¹ The fear of the role of the intelligentsia was not a new one; it was, in fact, the root issue that divided the Russian revolutionary movement at the start. In the early 1870's, the Zemlya i Voly a (Land and Freedom) movement set out to consolidate the various strands of revolutionary populism. Its prophet, Peter Tkachev, declared at the time mat revolutions did not arise spontaneously but were made by people with creative energy, and mat the intelligentsia—rather than the masses, who were passive or apathetic—were the only force capable of making a revolution. He demanded the formation of a conspiratorial organization based on die principle of “centralization of power and decentralization of function,” since only a “conscious minority” was able to act.

Tkachev was answered by Paul Akselrod, one of the founders of Russian Marxism, who declared diat the development of the revolutionary consciousness of the masses, to allow them to act for themselves, was the main task for socialists. And the subsequent debate, in fact, brought Russian Marxism into being. For in answering the claim of the Populists that only the intelligentsia could make the revolution, George Plekhanov, the intellectual father of Russian Marxism, argued that any movement that disregarded the “objective laws of social development” or the “inexorable laws of history” was doomed to failure. Plekhanov, using a metaphor that was to become a favorite of Russian Bolsheviks, warned that one could not “force birth” of a new system, although one could ease the labor pains. Thus the task, at the moment, was to wait for “objective” social conditions to develop. In contrast to the Populist intelligentsia, who openly declared the necessity of leading the masses, die Marxists identified themselves with the proletariat (although Lenin, shortly after, in terms completely reminiscent of Tkachev, spoke of the necessity for tutelage of die proletariat). Hence the charge by Machajski that the Marxists wanted to dominate the proletariat seemed to be aimed at the wrong party and could be easily dismissed. For a discussion of this issue, see Haimson, Leopold, The Russian Marxisis and the Origins of Bolshevism, Cambridge, Mass., 1955, pp. 36–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

² Trotsky, Leon, My Life, New York, 1931, pp. 129–43.Google Scholar

³ Only snippets of Machajski's works are available in English, in the anthology, The Making of Society, ed. by Calverton, V. F., Modern Library, New York, 1937.Google Scholar The fullest exposition of Machajski's ideas can be found in the article by Nomad, Max, “White Collars and Horny Hands,” Modern Quarterly, VI, No. 3 (Autumn 1932), pp. 68–76Google Scholar, and I am indebted to this account. Nomad, Machajski's major disciple, used his theory as die frame of analysis for his own studies of revolutionary personalities in Rebels and Renegades, New York, 1932, and Apostles of Revolution, New York, 1939. Machajski's ideas, through Nomad, explicitly influenced the writings of Harold Lasswell. In a number of books, Lasswell expounded the theory that the revolutions of the twentieth century have been led by intellectuals who, in the name of the mydis and symbols of socialism, used these revolutions to place themselves in power. See particularly Lasswell, Harold, World Politics and Personal Insecurity, New York, 1935, pp. 111–16Google Scholar, and The World Revolution of Our Time, Stanford, Calif., 1951. The theory of the double role of the intellectuals—a commonplace by now, perhaps—can also be found in the writings of Robert Michels and Joseph Schumpeter, and received its most poignant expression in the dialogue between Pietro Spina and Uliva in Ignazio Silone's memorable novel, Bread and Wine. Machajski's name is almost completely unknown in the Soviet Union, but a cursory account of his life and ideas can be found in the larger Soviet Encyclopedia in the article on A. Wolski, the pen name that Machajski first used.

⁴ Even as sophisticated a socialist as Sidney Hook, in his first major exposition of Marx, felt that die problem of bureaucracy under socialism was relatively simple. Seeking to refute the contention of Robert Michels, who held that, as a result of the “iron law of oligarchy,” “socialists may be successful but socialism (true democracy) never,” Hook wrote, in 1933: “… what Michels overlooks is the social and economic presuppositions of the oligarchical tendencies of leadership in the past. Political leadership in past societies meant economic power. Education and tradition fostered the tendencies to predatory self-assertion in some classes and at the same time sought to deaden the interest in politics on the part of the masses. In a socialist society in which political leadership is an administrative function, and, therefore, carries with it no economic power, in which the processes of education strive to direct the psychic tendencies to self-assertion into [moral and social equivalents] of oligarchical ambition, in which die monopoly of education for one class has been abolished, and the division of labor between manual and mental worker is progressively eliminated—the danger that Michels' [law of oligarchy] will express itself in traditional form, becomes quite remote.” (Hook, Sidney, Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx, New York, 1933, p. 312.)Google Scholar

