Socialist politics and revolutionary compromise

By Raju J Das

Published 23 November, 2024

In “On Compromises”, Vladimir Lenin (1917) said: “The term compromise in politics implies the surrender of certain demands, the renunciation of part of one’s demands, by agreement with another party.” In thinking about any compromise, Lenin (1920) wrote in “Left-wing Communism”: An Infantile Disorder, “the greatest efforts are necessary for a proper assessment of the actual character of this or that ‘compromise’.” 

In this article, I will discuss types of compromises and why they are necessary and possible. As fascist movements get stronger, the oppression of workers and petty producers from religious or racial minorities intensifies, and attacks on people’s living standards continue, the question of revolutionary compromise by socialist organisations and groups assumes greater urgency.

Types of compromise

There are different types of compromises. For example, compromises can be forced or voluntary. Compromises are forced when they are caused by objective political-economic circumstances but the devotion to class struggle is not diminished. Voluntary compromises are those caused by the actions of working-class traitors. 

Lenin eloquently explained the difference:

… between a compromise enforced by objective conditions (such as lack of strike funds, no outside support, starvation and exhaustion) — a compromise which in no way minimises the revolutionary devotion and readiness to carry on the struggle on the part of the workers who have agreed to such a compromise — and, on the other hand, a compromise by traitors who try to ascribe to objective causes their self-interest …their cowardice, desire to toady to the capitalists, and readiness to yield to intimidation, sometimes to persuasion, sometimes to sops, and sometimes to flattery from the capitalists. (Lenin, 1920)

Voluntary compromises cannot be allowed by the Marxist left (henceforward, left) but compromises imposed by objective conditions can be, under certain conditions.

Furthermore, compromises can be made with a) the main class enemy (the bourgeoisie) or b) with one’s “nearest adversaries” (for example, petty-bourgeois-democratic parties). Another group with which compromises are necessary and possible are non-revolutionary left groups.

Compromises can also be made in economic struggle (such as trade union fights) or in political struggle (more on this below). Compromises in economic struggle can be objective or voluntary, as can compromises in political struggle. Discussing compromises in political struggle, Lenin (1920) says:

In politics, where it is sometimes a matter of extremely complex relations … between classes and parties, very many cases will arise that will be much more difficult than the question of a legitimate “compromise” in a strike or a treacherous “compromise” by a strike-breaker, treacherous leader, etc.

Necessity and possibility of revolutionary compromise in political struggle

Here I want to focus on compromise in politics. In the course of the struggle to transcend capitalist society and establish a new genuinely democratic society, circumstances force the proletariat to make compromises in the political sphere. Arguing against the Blanquist communards, Friedrich Engels said it was a mistake to believe that “we want to attain our goal without stopping at intermediate stations, without any compromises, which only postpone the day of victory and prolong the period of slavery.” (quoted in Lenin, 1920)

Lenin was scathing in his criticisms of German Communists who thought “All compromise with other parties ... any policy of manoeuvring and compromise must be emphatically rejected.” (ibid.) To launch class struggle, which is protracted and complex, against the bourgeoisie, nationally and globally, and “renounce in advance any change of tack, or any utilisation of a conflict of interests (even if temporary) among one’s enemies, or any conciliation or compromise with possible allies (even if they are temporary, unstable, vacillating or conditional allies) — is that not ridiculous in the extreme?” (ibid.)

In so far as all bourgeois parties support capitalists, they are the same class enemy for the left. But these parties support — and represent — the ruling classes in different ways. First, different parties represent different interests of the ruling class (with its multiple fractions). Second, these parties, mainly to remain electorally competitive and to gain votes, represent the interests of different fractions differently, and in ways that are to a certain extent mutually conflictual. Some of these ways may partially overlap with the left’s agenda. Some non-socialist parties may be more secular-minded than others. Some may be slightly more pro-poor, pro-worker or pro-peasant than others. Some may support state-funded social services or state interventions to address the climate crisis more than others. Some may support national economic and political sovereignty or may be against the remnants of pre-capitalist relations more than others. None of these are socialist measures but all can make a socialist movement stronger.

Bot these facts constitute objective reasons why temporary compromises by left are possible:

The more powerful enemy can be vanquished … by the most thorough, careful, attentive, skilful and obligatory use of any, even the smallest, rift between the enemies…, any conflict of interests among … the various groups or types of bourgeoisie … (Lenin, 1920; italics added)

In fact, the entire history of the socialist movement, “both before and after the October Revolution, is full of instances of changes of tack, conciliatory tactics and compromises with other parties, including bourgeois parties!” (Lenin, 1920)

To vanquish the powerful class enemy, the left may also have to make compromises with small-scale proprietors who exist in large numbers and are exploited by capital, but who vacillate between pro-capitalist parties and the proletarian movement, which fights for the socialisation of means of production. The left has to take “advantage of any, even the smallest, opportunity of winning a mass ally, even though this ally is temporary, vacillating, unstable, unreliable and conditional.” (Lenin, 1920; italics added)

Regarding the possibility and necessity of compromises within the socialist movement, we need to consider the nature of the working class. The working class is potentially the most revolutionary agent. There is no Marxist party/movement without this class. No anti-capitalist revolution is possible without this class (or a substitute for this class and its organisation). This is the only class whose interests most consistently lie in a successful struggle for both democracy and socialism. 

