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Marxism under attack after the 1905 revolution Lenin fights back

Marxist Theory · 2026-05-13

Core Argument

The article argues that Lenin's 1909 polemic against the otzovist (recallist) faction and the God-building trend within Bolshevism represents a masterclass in applying dialectical materialism to questions of revolutionary strategy. The central thesis is that ultraleftism and philosophical idealism are not separate errors but organically linked expressions of petty-bourgeois impatience with the concrete tasks imposed by a period of reaction. Lenin's intervention demonstrates that the survival of a Marxist party depends on its capacity to distinguish between the forms of struggle appropriate to an offensive period and those required for an orderly retreat, and to resist the temptation to substitute revolutionary phrases for a sober assessment of the balance of forces.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis draws on Lenin's understanding of the relationship between objective conditions and revolutionary strategy, developed through his experience of the 1905 Revolution and its aftermath. The article situates Lenin's approach within the broader Marxist tradition of distinguishing between the content and form of class struggle — a distinction the ultraleftists collapse by treating parliamentary participation as inherently bourgeois regardless of the conjuncture. The theoretical framework is explicitly dialectical: the same tactic (Duma participation) that was correctly rejected in 1905-06 becomes necessary in 1907-09 because the objective situation has changed. This is not opportunism but the application of materialist analysis to tactical questions.

The article also grounds the struggle against God-building in Marx's critique of religion as both an expression of real suffering and a protest against it — Lenin's insistence that Marxism cannot be "supplemented" with religious sentiment, even a secularised version, flows from the materialist premise that consciousness is determined by social being, not the other way around. The connection between philosophical idealism (Mach, Avenarius) and tactical ultraleftism is presented as no accident: both substitute subjective will for objective analysis.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article's relevance to the current conjuncture is primarily analogical. The period following the 1905 Revolution — demoralisation, retreat, the substitution of individual escape for collective struggle — finds echoes in the aftermath of major defeats for the workers' movement in recent decades. The article implicitly invites comparison with the present: after the retreat of the mass movements of 2019-20 (Chile, Colombia, the US, France), the Marxist left faces similar questions about how to conduct an orderly retreat while maintaining organisational and ideological integrity.

The specific danger the article identifies — that ultraleftism and opportunism are not opposites but two sides of the same coin, both flowing from an inability to grasp the concrete movement of the class struggle — speaks directly to debates within the revolutionary left today. The otzovist tendency to reject all work within existing institutions as "selling out" finds contemporary expression in sectarian abstentionism, while the God-building tendency to adapt Marxism to prevailing ideological fashions finds expression in various attempts to "update" Marxism with bourgeois academic trends. The article's insistence that the task is not to choose between these poles but to reject both is its sharpest conjunctural contribution.

Where the Argument Continues

The article explicitly points forward to Lenin's 1920 pamphlet "Left-Wing" Communism: an Infantile Disorder, which develops the same critique of ultraleft sectarianism in the context of the young Soviet Republic. The argument about the relationship between philosophical idealism and political opportunism is developed at greater length in Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-criticism (1909), which the article mentions but does not summarise. The broader question of how Marxist parties should conduct themselves in periods of reaction is taken up in numerous IDOM articles on the history of Bolshevism, particularly those dealing with the period 1907-1912. The article also gestures toward the question of party democracy — Bogdanov's factional school at Capri is presented as a violation of democratic centralism — which is a recurring theme in the RCI's theoretical output.

Connections

  • Lenin, "Left-Wing" Communism: an Infantile Disorder (1920) — the most developed statement of the critique of ultraleftism
  • Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-criticism (1909) — the philosophical companion to the tactical polemic
  • Lenin, The Faction of Supporters of Otzovism and God-Building (1909) — the text under discussion
  • Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution — on the relationship between objective conditions and revolutionary strategy
  • The IDOM corpus on the 1905 Revolution and its aftermath
  • The broader Marxist tradition on the question of "parliamentary cretinism" versus principled participation in bourgeois institutions

Key Quotes

  1. "The highest forms of struggle, which have never anywhere in the world succeeded without a direct onslaught of the masses, are put in the forefront and recommended as 'feasible' at a time of acute reaction, while the lower forms of struggle, which presuppose not so much a direct breach of the law by mass struggle as utilisation of the law for the purpose of propaganda and agitation, preparing the minds of the masses for struggle, are declared 'unfeasible'!!"

  2. "In every period of reaction, there can be found so-called 'Marxists' who wish to marry Marxism with the tide of alien class ideas then sweeping the movement. Some sincerely believe this is the only way to win others over and break the isolation of the Marxists. But however sincere its representatives may be, this trend always serves as an ideological bridge for those seeking to abandon Marxism entirely."

  3. "What Bogdanov proposed sounded very radical — but it was empty rhetoric that had ceased to bear any relation with reality. This was the empty noise of a petty bourgeois who had learned nothing from the proletarian party 'but a few texts and "striking" slogans learned by heart'."

  4. "Instead of a thorough-going analysis of reality, teasing out the content of phenomena as they objectively exist, the sectarian takes only outward forms. 'This is a bourgeois parliament, therefore we cannot have anything to do with it'; 'this is a reactionary trade union, therefore we cannot work within it'; 'our task is the overthrow of Tsarism, therefore we must launch an immediate offensive'. Reality is made to fit into a preconceived schema."

  5. "The struggle against otzovism thus represented an important chapter in the history of Bolshevism, out of which the party cadres learned important lessons, and from which Lenin's political authority was enhanced in their eyes."