July 20, 1949
Dear J:
"Who", asked Lenin in the beginning of the Doctrine of Essence, "would believe that this (movement and self-movement, r) is the core of 'Hegelianism', of abstract and abstruse (difficult, absurd?) "Hegelianism??".1
That one sentence sums up pre-1914 Marxism, for if Lenin, who, among many other activities, took time out to write a 400 page book on philosophy,2 is first now (1914-15) gleefully shouting: I found the core of Hegelianism and it is that precisely which Marx and Engels have grasped, and purified and we must do the same3 - it is clear, painfully so, that dialectics simply was no part of Marxism, 1889-1914. As he will move into the Notion, he will move from internal connection to transition and from unity of opposites to complete freedom. We might break up the period 1914-1917 into two and say that from Aug. 1914 to Feb. 1917 Lenin lived in the realm of essence, and with the coming of the second edition of the Russian Soviets he lived in the realm of notion.4 Of course he takes up the unity of opposites in imperialism and in the disputes on self-determination,5 but it is the unity of opposites within the notion of capitalism; he has not yet concretised the mediation; he is for civil war and break-up of the capitalist state but he can only use generalities for the new society. With Feb. 1917 - when he recognizes the Soviets as the mediation and at the same time sees that the opposition between method - proletarian - and aim - socialism - has been overcome and proletarian revolution and soviet state is content and method and form and all can be summed up in the one expression "to a man" he arrives at State and Revolution6 or method is pure notion.
Now let us detail these two periods in Lenin's development. It is the first chapter of Capital which he says you cannot fully understand without the whole of the Logic. He then shows the logic of Capital to consist of Marx's beginning with simple being, a commodity, and by a dual analysis - inductive and deductive, or historical and logical - arriving at the essence that this exchange of commodities contains a social relationship. He refers us to the forms of value, which both logically and historically, develop from the simple elementary form to the general universal form, money. He says further that the syllogism, the singular is the general, U-P-I,7 has already been applied by Marx in Ch. I.8 But what was the upshot of it all? Wasn't it the fetishism of the commodities which indeed contains not only the history of capitalism but its notion? Lenin in fact will underline the fact that Capital is "The history of capitalism and the analysis of the NOTIONS summing it up". Now while you stick with His. Tendency of Cap/ Acc.,9 I want to linger one more moment in Ch. I for that last section of it shows the notion both of capitalist ideologies (they have found the secret of labor as the source of all value but cannot tear off the fetishism of commodities) and the proletariat who can strip off that veil because as "freely associated men" they can treat, regulate and consciously plan production.
The only other concrete thing Lenin refers to in his notes is the "current theory of knowledge". He says that the Hegelian-Marxian theory of knowledge10 is the knowledge which seeks to understand the truth of Being; the other, the Kantian, Machian "etc.", (It would be interesting to find out whom he had in mind with the "etc."), try to soften the truth or reason in order to elevate faith. Concretely, he had decided that the truth of the Being of Imperialism is Monopoly, while Kautsky had glossed over that truth in order to shadowbox with the "evil policy" while Bukharin has glossed it over, and hence tried to substitute a different truth for it, namely the "imperial state" which must be fought without any mediation,11 thus underestimating the importance or rather significance of proletarian state. Both opportunism and anarchism wish to be "immediately in the absolute" as Hegel would say. Here is how Lenin combats Bukharinism with his newly-acquired Hegelianism: 1) concrete analysis of every particular historical situation ("Marxian dialectics demand" it); 2) showing the relationship between economics and politics in the epoch of struggle for socialism; 3) the connection between struggle against war and against opportunism; 4) showing how the unity of opposites work out concretely, and how it is imposed in a wrongly syllogistic form; on the one hand counterposing democracy to imperialism while on the other hand capitulating to the latter.