Yet, its progressive and revolutionary nature is a potential. The working class as it actually exists falls short, ideologically and politically. This class is deeply politically divided in terms of levels of class consciousness and political preparedness. There are objective reasons for such a situation. 

In capitalism, the proletariat is inevitably surrounded by a large number of groups that are:

... intermediate between the proletarian and the semi-proletarian (who earns his livelihood in part by the sale of his labour-power), between the semi-proletarian and the small peasant (and petty artisan, handicraft worker and small master in general), between the small peasant and the middle peasant, and so on. (Lenin, 1920) 

The proletariat’s consciousness is shaped by ideas and interests of non-proletarian classes. It is shaped by the ways in which capitalism itself operates on the basis of competition, individualism, commodity fetishism, etc.

Some sections of the proletariat may be bribed by the capitalist class in return for their support for capitalism and imperialism. The proletariat is inevitably “divided into more developed and less developed strata” and “divided according to territorial origin, trade, sometimes according to religion, and so on” (Lenin, 1920; italics added). The fact that different groups of the world proletariat have different levels of class consciousness, histories and experiences is a reason why different socialist individuals, groups and organisations have different ideas about how capitalism works and how to fight it. Some are more revolutionary than others.

The fact that the working class exists but lacks unity and class-consciousness constitutes an objective reason why temporary compromises are necessary within the proletarian movement (for example among various socialist groups). Lenin spoke of:

…the absolute necessity, for the Communist Party, the vanguard of the proletariat, its class-conscious section, to resort to changes of tack, to conciliation and compromises with the various groups of proletarians, with the various parties of the workers and small masters. (Lenin, 1920)

Echoing Lenin’s point that the fight against capitalism requires temporary agreements and a degree of principled unity, Leon Trotsky (1933) wrote:

No successes would be possible without temporary agreements, for the sake of fulfilling immediate tasks, among various sections, organisations, and groups of the proletariat. Strikes, trade unions, journals, parliamentary elections, street demonstrations, demand that the split be bridged in practice from time to time as the need arises; that is, they demand an ad hoc united front, even if it does not always take on the form of one. In the first stages of a movement, unity arises episodically and spontaneously from below, but when the masses are accustomed to fighting through their organisations, unity must also be established at the top.

So, temporary compromises in, for example, the political sphere (such as in elections) are objectively necessary because, at a given juncture, the working masses might be divided and not class conscious (enough), and, concomitantly, the left can be relatively weak. Compromises can also be possible because there are conflicts of interests within the economic and political elites.

The point of political compromise is not to arrive at and settle for a capitalist society that is more or less democratic or more or less egalitarian, and just needs to be managed by left forces for an indefinite time period. The compromise in question here is revolutionary compromise (compromise as a part of, and with the purpose of, advancing long-term goals of class struggle). It is a compromise that is temporarily necessitated by the force of circumstances relative to the strength of the left forces, in order to advance the long-term revolutionary goal of transcending capitalism, and not to help sustain a capitalism sans fascistic tendencies.

Given the significance of temporary revolutionary compromises — compromises with bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties and reformist socialist organisations, etc — Lenin (1920) warned that those who do not understand the need for temporary compromises “reveal a failure to understand even the smallest grain of Marxism, of modern scientific socialism in general.” (ibid.; italics added) He emphasises:

Those who have not proved in practice, over a fairly considerable period of time and in fairly varied political situations, their ability to apply this truth [the truth about the need for political compromise] in practice have not yet learned to help the revolutionary class in its struggle to emancipate all toiling humanity from the exploiters.

Lenin added:

The task of a truly revolutionary party is not to declare that it is impossible to renounce all compromises, but to be able, through all compromises, when they are unavoidable, to remain true to its principles, to its class, to its revolutionary purpose, to its task of paving the way for revolution and educating the mass of the people for victory in the revolution. (Lenin, 1917)1

The development of a socialist movement requires engaging in day-to-day struggles against capitalism and its consequences. Doing so might require fighting alongside not-so-revolutionary groups and making temporary compromises with them. This may require a united front approach. The principle of a united front form of struggle “is imposed by the dialectics of the class struggle” (Trotsky, 1933). One aspect of this dialectics is the fact that the proletariat is deeply divided in terms of concrete needs and everyday economic demands, as well as level of consciousness. That means different sections of the proletariat may be represented by more or less revolutionary organisations.

