Imperialist wars and Bolsheviks

Bukharin, “Lenin as a Marxist”

After the revolution of 1848, the relative stability of the capitalist regime set in, and the cycle of organic development of capitalism began, which pushed its catastrophic features and its most striking contradictions to its colonial periphery. In the main nodes of the growing large-scale industry, we had a process of organic growth, the growth of the productive forces with relative prosperity, enlightenment of the working class.

On this socio-economic basis, we also had a corresponding political superstructure - consolidated national states; "fatherlands". The bourgeoisie sat firmly in the saddle. The imperialist policy began, which began to manifest itself especially sharply, approximately in the 80s of the last centuries. On the basis of the rise in the standard of living of the working class, the separation and rapid progress of the labor aristocracy, a process of slow growth of workers' organizations, internally, was reborn. This process thus served as a background, as a soil for the rebirth of the ideologically of the Labor movement, degenerating into the system of the general capitalist mechanism, which found its main expression, its most rational expression, in its political head, that is, in the state power of the ruling bourgeoisie.

Therefore, there is a certain lack of coordination between the development of Marxism in the ideological field and the development of Marxism in the purely practical field.

Marxism in its two main forms began to be reborn. The most striking formulation of the trend of degeneration was given by the revisionist current within the German Social Democracy. Since we are talking about precise theoretical formulations, we in other countries do not have more classical examples, even in spite of more decisive regenerations. Due to a whole series of historical conditions, which I cannot enter into an analysis of here, this practice did not receive sufficiently clear and precise formulations there, which it received in the most, so to speak, -thinking of country.

In Germany, the revisionist trend has already signaled quite clearly, and not only signaled, but very fully expressed the departure from Marxism that was characteristic of Marx and Engels and of the entire previous era. Much less clear was the departure from Marxism of other groupings, which was called the radical, or “orthodox” Marxist, with Kautsky at the head. … I personally consider it wrong to think that the fall of the German Social-Democracy and of Kautsky begins and dates back to 1914. It seems to me (now: we can say so) that it has been a long time ago, though not with such haste; as with the revisionists, with this grouping in the milieu of the German Social Democracy, which for a long time set the tone for the entire International, we can quite clearly see a departure from genuine orthodox, from truly revolutionary Marxism, as it was formulated by Marx and Engels in the previous phase of development working ideology.

I repeat, at the beginning of this period there was a certain lack of coordination between theory and practice. The most far-reaching ideologues of the revisionist type laid down the practice of the German Social-Democrats, having worked out the corresponding theory. Another part of the S.D. still rested in its theoretical formulations, not being able, and not really trying, in practice to overcome these harmful tendencies. This was the position taken by the Kautsky group, but at the end of this period, when history posed point-blank a number of the most fundamental and essential questions (commencement of world war) it turned out that there was almost no significant difference between these wings, both practically and theoretically. As a matter of fact, these two wings—revisionism and Kautskyianism—expressed one and the same tendency to degenerate and brand from , the tendency to adapt, in the worst sense of the word, to those new social conditions that were emerging in Europe and which were characteristic of this cycle of European development—they expressed one and the same theoretical current that was leading away from Marxism in its real and truly revolutionary formulation.

From a general point of view, one can characterize this difference in such a way that revisionist Marxism in its purest form—this has become most clear in recent years—that this revisionist Marxism in its purest form, or Marxism in quotation marks, has acquired a pronounced fatalistic character in relation to state power, to the capitalist regime, etc., whereas in Kautsky and his group we have a Marxism that could be called democratic-pacifist.

This line of differentiation was arbitrary, it has become more and more blurred in recent years as these currents began to follow the same channel, which more and more resolutely moved away from Marxism. The essence of this process lies in the exfoliation of the revolutionary essence of Marxism, in the replacement of the revolutionary theory of Marxism, revolutionary dialectics, the revolutionary teaching on the development of capitalism, the revolutionary teaching on the collapse of capitalism, the revolutionary teaching on dictatorship, etc., —replacement of all this by the usual bourgeois Democratic-Evolutionary pacifist doctrine.

