Report on the Party Programme

This is Lenin’s report on the second Party programme of the R.C.P.(B). It was written on March ,1919 ,published in Pravda issue No.62 of March 22,1919. The Chinese translation is included in Vol. 36 of the second revised edition of Complete Works of Lenin.

After the February Revolution in 1917, Lenin proposed, in April 1917, to revise the Party programme to meet the requirements of the new situation in his “April Theses” and “Letters From Afar”. In March 1918, Lenin drafted the Draft Party Programme to be deliberated in the Seventh Congress of the R.C.P.(B) and delivered a report on revisions in the Party Programme and change of the Party’s name. The congress adopted Lenin’s suggestions and changed the name “Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party” (B) to the Russian Communist Party (B), or the R.C.P.(B) for short. The seven-member Programme commission headed by Lenin was entrusted to formulate the final draft based on the resolution passed by the Congress on amending the Party Programme. The task was finally completed in February. The Eighth Congress of the R.C.P.(B) was held in Moscow between March 18-23, 1919. The central task was to discuss and adopt a new Party Programme. Lenin’s report at the Congress was the third of the “Documents of the Eighth Congress of the R.C.P.(B)”. He explained the revision of the Party Programme around the different opinion and arguments during the formulating process. He criticized Bukharin and others’ wrong views and clarified that only from the actual economic and political situation in Russia and in the world could the proletariat party formulate its own programme accurately and scientifically.

Bukharin proposed to delete the provisions on pre-monopoly period of capitalism and simple commodity production in the theoretical part, i.e., the general programme pat, and proposed to limit the discussion to “pure” imperialism, in this part of the programme. He also argued that financial capital was the “most typical thing” that determined imperialism. In response to this, Lenin argued that this was a bookish narrative that removes and neglects the old capitalist foundation of the financial capitalism, such emphasis would severe the history of capitalism, was divorced from reality, thus incorrect. Pure imperialism, without the fundamental basis of capitalism, has never existed, does not exist anywhere, and never will exist. Imperialism has developed on the basis of commodity economy and capitalism, imperialism and finance capitalism are a superstructure on the old capitalism. If its top is destroyed, the old capitalism is exposed. To maintain that there is such a thing as integral imperialism without the old capitalism is an obvious mistake, merely making the wish father to the thought.

Lenin analyzed the fact that the victorious countries of modern capitalism were also destroyed in the World War I and the old capitalism was restored. Based on this analysis, he pointed out that Russia was in the period after the destruction of the imperialist war and the beginning of the dictatorship of the proletariat. We were living at a time when a number of the most elementary and fundamental manifestations of capitalism have been revived. We saw the development of its early stage. This meant that there was still a very deep foundation of old capitalism in Russia, and we shall be unable for a long time to escape this heterogeneity. Therefore, the new programme retained all the contents of the old capitalism in the old programme. This was based on the present situation in Russia and the world.

Bukharin and Pyatakov proposed that the right to self-determination of the nations should be excluded from the programme and only the right to self-determination of the working people should be stipulated. They argued that the nation means the bourgeoisie together with the proletariat. Lenin argued: “This is not compatible with what actually exists. If you eliminate this, the result will be sheer fantasy. You refer to the process of differentiation which is taking place within the nations, the process of separation of the proletariat from the bourgeoisie.” … That is to say, you want to recognise something—right of the working classes to self-determination—which has not been achieved in a single country except Russia.

Lenin took Finland, Germany, Russia and other countries as an example to demonstrate that in different countries, the proletariat followed different paths and drew a clear line with the bourgeoisie based on their respective situations. Bukharin and others did not take into account the complicated difficulties of various countries. Lenin warned that extreme caution should be exercised in this regard, especially with regard to different nations. One must anticipate all stages of the development in other countries, be patient, and never give orders from Moscow. Therefore, in principle, the proposal of Bukharin and others could not be accepted. In response to the differences and controversies over the question of co-operatives and bourgeois experts, Lenin pointed out the following: (1) Co-operatives were the only organization for which capitalism paved the way among the people. This organization must be preserved all costs to serve the Bolshevik. It must be developed and must not, under any circumstances be discarded. It would also be retained in future consumer communes. (2) It was necessary to include the utilization of bourgeois experts in the programme. This was because although the Soviet had in principle implemented the incomparable proletarian democracy, cultural backwardness has limited the role of all workers, and the class composed of bourgeois doctors, engineers, agronomists and cooperative workers was very large. Therefore, without the assistance of other countries, it was impossible to raise the level productive forces immediately without such educated and expert workers which are generally found among the ranks of the bourgeoise. Communism could only be established by utilizing the scientific and technological achievements of the bourgeoise, and by making them more and more accessible by the people. Therefore, in the transitional period from capitalism to communism, experts should not be critical. They should attach importance to culture, treat experts well, consult them, and attract or win them over from the bourgeoisie to serve the Soviet and the proletariat. For this reason, it was worthwhile to pay experts even higher wages and remuneration.

Lenin also discussed other issues in the programme like the importance and necessity of the leadership of the proletariat, opposition of bureaucracy, attempt to attract the masses to participate in Soviet work and depriving the bourgeoisie of the right to vote. He pointed out that in Soviet Russia, the complete bureaucracy and the organization of bourgeois oppressors had been completely destroyed. Due to the low level of education, although the Soviet was an organization that managed its workers according to the Party’s programme, it was actually an organization that managed its workers through the advanced class of the proletariat rather than through the working people. At the same time, due to the shortage of professionals, the tsarist bureaucrats began to join the Soviet institutions and practise organizational, cultural and educational work. We could not at all regard disfranchise the bourgeoisie. Therefore, only by organizing the proletariat and the peasants on a much larger scale than before, and at the same time really implementing various methods to absorb workers into management, could we crowd out and oppose bureaucracy. Lenin argued that what the Soviet Republic had done in the past few months in absorbing workers and peasants into state administration was something the best democratic republic in the world had not done and could not do in hundreds of years. However, due to the low cultural level of the peasants, organizing the proletariat was much faster than organizing the peasants, which made the workers the mainstay of the revolution and gave the proletariat a superior position over the peasants. Therefore, the programme faithfully presented the facts and provided for systematic work to eliminate this inequality between workers and peasants. However, the programme did not recognize equality between exploiters and the exploited. Lenin argued that it was essential to suppress the bourgeoisie as a class, it was not essential to deprive them of suffrage and of equality, because otherwise it would not be socialism. However, it was not necessary to deprive them of suffrage and of equality, but it was necessary to deprive the exploiters who opposed the Soviet Socialist Republic, stubbornly maintained their exploitative status and maintained capitalist relations. Lenin repeatedly stressed that the correctness and scientificalness of the Party Programme should be based on absolute facts, and the policies and tasks of the Party should be determined on the basis of absolutely irrefutable and irrefutable reality. Only such a programme was the Marxist program. If the programme were to be written in the way Comrade Bukharin wanted, it would be a wrong programme divorced from the reality.

In this report, Lenin discussed the guiding ideology and basic principles for the proletariat party to formulate its own programme, which is an important document of Marxist party theory.