p Bourgeois ideologues often upbraid Marxists for relying exclusively upon force and armed coercion in working out the strategy and tactics of the proletarian struggle.
p To be sure the founders of Marxism often repeated the idea that violence is the "midwife of history”. However in giving formulation to this thought they by no means expressed their personal inclination to violence. They were merely stating an objective law of the development of society at that stage at 83 which the exploitation of man by man is preserved, a stage which they called the “pre-history” of mankind.
p In 1914 in connection with the view then current that war would “hasten” revolution, a journalist asked Lenin the question: did he hope for a military conflict in Europe? Lenin answered: "No, I do not want it ... I am doing, and will continue to do all that is in my power to oppose mobilization and war. I do not want millions of proletarians to be forced to kill one another, paying for the insanity of capitalism. There can be no misunderstanding concerning this. Objectively to foresee war and to endeavour in the event of this calamity to make the best use of it, is one matter. To want war and to work for it, is something quite different.” [83•1
p From the very first steps taken to create the Soviet state the worker-peasant government proclaimed the slogan of peace. It did everything then—and continues to do now—everything in its power to liquidate war and ward off military conflicts."Our policy has always combined firm rebuffs to aggression with the constructive line of settling pressing international problems and maintaining normal, and, wherever the situation allows, good, relations with states belonging to the other social system.” [83•2
p For the same reason Marxists not only do not reject the peaceful path to socialism but even consider it the preferable alternative. "Insurrection would be madness,” wrote Marx, "where peaceful agitation would more swiftly and surely do the work.” [83•3 Lenin, too, considered that the working class would prefer to take power peacefully. He emphasized that the proletariat "...would grasp with both hands the slightest reformist possibility of effecting any change for the better.” [83•4
p But in history the circumstances have often arisen in which the alternative in fact boiled down not to a choice between peaceful or non-peaceful means of struggle, but to a situation in which any change for the better could only be accomplished by the method of revolutionary, armed violence. We are not concerned with turning either one of these paths into an absolute, but rather with the precise analysis or the situation and in deriving the methods and forms of struggle from this analysis.
84p Speaking in opposition to those who tried to accelerate or export revolution, Lenin wrote that "... a revolution cannot be ‘made’, that revolutions develop from objectively (i.e., independently of the will of parties and classes) mature crises and turns in history”. [84•1
p Analyzing the lessons of history Lenin established that at the moment of maturation of revolutionary crises the question of violence arises as an alternative—either violence will DC applied by reactionary classes against the people or the revolutionary masses will take the initiative in their hands.
p Just so in 1917 in Russia a concrete historical situation unfolded in which the people of the country faced a dilemma—either the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the prolongation of internecine imperialist warfare, daily snuffing out thousands of human lives, or the dictatorship of the proletariat, the first working people’s state in the world and a revolutionary withdrawal from the war. Such were the objective possibilities for choice.
p Of course, even in this situation the peaceful path of revolutionary development would have been painless and preferable. Lenin wrote: "In my opinion, the Bolsheviks, who are partisans of world revolution and revolutionary methods, may and should consent to this compromise only for the sake of the revolution’s peaceful development—an opportunity that is extremely rare in history and extremely valuable, an opportunity that only occurs once in a while.” [84•2 But when peaceful channels were exhausted, when the bourgeoisie itself put "the bayonet on the agenda" peaceful illusions came to signify betrayal of the revolution.
p Communists ideally stand in opposition to any form of coercion. Unlike petty-bourgeois extremists who even today endeavour to turn armed violence into a universal skeleton key opening every door, Marxists regard it merely as a temporary and extraordinary measure, nor do they “ romanticize” violence, tor they understand the limited nature of its functions. In a tense moment in the Civil War while drawing up an official instruction for the employees of the Cheka (All-Russian Extraordinary Commission) concerning the procedures for conducting search and arrest operations F. Dzerzhinsky wrote that the intrusion of armed men into a private apartment and the deprivation of the liberty of the 85 guilty is an evil to which it is necessary to resort in order to ensure the triumph of justice and gooa. But it must never be forgotten that this is evil, that our task is to utilize this evil to root out the necessity of resorting to these means in the future. There has never been and there could not be similar instruction in any bourgeois punitive organ in existence.
