How Lenin studied Hegel

In the autumn of 1914 Lenin began a detailed study of Hegel’s writings. His notes contain a brilliant insight into the dialectical method, of which he was a master. In this article, Hamid Alizadeh draws out the essential aspects of this method, underlining the fundamental importance of theory for the communist movement.

In the summer of 1914, war broke out in Europe and the course of world history changed overnight. With the blessing of the treacherous Social-Democratic leaders, the European bourgeoisie dragged humanity down into a spiral of infernal carnage, in which tens of millions of workers and peasants were sent to the slaughter.

The betrayal of the leadership tore apart the Second International, the main organisation of the international workers’ movement, leaving the world proletariat defenceless as reaction raised its ugly head everywhere. Meanwhile, the forces of revolutionary Marxism had been reduced to a tiny minority, scattered across Europe and without a clear platform or lead.

Lenin found himself in Poland when the war broke out and had to hastily move to Switzerland. He had not anticipated the betrayal of the leaders of the International and was initially shocked at hearing the news of the German party having voted for war credits in the Reichstag. Now the International was in ruins, the class struggle in Russia was receding in the face of the war and Lenin was isolated from all but a handful of his comrades.

Yet, precisely at this moment in time, when the immediate organisational and political tasks loomed larger than ever before, Lenin threw himself into an in-depth study of Hegelian philosophy. But why bother, some might ask, to immerse oneself in abstract theoretical questions in such a crisis? To the mechanical mind this might appear strange and even ridiculous. What about the ‘needs’ of the party? Surely the task in such a situation is to focus on the immediate practical matters at hand!

Such a response would certainly harmonise with the crude bourgeois portrayal of Lenin as a philistine, so-called man of action; a stern ‘master conspirator’ who did not indulge in such trivial matters as philosophical contemplation – an image, by the way, that the Stalinist caricature of Lenin does not veer too far from.

In reality, such a view sharply contrasts with the real method of Lenin and of Marxism in general. What set Lenin apart from the other leaders of the Second International was, first and foremost, his clarity and his consistent class position – qualities that were solely based on his theoretical insight.

In 1914, the war blew over the world situation like a giant tornado, ripping up everything firm and solid in its path. Every country was thrown into a state of violent turbulence. All political trends were put to the test and the slightest weakness ruthlessly exposed. In such conditions, impressionistic improvisation could achieve exactly nothing.

The Marxists had foreseen the war. Nevertheless, it was a new situation, which required the skillful reorientation of the party. This was the context in which Lenin embarked on a new journey into philosophy as a means of deepening his understanding of the laws of nature and society.

His philosophical notebooks from this period, and in particular his notes on Hegel’s Science of Logic, are not only a treasure trove of ideas, they also provide us with a highly instructive account of Lenin’s approach and attitude towards theory.

Lenin’s method

Lenin was by no means a stranger to Hegel or philosophy in general. He studied Marx and Engels’ philosophical works keenly, as well as Plekhanov’s philosophical writings, which played a key role in developing the early core of Marxist revolutionaries in Russia.

He also had embarked on a period of serious philosophical study in the aftermath of the 1905 revolution, and wrote a book, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, against the revisionist ideas of Bogdanov, a Bolshevik leader who had drifted into the orbit of reactionary bourgeois philosophy.

Thus, as his philosophical notebooks reveal, Lenin was already a master of dialectics before 1914. Nevertheless, one never senses in him the slightest hint of comfortable self-satisfaction with his political and theoretical level. For the duration of his life, as is the hallmark of every master, Lenin approached theory with the humility and diligence of a student.

He methodically went through Hegel’s Science of Logic, taking detailed notes and contemplating each and every concept presented in it. This was by no means an easy task. In his own words, parts of the work appear to be the “best means for getting a headache!”^[1] But nothing worthwhile comes without a struggle, and the acquisition of the most advanced ideas will, by necessity, require serious labour.

