ne hundred days that shook Bavaria

September 3rd, 2017|anti-war, Corbyn, councils, Labour Party, peace, revolution, Visions|
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Kurt Eisner poster Stadtmuseum Munich

The Bavarian revolutions of 1918-1919 and those in the rest of Germany

were the first to take place in an advanced capitalist country. Inspired by the
Russian Revolution, whose centenary is marked this year, they challenged the
German state and the established political order.

What happened in Bavaria holds important lessons for those struggling for
system change today, while the role of the German SPD, the equivalent of the UK
Labour Party, in suppressing the revolutions in blood cannot be ignored,
especially as the prospects of a Jeremy Corbyn-led government grow.

German political thinker and leader Kurt Eisner was the inspirational personality
in Bavaria. His life was a compressed microcosm, shaped by the complex
experience of revolution in Bavaria and in Germany between 1917 and 1919.

It was a time described by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke himself under police
surveillance due to his friendship with Bavarian poet-revolutionary Ernst Toller: In
1918, in the moment of collapse Germany could have shamed and moved the
world through an act of deep truthfulness and reversal. Then I hoped for a
moment.

The events that convulsed Munich and surrounding Bavarian countryside

between 1918-1919 have been described as the forgotten revolution. This year,
the 150th anniversary of Eisners birth, Munichs Stadtmuseum has made a great
effort to fill this blank spot. Its tribute to the Bavarian Republics first prime
minister is a brilliantly designed and powerful way of placing Eisner and the
Bavarian revolutions on the map.

Eisner was born in Berlin in 1867 to a middle-class Jewish family. He began a

career as a journalist. His anti-government views led to his incarceration in 1898
for nine months in Pltzensee Prison. Whilst not sharing many of the Social
Democratic Partys philosophical ideas, he became a member on 1 December
1898, and joined the staff of its official newspaper.

He reproached official SPD party ideologists for pursuing a policy of

demonstrably doing nothing. As writer and peace activist Ingrid Scherf has
noted, the party leaders preached the revolution as something that would
happen as the natural order of things and as an historical inevitability due to
increasing class antagonism. Eisner criticised the revisionists for their
reluctance in breaking with the prevailing system.

His concept of democratic socialism, Scherf writes, pro-actively promoted a

culture of debate both within the party and with rival pressure groups. His
differences with the SPD leadership led to Eisners resignation from his job at
Vorwrts, the main party newspaper, in 1905.

Kurt Eisner before February 1918. Photo: Germaine Krull

Eisner initially sided with the SPDs pro-war political factions at the outbreak of
World War I. But within weeks, he changed his view and supported the anti-war
opposition in the SPD. In April 1917 he joined the newly-founded Independent
Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) which was in favour of immediate
peace.

The Russian Revolution of October 1917 led to the countrys exit from the war
and stimulated events in Germany and beyond. That winter, terrible military
losses on the Western front and food shortages aroused increased opposition to
the war in Bavaria as all around Germany.

In January 1918, Eisners call for strike action at the Krupps armaments factory in
Munich an astonishing feat for a frail intellectual personality in wartime
received warm support. He was arrested for his role there and, along with other
USPD militants was imprisoned.
Thanks to the USPD who wanted him as a candidate in the elections to the
Reichstag, Eisner was released some nine months later on October 14. Anti-war
feeling reached fever pitch in Bavaria. At mass meetings around Munich, Eisner
called for unity of the socialist parties, peace, bread, the eight hour day and
abdication of the monarchy.

Early in November, sailors on the German high seas fleet mutinied, refusing to
carry out orders to attack British ships. The anti-war revolt spread from Kiel to
Hamburg, Bremen and Lubeck, and now the flame spread south.

On 7 November some 60,000 people gathered on Munichs Theresienwiese (the

big field where the Oktoberfest is held nowadays) demanding peace, freedom
and an end to the war.

On the morning of November 8, Eisner and the USPD Independents took the
initiative. Eisner remained on the rostrum at the rally after right wing SPD leader
Erhard Auer, who had been against the peace demonstration, moved off with his
supporters. Felix Fechenbach, an invalided soldier, called on servicemen to
gather around Eisner. Along with the blind peasant leader Ludwig Gandorfer, they
led the crowd to the barracks.

Novelist Oskar Maria Graf, who took part in the events, described how the crowd
opened up the barracks, freed arrested men and stripped officers of their arms.
Revolutionaries occupied the railway station and other key buildings in Munich.

Meeting in the Mathser brewery, they organised a Constituent Soldiers, Workers

and Peasants Council. By midnight of November 8, the council (Rat) proclaimed
the founding of the Peoples Free State of Bavaria Freier Volkstaat Bayern.

Eisner was appointed first premier and governed with a cabinet in collaboration
with the independent self-governing councils (Rte), King Ludwig III was
deposed, thus ending the rule of the 738-year old Wittelsbach dynasty. Red flags
decorated the twin towers of Munichs great Catholic landmark, the Frauenkirche.

It was a bloodless revolution. A proclamation posted up overnight announced that

Bavaria was now a free state. It called for unity of the left and on the workers and
citizens of Munich to help self-govern and collaborate in the new freedom. For
the country as a whole, Eisners group called for a United States of Germany,
including Austria.

His 100-day government introduced the eight-hour day, the right to vote for
women and ended Catholic church supervision of schools. But it stopped short of
economic socialisation, saying that the productive forces of the country were
almost exhausted. The banks and major companies remained untouched.

Eisners cabinet included majority SPD leaders, as well as Independents and

prominent professors. Later that November, Eisner invited anarchist-socialist
theoretician and writer Gustav Landauer a friend of existential philosopher
Martin Buber to come to Munich to help as an orator in the transformation of
souls.
On November 9 the German Kaiser abdicated. Worried that Spartacist leader
Karl Liebknecht would declare German a Rterepublic (council) republic, SPD
leader Philip Scheidemann proclaimed that Germany was now a republic.

On 11 November, World War I came to an end. But the SPDs Ebert-

Scheidemann government in Berlin ensured that the worst representatives of the
old order occupy[ied] key posts in the foreign office and the foreign service, as
the new Bavarian ambassador to Berlin reported to Eisner.

Reich Chancellor Friedrich Ebert hated and feared the left socialist and
communist elements far more than those of the former Prussian state. On 10
November, he made a deal with General Wilhelm Groener, head of the German
High Command: the armed forces would be self-governing and Groener would be
in command of the officer corps. This pact, and a further deal with big business to
end strikes, prevent nationalisation and drive back the influence of the councils
deepened the split between the right and left wings of the SPD.

Revolutionary sailors occupying the courtyard of Berlin castle December 1918

In Bavaria, two overlapping administrative structures were in charge: the old civil
service and a growing network of workers, soldiers and peasants councils. By
December, 7,000 council bodies had sprung up around the country in cities
including Nrnberg, Frth, Wrzburg, Schweinfurt, Ingolstadt and Kempten. The
industrial centre of Augsburg was controlled by a workers and soldiers council,
chaired by 27-year-old teacher Ernst Niekisch.

In the 100 days of Eisners presidency, a conflict raged over the nature of the
state. Should it be a council republic or should there be elections for a
parliamentary democracy? Eisner tried to occupy an in-between position the
councils should have an advisory role vis--vis the to-be-elected parliament but
not an executive or legislative one. Meanwhile, he incurred the wrath of the
nationalists and militarists when he published secret documents revealing their
responsibility for the war.

Eisner, who reneged on his promise of land re-distribution, came under fire from
both the right and the left. The lack of support for the peasantry meant that
enthusiasm for the revolution was ebbing in the countryside. Right-wing SPD
leader Erhard Auer whom Eisner had appointed as Minister of the Interior led
calls for elections for a constitutional assembly. Eisner agreed to elections for a
Bavarian Diet on 12 January 1919.

Between Christmas and the New Year, tensions deepened between Auer and
Eisner, who tried to hold the factions together, and the Spartacist group, which
now formed the German Communist Party (KPD). So much so that, under
pressure, Eisner ordered the arrest of 10 left militants but soon rescinded it.

The election boycotted by the Spartacist-KPD saw a mass turn-out with many
voting for the first time. Women now had the vote and the voting age was down
from 25 to 21. The results were an disaster for Eisners USPD which received
only 2.5% of the votes. He was now on borrowed time: the mainstream press
called for his resignation; death threats and anti-Semitic cartoons were posted on
walls and in the right-wing press. He tried to strengthen his position by turning to
the councils.

On 16 February, 15,000 workers, soldiers and sailors demonstrated, headed up

by Eisner in an open car. Banners read: All power to the councils, Remember
Liebknecht and Luxemburg (who had been assassinated in Berlin on 15
January), Long live Lenin and Trotsky.
President Eisner with his wife surrounded by demonstrators, 16 February 1918. Poster reads:
Reaction is on the march long live the council system!

On 21 February, Eisner set out on the short walk to the Diet (Parliament) building,
escorted by two guards and his secretary Felix Fechenbach. He was about to
announce his resignation. Anton Graf (Count) von Arco auf Valley, an anti-
Semitic nationalist, stepped out of the shadows and shot Eisner dead. (Arco, who
survived his wounds from Eisners bodyguards, was released after three years in
a minimum security prison and treated as a hero, including by SPD leader Auer.)

Except amongst university students who cheered the news, Eisners death
sparked a collective communion with grief as all Munichs church bells tolled
and life came to a complete standstill.

The gulf between council rule headed by the Zentralrat (central council) and
the Diet (parliament) deepened as Bavaria became a state of dual power. The
congress of Bavarian councils met from 25 February in the same building as the
prorogued Diet. It was chaired by Ernst Niekisch, a left Social Democrat and a
supporter of the United Front, who tried to occupy the middle ground.

The spectre of a second revolution now began to haunt Munich. On the eve of
Eisners funeral on 26 February, a 5,000-strong crowd cheered Rudolf
Egelhofers call for the permanent dissolution of the Diet, the proclamation of a
Bavarian Soviet Republic, the establishment of diplomatic relations with Soviet
Russia and the arming of the workers and formation of a Bavarian Red Army.
Egelhofer, who had taken part in the sailors mutiny in the North Sea, soon
became Red Army commander.
 13 April 1919: After hours of combat Red Army units under Rudolf Egelhofer defeated the
Reichsgovernment troops

Under crisis conditions with food and finance running low powerful political
currents swirled in from outside Bavaria as the dual power situation continued.
On 21 March, a Soviet regime took power in Hungary, supported by Austrian
socialists. The conflict between the Diet and the Zentralrat deepened. Delegates
from all over Bavaria met in Augburg to discuss the Second Revolution. On April
7, USPD members of the Munich Workers and Soldiers council formed the first
Bavarian Council Republic, soon to be followed by a second later that month.
Activists included anarchist writer-poet Erich Mhsam and Ret Marut (B Traven).

The April 1919 events were a sharp to and fro between the forces of the old state
and those who sought to bring about a form of council power. The opponents of
the Weimar SPD were themselves divided.

Minister President and SPD chief Johannes Hoffmann, who had fled to Bamberg,
230 kilometres north of Munich, now tried to topple the Bavarian Soviet with a
military putsch on 13 April. This was defeated, thanks to the resistance of the Red
Army guards, under the leadership of Ernst Toller. Hoffmann now received the
support of Gustav Noske, the War Minister in Berlin, fresh from the bloody
crushing of the Spartacus insurrection. Some 35,000 troops now marched on
Munich to face no more than 12,000 Red Army soldiers.

The execution of 10 right-wing hostages by the Red Guards was used to

legitimise atrocities using the combined might of the Freikorps and Weimar
government troops. Some 600-1,000 civilians and revolutionaries were mown
down. Landauer and other leaders were brutally murdered. Spartacist women
were gunned down in Stadelheim prison. Eugen Levin, who led the 12 April
Soviet Republic, was shot by firing squad.

Historian Sebastian Haffner notes: The 1918 German Revolution was a social
democratic revolution which was brutally put down by Social Democratic leaders:
this was something that had never been seen in world history.

A century later and the challenges that Eisner and his comrades faced remain
with us in a new form. The old bourgeois political order is in crisis in all the major
capitalist countries. Liberal democracy has given way to a neoliberal
corporatocracy where state bodies play second fiddle to the demands of financial
markets and big business.

A Corbyn government that implemented radical, alternative policies would like

Eisner face the wrath of the state and, without doubt, the right-wing of the
Labour Party. Their loyalty is to the state and capitalism, not Corbyn and the
party.

Building a movement that unmasks the state for what it is and develops
strategies for a transition to deeper forms of democracy is essential. It is also the
best way to cherish Eisners memory and achievements.

Stadtmuseum Munich

Revolutionr und Ministerprsident Kurt Eisner (1867-1919) is at the

Stadtmuseum Munich until 8 October. Accompanied by curators guided tours.
The programme includes a reading from an autobiographical fragment by Hilde
Kramer, who took part in the revolution and eventually died in Britain. Co-curated
by Ingrid Sherf and Gnter Gerstenberg. With thanks to the Stadtmuseum press
and public relations office for their help.

Timeline of revolution in Bavaria

1918
31 January: Kurt Eisner arrested for organising strike at Munich Krupps munition
works
14 October: Eisner released
8 November: King Ludwig III deposed. Freistaat declared.
9 November: German Kaiser abdicates
11 November: Germany surrenders ending World War 1

1919

4 January: Bavarias Basic Law gives revolutionary regime legislative and

executive power
12 January: Elections to Bavarian constituent assembly. Defeat for USPD.
15 January: Liebknecht and Luxemburg murdered in Berlin
21 February: Eisner assassinated
17 March: new parliamentary government elected, led by SPD, led by Johannes
Hoffmann
7 April: First Council Republic announced by USPD: leaders include Ernst Toller,
Max Levien, Erich Mhsam
13 April: Hoffmann attempts military putsch against Bavarian revolution. Repelled
by Red Army
21 April: 2nd Council Republic under Eugen Levin
29 April: 10 hostages executed by Red Guards. SPD President Ebert gives order
to crush Bavarian Council Republic
1-3 May: White Terror: 39,000 Freikorps and Noske troops murder 600-1,000
revolutionaries and civilians, only 38 government soldiers died.

Russia 1917
How the revolution we need today prevailed then
BY CHRIS KINDER

Long disparaged and denounced as it is, the Russian Revolution of 1917 still demands our attention today. No
event in history was quite like the Russian Revolution, because no other event before or since has attempted to
change the motive force of history in the fundamental way that this event did. By forming the worlds first and
only lasting (if only for a few years) workers state, this revolution alone offered the promise of a world without
the endless class conflict that defined all previous history: a world based on genuine human cooperation; free of
exploitation, war, racism, sexism and national, ethnic and religious oppression. The promise of the Russian
Revolution embodied the true goals of the vast majority of humanity then, and yes, of humanity today. The fact
that this revolution soon was unraveled, betrayed and eventually destroyed only makes the lessons it holds for us
today more important to understand.
Like the Paris Commune before it, the Russian Revolution established the dictatorship of the proletariat as the
path to the eventual elimination of class-based society. But unlike the Commune, this revolution carved its way to
power not by trying to take over the institutions of the bourgeois state, but by an uncompromising insistence that
the working class take the power in its own name. Yet, that is not quite how it all began.
In February of 1917, a mass popular outpouring of women and men workers in Petrograd, exhausted, starved
and fed up with the war, and soon joined by rank and file soldiers, toppled the brittle and inept Tsarist regime
within a few days of strikes and street demonstrations. Workers councils (soviets) were immediately formed, but
their reformist leadership turned state power over to a bourgeois Provisional Government which sought to keep the
capitalists and landowners in power, and to continue Russias involvement in the world war, to which their class
was committed by finance and treaty.
 The masses had demanded more
The masses in the streetsworkers who had been peasants, and soldiers who were peasants in uniformhad
demanded much more. The women who led it off on International Womens Day shouted calls for bread to
address the chronic shortages of food for Petrograds workers, and shouts of down with the war were soon
everywhere in the streets. With the Tsar gone days later (after 300 years of autocracy, his own generals told him his
time was up), soldiers established committees which proclaimed equality and terminated both the rule of officers
and the death penalty in the military. Desertions from the trenches of the war with Germany, already high,
increased dramatically.
Workers demanded higher wages and workers control of production. Peasants in the countryside began to burn
the mansions of the landlords and seize the land. In short, the working people were putting forward their own
demands, for peace, land and bread: demands, which the bourgeoisie could not and would not accede to. It was a
stand off, known as dual power: the soviets had the masses, but the bourgeoisie, though weakened, still held the
reins of power.

The permanent revolution

In 2017the centennial year of the Russian Revolutionplagued as it is with a degenerate but still dominant
imperialist power in the throes of decline, and a world which seems embroiled in a Hobbesian nightmare 1 of
endless war, it is important to understand how the stand-off in Russias February evolved into a revolution, known
as the October Revolution, which established a workers state in Russia. The question of leadership was key, but
more than that, what were the principles upon which leadership operated to pull the masses together into a struggle
to put them in power? Here we need to look first of all at the theory of permanent revolution.
The Russian Revolution of 1917, under Lenin and Trotskys leadership, was nothing if not a confirmation of this
theory. The permanent revolution is a Marxist concept, which is just as vital today as it was in 1917. Permanent
revolution refers to the proposition that in the modern worldthat is, since the abolition of feudalism in Europe
the bourgeoisie is incapable of achieving even the most basic demands of a democratic revolution. The lessons of
the 1848 revolutions in Europe, as Marx and Engels made clear in their Address of the Central Committee To the
Communist League in 1850, were that the bourgeoisie, now empowered after the French Revolution and
Napoleonic wars, had become a brake on any further revolution in order to prevent the working-class masses from
becoming a threat to their property.
In the failed revolutions of 1848-49, the bourgeoisie had allied with its fellow propertied class, the aristocratic
landowners and other hangovers from feudalism, in order to prevent any concessions to the working masses. They
wanted to stop the revolution at their stage, i.e., with the bourgeoisie in power, regardless of the anti-democratic
compromises that required. What Marx and Engels so brilliantly concluded, is that the working-class would not
only have to complete the bourgeois revolution, but also needed to struggle independently to achieve its own
socialist and internationalist goals:
While the democratic petty bourgeois wish to bring the revolution to a conclusion as quickly as possible, and with the
achievement, at most, of the above demands [final abolition of feudalism and of laws against usury, democratic
governmental forms, etc.,] it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent, until all more or less
possessing classes have been forced out of their position of dominance, until the proletariat has conquered state power,
and the association of proletarians, not only in one country but in all the dominant countries of the world, has advanced so
far that competition among the proletarians of these countries has ceased and that at least the decisive productive forces
are concentrated in the hands of the proletarians. For us the issue cannot be the alteration of private property but only its
annihilation, not the smoothing over of class antagonisms but the abolition of classes, not the improvement of existing
society but the foundation of a new one.2

Two years later, Marx detailed how the interests of the peasantry had radically changed since the Revolution of
1789 in France. Peasants had allied with the bourgeoisie in 1789; and following the destruction of the feudal
nobility, which had held them as serfs, they had become small holders of agricultural plots. But now, they were the
victims of the mortgages and taxes imposed on them by the new bourgeois ruling class. Agricultural production
was down, and the peasants were immiserated, including five million who hover on the margin of existence and
either have their haunts in the countryside or...continually desert the countryside for the towns....
 Therefore Marx went on, the interests of the peasants are no longer, as under Napoleon, in accord with, but
are now in opposition to bourgeois interests, to capital. Hence they find their natural ally and leader in the urban
proletariat, whose task it is to overthrow the bourgeois order. 3

Russian Marxists were divided into three camps

There could hardly have been a better description of the situation, and the revolutionary tasks, in Russia prior to
the Revolutions of 1905 and 1917. But Russian Marxists were divided in their analysis into roughly three camps.
The Menshevik faction of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) pointed to Russias backwardness
to insist that the working class could only be an appendage to the bourgeoisie, which must lead the revolution to
establish capitalism, which must develop before the workers could advance to socialism. Always and
everywhere, said Trotsky in 1919, the Mensheviks strove to find signs of the development of bourgeois
democracy, and where they could not find them they invented them. (Results and Prospects 1906see footnote
5)
Lenins Bolsheviks, on the other hand, while accepting that a capitalist democratic republic was a necessary
stage of the revolution, had absolutely no confidence in the ability of the bourgeoisie to overthrow Tsarism and
carry out its own revolution. Lenins formula for the revolution was that the working class must make the
revolution and establish a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry (DDPP), which alone,
through workers and peasants sharing power together, could bring about bourgeois democratic revolution.
Lenin also foresaw something more, which gives a hint at least, that he understood the inherent contradiction of
the DDPP, in which two classes with two separate interests could hold power together. Its future [that is, the
future of the DDPP] is the struggle against private property, the struggle of the wage worker against the employer,
the struggle for socialism, Lenin explained. Even under a democratic republic established by the DDPP, A
Social-Democrat must never for a moment forget that the proletariat will inevitably have to wage a class struggle
for socialism even against the most democratic and republican bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie.... Hence, the
absolute necessity of a separate, independent, strictly class party of Social-Democracy. 4
This last pointthe need for a coherent revolutionary partyhad been at the core of the 1903 split between the
Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, and was to underlie all their growing differences. And it was to be a decisive feature
of the Revolution of 1917.
The third vision of the coming revolution was that of Leon Trotsky. Trotsky, who after the 1903 split briefly
went with the Mensheviks, then became independent, and finally joined Lenin in the Revolution of 1917, made the
most coherent class analysis. In several works written around the time of the first (1905) revolution (in which he
played a leading role as head of the Petrograd Soviet), he laid out his concept of the revolution in permanence in
Russia. Having the most concentrated industry, and with the largest factories in Europe, combined with the most
backward agricultural situation, Russia was saddled with a tsarist aristocratic state which rested on a powerful
landed gentry born of another era. The capitalist enterprises, heavily invested in by foreign (principally French)
capital, were fully intertwined with the landed aristocracy through financial arrangements. The capitalist class had
been established within, was integral to, and was supportive of the gentry-dominated state. This uneven and
combined developmentmodern capitalist industry imbedded within a dominant agricultural/aristocratic state
just advanced from feudalism by inchesmeant not only that the working class would have to make the bourgeois
democratic revolution, as Lenin insisted, but that it would have to immediately press forward with its socialist,
working-class demands.

Trotsky: permanent revolution

The standpoint that Trotsky and his co-thinker Parvus supported in 1904-05 was that, ... the revolution, having
begun as a bourgeois revolution as regards its first tasks, will soon call forth powerful class conflicts and will gain
final victory only by transferring power to the only class capable of standing at the head of the oppressed masses,
namely to the proletariat. Once in power, the proletariat not only will not want, but will not be able to limit itself to
a bourgeois democratic program.... It must adopt the tactics of permanent revolution, i.e., must destroy the barriers
between the minimum and maximum program of the Social Democracy, go over to more and more radical social
reforms and seek direct and immediate support in revolution in Western Europe. 5
Trotsky rejected Lenins slogan of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry because it was
embroiled in class contradictions. The peasantry, while it had sometimes managed to overthrow governments in
Europe, had never been able to establish its own state power, largely due to the unceasing class differentiation
among the peasantry, namely the inevitable conflicts between the richest peasants (kulaks, in Russia), middle
peasants and landless peasants, who were agricultural laborers on other peasants farms. Either a new landed
aristocracy (as in the endless imperial overturns in China, for example), or an urban class had always inherited the
power after peasant revolts.
Furthermore, a two-class state would be rife with contradictions and could not survive. The peasantry must
either give way to petty-bourgeois democrats, i.e., a new capitalist regime, or follow the lead of the proletariat,
which, Trotsky said, will bring all forces into play in order to raise the cultural level of the countryside and
develop the political consciousness of the peasantry. He goes on, From what we have said above, it will be clear
how we regard the idea of a proletarian and peasant dictatorship. It is not really a matter of whether we regard it
as inadmissible in principle, whether we do or do not desire such a form of political co-operation. We simply
think that it is unrealizable... And if taking the lead in the coming revolution did not mean that the advanced
workers should magnanimously shed their blood without asking themselves for what purpose, but means that the
workers must take political leadership of the whole struggle, which above all will be a proletarian struggle, then it
is clear that victory in this struggle must transfer power to the class that has led the struggle, i.e., the Social
Democratic proletariat.6

The final split, and the war

Following the decisive split with the Mensheviks, which had happened in 1912; and with the experience of the
inter-imperialist war then raging in Europe, by January of 1917 Lenin had come to a position on the revolution in
Russia similar to Trotskys. Emphasizing that the coming Russian revolution would be a prologue to working-class
revolution in Europe, Lenin said that Undoubtedly, this coming revolution can only be a proletarian revolution,
and in an even more profound sense of the word: a proletarian, socialist revolution also in its content. 7
Lenin was in exile in Zurich at this time, but as soon as he received word of the February Revolution and the
setting up of a Provisional Government, he set about expounding his views. Noting that the workers of Petrograd
were responsible for making the revolution happen, and had immediately established soviets as they had in 1905,
Lenin said that, ...the new government that has seized power in St. Petersburg, or more correctly, wrested it from
the proletariat, which has waged a victorious, heroic and fierce struggle, consists of liberal bourgeois and
landlords... [this government] cannot give the peoples of Russia (and the nations tied to us by the war) either
peace, bread or full freedom. The working class must therefore continue its fight for socialism and peace... 8 And
in Letters on Tactics, written in April just after his return to Russia, he denounced his earlier slogan:
The person who now speaks only of a revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the
peasantry is behind the times...he has in effect gone over to the petty bourgeoisie against the proletarian class
struggle; that person should be consigned to the archive of Bolshevik pre-revolutionary antiques (it may be called
the archive of old Bolsheviks.) Later, in the same writing, he attacked one of these old Bolsheviks for
proposing that the party should follow the revolutionary masses instead of sticking to their own, communist
program: Comrade Kamenev contraposes to a party of the masses a group of propagandists. But the masses
have now succumbed to the craze of revolutionary defencism. Is it not more becoming for internationalists at this
moment to show that they can resist mass intoxication rather than to wish to remain with the masses, i.e., to
succumb to the general epidemic? Have we not seen how in all the belligerent countries of Europe the chauvinists
tried to justify themselves on the grounds that they wished to remain with the masses? 9
Lenin here refers to old Bolsheviks, principally Stalin and Kamenev, who had taken over leadership in the party
press while Lenin was still in exile. The Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs), who comprised most of
the leadership in the soviets, had guided the workers into collaboration with the Provisional Government, while the
Bolshevik leadership had at first put forward opposition to the Provisional Government and the war more or less
along the lines that Lenin had advocated. But Stalin and Kamenev, after returning from their Siberian exile in
March, took over the editorship of the party paper Pravda and moved the position of the Bolsheviks sharply to the
right. They advocated limited support to the Provisional Government, denounced the slogan Down with the war,
and demanded an end to disorganizing efforts at the front, which Bolshevik agitators had been encouraging.
Kamenev proclaimed in Pravda that, While there is no peace, the people must remain steadfastly at their posts,
answering bullet with bullet and shell with shell. The slogan Down with the war is useless, echoed Stalin the
next day.10
 Lenin replied with his April Theses, spoken at the Finland Station, and delivered to the party within days of
his arrival, and subsequent works and statements such as The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution, in
which he hammered away on all his key points: no support to the bourgeois Provisional Government or the
pursuance of the Anglo/French/Tsarist inter-imperialist war; for renunciation of all imperialist annexations, secret
treaties and capitalist interests; and for the nationalization of the land under the control of peasant soviets, and the
expropriation of the banks and capitalist syndicates. All of this was to be pulled together with a new type of
state, bringing the working class to power, which could only be established through the soviets of workers and
poor peasants.11

Lenins April Theses dumbfounded some Bolshevik leaders

This last point, of all power to the soviets, left Bolsheviks dumbfounded when Lenin first proposed it to an
informal gathering of party members and others in Petrograd on the evening after his arrival at Finland Station,
according to Nikolai Nikolayevich Sukhanov, a former Socialist Revolutionary, who was present at the event.
...no one had ever dreamt of them [i.e., the soviets] as organs of state power, and unique and enduring ones
besides. ...this whole schema was incomprehensible. 12 While Sukhanov clearly had his own conceptual lenses in
this observation, Lenin was indeed a minority of one for a time on the main issues of his April Theses, which
were first published in Pravda a few days later with only his signatureno one else had signed onand with a
disparaging introduction by the editors to boot.
This was a party cadre which, though it immensely respected Lenin as its historic leader, was nevertheless still
stuck in its democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry formula, in which the workers would make
the bourgeois revolution, and only then fight for their own demands, perhaps sometime later. However, it was also
a committed and disciplined party, which was clear that this was a workers revolution. And since the immediate
tasks in the workers eyes, such as ending the war, feeding the people, mobilizing against the counter-revolution,
abolishing the landed estates, and even establishing an eight-hour work day were being actively opposed and
resisted by the government of the capitalists and landlords, it was not long before most Bolsheviks came around to
Lenins view. As Trotsky later related in his seminal History of the Russian Revolution:
Once the Leninist formulas were issued, they shed a new light for the Bolsheviks upon the experience of the
past months and of every new day. In the broad mass of the party, a quick differentiation took placeleftward and
leftward, toward the theses of Lenin. District after district adhered to them, says Zalezhsky, and by the time of the
all-party conference on April 24, the Petersburg organization as a whole was in favor of the theses. The struggle
for the re-arming of the Bolshevik ranks, begun on the evening of April 3, was essentially finished by the end of
the month.13

The revolution, enabled

So it was that Lenin, and soon the Bolshevik Party with him, had grasped the real issues in the class struggle that
were operative in Russia in 1917, and come around to the permanent revolution analysis put forward by Trotsky in
1904-06, and first enunciated by Marx in 1850. This is what enabled the October Revolution: it laid the basis in the
leadership for the conquest of power by the working class, and the subsequent transformation of Russia into a
workers state that managed to survive for decades, despite the Soviet states later degeneration into a distorted,
bureaucratic shadow of its former self. The impact of this historic 1917 victory still reverberates, and its lessons
inform and instruct conscious revolutionaries to this day. Meanwhile Stalin, who in a few years would be
condemning the permanent revolution as a Trotskyite heresy, quietly supported Lenin, and slipped into the
background.
There were, of course, many hurdles between the acceptance of the April Theses and the final insurrection in
October which established the new workers state, including continued opposition from the right within the
Bolshevik Party, as well as some challenges from the left, such as when the Petrograd workers sought an
immediate insurrection during the July days. The Bolsheviks opposed this at that time because the masses
throughout the country were not ready for that as yet. And the Bolshevik Party was not strong enough. Lenin never
sought decisive actions in isolation; only when the masses were clearly on board. The Kornilov affair, in which a
reactionary Tsarist General organized an attempt at a counterrevolutionary assault on Petrograd, in collaboration
with Kerensky, the socialist then head of the Provisional Government, was stopped in a well organized mass
response by the Petrograd proletariat, who recruited most of Kornilovs troops to the revolutionary banner, and
thus demonstrated the working-class resolve to preserve and protect the revolution from any backsliding. And the
October insurrection happened just at the opening of the second All-Russian Congress of Soviets as Lenin planned,
despite some opposition on the timing, and the defection of Kamenev and Zinoviev (Lenins close ally in exile and
collaborator at the Zimmerwald antiwar conferences) in opposing the insurrection plan in the public press!

Trotsky sees the need for the Bolshevik Party

Trotsky, who arrived back in Russia from exile in New York only by the 4th of May, when the theoretical re-
arming of the Bolshevik Party was mostly completed, soon joined the Bolsheviks and became a stalwart ally of
Lenin throughout the revolutionary period, including by serving as the chief organizer and leader of the Red Army
throughout the Civil War. It should be noted that in his 1919 Preface to the re-issue of Results and Prospects,
Trotsky acknowledged his error in not recognizing the importance of the Bolshevik Party earlier:
the author [i.e., Trotsky] did not fully appreciate the very important circumstance that in reality, along the line of
the disagreement between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, there were being grouped inflexible revolutionaries on the one
side and, on the other, elements which were becoming more and more opportunist and accommodating. When the
Revolution of 1917 broke out, the Bolshevik Party constituted a strong centralized organization uniting all the best
elements of the advanced workers and revolutionary intellectuals, whichafter some internal strugglefrankly adopted
tactics directed towards the socialist dictatorship of the working class, in full harmony with the entire international
situation and class relations in Russia.14

The seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in October was fully in accord with the needs and demands of the
masses, with the permanent revolution, and with Lenins April Theses, which had called for all power to the
soviets. Other approaches to power from both within (rightists such as Kamenev) and without (Mensheviks and
SRs) the Bolshevik Party, such as focusing on the Constituent Assembly or on a coalition of all the parties of the
soviets, would have resulted in a petty-bourgeois government and a continuation of capitalism. After a thunderous
endorsement of power to the soviets by the delegates of the second all-Russian Congress, 60 percent of whom
were Bolsheviks, the first two decrees of the new government were proposed and passed overwhelmingly: peace
and land. The Provisional Government, despite its many promises of reform, had in its nine months of existence
come nowhere near the initial accomplishments of this workers government in these two critical decrees.
The first, on ending the war, demanded an armistice, and immediate negotiations for a just, democratic peace.
The Bolshevik government declared that it considers it the greatest of crimes against humanity to continue this
war. It denounced the secret diplomacy which had contributed to the start of the war, and pledged to proceed
immediately with the full publication of the secret treaties, which it presently did, much to the chagrin of all the
competing imperialist powers, whether friend or foe of Russia. The decree also denounced all plans of the Tsarist
and other governments regarding annexations of territory, and declared that all such territories should have the
right to a free vote on their fate. With this statement alone, the Bolsheviks announced to the world their
renunciation of capitalism and imperialism, and secured their place in history by putting the interests of humanity
first, ahead of nationalism, imperialism, and all exploitative interests. 15

The Bolshevik land decree

The Decree on Land, which like the Decree On Peace is so important for understanding in todays world, was
also revolutionary in its intent and implications. The Decree, written by Lenin and fully supported by Trotsky, had
as its first clause, 1. Landed proprietorship is abolished forthwith without any compensation, period. And later,
under the clause, The most equitable settlement of the land question is to be as follows, we have 1. Private
ownership of land shall be abolished forever; land shall not be sold, purchased, leased, mortgaged, or otherwise
alienated. All land, whether state, crown, monastery, church, factory, entailed, public, peasant, etc., shall be
confiscated without compensation and become the property of the whole people, and pass into the use of all those
who cultivate it.16
Despite its clear wording of explicit state expropriation of the landi.e., nationalization without compensation
the Land Decree did not have the immediate effect of abolishing private holding in land. While making land
become the property of the whole people, it nevertheless allowed the land to pass into the use of all those who
cultivate it, which meant that peasants, now freed from the rent and debt to landlord and money lender, which
ever increasing burden they had suffered under ever since the abolition of serfdom in 1861, could divide up the
large estates, and work the land that they had long held as their own, free and clear. The wording of the decree was
in fact based on the land to the tiller program of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, the descendants of Narodniks,
populists who based themselves on the peasantry. Although the Land Decree was approved by a resounding
acclamation, Lenin did face questions about it from some Bolsheviks. When asked after the passage of the Land
Decree why he had applied the agrarian program of the SRs instead of his own, he said:
Voices are being raised here that the decree itself and the Mandate were drawn up by the Socialist-
Revolutionaries. What of it? Does it matter who drew them up? As a democratic government, we cannot ignore the
decision of the masses of the people. Let the peasants solve this problem from one end and we shall solve it
from the other. Experience will allow us to draw together in the general stream of revolutionary creative work, in
the elaboration of new state farms. We must be guided by experience; we must allow complete freedom to the
creative faculties of the masses. While the old, Tsarist government had only fought the peasants, Lenin
continued: The peasants have learned something during the eight months of our revolution; they want to settle all
land problems themselves. The point is that the peasants should be firmly assured that there are no more
landowners in the countryside, that they themselves must decide all questions, and that they themselves must
arrange their own lives.17

Rosa Luxemburg on the land decree

Rosa Luxemburg, though a firm supporter of the Bolshevik Revolution, said that Formerly, there was only a
small caste of noble and capitalist proprietors and a small minority of rich village bourgeoisie to oppose a socialist
reform on the land. And their expropriation by a revolutionary mass movement of the people is mere childs
play.18 Whose expropriation is mere childs play, the noble and capitalist proprietors and rich village
bourgeoisie, or them plus the mass of the peasantry, who thought the land belonged to them? And who was to do
the expropriating, in the absence of an active, mass rural proletariat? Much as I respect Rosa Luxemburg, I must
say that this statement is an over-simplification, which ignored the realities in Russia.
The peasants had indeed been learning something after the overthrow of the Tsar in the February Revolution,
and the situation was unstable to say the least. In rural areas during the summer and fall of 1917 all hell was
breaking loose. As the air of revolution permeated the countryside, peasants began to invade the big landed estates
and cart off crops of hay and other resources such as tools and other implements. Some of the estate owners tried
to get the weak Provisional Governments support to protect their properties to no avail, up until July, that is. Many
panicked and sold their estates to foreign investors, notably from France (which was Tsarist Russias major trade
and investment partner.) The expropriation of the landlords was proceeding apace!
The peasants were also looking around for leadership. This is when the Socialist Revolutionaries, who promised,
land to the tiller, surged to prominence as the peasants chief representatives. As Trotsky put it in 1923, The
Socialist Revolutionaries considered that the peasantry was created for the purpose of being under their leadership
and, through them, to rule the country. 19 The inability of the peasantry to take power on its own, and the fact that
the peasantry in power would mean rule by the petty-bourgeoisie, and hence the capitalist parties, completely
escaped the understanding of the SRs. More to the point, the SRs along with Menshevik ministers were in fact the
petty bourgeois government, by virtue of their majority in the Kerensky cabinetKerensky himself being an SR
as of May. Yet not only did they do nothing to implement their land and freedom program, which had the full
backing of the peasantry, but after the defeat of the insurrectionary movement of the Petrograd workers in July, the
Provisional Government (with its SR ministers!) sent troops to defend the landlords in the countryside, and
managed to reverse some of the peasants gains. As a result, reports Trotsky in his History of the Russian
Revolution, ...the peasants steadily lost confidence in both the government and the [SR] party. Thus the swelling
out of the Social Revolutionary organizations in the villages became fatal to this universal party, which was
rebelling at the bottom but restoring order at the top. 20

SRs had to be driven out of power

Despite all this, the SRs still had the nerve to criticize Lenin over the Land Decree: The SRs cried: A fine
Marxist, who for fifteen years baited us from the heights of his grandeur for our petty-bourgeois lack of science,
and then executed our program the moment he took power! And Lenin snapped back: A fine party, that had to be
driven out of power for its program to be realized!21
This brief exchange captured something fundamental: only the working class in power could finally uproot the
aristocratic remnants of feudalism, and implement the basic democratic demands of the masses that petty-
bourgeois or peasant parties were unable to bring about. But what about the socialist demands? Did the
Bolsheviks failure to immediately establish a system of collective agriculture mean they had betrayed the
permanent revolution, the theory Lenin adhered to, and which Trotsky had promoted early in the century?
The first thing to note in answer to this question is that Lenins Bolsheviks had adhered to their own formula,
that this revolution had to be a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat, supported by the peasantry. This support
had not been acquired through the earlier Bolshevik slogan of a joint dictatorship of the proletariat and the
peasantry. This would have been two-class rule, as in, for instance (hypothetically,) a joint government of
Bolsheviks and SRs. Rather; it had been achieved by the inability of the SRs to implement their own program, and
by the accession to power of the Bolsheviks alone (along with Left SRs, who recognized the need for working
class rule.) As Trotsky put it, The chief task lay in the substance of the historic task itselfa democratic agrarian
revolution. (See footnote 19)
Secondly, the Leninists had not for an instant forgotten the need for a class differentiation in the countryside.
Lenin had tirelessly pursued attempts to organize the agricultural laborers and other poor peasants into their own
soviets and other organizations, counterposed to the kulaks, who were often their employers. As more and more
big landlord holdings were being looted however, the kulaks and small-landowning peasants took the lead and had
the advantage of well-fed horses and carts to hold crops and equipment. So, in the thirst for land and freedom,
the peasants had instead rallied behind the better-off. Thus the Land Decree could only implement collectivization
as a future goal, through state ownership of the land. As a result, the kulaks did become a brake on the further
development of the revolution, by withholding grain from the cities and, in a few cases, supporting
counterrevolutionary forces in the Civil War.
Third and finally, if the Bolsheviks hadnt adopted the Land Decree when they did, the revolution could well
have been doomed. In this massive and mostly agrarian country, peasant support was vital, and the peasants needed
to be ...assured that there are no more landowners in the countryside, as Lenin said in his opposition to critics
(above.) Or, as Victor Serge said in his Year One of the Revolution, the Land Decree alone would make the new
authority invincible, by assuring it the support of millions of peasants. 22 A vital part of this is that the new
workers state had to deal with providing the peasants with modern machinerytractors, tools etc.in order to
make any collectives viable. This would have required a transformation of industry, which was essentially
impossible, especially given the looming danger of counterrevolutionary assaults and imperialist interventions. If
the Bolsheviks had immediately counterposed themselves to, and alienated the mass of the peasantry with
collectivization efforts which they werent ready for, and which the state couldnt provide the tools for, they easily
could have gone down in flames in the ensuing civil war, and the chance of future socialization would have been
lost. As it was, Bolsheviks did promote communal efforts, and special experimental farming collectives and other
collective farms wherever possible. Overall, the Lenin and Trotsky-led workers state, threatened as it was in the
next few years with all sorts of potential disasters, nevertheless did a spectacular job of implementing the
permanent revolution.

The Bolshevik housing policy

The housing policy of the Bolsheviks, though a much less prominent feature of their program compared to the
land policy, is nevertheless important for the lessons it carries for today. In both the land policy and the housing
policy, the workers state sought to dissolve the bonds of private property.
In his polemic against anarchists in State and Revolution, Lenin outlined the principles of the Bolshevik position
on housing, first by quoting Engels on The Housing Question:
... one thing is certain: there is already a sufficient quantity of houses in the big cities to remedy immediately all real
housing shortage, provided they are used judiciously. This can naturally only occur through the expropriation of the
present owners and by quartering in their houses homeless workers or workers overcrowded in their present homes.
Lenin quotes further, ...It must be pointed out that the actual seizure of all the instruments of labor, the taking
possession of industry as a whole by the working people, is the exact opposite of the Proudhonist [anarchist]
redemption. In the latter case the individual worker becomes the owner of his dwelling, the peasant farm, the
instruments of labor; in the former case, the working people become the collective owners of the houses, factories, and
instruments of labor...

