June 221 19, 1949
My Dear Grace
You have forced my hand. I am going to make a polemic against you. But first - prolegomena. You and R. must understand that copies of my letters go to R, G and W. Now I wish to add F and L2 (I would be glad if R sent you a copy of my letter with the chart. The date, Rae, I think, is June 4th). These letters, mine, must not go to anyone else. There are many reasons - the only one necessary to state now is that I express myself freely and know that I perpetrate philosophical boners. I don't mind. I encourage G. to write freely. They are a conversation - a three-way conversation. If they spread, the writers are affected. Williams I proposed to include because he is doing serious work for publication and he must be aware of what we are doing. F and L have followed the development of our ideas, back and forth, good and bad, and I have always talked to them so freely that I don't mind their catching me in contradictions, and furthermore Lyman has, I think, a little more time than before and if he follows the correspondence will undoubtedly have something to say and in addition should have the job of revising the final Mss.3 a tough job in which so far we have not on the whole distinguished ourselves. Within this circle I can polemicize against Grace. One step out of it and I wouldn't. I also invited you to polemicize against me - you didn't take it. I have spent the last three weeks thinking about what you told me about quantity and Leibnitz. I am an infinitely wiser man. I know now what you were talking about in your letters to Nevada. I know something was missing. But, Sister Grace, you are abstract. And in this last letter, you are abstract, not in general, as re Leibnitz, the Eleatics and Quantity, and Hegel in relation to individuals and the whole. No, that is good, tho I believe if you were more concrete in stating it to me, it would have been easier for me. But in this letter, abstract, abstract, abstract, about things which must be concrete.
Unreasonable? Harsh? No. Why. After weeks of painful back and forth, in and out, you and I bearing the burden, I struggle out of it. I say: we must find out the contradictions in Lenin himself; begin from the concrete; I say: instead of cracking our heads on the Logic, let us crack it on Imperialism, on what Lenin thought before 1914, etc. I make a chart. I state the periods: I say we are to find out what was the thought of each party at the time and trace inter-relations, connections, transition, development. My chart by the way comes out awful both in the Mss and in the typing. I say: only then; are we equipped to tackle the Logic, L's Logic, so to say.
Rae immediately ducks down into her books. Concrete, the concrete, the facts, tabulation, order, as she did for weeks and weeks until she came out with those marvellous three pages on L's politics before 1914 and after 1914. I say marvellous and mean marvellous - a model. But in this recent letter you have not been concrete. It is a letter of the Nevada kind. It contains many beautiful things and things wh. will come up later. But is is general, too, too, too general. Let me concretize:
We must know (a) what was L's theory of the state before 1914 (b) What was the Menshevik theory?
2) What was L's theory in 1917?What was their theory in 1917?
Now of immense importance. Did L anywhere develop the Soviet idea before 1914, Feb'y. As far as I know there is not a single mention of Soviets before 1917. Which means that if the Soviets had not come, State and Revn would have been a different book.
3) Where do we stand in regard to all these points in 1949?
Let me explain one point. Before 1914, L, for Russia, used to talk, write about, an armed militia as the army, the regular army, after the rev'n. He fought Plek.4 and others in favour of nationalisation of the land - this was purely bourgeois, he said. Of course, at the back of his mind, he had the Commune of 1871. But the question is precisely what, if anything, did he have in mind up to 1914 and then up to the March Revn about the prol. revn. Tabulate, chrono-logic-alize instead of pure logicking. Your little summary does not answer these questions, or the problems posed by them. I know. I spent quite a while in a duet with you doing that type of thing. It is even more misleading than it appears at first, or even second, glance.
Our real problem is not S & R. What you have done there is "easy", the hard to do as an expression of logical, i.e. Hegelian movement. There you have made a good beginning - for work which will come at the end. No, our problem now is imperialism. For S & R; the political relations come out of that. Here is one problem. Lenin writes as if he had never heard of monopoly as being characteristic of 20th century capitalism. He had discovered something. What was it exactly that he had discovered. Socialization etc. but I must see concretely what Hilferding drew from his monopoly. You describe Hobson, etc. But I am interested primarily in L Himself and then in Hilferding (1910).5
You see Kautsky and Lenin were supposed to have the same views before K. "betrayed".
