Letter: Soviets and Socialists (1975)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Soviets and Socialists

I thought that the article in your December issue on the International Socialists made a lot of good points. But one point I am not yet convinced about is your preference for Parliament as a means for the Socialist working class to take power over and transform society.

Parliaments as institutions don’t seem to me to suit the practical work of delegates, under the direct control of their constituents and recallable by them. Parliament is geared to the deliberations of so-called representatives, controlled not by their constituents but by rival Party bureaucracies who make all important decisions behind the scenes.

“Soviet” is only a Russian word for “council”. If by Soviet we genuinely mean a council of direct delegates, then surely this would be a better way of establishing a society in which we all take an active rôle in social affairs. If they were based on workplaces of all kinds, educational institutions, neighbourhoods and so on, they could easily be made as universal and democratic as you think Parliament is. Of course, you could convert Parliament and other State bodies into the form of workers’ councils, or you could develop the councils independently in the course of the struggle, or maybe some of both — I don’t think that is the crucial point.

The Soviets which existed in 1917 were not real Soviets in the direct democratic sense, but often little parliaments in which different supposedly Socialist parties — Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, SRs and so on — competed for power. The Party leaders took the decisions, like in present-day Britain, not the workers. Otherwise how could Lenin and Trotsky have taken part in the Soviets — as delegates of fringe journalism? Lastly the Soviets were not a Bolshevik tactic, but a form of organization that Russian workers set up to cater to their needs. The Bolsheviks manipulated them (because the workers were not conscious enough to prevent them, and not because Soviets are particularly fishy organizations) and then suppressed them into tools of their Party dictatorship.

As far as State power is concerned, both your idea of capturing and using it, and the Bolshevik or anarchist idea of “smashing” it, seem to assume that the armed forces are things which must be seized or destroyed. But isn’t State power not a thing, but a form of social behaviour by which we all allow ourselves to be things, the blind tools of others? Surely conscious organized Socialists won’t allow themselves to be used against the revolution — in the armed forces (if they still exist) or in the industries and services which support the forces? State power would fade away.

By the way, do members of the SPGB have views on this or other subjects (Women’s Lib. etc.) which are different from the Party line — or have members differed on interesting issues in the recent past? If so, do they have the right to express minority views, clearly labelled as such, in the Socialist Standard? It would improve your journal still more if the ideas were sometimes discussed from more than one point of view. Otherwise some readers may gain the false impression that Socialists are all identical in their attitudes, without variety.

Cicely Joyce 

London N.10

Reply:

The capitalist class have economic power because they have political power and not the other way round. They control the state machine and the armed forces through Parliament and are confirmed in their control by the working class at election times.

We are organized as a political party not out of preference (which implies that there are other ways of achieving our object) but because all the evidence of history and an analysis of capitalist society shows that this is the only way to achieve working-class emancipation. Without first gaining control of the state (the public organ of coercion and repression) through which the capitalists maintain their privileged relationship to the means of life by keeping the working class in its propertyless position, any minority movement seeking to challenge them will inevitably be beaten by the armed forces and the police who remain under the control of the capitalist class.

It does not follow that because Parliament is at present an institution of so-called “representatives” it must necessarily remain so. Once a working class who know what they want and how to get it send their delegates to Parliament with a mandate to capture political control of the state machine, it will cease to function as an instrument of class rule and become the indispensable instrument for our emancipation.

Soviets cannot establish Socialism

1. because they are economic organizations and not political; and
2. because they are based on the workplace, not on the centre of political power (See Gilmac’s articles in the Socialist Standard for January and February, and Horatio’s article in the October Socialist Standard.)

Before an electoral demonstration of a Socialist majority, Socialist ideas will have penetrated all strata of society — including central and local government, the police and the armed forces and this would strengthen the growing demand for Socialism.

However, control of the state machine is necessary

1. to lop off its repressive features; and in order:
2. to prevent any possibility of their being used in desperate attempts by counter-revolutionary groups to frustrate the wishes of the majority.

Armed forces will continue as long as capitalism because capitalism needs them. The capitalist class won't simply give up armed forces in the face of opposition. That is, they will still exist until consciously done away with.

On your final point we must point out that membership of the SPGB is dependent on acceptance of our aims and object set out in our Declaration of Principles. No-one is forced to join or prevented from leaving through disagreement. What for example would be the point of an advocate of minority action attempting to join the SPGB, other than possibly to be disruptive? Such a person is at liberty to join organizations which advocate his or her views. Party members finding themselves in disagreement with the Declaration of Principles invariably leave the Party — what would be the point in remaining in an organization dedicated to a method and object with which you disagree?

New situations faced by the SPGB have to be thrashed out, e.g. the Russian revolution of 1917, the rise of CND etc. The Socialist Standard is under the control of the whole of the membership and must reflect the democratically arrived-at Party case. The Socialist Standard does not exist to propagate anti-Socialist views — these are to be found in abundance elsewhere.

Editors.

