Showing posts sorted by date for query LENIN. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query LENIN. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Friday, November 01, 2024

 

Commemorating Lenin: Electricity, Logic and Science


Prabir Purkayastha 





On his death centenary this year, we need to not only remember Lenin’s contributions to political action and building a revolutionary party, but also to the philosophy of science and the role of electricity.

This year is Comrade V I Lenin's death centenary year. For those who are socialists and communists, the Soviet Union was the hope of founding a new society in which the working people, and not the capitalist or the feudal classes, would own the means of production. For many, the Soviet Union gave hope for a different social order and the possibility of national liberation from the clutches of the colonial rulers. The Bolshevik Revolution changed the capitalist and the colonial world, giving birth to the possibility of a world without greed and oppression, where those laboured would get the fruits of their labour. Not a set of parasitic classes who had very little contribution to production.

But this is not what I want to write today. I will address two very different aspects of Lenin's contribution which may not be so well-known: i) the electricity sector and its larger role in society, ii) science and philosophy. I will address only a few of the issues he grappled with and how these issues continue today, though in different forms.

In both these fields, Lenin not only had views but was also an active participant in shaping the views of his generation. In the electricity sector, he saw the future of industrialisation and agriculture in the Soviet Union. So much so that he declared that the Soviets and electrification equalled socialism; this was not simply a slogan but a deeply thought-out structure of the relationship he was proposing between the economy, the productive forces and knowledge. That, for him, included both science and technology—and the peoples' organisations: at that time, the Soviets.

The second addresses the new physics—relativity and quantum mechanics—both of which created problems not only for classical physics but also all the existing philosophical systems. Not surprisingly, not only were the old-school philosophers divided, but also the Marxists, many of whom dismissed both relativity and quantum mechanics as bourgeois deviations.

For Lenin, it was not simply a question of interpretation of reality within the framework of dialectical materialism but also one of how to enlarge the framework itself to meet these new challenges. Though he had published his initial work, Materialism and Empirio-criticism, and is widely known, his Philosophical Notebook, which advanced his formulations over his earlier work, remains as notes.

Though published later in the Soviet Union and available to all interested people, we miss the final form his notes would surely have taken due to his early death in 1924 at the age of 53.

Let us start with the story of the Soviet Union's electrification. At the time the Bolshevik Revolution took place—in 1918—the Soviet Union had an installed capacity of only 4.8 MW, catering at best to a few cities. What Lenin and the Communist Party recognised was that without large-scale electrification, neither industries nor agriculture would develop. Agriculture needed both irrigation and manufacturing to produce agricultural implements. This was why he said that the Soviets plus electrification was equal to socialism. For him and the Bolshevik party, that meant not just importing machines but also manufacturing them. The first target of industrialisation, therefore, was the electricity sector itself.

In November 1920, Lenin identified electricity as Russia's path to communism: "Communism is equal to Soviet power plus the electrification of the entire country". The declaration signified the Communist Party's approval of a plan forwarded by GOELRO, The State Commission for the Electrification of Russia, composed of engineers and scientists.

Lenin repeated his understanding of electricity and its importance to the Bolshevik Revolution in his address to the Third Congress of the Comintern (1921):

"A large-scale machine industry capable of reorganising agriculture is the only material basis that is possible for socialism… We had to undertake the scientific work of drawing up such a plan for the electrification of the USSR...with the cooperation of over two hundred of the best scientists, engineers and agronomists in Russia. Arrangements have now been made to convene an all-Russia congress of electrical engineers in August 1921 to examine this plan in detail, before it is given final government endorsement."

A number of later bourgeois scholars, including post-modernists, have tried to present Lenin as a mechanistic materialist who sought to strait jacket science within a utilitarian framework of technology. What they fail to understand is that Lenin was proposing an alliance of the technical workers with the peasantry for the two-fold purpose of rapid industrialisation of Russia and expanding its agriculture.

The technical intelligentsia—engineers and scientists—also allied with the revolutionary forces through this programme of expanding the fledgeling electricity sector. It was not simply expanding electrification but also developing the ability to build the machines that would produce electricity: the hydro-turbines.  This is what Marx called the Department 1 of the industry, the ability to build the machines themselves that produce other artefacts/goods. Hydroelectric power would supply electricity to the people and the industries, and the dams would provide water to irrigate the peasants' fields. The alliance of the workers and peasants would be built around the hydroelectric projects themselves.

Lenin's slogan of Soviets plus electricity was a political slogan as much as it was a techno-economic one. It became the backbone of the industrial development of the Soviet Union, as without electricity, no large-scale industrialisation would have been possible. It also built up a cadre of workers and technologists who would power the industrialisation of the Soviet Union.

Interestingly, the electricity sector in India was also the arena in which Nehruvian, the socialist-communist and the Ambedkarite vision also came together in post-Independence India. Just as Lenin had identified the electricity sector and hydroelectric projects as the core of the socialist project, so did Nehru and Ambedkar.

As we know, Nehru declared hydroelectric projects as the "temples" of modern India, though he also later thought of many small dams and small industrial projects as an alternative to a few large projects (When the big dams came up: The Hindu, March 20, 2015).

What is less known is Ambedkar and his pioneering efforts as the Chairman of the Policy Committee on Public Works and Electric Power in 1943, and drafting of India's Electricity Act in 1948. He, as the architect of the Act, envisaged that electricity was an essential necessity, needed to be in the public sector and kept free of profit-making (Ambedkar's Role in Economic Planning Water and Power Policy, Sukhdeo Thorat, Shipra Publications, 2006). He also defined himself as a socialist, though not a Marxist (India and CommunismB.R. Ambedkar, Introduction by Anand Teltumbde, Leftword Books).

Remembering Lenin, we not only have to remember his many-sided contributions to political action and building a revolutionary party but also his contribution to philosophy, including the philosophy of science.

