Lenin and the ‘Committeemen’¶
Core Argument¶
Here the author defends Lenin’s democratic centralism against the charge that it contained the seeds of Stalinism. The chapter’s core argument is that a measure of centralism is necessary in any serious organisation, and that the bureaucratic deformations later associated with Stalinism arose not from Lenin’s method but from the social conditions of backwardness and from a layer of party functionaries—the so-called “committeemen”—who mechanically applied organisational forms as fixed formulas, making a fetish of the apparatus and treating rank-and-file initiative as an encumbrance. The author insists that Lenin himself understood centralism as a lever for enhancing the activity of advanced workers, not for domineering over them.
The chapter draws heavily on Trotsky’s analysis, quoting his Stalin and My Life to distinguish Lenin’s approach from the incipient bureaucratic conservatism that could be found in any apparatus. Trotsky is cited to argue that the dangers of centralism lie not in the principle itself but in the “lack of homogeneity and the backwardness of the workers”—that is, in the concrete historical conditions that necessitate a vanguard. The author also draws on the minutes of the Third Congress and on correspondence from Bolshevik organisers like Gusev, who stressed the need to draw workers into committees based on revolutionary energy rather than literary polish, and to move the base of secret work into workers’ homes.
The polemic is directed against two targets. First, bourgeois historians and authors like Solomon Schwarz, who distort Lenin’s ideas to paint him as a defender of bureaucratic intelligentsia against workers—a claim the author refutes by quoting the same sources Schwarz uses. Second, contemporary reformist politicians like Tony Blair and Felipe Gonzalez, who feign horror at “Leninist” centralism while running their own parties on purely bureaucratic, dictatorial lines in the service of big business. This is denounced as “hypocrisy of a highly advanced type.”
The chapter also provides historical context for the split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in 1905, describing how the Menshevik-dominated Party Council illegally refused to convene the Third Congress despite a clear majority of organisations demanding it, forcing the Bolsheviks to call the congress themselves in London in April 1905. The figure of Leonid Krassin is presented as a prototype of the Bolshevik organiser—efficient, resolute, but politically a conciliator, reflecting the conciliationist moods prevalent among party activists and workers at the time.