July 25, 1949
Dear J:
The contradiction in Lenin between the practicing revolutionary dialectician and the thinking Kautskyan is the contradiction of Russian society whose1 singular development from feudal monarchy even to bourgeois monarchy was through proletarian methods of struggle. Lenin's philosophic leap from materialist evolution to dialectic revolution coincides with the Russian proletariat's coming of age through methodology (St. Petersburg Soviet, 1905) to unity of methodology and content (1917 Soviets). Both Lenin and the Russian proletariat "reflect" the development of Russia whose method of production did not "match" its non-bourgeois imperial rule. That is, while world imperialism rested on monopoly capitalism, Russian imperial rule rested on semi-feudalism while its isolated bourgeois methods of production was in fact in conflict with Tsarist imperialism. To make the methods of production worthy of imperial rule was beyond the capacities both of Tsarist autocracy and real living Russian capitalists. The revolution in production necessary necessitated a revolutionary class which at this stage of world development could not be dissected into a method and a content.
So far we are treading on familiar ground, but here delimitation, transition and leaps over gaps are needed to concretise this abstract absolute of ours. For instance, Lenin could be both a practician2 revolutionary and a thinking Kautskyian because the concrete and (NB, as Lenin would put it) revolutionary answers to the problems raised by Russia's development were bourgeois answers, answers that flowed from the economic content of Russia's coming revolution. The division between method and content paralleled the actual development of the Russian economy on the one hand and the Russian proletariat on the other hand. When the proletariat made its leap from isolated soviet to soviets as the dual power that would soon become a new type of state, it grounded Lenin's leap into his April Thesis3 so firmly to itself that Lenin was able to speak very simply: "I 'calculate' solely and exclusively on the workers, soldiers and peasants being able to tackle better than officials, better than the police, the practical and difficult problems of increasing the production of foodstuffs and their better distribution, the better provisioning of the soldiers, etc. etc." (VI, p. 43).4
It is as simple as all that: the practice of the proletariat and the peasantry demands a certain type of preaching of socialism. Note the stages in his April Report: (1) the purely practical measures of the peasants demands the nationalisation of the land/"Private ownership of land must be abolished. This is the task facing us, for the majority of the people are for it. To accomplish, we need the Soviets. It is a measure that that cannot be effected with the aid of the old govt. bureaucracy" (VI, p. 101).5 (2) We preach socialism. (3) The miner practices it. He is not interested who is his president: but how to run production and distribute bread. That same thesis moves us from monopoly to state control and the difference between that and workers control in the same manner as his thesis on imperialism moved us from bourgeois to proletarian democracy. Let us once again follow through both developments.
First to be noted is that out of Imperialism6 flowed the new urgency for self-determination as a fight which will bring out broad masses in the fight with the imperialist bourgeoisie which would in turn bring the socialist proletariat on the historic scene. Out of the socialist proletariat on the scene, the Soviet type of state there would flow not only proletarian democracy but proletarian internationalism. The schema of movement then is from bourgeois democracy to proletarian democracy and from bourgeois [...]7 internationalism (imp.)8 to true proletarian internationalism. That will first find its full expression in the 1920 thesis: "proletarian internationalism demands, firstly, the subordination of the interests of the prol.9 struggle in one country to the interests of the struggle on a world scale; and, secondly, it calls for the ability and readiness on the part of the greatest national sacrifices for the sake of overthrowing international capital" (X, pp. 235-6).10 This is the logical development of self-determination which, prior to Aug. 1914, meant freedom of competition and rule of home market, post-Aug. 1914 meant prol. democ. and Nov. 1917 means prol. internationalism.
But to return to the historical development and not rush through logical conclusions. State and Revolution11 is the next stage of development from April Thesis. Now this pamphlet may (and no doubt was) written against the opportunist perversions of Marxist teachings of the state and the re-establish on the eve of the proletarian revolution of the necessity to smash up the bourgeois state machinery. But it was also written to complete Lenin's notional development. There is a schema of movement here which is active as the schema of movement in objective development. The core of Hegelianism he finds in 1914 to be movement and self-movement. Then as he comes to the Notion (p. 72)12 he summarizes: "Briefly the dialectic can be defined as the doctrine of the unity of opposites. Thereby the kernel of the dialectic grasped but that demands explanation and development". This "explanation and development" was done not abstractly, but concretely.
