Reasons to hate Lenin.

Anarchism and Socialism (1901)

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Written: Written in 1901 Published: First published in 1936 in the magazine Proletarskaya Revolutsia, No. 7. Published according to the manuscript. Source:Lenin Collected Works, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961, Moscow, Volume 5, pages 327-330. Translated: Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (1901). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit Marxists Internet Archive as your source. Other Formats: Text README

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See also in Volume 10:

Socialism and Anarchism (1905)

Theses:

1. Anarchism, in the course of the 35 to 40 years (Bakunin and the International, 1866) of its existence (and with Stirner included, in the course of many more years) has produced nothing but general platitudes against exploitation.

These phrases have been current for more than 2,000 years. What is missing is (alpha) an understanding of the causes of exploitation; (beta) an understanding of the development of society, which leads to socialism; (gamma) an understanding of the class struggle as the creative force for the realisation of socialism.

2. An understanding of the causes of exploitation. Private property as the basis of commodity economy. Social property in the means of production. In anarchismnil.

Anarchism is bourgeois individualism in reverse. Individualism as the basis of the entire anarchist world outlook.

{ Defence of petty property and petty economy on the land. Keine Majoritt.[1]

Negation of the unifying and organising power of the authority. }

3. Failure to understand the development of societythe role of large-scale productionthe development of capitalism into socialism.

(Anarchism is a product of despair. The psychology of the unsettled intellectual or the vagabond and not of the proletarian.)

4.

Failure to understand the class struggle of the proletariat.

Absurd negation of politics in bourgeois society.

Failure to understand the role of the organisation and the education of the workers.

Panaceas consisting of one-sided, disconnected means.

5. What has anarchism, at one time dominant in the Romance countries, contributed in recent European history?

No doctrine, revolutionary teaching, or theory.

Fragmentation of the working-class movement.

Complete fiasco in the experiments of the revolutionary movement (Proudhonism, 1871; Bakuninism, 1873).

Subordination of the working class to bourgeois politics in the guise of negation of politics.

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Notes

*1+ No majority (i.e., the anarchists non-acceptance of the submission by the minority to the majority).Ed. Lenin

Socialism and Anarchism (1905)

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Written: Written on November 24 (December 7),1905

Published: Published in Novaya Zhizn, No. 21, November 25 1905. Signed: N. Lenin. Published according to the newspaper text. Source:Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1965, Moscow, Volume 10, pages 71-74. Translated: Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2004). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit Marxists Internet Archive as your source. Other Formats: Text README

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The Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers Dep aties decided yesterday, November 23, to reject the applica tion of the anarchists for representation on the Executive Committee and on the Soviet of Workers Deputies. The Executive Committee itself has given the following reasons for this decision: (1) In the whole of international practice,congresses and socialist conferences have never included representatives of the anarchists, since they do not recognise the political struggle as a means for the achievement of their ideals; (2) only parties can be represented, and the anarchists are not a party.

We consider the decision of the Executive Committee to be in the highest degree correct, and of enormous importance from the point of view both of principle and of practical politics. If we were to regard the Soviet of Workers Deputies as a workers parliament or as an organ of proletarian selfgovernment, then of course it would have been wrong to reject the application of the anarchists. However insignificant (fortunately) the influence of the anarchists among our workers may be, nevertheless, a certain number of workers undoubtedly support them. The question whether the anarchists constitute a party, an organisation, a group, or a voluntary association of like-minded people, is a formal question, and not of major importance in terms of principle. Lastly, if the anarchists, while rejecting the political struggle, apply for representation in an institution which is con ducting such a struggle, this crying inconsistency merely goes to show once again how utterly unstable are the philosophy and tactics of the anarchists. But, of course, instability is no reason for excluding anyone from a parliament, or an organ of self-government.

We regard the decision of the Executive Committee as absolutely correct and in no way contradicting the functions, the character and the composition of this body. The Soviet of Workers Deputies is not a labour parliament and not an organ of proletarian self-government, nor an organ of self-government at all, but a fighting organisation for the achievement of definite aims.

This fighting organisation includes, on the basis of a temporary, unwritten fighting agreement, representatives of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (the party of proletarian socialism), of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party (the representatives of petty-bourgeois socialism, or the extreme Left wing of revolutionary bourgeois democrats), and finally many non-party workers. The latter, however, are not non-party in general, but are non-party revolutionaries, their sympathies being entirely on the side of the revolution, for the victory of which they are fighting with boundless enthusiasm, energy and self-sacrifice. For that reason it will be quite natural to include representatives of the revolutionary peasantry in the Executive Committee.