Conclusion

In line with Lenin’s theory, it is possible to argue that compromises in the electoral/political sphere that pose ideological and political risks (of subordinating workers and peasants to bourgeois forces) are justified only when the following criteria are met, making the temporary agreement highly conditional.

First, compromises are unavoidable or forced by conditions (for example, the left is weak relative to, say, fascistic forces, so it needs allies in some cases). Compromises cannot be due to left leaders’ “cowardice, desire to toady to the capitalists, and readiness to yield to intimidation, sometimes to persuasion, sometimes to sops, and sometimes to flattery from the capitalists.” (Lenin, 1920)

Second, compromises must ultimately contribute to the political project of raising the level of mass consciousness and advancing the goal of the communist struggle against capitalism’s adverse consequences for the masses and capitalist class relations. Lenin said tactics of compromises are applied only “to raise — not lower — the general level of proletarian class-consciousness, revolutionary spirit, and ability to fight and win.” (Lenin, 1920)

Third, left forces must maintain their organisational and ideological independence from non-left parties and movements.

Fourth, the left must always maintain the right to criticise and politically mobilise against its temporary allies when their policies attack the living conditions of ordinary people.

Fifth, the left’s dominant focus must remain on extra-parliamentary mobilisation and not electoral battles, which may involve temporary tactical understanding with non-left forces. The point of temporary agreement is not to confine class struggle to the parliamentary/electoral sphere.

For Marxism — the foundation of which Marx and Engels laid and Lenin and Trotsky, among others, strengthened — revolution requires united action. Marxism recognises that sectarianism is counter-productive.2 It recognises that unity is “a good thing so long as it is possible,” but not, of course, at the expense of the fundamental principles or long-term goal of developing socialist consciousness (Engels, 1882). A non-sectarian revolutionary politics requires working with allies — especially, when fascistic political movements are everywhere and when people’s democratic and social rights are attacked by all sections of the capitalist class.

Socialists ignore this warning at their own peril:

One of the biggest and most dangerous mistakes made by Communists … is the idea that a revolution can be made by revolutionaries alone. On the contrary, to be successful, all serious revolutionary work [must be guided by] … the idea that revolutionaries are capable of playing the part only of the vanguard of the truly virile and advanced class… A vanguard performs its task as vanguard only when it is able to avoid being isolated from the mass of the people it leads and is able really to lead the whole mass forward. Without an alliance with non-Communists in the most diverse spheres of activity there can be no question of any successful communist construction. (Lenin, 1922)

Raju J Das is Professor at the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Research, York University, Toronto. https://rajudas.info.yorku.ca

References

Das, R. 2019. “Politics of Marx as Non-sectarian Revolutionary Class Politics: An Interpretation in the Context of the 20th and 21st Centuries.” Class, Race and Corporate Power, 7(1).

Engels, F. 1882. Letter to Bebel. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1882/letters/82_10_28.htm

Lenin, V. 1917. On Compromises. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/sep/03.htm

Lenin, V. 1920. “Left-wing Communism”: An Infantile Disorder https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch06.htm

Lenin, V. 2022. On the Significance of Militant Materialism. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/mar/12.htm

Trotsky, L. 1933. The German Catastrophe. https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/1933/330528.htm

• 1

  “To agree, for instance, to participate in the Third and Fourth Dumas was a compromise, a temporary renunciation of revolutionary demands. But this was a compromise absolutely forced upon us, for the balance of forces made it impossible for us for the time being to conduct a mass revolutionary struggle, and in order to prepare this struggle over a long period we had to be able to work even from inside such a ‘pigsty’.”  (Lenin, 1917).

• 2

  Note that it is not sectarian if a Marxist organisation refuses to join a bourgeois/reformist group/party organisationally, or if a democratically-functioning Marxist leadership drives away reformist people from its organisation (Das, 2019).

 

Boris Kagarlitsky’s ‘The Long Retreat’: Capitalism, crisis and the left’s challenge

By Dmitry Pozhidaev

Published 23 November, 2024MastodonFacebookTwitter

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The Long Retreat: Strategies to Reverse the Decline of the Left
By Boris Kagarlitsky
Published by Pluto Press

Boris Kagarlitsky, a prominent leftist thinker, political prisoner and fierce critic of neoliberal capitalism, has consistently offered a critical lens on global capitalism and Russia’s position within it. His latest work, The Long Retreat: Strategies to Reverse the Decline of the Left (Pluto Press, 2024), emerges at a moment of acute crisis for both global and Russian capitalism, compounded by the war in Ukraine — a conflict Kagarlitsky has resolutely opposed. Imprisoned for his anti-war stance, Kagarlitsky remains committed to his homeland, as his recent public refusal to participate in potential prisoner exchanges with the West testifies. His book is a timely, sobering and, paradoxically, hopeful examination of capitalism’s decline and the left’s prospects for renewal.

