Where Russia Stands. (1921)

From the June 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 2.

After the Bolsheviks had obtained possession of power their outlook and tactics underwent certain fundamental changes.

Before the upheaval Lenin had set out certain propositions, absolutely essential, in his opinion, as a programme for the Russian Communist Party. These propositions are contained in a pamphlet entitled: “Towards Soviets. Thesis and a letter on Tactics.” (“International Library” 14, published by the late British Socialist Party.) In order to illustrate some of the changes in views and methods practice forced upon the Bolsheviks, we will deal with some of the propositions mentioned. On page 6 appears the following :

   While we are in the minority, we carry on the work of criticism and explanation of mistakes, urging at the same time the necessity of the transfer of all power to the Councils of Workers’ Deputies, in order that the masses may free themselves from mistakes by actual experience.

This reads very nicely—”All power to the Councils of Workers’ Deputies”—the inference being that by this means all power would pass into the hands of the Russian workers, soldiers, and peasants. All through the insurrection the slogan “All power to the Workers” was used by the Bolsheviks as a rallying cry, to their considerable advantage, to say nothing of the furore it created among their windy would-be imitators in this country.

Right from the commencement the Bolsheviks, in practice, acted contrary to this principle. “All power to the Workers” remained, from the very beginning, nothing more than a phrase. All power signifies either what it is or—wind. In actual fact, like the so-called “Rights of Man” in the American and French Revolutions, the working out of the idea has been entirely different from its inference. In Russia "All Power to the Workers” signifies all power to a fraction of the Bolshevik Party.

When the insurrection had been carried to a certain point successfully and the time arrived for “all power” to pass over to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, the wire-pulling commenced. The Bolsheviks claimed to be the ruling party in Russia (although only a tiny fraction of the population), and would only agree to hand over power (which they, as leaders of the insurrectionary movement, already held) on certain very important conditions, relating to the constitution of the People’s Commissaries (the new form of government), which left all power where it already was—in the hands of the Bolshevik leaders. It is true other parties at the Congress were offered a place in the Government, but only in a minority to the Bolsheviks, and on condition that all the important departments were filled by the latter. After tumultuous sessions the Bolsheviks eventually gained their end. (John Reed. “Ten Days that Shook the World.”)

An ominous forecast of the future had been given by Trotzky when speaking on the 7th November 1917, during a night session of the Petrograd Soviet. He said that telegrams had been sent to the front announcing the victorious insurrection; also that troops were said to be marching against Petrograd to whom a delegation must be sent to tell them the truth. At this there were cries of “You are anticipating the will of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets.” To which Trotzky replied “The will of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets has teen anticipated by the rising of the Petrograd workers and soldiers.” (See John Reed p. 86.)

The final emptiness of the “All Power” slogan, however, was demonstrated by Zinovief in his report to the First Congress of the 3id International in March 1919, where he stated :

  Our Central Committee has decided to deprive certain categories of party members of the right to vote at the Congress of the Party. Certainly it is unheard of to limit the right of voting within the party, but the entire party has approved this measure, which is to ensure the homogeneous unity of the Communists.
  So that, in fact, we have 500,000 members who manage the entire state from top to bottom.

—”Socialist,” 29.4.1920.

This shows how much of the “All Power” the Russian workers, soldiers, and peasants possess. 500,000 out of about 180 millions possess all power in Russia! And this eighteen months after the successful insurrection led by the group who made the world ring with the rallying cry that was to be the corner stone of the edifice they would build. It will therefore be wise to remember that the organisation of Councils of Workers by no means guarantees the passing of power into the hands of the mass of the workers.

The paragraphs quoted above demonstrate that the power of the Russian people to day “is vested in its Government”—the Government composed of the ruling faction of the Russian Communist Party. Lenin himself supplies us with a damning indictment of such a state of affairs, as witness the following :

  Inasmuch as all the power of a people is vested in its government the people is divested of all power.

So that, with the able assistance of Zinovief and Lenin, we are now possessed of the information that the net result of the “All Power to the People” movement is that “the people is divested of all power”!

We will now take another proposition from the same paragraph in “Towards Soviets.” This proposition runs as follows :

  The abolition of the police, the army, the bureaucracy,

There is a footnote to this particular item which states that the standing army would be replaced by the universal arming of the people.

In the first place was the standing army abolished on the accession to power of the Bolsheviks ? Of course not. On the contrary it was enlarged as a standing army by the addition of fresh units of armed workmen. Anyone who had suggested, at the time, the abolition of the standing army would have been regarded as a lunatic. The Army Council system was continued for a while, but it was found to be unworkable and was eventually abandoned. On this question Trotzky made the following statements in an address at the City Conference of the Russian Communist Party in Moscow, 28th March, 1918 :

  How do violence, carelessness, and even unscrupulousness develop? They come exclusively from the fact that persons are holding positions they cannot master. Examine at close range what is happening in the Ukraine. Those who fought splendidly and heroically against the Kaledins, Dutoffs, and Korniloffs, who conquered these enemies who stood on the same technical level with them, failed us when they were confronted with the German military machine and felt the sense of their utter helplessness. Hence their dissatisfaction with themselves. They, these commanders of guerrilla bands, fight against one another, accuse one another, not infrequently fight less against the Germans than against the native population. The example of what is happening in the Ukraine shows us that if we are to speak seriously about the defense of the Soviet Revolution by force of arms, by means of war, we must reject all the empty talk of the Left Social Revolutionaries about partisan or guerrilla warfare, and all measures that make use of small bands, and proceed to the task of creating a regular army. Only if this regular army exists can these partisan bands play a positive part on its flanks. But in order to create such an army we need trained specialists, including the former generals.—(“Class Struggle,” Vol. III., No. 4. Article “Work, Discipline and Order.”)

The above suggests any thing but the abolition of the army. Nor is it even the universal arming of the people, as a further quotation from the same address will show more clearly still:

  The duty of the Party organisations, the Party cells, will consist in making sure that the elements entering the army are in a political and moral sense of good standing.

