Some people have attempted to find the ‘original sin’ of Stalinism in Lenin’s method of democratic centralism. Actually, the organisational methods of Bolshevism, impregnated through and through with the spirit of democracy, have nothing in common with that monstrous bureaucratic caricature. A measure of centralism is necessary in any serious organisation, whether a railway or a revolutionary party. Every political party, every stable organisation, necessarily has a conservative side. The need to provide the material means to pass from the realms of theory to that of practice demands the creation of an apparatus. The living principle of an apparatus is routine: the thousand and one organisational tasks of collecting money, organising distribution and sales of literature and so on, require a meticulous attention to detail. Without this, the construction of the party would be unthinkable. From the outset, a number of people must be dedicated to these tasks. As the party grows, their numbers increase. Unless special measures are undertaken to constantly raise the theoretical level of these comrades and enlarge their horizons, a certain organisational narrowness tends to creep in, which can play a harmful role under certain circumstances. Unconsciously or semi-consciously, the impression can be created of the primacy of organisation, whereas ideas, principles, and theory are regarded as of secondary importance. The opinions, initiative, and criticism of the workers, the rank and file, are regarded as an unnecessary encumbrance, at variance with the principle of centralism, or control from above.
That there were elements of this in the Bolshevik Party (as in any other party) is undeniable. But the attempts by unscrupulous bourgeois historians to link this with the abominations of Stalinism and to blame Lenin’s ‘pitiless centralism’ is a monstrous distortion. Unfortunately, a layer of Bolshevik organisers inside Russia, the so-called committeemen, on occasion acted like the very caricature invented by the Mensheviks. They interpreted Lenin’s organisational ideas as fixed and immutable formulas, to be applied mechanically, irrespective of the needs of the moment. Even the most correct idea, when carried beyond a certain limit, becomes transformed into its opposite. By making a fetish of organisational forms, and overlooking the dialectical method of applying these ideas in a rapidly changing situation, despite their undoubted capacity for self-sacrifice and hard work, the committeemen frequently played a negative role in the development of the Party, until corrected by the intervention of Lenin. Looking back on this period at the end of his life, Trotsky summed up Lenin’s position in the following way:
Lenin understood better than anyone else the need for a centralised organisation: but he saw in it, above all, a lever for enhancing the activity of the advanced working men. The idea of making a fetish of the political machine was not only alien but repugnant to his nature… The habits peculiar to a political machine were already forming in the underground. The young revolutionary bureaucrat was already emerging as a type. The conditions of conspiracy, true enough, offered rather meagre scope for such of the formalities of democracy as electiveness, accountability and control. Yes, undoubtedly the committeemen narrowed these limitations considerably more than necessity demanded and were far more intransigent and severe with the revolutionary working-men than with themselves, preferring to domineer even on occasions that called imperatively for lending an authentic ear to the voice of the masses. (L. Trotsky, Stalin, p. 62 and p. 61.)
A tendency towards routinism and conservatism can be seen in any apparatus, as any trade unionist knows from bitter experience. These elements, as we have said, were also present in the Bolshevik Party, but were far less important in the Bolshevik Party than in any other political party in history – and certainly less than in those Social Democratic parties and reformist trade unions which are entirely dominated by the worst sort of bureaucratic machines and parliamentary cliques, who have long ago sold their soul to the possessing classes. Politicians like Tony Blair or Felipe Gonzalez, who throw up their hands in feigned horror at the ‘Leninist’ theory of democratic centralism, run their parties on the basis of the purest bureaucratic, centralist, and dictatorial lines. This centralism reflects, on the one hand, the interests, salaries, and privileges of the apparatus, on the other the pressure of big business which wishes to make the labour movement subject to its discipline. That these people should point an accusing finger at Lenin is hypocrisy of a highly advanced type.
Trotsky answers the cynical attacks on Lenin and Bolshevism:
In this connection, it is rather tempting to draw the inference that future Stalinism was already rooted in Bolshevik centralism or, more sweepingly, in the underground hierarchy of professional revolutionists. But upon analysis that inference crumbles to dust, disclosing an astounding paucity of historical content. Of course, there are dangers of one kind or another in the very process of stringently picking and choosing persons of advanced views and welding them into a tightly centralised organisation. But the roots of such dangers will never be found in the so-called ‘principle’ of centralism: rather they should be sought in the lack of homogeneity and the backwardness of the workers – that is, in the general social conditions which make imperative that centripetal leadership of the class by its vanguard. The key to the dynamic of leadership is in the actual interrelationship between the political machine and its party, between the vanguard and its class, between centralism and democracy. Those interrelationships cannot, of their very nature, be established a priori and remain immutable. They are dependent on concrete historical conditions, their mobile balance is regulated by the vital struggle of tendencies, which, as represented by their extreme wings, oscillate between despotism of the political machine and the impotence of phrase-mongering. (Ibid., pp. 61-2.)
In common with many other bourgeois authors, Solomon Schwarz distorts Lenin’s ideas on organisation beyond recognition. He tries to paint Lenin as a defender of the bureaucratic intelligentsia against the workers, by quoting from the minutes of the Third Congress, when the quotes he uses prove precisely the opposite. The same author is compelled to admit that similar problems existed in the Menshevik organisation. This is clear from the discussions on reorganisation that took place at their All Russian Conference of Party Workers in Geneva in April/May 1905, and in the letters of prominent Mensheviks. In a well known pamphlet entitled Workers and Intelligentsia in our Organisations, signed ‘A Worker’ and published in 1904 with a foreword by Axelrod, the author says: “It is better not to harbour undue illusions about the Martovite intelligentsia either.”
