The Russian Revolution and the SPGB

[Anonymous]

<p dir=”ltr”>If the SPGB were to have had solidarity with any of the groups which arose during the Russian Revolution, it would have been the <i>Mensheviks</i>.</p>
<p dir=”ltr”>The <i>Russian Social Democratic Labour Party</i> had split, before the Bolshevik coup, into <i>bolshevik</i> (majority), and <i>menshevik</i><i> </i>(minority).</p>
<p dir=”ltr”>The <i>Bolsheviks</i> followed Lenin and Trotsky. Their belief, amid the turmoil following the Tsar’s abdication (the Revolution had been underway since  March 1917), was that the working class was (correct at the time in Russia!) too weak to make a socialist revolution. This was true, and the <i>Mensheviks</i> agreed. The two factions disagreed over the following:-</p>
<p dir=”ltr”>The <i>Mensheviks</i> said that capitalism must be developed in Russia and industry and technology built up to the level of western Europe. Then, and only then, would the working class grow and achieve the strength in numbers and the awareness to carry out a socialist revolution. Socialism must be global and achieved by the workers themselves!
In the meantime, they said, it is important for all to have freedom of press and assembly, and an open parliament, so that the free circulation of ideas can accompany social development. Capitalism, said the<i>Mensheviks</i>, cannot be jumped over, but has to be gone through. Parliamentary democracy is therefore the best option.</p>
<p dir=”ltr”>Among the <i>Mensheviks</i> were the writer Maxim Gorky, and the political essayist Julius Martov. The<i>Anarchists</i>, such as Emma Goldman, opposed parliamentarism, but sided with the <i>Mensheviks</i> in opposing dictatorship. In Britain, the SPGB was still unaware of what was actually happening in Russia, so complete was the Allied war blackout.</p>
<p dir=”ltr”>The <i>Bolsheviks</i> didn’t want to wait. They said (like the Leninist parties today) that the workers will never become aware of the need for socialism, and must therefore <i>be led</i> to it by a vanguard of intellectuals (meaning the <i>Bolsheviks</i> themselves!)</p>
<p dir=”ltr”>So, in November 1917 (October by the old Orthodox calendar), Lenin, Trotsky, and a band of <i>Bolsheviks</i>plotted and carried out a minority coup d’etat against the parliamentary government of Alexander Kerensky, and got workers to support them with the slogans “bread!” and “stop the war!” In the countryside,<i>Bolsheviks </i>put forward the slogan “bread and land!” as well as “stop the war!”</p>
<p dir=”ltr”>The <i>Bolsheviks'</i> campaign to stop the war reached the west, and in 1915 they had attempted to have their anti-war declaration published. Every western newspaper refused, except <i>The Socialist Standard</i> of the SPGB, which published the Russian <i>Bolshevik</i>declaration on its front page, proclaiming solidarity with all workers wanting the war stopped.</p>
<p dir=”ltr”>Lenin and Trotsky, after seizing power in November 1917, kept their promise to stop the war, winning massive support. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed with Germany, taking Russia out of the war.</p>
<p dir=”ltr”>Almost immediately, the western Allies blockaded Moscow and shut out all information concerning Russian events.
British and US armies were dispatched to Russia’s north-west; in the south and east, Tsarist armies terrorised the countryside, while in Moscow and Petrograd (St. Petersburg) Lenin and Trotsky gave in to hysteria similar to that of the revolutionaries in Paris in 1793.</p>
<p dir=”ltr”>In the Ukraine, Makhno’s <i>Anarchist</i> cossacks defeated the Tsarist army there and made an alliance with Lenin and Trotsky, which the <i>Bolsheviks</i> reneged on later.</p>
<p dir=”ltr”>Responding to the conditions of the military blockade, the <i>Bolsheviks</i> cracked down with their own terror, abolishing freedom of the press and arresting and executing political dissidents.
In the naval port of Kronstadt, the sailors mutinied, demanding the socialism the <i>Bolsheviks</i> had promised, and bread for the workers at least. Trotsky sent raw young frightened Red Army recruits against the sailors and many were killed. Finally the Red Army overran Kronstadt and those sailors who were not killed escaped to Finland.</p>
<p dir=”ltr”>Fleeing for their lives, many <i>Mensheviks</i> escaped to Georgia and held out briefly there against the<i>Bolshevik </i>government forces.
Trotsky then turned his attention to destroying the Ukrainian <i>Anarchists</i> as Lenin’s government became more secure.</p>
<p dir=”ltr”>Having seized control of the Russian state, Lenin found himself faced with the enormous task of having to achieve the transformation of a vast peasant economy in ruins into a capitalist nation-state. Just as the <i>Mensheviks</i> had told him, Russia wasn’t ready for socialism and must build a capitalist economy first. Now he was faced with the task, having closed parliament, outlawed all parties besides his own and established a dictatorship based on tyranny <i>over</i> the working class.</p>
<p dir=”ltr”>He thus elaborated an ideology which would permit the ruthless development of capitalism under a one-party state and still keep a “Marxist” <i>vocabulary!</i></p>
<p dir=”ltr”>He renamed the Bolshevik RSDLP the <i>Communist Party of the Soviet Union,</i> redefined <i>socialism</i> as state-capitalism, and said that this “socialism” must be an immensely long “transition period” before <i>communism</i>(real socialism) can become a reality. … A transition period which, naturally, would be ruled over by the CPSU!</p>
<p dir=”ltr”>By 1918, it was obvious to the SPGB that what had occurred in Russia was not a socialist revolution, but a coup d’etat by a group of opportunists, paving the way for a semi-feudal economy to be transformed into a modern capitalist state – a process finally completed by the Soviet tyranny, enabling Russia to finally do away with its pseudo-marxist terminology and emerge openly as a capitalist power.</p>