Lenin himself added that, The letting of houses owned by the whole people to individual families presupposes
the collection of rent, a certain amount of control, and the employment of some standard in allotting the housing.
All this calls for a certain form of state.... The transition to a situation in which it will be possible to supply
dwellings rent-free depends on the complete withering away of the state. 23 All of this adds up to a fundamental
change in how society was organized, and how the needs of the masses were to be met, which, needless to say,
would have been impossible without the complete abolition of capitalism which the Bolshevik insurrection and
establishment of the workers state made possible.
These principles began to be implemented immediately after the October Revolution in major cities in Russia, as
masses of working people in the cities moved into an active political life, forming committees of all sorts to make
the workers state a reality on the ground, so to speak. On the question of housing, local soviets struggled to keep
up. In September of 1918, for instance, the Moscow Soviet of Workers and Red Army Deputies issued a decree on
the commandeering of dwellings, etc., which provided for a housing commission to be set up in each district With
the object of finding, and providing workers with healthy dwellings... conducting inspections and redistributions
of tenants as necessary, with preferences for working people and noting that: Persons engaged in work of public
necessity are to be provided with a dwelling in the region where they work. 24

Ongoing problems in housing

Of course there were problems involved with Soviet housing from the start, such as inability of the workers
state to renovate old, and build new housing during the time of famine, civil war and counterrevolutionary threats
both internally and from abroad. These led to conflicts within families over shared facilities, and problems of
overcrowding. And such problems were compounded by an influx of former landowners and others into the cities,
many of whom were declared parasites who needed to be moved out of town to make way for workers. In later
years, many of these problems were indeed on going.
However, to judge by the numerous critiques of Soviet housing that emerged in modern times, one would think
that problems such as these were the whole story, as they repeat endless horror stories about inadequate housing in
the USSR. Yet, how many homeless people were there in the Soviet Union? Virtually none. One article, by Jeff
Harrison of the University of Arizona, about the switch to private ownership following the collapse of the Soviet
Union in 1991, brought home another side of the story: todays Russians dont like mortgages, and cant
understand why Americans think they own their own homes if they are saddled with a mortgage. Harrison quotes
Jane Zavisca in 2011, in a review of a then-forthcoming book of hers: It may be a legacy of Soviet entitlement to
housing, where housing is viewed as a right to them. Even though the Soviet government owned the housing,
people thought of it as their own and had the right to pass it down to their children, or swap with someone who
wanted to trade with you. She said Russians find it odd that Americans call themselves homeowners from the
day they close on a mortgage loan. For Russians, ownership only begins after all debts are paid off. 25 How true
that was for millions of so-called homeowners in the U.S. who lost their homes in the mortgage fraud-induced
crash of 2008!

Capitalism equals fraud and homelessness

Fighting against the endless rent increases, fraudulent mortgage foreclosures and homelessness under capitalism
is indeed a very hard slog. Many cooperatives which start out as affordable housing opportunities eventually
give way to privatization, and many private, including city-subsidized projects are still not affordable for the low-
income would-be tenants. The market economy in housing promotes rapid gentrification, which is enriching
landlords while destroying traditional low-income neighborhoods. Runaway increases in housing costs in San
Francisco, for instance, are destroying the historic Mission district, and creating a teacher shortage by preventing
education workers from living in the city where they teach.
Some cooperative housing organizations are able to make a small dent in the capitalist/landlord armor by
adopting a mode which bears a resemblance to the principles of land and housing adopted in the Russian
Revolution: the community land trust (CLT). A CLT operates by separating ownership of the land from ownership
of the building in a contractual arrangement, which prevents privatization and preserves affordability for even the
lowest income tenants. The Cooper Square Committee (CSC) in New York City got its start in 1959 by
successfully opposing city planner Robert Moses slum removal and re-development assault on the Lower East
Side neighborhood, which had threatened to displace thousands of inhabitants. It ultimately saved over 300
buildings. The CSC then set up a CLT based on donations, and on take-overs of buildings abandoned by landlords
and owned by the City, and now manages nearly 400 low-income apartments in 23 buildings. More recently in
California, the Bay Area Community Land Trust uses the same principles to provide low-income housing,
currently in 18 buildings. Ownership of the land under the building by the CLT, combined with cooperative
management of the housing and democratic leadership structures is what preserves the low-income housing. These
solutions hold promise, but can only be fully implemented through the expropriation of the banks, and nationwide
nationalization of the land, so that all working people may enjoy the benefits.

Lessons for today from the

revolution of 1917
Housing is a right, and homelessness is abolished! Mortgage debt to the big banks is liquidated, and rents are
fixed at a reasonable percentage of a tenants income! The rich are expropriated, and their tenement buildings and
multiple palatial homes and condominiums are divided up to provide adequate housing for all working people!
Such are just some of the possibilities suggested by the Russian Revolution if its lessons were to be applied in the
modern world today. But that is not all. If we widen the lens a bit, we can see applications of lessons from the
Russian Revolution throughout the crisis of 2008, for instance. In this crisis, the U.S. government bailed out the
big banks, not the homeowners who had lost their homes to fraud, and it also bailed out the auto industry when
General Motors faced bankruptcy. Of course it was a different time with different conditions, but in the Russian
Revolution, the Bolsheviks were very careful to address the specific situation with appropriate demands which
carried the revolutionary process forward, such as Down with the Ten Capitalist Ministers! This demand
addressed a particular situationthat of socialists serving in the Provisional government alongside bourgeois
representativesand helped the working class to see that by combining with capitalist forces, the Social
Democrats were holding back the essential immediate demands of the working masses, summed up as bread, peace
and land. Trotsky would later call this a transitional demand, which is a demand which, in order to be realized,
must drive the class struggle forward toward workers revolution.
In 2008 in the U.S. there was no such revolutionary situation, and no mass revolutionary party to implement
such a strategy. But if we focus on the lessons of the Russian Revolution, we can see how such a party might have
begun to build itself up into a position to actually effect the class struggle. Instead of the governments bail out of
General Motors, we might have demanded: Nationalize big auto without compensation and under workers
control! And we might have added, Employ auto workers to transform the industry to make electric and hybrid
autos only! With that, we would have expanded our scope to include not just housing, and not just auto, but the
threat of global warming as well, which challenges not just workers but the planet as a whole to wake up to what is
ahead for all of us. And if that last demand (or maybe all of them) seems like a stretch, then so was the Russian
Revolution itself. Lenin said in January 1917 that, We of the older generation may not live to see the decisive
battles of this coming revolution. But I can, I believe, express the confidant hope that the youth...will be fortunate
enough not only to fight, but also to win, in the coming proletarian revolution. 26 In a month or so, the Russian
Revolution had entered into history.
Despite its many great achievements, this revolution degenerated into a shadow of its former self within six to
seven years. Lenin, Trotsky, and Marx himself, along with most Bolsheviks, had expected the revolution to happen
first in the most advanced industrial countries, such as Germany, rather than in backward Russia. And the
Bolshevik leadership was clear that a socialist revolution in Russia could not survive unless it spread into Europe.
There was a great revolutionary upsurge throughout Europe and the world following the revolution and the end of
the war, but none besides Russia ended in the conquest of power by the working class. Then, with the failure of the
German Revolution in October 1923due to inadequate leadership both in the German party and at the head of
the Communist International (CI)things in Russia quickly began to change. The Russian workers, exhausted by
civil war and deprivationand with the untimely death of Lenin in 1924became demoralized. The revolutionary
state was captured by a conservative, bureaucratic clique headed by Joseph Stalin, who proclaimed that Russia
would survive with socialism in one country, a formula unheard of before in the cannon of revolutionary and
internationalist Marxism. The purposes for which Russia was ruled, the way it was ruled, and its leadership all
changed. It was Russias Thermidor.27

Stalin distorted and destroyed the lessons of 1917

The Stalin regime distorted or dispensed with all the revolutionary lessons of 1917. That the working class needs
an independent, disciplined revolutionary party to make a revolution even in a backward country was replaced
with orders for the Chinese CP to enter the bourgeois nationalist Kuomintang, which led to a slaughter of the
revolutionary workers in 1927. That the workers should refuse to enter or support coalition governments with
capitalist partiesas Social Democrats did in the Provisional Government in Russiawas replaced with support
for the popular front of workers and bourgeois parties, which led to the defeat of the revolution in Spain in the
1930s. Even the principle of the united-front, in which the working class struggles independently but alongside
other socialists against a counterrevolutionary threat (such as Kornilov) was abandoned, which led to the virtually
unopposed coming to power of the Nazis in Germany in 1933. All this was a result of Stalins international
strategy, which abandoned revolutionary politics for a policy of diplomatic alliances to protect the Soviet Union.
With the 1933 German defeat, Trotsky, now several years in exile, declared the Third International dead, and called
for formation of a new Fourth International of revolutionary workers parties.
Every step of the way, from his work with a Left Opposition in Russia in the 1920s to his fight to build new
revolutionary parties around the world, Trotsky fought to uphold and extend to the world the lessons of the Russian
Revolution of 1917. With regard to the great gains of the Russian Revolution, and the inspiration they provide for
revolutionary answers to critical problems from the housing crisis to the largest global issues, we can only say,
with Trotsky as he was dying from a blow inflicted by a Stalinist agent, go forward.

1 referring to the 17th century English author Thomas Hobbes, whose best-known work, Leviathan, describes a situation of
unrestrained, selfish and uncivilized competition. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Hobbesian

2 Marx and Engels, Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League, London, March 1850, Selected Works, vol. 1,
Moscow 1962, p. 110.

3 Karl Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, New York 1852, in Selected Works, vol. 1, Moscow 1962, p. 338.

4 Lenin, VI, Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, June-July 1905, in Collected Works, (CW) Vol. 9,
Moscow 1962.

5 Trotsky, Leon, Preface to the Re-Issue of this work, (1919) in Results and Prospects, 1906. This preface is Trotskys summary of his
views in 1904-05. About the minimum and maximum program, this was the rationalization of Social Democrats to justify their focus
on reform of the capitalist system. When it came to imperialist war or socialism, they betrayed both Marxism and the working classes of
the world.

6 Leon Trotsky, Results and Prospects, 1906, https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/rp-index.htm.

7 Lenin, VI, Lecture on the 1905 Revolution, January 9, 1917, in CW vol. 23, Moscow 1964.

8 Lenin, VI, Draft Theses, March 4 1917 in CW vol. 23, Moscow 1964.

9 Lenin, VI, Letters On Tactics, April 8 and 13th, 1917, CW vol. 24, Moscow 1964.

10 Rabinowitch, A, Prelude To Revolution, The Petrograd Bolsheviks and the July 1917 Uprising , Indiana University Press, 1968, page
36.

11 Lenin, VI, CW vol. 24, op.cit., contains both these documents.

12 Sukhanov, N.N., The Russian Revolution of 1917, Eyewitness Account, vol. 1. Oxford 1955, Harper reprint 1962, p. 283. Sukhanovs
history (which he denied was a history) is useful for its rare and lively eyewitness account of the 1917 events, despite his contradictory
and often derogatory comments on Lenin and Trotsky.

13 Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, vol. 1, 1932-33, Sphere Books Edition, London, 1967, p. 307.

14 Trotsky, Results and Prospects, op.cit.

15 Akhapkin, Yuri, 1970, First Decrees of Soviet Power, Lawrence and Wishart, London, pp. 20-22.

16 Akhapkin, Yuri, op.cit., pp. 23-26

17 Lenin, CW, Vol. 26, page 261

18 Rosa Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution, 1918, quoted in Tony Cliff, Rosa
Luxemburg,https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1969/rosalux/7-bolpower.htm#f69

19 Trotsky, The New Course, 1924, in The Challenge of the Left Opposition (1923-25), Pathfinder Press, New York, 1975, page 105.

20 Trotsky, History..., op.cit., Vol. 3 The Triumph of the Soviets, Chapter 1, The Peasantry Before October, pp 9 - 38.
21 Sukhanov, N.N., 1955 op.cit., vol. 2, p.661.

22 Victor Serge, 1930, Year One of the Russian Revolution, Peter Sedgwick translator, New York, 1972.

23 Lenin, VI, The State and Revolution, August 1917, CW vol. 25, Moscow 1964, quotes from Engels, The Housing Question, 1872, and
writes, on pages 433 and 434.

24 Executive of the Moscow Soviet of Workers and Red Army Deputies, Decree..., http://soviethistory.msu.edu//?=Housing.

25 Jeff Harrison, Why Russians Think Americans Dont Own Their Own Homes. 2011 https://uanews.arizona.edu/story/why-russians-
think-americans-don-t-own-their-homes

26 Lenin, VI, Lecture on the 1905 Revolution, op.cit., page 253.

27 The Revolution Betrayed, By Leon Trotsky

Thermidor is a reference to the later stages of the French Revolution, when conservative forces took
hold of society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Revolution_Betrayed

he End of State-Socialism and The Future of

Marxism
BY DR. NASIR KHAN

The New World Order

The rapid course of events that had started unfolding in the second half of 1989 in Eastern Europe eventually
culminated in the disintegration of the Soviet Union by the end of 1991. These colossal changes in the former
Eastern bloc countries undoubtedly constitute one of the major turning points in the history of the twentieth
century. In view of the epochal changes that had taken place, political observers asked questions, such as: What
will be the final outcome of these developments? What sort of new global order will emerge to replace the former
balance of power between the East and the West? How is the United States as the sole superpower going to behave
in relation to those countries that choose to follow their independent socio-economic developments, stand for their
national interests or refuse to bow to the U.S. domination and pressure? As it turned out, no one had to wait long
for the answers. The events during the last fourteen years are before us. They have revealed clearly the shape of
international developments.
Let us take a quick glance at some of the events. We have seen how during the course of the last sixteen years
the U.S. has virtually monopolized the United Nations and started to use it to dictate its decrees in the international
organization. In the first place, this ploy succeeds because it gives the appearance of legalistic formality to the
American conduct before the silent majority in the international community who in any case has little or no
effective influence on the major decisions, which are taken in the Security Council. Secondly, this practice has
been closely associated with asserting the full weight of the U.S., the only superpower in the international arena.
The foundation of this role is to protect and increase the sphere of the U.S. interests. These, in any case, are not
confined to any fixed area or location; they extend to the whole world in general, and in particular, the oil-rich
countries of the Middles East. At the same time, only the U.S. can define and proclaim its national interests in any
manner it chooses to do so. This assertion of supra-national interests is backed by the most destructive military
arsenal and prowess in the human history as well as by using the policy of terror and intimidation against those
countries that dare to defy the United States diktat. The continuing economic and political strangulation of Cuba;
economic sanctions, political and military pressure against Libya until its recent change of course; the support of
dictators and oligarchs in the Third World countries; the unleashing of the war against Iraq in 1991 when Iraq had
clearly agreed to withdraw from Kuwait; the misuse of the United Nations for the U.S. geopolitical designs world-
over; opposing the lifting of the UN economic sanctions (read U.S.-dictated sanctions) against Iraq since 1991 and
thus holding a nation of twenty-two million people practically as the hostages of the United States; the invasion of
Afghanistan in 2001 and installing a puppet regime; the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, are a few
instances of the present political realities. The American realpolitik, also called the New World Order, was now a
retooling of the old strategic designs of global hegemony and the imposition of superpower diktat in a changed
international situation consequent upon the break-up of the Soviet Union. The vast vacuum created by the
disappearance of Soviet power which often had operated to counter-balance the U.S. power-politics in
international arena, left the field open for the United States. For the U.S. rulers the situation provided a green light
for accelerating their strategic designs of global hegemony.

The break-up of the Soviet Union

In our view, these present-day developments are closely related to the political conditions arising from the
collapse of the Soviet Union. The end of the Soviet Union had great impact internationally. Apart from the
consequences of these epochal changes in the international system of relations and the emergence of the United
States as the unbridled hegemonic superpower, we are also face to face with the issues that are related to the
collapse of the 'real existing socialism' in the former Eastern bloc, where the bureaucratic and monolithic system of
nomenclature had stifled the living essence of Marxism. The fall of the system of nomenclature has also been
interpreted as 'the death of Marxism' as if bureaucratic state-socialism and Marxism were one and the same thing.
What is often ignored or is given little attention in this interpretation is to fall in a category mistake and I
emphasize that distinction between these two should be clearly borne in mind. It will help us to analyze the
problematic in a scientific manner and save us from following blindly the stereotypes of confused and confusing
viewpoints that are rampant at present.
In this article we shall deal with two related questions. The first one is: how far can Marxism as a philosophical
system in general be held responsible for the shortcomings of the collapsed regimes? And secondly, where does
Marxism stand in a wider philosophical and political perspective in the future developments?
Any attempt directed to give an adequate answer to each of these questions will require a lot of factors and
causes for analysis and evaluation as well as a general purview of growing number of views and opinions, both at
serious academic and popular journalistic level. A comprehensive and detailed discussion of disparate aspects of
the questions before us will not be attempted here. I intend to present only a limited number of views, leaving
aside some important details and perspectives as advanced by a number of writers. The first part of the article is
meant to highlight the representative response to these developments both of the academic Left and Right and the
salient features of the collapsed regimes. This will be followed by the discussion whether the end of state-socialism
means the end of socialism or the 'death of Marxism' as it is popularly called in the bourgeois press. In the final
part, I will mention the role and relevance of socialist values and the place of Marxism in the social sciences.
The ideological basis of these regimes has been interpreted and classified in a number of different ways
depending on the ideological outlook of the onlookers. The so-called 'really existing socialism' has been an
extraordinarily complicated and controversial subject. We can see that within the worldwide communist movement
represented by political parties, Leftist groups or in many cases individual writers the views on the issue have been
varied. They interpret and classify these regimes differently. Generally speaking, the epithets like socialists,
communists, totalitarian, authoritarian, Marxists, Marxist-Leninists and Stalinists are commonly used. We could
also add designations of state-capitalism, state-socialism and bureaucratic-socialism. While referring to other
writers I shall use the terms as they use it. However, the meanings they attach to these terms are obvious enough.
Having said that, we should not forget that theories, doctrines and viewpoints do not explain themselves. They are
interpreted and given meanings and content by the people. It also means that two different persons well acquainted
in the same theory can have different and perhaps conflicting notions of the same theory with regard to its form
and content. A wide-ranging philosophical outlook and political practice, which has come to be associated with
Marxism, cannot be an exception to this general rule.

The breakdown of the system

Seemingly, there was very little to point to the imminent collapse of East European regimes that started in 1989.
Western specialists on the Soviet and Eastern Europe were caught by a surprisingly rapid course of events. The
general mood in the West was profoundly conservative. The decade had been marked by a general trend of
economic recovery after a protracted period of economic chaos, inflation and suppression of the power of the trade
union movement in Britain and the U.S.A. The United States had not undertaken any major military or political
adventures except for supporting the military dictators, dynastic oligarchs and anti-revolutionary forces in Asia,
Africa and Latin America. The advanced capitalist countries represented that portion of the globe from which the
idea of revolution had long since become an academic question. The economic and social stagnation of Eastern
Europe and the Soviet Union was indicative that there was no longer any danger of the spread of revolutionary
socialism from these countries. In fact, there was very little interest in the Soviet hierarchy to provide any tangible
support to the revolutionary causes in places where people were struggling against the legacy of colonialism, neo-
colonialism, racism, Zionism and the apartheid system. It is true the ruling oligarchies and dictatorial regimes in
the Third World closely dependent on U.S. imperialism and western powers did raise the bogey of the Soviet hand
in all forms of struggle for national liberation and democracy. In the last decade of the crumbling Soviet system,
the Soviet rulers had no interest either to support the cause of socialism or the national liberation movements in
Third World countries. The reactionary forces used anti-Communist rhetoric to bolster their power during the Cold
War period. In the international arena, economic and military pendulum had decisively swung to the side of the
United States and the West whereas the Soviet system had started to show its unwieldy cracks. The stagnant
bureaucratic state system was no longer able to cope with the growing economic and social problems.
How western capitalism viewed the situation was ably put forward by the American philosopher Francis
Fukuyama. He was the deputy director of the U.S. State Department's Planning Staff. In 1989, he wrote in the
summer issue of the right-wing journal The National Interest his instantly famous article "The End of History?" By
all accounts this is an important article, not because of the accuracy of Fukuyama's theoretical presuppositions or
philosophical representations, which are lacking in depth and are also full of historical inaccuracies, but because it
provided a clear perspective and a guide to the world outlook of the U.S. Administration.
Fukuyama argues that liberalism, by which he means liberal capitalism, namely a combination of free market
and political democracy has finally triumphed. The major challenges to liberalism, according to him, were fascism
and communism. Fascism "...saw the political weakness, materialism, anomie, and lack of community of the West
as fundamental contradictions in liberal societies that could only be resolved by a strong state that forged a new
'people' on the basis of national exclusiveness. Fascism was destroyed as a living ideology by World War Two"
(Fukuyama, September 1989). And that ideological challenge mounted by communism, its most serious adversary,
is now also seen to have failed. As far as America was concerned, the Marxian vision of a classless society was
being realized. Fukuyama suggests: "But surely, the class issue has actually been resolved in the West. As Kojve
(among others) noted, the egalitarianism of modern America represents the essential achievement of the classless
society envisioned by Marx. This is not to say that there are not rich people and poor people in the United States,
or that the gap between them has not grown in recent years."(ibid., 9).
With the death of fascism and communism as political systems, Fukuyama sees no fundamental ideological
competitors left for liberal capitalism. He dismisses the claims of nationalism and religion to be any formidable
forces to challenge liberalism.
Alexandre Kojve bases the theoretical framework of his article on the influential interpretation of Hegel's
philosophy of history. Kojve was a serious Marxist scholar who had a big influence on the French thinkers as
diverse as Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Bataille and Lacan on the Left and Raymond Aron on the Right. His lectures in
the 1930s on Hegel's "Phenomenology of Spirit" are a monument to his clear grasp of Hegel. For Kojve, the
central moment in Hegel's thought is the dialectic between the master and slave as expounded in the
"Phenomenology of Spirit." In my view, Hegel's explication of dialectics, which pushes the course of history
forward through the inter-action of master and slave, is the achievement of an inimitable genius. Those who are not
quite familiar with this part of Hegel's thought will find the master and slave dialectic stimulating to read. In brief,
this shows that after his victory in the life-and-death confrontation in which one person emerges as the master by
reason of risking his life in the struggle for reciprocal recognition and the other party as the slave, the master
becomes a pure consumer and a dependent living on what the slave provides. Even though the slave had not risked
his life to establish his humanity as the master did, the development and history come to be embodied in the slave.
For, in his fear and subjection, the slave is forced to work, and through his labor, a practical activity, he develops
skill, memory and the power of thought. He becomes the mover of history.
It is interesting to see how Kojve's interpretation of Hegel, which is generally regarded as radical and proto-
Marxian, is used by Fukuyama to uphold the cause of American liberalism. For Kojve's Left-wing disciples,
Hegel's quasi-history of master and slave dialectic was an augury of class struggle between bourgeois and
proletarian. History had not reached its end because the requisite recognition had not been achieved. But the goal
of history had been stated and in this sense Marx was no more than a specification of Hegel's project. For
Fukuyama, on the other hand, the goal of history established by this dialectic was not communism but liberal
democracy and consumer-capitalism. The defeat of fascism and the crumbling of communism in the 20th century
finally brought about the end of the major challenges to liberalism.
 On the basis of this analysis, Fukuyama concludes that history is over. The forthright victory of economic and
political liberalism brings mankind's ideological evolution in the shape of the ideals of the French Revolution to
fruition. In the last paragraph, however, he sees the restart of history at some time in the distant future as possible.
He writes: "The end of history will be a very sad time. The struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one's
life for a purely abstract goal, the world-wide ideological struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination,
and idealism, will be replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental
concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands... Perhaps this very prospect of centuries of
boredom at the end of history will serve to get history started once again." (Fukuyama 1989, 18). This was a
fantastic view of the life, after the final triumph of capitalism and liberal democracy on the Western model. Thus a
world of Lotos-Eaters (it refers to a poem by the English poet Alfred Tennyson, depicting the leisurely life of the
mariners in an imaginary island after their ship had sunk) was likely to shake off the drowsiness and stupor caused
by consumer-capitalism. The wheels of history might start rolling again. Perhaps this consolation will be highly
cherished by the coming generations who will see those happy days.

The hierarchical system

A lot of literature has arisen about the collapse of the "really existing socialism" in the former Eastern bloc.
Within the Left, as mentioned before, there have been various and at times differing views on the question of
socialism in the former Eastern bloc as well as on the status and place of Marxism. In this context, the Right has
upheld its theoretical and political views rather consistently by projecting and portraying what socialism is or
could possibly be in the worst possible colors. The enemies of socialism and almost all the bourgeois
Establishment view the collapse of the Eastern bloc as being tantamount to the death of Marxism.
But what was the essential character of the socialist regimes? The two dominant characteristics of these regimes
were an absolute monopoly of power enjoyed by a single party and an economy under state-ownership and control.
First, political power monopolized in the single-party virtually meant power concentrated in the hands of party
officials. The society was organized hierarchically. The hallmark of this was the system of nomenclature, which
prescribed the position, obligations and privileges of each official engaged in decision-making. The higher
echelons in this system guaranteed securities and privileges to the lower ones in exchange for absolute loyalty and
obedience. There was little room for political dissent that could challenge the system. Various types of repressive
measures were taken to deal with any real or perceived threat to the single-party rule. The Marxist concept of the
dictatorship of the proletariat under socialism, which was to replace the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie under
capitalism, somehow turned out to be, in reality, the dictatorship of the party over the proletariat. The state
assumed all power and had nearly total control over the entire public life, culture and economy.
Secondly, the state became the owner of all public property and all means of production. Goods and services,
shops, places of work and residence, factories and farms, machines and tools came under state ownership. The
network of welfare system regarding the matters such as health, education and housing was able to meet the
immediate needs of the people. Through a policy of full employment and state subsidies basic prices of food,
energy, house-rents were low and within the reach of the common people. These were certainly important and
positive contributions. We are aware of the fact that the achievements of the socialist regimes in these spheres are
being totally ignored by the Western media now.

The general pattern

An important question is why these regimes followed this pattern. It is a historical fact that great revolutionary
changes did take place, changes that deeply affected the political, economic, social and cultural life in these
countries. The revolutions in the twentieth century in Russia, China, North Korea, Yugoslavia, Cuba and
Afghanistan were a result of the internal conditions of the countries. After the great successes of the Soviet Union
against the Nazi aggression in the Second World War, the Soviets were able to impose the new system on the
former Axis satellites like Rumania, Bulgaria and Hungary as well as the Baltic states. Ralph Miliband, a firm
critic of Stalinism, points to the profound changes wrought by the new regimes thus: "But whether internally
generated or externally imposed, they were revolutions, of a very thorough kind, with fundamental changes in
property relations, the elimination of traditional ruling classes, the access to power of previously excluded,
marginalized and persecuted people, the complete transformation of state structures, massive changes in the
occupational structure, and vast changes (or attempted changes) in the whole national culture." (Miliband 1989,
28-29.)
 But these regimes failed to develop or evolve any democratic institutions that could meet the aspirations of the
people and the needs of the times. Very often behind the empty rhetoric of revolutionary struggle and the actions of
the regimes, lay the dead weight of a rigid bureaucracy, which survived because it had imposed ossified
conservatism on society. However, an analysis of the failure of regimes should take into account various causes,
internal and external, and the results of their interaction on political developments. There were many factors,
which contributed to the worsening of the socio-political situation. In this regard, first of all, we can point out, the
internal economic and political level of development in these countries and, secondly, the conditions of civil wars
and their impact on society as well as imperialist intervention, aggression, sabotage and destabilization.
Generally, the economic level of development in most of the former Eastern bloc countries where the
revolutions took place had been very low. The only exceptions here were Czechoslovakia and East Germany. This
means the revolutions did not take place with a good economic base. After the devastations of the Second World
War, and the start of the Cold War the task of economic development was undertaken under extremely hostile
circumstances and conditions. In each of these countries, after having overcome the opposition of the parties
centered in the peasant parties and the Churches, the new regimes started collectivizing farms and nationalizing
industries. Unlike the Russian example of rapid collectivization of agricultural land under Stalin and the
liquidation of the kulaks, farming in East Europe was collectivized at a slower pace.
The many wars of aggression undertaken by the United States during the "Cold War," in countries such as
Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia and its various interventions in Afghanistan in the 1980s, apart from the savage
destruction of human life and property and the basic infra-structure of these countries, also had a debilitating effect
on the war-torn economy of the Soviet Union and other Eastern bloc countries because they gave military and
economic aid to fight the imperialist aggression. Even after the demise of the Eastern bloc, the United States
continues its economic blockade and political strangulation of Cuba. Cuba has been subject to all types of overt
and covert attacks, provocations and misleading propaganda by the United States.
Politically, the Eastern bloc countries, with the exception of Czechoslovakia, had no experience in democratic
rule. As Miliband observes: "The European states which became Communist regimes had all previously had strong
near-authoritarian or actually authoritarian regimes, with very weak civil societies, in which the state, allied to
semi-feudal ruling classes, had enjoyed great power and used it to exploit and oppress largely peasant populations.
As for Communist regimes in Asia, and the revolutionary regime in Cuba, they had all previously been either
colonial, or semi-colonial, or dependent countries, subject to oppressive external or indigenous rule, or both."
(Miliband 1989, 29.)
These conditions in no way were conducive to the functioning of a socialist democracy. Neither was there any
genuine effort on the part of the new regimes to break the authoritarian mould, which they had inherited. With the
partial exception of Yugoslavia under Tito after 1948, the Stalinist legacy weighed heavily in these countries. The
new thinking and relaxation introduced by Gorbachev proved to be the turning point in the fate of the authoritarian
system throughout the Eastern bloc. By popular will and people's resistance, the coercive ruling cliques were swept
away. The dissolution of the Soviet Union came to be the culminating point of this revolutionary and epochal
change.
The repercussions of these upheavals have changed the map of international relations and of the balance of
forces in the world politics. The socialist movement has suffered heavily. Over three decades ago the Italian
Marxist Lucio Magri had advocated a radical break with the Eastern bloc countries because these, in his view,
could not be reformed due to their social and political degeneration. He was expelled from the CPI. He wrote just
after the unsuccessful abortive coup in the Soviet Union in 1991: "A historical experience now is ending in painful
defeat-an experience which, both materially and in terms of ideas, served sometimes as a model and in any case as
a reference point for broad movements of liberation. It is now fashionable in the West, even on the Left, to treat
that connection as thoroughly harmful product of manipulation or folly-that is, to consider the October Revolution
and its sequel not as a process which degenerated in stages but as a regression aborigine, or as a pile of rubble. But
the historical reality is rather different. First Stalinism, then the authoritarian power of a bureaucratic, imperial
cast, were one side of that historical process, and we were wrong not to have seen its effects in time and denounced
it in its roots. But for decades another side has also continued to operate: the side of national independence; the
spread of literacy, modernization and social protection across whole countries; the resistance to fascism as a
general tendency of capitalism and victory over it; support for and actual involvement in the liberation of three-
quarters of humanity from colonialism; containment of the power of the mightiest imperial state. First the
involution and then the collapse of all that has direct and weighty consequences for the Left throughout the world.
For the oppressed, it means the passing away not so much of a model -mistakenly held and now generally
discarded-as of an ally and support." (Magri 1991, 7.)
The collapse of the Soviet system and its impact at the international level has meant the disappearance of the
previous equilibrium in international systems of alliances. The United States and its allies have emerged as the
supreme masters in the post-Soviet world to create a "new world order." It can be clearly seen in the case of Iraq.
The United States and its allies unleashed the Gulf War in 1991 to destroy Iraq to further their geostrategic goals
and economic interests. In 2003 the United States and Britain started a war of aggression on false pretexts and have
occupied Iraq and taken possession of its oil resources. There was no power left to resist American global
hegemony and its barbarous wars.

The death of socialism?

The effects of the fall of the Eastern bloc have been equated with the death of Marxism. It is quite true that
within the directly affected countries, the image of Marxism in the eyes of the majority is negative. In the West, the
academic Left has also been deeply skeptical of Marxism as an alternative to capitalism. Professor Fred Halliday
views the end of the Cold War thus: "It means nothing less than the defeat of the communist project as it has been
known in the twentieth century and the triumph of the capitalist.... The failure of the communist model to
constitute a viable, internationally distinct bloc, and the historical reversal of the process that began in 1917, do not
appear to be in doubt. The cold war, in its broader historic sense, is continuing, but with the collapse of one of the
two protagonists. In this sense, the apparent generosity of Western claims that the antagonism between the two is
over conceals a triumphant undertow. To speak in the language of "old thinking," what we are now witnessing is
class struggle on an international scale, as the superior strength of Western capitalism forces open the societies
partially closed to it for four or more decades." (Halliday 1990, 12, 13.)
There has been a growing agreement between Left and Right that the demise of the Eastern bloc has virtually
sealed the fate of Marxism as an alternative to capitalism. It is instructive to see what Ernesto Laclau, director of
theoretical studies at Essex University, said in an interview in 1991. One needs a rather lengthy quotation to
describe his point of view:
"For me Marxism is just one moment in the radical tradition of the West. A moment which is
definitely over if we look at the central theses of Marxism, there is, firstly, the assertion of an
increasing homogenization of the social structure under capitalism, tending towards a rapid
proletarianization which would lead to a final showdown between the bourgeoisie and the
proletariat. That image of the historical process is, obviously, wrong. Secondly, Marxism was a
theory based, precisely for those reasons, on the centrality of the working class as a historical
actor. Again, this centrality is disappearing, everywhere. I think, Marxism has to be considered
as just one moment in a wider process, which is the democratic revolution, in the sense that it
tried to expand towards the economic sphere the notions of equality that liberalism only
recognized in the public sphere of citizenship. But Marxism is just one limited episode in this
process. With the proliferation of new historical actors, new social movements in the world
today, we find that the democratic revolution has a much wider base. We also have to remember
that the fact that Marxism was an extremely complex and diverse phenomenon."
Laclau contends that very little can be maintained from the theoretical apparatus of Marxism. He adds: "I think
Marxism is important now from the point of view of the history of political ideas. The fact remains, however, that
some important tools for political analysis have emerged within the field of Marxism, for instance, the category of
hegemony, formulated by Gramsci." (Laclau 1991, 16.)
Laclau has rightly pointed to the complex and diverse phenomenon of Marxism. But the reduction of Marxism
to a few ready-made formulas is quite off the mark. This formulation, in my view, oversimplifies what is basically
complex and broad, extending beyond political and economic theories. It has been fashionable in bourgeois
propaganda to play down the role and place of the working class and working-class movements. To maintain as
Laclau does that the centrality of the working class is disappearing is to ignore the historic developments
throughout the world. In the affluent countries the class differences in the present times have accentuated. In most
of the Third World countries the problem of unemployment and poverty has reached unmanageable proportions by
all accounts. There is no doubt that modern technology has added new factors in the process of production. In
certain areas effective use of machines has reduced the need of many workers and operators. But again this reveals
the ever-evolving relationship of man and machine under the developments in natural science. In his Economic
and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx had emphasized this relationship in these words:
"But natural science has invaded and transformed human life all the more practically through
the medium of industry; and has prepared human emancipation, although its immediate effect
had to be the furthering of the dehumanization of man. Industry is the actual, historical
relationship of nature, and therefore of natural science, to man." (Marx 1974, 97.)
In fact the major shifts of rural population to the cities and industrial areas in search of jobs in the Asian, African
and Latin American countries show the enormous growth of the working classes and their pivotal role in the
historical transformations taking place. The potential of the working masses is increasing and not decreasing. In
the industrialized Western countries there is substantial percentage of working-class people unemployed and
reduced to the dole-queues or pushed to the care of welfare agencies.
Conservative writers and ideologists offer a simple explanation regarding the economic and political stagnation
that took place under state-socialism, i.e., that the Marxist ideology per se was the root-cause of this. But this
perspective has some major shortcomings. It virtually erases any distinction between the variant of socialism that I
have called state-socialism, and Marxism. If the aim is to gain any vantage point in the propaganda war against
Marxist ideology then apparently it is motivated by particular considerations and expediency. This in itself is
arguing on false premises; therefore it is intellectually untenable and unfair. Miliband rejects the view that
Marxism is responsible for the authoritarian mould in the former Eastern bloc. Writing in 1989 just before the big
turmoil in the Eastern bloc, he commented:
"In fact, Marxism has nothing to do with it. At the very core of Marx's thought, there is the
insistence that socialism, not to speak of communism, entails the subordination of the state to
society; and even the dictatorship of the proletariat, in Marx's perspective, must be taken to
mean all but unmediated popular rule. In the unlikely event of their wishing to find external
ideological inspiration for their form of rule, Communist leaders would have sought in vain in
the many volumes of Marx's and Engels's Collected Works for such inspiration. Least of all
would they have found any notion of single-party monopolistic rule? ... The real architect of the
model of the rule which came to prevail in all Communist regimes was in fact Stalin, who first
established it in the Soviet Union, and then had it copied by other Communist leaders nurtured
in his school, or imposed it on the countries which came under his control after World War
Two." (Miliband 1989, 30.)
Of course, it is essential to draw a demarcation line between Marxism and a Stalinist model of socialism. The
Stalinist model refers to the whole system of socio-political power, which took definite shape in the Soviet Union
in the 1930s and was later extended to Eastern Europe in the second-half of the 1940s. By the end of the 1980s it
started to collapse. This system, as mentioned before, was characterized by the hierarchically organized system of
nomenclature. The claim that this system was equal to the realization of the Marxian project of a Communist
society is to negate the very essence of Marxism, which stands for human realization and emancipation. Alex
Callinicos criticizes those who equate these two. He writes:
"This equation tends to imply another, namely: Marxism=Leninism=Stalinism. The apostolic
(or diabolic) succession thus established involves tracing a direct line of political continuity
between Marx's own theoretical and strategic conceptions, the Bolshevik political project which
triumphed in 1917, and the final shape assumed by the post revolutionary regime in the 1930s....
A qualitative break separates Stalinism from Marx and Lenin. A profound discontinuity can be
traced in the historical record, in the process which transformed the Bolshevik Party, even in the
1920s still what Moshe Levin calls an 'alliance of factions' rather than the monolith of liberal
and Stalinist myth, into the apparatus of the power, terrorized and terrorizing, that it became by
the end of 1930s." (Callinicos 1991, 15, 16.)
The views advanced by both Callinicos and Miliband call into question the whole approach towards the end of
authoritarian regimes, which we see in the capitalist and reactionary press. The end of the Eastern bloc has been
equated with the death of Marxism. It is true that the image of the Marxism in the former state-socialist countries
has been negative, and it is understandable in view of the oppressive monolithic system, which prevailed there.
Being victims of state-propaganda of the authoritarian regimes, many people seemed to have genuinely believed
that the system under which they lived was Marxism in practice. What else was it, if it was not socialism? This was
the sort of question very many did not ask.
In the Western liberal democracies, especially in the United States, the "death of Marxism" campaign reigns
supreme. American academic Victor Wallis comments in this regard:
"The ideological counterpart to capitalism's military-economic arsenal is its control over the
mass media: a control which largely delimits the vocabulary of the Left's political outreach.
Phrases like 'the collapse of Communism,' 'the death of Marxism,' and 'the failure of socialism,'
taken as being interchangeable, are repeated so often and so automatically that they attain the
status of axioms. Any suggestion that their message might be misleading requires the kind of
lengthy explanation, which threatens to turn people off. The cycle is then complete: capital
proclaims Marxism's death; ordinary people take it for granted; Left activists are loath to
challenge them; Marxism atrophies among the activists; and finally, Marxism is dead." (Wallis
1991, 7.)
However, the electoral successes of the former communist parties in some of the former socialist countries have
alarmed the West. It must be a surprise to many Western pundits that many people are turning back to the
communists in their struggle for their socio-economic welfare and political order and stability. In Russian
presidential elections in June 1996, the communist candidate Gennady Zyuganov scored about one-third of the
votes as compared to the rest of the candidates. Despite all the heavy odds under a dictatorial president who had
the state-machinery to help his re-election as well as the full backing and patronage of the West, the popularity of
the Communist party and its candidate still reveals hopes and aspirations of the people that still have to do with the
communist project replacing the capitalist system.

Basic values of the socialist tradition

How far can the authoritarian system be said be the continuation of the classical Marxist tradition? An answer to
this question has to be sought not in the current jargons of mass media but in the concrete analysis of the course of
events. Our analytical tools for this purpose are found to be in Marxist historical method. In this matter, the
Hungarian philosopher Georg Lukacs's classical formulation of "What is Marxism?" in 1919 needs to be repeated.
He writes:
"But among intellectuals it has become fashionable to greet any profession of faith in
Marxism with ironical disdain. Great disunity has prevailed even in the "socialist" camp as to
what constitutes the essence of Marxism, and which theses it is permissible to criticize and even
reject without forfeiting the right to the title of 'Marxist'.... Let us assume for the sake of
argument that recent research has disproved once and for all every one of Marx's individual
theses. Even if this were to be proved, every serious 'orthodox' Marxist would still be able to
accept all such modern findings without reservation and hence dismiss all of Marx's theses in
toto-without having to renounce his orthodoxy for a single moment. Orthodox Marxism,
therefore, does not imply the uncritical acceptance of the results of Marx's investigations. It is
not the 'belief' in this or that thesis, nor the exegesis of a 'sacred' book. On the contrary,
orthodoxy refers exclusively to method." (Lukacs 1971, 1.)
When we undertake an analysis of the collapse of state-socialism, the relevance of Marxism in clarifying the
issues becomes evident. Marx's theory of social transformations, historical materialism, explains how different
socio-economic organizations of production which have characterized human history arise or fall as they enable or
impede the expansion of society's production. The growth of productive forces thus explains the general course of
human history. Marx had concentrated on the analysis of one socio-economic formation, the capitalist mode of
production. Over the last three decades a lot of work on the conceptual refinement of historical materialism has
been accomplished in the West. Historical materialism is seen now as a general theory of the development and
transformation of all societies, pre-capitalist as well as capitalist. Seen in this light, we find not the demise of
Marxism but rather its increased relevance in understanding the general pattern of development and the underlying
currents and causes of it. The end of the system of nomenclature cannot be equated with the end of Marxism.
There is little justification for it.
 The mode of production and antiquated relations of production in the Eastern bloc countries had reached the
point where they were no longer able to solve the immense socio-economic problems with an archaic system of
material production and distribution. The consciousness to overthrow these conditions was embedded in the
material conditions. But the nomenclature was incapable of seeing the writing on the wall. The big changes that
occurred during and after 1989 confirm Marx's classic formulation on the start of social revolutions. He wrote in
1859:
"At a certain stage in their development, the material productive forces of society come in
conflict with the existing relations of production, or-what is but a legal expression for the same
thing-with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of
development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch
of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense
superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations a
distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic
conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the
legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic-in short, ideological forms in which men
become conscious of this conflict and fight it out." (Marx and Engels 1977, 181-182.)
Even the anti-Marxist scholars have come to acknowledge the relevance of historical materialism offering
explanation to historical change. Callinicos observes in this respect:
"Indeed, one of the principal trends in English-speaking social theory during the 1980s was
precisely such an implicit tribute, namely the formulation of various ambitious 'historical
sociologies,' which sought to offer, like Marxism, a general account of historical change, but
which tended to give ideological movements and political and military conflicts the same
explanatory importance as contradictions between the forces and relations of production.
Historical materialism has thus demonstrated intellectual vitality, its capacity to set a historical
agenda. A theory distinguished precisely by its focus on epochal transformations should be well
equipped to interpret the progressive collapse of the Stalinist regimes." (Callinicos 1991, 17.)
Callinicos like some other Trotskyist intellectuals is right to uphold the relevance of historical materialism. His
views also exonerate Trotsky who had exposed the degeneration of the Soviet system under the Stalinist
bureaucracy and also had warned of the coming dangers to the workers' state. The prophet whose forecasts often
proved wrong was not a false prophet after all. The degeneration and the collapse of bureaucratic-socialism proved
him finally right.
But it is important to remember that Marxism cannot be reduced to a historically oriented social theory either.
The Marxist political project fundamentally is one of human emancipation and free development of individuals as
the precondition of the evolution of Communist societies. Here Marx's concept of the free development of every
single individual and the realization of human potentialities complements his idea that individuals can find the
means of their development only in the community. His conception of Communism in this respect is the political
scheme for the full realization of man as total man (see Khan 1995, 244-56.)
Marx has a particular conception of communism, which sees the self-emancipation of the working class
achieved not by any other group or force but by the working class itself. Thus the working class in its historical
role by its self-emancipation also emancipates the whole of society from alienation and social oppression. It is not
socialism from above, but socialism from below which results from the activity of the masses themselves. If we
compare Marx's ideas on socialism with those of the nomenclature, we find that they have very little in common.
In fact, the socialism under state bureaucracy of the Eastern bloc was more like what Marx in his early writings
had characterized and castigated as "crude and thoughtless" form of communism. I think it is necessary to explain
this difference as a matter of theoretical accuracy and historical truth if the onslaught of the Right is to be
combated and its false premises and imputations refuted.
Let me repeat the words of Marx who expounds his concept of communism in his Economic and Philosophic
Manuscripts of 1844 in these words:
"Communism is the positive mode as the negation of the negation, and is hence the actual
phase necessary for the next stage of the historical development in the process of human
emancipation and rehabilitation. Communism is the necessary form and the dynamic principle of
 the immediate future, but communism as such is not the goal of human development, the form of
human society." (Marx 1974, 100-101.)
According to Marx, and it is worth remembering, the revolutionary processes of history which will emancipate
human beings from the shackles of private property under capitalism and put an end to human alienation and
degradation will not be an easy task. Marx says further in the same work:
"It takes actual communist action to abolish actual private property. History will lead to it; and
this movement, which in theory we already know to be self-transcending movement, will
constitute in actual fact a very rough and protracted process." (ibid. 108-109.)