Parliament or Soviet. (1930)

From the August 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Proletarian of America for July, 1930, publishes an article under the above title by John Keracher, which contains a covert attack on our principles and policy. Although our name is not mentioned, our Declaration of Principles is quoted.

The writer opposes our contention that the workers must capture power through parliament, but he carefully abstains from putting forward a course of action himself unless we are to take his blessing of the Paris Commune and the Russian Soviet as his idea of the future course of events.

The article contains alleged statements of Marx and Engels for which, significantly enough, no reference is given. Where, however, reference is given for quotations from Marx and Engels the context of these statements will not bear the interpretation Keracher tries to foist upon them. We will deal with these statements further on.

In a paragraph near the middle of the article Keracher ties himself in a knot and incidentally destroys his case. He writes:

  Then, again, the election of working-class representatives to the parliamentary bodies (local and national), gives the proletariat an opportunity through those representatives, to combat the representatives of Capitalism at close range. Those elected representatives of the workers can take advantage of their prominent position to combat and expose the nature of capitalist legislation , and to speak to the proletariat over the heads, as it were, of their political opponents. To "elect its own representatives in place of the capitalists" is also a means of hampering the capitalists in their "exclusive political sway"; of contesting every measure they bring forth in their own interests, and proposing measures in Parliament that would be a decided advantage to the workers, even while fully realising that the capitalist representatives, in the majority, will not permit their passage.

Good! And when the working class has a majority in Parliament cannot they seize the State power? But Mr. Keracher  is silent, wrapped in contemplation, with his gaze rivetted on Russia—which is thousands of miles away! Perhaps, in his simplicity, he thinks that when the working class have obtained a majority in Parliament  the representatives should disperse to the constituencies and start forming soviets. They certainly cannot start these organisations with any success before —  “the armed forces of the nation” will see to that!

In the effort to show the limitations of Parliament, Keracher, seeking for support from Marx, trots out the quotations we have dealt with over and over again in these columns, and, like other opponents, he omits the significant context. According to Keracher Marx wrote: “The working-class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery and wield it for its own purposes.” The paragraph in The Paris Commune , however, which is the opening paragraph of Chapter 3, runs as follows:

  On the dawn of the18th of March, Paris rose to the thunder-burst of ‘Vive la Commune!’ What is the Commune—that sphinx so tantalising to the bourgeois mind? 

  "The Proletarians of Paris" said the Central Committee in its manifesto of the 18th of March, "amidst the failures and treasons of the ruling classes, have understood that the hour has struck for them to save the situation by taking into their own hands the direction of affairs…. They have understood that it is their imperious duty and absolute right to render themselves masters of their own destinies, by seizing upon the governmental power." But the working-class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.”

From the above it will be seen that the phrase referred to the position after the workers had seized governmental power. This is the point our opponents always appear to overlook. The workers must, first of all, obtain control of power; once they have obtained supremacy in the State then they will, as Marx follows on by explaining, re-organise the administration of affairs to meet their needs. In his introduction Engels also makes this position clear: “From the outset the Commune had to recognise that the working class, having once obtained the supremacy in the State, could not work with the old machinery of government.” (Italics ours.)

Keracher, and others like him, are putting the cart before the horse. The quotation from Marx has no bearing upon parliamentary action in the way they seek to use it.

The comparison that is sought to be made between the Paris Commune and the Bolshevik Dictatorship is curious, as the Bolsheviks have done just the opposite to what was proposed by the Communards. The Communards proposed decentralisation of control whereas the Bolsheviks have established a rigid centralisation of control in the hands of a group inside the Russian Communist Party. The Communards made all posts elective and paid all officials the same pay as an ordinary workman. The Bolsheviks have established different grades of pay and the central group appoints the officials. Yet Keracher says:

  It [the political form of the future] must be a commune form, or Soviet form (the better known term since the Russian revolution). The Soviet government is the fully developed Commune; or, as Joseph Stalin expresses it, the Commune was "the Soviet in embryo."

This Russian Soviet that is alleged to be the shadow of our future we have repeatedly shown to be a state where frantic efforts are being made to build up a capitalist industry. We have so often given evidence of this that one illustration must suffice here. In Russia there is a large and growing class of capitalist investors drawing incomes from private trading and from investments in the co-operatives and the Russian State Loans. In 1927, the total share and reserve of capital in the Co-operatives amounted to ninety seven million pounds. In October, 1926, credits borrowed at home and abroad by the Co-operatives amounted to one hundred and eight million roubles. (Soviet Union Year Book, 1928, p.183 and 193). State Loans in Russia are used exclusively for financing industry, and by February, 1930, had reached nearly 300 million pounds. (Review of the Bank of Russian Trade, May, 1930). The interest on these loans averages about 10% What is the difference between this and Western capitalism?

Is this a lopping-off of the worst features of the State- as the Commune did?

