The Russian Revolution (2026)

Book Review from the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blood on the Snow: The Russian Revolution 1914-1924. By Robert Service ISBN 9781529065855

Continuing his popular histories of the 1917 Russian Revolution, Robert Service seeks to look more broadly at events, rather than through personalities and political decisions alone. Rather, he seeks to ‘explore […] how ‘ordinary’ people coped – or failed to cope – with the shattering dislocation of Russian and global affairs’ during the revolutionary period.

He utilises the diaries of the likes of Alexei Shtukaturov, a worker who was conscripted into the Imperial Army, and Alexander Zamaraev, a peasant, too old to be conscripted. Embedded within the stories of events, their own words reveal frustrations and aspirations. In part, this helps unveil the political sophistication of those often dismissed as ignorant peasants (as Service notes, ‘peasant’ was a legal, rather than an economic category). Nonetheless, the frustrations of the peasants form a significant backdrop to the events of the revolution.

Zamaraev lived in Totma district, Vologda, where 92 percent of agricultural land belonged to the state, church, and Imperial family. His diaries reveal concern over conscription, support for the Tsar and for the war, and over access to food as the war continued.

Service effectively brings home the conditions under Tsarism during the war, and helps show how common people were far from passive objects during these great events. At this time, one-third of European Russia was placed under martial law, and 13 million men went through the army (Service notes its harsh discipline.) Many others also laboured in the civilian economy. This fact, and the way that previously toothless local government bodies took on increasing responsibility for welfare provision, such as food and medicine, in a co-ordinated fashion (later to be joined by industrial committees) prefigured the kind of state that was to come out of the war.

Service is critical of Tsar Nicholas, especially his war aim of trying to gain Istanbul (or Tsargrad, as they referred to it) for the Russian empire. Service also notes the racist suppression of Jews and Poles within the Empire, the Tsar’s failure to grapple with its massive structural problems, and the way he vigorously resisted the changes needed to fight a modern mechanised war.

He notes that the Bolsheviks did not expect or want the specific revolution that they found themselves involved in, but that the line of party discipline and a one-party state were part of their core ideas from the very beginning: ‘They opted for force over persuasion; for central authority over democratic accountability’. They had no more legitimacy than the provisional government of Kerensky, but they were more prepared to use force to get their way.

The book draws out the role of the peasants, economically, politically and legally, and the way their frustrations formed a significant part of the backdrop to the drama against which the political leaders played their parts. In his assessments, though, Service does not look at whether there was any alternative path available which could have led to a different outcome.

Pik Smeet

1905: the first Russian Revolution (2005)

From the December 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

One hundred years ago this year there happened a series of events in Russia, culminating in a general uprising in December, that Trotsky called ‘the dress rehearsal for the revolution of 1917′ and which in terms of bloodshed were far more violent than the actual events in St. Petersburg twelve years later.

Russia at the time was a predominantly agrarian country. 80 per cent of its inhabitants were peasants, eking out a very meagre existence from the soil. They had been emancipated from being serfs in 1861 by a decree of Tsar Alexander III but peasant understanding of personal ownership in land remained very rudimentary. After the 1861 emancipation act there arose a widespread and deeply held belief among the peasants that at some time in the future a redistribution of land was going to happen. This belief made them a very volatile and potentially revolutionary class, although they had no political aims and could see no further than land.

Whereas in Britain and most of Europe at the time, a strong nobility had limited the power of the monarch, allowing a rising capitalist class to develop. In Russia, Tsar Nicholas had absolute power. He ruled under a system called patrimonialism, in which everything belonged to the Tsar. He was absolute monarch and nothing could change without his consent. There was no parliament or constitution. Government officials were directly responsible to him, and he believed firmly in upholding this system, much as Charles I of England believed firmly in the divine right of Kings. This meant in practice that the growth of capitalist industry in Russia was limited and largely reliant on foreign capital. Consequently the indigenous capitalist class was very weak.

As a result of this weakness the path to a political and legal set-up in which capitalist development could flourish was undertaken by the ‘intelligentsia’, a concept peculiar to Russia. Comprised largely of university students, lawyers, and artists (i.e. writers) it was more or less open to anyone who was against the patrimonial set-up. And because Tsar Nicholas was extremely rigid in his outlook and frightened of any change that could limit his power, democratic protest from the 1870s onwards was not an option. Protest became channelled into the form of violence, with assassinations of government officials taking a prominent part.  A movement, openly committed to assassination, called the People’s Will came into being, attracting the support of much of the intelligentsia, including, for a time, Lenin. Some thousands of government officials were killed; assassination became a way of life.

The response from the government, backed by the Tsar, was repression, to clamp down ever more tightly. The use of whips by the police to quell student strikes did not endear the government to those who wanted change. At the close of the 19th century with the setting-up of the Okhrana, Russia became the first police state in history. It was riddled with secret police infiltrating agents into most of the anti-Tsar organisations. Various political parties had developed by this time, with varying aims, ranging from the establishment of a parliament and a constitution to establishing socialism.

The exact nature of what they meant by socialism was never really stated, but probably boiled down to some kind of nationalisation, with tight government control. Around this time many of Marx’s early writings had arrived in Russia and Marx was very popular, but not much understood. Funnily enough Capital was allowed by the censor who thought it was so dreary no one would read it, but mostly Marx’s writings were smuggled in.

By 1905 there were three major political parties loosely representing different class interests. They were the Democratic Constitutional Party (Kadets) (bourgeois), Social Democratic Labour Party (working class or proletariat in the language of the day), and Socialist Revolutionaries (roughly, peasants and workers).

Tactics varied from assassination,advocating strike action, to ‘leading the workers to the dictatorship of the proletariat’ but all were agreed on the necessity to remove the Tsar. From the 1890s onwards things were growing tense. Conditions of work in the factories and railways were abysmal, with very low wages, working hours of twelve to fourteen hours a day and appalling living conditions, much like they had been a few years earlier in Britain’s industrial revolution. There were many very large factories in Russia employing up to six thousand workers, attracting thousands of unskilled peasants. They were mainly housed in rapidly built barracks crammed in four or five to one room, quite a few of those employing a night shift saving on bed linen by having the night and day shifts use the same bed.

As usual, as a result of hasty building to accommodate large numbers of workers sanitary conditions were practically non-existent with open sewers in St Petersburg and Moscow and the consequent health risk, the usual concomitants of capitalism in its early stages.

In 1903 the Social Democratic Labour Party held a conference in London to draw up fresh rules (largely to contain the split in their ranks between those following Lenin and those supporting Martov). Lenin was insistent on the need for a tightly integrated, disciplined party of  professional revolutionaries. Martov was infavour of a more open, less disciplined party with much easier access to membership. The conference lead to a decisive split, roughly down the middle but with a slight edge to Lenin. From that time on these two sections were known by the name of Bolsheviks (majority) and Mensheviks (minority), leading to open conflict between these groups, played out fifteen years later at the time of the deposition of the Tsar and the Bolshevik rise to power.

So, at the turn of the century there existed a highly critical situation. An all powerful and inflexible, but nevertheless weak, Tsar, a poorly organised and ill-developed native capitalist class, a peasantry in rebellious mood but non-politicised, and a small as yet unorganised working class, not political, whose aims were confined to improving working conditions. On the fringe a party of professional revolutionaries whose aim was to lead the proletariat as their ‘vanguard’, but as yet had minimal influence. Something had to give! In 1905 it did.

In 1904 Russia went to war against Japan, in a war that was partly territorial, and partly, as most Western historians seem agreed, a bid by the Russian government to distract attention from current difficulties and unite the population in a patriotic fervour with a resounding victory. Unfortunately for the Tsar it didn’t work, as there was an even more resounding defeat. The general public lack of support for the Tsar fell even lower. More large-scale strikes ensued, and then, in 1905, there happened an event only too common in the struggles of the working class to gain justice.

Trade unions had been disallowed up till then in Russia but the government had been experimenting with police-led unions in an attempt to take the heat out of workers discontent. One of these was a union led by a priest, Father Gapon. Father Gapon thought it a worthy idea to lead a march in St. Petersburg to appeal to the Tsar, following the commonly-held belief in countries with a very powerful head that their father figure is unaware of the sufferings of the population and will intervene to put them right if only they can bring their problems to his attention. On Sunday 22 January some 150,000 people gathered in St Petersburg and marched on the Winter Palace where it was believed the Tsar was in residence. It was a peaceful protest, many were carrying icons, none were carrying weapons; they believed the Tsar would listen. They were met by troops who opened fire. The death toll was estimated at 200 killed and 800 wounded, reminiscent of many other panic reactions by governing bodies to peaceful working class demonstrations, Peterloo, Tiananmen Square among them. Support for the Tsar fell even further from then on.

Bloody Sunday, as it was thereafter called, opened the floodgates and the country was in turmoil. Strikes, demonstrations, outbreaks of violence were the order of the day. Eventually it was reluctantly agreed to inaugurate a constituent assembly called the ‘Duma’. This was set up and delegates were voted in, many of them peasants, but it never had any real power. In the mind of the Tsar it was only a sop which he intended to revoke as soon as the opportunity presented itself. 

