In one of the many anthologies devoted to Lenin I stumbled upon an article by the British author, Wells, entitled The Dreamer in the Kremlin. [1] The editors of the anthology note in the preface that even such progressive people as Wells had not understood the meaning of the proletarian revolution which occurred in Russia. This would appear to be in itself insufficient reason for including Wells’s article in an anthology devoted to the leader of that revolution. But it is not really worth quibbling over: I, for one, read Wells’s few pages with some interest for which, however, their author is not responsible, as we shall see presently.
I can clearly visualize the time when Wells visited Moscow. It was the cold and hungry winter of 1920-21. In the air was an anxious presentiment of the troubles to come in the spring. Hungry Moscow lay under snow-drifts. The economic policy was on the eve of an abrupt turning-point. I remember very well the impression that V1adimir Ilyich [Lenin] brought back from his talk with Wells: “How middle class! How philistine!” he kept repeating, lifting his arms above the table and laughing and sighing with a laugh and a sigh which indicated in him a certain inward shame for another person. “Oh dear what a Philistine”, he would repeat when he recalled the talk later. This exchange of ours took place just before a Politburo meeting and was essentially confined to a repetition of the brief description of Wells I have just quoted. But this was more than sufficient. Certainly I have read little of Wells, nor have I ever met him. But the English drawing-room socialist, Fabian [2], and writer of Utopian and science fiction, who had travelled here to have a look at the communist experiments formed a picture I could imagine pefectly well. Lenin’s exclamation, and the tone of that exclamation in particular, rounded it off neatly. So now Wells’s article, which found its way into a Lenin anthology by some inscrutable path, not only revived Lenin’s exclamation in my memory but also filled it with a living content. For if there is scarcely a trace of Lenin in Wells’s article, then Wells himself is written all over it.
Let us start right away with Wells’s introductory complaint: do you realize that he had to go to great pains and take some time to obtain an audience with Lenin which was “tedious and irritating” for him. But why so? Perhaps Lenin had sent for Wells? Maybe he was obliged to receive him? Or perhaps Lenin had so much time to spare? On the contrary in those ultra-harsh days every minute of his time was full up; it was very hard for him to cut out an hour to see Wells. It would not be difficult for even a foreigner to realize that. But the whole trouble was that Wells, as a distinguished foreigner and for all his “socialism” a highly conservative Englishman of an imperialist cast, was thoroughly convinced that he was paying this barbarian country and its leader a great honour by his visit. Wells’s entire article from the first to the last line reeks of this baseless conceit.
His description of Lenin starts, as you might imagine, with a revelation. Did you know that Lenin “is not a writer”? For who can in fact decide this question, if not Wells, a professional writer? “The shrill little pamphlets and papers issued from Moscow in his name, full of misconceptions of the labour psychology of the West ... display hardly anything of the real Lenin mentality ...” The worthy gentleman is not cognizant of the fact that Lenin has produced a number of basic works on the agrarian question, economic theory, sociology and philosophy. Wells knows only the “shrill little pamphlets” and then he makes the remark that they were issued only “in his name”, intimating that others wrote them. The true “Lenin mentality” reveals itself not in the dozens of volumes he wrote but in the hour long conversation which the most enlightened guest from Great Britain most magnanimously deigned to hold.
One might have at least expected an interesting sketch of Lenin’s external appearance from Wells, and we would have been ready to forgive all his Fabian banalities for a single well-drawn feature. But in the article there is not even this. “Lenin has a pleasant, quick-changing brownish face with a lively smile” ... “Lenin’s not very like the photographs you see of him” ... “he gesticulated little with his hands during our conversation ...” Beyond such trivialities in the style of a pen-pushing hack reporter of a capitalist newspaper Wells did not go. He did, however, discover that Lenin’s forehead reminded him of the “domed and slightly one-sided cranium” of Arthur Balfour [3] and Lenin was generally “a little man: his feet scarcely touch the ground as he sits on the edge of his chair.” With regard to Arthur Balfour’s cranium, we are not able to say anything about that worthy object and we will willingly believe that it is domed. As for the rest – what an obscene mish-mash! Lenin had a reddish-blond colouring which in no way could be called brownish. He was of average height or possibly a little under; that he gave the impression of a “little man” and that he could scarcely reach the floor with his feet could only occur to Wells, who had arrived with the self-esteem of a civilized Gulliver in the land of northern communist Lilliputians. Wells also noticed that during pauses in the conversation Lenin was “pushing up his eyelids with his hand”; “this habit”, the perceptive writer deduces, “is due perhaps to some defect in focussing.” We know this gesture. It could be observed when Lenin had a strange and alien person in front of him and would cast a quick glance at him through his fingers resting against his forehead. The “defect” in Lenin’s sight consisted in that he could in this way see right through his collocutor, see his pompous smugness, his narrow-mindedness, his civilized arrogance and his civilized ignorance, and once having made a mental note of that picture he could long afterwards shake his head and keep repeating “What a Philistine! What a ghastly middle-class!”
During the conversation Comrade Rothstein [4] was present, and Wells made the discovery in passing that his presence was “characteristic of the present condition of Russian affairs”. You see Rothstein keeps a check on Lenin from the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, in view of Lenin’s excessive sincerity and his dreamer’s imprudence. What can we say about such a priceless observation? When he went into the Kremlin, Wells brought along in his mind all the rubbish of the international bourgeois news media and with his penetrating eye – which of course lacks any “defect”! – discovered in Lenin’s office what he had previously fished out of The Times or some other repository of pious and well-smarmed gossip.
Of what then did the conversation consist? On this score we can divine from Wells just a few hopeless commonplaces which prove how miserably and pathetically Lenin’s ideas break into some other craniums which, by the way, we do have some grounds for describing as one-sided.
