Between Vulgar and Ruptural Dialectics: Reassessing Lenin on Hegel

Abstract

This article reassesses Lenin's understanding of Hegel and his dialectic. It argues that Lenin deployed two understandings of that dialectic, one a more mechanistic and vulgar form and the other ruptural. While the former favours the objective and even evolutionary unfolding of stages, the latter is concerned with subjective intervention in those objective conditions. In order to develop this argument, I deal with the whole expanse of Lenin's treatments of Hegel and of Marx's materialist appropriation of the dialectic. This material spans almost three decades of writing, so I focus on key moments from the whole period. The argument is structured in three main sections: the first deals with Lenin's appreciation of the subjective rupture at the heart of the dialectic; the second concerns his focus on the dialectic's objective mechanisms; the third analyses the texts where Lenin juxtaposes both approaches, an effort that creates a dialectical tension of its own. I conclude by observing that Lenin did not invent this vulgar-ruptural dialectic, but rather that he inherited the tension from Marx.

Keywords:

• Lenin
• Hegel
• dialectic
• vulgar Marxism
• ruptural Marxism

Notes on Contributor

Roland Boer is a research professor at the University of Newcastle, Australia. His research interests concern the intersections between Marxism and religion. Among numerous publications, his most recent are In the Vale of Tears: On Marxism and Theology,V (2014) and Idols of Nations (2014).

Notes

¹My interpretation is not a common understanding of Lenin's engagement with Hegel, but it is justified by careful attention to the texts. I assume here that Lenin must be taken seriously as a philosopher (or perhaps as an anti-philosopher), thereby leaving aside those who dismiss Lenin as a philosopher (Zinoviev [1923] 1973, 44–45; Wilson 1972, 390; Plamenatz 1975, 221, 248; Donald 1993; Williams 2011) or describe him as an opportunist who threw aside his convictions when needed (Plamenatz 1947, 85; Lichtheim 1961, 325–51; Pearson 1975; Service 1985–95, 2000; Lincoln 1986, 426–53; Agursky 1987, 71–80; Read 2005). Among those who take Lenin seriously, two interpretations of his engagement with Hegel have been proposed. First, Lenin did not encounter Hegel seriously until he studied The Science of Logic in the library in Berne over some months in 1914. This study led him to discover the radical nature of the dialectic and led him to reformulate his approach to revolution (subjective intervention) that eventually led to October 1917 (Liebman 1973, 442–48; Löwy 1973; Bensaïd 2007; Kouvelakis 2007). Second, Lenin had a deep appreciation of Hegel's dialectic from the time he studied Phenomenology of Spirit while he was in exile in Siberia in the late 1890s (Lukács [1924] 1970; Michael-Matsas 2007). Neither position is correct, for Lenin's approach to Hegel was always torn between a mechanical understanding and a ruptural one.

²I leave aside his discussions of revolution and counter-revolution, the dialectic of part and whole, and the relation between reform and revolution (Lenin [1905] 1962a, 519–25; [1905] 1962c, 526–30; [1905] 1962d, 293–303; [1905] 1962e, 57, 99–100; [1905] 1962f, 336–41; [1905] 1962g, 260; [1905] 1962h, 212–23; [1905] 1962j, 281–82; [1905] 1962k, 265–80; [1905] 1962m, 243–44; [1905] 1962n, 169–78; [1905] 1962o, 304; [1905] 1962p, 447–48; [1905] 1962q, 414–15; [1905] 1962r, 58–59; [1906] 1962a, 170; [1906] 1962b, 109; [1906] 1962c, 161–62; [1906] 1962d, 135; [1906] 1962e, 185–86; [1906] 1962g, 172–73; [1907] 1962a, 333–36; [1907] 1962b, 114; [1910] 1963a, 350; [1915] 1964d, 415–20; and on part and whole, [1905] 1962b, 328; [1905] 1962i, 356–73; on reform and revolution, [1921] 1966, 115–16).

³So also from 1908:

In order to make a genuinely Marxist assessment of the revolution, from the standpoint of dialectical materialism, it has to be assessed as the struggle of live social forces, placed in particular objective conditions, acting in a particular way and applying with greater or less success particular forms of struggle. (Lenin [1908] 1963a, 55)

⁴Lack of awareness of the importance of praxis in Lenin's work leads occasionally to the accusation that he was a man of action, an intuitive politician with little concern for theory. See the references in note 1.

