Lenin: A Revolutionary Life (19 page)

Hilferding had brilliantly analysed a world tumbling into war in a spirit of aggressive nationalism. He linked the burgeoning ideology of ‘social Darwinism’ – notably that competition was necessary because it conformed to the ‘natural’ law of ‘survival of the fittest’ – to the nature of finance capital itself. He also argued that the profits made in imperialist adventures made it possible for working-class living standards in the home countries to rise and thereby fend off revolution. Hilferding had linked the dominant social characteristics of the era and produced a revolutionary analysis which has deeply affected the revolutionary left down to the present. His depiction of monopoly and corporate capitalism as a hungry tiger prowling the entire globe in search of prey is still influential and was the essence of many later Soviet polemics and propaganda campaigns against capitalism. No matter how benevolent it looked, the wild beast still lived underneath the more humanitarian mask.

Ironically, Hilferding himself moderated his political position and associated himself with Kautsky after the split in the International. Later he became a junior figure in the Weimar government of the 1920s and eventually died in Gestapo custody in 1941. However, his drift to the ‘opportunist’ camp made the reception of his ideas on the revolutionary left rather ambiguous. Indeed, it helps to explain his obscurity since his ideas are better known to us through those who built on them rather than through Hilferding himself. Of all those who are indebted to Hilferding none is better known than Lenin, two of whose main writings –
Imperialism
and the closely connected
State and Revolution
– would not have been possible without Hilferding.

However, Lenin being Lenin and Hilferding being who he was, the relationship between the ideas of the two of them is not simple. While he adopted large swathes of Hilferding’s analysis Lenin strongly defined differences between the two of them. Reading Lenin’s pamphlet one would hardly notice its debt to Hilferding as much as the polemic. Indeed, Lenin more readily acknowledges the influence of Hobson than that of Hilferding on the grounds that Hobson is an unambiguous bourgeois liberal while, as a supporter of Kautsky, Hilferding is a petty-bourgeois disguised as a socialist and therefore more dangerous.

None the less, the similarities between Lenin’s and Hilferding’s analyses are striking. Concentration of capital, monopolies and cartels are equally at the heart of both analyses. The insatiable appetite for profits and the worldwide striving to realize them are fundamental to both. The ensuing hypocrisy of ‘democratic’ and ‘humanitarian’ values alongside racism, exultant nationalism and a colossal arms race and, by the time Lenin was writing, the most horrible war of all time, are roundly denounced by both. Lenin also seizes on, and indeed quotes favourably, Hilferding’s point about the superprofits of imperialism funding the rising living standards of the ‘aristocracy of labour’. For Lenin, the existence of these beneficiaries of imperialism explains the emergence of reformist social democracy – it is the ideology of precisely these elements who rise above the true proletariat.

However, Lenin also attempted to emphasize a number of what he considered crucial differences from Hilferding. Openly following Hobson, Lenin argued that the system described was not dynamic but parasitic and moribund. This is an interesting argument in that, for its originator Hobson, the existence of a large, idle, class of speculators who lived on the profits made by others was disgusting, immoral and unsustainable. It seems likely that Hobson’s humanitarian disgust at the existence of such rich idlers carried away his judgement in that there is no convincing argument to say that they are a sign of the system’s decadence. Immoral though it was, there is no reason why the system should be undermined by it. It is perhaps even more extraordinary that Lenin should seize on this point to distinguish himself from Hilferding. He follows Hobson in his contempt for idle ‘coupon-clippers’ living on unearned income but, no more than Hobson, does he show that the system is unsustainable. Just because it was repulsive did not make it unworkable.

Writing in 1915 and 1916 Lenin’s perspective was somewhat different from that of Hilferding, whose book had come out four years before the war. Lenin focused more on why the war was happening. Without understanding these ideas it is impossible to understand what Lenin meant by his central mantra that the war was an ‘imperialist war’. In his view, as we have seen in his writings of the very early days, the war was essentially brought about by the conflict between the Anglo-French and German capitalist blocs competing with each other for markets and for the ruination and despoliation of the other bloc. Russia was involved as the hireling of the Anglo-French bloc. In a preface to the postwar French and German editions of
Imperialism
Lenin pointed to the Treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Versailles to make his point. In both cases the victors had attempted to ensure the economic ruination of the vanquished and the takeover of assets by the victors. Brest-Litovsk was the most draconian peace treaty of modern times with Germany taking vast tracts of land, population, infrastructure and mineral resources plus imposing an indemnity payable in gold. Left to France and some of the British delegates Versailles would have been equally draconian. However, America, motivated by a desire to restructure Europe for ‘business as usual’ and an increasing fear of the spread of revolution leading to the setting up of a ‘
cordon sanitaire
’ (the predecessor of the iron curtain), modified the terms of the treaty. However, this was not enough for John Maynard Keynes who pointed out that the economic destruction of one power would weaken the trade and finance system as a whole. None the less, Lenin was satisfied that his basic point was supported by events. The war was fought for markets, colonies and the destruction of competition. His pamphlet has become a classic statement of the radical Marxist view of war in the capitalist era and is much better known than the analysis of Hilferding on which much, though not all, of it depends.