For all practical purposes, the Soviet of Workers Deputies is an inchoate, broad fighting alliance of socialists and revolutionary democrats, the term non-p arty revolutionary, of course, representing a series of transitional stages between the former and the latter. Such an alliance is obviously necessary for the purpose of conducting political strikes and other, more active forms of struggle, for the urgent democratic demands which have been accepted and approved by the over whelming majority of the population. In an alliance of this sort, the anarchists will not be an asset, but a liability; they will merely bring disorganisation and thus weaken the force of the joint assault; to them it is still debatable whether political reform is urgent and important. The exclusion of anarchists from the fighting alliance which is carrying out, as it were, our democratic revolution, is quite nec essary from the point of view of this revolution and is in its interests. There can be a place in a fighting alliance only for those who fight for the aim of that alliance. If, for example, the Cadets or the Party of Law and Order*1+ had man aged to recruit at least several hundred workers into their St. Petersburg branches, the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers Deputies would hardly have opened its doors to the representatives of such organisations.

In explaining its decision, the Executive Committee re fers to the practice of international socialist congresses. We warmly welcome this statement, this recognition by the executive body of the St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers Deputies of the ideological leadership of the international SocialDemocratic movement. The Russian revolution has already acquired international significance. The enemies of the revolution in Russia are already conspiring with Wilhelm II and with all sorts of

reactionaries, tyrants, militarists and exploiters in Europe against free Russia. Neither shall we forget that the complete victory of our revolution demands an alliance of the revolutionary proletariat of Russia with the socialist workers of all countries.

It is not for nothing that international socialist congresses adopted the decision not to admit the anarchists. A wide gulf separates socialism from anarchism, and it is in vain that the agentsprovocateurs of the secret police and the news paper lackeys of reactionary governments pretend that this gulf does not exist. The philosophy of the anarchists is bourgeois philosophy turned inside out. Their individualistic theories and their individualistic ideal are the very opposite of socialism. Their views express, not the future of bourgeois society, which is striding with irresistible force towards the socialisation of labour, but the present and even the past of that society, the domination of blind chance over the scattered and isolated small, producer. Their tactics, which amount to a repudiation of the political struggle, disunite the proletarians and convert them in fact into passive participators in one bourgeois policy or another, since it is impossible and unrealisable for the workers really to dissociate themselves from politics.

In the present Russian revolution, the task of rallying the forces of the proletariat, of organising it, of politically educating and training the working class, is more impera tive than ever. The more outrageous the conduct of the Black Hundred government, the more zealously its agentsprovocateurs strive to fan base passions among the ignorant masses and the more desperately the defenders of the autocracy, which is rotting alive? clutch at every opportunity to discredit the revolution by organising hold-ups, pogroms and assassinations, and by fuddling lumpen proletarians with drink, the more important is the task of organisation that falls primarily to the party of the socialist proletariat. And we shall therefore resort to every means of ideological struggle to keep the influence of the anarchists over the Russian workers just as negligible as it has been so far.

Since there can be no talk of an independent ideology formulated by the working masses themselves in the process of their movement,[15][15] This does not mean, of course, that the workers have no part in creating such an ideology. They take part, however, not as workers, but as socialist theoreticians, as Proudhons and Weitlings; in other words, they take part only when they are able, and to the extent that they are able, more or less, to acquire the knowledge of their age and develop that knowledge. But in order that working men may succeed in this more often, every effort must be made to raise the level of the consciousness of the workers in general; it is necessary that the workers do not confine themselves to the artificially restricted limits of literature for workers but that they learn to an increasing degree to master general literature. It would be even truer to say are not confined, instead of do not confine themselves, because the workers themselves wish to read and do read all that is written for the intelligentsia, and only a few (bad) intellectuals believe that it is enough for workers to be told a few things about factory conditions and to have repeated to them over and over again what has long been known. Lenin the only choice is either