I write this review from the vantage point of someone who has been in regular contact with the author over the past few months of his incarceration. As we work on joint research projects, most of our conversations revolve around the themes explored in the book: the deepening crisis of contemporary capitalism, its different manifestations domestically and internationally, unequal relations between the capitalist core and the periphery, and, inevitably, the new forms of social and economic organisation that may replace capitalism in the future.

The crisis of capitalism: A system imploding

At its core, The Long Retreat situates contemporary struggles within the context of a deepening systemic crisis of capitalism, which Kagarlitsky identifies as beginning in the 1980s and ’90s. This era marked the rise of neoliberalism, with its dismantling of welfare systems, privatisation of public assets, and destruction of organised labour. These policies, initially hailed as modernising reforms, were, as Kagarlitsky notes, “a desperate attempt to stave off collapse by sacrificing social stability.”

Kagarlitsky traces the roots of this crisis to the exhaustion of the post-war welfare state. From the 1940s to the ’70s, this model had temporarily stabilised capitalism by balancing class compromise, union strength and reduced inequality. Yet globalisation, technological shifts and diminishing profit margins ultimately undermined this framework. Neoliberalism emerged as a reactionary response, prioritising profitability over social cohesion. This restructuring was not confined to the West. It extended its grip globally, shaping the trajectories of former socialist states, including Russia, as they transitioned to market economies.

Kagarlitsky’s analysis challenges the conventional narrative that democracy and capitalism are intrinsically linked, as argued by such scholars as Torben Iversen and David Soskice (2019) and Martin Wolf (2023). Kagarlitsky objects, saying that “…the bourgeoisie has never had any need of democracy; its social interests consist in the formation of a law-governed state with independent judges, reliable information, guarantees that contracts will be observed, clear legislation, a disciplined and predictable bureaucracy, and secure property rights.” He highlights the efficiency of autocratic regimes, such as China, in delivering these key components of capitalism (a phenomenon largely ignored by the champions of the umbilical link between capitalism and democracy). For him, “The belief in democracy as a necessary companion to capitalism is a dangerous illusion, blinding us to the realities of autocratic capitalism’s successes.”

Kagarlitsky highlights the hollowing out of Western democracy, which is progressively transforming into “a façade embellishing the ugly edifice of the corporate state.” Kagarlitsky argues that weakening ties between citizens and political parties, coupled with the diminished capacity for grassroots organisation, have eroded meaningful political engagement. Traditional roles such as organisers and ideologues have been replaced by media-savvy spin doctors who prioritise superficial messaging over substantive discourse. Attempts to foster meaningful public discussions are increasingly seen as disruptions to a system that prioritises commercial interests, predictability and the minimization of risks, stifling any debates that challenge societal stability or the status quo.

Dialectics of decline and renewal

A central strength of The Long Retreat is Kagarlitsky’s application of Marxist dialectics to contemporary issues. He consistently examines the contradictions between appearance and substance, production and consumption, and crisis and opportunity. For example, in his critique of neoliberalism, Kagarlitsky highlights how financialisation appeared to resolve capitalism’s consumption crisis by enabling households to borrow extensively. In reality, this shift merely postponed the contradictions, deepening systemic instability as financial obligations replaced workplace exploitation as the dominant form of oppression.

Kagarlitsky’s analysis of the Green New Deal offers another example of his dialectical method. While some capitalists embrace green technologies as a solution to ecological and economic crises, Kagarlitsky argues that their primary motivation lies in countering declining capitalist profits.

He demonstrates the dialectical interconnectedness between capitalism and socialism. Thus, Kagarlitsky argues that capitalism owes its most attractive features — such as social protections and democratic rights — not to its intrinsic vitality, but to competition with socialism and pressure from labour movements led by strong trade unions and visionary left structures. “Capitalism’s finest hours,” he writes, “were forged not in isolation but in response to the challenge posed by socialism.”

The left in retreat: A movement in crisis

If capitalism is faltering, why has the left not been able to mount a meaningful challenge? Kagarlitsky does not shy away from hard truths. He argues the left has become disconnected from its roots in the working class, prioritising political correctness, identity politics and cultural debates over bread-and-butter economic issues.

Kagarlitsky recognises that defence of the rights of minorities is an indissoluble part of the modern democratic order, but the essence is the right of these minorities along with the majority to be free from persecution and discrimination. It is not an entitlement to special rights and privileges, which grant these minorities particular advantages. Kagarlitsky argues that positive discrimination, on which a section of the left insists, is not just in contradiction to democracy but, like other neoliberal reforms, is an instrument serving to destroy it. This leads to a disastrous outcome when “the majority disappears, to be replaced by a mass of minorities who need to be protected, no longer from the majority but from one another.”

