Lenin 2: Revolutionary Personality and the Philosophy of Victory: Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of Lenin’s Birth
Wang Hui, Professor of Chinese Language and Literature and History at Tsinghua University
April 2020
The “Second Nature” of a Revolutionary’s Personality
In Lenin’s time, in addition to dedication and personal qualities, the personality of a revolutionary was also manifested in the ability to grasp the main contradictions and put them into action, the so-called “second nature”. This requires that while engaging in practical movements, one must also engage in intensive theoretical work to identify opportunities for action in the complex reality, persuade or even defeat the wrong views of the same camp, and conceive the strategy and tactics of the revolution.
Lenin first “discussed in Iskra the idea that in the complex chain of political activity one must be able to highlight the central link of the moment in order to grasp it and give the whole chain a direction.” Trotsky commented: “Later, Lenin repeated this idea more than once, and often spoke of the form of the chain and the links themselves. This method seemed to pass from the conscious realm to the subconscious and finally became his second nature.”[11] Trotsky, On Lenin, p. 100.
Lenin’s overall analysis and specific grasp of the situation were ultimately subject to what Lenin considered to be the decisive “link” in the specific situation, so that in specific actions, he often put aside those things that directly or indirectly conflicted with the central task. “This ‘shortcoming’ of his is only the reverse side of his talent for the greatest internal mobilization of all forces, which made him the greatest revolutionary in history.” [12] Trotsky, On Lenin, p. 100.
The so-called highlighting the central link of the time in the complex chain of political activities and pointing out the direction for the entire chain refers to a kind of judgment of the times. In January 1915, Lenin proposed a methodology for identifying the characteristics of the times in his article “Flying the Flag of Others”.
“It is indisputable that we live at the junction of two epochs; and therefore the great historical events which are passing before us cannot be understood unless we first analyse the objective conditions of the transition from one epoch to the other. We are dealing here with the great historical epochs. In every epoch there is and always will be individual, partial, sometimes forward, sometimes backward movements, all kinds of deviations from the general form and general tempo of the movement.
We cannot know how fast the various historical movements of a given era will develop, or how much they will achieve. But we can know, and do know, which class is at the center of this or that era, and determines the main content of the era, the main direction of its development, the main characteristics of the historical background of the era, and so on. Only on this basis, that is, taking into account the different basic characteristics of each “era” (rather than individual historical events in individual countries), can we correctly formulate our own strategy; only by understanding the basic characteristics of a certain era can we consider the more specific characteristics of this country or that country on this basis. “[13] Lenin, “Flying Someone Else’s Banner”, in Lenin’s Selected Works on Capitalism, Beijing: People’s Publishing House, 2009, pp. 91-92.
Contrary to the way of judging the times as Lenin said, confusing the main content and development direction of the times, blurring the central force of the times, and then moving strategies or tactics that may be appropriate or correct under other era conditions to a completely different era context, will form left, right, left in form but right in reality, dogmatic or empiricist opportunism.
The “second nature” of a revolutionary’s personality is not an abstract internationalism or a pure concept, but an internationalism deeply rooted in national life. On April 23, 1920, Trotsky published an article in Pravda to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Lenin’s birth. It is quite interesting that the focus of this short article is not internationalism, but Lenin’s “deep nationality”: “Lenin is rooted in Russia’s modern history, summarizes history, and gives it the highest expression. It is through this path that Lenin has reached the pinnacle of internationalist action and world influence.”
Trotsky believed that in addition to the qualities of dialectical materialism, revolutionary leaders also need “a potential creative power which we call intuition: the ability to quickly assess the situation, to distinguish the essential and important things from the coarse, to fill in the missing parts of the picture with imagination, to think of others, first of all the enemy, to combine all these together, and to strike in time when the ‘formula’ for striking is formed in the mind. This is the intuition of action. On the other hand, this intuition is also combined with what the Russians call sensitivity.” [14] Trotsky, On Lenin, pp. 132, 134.