The only inference to be drawn from this is that proved Bolshevik supporters were armed, but neutrals or doubtfuls did not become a part of the “armed people.” Here is again an illustration of how practice converted a “revolutionary slogan” into mere wind. Bolshevik Russia cannot get on without a standing army, and, as in ordinary capitalist countries, the material composing this army is carefully selected and trained.

The next proposition in the paragraph in “Towards Soviets” lays down—

  The payment of all officials—elective and revokable at any time, at a rate not exceeding the average wage of a good workman.

Was this policy adhered to ? By no means. Backward Russia was not ready for this any more than for the others.

We may here point out that the fundamental principles we are now examining are just the ones upon which Lenin grounds his claim that Bolshevik principles and policy are the working out of the principles laid down and acted upon by the Paris Commune. By showing that the Bolsheviks did not act in accordance with these principles we are, at the same time, illustrating where their policy differed from that of the Communards. We hope to go further into this particular question, but for the moment would urge that these points be borne in mind.

To proceed, let us take, first of all, the question of the payment of officials at the average rate of a good workman.

As soon as the Bolsheviks commenced the work of reconstruction they found themselves faced with a shortage of technical experts. In every direction ruin threatened unless they could enlist the assistance of those trained in the higher branches of science and organisation. In order to obtain this assistance they had to hold out a bait. Apparently force could not be applied. They were unable to say to this skilled section "Work or starve !” Why? Because the workers and peasants of Russia were too intellectually backward to understand the meaning of the common ownership of wealth and its implication—the equal sharing of the burden of producing. Consequently it was possible for a portion of the population to obtain the necessaries of life without taking any part in production.

All through the writings of Lenin, Trotzky, and others runs the complaint of profiteering and selfishness among the peasants and other workers. If the land in Russia were owned and worked by the poor peasants, and its produce only supplied to the workers and those physically incapable of work, there would be no pickings for profiteers or food for parasites. The only conclusion we can come to is that the peasant sells, to those from whom he can get the best price—in other words he acts in accordance with the ordinary capitalist commercial code—and the back door is open to the speculator.

What was the bait held out to the technical experts, who could obtain the means of subsistence without working? The bait was high wages—far higher wages than “the average of a good workman.”

The following quotations are interesting in this connection. They are taken from “Resolutions and Regulations of the IX Congress of the Russian Communist Party” (29th March-4th April, 1920) published by the Executive Committee of the Communist Party, Moscow.

  Rivalry between factories, regions, guilds, workshops and individual workers should become the subject of careful organisation and of close study on the side of the trade unions and the economic organs. 

  The system of premiums which is to be introduced should become one of the most powerful means of exciting rivalry. The system of rationing food supply is to get into touch with it : so long as Soviet Russia suffers from an insufficiency of provisions it is only just that the industrious and conscientious workers receive more than the indigent worker—(p. 8). 

  Registration of individual output or productivity of labour and the granting of corresponding individual premiums must also be carried out in a way suitable to administrative technical [staff. Better conditions must be secured for our best administrators and engineers to enable them to make full use of their capacities in the interests of socialist economy. 

   A special system of premiums is to be established for those specialists under whose guidance the workers can attain the necessary qualifications to make them capable to accept further independent independent posts.

In the above paragraphs we see put “forward the capitalist ethic of private gain as a motive force instead of the Socialist ethic—Social approbation, or the general good.

In connection with the above quotations and as an illustration of the lack of Socialist knowledge on the part of ”a considerable part of the workers” the following will be interesting :

  Owing to the fact that a considerable part of the workers either in search of better food conditions or often for purposes of speculation voluntarily leave their places of employment . . . the Congress considers one of the most important problems of the Soviet Government and of the trade union organisations to be the establishment of a firm, systematic, and insistent struggle against labour desertion. The way to fight this is to publish a column of desertion fines, the formation of labour detachments of deserters under fine and finally, internment in concentration camps.—(Same source, p. 19. See also pp. 23 and 25.)

The last few lines, in view of those to whom the penalties apply, suggest, not the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” but the iron rule of the Bolshevik leaders.

Now let us take the next of Lenin’s points, that of the elective principle relating to officials. The application of this principle was short-lived and it was finally abolished at the IX Congress of the Communist Party.

  (4) The Trade Unions participate in the formation of the administration of factories or works. This is effected with the consent and agreement of the corresponding organs of the Supreme Council of Public Economy ; the principle of election must now give place to that of selection, which is to be based on practical experience and qualifications, on technical competency, firmness, organising capacity and business efficiency of the candidates. 

—Rules and Regulations, p. 27.)

To really grasp the significance of this throwing overboard of the election principle it must be borne in mind that the appointment of such officials is not under the control of the trade unions, or similar bodies, but is under the direct control of the ruling group in the Bolshevik party, and further that the officials are revocable by this group only and not by any other organisation. A further quotation will illumine this point.

  It is therefore necessary that every trade union possess a strictly disciplined, organised fraction of the Communist Party. Every fraction of the Party represents a section of the local organisation which is under the control of the party committee, whilst fractions of the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions are under the control of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party. All the regulations concerning conditions and organisation of labour are binding upon all trade union organisations as well as upon members sf the party working therein and can be repealed by no other party organs except the Central Committee of the Party—(p. 35).

As yet a further illustration of the iron nature and wire-pulling methods the Russian mass ignorance has forced upon the Bolsheviks, and also as an illustration of the way in which the latter keep their hold upon power, we give the following quotations from an article by Lenin entitled “Should the Communists Participate in Reactionary Trade Unions?” printed in the “Workers’ Dreadnought” Jan. 22, 1921, Here is Lenin’s statement as to the position and activities of the Communist Party and its relation to the Russian masses :

  The Communist Party meets annually in convention and is represented by one delegate for each 1,000 members. It is headed by a Central Committee elected at the Convention and consisting of 19 members, while the current work is conducted by a still smaller group at Moscow—the Collegium— called the Organisation and Political Bureaux, consisting of five members each, who are in turn elected by the plenary session of the C.E.C. No important political or organisation question is de-citied by any State institution without the sanction of the E.C. of the Communist Party. 

  . . . As a matter of fact all the executive bodies of the vast majority of the Trade Unions, and of the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions, are composed of Communist Party members who carry out all the instructions of the Party. 