The conservative reaction to this concession was extreme. A party was set up, the Octoberist party, which encouraged mob violence against supporters of the Duma. Government-inspired pogroms against Jews resulted in thousands of deaths and much homelessness. A wave of strikes broke out, peasant violence against their landlords escalated, similar to the French peasant violence and destruction of chateaux in another bourgeois revolution. The country was approaching a civil war.The appointment of a new minister of the interior, Stolypin, brought some ease to the country. His reign of repression consisted of setting special courts, which would have no compunction about passing the death sentence. So many were hanged that the nickname ‘Stolypin’s neckties’ became popular. He was eventually assassinated – at the opera, in front of the Tsar.

On the positive side, Stolypin initiated land reforms that were meant to be progressive but are generally agreed as having no great effect. The country gradually settled down, though never completely, and from around 1908 to 1914 there was a mild boom, with an increase in capital development.

Was 1905 a revolution? Not really. It was more a revolt, by large sections of the population against savagely repressive conditions, and by the nascent capitalist class to establish the freedom to operate. But there was no proposal to change the basis of society and each element, the peasants, the bourgeoisie, the nobles were paddling their own canoe. There was only one way they could go: capitalism. At best it was a rebellion, but one that had a profound influence on a similar uprising twelve years later which did change the basis of Russian society by completely uprooting Tsarism.

There are many lessons to be learned from this one episode in a period of violent change. One is that any worthwhile progress in human society must come, and can only come, from the working class. Relying on our rulers to initiate worthwhile change is as useless as the Russian peasants’ reliance on the Tsar. But above  all is the fact that no force can cut short the natural development of society until it is ready for change.

Cyril Evans

Where Russia Stands. Our Attitude Supported by Latest Literature. (1921)

From the May 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

A large quantity of literature now exists in connection with the Russian question. While much of the information is contradictory, and a confused assortment of statements, still we can glean sufficient from it to enable us to make a fairly accurate survey of the general position, although details of certain matters, such as the method of taking the vote, are still lacking.

Conditions Favoured Bolshevists
From this literature we can see what the conditions were that enabled the Bolsheviks to obtain possession of power, and to retain their hold upon it up to the present time.

Before proceeding with our investigation it will be, perhaps, as well to point out that neither Socialism nor an approximation thereto exists in Russia yet. No less an authority than Lenin has made this clear. For example, in a pamphlet entitled The Chief Task of our Times, published by the Workers’ Socialist Federation, he points out: “Reality says that State Capitalism would be a step forward for us ; if we were able to bring about in Russia in a short time State Capitalism it would be a victory for us.”

Before information on this point had been received in this country, those people who suffer from an overheated imagination, and who put wishes in the place of knowledge, sedulously propagated the idea that Socialism had been established in Russia and that all we had to do was to copy the Bolsheviks. However, even these individuals are now compelled by the facts to admit that they were too hasty in coming to their conclusions.

An Unsound Foundation
As to the capture of political power by the Bolsheviks, Lenin, Trotzky, John Reed, and others supply us with convincing evidence that the Bolsheviks rode into power upon a wave of emotion, and used the customary bluff of the sensationalists to carry the mass of the people with them. In the first place the bulk of the Russian people had not the knowledge or experience to enable them to understand the meaning of a basic change in their conditions. The overwhelming mass of them were peasants, with the reactionary and conservative outlook of the peasant. Their ideas were bound up with the personal ownership of a small piece of land and freedom from the oppressive landowners and the rural pests, tax-gatherers, money-lenders, and the like.

Lenin’s Pessimism
At the All-Russian Congress of Peasants on the 27th November, 1917 Lenin made the following remarks during the land debate :

  If Socialism can only be realised when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least five hundred years (Ten Days that Shook the World, John Reed, p. 303.)

This statement suggests a lack of understanding of, or a wilful blindness to, one of the fundamental teachings of Marx:

The Marxian Corrective

 No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed ; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have been matured in the womb of the old society. Therefore, mankind always takes up only such problems as it can solve; since, looking, at the matter more closely, we will always find that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions necessary for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation.

Had the above principle been thoroughly grasped by those who write so glowingly of Bolshevism, and expect so much from it, they would have realised that the new society must grow out of the old, and could not be imposed upon it from without. The latter was the view and the practice of the Utopians of the past.

In view of the fact that the mass of the Russian people were intellectually backward, how was it that such a measure of success attended the efforts of the Bolsheviks ? The answer to this question is not far to seek.

John Reed’s Testimony
The Russian masses were heartily sick of the war. This war-weariness had been brought about not only by the ordinary conditions of war, but also on account of the action of a section of the Russian ruling class, who wished to come to an understanding with Germany. In their blind pursuit of this object they laid the foundations of their own ruin by disorganising the army, creating a shortage of food in the towns and villages, and so forth. Of this John Reed writes as follows :

  In considering the rise of the Bolsheviki it is necessary to understand that the Russian economic life and the Russian army were not disorganised on November 7th, 1917, but many months before, as the logical result of a process which began as far back as 1915. The corrupt reactionaries in control of the Tsar’s Court deliberately undertook to wreck Russia in order to make a separate peace with Germany. The lack of arms on the front, which had caused the great retreat of the summer of 1915, the lack of food in the army and in the great cities, the break-down of manufactures and transportation in 1916—all these we know now were part of a gigantic campaign of sabotage.—(Ten Days that Shook the World.)

Here was a fact of prime importance that played right into the hands of the Bolsheviks. Just as the National Assembly of France in 1851 voluntarily destroyed the root of its own power by handing over military control to Bonaparte, thus preparing the way for the Third Empire, so the Russian ruling class voluntarily impaired the efficiency of the very military machine that maintained them in power.

The Procession of Muddlers
Eventually the revolt against the war and war conditions broke out and Tsarism, left without a repressive weapon, collapsed. The parties that came into power after the fall of Tsarism, failed to understand the conditions that had given rise to the revolt. Each in turn made the prosecution of the war the first and all important objective. This policy brought about the downfall of one ministry after another.

There was only one party in Russia that promised immediate peace, and made that a central plank in its platform. This was the Bolshevik Party. The soldiers, the workers, and the peasants wanted in the first instance peace. Consequently, as time went on, they turned more and more toward the Bolsheviks— the party that held out the promise of an end to war troubles.

In the meantime an event occurred which still further favoured the Bolshevik movement, justifying the charges of its adherents against the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries—who were in power at the time—and compelling the latter to place arms in the hands of Bolshevik supporters. This event was the Kornilov affair, an adventurous attempt to conquer power by a late Tsarist general.

After Kornilov
The following reference to this event appeared in the Socialist (26.8.20) under the heading “The Bolsheviks After the Revolution ” :

  Trotsky, Lunacharsky, Kameniev, and others were arrested. They were tried by magistrates of the old order, and the trial resulted in setting the prisoners at liberty. During this time occurred the march of the Caucasus Division on Petrograd, headed by Korniloff. The Revolution was in danger. The Bolsheviks, the causes of all evil, had to be appealed to. The prisons were opened, the Kronstadt sailors called upon, and the Bolshevik workmen armed.
  Public opinion came with tremendous rapidity to favour the audacious Bolsheviks, who now seemed to be the only Socialists capable of realising popular aspirations, as expressed in the slogan—”Peace, Bread and Land”.

The Bolsheviks took full advantage of all the circumstances favouring their coup. They promised the war-weary soldiers peace ; they promised the starving town workers bread ; and they promised the land-hungry peasants land. By such means they gathered together sufficient support to carry them to power—the disorganised and badly equipped army proving useless, as a weapon of defence, to the falling coalition Government.

Bolshevik Good Faith
To the credit of the Bolsheviks be it said, they were the only party in Russia that endeavoured to keep the promises made during the struggle for power. Their first work immediately they had captured the political machinery was—the declaration of an immediate armistice by all the belligerents for the purpose of arranging peace terms ; the promulgation of the Land Decrees ; and the endeavour to obtain food for the starving population of the towns. For the latter purpose thirteen trains loaded with bolts of cloth and bars of iron were sent eastward to barter with the Siberian peasants for grain and potatoes.

These acts justified for the time the trust of their supporters, and increased the antagonism toward the supporters of the previous governments, besides providing the Bolsheviks with good propaganda arguments for the future. The point not to be lost sight of is that the supremacy of the Bolsheviks depends upon their power to satisfy the demands of the Russian people for means of subsistence. Unfortunately for the Bolsheviks, the bulk of the people are peasants who do not understand the meaning of co-operation for the purpose of satisfying social wants. We will return to this point later on.

The Military Pickle
The position in the army immediately preceding the Bolshevik rising is summed up by Trotsky as follows :

  At the front, the situation grew worse day by day. Chilly Autumn, with its rains and winds, was drawing nigh. And there was looming up a fourth winter campaign. Supplies deteriorated every day. In the rear —the front had been forgotten —no reliefs, no new contingents, no warm winter clothing, which was indispensable. Desertions grew in number. The old Army Committees, elected in the first period of the Revolution, remained in their places and supported Kerensky’s policy. Re-elections were forbidden. An abyss sprang up between the Committees and the soldier masses. Finally the soldiers began to regard the Committees with hatred. With increasing frequency delegates from the trenches were arriving in Petrograd, and at the sessions of the Petrograd Soviet put the question point blank: “What is to be done further? By whom and how will the war be ended ? Why is the Petrograd Soviet silent?”
“The Petrograd Soviet was not silent. It demanded the immediate transfer of all power into the hands of the Soviets in the capitals and in the provinces, the immediate transfer of the land to the peasants, the workingmen’s control of production, and immediate opening of peace negotiations.” — (Brest-Litovisk, pp. 32.33.)