Wells arrived “expecting to struggle with a doctrinaire Marxist” but “in fact found nothing of the sort.” This cannot surprise us. We know by now that “the real Lenin mentality” was revealed not in more than thirty years of his political and literary activity, but in the conversation with the citizen from Britain. “I had been told that Lenin lectured people; he certainly did not do so on this occasion,” Wells continues. But how in all truth can one lecture a gentleman so overflowing with self-esteem? That Lenin liked to lecture was not at all true. It is true that Lenin could speak very instructively. But he did so only when he considered that his collocutor was capable of learning something. In such circumstances he would spare absolutely no time or effort. But with the marvellous Gulliver who, by the kindness of fate, had found himself in the “little man’s” office, Lenin must have needed only two or three minute’s conversation to gain an unshakeable conviction to the approximate effect of the notice over the entrance to Dante’s Inferno. “Abandon hope forever ...”
The conversation touched on big cities. In Russia, Wells declares, the idea occurred to him for the first time that the face of a city is determined by the trade in its shops and markets. He shared this discovery with his collocutor. Lenin “admitted” that under communism cities might diminish considerably in size. Wells “pointed out to Lenin that the renovation of the cities would require a colossal labour and that many of Petersburg’s huge buildings would retain the significance of historical monuments.” Lenin agreed also with this unparalleled commonplace of Wells. “I think”, the latter added, “it warmed his heart to find someone who understood a necessary consequence of collectivism that many even of his own people fail to grasp.” There’s a ready-made yardstick of Wells’s mental level! He regards as the fruit of his tremendous power of vision the discovery that under communism today’s urban conglomerations will disappear and that many of today’s capitalist architectural monstrosities will retain merely the significance of historical monuments (unless they merit the honour of being demolished). But, of course, how could the poor communists (“the tiresome class-war fanatics”) reach such discoveries, which were, however, long ago elaborated in a popular commentary to the old programme of German Social-Democracy. This is not to mention the fact that the classic Utopians knew all about these things.
Now you will understand, I hope, why Wells “did not at all notice” during his conversation that laugh of Lenin’s about which he had been told so much. Lenin was in no mood for laughing. In fact I fear that his jaw may well have been convulsed by a reflex quite the reverse of laughter. But here a mobile and clever hand performed Ilyich a necessary service, for it always knew how to conceal the reflex of a discourteous yawn from a collocutor too much taken up with himself.
As we have already heard, Lenin did not lecture Wells, for reasons which we consider quite acceptable. In exchange Wells lectured Lenin all the more persistently. He would keep impressing upon him the totally new idea that for socialism to succeed “it is necessary to reconstruct not only the material side of life but also the mentality of a whole people.” He pointed out to Lenin that “Russians are by nature individualists and traders.” He explained to him that communism was “in too much of a hurry” and destroying before it was ready to rebuild, and so on in that vein. “That brought us,” relates Wells, “to our essential difference – the difference of the collectivist and the Marxist.” By “evolutionary collectivism” one is to understand a Fabian concoction of liberalism, philanthropy, thrifty social legislation and Sunday meditations on a brighter future. Wells himself formulates the essence of his evolutionary collectivism in this way: “I believe that through a vast sustained education campaign, the existing capitalist system could be civilized into a Collectivist world system. “Wells, does not make it clear by exactly who, and for exactly whom this “vast sustained educational campaign” will be carried out; will it be the lords with their domed craniums for the British proletariat, or conversely the proletariat carrying it out against the lords’ craniums? Oh no, anything you like but not the latter. Why in the world do there exist the enlightened Fabians, people with altruistically conceived ideas, ladies and gentlemen like Mr. Wells and Mrs. Snowden [5], if not to civilize capitalist society and turn it into a collectivist one by means of a systematic and sustained excretion of everything concealed under their own craniums, and with such a sensible and happy gradualness that even the British royal dynasty will not notice the transition?
All this Wells expounded to Lenin and all this Lenin listened through. “For me,” Wells remarked graciously, “it was very refreshing” to have a talk with this “unusual little man.” But for Lenin? Oh, poor long-suffering Ilyich! In private he would probably have uttered some highly expressive and juicy Russian words. He did not put them into English speech not only because his English vocabulary probably did not stretch that far, but also out of courtesy. Ilyich was very polite. But nor could he confine himself to a polite silence. “He had to argue,” Wells tells us, “that modern capitalism is incurably predatory, wasteful and unteachable.” Lenin made reference to a number of points contained in Money’s new book amongst others: capitalism destroyed the British shipyards, hindered a rational exploitation of coal resources and so on. Ilyich knew the language of facts and figures.
“I had, I will confess,” Mr. Wells concludes unexpectedly, “a very uphill argument”. What does this mean? Not the beginning of the capitulation of evolutionary collectivism in the face of the logic of Marxism? No, not by any means. “Abandon hope forever.” This, at first sight unexpected, remark was in no way accidental, it forms part of a system and had a consistently Fabian evolutionary didactic nature. It is directed at the British capitalists, bankers, lords and their ministers. Wells is saying to them: “you see, you act so badly and destructively and selfishly that in my arguments with the dreamer in the Kremlin it tends to be difficult to defend the principles of my evolutionary collectivism. Be sensible, perform weekly Fabian ablutions, be civilized and march along the path of progress.” In this way Wells’s doleful confession was not a beginning of self-criticism but an extension of the educational work on the same capitalist society that had emerged from the imperialist war and the Versailles Peace so much improved, moralized and Fabianized.
Wells remarks, not without a patronizing sympathy, that Lenin “has an unlimited confidence in his work.” We have no need to dispute this. Lenin did have a sufficient fund of confidence in his cause. What is true is true. This fund of confidence provided him, amongst other things, with the patience in those dark months of the blockade to talk to any foreigner whatever who could serve even as a crooked link between Russia and the West. Thus Lenin’s talk with Wells. He would talk in quite a different way with British workers who came to visit him. With them he would have a lively intercourse; he both learned and taught. But with Wells the conversation had essentially a half-forced, diplomatic character. “Our argumentation ended indecisively,” the author concludes. In other words the contest between evolutionary collectivism and Marxism ended in a draw. Wells went off to Great Britain, while Lenin stayed in the Kremlin. Wells wrote his pompous feature for the bourgeois public while Lenin shook his head and kept repeating: “How middle class! Dear, dear, what a Philistine!”