One further point. Hilferding’s analysis, as modified and added to by Lenin, depicted an aggressive, bloodthirsty, racist, immoral capitalist class drawing closer to the nation state and to militarism in its desire to annex the world and subdue its major competitors. In this way they were, inadvertently, opening the way for the Marxist interpretation of fascism as the ultimate, decadent phase of capitalism preceding its fall. Arguably, this interpretation had fatal consequences in blinding the dogmatic left to the ever-present contradictions between capitalists. As we have seen, Lenin had a tendency to believe that, despite imperialism, if threatened from the left, the warring capitalist blocs would put their mutual interest in suppressing revolution above their conflicting imperial interests. In fact, animosity between Germany and Britain and France continued for at least half of the century, revolution or no revolution. As such, the essence of this theory contributed to the fatal decision of the German Communist Party (instructed from Moscow in 1928) to treat all non-communist parties – Social Democrats, Liberals, Centre Party Catholics, Nationalists and Nazis – as equally fascist. Only when it was too late for Germany did they turn to alliances with all anti-fascist parties. However, such consequences could not be foreseen in 1916 when Lenin first formulated his ideas in detail.

There was, however, one more important dimension of Lenin’s pamphlet which distinguished it from its inspirers. Like all Lenin’s writings,
Imperialism
had a Russian dimension to it in that it addressed peculiarly Russian preoccupations. In fact, it addressed the oldest of Russian Marxist issues, the one with which Lenin had first made his name in the 1890s, namely, what is the fate of capitalism and hence of Marxist revolution in Russia? One of the main themes of the leftist interpretation of imperialism, shared by other theorists such as Rosa Luxemburg and Nikolai Bukharin, was the globalization of capitalism through imperialism. Indeed, Bukharin’s book was entitled
Imperialism and the World Economy
.
⁶
Lenin, among others, seized on this aspect of the debate. If capitalism were now a global system, the issue of which countries were ripe for Marxist revolution was less important in that the system could be challenged anywhere. Bukharin, adapting a phrase from Alexander Bogdanov, even went so far as to say that the chain of capitalism would break at its weakest link. For Lenin, this was not entirely the case. While it would not be the weakest link that would break the chain it could, at least initially, be one of the weaker links. The weakest links, in Lenin’s view, were in the periphery and he did not believe capitalism would break down there. A classic weaker link, however, was Russia which was much more strategically important to international capitalism. In Lenin’s view, the dilemma of whether one could have a Marxist revolution in a country which he, among others, considered ‘backward’ from the Marxist point of view, now had another resolution. A Marxist, class struggle against capitalism could be begun in Russia, but it could not be ended there. It would have to be supported by revolutions in the ‘advanced’ capitalist countries, notably Germany. However, for Lenin, there was no doubt about the applicability of Marx’s theories even to ‘backward’ Russia. Two fundamental points distinguished his view from that of the populists and the right-wing Social Democrats. First, as he had argued from the late 1890s, the question of Russia’s capitalist future was beyond dispute, since it was already irreversibly on the capitalist path. Second, because of the globalization of capitalism, the Russian revolution, though unsustainable in Marxist terms if it remained isolated, could spark off the final collapse of capitalism in its heartlands of Britain, France and Germany in particular. It is worth repeating that this did not mean that Lenin differed from his Marxist rivals by ignoring the orthodox Marxist ‘theory of stages’ whereby capitalism had to exhaust its creative potential before it gave way to socialism. Rather, his view was that Russia was already in the capitalist stage and therefore, given the new conditions of globalization, the socialist stage could be on the agenda even in ‘backward’ Russia. As we shall see, the assumption that Russia was ‘passing from the first stage of the revolution’,
i.e.
the bourgeois capitalist stage, to the ‘second stage’,
i.e.
the socialist stage, was a basic orientation for Lenin’s analysis and strategy in 1917.

