Lenin’s Theory of Indoctrination

Lenin’s statement that scientific socialism cannot be spontaneously generated from the workers’ movement, but should be brought to the working class and the working people from without.

Marx and Engels first demonstrated that socialism can not be produced from the spontaneous workers’ movement, it is created by theorists and imported into workers from without. The Communist Party is the product of the combination of scientific socialism and the workers’ movement. Lenin wrote the What Is to Be Done? in the autumn of 1901 and February of 1902. In the book, it comprehensively and systematically expounds the Marxist theory of indoctrination. Lenin argued that under the capitalist system, the proletariat is an exploited and oppressed class. In order to raise wages and improve working conditions, they can spontaneously organize themselves to strike and fight against capitalists. “These strikes themselves are struggles of unionism, not of social democracy; These strikes indicate that the workers have felt their confrontation with the factory owner, but they have not realized and can not realize the irreconcilable opposition between their interests and the whole modern political and social system, that is to say, they have not and can not have the consciousness of social democracy.” This is because, as a scientific theoretical system reflecting the historical position and mission of the proletariat and guiding the proletarian liberation struggle, scientific socialism can only be produced through the hard theoretical research of great proletarian revolutionaries, theorists and thinkers on the basis of summing up the experience of the struggle of the working class and absorbing the excellent cultural achievements of mankind. Lenin said: “The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labor legislation, etc. The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, the intellectuals.” In Lenin’s view, Marx and Engels, the founders of scientific socialism, were also intellectuals with educated family background according to their social status. “The same is true in Russia, where the theory of the Social-Democratic Party is totally independent of the spontaneous growth of the workers’ movement, its emergence is the natural and inevitable result of the ideological development of the revolutionary socialist intellectuals.” Since it is impossible for the working class itself to produce the consciousness of scientific socialism, “it could only be brought to them from without.” Indoctrination is to propagate, educate, enlighten and improve the socialist consciousness of the masses of workers, so that the working class can realize the transformation from the free class to the self-serving class, and shoulder the historical task of liberating the whole mankind and itself. If we don’t inculcate and rely on the blind development of the workers’ movement itself, we will not be able to move towards scientific socialism, but will be affected and dominated by all kinds of non-proletarian thoughts and fall into the quagmire of economism and unionism. Lenin said that without revolutionary theory, there would be no revolutionary movement. Only the party guided by advanced theory can realize the role of advanced soldiers. He added that the problem can only be this: either the ideological system of the bourgeoisie or the ideological system of socialism. Any disdain or separation from the socialist ideology means the strengthening of the bourgeois ideological system.

The indoctrination theory of Marxism-Leninism is still of great practical and historical significance today. First of all, scientific socialism, like any scientific ideological theory, is the result of a scientific summary of practical experience by using scientific thinking methods on the basis of absorbing the ideological achievements of predecessors, workers and working people will not produce it spontaneously. We can only study, study and consciously use it. Secondly, the thoughts of the ruling class are all dominant thoughts, and they attach great importance to the struggle in the ideological field, each ruling class tries to make its own ideology accepted by the whole society through indoctrination. If the proletariat and its political parties do not occupy the ideological position with Marxism, all kinds of non-Marxist and even anti-Marxist ideas will occupy it. It is in this sense that “arming people with scientific theories”, that is, indoctrination, is still the primary task of our propaganda and ideological and political work.