Keracher attempts to wave aside a paragraph in our Declaration of Principles on the ground that it is opposed to the phrase from Marx, relating to the laying hold of the ready-made State machinery. After quoting the sixth paragraph in our Declaration of Principles he goes on to say: 

  Marx and Engels, whenever they wrote in relation to the State, took pains to point out that this is just the thing the working-class cannot do. The working-class cannot use "this machinery, including these forces", for the working-class "emancipation and the overthrow of privilege." When writing on the Commune, Marx tells with approval of ‘the suppression of the standing army, and the substitution for it of the armed people.’ In other words, it was not "this machinery, including these forces" that were to be wielded as an "agent of emancipation and the overthrow of privilege". The Parliamentary government was to be to be eliminated and replaced by the Commune form of government, with its ‘suppression of the standing army, and the substitution of the armed people.’ Marx eulogises the Commune because it "got rid of the standing army and police." These neo-Marxians are going "to use the machinery of government, including the armed forces of the nation" (the capitalist government and the standing army and the police) as the "agent of emancipation.’”

If “Marx and Engels wherever they wrote in relation to the State, took pains to point out that this is just” what “the working class cannot do”, it is surely strange that Keracher cannot produce a single quotation to support his view!

Instead he drags out one or two phrases which in their context have nothing to do with the point. We have already quoted the first paragraph of The Paris Commune. The following three paragraphs are devoted to a brief history of the growth of state power in France to the time of the Commune. Then comes the paragraph from which Keracher has torn pieces and fitted them to suit his argument. The paragraph runs as follows:

  Paris, the central seat of the old governmental power, and, at the same time, the social stronghold of the French working-class, had risen in arms against the attempt of Thiers and the Rurals to restore and perpetuate that old governmental power bequeathed to them by the Empire. Paris could resist only because, in consequence of the siege, it had got rid of the army and replaced it by a National Guard, the bulk of which consisted of working-men. This fact was now transformed into an institution. The first decree of the Commune, therefore, was the suppression of the standing army, and the substitution for it of the armed people.

It wasn’t a case of eliminating “parliamentary government”, but of resisting an attempt to restore an older form of government than the 3rd Empire. Also Marx was not referring to the general question of the suppression of the army, and his “eulogy” consisted of pointing out that as the army had been got rid of and was already replaced by armed workers, the first decree of the Commune very properly as a natural consequence was the “suppression of the standing army and the substitution for it of the armed people.” They took advantage of an accomplished fact.

In England and America, however, the army, etc., has not been got rid of, and the people are not armed. And in view of the powers of government through parliament, we would be interested to learn from him how he proposes getting rid of the army and arming the people.

This misapplied phrase of Marx, however, does not touch our position. Marx said, in effect, that you cannot carry on Socialism with capitalist governmental machinery; that you must transform the government of  one class by another into the administration of social affairs; that between the capitalist society and Socialist society lies a period of transformation during which one after another the political forms of to-day will disappear, but the worst features must be lopped off immediately the working class obtains supremacy in the State. This completely harmonises with the position laid down in our Declaration of Principles.

Mr. Keracher’s peculiar group gives no indication of the way they propose getting rid of the armed force now controlled by the capitalist and they hide their lameness in a cloud of phrases, like the following:

 The Proletarian Party continually labours to organise the workers as a class, to perform a political act, namely, the conquest of political power by the vast majority, and the organising of a State form, such as the Commune of Paris and the Soviet of Russia, with its proletarian dictatorship to coerce and expropriate all expropriators, and to ultimately develop a classless society of free people.

This means, in fact, the organising of another state within the capitalist state.

And we suppose that while all this is going on the capitalists and the force they control, “are just going to stand, hat in hand, and say, ‘Welcome, brothers. It’s all yours!’ ”

Gilmac.

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.

A Fugitive Colour. (1920)

From the October 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

From an account of an interview with a Shoreditch councillor published in the "Hackney and Kingsland Gazette," Sept. 6th, 1920, it would appear to the reader of that paper that a revolution was likely to commence in Shoreditch, to be followed by a "Soviet System of Government." Having been elected to the Council as a "Labour member," this gentleman thinks that although he has "turned Communist" he is still entitled to keep his seat on the Council, and is apparently of the opinion that as he has changed his views, the views of the electors have changed also. He therefore contends that Shoreditch has "gone red."

He tells the representative of our contemporary that he "refused to have anything to do with a local 'Council of Action,'" and denounced all councils, yet he is in favour of still more councils ("Soviets") and a seat on the Council (Shoreditch Borough Soviet) although this Soviet "can do nothing."

This Councillor has yet to learn that it requires something more than "to get elected" to any body, whether it be local council or House of Commons, in order to accomplish anything in the workers' interest.

It requires knowledge on the part of the electors and their continued support.

The local Labour Party was returned at the last election in a large majority, but has not attempted to deal with the huge amount of poverty, the great shortage of houses and other questions that face the workers in Shoreditch as elsewhere. They have fought among themselves for PLACE AND HONOURS, and while the Mayor stated that his Council would refuse to pay the police rate, police are still to be found in that borough, and the bailiffs are not yet in the Town Hall.

