I must make two preliminary remarks: I do not intend to follow the line of official commemorations, and I will not make a biography of Lenin nor will I tell a series of anecdotes about him. I will attempt to trace from a historical and critical Marxist point of view the figure and role of Lenin in the revolutionary emancipation movement of the world working class: such syntheses are only possible by looking at the facts with a broad perspective of the whole, and not by going down to the analytical, journalistic, often gossipy and insignificant detail. I do not believe that it gives me the right to speak on Lenin by mandate of my party to be ’the man who saw Lenin’ or who had the good fortune to speak with him, but rather participating, as a militant of the proletarian cause, in the same struggle for the very principles Lenin personifies. Detailed biographical material has been made available to comrades by our entire press.

In the second place, given the vastness of the subject, as well as being necessarily incomplete, I will have to pass quickly over questions of primary importance, and assume that these terms are already known to the comrades listening to me: there is no subject in the problems of the revolutionary movement which has no relation to Lenin’s work. Without pretending, therefore, to exhaust the subject, I must be, at the same time, not brief, and perhaps excessively synthetic.

I need not set out the history of the falsifications, manipulated in the years preceding the Great War, of the Marxist revolutionary doctrine, as it was admirably outlined by Engels and Marx in all its parts, of which the classic synthesis remains the Communist Manifesto of 1847. Nor can I here carry out, in parallel, the history of the struggle, which was never silent, of the Marxist left against those falsifications and degenerations. To this struggle Lenin makes a contribution of the first order.

Let us first consider Lenin’s work as a restorer of the philosophical doctrine of Marxism, or, to put it better, of the general conception of nature and society; one that is proper to the system of theoretical knowledge of the revolutionary working class, which needs not only an opinion on the problems of economics and politics, but a stance on the whole broader framework of questions now indicated.

At a certain moment in the complex history of the Russian Marxist movement, which I will touch on, a school emerged, headed by the philosopher Bogdanov, which sought to revise the materialist and dialectical Marxist conception, in order to give the workers’ movement a philosophical basis of an idealistic and almost mystical nature. This school would have Marxists recognize the alleged overcoming of materialist and scientific philosophy by modern neo-idealist philosophical schools. Lenin responded to it in a definitive manner with a work (“Materialism and Empirio-Criticism”) unfortunately little translated and little known, which appeared in Russian in 1908. In it, after a vast amount of preparatory work, he developed a critique of ancient and modern idealistic philosophical systems. He defended Marx and Engels’ conception of dialectical realism in its full integrity. He overcame the obscurities that trap official philosophers. Finally, he showed how modern idealist schools reflect the recent mindset of the bourgeois class. Their influence on the thinking of the proletarian party only reveals a psychological state of impotence and confusion. This is nothing but the ideological derivative of the actual situation of defeat of the Russian proletariat after 1905. Lenin establishes, in a manner that rules out further doubts, that ’there can be no socialist and proletarian doctrine on spiritualist, idealist, mystical, moral grounds’.

Lenin defends the entirety of Marxist doctrine on another front: economic assessments and criticism of capitalism. Marx left his monumental work, *Capital*, incomplete. However, he provided the proletariat with a method for studying and interpreting economic facts. This method must be applied to the new data from capitalism’s recent development without distorting its revolutionary potential. German revisionism, in particular, attempts to undermine this by introducing ’new’ doctrines. These revisions appear minor but are actually significant departures from Marx’s teachings. We say "cheat" because, as Lenin demonstrated better than anyone, this was not just about objective scientific results. It was a process of political opportunism and corruption of proletarian leaders. They even suppressed important writings by Marx and Engels, partially falsifying and partially correcting their thoughts.

Contributing alongside other economists, including Rosa Luxemburg and Kautsky in his prime, Lenin helped continue Marx’s economic critique. In numerous works, he argues that modern capitalist phenomena, such as economic monopolies and the imperialist struggle for colonial markets, are fully explainable by Marxist economic science. There is no need to modify any of its fundamental theories on capitalism’s nature or the accumulation of profits through the exploitation of wage-earners. In 1915, Lenin summarized these findings in his book Imperialism, which remains a key text in communist literature. This theoretical stance supports the political developments, particularly in the fight against opportunism and the failures of the old leaders during the world war, which we must discuss further.

Lenin also leads a theoretical struggle in the narrower context of Russia. He fights against the bourgeois falsifiers of Marxism. These falsifiers pretend to accept Marxism, but only its economic and historical system, not its political and revolutionary content. They use this partial acceptance to argue that capitalism must triumph over feudalism in Russia. In doing so, they hide their true aim, which is to suppress the further progress of the proletariat, under the guise of supporting Marxist views on historical development.

Lenin, as a theorist, presents himself as the defender of the inseparability of the components that make up the Marxist conception. He does this not out of fanatical dogmatism (he is less deserving of this accusation than anyone) but by grounding his arguments in an enormous amount of factual data and experience. His exceptional knowledge as both a scholar and militant, illuminated by his genius, supports these demonstrations. Lenin’s approach should guide us in addressing those who selectively embrace arbitrarily separated ’parts’ of Marxism. Some, like bourgeois economists, are comfortable with the method of historical materialism, as seen a few decades ago not only in Russia but also in Italy, a country of backward capitalism. Others are intellectuals linked to neo-idealism, who claim to reconcile those philosophies with communist social and political theses. Then there are comrades who write books claiming to support the ’historical-political’ part of Marxism but reject the economic part, i.e., the doctrines fundamental to interpreting capitalism. Lenin analyzed and criticized these attitudes, showing their true origins outside and against the proletarian emancipation process. He also brilliantly predicted the opportunistic developments that would lead to serving the enemy cause, more or less directly. He did this without questioning the loyalty to our flag of any individual comrade. Following Lenin, we must respond to those who "deign" to accept our opinions with reservations, arbitrary distinctions, and bizarre separations. In fact, they do us a favor by sparing themselves from accepting the "rest" of Marxism. The greatest strength of Marxism lies in its holistic perspective, reflecting the consciousness of a revolutionary class and encompassing political, social, and economic facts alongside the problems of the natural and human world.

Lenin’s restorative work is grander, or at least more widely known, in what is considered the "political" part of Marxist doctrine. This includes the theory of the state, the party, and the revolutionary process. However, this "political" part, which is better called "programmatic", also includes the entire "economic" process that begins with the proletariat’s revolutionary victory. The triumphant dismantling of the misunderstandings, deceptions, and prejudices of opportunists, revisionists, petty-bourgeois, and anarcho-syndicalists is especially vivid in this area. After Lenin, the polemical weapons on this front are shattered in the hands of our adversaries, near and far. Those who still attempt to use them only reveal their ignorance and absence from the living process of proletarian struggle. Let us cover broad sections of these theses, which are fragments of reality embedded in a doctrine that is true and vital. We need only follow Lenin, whether in the theses of the first congresses of the new International, his speeches, his discussions of "the problems", or the programs and proclamations of the Bolshevik party on the road to victory. We also look to his patient and ingenious exposition in State and Revolution, which shows that the theses remained those of Marx and Engels. In this accurate interpretation of the classical texts, and in the true understanding of the method and thought of the masters – from the first formulation of the Manifesto to the analysis of the facts from later periods, especially the revolutions of 1848, 1852, and the Paris Commune – Lenin carries forward the historical advance of the world proletariat. He links this legacy to the revolutionary struggles in Russia, from the defeat of 1905 to the crushing victory twelve years later.

The problem of the interpretation of the state is resolved within the framework of the historical doctrine of the class struggle: the state is the organized strength of the ruling class, born revolutionary, which has become conservative to its positions. As with all other problems: there is no state, an allegedly immanent and metaphysical entity awaiting the definition and judgment of the reactionary or anarchist petty philosopher, but the bourgeois state, the expression of capitalist power; and the way will the workers’ state be, and how this will be after the disappearance of the political state. All these phases are situated in the historical process, as our scientific analysis allows us to trace it, in a dialectical succession, each arising from the previous one and constituting its negation. What separates them? Between the state of the bourgeoisie and that of the proletariat there can only be the culmination of a revolutionary struggle, in which the working class is led by the communist political party, which wins by overthrowing bourgeois power with armed force, by establishing the new revolutionary power: and this implements first of all the demolition of the old state machine in all its parts, and organizes the repression of attempts at counter-revolution with the most energetic means.

The anarchists are answered: the proletariat cannot immediately suppress all forms of power, but must ensure ’its’ power. We reply to the social democrats that the path to power is not the peaceful path of bourgeois democracy, but that of class warfare: and that alone. Lenin is the leader of us all in the long defense of this much falsified position of Marxism: the critique of bourgeois democracy, the demolition of the legalistic and parliamentary lie, the mockery, in the sarcastic and corrosive vigor of polemic taught by Marx and Engels, of universal suffrage and all similar panaceas as the weapons of the proletariat and the parties that stand on this ground.