[Anonymous]

Sorry about the abbreviations!

[Anonymous]

Despite all the evidences provided thru  so many years, there are still many groups and personalities who believe that the Soviet revolt was a revolution instead of a coup, and that a minority of peoples and a leader  can establish a new society. Whoever departs from the experiences of the Soviet Union will always end in wrong conclusions. I have read all the works of Lenin and there are only about five of his work with some value and they are a complete distortion of socialism and Marx basic ideas. I already did my homework

[Anonymous]

It’s really for the non-party members here.

[Anonymous]

I know, I am just  making a commentary

[Dave B]

Lenin and the Bolsheviks in 1905 also

 

“said that capitalism must be developed in Russia and industry and technology built up to the level of western Europe. Then, and only then, would the working class grow and achieve the strength in numbers and the awareness to carry out a socialist revolution.”

 

etc

 

1. I. LENIN TWO TACTICS OF SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY IN THE DEMOCRATIC
   REVOLUTION

 

 

 

page 43

 

 

But it is entirely absurd to think that a bourgeois revolution does not express the interests of the proletariat at all. This absurd idea boils down either to the hoary Narodnik theory that a bourgeois revolution runs counter to the interests of the proletariat, and that therefore we do not need bourgeois political liberty; or to anarchism, which rejects all participation of the proletariat in bourgeois politics, in a bourgeois revolution and in bourgeois parliamentarism. From the standpoint of theory, this idea disregards the elementary propositions of Marxism concerning the inevitability of capitalist development where commodity production exists. Marxism teaches that a society which is based on commodity production, and which has commercial intercourse with civilized capitalist nations, at a certain stage of its development, itself, inevitably takes the road of capitalism. Marxism has irrevocably broken with the ravings of the Narodniks and the anarchists to the effect that Russia, for instance, can avoid capitalist development, jump out of capitalism, or skip over it and proceed along some path other than the path of the class struggle on the basis and within the framework of this same capitalism.

page 44

All these principles of Marxism have been proved and explained over and over again in minute detail in general and with regard to Russia in particular. And from these principles it follows that the idea of seeking salvation for the working class in anything save the further development of capitalism is reactionary. In countries like Russia, the working class suffers not so much from capitalism as from the insufficient development of capitalism. The working class is therefore decidedly interested in the broadest, freest and most rapid development of capitalism. The removal of all the remnants of the old order which are hampering the broad, free and rapid development of capitalism is of decided advantage to the working class. The bourgeois revolution is precisely a revolution that most resolutely sweeps away the survivals of the past, the remnants of serfdom (which include not only autocracy but monarchy as well) and most fully guarantees the broadest, freest and most rapid development of capitalism.