The Soviet Not New

The Soviet, the method of organisation flourishing in Russia and utilised by the Bolsheviks, was not built up by the latter: They found this organisation already existing, obtained the majority of support in it in the industrial centres, and conditions then favoured their move for the conquest of political power, although their first venture in June 1917 had been unsuccessful.

Once in power the Bolsheviks found that the conditions that placed them there were stumbling blocks to future progress. Slogans and watchwords helped them no longer. They had to deal with a population in a backward state of development, a population mainly made up of peasants, whose outlook is essentially reactionary. The mass of this population was utterly devoid of all knowledge of social organisation, not having had the opportunity of learning the lessons social production taught to the populations of more advanced nations. Consequently the Bolsheviks could only proceed by methods of compromise, in spite of their previous denunciation of compromises when taken part in by the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries. That there may be no doubt about the fact that the Bolsheviks had to enter into numerous compromises we will quote some remarks Lenin made with reference to the German “Left,” who declared against compromises :

Lenin on Compromise

  It is to be wondered at that, holding such views, the Left do not decisively condemn Bolshevism ! Surely it is not possible that the German Left were unaware that the whole history of Bolshevism, both before and after the October Revolution, is full of instances of manoeuvring, temporising and compromising with others, the bourgeois parties included.—(Left Wing Communism, p. 52.)

In justification, however, Lenin claims that the Bolshevik compromises were revolutionary compromises. This has been the claim made on behalf of nearly every compromise throughout working-class history, including the well known Gotha compromise of the German parties in 1875 that brought about the collapse of German Social Democracy at the outbreak of War in
1914.

Not Exact Veracity
In the early days of the struggle (October, 1917) the Bolsheviks placarded the walls of Petrograd, and sent pronouncements throughout the country, to the effect that the vast mass of the soldiers, the workers, and the peasants were supporting them. The emptiness of the catch-cry, so far as the peasants were concerned, was soon illustrated. At the All-Russian Congress of Peasants (November 23rd, 1917) summoned by the Bolsheviks, the latter were howled down. Zinoviev could not get a hearing, and Lenin was received with a tumult of opposition.

  Almost immediately it was evident that most of the delegates were hostile to the Government of People’s Commissars. Zinoviev, attempting to speak for the Bolsheviki, was hooted down, and as he left the platform, amid laughter, there were cries of “There’s how a a People’s Commissar sits in a. mudpuddle.—(John Reed, p. 297.)

So strong was the opposition that the Bolshevik delegates, who were only able to muster a bare fifth of the delegates present, were at one time on the point of withdrawing from the Congress. (A full report of this Congress is given by John Reed, p. 296 et seq.)

Eventually, in order to get the support of the peasants, the Bolsheviks were compelled to compromise with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries. A compact was made at a secret conference of the leaders of the two parties whilst the Congress was actually in session. This was the beginning of the many compromises of their programme the stern facts of the situation forced upon the Bolshevik Government—compromises essential to their retention of power, and signifying the throwing overboard of many of the principles they had previously laid down as of paramount importance in the struggle for Socialism.

 Gilmac.

To be Continued.

A Russian Challenge. (1915)

From the March 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

  We have received the following and publish it in order to show the trickery resorted to by the pseudo-Socialists responsible for the London Conference in endeavouring to exploit the Russian Socialists , whose challenge they dare not face.

A DECLARATION TO THE LONDON CONFERENCE

Comrades, – Your Conference calls itself a conference of the Socialist parties of the allied belligerent countries, Belgium, England, France and Russia.

Allow me first of all to draw your attention to the fact that the Social-Democracy of Russia, as an organised body, as represented by its Central Committee and affiliated to the International Socialist Bureau, has received no invitation from you. The Russian Social-Democracy, whose views have been expressed by the members of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Group in the Duma, now arrested by the Tsar’s Government (Petrovsky, Muranoff, Badaoff, Samoiloff representing the workers of Petrograd, Yokaterinoslaff, Kharkoff, Kastroma and Vladimir districts) have nothing in common with your conference. We hope that you will state so publicly, as otherwise you may be accused of distorting the truth.

Now allow me to say a few words with regard to your conference, i.e., to tell you what the class-conscious Social-Democratic workers of Russia would expect from you.

We believe that before entering upon any deliberations with regard to the reconstruction of the International, before attempting to restore international bonds between Socialist workers, it is our Socialist duty to demand:

1. That Vandervelde, Guesde and Sembat immediately leave the Belgian and French bourgeois ministries.
2. That the Belgian and French Socialist parties break up the so-called “bloc national” which is a disgrace to the Socialist flag and under cover of which the bourgeoisie celebrates its orgies of chauvinism.
3. That all Socialist parties cease their policies of ignoring the crimes of Russian Tsarism and renew their support of that struggle against Tsarism which is being carried on by the Russian workers in spite of all the sacrifices they have to make.
4. That in fulfilment of the resolutions of the Basle conference we hold out our hands to those revolutionary Social-Democrats of Germany and Austria who are prepared to carry on propaganda for revolutionary action as a reply to war. The voting for war credits must be condemned without any reserves.

The German and Austrian Social-Democrats have committed a monstrous crime against Socialism and the International by voting war credits and entering into domestic truce with the Junkers, the priests and the bourgeoisie, but the action of the Belgian and French Socialists has by no means been better. We fully understand the conditions are possible when Socialists as a minority have to submit to a bourgeois majority, but under no circumstances should Socialists cease to be Socialists or join in the chorus of bourgeois chauvinism, forsake the workers’ cause and enter bourgeois ministries.

The German and Austrian Social-Democrats are committing a great crime against Socialism when, after the example of the bourgeoisie they hypocritically assert that the Hohenzollerns and the Hapsburgs are carrying on the war of liberation “against Tsarism.”

But those are committing a crime no less stupendous who assert that Tsarism is becoming democratised and civilized, who are passing over in silence the fact that Tsarism is strangling and ruining unhappy Galicia just as the German Kaiser is strangling and ruining Belgium, who keep silent about the facts that the Tsar’s gang has thrown into gaol the parliamentary representatives of the Russian working class, and only the other day condemned to six years penal servitude a member of Moscow workers for the only offence of belonging to our party, that Tsarism is now oppressing Finland worse than ever, that our Labour press and organisations in Russia are suppressed, that all the milliards necessary for the war are being wrung by the Tsar’s clique out of the poor workers and starving peasants.

On behalf of the Central Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party,

London, February 14th, 1915.                  M. Maximovich.

Blogger's Note:

The Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, also known as the Bolshevik Party, later changed its name to Communist Party.

“M. Maximovich” who signed the statement was Maxim Maximovich Litvinov, Commissar for Foreign Affairs 1930-1939.

Women Workers in Japan. (1904)

From the November 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard

(From Le Socialiste. Translated by P. J. Tobin.)

It is quite a common thing to ask Socialists : "Are you for Russia or Japan?" To this question, as to many others which usually crop up when two cut-throat thieves attack each other under our modern social system, we have only one reply : "Above all, we are for the proletariat of every country." This does not, however, prevent us from stating objectively in the case of the Russo-Japanese war, that the victory of the Japanese forces would mean as an inevitable consequence the political emancipation of Russia: it's almost certain deliverance from the home enemy—we speak of Czarism, hangman, and knout-beater.

In the meantime, let us study the situation of those who interest us most in both countries— the proletariat. We begin with that of Japan, the least known and most exploited. Take, for instance, the Japanese working woman.

The development of the great industries has gone on increasing and aggravating the economic slavery of woman.

In modern Japan we find as many workwomen as workmen. The cotton spinning mills employ more women than men : in the mills of Kanegafendji, they number 2,700 as against 300 men; in those of Boseki, 3,000 against 500—that is, six, and even nine, women for every man. In the extensive Mourai tobacco factories of Kyoto, they are 2,500, forming five-sixths of the entire staff. The match industry employs almost exclusively women and children. Even in the Imperial Printing Works the women are much more numerous than the men.

Under the preceding social system they were put to work at the roughest employments. Today under the capitalist regime they are employed in the most trying industries.

In the linen spinning mills of Hokkaido they live during entire weeks at a time in a stuffy atmosphere. In the paper mills of Odji they carry heavy baskets, filled with stinking rags, into smoky rooms. At the mines of Muke they not only work at the surface, removing earth or dragging coal, but even in the very bottom : mothers often descending into the pits with children on their backs.

Capitalism in Japan gives a better example than another countries of the tendency to replace male labour by female and child labour; a tendency so well analysed in the first volume of "Capital" by Marx. The proportion of women employed in the great industries, according to the statements of Wenlersse, continues on the increase, and we find it stated in the official report presented at the Chicago Exhibition that in the little town of Souva there are more than 40 silk manufactories employing hundreds of women. The women earn more working in this manner than if they were employed as domestic servants. It is, moreover, very difficult to obtain them for domestic purposes anywhere in the neighbourhood of a factory.