First, he created his new absolute when he integrated Marxian dialectics as part, inseparable, of Marxism, and his essay on Karl Marx resulted, altogether too abstract. But once it was set down it began to move. The next concrete study he moved into - Imperialism - Lenin was fully armed with a philosophic method. In turn the concrete transformation of competition into its opposite, monopoly, brought forth a new generalization. "There is not a single phenomenon", he writes Junius1314 "which cannot under certain condition be transformed into its opposition". This transformation is the [...]15 of comp. into monopoly: it is the transformation of imperialist wars into civil wars and imperialist politics into democratic politics. The relationship between socialism and democracy in the epoch of imperialism brings forth another application of Hegelian dialectics - manifoldedness, many-sidedness, totality. In "The Collapse of the Second Int." Lenin demands "a many-sided investigation of a given social phenomenon in its development".16 Unless you see it "in its development", he warns, that dialectics is transformed into sophistry. That counterposition of dialectics to sophistry is present both in the actual notes on Hegel and in articles on self-determination both against P & B as well as RL.17
In his philosophic leap note also the difference in his Notes on Science of Logic where the exhilaration over the discovery nearly muffles any criticism of Hegel, and those on History of Philosophy18 where he becomes a sharp critic of Hegel and Plekhanov and by the time he formulates these in those 3 superb pages called On Dialectic he hits also at Engels. Moreover, the unity of opposites, movement and self-movement have now been broadened by the "Singular is the general" and knowledge is a circle of circles. When he writes "Each fragment, segment, section of this curve can be transformed (transformed one-sidedly) into an independent, complete straight line which then... leads into the quagmire" he is fighting the opposition within the revolution: Bukharin. And when he says that philosophic idealism is not groundless; "it is a sterile flower undoubtedly, but it is a sterile flower that grows on the living tree of living, fertile, genuine, powerful, omnipotent, objective, absolute human knowledge" (XI, p. 85),19 he is the full dialectician. It never again separates itself from him.
Note for example that when he moves from fighting with the Marxists on self-determination and moves toward socialist revolution in Russia, he writes that both the revolution and the counterrevolution helped form the "precise self-determination of all classes" in Russia. This "precise self-determination" he lists in his Letters from Afar as "Arming of the proletariat - all else is a lie".20 When February comes, the bourgeois revolution is completed in an "original" manner. This original manner is the way in which the generalization of the "bourgeois democratic revolution" has concretely worked out. The "how" here is the transition which is both concrete (the mechanism why the old slogan must be given up) and the universal (the mechanism or the new individualization of the universal): "Who can say whether a special 'rev.-dem. dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry' detached from the bourgeois govt. is now still possible in Russia" (VI, p. 40).21 And since it seems non-detachable from govt. or state and state is an instrument of oppression of the majority (the masses) into that of a minority (the capitalists) would required democratic mobilization of the masses, a revolution to smash the old state machinery, therefore the fight for democracy is the fight to smash the state. State and Revolution simply must be written now. The proletariat is also readying to make this connection between democracy and revolution in the annals of history.
We need linger for one more concept though before we move on to S & R.22 And that is the question of "control". In his April Thesis he brings out two factors from 1891 criticism of Erfurt program:23 (1) Engels's emphasis that planless ceases with trustification, and the corollary to it (2) "Monopoly in general has evolved into state monopoly. Objective conditions show that the war has accelerated the dev. of cap.24 which advanced from capitalism to imperialism, from monopoly to state control".25 State control is of course bourgeois control and when he therefore elaborates the practical measures the peasant and the miner, each in his own way, is taking against the govt. he is moving from "state control" to "workers control" in the same way as he moved from bourgeois democracy to proletarian democracy.
The Universality of Socialism will assume the Particularity of Soviets and concretise itself into the Individuality of population "to a man". State and Revolution at the same time moves the "workers control" over the capitalist to universal control which is the foundation of socialism and "withers away" becomes "administration of things". Lenin moves slowly here, following Engels closely, and not forgetting dear old Hegel. He says that Socialists used to treat Engels' statement "put an end to the state... as the state" as if it were a "Hegelian Weakness" (VII, p. 17).26 "As a matter of fact, however, these words briefly express the experience of one of the great proletarian revolutions, the Paris Commune... As a matter of fact, Engels speaks here of the 'abolition' of the bourgeois state by the prol. rev., while the words about its withering away refer to the remnants of the proletarian state after the socialist revolution". Lenin comes back to the criticism of Erfurt. He repeats planlessness has ended (p. 63) but we must not forget that capitalism remains the "wage slavery is the lot of the people even in the most democratic bourgeois republic" (p. 19).27
Again, very simply, he "applies another dialectical law to the state which is more democratic" but still a state machine in the shape of the armed masses of workers who become transformed into a universal people's militia.
"Here 'quantity is transformed into quality': such a degree of democ. is connected with overstepping the boundaries of bourgeois society, with the beginning of its socialist reconstruction. If, indeed, all take part in the administration of the state, capitalism cannot retain its hold. The dev. of cap., in turn, itself creates the prerequisites that enable indeed 'all' to take part in the administration of the state".28
Lenin then shows what becomes of this control of production and distribution can be established overnight. There is your first phase. Compare with the actual 1917 revolution and watch the schema of the real movement from smashing of state to workers control and from workers control to Soviet Council of National Economy,29 never varying however that the activities of the Peoples Commissars30 can only proceed when the initiative is FROM BELOW and the Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Govt.31 can only exist because of the creative work of the masses from below and TO A MAN. The schema of movement from workers control to workers administration, or beginnings of the reconstruction of society is the harder job than the smashing of the state and the true movement from essence to subjectivity and freedom, and this point is emphasized in the last of Lenin32 and in his fights with Bukharin (From Revision of Program33 - very, very critical debate - to Left-Wing Childishness34) he bawls B out for praising him only when he describes the break-up of the machinery "The petty bourgeois in a frenzy may also want as much", (VII, p. 377)35, "failing to take note of the other, more important feature, the construction of socialism. The movement is completed, the contradiction overcome.