  By this means . . . is developed a broad and mighty proletarian apparatus through which, under the leadership and direction of the Communist Party, is realised the Dictatorship of the working class.

The above bears a suspicious resemblance to the wire-pulling, bribing methods applied to labour leaders by “the best bourgeois parliamentary democracies” ! Was there ever a more iron, dictatorship of the few? Was there ever a more “paternal” government? Surely the Dictatorship of the Working Class should at least signify that workers will dictate the means and methods to be pursued in organisation and so forth. Yet here we see that not the working class, but the leaders of the Communist Party do the dictating. So the ” Dictatorship of the Proletariat” is only another myth or “revolutionary” slogan.

A careful perusal of the quotations contained in this article will elicit the fact that another of Lenin’s fundamental propositions—the abolition of the Bureaucracy— was also consigned to oblivion. What is Bureaucracy? According to Annandale’s Dictionary it is the system of centralising the administration of a country, through regularly graded series of government officials.” And what else is the administration of Russian affairs to-day in actual fact ? ”Better conditions must be secured for our best administrators.” “A special system of premiums. . . for those specialists, etc.” “Assigning class conscious workers to all village posts, etc.,” and so forth.

And this, we are told, represents the transition stage from Capitalism to Socialism ! To us it reads like the efforts of a “vigorous” few to retain power after having gained it upon a wave of popular emotion without having the backing of knowledge on the part of the majority of the population.

These facts should drive home more power fully than ever the hopelessness of attempting to bring about a change in the social basis before the majority of those composing the class concerned understand tie meaning of such a change and give the movement class-conscious support.

Gilmac.

To be Continued.

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.

Long Day’s Journey Into the Night (2012)

Theatre Review from the June 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill (Apollo Theatre)

This 1956 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, written in 1942 and recently staged at the Apollo Theatre in London, was not performed until after O’Neill’s death.  This was because of its autobiographical nature, its inclusion of characters clearly drawn from members of the O’Neill Irish-American family and its descriptions of real incidents within it.

O’Neill was a breath of fresh air in American theatre in the 1920s, a writer of realistic dramas inspired by the naturalism of Chekhov, Strindberg and Ibsen. He avoided melodrama and sentimentality and concerned himself with tragedy, pessimism, and socialism.  He used vernacular speech and portrayed working-class characters in works like ‘Anna Christie’ and ‘The Iceman Cometh’.

O’Neill moved in left wing circles in Greenwich Village, New York City, where he met John Reed and Louise Bryant (their menage-à-trois is portrayed in the 1981 film ‘Reds’). Reed, a member of the Socialist Party of America, was in Russia in 1917 at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution and wrote about it in his book ‘Ten Days That Shook The World’.  He helped form the Communist Party of America.

In the early twentieth century there were exciting times for socialism in the USA. These saw the formation of the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905, an organisation which advocated the abolition of capitalism and the wage system and opposed the First World War.  The increasingly reformist nature of the Socialist Party of America led car workers in Detroit to leave in 1916 and form the Socialist Party of the United States.  This later became the World Socialist Party of the United States, the fraternal party of the SPGB.

‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night’ dissects the conflicts of  the bourgeois thespian James Tyrone (O’ Neill’s father) and his wife and two sons, and covers themes of patriarchy, the lack of fulfilment for women, addiction (alcohol and morphine), resentments, self-deception, illness, greed, failure, artistic promise, and general dysfunction in bourgeois family life in early twentieth-century American capitalism. The Irish-born family patriarch emigrated to America at the time of the Great Hunger of the 1840s when the potato famine and subsequent failure of the British government led to a million deaths and mass emigration from the Emerald Isle. O’Neill describes Tyrone’s experience of child labour and family poverty in the expanding industrial capitalism of nineteenth-century New York City.

Tyrone’s son Edmund (O’Neill) is a budding playwright, with a TB condition who has left Princeton early.  O’Neill himself left after a year because as the apocryphal story goes “he threw a beer bottle through the window of Professor Woodrow Wilson” (later the US President who promised voters to keep America out of the First World War but took them in, and later oversaw the Volstead Act which prohibited alcohol in the USA for 13 years).

O’Neill analyses the dysfunctionality of a bourgeois family in capitalism and shows the neuroses associated with bourgeois family life. Marx and Engels pointed out that the bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course with the abolition of capitalism.

Steve Clayton

Marxism versus Leninism (1990)

From the March 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx’s theory of socialist revolution is grounded on the fundamental principle that “the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself”. Marx held to this view throughout his entire forty years of socialist political activity, and it distinguished his theory of social change from that of both those who appealed to the princes, governments and industrialists to change the world for the benefit of the working class (such as Robert Owen and Saint Simon) and of those who relied on the determined action of some enlightened minority of professional revolutionaries to liberate the working class (such as Buonarotti, Blanqui and Weitling).

Conscious Self-emancipation

Marx saw that the very social position of the working class within capitalist society as a non-owning, exploited, wealth-producing class forced it to struggle against its capitalist conditions of existence. This “movement” of the working class could be said to be implicitly socialist since the struggle was ultimately over who should control the means of production: the minority capitalist class or the working class (i.e. society as a whole). At first the movement of the working class would be, Marx believed, unconscious and unorganised but in time, as the workers gained more experience of the class struggle and the workings of capitalism, it would become more consciously socialist and democratically organised by the workers themselves.

The emergence of socialist understanding out of the experience of the workers could thus be said to be “spontaneous” in the sense that it would require no intervention by people outside the working class to bring it about (not that such people could not take part in this process, but their participation was not essential or crucial). Socialist propaganda and agitation would indeed be necessary but would come to be carried out by workers themselves whose socialist ideas would have been derived from an interpretation of their class experience of capitalism. The end result would be an independent movement of the socialist-minded and democratically organised working class aimed at winning control of political power in order to abolish capitalism. As Marx and Engels put it in The Communist Manifesto, “the proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority”.

This in fact was Marx’s conception of “the workers’ party”. He did not see the party of the working class as a self-appointed elite of professional revolutionaries, as did the Blanquists, but as the mass democratic movement of the working class with a view to establishing Socialism, the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production.