These councillors are afraid to move in any serious attempt deal with the working-class questions because they might lose their seats at the next election. Any party could out-reform them at reforming in the same way that they reform—that is by promising. So they merely hold tight, sit and attempt to look wise, with no more idea of which way to turn to set about the task they were elected for than they have of refusing the plums of office that fall from the rich man's table.

Friend Councillor,—The workers do not require "soviet systems of government." They have had and are getting enough government. What they require is Socialism, but they don't know enough about it yet. Socialism does away with government and brings administration. Government implies a class that cannot administer, and so must be governed by another section of society ; it also implies that the present system of production for profit shall continue and the continuance of the present system of private ownership in the means of life.

So before any section of the workers "turn red " they must understand that this system of private ownership in the means of wealth production and distribution is the cause of their poverty and misery, that they are poor because they are robbed as a result of being compelled to sell their labour power to the class that own.

They must learn, further, that the interests of the working class, and of the non-working, employing, and owning class are opposed ; that the struggle which the workers carry on with the masters for better conditions, fewer hours of employment, etc, arises from the propertied and propertyless condition of the two classes, and the attempt of those classes to live out of the wealth produced by the working class, each class struggling to obtain as big a share as possible.

The masters take advantage of all the means at their disposal to compel the workers to, not only increase the total wealth production, but to accept and be content with, the smallest possible part of the total that will suffice to keep the workers alive and able, or fit, to continue wealth production.

Soviets or councils are but part of the governmental machine, and the masters have long since understood that the class that has control of that governmental machine are in the position of governors. So they seek always to capture control through their political parties, and to swing the workers' votes to their assistance to that end. It does not matter what label the party has, if its policy is to continue capitalism ; they can control the machine through all such parties. The reforms that are the planks in the programmes of these parties can be used, not only to content the workers, but to run the system more economically.

The workers must learn a lesson from the masters and build up an organisation for themselves ; and as only a change from the system of private, to the common ownership of the means of life, can alter the poverty conditions of the workers (that should be the object of the workers' party and that only) they should control their organisation and its members and seek to capture the governmental forces to aid them in their struggle against the capitalist class.

In so doing they take away the power that the capitalists have and add power unto themselves. The workers should not only elect their members to local and national bodies, but should also control the policy of those elected and see that a change in the opinions and policy of those elected is also followed by a change in the delegate and not a change in the opinions of the electors.

Then and then only can and do the workers "turn Red" and colour-blindness disappear.

TIMS.

The Russian Dictatorship. (1920)

Pamphlet Reviews from the July 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1918 a sharp controversy took place between Karl Kautsky, of the German Social Democratic Party, and Nikolai Lenin, of the Russian Bolsheviks, on the question of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. The debate has lately been translated into English, Kautsky’s contribution by the ILP, under the title The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, and Lenin’s by the BSP, under the title The Proletarian Revolution.

Lenin’s pamphlet is the more lively, the more abusive and, on a superficial level, the more effective statement. One capitalist critic has been so carried away by the stream of denunciations that runs from one end to the other of the pamphlet that he declared that Lenin had practically pulverised Kautsky.

But denunciation, however justified, is not argument, and when the case is more closely examined one gains the impression that a good deal of the abuse is used to hide the lack of argument, that in some cases is painfully apparent.

How valueless is Lenin’s judgement of Kautsky is shown by one outstanding fact. In Lenin’s view Kautsky was a Marxist until the war broke out in 1914, when he became a “renegade”. Yet as every Socialist knows, apart from previous actions in Germany, 14 years before the war Kautsky had proclaimed his renunciation of Marxism when he drafted the well-known “Kautsky resolution” at the 1900 International Socialist Congress. That resolution stated that a Socialist could accept a gift of a seat in a capitalist cabinet in a national emergency, such as war. His support of the German capitalist class in the war was therefore only the logical outcome of his resolution in 1900.

Kautsky says the question is one of the “clashing of two fundamentally distinct methods, that of democracy and dictatorship” (p. 1). Lenin retorts by claiming that the question is one “of the relation between the proletarian State and the bourgeois State, between proletarian democracy and bourgeois democracy” (p. 10).

It is obvious that Lenin’s statement is a shuffle. For relations to exist between a proletarian State and a bourgeois State both these States must exist at the same moment. Are these two States existing in Russia to-day? If not there can be no question of such a relation there.

Again, what is “Democracy”? Kautsky says “Democracy signifies the rule of the majority, but not less the protection of minorities” (p. 30).Lenin pours scorn upon the latter part of this definition, and refers to the repression of strikers, internationalists, and others in democratic countries like America, Switzerland, and England. True as this retort is against the “protection of minorities”, it does not touch the question of what is democracy, and Lenin carefully evades any definition himself. His use of the terms “proletarian” and “bourgeois” democracy merely clouds the issue.

Democracy means “Rule by majority”, and the trimmings introduced by both Lenin and Kautsky are quite secondary to this main point. It is generally taken that the minority shall be allowed to express their views and may endeavour to convert the majority to their ideas, while accepting for the time being the majority decisions. This, however, depends upon circumstances and conditions, such as war, where this allowance would not be made. Kautsky himself supported the German Government in repressing minorities in Germany.

