5. ‘Left-Wing’ Communism in Germany. The Leaders, the Party, the Class, the Masses¶
Core Argument¶
Lenin’s chapter is a polemical dissection of the ‘opposition on principle’ within the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), whose pamphlet The Split in the Communist Party of Germany (The Spartacus League) is subjected to sustained critique. The opposition’s core argument, as Lenin presents it, posits a stark antithesis: the dictatorship of the party versus the dictatorship of the proletarian class; rule by leaders versus rule by the masses. They accuse the KPD Central Committee of seeking coalitions with the Independent Social-Democratic Party (USPD) and of reverting to parliamentarianism, which they deem historically and politically obsolete. Their alternative is a ‘Workers’ Union’ based on factory organisations, separate from the trade unions, which would unite all workers accepting the Soviet system and the dictatorship, while the Communist Party remains outside, providing political education. The opposition’s slogan is: ‘There – the dictatorship of leaders; here – the dictatorship of the masses!’
Lenin dismisses this framing as “incredibly and hopelessly muddled thinking.” He asserts the elementary Marxist truth that classes are led by parties, and parties by stable groups of authoritative, experienced members—leaders. The opposition’s confusion, he argues, stems from the disorienting transition from legality to illegality in Germany, which disrupted the normal, convenient relations between leaders, parties, and masses. He also identifies a thoughtless adoption of the fashionable contrast between ‘masses’ and ‘leaders’, a divergence rooted, as Marx and Engels explained, in the emergence of a privileged labour aristocracy in advanced imperialist countries. The task of revolutionaries is to combat and expel such opportunist leaders, not to repudiate the principle of leadership itself.
The chapter’s central polemic is against the opposition’s repudiation of party discipline and the party principle. Lenin argues this is “tantamount to completely disarming the proletariat in the interests of the bourgeoisie.” Drawing on the Russian experience, he stresses that the dictatorship of the proletariat requires a prolonged struggle against the petty-bourgeois milieu—the millions of small proprietors who cannot be crushed but must be transformed through slow organisational work. This struggle demands “a party of iron,” strict centralisation, and discipline. Any weakening of this discipline, especially during the dictatorship, aids the bourgeoisie. Lenin notes that such attacks on the ‘dictatorship of leaders’ are not new; they occurred in Russia as early as 1895 and at the Ninth Party Congress in 1920. He treats the German ‘infantile disorder’ as a passing ailment, but warns that the real danger lies in the opposition’s logical conclusion: the dissolution of the party itself, as advocated by figures like Karl Erler, whom Lenin quotes as stating that the working class cannot destroy bourgeois democracy without destroying parties. This, Lenin concludes, is supremely absurd and reveals a failure to understand the ABCs of Marxism.