In his notes we can see how Lenin, like an anatomist, carefully dissected and evaluated every part of Hegel’s work, before putting them together and viewing the ideas as a whole. In doing so, he not only mastered Hegel’s method, but also critiqued it, separating the living kernel from its dead husk. Lenin’s method of study was itself a masterclass in dialectics. Trotsky summed up this approach in his article How Lenin Studied Marx:

“Study, which is not merely a mechanical repetition, also involves a creative effort, but of an inverse type: To summarise another man’s work is to lay bare the skeletal framework of its logic, stripping away the proofs, the illustrations and the digressions. Joyously and fervently Vladimir advanced along this difficult road, summarising each chapter, sometimes a single page, as he read and thought and verified the logical structure, the dialectical transitions, the terminology. Taking possession of the results, he assimilated the method. He climbed the successive rungs of another man’s system as if he were himself constructing it anew. All of it became firmly lodged in this marvellously well-ordered brain beneath the powerful dome of the skull.” ^[2]

Lenin’s philosophical notebooks bear testament to his determined mind, which incessantly searched for new ideas and angles that could expand his understanding of the world around him. While he met organisational questions with the utmost flexibility, his insistence on theoretical clarity was what set him apart as an outstanding leader, and the Bolshevik Party as the only consistently revolutionary trend of its time.

Do we need philosophy?

“Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. This idea cannot be insisted upon too strongly at a time when the fashionable preaching of opportunism goes hand in hand with an infatuation for the narrowest forms of practical activity.” ^[3]

Many communists can quote Lenin’s famous words – or at least the first sentence – from memory, and lose no chance to do so. But does that mean that they understand the full significance of it? Familiarity can be treacherous. It can lull people into a false sense of certainty and thereby hinder them from grasping the depth of things.

Here we see the difference between Marxism and the empiricism that characterises bourgeois philosophy today. For Marxists, the immediate matter at hand is only a snapshot; one flake or aspect of a given phenomenon, which must be studied, unfolded and understood in its concrete totality. For the empiric, the immediate is all there is and everything else is a book sealed with seven seals.

The ruling classes of Europe each approached the war from the standpoint of their own narrow national interests / Image: public domain

The reformists uncritically adopt bourgeois philosophy and, like their masters, bow their heads and bend their knees to the so-called ‘established fact’. Herein lies the philosophical core of opportunism.

The approach of the reformists to the First World War provides a case in point. The ruling classes of Europe each approached the war from the standpoint of their own narrow national interests, which they justified by reference to lofty abstractions, such as ‘defence of the fatherland’ or ‘the right of nations to self-determination’.

And so it went that the rulers of one nation after another entered the war following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, each blaming the other for provoking hostilities. That is the extent to which the bourgeois understand the First World War: as a series of decisions made by a series of rulers. On the surface of things, this course of events did take place, to be sure, but there is more to the matter than its surface appearance.

The Social Democrats of the time argued along the same lines, albeit with left-leaning rhetoric. The Austrian Social Democrats echoed the anti-Russian and anti-Serb sentiments of the war party in Vienna. Plekhanov and the opportunists in the Russian Social Democracy spoke about the threat of reactionary German imperialism and the need to come to the aid of oppressed Serbia. Meanwhile, the German Social Democrats voted for war credits based on the need to stop reactionary Russian imperialism, and so on and so forth.

They all viewed the war solely from the perspective of their own national capitalist class, and on this basis they rushed to the ‘defence of the fatherland’, eagerly voting to send millions of workers to their deaths.

Lenin, on the other hand, explained that the war was a product of the whole preceding period of capitalist development. The rise of giant industrial monopolies and the dominance of finance capital marked a new stage in the history of capitalism, in which the constant need to export capital had propelled the advanced, imperialist countries into a ferocious struggle for the division and redivision of the globe, in search of fields of investment, markets, and spheres of influence.

In such conditions, Lenin explained, ‘defence of the fatherland’ was merely a cover for a defence of the narrow interests of the ruling classes of each nation – that is, in the interests of the exploiters and oppressors of the proletariat and working poor masses.

Here we see in practice, the difference between blindly accepting the dominant philosophy of the ruling class as opposed to taking a conscious revolutionary philosophical standpoint.

In the ascending phase of capitalism, bourgeois philosophy was used as a powerful weapon against feudalism and its ideological defenders in the Catholic Church. Under the banner of science and reason, it exposed the hypocrisy and irrationality of feudal society.

But with the capitalist class at a dead end, the nature of its philosophy has also changed and become entirely conservative. Like the dogmas of the church that it once fought, the bourgeois doctrines of our day stand for the defence of the status quo.

Whereas the old church doctrines prescribed faith and scripture as the path to truth, today’s academic establishment and other paid pundits preach the irrationality of nature and society and raise immediate subjective experience – their subjective experience to be sure! – to be all that exists.

In the past, the clerics preached about the ‘divine order of things’, with the king at the top, followed by the feudal lords and at the bottom, the lower classes. Today, the high priests of capital preach the inviolability of capitalism – the market, private property, the nation state and all the reactionary moral manure that these bring with them – as the immutable essence of mankind.

