William Z. Foster: "Lenin Cleared the Road for Socialism in America!"

Reprinted from Starry Messenger : 

Comrade Lenin of Russia
Rises in the marble tomb
On guard with the fighters forever -
The world is our room!
- Langston Hughes, Ballad of Lenin

Lenin put American Communism on a rock hard scientific footing.  Daniel Mason reports that "The interplay between Lenin and the United States was very extensive. Lenin had learned the English language early in his career and became an avid student of US economics, politics, education and social life." (He Changed The World! foreword to Lenin's Impact on the United States, edited by Daniel Mason and Jessica Smith, New World Review, NY, 1970)

Confusion and utopian schemes ruled during the wilderness years of the American Left.  Lenin's writings and warm personal contact with US comrades swept away this discord.  Early Party luminary William Z. Foster evokes the bombshell effect of Leninism on the course of his own political maturity:   "after more than 20 years of intellectual groping about, I was at last, thanks to Lenin, getting my feet on firm revolutionary ground."  (William Z, Foster, Pages from a Worker's Life, 1939, International Publishers)

(Lenin, author of Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder  & other titles for workers.) 

William Z. Foster, yesteryear's fighting CPUSA National Chairman and lead organizer of 1919's Great Steel Strike, wrote eloquently in History of the Communist Party of the United States:

"Marxism-Leninism made its impact upon the American left Socialist movement not only by means of the practical example of the Russian Revolution and Lenin's major writings, but also by direct counsel from Lenin himself. Lenin knew the American situation profoundly and was deeply interested in it. He wrote a basic work on American agriculture, and twice he sent major political letters directly to the American working class - once, in 1916, in answer to a manifesto of the Socialist Propaganda League, and the second time in 1918, in his famous Letter to American Workers. Also, during the early years of the Communist International, Lenin often spoke about the 'American question.'

"The initial influence of Marxism-Leninism on American Marxist thinking was tremendous. Lenin provided the basic answers to many complicated problems of theory and practice which for decades past had confused and crippled the American Socialist movement. This clarification, besides acting with crushing effect upon the right-wing sophistries, also tended to liquidate the traditional sectarian errors of the left wing. Lenin exposed the De Leonite theories, syndicalist and sectarian, which had plagued and dominated the left wing ever since the death of Engels almost a quarter of a century earlier. Lenin provided a solid theoretical basis for the left's fight against Gompersism in the trade unions, and he also refuted the pseudo-Socialist pretenses of all sections of right-wing Social-Democracy - including its Bernsteinian and Kautskyan varieties. This had a clarifying and strengthening effect upon the American Marxist movement.

"Highly important from the American standpoint was Lenin's scientific analysis of imperialism. With powerful emphasis, Lenin pointed out the qualitative differences that develop within the whole structure of capitalism with the growth of monopoly. Previously, without clearly differentiating itself from the right wing on this question, the left wing had tended to consider the growth of monopoly as merely a quantitative development of capitalism, and it's 'expansionism' (imperialism) as simply a secondary policy manifestation, instead of a basic expression of monopoly capitalism. This error led to a profound underestimation of the aggressive character, reactionary aims, and war making potentialities of imperialism. Lenin cleared up this confusion.

"Lenin also made clear the road of all-out political mass struggle to socialism. In so doing, he annihilated for Americans the prevalent De Leonite, syndicalist ideas that the workers would win their way to power by 'locking out the capitalists' or by means of simply a general strike and other kindred illusions.

"He also smashed the syndicalist conception, previously held almost unanimously by all sections of the American left wing, to the effect that after the workers had secured political power, the Party would dissolve itself and the unions would take over the management both of the industries and of society as a whole. Lenin, with the reality of the Russian Revolution to back up his words, clearly outlined the Soviet form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, pointed out that it is incomparably more democratic than the bourgeois dictatorship, and stressed the decisively leading role of the Party in every stage of the struggle, both before and during the existence of socialism. Lenin also, in his masterly analysis of the national question, with the able co-operation of Stalin, laid the basis for a fundamental understanding of the Negro question in the United States, a problem that had baffled left-wing thinking up to that time. With his historic doctrine that 'without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement', Lenin struck hard, too, at the traditional American tendency to minimize theory.