The point is not historical. Absolutely not. In the Threat's Catastrophe6 and Will the Bolshs Retain,7 L says that nationalisation = control but nationalisation is possible only because of monopoly. Whose control? But before that he is sure monopoly means plan. The plan is in the economic movement. Again, maybe I am just dumb up to now. But I am seeing the whole thing as if new. So nationalisation = plan and the question is: whose plan. As I see it, so far he abandons planlessness: and it is possible that his insistence on monopoly as opposed to free competition signifies plan or no plan. The Soviets of 1917 show him how to plan. You have to watch very carefully what he wrote about plan between 1916 and the February Revolution (or March).
Furthermore a wonderful story is told if you watch the dates when Lenin stage by stage finds himself moving from monopoly to state-monopoly. The most remarkable is that he began, in the early chapters of Imp'm, with a conception of the state as collective capitalist. Then he dropped it, to take it up again in later books. The whole thing revolves around plan: trusts or masses. Now you see what workers control means.
You see L took very seriously free competition and commodity production for a free market as a lever of progress. At the other end, all monopoly, and in the latter part of Imp'm,8 he says so, all monopoly is stagnation. There is a very deep historic content here.
I have said enough, I hope, to make clear on one point how close is the connection between Imp'm and State & R.
Of immense importance too is monopoly as the transition. But perhaps I should not bring that in and should strike to the main point, that Lenin saw the Soviets solving a strictly economic problem posed by monopoly and imperialism, and he had never seen it before, either the problem or the concrete solution. The Threat'g Catastrophe and the other one show that clearly.
Now, from there, on to some Logic, from there. You say in your letter L repudiates method of thought of Being, and shows the necessity of method of thought of Essence. I can't say yes or no. But after the last ten days or so, (and how I have sweated, lying on my back, staring at the ceiling, dipping into a book, and staring at the ceiling again) after ten days of this, I arrive here.
Lenin I cannot see as having repudiated method of Being. You cannot do that. You have to use it but on its own level (God forgive me. I tremble, tremble, tremble, at the boldness of some of the things I say) Its level is things, material objects as material objects, i.e. capital as a material object. And if anyone says to me that capital is a social relation I shall utter a stream of filthy language. I know that. The material, the object, in Capital, can be measured, analytically: it must be as a start. Now let us measure it. It has an aim, a purpose, a something that is always present, a Being-for-Self, a One, that changes into a succession of the Many: each one of which many, however, comes and goes, but always bearing in it the thing-that-matters, the genuine abstract infinite - profit-seeking or more scientifically, surplus-value. Individual capitals come and go, infinite forms, Many, Many, Many, connected with each other, disappearing and giving place to new ones, but always swelling the total profit, increasing the total social capital. This is the problem of the Atomists. They see the many individuals but cannot see that these must be covered by some totality, some One. Leibniz sees the necessity for this, but he ties the many to the One by a purely external bond. They do not see what Marx saw (Cp Lenin on March 1914) that the Individual many ones, express, in their finite birth, death, and perishing, only the development of the big One, the system as a whole where Being-for-Self is profit.
These people are the ones who fall into pure Quantity, and here is a fine job for you, Grace. Note how in Quantity Hegel constantly comes back to Absolute Indifference. But we are dialecticians. The method of Thought of Being is a method of Thought; and if we follow it we see that Quantity becomes the infinite Quantitative progression (NB the vicious attack of Marx on Bentham; each for himself and therefore all for the good of all).
But Hegel insists you cannot go on indefinitely with the Infinite Quantitative Progression. As a certain stage the quantity begins, within certain limits, to assume what we might call, a quantitative quality. Then this quantitative quality becomes a ratio: the relation is what matters; and from this ratio you move into measure, some sort of rule by which you test the whole thing. I have innumerable quotes illustrating this.
