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The Significance of Leninist Doctrine

    [1950]
 

The significance of the doctrines of Lenin remains. They explain Lenin's leadership in the Russian revolution of October 1917 - a revolution of workers, peasants, soldiers and sailors, led by the revolutionary Bolshevik party which was Lenin's own creation - in distinction to the bourgeois-­menshevik revolution of the preceding March. Stalin's adoption of Lenin's teachings as his own is sufficiently indicated by his book on Leninism. The technique of revolution so demonstrated is now familiar. The aim is the creation of a workers' State, eliminating landowners and employers, their place being taken by the State. A revolutionary situation must be violently created by undermining all existing State authority. There is then an opportunist seizing of power by the small minority-organized party of revolution, the taking over of land and industry from private ownership, the state or the community being now the universal landlord and employer. Ostensibly a government of 'soviets' or committees of the people themselves, power is actually in the hands of a minority party, the Communists, exerting the 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat', and direction both of the party and the government being invested in the Polit-bureau. So far from being a workers' State, it is rather a State of managers, technicians and governing authorities, including the police: and the processes of industry and agriculture are matters of State planning on a vast scale, with much direction of human labour.

This pattern of revolution has been followed in greater or less degree in every country where Marxian Communism as interpreted by Lenin has forced its way to power. There will be temporary collaboration with other parties, then seizure of absolute power, purges, expropriation of landlords and employers, rigid regimentation of all life, suppression of minorities, forced labour, and unceasing police supervision. As an indication of how thoroughly the notion of armed revolution is ingrained in Communist teaching, note the fact that in the coup d'etat of the Communist Party in Czecho­slovakia, working men marched through the streets of Prague armed with rifles.

What the doctrine means in practice can only be conceived by those who have lived through such a revolution, or are face to face with those who seek to bring it about. Here is the comment of Stanislav Mikolycyzk, leader of the suppressed Polish Peasant party, in his Pattern of Soviet Domina­tion:
    'The Communist system, whose aim is to dominate the world, calls itself "a people's democracy", but it is in fact Red Fascism. It mouths the slogans of the freedom of man but brings the rule of violence and terror. It speaks of the equality of all people, and does not recognize the rights of man; instead, it tramples his self-respect, demoralizes his soul, divides peoples into the minority of the elite and the overwhelming majority of the serfs. It palms itself off as the herald of truth but abuses and discredits its loftiest slogans by spreading lies over all the world. While allegedly combating Capitalist exploitation, it creates the worst type of State Capitalism, placing at its disposal all privileges, all State rights, all executive power. By the aid of armed branches of enforcement it strips the citizen of the right to initiative and honest profit. It turns him into a slave.' (Pattern of Soviet Domination, p. 279.)



From E.C. Urwin's Communism and Violence (1950).


E.C. Urwin's Communism and Violence was originally printed in 1950 as a pamphlet, published by the Beckly Social Service Trust. Along with four other Beckly pamphlets, it was re-published in Communism, edited by Maldwyn L. Edwards (The Epworth Press, London, 1952).


 
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