As discussed in the last section, Marx and Engels left their followers with an ambiguous legacy. On the one hand, there are elements of "socialism from below" in their politics (most explicitly in Marx's comments on the libertarian influenced Paris Commune). On the other, there are distinctly centralist and statist themes in their work.
From this legacy, Leninism took the statist themes. Which explains why anarchists think the idea of Leninism being "socialism from below" is incredible. Simply put, the actual comments and actions of Lenin and his followers show that they had no commitment to a "socialism from below." As we will indicate, Lenin disassociated himself repeatedly from the idea of politics "from below," considering it (quite rightly) an anarchist idea. In contrast, he stressed the importance of a politics which somehow combined action "from above" and "from below." For those Leninists who maintain that their tradition is "socialism from below" (indeed, the only "real" socialism "from below"), this is a major problem and, unsurprisingly, they generally fail to mention it.
So what was Lenin's position on "from below"? In 1904, during the debate over the party split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, Lenin stated that the argument "[b]ureaucracy versus democracy is in fact centralism versus autonomism; it is the organisational principle of revolutionary Social-Democracy as opposed to the organisational principle of opportunist Social-Democracy. The latter strives to proceed from the bottom upward, and, therefore, wherever possible . . . upholds autonomism and 'democracy,' carried (by the overzealous) to the point of anarchism. The former strives to proceed from the top downward. . ." [Collected Works, vol. 7, pp. 396-7] Thus it is the non-Bolshevik ("opportunist") wing of Marxism which bases itself on the "organisational principle" of "from the bottom upward," not the Bolshevik tradition (as we note in section H.5.5, Lenin also rejected the "primitive democracy" of mass assemblies as the basis of the labour and revolutionary movements). Moreover, this vision of a party run from the top down was enshrined in the Bolshevik ideal of "democratic centralism" (see section H.5). How you can have "socialism from below" when your "organisational principle" is "from the top downward" is not explained by Leninist exponents of "socialism from below."
Lenin repeated this argument in his discussion on the right tactics to apply during the near revolution of 1905. He mocked the Mensheviks for only wanting "pressure from below" which was "pressure by the citizens on the revolutionary government." Instead, he argued for "pressure . . . from above as well as from below," where "pressure from above" was "pressure by the revolutionary government on the citizens." He notes that Engels "appreciated the importance of action from above" and that he saw the need for "the utilisation of the revolutionary governmental power." Lenin summarised his position (which he considered as being in line with that of orthodox Marxism) by stating that "[l]imitation, in principle, of revolutionary action to pressure from below and renunciation of pressure also from above is anarchism." [Marx, Engels and Lenin, Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, pp. 189-90, p. 193, p. 195 and p. 196] This seems to have been a common Bolshevik position at the time, with Stalin stressing in the same year that "action only from 'below'" was "an anarchist principle, which does, indeed, fundamentally contradict Social-Democratic tactics." [Collected Works, vol. 1, p. 149]
It is in this context of "above and below" in which we must place Lenin's comments in 1917 that socialism was "democracy from below, without a police, without a standing army, voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people." [Collected Works, vol. 24, p. 170] Given that Lenin had rejected the idea of "only from below" as an anarchist principle (which it is), we need to bear in mind that this "democracy from below" was always placed in the context of a Bolshevik government. Lenin always stressed that the Bolsheviks would "take over full state power," that they "can and must take state power into their own hands." His "democracy from below" always meant representative government, not popular power or self-management. The role of the working class was that of voters and so the Bolsheviks' first task was "to convince the majority of the people that its programme and tactics are correct." The second task "that confronted our Party was to capture political power." The third task was for "the Bolshevik Party" to "administer Russia." [Selected Works, vol. 2, p. 352, p. 328 and p. 589] Thus Bolshevik power was equated with working class power.
Towards the end of 1917, he stressed this vision of a Bolshevik run "democracy from below" by arguing that "[a]fter the 1905 revolution Russia was ruled by 130,000 landowners . . . yet they tell us that Russia will not be able to be governed by the 240,000 members of the Bolshevik party." He even equated rule by the party with rule by the class — "the power of the Bolsheviks — that is, the power of the proletariat," while admitting that the proletariat could not actually govern itself. As he put it, "[w]e know that just any labourer or any cook would be incapable of taking over immediately the administration of the State . . . We demand that the teaching of the business of government be conducted by the class-conscious workers and soldiers." The "conscious workers must be in control, but they can attract to the actual work of management the real labouring and oppressed masses." Ironically, he calls this system "real popular self-administration" and "teaching the people to manage their own affairs." He also indicated that once in power, the Bolsheviks "shall be fully and unreservedly for a strong government and centralism." [Will the Bolsheviks Maintain Power, pp. 61-2, p. 66, p. 69 and p. 75]
Clearly, Lenin's position had not changed. The goal of the revolution was simply a Bolshevik government, which, if it was to be effective, had to have the real power in society. Thus, socialism would be implemented from above, by the "strong" government of the "conscious workers" who would be "in control." While, eventually, the "labouring" masses would take part in the administration of state decisions, the initial role of the workers could be the same as under capitalism. And, we must note, there is a difference between making policy and taking part in administration (i.e. between the "work of management" and management itself), a difference Lenin obscures.
