Lenin's Political Thought, Vol. 1: Theory and Practice in the Democratic Revolution. by NeilHardingReview by: R. C. ElwoodSlavic Review, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Summer, 1981), pp. 288-290Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2496964 .

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288 Slavic Review

diplomatic service from the Bolshevik Revolution to the Great Purge, with analytical asides on the background of staff members and on what the author regards as the relatively limited impact of internal politics and ideology on the conduct of foreign policy during this period. He concludes with the "destruction"-rather the restaffing and curtailment of the Narko- mindel in consequence of the purges.

Much of this is familiar ground, particularly where the work touches on the general zigs and zags of Soviet foreign policy during these years. But Uldricks underscores with interest- ing detail the radical effect of a changing political context on the institutional character of the agency the improvising during 1917-18 when world revolution was imminent; Foreign Commissar Chicherin's labors to build a conventional diplomatic establishment even while most powers had severed all but indirect relations with the Russian Republic; the burgeoning of the organization with international recognition in the 1920s; and the crippling constraints and purges inflicted by Stalin in the 1930s. Uldricks has compiled biographical data on over five hundred diplomatic functionaries serving during the period of this study, and with use of this information he has demonstrated the distinctive character of the Narkomindel as a preserve, not of old-regime officials (who served here much less than in other agencies) but of the revolutionary intelligentsia, devoted to the regime but also equipped by educational background and experience in emigration to represent the Soviet government in its dealings abroad. Such people, recruited by Chicherin, formed the core of the reasonably effective and (as Uldricks sees it) remarkably conventional diplomatic service that went to work with the normalization of the Soviet Union's relations with most countries by 1924. This group was decimated by the purges, perhaps more dramatically than any other agency of the Soviet state, with the substitution of a new cadre of Stalinist apparatchiks who were youthful, untutored, and conformist and whose pre-Petrine style of devious xenophobia dominated Soviet international behavior thenceforth. Thus there was extended to Soviet Russia's inter- national arm the sociocultural blood exchange that Michal Reiman has termed the "plebeian revolution." (See Michal Reiman, "Spontaneity and Planning in the Plebeian Revolution," in R. Carter Elwood, ed., Reconsiderations on the Russian Revolution [Cambridge, Mass., 1976].)

Uldricks's otherwise interesting monograph seems to suffer from an uncertainty of style and audience, sketching the familiar context in a somewhat textbookish manner. At the same time, the changing chronological context, so important to the status of Soviet foreign rela- tions at any given time, is occasionally neglected as the author attempts generalizations governing the entire period of his compass. In particular, the reader is not persuaded by the attempt to present statistics about Narkomindel personnel, their backgrounds and tenure, against a rapidly changing political background and a rapidly growing numerical base. Nevertheless, any student of Soviet political history or of the conduct of international rela- tions will find the volume worthwhile for its vivid description of the impact of two revolu- tions Lenin's and Stalin's on the conduct of foreign relations by a major power.

ROBERT V. DANIELS

University of Vermont

LENIN'S POLITICAL THOUGHT, vol. 1: THEORY AND PRACTICE IN THE DEMO- CRATIC REVOLUTION. By Neil Harding. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1978. x, 360 pp. $25.00.

This is a serious attempt at reinterpreting Lenin's early political thought from a Western Marxist perspective. Harding (who teaches politics at University College, Swansea, Wales) takes exception to the "conventional wisdom which runs through almost all Western com- mentary, criticism and biography of Lenin." This "basic position," Harding contends, sees Lenin solely as the practitioner of revolution and as the manipulative organizer of a political party. His theoretical contributions are either ignored or misrepresented as voluntaristic distortions of orthodox Marxism. Harding views Lenin not as the Jacobinic product of the

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Reviews 289

nineteenth-century Russian revolutionary tradition who doted on Chernyshevskii and dab- bled in populism, but rather as a confirmed Marxist at the age of nineteen who became the "principal theorist" of the St. Petersburg labor movement by 1893.

Harding argues that Lenin's thought during the 1890s was soundly based on the ortho- dox writings of Plekhanov and Aksel'rod; indeed, he later fleshed out their generalities with an abundance of Russian statistical information and a more precise delineation of the various stages of economic growth in his Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899). This turgid tome, which Harding considers to be "the most important work he ever penned," is the cornerstone for volume one of Lenin 's Political Thought. The author feels that its "thorough- going theoretical analysis ... provided the basis for Lenin's practical politics right up to 1914" and "gave him a methodology which he applied to the development of class consciousness and working-class organisation." Much of this methodology was spelled out in What is to'be Done? (1902). Harding's analysis of this work is interesting. He is correct that it was not a practical guide to conspiratorial operations, that it was consistent with his earlier tactical writings, and that his ideas were generally accepted by his colleagues at the time. Harding concludes the first part of his two-volume study by noting that global problems were emerging on the eve of World War I which Lenin's earlier economic analysis and political strategy could not accommodate. This led to a new theoretical appraisal Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916) and to a revised organizational strategy. These are to be the subject of the second volume of Lenin's Political Thought.

Readers should be aware that this book is neither a history of the Social Democratic Party nor a biography of Lenin. While considerable attention is paid to the Mensheviks and to various groups of left Bolsheviks, it is simply to show how they, rather than Lenin, diverged from orthodox Marxism. It is curious that virtually no mention is made of Leon Trotskii despite the fact that he was Lenin's chief political opponent throughout the period in question. Nor do his principal lieutenants Zinov'ev and Kamenev fare any better. Out- side of the Second Congress, little attention is paid to pre-Revolutionary party gatherings. Even the 1912 Prague conference which confirmed Lenin's ideology as orthodox, consoli- dated his organizational control over the rump party, and began the reassessment of chang- ing conditions in Russia is overlooked.