In the cotton spinning mills the average proportion of women to men was in 1880 only two to one; in 1897 it had increased to more than three while to-day it has attained a figure of five, six, and even more.

The Japanese woman is considered much more able at certain work than the man. Wenlersse says that in the Imperial Printing Works women are employed in counting bank notes, in stippling sheets of stamps, and gumming the backs ; and with what rapidity do they not make their fingers travel; how they run from one machine to another, making their wooden sandals clatter on the stone flags—quite little people, like,white mice, in their great large linen robes !

The nimbleness of the tobacco factory girls is surprising. They wrap up as many as 100 packets of cigarettes in tin paper per hour—1,000 in a day. Those who fold up the large boxes are still more dexterous; the girls employed in the match factories paste 60 labels per minute on the little boxes, and continue thus for nine consecutive hours; while, in the spinning mills, they re-knot the broken threads with a rapidity and daintiness not to be equalled by a man.

The reasons for which the capitalist in Japan prefers female to male labour are the same as in Europe. In the first place, the woman is docile, and in order to get her better under his thumb, he has her brought from the most distant provinces.

The poor country-people make scarcely any opposition to delivering up their daughters to the recruiting agents of the great manufacturers. In order to get the children and parents to make up their minds these agents have recourse to falsehood. Here is what Saito Kashiro, an official employed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce, says :—

"I have been speaking with an old workwoman in the cotton spinning mills of Kanegafendji at Tokio. She has told me that the company's agent said to her, before the engagement, that the work was very easy, the pay considerable, and that before settling down to her duties, she could visit all parts of Tokio, see the theatres, listen to the concerts, all that she wished ; eating and drinking the best to be had in the finest restaurants."

As the greater part of these women are peasants, completely ignorant of the world and its ways, they easily consent to any proposals which will give them the pleasure of seeing the many novelties abounding in the great city. So off goes our little peasant girl without more ado. However, the day following her departure with the agent, she is limited to a plate of vegetables and rice both for breakfast and dinner ; and all such expenses are put down to her, as also the cost of travelling. On arriving at Tokio she was certainly conducted to the principal places of interest in the town, not forgetting the restaurants, as had been promised, but everything was duly chalked down to her account. Not having sufficient money to defray those outlays, a certain proportion was each month deducted from her wages. Now, the work was hard and the wage small: 6d. per day. Consequently, she could not support this intolerable condition and left the factory one fine day on the pretext of taking a walk—such a trick being possible only in the most exceptional cases, while the swindle just recounted is quite the rule.

Women allow themselves to be very easily exploited by the employers ; they are the complete dupes and victims of the capitalist system. Their most elementary interests demand that they should wake up to this fact and organise— in Japan as well as in Europe.

Moreover, female labour is preferred above all, for the reason that it is more profitable. Eleven hours of solid work per day is exacted and obtained from the Japanese workwomen— sometimes even eleven and a half. If an hour is granted to them during the day for eating, it is on condition that the machines are kept going; they must make an arrangement among themselves whereby they go to meals in such order that the factory always has its complement of workers. Sunday is unheard of; two days' rest only are allowed each month, and even such "days" consist of but a few hours. During the entire year they have scarcely five holidays, and those for the purpose of repairing—the machines, more precious to the capitalist than that other human machine which can always be readily replaced in the event of a breakdown !

No law has so far been passed on the limitation of the women's working hours ; just as the men, they work night and day indifferently. Their wage is beneath contempt. In Japan we are still in the stages of "primitive accumulation" thus styled by Karl Marx, the Dante of the regime under which we live. 

The more dexterous weavers of Osaka earn only about 10d. daily, which is the maximum, the minimum amounting to but 4 1/2d. The women who gum the labels on matchboxes receive 3 1/2d. in a working day. In the cotton spinning mills the adult women get from 6 1/2d. to 1s., while where men and women are employed at the same work, the latter are paid from a third to a half less than the men.

How do those "galley slaves" of the Japanese factory bear such conditions of labour? It opens sometimes with an idyll such as would make the aesthetic Pierre Loti (author of "Madame Chrysanthemum") and his fair readers rub their hands with joy, but it closes in quite another fashion—here is a picture :

  "The spectacle give a in the port of Nagasaki is still more singular and interesting. There you see the women coalporters with their sugar loaf hats of brown straw adorned with white and blue cambric, below which peeps out bunches of jet black hair. To see their sparkling eyes, their cheeks all rosy and tanned from the sun's rays, that air of sweetness spread over their features, is quite a pleasure. With what an unembarrassed step, without the impediment of skirts and not fearing to allow their legs to be seen, do they not carry the large bamboo cane to which are attached heavy black baskets . . . .
  They laugh, push, and tickle one another as they pass, and offer no objection whatever to being encircled round the waist by some young men working in the same gang . . . But these pretty white legs soon waver, and on the planks which stretch trembling from the quay to the ship, a little fright and very much fatigue close those lips in pain, which, but a short time since, expanded in a dazzling smile . . ." 

And all this for a few pence a day! Among every eight Japanese workwomen we find one prostitute. Under the conditions which she lives her "erring sister " is not the least intelligent nor the most to complain. She is but a rebel anyhow, an escaped slave of the capitalist compound.

And this they call "Civilisation !"

The Russian Revolution. (1906)

From the November 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mediaeval Russia.

The appeal from the International Socialist Bureau on behalf of the Russian revolutionaries which we publish elsewhere, is an interesting document and, like the Revolution itself, gives a working man much food for thought. We by no means desire to dogmatise respecting the events which are now passing in Russia, the more so since reliable news from that quarter is scanty and unsatisfactory. Yet the evidence before us, the news from the seat of the revolution, and the communication we publish from the Bureau, give rise to grave misgivings.

The other great nations of Europe have long ago burst asunder the feudal bonds on industry and commerce, and the few survivals are more picturesque than effective. The aristocracy, where it has been able to continue in existence, is merged into the plutocracy and forms one compact mass against the workers. Russia, however, lags behind; and her economic backwardness is reflected in her mediaeval system of government. Hence in the other nations of Western Europe a straight fight is possible between the proletariat and the capitalist ruling class; whilst in Russia the rising capitalist class has yet its emancipation from Autocracy to accomplish: so that, in contrast with practically the whole of civilised nations, the working class and the capitalist class in Russia have, in the abolition of Tsardom’s tyranny, a step to go together. This historical circumstance, which is at once the strength and weakness of the Russian movement, distinguishes it from that of all capitalist countries.

The Nature of the Struggle.

No Socialist, therefore, can withhold his sympathy from the great struggle of the Russian people for the elements of political liberty, and all must heartily wish that the great barrier to economic and political progress, Tsardom, may be speedily broken down.

It is satisfactory to note that, in the present communication from the Bureau the idea (which was so common at an earlier period of the revolution, and which was proclaimed by many who called themselves Socialists) that out of the ruins of Tsarist Russia the Socialist Republic would arise, is absent; whilst the elements of political liberty, the creation of a Constituent Assembly, or at most the inauguration of a Russian Republic, are taken for granted as the probable outcome of the present struggle. It has been insisted upon in these columns that the Socialist Republic cannot be the outcome of the defeat of autocracy in Russia because the economic elements are lacking or insufficiently developed. As Marx said: “No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed; and the new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions for their existence have been matured in the womb of the old society.” The industrial development of Russia is still in its infancy, and vigorous though the infant may be, the greater part of the empire is yet untrodden by it. It is indeed probable that whatever government succeeds that of the Tsar will be compelled, if only to appease the peasants – the bulk of the nation – to bring about that most reactionary of things in which the land is split up among the peasants as their private property.

The Driving Forces.

But the student who watches with as little emotion as possible the flowing tide of social life, is sickened at noting for how little human suffering and human blood count in great social movements, and how often the masses of the people have been struggling and fighting for a victory the fruits of which when won are not for them; and the present case appears to be but another illustration of this sad fact. The Russian revolution is a struggle, headed at first by the capitalist middle-class, for the free and untrammelled development of capitalism; and, as in former revolutions, it is the proletariat which later forces on the hesitating bourgeoisie to the completion of their revolutionary work. The hesitancy of the capitalist class is natural under the circumstances. They have an unholy fear of the proletariat which is only a degree less than their fear of the Autocracy that is throttling them.

We have misgivings, however, that the Russian working-class movement, not fully conscious of its mission, will lose its identity in the struggle for middle-class emancipation, and be absorbed by the party of the small capitalist, so that after having been the catspaw of the middle-class, the proletariat will have to start afresh the work of educating and organising the workers for their own great battle. Nevertheless the struggle must go on, even though the spoils of victory go to the capitalist class, freed from autocratic restrictions and oppression, and the workers, who remain wage-slaves and subjected, have only started on the road to their emancipation, have only cleared away one enemy in order to have a straight fight with the other whom their victory has placed in power.

The Duty of the Socialist.

Let us then do all in our power to help our Socialist comrades in Russia in the hope that they will not be deceived as to the outcome of the present upheaval: in the hope, also, that they will sternly keep their separate identity and distinct aim, so that the Russian bourgeois State of to-morrow may find a militant class-organisation of Socialist workers heading the final struggle against the capitalist class whose defeat must herald the triumph of Humanity.