Trotsky was aware that such an emphasis on Lenin’s “national” character might come as a surprise, and he explained that “to lead the revolution which Russia is now experiencing, unprecedented in the history of nations, requires an organic and inseparable connection—a deep-rooted connection—with the fundamental forces of people’s life.” “The theoretical exposition of the internationalism of the socialist revolution had long been known, but it was only in Lenin that it first acquired its national expression, and that is why Lenin was the foremost and most direct revolutionary leader of the world proletariat.”[15] Trotsky, On Lenin, pp. 132, 134.
Lenin’s theory of imperialism is a vivid manifestation of the methodology of this era of cognition. This work rarely directly involves China, but its theoretical analysis has laid the premise for the new start of the Chinese revolution. If the imbalance of the imperialist world system has created the “weak link” of this international system, then the domestic division caused by the multi-power competition pattern has also provided a “weak link” for domestic revolution.
Because “the great achievements of the speculative nature of international capitalism have not yet fully matured to the level of international cooperation and are still hindered by capitalist groups using national sentiments and policies to enforce their special interests,” while “the Western powers jointly attacked China,” they also competed and fought with each other within China, causing civil war and separatism in China in the form of proxy wars. The process of the great powers such as France, Russia, Germany, Britain, Japan, and the United States competing for international spheres of influence was accompanied by the process of dividing up spheres of influence within China. The purpose of both was to occupy the monopoly of investment and development in different regions through political and military power in order to obtain excess profits. [16]
Therefore, there are two weak links in the era of imperialism: one is the “weak link” that Lenin called the “uneven economic and political development” as the “absolute law of capitalism”, “from which it should be concluded that socialism may first triumph in a few or even in a single capitalist country”, [17] and the other is the gap caused by the uneven domestic political and economic development and the contradictions between the imperialist agents within the oppressed nations, which provided conditions for the survival and development of China’s revolutionary forces in the vast countryside and on the borders and marginal areas of the provinces.
“Weak links” not only refer to the fragility of the ruling order, but also to the possibility of breaking through its system. Therefore, “weak links” rely on the generation of revolutionary forces and cannot exist on their own. The revolutionary forces of the 20th century did not exist independently within a country or region, but rather were movements of nations, classes/strata, and regions that showed themselves in “weak links” and had profound international connections. In other words, if there were no revolutionary forces and revolutionary theories committed to breaking through the ruling system, there would be no “weak links”; if the “weak links” of the capitalist international system and the “weak links” of domestic rule could not be considered together, it would be difficult to form revolutionary strategies and tactics.
For the revolutionary forces, if they only regard imperialism as an economic phenomenon, rather than a situation of political and military competition based on economic needs, and do not understand that there is no clear and distinct boundary between the old imperialist policies and the new imperialism, they will not be able to form a specific strategy and tactics to resist imperialism. In this sense, without a specific revolutionary strategy and tactics, the weak link cannot become a “weak link”. Therefore, who exactly is the revolutionary force, or where the revolutionary force develops from, constitutes the premise for identifying the “weak link”.
We are now very familiar with Lenin’s analysis of the Eastern Question and the Chinese Revolution from around the time of the 1905 Revolution to the Xinhai Revolution. His advocacy of national self-determination and the theory of imperialism developed around the outbreak of World War I, as well as his judgment of “advanced Asia and backward Europe”, have incorporated the Eastern Question—from the Balkan crisis to the Chinese Revolution—into the analysis of the latest stage of global capitalism.
In his famous “On the Right of Nations to Self-Determination”, Lenin said: “In Eastern Europe and Asia the era of bourgeois-democratic revolutions began only in 1905. The revolutions in Russia, Persia, Turkey and China, the Balkan wars, etc., are the whole series of events of world significance which are taking place in our ‘East’ in our time.”[18] In fact, the position of the Russian Revolution on the national question was intrinsically linked to the process of “Asian Awakening”.
However, before the Northern Expedition (1924-1927), with very few exceptions, even within their respective leaderships, few attempted to link the Russian and Chinese revolutions in a more concrete way. They might have agreed with Lenin on the uneven development of the imperialist era and the theory of the weak link, but they never combined this theory with the exploration of revolutionary forces in China.
