The status of a classic text: Lenin's What Is To Be Done? After 1902

History of European Ideas, Vol. 22, No. 4, pp. 307-320, 1996

Pergamon

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T H E STATUS O F A CLASSIC TEXT: L E N I N ' S W H A T I S T O B E D O N E ? A F T E R 1902 ROBERT MAYER*

Of all of Lenin's arguments, none is more well known than his discussion of spontaneity and consciousness in What Is To Be Done? In the second chapter of that pamphlet Lenin claimed that workers were not spontaneously socialist in their inclinations but spontaneously bourgeois. If left to themselves, proletarians engaged only in a trade-union struggle for higher wages and better working conditions but did not press for a revolutionary transformation of the capitalist system itself. Marx had demonstrated, however, that socialism was in the objective interests of the working class, and Lenin therefore concluded that if the proletariat was ever to realize its class interest, the socialist idea would have to be brought to it 'from without' by those who understood Marx's science--the radical bourgeois intelligentsia. Because there was no internal dynamic within the working class that might drive it in a socialist direction, an enlightened external agent was needed in order to initiate the revolutionary transformation of proletarian consciousness. As Hough has observed, the passage about bringing consciousness from without 'is the Lenin statement most widely cited in the Western scholarly literature', z So much attention is devoted to this argument because it is thought to form 'the doctrinal core of Leninism' from which his authoritarianism 'flowed logically') Having denied the ability of workers to understand their own interests, it is not surprising that Lenin would discount the democratic wishes of this group when they conflicted with his own views. Many scholars have therefore concluded that Lenin's justification for refusing to submit to the will of the proletarian majority after the Bolshevik seizure of power must have been derived from his claims in What Is To Be Done? In an excellent account of the party's response to worker unrest in 1919, for instance, Brovkin described the Bolshevik justification for dictatorship in terms drawn straight from Lenin's most famous work: 'The workers had to be guided; proletarian consciousness had to be brought in from above. Left to themselves, the workers would never rise above trade-union consciousness'.4 According to the conventional view, then, the pessimistic thesis about working-class consciousness set forth in What Is To Be Done? 'continued to dominate all of Lenin's thinking and actions and is perhaps the very essence of Leninism'. s This paper, however, contests that view. Although What Is To Be Done? has been described as 'the crowning achievement of his theoretical efforts and *Department of Political Science, Loyola University Chicago, 6525 N. Sheridan Road, Chicago, IL 60626, U.S.A. 307

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his practical revolutionary activity',6 I will show that the argument about proletarian incapacity propounded in that work is in fact irrelevant for an understanding of Lenin's mature theory and practice. A systematic review of the evidence indicates that Lenin's critique of spontaneity there was an aberration--indeed, an error--from which he soon retreated. By 1917 Lenin no longer believed that socialist consciousness had to be brought from without, and never once did he employ that argument to justify dictatorship over the working class after he gained power. Other, quite different arguments replaced it, and it is therefore misleading to treat What Is To Be Done? as the classic statement of Lenin's view of working-class consciousness. The aim of this paper is to reevaluate the status of a classic text in Marxist theory. The first section describes how Lenin arrived at the novel thesis defended in What Is To Be Done? The second section offers hitherto unnoticed evidence for the claim that he abandoned that thesis after 1902. The third section identifies Lenin's mature theory of working-class consciousness, the theory that informed his practice after 1917.

THE COMPOSITION OF A CLASSIC TEXT Before examining the evidence concerning Lenin's later commitment to the ideas set forth in What Is To Be Done?, it is important to understand how that work was composed, for the manner of its composition raises questions about whether the views stated there were the product of careful reflection. Lenin conceived the idea for the pamphlet in the Spring of 1901 while engaged in a polemic with the editors of Rabochee Delo and others whom he considered guilty of 'economism'. He apparently did some preliminary work on the project at that time but soon put it aside until the end of the year. 7 In the prefaceto the pamphlet, Lenin informs us that the original plan did not include a separate section on working-class consciousness and that he only decided to devote a chapter to that subject after the appearance of several articles critical of Iskra in the September 1901 issue of Rabochee Delo. 8 In one of those articles, B.N. Krichevskii accused the Iskra organization (of which Lenin was a leader) of having 'underestimated the significance of the objective or spontaneous element of development' in the socialist movement,9 and we know from the minutes of a party conference held in early October that Lenin was outraged by this criticism. 1° Krichevskii's defense of spontaneity convinced Lenin that deep theoretical differences underlay the clash between the two organizations and that an explicit discussion of working-class consciousness was therefore necessary. Lenin may also have been encouraged to address this issue because of an October 1901 Neue Zeit article he came across by Karl Kautsky touching on this very question.l~ Lenin resumed work on the pamphlet in early November 1901 and finished the 200-page manuscript shortly after the new year. He accomplished this feat despite persistent bouts of illness and the pressure of other work. 12 In the preface Lenin admitted that the manuscript had been produced in 'great haste [naspekh]', and he apologized for its 'enormous literary shortcomings'.13

