Wellred Books is proud to announce our second brand-new selection of Lenin’s writings in this centenary year of the great revolutionary’s death. The Revolutions of 1917 brings out the key writings in that seminal year, writings whose whole bent was towards one aim: the seizure of power by the working class. We publish here a review of this new book, and encourage you to click here to get your copy.
It has become fashionable amongst the left to shy away from the ideas of Lenin and the traditions of Bolshevism. In these circles, Lenin was a narrow-minded, obstinate ‘hardliner’ whose ideas only lend themselves to dogmatism. Jacobin magazine, writing on why Kautsky was right(!), published the following:
“...moving away from dogmatic assumptions about the generalizability of the 1917 model should help socialists abandon other political dogmas, including on pressing issues such as how to build a Marxist current”
In other words, if only workers and youth opened their eyes to other thinkers (and bought the columnist’s book!) then they would be free of their dogma and would be able to really build a revolutionary organisation. Lenin answers this lie in his ‘Letters on Tactics’:
“Our theory is not a dogma, but a guide to action”, Marx and Engels always said, rightly ridiculing the mere memorising and repetition of ‘formulas’, that at best are capable only of marking out general tasks, which are necessarily modifiable by the concrete economic and political conditions of each particular period of the historical process.”
[...]
“Theory, my friend, is grey, but green is the eternal tree of life.” To deal with the question of ‘completion’ of the bourgeois revolution in the old way is to sacrifice living Marxism to the dead letter.” (Lenin, ‘Letters on Tactics’, Lenin Selected Writings 2: The Revolutions of 1917, Wellred Books, 2024, pg 63)
The caricature that such critics paint has nothing to do with the real Lenin. It is either the product of ignorance or conscious deception. On the contrary, Lenin understood that Marxism was a method to understand the world, not scripture to regurgitate. His writings of 1917 show the real Lenin in action.
So is “the 1917 model generalisable today”? In plain English – do we have anything to learn from the Revolutions of 1917?
The organic crisis of capitalism
Even the bourgeois commentators agree that the situation we find ourselves in today has many similarities to the beginnings of the 20th century – the Council on Foreign Relations wrote in 2023:
“But where the 1850s do not meaningfully resemble today, the 1890s certainly do. Technological change, economic concentration, and rising inequality; political partisanship, financial corruption, and social turmoil; populism, racism, and xenophobia—the similarities are striking.” (Gideon Rose, ‘How Today Is Like the 1890s’, Council on Foreign Relations, July 16, 2023)
At the start of the 20th Century, capitalism was in a period of deep crisis and stagnation. On top of this, you had increasing tensions between the major powers.
British capitalism, in particular, was no longer competitive compared to the rise of countries such as Germany and the US, which had developed later but had begun to surpass Britain. Despite this turnaround, Britain – with its vast empire – controlled much of the world. There was a desire on the part of the ruling classes of countries such as Germany to redivide the map so that it better reflected the balance of power and so their ruling class could have access to these superprofits.
This placed war back on the agenda. In the same way, as today’s world hegemon, the US, enters a period of protracted, relative decline, we see an increase in military spending and endless proxy wars.
In the midst of this, the conditions of life of the average worker had completely stagnated. Breadlines were on the rise, and disease was rampant, just as food bank usage, malnutrition, disease and food insecurity are on the rise today.
All this prepared huge waves of strikes, demonstrations and revolutions.
Today we see the same pattern. Time after time – in Sudan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and, most recently, Bangladesh – workers and the oppressed masses moved to overthrow their rotten leaders and challenged the ruling class for power. Meanwhile, the forces of capital spread barbarism as they struggled to maintain their system.
What was missing in all of these situations was a revolutionary leadership capable of seizing and holding onto power, and sweeping aside this rotten system.
This is why the lessons of 1917 are not only applicable but absolutely essential! The October Revolution represented the first time in history that the working class not only overthrew their old masters, but held onto power themselves. Lenin’s writings in 1917 stand out as a shining example of what this leadership actually is, does, and why, in the end, it was decisive.
A minority of one
In his The History of the Russian Revolution, Trotsky made a profound observation:
“Besides the factories, barracks, villages, the front and the soviets, the revolution had another laboratory: the brain of Lenin.” (Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, Wellred Books, 2022, pg 975)
Lenin’s 1917 writings are the fruit of that great laboratory, showing how important a theoretically trained leadership is. Lenin was undoubtedly the great teacher of the Bolshevik party. But he was also produced by the party, through its great internal battles, and the period of storm, stress and struggle that the Russian working class traversed in the run up to 1917.