His first major philosophy of science work was Materialism and Empirio-criticism, in which he criticises those who uncritically accepted the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. Undoubtedly, quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity posed serious challenges to all philosophical schools. This is the nature of any major scientific advance. It not only challenges the knowledge of nature that we have, but also the philosophies of nature that we build on such an understanding of nature.

Just like the heliocentric world, the discovery of the quantum world and the relativistic nature of the world, shook up the philosophical world. Philosophers refused to accept Einstein's theory of relativity, arguing that Einstein did not understand the philosophical nature of time, to which Einstein's reply was he only understood the time that could be measured and not philosophical time.

This was reflected in a major debate between Einstein and Henri Bergson in Paris (The Physicist and the Philosopher, Jimena Canales, 2015). Though history would show that Einstein's vision of time was objective, unlike subjective time for Bergson, Bergson's view prevailed on the Nobel Committee, which gave Einstein the Nobel Prize for the photoelectric effect and not for relativity, for which he became world-famous, keeping in mind, "...that the famous philosopher Bergson in Paris has challenged this theory".

Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks, though not written as a book but as notes to himself, makes clear that he had moved beyond his earlier formulation of sense perception of the external world as a "reflection". However, the critics of his Material and Empiro Criticism condemn it wrongly as being crude materialist based on this formulation alone. This is on par with condemning Engels as a crude materialist as opposed to Marx as the "correct" materialist.

Though Lenin always recognised that scientific laws are only partial and "fallible", his understanding of motion itself as—being in two places simultaneously—as dialectical and cannot be captured by binary (yes/no) Aristotelian logic. This is enunciated clearly in the Notebook. Though many multi-valued logic formulations exist, an exposition of dialectical logic that can replace Aristotelian binary logic and yet retain the mathematics built on this structure of Aristotelian logic remains a challenge. In other words, Zeno's paradox of why Achilles cannot catch a tortoise still remains a problem in the current paradigm of mathematical logic, even though we are fully aware that Achilles will overtake the tortoise!

We should be happy that Lenin has left us many more problems than what he has solved, both in revolutionary practice, history, economics and philosophy. This is our challenge, and a challenge all living science and philosophy should have. Others are dogmas that need to be discarded to understand the dynamics of nature and society


Thursday, February 22, 2024

The Passing of Lenin. (1924)


From the March 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard


One of the significant facts brought into prominence by the great war was the intellectual bankruptcy of the ruling class of the Western World.

A gigantic field of operations and colossal wealth at their disposal, failed to bring out a single personality above the mediocre, from England and Germany down the list to America and Roumania.

The only character that stood, and stands, above the Capitalist mediocrities, was the man lately buried in Moscow – Nikolai Lenin.

The senseless shrieks of the Capitalist henchman against Lenin was itself evidence of their recognition of their own inferiority. All the wild and confused tales that were told by the agents of the master class (from Winston Churchill to Mrs. Snowden) to suggest that Lenin was “the greatest monster of iniquity the world has ever seen,” largely defeated their object, to every person capable of thinking clearly, by their sheer stupidity and extravagance.

One result of this tornado of lies was to cause a corresponding reaction on the other side. The various groups of woolly headed Communists, inside and outside of Russia, began to hail Lenin a new “Messiah” who was going to show the working class a new quick road to salvation. Thus does senseless abuse beget equally senseless hero-worship.

From sheer exhaustion the two-fold campaign has died down in the last year or two, even the “stunt” press only giving small space to Lenin and Russia.

Lenin’s sudden death, despite his long illness, has brought forward a flood of articles and reviews entirely different in tone from those that greeted his rise to power.

The shining light of modern Conservatism – Mr. J. L. Garvin – does not know whether Lenin was famous or infamous, whether he was a great man or a great scoundrel, so, wisely, leaves the verdict to posterity to settle.

A Fabian pet, Mr. G. D. H. Cole, in the New Statesman, for the 2nd February, makes the claim that Lenin’s great work was the “invention of the Soviet”! It is difficult to understand how the editor of a journal, supposed to be written for “educated” people, should have allowed such a piece of stupid ignorance to have passed his scrutiny. The word “Soviet” – that seems to have mesmerised some people – simply means “Council.” Every student of Russia knows that the “Council” has been an organic part of the Russian Constitution since the middle of the 16th century. But there may be another explanation of Mr. Cole’s attitude. As one of the leaders of that hopeless crusade to turn back the hands of the clock (known as “The Guild System”) he sees around him the ruins and the rubbish of the various experiments in this system and maybe he hopes by claiming Russia as an example of “Guildism” to arouse some new enthusiasm for further useless experiments. His hopes are built on shifting sands.

Michael Farbman, in the Observer, Jan. 27th, 1924, takes a more daring and dangerous line. He claims to understand Marx and Marxism, and yet makes such statements as:-
  “When Lenin inaugurated the Dictatorship of the Proletariat he obviously was unhampered by the slightest hesitation or doubt as to the efficacy of Marxian principles. But the longer he tested them as a practical revolutionist and statesman the more he became aware of the impossibility of building up a society on an automatic and exclusively economic basis. When he had to adopt an agrarian policy totally at variance with his Marxian opinions, and when later he was compelled to make an appeal to the peasants’ acquisitive instincts and go back to what he styled ‘State Capitalism,’ he was not only conscious that something was wrong with his Marxian gospel, but frankly admitted that Marx had not foreseen all the realities of a complex situation. It is probably no exaggeration to say that the greatest value of the Russian Revolution to the world Labour movement lies in the fact that it has replaced Marxism by Leninism.”
The above quotation has been given at length because it not only epitomises Mr. Farbman’s attitude but also that of many so-called “Socialists.”

It will, therefore, be a matter of astonishment to the reader unacquainted with Marx’s writings and theories to learn that almost every sentence in that paragraph either begs the question or is directly false.