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According to the letters and reminiscences of G.V. Plekhanov and P.B. Akselrod--Lenin's fellow editors--Lenin did not revise the rough draft in any significant way, despite their criticisms. Plekhanov later characterized the argument of the second chapter in particular as 'aus der Pistole geschossen'. ~4 Nevertheless, the pamphlet went to press in February 1902, and the first copies were smuggled into Russia the following month. What Is To Be Done?, then, was not composed in a leisurely and reflective manner. It was a very different sort of book from The Development of Capitalism in Russia, which was the product of deep study carried out over several years in the enforced seclusion of Siberian exile. There is no evidence that Lenin undertook a special study of the question of working-class consciousness in Social-Democratic theory in the Fall of 1901--or indeed at any point during his career. In the second chapter itself he did not cite or refer to any works of Marxist theory except the Neue Zeit article by Kautsky. Like most of Lenin's writings over the years, What Is To Be Done? was a polemic dashed off in the heat of battle and should not be mistaken for a polished work of theory. Lenin, however, did not suddenly invent the argument about consciousness from without in the last months of 1901. Ideas of this sort first appeared in his writings two years earlier, as his term of internal exile drew to a close. This pessimism that emerged in late 1899 marked a sharp departure from the optimism Lenin had expressed earlier in the decade about proletarian capacities. Until the turn of the century, Lenin often argued that the experience of capitalist exploitation in the conditions of large-scale industry inevitably engendered anti-capitalist sentiments in the minds of factory workers. As he explained in 'Friends of the People', in the factory 'exploitation is already fully developed and emerges in its pure form without any confusing details. The worker cannot fail to see that capital oppresses him, that the struggle has to be waged against the class of bourgeois'.t5 In a later pamphlet, he explicitly stated that workers possessed a 'spontaneous striving' for socialism. 16 And these earlier, optimistic views were not at all unorthodox. Russian Social-Democratic theory consistently expressed great faith in the ability of workers to attain socialist consciousness through their own efforts. As I have explained elsewhere, according to the orthodox view, practice was supposed to lead workers inevitably to the socialist standpoint, but it was also said that the pace of that conversion could be accelerated through timely intervention from without by the intelligentsia. 17 Lenin's sudden change of mind in late 1899 therefore constituted a departure from party orthodoxy. The most plausible explanation for this about-face is Lenin's decision to intervene in the 'economist' controversy then raging in emigre circles and the rhetorical strategy he devised in order to counter economist criticisms of the intelligentsia. Those Social Democrats who were tarred with the economist label accused the intelligenty grouped around Plekhanov of artificially pushing workers into political struggle against the autocracy, while neglecting the economic struggle in which the proletariat engaged spontaneously. Plekhanov and his comrades rejected this charge, arguing instead that the Social-Democratic intelligentsia was merely

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accelerating a political struggle in which the class itself had already begun to participate and which directly facilitated its economic struggle. Nothing was being forced on workers from without; they were only being encouraged to do more quickly what they would do in any case even without intelligentsia intervention) s Writing at about the same time but from afar, Lenin took a different approach. He conceded that the Social Democrats were imposing alien tasks on the working class, but he added that without this external influence the workers would fail to emancipate themselves. Both Plekhanov and Lenin defended the intelligentsia against economist criticism, but their arguments now were significantly different. Lenin was encouraged in this direction by an idea he had encountered in Kautsky's Das Erfurter Programm, an influential explication of German Social-Democratic theory. In the latter sections of this commentary, Kautsky argued that Marx had succeeded in 'fusing' the labor movement and socialism, but that before him the two had existed separately and had often been at oddsJ 9 Lenin turned this idea against the economists in his 1899 manuscripts, arguing that the workers would only become socialists if socialist theory was brought to them from without and fused with their spontaneous economic struggle. 2° This argument was inconsistent with Plekhanov's more optimistic teaching, but Lenin appears not to have recognized this at the time. Lenin's newfound pessimism did not come to the attention of others at the turn of the century because none of his 1899 manuscripts were published until several decades later. Traces of this pessimism can be found in an article he wrote for the December 1900 issue of Iskra, 21 but this new view was set forth in detail for the first time only in the second chapter of What Is To Be Done? No doubt the fortuitous appearance of Kautsky's article in October 1901 strengthened Lenin's resolve to develop the approach with which he had toyed two years before in his Siberian manuscripts. 22 To conclude, given the manner in which What Is To Be Done? was composed, it is reasonable to wonder whether Lenin's provocative argument in the second chapter reflected his considered view of the subject. The pamphlet was written in great haste and little research informed its arguments. The thesis of consciousness from without was derived from some statements by another theorist whom Lenin greatly admired but whose work he did not fully understand, and his new views clashed with the party orthodoxy to which he himself had subscribed throughout the 1890s. While none of these circumstances tells us anything about Lenin's opinion after the booklet appeared in print, they should make us cautious about assuming that this pessimistic argument formed the doctrinal core of mature Leninism.