His grief at the capitalists being deprived of the vote under the Bolsheviks, receives an answer from Lenin that will hardly please the supporters of the latter here, who have proclaimed it as a necessary factor in working-class policy. He says: “One may say in this connection that the question about the suppression of the franchise of the exploiter is entirely a Russian question and not at all one of the dictatorship of the proletariat in general” (p. 38. Italics in original).

As a matter of fact, it is a question of the conditions existing at the time. If the capitalists were endeavouring to foment civil war – as they were doing at that time – they would be outlawed and thus deprived of most civil privileges.

But what is “bourgeois” democracy? Lenin points to modern capitalist countries as examples. Yet in all these countries the proletariat not only form the majority of the population, but also have the majority of the votes.

So a “bourgeois” democracy is one where the proletariat are in a majority. Then what is a “proletarian” democracy? We are told that it is “a democracy for the poor” (p. 31. Italics Lenin’s) while in a bourgeois democracy, even the best, “We are ruled, and our State is run by bourgeois bureaucrats, by capitalist parliaments, by capitalist judges” (Ibid.).

But if democracy is the rule of the majority, and in the capitalist countries mentioned the proletariat form the majority of the population and have the majority of the votes, it is clear that the proletariat must have voted the capitalists into Parliament and power. Why did they not vote themselves into power? Lenin’s statement on this point is such a stupid lie as to cause wonder that a man of his abilities should have written so glaring a contradiction of the facts. He says: “The labouring masses are kept away from bourgeois parliament (which never decides the most important questions in a bourgeois democracy as they are decided by the Stock Exchange and the banks) by a thousand and one barriers” (p. 29).

Lenin does not give one, let alone a thousand and one of these barriers, for the simple reason that they are non-existent outside his imagination.

This is one of the points on which Kautsky scores heavily and Lenin is reduced to evasion.

On page 12 of his pamphlet Kautsky says:

 “Every conscious action presupposes a will. The Will to Socialism is the first condition for its accomplishment.” 

  “This Will is created by great industry . . .  Small production always creates the Will to uphold or to obtain private property in the means of production which are in vogue, not the Will to social property, to Socialism.”

This is the situation. While the workers agree with capitalism, they will vote capitalists into Parliament. When they agree with Socialism – or “Will to Socialism” – they will send Socialists there.

And – how short is Lenin’s memory! – both he and his colleagues were voted into a “bourgeois” Parliament by the “labouring masses”.

Lenin on p. 30 of his book says: “the Soviet regime is a million times more democratic than the most democratic regime in a bourgeois republic”.

What is the Soviet Regime?

The word “Soviet” is used by many supporters of the Bolsheviks as though it denoted some newly discovered magical power. When one is told that it merely means “Council” the magic vanishes.

At the base of this system are the Urban and Rural Councils, directly elected by the sections qualified to vote. The delegates are elected in the proportion of one delegate to every 1,000 members in the towns (up to a maximum of 1,000 councillors), and one delegate to every 100 in the country.

Above this comes the Volost Congress. A Volost is a group of villages, and the Congress is composed of delegates from the Councils of these village groups.

Next above in the order is the District Congress composed of representatives from the Village Councils.

Still higher is the County Congress consisting of representatives from the Urban Councils and the Volost Congresses.

Overriding all these bodies is the Regional Congress made up of delegates from the Urban Councils and Congresses of the County Districts.

At the apex of the system is the All Russia Congress of Councils which is the supreme authority of the Russian Republic. This is formed of delegates from the Urban Councils and the Congresses of County Councils.

We have, then, six grades of authority in the Russian system. But note how they are elected.

The “labouring masses” vote once – namely, at the local councils, urban and village. This is their one and only vote. All the other grades are elected by the delegates of the Congress immediately below it.

This the Volost Congress is elected by the Village Group Councils; the District Congress by the general Village Councils; the County Congress by the Urban Councils and Volost Congresses; the Regional Congress by the Urban Councils and Congresses of County Districts; and the All Russia Congress by Urban Councils and Congresses of County Councils.

We see, then, that “the supreme authority of the Russian Council Republic” is removed five stages beyond the vote, reach, or control of the workers.

Another interesting point is the ratio between the urban and country representatives. Thus for the All Russia Congress of Councils the Urban Councils send one representative for every 25,000, while the County Council Congresses send one delegate for every 125,000, or to put it another way, the Urban Councils have five times the representation of the County Councils. The same ratio applies to Regional and County Congresses. These figures have a peculiar significance.

The Bolsheviks, naturally, find their chief support in the urban centres. By this basis of representation they are able to ensure the practical certainty of a majority in “the supreme authority of the Russian Republic”. “And that’s how it’s done”, as the stage conjurer says.

This method may be suitable to Russian conditions, but to claim for such a system that it is “a million times more democratic than the most democratic regime in a bourgeois republic” — where the workers have a direct, and overwhelming, vote for the very centre of power — is the wildest nonsense.

But what of the Recall? we may be asked. Let us see what the clause says.