Those interested in the details of Lenin's childhood, his personal relationships, and his likes and dislikes will also have to look elsewhere. What we are given is a two-dimensional picture of a man who was always right: whose critiques were "withering," whose articles were "masterly," and whose arguments were invariably "cogent." We are not, however, told of his patronage and protection of questionable individuals such as Roman Malinovskii, who turned out to be a police spy. Nor are we informed that Lenin was caught unawares every time revolution broke out in Russia. Instead, we learn that, after hearing of "Bloody Sunday," Lenin "went straight to the Public Library in Geneva to consult with von Clausewitz and, of course, Marx and Engels on the military strategy of revolutions in 1848 and 1871." While Harding acknowledges that Lenin did not return to Russia until "October of 1905," the reason for this delay was not so much that he was engaged in "self-preparation and feverish attempts to prepare his followers in Russia for the task of leading the coming revolution" as it was his preoccupation with schismatic party politics abroad.

The fact that Lenin returned to St. Petersburg in November rather than October is symptomatic of the problems with this book. Harding is better at analyzing Lenin's writings than at recording historical details and dates. The Potemkin mutiny, for instance, took place in June 1905, not late 1904; the Old Style dates for the setting up of the St. Petersburg Soviet and the issuing of the October Manifesto were October 14 and 17, 1905, not October 27 and 30; the First Duma lasted seventy-three days, not ten; the Kadets had about a third of the deputies in that Duma, not an "absolute majority"; the Trudoviks had slightly over one hundred deputies in the Second Duma, not two hundred; the Otzovists demanded the "recall" of the Social Democratic deputies to the Third Duma, not to the First and Second; the Tiflis expropriation took place in mid-1907, not in 1908; the Central Committee was not

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290 Slavic Review

"Bolshevik-dominated" in 1910; there was no such body as the "Central Committee of the Russian Bureau," and so forth. These factual errors, which were culled solely from the chapters on 1905 and its aftermath and which are repeated elsewhere, should be of concern even to those who do not adhere to the "basic position" on Lenin.

R. C. ELWOOD Carleton University

BEYOND MARX AND MACH: ALEKSANDR BOGDANOV'S "PHILOSOPHY OF LIVING EXPERIENCE." By K. M. Jensen. Sovietica, no. 41. Dordrecht, Holland and Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1978. x, 189 pp.

A. A. Bogdanov, one of the most productive and challenging Russian thinkers of the modern era, dedicated his life to making Marxism a twentieth-century system of social philosophy. The evolution of his thinking shows three important, though not clearly demarcated, phases. At the end of the nineteenth century, he thought that the modernization of Marxism could benefit by crossing Marx and Engels's theoretical legacy with Wilhelm Ostwald's theory of energy and Darwin's evolutionary ideas in biology. During the second phase, Bogdanov sought a synthesis of Marx and Ernst Mach, which made him the main villain of Lenin's Materialism and Empiriocriticism. This was the phase of empiriomonism, as Bogdanov preferred to call his philosophy; at this time he tried to make neopositivist theory of knowl- edge the base of Marxist sociology. During the third phase, Bogdanov added another interest to his involvement in philosophy: the search for a universal theory of organization tek- tology, a science dealing with the processes which regulate the organization of all systems of natural and social phenomena.

Bogdanov's Philosophy of Living Experience gave these views and interests an over- riding unity, supported by a deeper analysis of the psychological and sociological keys to the understanding of human society. Professor Jensen states correctly that "Bogdanov the philosopher could not be considered apart from Bogdanov the economist, sociologist, his- torical materialist and philosopher of science." The ideas presented in Bogdanov's book form the central theme of Professor Jensen's excellent study. The author concentrates on Bog- danov's views on the importance of philosophy for the proletarian movement, the differences between "ancient" and "modern" materialism, the leading schools of neopositivism (particu- larly empiriocriticism) and the nature of dialectics as both a mechanism of history and a tool of science. The author notes the "mechanistic" nature of Bogdanov's dialectics a view which influenced the sociological thinking of N. I. Bukharin. In his eagerness to bring Marxism closer to twentieth-century scientific thought, Bogdanov paid little attention to the rapid decline of the mechanistic tradition in science.

The ideas presented in the Philosophy of Living Experience (written in 1910, published in 1913, and republished in 1920) linked the most-abstract notions of the general theory of organization with the most basic realities of "proletarian culture" a "world view" built upon "labor causality" and the "collective organization" of the experience of the working people. In all this, Bogdanov agreed with the champions of neopositivism that "science" was the best "philosophy." He went so far as to propose his tektology as the guiding and unifying force in the development of science in socialist society.

The author is too kind to Bogdanov's ambitious effort to place terrestrial sociology into a grand science of the universe and to give proletarian culture a "monistic" unity. He is cor- rect in placing Bogdanov among the true forerunners of the general systems theory, the pioneers of modern Marxist sociology and the most original contributors to the unity of neo- positivist epistemology and social radicalism. The book shows that Bogdanov's strongest display of originality was in marshaling cogent arguments in favor of making sociology a vital link between the theory of knowledge and social psychology.

This book is a major contribution to the studies in Russian philosophical and social thought and in the history of neo-Marxism. The author has been eminently successful in

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