All of which, perhaps, explains the famous leaflet addressed to the workers of Petrograd immediately after the October Revolution, informing that "the revolution has won." The workers were called upon to "show . . . the greatest firmness and endurance, in order to facilitate the execution of all the aims of the new People's Government." They were asked to "cease immediately all economic and political strikes, to take up your work, and do it in perfect order . . . All to your places." It stated that the "best way to support the new Government of Soviets in these days" was "by doing your job." [cited by John Read, Ten Days that Shook the World, pp. 341-2] Which smacks far more of "socialism from above" than "socialism from below"!
The implications of Lenin's position became clearer after the Bolsheviks had taken power in 1917. In that situation, it was not a case of "dealing with the general question of principle, whether in the epoch of the democratic revolution it is admissible to pass from pressure from below to pressure from above." [Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 24, p. 190] Rather, it was the concrete situation of a "revolutionary" government exercising power "from above" onto the very class it claimed to represent. Thus we have a power over the working class which was quite happy to exercise coercion to ensure its position. As Lenin explained to his political police, the Cheka, in 1920:
"Without revolutionary coercion directed against the avowed enemies of the workers and peasants, it is impossible to break down the resistance of these exploiters. On the other hand, revolutionary coercion is bound to be employed towards the wavering and unstable elements among the masses themselves." [Collected Works, vol. 42, p. 170]
It could be argued that this position was forced on Lenin by the problems facing the Bolsheviks in the Civil War, but such an argument is flawed. This is for two reasons. Firstly, according to Lenin himself civil war was inevitable and so, unsurprisingly, Lenin considered his comments as universally applicable. Secondly, this position fits in well with the idea of pressure "from above" exercised by the "revolutionary" government against the masses (and nothing to do with any sort of "socialism from below"). Indeed, "wavering" and "unstable" elements is just another way of saying "pressure from below," the attempts by those subject to the "revolutionary" government to influence its policies. As we noted in section H.1.2, it was in this period (1919 and 1920) that the Bolsheviks openly argued that the "dictatorship of the proletariat" was, in fact, the "dictatorship of the party" (see section H.3.8 on how the Bolsheviks modified the Marxist theory of the state in line with this). Rather than the result of the problems facing Russia at the time, Lenin's comments simply reflect the unfolding of certain aspects of his ideology when his party held power (as we make clear in the appendix on "How did Bolshevik ideology contribute to the failure of the Revolution?", the ideology of the ruling party and the ideas held by the masses are also factors in history).
To show that Lenin's comments were not caused by circumstantial factors, we can turn to his infamous work Left-Wing Communism. In this 1920 tract, written for the Second Congress of the Communist International, Lenin lambasted those Marxists who argued for direct working class power against the idea of party rule (i.e. the various council communists around Europe). We have already noted in section H.1.2 that Lenin had argued in that work that it was "ridiculously absurd and stupid" to "a contrast in general between the dictatorship of the masses and the dictatorship of the leaders." [p. 25] Here we provide his description of the "top-down" nature of Bolshevik rule:
"The interrelations between leaders-Party-class-masses . . . now present themselves concretely in Russia in the following form. The dictatorship is exercised by the proletariat which is organised in the Soviets and is led by the Communist Party . . . The Party, which holds annual congresses . . . is directed by a Central Committee of nineteen elected at the congress, while the current work in Moscow [the capital] had to be carried on by [two] still smaller bodies . . . which are elected at the plenary sessions of the Central Committee, five members of the Central Committee in each bureau. This, then, looks like a real 'oligarchy.' Not a single important political or organisational question is decided by any State institution in our republic [sic!] without the guiding instructions of the Central Committee of the Party.