THE RECORD OF A RETREAT Lenin's pamphlet was an instant success when it first appeared in the Russian underground in the Spring of 1902. Only weeks after the first copies were smuggled into Russia, a secret police report noted that What Is To Be

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Done? was already making 'a great sensation' among Russian Social Democrats. z3 But Lenin's book was not merely of intellectual or literary interest to revolutionary activists, lskra's supporters quickly began to employ its arguments in disputes with those who favored decentralization and more democracy in the local organizations, and they succeeded in reconstituting many underground committees in conformity with Lenin's principles. 24 Some of Lenin's arguments in that pamphlet, however, were more successful than others. The critique of spontaneity in particular drew repeated criticism, both from the leadership abroad and from rank-and-file activists in Russia. Indeed, Lenin's argument was attacked as unorthodox even before it was published, certainly by Plekhanov and Akseirod, and possibly by Iu.O. Martov as well. z5 In the weeks following its publication, it was also criticized in private correspondence by A.N. Potresov, L.G. Deich, and Parvus. 26 The only Iskra editor who did not object to Lenin's pessimistic formulation at the time of publication was V.I. Zasulich.27 Memoir accounts of the period (admittedly less reliable than contemporary documents) also suggest that at least a few activists had reservations about Lenin's argument when they first encountered it. z8 And occasionally a letter would turn up at the Iskra editorial office in London expressing doubts. The most interesting one was sent in November 1902 by V.N. Shapashnikova, who wrote that some comrades in St Petersburg were speculating that ' What Is To Be Done? will be fundamentally improved in a second edition, that Lenin himself now acknowledges his mistake on the question of work among the masses, where he "omitted the existence of the labor movement" ,.29 Although this rumor must have surprised Lenin, the latter comment indicates that some Social Democrats in Russia were dissatisfied with Lenin's formulation in the second chapter of his booklet--and this well before that chapter became a subject of dispute between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. The first published criticisms of Lenin's argument appeared in the Spring of 1903, prior to the Second Party Congress. 3° But the controversial nature of Lenin's thesis only became the object of widespread attention when the future Menshevik leader A.S. Martynov criticized Lenin's pamphlet from the podium during the eighth sitting of the Congress. 31 Over the next two years Lenin's thesis would be attacked or defended numerous times in the party press as the conflict between the two factions intensified. To be sure, many of Lenin's ideas were subject to sharp criticism over the years, and he was not by nature one to give way to such criticism or to change his mind because others objected. In this instance, however, there is good reason to think that Lenin did retreat from the argument set forth in What Is To Be Done? Although no 'smoking gun' exists, there is much circumstantial evidence in the writings of Lenin and in the statements of his allies and opponents, suggesting that the thesis of consciousness from without was an aberration and not his considered view. In the following pages I present that evidence. I begin with Lenin's own statements about the status of his argument in What Is To Be Done? Lenin did not reply to the first published attacks directed against his pessimistic thesis. He could not, however, avoid saying

