Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
D O C U M EN T 1: V. I. Lenin, Teft-Wmg'Communism,
an Infantile Disorder
(New York; International Publishers, 1940). By permission
Although the basic part of this work was finished by the end
of April, 1920, it did not become well-known until the Second
W orld Congress of the Comintern met in July.
221
223
224
225
S-vest b l u S ^ n d
internationalism while paying lip
obiecf*rf
f
parliament has become an
Object of particular hatred to the advanced revolutionarv
members of the working class. This is incontestable It is quitl
v if e ^ a b o f f iS
d
y*ing L r e
vast
cherous than the behavior of the
majority of the socialist and social democratic
deputies during and after the war. But it would
m oo?
unreasonable but actually criminal to yield to this
be
hT r
recognized^evil s lu ld
re v o f ? T
countries of western Europe the
or a
"
ut present a novelty
impatiemJw a"d
h
sS ^bed
perhaps that is why the mood is so easily
am on?7h
*
n revolutionary mood
growth of
'ditions favoring the
converte?inm
^
by Io?g p l f m
777 ^
have been convinced
revolntfo P ^
bloody experience of the truth that
mo?is
hunt up on revolutionary
obi?^l
7
he based on a sober and strictly
(and in ne r
* e class forces in a given state
Welf as of
h
*h^
ver) as
pre sinl on
'utionary movements. ExP ssingones revolutionariness solely by hurling abuse at
226
227
228
229
230
231
. . . IVhen we West European Marxists read your painphlets, essays, and books, while admiring and agreeing with
almost everything you wrote, we would nevertheless always
come to a point when we would have to read more cautiously
and when we would begin to expect more elaboration. Upon
finding none, we would accept what you wrote with great re
serve. This point was when you spoke of the workers and the
poor pea.santry. You do that very, very often. And everywhere
you speak of these two categories as revolutionary factors
throughout the world. And nowhere, at least not in what I
have read, do you emphasize the very great difference that ex
ists on this question between Russia (and some of the East
European countries) and We.st Europe (that is, Germany.
France, England, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, and the
Scandinavian countries, perhaps even Italy). In my opinion,
the reason for the difference between your viewpoint about,
tactics on the trade union and parliamentary questions and
that of the so-called Left in West Europe lies precisely in the
difference between We.st Europe and Russia.
Of course, you know this* difference as well as I, but you
have not drawn the conclusions from it in regard to tactics in
West Europe, at least not in the works I have read. You have
Neglected these conclusions and because of this, your judg
ment about West European tactics is wrong. This was and is
232
233
4. When you say you did thus and such in Russia (for in
stance, after the Kornilov offensive or some other episode), or
you entered parliament in this or that period, or you remained
in the trade unions and therefore the German proletariat
should do the same, if does not mean very much and there
fore neither is nor has to be correct. For West European class
relations in the revolutionary struggle are entirely different
from those in Russia.
5. If you or the Executive or the opportunist communists
in West Europe want to force upon us a tactic which was
right in Russiaas, for instance, the tactic consciously or un
consciously dependent on and based upon the idea that poor
peasants or other working classes will soon join us; in other
words, that the proletariat does not stand alonethen the tac
tic which you describe and which is followed here will lead
the West European proletariat into ruin and terrible defeats.
6. If you or the Executive in Moscow, or the opportunist
elements in West Europe, as for instance the Central Commit
tee of the German Spartakushund and the BSP in England,
think you can force us into an opportunist tactic (opportun
ism always leans on alien elements who abandon the proletar
iat), you are wrong.
And this: that the proletariat stands alone, that there can
be no expectation of help, that the importance of the masses
IS relatively greater, that of the leadership relatively lessall
these form the general basis from which a West European tac
tic must be derived. . . .
By their nature, the trade unions are not a good weapon of
the West European revolution! Apart from the fact that they
nave become instruments of capitalism and are in the hands
of traitors, apart from the fact that these organizations, no
matter who its leaders are, by their very nature must make
slaves and instruments out of their members, they are also
useless in every other way.