Reconnecting masterfully with the fundamentals of the doctrine, Lenin solves all the problems of the proletarian regime and the program of the revolution. "It is not enough simply to take over the state apparatus", say Marx and Engels commenting on the Manifesto many years later, and after the experience of the Paris Commune. The classic theoretical swindle remains: the capitalist economy will slowly evolve to socialism, while workers’ power is secured legally, the opportunists arbitrarily conclude. Instead of this, Lenin comes to clarify: it is necessary, ’in addition’ to taking possession of the old state apparatus, to break it to smithereens and put the proletarian dictatorship in its place. To this end we don’t get by democratic means, and it is not based on the immortal (for the philistine) ’principles’ of democracy. It excludes from the new freedom, from the new political equality, from the new ’proletarian democracy’ (as Lenin himself liked to say, giving democracy an etymological rather than historical interpretation), the members of the defeated bourgeoisie. That only in this way can the freedom for the proletariat to live and rule be placed on a realistic basis was made clear by Lenin with propositions of crystal clear evidence with magnificent theoretical consequences. Let anyone blame the trampled freedom of association and of the press to the foul tools, whether hired or unconscious, of an anti-proletarian restoration. In polemics they are, after Lenin, resoundingly beaten; in practice we hope he will always find enough lead from the revolutionary guard to overcome his lack of understanding theoretical arguments.

And with regard to the economic task of the new regime, Lenin explains - not only with regard to Russia, which we will have to say more about later, but in general - their necessary gradualness of evolution, as well as the true nature of the distinctions which set it against the private bourgeois economy, in the field of production, distribution, and all collective activities.

Here, too, we find a clear and direct connection to the most authentic sources of Marxist doctrine. This links back to Karl Marx’s responses to the many banal confusions of bourgeois opponents and the followers of Proudhon, Bakunin, and Lassalle. It also connects to the best polemic from the Marxist left against Sorelian syndicalism. The apparent contradiction arises: After the conquest of power, will there still be a bourgeoisie to repress with dictatorial force? Will there still be reluctant elements of the proletariat, and even more so of the semi-proletariat, to discipline with legal authority? Will there be ’despotic’ intervention, as Marx stated, through the decrees of the new power in economic matters? Will the new regime have to ’wait’ before suppressing certain capitalist forms in specific areas of the economy? This contradiction is resolved in a logical, thorough, and brilliant manner within the construction of a revolutionary program. It is a program that does not fear reality, because it is not afraid to adhere to it. It is unafraid to seize and crush the aspects that are ready to pass into history, to leave behind dead forms, as part of the relentless process of evolution and revolution.

As a necessary factor in this renewing struggle, against the degeneration of trade unionism and syndicalism, Lenin defines the role of the class political party. This party must be Marxist, centralized, and almost militarized in discipline during the supreme moments of battle. To the opportunists, Lenin rebukes the idea that the politics of the revolutionary class is mere parliamentary maneuvering. Instead, it is civil war strategy, mobilization for the ultimate uprising, and preparation to manage the new order.

And to crown the masterly structure, after the efforts and pains of bringing forth a new regime, as foreseen in Engels’ classic passage, stands the necessary demands of sacrifice for the vanguard militia. At the top is the sure and scientific prediction of a society without a state and without constraints. This vision goes far beyond the mystical impatience of powerless thinkers. It is a society with an economy based on meeting the needs of every individual to the fullest. It envisions the complete freedom of man, not as an isolated individual, but as part of a united species. This freedom is achieved through the complete and rational control of nature’s forces and resources.

To Lenin we therefore owe the reconstruction of our program, as well as that of our critique of the world in general and the bourgeois regime in particular, which together complete the theoretical elaboration of the ideology proper to the modern proletariat.


The Bringer of Marxist Politics into Reality

Lenin’s theoretical work cannot be considered separately from his political work: the two are continually intertwined and we have divided them up only for formal convenience of exposition. While re-establishing the revolutionary conception and program of the proletariat, Lenin became one of its greatest political leaders and implemented in class struggle the principles that he defended on the ground of doctrinal criticism. The field of his grand activity during the years of his not so long life is not only Russia, but in the entire international proletarian movement.

Let us first consider Lenin’s work in Russia over thirty years of political struggle, up to the point when he became the leader of the first workers’ state. Opponents from all sides have tried to deny the continuity and unity between Lenin’s task as a historical figure and his Marxist doctrine. They argue it wasn’t the realization of the political program of the proletariat in the capitalist and "civilized" West. Instead, they claim it was not an actual victory of socialism as seen in modern developed countries, but rather a peculiar historical event in a backward country like Russia. They call it an "Asiatic" movement, revolution, and government that has no right to be connected with the historical task of the world proletariat. According to them, the proletariat has no right to see this as its first victory or as historical proof that its revolutionary ideals are achievable. The western bourgeoisie says this to reassure itself against the possibility of Bolshevik ’contagion.’ The opportunist social democrat does so to avoid admitting the failure of his program of class collaboration and peaceful, legal evolution, which he falsely claims is proper for the advanced proletariat of the most ’civilized’ countries. The anarchist, meanwhile, attributes the coercive forms of the revolution to the nature of the Russian people and their traditions of absolutism. He stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the glaring, undeniable proof – clear enough to "gouge out the eyes" (à créver les yeux) – of the necessity of those coercive forms.

Nothing could be more baleful than this thesis. Lenin signifies the international, world and even western (if by the west we mean all countries populated by the white race and infested with the most modern delights of industrial capitalism) content of the Russian revolution. The facts prove this too obviously, apart from all arguments supporting the Marxist and communist evaluation of the proletarian becoming of all countries.

Vladimir Ilijc Ulianov was born in 1870. It was twenty years later that he took his place in the political struggle in Russia. What does this date, 1890, mean besides the fledgling future great proletarian leader? Prior to this epoch, a remarkable and multifaceted revolutionary movement had already existed in Russia for several decades. The survival of absolutism and feudalism, overthrown in the rest of Europe by the democratic bourgeois revolutions, was accompanied by a movement tending to overthrow the tsarist regime, and which was anxiously trying to define the positive content of this opposition.

The nascent capitalist bourgeoisie, the middle bourgeoisie with its intellectuals, and all the other layers oppressed by the aristocracy, clergy, high officials, and officers participated in this chaotic movement. Despite the chaos, it had pages of struggle and heroism, never bowing to the brutal repressions of the tsarist government. The Russian Bolsheviks do not deny their connections with the best traditions of this movement from the 1860s, ’70s, and ’80s. However, Lenin and Bolshevism brought a unique and original factor that would ultimately prevail over all others. The year 1890, when Lenin entered the political scene, coincided with a significant development: the emergence of the working class in Russia. The capital, machines, and industrial technology of the West had crossed into tsarist Holy Russia. Though it once seemed to separate two worlds, Russia could not resist the powerful forces of modern capitalist expansion. With this entry, large factories rose, and a true industrial proletariat emerged, initially in a few major urban centers.

Even before Lenin and the other Russian social-democratic Marxists, the intellectual leaders of the movement of opposition to tsarism eagerly drew on the ideologies and literature of the western revolutionary movements, to use them in elaborating their programs and demands. This ideological importation is made more active by the fact of the continuous emigration of the persecuted to the intellectual centers abroad, as well as by the easily assimilable qualities of the Slavic race. It is not just a matter of importing ideologies, but of finding the one that corresponds to the actual development of social conditions in Russia, and has a concrete class basis in it. Marxism itself penetrates into Russia, as a theory, with someone who chronologically precedes Lenin, who in his good times presents himself to us as one of the best Marxists, who is Lenin’s teacher: Plekhanov.

But it is Lenin who arms himself with the doctrines already developed for the advanced workers’ movement of the West. He carries out his political activity among the nascent working class, following the concrete issues of workers’ lives in the factories and shaping their original role within Russian society. From that point on, for Lenin, the working class – statistically small and almost negligible in the vast population of the tsarist empire – emerges as the key player in the inevitable revolution. This does not mean a "specifically Russian" role, but it is possible because the arrival of capitalist means and conditions from the West is accompanied by the arrival of the critique of capitalism’s essential characteristics. Along with this comes the method, unique to the proletarian class, of interpreting the most varied social environments and historical moments: historical materialism and the critique of bourgeois economy from Western Marxists.