Imperialism
became one of Lenin’s best-known works. Ironically, one of the reasons he had written it in the first place, was that he was, as usual, desperately short of money. By the time it was finally published in full, in 1917, Lenin’s material and political situation had changed beyond all expectation. Looking at his life during the war there is no sign of such a transforming prospect on the horizon.

In the bright summer sun of August 1914 Europeans joyously went through the first stages of their own self-destruction. Troop trains set off for the fronts. In the main cities of the warring blocs, Berlin, Vienna, Paris, St Petersburg, London and the rest, the scenes were similar. Bands, patriotic songs, flags, banners and cheering crowds sent the first victims of a doomed generation to their fate. Peace protestors were outnumbered and often bullied into silence. Those who foresaw the horrors to come were, in most cases, overwhelmed by a paroxysm of jingoism.

The sombre expectations of the right-wing Social Democrats who reluctantly voted for war credits were not noticed by the mainstream. The prophetic words of 3 August 1914 of Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, that ‘The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime’, were ignored. It was to take several years of pointless sacrifice before the sceptics began to muster a significant audience, but even then they were a minority in most countries.

Unnoticed in the continent-wide mobilization the Ulyanov couple made their way from Krakow, in ‘enemy’ Austria-Hungary, to neutral Switzerland. As had often been the case in the past, Lenin needed favours from his political opponents. In this case, Austrian Social-Democratic leaders, notably Victor Adler, intervened on his behalf despite the fact that Lenin denounced them regularly as opportunists. Unlike most socialists Lenin did not abide by the principle of having no enemies on the left. None the less, he was prepared to take advantage of the sentimentality of others if he felt he had to. Here as elsewhere in his life, Lenin’s morality was dominated by the need to do whatever seemed necessary to promote the true revolution.

Throughout the turmoil of the Marne, the Masurian Lakes, Passchendaele, the Somme, Verdun and the other disasters of war Lenin continued to live the life of a scholar and litterateur. His life revolved around libraries and publications. Communications were obviously hampered in wartime as was travel and he was unable to leave Switzerland. The continuous contact with Russia which he had enjoyed was no longer possible. There was no question of producing a newspaper on the scale and with the frequency of previous ventures. Even so, Lenin threw himself into doing what he could and in November revived
Sotsial Demokrat
(
The Social Democrat
) which appeared fairly regularly. Over twenty issues and two volumes of articles had appeared before Lenin departed Switzerland in March 1917. It is inconceivable to think of Lenin being without some sort of mouthpiece at this critical period.

At first the Ulyanovs lived in Berne, which he described as ‘a dull little town, but … better than Galicia’ and occupied himself ‘poking around in libraries – I have missed them.’ [CW 43 432] Oddly, given the unfolding drama, Lenin returned to the great philosophers, including Hegel and Aristotle, about whom he compiled his
Philosophical Notebooks
. His studies were notable for his ‘discovery’ of dialectics. The dialectic became a major philosophical cudgel for Lenin because, to his own satisfaction at least, he was able to claim that all other Marxist philosophers, from Plekhanov onwards, had overlooked its significance. Even in his last writings as his death approached nearly ten years later, he said of Bukharin, the acknowledged philosopher of the Communist Party, that he had never understood dialectics. In other words, no one but Lenin had really understood Marx. This lack of understanding was no side issue because, for Lenin, it was absolutely crucial to understanding the philosophical underpinnings of Marx’s theory. In Lenin’s opinion the dialectic was the Marxist theory of knowledge. [CW 38 355–63] Why was it so important? Dialectics proved that thought operated through the conflict of ideas. An idea, a thesis, would engender its opposite, its antithesis. In the conflict between the two a new concept, the synthesis, would emerge. This would form a new idea/thesis and the process would continue. Essentially, for Lenin, the dialectical process undermined all static, and therefore conservative, ways of thinking. Dialectics posited the constant interaction and struggle between concepts, resulting in new concepts rather than the pure triumph of one of the original combatants. Transferred into the natural world it suggested that stasis,
i.e.
things being unchanging, was not their natural state. Rather, they were in a constant state of change. For a revolutionary like Lenin, this meant that revolution, a form of change, was more natural than its illusory opposite, the notion longed for by conservatives, that ideas, history, tradition and so on were, or could be, unchanging. In fact, dialectical thinking was by no means a monopoly of revolutionaries. Liberals, social Darwinists and even some of the more subtle conservatives, believed that interaction of opposites and ensuing change were inevitable. However, for the more extreme conservatives and reactionaries, who abounded in Russia, such ideas were anathema and fitted in badly with, for example, traditional religious assumptions about the revelation of absolute truth. If truth was known through revelation how could it evolve? Lenin keenly adopted dialectics as the philosophical underpinning of a world moving inexorably towards revolution, using dialectics as a tool to ridicule those fighting a constant rearguard action against innovation in the name of revelation.

