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WSWS : History : 2005 SEP/WSWS Summer School

Lecture three: The origins of Bolshevism and What Is To Be Done?

Part 7

By David North
13 September 2005

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This is the seventh and concluding part of the lecture “The Origins of Bolshevism and What Is To Be Done?” delivered by World Socialist Web Site Editorial Board Chairman David North at the Socialist Equality Party/WSWS summer school held August 14 to August 20, 2005 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The lecture is being posted in seven installments. Parts 1, 2, 3 , 4 , 5 and 6 were posted September 6-12.

This is the third lecture that was given at the school. The first, entitled “The Russian Revolution and the unresolved historical problems of the 20th century” was posted in four parts, from August 29 to September 1. The second, entitled “Marxism versus revisionism on the eve of the twentieth century,” was posted in three parts on September 2, 4 and 5. These lectures were also authored by David North.

How, then, was the political consciousness of the working class to be developed? The answer which was given by Lenin to this question bears careful study. For the economists, agitation related to economic “bread and butter” issues and immediate problems encountered in the factory served as the principal means of developing class consciousness. Lenin explicitly rejected the conception that genuine class consciousness could be developed on such a narrow economic basis. Agitation on immediate economic concerns was sufficient only for the development of trade union consciousness, i.e., the bourgeois consciousness of the working class. The development of revolutionary class consciousness, Lenin insisted, required that socialists concentrate their agitation on what he referred to as political exposures.

“In no way except by means of such exposures can the masses be trained in political consciousness and revolutionary activity. Hence, activity of this kind is one of the most important functions of international Social Democracy as a whole, for even political freedom does not in any way eliminate exposures; it merely shifts somewhat their sphere of direction.”[27]

In words that have lost none of their relevance—or, which, due to the staggering decline in our own period of the nature and significance of socialist consciousness, have actually grown in significance—Lenin wrote:

“Working class consciousness cannot be genuine political consciousness unless the workers are trained to respond to all cases of tyranny, oppression, violence, and abuse, no matter what class is affected—unless they are trained, moreover, to respond from a Social Democratic [i.e., revolutionary] point of view and no other. The consciousness of the working class cannot be genuine class consciousness unless the workers learn, from concrete, and above all from topical political facts and events to observe every other social class in all the manifestations of its intellectual, ethical and political life; unless they learn to apply in practice the materialist estimate of all aspects of the life and activity of all classes, strata, and groups of the population. Those who concentrate the attention, observation, and consciousness of the working class exclusively, or even mainly, upon itself alone are not Social Democrats; for the self-knowledge of the working class is indissolubly bound up, not solely with a fully clear theoretical understanding—it would be even truer to say, not so much with the theoretical, as with the practical understanding—of the relationships between all the various classes of modern society, acquired through the experience of political life. For this reason the conception of economic struggle as the most widely applicable means of drawing the masses into the political movement, which our Economists preach, is so extremely harmful and reactionary in its practical significance.”[28]

Lenin stressed that the revisionists who insisted that the fastest and easiest way to attract the attention of workers and win their support was to concentrate on economic and “shop-floor” issues—and that the principal activity of socialists should be in the day-to-day economic struggles of workers—were really contributing nothing of importance, in terms of the development of socialist consciousness, to the spontaneous workers’ movement. In fact, they were acting not as revolutionary socialists but as mere trade unionists. The really essential task of socialists was not to talk to workers about what they already know—day-to-day factory and on-the-job issues—but, rather, about what they cannot acquire from their immediate economic experience—political knowledge.

“You intellectuals can acquire this knowledge,” wrote Lenin, affecting the voice of a worker, “and it is your duty to bring it to us in a hundred- and a thousand-fold greater measure than you’ve done to now; and you must bring it to us, not only in the form of discussion, pamphlets, and articles (which very often—pardon our frankness—are rather dull), but precisely in the form of vivid exposures of what our government and our governing classes are doing at this very moment in all spheres of life.”[29]

Of course, Lenin did not counsel indifference, let alone abstention, from the economic struggles of the working class. But what he did oppose was the unwarranted and harmful fixation of socialists on such struggles, their tendency to limit their agitation and practical activity to economic issues and trade unionist struggles, and their neglect and avoidance of the critical and fundamental political issues that confront the working class as the revolutionary force within society. Moreover, when socialists intervened in trade union struggles, their real responsibility was, as Lenin wrote, “to utilize the sparks of political consciousness which the economic struggle generates among workers, for the purpose of raising the workers to the level of Social Democratic political consciousness.[30]

I have devoted such a great deal of time to this review of What Is To Be Done? because—and I hope that this is clear to all of you—what we actually have been talking about is the theory and perspective of the World Socialist Web Site.

Concluded

Notes:
[27] Vol. 5, p. 412 (italics in the original).
[28] Ibid, pp. 412-13 (italics in the orginal).
[29] Ibid, p. 417 (italics in the orginal).
[30] Ibid, p. 416 (italics in the orginal).