“The
Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true.”
V. I. Lenin, The Three Sources and
Three Component Parts of Marxism
How
does one distinguish an ideologue from a philosopher? The question is complicated somewhat by the
fact that our most “accomplished” ideologues have employed the work of
philosophers and passed themselves off as philosophers. Lenin, of course, immediately jumps to
mind. His entire mental universe was
built on the centerpiece of late nineteenth-century German metaphysics, the dialectical
materialism of Karl Marx. Lenin ‘s
venture into technical philosophy, his book, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, was conceived, in his own words,
“to seek for the stumbling block to
people who under the guise of Marxism are offering something incredibly
baffling, confused and reactionary.”*
Written in 1908 nearly a decade before Lenin’s
Bolshevik party had overthrown the Provisional Government, his sectarian
impulses for this philosophical production are clearly evident in this concise delineation
of his authorial motives. Here we have
the priestly, pastoral Lenin guiding his vulnerable flock, steering them away
from the precipices of alluring, but false doctrine, and ultimately, the chasm
of … reactionary thinking. He alone could
navigate the narrow path of true Marxism and steer away from the baffling and
confused detours into its perversion. Lenin from his earliest moments could always
sniff the odors of Marxist heresy that marked the reactionaries and their
enablers.
From
this also it is not difficult to parse evidence of the two connected core
elements that compose the soul of the ideologue; Lenin’s likely being the
purest of them all. First, the ideologue is “the knower”**, but a knower of
rare and remarkable powers. He has
penetrated a reality hidden from others, resisted even. Moreover, that knowledge confers an
entitlement of a very special kind, an entitlement to exert an unrestricted
power over others. Thus, the second core
element of the ideologue’s soul – a relentless quest for power over the lives
of other people.
The
entitlement claim to power is derived from the “hidden” nature of what the
ideologue knows. Which in its simplest
form is:
the wrong people are in charge. They exploit. They oppress, and they
pretend to be entitled to their privileges.
However, this ugly reality is largely hidden from view. The power
possessed by the exploiters has long been legitimized by a false knowing, a
“false consciousness”, as it is commonly expressed, which embraces the entirety
of the society’s cultural heritage. The
laws, religion, art, science altogether compose a vast superstructure that
represents both the natural and social world in ways that makes the undeserved
power and privilege of ruling class appear natural, reasonable and acceptable. This hidden knowledge as well is a repudiation
and rejection of the wisdom and experience of the social order that is in place.
The ideologue-knower is thus entitled
to power because (a) unlike most others, he sees through the false rationale of
legitimacy that supports the wrong people who are in charge, and (b) by virtue of this knowledge he represents
the people who should be in charge.
Resistance to the ideologue-knower is immoral because he alone is
determined to transform the status quo of corruption and misery into a new era of virtue
and happiness.
Compare,
however, the ideologue, Lenin, to a philosopher, Bertrand Russell. Russell, like Lenin, was also a man of the
Left and a critic of capitalism. Bertrand Russell traveled to the Soviet Union
in 1920 during the early days of the Bolshevik consolidation of power with a
group of British socialists to observe the progress of socialism which they
hoped would be a more humane and equitable system than capitalism. Russell was, so to speak, “a friendly critic.”
Upon his return he wrote a short but amazingly insightful book about his
experience and encounters with the Bolshevik leaders, including Lenin. This
short book, The Practice and Theory of
Bolshevism wonderfully illustrates the difference between an ideologue and
a philosopher.
While
sympathetic to the goals of the revolution in Russia, Russell, unlike Lenin,
never claimed to be a “knower.” Russell
captured in his own inimitable style, Lenin, The Knower: “He is
dictatorial, calm, incapable of fear, devoid of self-seeking, an embodied
theory…. He resembles a professor in his desire to have the theory understood
and in his fury with those who misunderstand or disagree…. I got the impression that he despises a great
many people and is an intellectual aristocrat.“***
Two
items stand out in Russell’s picture of this “embodied theory” of a man: his fury
with those who might disagree or dissent from his opinions, and his general loathing for the bulk of humanity. Lenin could not begin to conceive that what
he believed about the unfolding of history, the emerging modern world, and how
a society should be ordered might be mistaken or confused -- thus, the fury
with dissent and the disdain for the “great many people” unable to comprehend the
gnosis that he had long ago intuited and that defined his entitlement to rule
over demos and reorder their lives. Lenin lived in a rigidly dichotomous world
populated by the self-appointed clique of illuminati (historically destined to
rule, they asserted) and all the rest of humanity who would do what they were told.
In
his preface Russell states the profound difference he sees between himself and
with Lenin and Bolshevism. “Bolshevism is not merely a political
doctrine; it is also a religion, with elaborate dogmas and inspired
scriptures. When Lenin wishes to prove
some proposition, he does, if possible, by quoting texts from Marx and Lenin. He
[Lenin] is a man who entertains a number of elaborate and dogmatic beliefs … which
may be true, but are not, to a scientific temper, capable of being known to be
true with any certainty. This habit, of
militant certainty about objectively doubtful matters, is one from which, since
the Renaissance, the world has been gradually emerging, into that temper of
constructive and fruitful scepticism which constitutes the scientific outlook.
I believe the scientific outlook to be immeasurably important to the human
race.”***
Russell
here captures the atavistic and primitive features of Lenin’s intellectual universe. “Militant certainty about objectively
doubtful matters” was the essence of Leninism.
Lenin was above all else a ferociously driven fanatic, convinced of his
omniscience, obsessed to rule over others -- Unlimited“
power above all law,” as he himself put it.
The
obsession with power is what distinguishes an ideologue from a
philosopher. Russell’s embrace of the “scientific outlook”
with its premise of skepticism suggests a suspicion of power. Ideologues crave
power: power makes philosophers nervous. Russell recognized in 1920, a mere
three years into the failed seventy-four year Soviet experiment, that the Bolsheviks were
deluded about what they were and what they thought they could do. “They
think themselves utterly free from sentiment, but, in fact, they are
sentimental about Communism and about the regime they are creating; they cannot
face the fact that what they are creating is not complete Communism…”*** Russell
mentions one of Lenin’s first “initiatives” – the CHEKA and its unlimited
power. “It has spies everywhere, and ordinary mortals live in terror of it.”***
Lenin, as
noted above, was a fanatic. Leninism was fanaticism institutionalized and
operationalized across the planet throughout much of the twentieth century by
men – Stalin, Mao, Castro, and others –
who like Lenin were ideologues, men who claimed unlimited power over others
because they “believed that they knew.”
*V. I.
Lenin, Selected Works, v. 11, 90.
**“Lenin does not
know that he believes. He believes that he knows.” From: Alain Besancon, The Rise of the Gulag: Intellectual Origins
of Leninism, New York, Continuum, 1981, 9.
*** Bertrand Russell, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism,
1920, 19, 5, 37.
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