⁵ Trotsky, Leon, The Living Thoughts of Karl Marx, New York, 1939, p. 6.Google Scholar

⁶ For a penetrating discussion of this question of rationality in the “apocalyptic economics” of Bolshevism, see Polanyi, Michael, “The Foolishness of History,” Encounter, IX, No. 3 (November 1957), pp. 33–37.Google Scholar

⁷ Marx, Karl, Selected Works, Moscow, 1935, II, section III, pp. 494–504.Google Scholar

⁸ Rihs, Charles, La Commune de Paris, Geneva, 1955, pp. 70–72, 244Google Scholar; also Jellinek, Frank, The Paris Commune of 1871, New York, 1937, pp. 398, 403.Google Scholar

⁹ Marx, Karl, Critique of the Gotha Programme, London, 1943Google Scholar, esp. pp. 12–13 and 26.

¹⁰ Marx, in his early philosophical writings of the 1840's, had speculated considerably on the nature of human personality in a communist society. In his mind, the meaning of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” was linked to a vision of stages of society ranging from “raw” to “pure” communism. These earlier philosophical writings were unpublished, and unknown, in the years when orthodox Marxism and Leninism were developing, and the relationship of the early philosophical connections of Marx's economic writings was therefore not understood. As a result, Marxist thought followed one road, the narrow road of primitive economics, while another, which might have led to new, humanistic conceptions of work and labor, was left unexplored. These themes are investigated in my article, “The Meaning of Alienation: The Quest for the Historical Marx,” to be published in die Winter 1959 issue of the Partisan Review.

¹¹ Kautsky, Karl, The Social Revolution, Chicago, 1902, p. 112.Google Scholar

¹² Ibid., pp. 126–27.

¹³ It should be pointed out mat the Fabians, who were not mesmerized by the doctrine that one could not envisage the “laws” of a new “historical phase,” were much more specific in their inquiries into the question of administration in a socialist society. In her essay on “Industry Under Socialism,” in the Fabian Essays, Annie Besant, who later became a misty-eyed theosophist, wrote a hard-headed statement on the problem of management. Writing in 1889, she said: “The best form of management during the transition period, and possibly for a long time to come, will be through me Communal Council, which will appoint committees to superintend the various branches of industry. These committees will engage the necessary manager and foremen for each shop, factory, etc., and will hold the power of dismissal as of appointment. I do not believe that the direct election of the manager and the foremen by the employees would be found to work well in practice or to be consistent with the discipline necessary in carrying out any large business undertaking. It seems to me better that the Commune should elect its Council—thus keeping under its own control the general authority—but should empower die Council to select the officials, so that die power of selection and dismissal within the various sub-divisions should lie with the nominees of the whole Commune instead of with the particular group immediately concerned.” (Fabian Essays in Socialism, London, 1948, p. 147.)

Daniel De Leon, the American Marxist with an undeserved reputation for theoretical acumen—a chance remark by Lenin, who had never read him, was enough to give him minor canonization—although he talked of replacing the geographical or local district election system of parliaments by a functional or syndicalist organization, never dealt with the problems of production and exchange in a socialist society other than, like Kautsky, to emphasize the greater simplicity of the task under socialism than under capitalism. Speaking of the socialist industrial parliament, he said: “Their legislative work will not be the complicated one which a society of conflicting interests, such as capitalism, requires, but the easy one which can be summed up in the statistics of wealth needed, the wealdi producible and the production required.” (Cited in Petersen, Arnold, Proletarian Democracy vs. Dictatorships and Despotism, 4th ed., New York, 1937. p. 29.)Google Scholar

Actually, De Leon drew most of these ideas from the French syndicalists, after he embraced industrial unionism in 1905. For the best account of De Leon, see McKee, Donald, “The Intellectual and Historical Influences Shaping die Political Theories of Daniel De Leon,” unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Columbia University, 1955.Google Scholar

¹⁴ All citations are from Lenin, V. I., Collected Works, Vol. XXI, New York, 1932Google Scholar; see esp. pp. 184–89. Unless otherwise indicated, italics have been added.