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something at the Second Party Congress after Martynov made an issue of his statements. At the conclusion of a long and wide-ranging debate on the subject, Lenin took the podium and followed Plekhanov's lead in responding to his critics. Earlier in the day Plekhanov had observed that 'Lenin did not write a tract on the philosophy of history but a polemical piece against the economists', and Lenin in his speech reiterated that 'an episode in the struggle against economism is being confused with a principled statement regarding an important theoretical question (the development of ideology)'. 32 Lenin's strategy, in other words, was to deny that he had been making general, theoretical claims in that chapter and to insist that the work was merely a polemic of the moment. At the end of his speech he declared that 'the economists bent the stick in one direction. In order to straighten the stick it was necessary to bend it back in the other direction, and that is what I did'. 33 This appears to have been an acknowledgment that his pessimistic claims in What Is To Be Done? were an exaggeration. Lenin referred explicitly to his pessimistic argument in only one other publication: the September 1907 preface to Twelve Years, a volume of selected works including What Is To Be Done? This was also the last time Lenin ever mentioned that pamphlet in print or private correspondence. In the preface he dismissed Martynov's criticisms at the Second Party Congress as unfounded and also rejected Plekhanov's famous attack on his thesis in a two-part Iskra article published in July-August 1904. Lenin charged that 'Plekhanov's criticism was obviously mere cavilling, based on phrases torn out of context, on particular expressions not quite adroitly or precisely formulated by me, and ignored the general content and the whole spirit of the pamphlet'. Once again Lenin admitted to shortcomings in the earlier argument, but he also minimized those shortcomings. Repeating the strategy he had adopted at the Second Party Congress, Lenin claimed that he did not 'have any intention of elevating my own formulations, as given in What Is To Be Done?, to "programmatic" level, constituting special principles'. His pamphlet, he concluded, was 'a polemical correction of economism, and it is wrong to consider its content without recalling that pamphlet's aim'. 34 In other words, those arguments were appropriate only in 1902. One should not therefore treat that work as the philosophical basis of Bolshevism, Lenin was saying, for some of its arguments were no longer applicable. Lenin's most revealing statement about his famous argument, however, never explicitly mentioned What Is To Be Done? In an unsigned note tucked away in the back pages of an October 1905 issue of Proletarii, Lenin called the Russian reader's attention to a 'splendid' article written a few months earlier by the young Stalin concerning the 'memorable' question of 'introducing consciousness from without'. Lenin then reduced Stalin's argument to four theses, the first three of which merely repeated Lenin's own claims in What Is To Be Done? Lenin began with the unexceptional statement that 'socialist consciousness corresponds to the position of the proletariat'. He then quoted the Neue Zeit article by Kautsky he had cited in his pamphlet to the effect that scientific socialist consciousness could only be developed by those with a scientific education, namely the intelligentsia. The

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third thesis argued that the intelligentsia then brought this scientific consciousness from without to the proletariat. The fourth thesis, however, significantly amended Lenin's earlier argument and brought it into conformity with the Russian orthodoxy. Lenin asked, 'what does Social Democracy meet with when it comes to the proletariat with the message of socialism?' His answer was 'an instinctive inclination [vlechenie] toward socialism'. Lenin then quoted Kautsky's speech at the Austrian Party Congress in November 1901 in which the German leader claimed that working-class experience of capitalist exploitation 'of necessity engenders a socialist tendency among proletarians'. 35 What is noteworthy about the fourth thesis is that Lenin was no longer accusing the proletariat of spontaneous bourgeois tendencies. Workers were spontaneously socialist, he now admitted, although they were not spontaneously scientific. Without directly saying so, Lenin had revised What Is To Be Done? As important as these veiled admissions of error is the fact that Lenin never repeated his pessimistic thesis in any of the thousands of pages of writings he produced after 1902.36 Indeed, beginning in 1905, Lenin often stated explicitly that the working class was spontaneously socialist, not spontaneously bourgeois. In a series of articles on 'The Reorganization of the Party' published in November 1905, for instance, Lenin declared that 'the working class is instinctively, spontaneously Social-Democratic, and more than a decade of work by Social Democracy has done a very great deal to transform this spontaneity into consciousness'. 37 One week later he wrote that 'as a result of the peculiar position of the proletariat in capitalist society, the striving of the workers toward socialism and their union with the socialist party burst forth with spontaneous force at the very earliest stages of the movement'. 38 And these optimistic assessments were not temporary deviations engendered by the revolutionary enthusiasm of the October general strike. Five years later, in the dark days of reaction, Lenin could still insist that The very conditions of their lives make the workers capable of struggle and impel them to struggle. Capital collects the workers in great masses in big cities, uniting them, teaching them to act in unison. At every step the workers come face to face with their main enemy--the capitalist class. In combat with this enemy the worker becomes a socialist, comes to realize the necessity of a complete reconstruction of the whole of society ...39 Never again did Lenin revert to his earlier pessimism about the ability of workers to attain socialist consciousness through their own efforts. Resolutely hostile to the intelligentsia after 1903, Lenin no longer believed that it had to or could bring salvation to the proletariat from without. 4° There is additional evidence for this interpretation in the writings of Lenin's allies and opponents. Several who were close to Lenin at this time stated explicitly that the second chapter of What ls To Be Done? was an error, not Lenin's considered view. As noted above, Plekhanov published a devastating critique of the 'consciousness from without' thesis in the summer of 1904. What is