Take the Canadian trucker protests of 2022 analysed in the book. While mainstream media outlets painted the protesters as reactionary, Kagarlitsky argues the real failure lay with the left. Instead of engaging with these workers and their legitimate grievances, the left dismissed them outright. This, he says, reflects a broader tendency to socialise with elites rather than organise among the working class.

The same conclusion is perfectly applicable to the outcome of the 2024 US elections, which Kagarlitsky analyses in a recent interview. “In 2016, both the liberal establishment and liberal left received a very serious lesson,” Kagarlitsky observes. “But they did not learn from it. Worse, they doubled down on implementing principles of political correctness against the backdrop of dismantling the welfare state and pursuing market reforms.” This abandonment of working-class interests has created fertile ground for right-wing populism, which channels anger not at capitalism but at scapegoats like immigrants and minorities.

Russia’s crisis: A case study in neoliberal collapse

Kagarlitsky’s critique of capitalism is uniquely informed by his decades of research on Russian society and politics. He views Russian capitalism not as a deviation from the global norm but as a direct product of neoliberal restructuring. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the remnants of the decayed and degraded Soviet social and political structures, along with the practices that characterised them, became combined in their own organic fashion with the relationships and practices peculiar to late capitalism (Jameson, 1991). In his earlier works, such as Empire of the Periphery and Restoration in Russia, he argued that Russia’s trajectory reflects the broader trends of capitalism’s peripheralisation. In The Long Retreat, he expands on this, situating Russia’s ongoing challenges within the broader systemic crisis of global capitalism.

For Kagarlitsky, the war in Ukraine is yet another manifestation of the ongoing crisis in the global capitalist system, where economic imbalances and competition for scarce resources drive states towards militarisation and aggression. Kagarlitsky argues that developments occurring in Vladimir Putin’s Russia — marked by steadily rising state expenditures on coercive institutions, an increase in personnel within these structures, and their growing involvement in various aspects of life — are not an outlier but rather a pronounced example of a broader trend. Moreover, as has often been the case in Russian history, these processes stand out as a particularly striking or extreme expression of this general pattern.

Kagarlitsky argues that the driving forces of the conflict in Ukraine are primarily corporate and economic, stemming from structural issues within the neoliberal capitalist system. According to Kagarlitsky, both Russian and Western elites have vested interests in securing profitable sectors of Ukraine’s economy, such as grain production and remnants of Soviet infrastructure, which make Ukraine a site of economic competition rather than ideological confrontation. Far from acting on ideological whims, the Russian ruling class is pursuing material interests through territorial expansion.

The neoliberal reforms of the 1990s, Kagarlitsky asserts, created an elite class that views power solely as a vehicle for personal enrichment. “The key to this paradox,” he writes, “lies in the fact that power is viewed solely as a technical resource … to gain access to an unlimited amount of money.” This instrumental view of governance has compounded Russia’s social and economic fragility, especially in the wake of the war in Ukraine. Sanctions, economic isolation and structural stagnation have intensified the contradictions of Russian capitalism.

Negative convergence: The worst of both worlds

Kagarlitsky introduces a striking concept to describe post-socialist states: negative convergence. When socialism collapsed, these nations were promised prosperity through integration into global capitalism. What they got instead was the worst of both systems: social protections and collective ownership were dismantled, but the promised democratic and economic benefits of capitalism never materialised.

A former East German once remarked, “Now we know that everything Communist propaganda told us about socialism was a lie, but everything it told us about capitalism was true.” This anecdote captures the disillusionment of millions in the former Socialist world, so vividly described by Kagarlitsky, who saw their societies transformed into peripheral capitalist economies, marked by inequality and exploitation.

Russia epitomises this trajectory. The post-Soviet transition dismantled public systems, eroded labour rights and exacerbated inequality, replicating the worst features of early capitalism. Kagarlitsky critiques this process as a failure of both domestic and international elites, who prioritised short-term profit over sustainable development. His analysis underscores the interconnectedness of global and national crises, highlighting how neoliberal policies in one region can reverberate globally.

Kagarlitsky sees Russia’s ruling elite as a product of neoliberalism’s global crisis. Far from being an aberration, Russian capitalism reflects the same patterns of corruption and inequality found elsewhere — only intensified by its authoritarian veneer.

Opportunities amid crisis

Despite his grim diagnosis, Kagarlitsky remains optimistic about the potential for systemic change. In his opinion, the deepening crisis of ruling class hegemony creates new opportunities for the left. As more people become disenchanted with the existing system that had earlier suited them well enough, the need for a new social bloc uniting diverse social groups emerges more clearly. Kagarlitsky argues that political unity under the conditions of a heterogeneous society inevitably takes on the form of a coalition, even if in technical terms the representatives of various social groups and currents can be kept within the framework of a single party.

He identifies crises as moments of rupture that expose capitalism’s contradictions and create openings for alternative models. For example, he highlights how technological advancements could empower workers and facilitate democratic planning, provided they are harnessed to challenge capitalist alienation.

But Kagarlitsky warns against quick fixes like Universal Basic Income (UBI). He sees UBI as a band-aid solution designed to stabilise capitalism rather than transform it. Similarly, while he is sympathetic to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), he acknowledges its limitations, particularly its failure to address capitalism’s structural contradictions. “The real obstacle,” he writes, “is not a lack of ideas or political will but the entrenched interests of capital, which resist any meaningful reform.”

One of Kagarlitsky’s most innovative discussions centres on the politics of time and leisure. He revisits Karl Marx’s concept of the “economy of time,” arguing that modern technologies could enable a reimagining of work and leisure. However, he warns that without structural change, increased leisure risks being commodified, reinforcing consumerism rather than liberating individuals. “Modern technological conditions,” he writes, “make it possible to undermine the monopoly of the ruling classes on managerial power … to make the bourgeoisie unnecessary to the reproduction of the economy.”

Kagarlitsky’s analysis of the war in Ukraine is particularly compelling. He views the conflict not as an ideological or geopolitical aberration but as a systemic outcome of neoliberalism’s contradictions. The war, he argues, reflects the declining hegemony of Western capitalism and the reconfiguration of global power dynamics.

Kagarlitsky is sceptical about the prospects of Russia's economic “de-linking” from the West as conceptualised by Samir Amin (1990). While the war and sanctions have forced some degree of import substitution and capital retention, these measures remain superficial without a broader shift in class power and systemic priorities. True transformation, he argues, would require mobilising resources for public investment in education, healthcare and regional development — a far cry from the current regime’s agenda.

Yet Kagarlitsky sees potential for change amid the turmoil. Drawing on Lenin’s analysis of World War I, he suggests that wars often “tear apart the veil of illusions” surrounding capitalism, exposing its contradictions and creating openings for radical change. While critical of Russian elites, Kagarlitsky identifies opportunities for grassroots movement to push for systemic reforms. He argues that societal fragmentation creates opportunities for organised and strategically focused groups to emerge as new centres of power. “In a context where society lacks cohesion and direction,” he writes, “a group that demonstrates unity, organisation, and clarity of purpose can leverage the crisis to gain disproportionate influence.” Incidentally, some representatives of the Ukrainian left (Ishchenko, 2024; Kyselov, 2024) believe that this war also offers a glimpse of hope for systemic socio-economic reforms in Ukraine that could benefit future generations.

A call to action

Throughout The Long Retreat, Kagarlitsky emphasises the inseparability of theory and practice. His critical analysis extends to the realm of practice beyond the moralistic solutions disconnected from class realities by contemporary critics of capitalism, such as Paul Collier and Martin Wolf. For Kagarlitsky, socialism is not a distant utopia but a practical necessity. He advocates for creating “institutional enclaves of socialism” within the capitalist system — initiatives that reclaim public ownership, democratise credit and empower local communities. Drawing on the lessons of Yugoslav self-management, he emphasises the importance of balancing worker control with strategic economic planning. These initiatives, he argues, can serve as foundations for broader systemic transformation.

Kagarlitsky’s personal commitment to these ideals is evident in his recent statement on his imprisonment. Refusing to participate in potential prisoner exchanges, he declared, “If staying means being in prison, then I will stay in prison. After all, imprisonment is a normal professional risk for a left-wing politician or social scientist in Russia.” This unwavering dedication underscores the stakes of his analysis and the urgency of his call to action.

The Long Retreat is more than a critique of capitalism’s decline — it is a blueprint for renewal. Kagarlitsky challenges the left to move beyond lamentation and engage in strategies that respond to the crises and opportunities of our time. By integrating historical analysis, dialectical critique, and a pragmatic vision for action, the book offers a roadmap for reclaiming the future.

 

Ilya Matveev: ‘Lenin’s theory only goes part of the way towards explaining Russian imperialism’

By Ilya Matveev

Published 22 November, 2024

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[Editor’s note: The following is an edited transcript of the speech given by Ilya Matveev on the “Imperialism(s) today” panel at the “ Boris Kagarlitsky and the challenges of the left today” online conference, which was organised by the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign on October 8. Matveev is a political scientist formerly based in St Petersburg, Russia. Currently a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley. Transcripts and video recordings of other speeches given at the conference can be found at the campaign website freeboris.info, from where the below is republished.]

