A spectre has emerged once again, this time to haunt not only Europe, but the entire world. It is the spectre of Leninism and in a few weeks we will see how the bourgeoisie and the bureaucracy will try to exorcise it. The mass media in the capitalist world will observe Lenin's centenary by devoting all their energy to prove that Lenin and Leninism is now only of historical interest. In the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe the bureaucracies will celebrate the occasion by claiming that they are practising Leninism in their respective countries.
The task which confronts revolutionists throughout the world today is to rescue Lenin from the bear-hugs of the bourgeoisie and from the dead hand of the decaying Kremlin bureaucracy. That is why The Red Mole has decided to commemorate the centenary of Lenin's birth by devoting examining some of the basic concepts for in the process of struggle and not this issue in its entirety to restating and which Lenin fought and struggled all his life. The fact that it is still necessary to do this is an indication of the enormity of the task involved in rehabilitating Leninism today. There is a basic unity underlying the material printed in this issue, which includes a little known text by Lenin on guerrilla warfare and Trotsky's brilliant exposition of the real essence of Leninism in our epoch. There are two main reasons why we have published these texts in particular: first to stress that Leninism today is of sympathetic to organisations whose leaderships have either converted Leninism to a trendy, demagogic liberalism or have dogmatised it beyond recognition) that the time is now ripe for them to return to Leninism. THE BOURGEOISIE-HOW TO DESTROY IT The struggle against capitalism in Europe which has acquired a new dynamic since the pre-revolutionary crisis in France in May 1968 and the social and economic crisis which has existed in Italy throughout 1969 has shown large numbers of young militants the necessity of building revolutionary organisations of the working class and displacing the hegemony enjoyed today by social-democratic and Stalinist parties in the labour movement. However it is worth pointing out that many of these new militants have come to this conclusion merely through abstract propaganda.
The task before them now is the construction of revolutionary organisations. The experiences and examples of the Bolshevik-Leninists are an invaluable guide to the way forward.
But we have also to understand that today, a hundred times more than in Lenin's time, we cannot merely contine country. The increasing internationalisation of capital over the last few decades only serves to Market-the Europe of monopoly capitalism must be countered not by retreating into chauvinistic responses o by ignoring the problem but by counte posing the Europe of the workers and revolutionary students-A United Socialist Europe. It is obvious that the struggle must take place increasingly or a continental scale.
THE BUREAUCRACY-HOW TO SMASH IT At the same time as we struggle against capitalism in Europe and the colonial world, we must fully support the anti bureaucratic struggle of our comrades the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Many of them are beginning a long protracted struggle to smash the burea cracy and replace it with Soviets, and building organisations which are essent to make political revolution in their countries. The bureaucracy cannot be overthrown only in one country. It ha to be overthrown in the Soviet Union itself so that the real face of Leninism can really be seen by the millions of workers and students in Russia and Eastern Europe; so that those who ha distorted and mummified Leninism ca be swept off the stage of history and with the same broom which Lenin use to overthrow capitalism in Russia.
Leninism is above all the unity of ti ourselves to building organisations in one word and the deed, a unity which can only be realised nationally within a revolutionary organisation in which ti experiences of all the revolutionary
("Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile "Revisionist" is one the most powerful words in Disorder by V. I. Lenin-available from Collets. the vocabulary of the mindless. There are useful Pioneer Book Service and most left-wing and correct ways of employing it but these bookshops) become progressively fewer as intra-left polemic grows. Attempts to canonise Lenin and to incorporate his work into the New Testament of socialism are bred of a petty-bourgeois liberal consciousness unable to cope with the idea of revolution.
WHERE TO WORK Lenin's work is vast and inaccessible because it represents campaign writing. He was a pamphleteer, a polemicist and a fighter; he was also a great thinker but his work has to be seen in the context of the battles he was waging. This is, of course, true of everyone but it is quite acutely so in the case of Lenin. "LeftWing" Communism has been a source document for the left throughout the world ever since it was written, and has probably been the base for building more vicious and internecine denunciation than anything else in the history of socialist writing. Those of us not in the CP and finding ourselves the subject of many of these denunciations must look at this pamphlet with care.
Lenin's polemic was directed against those, particularly in Germany, but also elsewhere, including many in the ranks of the Bolshevik Party, who took what they felt to be an uncompromisingly revolutionary line. These comrades rejected all forms of activity that might involve them in collaboration with organs of the bourgeoisie. This meant no traditional parliamentary opposition, no Trade Union work, no attempt to use the bourgeois media and so on. Lenin rejected this "ultra" attitude as frivolous and went on:
"If you want to help the 'masses' and win the sympathy and support of the 'masses', you should not fear difficulties... but must absolutely work wherever the masses are to be found. You must be capable of any sacrifice... in order to carry on agitation and propaganda systematically, perseveringly, persistently and patiently in those institutions, societies and associations-even the most reactionary -in which the proletarian or semi-proletarian masses are to be found. The trade unions and the workers' co-operatives (the latter sometimes, at least) are the very organisations in which the masses are to be found."
Later, he attacks the claim made by "left" communists that bourgeois parliaments are politically obsolete on the ground that, at the time of writing and in the years before, this claim was demonstrably untrue. Their sheer effectiveness as organs of the counter-revolution they want to assume power (though they would prefer a coalition with the bourgeoisie), that they want to 'rule' along the old bourgeois lines and that when they are in power they will certainly behave like the Scheidemanns and Noskes. All that is true. But...in the interests of the revolution, working-class revolutionaries should give these gentlemen a certain amount of parliamentary support."
If any justification for Lenin's tactics is needed, it is easy to find. First, these were the tactics used very successfully by the Bolsheviks Second, the analysis of the political situation in the rest of Europe in the early '20s left very little alternative. "Left-Wing" Communism clearly grows out of Lenin's experience with the Anarchists and the Social Revolutionaries, both of whom worked for more precipitate action than that engaged in by the Bolsheviks. It is impossible now to say whether either of these groups would have been capable of carrying through the revolution with any success-we only know that the Bolsheviks, largely through the brilliant work of Lenin and Trotsky, prevailed, particularly at the first All-Russian Congress of the Soviets (Petrograd, June 1917), and that it was the Bolsheviks who led and won the revolution.
GUIDELINE Lenin's analysis in this pamphlet and in other letters and speeches has been the guideline to the greater part of left political activity ever since, and this is particularly so in the case of the Communist Parties of Western Europe. Our problem is that Lenin's polemic has been trans ferred wholesale as a means of attack on those of us who feel that the groups of the traditional left have adopted an incorrect and self-defeating course. The reaction of the "old" left to the "new" has been very curious, for it has consisted in nervous glances at the Lenin polemic rather than in any attempt to discover whether, in fact, a new analysis is not needed. This is particularly sad, for Lenin (in this pamphlet above all) demonstrated the way in which Marxist thinking could be developed to meet particular situations. It is our contention that a Marxist analysis of the contemporary British situation makes the parliamentary tactic