"Among his other contributions to the American revolutionary movement, Lenin clarified the question of the role of the farmers, which had always been a weak spot in Socialist Labor Party and Socialist Party policy, especially after the advent of De Leon. Lenin stressed the vital necessity of labor co-operating with the oppressed and exploited strata of these toilers, and he indicated the basic conditions under which such co-operation , with working class leadership, should be carried out. Lenin also, with his strong anti-sectarian position and his supreme genius for mobilizing all the potential strength of the anti-capitalist forces, laid the basis for a clarification of the question of the labor party.

"Smashing through the crippling De Leonite policy of non-participation in the broad, elemental mass movements of struggle, Lenin categorically, like Engels long before him, supported participation is such movements. Lenin likewise clarified the knotty question of partial political demands, which had also been a bone of contention in left-wing ranks for many years, especially under De Leon's intellectual tutelage. Indeed, Lenin had made this question quite clear in Russian practice, long before the Bolshevik Revolution. He showed that partial demands are an integral part of the workers' whole struggle. And Stalin, in his Foundations of Leninism, points out that reforms are by-products of revolutionary struggle and reforms can and must be used in the fight for socialism.

(William Z. Foster, past fighting Marxist leader of the Communist Party USA. Read his History of the Communist Party of the United States.)

"Lenin also clarified American Marxists on the question of religion. The Socialist Party, from its inception, had a confusion of policy on the matter, ranging from a cultivation of petty-bourgeois 'Christian socialism' to the placing of 'God-killing' as the main task of the Party. Lenin, reiterating Marx's statement that 'Religion is the opium of the people', stressed its class role in the exploitation of the workers, and declared: 'We demand that religion be regarded as a private matter so far as the state is concerned, but under no circumstances can we regard it as a private matter in our own party.' Lenin insisted, on the one hand, upon the complete separation of Church and State, and on the other, on an educational campaign by the Party. However, 'the propaganda of atheism by the Social Democracy must be subordinated to a more basic task - the development of the class struggle of the exploited masses against the exploiters.' The Party should not write atheism into its program. It should, however, freely admit religious minded workers to membership and then educate them to a scientific outlook on life.

"The writings of Lenin, the master Party builder, clarified the American left wing movement about the structure, practice and role of the Communist Party. In this respect he also made crystal-clear many problems which had worried and handicapped the left for many years. Lenin's basic teachings on the Party were especially needed in the United States, because of the long prevalence of syndicalist and semi-syndicalist ideas, the heart of which was a belittlement of the Party and an underestimation of political action.

"To all these great contributions of Lenin to the American movement must be added at least another. It was Lenin, above all others, who finally knocked on the head that chronic American sectarian disease, the dual union illusion. Ever since the days of Debs' American Railway Union in 1894 and De Leon's Socialist Trades and Labor Alliance in 1895, American left-wingers had been obsessed with the idea that the way to revolutionize the labor movement was to withdraw from the conservative trade unions and to organize independent, theoretically perfect industrial unions. The general effect of this policy had been to leave the Gompers machine in virtually unchallenged control of the basic mass organizations of the working class and to waste the strength of the dynamic left-wing fighting trade unionists in innumerable utopian industrial union projects.

"Lenin had encountered the problem of such abstention from the unions in Russia in 1908, on the part of the Otzovists, a group among the Bolsheviks. These elements, among other wrong tendencies, refused to work in the trade unions and other legally existing societies. Lenin, with his keen ability to go straight to the heart of a problem, and thus with a penetrating analysis to settle it once and for all, sailed into the Otzovists and destroyed their position completely.