In the first sentence we have two assertions, One that Lenin established the “ Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” the other that this is a “Marxian principle.” Both statements are deliberately false.

Lenin never established any “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” – whatever that may mean – but only the Dictatorship of the Communist Party which exists today. In the whole of Marx’s writing that he himself saw through the press the phrase Dictatorship of the Proletariat does not occur once! This, of course, Mr. Farbman knows well. The next sentence contains a phrase that Mr. Farbman may know the meaning of, but which is idiotic nonsense from a Marxian standpoint. To talk of a Society “on an automatic and exclusively economic basis” is utterly in opposition to all Marxian teachings.

If Lenin ever made the statement attributed to him in the sentence that follows – “that Marx had not foreseen all the realities of a complex situation” – which is at least doubtful as no reference is given, that would only show Lenin’s misreading of Marx.

But the last sentence is a gem. Not only has the Russian revolution not displaced Marxism by Leninism (for as showed above Marxism never existed there) – it has displaced Leninism by Capitalism.

To understand Lenin’s position, both actually and historically, it is necessary to examine the conditions under which he came to the front. Early in 1917 it was clear to all observers that the corruption, treachery and double-dealing of the Czar and his nobles had brought about the collapse of the Army. (See M, Phillips Price The Soviet, the Terror and Intervention, p. 15; John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World, etc,).

This was the most important factor in the whole Russian upheaval, and is the pivot upon which all the rest turns.

The Romanoffs and their crew had fallen from power when an efficient armed force was no longer at their disposal. Kerensky, who replaced them, tried to keep the war going without men or munitions. Lenin obtained permission to leave Switzerland for Russia and tried to stir up a revolt in March, 1917, but this failed, and he had to fly to Finland. Confusion grew, and finally it was decided to take steps to call a Constituent Assembly to draw up a new Constitution for Russia. The Bolsheviks hailed this move and loudly protested against the dilatoriness of Kerensky, who was afraid of losing office. At the same time the various Councils of peasants, workers and soldiers began to send representatives to Petrograd for an All-Russian Congress. At once a struggle began between the Kerensky section – or Mensheviks – and the Lenin section – or Bolsheviks – to obtain the majority of representation in this Assembly. For days the struggle continued and almost to the last moment the issue was in doubt, but the superior slogan of the Bolsheviks – “Peace, Bread, Land” – finally won a majority over to their side.

A day or two before this Lenin had come out of his hiding place and placed himself at the head of the Bolsheviks.

The first thing Lenin did when in office was to keep his promise. He issued a call for peace to all the belligerents on the basis of’ “no annexations, no indemnities.” This astonished the politicians of the Western Nations to whom election promises are standing jokes.

It was at this point that Lenin made his greatest miscalculation. He believed that the working masses of the western world were so war weary that upon the call from one of the combatants they would rise and force their various Governments to negotiate peace. Unfortunately these masses had neither the knowledge nor the organisation necessary for such a movement, and no response was given to the call, except the snarling demands of the Allies that Russia should continue to send men to be slaughtered. This lack of response was a terrible disappointment to Lenin, but, facing the situation, he opened negotiations for a separate peace with Germany. And here he made a brilliant stroke. To the horror and dismay of all the diplomatic circles in Europe he declared that the negotiations would be carried on in public, and they were. Thus exposing the stupid superstition still so beloved of Communists here, that it is impossible to conduct important negotiations in public.

Of course the conditions demanded by the Germans were hard. Again and again Lenin’s followers demanded that war should be re-opened rather than accept these conditions. Radek reports a conversation (Russian Information and Review, January 26th, 1924):-
  “The mujik must   the war. ‘But don’t you see that the mujik voted against the war,’ Lenin answered. ‘Excuse me, when and how did he vote against it?’ ‘He voted with his feet; he is running away from the front.’”
Large tracts of territory were detached from the Bolshevik control, and the greatest blow was the separation of the Ukraine, whose splendid fertile soil would have been of immense value for the purpose of providing food.

Still the problems to be handled were enormous. The delegates to the Constituent Assembly had gathered in Petrograd, but Lenin, who shouted so loudly for this Assembly when out of office, was not running the risk of being deposed now he was in office. He had the gathering dispersed, and refused to let the Assembly meet. Sporadic outbreaks among the peasantry were a source of continual trouble, particularly as the Bolsheviks had only a poor force at their disposal. The signing of the Armistice however solved this problem. The Communists are fond of claiming that Trotsky organised the “Red Army.” This claim is absurd, for Trotsky knew nothing of military matters. The upheaval in Germany, after the signing of the Armistice, threw hundreds of German officers out of work and Lenin gladly engaged their services, at high salaries, to organise the army. By the offer of better food rations, better clothing and warmer quarters plenty of men offered themselves for enlistment. The main difficulty however was not men but munitions.

Lenin and his supporters expected that the victorious Allies would turn their combined forces on Russia. But the Allies were so engrossed in trickery, double-dealing and swindling each other over the sharing of the plunder that they largely ignored Russia. Still to show their good will and kind intentions they subsidised a set of thieving scoundrels – Koltchak (assisted by that British hero “Colonel” John Ward), DenikenWrangelYudenitch, etc., to invade Russia for the purpose of taking it out of the control of the Russians.

It was a most hopeful undertaking, this sending in of marauding bands! The peasant, who had just got rid of his age-long enemy the landlord (sometimes rather summarily) was expected to assist in restoring that gentleman. To help them in reaching a decision, these marauding bands, with strict impartiality, plundered friend and foe alike. The only result of these various raids was to unify the mass of the people in Russia in accepting the Bolshevik rule. Slowly the Russians began to gather arms. Their army was already in good order, and although the enormous distances and lack of transport prevented them reaching many places, yet whenever the Red Army met the looting bands mentioned above the latter were defeated, with monotonous regularity.

Of course compared with the battles on the western front these engagements were mere hand skirmishes, as neither side had any heavy artillery, high-velocity shells, poison gas, nor bombing aeroplanes.