Lenin’s Opposing View

This was Marx’s view, but it wasn’t Lenin’s. Lenin in his pamphlet What Is To Be Done?, written in 1901-2, declared:

   The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc. The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical and economic theories that were elaborated by the educated representatives of the propertied classes, the intellectuals” (Foreign Languages Publishing House edition, Moscow, pp. 50-51). 

    Class political consciousness can be brought to the workers only from without, that is, only from outside of the economic struggle, from outside of the sphere of relations between workers and employers” (Lenin’s emphasis, p.133). 

   The spontaneous working class movement by itself is able to create (and inevitably creates) only trade unionism, and working class trade unionist politics are precisely working class bourgeois politics” (pp. 159-60) .

Lenin went on to argue that the people who would have to bring “socialist consciousness” to the working class “from without” would be “professional revolutionaries”, drawn at first mainly from the ranks of the bourgeois intelligentsia. In fact he argued that the Russian Social Democratic Party should be such an “organisation of professional revolutionaries”, acting as the vanguard of the working class. The task of this vanguard party to be composed of professional revolutionaries under strict central control was to “lead” the working class, offering them slogans to follow and struggle for. It is the very antithesis of Marx’s theory of working class self-emancipation.

The Bolshevik Coup

The implication of Marx’s theory of working class self-emancipation is that the immense majority of the working class must be consciously involved in the socialist revolution against capitalism. “The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority in the interest of the immense majority”.

The Bolshevik coup in November, 1917, carried out under the guise of protecting the rights of the Congress of Soviets, did not enjoy conscious majority support, at least not for socialism, though their slogan “Peace, Bread and Land” was widely popular. For instance, elections to the Constituent Assembly, held after the Bolshevik coup and so under Bolshevik government, gave them only about 25 per cent of the votes.

John Reed, a sympathetic American journalist, whose famous account of the Bolshevik coup, Ten Days That Shook The World, was commended in a foreword by Lenin, quotes Lenin as replying to this kind of criticism in a speech he made to the Congress of Peasants’ Soviets on 27 November, 1917:

  If Socialism can only be realized when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least five hundred years . . . The Socialist political party – this is the vanguard of the working class; it must not allow itself to be halted by the lack of education of the mass average, but it must lead the masses, using the Soviets as organs of revolutionary initiative…” (Reed’s emphasis and omissions, Modern Library edition, 1960, p.15).

Compare this with a passage from the utopian communist, Weitling: “to want to wait . . . until all are suitably enlightened would be to abandon the thing altogether!” Not, of course, that it is a question of “all” the workers needing to be socialists before there can be Socialism. Marx, in rejecting the view that Socialism could be established by some enlightened minority, was merely saying that a sufficient majority of workers would have to be socialists.

Lenin’s Legacy

Having seized power before the working class (and, even less, the 80 per cent peasant majority of the population) had prepared themselves for Socialism, all the Bolshevik government could do, as Lenin himself openly admitted, was to establish state capitalism in Russia. Which is what they did, while at the same time imposing their own dictatorship over the working class.

Contempt for the intellectual abilities of the working class led to the claim that the vanguard party should rule on their behalf, even against their will. Lenin’s theory of the vanguard party became enshrined as a principle of government (“the leading role of the Party”) which has served to justify what has proved to be the world’s longest-lasting political dictatorship.

The self-emancipation of the working class, as advocated by Marx, remains on the agenda.

Adam Buick

Notes by the Way: "Capitalists" at the Rubbish Heap (1937)

The Notes by the Way column from the December 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Capitalists” at the Rubbish Heap

Lord Iliffe, speaking at the Annual Conference of the British Junior Chambers of Commerce at Coventry on September 26th (Daily Telegraph, September 27th, 1937), said that “we” (presumably he meant the Government) are “curing the ills of capitalism as well as of Communism by creating capitalists as quickly as we possibly can.” A fortnight later the Daily Express (October 8th) published a striking photograph of dozens of women—some of Lord Iliffe’s "capitalists”—groping in a heap of colliery refuse at Longsight, Manchester, for bits of coal: —

   Three days a week are reserved there for women gleaners, three for men. . . . The women, here, were too busy to think of the camera. A lorry had just sent its load of refuse down the slope. Before the black dust had settled, seventy women were on their knees. For twenty minutes only the rasping of metal scrapers among the refuse was heard.

This is one of the "rights” free-born Britishers are asked to defend against foreign powers!

* * *

Beaverbrook is Candid—or Is He?

Conversation overheard in a Lyons’ tea-shop : —

   “I prefer the Daily Express, particularly now that Lord Beaverbrook says it isn’t run for profit.”
   “But isn’t it?” 
   “No. Lord Beaverbrook doesn’t get a penny out of it.”

That was the impression conveyed to one reader of the Daily Express, and, doubtless, to many others, by Lord Beaverbrook’s personal statement published on September 24th. It is one of those very candid statements which conceal more than they disclose. It starts off by saying that the profit of Express newspapers is limited to just under £150,000, “which is less than three per cent, of the gross turnover ”; but it does not tell us what is the capital and what percentage the profit represents of the capital. To relate profit to turnover in this instance means nothing at all.

Then, after telling us that “more than seventy-four per cent. of the ordinary shares are owned by me,” Lord Beaverbrook makes the statement which so impressed his admirer in the tea-shop: —

   I have never drawn a penny of salary from the newspaper. My sole and only object is to serve the public interest . . .” (italics ours).

Of course nobody supposed he did draw anything as salary, but what about his ownership of three-quarters of the ordinary shares? The accounts of London Express Newspapers, Ltd., show that the amount of profit available for dividend on ordinary shares averaged nearly £39,000 a year on the past three years. As Beaverbrook owns three-quarters of them, it appears that he is in a position to draw nearly £30,000 a year. Whether he owns any preference shares as well is not known. If he does his income will be correspondingly greater.

What about a little more candour, Lord Beaverbrook ?