"Lenin dealt again and crushingly with this particular sectarian abstentionist tendency shortly after the beginning of the Russian Revolution, when 'ultra-lefts' in Germany, Holland, England and other European countries, in the exuberance of their revolutionary spirit, had no patience for work in the old trade unions, but sought short cuts by setting up new revolutionary labor organizations. Lenin sharply denounced this practice as a serious form of sectarianism. He declared that 'to refuse to work within reactionary trade unions means leaving the insufficiently developed or backward working masses under the influence of reactionary leaders, agents of the bourgeoisie, labor aristocrats or 'bourgeoisified' workers.' This criticism applied with triple force to the United States, where the dual union fallacy had reigned almost unchallengeable in left circles for many years, thereby doing incalculable damage to the revolutionary movement.

"Lenin, in fighting for a correct political line, fought on two fronts. That is, he combated both the right danger and all forms of pseudo-leftism. This two front fight was particularly necessary in the United States, with its ingrained historical right weaknesses of American exceptionalism and its long affliction of 'left' sectarianism.

"The long-continued sectarianism of the left wing was basically an immature political reaction against the extreme opportunism of the Socialist Party and A.F. of L. leaders, which was bred of the especially corrupting influences of American political life. The left's dual unionism, anti-labor party, anti-farmer, anti-immediate demands, anti-parliamentary and other ultra-revolutionary policies and attitudes were short-cut methods aimed to create powerful trade unions, a militant workers' party and a mass Socialist ideology. A historical influence, too, producing left sectarianism was the pressure of the vast body of foreign-born workers, who were as yet little integrated into American economic, political and social life.

"Important also in this general respect was the fact that the American Marxist movement, in the imperialist epoch, had produced no outstanding Marxist theoretician, capable of immediately and basically solving the many complex problems faced by the working class. During many years, from the 1890s on, the great Lenin was developing Marxism into Marxism-Leninism and building the core of the eventual powerful Bolshevik Party. At this time, the American Socialists, in an extremely difficult objective situation, were being gravely hindered in their development by the powerful but revisionist influence of the ultra-left sectarian and semi-syndicalist theoretician, De Leon.

"The sudden impact of Lenin's profound and comprehensive writings, supported as they were by the tremendous reality of the Russian Revolution, revolutionized the thinking of the Marxist forces in the United States. The left moved rapidly toward a position of scientific communism. As Alexander Bittelman put it: 'The formation period in the history of our Party appears as a development from Left Socialism to Communism. The essence of this development consisted in this, that the Left Wing of the Socialist Party (1918-1919) was gradually freeing itself from vacillation between reformism and ultra-Left radicalism by means of an ever closer approach to the positions of Marxism-Leninism.'"

- William Z. Foster,  History of the Communist Party of the United States, 1952, International Publishers)

Soviet Union: Where Workers Had Power

FYI: Republished from a couple years ago, this piece will be updated.

Gus Hall, the former Marxist-Leninist leader of the Communist Party USA, said that the former Soviet Union was a society where workers had power. Gus Hall considered the USSR to be "the most powerful, successful and influential socialist society." He explained the Great October Socialist Revolution in a few words. "In 1917," Hall writes, "the working class of the Soviet Union decided they didn't need the owners who were getting richer while the people got poorer. In fact it was just this class of leeches that held back all social advances for working people. So the working people took over." (Gus Hall, "Where Workers Have Power," Working Class USA, 1987, International Publishers)

William Z. Foster, the Marxist-Leninist leader of the CPUSA preceding Hall, pointed out that "the Communist Party (was) the brain and heart and nerves of the Russian Revolution, and so it must be in any proletarian revolution." (William Z. Foster, Toward Soviet America, 1932, International Publishers)

And the ruling capitalist classes of the world freaked out! V.I. Lenin, stellar head of the 1917 revolution, answered their capitalist slanders of the Soviet Union eloquently. Lenin said: "for every hundred mistakes which we commit and which the bourgeoisie and their lackeys are dinning into the ears of the world, ten thousand great and heroic deeds are performed." (Lenin, Letter to American Workers, 1918)

