July 5, 1949
Dear J:
I would like to jot down some ideas which strike me rather sharply at the moment. Some of them, in fact most, are not particularly new, while those which are or appear so, are of course, tentative.
Hegel would never have emerged from Kant, if Napoleon had not emerged from and been anticipated by Robespierre. Likewise, Lenin would never have turned to the Hegelian dialectic from his previous satisfaction with Plekhanov if the revolutionist Kautsky had not been transformed into the social-chauvanist Kautsky. From this follows the fact that the method of thought of the dialectic is that which sees the negativity in the subject or the counter-revolution within the revolution itself, not from the right or from the old ruling class but from one section of the revolutionary movement. The only true content to the dialectic as method1 is not birds, seeds, or mass struggle, - but revolution.2
To me this throws a great deal of light not only on Lenin from 1916 to 1923 but also on the contemporary scene. It is the logical method on the basis of which Lenin from 1902 to 1914 and from 1916 to 1923 fundamentally, strategically, opposed the Economists, the Mensheviks, the Liquidators, and then Bukharin - and only tactically formed united fronts with them (as contrasted with LT3 who was always strategically forming united fronts with all these but tactically opposing them).
From 1916 on Bukharin is the theoretical enemy, not Kautsky. Nothing new is contained in the polemics against Kautsky. All the new ideas are directed against the enemies within the new revolutionary movement of the Third International. The universal to be fought is not the peaceful ultra-Imperialism of Kautsky but its continuation - the imperialist economism of Bukharin - in all its different forms - draft program of the Third International, national question and self-determination, Brest-Litovsk4 (first form of socialism in a single country), statification of the trade unions. (I've got to re-read the whole discussion around "The Economics of the Transition Period"5). I've just glanced through B's draft program for the 1924 5th Cong. of the CI6 and it is Economist to the core. It is as if 1917-23 never took place.
The importance of this dialectic as method of thought is the way in which it enables us to see this counter-revolution within the revolution itself, in other words, the actual dialectics of all revolutions. (I understand better now why Engels wrote to Kautsky that when the actual revolution begins, the most important question is not the economy).7 What obscures this dialectic is the struggle against the old ruling class which has already been outmoded by the time the revolution begins. (The most striking example of this deliberate obscuration is of course the way in which the Stalinists today try to keep the masses in a state of permanent mobilization against monopoly capitalism and the agents of Wall Street). The deeper logical content of the theory of stages is involved here.
The moment the revolution begins, the counter-revolution seeks to legalize the institutions which have been created by the masses, i.e. particularize their tasks, transform them into fixed and isolated determinations. The method of thought of the counter-revolution is the particularization of the universal, carrying it to the absolute like a shot out of a pistol. The permanent revolution is the overcoming of this particularization. The particularization is merely the completion of a tendency already moving to this culmination within the old society. Bukharin's conception of the world revolution was 1) introducing on a world scale the particularization of the universal achieved in Russia and 2) imposing on the proletariat the completion of the economic tendencies of capitalism towards internationalization and organization. Much the same is inherent in the concepts "only the proletariat can..." and "only the world revolution can...".
It seems to me that when Lenin in the notes on the Logic was so struck by the Hegelian method that the truth is not in the immediate concrete but in the logical form, what he was seeing was that the truth of the Social-Democracy was not in the fact that they betrayed but in the internal negative relation between bureaucracy and the masses. And this internal negative relation is not fully appreciated until State and Revolution8 (notes9 for which he was already preparing while writing Imperialism10).** In Imperialism much of the analysis seems not very different from Bukharin's. What is distinctive, however, is that Lenin seems to leave the question open - and not only because he was using Aesopian language11 for legal reasons. He just doesn't draw the conclusion that socialism is the appropriation by the proletariat of the centralized state organization. He seems to leave the particular open, so to speak, rather than fixing and isolating it. He hovers, so the speak, around the transition.
I have the feeling that when Lenin says Plekhanov only corrected Kant from the vulgar-materialist point of view, he is saying that Plekhanov only explained Kant, shows his objective petty-bourgeois base and at the same time the objective base of historical materialism in the development of the proletariat under capitalism. Plekhanov didn't deepen, generalize, broaden this i.e. didn't show that Kant only reached to the super-imposition of form on content, thus the proletarian revolution as an instrument to appropriate the economy, rather than the proletarian revolution as identity of subject, method and content. And because he didn't deepen Kant positively, he couldn't see the counter-revolutionary contained in the Kantianism in revolutionary crisis (Robespierre).
Thus, logically, one might see:
Lenin, 1914
Lenin, 1915- Essay on Dialectics13 - First appreciation of idealism, and yet criticism of one-sided, exaggerated nature of idealism.
Lenin, 1916- Imperialism - particular but not fixed and isolated as in Bukharin***
Lenin, 1917- State and Revolution - concrete universality of Soviets, identity of subject, method and content.