If the cretins of journalistic polemics now wish to present us with a "Mongolian mystic" Lenin, or a "German professor and pan-German agent" Lenin, we only need to remind them of this. Karl Marx, from whom Lenin drew much of his mentality, was also called a German agent by the ignorant. Yet Marx developed his doctrine largely from England, where capitalism first reached its economic maturity. He also extensively studied the most characteristic bourgeois revolution, that of France. Both Marx and Lenin spent much of their lives outside their countries of origin. Like other great revolutionaries, both had psychological traits opposite to those typically associated with their races. One would struggle to find a greater contrast to the pedantic German university scholar than Karl Marx, who possessed a brilliant, vibrant mind with immense tenacity and thorough preparation. Similarly, Lenin’s realism and formidable work ethic stood in stark contrast to the contemplative and mystical inertia often attributed to Russians. Marx was, indeed, a Jew. If that were considered a defect, it could not even be applied to Lenin. But these are the final points that help define both Marx and Lenin as the two greatest figures of a movement unparalleled in its claim to the non-rhetorical title of world importance.

It is certainly not possible for me to give the history of Lenin’s political function in Russia: it would involve expounding the complex history of the Bolshevik Party and of the greatest revolution that history has ever known, and the facts of all this cannot, in their substantial part, not be known to you.

Lenin first appears to us in a suggestive manner in his criticism of all the theoretical and political positions of the other movements of opposition to tsarism, and especially those which fabricate spurious theories for the action of the working classes. In this struggle against all forms of opportunism he is implacable and does not hesitate in the face of the most serious consequences.

Lenin contrasts a proletarian class ideology to bourgeois political liberalism, which, through intellectuals necessarily driven to be rebellious, tends to spread to the proletariat. One of the leaders of the ’narodniki’ had declared that ’the working class was of great importance to the revolution’. In this sentence was evident the intention of the bourgeoisie to ’use’ the proletarian masses to overthrow absolutism, and then, as in France a century earlier, to establish its own rule even and above all against the proletariat. But Lenin represents the answer: it is not the working class that will serve the revolution of the bourgeoisie: it is the revolution that will be made in Russia by the working class, and for itself.

On the strength of this brilliant historical insight, formidably backed by comprehensive studies of the nature and degree of development of the Russian economy, Lenin can fight against all falsifications of the revolutionary program and the various opportunist parties and groups. Just as he fights that bourgeois Marxism to which we have alluded, so he fights against ’economism’, which claims that the political struggle against tsarism must be left to the bourgeoisie and that the proletariat’s activity must be kept on the terrain of economic improvement, postponing the emergence of a workers’ political party until after the bourgeoisie has won power and ’political freedoms’. In this theoretical struggle, which takes place around 1900, the contents of the campaign against pre-war Bernsteinian international revisionism, of social-nationalist opportunism of the war years, and of post-war Menshevism are shown. In 1903 Lenin arrived at the split in the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party, proclaimed at the London congress although the formal organizational split came later. Apparently the disagreement was over questions of internal organizational technique: very important, however, for a party fighting by illegal means in an environment of fierce reaction. But the content of the split, as subsequent years were to prove, is substantial and profound. The split was wanted and prepared implacably by Lenin: and then he pronounced the phrase: "before uniting we must divide", in which one of his greatest teachings is summed up: that the proletariat will never be able to win without first getting rid of the traitors, the inept, the hesitant; that in cutting off the unhealthy parts from the body of the revolutionary party, one will never be brave enough. Of course Lenin was called a dissolver, a disintegrator, a sectarian, a centralizer, an autocrat, and anything else you want: he merely laughed at all this phrasing which opportunists invariably make use of when they see their maneuvers foiled, as at all the empty rhetoric for unity, which, outside the condition of homogeneity and clarity of directives, is for Marxists nothing but empty words.

Other disagreements emerge before arriving at the final and clamorous one of the war years: Lenin’s clarifying work, with a long view into the future, continues to unfold by accumulating the true conditions of the future revolutionary victory. At certain moments Lenin, an exile abroad, gathers only a few adherents of simple workers around himself and his small group of faithful: but he never doubts the final outcome of the struggle. The future must prove him right: the small groups will become the thousands and thousands of proletarians who in 1917 defeat Tsarism and capitalism, the millions of men who will parade in an interminable procession around the body of their leader seven years later.

We have no way of dealing more deeply with the Bolsheviks’ criticism of the ’liquidators’, who after 1905 wished to renounce the illegal forms of the party by favoring the alleged constitution granted by the emperor; nor with that of the revolutionary socialist party, of its program which placed the peasant class at the forefront by claiming that in Russia the proletarian revolution would not have as its central issue the abolition of private capitalism, and of its petit-bourgeois methods; nor with that of the anarchists, of the syndicalists, of so many other political schools of varying importance agitating in the kaleidoscope of the prerevolutionary period.

Lenin creates the party that must respond brilliantly to revolutionary needs, a magnificent instrument of action and struggle. And the time comes to move from polemical criticism and patient preparatory organization to open battle: around the secessionists of so many episodes the concentration of revolutionary forces begins to form: in the orbit of the party of the workers’ vanguard come to place the soldiers tired of the war, the poor peasants and also the soviets, which appeared in 1905 in the first great revolutionary struggle in which Bolshevism had tried and asserted itself vigorously, in ’17 gradually orient themselves towards Lenin’s party. In this period of action Lenin’s qualities emerge in a fantastic way, and would lend themselves to any form of mystical amplification, if what was taking place were not for us Marxists the necessary crowning glory of such a complete and exhaustive preparation of revolutionary conditions in every field. In the July insurrection, Lenin, despite the temptation of a moment, resolutely says that it is not yet time to play it all: but in the October days, alone or almost alone, he understands that the moment has come that must not be let pass and with an infallible hand he strikes the decisive blow, framing in the magnificent political maneuver of a party the formidable crisis of the struggle of the opposing social forces from which the working class must emerge triumphant.

The theoretical critique of democracy and bourgeois liberalism culminates in action, with the expulsion by force of the armed workers of the democratically elected constituent assembly, the ’bunch of scoundrels’!

Lenin’s word: power to the soviets, won; the dictatorship of the proletariat theorized by Marx makes its tremendous entry into the reality of history. The counter-revolution in its manifold efforts will no longer win: before the implacability of the revolutionary terror it will have to retreat, just as it will not be able to exploit against the success of the work of government, at the head of which Lenin stands, the accumulation of internal difficulties of the Russian economy and the failures of the proletariat in the other countries of the world. Lenin and his party continue their work in the new phase, different but no less arduous, increasingly building their strength and experience.

We have said little of Lenin’s realization of a Marxist policy in Russia: we are still left with all his international activity. Here too the struggle against deviations from Marxism is not only theoretical, but political and organizational. Not yet well known to large crowds, as were the traditional leaders of the parties of the 2nd International, Lenin animated the left-wing current within it and its struggle against revisionism. It was thanks to him if the Stuttgart congress passed the motion advocating a general strike in the event of war.

The war came, and it was Lenin who was the first to realize that the Second International had ended forever in the shameful failure of 4 August 1914. Within the socialist opposition to the war, which gathers in Zimmerwald and Kienthal, a left polarizes around Lenin’s formula: turn imperialist war into class war. And it moves towards the foundation of the new International, which can rise in 1919 in the capital of the first proletarian state, having by then established its Marxist doctrine on solid foundations, having given the grand essay of proletarian politics that it implements, in the victory of the Russian Communist Party.

After the restoration of proletarian theory, the work of the 3rd International is grand because of concretely separating from the opportunists of all countries, by banishing from the ranks of the world workers’ vanguard of reformists, social democrats, centrists of all categories. A palingenesis is taking place in all the old parties, and the foundations of the new revolutionary parties of the proletariat are being laid. Lenin guides the difficult operation with an iron hand, dispelling possible uncertainties and weaknesses.

It is later on that we will have the opportunity to say something about the reasons why the gigantic battle has not yet met with final success in all countries, and why the greatest strategist of the proletariat is leaving us at a time when on many fronts the struggle is not in our favor.

The political work of the new International contains some other essential aspects of which we want to say a few things. The theoretical Marxist restoration undoubtedly led to the fundamental conclusions of the first constituent congress on programmatic matters, and to a good part of the doctrines best elaborated at the second, in 1920, the best congress of the International. Thus for the questions on the conditions of admission, on the task of the communist party, on the significance of the workers’ and peasants’ councils, on the work in the trade unions. But other questions are dealt with, with no less fidelity to the Marxist method in the general lines, but with a more pronounced character of originality with respect to the more serious shortcomings of the traditional socialist movement.

