Wang Zhongru: The Political Differences Between Plekhanov and Lenin Regarding the October Revolution and Their Theoretical Roots
Plekhanov was the father of Russian Marxism and one of the founders of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. After 1903, he and Lenin developed serious differences over numerous issues, such as the party’s mode of organization, the nature of the First World War, and the party’s wartime strategy. Following the February Revolution of 1917, the greatest divergence between the two sides focused on whether to transform the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist revolution at the opportune time. Toward the October Revolution led by Lenin, Plekhanov was even more unsparing in his criticism. Nonetheless, except for polemics on a few special occasions, Lenin’s attitude toward Plekhanov generally managed to seek truth from facts and remain objective and fair. He even called upon "young Party members" to understand Plekhanov, stating: "one cannot become a conscious, real Communist without studying—and I mean studying—everything Plekhanov has written on philosophy, for it is the best of all international Marxist literature," and remains "required reading as a textbook of communism."
A comprehensive survey of Plekhanov’s writings around the period of the October Revolution and Lenin’s theoretical innovations in his later years reveals a clear distinction between the two: Plekhanov was not a revolutionary, but a theorist and propagandist unskilled at applying theory to guide practice; Lenin was not only a theorist and propagandist who could advance with the times, but more importantly, a man of action capable of seizing and fully utilizing the social pulse in a timely manner to advance the revolution. Lenin’s extraordinary ability to link theory with practice established his immortal status in the history of the international communist movement. Reviewing the final divergence of opinion between these two figures offers important insights for enhancing the theoretical cultivation of Communist Party members and their ability to apply theory to solve practical problems.
I. Plekhanov’s Negation of the Democratic Dictatorship of Workers and Peasants and the October Revolution
From February 23 to March 2, 1917, the Russian bourgeois revolution achieved victory. Based on the new domestic and international situation, Lenin proposed the famous April Theses. Comprising ten articles, the core proposition was the second: "The specific feature of the present situation in Russia is that the country is passing from the first stage of the revolution—which, owing to the insufficient class-consciousness and organisation of the proletariat, placed power in the hands of the bourgeoisie—to its second stage, which must place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants." Plekhanov, who returned to Russia almost simultaneously with Lenin, likewise participated in various political and social activities with an aged body but an excited spirit, publishing writings totaling over 380,000 characters in just one year. However, the theme of his socio-political activities and theoretical creative work was opposition to the democratic dictatorship of workers and peasants and the October Revolution proposed by Lenin, an opposition he maintained until his death in May 1918.
In response to Lenin’s April Theses, Plekhanov wrote the famous "Talk on Lenin’s Theses and Why Delirium is Occasionally Interesting," negating Lenin’s main points. He first cited Marx’s famous thesis from the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy as a theoretical basis: "At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or—this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms—with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution." On this basis, he elucidated his own view: "This means that it is by no means possible to transition from one mode of production to another, higher mode of production at any given time; for example, one cannot transition from the capitalist mode of production to the socialist mode of production at just any time. Marx goes on to say directly in this preface that no social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society." Evidently, Plekhanov’s latter sentence stems from Marx's famous assertion: "No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society."
Plekhanov argued that Russian capitalism was still in an ascending phase and had not yet reached the stage of obstructing the development of productive forces. "If a country's capitalism has not yet reached that high stage where it hinders the development of its own productive forces, then calling upon the urban and rural workers and the poorest peasants to overthrow capitalism is absurd. If calling upon those people I have just listed to overthrow capitalism is absurd, then calling upon them to seize power is equally absurd." To demonstrate his point, Plekhanov again cited Engels: "The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government in an epoch when the movement is not yet ripe for the domination of the class which he represents and for the realization of the measures which that domination would imply."
