Formal Logic versus Revolutionary Tactics.
IF one were to aprpoach the estimation of Lenin's activities from the point of view of formal logic, one would find quite a number of contradictions. On the one hand, if one analyzes his activity from the point of view of the objective conditions with which Lenin was dealing, and also considers dialectically the developments themselves, then all contradictions will disappear. He pursued the tactics of quick changes in orientation. His agrarian program between 1901 and 1903 had been based upon the principle of the division of land among the peasants, and in October of 1917 he carried thru the socialization of land.
Like all Social-Democrats Lenin started out as one favoring the defense of the fatherland. However, when the last war broke out, he immediately adopted the attitude of uncompromising hostility to the theory and practice of national defense. He declared that not even the defeat of Russia would matter for the working class. At that time the Marxian literature had just begun to discuss the problem of national and imperialist war. Lenin began devoting his attention to this problem and came to the conclusion that it is our duty to transform the imperialist war into a civil war.
From the Provisional Government of Russia he demanded the immediate convocation of the Constituent Assembly, and after the October Revolution he dispersed this very same Assembly. In the beginning Lenin was in favor of military Communism, but in 1921 he introduced the New Economic Policy. Following the socialization of the land in 1917, he favored in 1918 the formation of special committees composed of the poorest peasants, in order to split the peasantry thereby deciding the fate of the civil war in the villages. Starting out as an adherent of the idea of revolutionary war, he yet rejected this idea in 1918, and signed the Brest Litovsk peace treaty. And in 1920, he again favored the revolutionary war, this time against Poland. A deadly enemy of reformism, opposed to all dealings with the reformists, yet when conditions changed he declared in favor of the united front as a means of combating reformism altho it involved dealing with the reformists. Altho he favored a direct struggle against all parties of the Second International, yet at a certain stage in the development of the class struggle in England he favored the idea of supporting the British Labor Party and its coming into power. We could relate many more illustrations of the same kind.
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