There are two, rather different, politico-conceptual portraits of Lenin that have gained traction in recent years (though, as may be expected, their genealogies go farther back). First, there is the representation of Lenin as a Jacobin voluntarist who, in light of his analysis of the conditions of Russian society at the time, steered Marxism away from its deeply embedded democratic commitments toward a conception of the necessity of political elites in the struggle for communism (via a “vanguard party”), in the process taking too seriously the rather vague claims from Marx and Engels on the need for the “dictatorship of the proletariat” in the transition to communism. In the current context of the rise of diverse alter-globalization movements—many premised upon a commitment to participatory democratic means and actions (and, thus, in the words of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, against “representation” in all forms)—Lenin’s myopic concern with disciplined organization, “democratic” centralism, and vanguardism is a complete anathema to the contemporary political horizon.
Yet particularly in the response to these very same alter-global political developments, there is another picture of Lenin taking shape and becoming visible in radical theoretical circles. This portrait accentuates Lenin as the deeply political thinker who was able to actually translate the intimations of Marx and Engels into a political reality, and that, in the current context at least, his reflections on and promotion of the importance of party discipline, militant faith and élan, and commitment to insurrection can teach us plenty in a world too beholden to democratic practices and liberal principles. In this respect, Lenin can elucidate more than we may think about how to proceed within the “liberal democratic” horizon in which a commitment to certain forms of democracy often leads to the dissipation of radical actions and energies (as supposedly happened to the Occupy Movement in the United States). Here, we should remind ourselves of the contemporary arguments of theorists like Slavoj Zizek (2002), and, more recently, Jodi Dean (2012).
In this context, August Nimtz’s two-volume work on Lenin’s political theory comes at a good time for possibly rectifying the particular portraits of Lenin that currently circulate, and, in the process, allowing one to have a more nuanced and balanced representation of his strengths and weaknesses, particularly in relation to performing his ideas in our contemporary condition. In a sense, Nimtz cuts diagonally through these other portraits. In reaction to the “Lenin the Jacobin” view, Nimtz argues for Lenin’s deep democratic commitments, his clear linkages to the positions of Marx and Engels on politics and parliamentarism (indeed, one of his main arguments is that Lenin is the only consistent representative of what Marx and Engels bequeathed to the radical tradition in terms of the dialectic between parliamentary activity and armed insurgency), and his productive espousal of “revolutionary parliamentarism.” But, as opposed to “Lenin the Heroic Anti-Liberal,” Nimtz is clear that Lenin did not at all dismiss the importance of working within the existing parliamentary system, and saw the incredible importance of political liberties and freedoms for the struggles of the working class in general.
In order to ensure that the reader gets Lenin right, Nimtz finds it important to allow Lenin to speak, which is one ostensible reason for the length of the work itself. Nimtz spends ample (sometimes too ample) space quoting Lenin articulating the various theoretical, political, and tactical positions that arose from his first active engagement in the Russian revolutionary movement through the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 to the early period of consolidating power for the Soviet Union, in the process engaging in a chronological analysis of some of Lenin’s more well-known works, such as What Is to Be Done? (1902), One Step Forward, Two Steps Back (1904), State and Revolution (1918), and Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder (1920). In all of his explication and summarization of key texts, Nimtz deftly interweaves historical details of the particular practical and political issues that Lenin and his cohorts in the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party confronted on the way to political power, uncovering a number of consistent positions taken by Lenin that go against the reigning portraits and representations and which exemplify what Nimtz sees as an important position on revolutionary parliamentarianism that may have traction in today’s world of alter-global radical movements.