bourgeois or socialist ideology. There is no middle course (for mankind has not created a third ideology, and, moreover, in a society torn by class antagonisms there can never be a non-class or an above-class ideology). Hence, to belittle the socialist ideology in any way, to turn aside from it in the slightest degree means to strengthen bourgeois ideology. There is much talk of spontaneity. But the spontaneous development of the working-class movement leads to its subordination to bourgeois ideology, to its development along the lines of the Credo programme; for the spontaneous workingclass movement is trade-unionism, is Nur-Gewerkschaftlerei, and trade unionism means the ideological enslavement of the workers by the bourgeoisie. Hence, our task, the task of SocialDemocracy, is to combat spontaneity, to divert the working-class movement from this spontaneous, trade-unionist striving to come under the wing of the bourgeoisie, and to bring it under the wing of revolutionary Social Democracy. The sentence employed by the authors of the Economist letter published in Iskra, No. 12, that the efforts of the most inspired ideologists fail to divert the workingclass movement from the path that is determined by the interaction of the material elements and the material environment is therefore tantamount to renouncing socialism. If these authors were capable of fearlessly, consistently, and thoroughly considering what they say, as everyone who enters the arena of literary and public activity should be, there would be nothing left for them but to fold their useless arms over their empty breasts and surrender the field of action to the Struves and Prokopoviches, who are dragging the working-class movement along the line of least resistance, i.e., along the line of bourgeois trade-unionism, or to the Zubatovs, who are dragging it along the line of clerical and gendarme ideology.

Let us recall the example of Germany. What was the historic service Lassalle rendered to the German working-class movement? It was that he diverted that movement from the path of progressionist trade-unionism and co-operativism towards which it had been spontaneously moving (with the benign assistance of Schulze-Delitzsch and his like). To fulfil such a task it was necessary to do something quite different from talking of underrating the spontaneous element, of tactics-asprocess, of the interaction between elements and environment, etc. A fierce struggle against spontaneity was necessary, and only after such a struggle, extending over many years, was it possible, for instance, to convert the working population of Berlin from a bulwark of the progressionist party into one of the finest strongholds of Social-Democracy. This struggle is by no means over even today (as might seem to those who learn the history of the German movement from Prokopovich, and its philosophy from Struve). Even now the German working class is, so to speak, split up among a number of ideologies. A section of the workers is organised in Catholic and monarchist trade unions; another section is organised in the Hirsch-Duncker[33] unions, founded by the bourgeois worshippers of English trade-unionism; the third is organised in Social-Democratic trade unions. The last-named group is immeasurably more numerous than the rest, but the SocialDemocratic ideology was able to achieve this superiority, and will be able to maintain it, only in an unswerving struggle against all other ideologies. Thus, the German party is especially strengthening its positions and spreading its influence, thanks particularly to the untiring energy with which it is conducting its campaign of political exposure. 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 point of view

and no other. The consciousness of the working masses 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 analysis and 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 or rather, 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 the 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. In order to become a Social-Democrat, the worker must have a clear picture in his mind of the economic nature and the social and political features of the landlord and the priest, the high state official and the peasant, the student and the vagabond; he must know their strong and weak points; he must grasp the meaning of all the catchwords and sophisms by which each class and each stratum camouflages its selfish strivings and its real inner workings; he must understand what interests are reflected by certain institutions and certain laws and how they are reflected. But this clear picture cannot be obtained from any book. It can be obtained only from living examples and from exposures that follow close upon what is going on about us at a given moment; upon what is being discussed, in whispers perhaps, by each one in his own way; upon what finds expression in such and such events, in such and such statistics, in such and such court sentences, etc., etc. These comprehensive political exposures are an essential and fundamental condition for training the masses in revolutionary activity.

Why do the Russian workers still manifest little revolutionary activity in response to the brutal treatment of the people by the police, the persecution of religious sects, the flogging of peasants, the outrageous censorship, the torture of soldiers, the persecution of the most innocent cultural undertakings, etc.? Is it because the economic struggle does not stimulate them to this, because such activity does not promise palpable results, because it produces little that is positive? To adopt such an opinion, we repeat, is merely to direct the charge where it does not belong, to blame the working masses for ones own philistinism (or Bernsteinism). We must blame ourselves, our lagging behind the mass movement, for still being unable to organise sufficiently wide, striking, and rapid exposures of all the shameful outrages. When we do that (and we must and can do it), the most backward worker will understand, or will feel, that the students and religious sects, the peasants and the authors are being abused and outraged by those same dark forces that are oppressing and crushing him at every step of his life. Feeling that, he himself will be filled with an irresistible desire to react, and he will know how to hoot the censors one day, on another day to demonstrate outside the house of a governor who has brutally suppressed a peasant uprising, on still another day to teach a lesson to the gendarmes in surplices who are doing the work of the Holy Inquisition, etc. As yet we have done very little, almost nothing, to bring before the working masses prompt exposures on all possible issues. Many of us as yet do not recognise this as our bounden duty but trail spontaneously in the wake of the drab everyday struggle, in the narrow confines of factory life. Under such circumstances to say that Iskra displays a tendency to minimise the

significance of the forward march of the drab everyday struggle in comparison with the propaganda of brilliant and complete ideas (Martynov, op. cit., p. 61), means to drag the Party back, to defend and glorify our unpreparedness and backwardness.