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interesting about Plekhanov's argument, however, is that he did not interpret Lenin's thesis as a deeply held conviction but as symptomatic of his confusion about Marxist theory. In the article, Plekhanov explained that because he feared Lenin's view would be mistaken for an authoritative statement of the Iskra organization on the question of consciousness, early in 1903 he wrote 'two articles for Iskra in which I purposely raised the question of the relation of the heroes to the crowd and resolved it in an entirely nonLeninist manner'. 41 In 'The Ides of March', for instance, Plekhanov declared that 'the ideas of scientific socialism do not contradict the spontaneous tendency of things and in general do not diverge from it but serve as its conscious expression'. 42 This formulation was indeed at odds with Lenin's, but according to Plekhanov, when he showed the essays to his fellow editor 'Lenin did not object to these articles but rather praised them'. Plekhanov therefore concluded that Lenin 'had made several very significant "steps forward" in his development and had abandoned [pokinul] his past mistakes'. By the time of the Second Party Congress Plekhanov 'was convinced that Lenin had already relinquished those views'.43 Interestingly enough, this interpretation was accepted by one of Lenin's allies after the party split, M.S. Olminskii. In Our Misunderstandings, a compilation published shortly after Plekhanov's article appeared, Olminskii rose to Lenin's defense not by justifying what the Bolshevik leader had written in What Is To Be Done?, but by discounting the importance of any error Lenin might have made. Olminskii noted that Plekhanov himself had 'concede[d] only that the phrase [about developing consciousness from without] was unfortunate'. Lenin may have chosen his words poorly, Olminskii granted, but at the Second Party Congress Plekhanov had 'absolve[d] Lenin of any crime'. Now suddenly Plekhanov was attacking Lenin for his slip, but Olminskii countered that 'to argue with a person over a phrase which the author [Plekhanov] himself does not consider a precise formulation of the other's view is to push at an open door'. 44 Lenin might have erred, Olminskii admitted, but that error did not reflect his considered opinion. As he explained in another pamplet published in October 1904, 'one cannot view it [What Is To Be Done~ as a complete catechism for the Sooal Democrat or as a complete expression of the author's opinions'. 45 One could be a good Bolshevik, Olminskii appeared to be suggesting, without agreeing with everything Lenin had said in that particular work. Olminskii was even more explicit about Lenin's mistake 14 years later, in a short essay published not long after the October Revolution. Reminiscing about the debate over spontaneity and consciousness that had rocked the movement at the turn of the century, Olminskii observed that in the pamphlet What Is To Be Done?, which played a great role then, Comrade Lenin slipped [obmolvilsia] on this question with a rather unfortunate phrase . . . . This formulation clearly sinned, for it lost sight of the continual reverberation [otrazhenie] of the 'spontaneous' labor movement on this very theory. After the split within the party, the Mensheviks pounced on Lenin's argument and condemned him for his supposedly 'contemptuous attitude

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toward the workers', and according to Olminskii, 'that campaign led to embarrassment among some of the Bolsheviks, who begged Comrade Lenin to clarify the matter'. Lenin, however, was said to have 'scornfully dismissed' these entreaties because it was obvious that he took at least as much account of proletarian spontaneity as his opponents. 46 In other words, Lenin's discussion in his most famous pamphlet did not correspond to his considered conviction. Another Bolshevik--A.A. B o g d a n o v - - o f f e r e d a similar interpretation. In a 1910 reply to Materialism and Empirio-criticism, Bogdanov reminded his readers of Lenin's claim in What Is To Be Done? that socialist consciousness must be brought to workers from without, and he commented that The phrase was blurted out entirely by accident, in the heat of the polemic with the economists, and had no organic link with the fundamental views of the author. That did not prevent the Menshevik publicists from concentrating their attack for over three years on this phrase of Lenin's, as if it proved once and for all the anti-proletarian character of Bolshevism. 47 Bogdanov had been expelled from the Bolshevik faction by Lenin and his allies a few months before he wrote these lines, and so he had no reason to be kind to Lenin in his critique. It is therefore interesting that even Bogdanov considered Lenin's theory in the second chapter of his pamphlet an aberration, a mistaken formulation that did not define the essence of Bolshevism. In his effort to discredit the economists, Bogdanov maintained, Lenin got carried away with his own argument and said some foolish things, but those indiscretions did not reflect Lenin's mature view. Lenin did not really believe that workers were incapable of attaining socialist consciousness through their own spontaneous efforts. One final piece of evidence demonstrating the irrelevance of Lenin's pessimistic formulation is to be found in the minutes to the Third Party Congress, a purely Bolshevik affair convened in May 1905. At the fifteenth sitting of the Congress, Lenin became completely exasperated with those Bolsheviks who underestimated the inherently revolutionary character of the proletariat. While debating a resolution proposed by Bogdanov on the relationship between workers and intelligenty within the party, Lenin was amazed to discover the steadfast resistance of the underground committeemen to including more workers in the local Bolshevik organizations. After a heated exchange, Lenin accused his opponents of having 'said that the bearers of the Social-Democratic idea are mainly intelligenty'. But reversing his position in What Is To Be Done?, Lenin declared that 'this is false. During the era of economism the bearers of the revolutionary idea were workers and not intelligenty'. He insisted that 'introducing workers into the committees is not only a pedagogical but also a political task. Workers have a class instinct, and with a little political experience workers fairly soon become consistent Social Democrats'. 48 Unlike the intelligentsia, one did not have to worry about the natural inclinations of the proletariat. That class spontaneously tended toward revolutionary socialism.