What, then, are some of the aspects that Nimtz uncovers in relation to Lenin’s notion of revolutionary parliamentarism? First, what this position articulates is a dialectical conception of the need for both a commitment to parliamentary practices and ideals and a willingness to see the necessity of transcending bourgeois politics (and, thus, liberal democracy) itself. This aspect, for Nimtz, can be traced to the consistent political position of Marx and Engels (developed particularly in the aftermath of the failure of the 1848 revolutions on the continent) that one never abstains from engaging in democratic electoral struggles (and, thus, one continually supports the expansion of democratic rights and liberties), but, at the same time, one does not descend into “parliamentary cretinism,” a term that Engels used to designate the mistaken assumption that by merely winning seats within a representative body, one can dispense with extraparliamentary means (particularly armed struggle and revolution) on the way to true social emancipation. For Marx, Engels, and, as Nimtz astutely portrays, Lenin as well, the point of engaging in bourgeois democratic practices was to help engender independent working-class political power: Such electoral activities offer a chance for gauging one’s strength in terms of the citizenry, provide a needed process for the political education of working-class activists (which, given their historical exclusion from democratic practices, is imperative), and becomes an arena from which one can publically critique the ameliorative policies of other parties and clarify the uniqueness of one’s revolutionary political position. In this way, then, one engages in parliamentary activities so as to ultimately set the stage for overcoming bourgeois democracy itself, creating conditions for the deeper forms of liberty and democracy associated with a socialist society. Thus, for Marx, Engels, and Lenin, participation in the liberal democratic revolution is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the flowering of true human emancipation.
As implied, revolutionary parliamentarism rested on a second key commitment: namely, the understanding that true democracy lay not within bourgeois democracies that were always already contaminated by capitalist interests and power but could be nurtured only by the concerted class struggle of the working classes and peasantry in their fashioning of democratic institutions necessary to the revolutionary goals of socialism. In this respect, Lenin reiterated the support of Marx and Engels for the Paris Commune of 1871, and, of course, avidly supported the formation of Soviets in 1905 and later in 1917. For Lenin, the Soviets, like the Paris Commune, were truly representative organs that combined legislative and executive functions (becoming in the process not just “talking” bodies but “working” institutions), and which were ultimately geared toward the goals of radically transforming society.
Of course, I have only touched the surface of the many different facets of Nimtz’s discussion and narrative that are dealt with on the way to clarifying Lenin’s general position on revolutionary parliamentarism. If anything, Nimtz’s well-researched and historically informed analysis of Lenin’s position will be an extremely important intervention in Lenin studies, and, without exaggeration, will, I think, definitively settle the issue of Lenin’s close connection to the tactical positions of Marx and Engels, not to mention Lenin’s deep commitment to the democratic horizon, whether tactically in terms of bourgeois representative assemblies or ideally in the deep democratic practices associated with working-class self-governance. But Nimtz wishes his historical reconstruction and resurrection of Lenin’s position to be more than of historical importance; it is to be relevant for today’s global struggles associated with the Arab Spring, the Occupy Movement, and the antiausterity movement currently expressed by such movements and parties as Syriza in Greece. In what way does Lenin help us in our current attempt to institute radical changes on the global stage and possibly bring about socialism in the contemporary context?
In his conclusion, Nimtz attempts to deal specifically with the contemporary relevance of Lenin in the context of alter-globalization, antiauthoritarian and anticapitalist struggles that continue to course through the global political body. And, unfortunately, it is in this context that his argument begins to falter. Part of the reason for this conceptual fraying is related to the very strengths of Nimtz’s reconstruction of Lenin itself. That is, Nimtz’s painstaking and incisive genealogy of Lenin’s provocative position of revolutionary parliamentarism shows how Lenin was clearly a theorist embedded within his particular time and unique context. And, as Marx (and, indeed, Lenin) noted on a variety of occasions, one must continue to transform one’s arsenal of concepts and notions if there are clear material and political conditions that demand such a renegotiation. This is what it means to be a materialist who is devoted not just to understanding the world but also to changing it (to refer to Marx’s famous Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach).
Thus, to perform Lenin in today’s context demands more than merely reiterating the importance of party organization, militant faith, extraparliamentary necessities, and independent working-class political practices (all of which are brought out in a variety of ways by Nimtz in his final comments as Leninist relevancies). Or, at the very least, one needs to develop more extensively how such political reiterations can actually gain traction in the contemporary context, let alone how they actually can sit well with the variety of goals and ideals associated with the very movements that he finds important. With that said, Nimtz’s work provides a necessary corrective to earlier portrayals of Lenin, and his tenacity in showing Lenin’s commitment to the democratic horizon will undoubtedly inspire other scholars to take Lenin seriously as an important contemporary voice in politics.