"In its work the Party relies directly on the trade unions . . . In reality, all the controlling bodies of the overwhelming majority of the unions . . . consists of Communists, who secure the carrying out of all the instructions of the Party. Thus . . . we have a . . . very powerful proletarian apparatus, by means of which the Party is closely linked up with the class and with the masses, and by means of which, under the leadership of the Party, the class dictatorship of the class is realised." [Left-Wing Communism, pp. 31-2]
Combined with "non-Party workers' and peasants' conferences" and Soviet Congresses, this was "the general mechanism of the proletarian state power viewed 'from above,' from the standpoint of the practical realisation of the dictatorship" and so "all talk about 'from above' or 'from below,' about 'the dictatorship of leaders' or 'the dictatorship of the masses,' cannot but appear to be ridiculous, childish nonsense." [Op. Cit., p. 33] Perhaps this explains why he did not bother to view "proletarian" state power "from below," from the viewpoint of the proletariat? If he did, perhaps he would have recounted the numerous strikes and protests broken by the Cheka under martial law, the gerrymandering and disbanding of soviets, the imposition of "one-man management" onto the workers in production, the turning of the unions into agents of the state/party and the elimination of working class freedom by party power? After all, if the congresses of soviets were "more democratic" than anything in the "best democratic republics of the bourgeois world," the Bolsheviks would have no need for non-Party conferences "to be able to watch the mood of the masses, to come closer to them, to respond to their demands." [Op. Cit., p. 33 and p. 32] How the Bolsheviks "responded" to these conferences and their demands is extremely significant. They disbanded them. This was because "[d]uring the disturbances" of late 1920, "they provided an effective platform for criticism of Bolshevik policies." Their frequency was decreased and they "were discontinued soon afterward." [Richard Sakwa, Soviet Communists in Power, p. 203]
At the Comintern congress itself, Zinoviev announced that "the dictatorship of the proletariat is at the same time the dictatorship of the Communist Party." [Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress 1920, vol. 1, p. 152] Trotsky, for his part, also universalised Lenin's argument when he pondered the important decisions of the revolution and who would make them in his reply to the anarchist delegate from the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist union the CNT:
"Who decides this question [and others like it]? We have the Council of People's Commissars but it has to be subject to some supervision. Whose supervision? That of the working class as an amorphous, chaotic mass? No. The Central Committee of the party is convened to discuss . . . and to decide . . . Who will solve these questions in Spain? The Communist Party of Spain." [Op. Cit., p. 174]
As is obvious, Trotsky was drawing general lessons for the international revolutionary movement. Needless to say, he still argued that the "working class, represented and led by the Communist Party, [was] in power here" in spite of it being "an amorphous, chaotic mass" which did not make any decisions on important questions affecting the revolution!
Incidentally, his and Lenin's comments of 1920 disprove Trotsky's later assertion that it was "[o]nly after the conquest of power, the end of the civil war, and the establishment of a stable regime" when "the Central Committee little by little begin to concentrate the leadership of Soviet activity in its hands. Then would come Stalin's turn." [Stalin, vol. 1, p. 328] While it was definitely the "conquest of power" by the Bolsheviks which lead to the marginalisation of the soviets, this event cannot be shunted to after the civil war as Trotsky would like (particularly as Trotsky admitted that "[a]fter eight months of inertia and of democratic chaos, came the dictatorship of the Bolsheviks." [Op. Cit., vol. 2, p. 242]). We must note (see sections H.1.2 or H.3.8) Trotsky argued for the "objective necessity" of the "revolutionary dictatorship of a proletarian party" until his death.
Clearly, the claim that Leninism (and its various off-shoots like Trotskyism) is "socialism from below" is hard to take seriously. As proven above, the Leninist tradition is explicitly against the idea of "only from below," with Lenin explicitly stating that it was an "anarchist stand" to be for "'action only from below', not 'from below and from above'" which was the position of Marxism. [Collected Works, vol. 9, p. 77] Once in power, Lenin and the Bolsheviks implemented this vision of "from below and from above," with the highly unsurprising result that "from above" quickly repressed "from below" (which was dismissed as "wavering" by the masses). This was to be expected, for a government to enforce its laws, it has to have power over its citizens and so socialism "from above" is a necessary side-effect of Leninist theory.
Ironically, Lenin's argument in State and Revolution comes back to haunt him. In that work he had argued that the "dictatorship of the proletariat" meant "democracy for the people" which "imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists." These must be crushed "in order to free humanity from wage-slavery; their resistance must be broken by force; it is clear that where there is suppression there is also violence, there is no freedom, no democracy." [Essential Works of Lenin, pp. 337-8] If the working class itself is being subject to "suppression" then, clearly, there is "no freedom, no democracy" for that class — and the people "will feel no better if the stick with which they are being beaten is labelled 'the people's stick'." [Bakunin, Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 338]
Thus, when Leninists argue that they stand for the "principles of socialism from below" and state that this means the direct and democratic control of society by the working class then, clearly, they are being less than honest. Looking at the tradition they place themselves, the obvious conclusion which must be reached is that Leninism is not based on "socialism from below" in the sense of working class self-management of society (i.e. the only condition when the majority can "rule" and decisions truly flow from below upwards). At best, they subscribe to the distinctly bourgeois vision of "democracy" as being simply the majority designating (and trying to control) its rulers. At worse, they defend politics which have eliminated even this form of democracy in favour of party dictatorship and "one-man management" armed with "dictatorial" powers in industry (most members of such parties do not know how the Bolsheviks gerrymandered and disbanded soviets to maintain power, raised the dictatorship of the party to an ideological truism and wholeheartedly advocated "one-man management" rather than workers' self-management of production). As we discuss in section H.5, this latter position flows easily from the underlying assumptions of vanguardism which Leninism is based on.
So, Lenin, Trotsky and so on simply cannot be considered as exponents of "socialism from below." Any one who makes such a claim is either ignorant of the actual ideas and practice of Bolshevism or they seek to deceive. For anarchists, "socialism from below" can only be another name, like libertarian socialism, for anarchism (as Lenin, ironically enough, acknowledged). This does not mean that "socialism from below," like "libertarian socialism," is identical to anarchism, it simply means that libertarian Marxists and other socialists are far closer to anarchism than mainstream Marxism.