* * *

The 'Daily Herald's’ Case for Capitalism 

Mr. Douglas Jay, formerly on the staff of The Times, then of the Economist, is now City Editor of the Daily Herald. He has written a book called "The Socialist Case" (Faber & Faber, 12s.6d., 362 pages). The publishers declined to send us a review copy, but it does not appear that we have missed anything. Mr. J. A. Hobson, reviewing it in the Manchester Guardian (October 15th, 1937), finds in Mr. Jay two merits, one of which is that—

   he discards from practicable Socialism the indiscriminate attack on profits, rent and interest which Marxism put into the Socialist theory.

Mr. Jay proves why it is necessary to retain rent, interest and profit. ‘The interesting point about this is that it goes even further in its acceptance of capitalism than the Labour Party itself. The policy in the past has always been to attack profits and rent, and even promise to destroy them, but to retain interest. Now along comes Mr. Jay and states the case for a monstrous edifice which is called Socialism, but which stands on all three of the capitalist pillars.

The unkindest cut of all, delivered at Mr. Jay, comes from an old colleague on the Economist, who says: —

   Purists, perhaps, may doubt Mr. Jay’s Socialism, and dub him rather an enlightened democrat . . .”— (Economist, Oct. 9th, 1937.)

Mr. Jay may be a democrat, but is it really enlightened to rehash all this old stuff about a reformed capitalism?

* * *

History Embarrasses the Communist Party 

The Evening Standard (November 12th, 1937) tells the following entertaining story about the Communist Party's embarrassment over a written record (which carried Lenin's endorsement) of Trotsky's part in the Bolshevist seizure of power. The record in question is "Ten Days that Shook the World," written by the late John Reed, which the News-Chronicle proposed to serialise: —

   This contemporary account of the Bolshevist uprising was written by John Reed, the American Communist, who was a close personal friend of Lenin. When he died in 1921 he left the British copyright in his book to the Communist Party.
    When the News-Chronicle approached the copyright owners for permission to serialise the book it was gladly given. The Communists asked no fee, and made only one stipulation—that all reference to Trotsky should be eliminated from the text.
    Confronted with this modern version of Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark, the Liberal organ abandoned the project.

The book was filmed by the Russians prior to Trotsky’s downfall, and shows him taking an active part. The Communists still show the film in this country, but their commentator now tells the audience that Trotsky was sabotaging the efforts of  the Bolshevists! What is more, one of the commentators, when questioned about this, admitted that he had not read the book and therefore did not know how his instructions falsify the written record.

* * *

He Could Not be Worse than the Others

One writer on the career of Mr. MacDonald, Mr. Frank Owen, who is well aware that MacDonald was never a Socialist at all, sums him up neatly and briefly, and his former associates as well: —

   I will say this of him, that he was perhaps not less of a Socialist at the finish than he was at any other time. And I will add for the benefit of old colleagues who have abused him so savagely in later days that he was no worse a Socialist than most of them.—(Daily Express, Nov. 10th, 1937.)

* * *

Dictator’s Diversion

Reynold's Illustrated News (October 24th, 1937) publishes the following extract from a book written by Mussolini's airman son, Vittorio, on his Abyssinian adventures. It shows the appalling gulf dictatorship creates, so that a young man can be entirely bereft of all sense of the consequences of his actions for other human beings: —

   I have never seen a fire. . . . Probably someone here was aware of my frustration and therefore some planes of the 14th squadron were ordered to effect a bombing in the zone of Adi Abo and to use incendiary bombs exclusively. I do not believe a more important reason existed. . . . It was most diverting.

* * *

Dilemma of Sir Stafford Cripps

The position of the man who says it is desirable to stay inside the Labour Party in order to convert it to Socialism is hopelessly false. In the New Leader, organ of the I.L.P. (October 29th, 1937), Mr. F. W. Jowett asks Sir Stafford Cripps how he squares his new declaration of loyalty to the Labour Party with his other statement that its policy is "Liberal Imperialism in Foreign affairs" and "Capitalist Reformism in Domestic affairs."

* * *

The Russian Wages System

The News-Chronicle recently published some articles on Russia by a special correspondent, Mr. Paul Winterton. It was noticeable that, though his avowed intention was to describe facts, there was a considerable admixture of opinion, some of it of a kind which obscured rather than explained the subject matter. In particular, Mr. Winterton went to some trouble to explain that, though there is great inequality of income in Russia, this is not a sign of a drift to capitalism. He reported, for example (News Chronicle, July 30th, 1937), that the lowest paid worker receives 125 roubles a month, the highest (with a few exceptions) 3,000 roubles a month. He expressed the opinion that “there is no such range in Russia as that between the 30s. a week of the British unemployed family and the £10,000 a year of the company director," but admitted, at the same time, that he had been told of the head of a Russian constructional enterprise reported to be in receipt of 12,000 roubles a month. It will be noticed that 12,000 roubles is 96 times as much as 125 roubles, and the range between the two figures is therefore not so very much less than the range between 30s. a week and £10,000 a year. The latter is 130 times the former. Even 3,000 roubles is 24 times as much as 125.

The point of major interest is that Mr. Winterton appears to be quite unaware that the present Russian practice in this matter is in flat contradiction with the views of Lenin and the earlier Bolshevists, who were firm advocates of equality. Not only Mr. Winterton, but most of the present-day British Communists are unaware of it, and the reason is that Communist and "Left Wing" books and papers are nowadays curiously silent about the former advocacy of equality. A good illustration is to be found in a Left Book Club publication, “A Handbook of Marxism" edited by Emile Bums. It runs to nearly 1,100 pages and contains reprints of many of the smaller works of Marx, Engels and Lenin. But when you look up the index to see what Lenin, for example, had to say about equality, you discover the regrettable omission of references to Lenin’s opposition to inequality.

In his “Soviets at Work,” Lenin regretted the necessity in 1918 of paying high salaries to specialists, and said: —

   Such a measure is not merely a halt in a certain part and to a certain degree of the offensive against capitalism . . . but also a step backward by our Socialist Soviet State, which has from the very beginning proclaimed and carried on a policy of reducing high salaries to the standard of wages of the average worker.

He went on to say that “to pay unequal salaries is really a step backward; we will not cheat the people by pretending otherwise.”

But Lenin’s “Soviets at Work” is not one of the works reprinted in the “Handbook of Marxism.”