In October 1917, the socialist revolution led by Lenin achieved victory. Plekhanov wrote An Open Letter to the Petrograd Workers, stating his attitude toward this major political event. After reviewing a lifetime of struggle for the cause of the liberation of the Russian proletariat, he proposed: "The events of the last few days pain me, not because I do not wish for the victory of the Russian working class, but precisely because I strive for it with all my might." Relying once more on Engels’s relevant discourses, he emphasized that the dictatorship of the proletariat must take highly developed productive forces as its prerequisite: "The greatest historical disaster for the working class is to seize power before it is prepared." Meanwhile, he also negated the October Revolution from the perspective of Russia’s class composition and his understanding of dictatorship: "In our population, the proletariat does not constitute the majority, but the minority. However, only when it constitutes the majority can it successfully implement a dictatorship." The peasant class comprised the majority of the Russian population, and the working class could obtain their support. "However, the peasants need land; they do not need to replace the capitalist system with a socialist system... In the future, when the peasants obtain the landlords' land, their economic activity will not develop in a socialist direction but in a capitalist direction... The peasants are completely unreliable allies for the workers in the cause of establishing a socialist mode of production." A dictatorship of the proletariat established under such conditions "will not be a dictatorship of the working class, but a dictatorship of a few dozen people." Plekhanov’s conclusions were: first, "for its own interests and those of the state, our working class is still far from being able to take all power into its own hands"; second, "if our proletariat, after seizing power, wishes to carry out a 'social revolution,' then our economy itself will cause it to suffer the most disastrous defeat"; finally, "if the conscious elements of the working class do not resolutely and decisively oppose the policy of power being seized by one class or—worse still—by one party, the consequences will be even more tragic."
The theoretical basis for Plekhanov's opposition to the democratic dictatorship of workers and peasants and the October Revolution reflects his understanding of Marx and Engels’s views on productive forces and the so-called "premature seizure of power." Regarding the former, Plekhanov repeatedly emphasized: "It is not at any specific time that society can be transformed according to socialist principles. The socialist system presupposes at least two indispensable conditions: (1) a high degree of development of productive forces (so-called technology); (2) a very high level of consciousness among the domestic laboring population. Where these two necessary conditions are not present, there can be no talk of organizing a socialist mode of production... what they can organize is only hunger." Regarding the latter, Plekhanov cited Engels’s discourse many times. In The Peasant War in Germany (1850), Engels took the peasant uprising led by Thomas Münzer in 1525 as an example, pointing out: "The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government in an epoch when the movement is not yet ripe for the domination of the class which he represents and for the realization of the measures which that domination would imply." Engels analyzed the experiences and lessons of the German peasant uprising at the level of general principles, including the degree of development of class antagonism, the maturity of material conditions for revolution, and the appropriate timing of revolution. His focus was not on what Plekhanov called "premature seizure of power," but on praising the "revolutionary tradition" and the revolutionary "tenacity and stamina" of the German people, encouraging the revolutionary fighting spirit of the German proletariat during a low tide in the revolution: "The Peasant War is not so far removed from our struggles of today, and the opponents we have to fight are for the most part the same," and "if the violent actions in the Peasant War have only recently... received the attention they deserve, this is by no means a merit of modern insurrections." It is clear that Plekhanov's citation was one-sided; it not only severed Engels’s overall viewpoint but ran counter to the main theme of Engels’s discourse. Using these distorted citations to criticize Lenin’s revolutionary propositions as "an extremely harmful insane attempt to scatter anarchist chaos on Russian soil," and even as "pseudo-revolutionary" or "counter-revolutionary," was a form of unreasonable political bigotry.
II. Plekhanov’s Political Proposals Regarding Class Cooperation
Regarding the First World War, Lenin, adhering to a position of proletarian internationalism, always believed it was a predatory imperialist war, and this remained true for Russia after the February Revolution. Plekhanov, however, believed that one side of the war—namely the "European democratic countries" such as Britain and France—were "teachers of the entire civilized world in the cause of successful political progress," while the other side—namely the Central Powers such as Germany—were "pillars of the semi-autocratic system and allied with Turkey, which truly represents social stagnation and political barbaric forces." He believed Russia was a victim of the war and strongly opposed Lenin’s revolutionary strategy of turning the imperialist war into a civil war and establishing a regime of the proletariat and poor peasants; instead, he advocated that all classes unite and work together to resist German aggression.