In the body of the Manifesto all Socialists are urged, innocently enough, to bring pressure to bear on their governments to prevent the lending of money “at high interest” to the Government of Russia. Our Russian comrades have an object lesson close at hand as to the value of bringing pressure to bear on a government with any other object than that of defeating it. It is to be feared that the recommendation rests on a misapprehension. If the Socialists in any country are doing their duty in waging incessant war with all their power upon the capitalist government, it should be clear that the Government, knowing that the Socialists as soon as they can defeat them will immediately do so, will pay no attention to Socialist threats and will not yield to pressure in any particular except to superior force or for their own interests, being aware that the Socialists are doing their worst all the time and can do no more. It is conceivable that the capitalist class would, in order to get the support of some or all of the Socialists, or to avoid being defeated by them, make some small effort to get that support or avoid that defeat. But a Socialist movement which supports Capitalism ceases to be Socialist. The movement which begs a crumb when it has power to take its fill is – well! words fail to describe it. The spectacle of Socialists attempting to prevent the capitalist class lending money at high interest is pitiably amusing. The capitalist class would buy shares in hell itself, if hell could pay a dividend! In this connection the only word for the Socialist to concern himself in is the taking from the capitalist class the power to lend at all.

————————————————————————————————————-

International Socialist Bureau, 

Maison du Peuple”, Brussels

TO THE WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES.

In spite of his given word, Nicholas II, twice perjured Tsar, has dissolved the Duma as he had violated the constitution of Finland. After having concentrated his troops in St. Petersburg and forced the deputies to disperse, he has, to draw away the attention of Europe, issued a manifesto of which each word is an untruth. He accuses the Duma of having committed illegal acts, – after having illegally imposed the fundamental laws upon it, contrary to his promises of the 30th October. He accuses it of impotence, – after having refused it any power, after having compelled it to be but a tribune, which has served, at least, to denounce the crimes of the bureaucracy. He reproaches it with having done nothing, – after having made it impossible for it to realise a single parliamentary act.

International Socialism will not lose its time in vain protestations. It is to the action of all that it once more appeals. 

The new outrage of the man of the 22nd January has not at all surprised the Socialist Party and does not find it unprepared. The Duma was doomed as soon as the clique of secret councillors, the officials and Grand Dukes, saw the weakness of the majority of the assembly; and the latter, despite the efforts of the Social Democratic and Labour Groups, has followed tactics which could but weaken it.

An odiously restrictive electoral régime, administrative pressure of the most shameless kind exercised on the voting, popular suspicion keeping from the ballot boxes the few proletarians who had access to them; all this has created a fictitious majority which in no wise represented the aspirations of the majority of the country. The elected of the liberal bourgeoisie have themselves proved, by their attitude after the dissolution, that they were wrong to show themselves vacillating before the government, and hesitating before the most urgent reforms. Have they not lost the confidence of the peasants by promising only an insufficient agrarian reform, the adoption of which would not have restored the land to the people of the country districts? Have they not discontented the workmen in offering miserable palliatives to them instead of fundamental reforms? Have they not deceived all those who ardently aspired to liberty, by not knowing how to be firm and energetic respecting the amnesty, the pogroms, and the death penalty? And in spite of their repeated declamations of loyalty, the Tsar has had nothing but contempt for them. At the opening of Parliament he praised the fundamental laws before them, and, during the whole of the session, he refused them everything. At last, when by their own fault they found themselves without support and without power, they were dispersed without effort like dead leaves before the winds of Autumn.

The consequence of the coup d’état of Nicholas II will be to compel the liberal bourgeoisie to abandon the phase of speechmaking and to choose between absolutism and revolution. Compromises and delays are henceforth done with. After recent experience the most naively optimistic must be convinced that it is useless to try to conciliate contraries. The creation of a Duma without power of executive could not prevent the bureaucracy from pillaging the public treasury, from starving the peasantry, from organising with the pecuniary assistance of the occidental bourgeoisie, massacres and outrages upon the liberty of the workers.

But the revolution does not founder with the Duma. The revolution, on the contrary, enters upon a new phase, more decisive. Before putting an end to the parliamentary comedy, Nicolas II consummated the financial and economic ruin of his empire. He killed the idea of a constitutional Tsarism in the minds of the conservative classes. He opened the eyes of the peasants in refusing them the land. He rallied a portion of the navy and army to the cause of the people, who, after having ascertained the impotence of the liberal bourgeoisie, come again on the scene, grouped under the flag of Socialism. As at the beginning of the struggle it is the proletariat that leads, in the front rank, the struggle against absolutism. With the workmen of the towns, the peasants are joining, who understand better every day that only that union can give them the land, and so also are the intellectuals, more permeated with our doctrines than in any other country. Liberal bourgeoisie itself, if it will not be condemned to a radical impotency, will be, in many cases, compelled to follow the stream.

Two armies thus find themselves henceforth face to face: the army of the Tsar and the army of the people, and between the two, whose conflict is inevitable, victory will be by so much the more decisive for us as the revolution will have been better able to concentrate its forces, realise a unity of action, and utilise more abundant resources. The revolution commenced by the strike, will, at the proper time, be pursued by the strike, by refusal of taxation and of military service, by the occupation of the lands of the crown, of the aristocracy, and of the church, by armed revolt with the aid of the soldiers and sailors whom the Socialist propaganda daily wins to the new ideas. It will be pursued without truce and without weakness until the day when Tsarism, having neither troops nor money, neither credit nor power of any sort, the people will be at last the masters of their own destinies.

The past of the Russian Socialists speaks for the future. They will know how to compel the convocation of a Constituent Assembly, and to do their duty to the end. Let us know how to do ours. We can aid in the common work by two means: BY PREVENTING THE AUTOCRACY PROCURING MONEY, – AND BY SENDING MONEY TO THE SOCIALISTS OF RUSSIA.

The radical government of France, the reactionary government of Germany, the capitalist class of all countries, have made themselves the accomplishes of the Tsar in lending him at high interest the pay of his gendarmes, of his executioners, and of his black bands. Let us bring pressure to bear on the governments to put an end to their compliance! Let is warn the possessing class that the Russian Republic of to-morrow will not pay the infamous debts which the Tsar contracts in order to hire assassins! Let us rally all useful support to the cause of Liberty to end that millions of men may be delivered from an implacable tyranny. And, if contrary to all expectation, the Holy Alliance of the international reaction attempted to intervene in the conflict to break the revolutionary effort and save the Tsarist oppression, let us know how to take the necessary measures to effectively help the people of Russia, who, united still closely in that conjuncture, would make no distinction between Tsarism, already stricken to its death, and the foreign invader, guilty of attempting to outrage the autonomy of a nation conscious of its rights. Let us give, then, and give generously! Let the accumulated pence of the poor decide the victory!

Let the pass word be: MONEY FOR THE VICTIMS OF TSARISM.

Let each Socialist, let each worker, send his mite, be it to the central organisation of his party, be it to the authorised delegates of our Russian comrades, or to the Secretariat of the International Socialist Bureau.

DOWN WITH AUTOCRACY!

LONG LIVE INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM!

The Executive Committee of the International Socialist Bureau (Belgium). Eduoard Anseele, Emile Vandervelde, Camille Huysmans, Secretary. (November 1906)

Ideology and Revolution pt.3 (2017)

From the December 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Part 2

The concluding part of our series on revolutions and the ideology under which they are carried out.

Russia has always represented an enigma to historians. It is obviously connected to European culture but it is also recognisably very different. The reasons for this have pre-occupied many politicians, historians and economists in the west for centuries; Marx, famously, thought of it as a dangerous bastion of reaction that would confront and oppose the development of socialism. One element of consensus among the attempts to understand Russia’s relatively slow economic progress is the overwhelming scale of the country. Until the 19th century the population was too small to serve the needs of both agrarian feudalism and the developing capitalism of the cities. A series of military defeats seriously curtailed international trade and the internal market was enfeebled by the population’s lack of spending power. The retention of serfdom was a mechanism specifically devised by the feudal lords to chain workers to their estates and prevent them from either drifting off into the vast wilderness to farm for themselves or search for better wages in the cities. This was recognised as a handicap by some of the more progressive elements within the Russian hierarchy, including some of the Tsars. Economically they could not compete with the industrial might of Britain, America and Germany and so were trapped in a backward economic cycle. Many of the powerful aristocrats were aware that industrialisation needed better educated workers and a wealthy middle class, and they feared the political implications (the French Revolution being their nightmare scenario). However these economic changes were unstoppable and the collision between the anachronistic Tsarist autocracy and emerging capitalism became devastatingly obvious with the disaster of the First World War. Of all the great powers Russia was the least equipped to fight such an industrialised conflict and the stage was set for the Russians to make their revolution.