Bourgeois philosophy has, by necessity, turned into its opposite. Rather than revealing the truth, the true purpose of the ideas that are now disseminated through official religion, the media, schools, etc. is to cover up the truth.

The truth is therefore the most important weapon of the working class. Like all revolutionary classes before it, the proletariat must adopt a conscious revolutionary philosophy if it wishes to understand the workings of capitalism and how the system can be abolished.

Abstract thought

“The truth is concrete,”^[4] Lenin often repeated, after Hegel. And Marxism deals first and foremost with the truth. But that does not mean that abstract thinking, as such, is untrue. Far from it.

As Lenin writes in his conspectus of Hegel’s Logic:

“Thought proceeding from the concrete to the abstract — provided it is correct (NB) (...) — does not get away from the truth but comes closer to it. The abstraction of matter, of a law of nature, the abstraction of value, etc., in short, all scientific (correct, serious, not absurd) abstractions reflect nature more deeply, truly and completely”. ^[5]

Real knowledge is not the mere stacking of facts one on top of the other. The point is to understand the relation between those facts. That is the role of philosophy: to furnish us with a worldview, a method of approaching the nature and society around us. Abstract thought is true insofar as it reflects reality. The main question is, of course, how can we reach such truth?

Dialectics

Hegel’s revolution in philosophy was predicated upon his Objectivism – that is, in his belief that the world exists independently of mankind, and that it functions on the basis of its own inherent laws. On such a basis, the task of science and philosophy is not to conjure up a system to forcefully drag over the world, but to investigate the world as it is, on its own account, and thereby to derive the laws that govern it.

In his Logic, Hegel brilliantly conducts this treatment on scientific thinking itself. Step by step, he proceeds to trace human thought as it unfolds on its own account. Starting with the most simple and general concept possible, he proceeds to lay bare the laws that govern rational thought as such.

In the opening of the book he invites us to contemplate the simple concept of ‘Pure Being’. Here Hegel means ‘pure’ in the sense that it is completely indeterminate and undifferentiated, with no boundaries, no special characteristics and nothing in particular that defines it – just, pure Being. As Hegel remarks, no matter how hard we try to think about it, we cannot say anything about such a being, since anything that we say would limit and define it, and hence it would not be ‘pure’ any longer.

Hence, in this pure form we cannot in reality talk about any particular being at all. We therefore arrive at the conclusion that Pure Being is no different than Nothing. The idea of Pure Being, in other words, immediately leads us to the idea of Nothing.

Upon reflection, however, we find out that this is not our end destination. As it turns out, the idea of ‘pure nothing,’ in its emptiness and indeterminateness, is no different than Pure Being.

The two concepts therefore transition into one another as soon as we try to fix them in our thoughts: “each immediately vanishes in its opposite”, writes Hegel.^[6] And it is here, in this unity of Being and Nothing that we meet a new concept or category, namely Becoming: a higher concept, which carries Being and Nothing within it.

In this simple example, or thought experiment, Hegel has outlined the germ of all of dialectics starting with the fundamental principle that everything is in a state of uninterrupted change, of coming into being and passing away.

“Shrewd and clever!” Lenin comments, “Hegel analyses concepts that usually appear to be dead and shows that there is movement in them. Finite? That means moving to an end! Something?—means not that which is Other. Being in general?—means such indeterminateness that Being = not-Being.” ^[7]

The path of change

“Movement and ‘self-movement’ (this NB! arbitrary (independent), spontaneous, internally-necessary movement), ‘change,’ ‘movement and vitality,’ ‘the principle of all self-movement,’ ‘impulse’ (Trieb) to ‘movement’ and to ‘activity’ — the opposite to ‘dead Being’ — who would believe that this is the core of ‘Hegelianism,’ of abstract and abstruse (ponderous, absurd?) Hegelianism?? This core had to be discovered, understood, [salvaged], laid bare, refined, which is precisely what Marx and Engels did.”^[8]

For the petty-bourgeois empiric, things remain the same or at the very best move in a circular fashion. Since today is like yesterday, tomorrow will be the same again. The existing state of affairs appears almighty before him and hence he sees no option but to ceaselessly moan about it, while rejecting any attempt to break with it.

He will always find ways to prove that capitalism is here to stay, that the working class will never move, or that the revolutionary party cannot or should not be built, and so on and so forth. Insofar as he accepts change, he attributes it to external forces. Ultimately, he capitulates to the status quo, because he cannot imagine it changing. In reality, however, that development is inevitable.