Possibly I will be asked for what precise reason or purpose I have been dwelling here and now, almost four years later, on such an inconsequential article by Wells. The fact that his article had been reproduced in one of the anthologies commemorating Lenin’s death is of course no justification. The fact that these lines of mine were written in Sukhumi while undergoing treatment is likewise insufficient reason. But I do have more serious motives. In Britain today Wells’s party stands in power, being guided by enlightened representatives of evolutionary collectivism. I thought, and perhaps not without reason, that Wells’s lines on Lenin might unveil to us better than much else the spirit of the leading layer of the British Labour Party: after all, Wells is not the worst of them. How terribly backward these people are, burdened as they are with the heavy load of bourgeois prejudices! Their arrogance, a delayed reflex of the great historical role of the British bourgeoisie, does not permit them to interest themselves as they ought in the life of other nations, in new ideological phenomena and in the historical process which is rolling past over their heads. Narrow routinists, empiricists blinkered by bourgeois public opinion, these gentlemen betake themselves and their prejudices around the world and contrive to see nothing around them except themselves. Lenin had lived in every country of Europe, mastered foreign languages, read, studied, listened, investigated, compared and generalized. While leading a great revolutionary country he would not waste any opportunity to learn, inquire and find out, attentively and conscientiously. He never wearied of following the life of the whole world. He could read and speak German, French and English, and read Italian with ease. In the last years of his life, when overburdened with work in the Politburo, he was learning Czech grammar on the quiet so as to have direct access to the labour movement of Czechoslovakia: we sometimes “caught him at it,’ and not without embarrassment he would laugh and try to justify himself. Yet face to face with him was Wells, the incarnation of that species of pseudo-educated, narrow middle-class people who look in order not to see and consider that they have nothing to learn because they are safeguarded by their inherited store of prejudices. Mr. MacDonald [6], who represents a more stolid and grim variety of the same type, reassures bourgeois public opinion: “we fought Moscow and we beat Moscow.” Did they beat Moscow? They are the real poor “little men”, fully-grown as they might be! Today, after all that has happened, they know nothing about their own yesterday. The Liberal and Conservative businessmen can easily lay down the law to the “evolutionary” socialist pedants now in power, compromise them and consciously set about their political as well as ministerial downfall. At the same time, however, they are preparing, albeit far less consciously, the coming to power of the British Marxists. Yes, that’s right, Marxists, the “tiresome class-war fanatics”. For even the British social revolution will take place according to laws established by Marx.
Wells once threatened with his peculiar stodgy pudding-like wit to crop Marx’s “doctrinaire” head of hair and beard and anglicize, respectablize and Fabianize Marx. But this scheme neither has nor will come to anything. Marx will remain Marx just as Lenin remained Lenin after Wells had subjected him to the agonizing effect of a blunt razor for an hour. We will venture to predict that in the not so distant future two bronze figures will be erected side by side in London, say in Trafalgar Square, those of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. The British proletarian will say to his children: “What a good thing the little men from the Labour Party did not manage to crop or shave those two giants!”
In anticipation of that day which I hope to live to see, I shut my eyes for an instant and I can clearly see Lenin’s figure in the armchair, the same one in which he saw Wells, and I can hear, on the day after Wells’s visit or perhaps the same day, those words uttered with a stifled groan: “How middle class! How Philistine!”
Around October, Pravda and Izvestia, April 1924
We must say a few words at this point about Great Britain, with its new experience of a so-called Labour government on a parliamentary, “democratic” basis, that is, the most ideal and sacred, so it would seem, for every right-thinking Menshevik,
What has this experience given us thus far? You know that the so-called Labour Party does not have an absolute majority in Parliament. Why? Because a significant section of the British workers to this day tag along at the tail of liberalism. These workers are not by any means the most obtuse; they simply don’t see much difference between liberalism and MacDonald. They say: “What’s the sense of changing our quarters and going to the expense of moving when the only difference is in the landlord’s surname?”
So none of the parties in Parliament has an absolute majority. The Liberals and Conservatives have stepped back and said to the Labour Party. “Oh sirs, you are the most powerful party. Oh please, come rule and be master over us.” The British are great humourists, as you know. This is testified to by Dickens [7], that great representative of British humour.
And MacDonald took the government. Now we ask: What next? How will the “Labour” government proceed? If it does not have a majority in Parliament, that does not mean its situation is totally hopeless. There is a way out; one need only have the will to find it.
Suppose MacDonald said this: “To our shame, our country has to this day a kind of august dynasty that stands above democracy and for which we have no need.” If he added that those sitting in the House of Lords and in other state institutions were all the titled heirs of bloodsuckers and robbers and that it was necessary to take a broom and sweep them out – if he said that, wouldn’t the hearts of British workers quicken with joy?
What if he added, “We are going to take their lands, mines, and railways, and nationalize their banks.” And there’s surely more to be found in the British banks than we found in ours! [stormy applause]. If he added: “With the resources released by the abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords we are going to undertake the construction of housing for the workers,” he would unleash tremendous enthusiasm.
In Britain three-quarters of the population is working class. It is a purely proletarian country. It has a small handful of landlords and capitalists – they are very rich and powerful, it is true, but still they are only a handful.
If MacDonald walked into Parliament, laid his programme on the table, rapped lightly with his knuckles, and said, “Accept it or I’ll drive you all out” (saying it more politely than I’ve phrased it here) – if he did this, Britain would be unrecognizable in two weeks. MacDonald would receive an overwhelming majority in any election. The British working class would break out of the shell of conservatism with which it has been so cleverly surrounded; it would discard that slavish reverence for the law of the bourgeoisie, the propertied classes, and church and the monarchy.
But MacDonald will not do that. He is conservative, in favour of the monarchy, private property and the church. You know that the British bourgeoisie has created a variety of churches, religious associations, and sects for the people’s needs. As in a big clothing store, everyone can find a church for his own size and shape. This is no accident; it is quite expedient from the ruling-class point of view. This splintering and varied adaptation of the church provides greater flexibility and, consequently, more successfully befuddles the consciousness of the oppressed class.
