June 20, 1949
Dear J:
Early capitalist production which begins with cooperation and develops into machinofacture reaches its climax in railroads bringing cohesion to national market and Bessemer steel replacing iron in ships connecting the world. The cut-throat competition leading to scandals and fighting labor demanding an eight hour day in laissez-faire fashion ends the turbulent '80s and Capital as conceived by Marx. All Marxists accept Kautsky's "Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx",1 which has not an ounce of dialectic, nor of contradiction in any concrete sense, and reaches no more than commodity production is not an individual, but a social type of production and, abstractly, somehow socialism is the "next stage", historically only of course.
The 1890s bring capitalism to a new stage. Before they have quite ended, the trusts and final victory over agriculture will not only lay the groundwork for statification of production but there will be the first search by a gang boss (Taylor) as to "what constitutes a day's work on any operation", that is within socialization of labor, there will be the fragmentation of the individual worker, the standardization and principle of interchange of parts of machines, factory lay-out, that is, advance planning within factory as well as outside (trusts). In other words what Marx called real capitalistic production machinofacture and the creation of relative surplus value and the production and reproduction of the capitalistic relation of production will mean concentration and centralization of capital, rationalization of production or totalitarianism of production relations. It is at this point that Vol. II of Capital is published and Lenin enters on the scene in his fight with the Narodniki and his original explanation of Vol. II. By original I mean he not only does not accept Kautsky (although he doesn't know that he doesn't accept him either) but he himself interprets Marx directly. There is nothing anywhere greater in the explanation of accumulation of capital vs. market, production vs. consumption, disproportion leading either to crises or to foreign market to avoid crises but not to overcome it, inevitability of capitalist development than there is in Lenin's polemics with the Narodniki climaxed by Development of Capitalism in Russia.2 But Russia is a backward country and its capitalist development proves the progressive mission of capitalism against barbarian, feudal, paternalistic semi-feudal autocracy, and not the horrors of the capitalist factory.
Here enters the first contradiction within Lenin himself, pre-1914. The first period, 1894-1903, involves on the one hand the advanced worker vs. backward peasant abstractly, but in actual revolutionary worker, concretely, this advanced worker is a very much oppressed individual. On Fines,3 and all other leaflets Lenin writes in this period reveal the appalling conditions of the factory which do not enter into his book, but which most definitely enters into his fight with tendencies in the Social Democracy, for he will never for a minute deviate from his complete reliance on the worker and his desires, aims, needs, concrete and abstract. He begins with the dialectical principle "We must first separate and then unite".4 He separates not only from the Narodniki, but from Economists and not only what is already on the surface, has already appeared as an opposite, but he "creates" opposites for it is his profound understanding of organization, party as a new category the proletariat has reached, that gives birth to Menshevism before its time so-to-speak. Organization, organization, organization: "In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapons but organization. Divided by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by slave labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the 'lower depths' of utter destitution, savagery and degeneration, the proletariat can become and will inevitably become, an invisible force only when its ideological unity round the principles of Marxism is consolidated by the material unity round the principles of organization, which unites millions of toilers in the army of the working class" (II, 466).5
Now to retrace a bit to see what the bourgeoisie was thinking. In America Carnegie's principle was "Pioneering doesn't pay". Empire building through consolidations, destruction, swallowing up did. The proletariat, as an unorganized mass, has its last stab against the empires that are and that will become greater in Homestead in 1892, and loses. US Steel appears. The first billion dollar corporation will be followed by many attempts on the part of the proletariat to greater organization which will finally result in the IWW in the US, in the Soviets in Russia, in the Zulu rebellion in Africa; as well it will develop and move into 20th century's new industrial revolution (flight of Kitty Hawk, 1903) and new scientific concepts (Einstein's theory of relativity, 1905). But in the meantime, the period, 1870-1900, has the bourgeoisie impatient with all its new inventions and unevenness of home-development and breaking into imperialism. But the bourgeois economists do not follow (C, naturally, imperialism has its apologists but since it is unanimously considered a policy both by those like Hobson who oppose as by those who favor; those concerned with production keep to home country). They begin, first, by attempts to destroy Marx once and for all. Again, a backward country begins a new theory for Austria has temporarily replaced England as home of theoretician. Now, the coincidence of Marginal Utilitarianism6 with imperialism plus its own subjective apologies led Marxists to reject it in an offhand manner as a psychological quirk. But it is no psychological aberration; it is a very concrete, very much needed response to the beginnings of rationalized production. It is based on mathematics and quantities and infinitesimal increments and decrements, and "roundabout" machine production versus alternate raw materials that can be used, plus point in production where it no longer pays to have another worker, "final degrees of utility". It is true it boasts of resuscitating Bentham's table of pleasure and pain, but just as Keynes' resuscitation of Malthus's effective demands in the 1900s will be solidly connected with production not with clergy, so is the Marginal Utility's calculus of pleasures and pains linked with production. What Marx did for labor in his theory of utilization of labor alone creates surplus value, the Marginal Utilitarian will attempt to do for capital. And if the first attempt to "prove" productivity of capital will be crude, the later introduction of rates of movement into the statistics of quantity will acquire a veritable classicism.