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After listening to Lenin speak passionately in favor of including more workers in the local committees, M.G. Tskhakaia took the podium and delivered a long speech concluding the debate. Among other things, Tskhakaia urged his fellow Bolsheviks to stop referring to 'Leninism' and to 'Leninist principles'. The correct principles were Social-Democratic, he said, not specifically Leninist. Tskhakaia then observed that he like Lenin's writings well enough, but of course he has made mistakes--false or unfortunate formulations--and he himself would now probably formulate better or better substantiate those very ideas expounded in What Is To Be Done? Everyone makes mistakes, not only Lenin, for 'even on the sun there a r e spots'.49 Tskhakaia did not specify which formulations he thought Lenin would now revise, but given the context in which his remarks were made, it is likely that he was thinking of Lenin's chapter on spontaneity and consciousness. The most outspoken defender of working-class instinct at the Third Party Congress did indeed sound very different from the pessimist three years earlier.

LENIN'S MATURE THEORY The evidence, then, indicates that the thesis of consciousness from without set forth in the second chapter of What Is To Be Done? was a theoretical dead end for Lenin. It stood in glaring contradiction to Marx's insistence that workers could emancipate themselves, and it exposed the Bolsheviks to the embarrassing charge of representing a nonproletarian group, the pettybougeois intelligentsia. Lenin therefore quietly abandoned his famous thesis and began to laud proletarian spontaneity. Returning to the position he had held until the turn of the century, Lenin now claimed that experience of capitalist exploitation and the resulting struggle against it inevitably engendered a socialist consciousness in workers. Consciousness did not have to be brought from without, for it grew inexorably 'from within' in the course of working-class experience itself. Lenin, however, certainly did not believe that all Russian workers were convinced socialists. Some refused to follow the Bolshevik lead, and others actively resisted the policies of the new regime. How, then, did Lenin account for this resistance? If workers were not spontaneously bourgeois, what explained the oppositional behavior of significant numbers of wage-laborers? A systematic review of Lenin's writing after 1917 reveals a consistent strategy of argumentation on his part when confronted with the fact of working-class resistance. Instead of claiming that workers were incapacitated and unable to attain socialist consciousness if left to themselves, Lenin argued that those wage-laborers who resisted Bolshevik rule were less than fully proletarian according to their class character and were only giving voice to an alien class identity within. For Lenin, oppositional behavior was evidence of incomplete proletarianization that discredited the demands of working-class

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opponents. The latter had acquired, or still retained, a petty-bourgeois outlook engendered by their position on the margins of the working class, and thus the party was not obliged to accept their views as binding. The party represented only the 'real' workers, who agreed with its policies, not the heterogeneous elements that shaded off into the class of smallholders. For the mature Lenin, then, resistance to party leadership was explained not by a false consciousness to which the class spontaneously gravitated but by the true consciousness of an alien class from which his opponents sprang. Recalcitrant wage-laborers expressed the interests of the nonproletarian class to which they belonged and so naturally resisted proletarian dictatorship. Again and again in his revolutionary writings, Lenin asserted (usually without proof) that opponents from within the proletariat occupied a marginal position at the upper or lower reaches of the class, on the border with the petty bourgeoisie. Some were said to be well-paid workers, members of the labor aristocracy, whose affluent lifestyle afforded them 'a tolerable petty-bourgeois existence'. 5° Deliberately fostered by the bourgeoisie in order to divide the working class, Lenin frequently described these laborers as "a petty-bourgeois upper stratum or aristocracy (and bureaucracy) of the working class'. 5~ This fraction of the class, however, was of miniscule proportions in Russia and quickly vanished after the revolution, when its bourgeois patrons were eliminated. Lenin therefore usually employed this argument to explain the opportunism of the West European working class, which had been corrupted by imperialist superprofits, while in Russia he emphasized a different source of petty-bourgeoisification. If wealthy workers were made petty-bourgeois through a luxurious standard of living, many poorer workers in Russia were born petty-bourgeois and did not fully shed that identity when they entered the factory. Explaining the resistance of some workers to party control over the trade unions in December 1918, for instance, Lenin claimed that it resulted from 'the prejudices of certain pettybourgeois sections of the proletariat and semi-proletariat', 'those laborers who in some respects still remain petty-bourgeois'. 52 A year and a half later, in Left-Wing Communism, Lenin stated that the petty bourgeoisie 'surrounds the proletariat on every side with a petty-bourgeois atmosphere, which permeates it, corrupts it, and constantly caused within the proletariat relapses into petty-bourgeois spinelessness, disunity, individualism and oscillating moods of exaltation and dejection'. 53 A petty bourgeois lurked within the souls of many proletarians and caused them to resist the policies of the more homogeneous elements that constituted the party. Space does not permit me to undetake a detailed review of the evidence here, but a more thorough investigation would substantiate my claim that denial of working-class status was Lenin's principal method for defending party dictatorship over the proletariat after 1917.54 He certainly did not employ the argument of What Is To Be Done? to this end, for the thesis of consciousness from without set forth in that work had been abandoned long before the Bolshevik seizure of power. Embarrassed by the paternalism of that formulation, Lenin came instead to defend party rule over the proletariat on the basis of an essentialist conception of class. Working-class opponents of the regime were held