Now take Marx. Marx looking at Capital objectively reached Relative Surplus-Value, pure quantity: then he split it into organic composition, throwing aside pure quantity and fastening on the ratio: and his final statement is that the ratio develops until production becomes impossible. Why? By a measure. For us and for Marx that measure is man; the effect up on the proletariat. We are forthwith in the realm of Essence, the relationship between the proletariat and the objective form of Capital. The two are joined.
Now my supposed analysis of capital as objective constitutes an abstraction from Marx. I agree. But that is how Hegel, as a good bourgeois dialectician would argue, would think. And in the end he would arrive at measure - place, rule, order, and the organized bourgeois stage, or state-capitalism. The difference between him and Marx would be that Marx, from the start, would see and include the proletariat, labor. But it seems to me that the method of Being, being a logical and a dialectical method can go thus far, but no further.
Here I repeat, and I confess, I am always nervous about this: Logic is abstract. It applies to nothing in particular. The Logic of Capital is the logic of social development on a world scale (we shall go to that in a moment); but Hegel's Logic, whatever its origins, is placed before us as abstractions which fit or enable us to penetrate into the innermost essence of an object.9
Yet Hegel himself says Being = pre-capitalist society; Essence is modern society, beginning with Bacon etc. Let me make very clear How I see it, this use of Being as a method of thought.10
Today, 1949, there are different ways of looking at society. You can look at it purely objectively, materialistically. See how the productive forces grow, larger and larger; now they must be controlled by the state. That is pure Being, its method of thought. Others, however, see class conflict, recognize man as the measure - they want to correct capitalism - abstract from it the reason for its existence, profit-making. These are the "stubbornest" - the most, stupid of all. Then there are the dialecticians - Marxists who see it as transitory and the proletariat as its grave-digger.
So that at all times the modes of thought represented by the philosophers of different ages are used. Different classes use them, e.g. your old-fashioned American capitalist, your free enterprise fanatic, is a man of pure Being.
You can do the same with Stalinism; look at the different method of thought which try to solve it. You will find them again, Being, Essence, etc. Just for practice. At Being, Man says: Stalinism? You must have leadership. It defeats capitalism. He is a Stalinist. Another man, reflection, i.e. a man who stops at the end of essence, just as a being man stops at "subjective" measure, he says Stalinism? We must get a good bureaucracy. He does not understand that the essence of bureaucracy is to bureaucratize. A dialectician seeks to abolish the whole thing. Grace knows all this. The thing is to use it concretely.
Now I suggest (whisper it, whisper it) that Lenin before 1914 was not too far from a type of thinking for Western Europe which saw the Social-Democratic bureaucracies taking power (not peacefully, of course) and establishing that type of state. "Soviet" democracy, he did not know. What exactly did he think? I believe he had for Western Europe some vague ideas about something like the Commune. But the Commune voted as in bourgeois democracy.
But Imperialism and the banks and finance-capital put into his head the idea of a concrete national control (in fact in 1918 he said that the road to socialism and state-capitalism is the same = national accounting and control). This economic, objective economic relation opened his eyes to what socialism in 1916 was. This was his first step, his transition.
Many things will have to be worked out here. But to get this break sharply enough and all that it means - that is a job. In 1914, not a soul talked about "planned economy" - nobody. We have to drive this home. The bourgeoisie does it now. He saw the basis for it - and then moved to the control and accounting by the proletariat. Stop and think of how sharp a turn that was. Get back into the climate of 1914. But he saw both/and. He saw as clear as day that monopoly meant control, some sort of control, workers or the totalitarian state. You others may have seen this before as clearly as I see it now. I didn't. He says, and we have to say that he saw, then. It saves us from having to say how we see now.