As for calling the masses to action, that will come of itself as soon as energetic political agitation, live and striking exposures come into play. To catch some criminal red-handed and immediately to brand him publicly in all places is of itself far more effective than any number of calls; the effect very often is such as will make it impossible to tell exactly who it was that called upon the masses and who suggested this or that plan of demonstration, etc. Calls for action, not in the general, but in the concrete, sense of the term can be made only at the place of action; only those who themselves go into action, and do so immediately, can sound such calls. Our business as Social-Democratic publicists is to deepen, expand, and intensify political exposures and political agitation.

As a political-science term, Leninism entered common usage in 1922, only after infirmity ended Lenins participation in governing the Russian Communist Party. Two years later, in July 1924, at the fifth congress of the Communist International (Comintern), Grigory Zinoviev popularized the use of the term Leninism to denote vanguard-party revolution. Leninism was composed as and for revolutionary praxis, and originally was neither rigorously proper philosophy nor discrete political theory. After the Russian Revolution (1917), in History and Class Consciousness (1923), Gyrgy Lukcs ideologically developed and organised Lenins pragmatic revolutionary practices into the formal philosophy of vanguard-party revolution (Leninism). As a work of political science and of political philosophy, History and Class Consciousness illustrated Lenins 1915 dictum about the commitment to the cause of the revolutionary man, and said of Gyrgy Lukcs:

One cannot be a revolutionary SocialDemocrat without participating, according to ones powers, in developing this theory [Marxism], and adapting it to changed conditions.

Lenin and the Russian Revolution (1971) p. 35.[3] .[5] In the United States of Europe Slogan (1915), Lenin said:

Workers of the world, unite! Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence the victory of socialism is possible, first in several, or even in one capitalist country taken separately. The victorious proletariat of that country, having expropriated the capitalists and

organised its own socialist production, would stand up against the rest of the world, the capitalist world.

Collected Works, vol. 18, p. 232.[6]

The more powerful enemy can be vanquished only by exerting the utmost effort, and by the most thorough, careful, attentive, skilful and obligatory use of any, even the smallest, rift between the enemies, any conflict of interests among the bourgeoisie of the various countries and among the various groups or types of bourgeoisie within the various countries, and also by taking advantage of any, even the smallest, opportunity of winning a mass ally, even though this ally is temporary, vacillating, unstable, unreliable and conditional. Those who do not understand this reveal a failure to understand even the smallest grain of Marxism, of modern scientific socialism in general. Those who have not proved in practice, over a fairly considerable period of time and in fairly varied political situations, their ability to apply this truth in practice have not yet learned to help the revolutionary class in its struggle to emancipate all toiling humanity from the exploiters. And this applies equally to the period before and after the proletariat has won political power.

Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder (1920)[7]

Leninist theory In the pamphlet What is to be Done? (1902), Lenin proposed that a revolutionary vanguard party, mostly recruited from the working class, should lead the political campaign, because it was the only way that the proletariat could successfully achieve a revolution; unlike the economist campaign of trade-union-struggle advocated by other socialist political parties; and later by the anarchosyndicalists. Like Karl Marx, Lenin distinguished between the aspects of a revolution, the "economic campaign" (labour strikes for increased wages and work concessions), which featured diffused plural leadership; and the "political campaign" (socialist changes to society), which required the decisive revolutionary leadership of the Bolshevik vanguard party.

centralism As epitomised in the slogan Freedom in Discussion, Unity in Action, Lenin followed the example of the First International (IWA, International Workingmens Association, 18641876), and organised the Bolsheviks as a democratically centralised vanguard party, wherein free political-speech was recognised legitimate until policy consensus; afterwards, every member of the Party would be

expected to uphold the official policy established in consensus. In the pamphlet Freedom to Criticise and Unity of Action (1905), Lenin said:

Of course, the application of this principle in practice will sometimes give rise to disputes and misunderstandings; but only on the basis of this principle can all disputes and all misunderstandings be settled honourably for the Party.... The principle of democratic centralism and autonomy for local Party organisations implies universal and full freedom to criticise, so long as this does not disturb the unity of a definite action; it rules out all criticism which disrupts or makes difficult the unity of an action decided on by the Party.[9]