“Nowhere in heaven or on earth,” Hegel writes “is there anything which does not contain within itself both being and nothing”. ^[9] While Hegel furnishes us with no examples from heaven, the earth is saturated with them.

Change is the fundamental mode of existence of all matter. All things that come into being carry the seeds of their destruction within themselves. This struggle between the old and the new, between being and nothing, lies at the core of development – and capitalism is no exception.

The forces that lead towards the downfall of the system come entirely from within its own womb, namely the modern proletariat. The foremost characteristic of the proletariat is that it is a class that does not own any property and which is forced to sell its labour-power to the capitalist in order to survive. Its interests are directly opposed to the essential pillars of capitalism: private ownership of the means of production and the nation state. Every step forward in the development of capitalism forges the workers into a formidable class in opposition to the bourgeoisie, thereby preparing the downfall of this same ruling class.

But this is not a linear and gradual process. To the capitalists, revolutions are the work of cunning and charismatic leaders who suddenly appear on the scene, just as the strike is blamed on the ‘agitator’. In reality, every revolution is the result of long periods of rising social contradictions, where the interests of the ruling class clash with the interests of the proletariat.

The transition of quantity into quality and vice versa – or, in other words, leaps – is a fundamental trait of all development / Image: public domain

For years, however, the regime can appear to be unaffected. The workers will bow their heads and accept the dictates of the bosses. Sooner or later, however, a tipping point will be reached where one accidental event unleashes all the pent up anger: the dams burst and the masses flood the scene of politics.

Apparent stability gives way to the most intense turmoil. Meanwhile, the revolutionary forces, which until yesterday were relegated to the periphery of the labour movement, suddenly find themselves in the centre stage. All of this happens in the most abrupt and violent manner, seemingly without warning.

The reformists who yesterday wrote off the working class due to its so-called ‘low level of consciousness’ and weak organisation are dumbfounded by events that they did not expect and cannot control. This merely reveals their superficial approach.

“It is said that there are no leaps in nature,” writes Hegel, in a passage heavily underlined by Lenin, “and ordinary imagination, when it has to conceive an arising or passing away, it thinks has conceived them (...) as a gradual emergence or disappearance.”^[10]

In reality, the opposite is true. Development is never merely linear or gradual. It is composed on the one hand of periods with small quantitative and gradual changes, which in turn give way to sudden sharp qualitative leaps; and on the other hand qualitative shifts, which give way to quantitative bursts.

Hegel continues:

“Water on being cooled does not little by little become hard, gradually reaching the consistency of ice after having passed through the consistency of paste, but is suddenly hard; when it already has quite attained freezing-point it may (if it stands still) be wholly liquid, and a slight shake brings it into the condition of hardness.”^[11]

The transition of quantity into quality and vice versa – or, in other words, leaps – is a fundamental trait of all development. However, in order to understand the forces driving these shifts and which direction development will take, we need to go beyond the standpoint of ‘common sense’. What is needed is to take a closer look at the forces and undercurrents that are not immediately visible to the naked eye.

Underneath the surface

On the surface of things, as we go about our daily lives, we think of things as simple and fixed. We are certain that a man is a man, a dog is a dog, this is this, that is that, and so on and so forth. And yet, as soon as we focus our sights, this certainty disappears. For in our search for the archetypal dog, we must acknowledge that no such thing exists; all dogs are different.

Even if we take our singular canine friend, Fido, we will notice that today’s Fido is not entirely like yesterday's. He is very different from the pup we originally befriended years ago and, in a moment, he will differ from the Fido of the now. As soon as we try to hold them in our minds, all fixed and rigid concepts slip through our fingers and dissolve into an infinitely varied world.

The postmodernists stop at this point and declare ‘Difference’ to be the essence of the world. Everything is different from everything else they proclaim, and therefore our general concepts and categories are merely imaginary ‘constructs’.

But they speak too soon. Because once we turn our gaze to that world of boundless difference, what will immediately stand out to us is that in spite of the constantly changing state of everything, with striking clarity at all levels, is the recurrence of similar patterns and laws, which rule with an iron hand.

At a first glance, no two dogs are alike. Yet some essential attributes appear in all dogs, which makes them dogs. And even though every cell, molecule and atom of Fido’s body is in a state of constant motion and transformation, there nevertheless remains something innate that transcends every fleeting and accidental instance of our canine friend. The identity of things does not exist apart from their difference, but through it.