I don't know whether you feel some of this as sharply as I feel it. You know how I am always attacking Bukharin and Schelling. Somehow or other, no matter what I am dealing with, the fact that Schelling arose between Kant and Hegel, always seems to be what concerns me. I have the feeling that Lenin's appreciation of the 2nd International is something like Hegel's appreciation of Kant. But the guy that Hegel just couldn't stand was Schelling. Kant's thinking was shaped before the Revolution. He was petty-bourgeois, utopian, etc. etc. but he contributed the principle of the self-determination of thought. Schelling was the one who was really counter-revolutionary, positivist with his shot-out-of-a-pistol-absolute.
Isn't Lenin vs. B and LT like Hegel against Schelling when he insists continually on the concrete against the abstract? Didn't the Economists of 1902 seek to particularize the universal of the progressiveness of capitalism in Russia through the organization of the spontaneity of the masses under the leadership of the liberal bourgeoisie? And don't we have an analogous movement in the Imperialist Economists from Bukharin to Stalin? I know this has been said before in the Economism document and in the Nevada document.14 All I am doing is drawing the threads closer together in terms of what we are doing now. The importance of the dialectic for VL15 having been as it is for us vs. the Economists and not against the SD Kantians.16
One more thing that has been troubling me. LT's analysis in 1940 of the relation between Stalin and the masses, was that: When the revolutionary masses are crowding the streets, Stalin is in the background. When they retire from the revolutionary arena, Stalin emerges into the foreground. That has been proved completely wrong by all that has taken place since 1942-3, and with it, LT's bifurcation of subject and object, spontaneity and organization. The fact today which everybody knows, is that the Stalinists and the trade union bureaucracy betray and seek to control the spontaneity of the masses in the very process. (The latest detailing of this,17 both in relation to the trade union bureaucracy and the Stalinists, is a book by a Sidney Lens Left, Right and Center,18 which John and Rae had at camp and which I glanced through). You did a great deal with this in the Nevada document and I wasn't completely satisfied, as you recall. I can't help feeling that there is a formal, seemingly abstract, but logical way to deepen this fact of control. There is an externality about the relation which keeps haunting me. Maybe we have to wait for the Reason of the mass movement to reveal this logical content and show the real internality, just as Lenin had to wait for the Soviets to find the real truth of the relation between the bureaucracy and the mass movement. But I feel we can do something with it in the connection.
As ever,
G-
** because the true negativity of the 2nd Intl is not its defense of the imperialist fatherland but in its appropriation of the state to use against the proletariat.
*** Bukharin's ideas and the contemporary one-party state are the abstract universals of contradictions of capitalism, developing masses, leadership by party of revolutionary struggles - all carried to the absolute.
* When was the Bibliography written? Did you note that except for reference to Imperialism, 1917, all references are to pre-1914 works, and uncritical of Kautsky, Plekhanov?).
1 This the editor's best guess at the word, which is difficult to discern on the copy in the Raya Dunayevskaya Collection.
2 The highlighted text is in different font to the rest of the typewritten letter. It appears to have been added in later, after the letter was originally typed.
3 Leon Trotksy.
4 The 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was negotiated with the Central Powers by Bolshevik War Commissar Leon Trotsky. The Treaty, which saw Russia withdraw from the war, was concluded on terms that were very unfavorable to the Bolshevik government which agreed to cede what are now Poland, the Baltic states and Belarus to Germany and Austria-Hungary and certain southern territories to the Ottoman Empire. Russia also agreed to recognize the independence of Finland and Ukraine. This ceding of territory is presumably what Lee is referring to in her comment to James about 'socialism in one country'. A rationale for accepting the terms of the Treaty was provided by Trotksy in a Speech given in May 1918.
5 Bukharin's Economics of the Transition Period (1920), was not translated into English until 1979. Grace Lee may have been reading the German edition, which was published in 1922.
6 Bukharin's draft program for the 1924 5th Congress of the Communist (Third) International.
7 The editor has been unable to identify the letter that Grace Lee refers to here.
8 Lenin, State and Revolution, (1917).
9 Lenin, Notebooks on Imperialism.
10 Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, (1916).
11 Aesopian language refers to the use of allegorical or cryptic language to avoid a censor. Lenin uses the term in the first chapter of What is to be Done?, (1901).
12 Lenin, Karl Marx: A Brief Biographical Sketch With an Exposition of Marxism (written in 1914, published in 1915).
13 Lenin, 'On the Question of Dialectics' (written 1915, published 1925).
14 The 'Economism document' appears to be a reference to an internal JFT discussion document, "The Economist Tendency in the Fourth International", written by Grace Lee in 1947. The 'Nevada document' is a reference to Notes on Dialectics, written by CLR James (in Nevada) in late 1948 (see Footnote 3.2 for more details).
15 V. I. Lenin.
16 Social-Democratic Kantians.
17 This part of the text is difficult to discern, because it has been overwritten.
18 Sidney Lens, Left, Right, and Center: Conflicting Forces in American Labor (1949).