The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 19, 1924, Page 10

one mma LENIN THE REALIST Fae everything else in nature, Lenin was born, has developed, has grown. When Vladimir Ilyitch once observed me glancing through a collection of his articles written in the year 1903, which had just been published, a sly smile crossed his face, and he remarked with a laugh: “It is very interesting to read what stupid felolws we were!” But I do not here intend to compare the shape of Lenins sku at the age of 10, 20, or 30, with the skull of that man who presided over the sessions of the Central Committee of the Party or the Council of Peoples’ Commissars. Here it is not a question of Lenin as leader, but as a living human being. P. B. Axelrod, one of the fathers of Menshevism, who hates Lenin from the bottom of his soul—Axelrod’s case is an excellent example of how love can change to hate—related, in one of the philippics with which he sought to convince me of the harm- fulness of Bolshevism in general and of Lenin in particular, how Lenin went abroad for the first time, and how he went walking and bathing with him. “I felt at that time,” said Axelrod, “that here was a man who would become the leader of the Rus- sian Revolution. Not only was he an educated Marxist—there were many of these—but he knew what he wanted to do and how it was to be done. There was something of the smell of Russian earth about him.” Pavel Borisovitch Axelrod ig a bad politician, he does not smell of the earth. He is one who reasons at home in his own study, and the whole tragedy of his life conissts of the fact that at a time when there was no labor movement in Russia, he thought out the lines upon which such a labor movement sohuld de- velop, and when it developed on dif- ferent Hines, he was frightfully of- fended, and today, he continues to Yoar with rage, at the disobedient child. But people often observe in others, that which is lacking in themselves, and Axelord’s words with regard to Lenin grasp with unsur- passable cuteness precisely those characteristics which make Lenin a leader. Must know Labor Movement It is impossible to be a leader of the working class without knowing the whole history of the class. The leaders of the labor movement must know the history of the labor move- ment, without this knowledge there can be no leader, just as nowadays there can be no great general who could be victorious with the least expenditure of force unless he knew the history of strategy. The history of strategy is not a collection of reci- pes as to how to win a war, for a situation once described never re- peats itself. But the mind of the General becomes practiced in strat- egy by its express study; this study renders him elastic in war, permits him to observe the dangers and pos- sibilities which the empirically trained general cannot see. The his- tory of the labor movement does not wet oe ee to do, but tes 4 poss: to compare our position wit! situations which have already been experienced by our class, so that in various decisive moments we are en- acquainted history of capitalism, mechanism in all its econom litical . Lenin history of capitalism as do but f of Marx’s i out the theory of : rialism as no one else has been able to do, for the reason that he has studied it with the same object in view by which Marx was actuated when creating the theory. Lenin entered the movement as the embodiment of the Will to " tion, and he studied Marxism, the by to Revolution, and despite his great importance as a teacher of the Russian Revolution, he could only teach its algebra and not its arithmetic. Herein lies the point of transition from Lenin the theorist to Lenin the politician, Combines ans ognize danger. get thoroly phenomena. pils. Lenin = : Revolu- revolutionary signifi Russian y ag ory Beste | ing the fate of the Russian working class. Herein lies the whole of Len- in’s genius: in his utmost intensity of intimate contact with his field of activity. T must take some other opportun- ity of debating why so-great a mind as that of Rosa Luxemburg was not capable of understandi the cor- rectness of Lenin’s principles on the origin of Bo! ism; I can ohly out- line the fact. Rosa Luxemburg’ did not concretely the economic and political difference between the ting conditions of the Russian proletariat those of the prole- tariat of Western Europe. There- fore she inclined to Menshevism in the year 1904. Menshevism regard- ed historically, was the policy of the petty-bourgeois intelligentzia, and of those strata of the proletarait most closely related to the petty. bour- geoisie, being of whom we are convinced that his like will not occur for a century, it is but a poor begg E to praise his common sense. But it is in just this that his greatness as’ a politi- cian lies, When Lenin has to decide on an important question, he does net think of abstract historical cate- gories, he does not think of ground rents, of surplus values, of absolu- tism or liberalism, He thinks of Sobakevitch, of Gessen, of Sydor from the Tver Province, of the Pu- tiloy werker, of the policeman on the street, and he thinks of the effect of the measure on the Mujik Sydor and on the workman Onufria, as bearers of the revolution. nd I shall never forget my talk ith Hlyitch before the conclusion of the Brest-Litovsk peace. Every argument which we brought up against the conclusion of the Brest- Litovsk peace rebounded from him like This little book was written I had already drawn on the experiences of the But, apart from the title, line of the chapter, Afterword to “The State andRevolution” By NICOLAI LENIN. in August and September, 1917. up the plan for the next, the seventh chapigr, Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917. I had not succeeded in writing a single being prevented therefrom by a political crisis— the eve of the November Revolution of 1917. Such a hindrance can only be welcomed. However, this final part of the book devoted to the lessons of the Russian Revolution ably have to be put off for a long of 1905 and 1917, will prob- time. It is more pleasant and more useful to live thru the experience of a revolution than to write about it.—The Author. Petrograd (Nov. 30) Dec. 12, 1917. i estintessennstetnnsnnecee! Today it is most interesting to read the controversy on the famous first graph of the Party Stat- utes, paragraph which led to the split of the Social Dem inte Bolsheviki and Mensheviki. At that time Lenin’s demand, that only the members of illegal organizations were to be counted as party mem- bers, appeared sectarian. But what was the real point in question? Lenin sought to prevent the con- pay erg = rom determining policy o; labor party. Before the first revo- lution, any malcontent of a physi- cian or lawyer who happened to have read Marx styled himself a social democrat, altho at bottom he was only a liberal. Even when they entered an illegal organization, even when they had broken with their petty-bourgeois way of living, _his- tory shows many intellectuals to have remained liberals at the bot- tom of their souls. But the limita- tion of the Party to such persons as were willing to face the dangers of belonging to an illegal organizatien, had undoubtedly the advantage ot lessening the danger of bourgeois as- cendancy in the labor party, and permitted the revolutionary ray em- anating from the working class to penetrate the organizations, however much fi with intellectual elements. But in order to be able to this, in order to be even It may be remarked that when we ave speaking of a human ocratic Party| their peas from a wall. He employed the simplest argument: A war cannot be conducted by a party of good revolutionists who, having seized own by the throat, is not capable of closing a bargain with the German bourgeoisie. The mujik must carry on the war. “But don’t you see that the Mujik voted against the war?” Lenin asked me. “Excuse me, when and how did he vote against it?” “He voted with his feet, he is running away from the front.” And for him that settled the matter. That we would not able to ism, this everybody in favor breath, masses single;moment the suf- ferings which were bound to follow. But it was no worse than the im, mediate breakdown of Russian hope, a pause for Spreath, if only but a few months, and this was the de- cisive moment. It was necessary that the Mujik should touch with his nds the earth which the revolu- sary that he be confronted = Fs danger of losing earth, for then he would defend it. Let us take another example. It was at the time of our defeat in the Polish war, when negotiations were| fing taken up at Riga. At that time I abroad, and before leaving I differences of opin- had arisen between us the relatons to the trade unions. : — in order to speak] he has “ei gan: “slight S By KARL RADEK “They must have a rest, they are very tired.” Such was Lenin’s de- cisive argument. He saw before him the real Russian worker, as he was in the winter of 1921, and he felt what was possible and what was not possible. Not Blind to Reality. Marx, in the introduction to his Critique of Political Economy, states that Pistory only sets itself such tasks as it can fulfill. This means, in other word,s that only he who grasps what tasks are historically capable of fulfilment at a given mo- ge me} be Pre fight for e des’ ut for Possible can become the instrument of history. Lenin’s greatness lies in the fact that he never permits himself to be blinded to a reality when it is in process of transformation, by any formula, and that he has the courage to throw yesterday’s formula overboard as soon as it dis- turbs his grasp of this reality. Be- fore our seizure of power, we issued as revolutionary internationalists, the slogan of the peoples’ peace against the government’s peace. And sud- denly we found ourselves in the po- sition, of a Workers’ Government surrounded by peoples that had not yet succeeded in overthrowing their capitalist governments. “How can we conclude a peace with the Hohen- zollern government?” was a ques- tion put by many comrades. Lenin answered mi. ously: “You are worse than hens. A hen cannot make up its mind to step over a circle drawn around it with chalk. But it can at least justify itself by the ‘Bssertion that this circle wag drawn by a strange hand. But we have drawn up our formula with our own hands, and now you see the formula only, and not the reality. Our for- mula of peace to be concluded by the peoples, has for its object the awak- ening of the masses against the mil- itary and capitalist government, Now you want us to go to ruin, and to let the ca’ ist governments carry off the oe ae of our revolutionary formula. _ Lenin’s greatness lies in his aim- ing at goals arising out of realities, In this reality he sees a powerful steed which will carry him to his ~ goal, and ‘he trusts himself to it. But he never abandons himself eens nenne —_—— a plan of campaign, but the whole Boe PR. ep the campaign ie same time. Our organizers, who are organizers have often laughed at Lenin Pig organizer. Anyone seei how Ill- yitch works at home, in hee at the Council of Peoples, a has he no staff of prepare his material, of affairs named comrade Steklov to! (chief editor. of the Izvestia), with all the de! = Bey rere or- t h- anism.” But which one of the party leaders puts himself ae. waaay economic policy created) an alliance peasantry;