A greater enemy to Leninism than any of these gangs, however, and one which had been exerting its influence for some time, now greatly increased its pressure, this was the individualistic conditions of the peasant, combined with the wants of the townsmen. Various decrees had been passed forbidding private trading in the towns and villages (apart from special licences) but the Bolsheviks had never dared to enforce these decrees in face of the food shortage. The result of this increased pressure was the famous “New Economic Policy,” that caused such consternation in the ranks of the Communist parties. In this country Miss Sylvia Pankhurst nearly died of disgust when the news arrived.

But once more Lenin was right. He recognised the seriousness of the conditions and tried to frame a policy to fit them. His own words describe the situation with great clearness:-
  “Yet, in 1921, after having emerged victoriously from the most important stages of the Civil War, Soviet Russia came face to face with a great – I believe, the greatest – internal political crisis which caused dissatisfaction, not only of the huge masses of the peasantry, but also of large numbers of workers.
  “It was the first, and I hope the last, time in the history of Soviet Russia that we had the great masses of the peasantry arrayed against us, not consciously, but instinctively, as a sort of political mood.
  “What was the cause of this unique, and, for us, naturally disagreeable, situation? It was caused by the fact that we had gone too far with our economic measures, that the masses were already sensing what we had not properly formulated, although we had to acknowledge a few weeks afterwards, namely, that the direct transition to pure Socialist economy, to pure Socialistic distribution of wealth, was far beyond our resources, and that if we could not make a successful and timely retreat, if we could not confine ourselves to easier tasks, we would go under.” (Address to the Fourth Congress of the Communist International.) (Italics ours.)
The most significant phrase in the above statement – the one we have underlined – now admits at last that Marx was right, and that the whole of the Communist “Theories and Theses” are rubbish from top to bottom.

Mr. Brailsford, the £1,000 a year, editor of The New Leader, in the issue for January 25th, 1924 says:-
  “Alone in the earthquakes of the war period, this Russian revived the heroic age, and proved what the naked will of one man may do to change the course of history.”
What knowledge! What judgement! What intelligence! Where has the “course of history” changed one hair’s breadth owing to Russia? And the above specimen of ignorance, that would disgrace a school child, is considered worth £1,000 a year by the I.L.P.! Doubtless the measure of their intelligence.

The chief points of Lenin’s rule can now be traced out. He was the product of the “course of history” when the breakdown occurred in Russia. At first – nay even as late as the publication of Left-Wing Communism (p.44) – Lenin claimed that it was “a Socialist Revolution.” He also claimed that the Bolsheviks were establishing “Socialism” in Russia in accord with Marxian principles. Some of the shifts, and even deliberate misinterpretations of Marx’s writings that Lenin indulged in to defend his unsound position have already been dealt with in past issues of the Socialist Standard and need not detain us here. To delay the victorious Allies taking action against Russia, large sums were spent on propaganda in Europe by the Bolsheviks. “Communist” Parties sprang up like mushrooms, and now that these funds are vanishing, are dying like the same vegetable. Their policy was to stir up strife. Every strike was hailed as the “starting of the revolution.” But somehow they were all “bad starts”!

When the Constituent Assembly was broken up by Lenin’s orders he had the Russian Soviet Constitution drawn up. He realised that if the Bolsheviks were to retain control this new Constitution must give them full power. We have already analysed this Constitution in detail, in a previous issue, but a repetition of one point will make the essential feature clear. Clause 12 says:-
  “The supreme authority in the Russian Soviet Republic is vested in the All Russia Congress of Soviets, and, during the time between the Congresses, in the Central Executive Committee.”
Clause 28 says:-
  “The All Russia Congress of Soviets elects the All Russia Central Executive of not more than 200 members.”
Innocent enough, surely! But – yes there is a but – the credentials of the delegates to the All-Russia Congress are verified by the officials of the Communist Party and at every congress it turns out – quite by accident of course – that a large majority of the delegates are members of the Communist Party. The others are listened to politely, allowed to make long speeches, and then voted down by the “Block.” This little fact also applies to all “The Third Communist International Congresses,” and to all “The International Congresses of the Red Labour Unions.” No matter how many delegates the other countries may send, the Russian delegation is always larger than the rest combined.

By this “Dictatorship of the Communist Party” Lenin was able to keep power concentrated in his own hands.

Lenin made desperate efforts to induce the town workers to run the factories on disciplined lines, but despite the most rigid decrees these efforts were a failure. The Russian townsmen, like the peasant, has no appreciation of the value of time, and it is impossible to convert a 17th century hand worker into a modern industrial wage slave by merely pushing him into a factory and giving him a machine to attend. Lenin’s experience proves the fallacy of those who proclaim that modern machines, because they are made “fool-proof” in some details, can be operated by any people, no matter how low their stage of development.

Another idea was tried. A number of minor vultures on the working class, of the I.W.W. and Anarchist “leader” type, had gone to Russia to see what could be picked up. There were 6,000,000 unemployed in America. Lenin called upon these “leaders” to arrange for the transport of numbers of mechanics and skilled labourers to form colonies in Russia, with up-to-date factories and modern machinery. These “leaders” pocketed their fees and expenses, but the colonies have yet to materialise.

Such was the position up to the time of Lenin’s illness.

What then are Lenin’s merits? First in order of time is the fact that he made a clarion call for a world peace. When that failed he concluded a peace for his own country. Upon this first necessary factor he established a Constitution to give him control and, with a skill and judgement unequalled by any European or American statesman, he guided Russia out of its appalling chaos into a position where the services are operating fairly for such an undeveloped country, and where, at least, hunger no longer hangs over the people’s heads. Compare this with the present conditions in Eastern Europe!