From here to development of the whole significance of Lenin & Logic is a long ways to go yet, and I would feel more certain if I were to do that after a full-dress discussion of the36
1 This word is obscured in the archive copy. The word 'whose' is the editor's best guess at the word Dunayevskaya was using.
2 'practician' is the word used in the letter, Dunayevskaya appears to mean 'practising'.
3 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.
4 V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Volume VI: From the Bourgeois Revolution to the Proletarian Revolution (1917), (International Publishers, 1943). The essay being referred to is Letters on Tactics (1917).
5 V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Volume VI: From the Bourgeois Revolution to the Proletarian Revolution (1917), (International Publishers, 1943). The 'April Report' is a reference to Report on the Current Situation April 24 (May 7). The Report was delivered by Lenin to the Seventh (April 1917) All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P.(Bolshevik section).
6 The capitalisation of 'Imperialism' suggests that Dunayevskaya is referring to Lenin's pamphlet, Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism.
7 Three words have been unlined, but the underlining has obscured the words that were typed.
8 'imp.' appears to be an abbreviation of 'imperialism' (the stage of capitalism, not Lenin's pamphlet).
9 'prol.' is an abbreviation of 'proletarian'.
10 V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Volume X: The Communist International, (International Publishers, 1938). The pages cited are from Draft Theses on National and Colonial Questions.
11 Lenin State and Revolution, (1917).
12 Raya Dunayevskaya's (1949) English translation of Lenin's Philosophic Notebooks on Hegel (1914).
13 Lenin, Karl Marx: A Brief Biographical Sketch With an Exposition of Marxism (written in 1914, published in 1915).
14 Lenin, The Junius Pamphlet (1916).
15 This word is obscured on the copy held in the archive.
16 Lenin, The Collapse of the Second International (1915).
17 'P' is Georgi Velentinovich Plekhanov. 'B' is Nikolai Bukharin. 'RL' is Rosa Luxemburg.
18 Raya Dunayevskaya's (1949) English translation of Lenin's Philosophic Notebooks on Hegel (1914), includes a translation of both Lenin's notes on Hegel's Science of Logic and excerpts from Lenin's notes on Hegel's History of Philosophy.
19 V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Volume XI: The Theoretical Principles Of Marxism, (International Publishers, 1939). 'On Dialectics' is a reference to: 'On the Question of Dialectics' (written 1915, published 1925).
20 Lenin, Letters from Afar, (1917).
21 V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Volume VI: From the Bourgeois Revolution to the Proletarian Revolution (1917), (International Publishers, 1943). The essay being referred to is Letters on Tactics (1917).
22 Lenin State and Revolution, (1917).
23 Engels criticised the Erfurt Programme as opportunist, in a letter to Kautsky. The English translation of Engels's criticisms is not currently (August 2022) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it. A French translation is available on the MIA.
24 'dev. of cap.' is an abbreviation of 'development of capitalism'.
25 Dunayevskaya refers to the 'April Theses', but the passage quoted is from, what she earlier refers to as, the 'April Report'. Lenin, Report on the Current Situation April 24 (May 7).
26 V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Volume VII: After the Seizure of Power (1917-1918), (International Publishers, 1936). The quotes are from Lenin State and Revolution, (1917).
27 The quotes are from Lenin State and Revolution, (1917).
28 The quote is from Lenin State and Revolution, (1917).
29 The Supreme Council of National Economy was established in December 1917.
30 The Council of the People's Commissars was formally established in the 1918 Constitution of the USSR (Chapter 8).
31 Lenin, The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government, (1918).
32 The 'last of Lenin' appears to be a reference to Lenin's "Last Testament", (1922-23), notes that Lenin wrote to the Soviet government in the weeks before he died.
33 This appears to be a reference to Lenin's Revision of the Party Programme (October 1917) and Lenin's background notes, archived in the MIA as Materials Relating to the Revision of the Party Programme, (1917).
34 Lenin, "Left-Wing" Communism: an Infantile Disorder, (1920).
35 V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Volume VII: After the Seizure of Power (1917-1918), (International Publishers, 1936). In this International Publishers edition, the title of the pamphlet is translated into English as "Left-Wing" Childishness and Petty-Bourgeois Mentality.
36 The archived version of the letter ends here. The subsequent page is, or pages are, missing.