I think we should stay here awhile and extract every ounce of juice we can squeeze from Lenin's break with his economic past. I want G to say directly - Do you see what I mean by concrete and where you are too general. If not, let me know. My great polemic is not very serious really.
Now a little more on this point. We say that Lenin worked at imperialism primarily to account for the collapse of the Second International. Not concretely true. He worked primarily at capitalism. He found the transition - monopoly. Then he analyzed the IInd International and from there he linked them up completely with the bourgeoisie. Some he said would go, with the bourgeoisie. Remember now Lenin's "planlessness Ceases". For him, there was, inherent in the whole situation, a brutal, merciless type of "planning" and he threw the Social-Democracy over into the bourgeois, junker type of plan. In those days NB, even Trotsky in the Manifesto of 191911 spoke of either the proletarian state or the imperialist state. Lenin believed and thought this because like Marx in 1867 he drew his conclusions to the end. A very careful reading must be made of the Manifesto and the Platform of 1919.
So, Grace, I believe we must throw all we have into the concrete, around L's Imperialism. If Rae prefers you to do the syllogism, etc. O.K. But Imperialism and related writings, that is the stuff now.
Here I'll stop. Tired. I'll do something on the Logic of Capital when I feel like it. But first I want to employ some detectives. In the Manifesto of 1919 we used to have one translation: statification of production. I notice in First Five Years of C.I.12 the translator is using a new term: state-ization. Now one of LT's worst blunders is to say that state-capitalism can only be the French etatisme.13 The words should be carefully looked up. Cf. the Revolution Betrayed.14 The point is doubly important because words that the Stalinists originally translated as nationalization (Collected Works) they have changed (Selected Works) and call something else. Again, why?
Now I don't want to be misunderstood. I cast my remarks in the form of a polemic - not too much either. I began that way but soon forget; too much sincerity. We have all been abstract too long, time is going by and we need henceforward to be absolutely concrete. If I had strength and time I could supply a mass of quotes, and in order. But I'll wait on Rae's first response and then supplement.
Future concretions. Future. Precisely what did L think of the party in 1903, 1914; how did he change?
But for the time being. Imperialism - extract its guts. Scrutinize it. Dialecticalize it. Develop the implications. By dialecticalize it, I mean analyse it in dialectical terms. Then see what you can do with it in strict logical terms, quantity, quantitative ratio, etc., as I have tried to do. Marxists in the past have emphasized Imperialism and War. We should read now for what it signifies about the structure of capitalism. Imperialism is Marx's chapter on the Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation concretized. That is the 1914 stage of the Infinite. We have to concretize what Lenin described as Historical Tendencies of his time. I started something new I think, but will finish some other time. Or does it fit.
J
In Selected, p. 33, there is a marvellous definition of what L means by "private" in economic terms.
And I simply must not omit this. The Notes in the Selected Works are very full. There are references to Bukh's organized capitalism of 1928. There is a long quarrel between L and B. It should not be too difficult to trace this. Also I think R should begin to say what she wants us to do, or if she wishes I can do it, probably better than she, among other reasons because I can communicate with G so easily. The thing, if worth doing, should be done thoroughly, and as I see it, if done right, could use 1914 and hit a great blow for 1949. I am seeing now that far more than I thought before, even in Nevada. We have L's authority and method behind us. And I see every day if we can make that break sharp enough, we will be ready to make sure when the time comes.
***
Before I sent it off, I saw the thing so clearly that I am moved to write it down. It should go something like this.
1. Lenin in 1914
Sketch of his career. Pregnant double or single sentences such as: He had denounced RL's theory of underconsumptionism and insisted that a different rearrangement of the national capital etc.
2. Hegelianism and Marxism in 1914.
3. 1914 - His reading of the Logic. What the Logic is. What he saw.
4. Part IV will take up 1917-1923
And all through asking and posing such problems in such a way that anyone of intelligence would ask the same questions for 1949. And this to the general public. Isn't that something?
We must not write the article now. The main outline will be sufficient.