In 1905 the Russian bourgeoisie entered into a coalition of rebellion which petitioned the Tsar for political change but it was ruthlessly crushed and many were killed. In a concession to the mood of the country together with the need to end a nation-wide strike a parliament (Duma) was promised. When it did not do as it was told, it was promptly shut down by a Tsar who, like Charles I of England and Louis XVI of France, could not countenance any challenge to his power of ‘divine right’. In the spring of 1917 the war was going so badly that the Tsar was forced to abdicate and the Duma was again reassembled. Among the political parties present within this parliament were the Russian Social Democratic Party who, like the other members of the ‘Second International’, gave lip service to the ideas of Marxist socialism but were, in fact, bourgeois reformists. If they had not tried to continue the war in coalition with liberals and conservatives it is possible that Russia would have followed the traditional path to capitalism. When they made this tragic mistake and the country fell into chaos again the local and regional councils or ‘soviets’, formed during the struggles of 1905, filled the power vacuum. Not unlike the ‘communes’of the sans-culottes during the French Revolution these organisations competed with central government for power. As has been already discussed in depth by this journal in October, the Bolsheviks came to power by promising to stop the war and feed the people. They at least managed the former undertaking but at the cost of a military dictatorship together with the nationalisation of the means of production that was to give the state complete power over every aspect of Russian life. At first the new regime embraced the soviets but it was only a matter of time before their power was usurped by the Bolsheviks and they survived in name only. As with the English and French revolutions the result was capitalism, or rather in the case of Bolshevik Russia something called state capitalism. For the immense majority, it amounted to the same thing: exploitation by, and subjugation to, a small power elite.

If we look at the ideologies of those competing for power in Russia at that time what do we see? Certainly the liberals and conservatives believed in some of the enlightenment ideals that preceded the French revolution but, ironically, it was Lenin who really admired the Machiavellian tactics of the likes of Robespierre. Lenin’s obsession with power and leadership was essentially bourgeois as were, to the surprise of Rosa Luxemburg upon meeting him, most of his moral and cultural values. Why was it then that he so doggedly proclaimed himself and his regime as socialist?  Perhaps he was so enamoured by the political insights and intellectual rigour of socialism, especially through the works of Karl Marx, that he was reluctant to abandon them in the light of Russian political reality even after the non-appearance of the anticipated European-wide socialist revolution. He identified himself with socialism to the extent that he was prepared to pervert the concept into its antithesis. Marx’s quip about ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’(i.e. democracy) became the excuse for a totalitarian regime. He would not admit the impossibility of creating socialism in one country, especially one that had yet to experience the political consequences of capitalism. The other possibility, of course, is that once he had tasted power he could not give it up and his ‘socialism’served as a justification for this. There is little evidence that many understood slogans like ‘all power to the soviets’as having anything to do with socialism and, as we have seen, many who did think of themselves as socialist were reformists who did not believe in revolution. Yet again the slogans used were primarily expedients to manipulate those who could enable the elite’s rise to power.

The failure of the Bolshevik regime to produce anything remotely resembling socialism is testament to the Marxist understanding of how history proceeds. Without the potential for abundance and the class consciousness created by industrial capitalism, socialism is impossible. That so many of Europe’s intellectuals were seduced by Bolshevik propaganda underlines their idealism and the political danger inherent in the ignorance of historical materialism. To paraphrase Marx: ‘men create history but only within the limitations of their historical context’. To understand any political activity it is first necessary to comprehend the tectonics of economic evolution and the historical level of the class struggle it has enabled.

The historical reality of the English, French and Russian revolutions was the political consolidation of the transition from feudalism to capitalism which no superficial ideological differences can conceal. The subsequent history of these countries is entirely due to the economic and political logic of capitalism and has nothing to do with the ideals of Puritan Christianity, The Enlightenment, or Marxism. Socialism will not be ideological in so far as it will resolve the class struggle that has created the need for ideals within which class minorities struggle for intellectual and political supremacy. With its emphasis on reason and its rejection of faith Marxism has its roots within the European Enlightenment, but it is the antithesis of the idealism of Voltaire and Rousseau which, in the hands of Robespierre and Napoleon, became excuses for political authoritarianism—the true  essence of all bourgeois ideology. By understanding the class struggle socialists cannot be manipulated by ideology. Once they become the immense majority the revolution becomes inevitable as does the dissolution of all political parties, including the socialist party itself, after its conclusion. Lenin did not live to see the nemesis (Stalin, the gulags and starvation) that his hubris had helped to create for the Russian people. They still await their liberation. Let’s hope that it’s not another hundred years before this is accomplished, with their help, by a real global socialist revolution.

Wez

Marx in his Time (1973)

From the September 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marxism is not a dogma, not a record of the sayings and doings of Karl Marx to be carefully preserved and uncritically applied whatever the circumstances. Marxism is a method of assessing what, at any particular time, is in the best interest of the working class and should be done to hasten the establishment of Socialism.

Marx was born in 1818 and died in 1883. He became a Socialist around the end of 1843 so his period of socialist political activity covered nearly forty years between 1843 and 1883. Inevitably, and in accordance with his own theories, Marx’s political activity to further the cause of Socialism was shaped by the conditions of this time. Let us recall what those conditions were.

Capitalism was then a comparative new social system, still in its phase of expansion. By today’s standards its technology, though immensely productive compared with what went before, was backward being based on coal and iron. The electric motor and the diesel engine were unknown; transport was by steam locomotive or horse-drawn carriage; houses and streets were lit by gas; many — no, most — workers were still employed in small workshops not the large factories we know today.

On the political side too capitalism was still in its growth stage. Capitalist political forms — parliamentary control, a wide suffrage, a professional civil service — only existed in a few countries, and then incompletely. Most of Europe was governed by openly anti-democratic regimes under hereditary rulers supported by a landed aristocracy. The three most powerful of these — Tsarist Russia, Hapsburg Austria and the Kingdom of Prussia — constituted a permanent threat to capitalist political forms wherever they had begun to be established.

Marx, in short, was politically active in an age when capitalism had yet to become the dominant world system, economically or politically. This decisively shaped his political tactics. Since he believed that capitalism paved the way for Socialism and that it still had part of this work to do, he advocated that, in this circumstance, socialists ought to work not only for Socialism but also for the progress of capitalism at the expense of reactionary political and social forms. This involved Marx in supporting campaigns to establish political democracy or which he felt would have the effect of stabilizing or protecting it. So we find him supporting independence for Ireland in order to weaken the power of the English landed aristocracy, who were an obstacle to the development of political democracy in Britain, and Polish independence in order to set up a buffer state between Tsarist Russia and the rest of Europe so as to give political democracy a chance to develop there.

Marx in fact was very anti-Tsarist Russia, so much so that it led him to support the British-French side in the Crimean war (a clear error of judgement in our view) and to be lukewarm about Slav movements for independence from Austria or Turkey (which at least shows that Marx never supported independence movements because he believed in some mythical abstract “right to self-determination for small nations”). Marx supported the establishment of centralized States in Germany and Italy as he felt this would allow a more rapid capitalist development in these countries; and he supported the North in the American Civil War since he felt that a victory for the slave-owning South would slow down the development of capitalism in America.

These policies made certain sense at a time when capitalism had not yet fully created the material basis for Socialism as a means of hastening this. But once capitalism had done this, as it did within thirty years of Marx’s death, then they became, in accordance with Marx’s own theory, outdated and reactionary. The thirty years following Marx’s death saw the electrification of industry, the invention of the internal combustion engine, the coming of radio and other technological developments which clearly showed that the problem of production had been solved, that scarcity had finally been conquered and that mankind could at last begin to enjoy the benefits of the forced labour of past generations of toiling producers — provided they abolished capitalism and established Socialism. Then in 1914 came the aptly-named first world war which marked the emergence of capitalism as the unchallenged and predominating world system and ended in the break-up of the three reactionary Empires Marx had seen as threats to democratic and socialist advance in his time.

In these changed circumstances, an application of the Marxist method showed that Socialists need no longer help capitalism prepare the way for Socialism — it had now done this and so became a completely reactionary social system — but should rather concentrate exclusively on encouraging the growth of socialist consciousness and organization amongst the working class. This has been the policy of the Socialist Party of Great Britain since our formation in 1904 and why we have always refused to be sidetracked into advocating or supporting democratic or social reforms or movements to set up new States or to take sides in wars.

There is one other problem that concerned Marx which the further development of capitalism since his day has solved: the transition to Socialism. Living in the age he did when, as we saw, capitalism had not yet fully created the material basis for Socialism, Marx stated, when pressed on the question, that had the working class won political power at that time (which we can now see was most unlikely in view of its political immaturity, indeed in view of the fact that many of them still worked in petty industry) there would have had to be a longish period during which, first, control of the not yet fully socialized means of production would be centralized in the hands of society and then, this done, the means of production would be rapidly developed towards the stage at which they could provide plenty for all. In the meantime, even on the basis of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production, consumption would have to be restricted (Marx mentioned labour-time vouchers as a possible way of doing this). Free access according to individual needs could not be implemented till the means of production had been further developed. Marx did not mention how long he felt this might take but, judging by the subsequent technological advance under capitalism it could have been up to thirty years.

Once again this perspective made some sense in Marx’s day, but not now. Today “transition periods”, “revolutionary dictatorships”, “labour-time vouchers”, “first phases of socialism” are irrelevant, nineteenth-century concepts. Full free access to goods and services can be introduced almost immediately after Socialism has been established, and Socialism can be established almost immediately after the socialist-minded working class wins political power. This is what Marxism implies today and why we in the Socialist Party of Great Britain feel fully justified in claiming to be the Marxists of the twentieth century .