The loud clamors of the triumph of market economy

and new liberalism in the West and the death of
Marxism have been on the high agenda of the
reactionary forces throughout the world. But as I
have pointed out these assertions do not stand the test
of empirical scrutiny. The collapse of the one-party
dictatorships does not mean that the Marxist project
of a new society is over. The socialist values like the
idea of social equality, solidarity, self-development
and self-realization, acceptance of humanism and
atheism in place of religious illusions, the idea of
participatory democracy and self-government in their
historical developmental phases are and will continue
to be of concern to human society now and in the
future. The Yugoslav writer Markovic commented in
1991 in an article written just before the
disintegration of the Soviet Union:
"Values characteristic of socialist tradition are deeply rooted in humanist philosophy and
emancipatory movements in history. After the great catastrophic depression of the late twenties
and the thirties Western society survived and stabilized, implementing some of those ideas.
Socialism is, therefore, not a utopian vision but part of the reality of the most developed
contemporary societies . . .. All . . . socialist values cannot go down the drain because of the
failure of 'real socialism' which, in the first place, did not even try to implement them. There are
good reasons to believe that just now after the fall of bureaucratic form of socialism that ground
has been cleared for the emergence of democratic, humanist socialism in the East. This is an
optimal historical possibility but it is far from clear that it will be realized in Eastern Europe and
the Soviet Union." (Markovic 1990-1991, 215.)
The importance and relevance of Marxism in the social sciences is well known to all those who are familiar with
modern sociology, economics and philosophy. It has also been argued that academic objectivity was not among
Marx's priorities and that he brought the extraneous values into what ought to have been his strictly factual process
of inquiry. It is certainly true that Marx developed his scholarly work from the standpoint of his political
commitment. Of course, he also had the possibility of defending the capitalist system, the oppressive rulers, the
propertied classes, and thus ignore the downtrodden and oppressed as many had done before and after him. He
could also have paid lip service to the cause of the working masses while upholding the interests of the
bourgeoisie, who, in any case, are always good paymasters to their intellectual spokesmen. But the fact is that he
made a choice. He took the side of the wretched of the earth, the oppressed, and particularly the industrial
working-class people. He never tried to be value-free, detached or neutral in his work and studies. For example,
early in his encounter with the political economy, private property and capitalism in his Economic and Philosophic
Manuscripts, Marx began his analysis with an account of the poverty caused by private property rather than with
the wealth created by commodity production that had been the starting point of the political economists.
The vocabulary used in history, historiography, economics and philosophy has been enriched with new concepts
and dimension in Marx. The general categories, which have become words of everyday use in the present century
in social and political thought, owe much to Marx. Here we can mention the proletariat including the dictatorship
of the proletariat, class including the class struggle, class warfare, class consciousness, alienation including the
fetishism of commodities, and ideology including inverse consciousness, etc. I would like to finish this article with
an excellent summing up by Professor Paul Thomas of the University of California:
"It is no doubt easier to imagine a world without Marx than a world without revolution,
capitalism, socialism and communism. But in the world we actually inhabit, those facts of life
have still to be seen through Marx. He may not have coined any of those terms, but he set his
seal decisively on all of them, so much so that it remains impossible to discuss them without
bringing him in. Marx was not alone having advocated revolution or in having believed in the
need for drastic changes in order to attain human autonomy, as the nearest glance at the
wonderland of nineteenth-century revolutionism will reveal. But his sense of the tension
between the depravity and the promise of capitalism was unique." (Thomas 1991, 24.)
In my mind there is no doubt that as long as capitalism as a system of particular socio-economic relations exists,
Marxism as a critique of it, both at theoretical and practical levels, will continue to be a powerful force in the
service of mankind.
References
Callinicos, A. The Revenge of History, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991.
Fukuyama, F. 'The End of History?', The National Interest, Summer 1989.
Halliday, F. 'The End of Cold War', New Left Review, no. 189, 1991.
Khan, N. Development of the Concept and Theory of Alienation in Marx's Writings March 1843 to August 1844,
Oslo: Solum Publishers, 1995.
Laclau, E. 'What Comes after 1991?', Marxism Today, October 1991.
Lukacs, G. History and Class Consciousness, London: Merlin Press, 1971.
Magri, L. 'The European Left: Between Crisis and Refoundation', New Left Review, no. 189, 1991.
Markovic, M. 'The Meaning of Recent Social Changes in Eastern Europe', Praxis International, 10: 3/4,
October 1990 and January 1991.
Marx, K. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1974.
Marx & Engels, Selected Works (In One Volume), Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977.
Miliband, R. 'Reflections on the Crisis of Communist Regimes', New Left Review, no. 177, 1989.
Sidney, T. 'Aiming at a Moving Target: Rebellion in Eastern Europe', PS: Political Science and Politics, March
1991.
Thomas, P. 'Critical Reflections: Marx then and now', The Cambridge Companion to Marx, ed. Terrell Carver,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Wallis, V. 'Marxism and the U.S. Left', Monthly Review, June 1991
Nasir Khan, Dr Philos, is a historian and a peace activist. He is the author of, "Development of the Concept
and Theory of Alienation in Marx's Writings," (1995) and, "Perceptions of Islam in the Christendoms: A Historical
Survey," (2006). He has written numerous articles on international affairs and the issues of human rights.
He has his own blog at http://nasir-khan.blogspot.com through which he can be contacted
 Russian Revolution and Workers Democracy
BY SUZI WEISSMAN

The Russian Revolution of February and October 1917 opened up a new historical epoch, and was greeted with
enthusiasm by workers around the world. Never before had workers come close to winning power, though many
participated in political life in the Social Democratic parties of Western Europe.
Suddenly, in Russia, revolution was an actuality, not simply a hope or a threat. Victor Serge described the
intoxicating power of that moment as one where life is beginning anew, where conscious will, intelligence, and an
inexorable love of mankind are in action.
The unique element at the heart of the Russian revolutionary process was its revolutionary working classand
the democratic form of self-organization that it created in struggle that made the idea and reality of power possible.
Urban workers led and dominated the opposition to the old order and ultimately brought into beingfor the first
time in world historya workers state, albeit in embryonic form.
The movement toward revolution by the working class was facilitated, perhaps paradoxically, by the
underdeveloped nature of Russian society compared to the West. There was little in Tsarist Russia of the highly
evolved civil society that had developed over many centuries in Western Europe.
The autocracy did not allow freely contested elections to a parliament with the ability to legislate, nor legal
political parties, nor minimal formal liberties of speech, assembly and press. Nor did Russia possess the legal mass
reformist parties with their parliamentary delegations, trade union leaderships and radical newspapers, not to
mention sports clubs, popular theaters and the like, that played such a central role in the Wests working-class
politics.
The virtual non-existence in Russia of these networks was to an important degree because Russia lacked a
mature capitalist classthe sort of bourgeoisie that had elsewhere, over time, thrown up the institutions of civil
society made possible by capitalist productivity and economic surpluses.
Consequently the working class in Tsarist Russia could carry the revolution forward with stunning speed relative
to the more developed capitalist world, but only to the degree it built its own power through creating and
expanding the political sway of profoundly democratic forms of self-government. The working class could make
the revolution because it could win a political majority. Beginning in the urban centers of Petrograd and Moscow
and then rolling across the empire, it overthrew the old order and brought to power authentically revolutionary
mass institutions.
But this ended up being the limit of its power. It then faced a series of obstaclesobjective conditionsthat it
could only overcome through non-democratic means. To the extent the Russian working class sought to take the
revolution beyond this point, it could do so only by leaving behind its vibrant institutions of workers democracy.
And to the degree it left workers democracy behind, it undermined the effective foundations of its own rule.
As workers democracy was progressively weakened, the revolutionary regime was undermined, transformed,
and ultimately supplanted by its oppositea bureaucratic authoritarian, terroristic tyranny. The evisceration of the
workers councils, it turned out, traced the path of the revolutions ascent, decline and defeat from within.

Workers self-organization and power

When the Russian working class came to power with the slogan all power to the soviets, workers around the
world greeted the revolution with jubilationbecause it represented their broadest aspirations, a new democracy
of free workers, such as had never before been seen. (Victor Serge, From Lenin to Stalin, 1937, 22)
In the frontline cities of Petrograd and Moscow, Tashkent and Kazan, and in the provinces from Tula to Tambov,
Ryazan to Kaluga, in the networks of railroads across the country, hundreds-of-thousands of workers, peasants and
soldiers (the toiling masses) took their fate into their own hands. They organized collectively at the level of
industry, agriculture and garrisons, forming committees and councils to fight their bosses and the Tsarist regime.
In the process, they created innovative forms of self-rule: workers councils, peasants councils, soldiers
councilssoviets in Russian parlance. This new democratic form of self-organization arose spontaneously and
quickly blossomed independently from the existing political parties, distinguishing the Russian revolutionary
process from the beginning and inspiring working people around the world.
 The soviets had made their first appearance in 1905, and were swiftly adopted as an organizing tool by workers
around the globe as a higher form of political organization for the working class. Soviets were organized
democratically, joined voluntarily, enjoyed freedom of speech and representation for various political currents and
were hotbeds of revolutionary ferment.
The soviets became the workers state in embryo, functioning as an alternative government, an organ of self-
government and working-class power. This was an historic upheavaland a significant step forward for
concretizing democracybecause it meant that the parties had to compete for workers allegiance in a common
political arena. Russian workers developed their politics, their leaderships, and their power to fight the employers
and the state at the same time.
The defeat of the revolution of 1905 initially threw the country into a period of deep reaction driven by counter-
revolution. This period of political stasis and decline, however, was short-lived. Powered especially by the military
buildup that reflected the intensification of inter-imperialist rivalry leading up to World War I, the spectacular
growth of heavy industry led to a rapid and tumultuous expansion of the urban working class.
This new industrial working class, recruited from the countryside, was concentrated in coal, iron, steel and
military equipment. As a result, the terrain of struggle for working-class democracy and power between the two
revolutions of 1905 and 1917 shifted to industrial workers. Particularly during the 1912-1914 period came an
enormous growth of workers struggles and strikes.
As the trade union struggle became the chief school for working-class democratization, radicalism and
revolutionary politics, the Bolsheviks displayed their capacity to dynamize and lead the struggle. By the outbreak
of the war, the Bolsheviks had secured a strong political majority in the trade union movement. This became the
springboard for their politically winning over the urban working class in 1917.
Tsarist Russias entry into World War I, accompanied by delirious patriotism, temporarily ended labors
dynamism, but by 1917 the horrors of war mowed down an entire generation of young menmilitary defeats,
death and maiming on the battlefield, widespread hunger and diseases resulting from the disruption of the
economy, and the general destabilization of everyday life served to provoke a new upsurge.
More than three million soldiers were killed. When the empire collapsed with the abdication of the Tsar in
February, the Russian people, armed with guns from the war, were ready to fight for power.

April Theses:
All power to the Soviets
The Revolution of 1917 took up where the Revolution of 1905 left off; it was from start to finish a story of
workers initiatives to amass and ultimately take power. The mobilized masses had become increasingly combative
and turned toward revolution as the Russian empire crumbled, unleashing all the political and economic difficulties
of military defeat.
By February 1917 there were strikes and a huge mass rising, with workers taking to the streets and calling for an
end to the incompetent autocracy they could no longer tolerate. They demanded bread, land, and peace. This
encapsulated their grievances: exhausted from the war, the shortage of bread and the incomplete emancipation of
the peasants from serfdom.
They poured into central Petrograd and overthrew the Tsar and his regime. The urban working-class revolution
expanded its democratic base by winning the support of the peasants because it overthrew the rule of the Tsar and
the feudal aristocracy, and because the Bolsheviks advanced popular demands for land, bread and peace.
But the overthrow of the autocracy posed in acute fashion the problem of the nature of the revolution in progress
and what was to be its outcome. Almost overnight a situation called dual power emerged.
At one pole, replacing the Tsarist regime, a new provisional government began to meet, bringing together all the
forces favoring order and propertyliberal nobles, professionals, bourgeoisie. At the opposite pole were the
workers councils, and specifically the Petrograd Soviet, directly representing the radical revolutionizing working
class. In March 1917, all forces in play in the soviets agreed, at least in formal terms, that what was on the agenda
was the bourgeois democratic revolution. But what did that mean?
The Bolsheviks, who played a central role in the February revolution, stuck to the Marxist orthodoxy to which
they had committed themselves a decade earlierthe revolution would be bourgeois democratic ( i.e., not an
immediate assault on capitalist production and property.) But they appreciated the paradoxical character of this
notion in the Russian case, given the limited extent and cramped manner in which capitalism had developed there.
Capitalist industry developed under the auspices of, and was politically dependent upon, the old regime: in
particular, the military industry was directly driven by the state. At the same time, the capitalist class oversaw an
industrial sector that had a distinctly modern formno longer the small businesses of artisans and shopkeepers
who, in earlier times, had ultimately seen it in their interest to defend private property.
This meant the bourgeoisie in Russia had to confront an unprecedentedly radical proletariat aiming to overthrow
private property. The capitalists were in essence anti-revolutionary. They identified with the old order; opposed
even their own bourgeois democratic revolution in any form; and, following the February overthrow of the Tsar,
were dead set on restoring the old political regime in some form.
In fact, the liberals in the provisional government had the goal of ceding power to the old monarchy
demanding merely that it be constitutional. The working class was thus the only social force that could make the
revolution, and push the democratic revolution to its limit in a manner totally opposed by the bourgeoisie itself
free elections, free speech, the right of free propaganda, the eight-hour day. This is in fact what it did.
But there was a problem implicit in the notion of a bourgeois revolution carried out against the bourgeoisie by
the working class, a problem clearly articulated by Leon Trotsky. There was no place for a bourgeois democratic
society to emerge between the old regime and workers power.
The bourgeoisie was not numerous, and in political terms had virtually ceased to function once the February
Revolution and subsequent abdication of the Tsar had taken place. This left the working class to carry out the tasks
of development supposedly reserved for a democratic revolution. The liberal nobles, capitalists and professionals
were in opposition and in any case lacked the capital, skills and will to do so.
The working class had no choice, Trotsky argued, but to establish working-class power in order to consolidate
the democratic revolution, overthrowing the bourgeoisie in the process. However since the bourgeoisie would
oppose working-class power at every turn, the only way to insure workers democratic rule would be to abolish
bourgeois property. This impelled the working class to establish revolutionary governance. If it tried to stop the
process before it had destroyed the material foundations of the old ruling classes, it would be crushed by domestic
reaction.1
When Lenin returned from Swiss exile, the essence of Trotskys conception was presented in concrete political
terms before him. Arriving at the Finland station in Petrograd, Lenin understood that the revolution now required
recognizing that the power of the soviets was everything [they held the power, the provisional government did
not], hence the demand All Power to the Soviets. He dared the soviets to seize power, but the
Bolsheviks Pravda disavowed him, as did most party leaders. Not so the workers in the streets, factories and
barracks who eagerly agreed: Lenin had expressed, as no other politician had, what they wanted to hear.
Within three weeks Lenin had a majority in the party, and the program was for power, a democratic proletarian
and peasant soviet republic, with the hegemony of the working class at its center. 2

October 1917:
Workers come to power
The standard view in the West, central to discrediting the October Revolution, is that it was just a
violent coup by the minority Bolshevik leadership who had manipulated their way to power, overturning a nascent
democracy, mobilizing the working class behind them like soldiers following their officers.
The overwhelming evidence from a century of in-depth historical scholarship shows otherwise. Political life
within the Bolshevik party and its leadership, as in the soviets, was intensely collective and democratic with
tendencies appearing and disappearing with rise, resolution and new appearance of disagreements. The Bolsheviks
were able to succeed precisely because they were organized not in a top-down, militarist way but in a highly
decentralized manner. They could respond immediately to workers initiatives and integrate large numbers rapidly
into their ranks.
From this vantage point, the Bolsheviks prevailed not because they could direct the workers movement from
above but because, as result of their capacity to represent the working class in every changing phase of struggle,
they could quickly respond to workers shifting demands, objectives and moods.
 Worker activists made the Bolshevik party their organization, even as these militants collaborated on the ground
with worker members of other parties. The Bolsheviks came to represent the working class at its most creative and
radical, when the class could actually shape the party to its needs. They expressed the aspirations of the workers
and potential for power. Their popularity grew from the confidence they earned, as their words and actions were
debated democratically in the soviets and discussed on the streets.
The tactical and strategic skill of Lenin and Trotsky was crucial to the victorious revolution, but they were only
first among comrades, their leadership and that of the Bolsheviks based on the effectiveness of their activity. As
Victor Serge described it, the revolution triumphed because of the soviets, dual power and a party of capable
leaders who understood the historical moment, could see reality, grasp possibility, and conceive the action which
[would be] the link between the real and the possible. (Victor Serge, Year One of the Russian Revolution, 58.)
So crucial was the place of workers self-rule in the unfolding of the revolution that, on the eve of taking power,
Lenin was moved to theorize it in State and Revolution, written in August and September 1917. Looking back to
the experience of the Paris Commune of 1871 for the model of workers direct democracy, he captured the spirit
and goal of revolution from below. He saw in the soviets the political form for realizing the direct, democratic rule
of the producers. Once in power every worker can learn to directly administer the state. i.e., every cook can
govern.
Trotsky, the twice-elected president of the Petrograd Soviet (1905 and 1917), understood the nature of its
revolutionary form and saw its role in democratically coordinating the actions of the proletariat in its struggle for
revolutionary power.
The argument that the revolution was the work of a small conspiracy who intended to establish a monopoly of
power for themselves from the outset, is easily refuted. The Bolshevik party democratically won majorities for
their program in the soviets in the months leading to October, and on that basis assumed the leadership of the
workers and urban society.
At the same time, Bolsheviks succeeded in winning the support of the rank and file of the armyorganized in
soldiers sovietsdepriving the Kerensky provisional government of the means of coercion to sustain its rule and
constituting the vehicle for the revolutionary seizure of power by the working class. The Russian Revolution was
undeniably the most radical ever. In the early months, direct democracy prevailed. Far from dictating to the
population, the Bolsheviks typically endorsed initiatives already taken by the masses.
One example: the decree of November 14 invited the workers to use their own committees to control the
production, accounting and financing of the firms they work in, a call for workers to turn their occupations of
workplaces into workers control and workers ownership. Land and factories were turned over to peasant and
worker soviets, the debt was canceled, and banks, trusts and cartels were nationalized.

Whittling down democracy

The Bolshevik party had led the revolution in practice, legitimizing its leadership by winning formal majorities
for its program in the soviets. But with its victory, it fell victim to the revolutions structural lack of a political
majority.
In January 1918, the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries took office as a minority and argued
that the Constituent Assembly, which was to write the constitutional basis for the new regime, was improperly
elected. Unless new elections were called, the assembly, dominated by Right Social Revolutionaries (SRs) who
opposed the soviets, should not be allowed to continue. When delegates returned for their second day in office, the
doors were locked. Lenin admitted that the Constituent Assembly was, in theory, the highest expression of
bourgeois democracy, but in the circumstances its composition would lead directly to counter-revolution and the
restoration of some form of the old regime.
The most pressing objective for the new revolutionary government was to make good on its program and
secure peace. No reconstruction of society could be initiated without withdrawing from the imperialist world war.
The debate over peace terms had to begin from recognition of the immediate threat from occupying German
forces. While this debate caused substantial division in the party and society, it was also an example of the health
and vitality of democracy in these early days. However, it led to divisions that had deep consequences.
The Left SRs and Left Communists argued against the peace of shame, as they called the Treaty of Brest-
Litovsk.3 Bolshevik leaders Evgeny Preobrazhensky and Nikolai Bukharin, later to stand on opposite sides of the
industrialization debates, joined with others to write the Theses of Left Communistsopposing the treaty and
proposing to wage a revolutionary war against the Central Powers (most importantly, Germany.)
 Lenin maintained that the old army didnt exist and the new one was just forming therefore that proposal was
unrealistic. He said I want to lose space in order to gain time. That is, he was willing to give up territory to settle
quickly and place his hope on revolutionary developments in the West. His critics warned against trying to
preserve the revolution at any cost. Policies that led to the soviets losing their independence would result in
transforming Russia from a commune state to one with ruled by a centralized bureaucracy.
Trotskys position, neither peace nor war, meant stalling for time. While it seemed to be the reverse of Lenins
proposal, it was also based on the perspective of seeking aid from the Western proletariat.
Under the terms of Brest-Litovsk, revolutionary Russia lost Poland and the Baltic regions, as well as huge tracts
of the Ukraine (27 percent of her sown area, 26 percent of her population, a third of her average crops, three-
quarters of her iron and steel and 26 percent of her railway network.) The country was forced to pay six billion
gold marks in reparations.
One last horrendous consequence was that the terms of the peace sealed the sacrifice of the Finnish proletariat.
The Finnish Commune went down in bloodshed in April 1918in part because Soviet troops had to leave the
border under the treatys provisions. Forced to accept the harsh terms by the advance of the German army, Lenin
signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918.
The Civil War (1918-1921) and the military invasion by imperialist countries led to the destruction of a
significant portion of the urban working class, the agent of the revolution. This long and bloody conflict, in which
seven million died, is a dramatic contrast to the relatively bloodless revolution carried out against the defenders of
the old order from March through October 1917.
During the Civil War (1918-21), the revolution was hemmed in from all sides: from the old order, the White
armies of Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak, Iurii Denikin, General Yudenich and later Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel
were joined by the armies of fourteen capitalist powers to blockade and strangle the revolution. But armed
opposition also came from the bourgeois-liberal Kadets as well as factions of Socialist Revolutionaries,
Mensheviks and even some anarchists.
By the end of the Civil War, famine and epidemic had taken hold; the economy was in ruins. The measure taken
during this period, war communism, was described by Lenin as thrust on us by war and ruin. It was not, nor
could it be, a policy that corresponded to the economic tasks of the proletariat. It was a temporary measure.
Direct exchange between town and country was imposed by the requisitioning of grain and direct state
distribution of industrial goods under concentrated economic authority and power. Money was eliminated.
Although this reaction to circumstances had nothing to do with Marxism, it became an unfortunate source of
illusion about the possibility of a rapid and immediate transition to communism.
The abolition of the market was not based on material abundance and a highly developed productive base and
advanced forms of democracy and citizen participation but on social disintegration, destroyed production, absolute
scarcity and centralized, coercive authority. It wasnt viable. Everyone had to use the black market, even party
members. Stalin in the 1930s would borrow such methods in peacetime, and call it communism.

Ever-smaller revolutionary
working class
The Bolsheviks won the Civil War because they were able to mobilize the population, especially the urban
proletariat, to defeat the invading armies and the White contras of the day. But in the brutal process of breaking
their power, much of the revolutionary urban working class was destroyed.
With a return to peace, the urban working class could be reconstituted, drawn from the peasants of the nearby
countryside. But how to regenerate revolutionary consciousness in a semi-literate peasantry without class
traditions? Without any revolutionary practice, this new urban working class lacked revolutionary politics, and
labored under conditions remote from socialist goals.
War communism, with forced seizures of grain and militarization of labor, had effectively put an end to
democratic workers control at the enterprise level. The newly recruited working class had no say in factory
management and no voice in political decision making. The revolutionary momentum was lost, as well as the
frontline workers who made the revolution. Had there been elections at that point, the Bolsheviks would likely
have lost.
 The Bolsheviks were most afraid of being isolated in power. The Left Social Revolutionaries participated in the
government with the Bolsheviks from November 1917 until July 1918. However on July 6 the Left SRs began an
insurrectional revolt in Moscow, proclaiming their intention to govern alone and to reopen the war against
German imperialism. They were defeated and from then the Bolsheviks ruled alone.
Marcel Liebman noted, The Leninists...against their will, concentrated the whole state power in their own
hands, with no share held by other socialist parties. (Marcel Liebman, Was Lenin a Stalinist? in Tariq Ali
[editor], The Stalinist Legacy, Penguin Books, England, 1984, 140)
What Victor Serge would call this change of mentality meant that the Bolsheviks moved to suppress their
socialist and anarchist opponents, an act with irreversible consequences for the further development of socialist
democracy. At the time, it was a defensive move given that the SRs had launched a series of terrorist attacks,
killing first V. Voludarsky, then Moisei Uritsky, and had attempted to kill Lenin. Fanya Dora Kaplan, who shot
Lenin, said she did it because he was responsible for dispersing the Constituent Assembly.
Soon, however, with the outbreak of Civil War and the threat to the revolution it represented, the Bolsheviks
went further, banning political parties and abridging many of the basic liberties that an actually functioning
democracy requires. By 1921 other parties were virtually banned, and officially so by 1924.

Revolution isolated, workers power eroded

The basis of Marxs understanding of socialism, and in fact the common ideological patrimony of all the
socialist forces in RussiaBolsheviks, Mensheviks, and Left SRsis the vision of a consciously regulated society
of freely associated producers.
There was now a fundamental conundrum. The Bolsheviks, as Marxists, understood that there could be no
socialism without democracy. Institutions of democratic self-rule were crucial to the rational, equitable
reorganization of society with the working-class majority in control of its own destiny.
Leaders like Lenin and Trotsky understood the problem and saw it could only be overcome if the revolution
spread to countries where capitalism was developed and workers were closer to being a majority. Lenin often said
it was a terrible misfortune that the honor of beginning the world socialist revolution should befall backward
Russia, ill-suited to move toward socialism.
The Bolsheviks understood that their revolution was the first, but it belonged to the world. It was part of a global
process that couldnt be limited to Russia. They needed Germany and the West, and knew they couldnt survive if
they were left to themselves, surrounded by reaction. If need be, Lenin later said, Russia would sacrifice its
revolution for Germany because it had a better chance of advancing to socialism.
The soviets did not survive the Civil War, except in name. The working class barely existed, the country was
exhausted, in crisis, and the leadership faced chaos, circumstances that did not augur well for the democratic self-
governance of the working class. With society-wide democracy undermined, the soviets became de facto party
committees, rubber stamp organs for the party and later the state, losing their independence and becoming lifeless,
largely ceremonial institutions.
The irony (and tragedy) was that the organ of socialist democracy bequeathed to the international working class
could not itself survive the aftermath of the Revolution it had been indispensable in bringing about.

The end of inner party democracy

While constricting the play of formal democracy in the population, the Bolsheviks sought to continue it within
the party. This too was corroding, as a more or less inevitable result of the curtailment of democracy in the society
as a whole. The post-Civil War reality was that the state of siege in the society inevitably found its way into the
party, as the Bolsheviks found themselves isolated in Russia itself, and in the world where a postwar revolutionary
tide was ebbing.
The war, the internal measures against counter-revolution and famine, the privations of war communism and
then the suppression of an early 1921 sailors revolt at Kronstadt 4 relegated the commune state to the status of
myth. New entrants came into the party without the traditions of the Old Bolsheviks.
Any significant inner party faction, whether from a radical or conservative direction, that set itself against the
Bolshevik majority was seen as representing dissident political forces within the broader polity. Since the
Bolsheviks no longer allowed their existence outside the party, they could hardly be tolerated inside the party
where they might threaten splits. Even as it adopted a New Economic Policy, making concessions to peasant
interests, the party formally banned factions.

Extending the revolution,

consequences of failure
If socialist revolution was to be secured in the new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, formally
established in 1922) or begun to be realized over the longer run, it had to undertake the socio-economic
prerequisites of socialismat minimum, the industrialization of the economy so as to produce a working-class
majority.
Militant workers across the West saw the Russian working class as a model and appropriated this novel,
profoundly democratic form of organization, the soviet, as a new tool in the arsenal of class struggle.
Thanks especially to the centrality of the soviets in the Russian Revolution, but also to syndicalist and anarchist-
led uprisings in places like Spain, direct democracy was the order to the day, entailing a critique of bourgeois
electoralism and parliamentarism. Indeed, in the early years of the revolution the Bolsheviks hoped to forge
alliances with revolutionary syndicalists and anarchists to serve as partners in overthrowing bourgeois rule.
In the wake of the October Revolution that brought the Russian working class to power, committees and
councils appeared in sit-down strikes, general strikes, occupations and insurrections from Glasgow to Belfast,
Winnipeg to Seattle, Bavaria to Barcelona. From 1918-1920 revolutionary crises rocked Europes capitals.
These insurrectionary general strikes, with council power, were inspired by the Russian Revolution and aimed to
extend it to Europe, the Americas and beyond. But the German revolution, the Finnish and Hungarian Communes,
all the insurrectionary general strikes went down to a series of defeats. In Germany, the main hope, the
revolutionary possibility breathed its last in 1923.
The tragedy of the defeated revolutionary insurrections in Europe was that it threw the Russian revolutionary
leadership back on its own resources, in domestic circumstances of political isolation that were decreasingly
favorable for pushing the revolution forward.
The strangling of soviet democracy, even the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion, was hardly on the agenda
of the Bolsheviks as they went about securing all power to the soviets. But as the Bolsheviks adopted emergency
authoritarian practices in reaction to the brutality of the Civil War, and afterward to defend the revolution in power,
bit by bit they transformed themselves politically and the revolution itself.
In this way they preserved the revolution in the face of reaction and the fear of annihilation, but left it as a dying
plant in the eyes of the world, including other revolutionaries. The paradox was that the Bolsheviks used anti-
democratic, anti-socialist methods to preserve themselves in power, trusting only themselves among all the
political tendencies to be committed to the international revolution, to see the world advance to socialism as their
only hope for survival.
But in undermining the democratic and socialist foundations of their own rule, they ended up greatly reducing
the attractiveness of their revolution to the worlds radical working classesimproving the conditions for the
counter-revolution that would be perpetually pursued by the international ruling classes.
The contradictions facing the Bolsheviks in seeking to expand the Russian Revolutionto create the conditions
that would ultimately allow them to consolidate working-class rule on a democratic basismanifested themselves
with force and clarity in the one instance where they attempted to provoke a soviet revolution through military
intervention abroad.
After turning back a Polish incursion into Russia (conveniently forgotten in conventional historical accounts),
Lenins attempt to march on Warsaw in Poland in 1920, hoping to build a socialist bridge to Germanywhere
revolutionary ferment was still brewing after the defeat of 1918turned out to be deeply counterproductive.
Lenins enthusiasm (and impatience) for world revolution led to the Red Army march to Warsaw, where they
imagined Polish workers and peasants would rise up and greet them as liberators.
Instead, a Polish popular army led by Marshall Jozef Pilsudski defeated them at the gates of Warsaw. This had
the effect of turning the internationalist Bolsheviks into aggressors, undermining the attractiveness of socialism,
and allowing the arch-nationalist Pilsudski to portray himself as the democratic defender of the Polish nation
enhancing the political attractiveness of nationalism.
Trotsky had warned against the march as likely to boost the strength of the Bolsheviks enemies. The march on
Warsaw might possibly have succeeded had Joseph Stalin not disobeyed orders to provide support for Mikhail
Nikolayevich Tukhachevskys exhausted troops who were leading the expedition. But the victory would have been
that of the Red Army, not the Polish workers. The lesson was that workers power could not be imposed from
above or from outside.
When the bridge to Germany was lost as was the westward extension of the revolution, the Bolsheviks were
caught in a bind. Had they handed over power, say, to a Constituent Assembly to determine the future course of the
Russian Revolution, the revolution would have had a brief half-life.
Had they allowed legal forms such as elections, the Bolsheviks sooner rather than later would have been voted
out of office. This might have served the cause of revolution by setting a democratic example, demonstrating its
overriding commitment to its ideals. But the resulting defeat could have brought a much worse repression than the
mass murder of the Paris Communards in 1871, a fate the Bolsheviks knew would have awaited them.
The Bolsheviks reluctance to share or cede power, in the interests of assisting world revolutionto save the
revolution at homeis thus understandable. As we know, what actually happened under Stalin destroyed not only
the majority of the Bolshevik leadership but millions more. With the consolidation of the Soviet bureaucracy under
Stalin, the USSR became a more coercive regime.
The Left Opposition from the mid-1920s proposed promoting industrialization to increase the size of the
working class, and to create a new generation of revolutionary workers with the habits and education of socialist
industry under workers control, hopefully serving as an inspiration to workers elsewherethe kind of holding
operation that might spur revolutionary opportunities abroad.
Had they been able to hold on with at least a partial model of workers democracy, they might have secured their
best option and prevented Stalins ascendance to power. Revolution in Germany in the early 1930s or Spain in the
middle 1930s could have been possible, saving the Russian revolution and sparing the world from the nightmare to
come.
But left on its own, it would have been impossible for the Soviet Union to raise the resources internally without
squeezing the population. That couldnt be done democratically. Dictatorship became inevitable, though not one as
brutal as Stalins.
As Evgeny Preobrazhensky had demonstrated in the debates of the 1920s, industrialization could proceed with
what he called socialist primitive accumulation. This would entail unequal exchange between the urban
producers and peasants, with overpriced industrial goods going to the peasants and underpriced food and raw
materials coming back to the urban working class, and the surplus accruing to the industrial sector, to be used for
investment and expansion.
Under whatever terminology, this was a process of exploiting the peasantry, and without aid from more
developed countries that had successful socialist revolutions, would ultimately require the use of authoritarian
measures against the peasantthe construction of an ever more coercive regime. No one in those debates,
however, could have predicted the wholesale, murderous forced collectivization of agriculture under Stalin in the
1930s, causing millions of peasant deaths by starvation.
The idea of collectivizing agriculture had been to make it advantageous to the peasants and increase agricultural
production. The plan, in discussion since 1926, envisioned collectivizing only as much crop area as could be
supplied with agricultural machinery. The whole purpose was to industrialize agricultural production providing an
attractive alternative to the small, primitive farms of the peasantry. What happened under Stalinto peasants and
workers alikeis the story of a counterrevolution that set back the cause of international socialism for many
decades.

Old and new hope

The Russian Revolution was rightly seen as a threat to world capitalism. What could be more dangerous than
workers demanding control over their work and their lives? The success of the revolution was greeted with joy or
horror around the worldthe reaction depending on which side of the class line one stood. For the worlds ruling
classes, it meant isolating, discrediting and destroying the revolution, lest it spread to their doors.
Despite its tragic fate, the revolution was a transcendent historic event. It advanced the democratic ideals of the
French Revolution for liberty, equality, and fraternity and sought to extend them by deepening democracy into the
realm of the social economy, with the goal of ending exploitation, abolishing wage-labor, dismantling hierarchy,
and endowing workers with the ability to democratically plan (and implement) what was to be produced.
So long as the revolution could succeed with some autonomy, it could inspire greater support both at home and
abroad. The worlds leading capitalist regimes redoubled their efforts to destroy its inner life and dynamism,
leaving it to decay of its own accord, even as they sustained permanent pressure on it from outside.
With the regimes consolidation, Stalins nationalized economy and bureaucratic authoritarian rule served the
interests of both world capitalism and the bureaucracy by linking socialism to dictatorship. Meanwhile, workers
fighting for socialism in the West were co-opted, isolated or repressed. Henceforth democracy was equated with
capitalist property relations and called freedom, while socialism became identified with stultifying bureaucracy,
dictatorship, lack of liberty and terror.
The Cold War came to instantiate this symbiosis of capitalist democracy and Stalinist dictatorshipbeneficial
and functional for each of its contestants, both of whom had a vested interest in labeling the Soviet system as
Marxs vision of communism. From 1917 until 1991, the period of existence of the Soviet Union, the October
Revolution was relentlessly attacked, denounced, and distorted beyond recognition in the West.
Within the Soviet Union and its bloc, the key was to prevent any form of democratic challenge to the statist
economic status quo, in effect to promote the soviet version of neoliberal capitalisms TINA (There is No
Alternative,) the bureaucratic authoritarian anti-democratic form they called Communism, tightly controlled from
above. Both sides in the Cold War promoted the Stalinized version of communism as the goal of the October
Revolution of 1917. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, world capital treated the Soviet experience as an
irrelevance, a bracket in history soon to be forgotten.
Ironically, to counteract and preclude the soviet threat, Western capitalist regimes conceded to social
democratic reforms fought for by organized laboroften socialists in the labor movement. Important elements of a
more advanced political democracy such as universal franchise, representative democracy, free speech and other
basic rights were won and allowed in order to contain radicalism at home.
So long as these concessions did not threaten capitalist profits they could be accommodated. It wasnt until the
presidential candidacy of Bernie Sanders that the word socialism would be attractive to a majority of
Millennials, born after the redbaiting of the Cold War lost its efficacy. That a social democrat calling himself a
democratic socialist could win the hearts and votes of so many millions in the heart of capitalism shows that the
equation of socialism with anti-democratic statist dictatorship is no longer functional.
Fortunately the disintegration and demise of the Soviet Union, followed by the ravages of neoliberal capitalism
have combined to open the way to reclaim democracy as the heart of the socialist project. If it isnt democratic, it
isnt socialism.
Thanks to Robert Brenner for incisive comments.
Suzi Weissman, Ph.D. is a professor of politics at Saint Marys college, and an expert on American labor issues
and the history of Russia and the Soviet Union.
Solidarity, May/June, 2017
https://www.solidarity-us.org/node/4975

1 Trotskys theory of permanent revolution held that Russian capitalism was so backward, its capitalist class so
weak and immature that it was incapable of introducing bourgeois democratic reforms. That job would fall to the
working class in power. The revolution could not stop halfway and would be impelled to move toward socialist
goals.
2 The program called for workers rule with right to elect and recall functionaries; nationalization of banks, trusts, cartels; confiscation
of the land to be turned over to the peasants organized in soviets; and a workers peace directed against all the capitalists.
 3 The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a peace treaty signed on 3 March 1918 between the new Bolshevik
government of Soviet Russia and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman
Empire), that ended Russias participation in World War I.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Brest-Litovsk
4 In March 1921, an anarchist-led sailors revolt erupted at the crucial Kronstadt naval base under the slogan
soviets without Bolsheviks. It was a particularly wrenching episode in view of the revolutionary legacy of
Kronstadt during the events of 1905 and 1917. The underlying cause was the disastrous effects of war communism
on the Russian peasantry from which the Kronstadt garrison largely came. The revolt hastened the abandonment of
war communism, but the bloody suppression of the revolt and the brutal aftermath has echoed in debates ever
since. The definitive sympathetic historical account is Kronstadt 1921 by Paul Avrich. See also Victor Serge,
Once More: Kronstadt, April 1938,
https://www.marxists.org/archive/serge/1938/04/kronstadt.htm

Sources:
Sources include Victor Serge, Leon Trotsky, V.I. Lenin, Evgeny Preobrazhensky. The following is a very brief,
selected list of readings.
Isaac Deutscher: The Prophet Armed; The Prophet Unarmed; The Prophet Outcast (three-volume political
biography of Leon Trotsky.)
Samuel Farber: Before Stalinism. The Rise and Fall of Soviet Democracy (1990).
Evgeny Preobrazhensky: The New Economics.
Alexander Rabinowitch: Prelude to Revolution: The Petrograd Bolsheviks and the July Uprising (1968). The
Bolsheviks Come to Power (1976). The Bolsheviks in Power. The First Year of Bolshevik Power in
Petrograd (2007).
John Reed: Ten Days That Shook the World.
Victor Serge: Year One of the Russian Revolution; From Lenin to Stalin.
Lenin: State and Revolution; April Theses.
Leon Trotsky: The History of the Russian Revolution (three volumes); 1905; The Revolution Betrayed (1937

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7th Oct, 2017
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Eric Blanc

A critical engagement with the past remains an indispensable instrument for

critically confronting the present. Yet one hundred years after the Russian
Revolution, much of our understanding of 1917 and the Bolshevik party
remains clouded by accumulated myths and received ideas. Not least of these
is the claim that V.I. Lenin radically overhauled Bolshevik politics in April
1917 by convincing the party to fight for a socialist, instead of bourgeois-
democratic, revolution.

Interestingly, this account of how Lenin re-armed the Bolsheviks is one of the
few points of agreement shared by Trotskyists, Stalinists, and liberals alike.
According to Trotskys influential 1924 polemic The Lessons of October, the
Bolsheviks under the leadership of Joseph Stalin and Lev Kamenev had been
mired in de facto Menshevism before Lenin re-armed the party in April to
fight for socialist revolution. Since they did not consider Russia to be ripe for
this task, Trotsky argued, the Old Bolshevik leaders took the position that it
was necessary to complete the democratic revolution by putting pressure on
the Provisional Government. Most academic historians have likewise shared
[1]

this view.
[2]

The standard Stalinist analysis was strikingly similar, though it placed less
emphasis than Trotsky on the extent of the strategic rupture and absolved
Stalin of responsibility for the partys pre-April waverings. The classic
Stalinist Short Course history of Bolshevism, for example, condemned the
semi-Menshevik position of party leaders such as Kamenev in March and
affirmed that the Party needed a new orientation to advance boldly and
confidently along the new road. Lenins April Theses laid down for the Party
a brilliant plan of struggle for the transition from the bourgeois-democratic to
the Socialist revolution.
[3]

Unfortunately, this historiographical consensus is factually inaccurate and has

distorted our understanding of Bolshevism in 1917. In this article, I take a
fresh look at Bolshevik stances on state power and socialist revolution from
April through October. Based on my research in Russian, Latvian, and
German primary sources, I show that the available evidence does not confirm
the standard re-arming account, which has obscured a far more convoluted
internal debate and political evolution. We will see that while the Bolsheviks
throughout the year hinged their politics on the imminence
of international socialist revolution, their orientation within Russia itself
remained significantly less socially ambitious. And on several critical issues
including the class leadership of the coming Soviet regimethe Bolsheviks as
a whole upheld an open-ended approach up through October. There was an
important political evolution of the party towards socialist revolution over the
course of 1917, but this was uneven, protracted, and was primarily a response
to lived developments in the class struggle.

Getting this history right is important not only for the sake of accuracy but
because it helps us better understand the real nature of the Bolshevik party,
the example of which continues to inspire and inform Marxist politics today.
The rearming account has problematically inflated Lenins ability to
determine Bolshevik policy, thereby minimising the extent to which the
organisation evolved collectively and contentiously through the accumulated
experience and contributions of its cadres. By greatly oversimplifying the
nature of the 1917 debates, moreover, the prevailing historiography has
minimised the inherent difficulties and challenges of pursuing effective
socialist politics in the face of the necessarily unpredictable dynamics of the
class struggle. Contrary to the impression given by the re-arming
interpretation, revolutionary theory was (and remains) a necessary but
insufficient basis for successfully pushing towards anti-capitalist rupture.

Unlike most examinations of this topic, the focus here will not be on Lenins
writings. These were undoubtedly important, and as such their content will be
outlined, but it is hardly the case that Lenins approach (which itself was in
flux, both strategically and tactically) can be equated with that of the
Bolshevik leadership or ranks in 1917. A distinct political portrait arises when
we broaden our source base to include other Bolshevik leaders, local and
regional party bodies, public speeches, and mass leaflets. Similarly, expanding
our analytical attention from Petrograd to include the Russian empires
periphery and provinces provides a better sense of what we might call
ballpark Bolshevism, i.e., the core political stances generally shared by all
levels of Bolshevik cadres and projected by them to working people across the
empire.