¹⁵ At the meeting of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee in April 1918, Lenin delivered a polemic against the “left” Communists who saw in the actions to restore managerial authority the “road to state capitalism.” Actually, said Lenin, “state capitalism would be a step forward for us. If we were capable of attaining state capitalism in Russia within a short time this would be a victory … then the transition to full socialism would be easy and certain. For state capitalism is a system of centralization, integration, control, and socialization. And this is precisely what we lack.” (Lenin, V. I., Socheniia, XXII, p. 482Google Scholar, cited in Marcuse, Herbert, Soviet Marxism, New York, 1958, p. 44.)Google Scholar

¹⁶ When the new German Socialist Workers' Party, of 1875, adopted die Godia Program and called for the organization of producers' co-operatives under die democratic control of the “toiling people,” Marx chided them, saying, “The majority of die [toiling] people in Germany consists of peasants and not proletarians.” (Critique of the Gotha Programme, p. 25.)

¹⁷ In die essay, “Will Bolsheviks Retain State Power?” written in October 7–14, 1917, Lenin said: “Marx taught us from die experience of die Paris Commune, that me proletariat cannot simply lay hold of die ready-made state machinery and set it in motion for its own purpose, diat the proletariat must destroy diis machinery and replace it by a new one. (This I treat in detail in a pamphlet, The State and Revolution—The Teachings of Marxism about the State, and The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution.) This new state apparatus was created by the Paris Commune and of the same type of [state apparatus] are the Russian Soviets of Workers', Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies.” (Lenin, , Collected Works, XXI, p. 25.)Google Scholar

¹⁸ For a discussion of the varying interpretations of this claim, see Meyer, Alfred G., Leninism, Cambridge, Mass., 1957, pp. 187–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also note 15 above, for Lenin's statement on the greater ease of transition if Russia had been state capitalist.

¹⁹ For extracts from Lenin's notebooks and his marginal comments on the Critique, see Appendix II, Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marxist-Leninist Library #15, London, 1933, pp. 65–85.

²⁰ For these crucial passages, see Lenin, , Collected WorKs, XX, Book 1, p. 101Google Scholar, and ibid., XXI, Book 2, pp. 28–29.

²¹ The extent of Lenin's “naïveté” can best be seen by quoting at length from an extraordinary essay, written just before the Revolution, to illustrate his “magical” concept of administration. It was in answer to an article in Maxim Gorky's Novy Zhin. “… we are told,” wrote Lenin, “that Russia will not be able to be governed by the 240,000 members of the Bolshevik Party … (but) we have a [magic] means for increasing tenfold our state apparatus with one stroke, a means which never has been and never could be at the disposal of a capitalist state. This magic thing is the drawing of the workers, the poor people, into the everyday work of managing the state. “To explain how simple is the application of this magic means, how faultless is its action, we shall take a most simple and obvious example. “The state has forcibly to evict a family from a house and to install anodier in it. This is done time and again by the capitalist state, and it will have to be done by ours, by die proletarian or Socialist state. “The capitalist state evicts a worker's family which has lost its breadwinner and does not pay rent. There comes upon the scene a bailiff, policeman or militiaman, with a whole platoon of men. In a working-class district a whole detachment of Cossacks is necessary for the eviction. Why? Because the bailiff and policeman refuse to go without military protection of considerable strengdi. They know that the sight of an eviction brings forth such mad fury among the neighbouring population, among thousands and thousands driven well nigh to despair, such hatred against the capitalists and die capitalist state, that the bailiff and the squad of police might at any moment be torn to pieces. Large military forces are necessary; several regiments of soldiers must be brought into the town from a province, necessarily distant, so that the soldiers may know nothing of the life of die town poor, so that the soldiers may not be [infected] with Socialism. “The proletarian state has forcibly to move a very needy family into the dwelling of a rich man. Our detachment of workers' militia consists, let us say, of 15 people—two sailors, two soldiers, two class-conscious workers (of which only one needs to be a member of our Party or sympathizing with it), one intellectual, and eight poor labourers, of whom there would be at least five women, servants, unskilled workmen, and so on. The detachment comes to the rich man's house, investigates, and finds five rooms for two men and two women. [For this winter, citizens, you must confine yourselves to two rooms and prepare two rooms for two families diat are now living in cellars. For die time, until with the help of engineers (you are an engineer, I think?) we build good houses for all, you will have to put yourselves out a bit. Your telephone will serve ten families. This will save about a hundred hours' work in running to the stores, and so on. Then in your family there are two unoccupied semiworkers capable of doing light work—a woman of 55 and a boy of 14. They will be on duty for three hours daily, superintending the distribution of products for die ten families, and tiiey will keep the necessary accounts. The student in our detachment will write out two copies of the text of this state order and you will kindly give us a signed declaration of your undertaking to carry out the duties accurately.] “Thus, in my view, could be demonstrated in very clear examples the difference between the old bourgeois and the new Socialist state apparatus and state administration.” (“Will die Bolsheviks Retain State Power?” Collected Works, XXI, Book 2, pp. 34–35.) Thus Lenin, , writing in die week of October 7–14, 1917Google Scholar, in answer to mose who be litded the ability of die Bolsheviks to run the state!

