Party Organization and Party Literature

A short article by Lenin on the importance of the proletarian party’s use of various kind of publications for ideological publicity which was previously translated as the “Organization and Literature of the Party”. It was written on November 13, 1905, and published in the Novaya Zhizn issue No. 12 on the same day. The Chinese translation is included in Vol. 12 of the second revised edition of Complete Works of Lenin.

The Russian-wide political strike that began in early 1905 signaled the coming revolutionary storm and the inevitability of an armed popular uprising. Under strong pressure, the Tsarist government promised the people certain civil rights and limited political freedom, which Lenin saw as a historical opportunity. Since in the past there was no freedom of speech and publication in Russia at all, it was difficult for the proletarian party to exercise ideological leadership through the party press. Now the party could propagate its views and ideas through the public publication of its own press for the purpose of ideological leadership. However, the propaganda work of the party must be reformed. “Party Organization and Party Literature” was written by Lenin when he returned from abroad to preside over the Bolshevik Central Committee in St. Petersburg to guide the whole Party in mobilizing the masses and organizing them, to constantly raise the consciousness of the democrats, and to make adequate preparations for the coming armed uprising.

First of all, the article puts forward the proposition that “All Social-Democratic literature must become Party literature”, in contradistinction to bourgeois customs, to the profit-making, commercialised bourgeois press, to bourgeois literary careerism and individualism, “aristocratic anarchism” and drive for profit which explained the clear the boundary between the party’s literature and bourgeois literature. True writers must join the party organizations and among them who use the Party’s name to advocate anti-Party views must be “purged” and expelled. Party literature should also be led by the party.

Second, Lenin expounded on the function of party literature. Party literature must become part of the common cause of the proletariat, “a cog and a screw” of one single great Social-Democratic mechanism set in motion by the entire politically-conscious vanguard of the entire working class. Literature must become a component of organised, planned and integrated Social-Democratic Party work. But, there is no question, either, that in this field greater scope must undoubtedly be allowed for personal initiative, individual inclination, for individual thought and fantasy, form and content.

Third, Lenin also refuted the bourgeois idea of absolute freedom of creation. He pointed out that: your talk about absolute freedom is sheer hypocrisy. There can be no real and effective “freedom” in a society based on the power of money, in a society in which the masses of working people live in poverty and the handful of rich live like parasites. This absolute freedom is a bourgeois or an anarchist phrase (since, as a world outlook, anarchism is bourgeois philosophy turned inside out; it is necessary to expose and resist it.

Party literature should be a free literature, because the idea of socialism and sympathy with the working people, and not greed or careerism, will bring ever new forces to its ranks. It will be a free literature, because it will serve, not some satiated heroine, not the bored “upper ten thousand” suffering from fatty degeneration, but the millions and tens of  millions of working people—the flower of the country, its strength and its future. It will be a free literature, enriching the last word in the revolutionary thought of mankind with the experience and living work of the socialist proletariat, bringing about permanent interaction between the experience of the past (scientific socialism, the completion of the development of socialism from its primitive, utopian forms) and the experience of the present (the present struggle of the worker comrades). Lenin argued that such a transformation in the attributes of literature would be difficult under the new historical conditions of the time, but the party had to clearly set out this new task and set about solving it.

Fourthly, Lenin emphasized that the Party literature should be subject to Party supervision and freedom of speech should be advocated, but every voluntary association including our party is also free to expel members who use the name of the party to advocate their anti-party views. Lenin added: the border-line between party and anti-party there is the party programme, the party’s resolutions on tactics and its rules.

Lenin pointed out that the absolute freedom advocated by bourgeois individualists was nothing but hypocrisy and empty talk related to bourgeoisie or anarchism. Lenin also proposed: every newspaper, journal, publishing house, etc., must immediately set about reorganising its work, leading up to a situation in which it will, in one form or another, be integrated into one Party organisation or another. Only then will “Social-Democratic” literature really become worthy of that name, only then will it be able to fulfil its duty and, even within the framework of bourgeois society, break out of bourgeois slavery and merge with the movement of the really advanced and thoroughly revolutionary class.

Lenin’s proposition that “All Social-Democratic literature must become Party literature”, that the Party’s literature should be supervised by the Party and that freedom of expression should be promoted, but no writer should be allowed to use the name of the party to advocate their anti-party views, and other relevant views have a distinct political nature and still bears important practical relevance today.