Lenin had also emphasised this principle of equality in his “State and Revolution.” But while two chapters of this work are included in the “Handbook,” the chapter containing the references to equality of wages is one of those omitted on grounds of space.

The “Handbook” does, however, find space for Stalin’s latter-day Bolshevist doctrine ridiculing equality and actually quoting Lenin to. that end and making it appear that Lenin was opposed to equality (see pages 939 and 940). Needless to say, the quotation from Lenin does not really support Stalin’s view, but is concerned only with ridiculing the bourgeois notions that Socialism is based on the assumption that all men are equal. But even supposing that Lenin had on some occasion shared Stalin’s view, it is still most misleading to publish only a one-sided selection of his statements and omit the others, thus giving the false impression that the Bolshevists had always taken up the same attitude that Stalin and his Government take up now.

Before Mr. Winterton and others express opinions about what they find in Russia, and say there is no drift to capitalism, they could usefully acquaint themselves with what Marx, Engels and Lenin had to say on the subject of equality. But to do this they will have to go outside the publications of the Communist Party and the Left Book Club.

Edgar Hardcastle

"Ten Days That Shook The World." (1919)

1919 Boni & Liveright first edition.

Book Review from the November 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

From a correspondent in America. 

Under the above title John Reed has written his experience in Russia during the Bolshevist rise to power in November, 1917. It is to be followed by another called “From Kornilov to Brest-Litovsk,” covering a later period.

We are flooded with books on the Russian uprising, but still lack a story of the events in Russia written by a Socialist. In other words, we have no book written with an understanding of the relation of actions and movements in Russia to the principles and policy of Socialism.

Apart from a number of war correspondents’ pictures of the rise of Kerensky, we have several so-called radical works on the subject. John wife, a Suffragette (Louise Bryant), went to Russia for a capitalist Press syndicate and wrote a series of articles which appeared in all the leading newspapers of America. These are now reprinted under the title of “Six Red Months in Russia." It is a typical journalistic effort, being some descriptive sketches of people she met and things she encountered. There is no appreciation of the economic or historical value of the actions she describes, and her fulsome praise of Bolshevism is based upon enthusiasm unlit by understanding. Although the lady knows nothing of Socialism she is routed all over the States at high fees and worshipped by every Bolshevik.

Bessie Beatty, of the “San Francisco Bulletin,” a capitalist daily, also took a journalist's trip into Russia. She wrote a series of articles for the magazines now published as “The Red Heart of Russia.” Like Louise Bryant she was toured all through the country by the Socialist Party and others. Her book adds little to our knowledge, giving the usual story of the coup d' etat of Bolshevism and the break-up of the Constituent Assembly. There is no examination of the strength of Bolshevism compared with other parties, no enquiry into the truth of so-called reasons for abolishing the Constituent Assembly and the volte-face of Lenin and Trotsky on this subject, and we miss any study of the state of Socialist knowledge in Russia in the alleged Bolshevist book.

Now we come to the present book. John Reed is beat known as a war correspondent and the author of a book on the Eastern Front. He has been connected with “The Masses” and “The Liberator”—Max Eastman’s weeklies.

John Reed voted for President Wilson in 1916 and his articles betrayed no Socialist knowledge. Since his return from “Bolshevist Russia," however, he has been connected with the left wing of the Socialist Party, but his work for Socialism is nil. Like his fellow war correspondent, Arthur Rhys Williams, he capitalised his Bolshevism by speaking everywhere to enormous crowds at enormous fees.

His book purports to be a detailed account of the November Revolution. In a fragmentary fashion he tells the story of the starvation and chaos of the armies at the front and the delegations of soldiers coming to Petrograd in October 1917 demanding something to be done for them. Kerensky's Government were demanding that Russia should stick to the Allies, but internal disorder was drawing the Provisional Government to its fall. Peasants, tired of waiting for the promised land, were burning manor houses and massacring landholders. Korniloff's advance on Petrograd and his capture by loyal forces cemented the union for the time being against counter revolution. Kaledine's Don Cossacks were plotting against the capital, and on October 23rd a naval battle took place with a German squadron in the Gulf of Riga.

On the pretense that the capital was in danger plans were drawn up to evacuate Petrograd.

The Bolshevists saw in this move a plan to kill rising by removing the Government from the Red centre.

The Bolsheviks called a National Congress of Soviets far November 2nd. This was opposed by the supporters of the Government as being too near the date for the convening of a Constituent Assembly. In the midst of chaotic local election conditions the delegates came to the National Soviets. Judging from the inevitably unsettled conditions it is difficult to know who they represented and what support they had. But this was the Soviet Congress which captured the Government for Bolshevism.

Before the Congress met, Reed tells us, the Bolsheviks in Petrograd were considering an insurrection. Lenin and Trotsky alone favoured it, but their scheme was defeated. Then a “rough workman" and a few soldiers appealed for insurrection and Lenin and Trotsky won. In such a sentimental fashion were the Bolshevik Executive Committee swayed to change their attitude in a few minutes.

The right wing of the Bolsheviki continued to campaign against an armed rising. These were led by Kameniev and Zinoviev. The success of Bolshevik propaganda drove the Kerensky Government to formulate laws for giving the land temporarily to the peasants and for pushing a foreign policy of peace.

In the meantime the question of withdrawing the “Red" troops from Petrograd and sending them to the front had caused the Petrograd soldiers' soviet to appoint a military revolutionary committee, and this acted as the instrument of insurrection and organised the coup which took control of the Government

On the fateful day—November 7—the Ministry of War and other Government offices were seized by the soldiers and many Ministers ware arrested. Kerensky escaped.

The All Russian Congress of Soviets at Petrograd on November 7th, 1917, controlled by Lenin and Trotsky, issued an appeal to the working people of Russia claiming that it would “ensure the convocation of the Constituent Assembly at the proper date."

The first decree read by Lenin was one on land ownership transferring it to the township land committees and district soviets to be dealt with "until the Constituent Assembly meets."

"The peasant delegates wild with joy" is Reed's description of the result of the enactment of the decree.

A further decree was on the Constitution of Power:

  "Until the meeting of the Constituent Assembly, a provisional Workers’ and Peasants' Government is formed, which shall be named the Council of People's Commissars."