In our country the dominant church was the embodiment of the most official bureaucratism. It did not concern itself overmuch with the soul. But in Britain there are subtler methods and devices. In Britain there is an ultra-flexible, conciliatory, I might even say Menshevik, church. In addition, British Menshevism is thoroughly imbued with the priestly spirit. All this is merely the church’s way of adapting to the different groups and layers of the proletariat – a complex division of labour in the service of the bourgeois order.
Comrades, there is no need to mention that even before the “Labour” government, I did not have a high opinion either of the Second International or of MacDonald. But you know, and this is something I said earlier today in speaking with some friends, each time you encounter Menshevism in a new situation, you have to conclude that it is even more rotten and worthless than you had supposed.
This so-called Labour government is weighed down totally, to the very limit, with the worst petty-bourgeois prejudices and most disgraceful cowardice in relation to the big bourgeoisie. MacDonald’s ministers reek of piety, and make a show of it in every possible way. MacDonald himself is a Puritan: he looks at political questions, if you can call it looking, through the glass of the religion that inspired the revolutionary petty-bourgeoisie of the seventeenth century. His colleague, Henderson, the Home Secretary [8], is the president or vice-president, or something of the sort, of the Christian evangelical societies. Every Sunday the Home Secretary in the Labour government pronounces a devout sermon.
This is not a joke, comrades, not something from the British equivalent of Krokodil [9]; this is a fact. And this fact is tied in the most intimate way with the whole British conservative tradition, the clever, skilful, sustained ideological work of the British bourgeoisie. It has created an unbelievable terrorism of public opinion against anyone who dares declare that he is a materialist or atheist. Britain has a glorious history in science. It gave us Darwin [10], the Marx of biology. But Darwin did not dare call himself an atheist.
The British big bourgeoisie is a handful, and police repressions would be of no avail if the political influence of the church did not exist. Lloyd George once said, not without reason, that the church was the central power station of all the parties. To clarify this for you more specifically, let me cite one example that I mentioned in speaking privately with some friends. In 1902, that is, twenty-two years ago, I was in England and, with Vladimir Ilyich, attended a social-democratic meeting in a church. The meeting proceeded in the following fashion: a worker in the printing trade who had returned from Australia gave a speech that for those times was fairly revolutionary, against the ruling classes, for revolution, etc; then everyone rose and sang a hymn or psalm on the theme: Merciful God, grant that there be neither rich nor kings nor oppressors. [Laughter] All this is an important constituent feature of British political mores. The British bourgeoisie is the stronger for it, and the British proletariat weaker.
In recent days I read, I forget in which paper, a speech by MacDonald himself to an evangelical society. He spoke with indignation of the class struggle, preaching that society can save itself only through Christian morality, etc. Isn’t it hard to imagine him speaking of the Soviet Republic with indignation? But what happened? This Puritan, pacifist preacher of Christian morality, no sooner entered the government than he confirmed a proposal to build five new cruisers. His colleague declared that in the field of military aircraft the plans of the preceding Conservative government would remain unchanged.
Moreover, even after the Labour government came to power in Britain, the production of light tanks continued apace. You see what Christian pacifism looks like in practice. And it is not surprising that the same MacDonald declares that in the field of politics, continuity is necessary, that is, anything the Conservatives can do, we can do too.
In a letter to Poincaré [11] he writes that the alliance between Britain and France is the basis of European peace and order. Why? How does this follow? Present-day France is the personification of militarism and reaction. Why should this Labour government of Britain find itself in alliance with the vile French plutocracy?
Why couldn’t a Labour government, an actual Labour government, make an alliance with us? Would this be a bad alliance – one between the working class of Britain and the working class of the Soviet Republic? Between Tsarist Russia and capitalist Britain a long struggle went on. Tsarist Russia wanted to encroach on Britain’s colonies, above all India, while Britain denied Russia access to the Dardanelles. Bismarck called this struggle between Russia and Britain the battle of the elephant and the whale.
But now, with the great new change in history, cannot the whale of Labour Britain conclude a friendly alliance with the Soviet elephant? Would not such an alliance represent the greatest advantage for both sides? British industry and the British people need our fields, our forests, our bread, our raw materials, and we need their capital and technology. The alliance of Labour Britain with us would be a strong cheek on bourgeois France; it would not dare commit further outrages and ravages in Europe.
Together with Britain we would help Europe reduce the burden of armaments; we would draw closer to the creation of a workers and peasants United States of Europe, without which Europe is threatened with unavoidable economic and political decline.
But what does MacDonald do? This devout pacifist tells Poincaré, the most ferocious representative of stock-market France, that he wishes to remain in alliance with him, of all people – and consequently in opposition to us and the labouring masses of Europe. There you have real Menshevism, not the pocket edition, like you had here with Zhordania, but Menshevism of world proportions, placed in power in a country that encompasses hundreds of millions of colonial slaves.
In the few weeks of its rule, British Menshevism has become hated in the colonies, in both India and Egypt, where revolutionary nationalist aspirations have won out under the slogan of full separation from Britain. The Mensheviks will start complaining that British industry can’t get along without Indian and Egyptian cotton and colonial raw materials in general. As if that were the question! If MacDonald tried to reach agreement with the Indians and Egyptians on the basis of their full independence, Britain would have cotton in exchange for machines, would have economic ties, and these ties would develop. But here too MacDonald acts as a Menshevik-steward for the British imperialists.
Finally, there is another fact that has a direct symbolic significance for history: it concerns Turkey. Turkey, as you know, has done away with the caliphate. This is a progressive liberal-bourgeois measure. Nationalist Turkey throws off the feudal vestments of the Caliph and Sultan and becomes a more or less bourgeois-democratic country. This is a step forward.
What does the MacDonald government do, this Menshevik “Labour” government? It crowns a new Caliph in the Hejaz, the so-called “sheikh of Mecca and Medina” [12], in order to have, in his person, a weapon for colonial enslavement.
I read in The Times – although it is a Conservative organ, in foreign policy it always expresses the official line of the existing government, whether bourgeois, Liberal, or MacDonaldite – I read there that in Turkey, alas, the age-old sacred, majestic foundations are cracking and that we have the profound misfortune to see it happening before our eyes. And MacDonald subsidizes this very same newly cooked-up Caliph in Hejaz, because for majestic institutions a majestic establishment is necessary, and a corresponding budget.