In his book, Working Class USA, Gus Hall exposes the capitalist lies about the Soviet Union. The USSR was a society where, as Gus Hall put it, "workers (had) power." John Eaton, in Political Economy, notes that: "Socialism is planned production for use on the basis of public ownership of the means of production." Leontyev said that "the building of socialism begins only after state power passes from the hands of the bourgeoisie into the hands of the working class." And socialism in the Soviet Union, Gus Hall wrote, brought free education, medical and dental care. Employment was guaranteed and workers were the majority on all government bodies. The socialist economy guaranteed that there was no economic crisis or corporate capitalist profit. Racism and discrimination were outlawed as criminal offenses. Unions were a valued part of socialist society. There had been no unemployment in the Soviet Union since 1930. And all profits from production went to funds to provide for the mass welfare, paid vacations and housing for the Soviet people. (Gus Hall, "Where Workers Have Power," Working Class USA, 1987, International Publishers)



(V.I. Lenin: 'for every hundred mistakes which we commit and which the bourgeoisie and their lackeys are dinning into the ears of the world, ten thousand great and heroic deeds are performed.')

Karl Marx & Frederick Engels taught that communist society had two phases. Socialism, which Karl Marx referred to as "the first phase of communist society" is a transitional stage to highly developed communism, "a higher phase of communist society," where there is a classless social system and full social equality of all members of society. (Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, 1875)

And socialism, "the first phase of communist society," in the former Soviet Union brought enormous gains to the working class. Gus Hall explained that the working class and unions, not the capitalists, called the shots in the former Soviet Union. "In the socialist countries," Gus Hall said, "workers are their own bosses. They are the real economic and political power. There is no drive for maximum private profits, there are no privately-owned corporations, and no tax shelters inducing companies to close plants and move to more profitable locations leaving human devastation in their wake...

"The basic truth is that it is only in a socialist society that trade unions acquire real political and economic power because they work, speak and act for the class in power--the working class...Under socialism people come first and profits are made to serve them." (Gus Hall, "Where Workers Have Power," Working Class USA, 1987, International Publishers)

William Z. Foster correctly penned that "In a world thrown into deepening disorder and demoralization caused by the growing general crisis (of capitalism), the superiority of the system of planned socialist economy stands out like a great mountain!" (William Z. Foster, Toward Soviet America, 1932, International Publishers)

And V.I. Lenin was absolutely right that, with the birth of the Soviet Union, "a new era in world history has begun!" (Lenin, The Third International and It's Place In History, 1919)

Superb Books:

Daily Worker Labor Editor and Moscow Correspondent, George Morris, wrote Where Human Rights are Real.

Victor Perlo's excellent text Dynamic Stability: the Soviet Economy Today cited the 1977 Soviet Constitution.

Trotsky is NOT a Communist Hero

FYI: We urge workers to study M. J. Olgin's Trotskyism: Counter-Revolution in Disguise

.

Gus Hall, past US Communist Party warrior and a United Steelworkers founder, wrote eloquently: "Trotskyites, followers of Leon Trotsky, habitually employ splitting tactics in people's movements & promote anti-Communism in pseudo-radical guise!" (Fighting Racism, 1984)

Brothers and Sisters,

The influence of bourgeois propaganda, the lack of availability of authentic Marxist-Leninist books and the influence of revisionism in the Communist movement (see previous posts for a definition of revisionism) has produced a situation where some folks mistakenly believe that Trotsky was a Communist hero. It ain't so. "(Trotsky's) policies," William Z. Foster, former leader of the Communist Party USA, said "would have been fatal to the Russian Revolution and would have brought about the restoration of capitalism in Russia." William Z. Foster explains, in History of the Three Internationals, that:

"Trotsky, whose whole history stamped him as an unstable petty-bourgeois radical and who did not join up with the Bolsheviks until 1917, was a confirmed factionalist and opportunist. Even after he joined the party he continued his opposition to Lenin on many points. When Lenin was in his final illness, during the autumn of 1923, Trotsky made a bid to capture the leadership of the Communist Party. He gathered together the several small opposition groups than in the party and issued an oppositional program, the 'Declaration of the Forty-Six.' The substance of this was to accuse the party leadership of gross bureaucracy, to instigate the youth against the party, to pronounce the N.E.P. a complete retreat, to demand freedom to build factional groupings, to condemn the party for the defeat of the German and Hungarian revolutions, to blame the many economic difficulties upon party mismanagement, and to pronounce the Russian Revolution itself in a state of 'Thermidorian degeneration.'