Lenin’s method, the Marxist method, always took the living reality as its point of departure and the point to which it returned. We see this too in 1917: not dead dogmas counterposed to reality, but Lenin constantly returning to life itself, the ultimate measure of the correctness of theory.
For instance, for years after the 1905 Revolution – which showed the bankruptcy of the liberals in leading revolutionary struggle against autocracy – Lenin had put forward the idea of a “dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry”. This was a deliberately vague formula, the point of which was to get across that the only way of overthrowing Tsarism and uprooting feudal relations, especially on the land, was through the combined action of these classes. Lenin deliberately left the details of exactly what this would look like, and what the relationship of these classes would be, open-ended, to be filled in by life.
In February 1917, however, that process moved ahead greatly. Lenin understood that the Soviets represented this dictatorship, but that they placed the working class in the fore as the leading class of the revolution. The task was now for the revolution to proceed ‘uninterrupted’ to the seizure of power by the working class and to the construction of a socialist society that could solve the problems of both classes.
Lenin’s method, the Marxist method, always took the living reality as its point of departure and the point to which it returned / Image: public domain
The task was to demand that all power be handed to this new Soviet power. Handing power back to the Provisional Government and the leaderships of the petty-bourgeois parties, who trailed in the wake of the reactionary bourgeoisie, would have led the Soviets to a dead end or crushed them in blood.
This however, clashed with the ‘Old Bolshevik’ position – the more experienced members in the Bolshevik leadership who were unable to understand the situation and orient to it. In fact, many, (in particular Kamenev and Zinoviev) accused Lenin of ‘Trotskyism’ for advocating this idea, as it agreed with Trotsky’s theory of the Permanent Revolution! Lenin found himself in a minority of one in the leadership, and had to take the question to the ranks to win the party over to his position.
He began this process of reeducating the party ranks, even before the Tsar formally abdicated. In March, hundreds of miles away in exile in Switzerland, he began writing his famous ‘Letters from Afar’.
In them, he skips over honeyed praise for the revolution, immediately setting about explaining the key questions: how could a monarchy that had lasted for centuries be overthrown in a week? Who was in charge now? Could they solve the questions of the revolution? What conclusions should revolutionaries draw from this?
“Without the tremendous class battles and the revolutionary energy displayed by the Russian proletariat during the three years 1905-07, the second revolution could not possibly have been so rapid in the sense that its initial stage was completed in a few days. [...]
“But this required a great, mighty and all-powerful ‘stage manager’, capable, on the one hand, of vastly accelerating the course of world history, and, on the other, of engendering worldwide crises of unparalleled intensity – economic, political, national and international. [...]
“This all-powerful ‘stage manager’, this mighty accelerator was the imperialist world war. [...]
“If there is to lie a real struggle against the tsarist monarchy, if freedom is to be guaranteed in fact and not merely in words, in the glib promises of Milyukov and Kerensky, the workers must not support the new government; the government must ‘support’ the workers! For the only guarantee of freedom and of the complete destruction of tsarism lies in arming the proletariat, in strengthening, extending and developing the role, significance and power of the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies.” (Lenin, ‘The First Stage of the First Revolution (First ‘Letter from Afar’)’, Lenin Selected Writings 2: The Revolutions of 1917, Wellred Books, 2024, pg 11)
Foresight over astonishment
In the almost 70 articles, letters and more compiled together in this collection, Lenin shows that he carefully thought out every question, weighing every part, not in isolation, but as part of the whole.
He did not have a different policy on the war, and then on the peasantry, and so on. He looked at every movement, figure, event and slogan and placed it correctly in history. He formulated a single understanding of the whole situation, and proceeded with a singular force of will to win the party to his position once he had grasped that.
At root, Lenin’s importance and brilliance come from his understanding of the ideas and methods of Marxism, which he painstakingly worked on throughout his life. This gave him a foresight that allowed him to prepare the party in advance of the huge events 1917 would bring.
At root, Lenin’s importance and brilliance come from his understanding of the ideas and methods of Marxism / Image: public domain
In early July, the workers of Petrograd were ready to carry out an insurrection. Lenin, understanding that the rest of the country was not ready and would be turned against the workers, advised “firmness, steadfastness, and resilience” – i.e., he strategically tried to hold the workers back.
Despite this, a skirmish broke out in these fateful July Days that handed the initiative to the counter-revolution. Lenin understood that implicit in this situation was the danger of Bonapartism – of a figure arising who would ‘rule by the sword’. They would dismantle the organisations of the workers before handing power back to the ruling class. In late July, he writes:
“The class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat has reached the limit and on 20 and 21 April, as well as on 3-5 July, the country was within a hair’s breadth of civil war. This socio-economic condition certainly forms the classical basis for Bonapartism.” (Lenin, ‘The Beginning of Bonapartism’, Lenin Selected Writings 2: The Revolutions of 1917, Wellred Books, 2024, pg 256)
A month later, Kornilov marched on Petrograd and attempted a coup. However, the Bolsheviks, who had politically prepared, called for a general strike and fraternised with his troops. The coup melted away in the span of a few days. Without this preparation, the workers would have been hunted like dogs, as had happened in the years of reaction after the 1905 revolution.