He told the working class that the government produced by the February Revolution was "not the government of any one social class," but this did not "unsettle him as one who has long adhered to the proletarian viewpoint." On the contrary, "the most fortunate thing for the contemporary Russian proletariat is that now, in the struggle to defend the new system, its class interests coincide with the interests of all those residents who want to destroy the remnants of the old system forever." The Russian proletariat should "lead all those classes and strata among the population whose interests would be destroyed by the restoration of the old system," and should "give priority" to the "viewpoints that unite itself with them" rather than "viewpoints of going one's own way." He appealed to "conscious workers" not to present the bourgeoisie with "those conditions which are clearly unacceptable to the economic nature of this class"; if "very high demands are made," and "realizing these demands would make continuing to run the enterprise aimless (from the capitalist’s point of view), then the enterprise will close, the workers will not receive wages, and hunger will appear in the country." He strove to prove theoretically that under specific conditions, "it is entirely possible for the interests of wage laborers to coincide with the interests of entrepreneurs," and "in cases where these two types of interests coincide and both sides understand this point, what occurs is not class struggle, but class cooperation." He was deeply convinced that the proletariat had become the key force determining Russia’s development, even the "master of the situation." Because of this, he hoped the proletariat "can understand the greatness and the extreme difficulty of the task of the enviable historical role it is to play," and hoped it "would not commit those errors that require a heavy price and would particularly harm itself," and hoped it would "easily deal with excessive high expectations."
Regarding the peasantry, he argued that their desire to "turn all state, monastic, church, and private lands into the property of the people, to be distributed for the use of laborers without compensation and on an egalitarian basis" was incorrect: "Among private lands, those of the landlords are naturally the most extensive. Yet, currently, many peasants also hold private landed property. In most cases, these holdings are very small. Do you intend to seize the lands of these private owners without compensation? In my view, this is neither just nor advantageous... You would run the risk of turning them into enemies of our new system." For Large-scale landowners, he argued, "Once his land is requisitioned without compensation, he becomes a pauper... Without money, he will inevitably fall into poverty. The same will apply to the vast majority of other private landholders... For Russia to manufacture paupers... is contrary to your interests and likewise contrary to the interests of the entire country. Therefore, a certain compensation should be paid to the private landowners. Naturally, the sum would not be large: Russia is too poor to pay millions to the large landowners, especially since those estates were obtained by their ancestors for services that had nothing to do with the welfare of the people." Obtaining land was the urgent aspiration of the Russian peasantry and one of the primary drivers of the Russian Revolution. Plekhanov knew these propositions would inevitably meet with peasant opposition, yet he stubbornly maintained they were "correct," calling upon the peasants as "victors" to be "magnanimous" and to treat their ancestral enemies with "the heart of a lion rather than the heart of a jackal."
He instructed the bourgeoisie that if Russia were defeated, "the German bourgeoisie would gain much from it, while the Russian bourgeoisie would lose much." He noted, "Our industrial and commercial class has loudly announced through the mouths of its leaders its intention to struggle against the democrats," and that it "has reason to grumble" because the "democrats have made many mistakes"—yet the class itself was not without fault, for "many of the workers' errors have their roots in the unjust and unreasonable actions of the entrepreneurs." He argued, "Our industrial and commercial class has developed to the stage where it can be required to possess a conscious spirit," the "most fundamental and primary characteristic" of which "is the ability to treat one's own actions with a critical eye." The Russian bourgeoisie had to realize that due to the "unhealthy environment of the autocracy," "our industrialists and merchants have developed various habits that are not only ill-suited to satisfying the needs of the broader strata of the population, but are even ill-suited to satisfying the correctly understood interests of industry and commerce." They must further realize that while the proletariat had begun to move toward maturity and was able to correctly understand its own interests, Russia had not yet developed to the point of replacing the capitalist mode of production with a socialist one; therefore, the bourgeoisie "must as quickly, loudly, and resolutely as possible announce its readiness to accept the legitimate demands of the working class." He called on the bourgeoisie to formulate a "program of reform consistent with the interests of the working class," because a "conscious, comprehensive, planned, and sincere agreement between these two great classes" was the "way of salvation" for Russia, while those who "refuse to understand this truth" were "utopians."
He criticized the Socialist-Revolutionaries [5] and the majority of the Mensheviks as being inconsistent democrats—tactically "half-Marxist and half-anarcho-syndicalist," or "half-Leninist." "As Marxists, contrary to Lenin, they proved that the current revolution must necessarily have a bourgeois character. Yet as anarcho-syndicalist, they acted alongside Lenin to make the worker masses increasingly inclined toward the idea of possibly bypassing the capitalist period." This so-called "anarcho-syndicalism" meant "disregarding the objective logic of events"; it "treated with extreme contempt those socialists who, following Marx, repeated the thesis that even when a society has discovered the track of the natural laws of its development, it can neither leap over the natural stages of its development nor abolish these stages by decree." Plekhanov regarded himself as a Social-Democrat who truly understood scientific socialism. Since Russia had not yet developed to the stage where socialism could be realized, it "must more or less fully implement what socialists call their minimum program [6]," which "is precisely intended to be realized gradually within capitalist society." Since "the Russian working class is far from mature enough to rule politically, an agreement with the bourgeoisie was originally absolutely necessary." However, "some of our democrats, while openly admitting that Russia is currently undergoing a bourgeois revolution, simultaneously use all their strength to effectively neutralize the influence of the bourgeoisie. These democrats are inconsistent... A bourgeois system without a bourgeoisie, a capitalist mode of production without capitalists—these are inconceivable. The representatives of our industrial and commercial class have not only the right but the duty to demand that their hands not be tied." He maintained that "a system of broad social reform formulated through a well-considered agreement between the revolutionary democrats and the industrial and commercial bourgeoisie is the best means of struggling against the spread of utopian slogans among the Russian proletariat."
