gyorgy lukacs - interview - on the personality of lenin, marxism today, 1971

7/27/2019 Gyorgy Lukacs - Interview - On the Personality of Lenin, Marxism Today, 1971

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M A RX I S M T O D A Y , S E P T E M BE R, 19 71 28 3

a high level of theoretical awareness and needsto have as i ts focus the mobilisation of the workingclass movement around the demand for democrat ic

planning—a demand which, i f taken ser iously,can only lead in a revolutionary direction.

On the Personality of Lenin

Gyorgy Lukacs

The following text is extracted from a television interview first given by Gyorgy Lukacs to Adrds Kovdcs

a few months before his death. Part of it was televised before his death but on June 10 it was printed for

the first time by Nepszabadsag . Andrds Kovdcs is one of Hungary's foremost young film directors.

Q. D id you have any personal contact with Lenin ?

A. My only contact with Lenin was at the ThirdCongress of the Communist Internat ional when 1was introduced to him as a delegate of the Hungarian Party. This happened in 1921 when a fierce

battle was on against sectarian trends evolvingwithin the Comintern. Since I myself belonged toa sectarian group at the time, Lenin had an unfavourable opinion of me, as he generally had about

sectarians. It does not even enter my mind tocompare my role wi th that of Bordigha whorepresented sectarianism in the great Italian Party.Natura l ly, Lenin did not ascr ibe such importanceto any functionary of the il legal Hungarian Party.

One particular incident was in question: I hadtaken a stand in the Vienna periodical Communism

against Communist participation in Parliament, and

Lenin in passing referred in an article to the factthat I had published a very radical and rathernon-Marxist type of article on the subject. Forme this was instructive because Lenin's bookLeft W ing Comm unism— an Infantile Disorder waspublished about the same time as the article. In

this he dealt with the question of parliamentarianismin detail arguing that, in the context of worldhistory, par l iamentar ianism was an ant iquatedstage of development but this does not mean that

parliamentarianism could be ignored tactically.

Going back to how I got to know Lenin, once ,during an interval between meetings I was introduced

to Lenin and then we exchanged a few cordialit ies.One must not forget that several hundred peopletook part in the Congress and Lenin was interestedin 20-30 people, so you must take it that Leninshowed the customary cordiality to a delegate and

nothing more. This was the extent of the personalcontact between Lenin and myself.

It is another question that I, as a delegate, hadthe chance of observing Lenin. In this respectperhaps I may be allowed to tell a brief storywhich is very instructive. At that t ime the presidiumwas not such a great thing, there was no protocol,nor a large stage, where the members of the presidium sat, just a simple conference hall with some

sort of platform, the kind which is common in

universities or secondary schools for the lecturer.On it there was a bench, a table with four or fivepeople sit t ing around it who in fact presided overthe particular meeting. Once, as Lenin entered,some members of the presidium wanted to get upto make room for him at the table. Lenin signalledto them to stay put, sat on the step of the platform,took his notebook out and star ted making notes

of what the speakers said. And up to the end ofthe meeting he sat there on the step. I think this isvery characteristic of Lenin's personality.

Q. When did you first hear of Lenin in fact?

A. Very late. One must not forget, before thedictatorship^ I did not take part in the working

class movement , I was never a member of theSocia l Democrat ic Party. In December 1918 i twas the Communist Party I joined—the f i rstparty I ever joined.

Q. Were you a foundation mem ber ?

A. No , no, no . . . I joined about four weeks af ter

' This refers to the dictatorship of the proletariat—the Hungarian Republic of Councils of 1919.



284 M A RX I S M T O D A Y , S E P T E M BE R , 197 1

i ts formation. Though I was not a socialist , butnatura l ly , broadly speaking, I knew the German,French and Engl ish theoret ic ians. I had read

Kautsky and Mehring but mainly I had studiedSorel as Ervin Szabo^ had drawn my attention tohim. We knew nothing about the Russian workingclass movement , a t the utmost we only knew someof the works of Plekhanov. Lenin 's name beganto mean something to me when I read in the papers

about the role of Lenin in 1917. I only learnt aboutLenin's leal significance in emigration in Vienna.

Q. What was it that most ajfected you, as one

of his contemporaries, in Lenin's attitude ?

A. Thi; fact that I got acqua inted w ith a thoroug hly

new type of a revolutionary. At the time of the

transfer of power many in the working class movement, naturally, changed sides from right to left ,taking with them all the right wing characteristicsthrough which they had adapted themselves previously to bourgeois society. I was disinterested inthat type. But I was interested in and I stood closeintellectually to a certain ascetic type of revolutionary who had first risen at the time of the French

Revolut ion around Robespierre in Jacobinism.This type was described most precisely by MaxLevine who was executed in Munich and who sa id:"we communists are corpses on leave" . This typehad eminent examples in Hungary. I do not wantto give a whole list here but I do want to mention

the name of Ot to Korvin who was a type of ascet icrevolut ionary ' . Contrary to both types Leninrepresented something entirely new. He was aman who flung himself wholeheartedly into revolu

tion. One could even say he lived exclusively for therevolution. However, he was far from being ascetic.He was the type of man who was for l ife with alli ts contradictions, one might even say he enjoyedit . He was a man who acted as objectively as if hewere an ascetic but without even the slightesttrace of asceticism in him. And gradually as Ipieced together the picture of his personality, Ihave come to see that he was the great human

type of a socialist revolutionary.

