In Chapter 4 of “Left-Wing” Communism, Lenin argues about the direct link between the fight against opportunism and the fight against Social Chauvinism:

“First and foremost, the struggle against opportunism which in 1914 definitely developed into social-chauvinism and definitely sided with the bourgeoisie, against the proletariat. Naturally, this was Bolshevism’s principal enemy within the working-class movement. It still remains the principal enemy on an international scale. The Bolsheviks have been devoting the greatest attention to this enemy. This aspect of Bolshevik activities is now fairly well known abroad too.”

(https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch04.htm)

Opportunism “definitely developed” into Social-Chauvinism in 1914. That meant that for the Bolsheviks, beginning in the age of inter-imperialist conflict, the main enemy within the party and the working-class masses in general had become, not opportunist alliance with the capitalist class but instead a permanent break from progressive politics, an acceptance of wage-slavery as a constant condition for all history. This aspect of Lenin’s work proved decisive for his revolutionary success. As if there were two Lenins, the factionalist who split the party and the leader who took the power. In fact, only one Lenin existed, and to admire one side and not the other does injustice to both.

“Lenin proved that the growth of opportunism was not to be explained in terms of personal treachery (though treachery there certainly was), but in powerful socioeconomic tendencies arising out of the development of imperialism in the final years of the nineteenth century and the first decade and a half of the twentieth. ”

Opportunism grew as the influence of capitalist politics grew upon the party. With the fascists to attack and the liberals to negotiate, even leading socialists found themselves forced to come to an arrangement with the liberals to keep Capitalism going a few more years. Yet these were ideological trends.  The revolution could also attack treacherous leaders, forcing them to return into civil discussions with other leaders of their party or other parties.

The economic trends, the belated development of Germany, the destruction of the old feudal order driving the peasants off the land, and the division of the world into European colonies, these occurred in such a way as to unite the working class across borders while accumulation of capital made national economic planning possible. The economics produced necessity for revolution, while ideological weakness allowed for the penetration of bourgeois ideas, opportunism followed by chauvinism, into Social Democracy.

The main obstacle to revolution, as it is today, came from the absence of a movement that organized the workers, the driving social force, according to the lessons drawn from the history of former revolutions.  The influence of capitalist politics, the Social Democracy in Germany, the Labor Party in the UK, these pro-capitalist parties voted for war-credits for imperialist wars and introduced chauvinism into supposedly socialist political parties.  Lenin’s observation of these trends allowed him to call for an organizational break with the opportunists in order to reduce their influence on the revolutionary party.  This proved decisive with the arrival of 1917.

The article quotes Lenin:

“Imperialism somewhat changes the situation. A privileged upper stratum of the proletariat in the imperialist countries lives partly at the expense of hundreds of millions in the uncivilized nations.”

This privilege came as a conscious policy of capitalist governments to create the economic basis for chauvinism within the proletariat, which forces revolutionary leaders, out of fear of this chauvinist proletariat, to make opportunist alliances with liberals of the ruling class. In this way, the liberal capitalists come to dominate any movement from below.  The biggest industry based on chauvinism is the car industry based in Detroit, which seeks to divide the American working class from the rest of the world.  The US has 838 vehicles per 1000 people while the rest of the world only has 170, about 5 times more.  This well-known dream of Henry Ford, to provide all the workers with cars, came from a specific decision on the part of capitalists to shield themselves with privileges from a section of the workers.

Marxists must emphasize, however, that these privileges for a section of the working class will not appease the working class as a whole.  To appease the working class as whole would be to give in to the revolution and renounce the right to accumulate profit from surplus value.  This will not happen willingly.  The privileges for that proletariat may buy them some time, but eventually crashes do come, allowing workers to see through the illusion of peaceful development.  Lenin argues about this upper stratum in order to defend the revolutionary who actively participates amongst the workers from physical attacks from these privileged types.

With regard to the April Theses, we see no discussion on Revolutionary Defeatism (the Bolshevik position) versus Revolutionary Defensism (or Social Chauvinism).  The primary reason for Lenin’s sacking of the Provisional Government came from this discussion.  Any revolutionary defeatist arguments brought upon those real leaders persecution, prison, and execution.  Yet Lenin had to bring the entire Bolshevik party behind this position in order to end Russia’s participation in the war.

On the “Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the Peasantry”

Lenin’s Revolutionary slogan did not exist to create ambiguity but to divide the Bolsheviks permanently from the oldest counter-revolutionary arguments on the books, the arguments used to defend the Roman Republic against slave rebellions, like those of Cicero against Cesar. Cesar advocated the sacking of the Senate on the grounds that the Senate represented only an oligarchy, not the majority of Romans. He could accomplish this task only through a massive redistribution of land from the oligarchs to the ordinary soldiers in his army. Cicero warned against Cesar, defending the Senate as imperfect yet better suited to rule than Cesar as an autocrat who would turn the Republic into an Empire and then trample upon all the rights of the people protected under a republic.

Lenin would not allow any defense of bourgeois democracy or liberal constitutional rights to undermine the revolutionary will of the people. The army Lenin needed to take the power depended to a large degree on the redistribution of the land of the oligarchy to the peasantry in exchange for revolutionary soldiers.  Collectivization of land existed as a plan but only through free association on a voluntary basis.

On Trotsky’s criticism of the Bolshevik Program: “The Bolshevik formula insisted upon the leading role of the working class in the coming revolution, and aspired toward the destruction of all the feudal and anti-democratic remnants of the tsarist regime. But the program of the Bolsheviks did not call for the overthrow of the Russian bourgeoisie and the elimination of capitalist property relations.”

From the 1903 Bolshevik Party Program:

“By substituting social for private ownership of the means of production and exchange, and introducing planned organisation of the process of social production, in order to ensure the well-being and all-round development of all members of society, the social revolution of the proletariat will abolish the division of society into classes, and thereby free all oppressed mankind, since it will put an end to every form of exploitation of one part of society by another…”
“11. Appointment of an adequate number of factory inspectors in all branches of the economy, and extension of the scope of supervision by factory inspectors to all enterprises employing wage labour, including government enterprises (the work of domestic servants also to be subject to this supervision); appointment of women inspectors for those branches in which female labour is employed; participation by elected representatives of the workers, paid by the state, in checking on the enforcement of factory legislation, and also in establishing wage-rates and in the accepting or rejecting of material and of work done…
“15. Establishment in all branches of the economy of industrial tribunals, composed of an equal number of representatives of the workers and of the employers.
“16. The organs of local self-government to be made responsible for setting up offices (labour exchanges) to arrange for the employment of workers, both local and newly-arrived, in all branches of production, with participation in the running of these offices by representatives of the workers’ organisations.”

The program does not call for immediate expropriation of all employers, but it does call for social over private ownership of the means of production.  This makes the program socialist and in irreconcilable contradiction to any capitalist platform.  Their restraint with regard to the immediate transfer of all wealth, they put forward in order to maintain social peace after the revolution.  The workers would take the power through the work of elected inspectors that would decide wages, accept or reject work, and also enforce regulations.  Labor contract violations would become criminal.

Under a capitalist government, these demands would never reach the desk of the executive.  The specific resolutions listed here make socialist demands in a politically shrewd way so as to trap bourgeois “socialists” who really want to defend private ownership of the means of production through deliberately poor leadership of the revolutionary movement.

Trotsky more likely had Plekhanov in mind when criticizing the Bolshevik Program.  Plekhanov originally sided with Lenin, but he then later switched to the Menshevik position.  As a Menshevik, he supported a bourgeois-democratic revolution to establish capitalist rule.  They would accept an “Opposition” or reformist role within the new political system controlled only by capitalist parties.

Lenin’s opposition to social chauvinism deserves another mention.  In his April Theses, Lenin mentioned chauvinism 5 times in the concluding paragraphs, and 4 times in the final two paragraphs.  The greatest enemy of the revolution no longer brought opportunism but this new great threat.  Social chauvinism caused the old Bolshevik arguments against opportunism to miss the real target, bourgeois influence on socialist ideology.  The bourgeoisie used World War I to imprison socialists and demand conformity on its war policy.  Lenin, however, had prepared his party to grow powerful under conditions of extreme political persecution.