Luxemburg brought to our attention the central problematic of revolutionary Marxism in its pre-WW I iteration: the problem of organization. Capitalism produces the conditions of its overcoming – its own gravediggers, in Marx’s words – but it doesn’t overthrow itself. If the revolution is necessary and inevitable, it is because those gravediggers must and will start digging.
This problem of organization can be schematized as follows: [Sorry -- no diagram]
Capitalism creates the economic and political preconditions or foundations of socialism, but socialists must create Marxism, a workers’ party, and a political program that correspond to these preconditions and are capable of seizing them for the making of socialism.
I think Lenin shares this schema, and deepens our understanding of its problematic. Unfortunately, Lenin has a bad reputation, based in part on the work that we have read, WITBD? The accusation is that Lenin:
1. Opposes the workers’ spontaneous organization,
2. Thinks that workers must be led by Marxist intellectuals (“professional revolutionaries”), and
3. Is anti-democratic.
I think these indictments are not supported by a careful reading of WITBD?, and I will take the next three lectures as an occasion to defend Lenin. (That doesn’t mean you have to find him not guilty…)
The first count bases itself in texts like the following: “the task of Social Democracy is to struggle with spontaneity, to cause the workers’ movement to stray from this spontaneous striving of trade unionism to come under the leadership of the bourgeoisie” (p. 9).
In order to address the accusation, we must answer 3 questions:
1. What is spontaneity?
2. Why does the workers’ movement have a spontaneous tendency towards trade unionism and bourgeois leadership?
3. How does Social Democracy struggle with spontaneity?
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