In the old Platonic philosophy the essence of things were ideal archetypes, which stood above or in opposition to the vibrant and multifarious world that we experience. For postmodernists, the essence of things are merely mankind’s arbitrary mental constructs that we project onto external reality.

On this question, Lenin writes:

“The more petty philosophers dispute whether essence or that which is immediately given should be taken as basis (Kant, Hume, all the Machists). Instead of or, Hegel puts and, explaining the concrete content of this ‘and.’”^[12]

As modern science has proven again and again, the essence of things – what makes them what they are – is merely the inherent relations of things themselves. It is the internal dynamics of matter, which arises from and expresses itself in the infinite shapes and configurations that nature takes on around us.

Charles Darwin, in his theory of biological evolution explained how all organisms develop through the natural selection of mutations that increase their ability to survive and reproduce. “From so simple a beginning,” he writes, “endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”^[13]

The law of evolution does not stand apart from living organisms, it is their mode of development. What sets mankind apart from other animals is precisely our ability to abstract these aspects of things, aspects which are not immediately visible to the naked eye, to contemplate them and thereby to attain a deeper understanding of the phenomenon as a whole. Our ideas and general conceptions, in other words, are approximations to the real laws and relations that govern the world.

The deeper we are able to descend into things, the more of their relations we are able to uncover, the more precisely can our ideas reflect the essence of things themselves.

As Lenin writes:

“Nature is both concrete and abstract, both phenomenon and essence, both moment and relation. Human concepts are subjective in their abstractness, separateness, but objective as a whole, in the process, in the sum-total, in the tendency, in the source.”^[14]

Contradiction

Ordinary thinking grabs hold of one, immediate, aspect of a phenomenon and counterposes it to the rest of it. For everyday tasks that method holds true. But if we look closer, we will see that nature is not one-sided and simple, but many-sided and contradictory.

One-sided abstractions are dead, explains Hegel in a passage highlighted by Lenin, “but Contradiction is the root of all movement and vitality, and it is only insofar as it contains a Contradiction that anything moves and has impulse and activity.” ^[15]

“Something moves,” Hegel tells us, “not because it is here at one point of time and there at another, but because at one and the same point of time it is here and not here, and in this here both is and is not.”^[16] That is the course of all movement and development.

Dialectics does not exclude the one-sided world view of everyday thinking; it absorbs it as one aspect of a higher truth. It embraces all aspects of a phenomenon – its inner and outer relations – and holds them in their contradiction as a complex whole.

Once we acknowledge this, an entirely new world opens up for us. An interconnected world where the parts exist in a reciprocal relation with the whole; where being flows into nothing and vice versa; where quantity flows into quality and vice versa; where identity and difference interpenetrate one another; where the form and content are locked in a constant struggle; where simple principles are at the basis of the most complex processes, and so on and so forth.

“The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their ‘self-movement,’ in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites”, writes Lenin, adding: “Development is the ‘struggle’ of opposites.”^[17]

Lawfulness

The deeper we are able to penetrate into a phenomenon and the better we can trace its inner contradictory relations, the less haphazard or arbitrary it will appear in our eyes. Instead, what will gradually take shape is its necessary – or in other words, its lawful – path of development.

Through the application of the dialectical method, Marx uncovered the laws of capitalism / Image: public domain

Here we have an entirely different way of viewing the world than the dead categories of bourgeois philosophy. The dialectical view reflects not only the external properties of a phenomenon or its transient stages, but the totality of its development in its successive stages, from coming into being until its inevitable passing away. This method lies at the core of Marxism.

Lenin wrote:

“In his Capital, Marx first analyses the simplest, most ordinary and fundamental, most common and everyday relation of bourgeois (commodity) society, a relation encountered billions of times, viz., the exchange of commodities. In this very simple phenomenon (in this ‘cell’ of bourgeois society) analysis reveals all the contradictions (or the germs of all contradictions) of modern society. The subsequent exposition shows us the development (both growth and movement) of these contradictions and of this society in the [summation] of its individual parts. From its beginning to its end.(...) Such must also be the method of exposition (i.e., study) of dialectics in general (for with Marx the dialectics of bourgeois society is only a particular case of dialectics).”^[18]

Through the application of the dialectical method, Marx uncovered the laws of capitalism. And on this basis he was able to accurately predict, in general outline, the entire development of capitalist society after his death; a development that necessarily leads towards the coming to power of the proletariat and the abolition of private property and the nation-state.