That is why a bourgeois revolution is in the highest degree advantageous to the proletariat. A bourgeois revolution is absolutely necessary in the interests of the proletariat. The more complete and determined, the more consistent the bourgeois revolution, the more assured will be the proletarian struggle against the bourgeoisie for Socialism. Only those who are ignorant of the rudiments of scientific Socialism can regard this conclusion as new or strange, paradoxical

 

 

http://marx2mao.phpwebhosting.com/Lenin/TT05.html

 

he repeated it in 1914;

 

Left-Wing Narodism and Marxism

Published: Trudovaya Pravda No. 19, June 19, 1914.

 

 

The economic development of Russia, as of the whole world, proceeds from feudalism to capitalism, and through large-scale, machine, capitalist production to socialism.

Pipe-dreaming about a “different” way to socialism other than that which leads, through the further development of capitalism, through large-scale, machine, capitalist production, is, in Russia, characteristic either of the liberal gentlemen, or of the backward, petty proprietors (the petty bourgeoisie). These dreams, which still clog the brains of the Left Narodniks, merely reflect the backwardness (reactionary nature) and feebleness of the petty bourgeoisie.

Class-conscious workers all over the world, Russia included, are becoming more and more convinced of the correctness of Marxism, for life itself is proving to them that only large-scale, machine production rouses the workers, enlightens and organises them, and creates the objective conditions for a mass movement.

 

When Put Pravdy reaffirmed the well-known Marxist axiom that capitalism is progressive as compared with feudalism,[1] and that the idea of checking the development of capitalism is a utopia, most absurd, reactionary, and harmful to the working people, Mr. N. Rakitnikov, the Left Narodnik (in Smelaya Mysl No. 7), accused Put Pravdy of having undertaken the “not very honourable task of putting a gloss upon the capitalist noose”.

Anyone interested in Marxism and in the experience of the international working-class movement would do well to pander over this! One rarely meets with such amazing ignorance of Marxism as that displayed by Mr. N. Rakitnikov and the Left Narodniks, except perhaps among bourgeois economists.

Can it be that Mr. Rakitnikov has not read Capital, or The Poverty of Philosophy, or The Communist Manifesto? If he has not, then it is pointless to talk about socialism. That will be a ridiculous waste of time.

If he has read them, then he ought to know that the fundamental idea running through all Marx’s works, an idea which since Marx has been confirmed in all countries, is that capitalism is progressive as compared with feudalism. It is in this sense that Marx and all Marxists “put a gloss” (to use Rakitnikov’s clumsy and stupid expression) “upon the capitalist noose”!

Only anarchists or petty-bourgeois, who do not under stand the conditions of historical development, can say: a feudal noose or a capitalist one—it makes no difference, for both are nooses! That means confining oneself to condemnation, and failing to understand the objective course of economic development.

Condemnation means our subjective dissatisfaction. The objective course of feudalism’s evolution into capitalism enables millions of working people—thanks to the growth of cities, railways, large factories and the migration of workers—to escape from a condition of feudal torpor. Capitalism itself rouses and organises them.

Both feudalism and capitalism oppress the workers and strive to keep them in ignorance. But feudalism can keep, and for centuries has kept, millions of peasants in a down trodden state (for example, in Russia from the ninth to the nineteenth century,

 

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/jun/19.htm

 

the Bolsheviks supported the convocation of the constituent assembly throughout 1917 up until they seized power.

 

Lenin even dismissed the soviets in the middle of 1917 when they had no control over them;

 

 

1. I. LENIN THE STATE AND REVOLUTION [1917]

 

 

page 55

 

….This is so true that even in the Russian republic, a bourgeois-democratic republic, all these sins of parliamentarism were immediately revealed, even before it managed to set up a real parliament. The heroes of rotten philistinism, such as the Skobelevs and Tseretelis, the Chernovs and Avksentyevs, have even succeeded in polluting the Soviets after the fashion of most disgusting bourgeois parliamentarism and to convert them into mere talking shops….