It could be shown in detail how this bias manifested itself very clearly in a whole series of theoretical questions. I partly made this analysis in a speech devoted to the program of the Communist International at one of the international congresses. This revisionist deviation is found in Kautsky, who completely falsifies in his theory of the state and state power; the same with Plekhanov, who was one of the "most orthodox".

The presence of such revisionism in the theory of the state makes it quite clear why the Kautskyite wing also took a bourgeois-pacifist position during the "world imperialist war".

The real Marxian formulation in the field of the theory of state power is known to all of us. This teaching can be expressed roughly in this way. During the socialist revolution, the state apparatus of the bourgeoisie is destroyed, and a new dictatorship is created— “anti-democratic”- and at the same time proletarian-democratic state, a completely unique and specific form of state power, which then begins to wither away. In Kautsky however, you will not find anything of the kind in this point; and in Kautsky, as in all Social-Democratic Marxists in quotation marks, all of them elucidate this point in such a way that state power is something that passes from the hands of one class into the hands of another in the same way "like a machine that was in the hands of one class, and then passes into the hands of another class, without this new class dismantling all its cogs and then putting them back together in a new way.

From the same formulation, theoretically pure, from this teaching follows the defensive position during the war. Argumentation along this line could be heard dozens of times at the socialist meetings at the beginning of the war, and this extremely primitive argumentation has a certain kind of logic from its point of view. It goes without saying that” if this given bourgeois state will be tomorrow in my hands, then there is nothing to destroy it, but, on the contrary, it must be protected, because tomorrow it will be ours.”

The task was posed in a completely different way from that of Marx.

“If the state must not be destroyed, because it will be in my hands tomorrow, then the army must not be disorganized, because it is an integral part of the state apparatus, no state discipline can be violated,” and so on. Everything here is harmonious, and it goes without saying that when these complexes were exposed to blows in mutual struggle, then Kautskyianism, the German Social-Democrats, in full solidarity with its theoretical presuppositions, drew the corresponding practical conclusion.

I repeat that it is wrong to think that here we have some kind of momentary, catastrophic fall. It was theoretically “justified.” We just didn't notice this inner rebirth even in the so-called "orthodox" wing, which had little in common with real orthodoxy.

The same could be said about the theory of the collapse of capitalist society, about the theory of impoverishment, about the colonial and national questions, about the doctrine of democracy and dictatorship, about tactical doctrines, such as the doctrine of mass struggle, etc. Regarding this point of view, I would recommend to all comrades to read Kautsky's well-known classic pamphlet The Social Revolution, which we have read, but now we will read it with completely different eyes, because now it is not difficult to discover in it a whole Mont Blanc of all sorts of distortions of Marxism and opportunist formulations, which are completely clear to us.

If these Marxist "epigons" took into account certain new changes in the field of the capitalist system, in the field of the relationship between economics and politics, if they put some new phenomena from the field of current life under their theoretical lens, then these new phenomena are always in essence they took into account from one point of view, from the point of view of the growth of workers' organizations in an evolutionary way into the general system of the capitalist mechanism.

For example, a new joint-stock company appeared, but now they were using it to explain that capitalism was being democratized.

There has been an improvement in the condition of the working class on the continent, and the conclusion was drawn from this immediately that perhaps a revolution is not needed, but we can do everything by peaceful means.

Since they relied on Marx, they immediately seized on a whole series of quotations, on individual snatching of provisions and words ripped out of context.

It was well known that Marx said of England: "In England, perhaps things can get along without bloodshed."

This was shared by everyone.

It was known that Engels once said not particularly good things about the barricade struggle.

Thus, from this, every possible conclusion was at once drawn with the necessary quotations; every phenomenon was considered from the aspect whereby the workers' organizations were being absorbed by the general capitalist system, from the aspect which we might agree to call the standpoint of class truce. In the end its revolutionary essence flew off from revolutionary Marxism. What happened very often in history, when we have the same words, the same nomenclature, the same phrases, the same labels, the same symbols, and I repeat, we have a completely different socio-political content.

Bukharin, “Lenin as a Marxist”
Translated from Russian