It is this which the pre-1914 Marxists do not see. Imperialism is so much the all-dominant factor that it appears as the only factor, instead of as only one of 5 counteracting factors to the decline in the rate of profit. Imperialism in fact hides the tendency to the decline by its present super-profits. Finance-capital entrances Hilferding so that he does not see concentration of production. Bernstein had long before decided that colonies were "needed" by Germany. It should be said to Rosa's credit that at least she tried to see a connection between imperialism and production and accumulation of capital. Instead of trying to deduce it from the laws of capitalism as expressed in the decline in the rate of profit, she fell for the inductive method of history and ended up, as we know, revising Marx. But what I did not see before this was that she attempted to stick to Capital. Lenin did not go off the rails because he was concrete, concrete, concrete. But no one saw the decline in the rate until it appeared in life in 1929. We live in Volume III; the pre-1929 Marxists did not and it is the proletariat plus dialectics that made Lenin grasp some parts of this even in post-1914.
While Lenin did not see this theoretically or concretely in production, he saw it most profoundly as tendencies in the party. Note the development in his concept of organization. First he sees it as politics vs. economics, and to that he adds professional revolutionary vs. intellectual anarchism. But 1905 comes. He sees creativeness of proletariat in creating Soviets, but he still counterposes party to that and he writes: "The Social Democracy should strive in every possible way to safeguard its own influence in the Soviets of Workers Deputies, the real fighting organization of people in revolt". (Krupskaya)7 Political strike plus armed workers he develops, but the party is proletarian, while soviets have peasantry, etc. And when he sees economic content of Russian Revolution, he realizes that despite its extreme reaction after defeat, it is no longer a semi-feudal autocracy, but a bourgeois monarchy, and launches into his fight with Martov8 about school of capitalism vs. school of capitalist bourgeoisie. As he fought the hegemony of liberals over proletariat (Economism9), he fights now the hegemony of liberals over peasantry (Menshevism); moreover, bourgeois influence in period of reactions will now permeate S-D from the right as liquidationism and "left" as otzovism.10 But he still sees only Russian opportunism. Even in 1912 when Kautsky first reveals his opportunism openly in article11, but as late as May 1914 in Neue Zeit opposing workers using uprisings and strikes against war, he not only does not show the fury he did to the much less important conciliationism of LT12, but as late as May 1914, in his article on The Ideological Struggle in the Labour Movement13 (XI, p. 746) he limits analysis of opportunism to Russia: "Of all capitalist countries, Russia is one of the most backward, the most petty-bourgeois. It was therefore not fortuitous but inevitable that the mass movement of workers should have engendered a petty-bourgeois, opportunist wing within this movement". In other words, opportunism still comes from backward capitalism, and not the most advanced imperialist stage, and it is still p.b. rather than aristocracy of labor.
We reach 1914, August, thus: Tendencies in party, Russia exclusively. 1900. First separate then unite. 1903 - Separate again; 1904: Must view process in all its concreteness. 1908. Destroy Liquidationism, otzovism. (NB while he found the philosophic difference no deterrent to bloc with Bogdanov,14 he wrote that if faction approved boycottism, he would leave it). 1910. Destroy Menshevism and their school of capitalist bourgeoisie. 1912. Destroy conciliationism of LT; only one who gave theoretical formulation to conciliationism through "fight of intellectuals over immature proletariat". Destroy August Bloc.15 Disregard International that understands nothing of Russian problems. While destroying, build, build, build on proletariat.