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to be 'less' proletarian than those who supported it, and hence the party was entitled to discount their views as motivated by alien class instincts. As Kotkin points out, for the Bolsheviks 'class was never merely a sociological category but always a language of politics and thus a political w e a p o n ' Y Lenin's argument about proletarian incapacity in What Is To Be Done?, then, should be interpreted as a famous failure. It did not reflect his mature conviction and should not be viewed as the doctrinal core of Leninism. The Leninism that mattered--the Leninism that guided his revolutionary practice-is not to be found in this classic text but in the little-known articles and the forgotten polemics that constitute the bulk of Lenin's collected writings. Robert Mayer Loyola University Chicago

NOTES 1. V.I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 5th Edn (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1958-1965), Vol, 6, pp. 28-53. Hereafter cited as LPSS. 2. Jerry Hough, How the Soviet Union is Governed (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), p. 17. 3. Axel van den Berg, The Immanent Utopia: From Marxism on the State to the State of Marxism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 125-126, 128. 4. Vladimir Brovkin, 'Workers' Unrest and the Bolsheviks' Response in 1919'. Slavic Review 49 (Fall 1990), p. 373. 5. Jesse Clarkson, 'Lenin', in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Crowell Collier and Macmillan, 1968), Vol. 9, p. 257. 6. Rolf Theen, Lenin: Genesis and Development of a Revolutionary (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), p. 103. 7. See his premature announcement of the impending publication of the pamphlet in a May 1901 Iskra article in LPSS, Vol. 5, p. 9. 8. LPSS, Vol. 6, pp. 3-5. 9. B.N. Krichevskii, 'Printsipy, taktika i bor'ba', Rabochee delo 10 (September 1901), p. 18. 10. LPSS, Vol. 5, pp. 271-276. 11. Karl Kautsky, 'Die Revision des Programms der Sozialdemokratie in Oesterreich', Die Neue Zeit 20/1 (October 1901), pp. 68-82. 12. On the process of composition of this pamphlet see Lenin's correspondence in LPSS, Vol. 46, pp. 148-166. 13. LPSS, Vol. 6, p. 5. 14. G.V. Plekhanov, 'Rabochii klass i sotsial-demokraticheskaia intelligentsiia', in Sochineniia (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1922-1927), Vol. 13, pp. 135-137. See also note 25 below. 15. LPSS, Vol. 1, p. 310 (Lenin's emphasis). 16. LPSS, Vol. 2, p. 465. 17. Robert Mayer, 'Plekhanov, Lenin and Working-Class Consciousness', Studies in East European Thought (forthcoming). 18. For the economist critique and an orthodox reply see Plekhanov's Vademecum (1900), a compendium of documents with a critical introduction, in Sochineniia, 12, pp. 3-42, 475-516.