In short, Plekhanov’s primary views on the class question in the final year before his death were: that the proletariat was still small in number and should not seize power prematurely but should unite with the bourgeoisie to consolidate the political liberties won in the February Revolution; that Russia remained in the stage of capitalist revolution and capitalism still had ample room for development; that seizing state power would be detrimental to the development of the proletariat and to Russia as a whole; and that "all power to the Soviets" was an error, as were the "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry" [7] and the socialist revolution. Instead, power should be held jointly by the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to develop capitalism, with the socialist revolution initiated only after conditions had matured. "Since we must still go through a fairly long period of capitalist development, it should be remembered that this process is two-sided, in which the proletariat will act on one side and the bourgeoisie on the other. If the proletariat does not wish to harm its own interests, and the bourgeoisie does not wish to harm its own, then these two classes should seek ways to reach an agreement economically and politically bona fide (in good faith; sincerely)." The various social classes "must unite for the interests of the state and the cause of the revolution."
III. Lenin’s Philosophical Argument for the Rationality of the October Revolution
The October Revolution opened a new era in human history. However, the theoretical and political disputes that arose during the October Revolution and its preparation existed not only between different socialist currents and theoretical leaders within and outside Russia, but also within the Bolshevik party itself. Not to mention Kautsky and others whom Lenin regarded as representatives of revisionism and opportunism, even prominent Marxist leaders of the Left like Rosa Luxemburg, while affirming the general premise of the October Revolution, raised many objections to specific post-revolutionary tactics. A failure to thoroughly understand the October Revolution was, to some extent, a widespread phenomenon at the time. As Lenin stated in his "Letter to the Congress," it was "of course, not accidental" that Zinoviev and Kamenev publicly opposed the October Revolution, "but it would be as little justifiable to blame them for it personally." [8] Therefore, providing a full elucidation of the rationality of the October Revolution was a major theoretical and practical task facing Lenin, as well as the theoretical cornerstone for ensuring the smooth progress of socialist construction. In January 1923, Lenin provided a concise and powerful answer in works such as "Our Revolution."
Lenin first criticized: "Our small-bourgeois democrats, as well as all the heroes of the Second International, are as pedantic as can be"; "they all call themselves Marxists, but their understanding of Marxism is pedantic to a degree that is beyond belief. They have completely failed to understand what is decisive in Marxism, namely, its revolutionary dialectics." These "small-bourgeois democrats," in terms of the class interests they represented, included socialist currents such as the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. "The characteristic of the small-bourgeois democrats is a loathing of class struggle, the fantasy that one can do without it, and an effort to mitigate, reconcile, and blunt its sharp edges." Plekhanov can be included in the ranks of the small-bourgeois democrats; their failure to understand the Russian Revolution—especially the October Revolution—was rooted in their failure to understand Marx’s revolutionary dialectics. Lenin frequently cited the example Marx had once envisioned—a "combination of a German peasant war with the workers' movement"—to illustrate the practical application of revolutionary dialectics. On April 14, 1856, Engels wrote to Marx, noting that because of the unprecedented prevalence of capital speculation in Germany, a "collapse" was inevitable that would be "unprecedented," with "all the elements already present," being "violent, intense, and universal, involving all the propertied and ruling social strata." On April 16, Marx clearly proposed in his reply to Engels: "The whole thing in Germany will depend on the possibility of backing the proletarian revolution by some second edition of the Peasant War. Then the affair will be splendid." In the German social structure, the number of peasants was far greater than in Britain or France. They suffered exploitation both from developed capitalism and from the remnants of feudal forces preserved by the insufficiency of capitalist development. Given the glorious revolutionary tradition of the German peasantry, Marx did not rigidly adhere to the general principle that a proletarian revolution must succeed only in a country where the proletariat constitutes the majority of the population; instead, he dialectically raised the question of the role of the German peasantry in the proletarian revolution. Lenin attached great importance to this thought of Marx, taking it as one of the direct theoretical foundations for the Russian proletarian revolution. Of course, Kautsky, Plekhanov, and others failed to see this.