First, Lenin deals with Kievsky's "basic error of logic" (Bo.. & WW, pp. 225-6)12 when the latter contends that because imperialism is a repudiation of democracy, "hence" democ. is "impracticable" under capitalism; and because "only" socialism can be "opposed" to imperialist war, "hence" it is a deception to advance democ. slogans under cap.. Lenin shows that while imperialism transforms democracy into an illusion it "at the same time generates democratic tendencies among the masses, creates democratic institutions, accentuates the antagonism between imperialism... and the masses". He shows further (p. 227) that the slogan of civil war for socialism is a means both of ending the war and the connection between our struggle against the war and the struggle against opportunism. And when he turns from Kievksy, to Bukharin, Lenin sums up: (p. 231) "here is the 'chief reason' for his (B's) misadventure: he cannot solve the problem how to connect imperialism with the struggle for reforms and with the struggle for democracy - exactly as 'economism' of blessed memory failed to connect capitalism with the struggle for democracy".13
A very definite change has occurred in Lenin's conception of democracy. His schema was from absolutism to bourgeois democracy. The Soviets of 1905 was a form, a proletarian method of struggle against absolutism which showed that it could, with the mass support of the peasants, overthrow absolutism, contrary to the liberals who are willing to compromise with the monarchy. But still the content of the revolution remained to establish bourgeois production. Now the war comes and monopoly capitalism shows itself to be no different than Tsarism or Junkerdom14 and this monopoly of politics as well as economics makes the bourgeois republic just one of many democratic demands. Democracy is a state but democracy is also a mobilization of the masses to fight the state. It is a mobilization not only of the proletariat but broad masses as the Irish Rebellion showed15. The urgency therefore that the fight for self-determination assumes in the imperialist epoch a particular urgency. Moreover because imperialism means a division of the world among the big powers, the "competition" between them (free competition has become military rivalry) makes possible such a struggle as a concrete one. The reference to the dialectic are very pronounced in all his articles on self-determination. There is in them both the opposition of abstract and concrete, the inter-relationship between all facets that is, as true a feeling of totality as is the economics of imperialism itself, and where from imperialism Lenin comes out with the slogan of civil war - that is how the transformation of free competition into its opposite monopoly will be resolved - he comes out from his fight over the state with the all-important democracy which has transited from bourgeois democracy - a government, a parliament, universal suffrage - to proletarian democracy - a true majority on its way to including the population "to a man" and thus become transformed into full freedom or socialism.
The climax to this first war period of development of Lenin is Jan. 1917 when he delivers the lecture on the 1905 Revolution16 and says the next time the revolution comes it will be socialist, and soviet is not merely form but content, class content, that is, not parliament but working body. But, as is seen from the first telegram to Kollontai,17 the first day of the soviets he still thinks of mere combination of legal and illegal work, more or less republic then. But on the second day the LEAP is made. It is broaden out, broaden out, broaden out, masses, initiative. We are entering the Notion. It is not only connection, but transition, and then the heroism of the communards and freedom.
I would say that the masses showed in life that the HOW of the relationship between concrete and abstract, between ideal and real, the impulse to self-movement, the unprecedented initiative, the individual full development. The how in each case give the true answer. For example, the how surplus value is realized gave the answer expanded production and hence he had no concern with markets. The how competition was transformed into monopoly - socialization of production - suddenly revealed socialization as a bourgeois concept and whereas before the answer to concentration and centralization was socialization, organisation, and how absolutism was overthrown shows the answer to be revolt and reorganization. Soviet is a new type of state, a new type of democracy and it is that which he will proclaim in APRIL18 when he says the bourgeois state cannot be dissociate from bourgeois democracy and therefore the old slogan is dead and outlived and the new democracy means a new transition which will take us from majority to all, from democracy to freedom, from state to withering away of state, from equality to full development of each and from this he will never change.
There is another point I should like to tackle but I haven't all the links. Imperialism was a product of monopoly capitalism and in turn produced a new absolute, state monopoly capitalism. Now he looks at Germany and he says: well here it is and look at the damned superstructure, it is Junkerdom; now if only, etc. Then he writes State and Revolution and he says; on the basis of the state monopoly capitalism, even just on the basis of a trust for that matter, Engels saw plan; the question is who, and the answer is universal control. But an opposition still exists: it is true, he never wearies of saying, the masses to a man, not "they". But still both aspects are born within the same imperialist shell and he contrasts only politics, the economic basis remains the same. Without going to trade union debate, we would show the "to a man" only as an abstract universal; should we leave it at that?