  “The electors have at any time the right to recall the delegates whom they have sent to the Council and to proceed to new elections.”

Two interpretations may be given to this clause. First — if as the words state — the recall is limited to the Councils, all the Congresses are free from this control. Secondly, if the clause is intended to apply to all the grades, then the workers can only use it for Local Councils as they are not voters in any other grade.

Marx, of course, is freely quoted by both writers. On p. 140 Kautsky, while stating that the Bolsheviks are Marxists, asks how they find a Marxist foundation for their proceedings.

  “They remembered opportunely the expression ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’, which Marx used in a letter written in 1875.”

Kautsky states that this is the only place in the whole of Marx’s writings where this phrase occurs, though Engels used it in his preface to the 3rd edition of Marx’s Civil War in France.

Lenin’s reply to this is to call the passage a “celebrated” one, and to call Kautsky several names. He then makes the following statement:

  “Kautsky cannot but know that both Marx and Engels, both in their letters and public writings, spoke repeatedly about the dictatorship of the proletariat, both before and after the Commune” (p. 12. Italics in original).

Here was a grand opportunity for Lenin to get in a powerful blow by giving some of these “letters and public writings”, but, to the chagrin, no doubt, of his followers, he does not give a single case outside those mentioned above. There are endeavours to twist some of Marx’s statements on the Commune of Paris (1871) into a support of this claim, but they are all dismals failures. Only in the Communist Manifesto is found a phrase – “the proletariat organised as a ruling class” – that bears any resemblance.

But a more important point remains. Every student of Marx knows how he laid bare the laws of social evolution and claimed that, in broad outline, all nations must follow these laws in their development.

Kautsky uses this fact with great effect, and it forms the strongest argument in the whole of his pamphlet. On page 98 he gives the well-known phrase from the preface to the 1st Volume of Capital.

  “One nation can and should learn from others. And even when a society has got upon the right track for the discovery of the natural laws of its movement — it can neither clear by bold leaps, nor remove by legal enactments the obstacles offered by the successive phases of its normal development. But it can shorten and lessen the birth pangs.”

How does Lenin deal with this famous phrase of Marx’s? By entirely ignoring it. There is not a single reference to it in the whole of his reply. More than this, the quotation given above from page 140 of Kautsky’s pamphlet is printed by Lenin on page 11-12 of his reply. Immediately preceding the sentence quoted Kautsky says:

  “The Bolshevists are Marxists, and have inspired the proletarian sections coming under their influence with great enthusiasm for Marxism. Their dictatorship, however, is in contradiction to the Marxist teaching that no people can overcome the obstacles offered by the successive phases of their development by a jump or by legal enactment.”

This ignoring of one part of a paragraph while quoting the other part is full proof Lenin deliberately avoided this important question.

Kautsky’s analysis of the conditions prevailing in Russia, with the danger to the Russian Republic from American and even more from German capital, is well done, but is entirely ignored by Lenin.

This controversy, along with the events that have taken place since it occurred, adds considerable evidence to the correctness of the deduction we drew from the situation in 1918.

In the midst of the special conditions and chaos caused by the war, when the old exploiting regime had broken down and the new exploiting class were too weak to take hold of power, a small but resolute minority seized the political machinery and took control of affairs. The mass of the workers in Russia are not Socialists, neither do they understand the principles of Socialism nor desire to see Socialism established.

The new ruling minority promised peace and — to their highest credit — established it. That this peace has been broken and they have been compelled to take up war again is due entirely to the Imperialist aims of the capitalist class of Europe. Despite this great burden and the appalling chaos in which they found Russia, they have, according to the accounts of various witnesses who have visited Russia since the Bolsheviks came to power, done wonders in the way of reconstruction and reorganisation. Their success in these matters has caused large numbers of Russians who are opponents of Socialism to give their support to the Bolsheviks as the only party in the country who can get things done.

But rule by a minority — even a Marxist minority — is not Socialism. Not until the instruments and methods of production have reached the stage of large machinery and mass organisation is it possible for social production to develop. When the workers, organised and trained in this social production, reach an understanding of their slave position, and decide to supplement social production by social ownership, through the seizure of political power, then, and not till then, will Socialism be established.

The Bolsheviks based their hopes on a rising of the proletariat of Western Europe to make their position secure. But the Western proletariat did not rise, nor do they show any signs of doing so up to the present. This failure of their basic hope leaves the Bolsheviks in conditions that make inevitable the entry into, and development of capitalism in, Russia.

The Bolsheviks may try to save as much of their system as possible, but the events will prove the correctness of Marx’s view on the failure of attempts to jump the stages in social evolution. Their failure, however, will not be all disaster.

They will have shown the workers of the world that the capitalist class is a useless and parasitic class in modern society. They will have shown that men holding Socialist views and of the working class could take charge of huge affairs and manage them with great success, in the midst of the wildest chaos, and while hampered by enemies within and without. Already the lesson is beginning to be learnt, and though only affecting a few relatively at present, it is spreading with steady persistence.