It was Lenin who, for the first t ime, since Marx,

seriously raised the significance of the subjectivefactors in revolution . His definition of a revolutio narysituation, when the ruling classes are no longer

able to govern in the old sense, and the oppressedclasses are no longer willing to l ive in the old way,is generally known. When his followers adoptedthis concept, some made a "slight" difference in

- The first scientific Marxist in Hungary.' A foundation member of the Hungarian Communist

Party, arrested, tortured and executed after the defeatof the Republic of Councils.

interpretation, saying that "not to want to l ive in

the old way" meant for them that economic development is automatically turning people into revolu

t ionaries. Lenin knew that the problem of "notwan ting to l ive in the old w ay" has strong dialectical implications and is a manifold tendency ofsociety.

Allow me to il lustrate this with a very importantexample. At the time of the disputes around the1917 October Revolution, Zinoviev, in one of his

articles, wrote amongst other things that there wasno truly revolutionary situation because in thesuppressed masses there were very strong reactionarytrends, and some sections even belonged to the"black hundreds" , Russia ' s ul t ra-react ionaries.Lenin, with his customary sharpness, rejectedZinoviev's evaluation. The basis of his train ofthoughts can be summarised as follows: if thegreat crisis of society occurs, that is to say people

do not want to l ive in the old way any longer,this unwillingness can manifest itself, what i s moremust manifest itself, in a revolutionary and areactionary way. Here, the subjective factor, to acertain degree is squared* and the P arty 's task isprecisely to bring influence to bear on the possibilitiesoffered by the subjective factors under these circumstances.

Lenin preferred a forward pointing and at the sametime extremely realistic definition of the socialsituation. It is no accident that Lenin did not, inany way, accept the anarchist conception that theprerequisite of revolution was individual man's

passage from capitalist egoism to socialist cooperation. Lenin always said: socialist revolutionhad to be realised with men given to us by capitalism

and who, in many respects have been spoilt bycapitalism. That is to say, Lenin had the type ofrealism that brings social necessity into harmonywith actions of people who differ from individualto individual. And from this realistic harmonyhe endeavoured to define the current tasks ofrevolution in such a way that the task should be aconcrete analysis of the concrete situation. In thisconcrete analysis the analysis of man is also included .

Q. Does this dialectic also apply to the individual?

A. Lenin found Bukharin 's personal i ty mostattractive and emphasised his deserved popularitywithin the party. At the same time in what weused to call Lenin's testament, he explained thatBukharin had never been a true Marxist . Leninalso clearly saw the impossibili ty of always actinglegally and justly under circumstances of civil war.With his characteristic consistency he said onceto Gorky, who had complained to him on thissubject, that he should picture to himself a brawl

' Translator's note— "raised to the second power".



M A RX I S M T O D A Y , S E P T E M BE R , 19 71 285

in a tavern. Who can say which of the many blowswere necessary and which were superfluous fromthe point of view of the fighters? He added—it is

extremely important that the leader of an organisation fighting against counter-revolution (Dzerzhin-sky) should have a flair for assessing facts andjustice. That is, totality always manifests i tselfin intricate, dialectic many-sidedness whether i tbe a major polit ical decision or the assessment ofan individual person which is at stake.

Gyorgy Lukdcs quoted the relationship between

Lenin and Gorky as another example. He said:

"Lenin thought very highly of Gorky's talents but,as can be seen from his letters, he sharply con

demned Gorky when he took the wrong road.The concept that there were completely perfectand completely defective people was completely

alien to Lenin. In his book on Leftism he says veryclearly that flawless people, people who act flawlesslydo not exist . The wise people are those who do notcommit very vital mistakes and who put theirmistakes right as soon as possible, writes Lenin.Here it is also clearly evident how much Leninsaw live dialectics in individuals. Lenin demandeda concrete analysis of the concrete situation and thismanifested itself also in human and polit ical termsin his relationship with people whom he deemed tobe impor t an t " .

Discussion Contr ibut ions on:

The Strategy of Socialist

Revolution in Britain

Harry ChallisIt has been my view for a number of years that

The British Road to Socialism is an empiricaldocument tricked out by a few shreds of theorythat are presented as being so self-evident as toneed no deeper analysis. Once satisfied that Marxexpressed a view with which it would not be inconsistent, there seemed li t t le else for us to dobut get on wi th the job an d reshape the do cumen tin the light of experience.

The arguments for the British Road have beengrafted on to an existing body of theory with anastonishing absence of self-crit icism. The whole

process has been completely without intellectualrigour and if the theory and practice of the BritishCommunist Party could be represented as a book,then the British Road has simply added anotherchapter without disturbing in any way the perspectiveof the earlier ones.

Three years ago in the Crawley Branch BulletinI noted that : "Many comrades regard the British

Road as an astute bit of window dressing—welcomeinsofar as i t makes us more acceptable electorally".Bert Pearce makes a similar observation. He doesnot , unfortunate ly, draw at tent ion to the consequent

and much more serious fact that we have failedto develop or attract a cadre force with the conviction and will to put in the necessary work onthe electoral front to get our programme off theground. This is the price of treating the theoreticalbasis of our programme superficially.

World Relation of Forces

One cannot escape the suspic ion that we havebeen inhibited in our earnestness in this directionby a reluctance to expose the validity of our previouspractice to serious examination. This has led to

th e sine qua non of our programme being thecurious argument that the changed balance ofclass forces in the world now—that is, definitelynot before 1951—makes the concept an emergentpossibili ty. It would indeed be strange if the changedbalance of class forces in the world did not makesome difference to the prospects for world socialism.But i ts relevance to the manner in which it can bereached in Britain is not so apparent as i t is stated.

Clearly the existence of a powerful group ofsocialist states increases the chances of a new onesurviving because they can offer fraternal help

gyorgy lukacs - interview - on the personality of lenin, marxism today, 1971

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