6/8/49
Dear J:
Those Stalinist barbarians, M-E-L Institute in 1939, excluded from their publication of Lenin's "Notebooks on Imperialism":1 "a small number of materials... as having no direct relation to the theme". And who decided they had no relation to the theme? And what were they? Could it have possibly been notes on Phenomenology? But the philosophical notes, published separately as we know, are generally referred to by the editors as being found there, for ex., the one on "Marx and Hegel" by Plenge, whom Lenin calls "an arch-scoundrel". Also excluded from the Imperialist Notebooks are "some materials relating to the Imperialist war, 1914-1918, to the extent that these latter, according to the plan of the Marx-E-L Institute will come out in a separate sbornik". As I cannot get hold of the Sborniki here I do not know whether latter have been published. It may not since it is clear from the Notebooks that actually the WWI is included for the Imperialist Notebooks encompass not only what went into Imperialism, but also in the articles on the Fall of the 2nd Int., also on Kautskyism, also on the Self-Determination question, etc. (see below), and hence these particular ones must have been kept out for other reasons. The date of publication of the volume is 1939.
Lenin began the "Notebooks on Imperialism" in the middle of 1915 in Berne and continued them in Zurich in 1916, evidently finished Imperialism there in July 1916, altho it wasn't published till April 1917. There are altogether 20 notebooks, 16 of which were numbered by Lenin with Greek letters, and one was entitled "Brailsford" (author of "War of Steel and Gold"), another "Marxism and Imperialism" (contains latest materials on Marx & Engels found by Mehring), still another "Egelhaff" (author) and one entitled "Materials on Persia". In addition the one entitled "From the Notebook 'Austria soc. statistics' & others" must be the one which included the question of the war; in any case it is incomplete. Finally there is one entitled "Individual (Separate) Notes, 1912-1916". The Notebooks fill up 693 pages; they include quotations from 148 books (106 Ger., 23 Fr., 17 Eng. and 2 in Rus. tr.) and this means it does not include those books which we have no quotations, for ex., Phenomenology. Also there are quotations from 232 articles (205 Ger., 13 Fr. and 12 Engl.) that had been published in 49 different periodicals (34 Ger., 7 Fr., and 8 English). They are extremely rich, covering the field economically (including Annals of Am. Academy of Pol. & Social Science), philosophically (below), politically, including the attitude of American socialists to Negroes AND outline of article he intended to write on Trade Unions (and bureaucracy, see below)! I must take back the remark about Taylorism in my previous letter; Lenin had covered the first books on that too! The question of dialectics runs through all of them, and particularly so the question of the transformation of one thing into its opposite.
Now in the very first notebook, p. 3, there appears the following:
"From the p h i l o s o p h i c books of the Zurich c a n t o n a l library: GGideon Spicker: 'About the Relationship of Natural Science to Philosophy' (esp. versus Kant and Lange's 'History of Materialism, 8'. Berlin 1874.Hegel. 'Phenomenology' (Bolland ed. 1907)."
Then in the second notebook, (p. 42) there is mentioned "Plenge: Marx and Hegel". There is an editorial note here referring to Lenin's Philosophic Notebooks and a brief resume appears in those Notebooks.
The Imp. Notebooks include, beside the material used in Imperialism, material which was later used in following articles:
Junius,2 the Fall of the 2nd Int.,3 a projected one on Kautskyism, some of the material for State and Revolution (called here "Marxism and the State" and incl. Marx on France, 1871, Ireland, 1870, Coming War, English workers, Engels in his later letters, and in his introduction to Marx's Cologne Trial, on opportunism of English workers, and something I never heard before: Can Europe Disarm?, which was published in 1893, which has material on army and militia and then VIL has another little piece on the subject in which he lists everyone from Engels to Liebenech and Luxemburg (evidently her Reform and Revolution in its complete edition had an appendix on the subject).
As he went on his way (incidentally he continued to collect material on imperialism even after the work was published, up to Feb. revolution) he made outlines of the work, in which it can be seen that "final stage" was called "latest stage", and what is a great deal more important, he was to have included a section on Taylor (That was when the book was projected to include also political question: Imperialism and Opportunism, Diplomacy and Foreign Politics, Imperialism and Democracy, The National Question in the epoch of Imperialism, and finally "Interweaving" (combined, r) versus "socialization", under which heading, after St. Simon and Marx, follows:
"Technical" Progress and pain (Qualerei)Taylor and "study of the movement" 70-77
Then, when he plans the titles of the chapters, under Chapter X, the final, section III is entitled "Imperialism as a transitional or dying capitalism", but then there appears, evidently as a variant,
"III. Combination versus socialisation.Saint-Simon and Marx - Rieser about the rapidity of growth.- Transition to what? (84 we had it once already) Taylor here?"
As we know the last chapter, and that variant is there too, was instead entitled "The Place of Imperialism in History". We can now more fully appreciate his remark in the introduction to the work: "We are going to attempt to show, briefly and in the simplest way, the connection between and the reciprocal relations of the chief economic features of capitalism. We shall not pause on aspects of the question, other than economic, whatever their importance". Taylorism did not become a chief factor till 1920, and not a dominant one till the depression.
In getting rid of Kautskyism he went back also to his work on Religion, which he did not like, to put it mildly, he calls Kautsky a scoundrel when he attempts to make religion a "private matter". At the end of that (I believe it was because the Socialist paper in America was Kautskyian: he refers to that fact once) he writes: "Socialist party and Negroes in America. p. 382-3 (the page must refer to Kautsky's book on religion, r): "Industrial Workers of the World" is for Negroes. The Relationship of the Socialist party "is not entirely unanimous". One proclamation for Negroes in 1901. Only!!!
Ibidem. p. 592. in the state of Mississippi the socialists organized Negroes "in separate local groups"!! Finally, among the separate notes, which the editor says was written in 1912 or 1913, there is the following:
PLAN FOR ARTICLE ON TRADE UNIONS
1. Rise of prices. Plunder. "Strike". Pigeonbreeders ... Mark the 2nd and liberals.2. Trade Unions ("world phenomenon" in Europe (America) and Russia- a) development of production- b) home market. Farmer and peasant poverty- c) situation of the workers. Lawlessness.- d) political freedom3. Trade unions and "bureaucratism"4. Trade unions, oil and sugar versus landlords... (union of landlords)5. Trade unions and the Urals...6. Chinovnik liberalism (or liberal-chinovnik view) ("pogrom socialism") versus class struggle. Gov. carrion and life.7. Thiefs and mutual responsibility of thieves.7 bis. Capitalism and unions.8. Means:- (1) opening of the borders- (2) 20 min. in workers dwellings in coal & oil regions.- (3) government production and democratic conditions of control- (5) (4) labor unions and political freedom- (4) (5) questionnaire and public commission and full disclosure.
This plan was written on a single page with a document or rather outline of production and price of oil in America from 1900-1910.
I will try to translate other parts of the Notebooks as I go along.
R
1 Lenin, Notebooks on Imperialism, written 1912-1916, were published posthumously in 1938 in the magazine Proletarskaya Revolutsia, No.~9.
2 Lenin, The Junius Pamphlet (1916).
3 Lenin, The Collapse of the Second International (1915).