When the workers awaken to an understanding of the position in which they exist, and begin to fight the class war consciously in numbers that seriously count, the rule of the Russian Bolsheviks will be a splendid lesson, not on the value of “Soviet” or “Dictatorship”, but on the ability of the working class to manage its own affairs. It will have done its share in “shortening and lessening the birth pangs” of Socialism.

Jack Fitzgerald

50 Years Ago: The Communists and the ILP change places (1988)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is not often that two political parties change places so completely as the ILP and the Communist Party. In 1919-1924 the ILP was busily engaged in securing the election of a Labour Government, in the belief that such a policy would secure certain immediate gains and pave the way for the gradual reform of the capitalist system. The Communists, on the other hand, denounced Parliamentary methods and preached Soviets and armed revolt. In the intervening years experience has disillusioned the ILP and sent them sneaking into the position vacated by the Communists, while the latter, under Moscow’s orders, are seeking a Parliamentary alliance with Labour and Liberals in the guise of a Popular Front.

The following is a passage from Mr Fenner Brockway’s recent book, " 'Workers' Front" (Martin & Seeker. 3s. 6d.):-

  The hope that Capitalism can be transformed to Socialism through the means of the Capitalist state  . . .  is an illusion. Socialists should use the constitution of the Capitalist State as fully as possible but they should recognise that finally they must conquer the Capitalist class through their own actions and organs, through Workers' Councils or Soviets . . .  and in the last resort, if necessary, through their own Workers' Army . . .

And now the Scottish ILP, at its conference on February 13th. 1938 (The Times February 14th. 1938), is attacking the Communists because the latter advocate the policy "of collaboration with sections of the capitalist class and capitalist governments," in other words, because the Communists have adopted the ILP's own past errors and the ILP has adopted those of the Communists!

The ILP, of course, is as wrong now as it was then, so are the Communists.

[Article published in the Socialist Standard, March 1938]

“World Revolution”: another confused group (1980)

From the August 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recent years have seen the emergence of groups who recognise that by socialism Marx meant a society in which goods would no longer be produced for sale and in which people would no longer work for wages. They have not, however, acknowledged that the Socialist Party of Great Britain has been pointing this out for over seventy years. In fact they have some harsh things to say about us. The journal World Revolution, for instance, which styles itself “the British group of the International Communist Current” is on record as describing us as “a completely degenerate bourgeois organisation which can only play a counter-revolutionary role within the working class” and as “a parliamentarian leftist sect renowned for their Menshevism” (WR3). Recently, however, they seemed to have had second thoughts and have upgraded us from “a completely degenerate bourgeois” organisation to a “confused proletarian” one:

  The SPGB has survived since 1904 as a proletarian organisation. While its rigid sectarianism from the beginning tended to inhibit any real contribution to the clarification of the tasks of the working class, it nonetheless stood against both world wars, attacking them as capitalist wars in which the working class had no interest, and denouncing anti-fascism for the anti-working class movement it was. The SPGB also recognises Russia and China as state capitalist, and sees parties of the left and extreme left as parties of state capitalism. But against these class positions it also holds to the view that the working class can only come to power through Parliament and that it can defend itself through trade unions. It is even confused about who the working class is – for example, it sees the repressive arms of the state, the police, as members of the working class simply because they are paid wages (WR11).

The so-called “International Communist Current” is an organisation with supporters in North America and a number of European countries, centred on the French journal Révolution Internationale which has tried to combine the Italian and German “leftwing communist” traditions, both dogmatically anti-parliamentary, attacked by Lenin in 1921 in his pamphlet Leftwing Communism: An Infantile Disorder.

WR holds that capitalism is, and has been since the first world war, in a state of economic collapse due to its inability to find new markets on which to sell its products at a profit. This view is based on an uncritical acceptance of the analysis made by Rosa Luxemburg in her book The Accumulation of Capital first published in 1913. We are told: “As Rosa Luxemburg showed, surplus value cannot be realised within the context of a purely capitalist economy” (WR1).

Rosa Luxemburg did indeed try to demonstrate this, but her argument was based on a simple fallacy. According to her, under “pure” capitalism (an economy where there are only capitalists and wage workers) market demand was determined by consumption (what the workers spend on consumer goods plus what the capitalists spend on consumer goods). If the capitalists were to consume all their surplus value, so her argument ran, there would be no problem, but as soon as they re-invest a part of it – which, the accumulation of capital, is after all the purpose of production under capitalism – market demand is no longer equal to what has been produced. For, the consumption of the capitalists having been reduced, so, according to Luxemburg, has market demand. The result, she concluded, was that there was nobody to buy the products in which the re-invested profits were embodied (new machinery, raw materials and consumer goods for the extra workers taken on).

This argument makes accumulation impossible under “pure” capitalism and Luxemburg did not shrink from this conclusion. In fact it led her to the basic theme of her book: that for capital accumulation to take place there must be non-capitalist areas to buy the part of the surplus product not consumed by the capitalists. It followed for her that capitalism would collapse at the point when there were no more non-capitalist areas left in the world. It is WR’s contention that precisely this collapse began to occur at about the time of the first world war.