Lenin, understanding the needs of the situation, had to time and again lead from the front. In September, the collapse of Kornilov’s coup once more led to an enormous swing of the pendulum towards revolution. The masses were swinging towards the Bolsheviks beyond the two capitals.
Lenin advocated immediate preparations for an insurrection, but once again found himself in a minority in the leadership. So great was his conviction that not only could the Bolsheviks take power, but that they had to, immediately, he offered his resignation from the Central Committee so that he could win over the ranks of the party:
“To refrain from taking power now, to ‘wait’, to indulge in talk in the Central Executive Committee, to confine ourselves to ‘fighting for the organ’ (of the Soviet), ‘fighting for the Congress’, is to doom the revolution to failure. [...] – I am compelled to regard this as a ‘subtle’ hint at the unwillingness of the Central Committee even to consider this question, a subtle hint that I should keep my mouth shut, and as a proposal for me to retire. I am compelled to tender my resignation from the Central Committee, which I hereby do, reserving for myself freedom to campaign among the rank and file of the Party and at the Party Congress. For it is my profound conviction that if we ‘wait’ for the Congress of Soviets and let the present moment pass, we shall ruin the revolution.” (Lenin, ‘The Crisis has Matured’, Lenin Selected Writings 2: The Revolutions of 1917, Wellred Books, 2024, pg 360)
The role of the individual in history
These articles and letters are a fantastic tool in our arsenal as communists today. Through Lenin’s writings, one can get an almost day-by-day recap of the huge events – the “downright unbelievably sharp turns” as Lenin called them – which, without his clear insight, threatened to overwhelm and disorient the Bolsheviks.
Lenin read and revisited the fundamentals, and wrote prolifically in this period / Image: public domain
Lenin read and revisited the fundamentals, and wrote prolifically in this period. At every turn he armed the party for the tasks ahead, to the extent he needed to take a break to rest in the spring of 1917. Even in the middle of this break in Finland, Lenin rushed back to Petrograd to address the workers of that city who were preparing to carry out an insurrection – one that Lenin understood would be premature. At every turn, Lenin’s presence was decisive.
Our friends at Jacobin might object, calling this a return to the ‘great men’ theory of history. There is a grain of truth in this argument, although only a grain. History is not decided by the actions of ‘great men’. Wider processes – economic crisis, war, famine, imperialism – they set the stage for revolution, as they are doing now.
But the history of the two revolutions of 1917 shows us that in the sharpest, most tumultuous periods, the right people, in the right time and right place, and above all with the correct ideas, can and do play a decisive role. Objective conditions make revolutions inevitable, but the outcome of these great dramas is determined by the struggle of real men and women. The question of the calibre, training and theoretical insight of the leadership of the working class is not a secondary factor but one of first rank importance.
Without Lenin, the rest of the Bolshevik leadership would have handed power to the Provisional Government and the working class would have been drowned in blood, just as their comrades in Germany were only 18 months later. In the event, the Russian Revolution was successful thanks to the presence of Lenin and the Bolshevik party.
Contemporary events demand that we learn the lesson from this fact. Over 5,000 civilians have been killed in Myanmar and millions more displaced since the reactionary military coup and the failure of the revolutionary movement that erupted to stop it. In Sudan, 100,000 people have died from violence or hunger in the last year alone. Again, this is ultimately because of the failure of the revolution to smash the old ruling class and place power in the hands of the workers and poor. In the revolutionary crises that impend, without this leadership, the danger exists of more Sudans.
A revolutionary leadership worthy of the name must condense within itself the lessons of the great revolutions of the past and the history of the workers’ struggle. In this history, there is as yet no higher peak than the October Revolution of 1917. It is these lessons that we have set ourselves the task of mastering and incorporating in the building of the Revolutionary Communist International.
This new book, The Revolutions of 1917, brings these lessons to a new generation of communists, not in the drab style of the school textbook, but in the living texts, written under the light of the white-hot glow of the revolution by the greatest revolutionary leader and teacher that the working class has ever had.
These texts are a masterclass in what a revolutionary leadership really looks like, what it means and what revolutionaries must aspire to today: to understand the world by anchoring ourselves in theory, and deriving from this clear understanding, to forge a singular force of will, to lead from the front, and to dare to change the entire world.