Lenin’s Revolutionary Strategy

From Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile disorder, and other works.

WIP

Steps

Building the Party

• Begin a disciplined party committed to revolution. It must be from, of, and maintain a committment to, working-class people, and their everyday needs:
  • Food, housing, peace, employment, education, health care, child care, elderly care. An end to police brutality, mass incarceration, and imperialism.
• It must have a trustworthy, open, and well-defined democratic procedure in decision-making: exercising diversity in discussion, and unity in action.
• It must provide alternatives to existing capitalist structures, in the form of class-based unions, and community programs. It must win over even the small business-owners on the sidelines, building numbers and strength, creating dissillusionment in capitalist structures, until people trust the new structures over the old, and the status quo becomes untenable.
• It must be class-conscious, and have a solid understanding of Marxist theory, and class struggle. It should reject individualism, idealism, and individualist terrorism as solutions, considering them as agents provocateurs.
• It must meet the masses where they are: this sometimes means participating in reactionary platforms (parliaments, trade unions, media platforms) to agitate for socialism, to educate and bring more people towards revolutionary politics. It must build bridges for people to advance towards socialism, not fences to close us off from the masses.
  • It should expose the sham of capitalist parliamentarism (IE capitalist dictatorship) from within and without, and build popular support for its destruction. Its demands should be things that capitalism cannot deliver on: full employment, no homelessness, no hunger, an end to war.
• It must be fluid: able to advance and retreat, engage in legal and illegal means, form and break compromises, make temporary alliances, operate underground and in the open, depending on the circumstances and political situation. It must not be dogmatic or inflexible.

Growing Inequality

• After a prosperous period of growing industry and population, a rapid inequality grows and engenders increasing poverty.
• The limits of new markets, profit and carrying capacity are reached, and surplus revenue stagnates. The upper classes then launch wars to fight over this decreasing surplus. War, famines, and massive social upheaval ensue in the coming years.
• Battle lines are drawn among the three principle groups:
  • Capitalists / Liberals / Reactionaries. (Right)
  • Social Democrats. (Center / Center-right)
  • Working-class Revolutionaries. (Left)

The First Attempt

• The lower classes join unions, and become more class-conscious. Communist parties support and build these organizations.
• Workers, professionals, and small business owners become increasingly dissillusioned by the concentration of wealth.
• A period of mass unionisation and strikes occurs. This initial “dress rehearsal” is usually severely repressed, or diffused by social democrats. If diffused, capitalists regain power over the next few years.

Reactionary Period

• A period of reaction ensues: unions and worker organizations are smashed / dismantled. Many social democrats, and anti-communists aid in the communist witch-hunts. Unions lose their militancy and power.
• Left views are suppressed from the media, and center/center-right social democratic parties emerge in their place, pushing national chauvinism and protectionism.
• Anti-capitalist parties preserve strength, and continue to agitate and educate, often from abroad.

Renewed Growth

• Unionism begins growing again, and communist ideas begin to gain support, but are still on the fringe.
• Most of the public start openly supporting social democrats over the warmongering, socially regressive capitalists.
• Communist parties continue to agitate against social democracy, patriotism, social chauvinism, and pacifism.
• Lines are drawn between communists supporting soviets / unions, and social democrats supporting an altered parliamentary democracy, or a strategy to reform Capitalism from the existing government.

Shake-up

• Capitalist contradictions reach a point that war breaks out. The ineptitude of Capitalist / reactionary political parties and their unpopularity results in a surge of class conciousness.
• A center-right social democratic party takes over parliament.
• Capitalists gut / break down infrastucture: shutting down transportation, resources, and energy. They openly arm xenophobic militias.
• Capitalist reactionaries attempt to restore themselves to power, communists and unions make temporary alliances with the social democrats to prevent it.
• The military and police become increasingly demoralized. Large numbers of soldiers turn against the military hierarchy. The police lose mass support as they kill more workers in service of capital, and are less supported by social democrats, and the people.
• Social democrats, limited by capitalist parliamentary structures, become increasingly unpopular, and seen as opportunists and dangerous compromisers.
• Militant unions and communist parties grow, with armed wings.

Revolution

• The social democrats are unable to stem the worsening conditions brought on by Capitalism: unable to end war, poverty, hunger, and homelessness, and workers turn en masse to far-left parties and revolutionary unions.
• Communist vanguard parties emerge as a stable, disciplined alternative to capitalist political parties.
• A revolutionary situation is reached, militant unions begin socializing workplaces, communities engage in rent strikes. Armed communists dissolve local and national capitalist parliaments, stock markets, and centers of financial imperialism.
• A civil war ensues between the capitalists and their petty-bourgeois defenders, and those committed to revolution.