August 1914. "The Second International died, vanquished by opportunism". A Third International must be built. Internationalism assumes first place in Lenin's life. Rejects slogan of "Us of Europe" until an analysis can be made of economic side (he will then decide that without proletariat it can be nothing but an agreement for division of colonies). Rejects peace without annexations. Turn imperialist war into civil war. Write also essay on Karl Marx,16 July-Nov. 1914. Began study of LOGIC.
Sept. 1915. Bern. Outline of Hegel's Logic. Hegel's Philosophy of History. History of Philosophy. Outline of Lasalle's "Philosophy of Heraclitus", Aristotle's Metaphysics and works on Hegel.
1916. On the Question of Dialectic.17
1915-16 IMPERIALISM. Began his Notebooks on imperialism18 in the middle of 1915 in Bern. Jan. 1916 goes to Zurich and begins actual writing of pamphlet; completes it in June 1916. "In the autumn of 1916", writes Krupskaya19 (II, p. 195) and at the beginning of 1917 Ilyich steeped himself in theoretical work. He tried to utilize all the time the library was open. He got there exactly at 9 o'clock... Never I think was Vladimir Ilyich in a more irreconcilable mood then during the last months of 1916 and early months of 1917..." (197).
Now what springs out immediately, all through, and profoundly is the unity of opposites, the transition of one into its opposite and v.v.20 Unity of opposites and transition fill the notebooks which are richer than the actual pamphlet on Imperialism.21 There is competition that became its opposite, monopoly. They have not been overcome; they coexist. National wars can become imperialist wars, and vice versa. Dialectics is the theory of knowledge, not just a method in the sense of an instrument, which is the way pre-1914 Marxists thought of it, but the, the, the theory of knowledge. You know nothing if you do not know that. You do not know Capital, not even its first chapter unless you know the whole of the Logic. Capital is not an abstract universal, it is an aggregate of the most concrete, and that means also there is no separation between logic and history; it is one and the same like the inductive and deductive method of Capital. And it isn't only logic and history but Notion. (The dialectic of Ch.1 includes, I believe, the notion, too, in the fetishism of commodities for there the bourgeois theorist cannot master, although he has discovered labor as source of value; only proletariat can strip veil and master). A wealth of particulars, and Absolute Idea, there, says Lenin, you find the best in the dialectic.
Lenin sees more yet. He sees Engels' criticism of the Erfurt program.22 Two things, (1) planlessness ends with trusts; capitalism can plan but proletariat remains proletariat; (2) truth is concrete. Krupskaya says "he simply clutched the following sentence in Engels' criticism of the Erfurt Program:
"Such a policy can in the end only lead the Party onto the wrong road. General, abstract political questions are put in the foreground and thus obscure immediate concrete questions, which will automatically come up on the order of the day at the very first outbreak of big events, in the first political crisis".
"Having copied this passage", K continues, "Ilyich wrote in very large letters, putting the words in double parentheses: "((THE ABSTRACT IN THE FOREGROUND, THE CONCRETE OBSCURED!!!)) NOTA BENE! EXCELLENT! THAT'S THE MAIN THING! NB".
Dialectics demands the most concrete ... "Of course the fundamental proposition of Marxian dialectics is that all boundaries in nature and society are conventional and mobile, that there is not a single phenomenon which cannot under certain conditions be transformed into its opposite". Lenin writes in Junius pamphlet23 (Aug. 1916), which is part of his Imperialist Notebooks. These 693 pages also include one outline of his pamphlet which shows how he practically came to our stage of Taylorism, and why he did not. Instead of the last chapter (X, The Place of Imperialism in History), he was to have had 3 sections: "Imperialism is Monopoly Capitalism"; (2) Imperialism is parasitic Capitalism and (3) Imperialism is transitional or dying capitalism. Under the last he wrote:
"Interlacing versus socialization.
St. Simon and Marx - Rieser about rapidity of growth. Transition to what? (84) We dealt with it already once. Should Taylor be here?"
