Cinzia Arruzza | Identifying Potentialities in the Present

By Cinzia Arruzza

[Note: this is a draft, please do not quote without the author’s permission]

Although Lenin’s Theses of April can be considered a political manifesto of sorts—especially given the decisive role they played in the October Revolution—they are markedly different from Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto (CM). Unlike the CM, Lenin’s Theses do not analyze capitalism, nor do they articulate the general principles of communism. Instead, they serve as a strategic intervention during an unfolding revolutionary situation, characterized by the dualism of power and a bifurcation of possibilities: the bourgeois appropriation of the revolution through the provisional government vs. its further radicalization through the Soviets.

Despite these differences, there is a profound continuity between the Theses and the CM. To better understand these similarities and differences, we must begin with the historical context and the roles these documents were meant to play. Political manifestos like the CM are typically documents in which individuals or groups present an analysis of the present and a vision for the future—whether immediate or long-term. The most effective manifestos identify historical possibilities within a specific conjuncture and outline a potential path for their realization. Such documents are, therefore, predicated on a particular kind of gaze on the present (and its history) as they look at it from the vantage point of the future they aim to realize.

Marx and Engels’ present was in many regards dissimilar from Lenin’s. It also had a different history. Marx and Engels’ historical context differed significantly from Lenin’s, as did their historical experiences. The CM was written in 1848 as the manifesto of the Communist League, a newly founded organization in England. Although written quickly, it was the culmination of longer efforts to reorient the League’s theorical orientation—from its religious roots to a more historicized understanding of both capitalism and communism. Its immediate goal was to reorient the League but achieving this required Marx and Engels to present a comprehensive analysis of capitalism, its history, and the role of communists in the proletarian movement.

The CM emerged during revolutionary ferment but before the practical experiences of the February and June Revolutions of 1848, as well as the repression of the French revolutionary proletariat. It identified the revolutionary possibilities of its time but reflected a lack of practical experience and an absence of developed organizational forms within the working class. Two main problems stemmed from this.

First, the CM was overly optimistic about the imminent realization of communism. Marx and Engels viewed the proletarian revolution as both a continuation and completion of the bourgeois revolution, necessitated by the contradictions of capitalist production. These contradictions include the impossibility for the bourgeoisie to remain the dominant class for long due to its inability to assure the existence of the people on which it depends, the proletarians. This optimism assumed a simplification of class antagonisms and viewed the proletariat as inherently revolutionary. In this vein, Marx and Engels argued that the bourgeoisie had produced first of all its own “gravedigger”, namely the proletariat.

Second, this optimism led to a simplified outline of the strategic steps toward communism, as seen in Chapter 2 of the CM.

In contrast, Lenin’s Theses were quickly written down in April 1917, two months after the February Revolution, with the explicit goal of reorienting Bolshevik and Menshevik strategies. Lenin sought to identify the bifurcation of possibilities within the present conjuncture: either reaction or permanent revolution. Unlike the CM, the Theses were a product of a specific revolutionary process within a particular national context. From start to finish, they were a text of political strategy, laying out concrete steps to intervene in the unfolding revolution. Moreover, Lenin’s strategy was informed by the lessons of past revolutions—1848, the Paris Commune of 1871, and the Russian Revolution of 1905. Unlike the CM, Lenin’s Theses were free of deterministic optimism: the outcome of the revolution is genuinely open and depends on the nature of the political interventions of the various factions and agents operating within it and on which view will ultimately prevail.

Despite these differences, Lenin’s Theses can be seen as a rewriting and completion of the CM. This continuity becomes apparent in two prefaces Marx and Engels wrote for later editions of the CM. Let me begin with the preface to the edition of 1872. This year offered a profoundly different historical context: Marx and Engels had witnessed both the defeat of 1848 and of 1871 and experienced the political complexities of revolutionary struggles. Consequently, they write in the 1872 Preface that the Paris Commune had demonstrated that it is not possible to simply take on the bourgeois State to use it at the service of the communist goal. On the contrary, it is necessary to replace it with a new form of State. Furthermore, they write that the revolutionary measures proposed in the second chapter of the Manifesto are outdated and inapplicable, for practical experience has shown that the application of the general principles of the CM depends on the particular and national conjuncture in which one operates.

In the 1882 preface to the Russian translation, Marx and Engels suggested that a revolution in Russsia could act as a signal for proletarian revolutions in the West: in that case, the Russian communal land system (obshchina) would potentially serve as a starting point for communist development.

Lenin’s Theses adopt these lessons. They advocate for giving all power to the Soviets and establishing a new state form based on them, arguing that a return to parliamentary democracy would regress the revolutionary process. While Lenin incorporated some ideas from the CM—such as creating a national bank—he integrated them into a context-specific strategy. In this sense, the Theses can be seen as an application of the CM’s general principles to a specific situation. Lenin’s push for permanent revolution and the transformation of the bourgeois February Revolution into a socialist one aligns with Marx and Engels’ point that Russia could bypass full capitalist development and parliamentary democracy to signal a broader proletarian revolution. Furthermore, Lenin’s strategy is guided by a strong commitment not only to internationalism but to the idea that a successful revolution toward communism can only be international, such as we find in the CM as well.

Given these elements, Lenin’s Theses may be viewed as a creative rewriting of the CM. This raises a broader question: what kind of text is the CM today? A historical document or a template to follow? I agree with Étienne Balibar that the answer is: neither. As Balibar argued, the CM demands continuous rewriting, updating, and correction through new manifestos responding to new conjunctures.

In this spirit, I turn briefly to a more modest manifesto: Feminism for the 99%. I take it that this manifesto too takes its place in the history of creative rewritings of the CM. As both texts we have discussed, it identifies political possibilities for the future in the contradictions of the present. As the analysis of both capitalism and communism in the CM lacked a discussion of social reproduction and of women as a collective actor, Feminism for the 99% offers both: it explains what social reproduction is and why its crisis opens possibilities for struggle. Most importantly it responds to a specific conjuncture created by the feminist strike movements around the globe and identifies in these movements a crucial political actor. Furthermore, it emphasizes the centrality of internationalism and of the unity of the struggles. Unlike the Theses, however, it does not articulate any specific strategy. It remains at the level of the enunciation of principles and general guidelines. This is because in writing it we took seriously Marx and Engels’s point from 1872: that the application of the principles enunciated in the CM cannot be abstractedly predicted, for it has to emerge from specific dynamics of each struggle. In this case, it was the task of the various feminist strike movements to devise their own strategy, as well as – possibly – a collective international strategy. Finally, like the CM, Feminism for the 99% too awaits to be rewritten and updated: It is not a static document but an ongoing project of identifying potentialities in the present.