Full, inner-party democratic debate was Bolshevik Party practice under Lenin, even after the banning of party factions in 1921. Although a guiding influence in policy, Lenin did not exercise absolute power, and continually debated and discussed to have his point of view accepted. Under Stalin, the inner-party practice of democratic free debate did not continue after the death of Lenin in 1924. In chapter five of The State and Revolution (1917) Lenin describes:

...the dictatorship of the proletariat i.e. the organisation of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of crushing the oppressors.... An immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the rich:... and suppression by force, i.e. exclusion from democracy, for the exploiters and oppressors of the people this is the change which democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to communism.*13+ Soviet constitutionalism was the collective government form of the Russian dictatorship of the proletariat, the opposite of the government form of the dictatorship of capital (privately owned means of production) practised in bourgeois democracies. In the soviet political system, the (Leninist) vanguard party would be one of many political parties competing for elected power.[1][11][14] Nevertheless, the circumstances of the Red vs. White Russian Civil War, and terrorism by the opposing political parties, and in aid of the White Armies' counter-revolution, led to the Bolshevik government banning other parties; thus, the vanguard party became the sole, legal political party in Russia. Lenin did not regard such political suppression as philosophically inherent to the dictatorship of the proletariat; yet the Stalinists retrospectively claimed that such factional suppression was original to Leninism.[15][16][17]

Democracy for the vast majority of the people, and suppression by force, i.e. exclusion from democracy, of the exploiters and oppressors of the people this is the change democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to communism.

Lenin, The State and Revolution. Collected Works, Vol. 25, pp.461462

But from this capitalist democracy--that is inevitably narrow and stealthily pushes aside the poor, and is therefore hypocritical and false through and through--forward development does not proceed simply, directly and smoothly, towards "greater and greater democracy", as the liberal professors and petty-bourgeois opportunists would have us believe. No, forward development, i.e., development towards communism, proceeds through the dictatorship of the proletariat, and cannot do otherwise, for the resistance of the capitalist exploiters cannot be broken by anyone else or in any other way.

And the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the organization of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of suppressing the oppressors, cannot result merely in an expansion of democracy. Simultaneously with an immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the moneybags, the dictatorship of the proletariat imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists. We must suppress them in order to free humanity from wage slavery, their resistance must be crushed by force; it is clear that there is no freedom and no democracy where there is suppression and where there is violence.

Engels expressed this splendidly in his letter to Bebel when he said, as the reader will remember, that "the proletariat needs the state, not in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom the state as such ceases to exist".

Democracy for the vast majority of the people, and suppression by force, i.e., exclusion from democracy, of the exploiters and oppressors of the people--this is the change democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to communism.

Only in communist society, when the resistance of the capitalists have disappeared, when there are no classes (i.e., when there is no distinction between the members of society as regards their relation to the social means of production), only then "the state... ceases to exist", and "it becomes possible to speak of freedom". Only then will a truly complete democracy become possible and be realized, a democracy without any exceptions whatever. And only then will democracy begin to

wither away, owing to the simple fact that, freed from capitalist slavery, from the untold horrors, savagery, absurdities, and infamies of capitalist exploitation, people will gradually become accustomed to observing the elementary rules of social intercourse that have been known for centuries and repeated for thousands of years in all copy-book maxims. They will become accustomed to observing them without force, without coercion, without subordination, without the special apparatus for coercion called the state # Now the question is put somewhat differently: the transition from capitalist society--which is developing towards communism--to communist society is impossible without a "political transition period", and the state in this period can only be the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

Marx grasped this essence of capitalist democracy splendidly when, in analyzing the experience of the Commune, he said that the oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!

The idea of socialism is the theoretical expression of the historic trend of the proletariat coordinated with the logical development of capitalist society. The relation between class and idea is not mechanical but dialectical. The class attains self-consciousness not through revelation but through difficult struggle, which also takes the form of an internal struggle within the proletariat itself. It is inevitable, therefore, that in the process of development of the proletariat a crystallisation of the most far-sighted, courageous, of the elite, of the real vanguard, should take place. (Trotsky, Writings 1934-35, p. 262.)

