Vladimir Tismaneanu - The Devil in History

Marxian social theory’s cult of totality as the ultimate explanatory archetype set the stage for its degeneration, in Bolshevik (Leninist) terms, into dogma and the ruthless persecution of heretics. Marx’s emphasis on human emancipation as the conscious absorption of society by the individual and his equation of social conflict with class antagonism resulted in advocacy of the elimination of “superstructural” intermediaries (laws, institutions, etc.) regulating the relationship between civil society and the state. Marx failed to give instructions on the achievement of social unity. The utopian, eschatological vision of Marx’s body of political thought was translated into a revolutionary program of action by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (born Ulianov). Lenin operated a creative understanding of necessity that led to the Bolshevik version of man’s salvation. In Lenin’s vision, the monolithic vanguard party became the repository of human hope, a tightly knit fraternity of illuminated militants, and therefore the true vehicle of human freedom. The combination of Marxism with party/power set the Communist body politic on the path to self-purification (permanent purge and revolutionary offensive).

For Lenin, the fate of the Communist revolution predicted by Karl Marx depended on the maturity and political will of the revolutionary party. His vision of the new type of party was formulated in the pamphlet What Is To Be Done (1902), which articulated the Leninist concept of revolutionary practice in the twentieth century. Lenin’s notion of the party led to the split within Russian social democracy between moderates (Mensheviks) and radicals (Bolsheviks). Leninism consists fundamentally of Lenin’s theory of the vanguard revolutionary party, the doctrine of proletarian revolution in the age of imperialism, and the emphasis on the dictatorship of the proletariat as a new type of state emerging from the collapse of the old, bourgeois order. From the outset, the Leninist regime in the Soviet Union was based on abuses, violence, and repression directed against any form of political opposition. Bolshevism was the opposite of a rule-of-law state. 11These authoritarian features of Leninism were further exacerbated by Stalin, who transformed the Soviet Union into a totalitarian state. Bolshevik humanism was conditioned only by the success of the cause it was engaged in. The individual’s existence maintained its weight in the world insofar as it contributed to the construction of social utopia.

Like Marx, Lenin saw the proletarian revolution as a global phenomenon, but he modified some basic tenets of the Marxist theory. Lenin noticed the passivity of the workers in the advanced industrial countries and explained it as a consequence of the ability of the bourgeoisie to co-opt the working class within the system. According to Lenin, the bourgeoisie succeeded in ideologically corrupting the proletarians and their parties. It was therefore important to create a new type of political party that would refuse any form of collusion with the existing dominant forces and would eventually exert exclusive political power. For Lenin, a tightly knit, phalanxlike revolutionary organization, structured almost like a military order, was needed to inject revolutionary consciousness into the proletariat and direct the workers in the revolutionary battles. The party was the embodiment of historical reason and militants were expected to carry out its orders without hesitation or reservation. Discipline, secrecy, and rigid hierarchy were essential for such a party, especially during clandestine activities (like those in Russia). The main role of the party was to awaken proletarian self-consciousness and instill the revolutionary doctrine (faith) into the dormant proletariat. Instead of relying on the spontaneous development of consciousness in the working class, Leninism saw the party as a catalytic agent bringing revolutionary knowledge, will, and organization to the exploited masses. It was with Lenin that the mystique of a new type of party became an indelible feature of radical politics in the twentieth century.

The Fascists absorbed the Bolshevik lesson, internalizing Lenin’s cult of the party, but they never developed a mystical partolatry. The main distinction, therefore, was that neither the Fascist Party in Italy nor the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) became charismatic institutions like the Bolshevik Party. They were the sounding boards for the leaders’ harangues, collective entities meant to ensure the perpetuation of the Fürhrerprinzip. Alfredo Rocco was Mussolini’s minister of justice and a close friend of Il Duce. His views emphasized organicism, romanticism, and statism as key components of the Fascist ideology: “To the existence of this ideal content of Fascism, to the truth of this Fascist logic we ascribe the fact that though we commit many errors of detail, we very seldom go astray on fundamentals, whereas all the parties of the opposition, deprived as they are of an informing, animating principle, of a unique directing concept, do very often wage their war faultlessly in minor tactics, better trained as they are in parliamentary and journalistic maneuvers, but they constantly broke down on the important issues.” 12Benito Mussolini, Italy’s Fascist dictator between 1922 and his death in 1945, contributed in 1932 to the Enciclopedia Italiana with a famous entry on the doctrine of Fascism:

Thus Fascism could not be understood in many of its practical manifestations as a party organization, as a system of education, a discipline, if it were not always looked at in the light of its whole way of conceiving life, a spiritualized way…. The man of Fascism is an individual who is nation and fatherland, which is a moral law, biding together individuals and the generations into a tradition and a mission, suppressing the instant for a life enclosed within the brief round of pleasure in order to restore within duty the higher life free from the limits of time and space: a life in which the individual, through the denial of himself, through the sacrifice of his own private interests, through death itself, realizes that completely spiritual existence in which his value as a man lies. Fascism is a religious conception in which man is seen in his immanent relationship with a superior law and with an objective Will that transcends the particular individual and raises him to conscious membership in a spiritual society. Whoever has seen in the religious politics of the Fascist regime nothing than mere opportunism has not understood that Fascism besides being a system of government is also, above all, a system of thought. 13

Ideological absolutism, sanctification of the ultimate goal, suspension of critical faculties, and the cult of the party line as the perfect expression of the general will were imbedded in the original Bolshevik project and definitely imbued Mussolini’s political imagination.

I argue that the seeds of Stalin’s regime were sowed by Lenin. 14He carried to an extreme Leninism’s intolerant logic and turned the USSR into a police state. The Communist Party was transformed from a revolutionary elite into a bureaucratic caste whose sole aim was to preserve and enhance the leader’s power and its privileges. Gradually, the dictatorship of the proletariat became an empty slogan legitimizing Stalin’s absolute reign and secret police repression against the population. Invoking Lenin’s struggle against factionalism, Stalin completely destroyed any intraparty democracy, viciously persecuted all (real or imaginary) opponents, and imposed a monolithic dictatorship based on permanent purges and mass terror. In the physical absence of the numinous leader incarnating the absolute power of the party, Lenin, the congregation of his disciples had to reinvent itself by means of founding its charisma on the scriptures of its founding fathers. The invented tradition of Marxism-Leninism was then thrust upon the party ranks as a means of stabilizing the normative identity of the party. The “return to Leninism” became an important theme of the anti-Stalin opposition, especially among Trotsky’s supporters. Later, after Stalin’s death in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev proclaimed the restoration of the Leninist norms of party life and denounced Stalin’s “cult of personality” (i.e., the quasi-religious adoration of the supreme leader) as non-Leninist. In the 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev deepened Khrushchev’s critique of Stalinism and sought to instill pluralism within Soviet institutions. In his democratizing efforts, Gorbachev went beyond the logic of Leninism and abandoned both the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the party’s claim to monopoly of power.