In particular, the entourage of the Caliph is linked with a rather vast harem, which as we have read, was recently expelled from Constantinople. With the unemployment existing in Britain and the difficulties of the British budget, it is necessary, obviously, for MacDonald to cut unemployment benefit slightly in order to cover the additional expenses of the Caliph’s new harem. This all seems like a humourous anecdote but it is a fact that cannot be erased from history ...
Just think! This “humane” and “civilized’ Britain, in the person of Gladstone, threatened Turkey because of its backwardness and barbarity. And now, when Turkey has got on its feet and chased out Caliph and Sultan, parliamentary Britain establishes a Caliph under its protectorate. There you have the full measure of the decline of bourgeois democracy!
If in regard to all this you should ask what will be the fate of our further discussions with the new British government regarding possible loans, joint settlement of claims, etc., I would find it hard to give even an approximate answer. How can one know what MacDonald will decide to do, and what his Liberal and Conservative controllers will allow him to do?
And here I should correct the second inaccuracy in the interview published in Zarya Vostoka. It said there that Trotsky had indicated the possibility that these talks would serve as a lever to overthrow the so-called Labour government of MacDonald. No more, no less! Comrades, if I were to say something like that, Comrades Chicherin [13] and Rakovsky [14] would take stern measures against me, and they would be right.
Imagine the situation: we have sent a delegation for talks and at the same time I declare that we have sent this delegation in order to overthrow MacDonald, in passing. How? What for? To have Baldwin or Lloyd George in his place? Nonsense. I said nothing of the kind. On the contrary, our delegation is one of the levers that may immensely strengthen the British government. Under what conditions? Those of daring and decisive action by that government.
In Britain there is unemployment: it could be reduced by granting us credits, by increasing our purchasing power. The Soviet Union could serve as a truly vast market for British goods. No colonial plunder could give the British economy the advantages that a solid alliance with us could. Credit is not philanthropy. We pay the going interest rates. There are obvious mutual advantages in such an arrangement.
What are the obstacles? The capitalists demand, through MacDonald, that we repay the Tsarist debts. Whenever did the victim, after breaking free of the ropes that had bound him, pay the robber for the ropes? Well, we broke out of the Tsarist bonds. And do you think we are going to pay the British stock exchange for them? No, never!
Our own obligations we will rigorously fulfil. We openly and triumphantly avowed in the first Soviet, in 1905, that we would not pay the Tsarist debts, and we shall fulfil that international obligation of ours. [stormy applause] If we now deem it necessary to enter into one or another business agreement with the bourgeoisie, we will fulfil our new obligations most rigorously.
Bankers of Britain, if you give us a loan, then as long as you remain the bankers of Britain, that is, as long as the British proletariat tolerates you, we will pay it back promptly and exactly. And when the British proletariat overthrows you, it will disinherit you of our debts as well. There you have a clean, business-like and irrefutable statement of the situation.
The surest guarantee of our fulfilling international obligations is our own self-interest! If MacDonald would make a broad agreement with us, he would strengthen himself. Of that I have not the slightest doubt. In general, he can win the hearts of millions of workers only by a courageous policy, and then no one could turn him out by parliamentary tricks. As you can see, this is not at all what was ascribed to me in the newspaper interview. It was a hasty conversation, in a railway carriage, before the train pulled out; the comrade was jotting things down quickly with his pencil. I am not trying to reproach him, but merely to rehabilitate myself. [laughter]
That MacDonald will, with all his strength, help to overthrow himself, is absolutely clear to me, as it is to all of you. The Liberals, as I gather from a quick glance at the paper today, left MacDonald in a minority in Parliament on the question of workers’ housing, and he felt obliged to accept the Liberal bill. What does this mean? The worker will say, “Why get a Liberal bill via MacDonald when I can get it directly from a Liberal?” From this it is clear not only that the Liberal Party will remove MacDonald as prime minister whenever it wants to; it is also undermining the authority that the Labour Party has in the workers’ ranks.
A section of the workers, the more aristocratic, better-off workers who voted in the last election for the Labour Party, will probably vote for the Liberals in the next election. They will say, “This is a solid, established firm; why fool around with the middleman?” But the broad mass of workers will make a turn to the left. At what rate I do not know, but there is no doubt that as a result of the temporary splendour of having even a Menshevik government, a very significant strengthening of the left wing in the working class will take place. MacDonald is working for the communists. Yes, from the viewpoint of the international revolution, he is working for us.
However, I certainly don’t intend to send him a note of thanks for that. He is working in this direction not only unselfishly, but also unconsciously. Flushed by the Liberals and Conservatives, who intentionally compromise him, revealing that he is only a toy in their hands, MacDonald in turn pushes the British workers towards the revolutionary road. Such will be the final result of this historical experiment, the coming to power of the British Labour Party.
From a speech to the Tbilisi Soviet, 11th April 1924
(On the Road to the European Revolution)
The most acute question in our international position, at least on the plane of journalism, are our talks with Britain. Here, comrades, we still find ourselves in an extremely uncertain situation which reflects the political uncertainty of Europe as a whole and of Britain’s Menshevik government in particular.
Yesterday I met journalists from the American and British press and on behalf of their newspapers they demanded from me an explanation in connection with certain, supposedly impolite or sharp expressions about MacDonald’s government which I used in my report in Tibilisi. To justify my alleged attacks against the British government I asked the editors of Pravda to print the report in full. It is printed today and if Mr. MacDonald is interested in what we think about him he can instruct his translator to translate what refers to him and interests him.