Thank you. It is a pleasure to be speaking at this event, in such esteemed company, and to be able to support Boris in this way. To continue this theoretical discussion of imperialism, I want to take up some of the themes discussed by Robert Brenner in his presentation, but I think I have a slightly different perspective on the nature of Russian imperialism. What I propose to do is to use three authors who wrote about imperialism and to look at the Russian case through the lens of three different theories.

The first has already been mentioned, that is Vladimir Lenin’s theory. For Lenin, imperialism was ultimately an outgrowth of contradictions and tendencies inherent in capitalism, such as a tendency towards monopoly. The tendency towards overaccumulation of capital drives capital’s need for external expansion, and this in itself leads to inter-imperialist rivalries and ultimately world wars. This is Lenin’s theory in a nutshell.

Interestingly, a few years after Lenin published his famous essay on imperialism, the liberal thinker Joseph Schumpeter put forward a kind of liberal interpretation of imperialism in response to Lenin’s theory and the theories of other Second International Marxists such as Rudolf Hilferding and Rosa Luxemburg. According to Schumpeter, imperialism is inimical to capitalism, especially capitalism in its pure form, and imperialist impulses represent ideologies and social structures from the pre-capitalist past. This was Schumpeter’s major thesis, namely that imperialism is essentially a legacy of the absolutist state and ruling classes and ideologies from the absolutist period. They survive in a new capitalist era. And this is why states adopt aggressive imperialist policies. For Schumpeter, imperialism could ultimately be compatible with capitalist interests, but it is a sort of artificial combination. And like other liberals, Schumpeter thought that the development of capitalism somehow would lead to the withering away of imperialism and war. So that is the second theory I want to look at.

The third theory is that of John Mearsheimer, a contemporary of ours, unlike Lenin and Schumpeter. His main point is that country-specific factors are ultimately irrelevant for this whole discussion; internal capitalist contradictions are irrelevant, and ideologies and social structures are irrelevant because imperialism, or what he calls “great power politics,” stems from the very nature of the international system. In this view, every state struggles for security and makes other states insecure. Thus inter-imperialist wars are built into the international system. When one state threatens another state, the threatened country will respond with aggressive measures. This is basically inevitable and does not depend on the domestic, social and geological structures in the threatened country.

So here we have three kinds of guiding ideas. And we can analyze Russian imperialism using these three perspectives.

I want to start with Mearsheimer because I think this is the easiest sort of case to consider. We can ask whether Russia was actually threatened when it initiated its aggression against Ukraine in 2014. Objectively speaking, Russia was not threatened by NATO. It was not threatened by Western imperialism. The major argument for the proposition that Russia and its security interests were somehow threatened by the West is the expansion of NATO. But this should be seen in the context of actual developments on the ground, which demonstrate that NATO was in fact becoming weaker as a conventional military alliance. It was expanding, but it was also becoming weaker.

NATO presence in Central/Northern Europe, 1991-2016

This chart shows that NATO armies were becoming smaller, and the US was withdrawing its troops from Europe. Back in the 80s, there were 300,000 American soldiers in Western Europe, and by 2014 it was something like 30,000, or ten times fewer. It is the same story with equipment. The chart comes from a report published by the Rand Corporation, a US national security think tank. The report states that Russia was, in fact, becoming stronger than NATO in the specific Eastern European potential theatre of war.

Mearsheimer himself admitted this fact. In his famous — or infamous — article in 2014, he stated that NATO was expanding, but that it was also very careful not to provoke or threaten Russia in terms of conventional military strength. But he went on to make an interesting argument. He said that it does not matter that NATO was not objectively a threat. What matters is that Russia felt threatened, so the Kremlin perceived the situation as threatening. But this is a different argument, of course. It is not about objective developments anymore. It is about perceptions and, therefore, about ideology. So, I think that Mearsheimer’s theory is actually the weakest of the three theories we are looking at in terms of explaining Russian imperialism.

Then we have Lenin. His theory is actually stronger, in my opinion. We can see the emergence of certain criteria for imperialism in Russia in the post-Soviet period, especially during the period of economic recovery in the 2000s and the early 2010s. The criteria that Brenner already mentioned began to appear in Russia: the concentration of capital, capitalist monopolies, the over accumulation of capital, and the need for external expansion. This was all present in Russia in the 2000s. 

Russian companies were extremely interested in post-Soviet countries because they could rebuild Soviet-era supply chains under their control. They could benefit from those old Soviet industrial economic ties. And they also sought new markets in post-Soviet countries. This economic expansion created pressure for political assertiveness as well. I would argue that any Russian government, and not just Putin’s government, would feel some pressure to be more assertive, maybe even more aggressive, in the post-Soviet space because of the needs of capital accumulation. So, this argument is valid to a certain extent.