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19. Karl Kautsky, Das Erfurter Programm in seinem grundsdtzlichen Theil erl6utert (Stuttgart: Dietz, 1892), pp. 232-242. On Lenin's appropriation of Kautsky's argument see Robert Mayer, 'Lenin, Kautsky and Working-Class Consciousness', History of European Ideas 18 (1994), 673-681. 20. LPSS, Vol. 4, pp. 189, 244. 21. LPSS, Vol. 4, p. 373. 22. For his recommendation of the Kautsky article to Plekhanov see LPSS, Vol. 46, p. 150. 23. L.M. Kreidlina, 'Rasprostranenie i propaganda knigi V.I. Lenina Chto Delat?', in Kniga V.L Lenina i mestnye partiinye organizatsii Rossii (Perm: Permskoe Knizhnoe Izdat, 1972), p. 442. 24. On the influence of Lenin's pamphlet see the reports submitted by the local committees to the Second Party Congress in Vtoroi s'ezd RSDRP: protokoly (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1959), pp. 518-519, 548, 603,612, 677. 25. For evidence of Plekhanov's and Akselrod's dissatisfaction see the March 1902 letters in Perepiska G.V. Plekhanova i P.B. Aksel'roda (Moscow: Izdanie R.M. Plekanovoi, 1925), Vol. 2, pp. 165, 167; the 30 May 1902 letter in Sotsialdemokraticheskoe dvizhenie v Rossii." materialy (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1928), Vol. 1, p. 90; the April 1902 letters in Leninskii sbornik 3 (1925), pp. 400, 408; and the June 1902 letter in Leninskii sbornik 4 (1925), pp. 107-108. After the split with Lenin, Martov claimed to have been dissatisfied with the pamphlet as well. See his comments in 'Na ocherdi', Iskra 58 (25 January 1904), p. 3. 26. For Potresov's criticism see the 22 March 1902 letter to Lenin in Leninskii sbornik 2 (1924), p. 286. On the views of Deich and Parvus see N.I. Priimak, 'Kniga V.I. Lenina Chto Delat'? i redaktsiia Iskry', in Kniga I1".1.Lenina, pp. 465-466. 27. Zasulich echoed Lenin's pessimism about the working class in an August 1902 Zaria essay entitled 'Elements of Idealism in Socialism'. See V.I. Zasulich, Sbornik statei (St Petersburg: Rutenberg, 1906), Vol. 2, p. 359. 28. See P.A. Garvi, Vospominaniia sotsialdemokrata (New York: Fond Garvi, 1946), pp. 262-263; and Nikolai Valentinov, Encounters with Lenin, trans. P. Rosta and B. Pearce (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 26-27, 224. 29. Perepiska V.L Lenina i redaktsii gazety 'Iskra' s sotsial-dernokraticheskimi organizatsiiami v Rossii 1900-1903gg (Moscow: Mysl', 1969-1970), Vol. 2, p. 425. 30. See N. Riazanov, Materialy dlia vyrabotki partiinoi programrny (Geneva: Bor'ba, 1903), Vol. 2, pp. 89-100; and N. S. Rusanov (Tarasov), 'Evoliutsiia russkoi sotsialisticheskoi mysli', Vestnik russkoi revoliutsii 3 (March 1903), pp. 1-37. 31. See Martynov's speech and the ensuing debate in Vtoroi s'ezd, pp. 108-137. 32. Vtorois'ezd, pp. 125, 134. 33. Vtoroi s'ezd, p. 135. 34. LPSS, Vol. 16, pp. 106-107 (emphasis added). 35. LPSS, Vol. 11, pp. 386--387 (Lenin's emphasis). The article by Stalin to which Lenin was referring was 'A Reply to Sotsial-Demokrat" (1905), in Sochineniia (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1946-1951), Vol. 1, pp. 160-172. 36. Note that What Is To Be Done? was reissued as a separate pamphlet only in 1923, after Lenin's incapacitation. 37. LPSS, Vol. 12, p. 86. 38. LPSS, Vol. 12, p. 135. 39. LPSS, Vol. 19, 422 (Lenin's emphasis). 40. From Steps (1904) forward Lenin consistently disparaged the intelligentsia as the principal source of opportunism within the movement. He repeatedly portrayed

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41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

Robert Mayer the Bolsheviks as the steadfast proletarian wing of the party and the Mensheviks as its unstable intellectualist wing. See Plekhanov, 'Rabochii klass', in Sochineniia, Vol. 13, p. 137. Plekhanov, Sochineniia, Vol. 12, p. 339. Plekhanov, Sochineniia, Vol. 13, p. 137. See 'Organ bez partii i partiia bez organa', in Galerka and Riadovoi, Nashi nedorazumeniia (Geneva: Izdanie Avtorov, 1904), pp. 84, 86. Galerka, Na novyiput' (Geneva: Koop Tip, 1904), p. 7n. M.S. Ol'minskii, 'Toy. Lenin', Proletarskaia revoliutsiia 3(26) (1924), p. 29. A.A. Bogdanov, Padenie velikago fetishizma (sovremennyi krizis ideologii) (Moscow: Izdanie S. Dorovatovskago & A. Charushnikova, 1910), pp. 193-194. Tretii s'ezd RSDRP: protokly (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1959), p. 262. Tretii s'ezd, pp. 340-341. LPSS, Vol. 38, p. 88. LPSS, Vol. 26, p. 248. LPSS, Vol. 37, pp. 404-405. LPSS, Vol. 41, p. 27. For a detailed analysis see Robert Mayer, 'Lenin, the Proletariat and the Legitimation of Dictatorship'. Stephen Kotkin, 'One Hand Clapping': Russian Workers and 1917', Labor History 32 (Fall 1991) p. 618.