But comrades, it is quite remarkable how these gentlemen are arrogant on the one hand yet touchy on the other. Over Georgia, which I visited the other day, MacDonald threatened us with an international democratic, or social-democratic tribunal. We are “not democrats”. We “trample on” nationalities. We have “strangled’ Georgia. He excommunicated us from all the Menshevik and puritan churches – he is both a Menshevik and a practising puritan – because we violated the principle of democracy. He declared when he was already prime minister: “I fought Moscow and I beat Moscow”, not he personally but together with the whole Second International. Yet we are supposed to treat this as something legitimate. MacDonald, the representative of a great enlightened country, criticizes us, excommunicates us, threatens us, and this must not impede the progress of peace negotiations or economic negotiations. I, a citizen of a backward country, in Tbilisi, a remote city in a similarly backward country in whose fate MacDonald had earlier shown interest, permitted myself to say: “Well, good, you enlightened citizens of a greater democracy have come to power, yet you still keep human rubbish in the form of lords and an aristocracy and so forth, just when will you pick up a broom and do some sweeping?” which is of course a very naive question from the standpoint of a representative of a backward country which is accused of violating all the principles and laws of democracy. It is true that we have always said that the power of the toilers, the dictatorship of the toilers is in fact our rule. The way it was constituted is entirely democratic, or if not entirely so, the rule of the toiling masses is in itself a hundred and a thousand times higher than formal democracy.
We have never denied formal democracy. We said: formal democracy is higher than Asiatic despotism, higher than the power of the Shah of Persia or the King of England. The dictatorship of the proletariat is higher than formal democracy. Formal democracy is higher than monarchic and aristocratic barbarism and any shameless titled oligarchy. This has always been our viewpoint and those who accuse us of dictatorship have explained to us the advantages and sacred values of democracy. When they came to power it emerged that democracy was only opposed to the working class and not the power of the House of Lords and the British monarchy.
At the same time I made the objection that MacDonald has not got a majority in parliament, but I advanced the suggestion that if he were to appear in the House of Commons, or in the House of Lords, and say: honourable members, we need to make economics in the budget to provide the unemployed with necessary means and therefore the House of Lords is to be abolished, nine-tenths of the people would be behind him. But then, over these business considerations, which could be called costing questions (laughter), over these the British press, the pro-government, semi-government and conservative press beat a frantic alarm. This means that we are “breaking off negotiations” which MacDonald granted us.
Just note, what a narrow conceit! Where does MacDonald get it from? This is a reflection of the omnipotence of the London Stock Exchange. When we have self-confidence it reflects the strength of the working class which has taken power for the first time. (applause) With MacDonald it is a reflection of the omnipotence of the Stock Exchange whose authorized agent he effectively is when in power. How dare impoverished Soviet Russia tell the truth to the face of Britain or America, cultured, rich, enlightened countries with a foreign trade turnover of many millions! That’s their psychology. We shall wean them from this psychology! (Applause) ...
We find ourselves living in an era of extreme instability. There can be a reaction of a directly contrary nature following recognition. For you know that when that MacDonald criticizes us (he considers that in the order of things) and in criticizing us makes this or that political remark then he or his press rears up on its hind legs. What does this signify? This signifies that they have still not got away from the idea, and today’s telegram from France is the best testimony to the fact, that when we go to negotiations we should go with our head bowed.
Today there is a telegram in the morning papers in which the official French telegraph agency states: “for our part we are following the negotiations between the Soviet Union and Britain, we are following them very attentively and we cannot here permit any deal at the expense of the first and oldest creditor”. Britain, they say, is a second-rank creditor, but the old and the chief creditor of Tsarist Russia was France and the moment it comes to agreements then France will stretch out her claw: pay France first of all please.
Simultaneously with our delegation’s negotiations, other negotiations, the so-called reparations negotiations between Germany and the Entente, are being held over Germany’s repayment of the contributions imposed upon her. Here too the prospects for either side are hopeless. To lend to Germany would mean to create a powerful competitor for Britain. Britain to date exports only three-quarters the amount of goods she exported before the war while her population has increased. Industry and plant has grown. If Britain gives credit to Germany (German industry is now working at half its capacity), Germany will be able at once to turn out – and German technique is first-rate and German workers first-rate producers – 50-75% more goods than at present. This means an industrial crisis for Britain. Likewise for France.
Britain can give credit to us. Why? Because we are an agricultural country, because we will give Britain raw materials, timber, agricultural produce in exchange for machinery, advanced technique and in part industrial products. But to do this we are once again faced with the question of the stability of the whole bourgeois world.
From a speech to the 7th Congress of Railwaymen, 19th April 1924
In Britain, the conservative-reformist and pacifist illusions of the working class, seriously undermined by the war, are now booming again, and more luxuriantly than before, under the sign of the Labour Government. The entire political past of the British working class, in so far as it is expressed in political moderation, conciliation, reformism and complicity in the imperialist policy of the bourgeoisie, is now being subjected to its highest test, with the transfer of power to the Labour Party. The Labour Party itself is playing down the seriousness of this text by pointing to the fact that it has not an absolute majority in Parliament and therefore is not responsible for everything. But history has nevertheless mounted a full-scale experiment. The outcome of the MacDonald regime, however it may finish from the formal standpoint, will be a deepening of criticism and self-criticism in the ranks of the working class. And criticism and self-criticism means a growth of the left wing. For Britain the period of the formation of the Communist Party is only now really opening.
The MacDonald government has not only deepened the temporary democratic-pacifist illusions of the British working class, it has also increased its self-awareness. One cannot say that the British working class now feels itself master in the house, for if it had that feeling then it would already have become master. But the average British worker says to himself. we do count for something, then, since the King has called our trade unionists to power. And this awareness, whatever conservative limitations it may bear within itself as a result of the entire past, itself gives a big stimulus to future development. The workers have become more demanding, less patient, and as a result the number of strikes has sharply increased in Britain. And it is not for nothing that the Sunday Times is complaining that though they have splendid Labour leaders in Britain these are being rapidly thrust aside by revolutionaries. Rapidly or not, they are being thrust aside and they will be thrust aside – thrust aside and thrust out. [Applause]
From a speech to the 5th All-Russian Congress of Medical and Veterinary Workers, 21st June 1924
(Through What Stage Are We Passing?)
