Unfinished Leninism An interview with author Paul LeBlanc

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Paul LeBlanc, “Unfinished Leninism,” (Chi­ cago: Haymarket Books, 2014), 237 pp., $18. I sensible purpose, though the intent is not cons, even revolutionary ones, have a always realized. The iconic image summons the observer in the present to heed the achievements of the past and thus shape the future. An icon, then, is also an imperative to obey, an imperative often at odds with the rebellious spirit of the figure meant to be celebrated.

In Hanoi, in a park across from the War Museum, stands a large and imposing statue of Vladimir Lenin, main leader of the Com­ munist Party of the Soviet Union and archi­ tect of the Soviet state. This statue attracts relatively few people today, though a kind of inscription remains from a past visit. Some­ one has scrambled up the pedestal to draw, on Lenin’s left calf, the universal symbol of adolescent romance—a heart pierced with an arrow and the names of the, presumably, young lovers.

Thus the present pays its own tribute to the past; thus the fate of revolutionary icons. No surprise to Lenin, whose widow “recalled that Lenin had often used the word ikon in a derogatory sense, saying of a revolutionary who was honoured but no longer had any influence: ‘Well, he is al­ ready an ikon’” (E.H. Carr, “Socialism in One Country, 1924-1926,” Volume Two, page 11).

Lenin’s writings have also been made into a kind of icon, a process that began in the months after his death. Joseph Stalin’s “The Foundations of Lenin­ ism” and “Problems of Leninism” (1924) sculpted the iconic image of a Lenin suitable for the ascendant bu­ reaucracy that oversaw the degeneration of the Rus­ sian Revolution. Thus, the theory of “socialism in one country” was proclaimed, as bureaucratic rule in the Soviet Union abandoned revolutionary perspectives worldwide to seek accommodation and stability with its hostile capitalist neighbors.

A false “Leninism” was created that disowned the revolutionary past even while claiming continuity with the achievements of the October Revolution. It was a transformation that drained the life out of revolutionary ideas as they hardened into a set of commandments in the service of those who had the power to impose their interpretation. “Leninism” be­ stowed a false legitimacy to the rulers who were de­ stroying the revolutionary tradition of Lenin.

A body of work and a set of ideas intended to ana­ lyze and transform reality in the service of the op­ pressed became a set of laws intended to legitimize the rule of a new social layer of oppressors.

For anyone active in the struggle for socialism, this standard view of Lenin constitutes “the heritage we renounce,” to borrow a title from one of Lenin’s early works. A different and truer understanding of Lenin stand for? is needed, one that does not serve the interests of es­ tablished authority.

This is the challenge that LeBlanc, among other writers, has taken up—to look past the figure of Len­ in-as-icon and instead see him as “a key figure who must be engaged with.” Taken as a whole, LeBlanc’s essays are a sympathetic “[w]restling with and learn­ ing from the actual experience associated with Len­ in…” (p. 95).

Of course, LeBlanc is not forced to begin from scratch. In rejecting the “Stalin school of falsifica­ tion,” LeBlanc draws on the revolutionary traditions associated with Leon Trotsky, founder of the Left Op­ position within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, who in 1923 began a struggle for “The New Course” and continued this fight until his expulsion in 1927. Trotsky defended and extended Lenin’s ideas theoretically and practically in the formation of the Fourth International in the 1930s, drawing together cadres on several continents to form the world party of socialist revolution. The International continues its work today, and its sections are involved in social protest and struggles throughout the world.

Within the international left, controversy and de­ bate over Lenin and the Bolshevik legacy are not confined to the distant past. Quite the contrary! Even organizations whose origins lay in the anti-Stalinist left and Trotskyism have undergone political crises in which the theories of Lenin have played a significant part.

Thirty years ago in the United States, the formerly Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party (SWP) began to abandon its revolutionary program and the traditions on which it had been built, carried out in part in a series of “Lenin classes.” The demise of the SWP—with its expulsions and forced resignations—led many if not most of the expellees to a re­ newed questioning of the party’s heritage. How could so much have gone so wrong? More recently, in Britain, a widely publi­ cized case concerning allegations of sexual misconduct involving a leader of the Social­ ist Workers Party there (no relation to the SWP of the United States) led to a set of de­ cisions so controversial that scores of mem­ bers resigned in protest. The combined effect of these two events, though decades apart, has sparked anew disagreements about the nature and legitimacy of the Le­ ninist vanguard party and have led, in each country, to the creation of new socialist or­ ganizations.

Several of the key participants in the cur­ rent debates were formerly members of the Socialist Workers Party in the United States, as was LeBlanc himself. In Britain, leaders of the SWP there have defended their posi­ tions in print and at public conferences they have held.

Paul LeBlanc has emerged as a central figure in these debates, and much of his commentary is gathered in his most recent book. “Unfinished Leninism” is a collection of (mostly) previously published essays, articles, po­ lemics, and reviews. Also included are the texts of presentations, academic and political, given at con­ ferences worldwide. The accidental nature of this volume is no real drawback, given its objective.

The terrain of this book—its conflicts and contro­ versies—is often staked out by other writers whose opinions compelled LeBlanc to respond. So, “Unfin­ ished Leninism” is not another biography of Lenin, nor an all-encompassing commentary on Lenin’s work. The focus of the book, and its unifying thread, is the meaning of Lenin’s organizational ideas and the contemporary relevance of what does not (yet) exist: a revolutionary vanguard party of the working class.

This is a book that LeBlanc is uniquely qualified to write. A professor of history at LaRoche College, he is also a revolutionary socialist of some 50 years’ expe­ rience. With Dianne Feeley, he co-authored the first pamphlet published by Socialist Action, “In Defense of Revolutionary Continuity.” He is the author of sev­ eral books including “Lenin and the Revolutionary Party” and has recently edited anthologies of Lenin, Luxemburg, and Trotsky. He is currently a member of the International Socialist Organization.

“Unfinished Leninism” may be obtained from Hay­ market Books at www.haymarketbooks.org.

Question: Is there a “Lenin revival” that is more than the admittedly useful work of academic schol­ ars? Socialist organizations that consciously strive to follow a Leninist model are quite small and have little influence within protest movements today. Several years ago, you suggested that “Bolshevik and Leninist traditions will continue to attract, and be developed by, revolutionary activists of today and tomorrow.” Where would you locate such stirrings?

Paul LeBlanc: We can see a marked increase in significant Lenin studies, and related studies, from Lars Lih, Bryan Palmer, August Nimtz, John Riddell, Alan Shandro, Tamás Krausz, Eric Blanc, and a grow­ ing number of others. Why is this happening? Such things would not be written or published if they did not speak to the deepening concerns of an expanding layer of potential readers. They would not be appear­ ing if they were not—to borrow a capitalist term— marketable.

Such works are appearing in a period of ongoing economic, social, and political crisis, with a decline in the quality of life generating the rise of protest and insurgency. I have personally seen such stirrings, manifesting themselves in different ways, in differ­ ent parts of the United States, of course, and in such diverse places as England, Australia, Turkey, China, and India. While it is hardly the case that a majority among the rising tide of rebels and activists embrace (continued on page 9, in “What did Lenin”)