Lenin, Reid & Robinson vs. Iggy's Judgment

Paul Robinson openly contrasts Iggy's political judgment with that of Lenin and implicitly, our own little Lenin, Scott Reid (I prefer the original Kill him. Kill him dead. version): You don't turn down power True leaders have the ambition and sense of purpose to seize the levers of power at any opportunity -- it seems Michael Ignatieff does not
'Take power, you son of a bitch, when we offer it to you," a sailor shouted to Viktor Chernov in the midst of a massive demonstration in Petrograd in July 1917. Chernov was leader of the most popular party in Russia, the Socialist Revolutionary Party, and despite having the means to do so, he and his colleagues had refused to overthrow the ruling Provisional Government.

Others had fewer scruples. A month earlier, at the first Congress of Soviets, leading Menshevik politician Iraklii Tsereteli remarked, "In Russia at the present moment there is not one political party which would say, 'Give us the power in our hands'."

"Yes there is!" a heckler intervened. The heckler was Vladimir Lenin.

"Tsereteli said that there is no political party in Russia which would express its readiness to take upon itself the whole power," said Lenin, "I answer there is. No party can decline to do that, and our party does not decline. It is ready at any minute to take the whole power."

The audience laughed, but today everybody knows who Lenin was, while Chernov or Tsereteli have faded into obscurity.

One may wonder whether a hundred years from now anybody will have heard of Michael Ignatieff. At present, it seems unlikely.

In January of this year, the Liberal party had the chance to do what Lenin did, and seize power. It ducked the challenge. As Ignatieff said a few days ago, "I could be standing here as the prime minister of Canada. I turned it down."

His reasoning appeared to be that governing in coalition with the NDP would discredit the Liberal party, that the economic recession would make the Conservative government unpopular, and that a change of leadership would revitalize Liberal support. Together these factors would enable him to topple the Conservatives a year or two down the road and then win a majority to govern by himself.

Things have not gone according to plan. The latest opinion polls suggest that the Conservatives are poised to win yet another election, albeit probably with another minority. A Liberal majority seems most improbable, but last week Ignatieff ruled out governing in a coalition with other parties. This implies that he would rather that the Conservatives continued in office than that he shared authority with others. In turn, this leads one to doubt how much he really longs to control the levers of state.

Lenin understood the central fact of politics -- it is all about power. When you have a chance, you must seize it. As Shakespeare wrote, "There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune. ... And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures." Having turned down power, Ignatieff is about to discover that he may never get to hold it at all.

The very fact of having power fundamentally alters the dynamics of the political situation in favour of those who possess it. American author Ron Suskind reported a conversation with an official in the heyday of the Bush administration who told him, "when we act, we create our own reality." The quote inspired much derision, but the official was not entirely wrong. Governments do have the ability to shape events: they set the political agenda, determine the patterns of discourse, and dispense cash and patronage. Canadians might have said that they did not want a coalition, but once they had one, the situation would have changed fundamentally.

By ducking the chance when he had it, Ignatieff showed that he lacked that lust for power, that killer instinct, which distinguishes the Lenins of this world from the Chernovs and the Tseretelis and leaves the latter, as Trotsky said, "in the dustbin of history." Stephen Harper, by contrast, has that instinct in buckets, which is why he is prime minister now and Ignatieff is not, and why even if an election is held this autumn, he will probably still be prime minister this Christmas, while Ignatieff will still be languishing in political exile.

The great leaders of history combine immense personal ambition with a powerful sense of purpose, a strong belief in what they do, and a corresponding dislike of their political opponents, whose destruction they miss no opportunity to achieve. One senses none of this at present in the Liberal party or its leader. The Liberals chose Ignatieff because they believed he had charisma, not because he represented any political idea, any particular system of belief. Unfortunately, he has never given the impression of having deep and irreconcilable differences with his Conservative opponents, something which cannot be said in reverse.

Consequently, the necessary passion for power is absent. The Liberals must think more deeply about why they want power, and if the reasons are not sufficient to seize any opportunity which comes their way, they should reconsider why they are in politics at all.

The sailors who had once backed Chernov and his Socialist Revolutionaries eventually lost patience and switched their allegiance to somebody with the passion to act. After all, why should anybody back a party which cares so little for its supporters that it refuses to govern on their behalf?

"History will not forgive us if we do not seize power," Lenin said. That may yet prove to be Michael Ignatieff's political epitaph.

Paul Robinson is an associate professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa.