Save comrade Lenin

Bordigism in support of Leninist errors and nefarious tactics … amidst some bickering and some signs of critical lucidity

By Aníbal

“El Comunista” – “The Internationalist Proletarian” – “Per il Comunismo”, in its recent publication “El Comunista, no. 27”:

“The Arab and Jewish proletariat, together with that of the rest of the nationalities that have emigrated to work in the zone, must refuse to confront each other, organizing themselves jointly both in the plane of the immediate struggle and in that of the Party organization, rejecting any division nor discrimination for reason of language or origin, rejecting any identification with the bourgeoisie itself, refusing to be financed nor to align themselves with any imperialist bloc, cultivating in that environment the immediate struggle against the own bourgeoisie and the conditions for the struggle for the revolutionary overthrow of all the capitalist states of the zone without distinction, integrating that struggle in the struggle for the international communist revolution through the overthrow of the bourgeois states and the dictatorship of the proletariat towards a society without classes, nor private property, nor market regime, nor wage labor. (https://pcielcomunista.org/index.php/es/ English: https://pcielcomunista.org/index.php/en/journals/947-le-proletaire-il-comunista-spearhead-of-revisionist-degeneration-of-the-new-course)

This is completely valid and pertinent.

The PCInt “El Comunista” – “The Internationalist Proletarian” – “Per il Comunismo” has edited an article (see quote above) criticizing in general in a quite pertinent and wise way other groups and parties that came out of the PCInt “Programma Comunista” explosion, particularly in reference to the question of national self-determination and the proletarian struggle for communism. (1)
With an adequate position on the Israel-Palestine war, this PCInt nevertheless continues to defend Lenin “tooth and nail”, trying to show that on the basis of his positions, together with the classical Marxist ones, is the key to define the internationalist communist position on the national liberation struggles and national rights.
For this purpose they take up these positions defended in 1914 by Lenin as an essential part of the Marxist position on the national question:

“What does this absolute requirement of Marxism applied to our problem imply? First of all, that it is necessary to distinguish strictly two epochs of capitalism which are completely different from the point of view of national movements. On the one hand, it is the epoch of the bankruptcy of feudalism and absolutism, the epoch in which bourgeois democratic society and its State are constituted, the epoch in which national movements acquire for the first time the character of mass movements, incorporating in one way or another all classes of the population into politics through the press, through their participation in representative institutions, etc. On the other hand, we are witnessing an epoch in which the capitalist States already have their structure completed, a constitutional regime long since established, and a highly developed antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie; we are witnessing an epoch which may be called the eve of the collapse of capitalism.” (The Right of Nations to Self-Determination, Lenin, 1914). [All quotes have been translated from Spanish into US-English]

Published by Progress, Moscow, 1972

“The interests of the working class and its struggle against capitalism demand complete solidarity and the closest union of the workers of all nations, they demand that the nationalist policy of the bourgeoisie of any nation be rejected (…) It makes no difference to the wage-worker whether his principal exploiter is the Russian bourgeoisie rather than the Allogen bourgeoisie, or the Polish bourgeoisie rather than the Hebrew, and so on. To the wage-worker who has acquired consciousness of the interests of his class he is indifferent both to the state privileges of the Russian capitalists and to the promises of the Polish or Ukrainian capitalists to establish paradise on earth when they enjoy state privileges.” (The Right of Nations to Self-Determination, Lenin, 1914).

Positions which, except in conceiving capitalism as decadent and “on the eve of its collapse” (something not verified after more than a century), are in general adequate and valid… but which were not limited to that, but which incorporated other positions and developments which do allow us to connect Lenin with the defense of certain bourgeois nationalist movements.

Lenin had argued:
“The epoch of capitalist imperialism is the epoch of a capitalism which has already reached and passed its period of maturity, which is entering its ruin, ripe to leave its place to socialism. The period from 1789 to 1871 has been the epoch of progressive capitalism: its task was to overthrow feudalism, absolutism, liberation from the foreign yoke…” (Lenin. “Opportunism and the Bankruptcy of the Second International”, January 1916).

The first is fallacious, but the second is correct and truthful. Now, is Lenin consistent with this statement? No, he is not. He did not exclude on a general, world scale, support for national liberation movements, as we shall now see.

The PCInt “The Communist” – “The Internationalist Proletarian” – “Per il Comunismo” consciously avoids including those parts where Lenin defended national liberation in his article, in order to create a fictitious and adapted image of comrade Lenin. But the latter said more things and defended in certain cases the support to movements that he defined as anti-imperialist, bourgeois movements for national independence… outside the European area… This is what this branch of Bordigianism is soaked in, in a very evident opportunist and confusionist attitude. Let us see the evidence, quoting Lenin himself.

The Russian Social-Democratic Workers Party (POSDR) in its II Congress in 1903 (which in its article 9 defends the “right to self-determination of all nations, including those on the borders of the State”). Lenin clearly assumes this orientation, as can be seen in his article “The national problem in our program”, published on July 15, 1903.
In “The Working Class and the National Question”, in May 1913, Lenin maintains that:
“In our days, only the proletariat defends the true freedom of nations and the unity of the workers of all nations. For the different nations to coexist or separate (when it suits them best) freely and peacefully, forming different States, full democracy, defended by the working class, is necessary. Not a single privilege for any nation, for any language! Not the slightest humiliation, not the slightest injustice to any national minority! Such are the principles of workers’ democracy”.

We see that socialist support for processes and movements of bourgeois national emancipation remains open.

In his article “Critical Notes on the National Problem”, written between October and December 1913, Lenin presents Switzerland as an example of respect and practice of multilingualism, while reaffirming the defense of the right to self-determination, understood as the right to separation and not to federalism or decentralization, since he reaffirms the need for a State based on democratic centralism.
We are in the same situation, therefore.
Also that same year he highlights the growing interest he had shown from the impact of the Russian revolution of 1905 on the peoples of the East, as he shows in his article “The Awakening of Asia”. In it he argues that:
“After the Russian movement of 1905, the democratic revolution has spread throughout Asia, to Turkey, Persia and China. The agitation increases in English India (…) and Dutch Indies”.

In other words, the proletariat and communism could support this democratic revolution in these areas… under certain conditions. Its role lay in “diminishing the strength of imperialism and weakening the bourgeois powers”. It therefore excludes that these movements should be confronted by the proletariat fighting exclusively for its internationalist communist objectives.

The Communist International will theorize it, amid internal polemics. But it is the Leninist line which is imposed, and the RCP itself organizes a Congress of the peoples of the East in open concession to bourgeois nationalisms which could unite or at least converge tactically with the interests of the Russian State (later of the USSR).
Lenin also admitted Finland’s right to self-determination… which meant much defeat and suffering for the proletariat.

Later, in his article “The right of nations to self-determination” (February-May 1914), Lenin polemicizes with Rosa Luxemburg insisting on the defense of the right to self-determination as the right to separation and to “the formation of an independent national State”, although he makes it clear that the proletariat “subordinates national demands to the interests of the class struggle”.
This implies the need for “a differentiated tactic vis-à-vis the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nation.”
“Inasmuch as the bourgeoisie of an oppressed nation fights against the oppressor, we are in all cases and more decisively than anyone else in favor, since we are the most fearless and consistent enemies of oppression. Inasmuch as the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nation is in favor of its bourgeois nationalism, we are against it. Struggle against the privileges and violence of the oppressor nation and no tolerance for the oppressed nation’s quest for privileges”.

Also, against the opinion of the Polish revolutionary, Lenin considers legitimate the support of the Swedish workers’ movement for the independence of Norway, achieved through a referendum in 1905, relying on Marx’s position on the questions of Poland and Ireland, while still betting on “the fusion of the workers of all nations”.

As for relations between Russia and the Ukraine, in his speech in Zurich on October 27, 1914, Lenin maintains that “what Ireland has been for England, the Ukraine has become for Russia, exploited to the extreme, without receiving anything in return. Thus, both the interests of the international proletariat in general and those of the Russian proletariat in particular demand that the Ukraine regain its own state independence, which alone will allow it to achieve the cultural development indispensable to the proletariat” (included in “The War and the International”).

In 1916, in “The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination”, Lenin argues that:
“The circumstance that the struggle for national freedom against an imperialist power can be exploited, under certain conditions, by another ‘great’ power to achieve equally imperialist ends cannot force social democracy to renounce recognizing the right of nations to self-determination, just as the repeated cases of the use of republican slogans by the bourgeoisie for purposes of political fraud and financial plunder (for example, in the Latin countries) cannot force the social democrats to renounce their republicanism” (ibid. p. 355).
This was supported everywhere, not only in Europe. Precisely that is what the approach of the German-Dutch communist left adheres to… rejected by Leninists and Bordigists (although there were discussions about it in their midst).
It is in that article also where he develops the distinction between three great groups of states and countries:

1. The advanced ones of Western Europe and the United States (where each of “these ‘great’ nations oppresses other nations in the colonies and within the country”).
2. Eastern Europe (where such legitimate national movements are being formed in contexts of imperial decline); and
3. The semi-colonials and all the colonies (where the anti-colonial movements will be progressively forged, which must be supported).

A differentiation that he reaffirms, again in polemic mainly with Rosa Luxemburg, in “On the Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism”, written between August and October 1916.

In July 1916, Lenin wrote “On the pamphlet of Junius” referring to the text “The Crisis of Social Democracy” published by Rosa Luxemburg that same year, which she signed with the pseudonym of Junius. In his commentary, one can again observe different visions of the future of the wars of national liberation. For Lenin “not even in Europe can wars of national liberation be considered impossible in the epoch of imperialism”. The latter, he insists, are not only inevitable, but also “progressive, revolutionary”, although their success will depend on different factors, among them “the especially favorable conjugation of the factors characterizing the international situation”.

In his “Speech on the national problem” polemicizing with comrades of his own party, the Bolshevik leader declared before the VIII Congress of the RCP(b) of Russia:

“If Finland, Poland or the Ukraine secede from Russia, there is no evil in it. What evil can there be? Whoever says so is a chauvinist. One must have lost one’s wits to continue the policy of Tsar Nicholas. Has not Norway seceded from Sweden?”.

On the occasion of that Congress, in 1919, Lenin openly polemicizes with Bukharin, who opposes to this so-called right that of “workers’ self-determination”. Lenin answers him in these terms:

“Our program must not speak of workers’ self-determination, because that is wrong. It must tell things as they are. Since nations are at different stages on the road from the medieval regime to bourgeois democracy, and from bourgeois democracy to proletarian democracy, this thesis of our program is absolutely accurate. On this road we have had numerous zigzags. Each nation must have the right to self-determination, and this contributes to the self-determination of the workers.” (“VIII Congress of the CP(b) of Russia”, Selected Works, Vol. IX)

Rosa Luxemburg, rightly argues:
“Imperialism has completely buried the old bourgeois democratic program; expansion beyond national frontiers (whatever the national conditions of the annexed countries were) became the platform of the bourgeoisie of all countries. If the term ‘national’ remained, its real content and function have become its opposite; it acts only as a miserable cover for imperialist aspirations and as a battle cry of their rivalries, as the only and last ideological means to win the adherence of the popular masses and to play their role as cannon fodder in the imperialist wars.” (The Crisis of Social Democracy, 1916)

Lenin and his followers deny this when they affirm.
“It is necessary to distinguish between the nationalism of an oppressor nation the nationalism of an oppressed nation, between the nationalism of a big nation the nationalism of a small nation” (On the problem of nationalities or on “autonomization”)… so as to defend the military and political struggle of those small nations for their self-determination as part of the “Democratic Program of Socialism”.

Lenin argues:
“For Eastern Europe and for Asia, at a time when bourgeois democratic revolutions have begun, at a time when national movements have arisen and been exarced, at a time when independent proletarian parties have appeared, the task of these parties in national politics must be a twofold one: to recognize the right of all nations to self-determination, because the bourgeois democratic transformation is not yet completed, because workers’ democracy advocates with seriousness, frankness and consequence, not in the liberal way, not in the Kokoshkin way, the equal rights of nations and the closest, indissoluble alliance of the class struggle of the proletarians of all nations of a given State, for all kinds of vicissitudes of their history, with all kinds of modifications that the bourgeoisie introduces in the borders of the various States. “ (The right of nations to self-determination. February-May 1914).

In 1916 he will say:
“Progressive bourgeois national movements ended in them [the advanced capitalist countries of Western Europe and the United States] long ago. Each of these “great” nations oppresses others in the colonies and within the country. The tasks of the proletariat in these dominant nations are exactly the same as those of the proletariat of England in the 19th century with regard to Ireland.” (The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination (Theses), in Lenin: O.C., vol. XXIII. Written in January-February 2016.)
But it leaves the door open in other parts of the planet… It is in this open door that the Bordigists slip, some of whom make rivers of verbiage flow to try to deny and hide it. But there are more PROBATORY elements to be found.

Lenin, in 1922 (On the problem of nationalities or on “autonomization”), confirmed:
“And the tomorrow of universal history will be the day when the peoples oppressed by imperialism, who have already opened their eyes, will finally awaken, and when the long and hard final battle for their emancipation will begin.”

This uprising was developing, helped many times by those nations by capitalist and imperialist states who favored such self-determination.
New nations were appearing with the right to have their own state, a bourgeois state with a capitalist economy, a state that quickly established links with the existing imperialist capitalism, attacked other countries, generated militarism and aggressions. The nationally liberated Vietnam invaded Cambodia, the independent state of Algeria against Kabylia …
The new nation allied himself with constellations and blocs of international imperialist interests of capitalism, he favored it, he got involved in the developed and yet to be developed quarrels on the market, in geopolitics and international imperialist strategies….
Lenin adhered to the democratic program of social democracy and his orientation favors what has been the theoretical and practical line of bolshevism: capitalism, opportunist and imperialist interventionism, defeats of the proletariat.

It was the German-Dutch communist left who best understood what imperialism was, as well as the political, programmatic and strategic implications. In the texts of Rosa Luxemburg, as in those of Herman Gorter, Anton Pannekoek, the KAPD, the GIC … we find the reference to maintain the necessary lucidity. (2)

Notes

(1) “le Prolétaire”/”il Communiste”: spearhead of opportunist degeneration“.
Article published in “El Comunista” (No. 27, March 2024).

(2) See more arguments and references in the text to which these paragraphs correspond: Pasados más de cien años. La izquierda comunista germano-holandesa y Lenin ante el capitalismo, el imperialismo, la autodeterminación nacional y los nacionalismos.

Source

Salvad al camarada Lenin. El bordiguismo en apoyo de los errores y tácticas nefastas leninistas.. en medio de rifirrafes y algunos signos de lucidez crítica.