Vladimir Lenin, Statement at the Seventh Party Congress. March 8, 1918

Original Source: Protokoly s"ezdov i konferentsii vsesoiuznoi Kommunisticheskoi Partii (b) Sedmoi s"ezd (Moscow: Gos. izd-vo, 1928), pp. 144-50.

Comrades! The question of changing the name of the party has been before us ever since April 1917 and has brought forth a great deal of discussion ... leading to almost complete unanimity ... The Central Committee now proposes to change the name ... to Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik). The word "Bolshevik" is necessary ... I . because it has acquired a certain political significance both in Russia and abroad ... The term "Social-Democratic Party" is scientifically inaccurate and our press has already called attention to that fact.

When the workers formed their own government they came to see that in the process of revolutionary development the old conception of democracy, bourgeois democracy, has been left behind. We have arrived at a democracy which existed nowhere in Western Europe. The nearest thing to it was the Paris Commune, which, according to Engels, was, not a state in the proper sense of that term. In so far as the tolling masses themselves undertake to govern a state and to organize military force for the support of that state, to that extent the special government machinery ... and the state compulsion apparatus disappears. We cannot therefore stand for a democracy in its old form. On the other hand, in undertaking socialist reforms, we should clearly formulate the object toward which these reforms are aiming. That object is to create a communistic society and not merely to expropriate factories, shops, land, and other means of production or to introduce strict accounting and control over production and distribution. We must go beyond that and realize the principle: from each one according to his ability and to each one according to his needs. That is why the name--Communist Party-is the only scientifically correct name ... The most important reason for changing the name of the party is the fact that the old official socialist parties in the leading European countries have not yet broken away from the spirit of chauvinism and patriotism which has led to the complete crash of European socialism ... Now almost all official socialist parties stand in the way of the workers' revolutionary socialist movement ... Our party, which at the present time has without doubt and in an extraordinary measure the good will of the toiling masses of all countries ... should come out with a ... clear and straightforward statement that it has broken with the old official socialism. The change of name of the party will serve as the best means of attaining that end.

The most difficult question is the theoretical part of our program ... Two points of view are in evidence ... One, of which I am the protagonist, maintains that there is no reason to discard the old theoretical part of our program ... All that is necessary is to add a description of imperialism as the highest stage in the development of capitalism, and then--a description of the era of the socialist revolution, which is now in progress ...

The second point of view ... that of Comrade Bukharin and Comrade V. Smirnov ... maintains that it is necessary to remove part of the old program which deals with the evolution of industrialism and capitalism ... and substitute the later stages of capitalism, viz., imperialism, emphasizing at the same time the impending transition to the social revolution.

I do not think that the two standpoints are so radically divergent, but I shall insist on my own point of view ...

Our next task must be to describe the Soviet type of state. I believe that the ... official socialists of Western Europe have perverted completely the Marxist conception of the state. The experience of the Soviet Revolution and the formation of Soviets in Russia are remarkable proofs of this fact. There is no doubt that much in our Soviets is of a primitive and unfinished character ... but, from the point of view of the historical development toward socialism, the important thing is that we have here an entirely new type of state ...

We have made only a start in Russia and our start may be a bad one ... We must show the European workers concrete evidence of the kind of job we have undertaken ... They will see a concrete plan for achieving socialism and they will say to themselves: "The Russians are doing a splendid thing, they are doing it badly, so let us do it better." ...

I. The Congress resolves that henceforth the name of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party ("Bolshevik") is changed to Russian Communist Party with the addition of the word "Bolshevik" in parentheses.

2. The Congress resolves to change the program of our party either by revising the theoretical part or supplementing it with material relating to the epoch of imperialism and the new era of the international socialist revolution.

3. The political sections of our program should be changed so as to bring out in relief the peculiar characteristics of the new type of state, the Republic of Soviets, which embodies the dictatorship of the proletariat and which takes up the work of the international workers' revolution begun by the Paris Commune.

4. The program should indicate that, in case ... of a setback, our party will not refuse to make temporary use of bourgeois parliamentarism. In any case and tinder all circumstances the party will work for a Soviet Republic as the highest type of democratic government and as the most appropriate form of the dictatorship of the proletariat by means of which the yoke of the exploiters can be broken and their opposition crushed.

5. The economic, agrarian, educational, and other parts of our program should be gone over in the same spirit. Stress should be laid ... on the tasks already begun ..., the immediate problem facing the Soviet Government and the consequences of the measures already undertaken toward the expropriation of the expropriators.

6. The Congress authorizes a committee of seven (Lenin, Bukharin, Zinoviev, Trotsky, Stalin, Sokolnikov, and V. Smirnov) to undertake without delay the formulation of our new program in accordance with the above suggestions and to adopt it as the party program.

Until the last [Seventh] congress our party was called the Social Democratic Party. Throughout the world all parties of the working classes bore this name. The war, however, created a split in the ranks of the Social-Democratic parties and now we find three distinct groups an extreme Right, a Center, and an extreme Left.

The Social-Democrats of the Right are real traitors to the working classes. They lick ... the boots of generals stained with workingmen's blood ... Of these gentlemen there is a large number in France and England ...

The second group is the Center. It agitates against existing governments but is incapable of carrying on a revolutionary struggle. It cannot make up its mind to call the workers into the streets. It fears like fire the armed struggle which alone can decide the question.

Finally there is the third group-that of the Extreme Left. Germany this group is represented by Liebknecht and his friends ...

In Russia where in November the revolutionary struggle ... set at stake the establishment of socialism and the overthrow of the bourgeois power, the struggle between the socialist-traitors and the protagonists of socialism had to be decided by force of arms. The Socialist-Revolutionaries of the Right and the Mensheviks were on one side of the barricades with all the counter-revolutionary swine; the Bolsheviks were on the other side with the workers and the soldiers. Blood has created a gulf between us. This is not and never will be forgotten. It is why we had to give our party another name, to distinguish us from these traitors of socialism ...

Source: V. I. Lenin, Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1934), Vol. XXVII, pp. 140-141.