Our discussion will begin by charting out the meaning ascribed by the
Bolsheviks to the demand for Soviet power and the confoundingly wide array
of ways they described the unfolding revolutionary process in Russia. From
there we turn to a question on which there was a clear Bolshevik consensus:
the world socialist revolution was fast approaching. The subsequent segment
will demonstrate that Bolsheviks also generally agreed that while workers
control was necessary and urgent, capitalist production should not be
abolished before the West went socialist. But on the most immediate point
relating to socialist revolutioni.e., the political composition of the projected
revolutionary governmentthe hegemonic Bolshevik approach remained
algebraic for most of the year. Since so much of this question depended on
which other socialist currents would ultimately break with the bourgeoisie, it
is unsurprising that the precise class-party composition of Soviet rule
remained difficult to predict up through October. We conclude with an
overview of the famous late-year events in Petrograd, where the Bolsheviks
ultimately came to push for a proletarian-led government due to the obstinate
refusal of moderate socialists to support Soviet power.

The Meaning of Soviet Power

Much of the confusion around the impact of Lenins intervention within the
Bolshevik current in April is that it has been assumed that the internal debates
revolved around whether to critically back the bourgeois Provisional
Government or to push for a Soviet regime of and for working people. In
reality, as Lars Lih has shown in numerous articles, there was no substantial
debate on this issue, since the Bolshevik leadership in March 1917 was already
openly advocating that a Soviet government replace the Provisional
Government. As such, the partys political evolution in April was far less of a
[4]

break than has usually been claimed.

Much of the documentary basis for the re-arming narrative comes from
Menshevik declarations in April concerning Lenins arrival. But one has to
take these with a large grain of salt since the Mensheviks consistently
exaggerated their rivals extremism and were always looking to paint the
Bolsheviks as puppets in the hands of Lenin. The other major source for the
[5]

standard account comes from questionable 1920s Bolshevik memoir

literature written well after it had become both politically expedient for all
wings of the party to emphasise the genius of Lenins leadership and to claim
that the Bolsheviks had from April onwards advocated socialist revolution. A [6]

different picture emerges when we look at what the Bolsheviks actually said
and wrote in 1917. As self-described old Bolshevik leader Kalinin argued at
the 24-29 April All-Russian Bolshevik conference:

Read our first document during the Revolution, the [27 February] manifesto
of our party, and you will see that our picture of the revolution and our
tactics did not diverge from the theses of comrade Lenin. Of course, the
picture sketched out by comrade Lenin is whole, complete, but its method of
thinking is that of an Old Bolshevik, which can cope with the originalities of
this revolution. As a conservative I confirm that our old Bolshevik method is
quite suitable for the present time and I do not see any significant differences
between us and comrade Lenin. [7]

Contrary to what is usually assumed, neither Lenin nor the Bolshevik current
in 1917 equated Soviet power as such with workers power. The Soviets
(councils) represented a segment of the population much larger than just the
working class. As Lenin noted in April: in these Soviets, as it happens, it is the
peasants, the soldiers, i.e., petty bourgeoisie, who preponderate. Similarly,
[8]

Karl Radek explained in September that the transformation of the Workers'

Delegates Council [of 1905] into the Workers' and Soldiers' Council [in
February 1917] thus meant the transformation of a proletarian organ of
struggle into an organ of revolutionary democracy, into an organ, therefore,
with a predominantand even artificially proportionedpetty bourgeois
majority. By June 1917 roughly 37 million people were represented by the
[9]

councilsonly about seven million less than voted in the Constituent

Assembly elections in November. The defining class characteristic of the
[10]

Soviets was not that they were a workers organisation, but that they were an
explicitly and consciously non-bourgeois body.

Rejecting the claim that he was aiming to skip the bourgeois-democratic

stage, Lenin in April stressed that he was not calling for a workers
government but rather a Soviet regime of workers, agricultural labourers,
soldiers, and peasants. Though Lenin personally saw Soviet power as the
[11]

concretisation of a commune state, a step towards socialism, and the

highest form of democracy, for the majority of workers and Bolsheviks
throughout 1917 the demand for All Power to the Soviets meant establishing
a government without the bourgeoisie. This was certainly a very radical
[12]

perspective; but it was a very radical perspective that had been advocated by
the Bolsheviks and other revolutionary Marxists in Russia since 1905. In
1917, Lenins particular gloss on Soviet power was conspicuously absent not
only in the mass agitation of the Bolsheviks, but also in the writings of most
other party cadres.
Many Bolsheviks well after April generally continued to see the fight for Soviet
power as part of the democratic revolution. Speaking to the Moscow Soviet in
the summer, one Bolshevik leader thus argued: When we speak of
transferring power to the soviets, this does not mean that the power passes to
the proletariat, since the soviets are composed of workers, soldiers, and
peasants; it does not mean that we are now experiencing a socialist revolution,
for the present revolution is bourgeois-democratic. [13]

Without understanding the actual meaning ascribed to Soviet power by

Bolsheviks and working people in 1917, it is hard to make sense of party
stances and debates throughout the year. Consider, for example, the
resolution on Soviet power passed in April by the Bolshevik conference.
According to the re-arming account, this conference concretised its call for
socialist revolution in the demand for a Soviet regime. In reality, the
conference declared that any majoritarian representative body could serve as
the vehicle for the new revolutionary power. Thus, it called for the party to
orient towards the second stage of the revolutionwhich must transfer all
state power to the Soviets or to other bodies directly expressing the will of the
majority of the people (organs of local self-government, the Constituent
Assembly, etc.).
[14]

Soviets and a Constituent Assembly, in other words, would act as instruments

of what in 1917 was referred to as the democracy or revolutionary
democracy, i.e., the worker-peasant majority. The Bolsheviks, including both
Lenin and Trotsky, consistently campaigned for giving power to both Soviets
and a Constituent Assembly up through the October Revolution. The
significant difference between pre- and post-April Bolshevik approaches was
not that the demand for a Constituent Assembly was discarded or minimised,
but that Soviet power was less frequently framed as a provisional step towards
the latter. Nevertheless, the precise relationship between the two bodies was
left undefined, since this clearly would depend on the concrete political-
electoral composition of both. In an internal letter to Bolshevik leaders on the
eve of the October uprising, Lenin insisted that once power is in the hands of
the Soviets the success of the Constituent Assembly would be guaranteed.
The Bolsheviks, he noted, have said so thousands of times and no one has
ever attempted to refute it. Everybody has recognised this combined type [of
state]. That after 1917 Bolsheviks and moderate socialists
[15]
alike
counterposed democracy to (proletarian) dictatorship, and counterposed
democratic republics to Soviet republics, need not to oblige us to overlook how
these concepts were employed in the first year of revolution.

Given the aforementioned nature of the demand for Soviet power, it is

understandable why there was only one major Bolshevik-affiliated committee
in the spring to oppose Lenins April call to replace the Provisional
Government with a Soviet regime. And even this exception proves the general
rule, since this opposition came from Kiev, where the RSDRP committee was
headed by former members of G.V. Plekhanovs party-Menshevik current.
Led by Georgy Piatakov, the Kiev Committee had in February and March
consistently argued that the Russian proletariats strategic perspective must
be limited to pressuring the bourgeois government to cede to its demands;
unlike the Petrograd Bolshevik leadership, the Kiev Committee did not raise
the perspective of workers and peasants seizing power to win the democratic
revolution. Significantly, the committees case against the April Thesesthe
largest outright opposition to Lenins ideas in the country as one recent
Ukrainian study noteswas premised on the strategy of left Menshevism
rather than Old Bolshevism. [16]

According to the Kiev Committee, since Russia was not ready for socialist
revolution, therefore the proletariat must limit itself to forcing the bourgeoisie
in power to cede to its democratic and economic demands. Like the
Mensheviks, the Kiev leaders conflated overthrowing the Provisional
Government with socialist revolution: The defeat of the government, the
socialist revolution, is impossible because the economic prerequisites do not
exist for this. But this internal opposition proved to be rather short lived. At
[17]

the 15-17 April regional Bolshevik meeting in Kiev, after an extensive debate
on the April Theses, the vast majority of the participants decided to reject the
line of their local leaders; bowing to the popular sentiment, Piatakov and the
rest of the Kiev leadership dropped its opposition to the fight for Soviet power.

April marked a moment of political evolution rather than strategic rupture for
Bolshevism. Though substantial political opposition like that seen in Kiev was
rare, the discussions in April played an important role empirewide in
politically cohering the Bolsheviks and undercutting their early year
vacillations. Sharp attacks on the Provisional Government were stepped up
after the April conference. Local Bolshevik militants across the empire began
for the first time to consistently foreground the call for a Soviet regime, which
was henceforth less often framed as a temporary power. The need to clearly
demarcate themselves from the conciliatory socialists also became more
widely accepted.

How much of this evolution was due to Lenins impact or to the rapidly
changing political context is difficult to measure precisely. In March, the
Provisional Government had not yet announced any major measures openly in
contradiction with the popular demands for change. Early Bolshevik
vacillations generally reflected an adaptation to the post-February euphoria
and this mood in Russia didnt last more than a month. April was marked by a
massive outcry from workers in response to the revelation that the
government planned to continue the war until victory. The soon-to-be well-
known slogan All Power to the Soviets was raised by protestors for the first
time in the April demonstrations. And whereas the Soviet leadership had
initially fought in practice to push the Provisional Government forward, from
early April onwards it increasingly focused on propping up the bourgeois
regime and dampening popular militancyan orientation culminating in the
moderate socialist entry into the Provisional Government in early May. In the
midst of an unprecedented proletarian upsurge against the Provisional
Government and a sharp shift to the right by the Socialist Revolutionaries
(SRs) and Mensheviks, it is not surprising that many Bolsheviks across the
empire took a more militant and independent stand. And as the convocation
of a Constituent Assembly continued to be pushed by the government into the
indefinite horizon, the authority and permanency of the Soviets in the eyes of
workers were correspondingly heightened. Particularly given the absence of
any existing national parliament, the Soviets became the dominant democratic
expression of working people, into which they increasingly invested their
participation and aspirations.

Across Russia from late April onwards, the Bolsheviks churned out leaflet
after leaflet, and made speech after speech, reaffirming the same simple
message: to satisfy the demands of the people, workers and their allies must
break with the bourgeoisie and take all power into their hands. In other words,
to defend and deepen the revolution required class struggle not class
collaboration. Our programme is the struggle with the bourgeoisie, explained
one Bolshevik rank-and-file militant. In June, Armenian Bolshevik agitators
[18]

in the army declared that the only way to win the masses demands was
through overthrowing the bourgeois Provisional Government and creating a
real People's Government. [19]

Throughout 1917 it was almost always the moderate socialists (and the
liberals), rather than the Bolsheviks, who framed the sole options for Russian
development as capitalist democracy or socialism. The Mensheviks argument,
repeated incessantly across the empire, was the following: Socialism is off the
table, because peasants are a majority and because workers are insufficiently
organised and conscious. Therefore, an extensive period of bourgeois
democratic rule and capitalist development is needed during which the
proletariat can become sufficiently educated and organised to achieve its final
goal. In the interim, socialists must not push for a non-bourgeois government,
lest they scare off the liberals and pave the way for counter-revolution.

Rather than engaging with Lenin or the Bolsheviks actual arguments,

Menshevik polemicists generally accused the Bolshevik leader and his current
of advocating the clearly utopian adventure of immediate socialist revolution.
Upon Lenins return in April, the Petrograd Menshevik newspaper Rabochaia
Gazeta thus derided the promises of full and immediate economic liberation
made by the Leninists. The title of papers April 9 anti-Bolshevik polemic
speaks for itself: The Revival of Anarchism and Maximalism. [20]

In response to such claims, Latvian Bolshevik leader Pteris Stuka posited

that erecting such a rigid dichotomy between bourgeois and socialist
revolution was essential for justifying their refusal to support the demand for
Soviet power. Along these lines, Trotsky similarly noted that the Mensheviks
[21]

in February had invoked the bourgeois nature of the revolution to justify their
refusal to take power; then in May they raised this same point to justify
participation in a coalition government. Trotsky concluded that these
invocations were purely practical measures to preserve the privileges of the
bourgeoisie, and to assign to it in the government a role, to which it is by no
means entitled by the alignment of political groups within the country.
[22]

The Bolsheviks and other radicals generally refused to enter into this debate
within the analytical framework of the moderate socialists. Bolshevik cadres
repeatedly rejected the accusations that they were trying to introduce
socialism as an inaccurate straw-man argument that deflected attention from
the real political alternative: collaboration or rupture with the bourgeoisie.
Instead of making a case for a Russian socialist revolution, they insisted that
[23]

while socialism would have to be built internationally, it was both possible and
necessary in Russia to break with the native and imperialist capitalists. Even if
one believed that the revolution was bourgeois in nature, they argued, it didnt
follow that this obliged the establishment of a bourgeois government. Not only
would such a regime be incapable of achieving the central bourgeois-
democratic goals (agrarian reform, a Constituent Assembly, etc.), but it would
also be necessarily anti-democratic since most people in Russia were peasants
or workers.[24]

Space reasons obviously preclude recounting the specific form that the
October Revolution took in each city and region of the empire. For all the
tactical and political differences that local contexts imposed, there was
nevertheless a common underlying content to the late 1917 struggle for Soviet
power across imperial Russia. The shared goal was a clean political break with
the bourgeoisie to implement the urgent demands of working people. In the
immediate aftermath of the October uprising, for instance, the declaration of
the Baku Bolshevik committee made the following case for Soviet power:
Either revolution or counter-revolution. Either the power of the bourgeoisie
or the power of the Soviets. Down with the bourgeois coalition government!
Long live the Great Russian Revolution! Long live the heroic proletariat and
the garrison of Petersburg! Long live the power of the Soviets of Workers',
Soldiers' and Peasants deputies![25]

The October Revolution did break with the native and international
bourgeoisie and implement the core aspirations for which working people had
fought throughout the year, including Russias exit from World War One, land
to the peasants, workers control of production, and the election of a
Constituent Assembly. Unlike the moderate socialists, the Bolsheviks upheld
and implemented orthodox Marxisms longstanding commitment to
proletarian hegemony. But, as the following sections will show, it is hardly the
case that the Bolsheviks from April onwards put an equals sign between the
establishment of a Soviet regime and socialist revolution.

Categorising the Revolution

It has often been overlooked that in 1917 there was no clear Marxist definition
of socialist revolution. Nor was there a general agreement on the exact
political boundary between a democratic and socialist revolution, or for that
matter between a capitalist and socialist society. These conceptual ambiguities
rooted in the difficulties of categorising extremely fluid and hybrid socio-
political processeswere very much part of the story of 1917. One
manifestation of the reigning theoretical haziness was that both the
Bolsheviks April conference and the Sixth Congress (26 July-3 August, 1917)
decided to postpone the thorny discussion of updating the party programme.
 Marxists of the era generally agreed that there were at least two central
components to a socialist revolution. The first related to the means of
production: some significant inroads into capitalist property would have to
take place, leading towards the full socialisation of production. But how much
control and/or ownership would be seized immediately was undefined. The
fact that since 1905 the conception of democratic revolution articulated by
Karl Kautsky and other revolutionary social democrats had projected the
nationalisations of some major industries further muddied the theoretical
waters.

The second connotation related to social class and the government: unlike a
democratic revolution, a socialist revolution would be exclusively (or perhaps
primarily) the act of the urban and rural working class, culminating in its
seizure of state power. Much of the uncertainty of how to categorise the
revolution in Russia revolved around the expectation that it would also be the
product of a non-proletarian class (the peasantry) and would likely not result
in an exclusively working-class government.

In light of these conceptual grey areas, it is not surprising that Bolshevik

political stances and debates generally concentrated on concrete political and
economic questionsdifferent categories to describe the revolution were
invoked in these debates, but they did not constitute their analytical starting
point. In other words, the evolving Bolshevik meta-categorisations of the
revolution tended to nebulously reflect much more substantial political
positions and discussions.

In February and March, the revolution had been described primarily as

democratic or bourgeois-democratic. Such designations continued well past
April. Of the many examples that could be cited, at a late July meeting of
Latvias main Soviet, one Bolshevik declared that since the upheaval across
Russia was taking place in an era when the world capitalist system was ripe for
overthrow, therefore in these circumstances, the Russian revolution does not
have the character of what we call a bourgeois revolutionrather, it is distinct:
a democratic revolution. Other top Bolshevik leaders continued to use this
[26]

term through the Summer. Even after the October Revolution, one can find
[27]

numerous of examples of Bolshevik cadres arguing that the revolution

underway was democratic rather than socialist. [28]

For his part, Lenin argued in April that the main flaw in the reasoning of
socialists regarding the tasks of the revolutionary proletariat was that they
put this question in too general a form, as the question of the transition to
socialism. Instead, he made the case for focusing on concrete steps and
measures and argued that the establishment of Soviet power would begin a
novel transitional social period. This conception that Russia was
[29]

undergoing an exceptional historical process with as-yet undetermined

possibilities for radical social transformation was widespread among
Bolshevik cadres. During the April discussion and throughout the year,
various Bolsheviks positively invoked Kautskys influential 1906 argument
that the Russian Revolution was a unique project situated on the border of
democratic and socialist revolution. In this context, it merits mention that
[30]

Trotsky had argued as early as 1906 that the issue, of course, is not what to
call our revolutionwhether it is bourgeois or socialist and that under
whatever political banner the proletariat has come to power, it will be
obliged to take the path of socialist policy.
[31]

From the Summer onwards, Bolsheviks increasingly came to describe the

revolution simply by the class forces involved: i.e., workers and peasants
(including the soldiers). The declaration announcing the Provisional
Governments overthrow in Petrograd thus typically concluded: Long live the
revolution of workers, soldiers and peasants! Analogous formulations were
[32]

the norm across the empire. [33]

In Bolshevik discourse up through (and usually well past October) invocations

of socialist revolution almost always related to the approaching social
overturn in the West and/or the world revolution. Categorising the seizure of
power by working people in Russia as a socialist revolution was extremely
uncommon (and completely absent from the April discussions and resolutions
in Petrograd and beyond). In fact, top Bolshevik leaders including Lenin in
April explicitly rejected the claims that they were calling for socialist
revolution inside of Russia.[34]

A partial exception took place in the immediate aftermath of the July Days,
when a wing of the Bolshevik leadership dropped the slogan All Power to
Soviets, having been won to Lenins argument that the SRs and Mensheviks
had irrevocably capitulated to the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie and that
the existing Soviets could no longer become organs of revolutionary power. At
the Petrograd party conference and again at the Sixth party congress Stalin
described the forthcoming Russian Revolution as a socialist revolution, the
first such explicit use of the term by a Bolshevik leader that I have found in
1917. But other cadres such as V. Volodarsky sharply rejected this
[35]

innovation: This revolution is a transition to a socialist revolution, but it is

not a socialist revolution, in which we lose our allies and fight alone. Between
us and Western Europe there is a big difference. We have more than a
bourgeois revolution, but it is not a socialist revolution. Other cadres similarly
insisted that Stalins case marked a break with the more modest stance taken
by the April conference. Arguing against Stalin, future Left Opposition leader
Y.A. Preobrazhensky insisted that successful socialist transformation in Russia
required Western workers rule and he rejected Stalins sharp counterposition
of socialist and bourgeois revolution. This method, he argued, was
undialectical and had more to do with Menshevism than Bolshevism.
Ultimately the Sixth Congress open-endedly resolved that the events were
leading to an increase in the elements of the proletarian revolution.
Furthermore (for reasons discussed below) even this compromise
[36]

formulation, and the line of the Sixth Congress to which it was linked, was
ignored by the party committees.

In virtually all Bolshevik internal resolutions, literature, and agitation leading

up to the October Revolutionand issued by the 25-26 October All-Russian
Second Soviet Congressreferences to socialist revolution relate only to the
international process. It is true that in Lenins essay Can the Bolsheviks
[37]

Retain State Power?published in the partys theoretical magazine eight days

before the start of the October Revolutionhe in passing described the
forthcoming upheaval in Russia as a socialist revolution. But particularly
[38]

before the dramatic events of 25-26 October, there is little evidence to suggest
that this conception was widely shared within the Bolshevik party or among
the workers that supported it. To quote David Mandel: October was first and
foremost an act of defence of the actual and promised achievements of
February in conditions where society had split into two irreconcilably hostile
camps. And although October was seen as opening the way to socialism, all
the measures taken in October and the following months were seen either as
completing the democratic revolution or as fundamentally defensive actions
aimed at preserving the revolution in the new circumstances. Though [39]

various top Bolshevik cadres began to explicitly identify Russias revolution as

socialist following the October uprisingparticularly during the debates on
incorporating SR-Mensheviks into the government, signing a separate peace
with Germany, and regarding the Constituent Assemblyonly in early 1918
did this formulation generally become widely used in the party and
government. [40]

The International Socialist Revolution and Workers Control

One of the key complicating factors in categorising the revolution was that by
1917 all Bolsheviks and internationalist Marxists saw socialist revolution as
first and foremost a worldwide phenomenon. Thus the Russian Revolution
could be treated as the spark for and a constituent component of the
international socialist revolution even if the process within Russia itself was
still considered to be primarily or exclusively democratic. Indeed, this had
become the hegemonic stance among the Bolsheviks and revolutionary
socialists across the empire from at least 1914 onwards. Affirming this
approach at the April conference, Bagdatev argued that fully carrying out the
partys minimum programme was logically impossible without the socialist
revolution in Western Europe that would be sparked by the Soviet conquest of
power in Russia. Similarly, Latvian Bolshevik leader Fricis Rozi wrote in
[41]

July: Peace and freedom can only be won by the proletarian revolution. The
bourgeois revolution in Russia must initiate the proletarian revolution in all
capitalist countries. From this theoretical understanding follows all [the
internationalists] practical activities.
[42]

The importance of the fact that the Russian Revolution had erupted in the
context of World War One cannot be overemphasised. On the one hand, the
catastrophe of the war led all revolutionary Marxists internationally to
confidently predict impending socialist explosions in the Westby 1917 this
was seen as a matter of weeks and months, not years. Moreover, since a
serious fight for peace would put Russia on a collision course with foreign
imperialism, the majority view among radicals throughout the entire year was
that a successful revolution in Russia would be crushed by foreign powers if it
did not succeed in spreading abroad.

As Lenin argued in April: We are now tied up with all the other countries,
and are unable to disentangle ourselvesthe proletariat will either break free
as a whole or it will be crushed. The Bolsheviks main rejoinder to Menshevik
[43]

polemics on the absence of objective conditions for socialism within Russia

was to insist on the actuality of world revolution. Stuka declared that the
revolution in Russia would only be won when the proletariat in the West
raised the Red Flag because otherwise the Soviet government would fall
under the blows of global capitalism. [44]

Very much contrary to his later advocacy of socialism in one country, Stalin
in 1917 similarly affirmed that the Russian revolution is not something
isolated. It is vitally bound up with the revolutionary movement in the West
only in alliance with the workers of the West, only by shaking the foundations
of capitalism in the West, can they [workers and soldiers] count on the
triumph of the revolution in Russia! Like Trotsky, he explicitly argued that
[45]

without the support of revolutions abroad, not only socialist transformation

but even the basic survival of the Russian Revolution would be impossible. [46]

The centrality of the imminent worldwide anti-capitalist conflagration was an

ever-present aspect of Bolshevik agitation and propaganda in 1917. Over and
over, the party press insisted that the fate of the Russian Revolution depended
on the international class struggle. Party literature thus consistently seized
upon and highlighted any instance of a rise in worker and anti-war struggle
abroad. This wager on world revolution was affirmed on the eve, during, and
following the October Revolution. Lenin later noted that not a single Bolshevik
in October 1917 would have believed that a Soviet regime in Russia could have
survived three years without the spread of revolution abroad: when we began
working for our cause we counted exclusively on the world revolution.[47]

This stance constituted one of the core strategic difference between moderate
and radical socialists across the empire. While the Bolsheviks and their allies
wagered their push for a seizure of power on the ability of workers abroad to
do the same, the moderates justified their conciliationism by affirming that
that Western revolution was not on the immediate agenda and that it would
thus be foolhardy to premise a political project in Russia on expectations for
its extension abroad. Revolution in their eyes was primarily a process that
took place within discrete nations, each of which had to have fully mature
conditions before socialist revolution would be possible.

In hindsight, it might appear as if the moderates were proven right by the

survival of capitalism outside Russia. But such an analysis obscures the fact
there was a post-1917 international revolution and that its defeat was in large
part due to the class-collaborationism of the conciliatory socialists in Russia
and abroad. As such, moderate socialist scepticism regarding worldwide anti-
capitalist upheaval, far from being a neutral analysis, was a political
intervention and to a significant degree a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Just as on international revolution, there was a general Bolshevik consensus
up through at least October regarding workers control and the expropriation
of capitalist property. Put simply, the Bolsheviks were in favour of the former
but not the latter (until revolution in the West). Even Lenins talk of steps
towards socialism in April did not include the partial or complete
expropriation of capitalist industry. Lenin posited that we cannot be for
introducing socialismthis would be the height of absurdity since the
majority of the population in Russia are peasants, small farmers who can have
no idea of socialism. As such, Bagdatev agreed with the specific planks
[48]

proposed by Lenin, but argued that these were fully within the framework of
the partys minimum programme. [49]

The factory committee movement for workers control likewise did not aim to
socialise capitalist industry. Disputing bourgeois ownership or administration
of the workplace was not the goalindeed, the word kontrol in Russia actually
translates better as supervision or checking. Workers control for most of 1917
was a largely defensive measure that consisted of monitoring the actions of the
employers. The goal was to ensure that the bosses respected the rights of
employees and, above all, that they did not continue to dislocate and sabotage
production. In his classic study, S.A. Smith notes that the policy of workers'
control over production was first and foremost an attempt by factory
committees to stem the tide of industrial chaos. Anarchists and SR-
[50]

Maximalists called for the immediate seizure of industry and the complete
proletarian management of the factories, but this stance was generally
rejected by the committees (as well as the Bolsheviks) throughout 1917.
Workers control was analogous to the dual power structure of government
envisioned by the Mensheviks: though they did not seek full power for
themselves, workers demanded partial authority to pressure the bourgeoisie
in the right direction.

The push for the Bolsheviks to take a positive approach towards the factory
committees and workers control came not from Lenin, but from rank-and-file
workers and party labour militants. As Bolshevik labour leader Vladimir
[51]

Milyutin noted to the Sixth Congress, the party had borrowed the demands
for workers control from the experience of self-activity carried out on the
ground. Like in the labour movement generally, the hegemonic stance
[52]

among Bolsheviks was that the possibility for workers control (in conjunction
with Soviet state control) to be expanded toward full ownership and
management of industry depended on the spread of revolution
internationally. One Bolshevik leader explained to the June factory committee
conference that no one knows how [the] revolution will end up: at the least, in
the deprivation of capital of a part of its rights; at the most, who will say that
from a Russian revolution it will not become a world
revolution? Nevertheless, it was clear to all that even the relatively limited
[53]

workers control that prevailed up through October pointed in a different

direction than the normal functioning of capitalism.

Though the employers had grudgingly acquiesced to workers control in the

spring, from early September onwards they led an aggressive campaign
against the factory committees with the goal of regaining full control of their
enterprises. In a context marked by the rapid dislocation of industry and a
capitalist offensive against the committees, workplaces across the empire were
the sites of bitter battles for authority throughout the Fall. Indeed, the mutual
intransigence of workers and bosses pushed the workplace struggle further
and faster than even most Bolshevik leaders, including Lenin, had desired.

The October Revolution codified workers control but it did not nationalise
industry. Indeed, Lenin and the Bolshevik leadership for months after October
sought to reach some sort of working arrangement with the owners of
industry. Nevertheless, as Trotsky had predicted in 1906, upon leading
workers to power the Bolsheviks were compelled to go much further than they
had initially planned. Capitalist economic sabotage and political resistance, a
wave of workers wildcat expropriations, and the dynamics of civil war swept
the party into nationalising all major industries in the second half of 1918.
Though there was likely no other viable option in the given context, this wave
of Soviet nationalisations deepened the catastrophic collapse of production
and played a central role in the massive growth of a privileged state
bureaucracy. [54]

The Class Leadership of Soviet Power

Whereas there was little internal Bolshevik discord in 1917 regarding world
revolution and workers control, the question of the party/class leadership of
Soviet government was far more contentious. And ultimately it
was this question that was decisive for the course of the revolution and for
practical party politics. Though my preceding analysis has overlapped in
important respects with the pioneering work of Lars Lih, in my view his stress
on the continuity of Bolshevism in 1917 has led him to minimise the
importance of this debate.

Ever since 1905 the Bolsheviks had insisted on the need for a Soviet
government of workers and peasants, without specifying which class (and its
corresponding party) should be hegemonic in such a power. The crucial thing
to note about the Bolshevik call for a democratic dictatorship of the
proletariat and peasantry was that it referred to the general class content of a
revolutionary state power without specifying the weight of the working class
and its political representatives inside of it. Crucially, this meant that
Bolshevik strategy could be concretised in a number of different directions. In
contrast, Trotsky argued that the proletariat had to be the hegemonic current
within any government capable of leading the democratic revolution to
victory. Trotsky justifiably argued that his position regarding this issuewho
is to wield the hegemony in the government itself, and through it in the
country?was one of the most fundamental tenets of the strategy of
permanent revolution. [55]

From 1905 onwards, Bolsheviks at different times projected distinct concrete

governmental visions for the democratic revolution. It is generally overlooked
that these sometimes included support for a form of proletarian state
hegemony virtually identical to that of Trotsky. At other times, however, the
[56]

Bolsheviks projected that the workers party could act as an equal (or even
minority) partner in a government with petty-bourgeois revolutionary
democrats (e.g. the SRs and Trudoviks). [57]

For most of 1917, the Bolsheviks upheld this open-ended approach regarding
whether (proletarian) Bolshevik governmental leadership would prove to be
necessary for the victory of the democratic revolution or whether the (petty-
bourgeois) moderate socialistsMensheviks and SRscould be compelled to
break with the bourgeoisie. The April debates did not lead the Bolshevik
current as a whole to adopt Trotskys longstanding view that a viable workers
and peasants regime required proletarian hegemony in the state. On this
question the April conferences central message was that a cross-class Soviet
government could and should be established through the uncompromising
promotion of the proletarian line (i.e. for a break with the bourgeoisie) within
the Soviets. Though a few formulations in the April resolutions written by
[58]

Lenin vaguely pointed in the direction of proletarian state leadership as a

necessary next step, the precise class-political leadership of the projected
Soviet government was generally left unspecified.

Underlying the ambiguities of the April resolutions was the fact that a wide
range of different views had been articulated during the conference. Lenins
stance differed in a substantial way from that articulated most clearly by
Kamenev. According to Lenin, it was now anachronistic to speak only of a
revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry since this
dictatorship had been unexpectedly realised in a Soviet whose petty-bourgeois
leaders had handed power over to the big bourgeoisie. He concluded that a
new and different task now faces us: to effect a split within this dictatorship
between the proletarian elements and the petty-bourgeois elements (Right
Menshevik and SR leaders) committed to supporting the bourgeoisie.
Reflecting this analysis, Lenin projected that the main allies of workers in
[59]

class struggle and in the future state power would be poor peasants and
agricultural labourers, rather than the peasantry as a whole.

This stance pointed in the direction of proletarian hegemony in revolutionary

government, a form of power that Lenin tended throughout 1917 to describe as
a government of workers and poor peasants. Lenins framing of the
establishment of Soviet power as a step towards socialism likewise had strong
connotations of working-class hegemony. It is not entirely surprising that a
few Bolsheviks and the overwhelming majority of Mensheviks saw Lenins
stance as equivalent to socialist revolution. But it is crucial to note that Lenin
rejected this label and affirmed that it was quite possible that the petty-
bourgeoisie and its representatives en toto might still break from the
bourgeoisie and take state power together with the proletariat. He concluded
that if this is still possible, then there is one, and only one, way towards it,
namely, an immediate, resolute, and irrevocable separation of the proletarian
Communist elements from the petty-bourgeois elements. [60]
Lenins party critics generally remained more hopeful in the potential for the
entire petty-bourgeoisie and its political representatives to break with the
capitalists. Kamenev declared that a clash of the bourgeoisie with the entire
revolutionary democracy is inevitablegiven this impending split from the
capitalists it was therefore necessary to build all of our tactics to not break the
bloc between the proletariat and the petty-bourgeoisie. At the April
[61]

conference Bagdatev argued that the essence of the party critics

disagreements with Lenin was that they did not think that winning the Soviet
to the stance of the Bolsheviks was a precondition for its assumption of power.
[62]

Throughout the year, the defining attribute of Bolshevik moderates was that
they were the most consistently oriented towards winning the SRs and
Mensheviks to jointly form a broad multi-party socialist government. There
were compelling reasons to orient in this direction. Since the working class
was a minority in Russia, a politically broad Soviet government seemed to
offer the best possible prospects for cementing a worker-peasant alliance and
a solidly majoritarian social base against the bourgeoisie. The Bolsheviks
lacked strong rural support and rural class differentiation (apart from Latvia)
was far less prevalent than Lenin claimed in April. The approach of Bolshevik
moderates, in other words, differed considerably from the Mensheviks and it
should not be lightly dismissed as doctrinairism or reformism.

These distinct Bolshevik expectations coexisted well past April. Given the
ambiguities of the April party discussions, and the fact that Lenin himself did
not deny the potential for a SR-Menshevik rupture with the liberals, the
Bolsheviks overwhelmingly continued to conceive of and agitate for Soviet
power within a strategic framework open to all eventualities about its
potential class leadership. Neither the post-April internal discussions nor the
party press indicate that the Bolsheviks were specifically oriented towards
establishing Soviet power through first winning a majority for their party.
Given the moderate socialist dominance of the Soviets, the slogan All Power
to the Soviets concretely meant the creation of a SR-Menshevik government.
Bolshevik agitation for this demand was not primarily a tactical ruse to expose
their rivals, but a serious push to form a broad non-capitalist power
committed to meeting the demands of working people.

Bolshevisms post-April stance was not that the SRs and Menshevik
leaderships were incapable of breaking with the bourgeoisie, but rather that
they could and should do so immediately. In his July call for the moderate
socialists to take power into their own hands, Baku Bolshevik leader Stepan
Shaumian concluded with the following question: Will the ruling socialist
parties listen to the imperious voice of life or will they continue to persist in
their stupid misunderstanding of the interests of the revolution? Bolshevik
[63]

agitation for Soviet power, he explained, gave expression to the desire of the
revolutionary proletariat to tear the petty-bourgeois Socialist-Revolutionary
and Menshevik parties from the influence of [liberal leaders] Milyukov and
Guchkov, and from their slavish subordination to Russian and Allied
imperialism. [64]
 Speaking to the Sixth Congress, Stalin uncontroversially explained the
meaning given by the Bolsheviks to their famous watchword: Our slogan was
All power to the Soviets! and, hence, a united revolutionary front. But the
Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries feared to break with the
bourgeoisie, [they] turned their backs on us. The dominant Bolshevik
[65]

approach was that only time would tell whether the moderate socialists would
break. In contrast, Trotsky argued in June that with downfall of the present
government will come the downfall of the present leaders of the Soviet of
Workers and Soldiers Delegates. To preserve the authority of the Soviet as a
representative of the Revolution, and to secure for it a continuance of its
functions as a directive power, is now within the power only of the present
minority of the Soviet. [66]

The first major break within Bolshevik approaches to Soviet power came not
in April, but after the July Days. Following the coalition governments bloody
repression of workers and its subsequent anti-radical offensive, Lenin
declared that the SRs and Mensheviks had definitively betrayed the cause of
the revolution and that it was no longer possible to peacefully push the
existing Soviets to take power since these (in his view) had yielded all their
authority to the bourgeois dictatorship. The party should drop the call for All
Power to the Soviets and orient instead towards an armed proletarian
uprising against the counter-revolutionary militarist regime. He argued that,
unlike in the preceding period, a rupture with the bourgeoisie now absolutely
required that the masses turn their backs on the Socialist-Revolutionary and
Menshevik parties after the experience of July 1917, it is the revolutionary
proletariat that must independently take over state power. Without that the
victory of the revolution is impossible. This did not mean that Lenin had
abandoned the goal of creating a majoritarian Soviet regime representing both
workers and the broad mass of peasantsbut, in his view, the path towards
this now necessarily passed through the immediate assumption of power by
the armed workers. [67]

Lenins sharp insistence that the advance of the revolution absolutely required
a proletarian-led government was new, as was his view that power should be
taken independently of the existing Soviets and against their SR-Menshevik
majorities. Various radical Bolshevik cadres in Petrograd supported this
stance, which coincided with a strong sense of the militant proletariats
isolation from the moderate socialists after the July Days. But on the whole
this line proved to be far more disputed in the Bolshevik leadership and ranks
than the April Theses.

Since Lenin was in hiding, the new lines main defender at the partys Sixth
Congress in late July-early September was Stalin, who went further than
Lenin himself by arguing that Russia was now ready for a socialist revolution
even before it erupted in the West. But top Bolshevik leaders at the Sixth
Congress sharply disputed the call for a proletarian seizure of power
independent of the Soviets, as well as the related description of the revolution
as socialist in nature. Dropping the fight to transform the Soviets into organs
of power, in their view, dangerously risked isolating the party and the working
class. They insisted that it was premature to write off the current Soviets and
the alliance with the petty-bourgeois masses that these bodies represented. [68]

This revealing discussion has largely been overlooked in the historiography

since it contradicts the prevailing misunderstanding of the demand for Soviet
power. At the Sixth Congress, it was the Bolshevik moderates who most
consistently demanded All Power to the Soviets against the line of advocates
of socialist revolution (and/or taking power independently of the Soviets). In
the end, the Sixth Congress dropped the call for All Power to the Soviets and
passed a series of compromise resolutions that leaned in the direction of
Lenins stance while simultaneously reaffirming much of partys preceding
approach. [69]

It is highly instructive to examine the reaction of the party as a whole to the

new line espoused by Lenin and (in more attenuated form) the Sixth Congress.
The call to drop the fight for All Power to the Soviets was basically ignored
across the board; by all accounts, Bolshevik committees continued to raise this
demand and to push for the moderate socialists to break with the liberals. This
was the case not only in the main provincial and borderland cities, but also in
Moscow and Petrograd. At the local level there was widespread refusal to
implement a change in policy that ran counter to mass feelings, notes Acton.
The result was to soften what might have been a deeply damaging blow to the
partys image as the champion of soviet-based government. [70]

The defeat of Kornilov at the hands of a broad multi-party resistance in late

August radically changed the political situation. Contrary to what Lenin had
been insisting for the past month, the anti-Kornilov struggle had
demonstrated that the existing Soviets were not obsolete and that the SRs and
Mensheviks had not definitively subordinated themselves to the counter-
revolutionary bourgeoisie. In the wake of this united victory it seemed to
many across the political spectrum that the Soviet leadership would finally
break with the liberals. From his hideout in Finland, Lenin made yet another
abrupt political reversal and now lent his support for the Bolshevik
leaderships call on the SR-Mensheviks leadership to form a Soviet
government. Since his immediate goal remained the dictatorship of the
revolutionary proletariat, Lenin personally argued that the Bolsheviks should
not participate in the proposed SR-Menshevik Soviet government. But the [71]

anti-coalition state proposals made by the Bolshevik Central Committee

(which now included Trotsky) to the Soviet Executive leadership on 31 August
and again for the 14-22 September All-Russia Democratic Conference did not
reject this possibility.

In this spirit, the Bolshevik leaders in Petrograds City Duma on 1 September

declared: Let only the genuine revolutionary democracy take the management
of the great revolutionary Petrograd into its hands and we, too, will take our
place in its ranks to work intensively and selflessly for the benefit of the capital
of the world revolution. The leaderships editorial two weeks later struck a
[72]

similar note: You want a united front with the Bolsheviks? Then break with
the Kerensky government, support the Soviets in their struggle for power, and
there will be unity. Had this compromise been accepted, a regime
[73]

resembling Kamenev and co.s vision of a democratic dictatorship of the

workers and peasants would have been the result. But the SR-Menshevik
leadershipsdespite the strong growth of anti-coalition wings within both
partiesset up yet another government with the liberals.

Only days after the Bolshevik leadership made their proposed compromise to
the moderate socialists, a major new development entered into the political
equation: the Bolsheviks for the first time won the leadership of the Petrograd
and Moscow Soviets. Soviets across the empire soon followed. Now that the
Bolsheviks were the strongest current within these bodies, the demand for
Soviet power took on a whole new political content. A Soviet government
henceforth likely meant a Bolshevik-led government; in terms of Bolshevik
class analysis, it would be a regime in which the proletariat was the hegemonic
force.

Had the moderate socialists agreed to accept the legitimacy of such a

Bolshevik-led Soviet regime, its broad social base would have represented the
vast majority of the population. Most people continued to envision Soviet
power as a multi-party regime representing workers, peasants, soldiers, the
left intelligentsia and their political representatives. But the continued
opposition of the SRs and Mensheviks to Soviet power raised the spectre that
a Bolshevik-led Soviet government might be primarily (or exclusively) based
on the working class. Left wings in the SR and Mensheviks were growing, but
it was unclear where their political allegiances would ultimately fall. In this
context, the assumption of power by the Soviets without the agreement of
other socialist currents brought with it the potential danger of proletarian
isolation and civil war.

In such a context, Lenins exhortationsmade from mid-September onwards

that the Bolshevik leadership immediately organise an armed uprising to
depose the Provisional Government were at first flatly rejected by the rest of
the Bolshevik Central Committee. For weeks after the moderates initial rebuff
of their proposed compromise, Bolshevik cadres nevertheless continued in
negotiations and pressure initiatives to find a way to peacefully establish a
multi-party working peoples government in agreement with the other
socialist currents. This stance resulted not only from Bolshevik leaders desire
to secure as broad a base as possible for anti-bourgeois rupture, but also from
the ongoing pressure from below for the unity of the revolutionary
democracy. In such a context, the political success of the Bolsheviks required
that they challenge the moderates for the mantle of unity.

But by October 10, the impasse of negotiations with the moderates, combined
with the Kerensky governments new initiatives to restore order, led the
majority of the Central Committee to finally accept Lenins argument
concerning the necessity of an armed uprising. The party would have to forge
ahead towards the establishment of a Soviet regime despite the uncertainty of
support from other socialist currents and/or their constituencies. Like Lenin,
the party majority now wagered that upon assuming power they would
subsequently be able to win over the broad mass of peasants, a dynamic
hopefully foreshadowed by the growing Bolshevik-Left SR collaboration.

This did not mean, however, that the Bolshevik leadership agreed with Lenins
ill-advised push for the party to organise an insurrection weeks before the
forthcoming Second All-Russia Soviet Second Congress. Instead, the
Bolsheviks under the leadership of Trotsky sought to promote the overthrow
of the government through a more cautious and defensive approach that
would tie armed actions to legitimacy of the Soviet, its institutions, and its
Second Congress. Ultimately, it was the latter method that prevailed, though it
would appear that Lenin played an important role in pushing these ongoing
military manoeuvres into a more offensive mode a few hours before the
Second Congress opened on 25 October.

As is well known, a minority of two in the Bolshevik Central Committee,

Kamenev and Zinoviev, voted against the October 10 resolution and
proceeded to argue against an armed uprising in the non-Bolshevik press. The
essence of their casewhich was shared by many Bolshevik party cadres
across the empirewas that the proletariat and its party was still too weak and
isolated for an armed conquest of power to succeed. Pointing towards the
importance of the forthcoming Constituent Assembly, they argued that time
was on the side of the workers since (among other things) in the future the
position of the petty-bourgeois parties...will not be exactly the same as it is
now. Pressure from below will put ever greater pressure on them and force
them to seek an alliance with the proletarian party against the landowners and
capitalists represented by the Kadet Party.
[74]

In a certain sense, Kamenev and Zinovievs opposition to an immediate armed

uprising was no different from that which had prevailed among the Bolsheviks
before October 10. As the preceding months of debates had demonstrated,
there was no obvious answer to the question of if and when attempts to reach
an agreement with the moderate socialists should be abandoned. Moreover, in
the concrete circumstances of October 1917 there was a very significant
tension between the Bolshevik partys principled insistence on proletarian
hegemony in the fight for Soviet power and the desire shared by workers and
party militants alike to establish a broadly-based regime of working people.
Lenin, Trotsky, the Bolshevik Central Committee had not abandoned the latter
goal, but its realisation in practice was now based more on a wager on future
developments than on a political certainty.

Perhaps the main criticism to be levelled against Kamenev and Zinoviev is that
they failed to make a political turn when conditions warranted it. Though they
pointed to real political dilemmas and dangers, their initial opposition to the
uprising cannot be reduced to a simple difference in tactics. Their tendency
towards treating an alliance with moderate socialists as a precondition for
Soviet government threatened to subordinate the Bolsheviks to political forces
who themselves remained subordinate to Capital. In this sense, Trotsky was
not off the mark in arguing that the minority leadership opposition in October
reflected the pressure exerted on the party by bourgeois public opinion at a
time when mortal peril was gathering above the heads of bourgeois
society. This point, however, should not be overstated since despite their
[75]

early opposition to the initiation of an armed uprising, Kamenev and Zinoviev

both ended up playing central roles during the founding of the new Soviet
government on 25-26 October indeed, Kamenev was elected chair of the
Soviet Central Executive Committee and Zinoviev wrote multiple leading
Bolshevik articles on 25 October and then became editor of Izvestiya, the
paper of the Soviet leadership. That the actual October insurrection had been
[76]

so defensive, and so tied to Soviet legality, meant that moderate Bolshevik

hopes in finding an accord with a large swath of the SRs and Mensheviks had
not yet been dashed.

Though the Kamenev-Zinoviev wing leaned on the important strategic aspects

of Old Bolshevism, it makes little sense to reduce this tradition to their
wavering. By mid-October the other top Bolshevik leaders had become
convinced that the establishment of a proletarian-led Soviet government was
necessary and possible despite the opposition of the SRs and Mensheviks and
the related threat of Civil War. As we have seen, the partys algebraic stance on
Soviet rule could be developed in different directions. And even had
Bolshevism been based on a less open-ended strategy, the party still would
have been subjected to intense external political pressures and it would still
have had to grapple with the challenge of wagering on the best moment and
means to push for power.

The Bolsheviks were the leading current in the armed actions that overthrew
the Provisional Government on 25 October, but nobody knew ahead of time
whether they would have an absolutely majority or only a large plurality at the
Second All-Russia Soviet Congress. As it turned out, the vast majority of
delegates supported granting all power to the Soviets, though the Bolsheviks
themselves fell just short of having a majority (300 of the 670 delegates). Had
they so desired, the non-Bolshevik currents could have exerted considerable
influence over the Congress (which was chaired by Kamenev) and the new
government. Though Lenin had advocated the establishment of a specifically
Bolshevik administration, the Bolshevik delegates unanimously accepted the
proposal made in the opening congress session by Martov for the
establishment of a broad multi-party socialist power. Yet the potential for
creating some form of wide Soviet regime was soon squandered by the
walkout of the moderates and the refusal of any other political currents to
participate in the newly established government.

The Bolsheviks desire to prevent proletarian isolation nevertheless found

expression, among other things, in the new governments immediate
implementation of the SR agrarian programme and its incorporation a few
weeks later of the Left SRs as minority partners in power. On a local and
regional level, the newly established Soviet governments included an even
wider array of political currents, namely non-Russian Marxists, SR-
Maximalists, anarchists, and revolutionary nationalists. Only in the course of
1918 would these alliances be blown apart by the storms of foreign
intervention, civil war, and economic collapse.
Conclusion

Much more could be said about Bolshevik stances on socialist revolution in

1917, but the preceding discussion was hopefully sufficient to have clarified
the main lines of development. October can be justifiably described as a
socialist revolution in so far as it established a proletarian-led state power that
asserted workers control over the economy and that actively promoted the
international overthrow of capitalism. But it is not historically accurate to
claim that the Bolshevik current from April 1917 onwards saw this goal as the
revolutions necessary next stage, nor that it equated the establishment of
such a government with socialist revolution.

Ultimately, the tensions and ambiguities in Bolshevik strategy reflected the

real social and political contradictions of promoting working-class hegemony
in an economically backwards, war-torn, primarily peasant society. The course
of events largely vindicated the Old Bolshevik stress on the need for a
worker-peasant alliance and the centrality of democratic demands. At the
same time, the experience of 1917 likewise confirmed Trotskys argument that
the success of this democratic revolution required proletarian governmental
leadership. Events similarly vindicated his contention that the resulting
regime would have to attack the foundations of capitalist property relations.

Since socialism could not be built within the confines of Russia alone, the sole
path to positively resolving the inherent contradictions facing the new Soviet
government was through the spread of workers rule abroad. And regarding
the imminence and necessity of world revolution, the perspectives of all
Bolsheviks in 1917 fully converged. The axiom that the Russian Revolution
would be defeated if it remained isolated was borne out, though this defeat
took the unforeseen form of Stalinist degeneration. In short: Trotskys theory
of permanent revolution was confirmed by the experience of the Russian
Revolution, but the same cannot be said of his polemical account of how Lenin
re-armed the Bolsheviks.

The author would like to thank John Riddell, Todd Chretien, Lars Lih, and
Charlie Post for their comments on this article.

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[1]
The Lessons of October [1924], Leon Trotsky, in Corney 2016, p. 101.

[2]
Slusser 1987, p. 54.

[3]
Commission of the Central Committee Of The C.P.S.U. (B.) 1939, pp. 183-84.

Many of Lihs important pioneering contributions can be found

[4]

here: https://johnriddell.wordpress.com/category/authors/lars-t-lih/ For my

recent accounts of Bolshevism in February and March 1917, see Blanc 2017a
and Blanc 2017b.
 For typical Menshevik claims about Lenins purported anarchism, see
[5]

Rabinowitch 1968, p. 40.

On the dubious analytical and factual accuracy of some of these memoir

[6]

accounts, see Longley 1978, pp. 252, 337-38. On the evolution of early
Bolshevik historiography concerning 1917, see White 1985 and the
introduction in Corney 2016.

[7]
() 1958a [1917], p. 18.

[8]
Letters on Tactics [1917] in Lenin 1964a, p. 48.

[9]
Radek 1917, pp. 3-4.

[10]
Getzler 1992, 30.

[11]
Letters on Tactics [1917] in Lenin 1964a, p. 48.

[12]
Smith 2006, p. 134; Anweiler 1974, p. 157-58.

[13]
Cited in Anweiler 1974, p. 171.

On the Soviets of Workers and Soldiers Deputies [1917] in Elwood 1974, p.

[14]

223. My emphasis.

[15]
Letter to Comrades [1917] in Lenin 1964b, p. 200.

[16]
and 2010, pp. 82, 91.

[17]
2004, p. 100.

[18]
Cited in Service 1979, p. 45.

[19]
Cited in 1985, p. 145.

Cited in Galili y Garcia 1989, p. 157. Only by way of exception did the
[20]

Mensheviks engage with the actual stance of their rivals. For instance, in mid-
October Menshevik leader D. Koltsov argued that there was no third way
between capitalism and socialism. Marxist theory, he asserted, did not support
the conception of a semi-socialist revolution. (Cited in Shkliarevsky 1985, p.
330.)

[21]
Demokratija un kapitalisms [1917] in Stuka 1978, p. 203.
 What Next? After the July Days, Leon Trotsky [1917], in Lenin and Trotzky
[22]

1918, pp. 268-69.

[23]
1958, p. 47.

What Next? After the July Days, Leon Trotsky [1917], in Lenin and Trotzky
[24]

1918, pp. 268-71.

[25]
K [1917] in

and 1957, p. 179.

[26]
Iskolats 1973, p. 29.

[1917] in 1958, p. 22;

[27]

[1917] in 1958, p. 27.

[28]
Treijs, R. 1977, p. 38; Raleigh 1986, p. 320.

Report on the Current Situation April 24 (May 7) [1917] in Lenin 1964a, p.

[29]

241.

() 1958a [1917], pp. 15, 96; ()

[30]

1958b [1917], pp. 114, 132.

Kautsky on the Russian Revolution [1906], Leon Trotsky, in Day and Gaido
[31]

2009, pp. 574, 578. My emphasis.

[32]
To the Citizens of Russia! [1917] in Lenin 1964b, p. 236.

For one of many such examples, see K

[33]

K [1917] in , . . 1958, p. 108.

Letters on Tactics [1917] in Lenin 1964a, p. 52;

[34]

[1917] in
1958, p. 166.

Reply to the Discussion [1917] in Stalin 1953a, p. 133; Speeches at the Sixth
[35]

Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.(B.) [1917] in Stalin 1953a, p. 185.

[36]
() 1958b [1917], p. 119, 128, 133, 254.

See, for example, the documents collected in 1925, Chamberlin 1935,

[37]

. 1957, Elwood 1974, RSDRP Central Committee

1974, Stalin 1953a.
[38]
Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power? [1917] in Lenin 1964b, p. 105.

[39]
Mandel 1984, p. 80.

For the invocation of the category of socialist revolution in the post-October

[40]

internal debates on Soviet power, see RSDRP Central Committee 1974. On the
post-October general evolution of Bolshevik categorisations of the revolution,
see, for example, the documents collected in 1925, Chamberlin 1935,
. 1957, Stalin 1953a, Stalin 1953b. Lenins
descriptions of the October revolution continued to vary after 1917. Sometimes
he called it a socialist revolution. (Theses on the Question of a Separate Peace
[1918] in Lenin 1964b, p. 445.) Other times he called it fundamentally
bourgeois-democratic. (Report of the Central Committee March 18 [1919] in
Lenin 1965, p. 157.)

[41]
() 1958a [1917], p. 18.

[42]
Rozi 1965, p. 273.

[43]
Report On The Current Situation [1917] in Lenin 1964a, pp. 239-40.

[44]
Revolucijas Burzma [1917], in Stuka 1978, pp. 226-27.

[45]
Yellow Alliance [1917] in Stalin 1953a, pp. 267, 270.

[46]
, , 16 August, 1917.
Significantly, these arguments were not included in Stalins collected works.

Speech at a Joint Plenum of the Moscow Soviet of Workers, Peasants and

[47]

Red Army Deputies [1920] in Lenin 1966, p. 397.

[48]
Report on the Current Situation [1917] in Lenin 1964a, p. 242.

[49]
() 1958a [1917], p. 91.

[50]
Smith 1983, p. 146.

[51]
Shkliarevsky 1985, pp. 146-50, 190.

[52]
() 1958b [1917], p. 153.

[53]
Cited in Mandel 1983, p. 153.

On the nationalisation of industry and the related political issues, see, for
[54]

example, Chamberlin 1965, Volume 2, pp. 96-116.

 Trotsky 1969 [1906], p. 70. It should be noted that, among others, Rosa
[55]

Luxemburg and Karl Kautsky in this period similarly advocated for Russia a
governmental power in which the working class party would be the hegemonic
force; neither of these two leaders equated the establishment of such a
government with socialist revolution.

[56]
See, for example, 1959 [1905], p. 102-3.

[57]
See, for example, 1992 [1923], pp. 66, 165.

On the Soviets of Workers and Soldiers Deputies [1917] in Elwood 1974, p.

[58]

223.

[59]
Letters on Tactics [1917] in Lenin 1964a, pp. 44-46.

[60]
Ibid., pp. 46, 51.

[61]
() 1958a [1917], pp. 81-2.

[62]
() 1958a [1917], pp. 90-91.

[63]
[1917] in 1958, p. 28.

[64]
[1917] in 1958, p. 61.

[65]
Report on the Political Situation [1917] in Stalin 1953a, p. 188.

The Farce of Dual Power [1917], Leon Trotsky, in Lenin and Trotzky 1918,
[66]

p. 192.

[67]
On Slogans [1917] in Lenin pp. 188, 191.

[68]
See, for example, () 1958b [1917], pp. 114-17.

For the full Sixth Congress resolutions see () 1958b

[69]

[1917], pp. 253-76.

[70]
Acton 1990, pp. 197-98.

[71]
On Compromises [1917] in Lenin 1964b, pp. 310-11.

Declaration by the Bolshevik Group [1917] in RSDRP Central Committee

[72]

1974, p. 40.

[73]
The Revolutionary Front [1917] in Stalin 1953a, p. 326.
 Kamenevs and Zinovievs Opposition to Insurrection [1917] in Kowalski
[74]

1997, p. 83.

[75]
Our Differences, Leon Trotsky, in Corney 2016, p. 310.

For one of the few serious accounts of the late year moderate Bolshevik
[76]

opposition, see Hedlin 1975.

olitical Power and Dissent in Post-Revolutionary Societies

Marxs original definition concerned political power as the

direct manifestation of class antagonism, coupled with its
opposite: the abolition of political power properly so-called in
a fully realized socialist society. But what happens in
between? Is it possible to break entrenched political power
without necessarily resorting to the exercise of a fully
articulated system of political power?

Mszros in a 2002 appearance on Brazilian television program Roda Viva.

We were saddened to learn of the death of Istvn Mszros on October 1st.
A distinguished Marxist philosopher, Mszros was born in Hungary in
1930 and studied with Georg Lukcs before emigrating to the UK after the
Soviet invasion of 1956. His many books include Marx's Theory of
Alienation, winner of the 1970 Deutscher Memorial Prize, The Challenge
and Burden of Historical Time: Socialism in the Twenty First Century,
and The Necessity of Social Control, a collection from Monthly Review
Press designed as an introduction to his thought.

Below we present an essay by Mszros first published in New Left

Review in March 1978, adapted from a talk given at the Convegno del
Manifesto on "Power and Opposition in Post-revolutionary Societies," held
in Venice on 1113 November 1977.

The question of political power in post-revolutionary societies is and

remains one of the most neglected areas of Marxist theory. Marx formulated
the principle of the abolition of "political power properly so-called" in no
uncertain terms: "The organization of revolutionary elements as a class
supposes the existence of all the productive forces which could be
engendered in the bosom of the old society. Does this mean that after the fall
of the old society there will be a new class domination culminating in a new
political power? No. The condition for the emancipation of the working
class is the abolition of every class, just as the condition for the liberation of
the Third Estate, of the bourgeois order, was the abolition of all estates and
all orders. The working class, in the course of its development, will
substitute for the old civil society an association which will exclude classes
and their antagonisms, and there will be no more political power properly
so-called, since political power is precisely the official expression of
antagonism in civil society." 1 And he was categorical in asserting that
"When the proletariat is victorious, it by no means becomes the absolute
side of society, for it is victorious only by abolishing itself and its opposite.
Then the proletariat disappears as well as the opposite which determines it,
private property."2 But what happens to political power in post-
revolutionary societies when the proletariat does not disappear? What
becomes of private property or capital when private ownership of the means
of production is abolished while the proletariat continues to exist and rules
the whole of society including itself under the new political power
called "the dictatorship of the proletariat"? For according to Marxs principle
the two sides of the opposition stand or fall together, and the proletariat
cannot be truly victorious without abolishing itself. Nor can it fully abolish
its opposite without at the same time abolishing itself as a class which needs
the new political form of the dictatorship of the proletariat in order to secure
and maintain itself in power.

It would be mere sophistry to try and get out of these difficulties by

suggesting that the new political power is not "political power properly so-
called," in other words that it is not the manifestation of deep-seated
objective antagonisms. For the existence of such antagonisms is painfully in
evidence everywhere, and the severity of measures devised to prevent their
eruption by no means with guaranteed success provides an eloquent
refutation of all evasive sophistry. Nor is it possible to take seriously for a
moment the self-justifying suggestion that the political power of the post-
revolutionary state is maintained indeed intensified in function of a
purely international determination, in that political repression is explained
as the necessary consequence of "encirclement" and as the only feasible
form of defending the achievements of the revolution against external
aggression and its complementary: internal subversion. As recent history
loudly testifies, "the enemy within and without" as the explanation of the
nature of political power in post-revolutionary societies is a dangerous
doctrine, which substitutes the part for the whole in order to transform a
partial determination into wholesale a priori justification of the
unjustifiable: the institutionalized violation of elementary socialist rights
and values.

The task is, clearly, an investigation without apologetic preconceptions

of the specific political antagonisms which come to the fore in post-
revolutionary societies, together with their material bases indirectly
identified by Marxs principle concerning the simultaneous abolition of both
sides of the old socio-economic antagonism as the necessary condition of
proletarian victory. This does not mean, in the least, that we have to commit
ourselves in advance to some theory of a "new class." For postulating a
"new class" is only another type of preconception which does not explain
anything which, on the contrary, badly needs explanation itself. Nor does
the magic umbrella term "bureaucratism" which covers almost
everything, including the assessment of qualitatively different social systems
approached from opposite standpoints, from Max Weber to some of
Trotskys followers provide a meaningful explanation of the nature of
political power in post-revolutionary societies, in that it merely points to
some obvious appearances while begging the question as to their causes: i.e.
it presents the effect of far-reaching causal determinations as itself a causal
explanation. Similarly, the hypothesis of "state capitalism" will not do. Not
only because it confounds the issues with some present-day tendencies of
development in the most advanced capitalist societies (tendencies very
briefly touched upon already by Marx himself), but also because it has to
omit from its analysis some highly significant objective characteristics of
post-revolutionary societies in order to make the application of this
problematic label look plausible. Labels, no matter how tempting, do not
solve complex theoretical issues, only bypass them while giving the illusion
of a solution.

By the same token, it would be somewhat naive to imagine that we can

leave these problems behind by declaring that the dictatorship of the
proletariat as a political form belongs to the past, whereas the present and
future are to be envisaged according to the principle of political pluralism
which, in turn, necessarily implies a conception of shared power as a
"historical compromise." For even if we accept the pragmatic viability and
relative historical validity of this conception, the question of how to
constitute and exercise political power which actively contributes to a
socialist transformation of society, instead of postponing indefinitely its
realization, remains just as unanswered as before. There are some worrying
dilemmas which must be answered. In the framework of the newly
envisaged pluralism, is it possible to escape the well-known historical fate
of Social Democracy, which resigned itself to the illusion of "sharing
power" with the bourgeoisie while in fact helping to perpetuate the rule of
capital over society? If it is not possible if, that is, the political form of
pluralism itself is by its very nature a submission to the prevailing form of
class domination, as some would argue in that case why should
committed socialists be interested in it in the slightest? But if, on the other
hand, the idea of pluralism is advocated in the perspective of a genuine
socialist transformation, it must be explained how it is possible to proceed
from shared power to socialist power, without relapsing into the selfsame
contradictions of political power in post-revolutionary societies whose
manifestations we have witnessed on so many occasions. This is what gives
a burning topicality to this whole discussion. The question of political power
in post-revolutionary societies is no longer an academic matter. Nor can it be
left anchored to the interests of conservative political propaganda and
dismissed by the Left as such. Quite unlike 1956 when these
contradictions erupted in such a clamorous and tragic form it is no longer
possible for any section of the Left to turn its shoulders to it. Facing the
issues involved has become an essential condition of advance for the entire
working-class movement, under conditions when in some countries it may
be called upon to assume the responsibilities of sharing power, in the midst
of an ever-deepening structural crisis of capital

The Ideal and the "Force of Circumstance"

If there has ever been a need to go back to the original sources and
principles in order to examine the conditions of their formulation, together
with all the necessary implications for present-day conditions and
circumstances, it is precisely on these issues. But as soon as we admit this
and try to act accordingly, we are immediately presented with some great
difficulties. For Marxs original definition of political power as the
necessary manifestation of class antagonism contrasts the realities of class
society with fully realized socialism in which there can be no room for
separate organs of political power, since "the social life-process . . . becomes
production by freely associated men, and stands under their conscious and
planned control." 3 But try and replace the plan consciously arrived at by the
totality of individual producers by a plan imposed upon them from above,
then the concept of "freely associated men" must also be thrown out and
replaced by that of a forced association, inevitably envisaging the exercise
of political power as separate from and opposed to the society of producers,
who must be compelled to accept and implement aims and objectives which
do not issue from their conscious deliberations but, on the contrary, negate
the very idea of free association and conscious deliberation. Or, vice versa,
try and obliterate the concept of "freely associated individuals" worse
still, arbitrarily declare, in the spirit of whatever form of Stalinism, that such
concepts are purely "ideological" remnants of a "moralizing bourgeois
individualism," even if this means that from now on, however
surreptitiously, a significant portion of Marxs own work too has to be
obliterated with the same label and there will be no way of conceiving
and envisaging (let alone practising) the elaboration and implementation of
social planning except as a forced imposition from above.

Thus we witness the complete transformation of Marxs ideal into a reality

which replaces the self-determining life-activity of freely associated social
individuals by the forced association of men ruled by an alien political force.
Simultaneously, Marxs concept of a conscious social plan (which is
supposed to regulate, through the full involvement of the freely associated
individuals, the totality of the life-processes of society) suffers the gravest
reduction, becoming a one-sided, technocratically preconceived and often
unfulfilled mere economic plan, and thus superimposing upon society in a
new form the selfsame economic determinations whose supersession
constituted the framework of orientation of scientific socialism from the
moment of its inception.

Furthermore, since now the two basic constituents of a dialectical unity, the
association of producers and the regulatory force of the plan, are divorced
from and opposed to one another, the "force of circumstance" which is
the necessary consequence of this separation rather than its cause, whatever
the historically changing social determinants at work becomes the
unqualified cause, indeed the "inevitable cause." And since the "inevitable
cause" is also its own justification, the transformation is carried even further,
setting itself up as the only possible form of realization of Marxs ideal: as
the unsurpassable model of all possible socialist development. From now on,
since the prevailing form of political rule must be maintained and therefore
everything must remain as it is, the problematical notion of the "force of
circumstance" is used in the argument in order to assert categorically that
it could not have been otherwise, and thus it is right that everything should
be as it is. In other words, Marxs ideal is turned into a highly problematical
reality, which in its turn is reconverted into a totally untenable model and
ideal, through a most tortuous use of the "force of circumstance" as both
inevitable cause and normative justification, while in fact it should be
critically examined and challenged on both counts.

To be sure, this double perversion is not the product of one-sided theory,

though it represents an apologetic capitulation of theory to the "force of
circumstance," which in its turn is brought into existence as a result of
immensely complex and contradictory social determinations, including the
share of theoretical failure as a significant contributory factor to the overall
process. But once this process is accomplished and a uniform praise of the
perverted ideal is imposed by the force of law, condemning as "heresy" and
"subversion" all voices of dissent, critical reflection must assume the form
of bitter, self-torturing irony. Such as the answer given by the mythical
"Radio Yerevan" to the question of an anonymous listener who asks: "Is it
true that we have socialism in our country?" The answer is given in an
oblique form as follows: "You are asking, Comrade, whether it is true that
luxurious American motor cars will be given away this Saturday afternoon
on Red Square. It is perfectly true, with three qualifications: they wont be
American, they will be Russian; they wont be motor cars, they will be
bicycles; and they wont be given away, they will be taken away." Cynically
nihilistic though this may sound, who can fail to perceive in it the voice of
impotence protesting in vain against the systematic frustration and violation
of the ideals of socialism? Admittedly, the problems of political power in
post-revolutionary societies cannot be solved by simply reiterating an ideal
in its original formulation, for by their very nature these problems belong to
the period of transition which impose their painful qualifications on all of
us. All the same, there is a moral for us too in the story of "Radio Yerevan."
It is that we should never consent to "qualifications" which obliterate the
ideal itself and turn it into its opposite. To ignore the "force of
circumstance" would be tantamount to living in the world of fantasy. But
whatever the circumstances, the ideal remains valid as the vital compass that
secures the correct direction of the journey and as the necessary corrective to
the power of vis major which tends to take over in the absence of such
corrective.

Political Power in the Society of Transition

Is it possible to identify the necessary socio-historical qualifications which

apply the spirit of Marxs original formulations to the concrete realities of a
complex historical transition from one social formation to another? How is it
possible to envisage this transition in a political form that does not become
its own self-perpetuation, thus contradicting and effectively nullifying the
very idea of a transition which alone can justify the continued, but in
principle diminishing, importance of the political form? Is it possible to
have such qualifications without liquidating Marxs theoretical framework
and its implications for our problem?

As we have seen, Marxs original definition concerned political power as the

direct manifestation of class antagonism, coupled with its opposite: the
abolition of political power properly so-called in a fully realized socialist
society. But what happens in between? Is it possible to break entrenched
political power without necessarily resorting to the exercise of a fully
articulated system of political power? If not, how is it possible to envisage a
change of course "halfway through" namely, the radical transformation of
a powerful system of self-sustaining political power which controls the
whole of society, into a self-transcending organ which fully transfers the
manifold functions of political control to the social body itself, thus enabling
the emergence of that free association of men without which the life-process
of society remains under the domination of alien forces, instead of being
consciously regulated by the social individuals involved in accordance with
the ideals of self-determination and self-realization? And finally, if the
transitional forms of political power stubbornly refuse to show signs of
"withering away," how should one assess the contradictions involved: as the
failure of a "utopian" Marxism, or as the historically determinate
manifestation of objective antagonisms whose elucidation is well within the
compass of Marxs original project?

Marxs assertion about the supersession of political power in socialist

society is coupled with two important considerations. First, that the free
association of social individuals who consciously regulate their own life-
activities in accordance with a settled plan is not feasible without the
necessary "material foundation, or a series of material conditions of
existence, which in their turn are the natural and spontaneous product of
a long and tormented historical development." 4 The emancipation of labour
from the rule of capital is feasible only if the objective conditions of its
emancipation are fulfilled whereby "the direct, material production process
is stripped of the form of penury and antithesis," giving way to the "free
development of individualities." 5 By implication, so long as "penury and
antithesis" remain characteristics of the material base of society, the political
form must suffer their consequences and the "free development of
individualities" is hindered and postponed.

The second consideration is closely linked to the first. Since overcoming the
conditions of "penury and antithesis" necessarily implied the highest
development of the forces of production, successful revolution had to be
envisaged by Marx in advanced capitalist countries, and not on the
periphery of world capitalist developments (although he touched upon the
possibility of revolutions away from the socio-economically most dynamic
centre, without however entering into a discussion of the necessary
implications of such possibilities). Inasmuch as the object of his analysis
was the power of capital as a world system, he had to contemplate a
breakthrough, under the impact of a profound structural crisis, in the form of
more or less simultaneous revolutions in the major capitalist countries.

As to the problems of political power in the period of transition, Marx

introduced the concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat"; and in one of
his later works, The Critique of the Gotha Programme, he addressed himself
to some additional problems of a transitional society as manifested in the
politico-legal sphere. While these elements of his theory certainly do not
constitute a system (the sequel to Capital which was supposed to develop
the political implications of Marxs global theory in a systematic way was
never even sketched, let alone fully worked out), they are important
signposts and must be complemented by certain other elements of his theory
(notably the assessment of the relationship between individual and class, and
of the structural interdependence between capital and labour) which have a
significant bearing on the strictly political issues, as we shall see in a
moment.

It was Lenin, as we all know, who worked out the strategy of revolution "at
the weakest link of the chain," insisting that the dictatorship of the
proletariat must be considered as the only viable political form for the entire
historical period of transition that precedes the highest stage of communism,
in which it finally becomes possible to implement the principle of freedom.
The most significant shift in his analysis was envisaging that the "material
foundation" and the supersession of "penury" will be accomplished under
the dictatorship of the proletariat in a country which sets out from an
extremely low level of development. Yet Lenin saw no problem in
suggesting in December 1918 that the new state will be "democratic for the
proletariat and the propertyless in general and dictatorial against the
bourgeoisie" only. 6

There was a curious flaw in his usually impeccable reasoning. He argued

that "thanks to capitalism, the material apparatus of the big banks,
syndicates, railways, and so forth, has grown" and "the immense experience
of the advanced countries has accumulated a stock of engineering marvels,
the employment of which is being hindered by capitalism," concluding that
the Bolsheviks (who were in fact confined to a backward country) can "lay
hold of this apparatus and set it in motion." 7 Thus the immense difficulties
of a transition from one particular revolution to the irrevocable success of a
global revolution (which is beyond the control of any one particular agency,
however class-conscious and disciplined) were more or less implicitly
brushed aside by voluntaristically postulating that the Bolsheviks were
capable of taking power and "retaining it until the triumph of the world
socialist revolution." 8

Thus, while the viability of a socialist revolution at the weakest link of the
chain was advocated, the imperative of a world revolution as a condition of
success of the former reasserted itself in a most uneasy form: as an insoluble
tension at the very heart of the theory. But what could one say in the event
the world socialist revolution did not come about and the Bolsheviks were
condemned to hold on to power indefinitely? Lenin and his revolutionary
comrades were unwilling to entertain that question, since it conflicted with
certain elements of their outlook. They had to claim the viability of their
strategy in a form which necessarily implied anticipating revolutionary
developments in areas over which their forces had no control whatsoever. In
other words, their strategy involved the contradiction between two
imperatives: first, the need to go it alone, as the immediate (historical) pre-
condition of success (of doing it at all); secondly, the imperative of the
triumph of the world socialist revolution, as the ultimate (structural)
precondition of success of the whole enterprise.

Understandably, therefore, when the actual conquest of power in October

1917 created a new situation, Lenin exclaimed with a sigh of relief: "It is
more pleasant and useful to go through the 'experience of the
revolution' than to write about it." 9 And again: "The October 25 Revolution
has transferred the question raised in this pamphlet from the sphere of theory
to the sphere of practice. This question must now be answered by deeds, not
words." 10 But how deeds could themselves answer the dilemma concerning
the grave difficulties of accomplishing all the necessary "material
groundwork" which constitutes the prerequisite of a successful socialist
transformation, without "words" without, that is, a coherent theory
soberly assessing the massive potential dangers involved, and indicating at
the same time, if feasible, the possibilities of a solution to them Lenin did
not say. He simply could not envisage the possibility of an objective
contradiction between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the proletariat
itself.
While in March and April 1917 Lenin was still advocating "a state without a
standing army, without a police opposed to the people, without an
officialdom placed above the people," 11 and proposed to "organize and
arm all the poor, exploited sections of the population in order that
they themselves should take the organs of state power directly into their own
hands, in order that they themselves should constitute these organs of state
power," 12 a significant shift became visible in his orientation after the
seizure of power. The main themes of The State and Revolution receded
further and further in his thought. Positive references to the experience of
the Paris Commune (as the direct involvement of "all the poor, exploited
sections of the population" in the exercise of power) disappeared from his
speeches and writings; and the accent was laid on "the need for a central
authority, for dictatorship and a united will to ensure that the vanguard of
the proletariat shall close its ranks, develop the state and place it upon a new
footing, while firmly holding the reigns of power." 13 Thus, in contrast to
the original intentions which predicated the fundamental identity of the
"entire armed people," 14 with state power, there appeared a separation of
the latter from "the working people," whereby "state power is organizing
large-scale production on state-owned land and in state-owned enterprises
on a national scale, is distributing labour-power among the various branches
of economy and the various enterprises, and is distributing among the
working people large quantities of articles of consumption belonging to the
state." 15 The fact that the relationship of the working people to state power
manifested as the central distribution of labour-power was a relationship of
structural subordination did not seem to trouble Lenin, who bypassed this
issue by simply describing the new form of separate state power as "the
proletarian state power." 16 Thus the objective contradiction between the
dictatorship of the proletariat and the proletariat itself disappeared from his
horizon, at the very moment it surfaced as centralized state power which
determines on its own the distribution of labour-power. At the most generic
level of class relations corresponding to the polar opposition between the
proletariat and the bourgeoisie the contradiction did not seem to exist.
The new state had to secure its own material base and the central
distribution of labour-power appeared to be the only viable principle for
achieving this, from the standpoint of the state already in existence. 17 In
reality, however, it was "the working people" themselves who had to be
reduced to and distributed as "labour-power": not only over immense
geographical distances with all the upheavals and dislocations inevitably
involved in such a centrally imposed system of distribution but also
"vertically" in each and every locality, in accordance with both the material
dictates of the inherited production structures and the political dictates
inherent in their newly constituted principle and organs of regulation.

Lukcss Solution

No matter how problematical his conclusions, it was Lukcss great

intellectual merit to have highlighted this dilemma in a most acute form, in
one of his relatively unknown articles, written in the spring of 1919. The
issue is important enough to warrant the long quotation which is needed to
faithfully reproduce the train of his thought: "It is clear that the most
oppressive phenomena of proletarian power namely, scarcity of goods
and high prices, of whose immediate consequences every proletarian has
personal experience are the direct consequences of the slackening of
labour-discipline and the decline in production. The creation of remedies for
these, and the consequent improvement in the individuals standard of
living, can only be brought about when the causes of these phenomena have
been removed. Help comes in two ways. Either the individuals who
constitute the proletariat realize that they can help themselves only by
bringing about a voluntary strengthening of labour-discipline, and
consequently a rise in production: or, if they are incapable of this, they
create institutions which are capable of bringing about this necessary state
of affairs. In the latter case, they create a legal system through which the
proletariat compels its own individual members, the proletarians, to act in a
way which corresponds to their class-interests: the proletariat turns its
dictatorship against itself. This measure is necessary for the self-
preservation of the proletariat when correct recognition of class-interests and
voluntary action in these interests do not exist. But one must not hide from
oneself the fact that this method contains within itself great dangers for the
future. When the proletariat itself is the creator of labour-discipline, when
the labour-system of the proletarian state is built on a moral basis, then the
external compulsion of the law ceases automatically with the abolition of
class division that is, the state withers away and this liquidation of
class-division produces out of itself the beginning of the true history of
humanity, which Marx prophesied and hoped for. If, on the other hand, the
proletariat follows another path, it must create a legal system which cannot
be abolished automatically by historical development. Development would
therefore proceed in a direction which endangered the appearance and
realization of the ultimate aim. For the legal system which the proletariat is
compelled to create in this way must be overthrown and who knows what
convulsions and what injuries will be caused by a transition which leads
from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom by such a dtour?
. . . It depends on the proletariat whether the real history of humanity begins
that is to say, the power of morality over institutions and economics." 18

This quotation shows Lukcss great power of insight as regards the

objective dialectic of a certain type of development, formulated from a
rather abstract philosophical point of view. Lenin, by comparison, preferring
"deeds" to "words," was far too busy trying to squeeze out the last drop of
practical socialist possibilities from the objective instrumental set-up of his
situation to indulge in theoretical anticipations of this kind in 1919. By the
time he started to concentrate on the dreadful danger of an ever-increasing
domination of the ideals of socialism by the "institutions of necessity," it
was too late not only for him personally, but historically too late to
reverse the course of developments. The idea of autonomous working-class
action had been replaced by advocacy of "the greatest possible
centralization." 19 Both the Soviets and the factory councils had been
deprived of all effective power, and in the course of the trade-union debate
all attempts at securing even a very limited degree of self-determination for
the working-class base had been dismissed as "syndicalist nonsense" 20 and
as "a deviation towards syndicalism and anarchism," 21 seen as a direct
threat to the dictatorship of the proletariat. The cruel irony of it all is that
Lenin himself, totally dedicated as he was to the cause of the socialist
revolution, helped to paralyse the selfsame forces of the working-class base
to which he tried to turn later for help, when he perceived the fateful danger
of those developments in Russia which were to culminate in Stalinism.
Against this background, it is pathetic to see Lenin, a genius of realistic
strategy, behaving like a desperate utopian from 1923 to the moment of his
death: insistently putting forward hopeless schemes like the proposal to
create a majority in the Central Committee from working-class cadres, in
order to neutralize the Party bureaucrats in the hope of reversing this
dangerous trend, by now far too advanced. Lenins great tragedy was that
his incomparable, instrumentally concrete, intensely practical strategy in the
end defeated him. In the last year of his life, there was no longer a way out
of his almost total isolation. The developments he himself, far more than
anybody else, had helped to set in motion had made him historically
superfluous. The specific form in which he lived the unity of theory and
practice proved to be the limit even of his greatness.

What was extremely problematical in Lukcss discourse was the suggestion

that the acceptance of the need for higher productivity and greater labour
discipline as a result of the philosophers direct moral appeal to the
consciousness of individual proletarians might avert the danger so
graphically described and render the creation of the institutions of necessity
superfluous. What degree of labour discipline is high enough under the
conditions of extreme urgency of the necessary "material groundwork"? Is
"correct recognition of class-interest" ipso facto the end of all possible
objective contradiction between individual and class interest? These and
similar questions did not appear on Lukcss horizon, which remained
idealistically clouded by postulating an individualistic yet uniform moral
base of social practice as an alternative to collective necessity. Nevertheless,
he clearly spelled out not only the possibility of the proletariat turning its
dictatorship against itself, but also the anguishing implications of such a
state of affairs for the future when "the legal system which the proletariat is
compelled to create in this way must be overthrown."

Was it this early thought, perhaps, which Lukcs tried to amplify in much
greater detail, in the light of subsequent developments, in an unpublished
"political testament" he wrote in 1968, following his bitter condemnation of
the military intervention in Czechoslovakia? Be that as it may, the dilemma
remains as acute as ever. What were those objective and subjective
determinations which produced the submission of the proletariat to the
political form through which it assumed power, and is it possible to
overcome them? How is it possible to avoid the potential convulsions
associated with the imperative need of changing in depth the prevailing
forms of political rule? What are the conditions of transforming the existing
rigid "institutions of necessity," by means of which dissent is suppressed and
compulsion enforced, into more flexible institutions of social involvement,
foreshadowing that "free development of individualities" which continues to
elude us?

Individual and Class

This is the point where we must put into relief the relevance for our problem
of Marxs considerations on the relationship between individual and class.
For in the absence of a proper understanding of this relationship, the
transformation of the transitional political form into a dictatorship exercised
also over the proletariat (notwithstanding the original democratic intent)
remains deeply shrouded in mystery. How is it possible for such a
transformation to take place? The ideas of "degeneration,"
"bureaucratization," "substitutionism" and the like not only all beg the
question, but also culminate in an illusory remedy, explicit or implied:
namely, that the simple overthrow of this political form and the substitution
of dedicated revolutionaries for party bureaucrats will reverse the process
forgetting that the blamed party bureaucrats too were in their time dedicated
revolutionaries. Hypotheses of this kind idealistically transfer the problem
from the plane of objective contradictions to that of individual psychology,
which can explain at best only the question of why a certain type of person
is best suited to mediate the objective structures of a given political form,
but not the nature of those structures themselves.

Similarly, it would be very naive to accept that the new structures of

political domination suddenly and automatically and just as mysteriously
come into existence following the refusal of proletarians to accept an
intensified labour-discipline and a self-sacrifice that have been dictated to
them. On the contrary, the very fact that the question can be raised in this
form is itself already evidence that the structures of domination are in
existence before the question is even thought of. Admonitions and threats
are empty words if they do not issue out of material power. But if they do, it
is an idealistic reversal of the actual state of affairs to represent material
dictates as moral imperatives which, if unheeded, would be followed by
material dictates and sanctions. In reality, material dictates are internalized
as moral imperatives only under the exceptional circumstances of a state of
emergency, when reality itself rules out the possibility of alternative courses
of action. To identify the two i.e. to treat material dictates as moral
imperatives would mean to lock the life-processes of society into the
unbearably narrow confines of a permanent state of emergency.

What are the structures of domination on the basis of which the new
political form arises, which it must get rid of if it is not to remain a
permanent obstacle to the realization of socialism? In discussions of Marxs
critique of the state, what is usually forgotten is that it is not concerned
simply with the termination of a specific form of class rule the capitalist
but with a much more fundamental issue: the full emancipation of the
social individual. The following quotation makes this amply clear: "the
proletarians, if they are to assert themselves as individuals, have to abolish
the hitherto prevailing condition of their existence (which has, moreover,
been that of all society up to then), namely, labour. Thus they find
themselves directly opposed to the form in which, hitherto, the individuals,
of which society consists, have given themselves collective expression, that
is, the State. In order, therefore, to assert themselves as individuals, they
must overthrow the State." 22 Try and remove the concept of
"individuals" from this reasoning, and the whole enterprise becomes
meaningless. For the need to abolish the State arises because the individuals
cannot "assert themselves as individuals," and not simply because one class
is dominated by another.

The same consideration applies to the question of individual and class.

Again, discussions of Marxs theory as a rule neglect this aspect, and
concentrate on what he says about emancipating the proletariat from the
bourgeoisie. But what would be the point of this emancipation if the
individuals who constitute the proletariat remained dominated by the
proletariat as a class? And it is precisely this relationship of domination
which precedes the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. There
is no need to newly establish the domination of the proletarians by the
proletariat, since that domination already exists, though in a different form,
well before the question of taking power historically arises: "the class in its
turn assumes an independent existence as against the individuals, so that the
latter find their conditions of life predetermined, and have their position in
life and hence their personal development assigned to them by their class,
thus become subsumed under it. This is the same phenomenon as
the subjection of the separate individuals to the division of labour and can
only be removed by the abolition of private property and of labour
itself." 23

To be sure, this aspect of class domination holds in all forms of class society,
irrespective of their specific political superstructures. Nor could it be
otherwise, given the existence of irreconcilable inter-class antagonisms;
indeed, the submission of the individuals to their class is a necessary
concomitant of the latter. Moreover, this condition applies just as much to
advanced capitalist countries as to their more or less underdeveloped
counterparts. It would, therefore, be illusory to expect that the political
consequences of this objective structural contradiction could be avoided
simply in virtue of some undeniable differences at the level of the legal-
political superstructure. For the contradiction in question is an objective
antagonism of the socio-economic base as structured according to a
hierarchical social division of labour, though, of course, it also manifests
itself at the political plane. Underneath any so-called "elected dictatorship of
Ministers" (or, for that matter, under whatever other form of liberal
democracy), there lies the "unelected dictatorship" of the hierarchical-social
division of labour, which structurally subordinates one class to another and
at the same time subjects individuals to their own class as well, predestining
them to a narrowly defined position and role in society in accordance with
the material dictates of the prevailing socio-economic system, and thus
unceremoniously ensuring that, may Ministers come and go as the electors
please, the structure of domination itself remains intact.

Paradoxically, this dilemma of the structural domination of individuals by

their own class becomes more rather than less acute in the aftermath of the
revolution. In the preceding form of society, the severity of inter-class
antagonism gives an apparently and to a significant extent also
objectively benevolent character to the subjection of individuals to their
own class, in that the class does not champion only its own interests as a
class but, simultaneously, also the interests of its individual members against
the other class. Individual proletarians accept their subordination to their
own class though even that not without deep-seated conflict over
objective sectional interests since class solidarity is a necessary
prerequisite of their emancipation from the rule of the capitalist class,
although it is in an astronomical distance from being the sufficient
condition of their emancipation as social individuals. Once the capitalist
class is defeated and expropriated, however, the objective structural
contradiction between class and individual is activated in its full intensity,
since the dampening factor of inter-class antagonism is effectively removed,
or at least transferred to the international plane.