 

http://marx2mao.phpwebhosting.com/Lenin/SR17.html

 

There were actually sort of two coups.

 

Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks justified the first one by claiming that the current provisional revolutionary government was going to cancel or not convoke the elections and the constituent assembly etc

 

 

Eg from Trotsky with his long live the constituent assembly.

 

 

 

………. If the propertied elements were really preparing for the Constituent Assembly in a month and a half, they would have no grounds for defending the non-responsibility of the government now. The whole point is that the bourgeois classes have set themselves the goal of preventing the Constituent Assembly …’

 

 

There was an uproar. Shouts from the right: ‘Lies!’

 

……….. The propertied classes, who provoked the uprising, are now moving to crush it and are openly steering a course for the bony hand of hunger, which is expected to strangle the revolution and the Constituent Assembly first of all.

 

 

http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1989/trotsky1/15-towards.html

 

 

and from Trotsy’s history and the immediate aftermath of the first coup;

 

 

 

…..The answer was, “Postponement is unfavorable just now. It will be looked upon as a liquidation of the Constituent Assembly the more so because we ourselves reproached the Provisional Government with putting off the Constituent Assembly.”….

 

 

The second coup was when they dissolved the constituent assembly using armed force a a few months later; in January 1918, which was planned.

 

…..“It is an open mistake,” he said. “We have already gained the power and now we have put ourselves in a situation that forces military measures upon us to gain the power anew.”….

 

https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1925/lenin/05.htm

 

Claiming that the constituent assembly was now a talking shop as he said the soviets were 6 months earlier; when they had no control over them.

[alanjjohnstone]

The 1905 soviets arose spontaneously and independently of the political parties. The situation was quite different in 1917.

Lenin never ever advocated power to the soviets. His lesson of 1905 was that the soviets were to be an appendage to the political parties (as they became)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1907/5thdraft/6.htm

“…if Social-Democratic activities among the proletarian masses are properly, effectively and widely organised, such institutions may actually become superfluous…that a most determined struggle must be waged against all disruptive and demagogic attempts to weaken the R.S.D.L.p. from within or to utilise it for the purpose of substituting non-party political, proletarian organisations for the Social-Democratic Party…that Social-Democratic Party organisations may, in case of necessity, participate in inter-party Soviets of Workers’ Delegates, Soviets of Workers’ Deputies, and in congresses of representatives of these organisations, and may organise such institutions, provided this is done on strict Party lines for the purpose of developing and strengthening the Social-Democratic Labour Party…”

Conditions in Russia weren’t ripe for a socialist revolution there. We all know people don’t like being told “we told you so”. But, the SPGB actually did and it was not from hindsight but by exercising Marx’s Material Conception of History. What’s the point of a theory if it is not put into practice?

Victor Serge argues that the Russian Revolution did indeed possess the seed of Stalinism within it, but he adds that it also contained many other more fruitful seeds but the SPGB said that the soil was barren and infertile for those to flourish. We were right.

[Anonymous]

Lenin considered that the Vanguard Party to Lead was a temporary measure only applicable to Russia, and he wasn’t going  to republish it but when he died the soviet leaders used it to control the workers. Marxism-Leninism was a creation of Joseph Stalin,and I don’t think Lenin would have created that Hybrid, and he wanted to be buried next to his mother. Stalin  was not an amateur Soviets as the Trotskyists are always saying, he was an old bolshevik who started with them at a very early age Isaac Deutscher  wrote in the Prophet Outcast that Trotsky provided the road for Stalin  ascendance  to power because he lost popularity within  the workers, and he was a despot when he was in charge of the Red army. There was nothing fruitful within Leninism or the Russian revolution, it was a bad seed since its very beginning. Lenin was not as the Marxist humanist argued that he was a different Lenin after 1914, he was the same Lenin as during 1903

[Author]

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