²² The question of consciousness and spontaneity was probably the most crucial in the history of radical politics, for it involved, on the one hand, the nature of party organization and its relation to the masses and, on the other, the role of the intellectual. Further, if the masses by themselves are unable to achieve socialist consciousness, what does this mean for the entire theory of Marxist materialism to the effect that existence determines consciousness? Also, if such ideas derive from the intellectuals and, as Kautsky—from whom Lenin drew many of his ideas in What Is To Be Done—puts it, science is the source of radical consciousness, what does this mean for a Marxist theory of ideas? Such problems, however, are beyond the scope of this article. They are discussed in my forthcoming study on Communism and the American Labor Movement.

²³ For a general discussion of these ideas, see Arthur Rosenberg, A History of Bolshevism, a neglected work but still one of the most thoughtful accounts of the background of Leninism (London, 1934, esp. pp. 57–63). For detailed discussion of Gorter's ideas, see Gorter, H., “Mass Action, the Answer,” International Socialist Review, Chicago, September 1916.Google Scholar

²⁴ See Luxemburg, Rosa, “Die Russische Revolution,” in Die Aktion, V, No. 6 (February 4, 1922)Google Scholar; reprinted in English as The Russian Revolution, tr. and introd. by Bertram D. Wolfe, New York, May 1940.

²⁵ See “Theses on the Basic Tasks of the Communist International” and “Theses on the Role of the Communist Party in the Proletarian Revolution,” in The Communist International, 1919–1943: Documents, Vol. I, 1979–1922, ed. by Jane Degras, London and New York, 1956, pp. 113–27 (esp. p. 126) and 127–35.

²⁶ Cited in Gordon, Manya, Workers Before and After Lenin, New York, 1941, p. 79.Google Scholar

²⁷ For a discussion of this debate, see Schapiro, Leonard, The Origin of the Communist Autocracy, London, 1955, pp. 254–55.Google Scholar To some extent, the communes which the Chinese Communists instituted in 1958 follow the lines of this plan remarkably closely. With their leveling, the communes are also a prime example of what Marx meant by “raw communism.”

²⁸ Collected Works, 3rd Russian ed., 1935, XXVI, pp. 101, 103.

²⁹ Ibid., p. 141.

³⁰ Cited in Schapiro, , op.cit., p. 277.Google Scholar

³¹ Lenin, , Selected Works, IX, p. 9.Google Scholar Lenin's “practical”; awareness of the threat of bureaucracy as an immediate and ever-present reality contrasts strangely with the “naïve” notions one also finds him expressing. In an essay written a few days after the seizure of power, called “Report on the Right to Recall,” Lenin said, actually, that so long as any state exists a Marxist has no right to speak of freedom. “The state is an instrument of coercion,” he wrote. “Formerly this was oppression of the entire nation by a bunch of money bags… we want to organize coercion in the interests of the working people.” What counted, for Lenin, was that the state would be under the control of the workers, and therefore be subject to check. (“Report on the Right to Recall,” Collected Works, XXII, p. 97.)

³² I follow here the account by Leonard Schapiro, op.cit.

³² Lenin, , Selected Works, XIV, p. 338Google Scholar, cited in Draper, Theodore, The Roots of American Communism, New York, 1957, p. 249.Google Scholar

³³ See Stalin, Joseph, Leninism, New York, 1939, Vol. IIGoogle Scholar, “Tasks of Business Managers,” February 4, 1931, and “New Conditions—New Tasks,” June 23, 1931.

³⁴ See Vucinich, Alexander, Soviet Economic Institutions: The Social Structure of Production Units, Stanford, Calif., 1952.Google Scholar