P.S. Reading over your letter, G, I am struck by two things: a) how useful it is to me b) how necessary it is for me to start to take Imperialism apart so that you can see what I mean by concrete. Just to keep you going for a bit.
Do you know that R-S-D party15 in July 1903 formulated a program, the only one in Europe which contained a paragraph on the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Exactly what was L's conception of the dem. dict. of the pt and pea'y.16 I believe in all this L had nothing to learn from anybody or anything. The state was to mobilize the masses and crush the enemy, whether for bouregois d-c or socialist revolution. Now as far back as 1907 L had a clear conception of his thesis on super-profits and the prol, limited however to colonial chauvinism (Gankin and Fisher, p. 62).17 But he was not troubled seriously by it. But it is there.
Again, Gankin and Fisher, p. 226, L says in a very very profound (and confusing) passage: we must have complete democracy in mobilizing the proletariat in the army, etc. in order to achieve socialism. Civil war against the bourgeoisie is a war "democratically organized". But despite talk about participating in "state affairs" he is concerned with civil war and liquidation of capitalism. This is written in spring or summer of 1916. National accounting and control do not appear. He had already written or very nearly written Imperialism. He gets into a controversy with Bukharin (G & F, p. 236) and S & R begins as notes for an article against Buk's Theories of the State.18 It was to be published with Buk's article. He began in the spring of 1917 before the outbreaks in March in Russia. Now B's two articles are in G&F. Now we have L on Imperialism and B on Imp'm. Then we have both on the state and both on self-determination. L, I believe, added plenty after the first revolution.
But there is a duality in his conception of the state - to crush the enemy; and to administer. One of them he always had. We have to dig the other out of all that mess. E.g. the comparison of the original note-book on S & R with the final book, (some of the notes are at the back of Critique of Gotha19) L says B on self-determination is the "same" nonsense as on the state. You see what I mean by concrete, now; not yesterday nor tomorrow but now. In all this not a word, not one word about the Soviet.
Now I am going to jump a bit. You see it seems to me that he wanted to finish with the 2nd Intl as a type of organization. His party, therefore, was merely the vanguard of a new type of organization. Here now in the organization is the counter to the stagnation inherent in all monopoly - here is the source of movement - free creative activity to replace free competition. See? Dig it out, dig deep.
And, I am going to jump again, the key to all these differences, development of L, etc. is in Imperialism, somewhere behind B's anarchist ideas is an incapacity to grasp the relation between free competition and monopoly. I am guessing, but I believe the guess is good. Here I will stay. This is long enough. I think next time instead of the Logic of Capital, I'll do some notes on Imp'm. But I hope you see what we must now systematically do and why I look at your letter as too smooth. Finally, we must be on guard against giving the impression (false) that L read a book - and understood. That would strangle us. No dialectic taught him to formulate, clarify, concretize objective stages etc. We must show the dialectical contradictions in life and in his inheritance of 1914, and his contemporaries20 etc. This is not Nevada, by the way. I get so tired after two hours and what is worse, I skip the connections - cannot bother to write them down. I believe we got some place here. If we haven't, in method, let me know. And even if Marcuse says, No, we have two or three articles, and if I am not crazy, we shall offer them if need be to all sorts of people, all sorts. We got something, and with patience, out of patient work, comes the way to work it out and what to do with it.
June 22 (duly dated)
Do you agree now after yesterday's opus (Tuesday, June 21st); that there is a new significance now to L's statement on the Great Beginning. Look at it again, will you, Selected IX, p.21 "I have always said that coercion is not the main thing".22 Why? He knew all about coercion even for the bourgeois revolution. No, the main thing is the new discipline, etc. and then he describes the characteristics of slave-labor, serf-labor, wage slavery and proletarian or rather socialist labor.
(Stop a bit friends, and visualize what a terrific impact a study of this kind of will have - in the prevailing gloom).