We can see how the government of the same MacDonald quivers at the voice of its masters, the bourgeoisie, while restraining the British proletariat from making a bold step to confront it. If there were any elements of energy and courage in the British Labour government then it would make a broad treaty with us and this treaty would make a new page in the history of the whole world. Just look how bank deposits have grown in Britain over the last years. British industry does not have its former outlets; it has scarcely won back. Three-quarters of its pre-war markets. If they do not make a treaty with us they will be choked to death by the pressure of America. We, with our boundless spaces and our 130 million-strong population, represent for them the most enormous interest. Our country is rich in the natural resources which Britain lacks. Look at our agricultural lands which could feed Europe. Look at our subterranean wealth, our oilfields and our forests with which we could furnish all of Europe, and all the world. All this cries out for British technique! Just let us unite and you will see how quickly you and we will be able to raise ourselves up. The British working class would have cheap wheat, bread, they would have meat and they would have sufficient raw materials and would grow richer – as we would ourselves. And an alliance of Labour Britain and the workers’ and peasants’ Soviet Union would be a mighty lever in the world, not a platonic demonstration on the third Sunday in September but the opportunity for combining the most powerful naval force with the most powerful land-based armed forces. Along with the working class of Britain we could order Europe to disarm and Europe would not dare shove us off! [Applause]. And yet these gentlemen chide us for the fact that this or that sharp expression of ours is upsetting the progress of the negotiations in Britain. But isn’t this a shameful and contemptible view? Surely the interests of two great nations, two states, cannot be determined by this or that sharp expression? But why are these expressions on the tips of our tongues? Because the programme which I have just sketched in rough outline, this programme of the pacification of Europe and its rapid advance will not be realized, for the working class of Britain does not have a government which could make this bold step which is vouchsafed by all history, of an alliance with us.
In London we have accepted a series of agreements and we shall quite sincerely accept new ones, we shall fulfil all our obligations and at the same time we will say – and no diplomatic considerations can prevent this – we will say to the British working class: “You do not have at your head a government which is worthy of you!” When I called the MacDonald government a government of stewards to the British bourgeoisie, the British press pounced upon this expression almost as if it offended the national dignity of Britain. Over there they translated it in various ways. They asserted that I said that MacDonald was a bank “clerk” and others said a “stock market shark”. I have already explained that I didn’t say that. A bank clerk is an employee, a bank proletarian, and among them are many fine revolutionaries. As far as I know MacDonald has not worked in a bank and if he had, then he has now radically changed his profession. [laughter] Nor did I call him a stock-market shark. This too is the profession, though a less laudable one, of the small speculator on the Stock Exchange. As far as I know, MacDonald has not had any relation to this category, or at any rate he has not now. But when I say that he is the political steward of the bourgeoisie, then this is the truth and on May Day we can repeat this truth with a clear conscience. [applause] When I said this I did not know that I was committing a literary plagiarism on Lloyd George [15], for it was he (we must put this in!) who said on 24th April that the Liberals had put MacDonald in power and wished him well, but that in three months he had cornpletely squandered the reserve of their benevolence. Whose voice is this? This is the voice of the master who has “put a steward in charge”. “I put you in charge, I trusted you, but you have not fulfilled my trust.” And are we not right to say that if MacDonald acknowledges this criticism and this voice of the master then can he blame us if we translate this into the language of our political terminology? It might seem that the British Labour government had been put in by the proletariat and bears responsibility to it. And it might seem that MacDonald should make an appeal to the proletariat in order to insert in his programme the policy of an alliance with the Soviet Union on a platform of fraternal co-operation. And had he presented such a programme and Lloyd George dared to raise his voice against it, then nine-tenths of the proletariat would have swept both the Liberals and the Conservatives clean out and then the new Labour government of Britain would be unshakable. But will this happen now? No, nor will it happen tomorrow. But this hour is nevertheless approaching. And who is bringing it nearer? MacDonald and his associates are bringing it nearer. They accuse us of propaganda. But surely not a single one of us, if we went off to Britain knowing the English language, customs, habits and traditions to perfection, could have such an influence through his propaganda or produce such a shift in the consciousness of the working class as the fact that at the head of the country stands a government which considers itself to be the government of the work ing class but to which Lloyd George says: “I put you in charge but you did not fulfil my trust.” There’s an instructive dialogue! There’s propaganda for you! This will embed itself for ever in the consciousness of the workers of Britain. We are not making propaganda but a prediction, for we do have a theory of political foresight and perception wrought by revolutionary experience. We predict that MacDonald and his government will play in Britain a very great preparatory role for the revolution, not because MacDonald wishes it so but, on the contrary, because he does not wish it so. MacDonald belongs to the Puritans. The Puritan church is the English branch of Calvinism. Calvinism is the Protestant doctrine at the base of which lies the law of pre-destination. This law states that man does not enjoy free will but fulfils his destiny in accordance with the designs of divine providence. There is no free will. Every man is a tool in the hands of divine providence; this ideology of Calvinism closely resembles the politics, psychology and objective role of democracy and Menshevism in the present epoch of imperialist autocracy. Calvinism says: your ideas and hopes are but subjective illusions, for actually you are a tool in the hands of providence. And the petty-bourgeois politician is indeed fed with illusions, each step he takes is dictated by subjective error, but in fact he is a tool if not in the hands of providence then in the hands of Morgan, Rockefeller [16] and big capital in general. And while it is beyond doubt that in this sense MacDonald represents a tool in the hands of the City of London and of the British Stock Exchange, history has allotted him a still greater role in that he represents the unconscious tool not of divine providence – we have quite a serious difference with MacDonald on this score for there is no place for divine providence in either our programme or our ideas – but of the laws of history. History has said to him: “Mac Donald, guided by your subjective prejudices, show what you can do and show what you wish to do.” And so MacDonald shows us that he wishes for little and is capable of even less. [laughter, applause] And it is this which is his enormous role – in the hands of the providence of history. As a result MacDonald gives a mighty impulse to the revolutionary movement of the masses of Britain. Let me repeat once again: this is not propaganda; this is Marxist foresight made on the basis of the laws of history and all our political experience. We are conducting negotiations with MacDonald in good faith and I, like everyone of you here, want these negotiations to yield practical results. These negotiations are on one plane while the problems of the great contest of classes and of the struggle between the two Internationals are on another, higher plane and embrace great masses of people and great periods. For we shall spend May Day in the profound certainty that in this great play of historical forces, in the struggle of the classes and in the working of the laws of history, MacDonald and the whole of European Menshevism form an instrument which is preparing, not according to the laws of Calvin [17] but according to the laws of Marx, the ground for the advent of British Bolshevism.