Within a few days Moscow Red Guards took charge of the Kremlin and controlled the city for the Bolsheviki The battle between the Committee of Public Safety and the soldiers under the military revolutionary committee lasted six days. In a scrappy fashion Reed tells the story of the control of the cities by the Bolshevik faction, and it reads more like a conspiracy than a proletarian revolution.

On the night of November 17th, 1917, opposition to Lenin's policy grew.

   “Larin (Bolshevik) declared that the moment of elections to the Constituent Assembly approached, and it was time to do away with 'political terrorism.'
   “The measures taken against the freedom of the Press should be modified. They had their reason during the struggle, but now they had no further excuse. The Press should be free, except for appeals to riot and insurrection." (Page 267.)

Contradictory statements in opposition to this ware made by Trotsky and Lenin. Oh the one hand they said “The victory over our enemies is not yet achieved, and the newspapers are arms in their hands" (p. 269), and they further said that the bourgeois parties “are in the minority." But how can we explain Lenin’s statement (p. 271) that “the immense majority of the people is with us" if they were forced to close down all opposition papers to prevent the workers being influenced.

The vast majority claimed by the Bolsheviks must have been very wavering to be influenced by the anti-Government Press.

Five members of the Council of People’s Commissars resigned declaring:

   We are in favour of a Socialist Government composed of all the parties in the Soviets. We consider that only the creation of such a Government can possibly guarantee the results of the heroic, struggle of the working class and the revolutionary army. Outside of that, there remains only one way: the constitution of a purely Bolshevik Government by means of political terrorism. This last is the road taken by the Council of People's Commissars. We cannot and will not follow it. We see that this leads directly to the elimination from political life of many proletarian organisations, to the establishment of an irresponsible regime, and to the destruction of the revolution and the country. We cannot take the responsibility for such a policy, and we renounce before the Tsay-ee-kah (Central Executive Committee of National Congress of Soviets) our function of People's Commissars.

Five others signed without resigning. At the same time Kameniev, Rykov, Miliutin, Zinoviev and Nogin resigned from the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party making public their reasons:

   The constitution of such a Government (composed of all the parties of the Soviets) is indispensable to prevent a new flow of blood, the coming famine, the destruction of the revolution by the Kaledinists, to assure the convocation of the Constituent Assembly at the proper time, and to apply effectively the programme adopted by the Congress of Soviets.
   We cannot accept the responsibility for the disastrous policy of the Central Committee, carried on against the will of an enormous majority of the proletariat and the soldiers, who are eager to see the rapid end of the bloodshed between the different political parties of the democracy. . . . We renounce our title as members of the Central Committee, in order to be able to say openly our opinion to the masses of workers and soldiers. . . . We leave the Central Committee at the moment of victory; we cannot calmly look on while the policy of the chiefs of the Central Committee leads towards the loss of the fruits of victory and the crushing of the proletariat.  . . . 

The old officials continued to sabotage the Government and strikes of technical functionaries took place, especially in halting the transportation of food. Banks, railroads, posts and telegraphs were jeopardised by this walk out. The armies at the front were dying of hunger.

The Peasant’s Congress on November 27th was a stormy affair ending in the Bolsheviks adopting the land platform of their opponents, the Social Revolutionaries. At the outset of the Convention, Kolchinsky, for the left Social Revolutionaries pointed out (p. 302)

    the Council of People's Commissars abolished private property in land, but the regulations drawn up by the land Committee are based on private property. . . .  However, no harm has been done by that, for the Land Committee are paying no attention to the Soviet decrees, but are putting into operation their own practical decisions—decisions based on the will of the vast majority of the peasants.  . . .

Reed promises to tell us in his coming book why the Constituent Assembly was destroyed by the Bolsheviks. In the meantime it may be well to note that in his “Letter to the Comrades” (326) written a few days before the insurrection of November 7th 1917, Lenin says: 

   Since September the Bolshevik party has been discussing the question of insurrection. Refusing to rise means to trust our hopes in the faith of the Bourgeoisie, who have “promised" to call the Constituent Assembly. When the Soviets have all power, the calling of the Constituent is guaranteed, and its success assured.

E. S.

The Struggle in U.S.A. (1919)

From the September 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Movement of the Blind.

America badly needs a Socialist party. The deep ignorance of the workers here is reflected in the profound ignorance of the organised labour movement. The American Federation of Labour continues on its capitalist road, exchanging thorough support of the war for the enslaving policy of our masters' peace. The Industrial Workers of the World has been paralysed by anti-Syndicalist laws and persecution of its leaders—mostly now in Federal prisons. The Workers' International Industrial Union—the child of the Socialist Labor Party—does not grow, and is always busy with internal fights, especially with its parent, the S.L.P. It refuses to endorse the S.L.P. as more than half its membership belongs to the rotten Socialist Party of America.

"My Country, 'tis of Thee."

The war found the S.P. leaders pro-Ally and anxious for the popular side, many getting Government jobs and increased publicity. These leaders seceded or were finally expelled, and they formed the Social Democratic League similar to the Hyndman clique in England. To-day the S.D.L. is little heard of and is represented in print by Allan Benson's paper, "Reconstruction." Rose Pastor Stokes returned to the S.P. fold, while her millionaire husband still continues with the jingoes.

A. M. Simons, when not busy misleading Europe, writes lies for the capitalist Press with Chas. E. Russell, William English Walling, Allan Benson and John Spargo. They flourish in the pages of that worst of all papers, the "Appeal to Reason," now known as the "New Appeal," of Girard, Kansas.

The leading writer of that journal is Upton Sinclair, who is trying to explain away  his jingoism in his monthly magazine, "The New Justice," of Los Angeles.

Debs and Debsism.

Eugene V. Debs was enthusiastic for the S.P. anti-war stand at the St. Louis Convention in 1916, but began to wobble when America entered the war. In the pages of the "Social Builder," a social reform Magazine of St. Louis, Debs argued that the anti-war stand should be modified, especially in view of the approaching election. All the capitalist papers reprinted his statements to show that the S.P. was becoming "sane."