It is this contradiction between class and individual which is intensified in

the aftermath of the revolution to the point that it may indeed, in the absence
of adequate corrective forces and measures, endanger the very survival of
the dictatorship of the proletariat and revert society to the status quo ante.
What we witness, however, at the level of political ideology and practice is
the misrepresentation of a necessary prerequisite of class emancipation as
the sufficient condition of full emancipation, which is said to be hindered
only by "survivals from the past," or the "survival of the class enemy." Thus
the rather intangible "enemy within" becomes a mythical force whose
empirical counterpart must be invented, to fill with millions of common
people the emerging concentration camps.
One cannot emphasize too strongly that the ideological-political
mystification does not feed on itself (if only it did, for that would be
relatively easy to overcome), but on an objective contradiction of the socio-
economic base. It is because "the condition of existence of individual
proletarians, namely labour," is not abolished as Marx advocated because
in other words, hierarchical social division of labour remains the
fundamental regulatory force of the social metabolism that the
antagonism, deprived of its justification through the expropriation of the
opposite class, intensifies, creating a new form of alienation between the
individuals who constitute society and the political power which controls
their interchanges. It is because the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot
remove the "contradictions of civil society" by abolishing both sides of the
social antagonism, including labour on the contrary, it has to envisage
enhancing the latter, in function of the absolutely necessary "material
foundation" that "the proletariat turns its dictatorship against
itself." 24 Or, to be more precise, in order to maintain its rule over society as
a class, the proletariat turns its dictatorship against all individuals who
constitute society, including the proletarians. (Indeed, including the party
and state officials who have a mandate to carry out determinate functions
and not others, following the imperatives of the system in existence and not
their own exclusive sectional interests, even if by virtue of their privileged
location with regard to the machinery of power they are in a position to
appropriate a greater portion of the social product than other groups of
individuals, whether or not they actually do so.)

Since one side of the antithesis Marx speaks of labour cannot be

preserved on its own, under the new conditions of the post-revolutionary
society a new form of manifestation must be found for the other side as well.
The expropriation of the capitalist class, and the radical disruption and
alteration of the normal market conditions which characterize the
functioning of commodity society, impose radically new functions on the
proletarian state. It is called upon to regulate, in toto and in small detail, the
production and distribution process, directly determining the allocation of
social resources, the conditions and the intensity of labour, the rate of
surplus-extraction and accumulation, and the particular share of each
individual in that portion of the social product which it makes available for
consumption. From now on we are confronted with a system of production
in which the extraction of surplus-labour is politically determined in the
most summary form, using extra-economic criteria (ultimately the survival
of the state itself) which, under determinate conditions, may in fact disrupt
or even chronically retard the development of the productive forces. Such a
politically determined extraction of surplus-labour which, under the
conditions of extreme penury and in the absence of strictly economic
regulatory forces and mechanisms, may indeed reach dangerously high
levels, whereupon it becomes self-defeatingly counter-productive
inevitably sharpens the contradiction between individual producers and the
state, with the gravest implications for the possibility of dissent. For under
these circumstances dissent may directly endanger the extraction of surplus-
labour (and everything else built upon it), thus potentially depriving the
dictatorship of the proletariat of its material base and challenging its very
survival.

By contrast, the liberal state, under normal conditions, has no need to

regulate directly the extraction of surplus-value, since the complex
mechanisms of commodity-production take care of that. All it has to do is to
ensure indirectly the safeguard of the economic system itself. Therefore, it
need not worry at all about the manifestations of political dissent, so long as
the impersonal mechanisms of commodity-production carry on their
functions undisturbed. Of course, the situation significantly changes at times
of major crises, when the forces of opposition cannot confine themselves
any longer to contesting only the rate of surplus-value extraction, but have
to question the very mode of surplus-value production and appropriation. If
they do this with any success, then the capitalist state may be compelled to
assume very far from "liberal" forms. Similarly, under the conditions of
present-day development, when we can witness as a trend that the whole
system of global capitalism is becoming extremely "disfunctional," the state
is forced to assume increasingly more direct regulatory functions, with
potentially serious implications for dissent and opposition. But even under
such circumstances, the respective structures are fundamentally different in
that the political involvement of the capitalist state applies to an all-
pervasive system of commodity-production, and the underlying aim is the
reconstitution of the self-regulatory function of the latter, whether it can be
successfully accomplished or not. By contrast, the post-revolutionary state
combines, as a matter of normality, the function of overall political control
with that of securing and regulating the extraction of surplus-labour as the
new mode of carrying on the material life-processes of society. It is the close
integration of the two which produces apparently insurmountable difficulties
for dissent and opposition.

Breaking the Rule of Capital

All this puts sharply into relief the dilemma we have to face when we try to
envisage a socialist solution to the underlying problems. In 1957 a gifted
young German writer Conrad Rheinhold had to flee the DDR, where he used
to run a political cabaret in the aftermath of the Twentieth Congress. After
he had had some experience of life in West Germany, he was asked by Der
Spiegel to describe the main difference between his old and new situations.
This was his answer: "In the East political cabaret is supposed to change
society, but it is not allowed to say anything; in the West it is allowed to say
whatever it pleases, so long as it cannot change anything at all." ("Im Osten
soll das Kabarett die Gesellschaft ndern, darf aber nichts sagen; im
Westen kann es alles sagen, darf aber nichts ndern.") Is there a way out of
this painful dilemma? If there is, it must be through the maturation of the
objective conditions of development to which political movements can
relate themselves, greatly accelerating or powerfully frustrating their
unfolding. In this respect, it matters very much whether or not post-
revolutionary societies represent some new form of capitalism ("state
capitalism," for example). For if they do, with the advent of the revolution
nothing has really happened: no real steps have been taken in the direction
of emancipation, and the allegedly monolithic power of capitalism which
prevails in all its forms makes the future look extremely gloomy.
Marx wrote his Capital in the service of breaking the rule of capital, not
just capitalism. Yet, strangely enough, it is on the assessment of this
innermost nature of his project that the misconceptions are the greatest and
most damaging. The title of Book I of Capital Volume One was first
translated into English, under Engelss supervision, as "A Critical Analysis
of Capitalist Production," whereas the original speaks of "The Process of
Production of Capital" (Der Produktionsprozess des Kapitals), which is a
radically different thing. Marxs project is concerned with the conditions of
production and reproduction of capital itself its genesis and expansion, as
well as the inherent contradictions which foreshadow its supersession
through a "long and painful process of development" whereas the
mistranslated version speaks of a given phase of capital production only,
while confusingly conflating the concepts of "capitalist production" and
"production of capital."

The concept of capital is much more fundamental than that of capitalism.

The latter is limited to a relatively short historical period, whereas the
former embraces a great deal more than that. It is concerned, in addition to
the mode of functioning of the given capitalist society, with the conditions
of origin and development of capital production, including the phases when
commodity-production is not all-pervasive and dominating as it is under
capitalism. On the other side of the radical socio-historical line of
demarcation drawn by the breakdown of capitalism, it is equally concerned
with the forms and modalities in which the need for capital production is
bound to survive in post-capitalist societies for a long and painful historical
period until, that is, the hierarchical social division of labour itself is
successfully superseded, and society is completely restructured in
accordance with the free association of social individuals who consciously
regulate their own life-activities.

The rule of capital, rooted in the prevailing system of division of labour

(which cannot conceivably be abolished by a political act alone, no matter
how radical and free from "degeneration"), thus prevails over a significant
part of the transitional period, although it must exhibit the characteristics of
a diminishing trend if the transition is to be successful at all. But this does
not mean that post-revolutionary societies remain "capitalist," just as feudal
and earlier societies cannot be rightfully characterized as capitalist on the
basis of the more or less extensive use of monetary capital and the more or
less advanced share which commodity-production, as a subordinate element,
occupies in them. Capitalism is that particular phase of capital production in
which 1. production for exchange (and thus the mediation and domination of
use-value by exchange-value) is all-pervasive; 2. labour-power itself, just as
much as anything else, is treated as a commodity; 3. the drive for profit is a
fundamental regulatory force of production; 4. the vital mechanism of the
extraction of surplus-value, the radical separation of the means of
production from the producers, assumes an inherently economic form; 5. the
economically extracted surplus-value is privately appropriated by the
members of the capitalist class; and 6. following its own economic
imperative of growth and expansion, capital production tends towards
a global integration, through the intermediary of the world market, as a
totally interdependent system of economic domination and subordination. To
speak of capitalism in post-revolutionary societies, when out of these
essential defining characteristics only one number four remains and
even that in a radically altered form in that the extraction of surplus-labour
is regulated politically and not economically, can be done only by
disregarding or misrepresenting the objective conditions of development,
with serious consequences for the possibility of gaining insight into the real
nature of the problems at stake.

Capital maintains its by no means unrestricted rule in post-

revolutionary societies primarily through 1. the material imperatives which
circumscribe the possibilities of the totality of life-processes; 2. the inherited
social division of labour which, notwithstanding its significant
modifications, contradicts "the development of free individualities"; 3. the
objective structure of the available production apparatus (including plant
and machinery) and of the historically developed and restricted form of
scientific knowledge, both originally produced in the framework of capital
production and under the conditions of the social division of labour; and 4.
the links and interconnections of the post-revolutionary societies with the
global system of capitalism, whether these assume the form of a "peaceful
competition" (e.g. commercial and cultural exchanges) or that of a
potentially deadly opposition (from the arms race to more or less limited
actual confrontations in contested areas). Thus the issue is incomparably
more complex and far-reaching than its conventional characterization as the
imperative of capital accumulation, now renamed as "socialist
accumulation."

Capital constitutes a highly contradictory world system, with the capitalist

"metropolitan" countries and the major post-revolutionary societies as its
poles related to a multiplicity of gradations and stages of mixed
development. It is this dynamic, contradictory totality which makes the
possibilities of dissent and opposition much more hopeful than the
monolithic conception of the power of capitalism would suggest. Post-
revolutionary societies are also post-capitalist societies, in the significant
sense that their objective structures effectively prevent the restoration of
capitalism. To be sure, their inner contradictions, further complicated and
intensified by their interactions with capitalist countries, may produce shifts
and adjustments within their structures in favour of commodity relations.
Nevertheless, the possibility of such shifts and adjustments is fairly limited.
It is strictly circumscribed by the fact that the political extraction of surplus-
labour cannot be radically altered without profoundly affecting (indeed
endangering) the political power in existence. The systematic frustration and
prevention of dissent has its complement in the extremely limited success of
recent attempts at introducing strictly economic mechanisms into the overall
structure of production. Post-revolutionary societies, as yet, have no such
self-regulatory mechanisms which would ensure that dissenters "say
whatever they please without changing anything at all." Indeed, it would be
a Pyrrhic victory if dissent developed in post-revolutionary societies parallel
to the reintroduction of powerful capitalistic mechanisms and institutions.
Positive developments in this respect may be envisaged only if the system
finds some way of achieving an effective, institutionally underpinned
distribution of political power (even if very limited in the first place) which
does not represent a danger to the prevailing mode of extracting surplus-
labour as such although of necessity it would question its particular
manifestations and excesses. In other words, "decentralization,"
"diversification," "autonomy," and the like must be implemented in post-
revolutionary societies as in the first place political principles, in
order to be meaningful at all.

The dynamic, contradictory totality mentioned above is also

an interdependent totality through and through. What happens at one place
has an important bearing on the possibilities of development elsewhere. The
demand for a much greater effectiveness of dissent and opposition in the
West arises now under circumstances when the capitalist system exhibits
severe symptoms of crisis, with potentially far-reaching consequences. The
weakening of the essential mechanisms of control of commodity society
which in their normal functioning successfully nullify dissent and opposition
without the slightest need for suppressing offers more scope for the
development of effective alternatives, and the debate on "pluralism" must be
situated in this problematic. At the same time, it is not without a profound
significance that virtually all forces of the left have thoroughly disengaged
themselves from an earlier uncritical attitude towards the assessment of
post-revolutionary developments. This attitude in the past reflected a state of
enforced immobility, and could not envisage more than repeatedly
reasserting its ideal as a "declaration of intent" about the future, however
remote, instead of undertaking a realistic assessment of a historical
experience in relation to its own concrete tasks. In a world of total
interdependence, if effective achievements result from this critical
examination which is inseparably also a self-examination that will not
be without positive consequences for the development of dissent and
meaningful opposition in the post-revolutionary societies.

Notes

1. The Poverty of Philosophy, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected

Works, Vol. 6, London 1976, pp. 21112 (emphasis added).
2.The Holy Family, in Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 4, London
1975, p. 36 (emphasis added).

3. Capital, Penguin/NLR edition, Vol. 1, London 1976, p. 173 (emphasis

added).

4. Ibid., (emphasis added).

5. Grundrisse, London 1973, p. 706 (emphasis added).

6. In a section added to the second edition of The State and Revolution,

see Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 412 (emphasis added).

7. Ibid., Vol. 26, p. 130 (emphasis added).

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid., Vol. 25, p. 412.

10. Ibid., Vol. 26, p. 89.

11. Ibid., Vol. 24, p. 49 (Lenins emphasis).

12. Ibid., Vol. 23, p. 326 (Lenins emphasis).

13. Ibid., Vol. 30, p. 422 (emphasis added).

14. bid., Vol. 23, p. 325 (Lenins emphasis).

15. Ibid., Vol. 30, pp. 108109 (emphasis added).

16. Ibid., p. 108.

17. The extent to which the newly constituted state organs were structurally
conditioned by the old state should not be underestimated. Lenins analysis
of this problem in his stock-taking speech on the NEP is most revealing.
"We took over the old machinery of state, and that was our misfortune. Very
often this machinery operates against us. In 1917, after we seized power, the
government officials sabotaged us. This frightened us very much and we
pleaded: 'Please come back.' They all came back but that was our
misfortune. We now have a vast army of government employees, but lack
sufficiently educated forces to exercise real control over them. In practice it
often happens that here at the top, where we exercise political power, the
machine functions somehow; but down below government employees have
arbitrary control and they often exercise it in such a way as to counteract
our measures. At the top, we have, I dont know how many, but at all events,
I think, no more than a few thousand, at the outside several tens of
thousands of our own people. Down below, however, there are hundreds of
thousands of old officials whom we got from the Tsar and from bourgeois
society and who, partly deliberately and partly unwittingly, work against
us." (Collected works, Vol. 33, pp. 4289, emphasis added.) The new state
power was constituted and consolidated through such tensions and
contradictions, which deeply affected its structural articulation at all levels.
The old heritage, with its massive inertia, was a factor that weighed heavily
on successive stages of Soviet development. Not only in the sense that "state
officialdom placed above the people" could counteract the "good
measures" taken at the top where political power was being exercised, but
even more so in that this type of decision-making a far cry from the
originally advocated alternative described in State and Revolution, with
reference to the principles of the Paris Commune turned itself into
an ideal. From now on the problem was identified as the conscious or
unwitting obstruction of state authority by local officials and their allies, and
the remedy as the strictest possible form of centralized control over all
spheres of social life.

18. "Az erklcs szerepe a komunista termelsben" (The Role of Morality in

Communist Production). The translation here is my own, but see Georg
Lukcs, Political Writings 19191929, London 1968, pp. 512.

19. "Communism requires and presupposes the greatest possible

centralization of large-scale production throughout the country. The all-
Russia centre, therefore, should definitely be given the right of direct
control over all the enterprises of the given branch of industry. The regional
centres define their functions depending on local conditions of life, etc., in
accordance with the general production directions and decisions of the
centre." Anything short of such centralization was condemned as
"regional anarcho-syndicalism." See Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 42, p. 96
(emphasis added).

20. "All this syndicalist nonsense about mandatory nominations of

producers must go into the wastepaper basket. To proceed on those lines
would mean thrusting the Party aside and making the dictatorship of the
proletariat in Russia impossible." Ibid., Vol. 32, p. 62 (emphasis added).

21. Ibid., p. 246. And again, "The syndicalist malaise must and will be
cured," Ibid., p. 107.

22. The German Ideology, in Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 5,
London 1976, p. 80 (emphasis added).

23. Ibid., p. 77 (emphasis added).

24. As Lukcs put it in the passage quoted earlier.

9172017
Chris Cutrone, Bryan Palmer, Leo
Panitch
Platypus Review 99 | September 2017
On April 8, 2017, for the closing plenary of its 9th Annual International
Convention, the Platypus Affiliated Society organized a panel
discussion, 19172017, at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago.
Tasked with reflecting on the historical significance of 1917 for the
Left, the panel brought together Bryan Palmer, Chair of the Canadian
Studies Department at Trent University and author of numerous
histories of the Left; Leo Panitch, Professor of Political Science at York
University, author, and co-editor of the Socialist Register; and Chris
Cutrone, President of the Platypus Affiliated Society. Pamela Nogales,
of Platypus, moderated. What follows is an edited transcript of their
discussion.
Opening remarks
Bryan Palmer: Ill begin with a very modest proposal: In a non-
revolutionary period, which is certainly what we live in now, the main
task is to cultivate socialist consciousness within the working class,
but also within society more broadly. The question of exactly what
forms, organizations, and institutions should then arise from those
efforts can be suspended for the moment. Right now, a certain humility
is necessary in terms of the tasks that are required.
I want to address the distinctive heritage of 1917. A spectre is haunting
Europethe spectre of communism, Marx famously wrote in 1848. This
was a statement guided by optimism of the will. Over the next half-
century, socialists were forced increasingly to adopt a pessimism of the
intellect. Chartism faded as a mass mobilization of working people in
the late 1850s; the insurrectionary substance of the movement
disappeared from view under the dark clouds, though perhaps silver
lined, of incremental legislation such as the 1867 Reform Act. The
Communards of Paris promised a realization of Marx and Engels
prediction of the inevitable abolition of class rule, only to be drowned in
blood. With the massacre of revolutionaries in 1871, the Left could no
longer harbor illusions of peaceful transition to socialism. William
Morris polemicized against his Fabian opponents in the late 1880s,
insisting that a gradual, peaceful, and parliamentary transition to social
democracy through extension of the franchise, as was advocated by
socialists such as George Bernard Shaw, was little more than an
illusion.
In the United Stateswhere Engels predicted in 1886 that a vibrant
workers movement would soon shake society to its very foundations
the countrys first Red Scare demonized anarcho-communism, sending
revolutionaries to prison and the gallows in the aftermath of the
Haymarket events. A decisive working-class defeat, such as the
Homestead Strike of 1892, also played a part in driving labors great
upheaval in the late 1880s into retreat and consolidated a somewhat
tepid and inward-looking craft unionism. Revolutionary socialisms
pessimism deepened with the fracturing of social democracy on the
outbreak of World War I. Formed in 1889, the Second International
continued the work of Marx and Engelss First International, uniting
socialists and labor parties. Anti-militarist from its conception, the
Second International opposed capitalist war and endorsed the
necessity of class war, but, as World War I tested the organization,
social democratic leadership lapsed into social patriotism. Separate,
nationally organized socialist parties failed to maintain the united front
against the war, opting instead to align with their respective national
bourgeoisies. The Second International consequently dissolved in 1916.
A socialist future seemed unlikely indeed.

Then, suddenly, the demoralizing pessimism of the intellect lifted.

Revolutionary Russia, under the leadership of Lenin and the Bolsheviks,
catapulted revolutionaries into power, displacing Tsarism and
proclaiming the worlds first proletarian state. This successful
revolution contradicted the evolutionary thinking of many European
socialists, fixated as they were on the logic of capitalist development
as the decisive material factor in revolution. A rigid and economistic
Second International Marxism could not grasp the revolutionary
possibilities, the transformative dialectic inherent in global capitalisms
contradictory character. The Bolshevik Revolution, conceptually
orchestrated by Lenin and Trotskys deft application of Marxism, linked
the analysis of capitalism in Russia with the rule of working-class
leadership in a backward, peasant-dominated economy, thus rewriting
the script of revolutionary possibility. It shocked the least imaginative
and the most mechanical among the worlds socialists into rethinking
the boundaries of revolutionary possibility, in which the prerequisites of
revolution, and understandings of how such revolution would be made,
had previously been far too restrictive.

Forged at the weakest link of capitalisms combined and uneven

development, the Soviet Workers Republic was thus a world-historic
victory for the possible realization of socialism and the probable
emancipation of labor that would follow in its wake. It fused Marxist
understandings of capitalist development and overthrowing its
exploitative regime of accumulation, with lessons of socialism; it
wrestled with the crucial recognition of addressing state power, and
linked struggles in the political sphere to the militant, often syndicalist
wars of position within the productive arena. It stressed the importance
of sustaining organization, reflected in the building of a class struggle
party, and ultimately a Communist International, upon which
sympathetic traditional sections of revolutionaries could build. With the
revolution of 1917, communism then became more than a spectreit
now haunted the world, not as a threatening phantom, but as an actual
alternative.

I belong to the generation tied by an almost unbreakable umbilical

cord to the hope of the world revolution, and of its original home, the
October Revolution, wrote Eric Hobsbawm in his
autobiography, Interesting Times: A 20th Century Life.[1] No generation,
then, of revolutionary Leftists has confronted so starkly the
possibilities posed by the revolution of 1917, and the limitations of its
considerable promise, more than our own. As Geoff Eley writes in the
preface to his substantial history of the Left in Europe, Revolutions no
longer receive a good press. The calamity of Stalinism and the
ignominious demise of the Soviet Union have been allowed to erase
almost entirely the Russian Revolutions emancipatory effects.[2] For
much of the Left today, the failures of 1917 loomed large, to the point
that they perhaps dwarf its tremendous transformative
accomplishments.
Well before 1917, in the 1880s, William Morris captured something of
what I want to address tonight in his defense of revolution. His
agitational forays into the making of socialists always entailed a refusal
to collapse the container of popular antagonisms and revolutionary
aspirations into a restrictively small time or space. He wrote,

I see it as the plain duty of those who believe in the necessity of social
revolution, quite irrespective of any date they may have to give to the
event, first to express their own discontent and hope when and where
they can, striving to impress it upon others. Secondly, to learn from
books, and writing, and from living people who are willing to teach
them, in as much detail as possible, what are the ends and the hopes of
social revolution. And thirdly, to join any body of men which is honestly
striving to give means of expression to that discontent and that hope,
and to teach people the details and aims of the constructive revolution.
[3]

It was Morriss purpose, whether he addressed audiences large or small

and more often he addressed handfuls of people, rather than rooms
like thisto stir them up, to inspire them not to be contented with too
little. Insisting that those who were satisfied with what small offerings
capitalism claimed it could offer never managed to get even the
crumbs, Morris told his audiences that they can either struggle to be
free, or remain mired in enslavement. I stress this because in the
defeats on the Left in recent decadeswhich have been marching in
seven league boots, to borrow the metaphor from Marxthe idea of
revolution is itself drawing fewer and fewer adherents. The notion that it
is possible to have a revolutionary transformation, that the very idea
could be on the agenda, is something that much of the Left has lost
sight of. When you lose your grip on that, you will be contented with too
little.

The year 1917 inaugurated a revolution that was, in the end, thwarted
by capitalist containment and suffocation, and betrayed by Stalinism to
the point that its legacies are now pilloried. It is repudiated by most of
todays leftist critics of inequality. And yet, the Bolshevik Revolution of
1917 was a world-historic event that made a decisive impact on modern
history, directly facilitating many of the events and developments of the
20th century. However one may view it, one has to attend to it. From the
class mobilizations and anti-capitalist struggles of the 1920s and 1930s,
through World War II and the anti-colonial movements of the 1960s and
beyond, to the global upheavals of 1968, the Bolshevik Revolution of
1917 has had a determinative influence, the meanings of which demand
our attention. If I had two hours, as Morris often did, I would then speak
to you about the particulars of this. About, for instance, class struggle
initiatives, about the cultural developments in the arts, about the
womens question, about race and struggles against inequality, about
the anti-colonial strugglesall of which, from the time of the revolution
of 1917 through the later 20th century, had been advanced by addressing
the revolution and its meanings. But also, all of which were in many
ways stifled by the revolutions Stalinist denouement.
All of the above set the stage for the arrival of the New Left, the birth of
which, whether in Britain, America, or elsewhere, was inseparable from
the structures of the Cold War and the rigid oppositional blocs that
defined the post-WWII period: Soviet Stalinized communism versus
corporate capitalism. These blocs were further riven by the antagonism
of almost every revolutionary movement, and particularly by the
colonial revolutionary movements, of the post-WWII period. The Vietnam
imbroglio, with its pressures on both the ethical, moral standing of the
state and on the Keynesian balance on guns or butter, propelled the
domestic American political economy towards crisis. The United States
was impaled on the horns of youthful protests, inner-city black
insurgencies, and a war across the world that it could not win.

For the first time since the mass industrial union struggles that reached
from the late 1930s into the 1940s, young workers exploded in
rebellious antagonism in this period, upping the decibel level of class
struggle in articulations of alienation that echoed even in the pages
of Life, Fortune, and the New York Review of Books. Journalistic
commentary noted a troublesome blue-collar blues that convulsed
pivotal industries. The Fordist dream of the post-war settlement was
turning into a nightmare of class antagonism. Capital and the state
awoke to a maelstrom of shock and convulsions, growing over the 1960s
and peaking from 1969 to 1972. All of this looked too much like the
demonized campus uprisings and the anti-war mobilizations of 1968.
Isaac Deutscher, for onean Old Left figure attractive to the New Left
recognized revolutions ongoing significance, stressing that in spite of
Stalinization and ostensible de-Stalinization, Whatever may be the
malaise, he wrote, the heart searchings and gropings of the post-
Stalinist era testify in their own way to the continuity of the
revolutionary epoch.[4] For Deutscher, decades of totalitarian rule inside
the Soviet Union had robbed the people of their capacity for self-
expression, spontaneous action, and self-organization. That said,
Deutscher acknowledged that even Trotsky, in the last year of his exile,
just before his assassination by a Stalinist agent, insisted that the
revolution had not come to an end. His deportation from the Soviet
Union notwithstanding, he concluded, the great divide of 1917 still
looms as large as ever in the consciousness of mankind.[5]
Now, how do we assess the revolutions currency in our own particular
moment? Its difficult, of course, not to accent the contradictory nature
of recent developments. To be sure, there are abundant signs that the
revolutionary left and its attachment to the legacies of 1917 are on the
decline. This has been evident not only with respect to the fortunes of
socialist feminism, but in terms of the general waning influence of
revolutionaries and leftists of all stripes in the labor movement. Aside
from pockets of entrenched influence, Marxism in the academy has
become something of a marginalized voice, whereas it once had more of
a purchase with students in the aftermath of the 1960s. The implosion
and decline of revolutionary organizations of the New Communist and
Trotskyist kind, first evident in the 1970s, has continued over the next
decades. Moreover, we have witnessed the collapse of actually existing
socialism in the Soviet Union and its satellites, throughout once-Soviet
Central and Eastern Europe, now largely incorporated into the European
Union. In the outposts of the planned economy that remain, such as
China and Cuba, the drift to capitalist restoration is discernible. The
experiment of African socialism, in which so much hope was invested in
the 1960s, has slowly spiraled downward, the arc of its politics tending
toward authoritarianism.

More recently, the long march of the Brazilian left to power and the
subsequent reckoning by right-wing terror and military dictatorship,
stalled in the morass of populism, concessions to austerity, and
corruption, was a development hardly unique throughout Latin America.
The promise of the Arab Spring, so electrifying in 2011, is in an
undeniable blackout. Mike Davis, writing amidst the hopes and dreams
unleashed in Tahrir Square, asked, Will an Islamic majority government
ensure the right of the new left and independent unions to organize and
campaign openly? This will be the litmus test of Egyptian
democracy.[6] The answer, now apparent, is anything but comforting for
the Left. In the context of an unstable European Union, Greeces
SYRIZA suffered subordination at the hands of large national capitalist
power brokers headed by Germany. Even at the point of resistance, the
mercurial politics of anarchist-inflected anti-globalization struggles that
erupted in the eventful years reaching from the Battle of Seattle in 1998
to the Occupy Wall Street mobilizations of 2011, fit uneasily with the
legacies of 1917 in theory and practice. Moreover, their concrete
achievements have been ambiguous at best.
This, however, is not the sum total of what needs to be addressed,
analyzed, and acted upon. For all the downside of this sober accounting,
there are other considerations. Even as events suggest a troubling
reality, there are indications of openings through which the politics of
revolution can find new and invigorated life, for capitalism will
inevitably push people toward resistance. Crisis after crisis appear to
be accelerating the time frame. The 20th century was generally hailed as
capitalisms ultimate triumph. However, if you look at the crises over
this period, which have been and are being managed in large part
because there is not a revolutionary opposition, they are increasingly
squeezed into shorter and shorter periods. The pressures, then, on the
working class are consequently greater. This will, I would argue,
inevitably create resistance, and that resistance will be driven to look
back to 1917 and its meanings.
Bringing revolution back into the theory and practice of the Left in a
more frontal way, reconnecting current thinking and struggles with the
legacies of 1917 in the longue dure, is just one component of the
contemporary challenge of our times. With the ideologues of the
marketplace and acquisitive individualism so ascendant, a foundational
continuity with the present of the Left and its pasts has not only been
broken, but has been in some measure even been forgotten. Recovery
and resuscitation become small but important acts in the renewal and
rebirth of the Left. This does not mean, of course, repeating the
mistakes and shortcomings of the past, or arguing that we live in the
same conditions and must follow the same trajectories of past
revolutions. But we must nonetheless maintain that commitment to the
revolutionary alternative in all of its meanings. Revolutions present,
like its past, is necessarily subject to the same expansive
understandings that have always animated the concrete struggles of
those who, like William Morrisand, yes, like Lenin, Luxemburg, and
Trotskyimagine their purpose as revolutionaries to be to stir the
people up, and not to be contented with too little. Amidst the
determined structure of limitation of our current situation we need a
new spectre of agencyone that will haunt the globe amidst the
ravages of late, decaying capitalism, and turn the tides of change in
entirely new and socialist directions.
Long Live the Worldwide Socialist Revolution!

Leo Panitch: Theres a certain irony that at meetings like this, a quarter
of a century after the demise of communism, we should be talking
about 1917 and the Russian Revolution. But to get beyond irony, indeed
to validate why it is important to redeem something from 1917, I think
we have to begin at least a quarter-century before 1917. We have to
begin with the remarkable development that, almost forty years after
the Communist Manifesto, mass socialist parties emerged across a
range of countries as permanent organizations of the subordinate class.
In this period it looked like it might happen in the United States, too. In
the 1880s, the American working class was by far the most militant.
There have always been bread riots, there have always been slave
revolts, but these permanent organizations of the subordinate class
formed in the late 1800s and early 1900s were a new phenomenon. Of
course, that had to do with the nature of capitalism. There was a
material base for it. Freedom of association gave scope to these new
parties, although that freedom was not simply provided, and was not
strictly required. People tend to forget that the German Social
Democratic Party (SPD), which was treated, including by Lenin, as the
model party, remarkably managed to build itself through the 1880s in
spite of legal proscription. Some 1,300 newspapers and magazines were
shut down in those years, while 1,500 activists were jailed and over 300
trade unions associated with the Social Democrats were dissolved by
the state. So, even though the repeal of anti-socialist laws in 1890 was
a boon, the emergence of these organizations was not entirely
dependent upon the freedom of assembly.

As I mentioned, the Russian revolutionaries modeled the Russian Social

Democratic Labor Party on the German SPD. Lenins discussion in 1895
of party program is explicitly related to the Germans Erfurt Program of
1891. What Lenin articulated is that the task of the party is class
consciousness, which means pushing beyond trade-union
consciousness, and I think this is how most social democrats
understood their work at this time. Lenin clarified that class
consciousness is not just something you add on to trade-union
consciousness; it requires the active intervention by socialists in order
to drive a politics of class formation.
Today, more than two decades after the demise of Communism, things
appear very different from how they seemed in the immediate aftermath
of 1991. Remember, in 1992 Bill Clinton was elected promising universal
health insurance, saying during the campaign, Its the economy,
stupid! Here it is important to point out that there is no real difference
between the Democratic Party in the U.S., European social democratic
parties, or the Canadian New Democratic Party (NDP). Have no illusions.
There are the same linkages with the union bureaucracies, the same
orientation to policy, the same understanding of the state as simply a
policy machine neutral to whoever happens to get elected, and none of
the branches of these parties are engaged in developing the capacities
of the working class. In 1990, the NDP, our social democratic party, is
elected for the first time in the largest province in Canada, under the
leadership of Bob Rae. By 1995, most countries in the developed world
are run by some variety of party claiming to be social democrats.
Around this time, what you constantly hear from political science
departments, especially in America, is, Well look at the European
variety of capitalism. Look at the social democratic variety of
capitalism. We may be mired in Anglo-American neoliberalism, but thats
viable.

Where are we a quarter-century after that? It is apparent that there

were two failures: a historic and general failure of social democracy
alongside the historical failure of the Communist parties. That failure is
so deep, so great, that in 2016, working-class constituencies and
communities that traditionally voted Communist or social democratic,
are now voting for scoundrels who appealed directly to the working
class, in class terms, but on the basis of xenophobic attacks on
immigrant communities. Where have we ended up, from the creation of
those remarkable parties, to their very class constituency being open to
this? This isnt just a matter of the U.S. and Trump. Brexit in the United
Kingdom reflects this, with the most deeply embedded Labour voters,
constituencies that have voted Labour continually since 1924,
supporting Brexit. I am not a proponent of the neoliberal institutions of
the European Union, but voting for Brexit on xenophobic grounds,
mobilized by racist appeals, is a reflection of the failure of social
democracy, not only the failure of communism. We are seeing
something similar in France, with Le Pen rallying an enormous working-
class base as the Socialist Party trails in the polls.
In my view, neoliberalism as an ideology was never that popular
amongst the working classes. When Perry Anderson said in 2000 that
neoliberalism is the most successful ideology in world history, I think
he was wrong. People forget the fierce opposition to NAFTA, and free
trade more generally, from 1992 to 1994. People forget the mobilization
of Indian peasants in 1995 against free trade. People forget Seattle, for
heavens sake, when Teamsters and Turtles came together. So it was
never all that popular ideologically. The problem is that there was not a
vehicle for those discontents, apart from the very negative and to some
extent racist way that, say, the AFL-CIO wanted China out of the World
Trade Organization. Rather than putting resources into building
independent trade unions in China, as they did in Poland, they were
largely engaged in a kind of Yellow Peril appeal.

What we have seen in the present juncture is not a delegitimization of

neoliberal ideology, but a delegitimization of
neoliberalisms institutions. That includes not only the party institutions
of social democracyfor which, clearly, many long-embedded
contradictions of neoliberal social democracy are coming home to
roostbut also institutions like the European Union. In that context, we
have seen a remarkable development, with a shift from protest to
politics. The emphasis appears to have moved away from anti-neoliberal
protest and returned to the question of political parties and the
importance of entering the state. With Occupy, we had protests that
were class-focused, as seen in the slogan of the 99 percent against
the 1 percent, but not class-rooted. The shift since then from protest
to politics has taken different forms, from the Indignados and Podemos
to the occupations in Syntagma Square in Athens and the solidarity
networks of SYRIZA. However, even with this new emphasis on class-
focused politics, these formations still are not class-rooted, in the
sense that the social democratic and communist parties once were,
with deep roots, organizationally and culturally, in the working class.
Those roots are absent, including in recent developments in the old
parties, such as the Corbyn and Momentum insurrection inside the
Labour Party, or the Bernie Sanders phenomenon.
As we consider the revolutionary legacy in light of where we are now, it
is important that we not look back from the point of view of nostalgia.
Simone Signoret, the great French communist actress, wrote a great
memoir in the 1970s, Nostalgia Isnt What It Used To Be, in which,
among other things, she recounts her affiliation with the Communist
Party. We also should not look back the way Enzo Traverso describes in
his book, Left-Wing Melancholia, about Benjamin, Adorno, and Daniel
Bensad, all of whom, he argues, were haunted by the defeated
revolutions of the past. My generation, the generation of the 1960s, did
not become socialists because of the example of the Soviet Union. We
became socialists against that example. However, a good portion of us
looked to 1917 and the Bolsheviks as the common point of departure of
our politics. What we needed to reclaim was the audacity and the
strategic brilliance of the Bolsheviks.
In my view, which has been further confirmed as the years have passed,
the attempt to build a new and better Leninist party in the post-1968
period was a failure because the language of Bolshevism was arcane by
1970. Would you go around today trying to express your revolutionary
ambitions in terms of a workers state and the debate with the
Mensheviks? It is not that the politics were sectarian because the
people were innately sectarian. Rather, their sectarianism was a
product of their isolation, which resulted in turn from taking the
Bolshevik Revolution as the departure point and the endpoint of their
politics.
Others have attempted to revive the educational, pedagogical, and
developmental aspect of social democratic parties, including in the U.S.
The Shachtmanites and other socialists were heavily involved in the
New Politics movement inside the Democratic Party from 1968 to 1972.
They ran up against the trade-union bureaucracy that accused them of
being middle-class kids who were attacking the class basis of the
Democratic Party. Ultimately you ended up with Clinton and Gore
putting the last nail in the coffin of achieving democratic reforms
through the Democrats. The same thing happened in the United
Kingdom with the Bennite movement, the Greater London Council, and
the campaign for Labour Party democracy, out of which Corbyn comes.
Part of the problem there, as with those trying to create a better
Leninism, was self-delusion. The Bennites said, We are returning the
Labour Party to its original social democratic roots. We are returning
the Labour Party to socialism.Bullshit! The Labour Party
was never socialist in the sense of class struggle, and those who
controlled the Labor Party had as much right to claim that their vision
of the party was closer to its legacy than Tony Benns.
As we see socialist parties evolve through the course of the
21st century, a few things need to be observed. The first is that
capitalism is not doomed to collapse. Two, socialism is a marathon, not
a sprint. We are not going to get there through insurrection in a country
like this, given how the military is controlled and organized. Three,
because of the time we need to develop socialist parties and build our
capacities, liberal democracy is crucial. Without freedom of
association, we will not have the political space to do this. Four,
capitalist contradictions today, including the tendency toward crisis,
but not only that, are likely to be closing the space for liberal
democracy, which poses a difficult dilemma. Do we combine in
alliances and popular fronts with anybody to the left of the
authoritarians in order to preserve liberal democracy? If we do that,
however, we limit our ability to articulate socialist politics
independently. That is a major dilemma at the current conjuncture. I do
not think we should in any way be dissuaded from trying to build
socialist parties anew, but it will be a major problem if the authoritarian
tendencies of capitalism come to the fore in the coming years.

Soviet poster dramatizes the burning of the local peasants' barns and crops by
the White Army
Chris Cutrone: The Frankfurt School approached the problem of the
political failure of socialism in terms of the revolutionary subject,
namely, the masses in the democratic revolution and the political party
for socialism. However, in the failure of socialism, the masses had led to
fascism and the party had led to Stalinism. What was liquidated
between them was Marxism, or proletarian socialism; what was
liquidated was the working class politically constituted as such, or, the
class struggle of the working classwhich for Marxists required the
goal of socialism. The revolutionary political goal of socialism was
required for the class struggle or even the working class per se to exist
at all. For Marxism, the proletariat was a Hegelian concept: It aimed at
fulfillment through self-abolition. Without the struggle for socialism,
capitalism led the masses to fascism and led the political party to
Stalinism. The failure of socialism thus conditioned the 20th century.
The legacy of the Russian Revolution of 1917 is a decidedly mixed one.
This variable character of 1917s legacy can be divided between its
actorsthe masses and the partyand between the dates, February
and October 1917.

The February 1917 revolution is usually regarded as the democratic

revolution and the spontaneous action of the masses. By contrast, the
October Revolution is usually regarded as the socialist revolution and
the action of the party. But this distorts the historythe events as well
as the actors involved. What drops out is the specific role of the
working class, as distinct from the masses or the party. The soviets or
workers and soldiers councils were the agencies of the masses in
revolution. The party was the agency of the working class struggling for
socialism. The party was meant to be the political agency facilitating
the broader working classs and the masses social revolutionthe
transformation of societyovercoming capitalism. This eliding of the
distinction of the masses, the working class and the political party goes
so far as to call the October Revolution the Bolshevik Revolutionan
anti-Communist slander that Stalinism was complicit in perpetuating.
The Bolsheviks participated in but were not responsible for the
revolution.

As Trotsky observed on the 20th anniversary of the 1917 Revolution in his

1937 article on Stalinism and Bolshevismwhere he asserted that
Stalinism was the antithesis of Bolshevismthe Bolsheviks did not
identify themselves directly with either the masses, the working class,
the revolution, or the ostensibly revolutionary state issuing from the
revolution. As Trotsky wrote in his 1930 book, History of the Russian
Revolution, the entrance of the masses onto the stage of history was
something Marxism had to reckon with, for good or for ill. How had
Marxists done so?
Marx had observed in the failure of the revolutions of 1848 that the
result was Bonapartism, namely, the rule of the state claiming to act
on behalf of society as a whole and especially for the masses. Louis
Bonaparte, who we must remember was himself a Saint-Simonian
Utopian Socialist, claimed to be acting on behalf of the oppressed
masses, the workers and peasants, against the capitalists and their
corruptincluding avowedly liberalpoliticians. Louis Bonaparte
benefited from the resentment of the masses towards the liberals who
had put down so bloodily the rising of the workers of Paris in June 1848.
He exploited the masses discontent.

One key reason why, for Trotsky, Stalinism was the antithesis of
Bolshevismthat is to say, the antithesis of Marxismwas that
Stalinism, unlike Bolshevism, identified itself with the state, with the
working class, and indeed with the masses. But this was for Trotsky the
liquidation of Marxism. It was the concession of Stalinism to
Bonapartism. Trotsky considered Stalin to be a Bonapartist, not out of
personal failing, but out of historical conditions of necessity, due to the
failure of world socialist revolution. Stalinism, as a ruling ideology of
the USSR as a revolutionary state, exhibited the contradictions
issuing out of the failure of the revolution.

In Marxist terms, socialism would no longer require either a socialist

party or a socialist state. By identifying the results of the revolution
the one-party state dictatorshipas socialism, Stalinism liquidated
the actual task of socialism and thus betrayed it. Claiming to govern
democratic republics or peoples republics, Stalinism confessed its
failure to struggle for socialism. Stalinism was an attempted holding
action, but as such undermined itself as any kind of socialist politics.
Indeed, the degree to which Stalinism did not identify itself with the
society it sought to rule, this was in the form of its perpetual civil-war
footing, in which the party was at war with societys spontaneous
tendency towards capitalism, and indeed the party was constantly at
war with its own members as potential if not actual traitors to the
avowed socialist mission. As such, Stalinism confessed not merely to
the on-going continuation of the revolution short of its success, but
indeed itssocialismsinfinite deferral. Stalinism was what became of
Marxism as it was swallowed up by the historical inertia of on-going
capitalism.

So we must disentangle the revolution from its results. Does 1917 have
a legacy other than its results? Did it express an unfulfilled potential,
beyond its failure?

The usual treatment of 1917 distorts the history. First of all, we would
need to account for what Lenin called the spontaneity of spontaneity,
that is, the prior conditions for the masses apparently spontaneous
action. In the February Revolution, one obvious point is that it
manifested on the official political socialist party holiday of
International Working Womens Day, which was a relatively recent
invention by Marxists in the Socialist or Second International. So, the
longstanding existence of a workers movement for socialism and of the
international political party of that struggle for socialism was a prior
condition of the apparently spontaneous outbreak of revolution in 1917.
This much was obvious. What was significant, of course, was how in
1917 the masses seized the socialist holiday for revolution to topple the
Tsar.

The October Revolution was not merely the planned coup dtat by the
Bolshevik Partynot alone, but in alliance, however, we must always
remember, with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries or SRs. This is best
illustrated by what took place between February and October, namely
the July Days of 1917, in which the masses spontaneously attempted to
overthrow the Provisional Government. The Bolsheviks considered that
action premature, both in terms of lack of preparation and, more
importantly, in terms of the Provisional Government not yet having
completely exhausted itself politically. But the Bolsheviks stood in
solidarity with the masses in July, while warning them of the problems
and dangers of their action. The July uprising was put down by the
Provisional Government, and indeed the Bolsheviks were suppressed,
with many of their leading members arrested. Lenin went into hiding
and wrote his pamphlet The State and Revolution in his time
underground. The Bolsheviks actually played a conservative role in the
July Days of 1917, in the sense of seeking to conserve the forces of the
working class and broader masses from the dangers of the Provisional
Governments repression of their prematurebut legitimaterising.
The October Revolution was prepared by the Bolsheviksin league with
the Left SRsafter the attempted coup against the Provisional
Government by General Kornilov, which the masses had successfully
resisted. Kornilov had planned his coup in response to the July uprising
by the masses, which to him showed the weakness and dangers of the
Provisional Government. As Lenin had put it at the time, explaining the
Bolsheviks participation in the defense of the Provisional Government
against Kornilov, it was a matter of supporting in the way a rope
supports a hanged man. Once the Provisional Government had revealed
that its crucial base of support was the masses that it was otherwise
suppressing, this indicated that the time for overthrowing the
Provisional Government had come.