Now, watching particularly the kind of socialist labor described in the Great Beginning, back again to Imp'm. All monopoly is stagnation. But as he said in 1920, all democracy helps production. Socialization of labor is wonderful. But he has nothing concrete to put in its place23 in Imp. The articles which describes the relation of dem'y to soc'm (It is in Vol. V, Selected) is written in August 1916. Note the key para beginning "Impm is highly developed capitalism" and ending "minimum program, i.e. under capm". There is a deep-going dial. law here. But we must pass it by, tho bearing it in mind.
However, note: L is dragged into this by Buk. Question I. Does Buk. "represent" the Marxists who did not understand Capital. For note that L is not hostile to these dumb Marxists as he is not hostile to the philosopher, Plek, as he is too close to them, only too recently. Back again to the economic revn of socialism. L has nothing positive to say.
You see this is a very fine mind, I see it now in detail; of the same kind as Hegel's and Marx's. Takes nothing for granted, never substitutes a phrase for a thing, skips no intermediate stages, lets nothing pass. He knows what free competition has meant. That was the impetus, later he will say that it is the expanding world market. Socialization of labor is wonderful. But I don't see a line in Imp. which implies the positive solution concretely. Now plan is there. When he comes to write S & R, he carries over the fact that "planlessness ceases". It seems to me that HE REJECTS PURE PLAN.
It may seem I have said this before. Maybe. But I don't think so. Later, after the Soviets have appeared he will say either their plan or ours. But until then he does not slip into the easy road, socialization and workers power. There is not a line that I know between 1916 and the Letters from Afar24 about economics. There is very little between April and July. Only after he has started to write S & R that he grasps what is required, what is it? The energy of people, new millions. Before this he simply did not know. But is it implied in Imperialism? It is. You can see that he has to find an opposite to Monopoly. It is not "socialization of labor". S of l is an economic fact. He has not yet found the relations between the fact and the energy of millions as a motive force. There is a mass of stuff in the early writings of Capital - against Narodniks, etc; not a line about this, that I can remember. All of them, L included, all capitalist disorder and socialist order. Show this. L however (only now I touch the Logic) sees at the core of Hegelianism and Marxism spontaneous self-movement, etc. This is the core. Monopoly is the economic quintessence of capitalism. Its opposite is not socialization of labor, just growing bigger and bigger and bigger. That if you please is "Quantity" and "plan". Its opposite is the freedom, the democracy, of millions which lifts production to a new stage. How we must drive home this. In the 1914 things he had said socialization of labor. In that, however, so late (July-November 1914) the large scale production is there, and he talks about new people, better educated, etc. The thing is there but very very abstractly and bookishly as we used to say it at the start.
Now for some jumps. There is some strict logical work hidden here. Every form has its opposite, every new stage of the Absolute contains its sylogistic opposite. Monopoly is one such stage. Grace can work on this. But behind it all is something else, the Logic of Capital. Lenin says: we have that. What is the connection with all the above? Nothing but the whole logic of social development. Two movements are in Capital. One is the whole of history. Primitive use-value producing societies, guilds, and small peasants, capitalism, socialism. Dominating this but growing out of it, is the logical movement of Capital itself, simple cooperation, conquest of home market, struggle over working day, relative surplus-value (very important transition here). Now we have to see both in general and in particular, at the critical stages, there is an opposition which is exploded and new relations established. Monopoly is one such and L seeks the concrete opposite and sphere of transition. In Monopoly is a contradiction, many contradictions but all expressing one basic one. Now having dug all this out of Impm and the concrete - dates of articles, etc. we can begin with Letters from Afar and ride gloriously to S & R. I hope this means something to you investigators. I wish I could get down to it. But maybe it is just as well. One last word. At all costs establish what the others were thinking around 1914 and keep that going.
