The ‘Left’ Bolsheviks¶
Core Argument¶
Here, the chapter pivots from the right-opportunist deviation represented by Kamenev to examine an opposing ultra-left and sectarian current that emerged among Bolshevik exiles during the First World War. The central figures are Bukharin, Piatnitsky, and the group around them, whose errors Lenin subjected to a sustained polemic. The core argument is that this faction, while sincerely revolutionary, fell into a mechanical and undialectical mode of thought that threatened to jettison essential elements of the Marxist programme in the name of a spurious radicalism.
The primary terrain of dispute was the national question, specifically the right of nations to self-determination. Bukharin’s group argued that the advent of imperialism had rendered such democratic demands obsolete in advanced capitalist countries. Lenin countered this as a “crying error,” a semi-anarchist capitulation to imperialism. The chapter reproduces Lenin’s letter to Kollontai to illustrate the point: to reject the armament of the people and self-determination because imperialism exists is to abandon the necessary weapons for the socialist revolution itself. The question of annexations was central to the war, making any concession on this principle impossible.
The chapter details the organisational expression of this theoretical divergence. A bitter row erupted when Bukharin’s supporters (Krylenko and Rozmirovich) in Switzerland insisted on publishing their own journal in defiance of the central committee’s resource-based prohibition. This was the immediate pretext for Lenin calling a Conference of foreign party groups in Berne in February 1915. At this conference, Bukharin submitted theses echoing the arguments of Rosa Luxemburg and the Polish left, asserting that democratic demands were no longer relevant. The Baugy group’s resolution, while broadly agreeing with Lenin’s anti-war stance, explicitly rejected the “defeat of Russia” slogan, particularly in the crude form presented by Zinoviev. The conference saw the late arrival of Pyatakov and Bosch, who immediately reinforced Bukharin’s abstract position: that only the seizure of power, not democratic demands, should be advanced. The chapter notes the telling detail that, despite the dispute, the conference commission (Lenin, Zinoviev, and Bukharin) accepted Lenin’s resolution unanimously, implying Bukharin voted against his own stated position.
The chapter also covers the evolution of the “United States of Europe” slogan. Initially adopted in Lenin’s early war manifesto, it was intended to rally opposition against the three reactionary monarchies. However, following the Berne debate, Lenin revised his view, explaining in a subsequent article that a capitalist United States of Europe was “either impossible or reactionary”—a Proudhonist fantasy. The chapter stresses that Lenin’s critique was directed at capitalist unification; the socialist unification of Europe remained an absolute necessity, achievable only through working-class revolution. The polemic here is not only against Bukharin’s ultra-leftism but also against pacifism and the abstract slogans of peace and disarmament, which Lenin consistently scorned. The chapter thus establishes that Lenin’s revolutionary defeatism was not a blanket opposition to all war, but a careful dialectical distinction between just and unjust wars, a nuance his ultra-left critics failed to grasp.