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CHAPTER ONE. Leninism and the Bolshevik Party, to 1917
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CHAPTER ONE Leninism and the Bolshevik Party, to 1917 The background of the Communist movement was dominated by one powerful figure, Lenin. The disciplined organization, the revolutionary mission, and stern enforcement of Lenin's version of doctrinal orthodoxy were all firmly established in the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social-Democratic Party long before 1917. The reactions of other Marxists testify eloquently to the unique impress which Lenin's personality made in the movement. When revolution came in 1917, Lenin was prepared to strike for power and hold it at any cost. Lenin as a Marxist As early as 1894, when he was twenty-four, Lenin (born Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov) had become a revolutionary agitator and a convinced Marxist. He exhibited his new faith and his polemical talents in a diatribe of that year against the peasant-oriented socialism of the Populists led by N. K. Mikhailovsky. . . . Now—since the appearance of Capital—the materialist conception of history is no longer a hypothesis, but a scientifically demonstrated proposition. And until some other attempt is made to give a scientific explanation of the functioning and development of any form of society—form of society, mind you, and not the mode of life of any country or people, or even class, etc.—another attempt which would be just as capable as materialism of introducing order into the "pertinent facts" and of presenting a living picture of a definite formation and at the same time of explaining it in a strictly scientific way, until then the materialist conception of history will be synonymous with social science. Materialism is not "primarily a scientific conception of history," as Mr. Mikhailovsky thinks, but the only scientific conception of history. . . . . . . Russian Marxists . . . began precisely with a criticism of the subjective methods of earlier socialists. Not satisfied with merely stating the fact that exploitation exists and condemning it, they desired to explain it. Realizing that the whole post-Reform* history of Russia consisted in the impoverishment of the mass and the enrichment of a minority, observing the colossal expropriation of the small producers side by side with universal technical progress, noting that these opposite tendencies arose and became intensified wherever, and to the extent that, commodity production developed and became consolidated, they could not but conclude FROM: Lenin, "What the 'Friends of the People' Are and How They Fight the SocialDemocrats " (April, 1894; in V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1950-52, Vol. I, book i, pp. 110, 165-66). *I.e., since the emancipation of the serfs in 1861—Ed. 4 Leninism and the Bolshevik Party, to igij that they were confronted with a bourgeois (capitalist) organization of social economy, which necessarily gave rise to the expropriation and oppression of the masses. Their practical program was quite directly determined by this conviction; this program was, to join the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, the struggle of the propertyless classes against the propertied, which constitutes the principal content of economic reality in Russia, from the most out-of-the-way village to the most up-to-date and perfected factory. How were they to join it? The answer was again suggested by real life. Capitalism had brought the principal branches of industry to the stage of large-scale machine industry; by thus socializing production, it had created the material conditions for a new system and had at the same time created a new social force—the class of factory workers, the urban proletariat. Subjected to the same bourgeois exploitation—for such, in its economic essence, is the exploitation to which the whole toiling population of Russia is subjected—this class, however, has been placed in a special, favourable position as far as its emancipation is concerned; it has no longer any ties with the old society , which is wholly based on exploitation; the very conditions of its labour and circumstances of life organize it, compel it to think and enable it to step into the arena of the political struggle. It was only natural that the Social Democrats should direct all their attention to, and base all their hopes on, this class, that they should make the development of its class consciousness their program, that they should direct all their activities towards helping it to rise and wage a direct political struggle against the present regime and towards drawing the whole Russian proletariat into this struggle. . . . The Foundation of the Russian Marxist Party While Marxism had been winning adherents among the Russian...