Lenin then pointed out the practical manifestation of how "all our small-bourgeois democrats" and "all the heroes of the Second International" failed to understand revolutionary dialectics: "They have seen only one fixed path of development for capitalism and bourgeois democracy in Western Europe," and could not see or even imagine that there might be other paths. The First World War was an unprecedented war that was bound to bring about unprecedented changes to society and revolution. On the one hand, the destruction of capitalism by the war was unprecedented; even the most developed capitalist countries in the post-war years "had not yet been able to adjust 'normal' bourgeois relations," while "all our small-bourgeois democrats" and "all the heroes of the Second International" "have always regarded normal bourgeois relations as a limit," an "insurmountable limit" that must not be breached. On the other hand, "they are completely strangers to the idea that while the general laws of world-historical development do not in the least exclude special periods of development that manifest peculiarities in either the form or the sequence of development, they rather presuppose them." The concrete realities of Russia gave the Russian Revolution a peculiarity that distinguished it from "previous revolutions in Western European countries," yet this did not contradict "the general line of world development." A socialist society should, of course, have developed social productive forces as its objective economic premise, but this is merely a general truth. This "indisputable thesis" was not the "decisive point" for evaluating the Russian Revolution; what was decisive was the opportunity for the people—under complex revolutionary circumstances and "forced by a situation that offered no way out"—to "rise in struggle" to "win for themselves conditions that were not quite ordinary for the further development of civilization." There existed the realistic condition for the "union of a 'peasant war' with the workers' movement" mentioned by Marx, and the possibility of "creating the fundamental premises for the development of civilization by a method different from that of all other Western European countries." The general line of world-historical development was not changed by the peculiarity of the Russian Revolution. "Since a certain level of culture is required for the building of socialism... why should we not first begin by using revolutionary means to achieve the premises for this certain level, and then, on the basis of the workers' and peasants' power and the Soviet system, proceed to overtake other nations?"
Lenin’s discourse on the path of revolution and development in his late years serves as a classic example of the practical application of dialectical materialism. While the developmental level of the productive forces is indeed the decisive factor in social transformation and a fundamental tenet of historical materialism, the pathways to reaching a certain level are diverse and not confined to any specific model. Laborers are the most revolutionary element within the productive forces; their subjective initiative is closely linked to the state of development of those forces. Plekhanov repeatedly emphasized the low level of Russia’s productive forces, stressing that "the flour has not yet been ground in Russia out of which the socialist pie will eventually be baked" [9] and that socialism for Russia remained "a matter of the relatively distant future." He used these points to attack Lenin’s socialism as "having absolutely nothing in common with modern socialism." This demonstrates that he never considered the opportunity Lenin described—where the masses, "driven by a hopeless situation," would "rise up in struggle" to "win for themselves the unusual conditions for the further development of civilization." He never entertained the historical possibility of embarking on the socialist road without passing through the full development of capitalism. By treating the state of the productive forces as an absolute prerequisite for social change, he was himself violating the requirements of dialectics. "Our enemies have told us more than once that we are performing a rash act in implanting socialism in an insufficiently cultured country. But they were mistaken… we did not begin from the end that was prescribed by theory (the theory of all kinds of bookworms); our political and social upheavals proved to be the precursors of that cultural transformation, 그 cultural revolution, which we now face." [10] That is to say, political and social transformation provided the conditions for the emergence of a new social formation. "But this cultural revolution presents incredible difficulties for us, both from a purely cultural aspect (for we are illiterate) and from a material aspect (for to be cultured we must achieve a certain development of the material means of production, must have a certain material base)." This is the dialectics of revolution, which Plekhanov and others failed to understand.