p “Coercion,” wrote Lenin, "is effective against those who want to restore their rule. But at this stage the significance of force ends, and after that only influence and example are effective.” [85•1 This idea of Lenin’s explains specifically why in carrying out their policies among the masses Marxists employ as a basic method not coercion but precisely influence, persuasion, example.
p The question of the humanist orientation of politics would be much simpler if the demands of the masses always coincided in full with the decisions dictated by a scientific analysis of the situation. However, history has more than once created the situation in which the people as a result, for example, of insufficient consciousness (to name but one reason) advanced demands differing from the science-based Marxist programme.
p Such, in particular, were the demands for "egalitarian land-tenure" contained in peasant decrees and included in October 1917 in the famous Decree on Land. The peasants themselves considered that such a solution to the agrarian question was the final embodiment of justice although it was completely clear that small landholding could not prevent inter-peasant or class differentiation and poverty. Openly criticizing the Utopian nature of such views, Lenin further said: "As a democratic government, we cannot ignore the decision of the masses of the people, even though we may disagree with it. In the fire of experience, applying the decree in practice, and carrying it out locally, the peasants will themselves realize where the truth lies.” [85•2
p The corresponding explanatory and educational work and, in the main, the experience of the masses themselves would help to overcome the contradictions which had arisen between scientific and most expedient (from the point of view of the interests of the peasants themselves and of the fight for socialism) resolution of the agrarian problem and the demands of the peasants.
86p Marxists have often encountered analogous situations in the resolution of the nationalities question. During the First World War which sharply intensified this question there arose among those who considered themselves Marxists a heated discussion around the slogan, advanced by Lenin, on the right of nations to self-determination.
p Lenin at the same time provided a theoretical foundation for the superiority of a large centralized state over a number of small states.
p Many of Lenin’s opponents saw a contradiction in this. They believed that since a large state would create more propitious conditions for the development of the economy and the class struggle, the slogan of self-determination could subvert the trust of the proletariat in the scientific foundation for the Party programme for this slogan, which rests upon notions such as the "will and sympathies of the population" is "an historically unjustified sentimentality" and marked by an "illusory character”.
p In point of fact Lenin did attach overriding importance to “sentimentality”, the “sympathy” of the population. The reluctance to take account or the "will of the people" in such questions has nothing in common with Marxism or Marxist policies and in fact represents nothing other than " imperialistic economism”.
p But what is to be done with a truly science-based conclusion concerning the advantages of a large centralized state? How can this be coordinated with party policy? In each given instance, Lenin replied to this, the question of the expediency of secession is decided upon the basis of the interests of both social development as a whole and of the class struggle of the proletariat for socialism. If secession is inexpedient, then, not denying the right of nations to self-determination, and offering the given nation the right to secession, Marxists reserve the rignt to carry on agitation against secession and to convince the masses of its inexpediency.
p If the people are not successfully persuaded of the justice of the policies being carried out it is impossible to win their conscious participation in the social movement. In this instance the masses coula even function as a negative force dragging great ideas into the mud if their conceptions of the ideal and of justice do not coincide with these ideas.
p For the Marxist government is possible only through the masses themselves, that is to say—oy bringing mass conceptions concerning goals in line with the approaches leading to these goals.
87p A classic example of such a solution is represented by Lenin’s definition of the paths and forms of the transition from an economy of smallholding peasant farms to large-scale socialist agricultural production. If we abstract the problem from the object itself—the peasantry with its consciousness and particular conceptions of desirable goals, then such paths and forms are numerous. But Lenin “chooses” precisely cooperation to make the transition to a new order—through the simplest, easiest and most accessible path for the peasantry.
More than two thousand years ago Aristotle called man a political animal. For the first time in the history of man Marxist policies set as their direct goal the creation of conditions under which each individual may truly become a political being. The authentic democratism of Marxist scientific policies as well as their orientation toward the interests of man and mankind make up the moral foundation and justification of these policies.
Notes
[83•1] V. I. Lenin. A Biography, Moscow, 1970, p. 226 (in Russian).
[83•2] 24th Congress of the CPSU, p. 29.
[83•3] Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly, Aug. 12, 1871, p. 12.
[83•4] V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 19, p. 327.
[84•1] V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 240.
[84•2] Ibid., Vol. 25, pp. 306-07.
[85•1] Ibid., Vol. 31, p. 457.
[85•2] Ibid., Vol. 26, p. 260.