But the October Revolution was not a socialist revolution, because the
February Revolution had not been a democratic revolution. The old
Tsarist state remained in place, with only a regime change, the removal
of the Tsar and his ministers and their replacement with liberals and
moderate socialists, namely the Right Socialist Revolutionaries, of
whom Kerensky, who rose to the head of the Provisional Government,
was a member. To put it in Lenins terms, the February Revolution was
only a regime changethe Provisional Government was merely a
government in the narrow sense of the wordand had not smashed
the state: the special bodies of armed men remained in place.

The October Revolution was the beginning of the process of smashing

the statereplacing the previously established (Tsarist, capitalist)
special bodies of armed men with the organized workers, soldiers, and
peasants through the soviet councils as executive bodies of the
revolution, to constitute a new revolutionary, radical-democratic state,
the dictatorship of the proletariat.

From Lenin and the Bolsheviks perspective, the October Revolution was
merely the beginning of the democratic revolution. Looking back
several years later, Lenin judged the results of the revolution in such
terms, acknowledging the lack of socialism and recognizing the
progress of the revolutionor lack thereofin democratic terms. Lenin
understood that an avowedly revolutionary regime does not an actual
revolution make. The events of 1917 exhibited this on a mass scale.

Most of the Bolsheviks political opponents claimed to be

revolutionary and indeed many of them professed to be socialist and
even Marxist, for instance the Mensheviks and the Socialist
Revolutionaries.

The Bolsheviks former allies and junior partners in the October 1917
Revolution, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, broke with the Bolsheviks
in 1918 over the terms of the peace the Bolsheviks had negotiated with
Germany. They called for overthrowing the Bolsheviks in a third
revolution: for soviets, or workers, soldiers, and peasants councils,
without parties, that is, without the Bolsheviks. As Engels had
correctly observed, opposition to the dictatorship of the proletariat was
mounted on the basis of so-called pure democracy. But, to Lenin and
the Bolsheviks, their opponents did not in fact represent a democratic
opposition, but rather the threatened liquidation of the revolutionary
democratic state and its replacement by a White dictatorship. This
could come about democratically in the sense of Bonapartism. The
opponents of the Bolsheviks thus represented not merely the undoing of
the struggle for socialism, but of the democratic revolution itself. What
had failed in 1848 and threatened to do so again in 1917 was
democracy.

Marx had commented that his only original contribution was

discovering the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The
dictatorship of the proletariat was meant by Marxists to meet the
necessity in capitalism that Bonapartism otherwise expressed. It was
meant to turn the political crisis of capitalism indicated by Bonapartism
into the struggle for socialism.

The issue of the dictatorship of the proletariat, that is, the political rule
of the working class in the struggle to overcome capitalism and achieve
socialism, is a vexed one, on many levels. Not only does the dictatorship
of the proletariat not mean a dictatorship in the conventional sense of
an undemocratic state, but, for Marxism, the dictatorship of the
proletariat, as the social as well as political rule of the working class in
struggling for socialism and overcoming capitalism, could be achieved
only at a global scale, that is, as a function of working-class rule in at
least several advanced capitalist countries, but with a preponderant
political force affecting the entire world. This was what was meant by
world socialist revolution. Nothing near this was achieved by the
Russian Revolution of 1917. But the Bolsheviks and their international
comrades, such as Rosa Luxemburg in Germany, thought that it was
practically possible.

The Bolsheviks had predicated their leading the October Revolution in

Russia on the expectation of an imminent European workers revolution
for socialism. For instance, the strike wave in Germany of 1916 that had
split the Social-Democratic Party there, as well as the waves of
mutinies among soldiers of various countries at the front in the World
War, had indicated the impending character of revolution throughout
Europe, and indeed throughout the world, for instance in the vast
colonial empires held by the European powers.

This had not happenedbut it looked like a real, tangible possibility at

the time. It was the program that had organized millions of workers for
several decades prior to 1917.

So what had the October Revolution accomplished, if not socialism or

even the dictatorship of the proletariat? What do we make of the
collapse of the 1917 revolution into Stalinism?

As Leo Panitch remarked at a public forum panel discussion that

Platypus held in Halifax on What is Political Party for the Left? in
January 2015,[7] the period from the 1870s to the 1920s saw the first as
well as the as-yet only time in history in which the subaltern class
organized itself into a political force. This was the period of the growth
of the mass socialist parties, around the world, of the Second
International. The highest and perhaps the only result of this self-
organization of the international working class as a political force was
the October Revolution in Russia of 1917. The working class, or at least
the political party it had constituted, took power, if however under very
disadvantageous circumstances and with decidedly mixed results. The
working class ultimately failed to retain power, and the party they had
organized for this revolution transformed itself into the institutionalized
force of that failure. This was also true of the role played by the Social-
Democratic Party in Germany in suppressing the revolution there in
191819.
But the Bolsheviks had taken power, and they had done so after having
organized for several decades with the self-conscious goal of socialism,
and with a high degree of awareness, through Marxism, of what
struggling towards that goal meant as a function of capitalism. This was
no utopian project.

The October 1917 Revolution has not been repeated, but the February
1917 Revolution and the July Days of 1917 have been repeated, several
times, in the century since then.

In this sense, from a Marxist perspective what has been repeatedand

continuedwas not really 1917 but rather 1848, the democratic
revolution under conditions of capitalism that has led to its failure. For
Marx, the Paris Commune of 1871 had been the repetition of 1848 that
had however pointed beyond it. The Paris Commune indicated both
democracy and the dictatorship of the proletariat, or, as Marx had put it,
the possibility for the revolution in permanence. 1871 re-attained 1848
and indicated possibilities beyond it.

In this sense, 1917 has a similar legacy to 1871, but with the further
paradoxactually, the contradictionthat the political agency, the
political party or parties, that had been missing, from a Marxist
perspective, leading to the failure of the Paris Commune, which in the
meantime had been built by the working class in the decades that
followed, had, after 1917, transformed itself into an institutionalization
of the failure of the struggle for socialism, in the failure of the world
revolution. That institutionalization of failure in Stalinism was itself a
processtaking place in the 1920s and continuing up to todaythat
moreover was expressed through an obscure transformation of
Marxism itself: avowed Marxists (ab)used and distorted Marxism to
justify this institutionalization of failure. It is only in this self-
contradictory sense that Marxism led to Stalinismthrough its own
failure. But only Marxism could overcome this failure and self-distortion
of Marxism. Why? Because Marxism is itself an ideological expression
of capitalism, and capitalism must be overcome on its own basis. The
only basis for socialism is capitalism. Marxism, as distinct from other
forms of socialism, is the recognition of this dialectic of capitalism and
the potential for socialism. Capitalism is nothing other than the failure
of the socialist revolution.

So the legacy of 1917, as uniquely distinct from other revolutions in the

era of capitalism, beginning at least as early as in 1848 and continuing
henceforth up to today, is actually the legacy of Marxism. Marxism had
its origins in taking stock of the failed revolutions of 1848. 1917 was the
only political success of Marxism in the classical sense of the Marxism
of Marx and Engels themselves, and their best followers in the Socialist
or Second International such as Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg and Trotsky,
but it was a very limited and qualified successfrom Lenin and his
comrades own perspective. And that limited success was distorted to
cover over and obscure its failure, and so ended up obscuring its
success as well. The indelible linking of Marxism with 1917 exhibits the
paradox that its failure was the same as in 1848, but 1917 and so
Marxism are important only insofar as they might point beyond that
failure. Otherwise, Marxism is insignificant, and we may as well be
liberals, anarchists, Utopian Socialists, or any other species of
democratic revolutionaries. Which is what everyone today isat best
anyway.

1917 needs to be remembered not as a model to be followed but in

terms of an unfulfilled task that was revealed in historical struggle, a
potential that was expressed, however briefly and provisionally, but was
ultimately betrayed. Its legacy has disappeared with the disappearance
of the struggle for socialism. Its problems and its limitations as well as
its positive lessons await a resumed struggle for socialism to be able to
properly judge. Otherwise they remain abstract and cryptic, lifeless and
dogmatic and a matter of thought-taboos and empty ritualincluding
both ritual worship and ritual condemnation.

In 1918, Rosa Luxemburg remarked that 70 years of the workers

struggle for socialism had achieved only the return to the moment of
1848, with the task of making it right and so redeeming that history.
In Results and Prospects, on the 1905 Revolution in Russia, Trotsky had
observed that it was only because of Marxism that the 19th century had
not passed in vain.
Marxs concept of Bonapartism resonates today because it depicts
politics and society absent the working-class struggle for socialism.
The masses remain, but the working class and its political party for
socialism are missing. The spectre not of proletarian socialism but of
the petite bourgeoisies and lumpenproletariats Bonapartism is what
haunts the world today, a century after the failure of 1917just as it did
after the failure of 1848.

Today, in 2017, on its hundredth anniversary, we must recognize, rather,

just how and why we are so very far from being able to judge properly
the legacy of 1917: It no longer belongs to us. We must work our way
back towards and reattain the moment of 1917. That task is 1917s
legacy for us.

Responses
BP: To Leo, I would raise the question of just how successful was the
appeal to the working class on xenophobic grounds. Certainly one could
point to empirical examples of this, but what I dont think has been
established is that those appeals were actually decisive in the Brexit or
the Trump victories. I am not sure the working-class vote in either
campaign was the decisive factor. Regarding Brexit, many voters were
not attracted to the xenophobia so much as they were striking out
against the austerity program of the EU. The liberal media was very
happy to peg the Trump victory on the working class, but to me there is
more of a question mark over that issue.
LP: Let me take up the question of what the legacy of 1917 is, to what
extent it embodies Marx and Engels, and whether it does so in a
positive way. You say there was good reason to think a revolution would
happen in Germany. This was in fact the product of a very
understandable tendency in any mortal to want to see socialism in his
or her lifetime. That was true of Marx and the way he looked at the
185758 crisis, but at other points in his life he precisely made the
argument that we need the time to develop capacities. Engels, by 1896,
is not pointing to the Paris Commune as the way forwardLenin comes
back to that, but Engels does notand says, in these societies, what we
did in 1848 and even in 1870 is no longer possible. Now, you can say
that was not the case with Russia precisely because of the brittle
nature of the Tsarist regime, the peasant nature of the society, and so
on. But to have expected that the capitalist train had run its course
around the worldwhich was, after all, Lenins argument
in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalisminvolved not looking at
what Gramsci so quickly said to the Leninists: This isnt going happen
so easily in the West, by which he meant, in those societies where the
state is deeply embedded in society. So, it was not just a case of, It
might have happened. It was a product of a teleology in Marxist
thought that we have to overcome, which is that capitalism was about
to have reached the limits of its productive capacity. We need to
overcome that teleological viewpoint, rather than inherit it.
Rosa Luxemburg and Trotsky were pointing to the problems in the
Bolshevik Party by 1907, namely, the problems of operating as an
underground vanguard and what that meant in terms of party
democracy and the development of class capacities. One should try to
understand why the Bolsheviks adopted those tactics, but we should be
wary of validating them. I say that without, in any sense, wanting to
suggest that Stalin was present in Lenin or in Trotsky. I do not believe
that for a moment. But there were elements in the Bolshevik Party and
the Russian situation that did lead, very quickly, to the banishment all
opposition parties. As Deutscher pointed out, as soon as they did that,
they would inevitably need to banish factions inside the Communist
Party, whichright through the Civil War, in factwere not flourishing.
The factions needed to be banished, precisely because the same
political forces that could no longer find expression in other parties
then sought influence in the only place they could, as factions in the
Bolshevik Party. How does Lenin respond to that? With the Conditions of
Admission to the Communist International.[8] I urge you to go read them
and see how fundamentally anti-democratic they are. They are not
Stalinist in the totalitarian bureaucratic sensethey are about the
party, and the activists in the party. They are not an image for society
at large. But, for heavens sake, there are many elements there that we
do not want to emulate.
Leon Trotsky addresses the Red Guards in 1918

CC: I will come back to a theme that Bryan raised, the idea of revolution
and whether it has been disenchanted. Whats remarkable, of course, is
that while the idea of revolution may have been disenchanted on the
Left, it is not disenchanted in general. The Arab Spring was not so long
ago, and today you even see capitalist politicians calling what they do
revolution, whether it is Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, or whoever.
When we talk about the allegedly teleological view of Marxism in Lenin,
Luxemburg, and Trotskys time, and the limits of capitalism, I would say
that their understanding of limits was not so much predicated on an
idea of economic limits, but political limits. Those political limits had
already been clearly exposed in 1848, even if they had not yet been fully
reached. In other words, the necessity of the dictatorship of the
proletariatMarxs one original ideais about the limits that capitalism
places politically on society and on the democratic revolution. Thats
why I raise the issue of Bonapartism. If we look at Trotsky and his
analysis of Stalinism, fascism, and the New Deal, he places these
different configurations on a spectrum of Bonapartism. The U.S. could
afford to be Bonapartist in a soft way whereas Germany and Russia
could not. Whether or not that is a very good analysis of what was going
on in the 1930s by Trotsky, it certainly was in keeping with Marxs
observation that a certain political crisis in the history of capitalism
and of modern democracy, as revealed by 1848. That is, the revolutions
of 1848 had a different kind of fallout than those of 1776, 1789, or 1830.
In the aftermath of 1848, you could no longer look at the bourgeois
revolution as an arc of progress, liberalization, and democratization.
Capitalism had created a situation, as Marx put it, in which the
bourgeoisie could no longer rule in the old waythat is, in terms of
leading civil societywhile the working class could not yet rule.
Today, even in the most advanced and liberal countries, we still see
different varieties of state capitalism that contradict the ideals of
classic liberalism and liberal democracy of the late 18th and early
19th century. When we are talking about the limits of capitalism,
the economic limits of capitalism may be boundlessthey might be
infinite, in the sense that there might be new forms of value extraction
always available in a concrete reconfiguration of political economy.
However, the political limits have been shown long ago. The issue of the
party, therefore, is really about meeting the challenge of those political
limits.
Various political scientists have remarked on the fact that in the
20th century, capitalist parties started to exhibit Stalinist features. In
other words, Stalinism had a kind of echo as a political formparty
discipline and a certain kind of authoritarianism became a necessity,
politically, even in ostensibly liberal, democratic states. So I would pose
that question: Are we talking about limits that are economic, or are we
talking about political limits? I would prefer to address the question of
socialism as a matter of politics.

Questions
The narrative that has been presented by Bryan, and to some extent by
Leo, is that in the 1960s and 1970s there was a new generation that
revived the Left. Looking back over the last hundred years, I do not
think you could consider the post-war period, even the 1960s and 70s,
as such a radical moment. Civil rights, while obviously a progressive
movement, did not hold the potential to threaten the global capitalist
order in the sense that the New Left thought at the time. So too with
decolonization. The New Left profoundly misjudged its own moment and
could in many respects be considered a disaster for the Left. It seems
to me that the memory of 1968 is, in some way, an obstacle to the
memory of 1917.
LP: Thats a good point, but 1968 was embedded in trying to revive the
memory of 1917and there were limits to that, as well. In my opening
remarks, I was trying to point out the limitations of those within the
political New Left, in particular the various Trotskyist groups, who tried
to found new Leninist parties. At the same time, those who came out of
68 and moved into social democratic parties were also engaged in a
futile and limited project. In both cases, they attempted to sink roots
into the class. It was as true of Benn and Corbyn as it was of the
Trotskyist industrial organizers. As it turned out, that did not succeed.
Our generation of socialists, in that sense, failed. Then, on top of that,
there was the activist-ism that took off in 68 and led to the kind of
protest movementism that we have today, the problems of which are
very clear. Most protests are not even oriented to winning universal
collective benefitslike the universal right to womens reproduction
servicesbut to making tepid demands for meritocracy. That is
the antithesis, it seems to me, of a socialist ideology. We want to
develop everybodys capacities. Its not a matter of plucking a few
bright people out of the working class and bringing them into the
university or making them CEOs.
BP: I respond more positively towards the New Left. We should
remember there were different New Lefts in the U.S., Canada, Britain,
and Germany. However, in general, I would say that the New Left on the
whole was grappling with capitalism and its crises in various forms, on
the one hand, and with the failure of the Stalinist Communist
International, on the other. The relationship of these New Lefts to
Marxism was complicated and shifted over time. But what came out of
1968, and the debates around these questions, did, in fact, further the
development of the Left and involved an engagement with the legacies
of 1917. It seems to me that the New Left did move, after
fragmentations and disillusionment, out of 1968 and into addressing
these questions. So, I do not think that there is a memory of 1968. I
think there is a fragmented set of different memories. Whatever you
would say about the Trotskyist or New Communist movements of the
1970s, they were trying to address the point that Leo was focused on:
creating a consciousness within the working class. They failed. Their
failures are worth grappling with and interrogating, but I do not think
their legacy should be seen as simply an obstacle. Because it was out
of those groups that much of the memoryagain, in various
reconfigured waysof 1917 was translated to our times.
CC: I do think the 1970s were significant as a turn from protest to
politics, if you will, and as a regroupment and party-building decade.
However, the 1970s were conditioned by a number of rather unfortunate
influences. Obviously Maoism was a major force, and the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution as a model complicated things a great
deal, because proletarianization was understood in terms of the self-
criticism of intellectuals in Chinain other words, sending intellectuals
to the countryside and making them learn from the people. I like to
think of the arc of the 1960s and 1970s as a kind of Neo-Narodnism.
The back to the people proletarian turn of the 1970s on the Left had a
kind of a pre-Marxist or even non-Marxist flavor to it. The question of
party building is vexed by this history.
Earlier, I cited Leos comment about the period of the 1870s to the
1920s being the first and only time in history that the subalterns had
organized themselves as a political forcenever before and never since.
But the models for party building inherited by the New Left were and
are filtered through the experience of Stalinism in the 1930s and 1940s.
I am sympathetic to Trotskys perspective, which held that the
expansion of the Communist parties in the 1920s and 30s was actually
their political liquidation. In other words, their growth
and apparent success actually indicated that they were becoming
reformist and abandoning the goal of socialism. In this, they mirrored
the trajectory that social democracy took after World War I. This is an
obscure point, perhaps, but an important one. It is why Trotsky thought
that there was really no difference between what remained of the old
Second International and what became of the new Third International in
the 1930s. From that perspective one could justify the French turn as
well as Trotskyists joining the Socialist Party of America.
In light of this history, it is important for us to reconsider what party
building meant before World War I. It had a different character than
what came later, in the 1970s, which was a weak echo of the 1930s and
had more in common with liberalism. In other words, the vanguard
party idea got completely distorted. The earlier idea was that the party
was not simply identical with the self-organization of the working class.
Rather, the party served a crucial role in facilitating the self-
organization of the working class, while also serving a function beyond
the membership of the party and even beyond the working class as
such. For the party also took up the lead in various democratic
struggles in civil society, and thereby led the petite bourgeoisie. It also
strove to provide all sorts of social services to people. The party did not
just aim at state power, but was the school of revolutionmeaning that
it was teaching people how they, themselves, could exercise state
power after the revolution. That was the party in its original conception
and practice. I dont think that Lenin was ever guilty of
substitutionalism, of saying that the party is going to make revolution,
rather than the workers or the masses.
LP: What was Lenin doing, then?
CC: Well, the Civil War and the loss of the SRs as allies in the
government are really tragic turns. Nonetheless I think that the model
of the SPD, which Lenin and the Bolsheviks followed, was a model of
building up the working class so that, as Lenin put it, Any cook could
govern. That was the sincere intention and I do not think there was
anything particular to the party organization that prevented it. Rather,
there were external circumstances that impinged upon the party. The
21 Conditions that Leo mentioned earlier were meant to distinguish the
Communists from the Social Democrats. They had a polemical
character and the ban on factions was, precisely, a ban on factions
because the party had taken over the state. The assumption was that
state bureaucrats would be the ones forming the factions. It was not
aimed at the workers who wanted to form factional oppositions
politically, but in response to the fact that the party was being taken
over by the state bureaucracy. That is what the ban on factions was
really about. However, what should have been a temporary measure
became a virtue. A necessity was made into a virtue, with disastrous
results.
LP: I would not be as hard and fast as Chris in saying that the party
ceases to be a positive example or model in the 1920s. As Bryan has
shown so well, what the Communists, including the Trotskyists, were
doing in the 1930s was very creative and achieved successes in terms
of class formation. We can look at the CIO unions, for instance. Of
course, they ultimately undermined themselves thanks to their slavish
following of Stalinism and, then, because of their alliance with the
Democratic Party during and after World War II. Nevertheless, that was
a remarkable instance of class formation. The repression of those
communist organizers after World War II was a crucial factor in making
American trade unionism such a weak and non-radical force today.
Since I have the opportunity, I would like to say, Chris, that it is very
dangerous to present the development of liberal democracy after 1848
as a soft form of Bonapartism or fascism. Of course, Marx is correct
that we need to overcome liberalism in order to realize full democracy.
But there are enormous differences between liberal democracy and
authoritarian regimes. Not just in terms of human rights, generally, but
also freedom of association, which provides a necessary space in
which the working class develops politically.

Leo, in a different panel earlier in the afternoon, you mentioned

rereading Luxemburgs Reform or Revolution. I was wondering if you
could elaborate on what you agree and disagree with Luxemburg
about?
LP: As I said in that panel, Luxemburg nailed Bernstein on his
statement, The movement is everything, the end is nothing, in two
major respects. First, she argued that the SPD is trying to engage in
class formation; that is the movement, ultimately. But she also very
presciently argued against how his understanding of the reform
struggle called for an alliance with state bureaucrats and bourgeois
representativesindeed, even feudal representatives. Thus, you would
inevitably end up with reforms conceived and implemented so as to
foreclose further, more transformative changes. Now, heres what I
think Luxemburg got wrong. Chris may say, I want to focus on the
political limits. However, Luxemburgs critique of Bernsteins teleology
socialization of capitalism will slip into socialism of its own
accordwas entirely economic. For example, the credit system, which
Bernstein argues is a form of socialization, is for Luxemburg an
instance of capitalism running into its limits. Her critique of Bernstein
is based in the idea that the productive forces no longer have room to
expandin 1898! It is absurd.
My question touches on something else often discussed on the Left in
relation to 1917: imperialism. Lenins slogan was, Turn the imperialist
war into a Civil War. Do we still live in imperialismthe highest stage
of capitalism? What does that mean today? Can we recover the
speculative optimism of the way in which Lenin addressed imperialism
monopoly capitalismas a transitional phase to a superior social
form?
LP: I think how Lenin understood imperialism, as inter-imperial rivalry
leading to war amongst the great powers, was unique to that time. It is
dangerous to try to make that relevant to the form of empire we have
today. In the course of the 20th century, those rival empires were
absorbed as subordinate states within the American empire in the post-
1945 period. We will have to see whether, with the Trumpization of the
American state, the U.S. can continue to play that role and how difficult
it will be to absorb a capitalist Russia or a capitalist China. But I also
think the very term monopoly capitalism is full of problems. In Lenins
case he swallowed hook, line, and sinker Hilferdings Trustification
thesis, which only applied to the United States between 1898 and 1902.
The American financial system was, in fact, highly decentralized. You
didnt get bank control of companies. Companies went to the marketa
much more diffuse capital marketthroughout the 20th century.
Monopoly capitalism is a less apt term today than ever. The dominant
corporations are extremely powerful, but theres enormous competition
amongst them over rates of profit. Lenins Imperialism seems to
imagine that the state has been captured by a few all-knowing
capitalists who, in effect, form the executive committee of the
bourgeoisie outside the state, and then tell the state what to do. The
very notion of the state as an instrument, which has been one of the
major premises of the Marxist critique of liberal theoryeven though it
is not what Marx himself saidis extremely problematic.
BP: But is that to say that imperialism, in a general sense, is over? No.
Clearly, imperialism still exists, albeit in forms that differ from 1911.
Surely, it would be dangerous to eliminate imperialism as a category of
analysis.
LP: Yes, we do need to reclaim it.
BP: And build struggles around it in the era of globalization. Looking at
imperialist aggressions around the world will always be an important
component of the Left. We must deal with the possibility that a war in
some small state becomes a flashpoint for large-scale conflict, with
incredibly destructive and destabilizing consequences.
CC: That the imperialist era is the highest stage of capitalism is a
broader idea of the Second International. It underpins Luxemburgs
critique of Bernstein in Reform or Revolution, for instance.
(Interestingly enough, Hilferding was Bernsteinian.) Lenins
pamphlet Imperialism is tricky with respect to how it develops an
immanent critique of both Hilferding and Hobson. So we need to keep
Hobson in the mix. Lenin was saying, Well, what about the liberal
project, articulated by Hobson, that we can dismantle empire, cut down
the financial oligarchy and the credit system, achieve a new kind of
Little England-ism, and return to pre-monopoly capitalism? Lenins
issue with that is, even if it is possible, you would only end up
reproducing the dynamic that got us here to begin with. One is
therefore obligated to turn monopoly capital into a pre-condition for
socialism, to treat it as an opportunity, rather than as a mistake or a
dead-end from which we must retreat. What comes out of World War I
and, later, the Great Depression both falsifies and confirms Hilferding
and Hobson, in different ways. This is why it is so difficult to read
Lenins pamphlet in its proper register.
Going back to Luxemburg, when she writes about capitalism reaching
its limits, as exhibited by credit, financialization, etc., we must keep in
mind that, for her, limit means contradictions. Bernstein thinks
capitalism will gradually become socialism, but Luxemburg does not
simply oppose this by saying, capitalism is reaching its limits, period.
Rather, her real argument with Bernstein is about whether and how this
is a contradictory phenomenon. Luxemburg accuses Bernstein of
treating phenomenon like financialization and the extension of credit to
the working class as un-contradictory, whereas she wants to uphold
the dialectical view that these kinds of socialization through
capitalism exacerbate, rather than ameliorate, contradiction. That is to
say, we are tasked as socialists to treat it as an opportunity.
German and Russian soldiers dance in celebration of the December 1917
Armistice that led to the signing of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty the following year

Leo, you were talking about the apparent political success of social
democracy in the 1990s. I was wondering if you considered the ultimate
failure of social democracywhich happened alongside the failure of
the communist partiesto be a necessary failure? What was the
relationship between the communist project and the social democratic
parties, after 1914? Was this supposed success of social democracy
by the 1990s the necessary outcome of that split?
LP: No, it was not a necessary outcome. I was using the word success
by the 1990s as an index of failure in terms of the project for socialism.
But they were having electoral success. By the time we get to the
1990s, many people around the world were saying, Okay, communisms
gone, but social democracy can ride the wave of neoliberalism,
achieving universal healthcare and sustaining the welfare state. Of
course, social democracy could not actually do that, and this is
especially clear in 2016.
Speaking of 2016, I hope people have not mistaken me to be blaming
the white working class for the events of this past year. I blame social
democracy for abandoning not only the white working class but also, for
instance, the Asian working classwhich voted for Brexit, by the way. It
is one of the illusions of politically correct identity politics to think
there is not racism within and among people of color. For heavens sake,
look at Latin America! Of course a good number of Latino workers are
open to xenophobic appeals, which points to a failure on our part,
insofar as they had previously been open to politicization by the Left or
by labor-oriented institutions, but were not sustainably mobilized or
organized by them.

Why do you think we can study 1917 any better than those before us? Is
there a greater opportunity for us to understand or recover 1917
because we are further from it? Or is that more of a liability for us?
CC: I could put a finer point on what I was getting at in my opening
remarks. The paradox of 1917 is that failure and success are mixed
together in its legacy. Therefore, the fact that 1917 is becoming more
obscure is an opportunity as well as a liability. We are tasked not only
with understanding the opportunity, but also with trying to make the
liability into an asset. The various ways in which 1917 is falsely claimed,
in a positive sensewe can call that Stalinism, we can call it all sorts
of thingshas dissipated. We have to try to make use of that. What has
faded is not the revolution, perhaps, but the counter-revolution. In other
words, while not entirely gone, the stigmatization of 1917 throughout
the 20th century and the horror at the outcome of revolutionthese are
fading. In that way we might be able to disentangle the success and the
failure differently than it has been attempted in the past.
LP: Perhaps so, but lets not go back to the attempts by various
Trotskyist groups to stand outside of plants with their newspaper,
thinking that they are going to attract workers through a debate over
the nature of the USSR, about state capitalism and deformed versus
degenerate workers states. I wish we were not discussing 1917. I
wish we were discussing 2015, during which a radical left party,
SYRIZA, came into government. Bryan put it very well. SYRIZA did not
capitulate so much as it was subordinated by powerful interests in
Europe, led, above all, by Germany. The question was if Greece, as the
weakest link in the European Union, broke away, would others follow
their example and leave the EU, thus provoking a general crisis of
neoliberalism in Europe? SYRIZA decided that was not going to happen.
I wish we were talking about the dilemmas and failures of SYRIZA.
There were people in SYRIZA who saw their main task being to bring
greater resources to the solidarity networks, providing alternative forms
of production and consumption. They were marginalized when SYRIZA
came to power, however, as the main concern instead became finding
well-trained people to go into this corrupt state and actually run an
efficient bureaucracy. That, too, reflected an inability to transform the
state. I wish we were talking about that, rather than the much more
arcane language of Russia in 1917.
BP: I agree with Chris that there are two sides to our distance from
1917. I would offer this warning, however. In the great separation
between 1917 and our period, there is the danger that the revolutions
accomplishments become abstractions. We can then very easily forget
the great historical accomplishment of 1917 and what that meant to the
masses of workers around the world who were inspired by it. We can
also forget the repression undertaken by numerous capitalist nations
that basically fought World War I on the Russian front. We can forget
how that stifled and suffocated the revolution. Without wanting to give
excuses, those conditions did play a large part in the undemocratic
procedures that came about after 1917.
CC: In 1917 the working class had been organized to take state power
and to reconstitute the state, but conditions militated against it.
Nonetheless, there was a real achievement in terms of advancing
possibilities. However, those possibilities were translated in various
paradoxical ways as a function of subsequent history. We could
consider the increasing power and rule of the bureaucracy in the USSR,
for instance. In some ways it was the resurrection of the old Tsarist
bureaucracy, in other ways it was a kind of petty-bourgeois importation
into the stateand yet it was the working class, organized for
revolution, that created the new bureaucracy. That is an achievement of
sorts, but an extremely paradoxical achievement. I think what the
revolution of 1917 meant to workers around the world was, We can do
this. And that is profound.
BP: Yes. Regarding Leos point about the deformed or degenerate
workers state debates at the factory gates, there were many workers
in the 1930s who understood that debate and wanted to have it. That
seems very strange to us, today, because we have lost something due
to our distance from that time period. This distance may give us an
opportunity, but we must try to recover what was lost, first, and then
deal with the more nuanced analysis.
In 1956, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno had a discussion about
rewriting the Communist Manifesto. Horkheimer pointed out that the
Soviet Union was under the rule of bureaucracy, whose authoritarian
governance shared characteristics with fascism. But they both also
said the USSR, even in 1956, nonetheless stood for something more
important or even better than the Western world. Today, in reflecting on
1917, does it help us or hurt us that the Soviet Union no longer exists?
BP: Although Stalinism is repugnant to revolutionary socialists, because
it has soured socialism in the mouths of millions of people around the
world, nevertheless the demise of the Soviet Union is a tremendous
setback. It is a tremendous setback in the sense that it has destabilized
the world and given undiluted power to the U.S. as a global empire. So I
cannot see much in the way of positives to the fact that the Soviet
Union no longer exists. But grappling with that question brings forth a
whole series of other issues that are far more complicated.
LP: As more time passes since the fall of the Soviet Union, I think our
distance from it allows the terms socialism and even communism to
be recovered in the 21st century. We saw that with the Sanders
phenomenon. His idea of socialism may have just meant, Denmark, but
people were hearing the word socialism and were attracted, or at
least not repelled, by it. In that sense there is a positive side to the fall
of the USSR. However, Bryans point on this is well taken.
Breakthroughs in particular countries in the 20th century were
facilitated because the Soviet Union gave them breathing room in an
imperialist world. Of course, what came with that was the very heavy
imposition of the Soviet model, both politically and economically. Still,
we are not better off now that the USSR no longer offers a kind of buffer
geopolitically.
What is positive about the current moment is that it is, or could be, the
graveyard of the Third Way, of Blairism and Clintonism. It is also the
graveyard of the claim that, liberated from the Soviet Union, Eastern
European nation states will all develop into wonderful bourgeois
democracies. What we have seen instead is the recrudescence of
fascism. We need to hammer that fact home. What you see in Hungary,
Poland, and above all in the Ukraine is the revival of the political forces
that killed my relatives, who were not shot by German soldiers, but by
Ukrainian nationalists.
In the face of all that, it is incumbent on us to improve Marxism. I am
very suspicious about going back to the classics if we are not trying to
discover and move beyond their limitations. It is extremely un-
materialist to do that, of course. It involves an idealistic reading. So it
is really important that we see ourselves as developers of Marxismas
people trying to make it better, rather than simply going back to it.
What we can and need to take from the classics is how to become
organizers. Maybe if there is a massive precariat the younger
generation will find they have no alternative but to become organizers.
The material base might be developing for that. Young leftists will not
find cushy jobs in the university the way that many in the 1960s and
1970s generation did. Perhaps they will have to become revolutionary
organizers and develop Marxism.
CC: The USSR collapsed. Whether it is good or bad, it happenedwe
have to reckon with it. The real question is whether conditions for the
Left outside the USSR were better when it existed. I would connect that
question to the mixed legacy of the 1990s: the New World Order, the
triumphalism, and the hope that, freed of the exigencies of the Cold War,
you could have capitalism with a human face (as opposed to the
slogan of Prague in 1968, socialism with a human face). The illusion of
the Third Way was that we would not be blackmailed into the kind of
mean capitalism necessitated by the Cold War. But, of course, the
1990s ended, and with it that boom, or bubble, of optimism also
ended.
The first time that I read the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Marx, I
was struck not so much by what he said about Bonaparte or the
working class, but what was said about the lumpenproletariat and the
peasants. Being from a working class background, I observed the
effects of the 1970s downturn on my immediate milieumy family, my
neighborhood, and so on. What Marx said about the sack of potatoes,
the walking dead, the Lazarus layer of the working class, all rang
true. The kinds of social pathology that were offered as explanations for
Trumpthe opioid epidemic, increased death rates among white people,
middle-aged men who should be working but are instead dependent on
disability benefitsall that stuff was there in the 1970s. What Marx said
about the ambient social circumstances of capitalism, as opposed to
just the working class per se, has really stuck with me. So, later on,
when I heard these terms like precariat, I just thought, Where have
you been? That had already been my life, for thirty years or more!
Bringing it back around to Bonapartism, I would like to connect that to
something Leo brought up, about whether struggles for reforms provide
opportunities for the self-organization of the working class, or whether
they are just ways of deferring political responsibility to the state. That
question is encoded in the loaded term, Bonapartism, which among
other things can help us think about how the working class goes from
being aspiring social subjects to being objects of policyobjects of
government administrationand therefore objects of politics, but only
in a very debased way. Really, the working class becomes objects of
pseudo-politics and demagogy. We need to recognize how that is built
into this language of Bonapartism; otherwise, its connotation becomes
too particular and narrow. What happens when the working class is
defeated? What does society start to look like? And why do the petite
bourgeoisie and the lumpenproletariat, rather than working class rule,
become the spectre haunting politics? That is already there in the
classics. Going back to the writings of Marx and Engels, one finds this
whole penumbra of meaning. |P

Transcribed by Matt Cavagrotti and Audrey Crescenti

[1]
Eric Hobsbawm, Interesting Times: A Twentieth-Century Life (New
York: Pantheon, 2003), 218.
[2]
See the foreword to Geoff Eley, Forging History: The History of the
Left in Europe, 18502000 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).
[3]
Quoted in William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary, by E. P.
Thompson and Peter Linebaugh (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2011), 305.
[4]
See Isaac Deutscher, The Unfinished Revolution 19171967, New
Left Review I/43 (MayJune 1967).
[5]
See Deutscher, The Unfinished Revolution 19171967.
[6]
See Mike Daviss editorial, Spring Confronts Winter, in New Left
Review 72 (NovemberDecember 2011). Available online at
<newleftreview.org/II/72/mike-davis-spring-confronts-winter>.
[7]
An edited transcript of this panel discussion was published by
Platypus. See What is Political Party for the Left? in Platypus
Review 74 (March 2015). Available online at
<https://platypus1917.org/2015/03/01/political-party-left-2/>.
[8]
See Lenin, Terms of Admission into Communist International, first
published in 1921. Available online at
<https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/jul/x01.htm>.
 The Polish Revolution of
1918-1920: What
happened and why did it
fail?
Print

Maciej Krzymieniecki
06 October 2017
The National Question Civil War after 1917 Poland

Polish Revolution Poster / Wikimedia Commons

The Polish Revolution of 1918-1920: What happened and why did it fail? 6 Oct
2017
 Polish state targets left-wing activists 11 Jul 2017
Womens rights, class struggle and building the forces of Marxism in Poland 5 Apr
2017

Pro-democracy protests - early signs of what lies ahead for Poland 22 Dec 2016

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This year is the 97th anniversary of the 1920 Kiev Offensive by
the Polish Army and the decisive defeat of the Soviet troops at
the Battle of Warsaw: an event of great historic importance
that marked a turning point in the course of the European
revolution. This front of the Russian Civil War was a grave and
important test for the Bolshevik Party, sparking daily and
intense debate throughout its ranks.
The Bolsheviks knew that if they were to achieve success in
these battles, they would be able to give a significant boost to
the forces of the Polish, German, Hungarian, and ultimately
European and world revolutions.
In Poland today, the right-wing President Andrzej Duda
(during this years anniversary celebrations) publicly
subscribed to the idea behind the alternative name of the
battle: the Miracle at Vistula. According to this myth, the
Virgin Mary herself aided the Polish army in the holy fight
against the godless Bolshevik hordes. Duda explained that he
is not hesitating to state, which is what the strategists and
officers of the Polish army also thought at the time, that the
breakthrough did occur on the day of the Feast of Saint Mary
the Virgin, Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Such a divine intervention was, unfortunately, nowhere to be
seen 19 years later as German and Russian tanks rolled
through Polish fields at the commencement of the Second
World War. In any case, we should leave Duda and his
colleagues to their appeals to the heavenly legions once more,
while we draw lessons from this turning point that changed
world history.
Jerzy Kossak interpreting the myth of holy intervention during the battle (1930). / Public
Domain

The question of independence

The declaration of Polish independence in November 1918 was
preceded by 123 years of partition of the country by the three
great powers: Austria-Hungary, Prussia and Tsarist Russia.
Without understanding the character of the national question
arising from this partition and how the First and Second
international dealt with it, it is impossible to understand the
mood of the Polish workers during the Russian Civil War and
the Soviet offensive of 1920.
The independence of the Polish state was mulled over and
fought for by a range of classes: nobility, lesser nobility, the
rising bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie, with sections taking
the lead temporarily in one period before transferring the
initiative to another. The ruling classes across Europe
periodically switched their positions in this turbulent and
economically transformative period. In the end it was clear,
that the only class to remain consistent in its revolutionary
aspirations was the proletariat. But the flames of revolt in
Poland could never be extinguished. The Poles are always
conspiring, writes the brilliant Polish historian of the uprising
of 1831, Mochnacki. If they fare badly they revolt to shake off
the yoke. They revolt because they cannot help revolting. But if
they are doing well they revolt because they can afford it.
The concrete reality of the struggle, however, cannot be
reduced to the abstract idea of the nation. In fact, in its
initial stages, the struggle for independence was restricted to a
small section of the nobility, fighting with methods
corresponding to its class character: a guerrilla war of small
battles conducted by a small minority. This minority was
unable to gain the support of the peasants they exploited and
were unable to ally themselves with the rising bourgeois, who
were seeking to replace the nobility as the leading force. These
and other factors led the nationalist petty-bourgeoisie to
debate the reasons for the partition in the first place, and the
inability of the nobility to break with it. As such, the emerging
petty-bourgeoisie began to blame, within the limits of their
own class perspectives, the nobility for the general situation.
In turn, parts of the petty-bourgeoisie (the early Polish
Socialists) oriented themselves to the struggle for social
reform, which gave them a veneer of socialism, despite their
petty-bourgeois class character.

The First International and Poland

The formation of the First International in fact originated with
the international movement of solidarity with the Polish
Uprising of 1863, which had been bloodily suppressed by the
Russians. The International Workingmens Association, and
above all Marx and Engels, never stopped advocating for the
Polish cause despite intense debate regarding the complex
interconnections of the Polish struggle with the wider
questions posed by the development of the revolutionary
struggle in Europe.
The First International was extremely heterogeneous in
composition, ranging from petty-bourgeois revolutionary
nationalists like Mazzini to anarchists like Bakunin and
Proudhon; utopian socialists, and the British Trade Unions.
Marx and Engels - the IWAs main theoreticians - had to go
through a long period of struggle with different tendencies to
firmly establish the ideas of scientific socialism within the
International.
Marx and Engels were advocating support for Polish
independence in spite of the reactionary character of the
Polish aristocrats leading the national movement at that stage.
This was because because the struggle for Polish independence
objectively undermined the power of the most reactionary
force in Europe at that time: Tsarist Russia. On the other side
of the argument were Proudhon and his followers, who denied
the importance of the national struggle altogether, by
declaring nationalities to be antiquated prejudices.
It is ironic that the establishment of the International - such a
gigantic step forward for the revolutionary forces of the
working-class - sprung out of the wave of workers solidarity
with the Polish Uprising. The Polish national struggle
occupied a central place in European politics throughout the
19th century (in spite of Proudhons idealistic prejudices) and
also deeply affected the working-class movement. As Engels
pointed out, the Polish people, by their heroic struggles
against Tsarist Russia, on several occasions saved revolutions
in the rest of Europe, as happened in 1792-94 when Poland
was defeated by Russia but in the process saved the French
revolution.
The circus of Proudhonists, spiritual ancestors of modern day
Anarchists, which opposed Polish independence on the basis
of their opposition to any and all states, has today been
reduced to nothing but a curiosity. In any case, based on
serious observation, Engels wrote in 1868 a series of articles
for The Commonwealth, the organ of the IWA, answering
many questions in more detail, and correctly outlining the
complexity of the Polish national question in relation to the
revolutionary tasks on the agenda in Europe and the necessity
of a concrete analysis of each element in the equation from an
internationalist standpoint. In short, making all small
nationalities independent states would be reactionary; that is,
simply not beneficial for the European working-class in its
revolutionary struggle. Polands independence was then
supported on the basis of acting as a dam against the most
reactionary force in Europe, that of Tsarism, which would seek
to strangle the European revolution.