"It devolved upon Stalin to lead the party fight against this disruptive opposition, and he was to prove brilliantly capable of the task...Stalin, a profound Marxist and a relentless fighter, ideologically shattered the Trotsky case, and at the 13th conference of the party in January 1924, the opposition was condemned overwhelmingly as a 'petty-bourgeois deviation from Marxism.' During this fight Stalin produced his great book, The Foundations of Leninism, which played a big part in the controversy.

Lenin: "The dialectics of history were such that the theoretical victory of Marxism compelled its enemies to disguise themselves as Marxists." (The Historical Destiny of the Doctrine of Karl Marx, 1913)

"The defeated Trotsky, tongue-in-cheek, pledged himself to abide by the party decision, a pledge which, however, he immediately began to violate.

"Shortly afterward, the party...was confronted with the basic problem of defining its perspective. Stalin, in early 1925, met this tremendous theoretical task magnificently. He declared, and the Central Committee backed him up, that Soviet Russia possessed all the requirements for the building of socialism. Lenin had previously indicated the possibility, if need be, of building socialism in one country, Russia. Stalin's formulation was a bold departure from commonly held Marxist opinion, which was that in order to make the construction of socialism possible it would be necessary for the workers simultaneously to gain political power in several countries.

"Stalin's basic statement immediately drew fire from the adventurer Trotsky, who came forth with what he called the theory of 'permanent revolution.' Trotsky categorically denied the possibility of constructing socialism in Russia alone. He proposed, instead, an intensification of revolutionary struggle at home against the peasantry (all categories) and war abroad against the bourgeois governments. The fate of the Russian Revolution was at stake in this historic discussion. Stalin succeeded in making the party understand that Trotsky's line would have meant the overthrow of the Soviet government and the end of the Revolution. As a result, at the 14th party conference, April 1925, Trotsky's policy was defeated and Stalin's overwhelmingly endorsed. Again Trotsky agreed to abide by the party decision, but did not." (William Z. Foster, History of the Three Internationals, 1955)

William Z. Foster points out that Trotsky and his friend Zinoviev and their handful of supporters, held "a street demonstration against the party on November 7," 1927.

(William Z. Foster, former leader of the Communist Party USA)

In another book, History of the Communist Party of the United States, Foster says that:

"For several years prior to the sixth Comintern congress Trotskyism, which Lenin had long fought, had become a malignant pest in the Soviet Union. Leon Trotsky, always an opportunist and adventurer, made a reckless grab for the leadership of the Communist Party after the death of Lenin in 1924. The substance of his 'ultra-revolutionary' program was the provocation of civil war against the peasantry as a whole and the unfolding of aggressive foreign policy that could have only resulted in bringing about a war between the capitalist powers and the Soviet Union. His policies to force such an artificial revolution would have been fatal to the Russian Revolution and would have brought about the restoration of capitalism in Russia.

"The Soviet people wanted none of Trotsky's destructive program...At the time of the sixth congress of the Comintern, Trotsky was in exile, as a criminal against the Revolution." (William Z. Foster, History of the Communist Party of the United States, 1952)

And Trotsky became anti-Soviet to the core. "Trotsky, who had been expelled from the Soviet Union in 1929, organized abroad the 'Fourth International' in 1933, which was composed of skeleton groups in many countries. Among its other counter-revolutionary activities, it openly advocated the violent overthrow of the Russian Communist Party leadership and of the Soviet government." (William Z. Foster, History of the Three Internationals, 1955)

We urge workers to study M. J. Olgin's Trotskyism: Counter-Revolution in Disguise.

http://marxists.org/archive/olgin/1935/trotskyism/index.htm

Dig William Z. Foster's History of the Communist Party of the United States !

(Note the section on "the expulsion of the Trotskyites" in Chapter Nineteen.)

Enjoy the 1939 book authorized by the Central Committee of the CPSU: History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks).

Required Reading: Lenin's "Left-Wing" Communism, an Infantile Disorder