For example, the Communist International revolutionary Roy opposed Lenin’s united front policy and believed that Sun Yat-sen was a scheming strategist and a reactionary. [19] At the Far Eastern Workers’ Congress (Moscow, January 1922), Zinoviev was extremely dissatisfied with Sun Yat-sen’s request for American aid and fiercely criticized the bourgeois style of the Chinese Kuomintang. [20] In 1925, in order to mourn the death of Sun Yat-sen, Radek, who later served as the president of Moscow Sun Yat-sen University, published an article in Pravda, specifically mentioning the following facts:
“One day in 1916, when the First World War was raging, a group of Bolsheviks met in Bern to discuss the question of national self-determination. Lenin suddenly proposed at the meeting that the Bolsheviks should unite with the Chinese revolution in the future. This proposal seemed like a foolish dream at the time! It was really conceivable that the Russian proletariat would fight shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of millions of Chinese. Among the five or six Bolsheviks present at the meeting, some imagined that if they lived long enough, they might see this dream come true.” [21]
Even Trotsky did not become interested in this until the 1920s, especially during the period of the Shanghai workers’ uprising.
However, Lenin’s judgment was completely different. Radek recalled: “In 1918, when China and Russia were still divided by the Czechs, the Social Revolutionaries and Kolchak, Lenin once asked whether it was possible to select revolutionaries from among the Chinese workers who had immigrated to Russia to have contact with Sun Yat-sen. Now we have established contact with the Chinese people. The mission we entrust to the Chinese revolutionaries today is to expand our contact with hundreds of millions of people.” [22]
It was under Lenin’s influence that the Fourth Congress of the Communist International adopted the General Discussion of the Eastern Question from November 1922 to February 1923. After analyzing the inherent defects of the Chinese Communist Party, it advocated the realization of cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party and the establishment of a united front. [23] In January 1923, Soviet government representative Adolf Joffe met with Sun Yat-sen in Shanghai and issued the Sun Yat-sen-Joffe Manifesto. On the premise of recognizing Sun Yat-sen’s view that communism and the Soviet system were not suitable for China at that time, the Kuomintang officially began the three major policies of “allying with Russia, allying with the Communist Party, and supporting farmers and workers” and the first cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party.
Based on his specific grasp of the overall characteristics of the imperialist era and the different social conditions, Lenin transcended the obvious divisions between Sun Yat-senism and the Chinese revolution on the one hand, and the communist movement on the other, and discovered the potential of the Chinese revolution and its consistency with the Russian revolution.
This also profoundly influenced Li Dazhao and the first generation of Chinese Communists. Their internationalism and world view also had a character based on national life. In the speech commemorating the second anniversary of Lenin’s death mentioned above, Li Dazhao expressed a point of view that seemed incredible to “pure” Marxists or communists:
Leninism is the theory and strategy of the proletarian revolution in the era of imperialism. Sun Yat-senism is the theory and strategy of the oppressed national revolution in the era of imperialism. In theory, Sun Yat-senism and Leninism can be combined into one, and in strategy they can also be consistent. Therefore, Leninists can be said to be Sun Yat-senists; Sun Yat-senists are also Leninists! Their doctrines are both revolutionary doctrines… There is no difference between the greatness of their thoughts and personalities. [24]
As the most steadfast communist with the deepest Marxist theoretical knowledge in China at that time, Li Dazhao asserted that “If Sun Yat-sen had been born in Russia, he would have been a Lenin; if Lenin had been born in China, he would have been a Sun Yat-sen too! Their doctrines may seem different on the surface, but it is actually because of their different environments. Sun Yat-sen and Lenin had the same goal, but unfortunately the environment did not allow him to achieve it as successfully as Lenin!” [25] Li Dazhao was not trying to erase or confuse the differences between the revolutions led by Lenin and Sun Yat-sen. Instead, he was trying to find the connections and intersections between differences and even contradictions in the political logic formed by the interaction between the world situation and domestic conditions. In the process of identifying common enemies, he expanded the scope of comrades and friends and formed a broad front.
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