Not so long ago, MacDonald said: “We fought against Moscow and we beat Moscow.” This is presumably not propaganda! “We fought Moscow and we beat Moscow.” He considers the fact that today, at the 35th anniversary of May Day, Europe, dismembered, bled white, led by Mensheviks and semi-Mensheviks (as far as the bourgeoisie permits them to lead) is still alive, he considers that this fact signifies our defeat. No, this is but one of the stages on the road to our forthcominghistoric victory. You fought Moscow and you are fighting Moscow. And what of it? We are not afraid of waging this struggle alongside ngotiations. But no, you haven’t beaten Moscow. Not by a long shot!
What we are talking about is Red Moscow, that Moscow where we are here preparing to celebrate May Day in our own Soviet fashion. This Red Moscow is strong, a great and strong builder constructed it and European Menshevism and British MacDonaldism shall not beat it! It is true that the great builder of Red Moscow will not be greeting May Day with us – he lies in the heart of Moscow in the mauseoleum on Red Square; but if the great builder of Red Moscow has died then he who shall defeat our Red Moscow has yet to be born! [Stormy applause. Internationale]
From a speech to the Moscow Soviet, 29th April 1924
(May Day in the West and East)
There has never been a more favourable moment in history to gain an absolute majority in parliament, but to do this MacDonald would need a different party from MacDonald’s. It is difficult to predict today the results of the election. [18] If the Conservatives obtain a majority Curzon will be in power. This will complicate the question of a treaty but will produce an explosion in the class struggle. The workers will press on with their old trade union demands and pose the question point-blank. British politics have reached a turning point and a sharpening of the class struggle.
From a speech given to the Pyatigorsk Soviet, 14th October 1924
1. Sunday Express, 28th November 1920. – H.G. Wells (1966-1946), British writer and journalist; had vague socialistic views; was a member of the Fabian Society for a short period.
2. The reformist Fabian Society was set up to pursue an explicitly gradualist transition to socialism as opposed to a revolutionary one. Leading members included, George Bernard Shaw and Sidney and Beatrice Webb.
3. Arthur Balfour (1848-1930), British Conservative politician; prime minister from 1902 to 1905.
4. Theodore Rothstein (1871-1953), Russian revolutionary active in the British socialist movement; forced to leave Russia in 1890, he joined the SDF in 1895 and became a leader of the left wing; also joined the RSDLP in 1901 and supported the Bolshevik faction after the split in 1903; close friend of Lenin; strong supporter of the unity process that led to the creation of the British Socialist Pparty in 1911; even though he was strongly opposed to World War I, he worked as a translator for the Foreign Office and the War Office; played prominent role in the move to oust Hyndman and his “patriotic” clique from the leadership of the BSP and later played an important role in the founding of the Communist Party of Great Britain; returned to Russia in 1920 and worked in the diplomatic corps until 1930; became director of the Institute of World Economy and World Politics.
5. Ethel Snowden (1880-1951), British socialist and feminist campaigner, member of the Independent Labour Party (ILP), wife of Philip Snowden.
6. Ramsay MacDonald (1866-1937), Scottish Labour politician, member of Independent Labour Party (ILP), adopted pacifist position during World War I, prime minister in the first (1924) and second (1929-1931) Labour governments, defected in 1931 with Philip Snowden and Jimmy Thomas to form National Government with the Conservatives after the Labour government split on the question of cutting unemployment benefits, served as prime minister until 1935.
7. Charles Dickens (1812-1870), English journalist, novelist and social campaigner; the most prominent English novelist of the Victorian period, his works have never since been out of print.
8. Arthur Henderson (1863-1935), a leader of the British Labour Party, who rallied the party to support World War I and became a government minister. He later served as Home Secretary in the first Labour government (1924) and Foreign Secretary in the second Labour government (1929-1931).
9. Krokodil was a satirical magazine published in the Soviet Union from 1922 until 1992.
10. Charles Darwin (1809-1882), English naturalist, who proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection.
11. Raymond Poincaré (1860-1934), French Prime Minister from 1922 to 1924.
12. The Caliphate was the name of the Empire established after the death of the prophet Muhammed in 632 AD. By the twentieth century the title of “Caliph” originally applying to a religious leader, had been taken over by the Sultans of Turkey. It was abolished on 3rd March 1924 by the bourgeois revolutionary government of Kemal Ataturk. Under British influence the “revived#8221; Caliphate was set up in the Hejaz, whose was then a British puppet, a member of the same Hashemite family whom the British installed as kings of Jordan and Iraq. However not long after this the Hejaz was conquered by Ibn Saud who put an end to the “revived” Caliphate.
13. Georgy Chicherin (1872-1936), Soviet People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs from 1918 to 1930.
14. Christian Rakovsky (1873-1941), Bulgarian-born Romanian socialist and Soviet diplomat; Soviet diplomatic representative in London (1923-24) and Ambassador to France (1925-27). See also Christian Rakovsky.
15. David Lloyd George (1863-1945), Welsh Liberal politician, responsible as Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) for the introduction of old age pensions, unemployment benefit and sickness benefits; prime minister from 1916 to 1922.
16. J.P. Morgan Jr. (1867-1943), American financier, son of J.P. Morgan Sr. (1837-1913). – J.D. Rockefeller Sr. (1839-1937), American industrialist and oil magnate; world’s first billionaire; father of J.D. Rockefeller Jr. (1874-1960).
17. Jean Calvin (1509-1564), French Protestant theologian during the Protestant Reformation, who spent most of his adult lfe in Geneva (1536-38 and 1541-61); his ideas on civic and religious governance greatly influenced Scottish Presbyterianism, English (and later American) Puritanism and the Dutch Reformed Church.
18. The Conservatives won the 1924 General Election.
Last updated on: 2.7.2007