Trotsky derived from the revolutionary character of the epoch not the need for mass action, but the burning need for revolutionary leadership. The WRTs conception of the crisis of revolutionary leadership has nothing in common with that of Trotsky, who wrote in the Transitional Program:

The objective prerequisites for the proletarian revolution have not only ripened; they have begun to get somewhat rotten. Without a socialist revolution, in the next historical period at that, a catastrophe threatens the whole culture of mankind. It is now the turn of the proletariat, i.e., chiefly of its revolutionary vanguard. The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership. Vladimir Lenin popularized political vanguardism as conceptualized by Karl Kautsky, detailing his thoughts in one of his earlier works, What is to be done?. Lenin argued that Marxism's complexity and the hostility of the establishment (the bourgeois state or, in the case of Imperial Russia, the feudal state) required a close-knit group of individualsthe vanguardto safeguard the revolutionary ideology. While Lenin allegedly wished[citation needed] for a revolutionary

organization akin to his contemporary Social Democratic Party, which was open to the public and more democratic in organization, the Russian autocracy prevented this.

Leninists argue that Lenin's ideal vanguard party would be one where membership is completely open: "The members of the Party are they who accept the principles of the Party programme and render the Party all possible support."[1] This party could, in theory, be completely transparent: the "entire political arena is as open to the public view as is a theater stage to the audience."[2] A party that supposedly implemented democracy to such an extent that "the general control (in the literal sense of the term) exercised over every act of a party man in the political field brings into existence an automatically operating mechanism which produces what in biology is called the survival of the fittest." This party would be completely open to the public eye as it conducted its business which would mainly consist of educating the proletariat to remove the false consciousness that had been instilled in them.[3]

In its first phase, the vanguard party would exist for two reasons. Firstly, it would protect Marxism from outside corruption from other ideas as well as advance its concepts. And secondly, it would educate the proletariat class in Marxism in order to cleanse them of their "false individual consciousness" and instill the revolutionary "class consciousness" in them.

Our task is not to champion the degrading of the revolutionary to the level of an amateur, but to raise the amateurs to the level of revolutionaries. [4]

If the vanguard is successful in this lofty goal, on the eve of revolution the entirety of the working class population would be enlightened, Marxist revolutionaries. Furthermore a great number of them, namely their most intelligent members, would belong to the vanguard's inner circle as professional revolutionaries. Thus the organization would quickly include the entire working class.[5]

Once the proletariat gained class consciousness and thus was prepared to revolt against the ruling classes, the vanguard party would serve another purpose. The party would coordinate the proletariat through its revolution by acting as a military command hub of sorts. This is, according to Leninists, a vital function as mass revolutions can sometimes be easily crushed by the disciplined military of the ruling classes. The vanguards would serve as commanders of the revolt, chosen to their positions by "democratic natural selection".[citation needed]

In Lenin's view, after the revolution the working class would implement the dictatorship of the proletariat to rule the new worker's state through the first phase of communism, socialism. Here it can be said that the vanguard disappears, as all of society now consists of revolutionaries. ? Cannot such a task be carried out even by masses that do not struggle against the political police at all? Could this task, moreover, be fulfilled if, in addition to the few leaders, it were not undertaken by such workers (the overwhelming majority) as are quite incapable of struggling against the political police? Such workers, average people of the masses, are capable of displaying enormous energy and selfsacrifice in strikes and in street, battles with the police and the troops, and are capable (in fact, are alone capable) of determining the outcome of our entire movement but the struggle against the political police requires special qualities; it requires professional revolutionaries. And we must see to it, not only that the masses advance concrete demands, but that the masses of the workers advance an increasing number of such professional revolutionaries. Thus, we have reached the question of the relation between an organisation of professional revolutionaries and the labour movement pure and simple. Although this question has found little reflection in literature, it has greatly engaged us politicians in conversations and polemics with comrades who gravitate more or less towards Economism. It is a question meriting special treatment. But before taking it up, let us offer one further quotation by way of illustrating our thesis on the connection between primitiveness and Economism- Lenin,what is to be done. political struggle of Social-Democracy is far more extensive and complex than the economic struggle of the workers against the employers and the government. Similarly (indeed for that reason), the organisation of the revolutionary Social-Democratic Party must inevitably be of a kind different from the organisation of the workers designed for this struggle. The workers organisation must in the first place be a trade union organisation; secondly, it must be as broad as possible; and thirdly, it must be as public as conditions will allow (here, and further on, of course, I refer only to absolutist Russia). On the other hand, the organisation of the revolutionaries must consist first and foremost of people who make revolutionary activity their profession (for which reason I speak of the organisation of revolutionaries, meaning revolutionary Social-Democrats). In view of this common characteristic of the members of such an organisation, all distinctions as between workers and intellectuals, not to speak of distinctions of trade and profession, in both categories, must be effaced. Such an organisation must perforce not be very extensive and must be as secret as possible. Let us examine this threefold distinction- Lenin,what is to be done.