In March 1905, Gusev, secretary of the Petersburg committee and of the Bureau of Majority Committees, wrote to the centre abroad the following:
A circular on organisational questions is needed, particularly on the issue of drawing workers into the committees. It is necessary to stress the importance of the conditions in which this can be done. The criteria for bringing in workers should not be how well read they are, but how revolutionary, how devoted, energetic, and influential. Nowadays there are many such [people], and mainly among unorganised workers, most of them very young and lacking the qualities of political leaders, although they are well read in social democratic literature. Further, I have already written to you about moving the base of our organisation, the secret work, to workers’ homes. Concretely, this means that a part of our best illegal forces must become outwardly proletarianised. (Quoted in S.S. Schwarz, The Russian Revolution of 1905 the Workers’ Movement and the Formation of Bolshevism and Menshevism, p. 214 and p. 216, my emphasis.)
The essence of the problem facing the Party was: how to establish firm links between the relatively small forces of the revolutionary vanguard and the mass of the workers and youth who were moving into struggle? The revolution does not unfold in an orderly and pre-determined fashion, like an orchestra responding to the flourishes of a conductor’s baton. It is a living play of forces, an equation even more complex than war between nations. The events of Bloody Sunday and afterwards, to pursue the military analogy, represented a general mobilisation of the working class. But that class, only just recovering from its naïve illusions and striving to find the road to a complete overhaul of society, continually stumbling over the innumerable obstacles placed in its path, as yet lacked a general staff able to point the way forward to victory. Even the most courageous army never won a war without good generals. But the best of generals without an army do not count for much.
At this time, none of the main leaders of either the Bolsheviks or Mensheviks had yet returned to Russia. Martov only returned to Russia after 17 October; Lenin slightly later, on 4 November. The sole exception was Trotsky, who arrived in Kiev in February. There he established close contact with the key Bolshevik figure in Russia at that time, Leonid Krassin. Krassin was in charge of a large and well-equipped secret printing press somewhere in the Caucasus. But his role went far beyond that. A highly capable young engineer, Krassin was in many ways the prototype of a Bolshevik organiser. He proved to be an outstanding organiser and technician.
The party, like the revolution, was still young at that time, and one was struck by the inexperience and lack of finish revealed both by the members and their actions in general. Krassin likewise was not wholly free from this fault. But there was something firm, resolute, and ‘administrative’ about him. He was an engineer of some experience, he held a paying job and filled it well; he was valued by his employers, and had a circle of acquaintances that was much larger and more varied than that of any of the young revolutionaries of the day. In workers’ rooms, in engineers’ apartments, in the mansions of the liberal Moscow industrialists, in literary circles – everywhere, Krassin had connections. He managed them all with great skill and, consequently, practical possibilities that were quite closed to the others were opened to him. In 1905, in addition to participating in the general work of the party, Krassin had charge of the most dangerous fields of the work, such as armed units, the purchase of arms, the preparing of stocks of explosives, and the like. In spite of his broad outlook, he was primarily a man of immediate achievement, in politics as well as in life. That was his strength but it was also his heel of Achilles. (L. Trotsky, My Life, pp. 169-70.)
Lenin greatly appreciated people like Krassin who got on with the work quietly, efficiently, and without fuss. Krassin’s work went on in secret, but he played an invaluable role in building the Party in this stormy period. Politically, Krassin was a conciliator. But conciliationist moods were common among Party activists in Russia, and still more among the workers, as was clearly reflected in the report of the Petersburg delegation to the party congress:
In the recent period, the demand for an end to the split is becoming widespread. Worker-Bolsheviks and Mensheviks are holding joint meetings, either with or without the intellectuals, and everywhere the demand for unification is pushed to the fore. (Trettiy s’yezd RSDRP (Protokoly), p. 549.)
One way or the other, the split in the party had to be resolved.
The obvious solution was the convening of a party congress. The Bolsheviks had been agitating for the convening of the Third Congress for months, but the Mensheviks, fearing they would be in a minority, continually stonewalled. Early in February, a police raid on the Moscow apartment of the writer Leonid Andreyev led to the arrest of all the members of the Central Committee (mainly Mensheviks and conciliators). Those still at liberty contacted the Bolshevik ‘Bureau of Majority Committees’ with the intention of reaching agreement to convene a congress.
Though formally this was the responsibility of the Party Council, a majority of the Party organisations inside Russia were clearly in favour. If two-thirds of the committees requested a congress, the Council was obliged by the rules to call one. By the beginning of April, the Bolsheviks were able to prove conclusively that a total of 21 organisations inside Russia, including the CC, were in favour of a congress.[1] This represented 52 votes out of a total of 75 that would represent the whole party at a congress – many more than what would be required by the rules. An open letter to Plekhanov, as chairman of the Party Council, written by Lenin in the name of the CC, was published early in April. Yet the Council, openly flouting the rules and in contempt of democratic procedure, refused to call the congress. Given the irresponsible and illegal behaviour of the Council, the Bolsheviks had no alternative but to convene a congress themselves, in the name of the Central Committee and the majority of Party organisations in Russia. The Mensheviks, although invited to attend, stayed away and organised their own conference in Geneva. On 12 April, 1905, delegates assembled in London for over two weeks of intense discussions on the fundamental problems of the revolution.
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These figures were accepted as correct by Martov. See J. Martov et al, Obshchestvennoe Dvizhenie v Rossii v Nachale 20 Veka, vol. 3, 557.