Bukharin is the enemy of course, the counter-revolution within the revolution, from imperialist economism to economics of transition period, which is bureaucratic economism; from Brest-Litovsk to "socialism at tortoise pace" it is a "pure" example of we suffer not only from the living but from the dead, in this case, the dead being the outlived capitalism stretching for its absolute of concentration "in the hands of one man" which cannot be negated except through subjective forces which must at that point become objectivity at its highest moment, for the self-development of man alone can become motive force of truly human society. I am not sure of this but it seems to me that to show how subjectivity enters ties in directly with the dialectic of the party, and in its we will see both the withering away of the party with the state with democracy, and the shell that wants to hold on and strangle the new and which will be right within the revolution.
At this point too many raw ideas are floating about, and we have expanded so much that I am not sure I have a view of the whole. It seems to me that it would be around about now to meet and discuss and then to draft. But if you think I should try a dig at it now, I will, but I feel rather incomplete.
Yours Raya
1 The reference is to Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks on Hegel, (1914). In Dunayevskaya's translation of the Notebooks, the quoted passage reads: 'Movement and "self-movement" (this NB! arbitrary (independent) spontaneous, internally necessary movement), "change", "movement and life", "the principle of every self-movement", "impulse (Trieb) to movement" and to "activity" -- opposite of dead-being -- who would believe that this is the core of "Hegelianism", of abstract and abstruse (difficult, absurd?) Hegelianism??' (p. 29).
2 Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, (1908).
3 This is a reference to Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks on Hegel, (1914). The extract quoted in the previous paragraph continues: 'We must disclose this core, grasp it, save, shell it out, purify it -- which is precisely what Marx and Engels have done' (p. 29).
4 'the second edition of the Russian Soviets' is a reference to the Soviets established by Russian workers and peasants during the February 1917 Revolution. The first edition was the Soviets established during the 1905 Russian Revolution.
5 See especially: Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, (1916); The Right of Nations to Self-Determination, (1914).
6 Lenin, State and Revolution, (1917).
7 'U-P-I' is an abbreviation of Universal-Particular-Individual. For more on the importance of the relationship between the Universal, Particular and Individual in Hegel's thought see the section of Hegel's The Science of Logic on The Syllogism.
8 Chapter One: Commodities of Volume One of Marx's Capital.
9 Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation.
10 The text on the right-hand side of the page in the archive is faint. The text provided is the editor's best guess at the contents of the paragraph.
11 This appears to be a reference to Bukharin's Toward a Theory of the Imperialist State, (1915).
12 This appears to be a reference to the work more commonly known as A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism, which Lenin wrote as a sustained critique of P. Kievsky (Y. Pyatakov), who appears to have been a Bolshevik who wrote some articles arguing against the right of nations to self-determination.
13 The text down the centre of this paragraph is faint. The text provided is the editor's best guess at the contents of the paragraph. The editor has changed the underlined word 'connection' to 'connect', (in the long piece of underlined text), for the sake of readability.
14 Prussia and Imperial Russia, in 1914, had forms of government with limited popular democratic input and with a monarch at its head. In response to the 1905 Revolution in Russia, the Tsar introduced some limited democratic reforms. As a consequence the governance of the Russian Empire became a kind of autocratic rule, with some democratic trimmings (an elected parliament (Duma) with some limited powers). Prussia became a constitutional monarchy after the revolutions of 1848. The monarch (Kaiser) dominated the political system, but there was some check on his power from the two-chamber parliament (Landtag) established under the 1850 Constitution. The House of Representatives was the less powerful of the two and was 'popularly' elected (by males over 25 banded into three different 'classes' determined by how much tax the elector paid). The House of Lords was composed of mostly, hereditary roles, and a few positions appointed by the Kaiser. The landed nobility (Junkers) dominated this chamber of the parliament, and consequently the government as a whole.
15 'The Irish Rebellion' is a reference to the 1916 Easter Uprising. The Uprising was a revolt against British rule in Ireland, and took place in the midst of World War I. It was a nationalist revolt, not a working-class led socialist one (although the Irish Citizens Army, established by James Connolly, played a significant role). Nevertheless, Lenin praised the Uprising and gave a prominent place to it in his article The Discussion On Self-Determination Summed Up (1916).
16 Lenin, Lecture on the 1905 Revolution, (1917).
17 The 'telegram to Kollontai' appears to be a reference to a letter dated March 16th 1917.
18 Lenin, The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution (a.k.a. The April Theses)., (1917). The April Theses was presented by Lenin to the Bolsheviks the day after he arrived in St Petersburg on a sealed train from Switzerland.