The rising importance of the working-

class
This perspective, correct at that time, was changed by the
events of 1871, which marked the end of the revolutionary role
of the bourgeoisie. The emphasis was switched even in
relation to Poland towards the revolutionary working-class,
which would play the decisive role in future upheavals. The
policy, reflecting the growth of Polish distilling and textile
industries, recognised that following developments led by
the nobility in the past insurrections the Polish working-
class did not fight for the same ends as its nobility. Instead, it
would pursue its aims beyond the limitations of a national
struggle, in alliance with the international working-class. As a
result, the question of forging class unity between the Polish
working-class and the nascent Russian working-class gained
increased importance.
The Polish section of the Second International was formed in
1892. The PPS (Polish Socialist Party) from its inception was
dominated by petty-bourgeois nationalism, thus provoking the
split of the Marxist wing of the party, whose leader was soon to
become Rosa Luxemburg. They formed the SDKPiL (Social
Democracy of the Kingdom of Lithuania and Poland) in 1893.
The young party was divided into two factions in relation to
the national question, with one section taking the standpoint
of Rosa Luxemburg. Her position had radicalised in the
struggle against petty-bourgeois nationalism to the extent of
reaching the wrong conclusion, by failing to understand the
need to defend the right of the Polish people to pursue self-
determination. The other camp followed Marchlewskis
position, more in agreement with the approach of Lenin and
the Russian Bolsheviks. The important discussion between
Lenin and Luxemburg on the National question is full of key
lessons for revolutionaries today.
Although Rosa Luxemburgs position was fundamentally
wrong an abstract position she and her supporters were
genuine internationalists motivated by the need to combat the
reactionary petty-bourgeois nationalism of Pilsudski's so-
called Polish Socialist Party, which consciously strove to
separate the Polish workers from the Russian workers. A
Russian author, Ivan Krylov, ended one of his fables with the
following: The eagle can come lower than a hen on the barn,
but no hen can ever reach the heavenly realm. Theres no
doubt that Rosas role as a working-class revolutionary makes
her the great eagle in this analogy, whereas desperate
opportunism had reduced the reactionary wing of the PPS to a
powerless hen on the barn.

Socialist chauvinism
The PPS split once more in 1906 on the question of
independence and also the pursuit of Socialism. A leftward-
moving faction called The Left adopted centrist and eventually
revolutionary positions, ultimately merging with the SDKPiL
to form the Communist Workers Party of Poland in 1918. A
right-reformist faction called the Revolutionary faction but
mockingly called the Moderate faction by the Left was more
interested in achieving immediate independence and
establishing a bourgeois parliamentary democracy on the basis
of social reform.
1905 Revolution in Lodz, with the banner of the Polish Social Democracy (aligned with
the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party). / Public Domain
With the awakening of the working-class into political life
(defining itself as a class movement by 1886) the Polish
question was addressed in response to events. These included
the unity of the Polish and Russian proletariat, emerging in
their struggles (most notably in connection with the Russian
revolution of 1905-06), and the hostile ideas of bourgeois
patriotism. The period certainly spawned serious and
complicated theoretical challenges for the Polish Communists.
In turn, Poland has produced some of the most outstanding
revolutionaries in Europe during this period, most notably
Luxemburg, Dzerzhinsky, Radek and Marchlewski.
Following the period of struggles, strikes and upheavals by the
working-class, the question had been blown all over the
country once again by the mighty storm of the Great War.
Curiously, there existed a strata of Polish Socialists who
sought a shortcut by repeating Marxs pre-1871 position in an
abstract way, in turn signifying their mistrust of the now
present revolutionary potential of the Polish and Russian
proletariat.
On the other hand, there was an alignment of the Polish
Socialist Party that is, the right wing faction affiliated with
the Second international towards German imperialism, to
the extent that the PPS supported Jozef Pilsudskis Polish
Legions, which fought on the side of Austro-German
imperialism during the First World War. Criminally, the
chauvinist PPS built a barrier against the workers of Russian
Poland: 2.5 million people, including 500 thousand soldiers.
Many of these were later some of the most dedicated
participants in the Russian Revolution. The atomisation of the
reformist movement towards such tendencies expressed the
theoretical capitulation to social chauvinism of the Second
International during the War. The extreme chauvinism of the
PPS was never combated by the Second International, and this
further contributed to the hopeless rot of the leadership of the
Polish Socialist Party, in line with its European counterparts.

Impact of Russian October

In 1917, the October Revolution in Russia put into practise the
positions defended by Lenin in 1903, namely: defence of the
right of oppressed nations to self-determination, up-to-and-
including separation. This policy was extremely important in
consolidating the Soviet revolution in Russia by winning over
the support of workers and peasants of many oppressed
nationalities of the former Tsarist empire, who supported the
Bolsheviks during the Civil War. It was also the only way to
show in the language of concrete facts that the working-class
had no interest in perpetrating national oppression after
conquering state power.
But Lenins position cannot just be reduced to the defence of
the right of self-determination of oppressed nations. The
necessary corollary to Lenins position was the defence of the
unity of the working-class and the duty of revolutionary
Marxists of oppressed nationalities to oppose petty-bourgeois
nationalist prejudices among their own people that could
break the unity of the working-class. This articulated position
succeeded in winning the battle for a voluntary Socialist
Federation of Soviet Republics.
Like Marx before him, Lenin outlined the necessity to take into
account the contextual requirements of the moment, rather
than advocating for the parties of labour to support separatism
everywhere. At the same time it highlighted the need for an
international working-class struggle to overthrow capitalism.
Such a position, exercised for years by the Polish Marxists of
the SDKP (affiliated with the Russian Social Democratic
Labour Party) resonated with the working-class, even finding
traction among the social patriotic layers of the Polish Socialist
Party. However, to achieve it would require a break with
capitalism, something that the Second International was not
prepared or able to do.

1918 Polish independence

During the course of the War, Germany conquered large parts
of Poland and established a puppet Polish regime in
November 1916. Ultimately, the Polish bourgeoisie used the
opportunity of the collapse of Germany and the German
Revolution of November 1918 to establish its independence. It
did so on the basis of an insurrection and a series of small
wars with neighbouring countries to establish a bourgeois
republic. The Second Polish Republic was born weak and
unstable. The right-wing PPS was placed at the head of the
new government.
The declaration of independence was staged amid earth-
shattering revolutionary events. On the back of the tradition of
the 1905 revolution and following the example of the Russian
and German revolutionary workers, at least 100 workers and
peasants deputies councils representing 500,000 workers
and peasants were established throughout the Polish
territories. This was done on the initiative of the SDKPiL and
the PPS Left, which soon merged to form the Communist
Workers Party of Poland. Other workers organisations and
parties competed for influence within the councils as well,
including the Polish Socialist Party (PPS), the Bund in Poland
and the National Workers Union.
Paralysed by important disputes over the political and
economic future of the newly independent Poland, the
workers councils failed to create an elected national
leadership. The most numerous and radical councils were
located in Krasnik, Lublin, Plock, Warsaw, Zamosc and
Zaglebie Dabrowskie; some of them set up their own military
self-defence units: the Red Guards. Episodes like the short-
lived Republic of Tarnobrzeg, proclaimed on 6 November
1918, showed how these workers councils would inevitably
lead to a dualism of power that could be resolved only by the
working-class conquering political power or by the Polish
bourgeois forces dismantling these organs of workers power.
The bourgeois forces rallying behind Pilsudski clearly shared
this view and succeeded in having the workers councils
dismantled by July 1919, thanks to a combination of the
withdrawal of the Polish Socialist Party (which in many cases
had a majority in the councils) and suppression by the Polish
government. The councils were correctly regarded by the
Polish bourgeois as a barrier to the formation of a bourgeois
Polish state.
In order to tame the revolutionary spirit displayed by the
Polish workers and buy itself time, the so-called peoples
government, initially headed by Ignacy Daszynski introduced
reforms within the capitalist framework, including but not
limited to womens suffrage and the 8-hour working day.
These acts were able to temporarily minimise the intrinsically
motivated struggle of the working-class towards emancipation.
The Polish working-class, although very observant of the
European revolution, was still testing out its own national
reformists. However, with the inevitability of the Polish labour
leaders turning into counter-reformists in response to the
pressures of capitalist crisis, the working-class would
doubtlessly start reaching revolutionary conclusions very
swiftly.
The revolutionary process could be accelerated given
inspiration from the successes of the Russian Revolution. In
fact, two parallel governments were proclaimed, one in
Warsaw and the Soviet Republic of Lublin in the East of
Poland. The Warsaw government, led by Daszynski and
Pilsudski, came out with substantial concessions to draw the
Lublin workers towards it.
Eventually, the workers of the city were crushed by Pilsudski
himself, as they resisted the coming of inevitable betrayal by
the PPS. With the experience of its past struggles, both of legal
and illegal character, the Polish working-class was (and still is)
capable of enormous revolutionary sacrifice. The revolutionary
possibilities were clearly titanic, and a movement he Polish
workers would be merciless to the inexperienced bourgeois
ruling class. On the other hand, the lessons drawn from the
partition period, and the burning memory of Russias
oppressive measures, such as Russification, had left many of
the workers with a strong sensitivity towards any big power
games which could influence Polands sovereignty even in the
slightest degree.
Here we can briefly gain familiarisation with the nature of
Polish proletarian consciousness by 1920, shaped by its long-
term memory. It contrasts to the Russian or German workers
consciousness of the time. It is built by great stories worthy of
more than a mere section of an article. Through careful study
this consciousness was understood by many Bolsheviks,
including but not limited to Leon Trotsky, Karl Radek, and
Klara Zetkin. They put forward a perspective that is not often
brought up, for the sake of simplification. With the benefit of
hindsight, considering the developments of the war, the brief
establishment of Soviet power in Poland and the general
lessons of the following ebb, they have been proven right.
Following the conclusion of the Great War, the whole
geographical alignment was completely redefined according to
the terms of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. This had a
fundamental impact on Polands borders, which were being
drawn up, connecting the three parts occupied by the mighty
empires. The national bourgeoisie was once more split
accordingly to the character and the size of these borders.
Emerging as the commander-in-chief of the Polish armed
forces, Jozef Pilsudski knew that the doors to eastward
expansion were wide open. The degeneration of the former
leader of the Polish Socialist Party can be summed up in an
episode in which he was confronted by an old comrade about
some issue, addressing him as Towarzysz (comrade), in
accordance to pre-independence struggles. In response,
Pilsudski asked to be called Pan (Sir) instead
of Towarzysz, explaining that We were on the same train
heading towards socialism, however, I got off the ride at the
independence stop. I will go on my own from here.
Following the treacherous footsteps of the Hendersons, the
Clyneses and the MacDonalds of the Second International
more loyal to the bourgeois order than to the working-class
he was naturally orbiting around the idea of a national
coalition government. This was impossible at first due to the
strong initial opposition from the Endecja (National
Democrats, right-wingers led by the opportunist Dmowski)
and even within the rank and file and the parliamentary wing
of the PPS. Throughout his actions during the course of the
new Polish states expansion into Ukraine and Belarus, and in
fact the whole war, Pilsudskis prestige was saved and
immortalised by bourgeois propagandists and historians as a
key figure that indeed oversaw building a dam. However,
this was not against Russian reaction but the Russian
revolution.

The return of commander Pilsudski on the front page of Kurjer Warszawski. Pilsudski is
pictured saluting, third character from the left. / Public Domain
The optimistic aspirations reflecting a strongly redefined
status of the Polish bourgeoisie were encapsulated in the
pursuit of intermarium. That is, of a nationalistic expansion,
emulating a Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth-style
federation of various nations from the Baltic to the Black Sea,
acting as a new power to counter the might of Russia in the
region. The invitation to this new union was naturally rejected
by the bourgeoisie of countries such as Lithuania or Finland,
which had only just regained their independence, and the
Ukrainians under Symon Petlyura, who were still trying to
entrench their positions in face of the threat of Ukrainian
Bolshevism.
Thus, the carrot was replaced by the stick, and Pilsudski
decided to go through formalities but only after the Polish
White Guards were in control of Vilnius, Lviv and Kiev. It is in
the areas surrounding Vilnius where the first, albeit not very
serious, confrontations occurred between the Red Army and
the Poles, after power was being tossed around like a hot
potato to the Soviets, Polish nationalists, the German army in
agreement with Pilsudski, and finally to Pilsudskis forces
themselves. Thus, the northern front was becoming more and
more of a serious factor in the calculations of both the Red and
the White armies.
However, at that time, during the summer of 1919, the
revolutionary forces were forced to be more concerned with
defending the surrounding areas of Petrograd from Kolchak.
Belarus was occupied, and the peasants in particular, faced
with requisition of their land, provided a serious base of
underground resistance against the Whites.
After Kolchaks defeat, the spotlight was moved onto other
leaders, including Pilsudski. However, it was well known that
the reactionary forces of the Russian Whites and their
potential victory would not be beneficial to the interests of
Polish independence. After all, the Russian Whites leadership
was made up of elements who enforced brutal Russification
and national oppression in the Polish territories in the past,
and continued to do so. Expecting anything more from them
than (perhaps, the concession of a small satellite state) would
have been wishful thinking, even if we put aside the fact that
reaction would have taken the form of Russian fascism and
projected its revengeful rage on the old minorities of Tsarist
Russia especially the Poles. The prospect of a White victory
was indeed grim and completely incompatible with the
aspirations of any national minority, even for the Polish
bourgeois, who would rather see Russia in a state of
fragmentation and anarchy. For this very reason, Pilsudski
initially refrained from backing Denikin in South-West Russia,
at least until the Bolsheviks started to gain the upper hand
towards the end of the year.
It is worth remembering, that the Russian Federative Soviet
Socialist Republic was the initiator of multiple peace talks,
sending several delegations headed by Julian Marchlewski,
who was given authority by the Bolshevik Party to accept
peace even if it meant far-reaching concessions. The Polish
authorities, dizzy with success following the occupation of
Vilnius, thought the door was still wide open for further
expansion. They swiftly rejected any peace with the Bolsheviks
and renewed their offensive by November 1919. Peace
negotiations were attempted by the Bolsheviks frequently until
late spring of 1920. In the words of Chicherin, the Peoples
Commissar for foreign affairs of Soviet Russia: The politics of
RSFSR in relation to Poland doesnt base itself on momentary
military or diplomatic combinations, but on the principle of
unswerving, inviolable right to self-determination. RSFSR
recognises, and continues to recognise without any
reservation, the independence and sovereignty of the Polish
Republic, and recognises it in the first moments of the creation
of a sovereign Polish state.
The attitude of the Bolsheviks in these talks and statements
reflects a clear and honest desire for peace a key policy of the
Bolshevik party which was rejected on the basis of
Pilsudskis dream of an expansionist march through Ukraine.
Once again, the attitude by the bourgeois towards
independence, peace and democracy reflects not a shred of
honest consistency, but a speculation towards emboldening
the power of their class. The only consistent guardian of peace
in this war could only be the revolutionary alliance of the
Polish, Ukrainian and Russian proletariat.
After gaining the upper hand by signing an agreement with
Petlyura, Pilsudski ordered his troops to march on Kiev. The
Red Army wasnt as strong in this area, thus reinforcements
were being dispatched from mainland Russia. On May 5th,
Lenin made the following speech to the soldiers, of which the
transcript was printed in Pravda:
Comrades: You know that, instigated by the Entente, the Polish landowners and
capitalists have forced a new war on us. Remember, comrades, that we have no
quarrel with the Polish peasants and workers; we have recognised Polands
independence and the Polish Peoples Republic, and shall continue to do so. We
have proposed peace to Poland on the basis of the integrity of her frontiers,
although these frontiers extend far beyond the purely Polish population. We have
agreed to make all concessions, which is something each of you should remember
at the front. Let your attitude to the Poles there prove that you are soldiers of a
workers and peasants republic, that you are coming to them, not as aggressors
but as liberators. Now that, despite our efforts, the Polish magnates have
concluded an alliance with Petlyura, launched an offensive, are approaching Kiev,
and are spreading rumours in the foreign press that they have already captured
Kievwhich is the sheerest fabrication since only yesterday I was talking on the
direct line with F. Kon, who is in Kievwe say: Comrades, we have been able to
repel a more terrible enemy; we have been able to defeat our own landowners and
capitalists, and we shall defeat the Polish landowners and capitalists too! All of us
here today should pledge ourselves, give a solemn promise, that we shall stand as
one man so as not to allow a victory of the Polish magnates and capitalists. Long
live the peasants and workers of a free independent Polish Republic! Down with
the Polish magnates, landowners and capitalists! Long live our Red Workers and
Peasants Army!(The mighty strains of the "Internationale" and cries
of "Hurrah"drown Comrade Lenins final words.)

The war started to take up the front pages of newspapers

worldwide, as a direct confrontation between the Polish
Republic and the Red Army was being prepared. It need not be
said that there was a complete lack of support for the Polish
Army by the Ukrainian masses. This gave further momentum
to the Red Army and guaranteed a swift departure of the
Polish forces from Ukraine. Thus, the character of the war
from the Bolshevik perspective, ceased to be defensive and,
after intense debate, they agreed to make it a revolutionary
war that would act as a base of support for the revolutionary
movements in Europe. These arguments were put forward by
Lenin and Bukharin and represented the majority of the CC of
the Bolshevik Party, whereas a minority consisted mainly of
Trotsky, who recalled it in chapter 37 of My Life:
There were high hopes of an uprising of the Polish workers. At any rate, Lenin
fixed his mind on carrying the war to an end, up to the entry into Warsaw to help
the Polish workers overthrow Pilsudskis government and seize the power. The
apparent decision by the government easily captured the imagination of the high
command and of the command of the western front. By the time I paid my regular
visit to Moscow, I found opinion strongly in favour of carrying on the war until
the end. To this I was resolutely opposed. The Poles were already asking for
peace. I thought that we had reached the peak of our successes, and if we went
farther, misjudging our strength, we would run the risk of passing beyond the
victory already won to a defeat.

Trotsky was, by any means, familiar with all layers of the Red
Army, but also with Marchlewskis sober understanding of the
Polish situation as premature for revolution, and so he
disagreed with the further advance. Only Rykov took his side
in the CC of the Bolshevik Party. On the other hand, Lenin was
misinformed by overly optimistic reports by the cadres of the
Polish Communist Party. The bulk of the masses were still in
the grip of the reformists.
However, regardless of the incorrect assessment of the
situation, it is important to remember that the advance by the
Red Army had a purely revolutionary class character, not a
nationalist one. Further comparisons can be made with the
substance and even the propaganda of the 1939 Soviet
invasion. The aim of the Bolsheviks in 1920 was not to
incorporate Poland into Russia, or even impose the Soviet
Regime on it, but to aid the Polish proletariat itself in taking
power and give it a boost in doing so.
In any case, the decision was made, and the Red Army moved
on to a counter offensive. For 23 days, the Polrevkom (Polish
Temporary Revolutionary Committee) was based in Bialystok,
essentially expressing the embryonic developments of a short
lived Polish Soviet Republic.

The Polish Revolution

Sources relating to the Polrevkom are scarce. Many first-hand
accounts, such as newspapers or notes, were lost during the
Second World War. The official paper of Soviet Poland, Goniec
Czerwony, is also a rarity, and regardless had a very
agitational character. The origin of the committee itself goes
way back to recruitment and training of Polish Bolsheviks who
played key roles in the revolution Grzelszczak, Krolikowski,
Budzynski or Bitner, to name a few.
The close communication between Polish Communists in
Russia and Poland acknowledged a sense of urgency, with the
formation of multiple organisations aiming to agitate among
the workers and soldiers. Divisions led and manned by Polish
workers were taking part in the civil war as an embryonic
Polish Red Army. Its development never reached a mass
character due to its isolation from the important sections of
the workers in Poland. For this very reason it also faced many
issues with morale. It was opposed to the appointment of
former tsarist officers and also to fighting against the Polish
White Guards. The Bolshevik propaganda, both from the
outside and the inside, of the Polish army was not too fruitful.
The consciousness in Poland was on a different level. This was
understood by the Polish Red Army, representing the cadres of
the working-class, who were eventually moved to the south of
Russia to fight Wrangels armies instead.
In any case, the Polish Revolutionary Committee was chaired
by Julian Marchlewski, who also fulfilled duties of a
propagandist and agitator. The reason behind his
appointment, as opposed to the better-known Felix
Dzerzhinsky, was because Felix had by this point been given a
complete slating by the Polish bourgeois press, as a leader of
the Soviet Cheka. The committee first started assembling a
week before its arrival in Bialystok, where they based
themselves at the expropriated Palace of Labour. Its aims, as
stated in its first printed appeal, were: To lay the foundations
of the future Polish Soviet Republic, up until a worker-peasant
government has taken power in Poland definitely. The
bulletin also contained announcements of the future policies
of the new government, which would be the establishment of
worker and peasant soviets, nationalising the main branches
of industry, the land, forests, etc. In essence, despite doing
pioneering work in unknown circumstances, it was building
the subjective factor in time for the revolutionary events which
were just around the corner.
The Polish Revolutionary Committee in August 1920. Among others, in the centre: Felix
Dzerzhinsky, Julian Marchlewski, Feliks Kon. / Public Domain
A mass rally in support of the new revolutionary government
took place on 2 August 1920. Marchlewski, Tukhachevsky and
Stepanov made speeches representing accordingly the
Polrevkom, the Red Army and the Central Committee of the
Bolshevik Party. The rally was succeeded by a demonstration
of the railway workers, which supported the committee with
the biggest enthusiasm. The propaganda work in the
immediate period was carried out through the production of a
paper, edited by Feliks Kon, reporting news from the front, the
international labour movement, as well as local stories and
announcements. The committee also produced leaflets and
posters, inspired by an internationalist spirit, highlighting
messages of support from the British, French and German
workers towards a Polish revolution. The strike by the English
dockworkers of Dover, blocking British supply lines to
Pilsudskis army, was an example of international solidarity.
The paper played a key role as a point of reference that helped
transform the consciousness of the workers in Bialystok and
Eastern Poland in support of the revolution.
Nevertheless, the necessity of peasant support was noticed by
the committee and even by Lenin himself. However, the
demand of immediate redistribution of the land sparked a
debate. It concluded that the Committee would appeal to the
peasants, explaining that the land will be redistributed, but
first Warsaw must be taken by the workers, so that
collectivisation may take place without the pressure from the
proximity of a war front. This was a key factor in the
scepticism of the local peasants.
In one of the issues of the Goniec Czerwony, the inevitability
of the victory of the Polish masses was announced, and the
soldiers were called on to turn their guns towards their
officers. Although Marchlewski was busy visiting newly
liberated towns, on 8 August, a mass rally was organised in
Bialystok once more for the first celebrations of the Workers
Liberation of Poland Day, which surpassed the numbers of
the first rally and was concluded with the singing of the
Internationale in Polish, Yiddish and Russian. The committee
had its base of support among the workers, and especially the
Jewish and Belorussian minorities.
The peaceful character of the takeover indicated that, with
time, the revolution would gain significant support from the
peasants and the better-off workers. On the other hand, the
workers to the west of the borders of Soviet Poland were
familiar only with the slanders of the Nationalists and the
Reformists, in one chorus accusing the committee of an
unlawful coup, and creating an instrument for the Russian
annexation of Poland. The objective situation was not yet in
favour of the Polish Communist Party. The workers of Western
Poland did not rise up, and the revolutionary development was
dealt a crushing blow after the Battle of Warsaw was won by
Pilsudskis White Guards.
As Pilsudskis armies were getting close to Bialystok, one last
issue of Czerwony Goniec was released, in which the editorial
board announced the inevitability of a Polish and worldwide
socialist revolution. Once the troops entered the city, there
were riots between the local Bolshevik sympathisers and
citizens supported by the army and the police. These were
later incited into a series of anti-Semitic pogroms in the short
term, and mass murder of Red Army prisoners of war (POWs)
in the longer term, resulting in 17,000 deaths in three years in
the concentration camps, the biggest one being in Strzalkowo.
The committee, which curiously was never formally dissolved,
was evacuated into Soviet Russia. All but one of the members
of the Polrevkom, (that is, all those who didnt die earlier from
natural causes), were among the first victims of the Stalinist
Great Purge in 1937. This was also the fate of most of the
cadres of the Polish Communist Party. In Moscow alone there
were 3,817 Polish Communists, many of them veterans of the
October Revolution, who had sought refuge from the Polish
bonapartist dictatorship. Of these 3,817, only around 100
survived the Purges. By 1938, the Stalinist Comintern
dissolved the Polish Communist Party.
The complete destruction of the most advanced Polish
workers, both by hand of the Stalinists and by the Nazis,
meant that by 1945 Moscow had to orchestrate a new Polish
Communist Party out of thin air. This had further implications
for the inability of the Polish Communist bureaucracy to
connect and understand the mood of the working-class.
Excessive reliance on the faithful secret police led to
mercilessly antagonising the Polish workers. All these factors
hardened the Polish workers, but without a revolutionary
point of reference, which had been physically purged, they
were left with little more but scepticism. Now, after more than
two decades since the collapse of so-called Communism, the
present scepticism is wearing off on the basis of experiencing
capitalism. The necessity to defend the genuine ideas of
Marxism without any distortions, the tradition of Rosa
Luxemburg, Julian Marchlewski and Trotsky, is of vital
importance.
The 1920 war continues to exert an enormous effect on Polish
consciousness to this day. Trotsky and others were right to
notice that the offensive presented significant risks, as the
consciousness of significant layers of Polish workers had not
yet caught up with the events to resonate with the Red Armys
advance. The Left Bolsheviks of the time, such as Bukharin,
had a schematic view of a revolutionary war, not taking into
account fully the specific circumstances of the Polish national
question. They got drunk with the early success in Ukraine and
planned a raid as far as Paris and London, to which Warsaw
would have been only a first step. The gears of the war did not
correlate with the gears of proletarian consciousness, which in
Trotskys words, cannot be measured by the same yardsticks.
He also said:
The error in the strategic calculations in the Polish war had great historical
consequences. The Poland of Pilsudski came out of the war unexpectedly
strengthened. On the contrary, the development of the Polish revolution received
a crushing blow. The frontier established by the Riga treaty cut off the Soviet
Republic from Germany, a fact that later was of great importance in the lives of
both countries. Lenin, of course, understood better than anyone else the
significance of the Warsaw mistake, and returned to it more than once in
thought and word. (Leon Trotsky, My Life, Chapter 37.)

A series of misjudgements, from the local level of the

Communist Parties in Poznan and Warsaw, to the highest
levels of the Bolshevik Party, opened up a crisis of leadership.
Despite unseen heroism and unity of action between Polish
and Russian Bolsheviks, the political development of the
subjective factor (the revolutionary leadership) was not evenly
distributed. The Polish revolution fell, but the sacrifice of
thousands of Polish workers for the dream of a Polish Soviet
Republic, as part of a World Soviet Federation, free from the
horrors of Capitalism, is part of the history of the Polish
working-class and will be rediscovered.
The Polish workers did not deserve the bureaucratic caricature
of Socialism built by the Stalinists after the Second World
War. The Stalinist bureaucrats, who immediately expropriated
from the working-class of Poland any semblance of political
power, showed soon enough that their commitment to
socialism was but a smokescreen to hide their own petty
interests and privileges. Many of these same bureaucrats
turned into the best managers of capitalism as soon as
Stalinism collapsed. A few decades of a capitalist regime in
Poland are undermining the illusions that so-called democracy
(i.e. capitalism) is be more beneficial to the mass of the Polish
people than so-called communism (i.e. Stalinism).
Direct experience of capitalism is part of the necessary
learning process for the working-class. In the conditions
unfolding before our very own eyes, a genuine Marxist
organisation, based on a serious political development in the
theory of Marxism, could begin developing, starting from a
few educated Marxist cadres and soon turning quality into
quantity. An organisation, through which the Polish workers
might liberate themselves from the yoke of foreign and
domestic capital, could finally emerge on the basis of the great
revolutionary history and ideas, whose time has now come.

A poster of the Bialystok Soviet.

Long has, in the claws of the white eagle, moaned the proletariat of Poland, Belarus and
Ukraine. Today, the workers of villages and cities are freeing themselves from the chains
of oppression and exploitation. Under the blows of proletarian hammers, the Poland of
the Capitalist and the gendarme is falling apart, the white eagle is dying. Under the red
banner, a new one is being born SOVIET SOCIALIST POLAND. LONG LIVE THE
REVOLUTION! / Public Domain

Russian Revoluton -
From July to September:
Revolution and Counter-
revolution
Print

Terry McPartlan

29 August 2007
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The July days in Russia in 1917 were crucial. Without the
Bolshevik Party the outcome could have been a devastating
defeat. The reaction could have gained more ground. Thanks
to the Bolsheviks the events after the July days illustrated the
weakness of the reaction and the role of the reformists and
prepared the ground for the events up to October
On June the 29th Kerensky, the leader of the Provisional
Government, issued a proclamation to the army and navy to
begin a new offensive. The Bolsheviks had explained to the
Congress of the Soviets, in a declaration written by Trotsky, as
early as the 4th June that "the offensive was an adventure that
threatened the very existence of the army". As Trotsky
explains in "My life" no amount of speechifying could solve the
problems faced by the soldiers.

When the inevitable defeat came to pass, the Bolsheviks were

blamed and ruthlessly hounded. But at the same time the
masses' confidence in the provisional Government was fatally
undermined.

At this stage the political consciousness of the soldiers and

workers in Petrograd was considerably more advanced than in
the rest of Russia, a bit too far ahead even. Lenin and Trotsky
were acutely aware of this and were seeking to develop the
strength of the radical tendencies among the workers, soldiers
and sailors, while calling for "All Power to the Soviets," within
which this radicalisation would be expressed.

On June 21st a strike had broken out amongst the skilled

workers at the giant Putilov factory. This arose from the
struggle for wages against a background of shortages and
inflation. Against the general political background, a small-
scale economic struggle was unlikely to succeed and the
leaders of Bolsheviks and the factory committees advised
restraint. But within a few days it was clear that there was a
generalised ferment across the city. The anger was directed
towards the government. As a report from the trade union of
the Locomotive Brigade explained to the Government, "For
the last time we announce: patience has its limit; we simply
cannot live in such conditions..."

Vyborg district

At the same time reports reached the capital of whole

regiments being disbanded for disobedience. There was
ferment among the soldiers in the capital. The regiments in
the Vyborg district were continually under the influence of the
working class, especially the women. As Lenin's wife
Krupskaya points out "The first to carry out Bolshevik
propaganda among the soldiers were the sellers of sunflower
seeds, kvas (a Russian soft drink), etc. many were soldier's
wives". Trotsky called this process being "continually washed
by the hot springs of the proletarian suburb."

The pressure among the soldiers was greater, their problems

more immediate and their understanding of the political
situation less developed. Also, as Trotsky explains in the
"History of the Russian Revolution", they tended to
overestimate the independent power of the rifle.

Meeting after meeting of the regiments called for final action

against the government, delegations came from the factories
urging the soldiers onto the streets and the Machine Gun
Regiment, who faced the threat of sending 500 machine gun
crews to the front, sent delegates to the other regiments calling
for them to rise against the continuation of the war.

Under these conditions the Bolshevik Central Committee were

more and more frequently forced to send delegates to the
workers and soldiers calling for restraint, for fear of a
premature rising which could be defeated at a huge cost.
Sections of the army and the workers began to develop new
informal structures, underneath the soviets, demonstrating
their impatience, but also representing a warning to the
Bolsheviks that there were limits to their political authority
even among the most advanced layers.
The Vyborg Bolsheviks complained that they had to "play the
role of a fire hose". Eventually the Bolsheviks couldn't hold
back the tide of anger and on July 3rd thousands of workers,
soldiers and sailors flooded into the streets, under arms,
sections of the workers with civilian cars bristling with
machine guns and rifles, courtesy of the soldiers.

By seven o'clock the industrial life of the capital was at a

complete standstill. Factory after factory came out, lined up
and armed its detachment of the Red Guard. "Amid an
innumerable mass of workers," relates the Vyborg worker,
Metelev, "hundreds of young Red Guards were working away
loading their rifles. Others were piling cartridges into the
cartridge-chambers, tightening up their belts, tying on their
knapsacks or cartridge boxes, adjusting their bayonets. And
the workers without arms were helping the Red Guards get
ready..." Sampsonevsky Prospect, the chief artery of the
Vyborg Side, was packed full of people. To the right and left of
it stood solid columns of workers. In the middle of the
Prospect marched the Machine Gun regiment, the spinal
column of the procession. At the head of each company went
an automobile truck with its Maxims. After the Machine Gun
regiment came the workers. Covering the manifestation as a
rear guard, came detachments of the Moscow regiment. Over
every detachment streamed a banner: "All Power to the
Soviets!"(Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, Vol.
2, Chapter 1)

The movement was spontaneous, driven by the conditions that

the soldiers and workers faced, but with no clear aims or
strategy. Taking the mood of the class into account, the
Bolshevik Central Committee, the Petrograd Committee of the
Party and the Bolshevik dominated Military Revolutionary
Committee of the Petrograd Soviet eventually agreed to take
part in the demonstration, to "give it an organised expression".
They aimed effectively to prevent the movement from being
smashed as it inevitably ebbed, given its lack of a clear focus.
At the same time it was necessary to take the lead in a
situation, shoulder to shoulder with the workers. To stand
aside would have destroyed the political authority of the
Bolsheviks among the most advanced layers.

Movement from Below

The demonstration thronged around the Tauride Palace,

where the Central Executive of the Soviet was based. Why?
The workers and troops were tired of the vacillation of the
leaders of the reformist parties, the Mensheviks and the Social
Revolutionaries. Like the movement in February that
overthrew the Tsar, the movement came from below, arising
out of the impasse that Provisional Government and the
reformist leaders had arrived at. The reformist leaders were
aghast, and yet the Bolsheviks did their best to restrain the
masses. As one incident reveals graphically.

In front of the palace, a suspicious-booking group of men who

had kept aloof from the crowd seized the minister of
agriculture, Chernov, and put him in an automobile. The
crowd watched indifferently; at any rate, their sympathy was
not with him. The news of Chernov's seizure and of the danger
that threatened him reached the palace. The Populists (SRS)
decided to use machine-gun armoured cars to rescue their
leader. The decline of their popularity was making them
nervous; they wanted to show a firm hand. I decided to try to
go with Chernov in the automobile away from the crowd, in
order that I might release him afterward. But a Bolshevik,
Raskolnikov, a lieutenant in the Baltic navy, who had brought
the Kronstadt sailors to the demonstration, excitedly insisted
on releasing Chernov at once, to prevent people from saying
that he had been arrested by the Kronstadt men. I decided to
try to carry out Raskolnikov's wish. I will let him speak for
himself.

"It is difficult to say how long the turbulence of the masses

would have continued," the impulsive lieutenant says in his
memoirs, "but for the intervention of Comrade Trotsky. He
jumped on the front of the automobile, and with an energetic
wave of his hand, like a man who was tired of waiting, gave the
signal for silence. Instantly, everything calmed down, and
there was dead quiet. In a loud, clear and ringing voice, Lev
Davydovich made a short speech, ending with those in favour
of violence to Chernov raise their hands!' Nobody even opened
his mouth," continues Raskolnikov; "no one uttered a word of
protest. Citizen Chernov, you are free,' Trotsky said, as he
turned around solemnly to the minister of agriculture and with
a wave of his hand, invited him to leave the automobile.
Chernov was half-dead and half-alive. I helped him to get out
of the automobile, and with an exhausted, expressionless look
and a hesitating, unsteady walk, he went up the steps and
disappeared into the vestibule of the palace. Satisfied with his
victory, Lev Davydovich walked away with him."

"If one discounts the unnecessarily pathetic tone, the scene is

described correctly. It did not keep the hostile press from
asserting that I had Chernov seized to have him lynched.
Chernov shyly kept silent; how could a "People's" minister
confess his indebtedness not to his own popularity, but to the
intervention of a Bolshevik for the safety of his head?"
(Trotsky, My Life, Chapter 26.)

At 7pm a group of armed and angry Putilov workers burst in

on the terrified leaders of the soviet. A worker jumped on the
platform and shouted at the deputies:
"Comrades! How long must we workers put up with treachery?
You're all here debating and making deals with the bourgeoisie
and the landlords... You're busy betraying the working class.
Well, just understand that the working class won't put up with
it! There are 30,000 of us all told here from Putilov. We're
going to have our way. All power to the Soviets! We have a
firm grip on our rifles! Your Kerenskys and Tseretelis are not
going to fool us!" (from The Essential Trotsky)
Compelled to negotiate, the Soviet leaders bought time for
Kerensky to identify loyal troops. But as soon as the troops
appeared the reformist leaders dropped their democratic face.
The Bolsheviks were declared to be a "counter-revolutionary
Party" that had sought armed rebellion. The Cossacks and
police fired on demonstrators, killing hundreds and causing
panic to ensue.

The middle class reaction showed its face as the rebel units
were disarmed. Workers were beaten and murdered by
respectably dressed hooligans. Pravda, the Bolshevik paper,
was suppressed, the presses wrecked and the rebel units were
marched up the line as canon fodder.

The events of the first week of July revealed the weakness of

the reformist leaders in Petrograd, but it also indicated just
how far Petrograd was ahead of the provinces. The reformist
leaders still had a large support in the country as a whole,
exactly as the Bolshevik leaders had perceived. It also revealed
the differing mood among layers of the soldiers in Petrograd.
Many units had stood to one side of the movement, but
significantly none had come to the defence of Kerensky or the
reformist Soviet leaders.

Reaction

The reaction developed apace, the Cadet ministers walked out

of the Coalition government and the Bourgeois called on the
reformist ministers to break their links with the Soviet. The
right wing papers bayed for Bolshevik blood, promoted anti-
Semitic propaganda, and denounced Lenin as a German spy.
Even the Menshevik and SR leaders joined in, calling for Lenin
to give himself up. Even though they knew very well that the
accusations against him were false.

Lenin went into hiding after having been persuaded by the

other Bolshevik leaders not to give himself up, which would
have been suicide. Even then he agreed that he would give
himself up if the order was signed by the Central Executive of
the Soviets. Needless to say that was a step too far even for the
reformists.

The pendulum hadn't swung far enough to the right for the
bourgeoisie. At a meeting of the provisional committee of the
Duma the reaction ran wild; Maslenikov called for an end to
Dual Power, to the role of the soviets and even: "if a thousand,
two thousand, perhaps five thousand scoundrels at the front
and several dozen in the rear had been done away with, we
would not have suffered such an unprecedented disgrace".
(Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks Come to Power: The
Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd).

In attempting to restore order, the reaction called insistently

for the restoration of the death penalty. They did this to
restore order in society, but fundamentally to restore order
within the armed forces, those "armed bodies of men" on
which the government and the whole state apparatus
ultimately rested. Only on this basis could the reaction destroy
the dual power and settle affairs with the working class.

Every step that the movement took backwards was mirrored

by a step forward on behalf of the reaction. As the reaction
grew more vocal the workers in Petrograd felt more isolated
and weak.

Lenin's perspective
With arrest warrants out for Lenin, Kamenev and Zinoviev
and the movement thrown back Lenin initially considered that
the reaction had triumphed all along the line. He even
considered at one stage that the Bolsheviks should go
underground "for a long time". Trotsky, who was in the
process of trying to bring his organisation, the Mezhrayontsi
(Inter District Organisation) into the Bolsheviks, made a very
public written display of solidarity with the Bolsheviks and
was promptly arrested.

Several weeks passed before the situation changed. Lenin felt

that the opportunity for a peaceful transformation of society
had passed and that the Bolsheviks needed to prepare for the
likelihood of civil war. He considered for a while that the
Soviets had lost their value as organs of struggle, since the
leadership had passed over to the counter-revolution. He even
argued for the demand of "All power to the Soviets" should be
dropped in favour of the slogan "All power to the factory
committees," and that the party should prepare for
insurrection on this basis.

Even in this situation Lenin was looking forward and

preparing an insurrection, based on the understanding that
there was no basis for the reaction to consolidate power in the
conditions that existed. But the reaction after the July days
had dramatically affected the balance of forces within the
working class. The reformist leaders sat very uneasily on top of
the soviets while at the same time actively supporting the
counter-revolution and preparing the conditions for civil war.

The Bolsheviks began to recover. The counter-revolution

proved much weaker than Lenin had originally thought.
Kerensky's policies were just as unpopular and particularly at
the front, where the soldiers just wanted to come home. The
attempt to reintroduce the tsarist discipline into the army
rebounded on the officers, who had been forced to keep quiet
for months after February.
The Menshevik and SR leaders began to lose their hold on
sections of the workers and the left tendencies, the Menshevik
Internationalists, the Mezhrayontsi and the Bolsheviks, began
to make up ground in the Soviets. After all, where else could
the workers go other than their own mass organisations?

As the Bolsheviks regrouped it became clear that the

repression hadn't destroyed the party. On the contrary it
began to grow once more. At the Sixth Congress Trotsky
brought the Mezhrayontsi into the Bolsheviks and was elected
with Lenin's full support onto the Central Committee. Times
were still hard, premises and records had been destroyed
resulting in a temporary disorganisation. It wasn't till early
August that Pravda restarted publication.

Lenin tried to prepare the Central Committee for the new

political conditions that he felt existed and the need to prepare
for an armed uprising. Out of the 15 present 10 voted against
his prognosis. Alarmed by the CC's prevarication he argued
the next day "The people must know the truth - they must
know who actually wields state power"..."power is in the hands
of a military clique of Cavaignacs (Kerensky, certain generals,
officers, etc), who are supported by the bourgeois class headed
by the Cadet party, and by all the monarchists, acting through
the Black Hundred papers".

Kornilov

Cavaignac, the French War Minister in the provisional

government after the February revolution of 1848 had led the
bloody suppression of the Paris workers in June. As Lenin had
prophesied, the counter-revolution now sought its own
solution, through the person of General Kornilov.

Kornilov, who was noted as having the heart of a lion but the
brain of a sheep, reflected the extent to which the pendulum
had swung to the right. Insisting on the death penalty and the
shooting of deserters, he also dictated to Kerensky a ban on
meetings at the front. This, together with disbanding
revolutionary units, and an end to the power of soldiers
committees was a recipe for once again restoring bourgeois
"order" at the front. Taken with the death penalty for civilians,
martial law and the banning of strikes on pain of death, it was
the programme of counter-revolution.
Although Kerensky was happy with this, he was also conscious
of his own position and was wary of Kornilov's longer term
plans. The Cadets, sections of the officers and the bourgeois
were actively preparing a coup d'etat that would finish off the
Provisional Government.

Kornilov's attitude became ambiguous towards Kerensky, then

provocative, and on the 24th August he formally declared war
on the Provisional Government. Ordering his troops to march
on Petrograd he boasted about how he would deal with the
revolution. Kerensky and the Mensheviks realised they
couldn't defeat the reaction without the Bolsheviks, in the
same way that in the July days they couldn't defeat the
Bolsheviks without the Generals.

The government issued guns to the Red Guards and eventually

even approached the Kronstadt sailors. These sent a
delegation to visit Trotsky in his cell to ask his advice. Should
they support Kerensky against Kornilov, or fight both? Trotsky
advised them to postpone their reckoning with Kerensky. At
the same time Lenin was arguing that the Bolsheviks should
use Kerensky as a "gun rest" against Kornilov.

United Front

This was a united front, a movement where different political

tendencies could march separately but strike together against
a common enemy. The Bolsheviks offered the Menshevik and
SR workers a united front. They maintained an independent
position, against Kornilov, but gave no support to the
Provisional Government. In the process they revealed the
weakness of the leaders of the reformists and of the
government. But also, side by side with the Menshevik and SR
workers they demonstrated that only the Bolsheviks could
effectively fight the counter-revolution.

The Bolsheviks mobilised the workers against Kornilov using

revolutionary methods. The reaction soon ground to a halt.
The railway workers sabotaged the trains, the troops were
engaged by agitators and even the "Savage Division", the
General's shock troops made up of warlike tribesmen were
addressed in their own language by Caucasian Muslims. The
rebel officers were isolated and defeated, the Kornilov
rebellion collapsed under the pressure of the revolution. Many
officers were arrested by their own men and the most
unpopular shot.

July and August demonstrate that revolution is a complex

thing, the interplay of living forces, of men and women. It
illustrated the combativity of the working class and the
soldiers, but it also demonstrated the necessity of
revolutionary strategy and tactics, above all the role of the
Bolshevik party. Without the Party the July days could have
been even more of a serious defeat. The reaction could have
gained more ground. In reality the events after the July days
illustrated the weakness of the reaction and the role of the
reformists.

The Kornilov revolt gave a mighty impetus to the revolution

and clarified the political situation in the minds of many of the
workers. The struggle for the decisive majority of the working
class in preparation for the taking of state power now took
centre stage.