Despite his claims at the beginning, he was the first to see the trend of conditions and adapt himself to these conditions. So far was he from “changing the course of history” as Brailsford ignorantly remarks that it was the course of history which changed him, drove him from one point after another till today Russia stands halfway on the road to capitalism. The Communists, in their ignorance, may howl at this, but Russia cannot escape her destiny. As Marx says:-
  “One nation can and should learn from others. And even when a society has got upon the right track for the discovery of the natural laws of its movement – and it is the ultimate aim of this work to lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society – it can neither clear by bold leaps nor remove by legal enactments the obstacles offered by the successive phases of its normal development. But it can shorten and lessen the birth pangs.” (Preface Vol, I. Capital.)
The Bolsheviks will probably remain in control for the simple reason that there is no one in Russia capable of taking their place. It will be a question largely as to whether they will be able to stand the strain for the task is a heavy one, and they are by no means overcrowded with capable men. But this control will actually resolve itself into control for, and in the interests of, the Capitalists who are willing to take up the development of raw materials and industry in Russia. The New Economic Policy points the way.

The peasant problem will take longer to solve because of the immense areas, and lack of means of communication. Until the capitalists develop roads and railways the peasants will, in the main, follow their present methods and habits. When these roads and railways are developed, modern agriculture will begin to appear worked at first with imported men and machines. But then Russia will be well on the road to fully developed Capitalism.

The Communists claim that Lenin was a great teacher to the working class the world over, but with singular wisdom they refrain from pointing out what that teaching was. His actions from 1917 to 1922 certainly illustrate a certain lesson that is given above, but the teacher of that lesson was Karl Marx.
Jack Fitzgerald



LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for LENIN

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for STATE MONOPOLY CAPITALISM

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for BOGDANOVICH LENIN

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for BOLSHEVIKS

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for LENINISM

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for BOLSHEVIK




 

What’s next for the Nigerian left?

Published 
Photo by Ayanfe Olarinde on Unsplash

First published at Africa is a Country.

The #EndBadGovernance protests in Nigeria, held from August 1 to 10, 2024—with an extension to Independence Day’s #FearlessinOctober—has reignited discussions about a potential resurgence of the country’s socialist left movement. Following a prolonged period of seeming inactivity and a limited role during the historic #EndSARS protests of October 2020—an event that could have offered the left an opportunity to provide ideological direction and leadership—leftist organizations are now reasserting themselves. These organizations did not merely participate in the #EndBadGovernance protests but played a central role in organizing and mobilizing the masses.

In a political climate where mainstream opposition parties have largely receded under government pressure, groups such as Take It Back (TIB)Socialist Workers League (SWL), Youth Rights Campaign, Democratic Socialist Movement, Socialist Labour, and Education Rights Campaign have stepped into the fray. These organizations and other left-leaning groups visibly aligned themselves with the protests, amplifying calls for government accountability and aiming to lay the groundwork for a more structured radical opposition.

During the government crackdown, there was a sweeping action against leftist figures nationwide, including the brief arrest of Kayode Ani, the central chair of the Queer Union for Social and Economic Transformation (QUEST9ja). Several mobilizers from TIB were also arrested and detained for varying periods. Among those detained was Adeyemi Abayomi Abiodun, who works at Iva Valley Books, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) headquarters. He was picked up by the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) at the bookshop, which had previously been raided in search of its owner, Drew Povey, a Briton accused by the NPF of various criminal activities across Nigeria and Africa. The arrest of Michael Aderamoye Lenin, the pro tem chair of the Youth Rights Campaign, along with six others on the orders of the National Security Adviser, further underscored the left’s significant presence, which was central enough to the protests to be perceived as a tangible threat by the state.

The scale of this crackdown against leftist organizations is reminiscent of the Babangida-era Gestapo-style repression of the 1980s, where authorities not only detained activists but also seized and destroyed literature. The raids on bookshops, surveillance of dissenting voices, and detentions of critical dissent further show that the state did not attempt merely to curb public disorder but to stifle the burgeoning ideological movement at the heart of #EndBadGovernance. For the general left, this level of engagement marks a turning point that starkly contrasts with previous occasions when hesitation and ideological debates often overshadowed solidarity.

However, the impressive turnout for the demonstrations also reflected the influence of non-leftist factions. Organizations like the Arewa Youth Ambassadors, Arewa Consultative Forum (before its later withdrawal), and various community groups from the north mobilized thousands, highlighting the protests’ broad appeal across political fronts due to the generally excruciating economic conditions. Notably, some members of the self-styled “ Obidient” movement overcame previous discouragement and joined the community of Nigerians in solidarity.

The Nigerian left has a longstanding presence on the political scene. In 1960, leftist student and youth movements protested against a permanent British military base in the country, underscoring their early opposition to neocolonial influence. The left also made its mark with the 1945 General Strike, led by the Nigerian Union of Railwaymen, which called for improved wages and working conditions under colonial rule. In the late 1940s, the Zikist Movement—a youth-led leftist nationalist group—organized protests demanding independence, with leaders like Raji Abdallah facing arrest for their revolutionary anticolonial politics. The left’s influence was evident again in the 1964 General Strike, when the Joint Action Committee of the four trade union centers rallied workers for fair wages, underscoring the growing strength of labor movements as a political force.

During the 1980s, leftist groups such as the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) mobilized thousands of students for anti-austerity protests against the Structural Adjustment Programme, which imposed harsh economic conditions on the populace. Resistance to the Babangida regime led to a significant crackdown on leftist thought across the country. In parts of the north, the Nigerian military raided universities, burning Marxist books and expelling left-leaning professors. The brutalization and terror of the regime led to a passive presence of the left in Nigeria’s political space. Although some groups continued pressing for democracy and transition to civilian rule, it wasn’t until the aftermath of the June 1993 elections that building a mass-based and united front against the military became strategically necessary and politically inevitable.