He had made an outline of Taylorism and spoke of "torment" of labor. He saw Taylorism, that is, and did not exclude its transiting to that any more than, abstractly, he excluded ultra-imperialism, but the concrete actual situation and his analysis of imperialism "as the eve of the revolution" made him reject this variant, in favor of a critique of Kautsky's pettybourgeois critique of imperialism: "Kautsky's theoretical critique of imperialism has nothing in common with Marxism and serves no other purpose than as a preamble to propaganda for peace and unity with the opportunists and jingo Socialists, just because this critique avoids and obscures precisely the most profound and essential inherent contradictions of imperialism: the contradiction of monopolies existing side by side with free competition; the contradiction between immense "operation" (and immense profits) of finance capital and "honest" trade on the open market; the contradiction between combines and trusts on the one hand and non-trustified production on the other, etc." And that is where imperialism had reached at the outbreak of WWI.
At that time there also occurs a change in Lenin's concept of organization. Krupskaya tells us it is impossible to understand State and Revolution, without reading L's "Letters from Afar" and particularly so the one on the proletarian militia: "Our immediate problem is organization, not in the sense of effecting ordinary organization by ordinary methods, but in the sense of drawing large masses of the oppressed classes in unheard of numbers into the organization and of embodying in this organization, military, state and national economic problems".
It will be, you see, a social reorganization, not a mere economic reorganization. The organization widens.
Secondly, and this will form part of the April Theses24: Imperialism means, from the point of view of Marxism, to consider problems not "from the point of view of one country but of world".
In looking for an economic basis of US of Europe when he rejected the slogan he showed a further development of objective conditions "from monopoly to state concentration". Before we approach April, however, February and the actual reappearance of soviets and on a national scale is to influence that man to make as great a leap as "Transform imperialist war into civil war". Contrast the two letters to Kollontai25 when he first heard the news. The first he still lives in 1905 and talks in terms of legal and illegal work, but the very next day, in response to a telegram from Kollontai what to do, we get: "Spread out! House new sections! Awaken fresh initiative, form new organizations in every layer and prove to them that peace can come only with the armed Soviets of Workers Deputies in power". He had already said at first news: "Never again along the lines of the 2nd Int! Never again with Kautsky! By all means a more revolutionary programme and more revolutionary tactics". But the word, "more", shows yet a quantitative conception which will entirely vanish in April. The Resolution based on speech (or rather vv) was "lost", they tell us, but it is clear that in his elaboration of state monopolies and, later, in his fight with the "Left" on state capitalism in Russia that he was saying, since statification is next stage, just remember only intervention of proletariat "to a man" can possibly keep out Junkerism. And State and Revolution, written in August 1917, is the answer.
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For the time being that is enough. I am not sure I'm working along the lines you wish since there seemed somehow to be a lack of continuity in your thoughts between your writing and G's somewhat overly brief summation: also not yet received analysis of "Syllogism". I do think if at all possible for you it would be best to write a draft now so we finally get a conception of the whole.
1 Kautsky, The Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx, (1887/1903).
2 Lenin, The Development of Capitalism in Russia, (1899/1908).
3 Lenin, Explanation of the Law on Fines Imposed on Factory Workers, (1895).
4 The quote appears to be from the Declaration of the Editorial Board of Iskra, (1900). The version of the Declaration on the MIA translates the relevant sentence as: 'Before we can unite, and in order that we may unite, we must first of all draw firm and definite lines of demarcation.'
5 The quote is from the concluding section of Lenin, One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, (1904).
6 For criticisms of Marginal Utilitarianism see, Paul Mattick, Marxism and Marginal Utility Economics, (1939), and Istvan Meszaros, 'Marginal Utility' and neo-classical Economics in Beyond Capital, (1995).
7 The quote appears to be from Krupskaya's Reminiscences of Lenin, (1933). The relevant section is translated on the MIA version as:
'Vladimir Ilyich was quick to note the fact in his November articles that the Soviets of Workers' Deputies were militant organizations of the people in revolt. He expounded the idea that a provisional revolutionary government could only be forged in the crucible of revolutionary struggle on the one hand, and that the Social-Democratic Party, on the other, should strive its hardest to win influence in the Soviets of Workers' Deputies.'