When Debs saw that his new attitude was losing him support he wobbled back to his former position, though at his recent trial he reminded the court that he did not agree with the St. Louis platform. Debs sought to hold his democratic following, and received 10 years at Cleveland Federal Court for speaking against the war at Canton, Ohio. He is now in Atlanta prison.

Kate Richards O'Hare, a reformer and leader of the S.P., is also in prison, though her danger to the ruling class is infinitesimal. Victor Berger, one of the most anti-Socialist leaders of the S.P., has also been given 20 years, though he supported the Mexican War and militarism. He was widely known as a pro-German. While Berger wrote the pro-German articles for the "Milwaukee Leader," Simons did the pro-Ally work on the same periodical.

The Lawyer Leaders.
Even after many of the openly pro-war gentry had left the party the great bulk of the leadership and many members refused to take the working-class position on the war. The mass of S.P. membership can be estimated by their continual support of the official clique and by their sticking to such a rotten organisation. Morris Hillquit, the "brains of the S.P.," one of the many lawyers on the National Executive, offered to organise an army of Socialists to help to explain democracy to the Germans overseas. He also admitted that if he had been a member of Congress he would have voted for the war.

Algernon Lee and six other S.P. aldermen voted $80,000 in New York for a "Victory" arch on which the American "victory" at Murmansk in Russia was inscribed. Louis Boudin—another lawyer, and, author of "Theoretical System of Karl Marx"—rallied in support of the League of Nations, and refused to adopt any views on the Russian situation as he would not condemn Plechanoff and his other friends thousands of miles away.

Such a Happy Family!
When Kerensky got control in Russia the S.P. rallied for that capitalist Government, and when Ebert rose to power in Germany they duly celebrated the German "Revolution." Their support of much A. F. of L. officialdom, the sickening reform programme, the lack of party discipline, the general ignorance of Socialism caused a growing revolt in certain centres in the States. More than 50 per cent. of the membership is composed of foreign language federations. These have always been  hotbeds of reform propaganda and general ignorance. The Finnish, Jewish and German federations supported every reactionary policy. Until the Bolshevik uprising in Russia the various Russian federations in the S.P. were small, but they sprang up like mushrooms after the coup of 1917. The Russians wobbled from the defense of Plechanoff to that of Kerensky, and through their ignorance rallied to the policy of S.P. reformism.

The great bulk of Jews in the party read "Forward," the national daily edited by Abe Cahan—the supporter of war and defender of reaction in the party.

Many prominent members of the Socialist Labor Party have climbed back onto the S.P. waggon—Frank Bohn, Louis Fraina, Solon De Leon, Karl Dannenburg, Seidel, Dr. Julius Hammer—and some of them began the contest for leadership in the S.P. They preached Industral Unionism of a kind, and men like Fraina saw in the rising Bolshevik wave in the party a chance to build up a large following.

All Aboard for Bolshevism.
One point should be well noted. The elements here who took front rank in their support of Bolshevism were the very ones who were against revolutionary methods and who ridiculed Socialist education. Their feelings ran high when Allied intervention in Russia welded working-class sentiment against the capitalist international. And the anti-political ideas preached for years were good material for "abolish the State immediately" propaganda. Soviets were formed here but were mere parodies of the Russian example. Some, like in Philadelphia, advocated the armed rising of a minority, whilst most of them degenerated into veterans' reform associations.

The Left Wing and its Feathers.
The Left Wing of the S.P. comprises every variety of fool and freak, just like the Right Wing. There is, however, some good material in the Left Wing, but it is powerless while it remains together with such an army of ignorance. The test question is not whether you understand Socialism and are in favour of it, but whether you are a Bolshevik. And Bolshevism here covers almost every conceivable idea except the scientific principles of Socialism—Mass Action on the streets against machine guns, Minority Rule, To Hell with Democracy, Action not Study, such are some of the ideas of the Left Wing.

The S.P. have suspended seven language federations—Russian, Lithuanian, Lettish, Polish, South Slavic, Ukrainian, and Estonian—on account of their affiliations with the Left Wing party within the party. The State of Massachusetts and many locals in New York were expelled for the same reason, making nearly half the membership. The State of Michigan was expelled for adopting a "no reform" constitution. Michigan was not affiliated with the Left Wing organisation as they objected to the Mass Action, Industrial Unionist, and other confused ideas preached in the Left Wing manifesto and the Left Wing official organ, the "Revolutionary Age." The support of Michigan only existed where study classes had been organised by Michigan's proletarian university, a Marxian study class-promoting body organised by a number of Detroit workers.

The Left Wing is in Pieces
The Socialist Propaganda League was formed in 1916 to preach Industrial Unionism and Mass Action within the S.P. Fraina and S. J. Rutgers (now in Russia), and Bucharin the Bolshevik Commissar, were prominent members. They published the "New International" at Boston, and they eventually merged into the Left Wing group and gave up their paper for the "Revolutionary Age"—a parrot-like edition of Lenin's and Trotsky's speeches. It falsifies Marx and dupes its ignorant following.

All Left Wing branches, locals, and States were invited to send representatives to the Left Wing Convention at New York on June 21st. The Convention was dominated by Jim Larkin, the supporter of Labourism, John Reed, the war correspondent lately returned from Russia, and Louis Fraina, the political gymnast of the S.P., S.L.P., and Socialist Propaganda League. The whole business was a miserable farce, being a sordid struggle for control. The Michigan delegates presented an ultimatum demanding the immediate formation of a Communist party on the basis of a platform adopted by Michigan at its special Convention on June 15th. The Russian federations—the backbone of the Left Wing—also objected to the policy of the Left Wing leaders in trying to capture the rotten S.P. at their coming National Convention on August 30th; the Russians, therefore, wanted to form a Communist party immediately. Thus Michigan found itself withdrawing from the Conference in Company with 30,000 Russian members who would easily dominate Michigan's 6,000. At the time of writing Michigan has been pledged by its delegates to work with the Russian Federations and they have formed the Communist Party. In doing so Michigan has adopted a programme of Mass Action, Industrial Unionism, and "Abolition of the State at Once," but many well-informed members in Detroit are determined to undo this underhand work of the delegates.

Adolph Kohn