It is on the basis of the perspective, developed initially by Marx and Engels based on the study of human history – and which is being proven correct on a daily basis – that our communist programme is formulated.

Hence, Lenin wrote: “It is impossible completely to understand Marx’s Capital and especially its first chapter, without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel’s Logic. Consequently, half a century later none of the Marxists understood Marx!!”^[19]

Reading Hegel right-side up

Hegel brilliantly developed the most comprehensive exposition of dialectics as the science of movement and change. To this day, his ideas stand head and shoulders above the official philosophical doctrines of the capitalist class.

But in Hegel’s hands, dialectics received a mystical, idealist form. Here they were not the inherent laws of development of nature, but the laws of development of what he called the Absolute Spirit or the Absolute Idea. The Idea “becomes the creator of Nature,” he writes – to which Lenin merely replies with: “!!Ha ha!”^[20]

For Hegel, the logical categories, such as Being, Nothing, Becoming, Quantity, Quality, Essence, Appearance, etc. have an independent existence as the component parts of this all encompassing Idea, which in turn has expressed itself through nature. Once it has unfolded itself into nature, it is in rational thought that the Absolute finds its highest form, peaking with Hegelian philosophy itself.

Hegel insisted on the ultimate primacy of abstract thought over human activity. Insofar as he included activity as a key component of his logic, this was first and foremost as a logical category. Throughout his logic he insists that the reader must leave behind the external world and stay in the realm of “pure thought”.

And yet, he was forced, again and again, to veer towards materialism, by his own logic and in order to prove his points. As Lenin noted : “[I]n this most idealistic of Hegel’s works there is the least idealism and the most materialism. ‘Contradictory,’ but a fact!”^[21]

Hegel belonged to the camp of philosophical idealism, which holds that mind is the primary component of reality and that the external world, in one way or another, is a derivation or reflection of mind. All religions fall into the camp of philosophical idealism and Hegel made no secret that he was formulating a religious system.

Marxists are philosophical materialists. As opposed to the idealists, we believe that there exists only one world, namely the material world that we can sense and interact with. The human mind is a product of this material world and our ideas are merely reflections of it.

“I am in general trying to read Hegel materialistically.” wrote Lenin, “Hegel is materialism which has been stood on its head […] — that is to say, I cast aside for the most part God, the Absolute, the Pure Idea, etc.”^[22]

Lenin can do that because the concept of the Absolute Idea does not play any fundamental role in the essential aspects of Hegel’s ideas. In fact, as Friedrich Engels noted, Hegel says “absolutely nothing”^[23] about the Absolute Idea.

Marxists do not believe that dialectics has any existence separate from nature. The laws of dialectics are not the laws of ideas, but reflect the inherent lawfulness of nature itself at the most general level. By our interaction with the world, we humans are able to discover these laws at deeper and deeper levels. That is the basis of Marxist philosophy: dialectical materialism.

“Logic is the science not of external forms of thought,” Lenin wrote, “but of the laws of development ‘of all material, natural and spiritual things’, i.e., of the development of the entire concrete content of the world and of its cognition, i.e., the sum-total, the conclusion of the History of knowledge of the world.”^[24]

It was one of Marx and Engels’ great achievements to rescue dialectics from the shackles of Hegel’s dead idealism and to ‘turn it right side up’. And while the dialectics of nature is demonstrated daily by the advances of science and culture, Hegel’s idealism – that is, his Absolute Spirit – merely remains as a lifeless exoskeleton, which had to be moulted for the real living organism underneath to continue developing.

Theory and practice

Where do ideas come from? These enchanting phantasms roaming about our inner worlds; their specific origins have long been forgotten, and hence, for thousands of years men have imbued them with mystical qualities. In idealism, ideas face mankind as powerful forces standing above nature and society.

But ideas do not have an independent existence. Neither are they, as the subjectivists would imagine, impenetrable barriers between human beings and the external world. The mind is a regulatory function of our species, which through labour bridges the gap between us and the nature that surrounds us.

Through thousands of years of trial and error we have developed ideas and general conceptions / Image: public domain

“The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life”, explains Marx.^[25] Out of our constant interaction with the world around us, what Marx calls “the metabolism between man and nature”, arise conceptions that allow us to understand our surroundings and adapt them to our needs. By doing so we also change ourselves. Our ideas, such as the categories of logic, are not supernatural phenomena; they merely reflect nature itself and their origins lie in human social activity.