8 Julius Martov (1873-1923), was the ideological leader of Menshevism, he began his political career in 1895 working with Lenin in the St. Petersburg 'League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class'. Collaborated in founding Iskra but broke with Lenin in 1903 on the question of Russian Socialist Democractic Labour Party rules.
9 Economism was the term used to refer to Social Democrats who theoretically limited the aspirations of the working class to an economic struggle for higher wages and better working conditions. They set up an intellectual division of labour between 'economic' struggles (for better wages and conditions), which was the focus of Social Democratic theory, and 'political' struggles (e.g. extension of the franchise), which was primary the role of the liberal bourgeoisie. In doing so, the Economists were against the importance of revolutionary theory and class-consciousness, and instead asserted that socialist ideology could arise out of the spontaneous movement of the working class.
Lenin was a forceful opponent of Economism. He outlined his criticisms in an article in Iskra, the Bolsheviks newspaper, entitled 'A Talk With Defenders of Economism', (1901). He further developed his critique in the pamphlet, What is to be Done?, (1902).
10 In the wake of the 1905 Revolution in Russia there was an ongoing debate about the tactics that the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), (which at this stage included Menshevik and Bolshevik factions), should adopt in relation to the political institutions of the Russian state. Liquidationists is a reference to those in the RSDLP who 'liquidated' (or denied) the primacy of the working-class as the democratic force in society. Otzovism (recallism) is a reference to those who argued against the RDSLP taking part in elections to the Duma. See e.g. Lenin, 'The Liquidation of Liquidationism' (1909), which refers to both factions.
11 This appears to be a reference to 'Die neue Taktik', (1912), which is currently (August 2020) only available on the MIA in the original German.
12 Leon Trotsky.
13 This article is not currently (August 2020) available on the MIA.
14 Aleksandr A. Bogdanov (1873-1928) was one of the Old Bolsheviks. He joined the Bolsheviks in 1903 but was expelled in 1909 after leading the ultra-left, boycottist (or ultimatist) tendency. He maintained that the party could only work through illegal organizations (due to the suppression of political parties during this period). Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, was written as a polemic against Bogdanov and others, dealing with the influence of Positivism in the Bolshevik Party.
15 The 'August Bloc' were a faction of liquidators that coalesced at an RSDLP conference in August 1912. They argued for the RSDLP to be liquidated and a new party formed, as there was no longer a need for an illegal Social Democratic party in Russia. Some examples of places where Lenin polemicised against the August Bloc include: 'The Liquidators Against the Party' (1912), and; 'The "August" Fiction Exposed' (1914).
16 Lenin, Karl Marx: A Brief Biographical Sketch With an Exposition of Marxism (written in 1914, published in 1915).
17 Lenin, 'On the Question of Dialectics' (written 1915, published 1925).
18 Lenin, Notebooks on Imperialism.
19 Krupskaya Reminiscences of Lenin, (1933).
20 v.v., in this context, is an abbreviation of vice versa.
21 Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, (1916).
22 The Erfurt Programme was passed by the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) in October 1891. The Programme was proposed and passed in the context of the resignation of Bismark and the expiration of the Anti-Socialist Law. The Programme opened up opportunities for SPD members to work through bourgeois political institutions. Kautsky wrote the official SPF commentary on the Erfurt Programme, which was published as The Class Struggle, (1892).
Engels criticised the Erfurt Programme as opportunist, in a letter to Kautsky. The English translation of Engels's criticisms is not currently (August 2022) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it. A French translation is available on the MIA.
23 Lenin, The Junius Pamphlet (1916).
24 Lenin, The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution (a.k.a. The April Theses)., (1917). The April Theses was presented by Lenin to the Bolsheviks the day after he arrived in St Petersburg on a sealed train from Switzerland.
25 Alexandra Kollontai (1872-1952) was a member of the RSDLP from the 1890s, and was active in the international Socialist Women's movement. She was a member of the Mensheviks before 1914, but worked with Lenin after the outbreak of WW1. She was elected to the Bolshevik's Central Committee in 1917. She was a leading figure in the Workers Opposition and sympathised with the Left Opposition, but subsequently 'conformed' under Stalin's leadership of the Russian Communist Party.
The two letters appears to be a reference to a letter dated March 16th 1917 and one dated March 17th 1917.