J
Rae - I got your letter a few hours ago. I hadn't sent this off and will add a few things. Your method is admirable. And you will see that I am answering the same questions you ask. But there are some trends I think wrong. You seem to be polemicizing in a very narrow circle and writing a political treatise. However good that may be it will get us nowhere with Marcuse, and this may sound like heresy, no place with anybody now. I have as good a record as any in struggle of tendencies I believe. In fact nearly 10 years of my life has been spent in building a tendency. But this is neither the time nor the place for that. This is what [...].25
Something happened to Lenin in 1914. It happens that there was posed what is now openly and for everybody - the crisis of world history. In those days it was the business of revolutionaries and counter-revols only. Today everybody talks about what preoccupied Lenin then. We tell his experience, what he accepted, what he rejected, how and why. No such study of Lenin exists anywhere. So in general, abstractly.
But concretely, we have to hang it on his logical studies. It will need tact but it gives us the opportunity to emphasize method. Why must we be so concrete. Primarily because without that we shall never understand him: never did he lose sight of it; secondly we will not be able to explain him except by contrast, with himself, his own past, and with others. We are therefore concerned with pre-1914, with certain broad concepts common to all, and oppostions such as they had appeared. No more.
(above)
Now my letter here shows how we must explain Imperialism. The whole thing finally will be written in 3 pages. It means 30 pages of work to get it down to that. But note how Krupskaya's statement about Letter from Afar fits like a glove. Lenin just didn't know and was looking for some concrete form for the social revolution. (Don't forget Bertram Wolfe26 and all these writers on Lenin. They are just ciphers, they understand nothing. Our stuff will have authority). As you study and make notes keep in your mind this. The talk about planned economy, free enterprise as progressive, is socialism possible without totalitarianism - all these people want to know about today. Work hard and then be in a position to write it down very simply and directly.
Another point. Take L's joy about abstract and concrete. Will continue elsewhere soon.
1 The 22nd was the date originally typed on the manuscript. This date was subsequently striked out and the date 19th typed above it.
2 W. is probably a reference to William G., who James wrote to on July 5, 1949 (letter 19). F. and L. are Freddie and Lyman Paine. The Paine's were early members of the Johnson-Forest Tendency (JFT). They remained with CLR James and Grace Lee (Boggs) after the break-up of the JFT. When James and Lee-Boggs parted ways, they sided with Lee-Boggs.
3 This word is blurred in the text.
4 Plekanhov.
5 Rudolf Hilferding, Finance Capital: A Study of the Latest Phase of Capitalist Development, (1910).
6 This appears to be a reference to Lenin's October 1917 pamphlet The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It
7 Lenin, Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?, (1917).
8 Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, (1916).
9 The right-hand side of this paragraph is missing.
10 The right-hand side of this paragraph is missing.
11 This appears to be a reference to Trotsky et al, Manifesto of the First Congress of the Comintern, (1919).
12 Trotsky, The First Five Years of the Communist International, (1924).
13 etatisme (French) translation into English as 'Total control of the State over an individual citizen'.
14 Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, (1936).
15 Russian Social Democratic Party.
16 Dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry.
17 Olga Hess Gankin & H.H. Fisher, The Bolsheviks and the World War, The Origin of the Third International Stanford University Press (1940). CLR James reviewed the book for the Workers' Party publication, The New International.
18 This appears to be a reference to Bukharin, Toward a Theory of the Imperialist State, (1915).
19 Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, (1875).
20This word is blurred in the text.
21 No page number is given in the letter.
22 Lenin, A Great Beginning, (1919). In the version of this text on MIA the relevant sentence is translated as:
'As I have had occasion to point out more than once, among other occasions in the speech I delivered at a session of the Petrograd Soviet on March 12, the dictatorship of the proletariat is not only the use of force against the exploiters, and not even mainly the use of force.'
23 This word is blurred in the text.
24 Lenin, Letters from Afar, (1917).
25 A small portion of the text is missing.
26 Bertram Wolfe was a veteran trade union organiser and a founding member of the Communist Party of the USA, when it was established in 1919. He was expelled from the party in 1929 and was a supporter of Bukaharin and helped establish the International Communist Opposition (the International Right Opposition). In the 1950s he became a leading anti-communist.