The 1993–1999 anti-military protests, led by the Campaign for Democracy (CD), United Action for Democracy (UAD), and other groups, further underscored the left’s commitment to democratic governance, eventually leading to the end of military rule. Many of these movements were left-leaning based on their opposition to military rule and the adoption of activist tactics, bringing them into solidarity with the broader left, including Marxists, radical liberals, trade unionists, and democratic socialists.

Following the anti-military struggles, much of the Nigerian left faded into civil society and NGO-based activities. The rest of the left rallied forces around the National Conscience Party (NCP), which contested elections and served as opposition in the early 2000s. Much later, in January 2012, the impact of government corruption and proposed subsidy removal sparked the #OccupyNigeria protests, with labor unions and civil society groups uniting in a popular struggle that involved millions of people across the country. These instances reflect the enduring role of leftist movements in shaping Nigeria’s political landscape, continually pressing for workers’ rights, democratic reforms, and broader social change. More importantly, they show that the Nigerian left has been at the forefront of rallying voices to demand systematic change.

The re-emergence of the left as an active political force has been gradual, beginning with the founding of Take It Back in 2018 and its partisan formation, the African Action Congress (AAC), later in the same year. Its establishment and subsequent collaboration with Aminu Kano’s faction of the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) marked a visible re-entry of the left into mainstream politics, with the movement and its political wing advocating socialism and solidarity with the working class.

Drawing lessons from the spontaneity that characterized the #EndSARS protests, the #EndBadGovernance protests were preceded by a vocal campaign on social media, with citizens calling for renewed resistance against President Bola Tinubu’s neoliberal policies. This differs from #EndSARS, which emerged largely as an unplanned eruption of public outrage. Although the brutality of the #EndSARS crackdown made many hesitant to return to the streets, the mobilizing efforts led by leftist organizations signaled a new era of structured, grassroots-driven resistance. This shift from unplanned protests to a more intentional, organized approach has profound implications.

A critical aspect of this shift was the scheduling of the protests from August 1 to 10, reminiscent of tactics used by leftist movements in Latin America, such as Chile and Colombia. Whether this approach was deliberately modeled on these examples or simply the natural flow of circumstances is unclear. Nonetheless, this preplanned time frame provided the organizers and the state with a defined period to prepare, reducing the risk of the protests devolving into uncontrolled disorder. While this strategy did not eliminate the state’s inherent tendency towards violence, the movement’s intentional and well-considered approach illustrated the strategic insight the revolutionary left could bring to large-scale protests.

The #EndSARS protests largely embraced a leaderless, horizontal structure to avoid co-optation, despite the role of TIB in igniting it. However, this approach also led to challenges in articulating unified demands and coordinating mass actions. In contrast, the left’s involvement in #EndBadGovernance introduced a level of structured mobilization that facilitated a more deliberate, ideologically grounded effort. By adopting a clear 14-point demand list from the outset, the TIB offered a blueprint guiding participants toward specific goals. TIB’s founder, Omoyele Sowore, first drafted and publicized this list.

While the 14-point demands were not completely uniform across all fronts of the demonstrations—other groups articulated their own sets of demands—the initiative marked a significant contrast to the delayed formulation of #EndSARS’s five-for-five demands. The latter emerged only with the deepening of contention over several days in October 2020, highlighting the spontaneous nature of the earlier movement. The immediate clarity provided by TIB’s 14-point demand list helped streamline the protest’s focus, making it easier for participants to rally around shared objectives while still allowing space for diverse perspectives within the broader movement.

Additionally, the left’s involvement addressed a deeply ingrained challenge in Nigerian activism—the pervasive distrust of leaders under pressure. In the #EndSARS protests, this fear led to a rejection of centralized leadership to avoid opportunism and potential betrayal, a decision that ultimately limited the movement’s ability to sustain momentum. During #EndBadGovernance, however, TIB leaders challenged this mindset by taking a front-row seat in the discussions leading up to the protests. They identified as one of the organizers and took the initiative to rally a legal team for arrested protesters.

TIB’s work extended beyond legal support; they were instrumental in designing and distributing flyers with information regarding protest updates and convergence points. Additionally, the group held several online conversations using Twitter Spaces to address and rally opinions on the state of the country and the methods for the demonstrations.

Although leftist organizing in the #EndBadGovernance protests attempted to address lingering questions from the #EndSARS era and pave the way for future political activism grounded in ideological clarity, the potential for these leftist groups to transform Nigeria’s political landscape remains a question. Some members of the public have criticized TIB’s commitment to organizational democracy, which raises questions about the effectiveness, structure, and inclusiveness of its decision-making processes. For instance, the 14-point demand list was posted by Omoyele Sowore on his Twitter page, inviting observers to comment on what they would like to add or remove. This method, analysts argue, falls short of a standard deliberative procedure typically expected of social movements, potentially diluting the clarity, urgency, and broadness of support for the demands.

Furthermore, sustaining momentum and translating street protests into broader political influence—and, indeed, the struggle for political power—is no small task. Questions continue to arise regarding the efficacy of leadership structures within the movement. Not all social actors recognized TIB’s leadership during #EndBadGovernance. While TIB’s profile and influence may have been more visible in media narratives and certain regions, there were undoubtedly areas, particularly in northern Nigeria, where their leadership was not as influential or even recognized.

The regional limitations of TIB’s presence were apparent in states like Kano, Katsina, and Borno, highlighting that TIB’s influence was not ubiquitous. The diversity in perspectives and approaches also brought varied regional priorities and approaches to the movement, complicating the overarching narrative of a general united front. Additionally, TIB’s leadership role was amplified by its presence in traditional and social media, where it articulated goals and positioned itself as a voice of the movement. However, this did not always translate to a direct on-the-ground presence in every protest zone. In areas further from major urban centers, the movement’s spontaneity was often guided more by local actors than by TIB.