“For Hegel”, Lenin notes, “action, practice, is a logical ‘syllogism,’ a figure of logic. And that is true! Not of course, in the sense that the figure of logic has its other being in the practice of man (=absolute idealism), but vice versa: man’s practice, repeating itself a thousand million times, becomes consolidated in man’s consciousness by figures of logic. Precisely (and only) on account of this thousand-million-fold repetition, these figures have the stability of a prejudice, an axiomatic character.”^[26]

The dialectical character of thought that Hegel mapped out in his Logic, in other words, is merely a reflection of the nature that men interact with. Lenin paraphrasing Hegel writes: “Nature, this immediate totality, unfolds itself in the Logical Idea.” He goes on to say:

“Logic is the science of cognition. It is the theory of knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of nature by man. But this is not simple, not an immediate, not a complete reflection, but the process of a series of abstractions, the formation and development of concepts, laws, etc., and these concepts, laws, etc., (thought, science = ‘the logical Idea’) embrace conditionally, approximately, the universal, law-governed character of eternally moving and developing nature.”^[27]

Through thousands of years of trial and error we have developed ideas and general conceptions diving ever deeper into different aspects of nature, ideas which have become the concentrated essence of human experience. Dialectics is the crowning achievement of this development so far.

But knowledge is not a one-way stream, imprinting the results of our activities in our brains; there is a reverse simultaneous process in motion as well. Having deduced different aspects of the law-governed world, abstract thought allows us to contemplate and deepen our ideas, in order to improve our practice further down the line.

It is ultimately in practice that our ideas face up against the objective world that we seek to change. And it is through this process that they gain objectivity: “The unity of the theoretical idea (of knowledge) and of practice—this NB—and this unity precisely in the theory of knowledge, for the resulting sum is the [objective idea]”.^[28]

For the philistine, theory represents a curiosity at best. But it is the dialectical interplay of theory and practice, one leading into the other, that characterises “the endless process of the deepening of man’s knowledge of the thing, of phenomena, processes, etc., from appearance to essence and from less profound to more profound essence.”^[29]

This is a process that at the same time enhances and broadens man’s mastery over nature. The deeper knowledge we have of the laws that govern our world, the more efficiently we can reach our aims and aspirations. And here we see the importance of theory for Communists.

As Trotsky explained:

“Infinitely more exacting, rigorous and well-balanced is he who views theory as a guide to action. A drawing room sceptic may scoff at medicine with impunity, but a surgeon cannot live in an atmosphere of scientific uncertainty. The greater is the revolutionist’s need for theory as a guide to action, all the more intransigent is he in guarding it. Vladimir Ulyanov mistrusted dilettantism and detested quacks. What he valued above all else in Marxism was the severe discipline and authority of its method.”^[30]

The victory of foresight over astonishment

Trotsky once defined Marxist theory as the advantage of “foresight over astonishment”. And it was precisely this foresight and deep understanding that allowed Lenin and the Bolsheviks to prevail in the face of extreme adversity from all sides.

At the beginning of the First World War, the Bolsheviks could be described – in terms of power, influence and resources – as one of the weakest political trends in Europe. Under the impact of the wave of patriotism, which was whipped up by tsarist authorities and the consequent mood of national unity, the party lost the majority of its support amongst the Russian working class. The revolutionary wave that was brewing in Russia before the war was immediately cut across and tsarism was temporarily strengthened.

The revolutionary elements were once again relegated to the periphery. To make matters worse, many of the best workers were sent to the front as punishment for their activities in the factories and elsewhere. The main Bolshevik leaders, for the most part, were in exile in Europe where the lines of communication had been cut or severely disrupted by the war.

Reaction was raising its head and gaining ground everywhere in Europe and the working class was on the retreat. Armed with guns, tanks and bombs, the bourgeois of Europe were massacring their way through the continent – and anyone who stood in their way could easily be pushed aside or, if need be, sent to the front and eliminated. Meanwhile, the European Social-Democratic leaders, who had swung behind their own ruling classes, appeared to sit comfortably in the laps of their bourgeois masters.

For the Bolsheviks, with weak finances, little to no apparatus, and party organisations in total disarray due to the war, the idea of taking power might have appeared to be further away than ever. And yet, only a little more than three years after the start of the war, all of this had turned to its opposite and the Bolshevik Party was leading the workers and peasants of Russia to power in the October Revolution of 1917. A greater demonstration of dialectics could not be imagined!