⁵He also read other works by Hegel, as well as Aristotle, the Pre-Socratics, material on the natural sciences and some secondary literature.

⁶As Kouvelakis puts it, the genuine “materialist reversal” of Hegel lies “in understanding the subjective activity displayed in the ‘logic of the notion’ as the ‘reflection,’ idealist and thus inverted, of revolutionary practice, which transforms reality by revealing in it the result of the subject's intervention” (Kouvelakis 2007, 183).

⁷Perhaps the fullest definition of dialectics appears in these notebooks, in the 16 points gathered in a section called “Elements of Dialectics” (Lenin [1914–16] 1968, 220–22; see also 355–61).

⁸See the earlier statements in Lenin ([1906] 1962f, 222–23; [1914] 1964a, 15–19; [1914] 1964b, 25–34; [1915] 1964a, 192–93; [1915] 1964b, 158–64; [1915] 1964c, 275–80; [1915] 1964e, 315; [1916] 1964, 77–87).

⁹See Anweiler and Cliff on Lenin's struggles to persuade the Bolsheviks of his approach (Anweiler 1974, 154–57, 185–89; Cliff 2004, 122–40, 361–64).

¹⁰Harding puts it well:

The revolution was not like a plum falling into the hand when fully ripe without so much as a shake of the tree. It was, to characterise Lenin's account, more like a turnip. It would swell and ripen in the ground but would take a stout pull to harvest it—otherwise the action of the elements and of parasites would combine to rot it away. (Harding 2009, 73; see also Liebman 1973, 147)

¹¹As Lars Lih shows so well in relation to Lenin's thought overall (Lih 2005).

¹²See Lenin's critiques of abstract, universally compulsory historical schemas, which are mystical and metaphysical and thereby not Marxist ([1894] 1960a, 408; [1894] 1960b, 192–94).

¹³See, for example, Lenin ([1895] 1960, 21; [1904] 1961, 409–10). Later, in “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back,” Lenin does deploy a Hegelian dialectic, but now understood in a rather mechanical, developmental pattern of thesis, antithesis and negation of the negation that leads to a higher synthesis. He uses such a pattern to interpret the struggles of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), particularly in light of the Bolshevik-Menshevik split during the Second Congress: “In a word, not only do oats grow according to Hegel, but the Russian Social-Democrats war among themselves according to Hegel” (Lenin [1904] 1961, 409).

¹⁴As Krupskaya notes, Lenin was immersed in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit at the time. It is no wonder, then, that the dialectic of lord and bondsman should appear in that text (Lenin [1899] 1960, 217).

¹⁵This argument is common in Lenin's texts from the 1890s to the 1910s (Lenin [1897] 1960, 532; [1901] 1961, 164–66, 177–80, 195, 205–6; [1908] 1963c, 261–62; [1912] 1963a, 146–48; [1912] 1963b, 76–77; [1913] 1977, 364–68).

¹⁶Lenin's argument is as much conventional Marxist theory of the time as it is a critique of Narodnik arguments that Russia might avoid the capitalist stage and move straight to socialism through a romanticised image of the communal mir or obshchina, the village-commune, which was really another mode of exploitation through its small-scale production (Lenin [1894] 1960a, 494–95; [1894] 1960b, 176; [1908] 1963a, 50–62; [1908] 1963b, 34–35). It also seeks to counter assumptions of Russian exceptionalism, arguing that Russia is no different in its path of economic and social development than the Western world.

¹⁷Anderson holds to the position that Lenin first truly discovered Hegel in the library in Berne in 1914, so he is forced to argue that the ruptural approach to the dialectic in “Karl Marx” is a late insertion, a manifestation of Lenin's growing awareness of the deeper nature of Hegel's dialectic. Anderson's evidence includes a slightly earlier article from 1913, “The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism” (Lenin [1913] 1963, 23–26), as well as Lenin's letters to the publishers of the encyclopaedia (Lenin [1914] 1966, 173–74; [1915] 1966, 317). However, Anderson forces the evidence into his theory, for a close examination of the letters indicates that Lenin regrets the need to cut the article due to requirements of length, the need to alter some words due to the censor, and to make some corrections and refine his argument due to further research.

¹⁸He repeats the point in volume 3 of Capital (Marx [1894] 1998, 587). It is in fact an old argument, appearing first in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (Marx [1844] 1975, 290–91).