Adam Buick

Editorial: Bloody Nicholas! (1909)

Editorial from the August 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

If the Labour Party engages in strenuous agitation, it is always for something that is utterly useless to the working class. It is so in its agitation in favour of the capitalist budget, and so it was also in its protest against the visit of the Tsar. Whenever the boom of the “ Labour” drum is heard it betokens an attempt to divert the attention of the workers from things that really matter, and to rally them in support of the class that battens upon their misery. This is the characteristic of the “Labour” and reform parties, and it is the reason why, even in the matter of the Tsar’s visit, we are compelled to join issue with them.

The visit of Nicholas Romanoff will doubtless have taken place before these lines appear; but supposing it had been prevented, would the working class, or even the middle class, of Russia, have been benefited in the slightest? Obviously they would no more have benefitted on this occasion than they did after his cowardly majesty abandoned his visit to Italy through dread of a hostile demonstration. Moreover, we read in the Labour Party’s advertisement of their “Protest” (in the I.L.P. and S.D.P. organs) that the Tsar is “Our Guest’’! And it is asked “Will the hand of England be stained by grasping his?” We, in turn, protest against these “protesters.” We deny that the Tsar is “our guest.” He is solely the guest of our enemies, the capitalist class. And the “hand of England” (which, to-day, is that of the class who own and rule) can hardly be further or deeper stained by grasping the bloody hand of a brother in exploitation and repression.

True the “middle” class and their hangers-on often speak as though this country were the peaceful haven of freedom and happiness, and Tsardom the only repressive State in the world. But that is only because the middle class have yet to achieve their complete emancipation in Russia, while in England they are the ruling class, and themselves make use of “Russian” methods in governing dependencies, and even in crushing workers and strikers at home. It naturally makes all the difference to the "middle” class whether they are the upper or under dogs; hut the worker is under dog all the time, and is crushed under both forms of class rule.

The capitalists of Western Europe are equally guilty with Russian despotism. Germany in S.W. Africa and Poland; Belgium on the Congo; France in Morocco; England in India and Ireland : each can parallel Russian atrocities. To take England as typical in internal affairs, capitalist rule condemns one third of the population to slow starvation, while thousands are killed or maimed yearly for the profit of the capitalist, and the mass of the people are condemned to leisureless, joyless lives of poverty, toil and suffering.

This progressive crushing of humanity by class rule is international, not local; and Russia's stain is of scarcely darker hue than the rest. It is, therefore, sheer hypocrisy to pretend that the ruling class of this country would be contaminated by the presence of the Tsar. On the other hand, in the welcome to bloody Nicholas that is given by a Government responsible for Featherstone and Belfast, there is a peculiar fitness that aptly illustrates the international character of class oppression. The ruling class of each country use the surest and most deadly means of repression that are suited to their circumstances, and the Government here would repeat the worst Russian atrocities in England if it could thus strengthen its position.

We are of and for the workers, hence as distinct from the Labour Party, we do not protest against oppression abroad and actively support the oppressor at home. We recognise (as members of a subject class) that the only effective help we can at present give to our Russian comrades is to push on faster the work of making Socialists and of exposing the rascality of the international ruling class. Indeed, before England can aid working class emancipation in Russia, England herself must be conquered by those who produce.

The Revolution in Russia: Where it Fails (1918)

From the August 1918 issue of the Socialist Standard

By far the most important event in the social sense, which has occurred during the world war has been the upheaval in Russia, culminating in the revolution of March and November, 1917. For the working class these events are of supreme interest and worthy of close and deep study, not only for the purpose of keeping in touch with events as they occur, but also for learning the lessons these may impart.

Just here, however, the working class of Great Britain are faced with a most formidable obstacle in the way of their gaining even a slight knowledge of the happenings, or reaching a position where a full consideration could be given to the facts of the revolution. This obstacle is the Defence of the Realm Act.

By operations of this Act the master class sift all news coming into the country, by either Press or post, and take care that only matters allowed to be published are those that suit the interests of this class in one form or another. Thus, quite apart from their ownership of the General Press, they are able to prevent groups or individuals in this country obtaining information that might be useful to the working class. In other words, the only information or statements anyone outside of government circles can obtain here is just what it suits the master class to allow them to have.

In spite of this simple and glaring fact the I.L.P. have not hesitated in to denounce the action of November, usually called the “Bolshevik Revolution,” while the S.L.P. has acclaimed it as a great Socialist revolution.

Point is added to these facts by the appearance of two pamphlets written not only by Russians, but by men claiming to be Bolsheviks. Here, if anywhere, one might imagine, will be found useful information, concrete facts, detailed accounts of events, that would be useful in guiding us to a sound judgement.

Unfortunately, nothing whatever is told in either pamphlet, apart from expressions of opinion, except the statements already given in the capitalist Press, which for the reasons above must be taken with the utmost caution.

The first pamphlet entitled: "War or Revolution", is written by Leon Trotsky, and is published by the S.L.P. at Glasgow. No date of its writing is given, but from internal evidence it was seemingly written in 1915—before the fall of the Czar—and appears to have been originally published in America.

While claiming to be a Marxist Trotsky appears surprised at the actions of the so-called Socialist International in voting war credits and supporting the war. To any serious Marxian student this was only to be expected. The Socialist Party stands firm and solid on the line of the class war. Only here is he impregnable. Only on this basis can the workers organise successfully for the overthrow of capitalism. For years past the S.P.G.B. alone in this country, and the Marxist groups in other countries, have pointed out that sections from England, France, Germany, Italy, Austria, etc., that formed the majority of the International, either had abandoned, or had never taken up, a stand upon the class war, and were therefore really not Socialists in the proper sense of the word. Their actions when the war began and since have simply emphasised the truth of our former case. That it took this world-slaughter to enlighten Trotsky as to the real position of these sections shows how little he grasped their actual attitude before. He is equally mistaken in his judgement of events in England, for on p.16 he says:

In England the Russian Revolution [1905] hastened the growth of independent Socialism.

Quite apart from the fact that the 1905 upheaval in Russia was a capitalist and not a Socialist movement, this statement is absolutely incorrect. A movement that is not independent cannot be Socialist, and the Russian episode had no measurable effect upon either the Labour or the Socialist movement in this country. The real break with the old compromising policy that had saturated the movement in England, took place in 1904—a year before the Russian outbreak—when the Marxists formed up in the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Equally mistaken is Trotsky’s statement on the same page that “six or seven years ago [that is six or seven years before 1915] in England, the Labour Party, after separating from the Liberal Party, entered into the closest association with it again.” As every student of the history of the Labour Party knows, that party has never been out of the “closest association” with the Liberal Party since the day it formed. Just as incorrect is the phrase in the concluding section (p.27) where the author says: “Socialist reformism has actually turned into Socialist imperialism.”

Reformism and Imperialism are capitalist, and can by no stretch of the imagination be called Socialist. Such misuse of the latter word, especially by one claiming to be a Socialist, is a direct assistance to the master class in their endeavours to further confuse the minds of the working class by misrepresentation of various kinds.

The second pamphlet was written by M. Litvinoff in March 1918, but it adds nothing to our knowledge of affairs in Russia, as it simply consists of a selection of the statements that have appeared in the capitalist Press of this country. In some instances these statements are exceedingly useful against agents of the master class like Kerensky, and we have used these admissions ourselves in the Socialist Standard when Kerensky was in power. Some of the other statements are significant in their bearing on the actions of the workers in Russia in a manner unsuspected of Litvinoff.

One feature of extreme and peculiar importance in these movements is treated by both the above writers in exactly the same manner, i.e., with silence. This feature is the economic and social position of the working class in Russia. For a matter of such importance to be neglected by both writers, shows either a lack of knowledge of the Russian situation or a deliberate attempt to conceal such knowledge from their readers. As two such Russians are either unable or unwilling to supply this information the only thing left is to take that available before the war and try to apply it to the solution of the present situation. Clearly this can only be a provisional judgement while awaiting reliable news of the revolutions and of the present position of the workers in Russia.

Even to-day Russia is largely an agricultural country, some authorities stating that 80 per cent. of the population are engaged in that calling. Their system, however, has certain peculiar features that would take a large volume to describe.

In the main the agricultural population is divided up in village groups or communities largely based on what is called the “Mir.” Each peasant is allotted a certain amount of land, depending on the number of his family. The holdings are changed periodically so as to prevent any one individual retaining the best land. If the population increases beyond the limits of the land controlled by the “Mir,” a group forms up and moves out to new lands in a manner so well described by Julius Faucher in his brilliant essay on The Russian Agrarian System. As this group is related to the old “Mir,” communication and intercourse are kept up and a division of a race may have a whole series villages spread out over a certain area, and having a more or less loose connection with each other. The land, however, is not owned by the village group. In the ultimate it is owned by the Czar in his capacity as “Father of the People” though large number of estates have been granted to the Nobles for their military and other services rendered to the Crown.

This ownership, whatever particular form it may take, is admitted by all the “Mir” by the payment of a charge for the land, usually termed a tax. This tax is paid to the Noble where he holds an estate and to the Czar where the latter is personal owner.

Into the developments, complications, abuses and rogueries that have resulted from this system we have not the space to go. One illustration can be found in Carl Joubert’s Russia as it really is and Stepaniak in his Russian Peasantry, has given a masterly description of its workings. It will be sufficient to point out that apart from minor modifications three broad divisions have developed.