However, Lenin’s philosophical musings were not published at this time. Instead, he went full steam ahead with the polemic with the majority of the Second International which had supported the war and wrote his predictions about the war hastening the revolution which we have already examined. The new situation caused him some, usually temporary, re-evaluations. According to a newspaper report of a speech against the war which he gave in Lausanne on 14 October Lenin praised his former friend Martov for ‘doing precisely what a social democrat should do. He is criticizing his government.’ [CW 36 300–1]

The routine in Lenin’s life in Switzerland was based, as usual, on libraries, writing and lecturing, largely in Russian émigré circles which included Plekhanov, Axel’rod, Martov, Trotsky and Angelica Balabanoff, as well as the core Leninist group itself. In this respect the Shklovskys and the Zinovievs were Lenin’s closest companions and comrades in arms along with Bukharin, G.L. Pyatakov, E.F. Rozmirovich and Evgeniia Bosh. Key correspondents included Alexander Shlyapnikov and Alexandra Kollontai who spent the war years in the other main neutral zone, Scandinavia. Of course, some Leninists were in prison and exile including Kamenev and Stalin. The latter had yet to fully make his mark on Lenin who, despite having called him ‘his splendid Georgian’, had actually had to be reminded of his name during the war. [CW 43 469] Later, when released from prison after the February Revolution, Stalin was to become one of Lenin’s closest and most reliable assistants. Also in prison were the five Bolshevik deputies to the State Duma who were arrested for their opposition to the war in late 1914. It was still a tiny group.

Cultural and recreational distractions appear to have been less frequent in wartime but, as before, Lenin and Krupskaya took many, sometimes lengthy, visits to the mountains. The routine was disrupted by family bereavements, the arrival of Inessa Armand as a near-neighbour and companion and the convening of several important left-wing conferences in Switzerland which meant that, if Lenin could not travel to meet other socialists in other countries, at least a trickle of them were able to come to Switzerland. As ever, the Ulyanovs’ existence involved a constant battle for funds to keep the wolf from the door.

Once they had settled in Berne Lenin was quick to invite Inessa Armand, who was also living in Switzerland, to join them. She did so and by October was living ‘across the road’ [Krupskaya 252] from Lenin and Krupskaya. Krupskaya describes the relationship. The autumn of 1914 was, she recalled, ‘glorious’ and they took frequent walks in the nearby forest.

We would wander for hours along the forest roads, bestrewn with fallen yellow leaves. On most occasions the three of us went together on these walks, Vladimir Il’ich, Inessa and myself. Vladimir Il’ich would develop his plans of the international struggle. Inessa took it all very much to heart. In this unfolding struggle she began to take a most direct part, conducting correspondence, translating our documents into French and English, gathering materials, talking with people
etc.
Sometimes we would sit for hours on the sunlit, wooded mountainside while Il’ich jotted down outlines of his speeches and articles and polished his for
mulations; I studied Italian with the aid of a Toussain textbook; Inessa sewed a skirt and basked with delight in the autumnal sun – she had not yet fully recovered from the effects of her imprisonment. [Krupskaya 252]

If there ever had been an affair between Lenin and Inessa it was certainly over by this time. They remained close friends and comrades in the struggle but there is no evidence of the transient heat which character
ized their relationship in 1910. While they were apart from 1912 to 1914, their letters were frequent and cordial but less intimate than Inessa’s letter in which she said she was in love with Lenin. Throughout, Nadezhda and Inessa maintained an unaffectedly friendly relationship.