The trade unions are too weak for the revolutionary strug
gle against highly organized West European capital and its
state. The latter is too strong for them. For they are still in
part craft associations and for that reason alone cannot make
^ revolution. And so far as they are industrial associations,
ney are not based in the factories, the shops themselves, and
re therefore weak. They are also more like mutual aid sociees rather than combat organizations, and came into being in
e petty bourgeois era. Their organizational structure was
234
235
236
These classes are joined with big capital more than ever be
cause now they see the additional danger of the proletarian
revolution before them.
The domination of capitalism in West Europe means for
them a certain security in life, the possibility or at least the
belief in the possibility of rising in the world and bettering
their lives. Now chaos and revolution, which at first would
mean even greater chaos, threatens them. For that reason they
support the capitalists in their attempts to end the chaos at all
costs, to revive production, and to drive the workers to longer
hours and into bearing their privation passively. The proletar
ian revolution in West Europe means for them the collapse
of all order and security, no matter how tenuous it really is.
That is why they support big capital and will continue to do
so for a long time, even during the revolution.
I ought to say that here I am again speaking about tactics
for the beginning and the course of the revolution. I know
that at the very end of the revolution, when victory is near
and capitalism shattered, these classes will come to us. But it
is our job to define a tactic for the beginning and the course
of the revolution. . . .
I now come to your third argument about the Russian ex
amples. You refer to them repeatedly (they appear contin
ually from pages 1 to 97). I read them with the greatest atten
tion and just as I admired them then, I admire them now. I
was always with you from 1903 on. Even when I did not as
yet know your reasonscommunications were cut offat the
time of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, 1 defended you with your
own reasons. Your tactics were brilliant for Russia, and the
Russians were victorious because of them. But what does that
prove for West Europe? In my opinion, nothing, or very little.
The soviets, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the means to
ward revolution and reconstruction, all this we accept. Your
international tactic, at least up until now, was also an example
for us. But this is not the case with your tactics for the West
European countries; that is quite natural.
How can a tactic be the same for East and West Europe?
Russia is a country in which agriculture predominates and
where an industrial capitalism was only partially developed
and minute in comparison with the rural sector. Even this [in
fant capitalism] was nurtured to a very large extent by foreign
capital. In West Europe, and particularly Germany and Eng-
237
238
239
240
The Left chooses its tactics above all with the aim of
freeing the mind of the proletariat.
Since the Third International neither focuses its tactics on
liberating the mind of the proletariat nor upon the [dangerous]
unity of all bourgeois parties, but upon the compromises and
rifts, it allows the old trade unions to continue and tries to
admit them into the Third International.
As the Left wants above all the liberation of the mind and
believes in the unity of the bourgeois forces, it realizes that
the trade unions must be destroyed and that the proletariat
needs better weapons.
For the same reasons, the Third International allows parhamentarianism to remain.
For the same reasons, the Left annuls parliamentarianism.
The Third International allows the condition of slavery to
continue as it was at the time of the Second International.
The Left wants to change it completely. It grasps the evil
by the root.
As the Third International doe.s not believe that the libera
tion of minds is above all necessary in West Europe and does
not believe in the unity of all bourgeois forcp in the period of
revolution, it gathers the masses about it without asking
whether they are real communists, without .coordinating its
tactics as if they were communists, because all that counts is
that they are masses.
The Left will build parties in all countries containing only
communists, and will aim for this in its tactics. By virtue o
the example of these initially small parties, the Left hopes to
make communists out of the majority of the proletariat, that
is*, out of the masses.
For the Third International, the masses of West Europe are
a means.
For the Left they are the end.
Throughout this whole tactic (which was correct in Rus
sia), the Third International has been conducting a leader
ship-oriented policy.
The Left, on the other hand, conducts a policy for tne
masses.
With this tactic the Third International is leading not only
the West European but particularly the Russian Revolution as
well, toward its ruin.
The Left, on the other hand, is leadihg the West European
proletariat with its tactic to victory.. ..
I N T E R P R E T A T lO hl
Alfred D. Low, T he First Austrian Republic and Soviet H un
gary, /ournal of Central European Affairs, XX (July, 1960).
By permission.
241