Given the tasks facing the revolutionary party, it could not be an amateurish loose outfit, but needed to be based upon the principles of a centralised party, known as democratic centralism. This provided it with the most effective democratic form of organisation.
On this basis, following a democratic discussion within its ranks, culminating in a congress, the majority would decide its policy and priorities. These would then become the official policy for the whole party. Lenin’s conception was not new but modelled on the example of the party of German Social-Democracy, which he admired.
He himself stressed his lack of originality at the Second Congress of the RSDLP, saying he had no “intentions of elevating my own formulations, as given in What is to be Done?, to ‘programmatic’ level, constituting of special principles.” (LCW, vol. 13, p. 107.)
Today it is fashionable among reformists and ex-Marxists to deny the essence of Lenin’s position by attempting to present it as only valid for the conditions of tsarist Russia at the time. But it is not correct to say that Lenin’s struggle to build the Bolshevik Party was due to Russian exceptionalism.
Of course, the conditions in tsarist Russia were extremely difficult and required underground methods of work. Party congresses, for instance, could not take place inside Russia for fear of arrest and repression. That was the fate of the founding congress of the RSDLP in 1898, where the leading participants were arrested shortly afterwards. Plekhanov’s Emancipation of Labour Group could only operate in exile. Likewise, Iskra had to be published abroad and smuggled back into Russia.
However, Lenin’s theory of organisation was not determined simply by Russian conditions. It was based upon the need to build a party that could lead the working class to power. The importance of such a party is based upon historical experience. Never in history has the ruling class ever given up its power and privileges without a struggle, and that means with no holds barred. History shows that the revolutionary class requires a party and leadership which are prepared to overcome this challenge. Despite the heroic role of the masses, experience shows that without such a party the revolution will not succeed.
The importance of the Bolshevik Party was demonstrated by the success of the October Revolution. Conversely, the defeats suffered by the working class over the last 100 years can be put down to the failure to build such a party. In fact, the key obstacle that stands between the working class and the victory of socialism is the unresolved problem of leadership. That is what is meant by “the question of the party”. Until the working class resolves this question, the conscious expression of the revolutionary process, the issue of workers’ power will remain elusive.
Due to the many defeats of the past and the protracted development of events in recent decades, many have abandoned all hope of building such a party. They have become sceptical and burned out.
Instead of building first a cadre organisation and then the party, they talk about ‘building the movement’ and ‘building the left’ as the way forward. They fail to understand that you cannot artificially ‘build the movement’. The movement of the working class is primarily built by great events. Incapable of understanding this, they inevitably end up in the swamp of reformism, especially its ‘left’ milieu. Such types, in fact, litter today’s Labour movement.
While Lenin’s book contains many general lessons, it was specifically written in answer to concrete problems relating to the early ‘circle’ period of the Russian movement. In 1907, in a preface to his writings, Lenin emphasises this point:
The basic mistake made by those who criticise What is to be Done? is to treat the pamphlet apart from its connection with the concrete historical situation of a definite, and now long past, period in the development of our Party. This mistake was strikingly demonstrated, for example, by Parvus (not to mention numerous Mensheviks), who, many years after the pamphlet appeared, wrote about its incorrect or exaggerated ideas on the subject of an organisation of professional revolutionaries…
To maintain today that Iskra exaggerated (in 1901 and 1902!) the idea of an organisation of professional revolutionaries, is like reproaching the Japanese, after the Russo-Japanese War, for having exaggerated the strength of Russia’s armed forces, for having prior to the war exaggerated the need to prepare for fighting these forces. To win victory the Japanese had to marshal all their forces against the probable maximum of Russian forces. Unfortunately, many of those who judge our Party are outsiders, who do not know the subject, who do not realise that today the idea of an organisation of professional revolutionaries has already scored a complete victory. That victory would have been impossible if this idea had not been pushed to the forefront at the time, if we had not ‘exaggerated’ so as to drive it home to people who were trying to prevent it from being realised.
Lenin went on:
Iskra fought for an organisation of professional revolutionaries. It fought with especial vigour in 1901 and 1902, vanquished Economism, the then dominant trend, and finally created this organisation in 1903. It preserved it in face of the subsequent split in the Iskrist ranks and all the convulsions of the period of storm and stress; it preserved it throughout the Russian revolution; it preserved it intact from 1901-02 to 1907. (LCW, vol. 13, pp. 101-103.)
In fact, its preservation demonstrated its success in the victory of October 1917.
When Lenin published What is to be Done? in early 1902, all the supporters of Iskra welcomed its conclusions. They regarded it as an important contribution to the development of the party. However, the bitter split at the Second Congress in the summer of 1903 opened up a tirade against the book. “Now they [differences] had come out at the Congress, and everyone who had had a grudge against Iskra, against Plekhanov and Lenin, went out of his way to fan it up into a disagreement on a fundamental issue”, explained Krupskaya. “Lenin was attacked for his article ‘Where to Begin?’ and his pamphlet What is to be Done? and accused of being ambitious, and so on.” (Reminiscences of Lenin, International Publishers, New York, pp. 95.)
It was here that the story began that Lenin’s so-called elitist ideas on organisation, of professional revolutionaries, and the like would lead to a dictatorship within the party. Subsequently, bourgeois academics and reformists have claimed that these organisational methods would ultimately lead to Stalinism. But this is completely false. Stalinism arose from the isolation of the revolution in a backward country, not some organisational norms.