This is the case with the national and colonial question. The condemnation of social-nationalism, with its sophistry about national defense, war for democracy and freedom, and restoring the bourgeois juridical principle of nationality, is reaffirmed both theoretically and practically, without any room for misunderstanding. The importance of the social and political forces opposing the power of the main imperialist bourgeois states is evaluated in Marxist and dialectical terms, particularly in places where a modern proletariat has not yet developed, such as the colonies and smaller countries dominated by large capitalist metropolises. Thus, an ingenious political synthesis is created. It combines the struggle of the European proletariat and other more modern countries against the big bourgeois strongholds, on a strictly class-based platform, with the rebellion movements of the peoples of the East and other colonial nations. The goal is to shake the global foundation of capitalism’s defense with the help of all these forces. In this position, the world communist proletariat maintains its leadership and vanguard role. It does not compromise its ideological positions or its objective of achieving class dictatorship. At the same time, it makes no concessions to the flawed theoretical and political premises of the semi-bourgeois national revolutionaries in these countries. Proletarian communist parties must aim to take leadership of the movement away from them as soon as possible. This delicate historical question remains within the framework of revolutionary dialectics, as long as it is managed by politically mature Marxist forces. However, there is a potential danger if it is presented as a "new" concept, differentiating the International’s approach from that of the traditional Marxist left. Such a move would likely come from opportunists who still linger on the fringes of the International for unclear reasons. Under Lenin’s theoretical guidance and political direction, this danger was not to be feared. Instead, the focus was on intensifying revolutionary action globally, not weakening it.

We will soon say a few things about the ’agrarian’ question. Even in the Second Congress’s position on this matter, the core remains an analysis that highlights the true Marxist view of the agrarian economy. Lenin had already provided significant theoretical work in this field. Politically, the International finally addressed the agrarian problem, which opportunists avoided. They executed a clever maneuver, shifting from the revolutionary thesis – that the industrial proletariat would drive the revolution – to their opportunist strategy of courting the interests and class privileges of a pretentious workers’ aristocracy, aiming to align it with capital. The Third International’s agrarian doctrine is grounded in the ABC’s of Marxism. It clearly identifies modern agrarian and industrial business, traditional small business, and the regime of small businesses linked to the legal unity of large estates under a single owner, who exploits several land-working families. The gradual economic construction of socialism, as outlined in the Communist International’s general theory, leads to the conclusion that the proletarian dictatorship must apply different solutions to these various agricultural stages. Only the first stage aligns with the socializing program of large-scale industry. In the third stage, however, the immediate goal is to eliminate the landowner and distribute land to individual peasant families until technical conditions mature for centralized, industrial-type cultivation in a later stage. From this clear theoretical analysis – conveniently ignored by opportunists – the political relations between the industrial proletariat and various peasant classes emerge unequivocally. The analysis calls for complete alignment with land wage earners on industrialized estates, alliance with poor peasants who directly work the land, and contingent relations with semi-poor peasants. This approach secures a fundamental contribution to the revolution without ever losing sight of the distinction held by the great urban proletariat. This distinction is reinforced by the Soviet republic’s constitution, which gives far greater representation to workers than to peasant masses, and by the fact that it is the workers who supply the personnel for the machinery of the new workers’ state.

Exaggerations and misunderstandings are likely if the distinction of revolutionary tasks is even slightly overlooked. Comrade Trotsky’s criticism of the "peasant" tendencies that lead to opportunism in the French party is notable. It’s essential to remember that the International’s work doesn’t require presenting these ideas as new or unforeseen solutions to the fundamental Marxist line. Nor should these ideas be used to appease questionable attitudes. It also doesn’t seem necessary, even if no substantial dissent is implied, to present Bolshevism or Leninism, as comrade Zinoviev appears to do, as a doctrine in itself. This portrayal suggests a revolutionary ideology of the proletariat in alliance with the peasants. While comrade Zinoviev’s intentions may be clear, opportunist currents could misuse this as a theoretical formula for counter-revolutionaries, disguised as supporters of a historical retreat in the Russian revolution’s content. Among the finest traditions of the Bolshevik party is the brilliant historical intuition with which it addressed the social-revolutionary program. The party "stole" an essential point from it, not to give power to the peasant class, but to the working class. For only the working class, and not the peasants by themselves, can lead the peasants to liberation.

I cannot here give more than a hint of these issues, but comrades know, or can see, a pamphlet of mine on the ’agrarian question’ and, better, the theses of the Second Congress of our party on the question itself, which represent the unanimous stance of the Italian communists on the platform I have tried to briefly recall.


The alleged tactical opportunist

Let us now consider the most delicate and difficult aspect of Lenin’s character: his tactical criteria. Tactics are certainly not separate from doctrine, the program, or general politics. For this reason, we strongly reject the interpretation that opportunism – a term first defined by Frederick Engels, who, as if anticipating Bernstein’s distortions, condemned those who compromise long-term programmatic goals for short-term gains – is someone who made fatal concessions to ambiguous flexibility, flattering diplomacy, or so-called "realism" as understood by shopkeepers and philistines.

On this false note, the bourgeois insists to claim some sort of revenge on the ’utopianism’ foolishly attributed to Lenin and his school. The opportunist insists for similar reasons, while the anarchist does so to assert an illusory ability to maintain unwavering fidelity to revolutionary principles. I cannot, for many reasons, fully address the entire question of communist tactics here. Instead, I will offer a few observations on Lenin as a tactician and political maneuver, and clarify the true nature of his work. Tomorrow, a debate on this topic may become crucial, as it’s possible – and we will see why – that Lenin’s teachings could be misrepresented from their true meaning when not viewed as part of his formidable and complex and unitary whole of his work. We reject the notion that there is even the slightest discord between the rigid, implacable Lenin of preparation and debate, and the tireless Lenin of concrete achievements.

Here too it is appropriate to examine first Lenin’s tactics as leader of the Russian revolution, then as leader of the Communist International. There is much to be said about the tactics of the Bolshevik Party before the revolution: we have in fact said what the task of this party was in the great programmatic directives as in the criticism of its adversaries; it would still be necessary to discuss its behavior in relation to similar parties in the subsequent contingent situations that preceded the great autonomous action of 1917. This very important matter is continually invoked by the Russian Communists in their position on the problems of international tactics: and indisputably it must be taken into exact account, and will always be taken into account in the debates of the International.

Let us focus on a subject of primary importance, one that even the Russian comrades themselves disagreed on at the time: the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty of 1918 with imperialist Germany, driven primarily by Lenin’s foresight. Did it mean a compromise with Kaiserist and capitalist militarism? Yes, if one judges from a superficial and formalistic point of view; no, if one follows a Marxist dialectical criterion. On that occasion, Lenin dictated the true policy which took into account the great final revolutionary needs.

It was important to emphasize the mindset that fueled the Russian masses’ revolutionary energy: turning away from the front of the war of nations to overthrow the internal enemy. Equally important was creating the same defeatist sentiment within the ranks of the German army, as had been done from the beginning with the "fraternizations". The future proved Lenin right, while disproving those who thought the fight against militarist Germany should continue without considering long-term programmatic goals. These critics also ignored practical concerns, which, in this case, coincided with the programmatic ones. This doesn’t always happen, and when it doesn’t, tactical problems become more difficult. The certainty of Germany’s defeat had become clear due to military technical reasons. General Ludendorff wrote in his memoirs that the collapse of the German front, despite a series of resounding military victories, was due to moral, political reasons: the soldiers no longer wanted to fight. Lenin’s revolutionary policy, while using formal language in negotiations with the Kaiser’s delegates, managed to reawaken the exploited proletarian beneath the German soldier’s uniform. These soldiers were being sent to slaughter for the benefit of their oppressors.

Brest-Litovsk didn’t only save the Russian revolution from the assault of German capitalism. The Entente capitalism quickly took Germany’s place with equal counter-revolutionary arrogance. After gaining the critical months needed to transform the Red Army into an invincible bulwark, the treaty also played a key role in Germany’s defeat in the West. The defeat was wrongly attributed to the strategic skill of Foch and Diaz, the Entente’s military leaders, whose professional inferiority had been exposed repeatedly during the war.

Let us now turn to the subject that is most insisted upon to show the Lenin of concessions and transactions: that of the new Russian economic policy, to briefly mention it.

We have recalled that we must consider the economic task of the proletarian revolution, along with its necessary gradualness and international nature. We have also briefly noted the theoretical and political significance of the relationships that the Russian industrial proletariat logically had to establish with the peasant classes. But, our adversaries tell us, it was not just about proceeding slowly towards a socialist and then communist regime. Rather, they argue, there was a real retreat from outdated positions, a re-establishment of purely bourgeois forms that were meant to be suppressed. They claim it was a compromise with world capitalism, against which a war without quarter had been declared. This, they say, proves that the communists and Lenin have adapted to practicing the same opportunism they had loudly reproached others for.

We maintain, on the contrary, that there is no question of opportunism. The entire grand tactical maneuver was carried out in line with Lenin’s theoretical vision. It was applied by him hour by hour, up until almost two years ago. To be clear, this is also evident in the brilliant formulation of the problem given by Leon Trotsky in his powerful speech at the 4th World Congress. The constant and tenacious goal has always been the supreme interest of the revolutionary process and ultimate victory in the complex struggle against capitalism’s formidable and multiple resistances. The very name "Lenin" is a guarantee of this.

In the first period, the fundamental problem of the Russian revolution was the military struggle. This directly continued the revolutionary offensive, repelling multiple counteroffensives of reactionary forces. These forces were not just on the internal political front but on all fronts created against the white bands, supported by large and small bourgeois powers. In this epic struggle, which ended by the close of 1920, through various episodes and phases that I need not recall here, the Red Army and Red police acted with such brilliant determination in crushing the enemy that no one would speak of compromises or renouncing the broad class conflict between revolution and counterrevolution. Nothing so far suggests that this same determination will cease if the antagonism between the proletariat and world capitalism, on which the politics of the first workers’ and peasants’ state is built, becomes more acute or returns to the military terrain. In that period, the problem of building socialism was secondary. It was about, on one hand, preventing the proletariat’s political-military conquest from being shaken, and on the other, provoking the extension of revolutionary victory to other countries.

Whether, for this reason, the agents of the defeated and scattered white forces should be called back and told that, since a communist economy cannot be established overnight, power should be returned to them to manage the country with a bourgeois economy, is one possibility. Alternatively, this could be fixed by disarming the army and revolutionary state apparatus and relying on the so-called "free" and "spontaneous" initiatives of the "people", as anarchists suggest. They do so without realizing they are essentially proposing the same thing. These types of ideas we will leave to the madmen or imbeciles.

A very clear and courageous Marxist analysis leads the Bolsheviks, with Lenin at their head, towards the difficult solution.

Political and military necessity had ’imposed’, in that early period, a set of economic measures that were not taken for their own sake, but to crush the resistance of certain classes and strata. Lenin called this set of measures ’war communism’. Thus it was necessary, without being able to think of any middle ground, to ruthlessly demolish the old administrative apparatus of Russian industry, which was, in a backward country, nevertheless highly centralized; to expropriate not only the large landowner, but also the middle landowner because he constituted an anti-revolutionary class to be put out of action; to completely monopolize the grain trade, as it was otherwise impossible to ensure the supply of the large centers and the army: without questioning whether the proletarian state could have stably held the socialist organization to replace all these forms suppressed by necessity.

When this period came to an end, the problem presented itself in its essentially economic aspects, and a new and different solution was consequently found. Today, all this becomes crystal-clear, provided it is examined without being clouded by pseudo-revolutionary prejudices. Within the framework of Russian society one recognizes, says Lenin, the most varied economic forms: patriarchal agricultural regime, small-scale agrarian production for the market, private capitalism, state capitalism, socialism. The struggle is economically not so much about the transition from state capitalism to socialism, but rather the struggle against this ’state capitalism’ of the ’octopus’ of the petty-bourgeois peasant economy and private capitalism. What state capitalism is as indicated by Lenin is well clarified by Trotsky in the speech already mentioned (which should be published in Italian in a very popular pamphlet). It is not, as in the traditional meaning of the phrase, socialization implemented by a ’bourgeois’ state, but socialization, implemented indeed, in certain fields of the economy, by the proletarian political power, but with reservations and limitations that amount to keeping intact the supreme political and financial control of the state while adopting the methods of capitalist ’commercial bookkeeping’.

That is to say, the Russian state acts as entrepreneur and producer, but it cannot, in the real Russian economic conditions, be the sole entrepreneur, as it would be in the ’socialist’ regime: for it must allow distribution to take place, not by means of a state apparatus, but by means of the free market of the bourgeois type, where the small peasant-merchant, the small industrial entrepreneur and in certain cases the local medium capitalist and the large foreign capitalist are allowed to intervene, in organizations and enterprises, but strongly controlled by the workers’ republic with its appropriate organs.

Acting otherwise, especially regarding the agrarian question, would have paralyzed any chance for productive life. Since socialization or even state management was not feasible for a significant portion of Russia’s rudimentary agriculture, the only way to get the peasants to produce was to allow them the freedom to trade agricultural commodities. This came after they paid a tax ’in kind’ to the state, which replaced the requisitions imposed out of necessity during ’wartime communism’.

This new orientation of economic policy is presented as a kind of retreat, but this retreat, in the actual sense now given to it, is but an inevitable moment in the complex evolution from capitalism and pre-capitalism to socialism: a moment foreseeable for the other proletarian revolutions as well, but evidently of less significance the more advanced big capitalism is in their respective countries, the more the ’territory’ of proletarian victory will have previously spread.

Another danger that the NEP temporarily contained must be noted: the downgrading of the industrial proletariat. The difficulties in supplying the large centers had caused a migration of workers from the factories to the countryside: this, in addition to the economic consequences, had a very serious socio-political one, depriving the revolution and its organs of their main base: the urban proletariat, and thus compromising the most essential conditions for the development of the entire process. The measures adopted made it possible to face this phenomenon too, to increasingly raise the standard of economic life, to fight against the natural scourge of famine, which had unfortunately come to add to all the difficulties caused by the adversary.

Among the measures characterizing the NEP is, of course, the establishment of an economic and even diplomatic way of life with the bourgeois states. No serious theory of revolution can claim that, since there are bourgeois and proletarian states, there must be permanent war between them: this war is indeed a possible fact, but it is in the revolutionary interest to provoke it only when it serves to favorably precipitate that situation of civil war within the bourgeois countries, which is the ’natural’ way by which the proletariat’s victory is achieved. It is therefore nothing strange, while this is not possible from the communist point of view, that the bourgeois states have themselves ascertained the impossibility of arousing an anti-communist uprising in Russia, we are in a period of military truce and economic relations, the need for which is concretely apparent on both sides. It would even be ridiculous to reduce such an issue to repugnance for certain diplomatic contacts and the demands of etiquette.

The same situation, due to which the Genoa conference broke down, shows that the Russian government does not renounce questions of principle at all and does not even hint at a return to the directives of the private economy, as all our adversaries like to insinuate continuously. By tearing away from capitalism, even at the cost of an adequate compensation taken from the various Russian natural resources, some of its forces promoting large-scale production, we are continuing the work theorized by Lenin to gradually suppress the small-scale industrial, agrarian and commercial economy which is the enemy of the proletariat, and the main enemy where, as in Russia, the organization of political domination of big capitalism has already been put out of action. And the problem of political relations with the peasant class is not solved with a formula that smacks of opportunism, because, if concessions are made to the small peasant, one does not lose sight of the fact that he is a revolutionary factor in that his struggle against the boyar has been welded to the struggle of the proletariat against capitalism, but in further development the workers’ program must definitively overwhelm and surpass the peasant program of the alliance.

After these incomplete references, I will address the concept many have formed regarding Lenin’s tactics for the Communist International and his sharp criticisms of the "left’s" tactical approach.

Lenin’s approach to examining tactical problems and developing the theory of ’compromise’ is fully satisfactory. But I want to say at once that, in my opinion, the extensive task of applying this method to fully develop the tactics for the International is far from complete. Lenin has thoroughly addressed issues of doctrine and program, but not tactics. There’s a risk that his tactical method will be misrepresented, to the point of obscuring its clear revolutionary programmatic foundations, which could undermine the consistency of our program. Some right-wing elements in the International too often use Lenin’s tactical approach to justify forms of adaptation and potential renunciation that have nothing in common with the bright revolutionary and finalist line connect all of Lenin’s grand work. This is a very serious and delicate problem.

What is Lenin’s main criticism of the ’left’s’ errors? He condemns any tactical evaluation that, instead of relying on the concrete realism of historical dialectics and the practical effectiveness of tactical approaches, becomes trapped in naive, abstract, moralistic, or mystical formulas. These formulas often lead to results completely detached from our method. The whole rebuke to the pseudo-revolutionary phraseology which often arbitrarily takes the place of the real Marxist arguments is not only just, but is perfectly in tune with the whole framework of Lenin’s grand work of restoring revolutionary values ’in earnest’, which we here vaguely try to trace in its synthetic outline. Tactical arguments based on fear of certain words, gestures, or interactions, or on a supposed purity and untouchability of communists in action, are laughable and represent the childish immaturity Lenin opposes – born from bourgeois theoretical prejudices with an anti-materialist bias. Replacing Marxist tactics with moral doctrines is utter balderdash.

This does not mean that certain tactical conclusions supported by the left, and defended with naive arguments, cannot be re-presented. These conclusions can be the result of a genuine Marxist analysis, stripped of all ethical and aesthetic pretensions. They should be fully prepared to accept, with good reason, the demands of revolutionary tactics, even when those tactics may lack immediate elegance or nobility. For example, in the tactical theses of the Second Congress of our party, there was an attempt to approach this. While criticizing the tactical method of the united front of political parties as a permanent organ above them, it never uses the argument that it is unworthy of communists to deal with opportunist leaders or approach their followers. I believe even the term "opportunist" should be reconsidered, as it carries a moralistic tone. I mention this problem not to debate it, but simply as an example for clarification.

Considering the latest results of the International’s tactical experience, and the fact that Lenin has not been its driving force for two years, we have the right to say the problem still requires discussion. We reject the idea that Lenin’s Marxist realism can be reduced to the formula that every tactical expedient is acceptable for our goals. Tactics, in turn, influence those who use them. It cannot be assumed that a true communist, with a mandate from the true International and a genuine communist party, can act anywhere without the risk of mistakes. A recent example, which I briefly mention, is the workers’ government in Saxony. The president of the International was rightly scandalized when the comrade sent to the state chancellorship, instead of following revolutionary tactics and organizing the arming of the proletariat, became a prisoner of legal observances. Zinoviev noted it wasn’t about communist intentions but rather a Germanic respect for state legality. The statement is strong, perhaps even worthy of Marx himself. However, Zinoviev must question whether the failure was due to the comrade’s qualities or the inherent flaws in the planned tactics, which faced insurmountable difficulties.

Doesn’t ’stretching’ tactical projects beyond all limits clash with our own theoretical and programmatic conclusions? These are the result of a truly realistic examination, backed by continuous and extensive experience. We reject as illusory and contrary to our principles any tactic that believes it can replace the overthrow and destruction of the bourgeois state machine, so strongly emphasized by Lenin, with the infiltration of some Trojan horse into the system. This is the petty-bourgeois illusion that the state can be blown up with a single symbolic act. The situation of the Saxon communist ministers, which ended in ridicule, proves that one cannot capture the capitalist state fortress with clever tricks that avoid a direct assault by the revolutionary masses. It is a grave mistake to make the proletariat believe such tactics exist, allowing them to avoid the hard road of effort and sacrifice. This belief has caused a serious disillusionment within the German party, leading to unfortunate consequences. Although it’s debatable that this caused the failure to launch a direct general attack when it could have succeeded, the issue remains. Now the German communists are calling for general insurrection and proletarian dictatorship. It should have been made clear beforehand that, while situations and power relations are variable, and sometimes such calls cannot be made immediately, the path to revolution is generally fixed. There are no "half-revolutions, only full revolutions".

Many would have us believe that Lenin’s approach was to always leave the page blank when addressing daily tactical tasks. They argue that this excludes any generalization. This, they claim, represents the so-called "true Marxist" realism. As a result, we see a "true Marxism" emerge, which could eventually resemble the "true socialism" criticized by Karl Marx. What we know of Lenin, and the immense synthetic scope of his work, allows us to reject this distortion. It would reduce him to vulgar opportunism, which he spent his life fighting against. The Marxist tactical method must be free from preconceptions drawn from arbitrary ideologies or psychological attitudes introduced subtly. It must be grounded in reality and experience. However, this doesn’t mean sinking into the gossipy and cowardly "eclecticism". This eclecticism, condemned during the rise of Russian Bolshevism, hides the petty-bourgeois cowardice of false revolutionaries. Our realism and experimentalism, while avoiding needless ideological abstractions, aim to develop the movement’s consciousness. This is done on a rigorously scientific basis, with a unified and synthetic direction, rather than capricious or arbitrary daily practice.

In Lenin, we affirm that tactical evaluations, even bold ones, were never guided by spontaneous sentimental suggestions or rigid formalism. He never strayed from the revolutionary platform. This platform was always coordinated with the supreme and integral aim of the universal revolution. This coordination must be clarified and specified in the tactical discussions of the International. Lenin provided the method and certain results, but a complete elaboration was not possible, as history hadn’t allowed for it yet. As the International continues its work, it must guard against the danger that the thesis of maximum tactical freedom might conceal the abandonment of Lenin’s platform. This would result in losing sight of revolutionary goals. If these goals are lost, tactical decisions would become pure anti-realistic voluntarism. Tactical decisions would no longer be based on a coherent set of directives but on the will of one or more individuals. This would overturn the entire unitary discipline, which is key to the effectiveness of our organization. And with that, I will say no more on the subject.

With those who would overemphasize in Lenin the tactician "without fixed rules" we will always bring up the unity that binds all his political work. Lenin is that great man who, with his eyes fixed on the final revolutionary goal, is not afraid of being called, in the time of preparation, the dissolver, the centralizer, the autocrat, the devourer of his masters and friends. He is the ruthless purveyor of clarity and precision where this entails the collapse of false harmonies and posturing alliances. He is the man who knows how to stall when it is appropriate, but who at a certain moment knows how to formidably dare and, as I have recalled, in October 1917, faced with the very hesitations of the CC of his party, after pestering it with pressing messages, rushes in person to Petrograd, incites the workers to take up arms, passes over all uncertainties. A bourgeois, who heard him speak, recounts: ’I had been told of his cold, realistic, practical language; all I heard was a series of fiery incitements to the struggle: Take power! Overthrow the bourgeoisie! Oust the government!"

Now the Lenin of pondered tactical assessments is the same man who in potency embodies those faculties of revolutionary audacity. Many a marmot would like to clothe himself in the skin of this lion. So we say to so many who invoke dexterity and elasticity in tactics and cite Lenin, but whose revolutionary potentiality we have reason to doubt: do likewise, show that you are embodied in the dominant necessity of the victory of the revolution, which in the culminating moment is made up of irresistible momentum and hard blows, and then you will have the right to speak in his name!

No, Lenin does not represent the practical unpredictability of opportunism, but rather the steadfast unity of revolutionary force and theory.

The function of the leader

Lenin is dead. The colossus, and not since yesterday, has abandoned his work. What does this mean for us? What is the place of the function of the leaders in the whole of our movement and in the way in which we judge it? What will be the consequence of the disappearance of the greatest leader on the action of the Russian Communist Party and of the Communist International, on the whole world revolutionary struggle? Let us go back a little, before coming to the conclusion of this already long speech, to our evaluation of this important problem.

There are those who roar against leaders, who would like to do without them, who describe, or fantasize about, a revolution "without leaders". Lenin himself illuminates this question with his clear criticism, clearing it of superficial confusion. There are, as historical realities, the masses, the classes, the parties and the leaders. The masses are divided into classes, the classes are represented by political parties, these are led by leaders: the matter is very simple. Concretely speaking, the problem of leaders has taken on a special aspect in the Second International. Its parliamentary and trade union leaders had encouraged the interests of certain particular categories of the proletariat, for whom they tended to constitute privileges through anti-revolutionary compromises with the bourgeoisie and the state.

These leaders ended up cutting the bond that united them to the revolutionary proletariat, becoming more and more attached to the vehicle of the bourgeoisie: in 1914 it was openly revealed that they, from instruments of proletarian action, had become pure and simple agents of capitalism. This criticism, and the righteous indignation against them, must not mislead us to the point of denying that leaders, but leaders very different from those, will exist and cannot but exist also in the parties and in the revolutionary International. That every directive function is automatically transformed, whatever the organization and its relationships, into a form of tyranny or oligarchy, is such a trite and disproportionate argument that even Machiavelli five centuries ago, in The Prince, could give a critique of it of crystalline evidence. Of course, the proletariat faces this problem, which is not always easy, of having leaders and of preventing their functions from becoming arbitrary and unfaithful to the class interest: but this problem is certainly not resolved by persisting in not seeing it or by claiming to remove it by abolishing the leaders, a measure which no one would be able to indicate what this consists of.

From our historical materialist point of view, the function of leaders is studied by stepping decisively outside the narrow limits in which the vulgar individualist conception encloses it. For us, an individual is not a separate, self-contained entity, like a machine operating independently. Nor is it driven by some divine creative force or any philosophical abstraction, such as immanence, the absolute spirit, or similar obscure ideas. The manifestation and function of the individual is determined by the general conditions of the environment and society and its history. What is elaborated in a man’s brain has had its preparation in the relations with other men and in the fact, also of an intellectual nature, of other men. Some privileged and exercised brains, better constructed and perfected machines, better translate and express and rework a wealth of knowledge and experience that would not exist if it did not rely on the life of the community. The leader, more than inventing, reveals the mass to itself and ensures that it can recognize itself better and better in its situation in relation to the social world and the historical becoming, and can express in exact external formulas its tendency to act in that sense, the conditions of which are set by the social factors, the mechanism of which is ultimately interpreted starting from the investigation of the economic elements. What’s more, the greatest scope of Marxist historical materialism, as an ingenious solution to the problem of human determination and freedom, lies in its ability to break free from the vicious circle of viewing the individual as isolated from the environment. It has instead returned the analysis to the experimental study of collective life. Thus the verifications of the Marxist deterministic method, provided by historical facts, allow us to conclude that our objectivist and scientific approach is correct. This holds true even though science, at its current level of development, cannot yet explain how somatic and material factors on human organisms are expressed in collective and personal psychic processes.

The leader’s brain is a material instrument that works through its connection to the entire class and party. The theories the leader formulates and the norms he prescribes as a practical leader are not his own creations. They are the result of clarifying a consciousness made up of materials belonging to the class-party, shaped by vast experience. Not all the elements of this experience are always present to the leader as learned facts. This helps explain certain intuitive phenomena, often mistaken for divination. These phenomena do not prove the transcendence of individuals over the masses. Instead, they confirm that the leader is an instrument of common thought and action, not its driving force.

The problem of leaders cannot be posed in the same way in all historical epochs, because its data changes in the course of evolution. Here, too, we move away from conceptions that claim these problems are resolved by immanent data, in the eternity of the facts of the spirit. Just as our consideration of the history of the world assigns a special place to the class victory of the proletariat, the first class to win possessing an exact theory of social conditions and knowledge of its task, and which can, ’coming out of human prehistory’, organize the domination of man over economic laws, so the function of the proletarian leader is a new and original phenomenon in history, and we can well dismiss those who want to raise it again by citing the prevarications of Alexander or Napoleon. And indeed, for the special and luminous figure of Lenin, even if he did not live through the period that would appear to be the classic period of the workers’ revolution, when this would show its greatest strengths in terrifying the philistines, the biography encounters new characters and the traditional historical clichés of greed for power, ambition, satrapism, pale and fade in comparison with the straight, simple and iron story of his life and the last detail of his personal habit.

The leaders, and the leader, are those who best and most effectively embody the thought and will of the class. These definitions are both necessary and shaped by the premises that historical factors provide. Lenin was an exceptional, extraordinary example of this function in both intensity and scope. While it is remarkable to study his work to understand our collective historical dynamics, we cannot claim that his presence solely determined the revolutionary process he led. Even less can we say that his death halts the progress of the working classes in their march forward.

The organization into a party, which allows the class to truly exist and act as a class, functions as a unified mechanism. In this mechanism, the various ’brains’ (and other individual organs) perform different tasks based on their aptitude and potential. All serve a purpose and interest that become more unified over time and space (a term used empirically, not transcendentally). Not all individuals have the same place or weight within the organization. This division of labor occurs according to a more rational plan, which applies today to the party-class and will apply tomorrow to society. It is out of the question for those at the top to be privileged over others. Our revolutionary evolution leads not to disintegration, but to an increasingly scientific connection between individuals.

It is anti-individualist insofar as it is materialist; it does not believe in the soul or a metaphysical, transcendent content of the individual, but places the functions of the individual in a collective framework, creating a hierarchy that unfolds in the sense of increasingly eliminating coercion and replacing it with technical rationality. The party is already an example of a collectivity without coercion.

These general elements of the question show how no one better than us is beyond the banal meaning of egalitarianism and ’numerical’ democracy. If we do not believe in the individual as a sufficient basis of activity, what value can a function of the brute number of individuals have for us? What can democracy or autocracy mean to us? Yesterday, we had a machine of the highest order (what sportspeople might call a ’champion of exceptional class’). This comrade stood at the very top of the hierarchical pyramid. Today, he is no longer there, but the mechanism can still function. It will do so with a slightly different hierarchy, where the top is occupied by a collective body made up, of course, of chosen elements. The question is not posed to us with a legal content, but as a technical problem not prejudiced by philosophies of constitutional or, worse still, natural law. There is no principled reason for us to write ’chief’ or ’committee of chiefs’ in our statutes, and from this premise a Marxist solution to the question of choice begins: a choice that makes, more than anything else, the dynamic history of the movement and not the banality of elective consultations. We prefer not to write the word leader into the organizational rule because we will not always have within the ranks an individuality of the strength of a Marx or a Lenin. In conclusion, if the man, the ’instrument’ of exception exists, the movement uses him: but the movement lives the same when such an eminent personality is not to be found. Our theory of the leader is a long way from the nonsense with which theologies and official politics demonstrate the necessity of pontiffs, kings, ’first citizens’, dictators and dukes, poor puppets who delude themselves that they make history.

More than that: this process of elaboration of material belonging to a collectivity, which we see in the individual leader, just as it takes from the collectivity and returns to it enhanced and transformed energies, nothing can remove it from its circulation within the collectivity. The death of Lenin’s organism does not at all mean the end of this function if, as we have shown, in reality the material as he elaborated it must still be the vital nourishment of the class and the party. In this purely scientific sense, trying to guard ourselves, as far as possible, against mystical concepts and literary amplifications, we can speak of an immortality, and for the same reason of Lenin’s particular historical approach and his task to show how much broader this immortality is than that of the traditional heroes of which mysticism and literature speak to us.

For us, death is not the end of a conceptual life rooted in a person, but rather a physical fact that can be scientifically understood. We are absolutely certain that Lenin’s intellectual function, tied to his brain, ceased with his physical death. There is no incorporeal Lenin to revere as invisibly present at our rituals. That powerful and remarkable machine is, unfortunately, destroyed forever. Yet, we are certain that its function continues and lives on through the organs of battle he once led. He is dead, as confirmed by the autopsy, which showed the cause: progressive hardening of cerebral vessels due to relentless pressure. Mechanisms of such immense power often have a short lifespan. Their exceptional exertion is the reason for their early breakdown.

What killed Lenin is this physiological process, determined by the titanic work to which he wanted, and had to, submit in his last years, because the collective function required that this organ work with greatest intensity, and it could not be otherwise. The resistances that opposed the revolutionary task ruined this magnificent tool, but after it had broken the vital points of the adverse matter on which it operated.

Lenin himself wrote that even after the political victory of the proletariat, the struggle is not over. We cannot simply remove the bourgeoisie’s monstrous corpse after its defeat; it remains, decomposing among us, and its pestilential fumes infect the air we breathe. These poisonous remnants, in various forms, have overcome even the best revolutionary leaders. They manifest as the immense tasks needed to face world reaction, counter-revolutionary plots, and the desperate struggle to escape the hunger caused by the capitalist blockade. Lenin had to subject his body to this fight without being able to spare himself. These poisons also took the form of the bullets fired by the social revolutionary Dora Kaplan, which remained lodged in Lenin’s flesh and contributed to his decline. Striving to maintain the objectivity of our method, we can see in these pathological phenomena of social life a way to judge certain attitudes that would otherwise seem absurd, such as the anarchists’ comment on Lenin’s death titled: "Mourning or celebration?". These too are remnants of a past that must disappear. Paranoid futurism has always been a symptom of great crises. Lenin sacrificed himself fighting against these remnants, even within the triple fortress of the first revolution. The fight will be long, but in the end, the proletariat will rise above the poisonous remnants of disorder and servitude, and the memory of them will fade.

Our perspective of the future

At the moment of Lenin’s death, a question arises before us, and we will certainly not escape it. Has Lenin’s great prediction failed? Is the revolutionary crisis, which we awaited with him, postponed, and for how long?

It is not the first time that we Marxists have been reminded that the revolutionary, ’catastrophic’ predictions of our masters have been belied by facts. Especially in the works of socialist opportunists, one complacently enumerates how many times Marx waited for revolution and it did not come.

In 1847, in ’49, in ’50, in ’62, in ’72, Marx repeats his conviction - and the relevant passages are quoted more or less exactly - that the economic-political crisis of capitalism corresponding to that given era will be resolved in the social revolution. The passages are taken at random from theoretical works of that complex corpus which are the materials of Marxism. Naturally, it is the same critics who would then serve us a reformist Marx and all "peaceful sunsets" without being able to tell us how he would then reconcile himself with Marx the hasty and impatient announcer of apocalyptic catastrophes. But let us leave them and see what can be said about this delicate subject of revolutionary prediction.

If we consider the activity of a Marxist party in its purely theoretical aspect of studying the situation and its developments, we must admit something. If this analysis had reached its maximum precision, it should be possible, at least in general terms, to say whether we are closer or farther from the final revolutionary crisis. However, first, the conclusions of Marxist criticism are continuously evolving as the proletariat becomes a more conscious class. That degree of perfection is only a limit to which we strive to approach. Secondly, our method does not claim to make a perfect prophecy. Instead, it intelligently applies determinism to establish that a thesis depends on certain conditions. We are more interested in explaining how a process will unfold under specific conditions rather than simply predicting what will happen. The essential point affirmed by Marx and Lenin, which we still hold, is that modern capitalism creates the necessary conditions for proletarian revolution. When the revolution happens, it will follow a specific process. We have outlined the broad strokes of that process as the conclusion of a vast critique based on experience.

If we were to revisit the entire question of how the proletarian party can hasten this process, it wouldn’t be hard to reach a conclusion. The party must be prepared for how to act in the most varied circumstances. However, since this is an empirical historical fact and not an absolute, unquestionable truth, which we don’t believe in as a nec plus ultra (best/most extreme example of), it’s important that the party does more than just know how to act when the revolution comes. It must also believe that the revolution will come as soon as possible. The goal of total revolution should so deeply inspire the party’s actions, even years after the revolution, that as long as it avoids serious errors in assessing the balance of forces, we can say that it is "useful" for revolutionary forecasts to be somewhat ahead of events.

History shows us that those who have not believed in revolutions have never made them: those who have so often anticipated them as imminent have often, if not always, seen them come true. It is true that, unlike other movements, the final goal for us is not set as a myth to drive and determine action. However, it is equally true that, in the objective and Marxist view of the formation of mass psychology, as well as that of the leaders, this emphasis on the likelihood of revolution can, under the right conditions, serve a useful purpose.

We do not say that the communist leader, even knowing the revolution to be impossible, must always declare it imminent. On the contrary, this dangerous demagogy must be avoided, and above all, the difficulties of revolutionary problems must be brought into view. But in a certain sense, the revolutionary perspective must be revived in the ideology of the party and the masses, as it is revived in the minds of the leaders themselves, in the form of a coming closer to us in time.

Marx lived in expectation of the revolution, and this places him forever above the injury that revisionism has done to him. Lenin after 1905, when Menshevism despaired of the proletarian revolution, expected it for 1906. Lenin was wrong. But what impression does this error leave, considering it caused no strategic disaster? In fact, it ensured the revolutionary party’s independent survival. When the revolution finally came, even if belatedly, Lenin positioned himself as its leader. Meanwhile, the Mensheviks shamefully sided with the enemy. What impact does this have on the workers?

One or more of these failed predictions do not and will not diminish the figure of Lenin, all the more so as they do not diminish the figure of Marx, since Lenin actually gave the bourgeoisie a ’taste’ of what a revolution is. Let the reformists or anarchists protest that ’it is not a revolution’, which only serves to submerge them in the ridicule they deserve in the eyes of the simplest of proletarians.

In conclusion, each of our revolutionary conclusions or ’forecasts’ is made up of two parts. The second part is the vital one. The first, which may include a date or a prediction, is of secondary value. It is a postulate used for agitation and propaganda. This part is a partially arbitrary hypothesis, much like those any army must pose when preparing its plans. These plans assume the enemy’s movements and other factors beyond the control of those in command.

But do we really want to ask ourselves what are the prospects that we face today? Communists all over the world support Lenin’s thesis, that the world war has opened the revolutionary and "final" crisis of the capitalist world. There may have been secondary errors in the evaluation of the rapidity of this crisis and the rapidity with which the world proletariat could have taken advantage of it, but we maintain the essential part of the affirmation, since the factual considerations on which it is based are still standing.

It is possible that we will experience a phase of reduced revolutionary activity. This does not mean a reorganization of capitalism at its core. Rather, it suggests that revolutionary efforts may become less frequent or less successful. This possibility, far from contradicting Lenin’s essential evaluations, exposes us to the risk of entering a phase of opportunist activity.

In the introduction to State and Revolution Lenin himself says that it is inevitable that the great revolutionary pioneers are falsified: as was the case with Marx and his best followers. Will Lenin himself escape this fate? Certainly not, although it is certain that the attempt will have less response among the ranks of the proletariat, who by instinct will continue to hear in the name of Lenin not the word of distrust, but that of generous encouragement to fight. However, we already see the global bourgeoisie, astonished and dismayed by the stability of the regime founded by Lenin. They seem to only now realize its strength, as the mourning of over a hundred million people manifests in ways surpassing all historical memories of collective demonstrations. To console themselves, they describe a Lenin who is different from his ideas, cause, and flag. They say Lenin was victorious not for advancing, but for retreating on certain fronts and abandoning key parts of his program. We reject these deceptive compliments. The greatest revolutionary does not need approval or concessions from the capitalist press. We do not believe in the sincerity of these homages that cross the class divide. Instead, we see in them yet another bourgeois attempt to influence and control proletarian ideology. Around Lenin’s coffin gather the burning fervor of millions of workers worldwide, alongside the hatred – though not always openly admitted – of the capitalist class. Lenin made them feel the sting of revolution in their flesh, with its unyielding point aimed at their heart, and it will find its mark.

This hypocritical attitude of bourgeois thought almost certainly preludes other attempts at falsification, more or less close to us, against which tomorrow’s militants have a duty to fight: a duty to be fulfilled, if not with the same brilliance, however with the same decision Lenin showed if compared to the masters of Marxism.

I cannot even begin to outline an analysis of the current global situation here. We are witnessing a retreat of the working class in many countries, where fascist-like regimes are gaining power. We are not so naive as to contrast these countries solely with the great and glorious Soviet Union of Russia. We also see bourgeois leftists and social democrats, like MacDonald and Vandervelde, starting and preparing new exploits in other nations. The capitalist offensive has been, and remains, an international phenomenon. It seeks to unify anti-proletarian forces, both politically and militarily, to confront revolutionary threats and further degrade the economic conditions of the working class.

In broad terms, it is a bourgeois attempt to fill the wealth gaps caused by the war through depressing the wages of labor. The political offensive’s success in many countries, along with an analysis of the world economy, increasingly shows that the damage to the bourgeois system is irreparable. Apparent recoveries and quick fixes only lead to further difficulties and unsolvable conflicts. All countries are heading toward deeper economic depression. Today, for example, we are witnessing the collapse of France’s financial power, a political stronghold of bourgeois reaction, as a repercussion of the reparations crisis. One cannot, of course, counter this with the supposed improvement in the Italian economy. Even if the tacky propaganda promoting this were correct, it wouldn’t change the overall picture. You all know that in Italy, not only the proletariat, but even the upper classes, are experiencing worsening economic hardship and tension. Italy has a political apparatus that, better than any other, pushes the consequences onto the working class while protecting the profiteering industrial and agricultural elite. These are the ones who benefit.

The bourgeois counteroffensive is for us the proof of the inevitability of the revolution, which has entered into the very consciousness of the ruling classes. Because the superiority of the Marxist revolutionary doctrine also lies in this, that the opposing classes themselves are forced to feel its correctness and act according to this feeling, despite the continuous abortions of doctrines and ideological restorations that they put into circulation for the use of the masses. If we could continue examining how the bourgeoisie has tried to find ways around the "catastrophic predictions" made by proletarian theorists, we would see the pattern. The combination of deceptive tactics like economic and political collaboration, championed by the democrats and social democrats, with open counterattacks and punitive actions, shows that all resources are now being used by the reaction. Soon, it will have nothing left to oppose the inevitable collapse. Even if its goal is to let all human social life collapse alongside the bourgeois regime, it will have no power to stop the revolution’s victory.

How this development will take place and how it will affect the formation of the fighting phalanx of the proletariat, undermined by enemy’s enticements and bullying, is not given here to say. But all our experience, the doctrine built on it by the working class, the colossal contribution made to this titanic work by Lenin himself, lead us to conclude that we will not see a stable phase of the reorganization of private capitalism and bourgeois rule. Through continuous shocks, and we do not know how soon, we will arrive at the outcome that the theory of Marxism and the example of the Russian revolution point us to.

Lenin may not have accurately gauged the distance separating us from this historical outcome. However, we are still authorized, with a formidable array of arguments, to assert that history will follow his path. The future will pass through Lenin’s ideas and methods. It will reproduce the revolutionary phases that he revived in Marxist theory and strengthened in practice.

This is the unshakable position that we assume in the face of any temporary prevalence of opposing forces, as well as in the face of any attempt at oblique revisionism tomorrow.

The theoretical, political and organizational weapons which Lenin hands over to us, are already battle-tested and victorious, they are hardened enough to be able to defend the work of the revolution, his work.

Lenin’s work clearly defines our task. By following its wonderful path, we, the communist proletariat of the world, will show how revolutionaries know how to dare everything in the supreme moment. Just as we will know, during difficult times, to wait without betraying, without hesitating, and without doubting. We will never desert or abandon, even for a moment, the grand work: the demolition of the monstrous structure of bourgeois oppression.