IV. The Erroneous Methodological Roots of Plekhanov
At a historical juncture of drastic revolutionary turning points, and under extremely complex domestic and international conditions, Plekhanov ceased to be a clear-headed Marxist theorist. Instead, like the utopian socialists of history, he became a seemingly impartial "prophet" who exhorted both the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to make concessions. Naturally, his views were not accepted by any class or stratum possessing actual power, nor did they exert any influence on the actual historical process. He frequently cited Marx and Engels’ statements on certain issues without providing further induction or explanation, attempting to demonstrate the correctness of his propositions but unable to do so. This is a tragedy; history abandoned him.
The tragedy of Plekhanov’s late years has deep methodological roots. He repeatedly stressed adherence to the general principles of dialectical materialism and recalled Engels' warning to him: "You must use your greatest strength to avoid dogmatism." In handling the relationship between ends and means, he believed that revolution itself was not the end, but a means to achieve proletarian liberation. Any means "is not important in itself, but is important only insofar as it serves the end. Once it no longer serves the end, it must be rejected and replaced by another means." To reverse this principle and "serve that god called dogmatism would be a particularly grievous sin for us." He accused Lenin and the Bolsheviks’ propositions of being essentially "built on a purely dogmatic understanding of socialist principles," claiming that "a lack of dialectics is precisely their main characteristic." According to him, "people reason according to the formula 'yea is yea, nay is nay; whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.' [11] They are unable to study the transformation of one concept into another; for them, nuances of thought do not exist. They chop away recklessly, sometimes even cutting off the very branch they intend to sit on." Plekhanov grasped the core of theoretical dialectics—the transformation of concepts—but he failed to understand Engels' critique of the thinking style that "makes things conform to" concepts or "measures things by concepts." Nor did he understand Lenin’s discourse on grasping the "essence of things" by starting from "experience" and "historico-economic" processes rather than from "legal definitions derived from 'general concepts.'" He could not see the practical foundation of conceptual transformation and failed to correctly understand the dialectics of practice. For him, dialectics ceased to be a guide to action for transforming the objective world and instead became an intellectual obstacle to revolution.
Plekhanov was not wrong to emphasize starting from reality, nor was he wrong to emphasize the understanding and application of dialectics. Even from the perspective that Russia's capitalist mode of production was still in an ascending stage, his call for compromise and alliance between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat was not wrong in an abstract sense. His error lay in emphasizing "reality" in words while failing to understand or even violating reality in his tactical actions. He could not correctly use the dialectical, scientific method he advocated to understand the concrete reality of Russia's underdeveloped capitalism, the intricate contradictions intertwined with domestic and foreign wars, or the relationship between subject and object against this backdrop. In particular, he could not imagine the immense role of human subjective initiative under specific conditions. As some scholars have noted, the Marxist philosophy (philosophical materialism) interpreted by Plekhanov emphasized especially "the idea that matter determines consciousness," but left no room for the initiative of the revolutionary subject. It could not "provide a theoretical basis for the legitimacy of the Bolsheviks' practice in advancing the Russian proletarian revolution." On the one hand, he emphasized that everything depends on conditions such as time and place, stating that "scientific socialism does not recognize the possibility of absolutely solving practical problems. A fondness for absolute solutions is a characteristic of utopian socialism." On the other hand, he turned fundamental Marxist principles and specific views—such as social existence determining social consciousness, the productive force prerequisites for socialism, and the idea that natural stages of development can neither be leaped over nor abolished by decree—into unshakeable, absolute dogmas. On the one hand, he ignored the violent conflict of class interests during the war years, firmly believing he stood on the ground of the "Fatherland's" survival and painstakingly appealing for mutual understanding and concessions among classes, transforming himself into a shouter of "universal love" like a bourgeois Enlightenment thinker. On the other hand, he was not entirely without faith in powerful material force; he called upon the "majority of the democrats" to suppress the "minority who have usurped the name Bolshevik" ("the Leninists") for creating "internal strife" and "inciting civil war" within the ranks of the revolutionary democrats, because "wherever criticism begins with weapons, the weapon of criticism becomes powerless." On the one hand, he acknowledged the leading role and key function of the proletariat in the historical process; on the other hand, he demanded that the proletariat voluntarily relinquish the state power that best embodied hegemony [12], opposing the establishment and implementation of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Due to these methodological deviations, Plekhanov fell into a mire of self-contradiction from which he could not extricate himself.