Here we see the power of ideas in practice. The success of the Bolsheviks can be reduced to the success of the Marxist method, to the method of dialectical materialism.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks insisted on a working-class position and refused to make the slightest concession to the national chauvinist shifts that the war produced across Europe. And while the war initially strengthened the ruling class, it later became the biggest driving force of revolution by sharply bringing out the class contradictions in society.

Thus, the revolutionary message of the Bolsheviks, which received no popular echo whatsoever in the early days of the war, became the rallying cry of the Russian masses, and spread terror amongst the ruling classes of the world.

Opportunism is the abandonment of long-term perspectives in favour of immediate short-term objectives. Dialectics is the science of going beyond the immediate and understanding complex and drawn-out processes in their totality. It was dedication to theory and a mastery of dialectics that gave Lenin an towering advantage over his enemies.

In politics, an infatuation for the immediate appearance of things leads to flippant sloganeering and an “infatuation for the narrowest forms of practical activity”. Lenin and the Bolsheviks, however, transcended appearances and addressed the essence of things, regardless of the immediate impact it had on the party, because they knew that in the end only the truth would bring them closer to the victory of the working class. This was the key to their success.

Leon Trotsky summed up the core of the matter:

“It is historical experience that the greatest revolution in all history was not led by the party which started out with bombs but by the party which started out with dialectic materialism.”^[31]

References

[1] V I Lenin, “Conspectus of Hegel’s Book ‘The Science of Logic’”, Lenin Collected Works, Vol. 38, Progress Publishers, 1961, pg 176

[2] L Trotsky, “How Lenin Studied Marx”, Fourth International, Vol.11, No.4, July-August 1950, pg 126

[3] V I Lenin, What is to be done?, Wellred Books, 2018, pg 26

[4] V I Lenin, “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back”, Lenin Collected Works, Vol. 7, Progress Publishers, 1961, pg 412

[5] V I Lenin, “Conspectus of Hegel’s Book ‘The Science of Logic’”, Lenin Collected Works, Vol. 38, Progress Publishers, 1961, pg 171, emphasis in original throughout

[6] G W F Hegel, The Science of Logic, Cambridge University Press, 2010, pg 60

[7] V I Lenin, “Conspectus of Hegel’s Book ‘The Science of Logic’”, Lenin Collected Works, Vol. 38, Progress Publishers, 1961, pg 110

[8] ibid. pg 141

[9] G W F Hegel, The Science of Logic, Cambridge University Press, 2010, pg 61

[10] V I Lenin, “Conspectus of Hegel’s Book ‘The Science of Logic’”, Lenin Collected Works, Vol. 38, Progress Publishers, 1961, pg 123

[11] ibid. pg 124

[12] ibid. pg 134

[13] C Darwin, The Origin of Species, P F Collier and Son, 1909, pg 529

[14] V I Lenin, “Conspectus of Hegel’s Book ‘The Science of Logic’”, Lenin Collected Works, Vol. 38, Progress Publishers, 1961, pg 208

[15] ibid. pg 139

[16] G W F Hegel, The Science of Logic, Cambridge University Press, 2010, pg 382

[17] V I Lenin, “On the Question of Dialectics”, Lenin Collected Works, Vol. 38, Progress Publishers, 1961, pg 360

[18] ibid. pg 360-361

[19] V I Lenin, “Conspectus of Hegel’s Book ‘The Science of Logic’”, Lenin Collected Works, Vol. 38, Progress Publishers, 1961, pg 180

[20] ibid. pg 174

[21] ibid. pg 234

[22] ibid. pg 104

[23] F Engels, “Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy”, Karl Marx Frederick Engels Collected Works, Vol. 26, Progress Publishers, 1990, pg 360

[24] V I Lenin, “Conspectus of Hegel’s Book ‘The Science of Logic’”, Lenin Collected Works, Vol. 38, Progress Publishers, 1961, pg 92-93

[25] K Marx, The German Ideology, International Publishers, 1947, pg 13-14

[26] V I Lenin, “Conspectus of Hegel’s Book ‘The Science of Logic’”, Lenin Collected Works, Vol. 38, Progress Publishers, 1961, pg 217

[27] ibid. pg 182

[28] ibid. pg 219

[29] ibid. pg 222

[30] L Trotsky, “How Lenin Studied Marx”, Fourth International, Vol.11, No.4, July-August 1950, pg 127

[31] L Trotsky, In Defence of Marxism, Wellred Books, 2019, pg 106