In the wild forest regions of the North, the people are still in the upper stage of Barbarism, being a mixture of hunters and pastoral workers, who know practically nothing of the affairs of the outer world. In the middle regions the spread of the use of money and the effects that follow have resulted in more modern methods of working the estates. Owing to the heavy tax imposed large numbers of peasants have been unable to pay this charge after a poor season, with the inevitable result that they fall into the hands of money-lenders—who in numerous cases are actual members of the “Mir” —or they have to give up their holdings and either work for the money-lender or drift into the towns in search of work.

In the South or “Black Belt” region, largely owing to the fertility of the soil, old-fashioned methods still persist and the peasants make desperate struggles to retain their holdings, but were slowly losing their grip before the war.

The abolition of serfdom on private estates in 1861 and on the Czar’s estates in 1871, was loudly announced as a great emancipation of the peasants. Under these decrees the peasants were supposed to be placed in a position were they could purchase their holdings, either individually or as a village group or Mir. The Nobles, of course, still retained the bulk of the estates granted to them, and it was intended that the big landlords would be balanced in the social system by the large number of small owners or peasant proprietors that would be sure to follow the great act of “emancipation”. In the vast majority of cases, of course, the whole thing was a fraud and the landlords and moneylenders being the only ones, as a rule, able to purchase land, we have the paradox that the measure introduced to extend peasant proprietorship has resulted in the concentration of large estates in fewer hands than before. This has increased the number of landless peasants which recent estimates have placed at about one-third of the agricultural population, while even those who favour the system do not claim that more than another third have become owners of the land, either individually or through their village groups.

The local affairs of the Mir are managed by the open general meetings, and these meetings elect the Elder or Mayor, who is the spokesman and delegate before the authorities. As stated above, the moneylender of the village is often a member of the Mir, and owing to his economic hold on the peasants he is often elected as the Elder.

It was, and is, people of this type that Kerensky represents. The Mir, of course, is under general Government control, usually through a “superintendent” or police officer.

In the Western area and the Southern Oil Belt industrial towns of the usual capitalist type, have developed in late years, and contain a number of genuine proletarians or wage slaves.

Is this huge mass of people, numbering about 160,000,000 and spread over eight and a half millions of square miles, ready for Socialism? Are the hunters of the North, the struggling peasant proprietors of the South, the agricultural wage slaves of the Central Provinces, and the industrial wage slaves of the towns convinced of the necessity, and equipped with the knowledge requisite, for the establishment of the social ownership of the means of life?

Unless a mental revolution such as the world has never seen before has taken place, or an economic change has occurred immensely more rapidly than history has recorded, the answer is “No!”

And it is extremely significant that neither Trotsky nor Litvinoff say a single word on this aspect of the situation. In fact, as far as one can judge, the best, but all too brief, account of the present position in certain parts of Russia is given by Mr. Price in his articles in the Manchester Guardian during November and December, 1917.

Leaving aside the subsidiary differences in the economic positions of the different provinces, the one great fact common to the mass of the peasantry is their desire to be rid of the burden of the tax they have to pay for their land, whether to the local lord or to the Government, so that they may gain a livelihood from their holdings. This applies to both the individual and the group holders. Hence the peasants’ movements are not for social ownership, but merely for the abolition of the tax burden and their right to take up new land as the population increases. In other words, they only wish to be free the old system of individual or group cultivation from governmental taxes and control.

The agricultural and industrial wage-workers would be in a similar position economically as the same class of workers in Western Europe, if allowance is made for the lesser capitalist development of Russia.

What justification is there, then, for terming the upheaval in Russia a Socialist Revolution? None whatever beyond the fact that the leaders in the November movement claim to be Marxian Socialists. M. Litvinoff practically admits this when he says (p.37):

  In seizing the reigns of power the Bolsheviks were obviously playing a game with high stakes. Petrograd had shown itself entirely on their side. To what extent would the masses of the proletariat and the peasant army in the rest of the country support them?

This is a clear confession that the Bolsheviks themselves did not know the views of the mass when they took control. At a subsequent congress of the soviets the Bolsheviks had 390 out of a total of 676.

It is worthy of note that none of the capitalist papers gave any description of the method of electing either the Soviets or the delegates to the Congress. And still more curious is it that though M. Litvinoff says these delegates “were elected on a most democratic basis”, he does not give the slightest information about this election. This is more significant as he claims the Constituent Assembly “had not faithfully represented the real mind of the people”

From the various accounts and of the capitalist Press (and, as stated above, M. Litvinoff does not supply us with any other information) it seem the Bolsheviks form the driving force, and perhaps even the majority, of the new Government, sometimes called the Soviet Government and sometimes the “Council of Peoples’ Commissaries”. The Soviet Government certainly appears to have been accepted, or at least acquiesced in, by the bulk of the Russian workers. The grounds for this acceptance are fairly clear. First the Soviet Government promised peace; secondly they promised a settlement of the land question; thirdly they announced a solution of the industrial workers grievances.

Unfortunately various and often contradictory accounts are given of the details of this programme, and Litvinoff’s statements are in vague general terms that give no definite information on the matter. Until some reliable account of the Soviet Government’s programme is available detailed judgement must remain suspended. That this mixed Government should have been tacitly accepted by the Russian workers is no cause for surprise. Quite the contrary. They (the Soviet Government) appear to have done all that was possible in the circumstances to carry their peace proposals.

And we are quite confident that if the mass of the people in any of the belligerent countries, with the possible exception of America, were able to express their views, free from consequences, on Peace or Continuance of War, an overwhelming majority would declare in favour of Peace.

As is admitted by the various sections of the capitalist Press, the Soviet representatives at the Brest-Litovsk Conference stood firm on their original proposals to the last moment. That they had to accept hard terms in the end is no way any discredit to them, but it was a result of conditions quite beyond their control. If they had done no more than this, if they had been compelled to give up office on their return, the fact that they had negotiated a stoppage of the slaughter and maiming of millions of the working class would have been a monument to their honour, and constituted an undeniable claim to the highest approbation of the workers the world over.

Of course the capitalist Press at once denounced the signing of the Peace treaty as “dastardly treachery”, and so on. We can quite easily understand that the agents of the foullest and most hypocritical ruling class the world has ever seen, steeped to their eyes in their own cruel treacheries, should have been astounded at the Soviet Government keeping its pledge to the Russian people, instead of selling them out to the Allied Governments.

Then follow the usual stereotyped “outrages” and “crimes” that the master class agents never fail to provide when an opponent dares to stand in their path. Unfortunately for these capitalist agents, their own correspondents are allowed to move freely over the country, and often “give the game away” by describing improvements both in ordinary administration and economic conditions under the new rule. And Mr. Litvinoff scores neatly here over the capitalist Press by comparing the alleged “outrages” with the actions of the master class against the workers after the fall of the Paris commune. A still more striking illustration is given by the Mr. Price from Russia itself, in his article in the Manchester Guardian for November 28th, 1917, where he describes the cold-blooded slaughter of 500,000 Khirgiz Tartars by the Czar’s Government in 1916. And he caustically remarks:

   While Western Europe has heard about Armenian massacres, the massacre of the Central Asian Moslems by the Tsar’s agents has been studiously hidden.

Indeed, if the Soviet Government were to start on a campaign of deliberate slaughter, it would take them many busy years to even approach the huge number of victims of the last Czar’s reign. But so far all the evidence points to the allegations of Bolshevik butcheries being but a tissue of lies fabricated to suit bourgeois purposes.

And what of the future? It is impossible to offer any close forecast in the face of our lack of knowledge. We do not know what the Soviet Government has promised the peasants. We are ignorant of what measures they are putting into operation to solve the complicated land question. Despite the existence of the Mir organisation it will be easier for the Russian government to arrange for the management of the factories and industries of the towns than to settle the various and widely divergent, detailed demands of the peasants of the different provinces. There is no ground whatever for supposing that they are ready or willing to accept social ownership of the land, along with the other means of production. Are the Bolsheviks prepared to try to establish something other than this? If so does it not at once flatly contradict M. Litvinoff’s claim that they are establishing Socialism?

And grim shadows are spreading from both sides. On one side the Germans are trying to exploit and plunder as much as possible while they have the chance; on the other side the Japanese, assisted by British and American forces are entering on an exactly similar expedition, with the same objects in view. Also it has been reported that the Allied forces landing on the Murman coast are either under the command of or are accompanied by a notorious Czarist officer, General Gourko, who is working hard for the restoration of the Romanoffs.

With the mass of the Russian people still lacking the knowledge necessary for the establishment of socialism, with both groups of belligerents sending armed forces into the country, with the possible combination of those groups for the purpose of restoring capitalist rule, even if not a monarchy, in Russia, matters look gloomy for the people there. If the capitalist class in the belligerent countries succeed in this plan, the Soviet Government and its supporters may expect as little mercy as—nay, less than—the Khirgiz Tartars received. It may be another Paris Commune on an immensely larger scale.

Every worker who understands his class position will hope that some way will be found out of the threatened evil. Should that hope be unrealised, should further victims be fated to fall to the greed and hatred of the capitalist class, it will remain on record that when members of the working class took control of affairs in Russia, they conducted themselves with vastly greater humanity, managed social and economic matters with greater ability and success and with largely reduced pain and suffering, than any section of the cunning, cowardly, ignorant capitalist class were able to do, with all the numerous advantages they possessed.

Jack Fitzgerald