In the history of modern thought, Hegel’s self-contradiction is typical: the system he constructed ended in a certain absolute truth, yet his method (dialectics) recognized nothing as absolute. Plekhanov’s encounter is similar to Hegel’s: he intellectually opposed dogmatism and emphasized dialectics, yet in action, he clung tightly to certain views of Marx and Engels, practicing dogmatism and non-dialectics. Because of his own self-contradiction, all he saw were the "contradictions" of others: Since it is a bourgeois revolution, how can there be no participation by the bourgeoisie? Since the revolution is to create conditions for the development of capitalism, how can there be no bourgeoisie? "A capitalism without capitalists" was for him a "startling logical irrationality" and reflected a "series of contradictions in the tactical system." In his view, "the requirements of logic" dictated that "it is impossible to have a capitalist revolution without the participation of the bourgeoisie" and "impossible to have capitalism without capitalists." He also emphasized that "according to the doctrine of Social Democracy, the dictatorship of the proletariat is possible and desirable only when wage-workers constitute the majority." He used this to oppose the dictatorship of the proletariat, pitting "the dictatorship of the majority" against "the dictatorship of the minority," revealing his unfamiliarity with the dialectics of the relationship between the majority and the minority, and between the masses and the leaders. Lenin pointed out: "'Dictatorship of the party or dictatorship of the class? Dictatorship of the leaders (the party of the leaders) or dictatorship of the masses (the party of the masses)?'—The very way the question is framed is proof of an incredibly and hopelessly muddled state of mind... Everyone knows that the masses are divided into classes... as a rule and in most cases—at least in modern civilized countries—classes are led by political parties; political parties, as a general rule, are directed by more or less stable groups comprising the most authoritative, influential and experienced members, who are elected to the most responsible positions, and are called leaders." [13] The logic was so obvious, yet was it not absurd for Plekhanov to oppose the "dictatorship of the working class" against the "dictatorship of a few dozen people"? Even if the working class constituted the majority of the population, the dictatorship of the proletariat is not realized by every member of the proletariat; "the Party absorbs the vanguard of the proletariat, and this vanguard realizes the dictatorship of the proletariat." This is the general principle regarding the dictatorship of the proletariat as expounded and practiced by Lenin.
In “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder, Lenin mentioned Plekhanov in passing while criticizing Kautsky and others: "They have themselves studied and taught others Marx’s dialectics... but in their application of this dialectics they have committed such an error, or have proved in practice to be such non-dialecticians, such people as are unable to estimate the rapid change of forms and the rapid filling of old forms with new content, that their fate is not much better than that of Hyndman, Guesde and Plekhanov. The fundamental cause of their bankruptcy was that they were 'spellbound' by one particular form of development of the working-class movement and the socialist movement, they forgot its one-sidedness, they were afraid to see the sharp turn which was becoming inevitable in consequence of objective conditions, and they continued to repeat simple, rote-learned and at first sight incontestable truths, such as: three is more than two." Plekhanov achieved prolific success and made significant contributions to the study and dissemination of Marxist dialectical materialism. His deficiency lay in his shallow understanding of dialectics—or rather, staying only at the conceptual level: emphasizing only the objective dimension of revolution (economic power) while ignoring the subjective dimension; emphasizing only the universality of development while ignoring its particularity. A dialectic that stays at the conceptual level, without being integrated with complex real life and historical conditions—that is, with the dialectics of practice—is naturally hard-pressed to function as a guide to revolutionary action or an ideological weapon. In this regard, the criticism of Plekhanov by Bukharin—whom Lenin once criticized for not fully understanding dialectics—was quite apt: "G. V. Plekhanov was a bookish dialectician," and the crux was that in this dialectics, "there was not a bit of developing real life."
Until his death, Plekhanov sincerely believed he was a thorough Marxist with profound theoretical cultivation. He criticized Lenin for "never being a man who excelled in logic" and criticized other opponents, including Lenin, for "often calling themselves Marxists" when in fact they were "extremely backward in their cultivation of socialist theory." This accusation was, in fact, an accurate assessment of his own Marxist theoretical cultivation. It can be said that while the October Revolution opened a new era in human history, "Plekhanov (the co-author with Lenin of the Program of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party), the outstanding founder of Russian Marxism, completed his own tragic development." This is truly a historical irony worthy of deep reflection by all revolutionaries. Adhering to the integration of theory with practice, creatively applying dialectical and historical materialism, and correctly understanding the ever-changing and multifaceted reality of life constitute the methodological guarantee for the smooth advancement of the cause of socialist revolution and construction. This is also the important revelation left to posterity by the divergence of opinions between Plekhanov and Lenin regarding the October Revolution.