But at the same time, what is different from the pre-1914 period, for example, is that Russia was integrated into global capitalism in a very specific way. On the one hand, it was quite influential in its region, the post-Soviet region. On the other hand, Russian capitalism was a dependent form of capitalism. In fact, it is dependent on Western centres of capital accumulation. And so Russia was in an intermediate position: a classic case of semi-periphery. So, I do not believe that the impulse for this extreme confrontation with the West could have come from the economic sphere, from the sphere of capital accumulation. Russian capitalism was just not built for this confrontation.

The impetus could only come from outside the economic sphere, probably from the political sphere. So, the impulse not just towards imperialism, but towards a specific form of imperialism that would not only break with the West but engage in this extreme confrontation with the West, could only come from elsewhere, not from Russian capitalism, because Russian capitalism really benefited from the way it was integrated into the global economy.

The Russian ruling class derived huge benefits from this intermediate position, or what we could call its sub-imperialist position in post-Soviet countries, where Russian corporations were very influential and sometimes even dominant. At the same time, Russian corporations had deep ties with Western companies and Western centres of capital accumulation. In fact, Western capital was exploiting the post-Soviet region through Russian capital — not directly, but through Russian capital. And this is the essence of a sub-imperialist position. So, speaking strictly in economic terms, that was the essence of Russia’s global integration. 

An illustration of this was Russia’s participation in the Davos forum. Take Dmitry Medvedev, for example; he was not a bloodthirsty nationalist back then. He was a kind of a moderate semi-liberal politician. And he spoke at Davos. This demonstrates that the Kremlin’s intention was to maintain its sub-imperialist role.

In sum, Lenin’s theory goes some of the way towards explaining Russian imperialism, but not all the way, in my opinion. Then we have Schumpeter, who offers not just a non-Marxist explanation, but to some extent an anti-Marxist explanation. Nevertheless, I think it is compelling in some respects, because Schumpeter emphasises historical elements in imperialist policy. He sees it as a kind of revenge of the past.

And if we look at Russia’s imperialist discourses we find in them an echo of the Soviet and especially the imperial past. The arguments that the Kremlin and Putin use resemble the arguments of the Russian Empire and specific ideological tropes about how Ukrainian identity was somehow invented by foreign intelligence specifically to weaken and destroy Russia. All that was already present some 120 years ago. These discourses have made their reappearance in Russian politics. So, the idea that Russian imperialism is a product of the past is compelling.

One obvious argument is that Putin is preoccupied with the past. He is constantly reading history books, and his obsession with Russia’s place in history and his own place in history is evident in his thinking, in his public speeches, and in the articles that he publishes. In terms of ideology, the influence of the past is very clear.

But then there’s the question of Putin’s transformation from a cynical materialist into an ideological imperialist. Why did he suddenly develop this interest in historical ideas? For me, that points to limitations of Schumpeter’s theory, as it does not really explain how the past reasserted itself in the present in Russia. I think that the explanation ultimately lies in contemporary events and not just some kind of metaphysical revenge of the past.

More specifically, the Kremlin’s ideology is based on the experience of primitive accumulation in the 1990s, when people, including Putin, participated in a kind of dog-eat-dog free for all in which you need to be on the offensive all the time or else you will be destroyed by your competitors. This was the essence of Russian capitalism in the 1990s, and this kind of experience was projected by the Kremlin elites onto the world stage. In Putin’s view, the world works just like Russian capitalism in the 90s: it is the Wild West. You cannot show weakness. You need to take the offensive at every opportunity, and you can never bluff. Bluffing is a sign of weakness, and weakness means you will be destroyed.

Based on this kind of experience and habitus, to borrow Pierre Bourdieu’s term, the ideology was fashioned after the Kremlin was radicalised by the Arab Spring and by the colour revolutions in the post-Soviet space. The Kremlin felt threatened by these events, and they interpreted them as an attack by the West — not as genuine popular protests, but as something inspired by the West to weaken these countries and destroy these political regimes. The conclusion was that the West is plotting the same thing against Russia, and so the Kremlin needs to strike first in order to neutralise the threat of a colour revolution or something similar to the Arab Spring. These were the triggers that dredged up those discourses and ideologies from the past and made them so relevant to the Kremlin in the present moment.

This ultimately explains the ideological consolidation of the Kremlin. In my opinion, ideology is the crucial factor in Russia’s aggression in 2014 and 2022. It cannot be accounted for simply with reference to objective contradictions, such as the contradictions of capital accumulation or geopolitical contradictions. By themselves they cannot explain the Kremlin’s decisions and actions, such as the decision to annex Crimea or the decision to invade Ukraine. Ultimately, the explanation lies in the sphere of ideology.