Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder/Chapter 1
"LEFT WING" COMMUNISM:
AN INFANTILE DISORDER
By NIKOLAI LENIN
CHAPTER I.
IN WHAT SENSE CAN WE SPEAK OF THE INTERNATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION?
During the first months after the Russian proletariat had conquered political power (October 25 [November 7], 1917,) it might have seemed that the proletarian revolution in other countries would be very little like ours, because of the tremendous differences between backward Russia and the advanced countries of Western Europe. But we have now considerable experience, of an international scope, which pretty definitely establishes the fact that some fundamental features of our revolution are not local, not peculiarly national, not Russian only, but that they are of international significance. And I say "international significance", not in the broad sense of the word; not some features, but all fundamental and many secondary features are, in the sense of their influence upon other countries, of international significance. Not in the strictest sense of the word—that is, taking it in its essence—or in the sense of the historical inevitability of a repetition, on an international scale, of what we in Russia have gone through; but one must admit some fundamental features of our revolution to be of such international significance. Of course, it would be the greatest mistake to exaggerate this truth and to apply it to more than the fundamental features of our revolution. It would be likewise erroneous to keep in mind that, after the proletarian revolution in at least one of the advanced countries, things will in all probability take a sharp turn; Russia will cease to be the model, and will become again the backward (in the "Soviet" and Socialist sense) country.
But at this historical moment such is the state of affairs that the Russian example reveals something quite essential to all countries in their near and inevitable future. The advanced workers in every land have long understood it—although in many cases they did not so much understand it as feel it, through the instinct of their revolutionary class. Hence the international "significance" (in the strict sense of the word) of the Soviet power, as well as of the fundamentals of Bolshevik theory and tactics. This the "revolutionary" leaders of the Second International—Kautsky in Germany, Otto Bauer and Friedrich Adler in Austria—failed to understand and, therefore, turned into reactionaries and advocates of the worst kind of opportunism and social treason. The anonymous pamphlet, The World Revolution, which appeared in 1919 in Vienna, shows plainly their whole process of thought or, what is more correct, all their appalling imbecility, pedantry, dastardliness and betrayal of working-class interests under the guise of "defending" the idea of "world revolution." Of this pamphlet we shall speak at greater length on some other occasion. Here we shall remark only this: that in the time, now long gone by, when Kautsky was yet a follower of Marx and not the renegade he is today, approaching the question as an historian, he foresaw the possibility of the revolutionary spirit of the Russian proletariat serving as an example for Western Europe. This was in 1902, when Kautsky wrote an article headed "The Slavs and the Revolution," published in the revolutionary organ, Iskra. This is what he wrote:—
"At the present time (in contradistinction to the year 1848) it may be assumed that not only have the Slavs entered the ranks of the revolutionary peoples, but that the center of gravity of revolutionary thought and revolutionary action is moving farther and farther to the Slavs. The revolutionary center is moving from the West to the East. In the first half of the nineteenth century this center was in France, and sometimes in England. In 1848 Germany entered the ranks of revolutionary nations. The new century is being ushered in by such events as induce us to think that we are confronted by a further removal of the revolutionary center, namely, to Russia. Russia, which has imbibed so much revolutionary initiative from the West, is now perhaps itself ready to serve as a source of revolutionary energy. The Russian revolutionary movement, which is now bursting into flame, will, perhaps, become the strongest means for the extermination of the senile philistinism and sedate politics which is beginning to spread in our ranks, and will again rekindle the militant spirit and the passionate devotion to our great ideals. Russia has long ceased to be for Western Europe a simple prop for reaction and obsolutism. The case now may be said to be reversed. It is Western Europe that is now becoming the mainstay of reaction and absolutism in Russia. As far as the Czar is concerned, the Russian revolutionists would perhaps have coped with him long ago, had they not been compelled to fight simultaneously his ally, European capital. Let us hope that they will find themselves able this time to settle both enemies, and that the new 'Holy Alliance' will crash to the ground sooner than its predecessor. But however the present struggle in Russia may end, the blood of the martyrs who have sprung from it, unfortunately in too great numbers, will not have been shed in vain. It will nourish the shoots of the social revolution throughout the civilized world, and make them flourish more quickly. In 1848 the Slavs were that crackling frost which killed the flowers of spring of the awakening peoples; perhaps now they are destined to be that storm which will break through the ice of reaction and will irresistably bring with it the new, happy spring of the peoples." (Karl Kautsky: "The Slavs and the Revolution," article in Iskra, the Russian Social-Democratic revolutionary paper, 1902, No. 18, March 10).
How well did Kautsky write eighteen years ago!