It also further corroborates the notion that neither #EndSARS nor #EndBadGovernance was absolutely spontaneous or organized. The #EndSARS protests featured various informal and decentralized leadership forms. Influencers, grassroots organizers, and nonprofit groups provided crucial structure, taking on responsibilities related to logistics, security, and media outreach. Local activists created temporary leadership roles to address immediate challenges and navigate the complexities of organizing protests. In contrast, while the #EndBadGovernance protests showcased a more pronounced presence of organized leadership from leftist groups in certain hotspots and media narratives, other fronts maintained an organic momentum driven by local actors responding to their immediate experiences and challenges.

Still, organized socialist left politics holds the promise of igniting social, political, and economic transformation in the country. Nigerian leftists have historically demonstrated a profound commitment to catalyzing the struggle for system change needed for the revolutionary transformation of the country and the emancipation of its long-exploited and oppressed working-class people. The torch of this historical duty is what the TIB, SWL, and other allied organizations seek to light.

Ayoola Babalola is a writer and journalist with a focus on exposing political corruption, human rights violations, and amplifying social movements.

 

Hanna Perekhoda: ‘Russian political elites are openly promoting a global project’


Published 
Hanna Perekhoda

[Editor's note: The following is an edited transcript of the speech and responses to questions given by Hanna Perekhoda 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. Perekhoda is a Ukrainian socialist, member of solidaritéS in Vaud Canton, Switzerland, and a PhD candidate in Political Science (University of Lausanne). 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 for the invitation and the opportunity to speak. First of all, I would like to be clear. I don't work on the issue of imperialism as such. My topic is related to different expressions of Russian-Ukrainian political imaginaries. I guess I'm here more as an activist and not as a researcher. My analysis has no pretension to be extensive or a scientific one.

It's now a commonplace to say that fossil fuels and the trade of fossil fuels are closely linked to dictatorship, corruption, and militarism. But paradoxically, this is something we do not talk about systematically when it comes to understanding Russian imperialism. 

Let's start with the observation. Since oil and gas extraction doesn't require much labor, the wealth that is produced doesn't go back to the population. Instead, it goes directly into the hands of those who own the fields. In Russia, it's basically a circle of Putin's friends. Gas and oil are practically the only things that bring in real profits in Russia. 

These profits are then redistributed to other areas. A huge part of these profits, of course, goes to a few hundred families of the highest state officials who use it to buy the longest yachts in the world, the biggest palaces, and the most extravagant luxury goods. Some of these profits go to maintain the military industry, the army, the police, in short, all the structures that help keep this small circle of people in power. What is left is generally used to keep the rest of society in a relationship of extreme dependency on the state.

As Ilya Matveev said, this system could continue like that. But there is an ideology shared by Putin's circle, by himself, and we suppose by a few people around him, an ideology that perceives the world in a certain manner, and where Ukraine occupies a central place.

It would not be an easy task to summarize why Ukraine ended up occupying this central place in the Russian political imaginary. But if we can roughly summarize Russian political elite’s imaginary, we obtain a following narrative. Ukraine is a part of the Russian nation because they have a primordialist conception of nation. A distinct national identity of Ukrainians was deliberately created by the Western enemies of Russia and by their agents (Vladimir Lenin was agent number one, he created Ukraine and he did it to divide the Russian nation). By doing that, all these enemies of Russia aimed to prevent Russia from taking its rightful position as a leading imperial power in the world.

Ukraine is seen as a pawn in a zero-sum game. If there is an independent Ukraine, Russia cannot become a great power.

According to this worldview, only great powers have true political sovereignty. This is an important point: the way sovereignty and agency are understood in this ideology. For those who hold this worldview, those who have the capacity to act are not mobilized human communities, like nations or classes, nor even the elites who represent these communities. Only the leaders of the so-called great powers have real agency. They are the only real sovereigns. According to Putin, the world has only two such sovereigns: himself and the American president.

Seeing the world through the lens of this ideology, which is a closed system, like any ideology, Putin is sincerely convinced that every emancipation movement in the world is ultimately a plot led by the United States against Russia. Whether in Syria or other countries, it is perceived as an act of aggression by the global hegemon against the aspiring hegemon.

The war against Ukraine was a political choice. It was conceived, let us not forget, as a short, victorious war in which there would be no resistance. Let's keep this fact in mind. It was imagined as a rapid overturning of the balance of power, with the aim of imposing a new, lasting status quo — a status quo that would allow these two leading great powers, Russia and the United States, to establish exclusive zones of influence, in other words, to create colonies where they could exploit populations and natural resources without limits or regard for any norms or rules, whether environmental protection or human rights.

Through this war in Ukraine, which may appear local, Russian political elites are openly promoting a global project, and they conceive it in these terms. Essentially, they argue: "You see, international law doesn’t work. So what do we do? Let’s admit that the only law that truly exists is the law of the strongest. Let's just be honest and make it official."

The risk of accepting this logic is very high, especially today, as we witness Israel destroying Gaza and the complicity of the United States, along with the paralysis of many other countries in the face of this total disregard for all rights and laws. It is the clearest evidence that, indeed, international law doesn’t work. We are witnessing an enormous crisis. The need to maintain the current international structure seems practically useless.

The problem is that in a world where these structures disappear abruptly, those already in positions of weakness – states like Palestine, Ukraine, Armenia, to name just a few examples – and political forces in a position of weakness, such as the international left, will be among the first to lose in this struggle where only pure force and power matter. The authoritarian, productivist right that Putin represents, as well as many other politicians in other countries, is determined to completely erode these international structures and prevent the emergence of any alternative mechanisms that could limit their supremacist, polluting ambitions.

Ultimately, any act of aggression, however remote, if normalized, has implications that should concern all of us. The military victory and rise to power of a reactionary, militaristic state like Russia inevitably mean the rise of reactionary, militarist, fascist forces in other countries, and vice versa. When the victims of aggression are not defended, in any part of the planet, it emboldens the countless psychopaths in power to resolve their problems of political legitimacy through war. And right now, they face many problems of political legitimacy, given the rising inequalities, among other issues.