The spring of 1915 brought a deep personal blow for Krupskaya. Her mother died on 20 March and was cremated and her ashes buried on 23 March. Her death brought an unexpected problem. It exposed the Ulyanovs’ irreligious outlook to their pious landlady who, in a singularly unchristian and uncharitable way, requested her tenants to look for a room elsewhere so she could rent hers out to Christians. Mourning was brief as the two of them threw themselves into an International Socialist Women’s Conference held in Berne from 26 to 28 March. As it happened the war years also brought the death of Lenin’s mother on 25 July 1916. Lenin maintained a revolutionary stiff upper lip but his love and affection for his mother remained undimmed and, within a few hours of his eventual return to Petrograd in April 1917, he visited the grave where she lay next to Lenin’s sister Olga.

LENIN’S WARTIME POLITICS

Conferences and meetings were the restricted arenas in which Lenin was able to play out wartime politics in Switzerland. The first confrontation came in Lausanne on 11 October 1914. Plekhanov was scheduled to make a speech to rally Mensheviks to the defence of Russia (defensism). Like other socialist groups they were splitting over the war and a left wing, including Martov, was inclining towards internationalism. Lenin decided to go although he was uncertain as to whether the organizers would let him in. We do not have the text of his speech but we do have accounts of the event. Lenin was allowed in and listened intently to Plekhanov’s speech. The first part, which enunciated some general Marxist principles, brought applause from Lenin. However, the second half was an argument in favour of defensism. Plekhanov’s remarks were met with warm support. Indeed, the audience were Plekhanov’s people. Even Lenin still respected him and hoped he would be converted to internationalism. At the end of his speech, there was a call for comments from the audience. Only one person responded. Lenin walked nervously forward, glass of beer in hand. It was rather like a bull entering the arena after the matador’s parade and early flourishes. In the teeth of the enemy Lenin courageously stood up and put forward the point of view we have already seen him articulating in his articles of September, the need for working-class solidarity and the transformation of the war into a civil war. He spoke for about ten minutes. Plekhanov took the floor to despatch the brave bull which he did to great adulation from the audience, which was, in any case, predisposed to his side. None the less, Lenin had made his point even though he appeared to have lost that particular fight. Needless to say, the intensity of the occasion affected his nerves and he was in a state of great excitement after it. However, his nerves and his confidence were somewhat restored on 14 October when he spoke at a meeting of his own. He stressed working-class solidarity in the face of imperialist war and it was on this occasion that he even partially praised Martov for doing the right thing. He also lectured on the war and socialism in Geneva on 15 October. His positions were very well received by his audience.

Switzerland was one of the only places left in Europe where vestigial international conferences of the left could be held. One of the earliest was the International Conference of Socialist Women held in March 1915, a few days after the death of Krupskaya’s mother. Lenin himself could not be a delegate but he directed the Bolshevik delegation, which consisted of Nadezhda, Inessa and Lilina Zinoviev. In true Bolshevik fashion they split the conference and refused to budge. After some tense wrangling a compromise was reached whereby the majority resolution stood but the minority Bolshevik resolution was minuted. The Bolshevik culture of hard-line confrontation was not being softened by the war. They remained a supposedly democratic group which refused to accept majority decisions, other than their own. It was a similar story a week later when an International Socialist Youth Conference also met in Berne from 5 to 7 April. Again excluded from direct participation Lenin held court in a nearby café, and sympathetic delegates came and went in a steady stream looking for guidance on what steps to take next in the conference.

The two most important such conferences, however, were the antiwar conferences held at Zimmerwald (5–8 September 1915) and Kienthal (24–30 April 1916). The timing of the Zimmerwald Conference meant it interrupted the Ulyanovs’ usual summer mountain holiday. In fact, for once it was Krupskaya’s health, her persistent problems with Graves’ disease – a thyroid condition which caused her goitre, bulging eyes, heart palpitations and infrequent periods – which flared up once more after her mother’s death, that caused them to leave Berne for a base near the mountains. They chose Soerenberg at the foot of the Rothorn. As usual, they enjoyed almost idyllic surroundings. ‘We were quite comfortable at Soerenberg; all around there were woods, high mountains and there was even snow on the peak of the Rothorn.’ The punctuality of the Swiss post and the efficiency of Swiss organization meant that Lenin could request any book from the Berne or Zurich libraries and it would arrive two days later – ‘a complete contrast to bureaucratic France … This arrangement enabled Il’ich to work in this out-of-the-way place. Il’ich had nothing but praise for Swiss culture.’ Their way of life contrasted with the turmoil of war going on around them and against which Lenin was directing his intellectual energies: