Lenin: A Revolutionary Life (34 page)

World revolution was an essential part of Lenin’s revolutionary discourse. For a Marxist it could not be otherwise. This was doubly so for a Russian Marxist. Only by seeing the Russian Revolution as an essential component of something larger could one possibly promote a Marxist revolution in a Russia Lenin frequently acknowledged to be backward and with a proletariat he also described on numerous occasions as backward. It followed that, internally, the first duty of a Russian Marxist was to overcome backwardness. Ironically, the first step of the Revolution in Russia was to build its own prerequisites. It had to establish the conditions which were theoretically required for it to have come to power in the first place! In a word, we have already termed this productionism – putting every effort into developing the economy to a high level of output consistent with constructing socialism. Lenin made it clear many times that what was being built in Soviet Russia could not be called socialism: that was further down the line. Lenin eventually settled on state capitalism as the term to best describe what existed. What did he mean by the term?

The clearest expression of its essence came in June and July of 1919 in the pamphlet
A Great Beginning.
Lenin argued that ‘in the last analysis labour productivity is the most important, the principal thing for the victory of the new social system.’ It had also been the key to the capitalist revolution: ‘Capitalism created a productivity of labour unknown under serfdom. Capitalism can only be utterly vanquished by socialism creating a new and much higher productivity of labour.’ [SW 3 219] He had already made similar statements in 1918 at the time of adoption of the new line in the draft and final versions of
The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government
. But how was it to be achieved? In this light the hated Taylor system of scientific management was transformed from the most advanced capitalist tool for the exploitation of labour into a key weapon in the liberation of labour. However, for the worker in question the daily grind of work would not be much different under either dispensation, and intensive labour and associated systems like piecework remained highly unpopular with workers. Other ways to achieve it were equally unpopular. Paying engineers and managers high wages was one. The new emphasis on discipline and one-man management was another. Lenin also set great store by voluntary labour days known as
subbotniki
or subbotniks. The word derives from the Russian for Saturday because it usually involved giving up part of a Saturday to do work voluntarily. This might mean an extra day in the factory to produce a locomotive or a boiler without being paid or it might involve volunteering for communal work such as cleaning streets. As an example to his countrymen and women Lenin himself participated on 1 May 1920, helping to move lumber in the Kremlin. He had great praise for the system, though from an interesting angle. The point, he argued, once again in
A Great Beginning
, was that, although no one knew if subbotniks would work, they were of ‘enormous historical significance precisely because they demonstrate the conscious and voluntary initiative of the workers in developing the productivity of labour, in adopting a new labour discipline, in creating socialist conditions of economy and life.’ [SW 3 216] Lenin was perceptive enough to understand that voluntary labour alone would never enable the Soviet system to catch up with the capitalists and achieve ‘scientific American efficiency of labour’. [CW 42 68–84] What other strategies were there?

Echoing the original relationship foreshadowed in
The April Theses
he went on to say ‘The possibility of building socialism depends exactly upon our success in combining the Soviet power and the Soviet organization of administration with the up-to-date achievements of capitalism. We must organize in Russia the study and teaching of the Taylor system and systematically try it out and adapt it to our own ends.’ [SW 2 664
Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government
] Although Lenin had many ‘most important’, ‘vital’, ‘essential’ and ‘all that is needed’ formulae and the use of such terms has to be understood rhetorically rather than literally, the theme of Soviet power and disciplined labour remained strong throughout the rest of his life. In
A Great Beginning
he expressed it most fully:

In order to achieve victory, in order to build and consolidate social
ism, the proletariat must fulfil a twofold or dual task: first, it must, by its supreme heroism in the revolutionary struggle against capital, win over the entire mass of the working and exploited people; it must win them over, organize them and lead them in the struggle to overthrow the bourgeoisie and utterly suppress their resistance. Secondly, it must lead the whole mass of the working and exploited people, as well as all the petty-bourgeois groups, on the road of new economic development, towards the creation of a new social bond, a new labour discipline, a new organization of labour, which will combine the last word in science and capitalist technology with the mass association of class-conscious workers creating large-scale socialist industry. [SW 3 215]

If one also adds their prescriptive nature, far removed from the once-promised ‘complete creative freedom for the masses’, most of what Lenin was about when in power can be found encapsulated in those words.

‘The last word in science and capitalist technology.’ Lenin was extremely interested in technological fixes to Russia’s problems. He was fascinated by the liberating potential of modern technology. Even during the war scientific research establishments remained operative. Although he was not a radical, the world-renowned psychologist Pavlov was pro
tected and, to discourage him from emigrating, Lenin ordered he should be given ‘more or less decent conditions’. Some scientists, like Timiriazev, came to sympathize with the Revolution but most were neutral or hostile. Even so, one of the most remarkable features of the early Soviet years is that the Academy of Sciences, Russia’s leading research institution which covered sciences and humanities (social sciences not yet having developed independently), was allowed to continue with a high degree of autonomy until 1928. Lenin always assumed that science and socialism enjoyed a special relationship and would reinforce one another. He also assumed that science was the refutation of religion. The thought that they might be compatible seems never to have crossed his mind.

In the grim years of the Civil War, resources for scientific and technical research were sparse. Basic conditions, like heating and lighting let alone salaries and rations, were poor. None the less, Lenin did encourage key projects. In particular, electrification came to be seen as a priority national goal. For Lenin it had obvious practical significance but beyond that it was also symbolic. It embodied the Promethean myth. Electricity was the new fire of the gods and man was stealing it to extend his own life chances. It would provide a portable system of power to take on heavy tasks as well as provide illumination all over the country and in the countryside. In one of the most famous photos of the 1920s, a peasant stares almost worshipfully at a light bulb in his hut. Not only would electricity transform the town it would also be a powerful factor in showing the peasantry the advantages of socialism, the task Lenin believed from mid-1919 onwards to be one of the most crucial if the Revolution was to survive. Rural application of electricity was thus a high priority, though that did not in itself guarantee success. Lenin was very enthusiastic about developing an electric plough and put considerable funds into its development though, in the end, it turned out not to be practicable. None the less electricity was the ultimate symbol of progress and Lenin developed a project of nationwide electrification by 1920. The well-known slogan of the period, displayed along the banks of the River Moskva opposite the Kremlin right up to the end of the Soviet era, famously quoted Lenin: ‘Communism equals Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.’ The whole country. The rural areas were not to be overlooked.

The electrification project was a forerunner of another key Leninist approach to economic advance, planning. Even as civil war raged Lenin was promoting the reconstruction of the Russian economy. A first step was the convening of a group of scientists, non-communist almost entirely, for the task of making an inventory of national resources and suggestions as to how they might best be exploited. It was called the Academy of Sciences Commission for the Study of Scientific Productive Forces, or KEPS from the Russian initials. Many scientists and engineers, while they were not communist, accepted its Promethean vision. One of them, I.P. Bardin, recounted in his memoirs that his pre-Revolutionary dreams of turning Russia into ‘a fairy-tale country of technical marvels, where everything was mechanized, blast-furnaces ran like clockwork and people in mines did not have to fear anything unexpected’ appeared to be coming closer through the Bolsheviks.
⁸
Indeed, Lenin was the product of and was able to plug into a deep vein of Prometheanism in the Russian intelligentsia tradition which made it easy to promote KEPS and other scientific-productive endeavours.

Planning was soon incorporated into the economic fabric with the setting up of the Supreme Council of the National Economy in 1918 which had a scientific and technical section from late 1918 onwards. In part, it had been forced on Lenin by circumstance in that direct allocation of key products, which requires extensive planning, was the only kind of nationwide distribution there was after the collapse of money and markets (apart from the fast-growing local black markets). It was also partly a conscious imitation of the direction the great European economies, especially Germany, had taken during the war and, finally, it was the embodiment of the socialist aim of promoting a rational economy adjusted to needs rather than the irrational capitalist economy adjusted to maximizing profits. However, it must be said that what was meant by planning fell far short of the experience of the 1930s and beyond. Most obviously, in the trying times of revolutionary war, there were no resources for serious planning. None the less, it held promise for the future as the socialist alternative to the anarchy and unpredictability of the market. In an article of 21 February 1921, entitled ‘An Integrated Economic Plan’, Lenin praised the pioneering work of the electrification commission (GOELRO). It had succeeded in ‘mobilizing hundreds of specialists and producing an integrated economic plan on scientific lines within ten months (and not two, of course, as we had originally planned). We have every right to be proud of this work.’ Lenin described the plan as modest and indeed it was in that it only involved the task of electrification, but he praised it highly, quoting the Eighth Congress of Soviets, which described it as ‘
the first step in a great economic endeavour
’ and saw its propagandist significance and called for ‘
the most extensive popularization
of this plan’, even stipulating that ‘a study of this plan must be an item in the curricula of
all educational establishments of the Republic, without exception
.’ [SW 3 552] Lenin’s praise for the plan, ironically coming a month before the adoption of the New Economic Policy (known as NEP) which partially reinstated the market, was also tied up with another issue that had begun to attract his attention, the poor quality of Party and state officials compared to the specialists who had drawn it up.

Productionism had many other ramifications but labour productivity, technological advance and embryonic planning were the most important. There were a number of others. If labour productivity was to be raised how would the workers take it? The issue of worker representation and trades unions in the early Soviet days is very tangled. What rights did workers have to protest against the Workers’ State? Wouldn’t state capitalism exploit them as much as capitalism itself? Certainly many thought so. Lenin’s early assumption, that their chief protector was the state and Party itself, was largely unshaken. But there was an even more sinister edge to the question. If the state was the expression of the best interests of the workers why should its power over them be limited at all? As far back as January 1918 the Declaration of Rights of Working and Exploited People had talked about the introduction of universal labour conscription. In other words, it opened up the possibility that labour could become analogous to military service. Workers would be enrolled and posted wherever they were needed. Initially, the idea had been to enact a universal duty to work in order to force the bourgeoisie into forms of socially useful labour. However, as the Civil War wound down and troops were being demobilized, Trotsky was once again taken by the incontrovertible logic. If the state could demand your life in battle, why could it not demand your labour in the revolutionary struggle on the economic front? In his words it was ‘the right of the workers’ state to send each working man and woman to the place where they are needed for the fulfilment of economic tasks.’
⁹

Such a move would have turned workers into state pawns. If carried out it would have been disruptive beyond measure. How would families be handled? Mothers might be sent to one place, fathers to another. It was the gradual dawning of the practical implications that sank the project though there was some opposition. Lenin, however, remained somewhat equivocal, claiming that ‘labour must be organized in a new way, new forms of incentives to work, of submission to labour discipline must be created.’
¹⁰
He also talked about ‘more labour discipline’ working ‘with military determination’ and ‘sacrificing all private interests’. [CW 30 502–15] Clearly Lenin’s vision was not far removed from Trotsky’s, though his sense of what was possible was more acute and it held him back from the more extreme position.

Other issues where productionism impinged on everyday life in Lenin’s outlook include diverse questions such as women’s rights and education and culture. While women’s rights were always part of the socialist project Lenin linked them closely with releasing mothers into the labour force. By collectivizing traditional family tasks, such as cooking, laundry, child-minding and so on, women would be able to spend more time at work. The link was captured at a conference on 19 November 1918 where Lenin stated that the Revolution would ‘abolish all restrictions on women’s rights’ and that previously, women had been in the position ‘of a slave; women have been tied to the home and only socialism can save them from this’, the implication being they would join the workforce on an equal basis with men. [CW 28 180–2]