I would like to say a few words about the conference itself.

I want to thank the organizers for this initiative and for what they are doing, because any act of solidarity is precious in these times. We need to maintain the practice of solidarity.

I also want to say that I don’t know Boris Kagarlitsky personally and I don’t share most of the analysis I’ve seen from him. But I support your initiative of solidarity because he is a political prisoner.

As someone originally from Donetsk, as was mentioned, my friends and family there have lost a lot — some lost everything, some lost their lives — because of the Russian occupation of our region that began in 2014. I must say I was deeply upset at that time to see how many Russian left intellectuals and activists, including Boris, completely missed the point of what was happening in the Donbas. 

Many downplayed or failed to recognize the role of the Russian state and army, often being inattentive to the fact that without direct Russian involvement, this war in Donbas would never have happened. This was openly acknowledged by people like Igor Strelkov, who complained that the locals in Donbas didn’t want to separate from Ukraine or fight against Ukraine. The Russian army, he said, had to do it for them. 

In 2014, I was very young, but even then, I was surprised to see how many leftists projected strange fantasies about class struggle onto what was, in reality, a Russian intervention. That’s why it should not come as a surprise that many Ukrainian leftists are reluctant to express their solidarity.

As for me, my position is simple: nobody deserves to be subjected to the torture of a Russian prison, which is one of the worst places you can imagine. I truly hope that political prisoners and prisoners of conscience are released as soon as possible, especially those like Boris, who opposed the military aggression of their country. But I also want to stress that there are left activists who had the courage to stand against this, not only in 2022, but already in 2014. For all these long years, they have been in Russian prison. I’m speaking of people like Daria Poludova and Igor Kuznetsov.

Most of the victims of repression in Russia today are ordinary people who had no significant involvement in political activity. Many now face long prison sentences for expressing opposition to the war on social media, even if their posts reached only ten people. They are imprisoned for that, and they don't have social capital or international friends. Sometimes we only learn about their existence and courage after their deaths in prison.

A huge number of prisoners are random Ukrainian citizens who went to occupied territories for personal reasons, such as visiting dying parents. They are being held hostage in Russia, accused of terrorism. They are tortured, humiliated, and used for propaganda purposes. An even larger number of prisoners are Ukrainians from occupied territories, with a significant number being Crimean Tatars. Since 2014, tens of thousands of people have been kidnapped, most of them disappearing forever. Many are killed without trial. This has been the reality in occupied territories for years, while in Russia, most people were living in a period of so-called "blissful times," to use the expression that was mentioned today and that Boris Kagarlitsky referred to in his letter.

Finally, we must not forget that repression is severe in Russia and in Russian client states like Belarus. In Belarus, it's a real slaughter, but it mostly goes unnoticed.

To conclude, let's be clear: victims of repression in Russia and Belarus need support and active, practical solidarity. In Ukraine, we also see cases of completely arbitrary accusations, such as accusations of collaborationism. Please check the project "Graty" to learn more and support their work, as they make these cases known and help the victims. Regular donations to initiatives like OVD-Info or the Association of Relatives of Political Prisoners of the Kremlin can also make a difference. It's crucial to support progressive movements that still operate in Russia, like the Feminist Anti-War Resistance. 

But what would make a real difference, in my opinion, is to support those who fight against the source of the problem, not just against its consequences. I mean the Ukrainian army and especially anti-authoritarian and left soldiers that have chosen to risk their lives to fight Russian imperialism. So please donate to Solidarity Collectives.

I’ll stop here. I hope we have some time for questions.

Responses to questions

Thank you. I really appreciate all your questions and comments. I’m sorry that I won’t have time to respond in detail, as I also want to hear the other speakers who will follow, and I think it would be disrespectful to take their time.

Maybe just a few points. One of them is about the extreme right in Ukraine, etc. I find myself in a kind of paradoxical situation. When addressing the Ukrainian public as a leftist, we want to emphasize how dangerous it is to normalize nationalism in the context of war. What is happening now in wartime Ukraine is also the search for internal enemies, with Russian-speaking Ukrainians being presented as one of the sources of the problem. There is this narrative: "Putin invaded us because you, Russian-speaking Ukrainians, exist; you gave him a pretext to invade our country." The longer the war goes on, the more difficult it becomes to navigate this situation, which is becoming increasingly dramatic.

At the same time, when I speak to an international audience, I want to clarify: do not confuse the cause with the consequence. Before the Russian invasion in 2014, practically no such problem existed in Ukraine. It was a Russian discourse aimed at fueling internal conflicts, using the Russian-speaking population as a tool for their own political purposes of subjugating Ukraine. Ukrainian elites within the country also used a divide-and-rule strategy to secure their own portion of the Ukrainian economic pie, further fueling this nonexistent antagonism between Russian speakers and Ukrainian speakers.

Living in Ukraine, I can tell you that these are largely invented problems, but they became more real after the Russian invasion started. As for the alleged cases of violence against “Russians” in Donbas prior to 2014, I can say they never existed. I don’t know where this information comes from.

I also want to point out that one doesn’t need to romanticize or create illusions about a society to defend its right to exist and defend itself against the aggression of an imperialist state. We must not create illusions about what Ukrainian society represents. It has its own significant internal contradictions. It has its own extreme right, just like any society in the world today, including in the West. In fact, compared to some Western countries, Ukrainians are not as retrograde as one might think.

Unfortunately, we don’t have enough time, and I apologize for that. I’d like to conclude by saying that while we may have different analyses of certain details of the situation, we can also find common ground where we can engage together in practical solidarity. In these times, practical solidarity with the victims of aggression and with those who risk their lives to oppose the war is crucial. I hope that our collaboration will continue, and that together we can make a difference in what seems to be a quite desperate situation.

Thank you.