Luxemburg had the intellectual honesty to admit that this theory conflicted with the rough notes Marx had made at the end of Volume II of Capital which implied that long-term growth (accumulation) was possible under “pure” capitalism. She therefore tried to show where Marx had gone wrong, but only succeeded in exposing her own utter confusion about economics. She made the silly mistake of assuming that the level of market demand was determined exclusively by consumption (the spending of workers and capitalists on consumer goods) whereas in fact it is determined by consumption plus investment (capitalist spending on new means of production). Thus, when a part of the surplus value is re-invested rather than consumed, market demand is not reduced; it is merely re-arranged: what the capitalists formerly spent on consumer goods they now spend on means of production. Marx had made no mistake.

Of course, to say that capitalism could in theory exist without external non-capitalist markets is not to say that it always has done. External markets did play a key role in the birth and early growth of capitalism. Similarly, to say that there is no permanent underconsumption built-in to the capitalist system is not to say that there is therefore always a smooth crisis-free accumulation of capital. Far from it. Accumulation under capitalism proceeds by fits and starts, but these crises are caused by other reasons than underconsumption: by disproportions between the different branches of production leading to a fall in the rate of profit or, at times, to a temporary retraction of the market demand for consumer goods. Finally, to deny that capitalism is in a state of collapse through inability to find new external markets is not at all to deny that, since about the turn of the century, it has been a reactionary, “decadent” system with no further positive role to play in the history of mankind. By that time, it had already built up the material basis for a world socialist society and so had fulfilled its historic role.

According to WR theory, the period after the first world war was one of imminent “proletarian revolution” sparked off by the collapse of capitalism. In fact, however, capitalism was not collapsing nor were the workers revolutionary in any meaningful sense of the term, that is, imbued with socialist understanding. They were merely discontented with the terrible conditions they had to endure. A minority were indeed prepared to take violent action to try to rectify the situation, but this did not mean they were revolutionary in the sense of wanting and understanding socialism. The great majority of workers, however, as the results of elections held in Britain, France and Germany at the time showed, remained loyal to the political parties which openly upheld capitalism, including by now the Labour and Social Democratic parties.

Lenin too made the mistake of assuming that a socialist revolution in the West was imminent. His justification for the Bolshevik seizure of power in November 1917 was that it was the first step in the world proletarian revolution, a breakthrough by the working class where the link in the imperialist chain was weakest, to be followed fairly rapidly by revolutions in the other countries of Europe and in particular in Germany. In reality the Bolsheviks’ coming to power was nothing of the sort, but was rather the seizure of power by a determined group in the conditions of chaos following the collapse of the Tsarist State under the impact of the war. Certainly, the Bolsheviks claimed to be socialists, but their support amongst the workers had been built up not for socialism but on the slogans “Peace, Bread and Land”. Once in power they never had any choice but to develop capitalism in Russia which they proceeded to do in the form of state capitalism as Lenin was to frankly admit. Thus their coup d’état was essentially only a point in the process of the development of capitalism in Russia, Russia’s equivalent of the French bourgeois revolution of 1798 or rather of the coming to power of Robespierre and the Jacobins in 1793.

WR, however, and the “International Communist Current”, reject this view and proclaim that the Bolshevik seizure of power was a “proletarian revolution” which later “degenerated” into the state capitalism we see in Russia today:

  Its [the Bolshevik Party’s] coming to power in October was one of the highest moments of the proletarian revolution” (WR1). 

  With the recognition of the proletarian character of the October Revolution must come the realisation that the Bolshevik party . . . was a proletarian party of the revolutionary wave” (International Review No.3, p. 1).

The fact that WR regards the Bolshevik seizure of power as a “proletarian revolution” and the Bolshevik vanguard party as (at that time) a “proletarian party” reveals a lot about their own conception of majority, conscious revolution (as WR claims), yet points to the Bolshevik coup (where an unconscious majority was manipulated by a conscious minority as in all previous bourgeois revolutions) as an example of the sort of revolution they have in mind, then their claim, or their understanding of its implications, must be open to serious question. That, despite what they say, they don’t really stand for a majority conscious revolution will be confirmed when we examine their attitude to Parliament and elections.

WR is vehemently opposed to Parliament describing it as a “circus” and us as “parliamentary cretins” for saying that the working class can make some use of it. They favour instead “workers councils” in which their organisation would play a “vanguard” role. Once again this results from the fascination the Bolsheviks have for them.

Tsarist Russia was a political autocracy which did not permit the organisation of normal political parties or trade unions. Thus when it collapsed in March 1917 there were no mass parties or trade unions, or even local government bodies, through which the workers and soldiers could express their views. To fill this gap they formed make-shift representative bodies called “soviets” (which is merely the Russian word for “council”) as they had done before in 1905. The fact that these bodies were make-shift without any formal democratic structure (though there is no reason to believe that they were not more or less representative till the Bolshevik coup) made it easier for them to be manipulated by a determined minority such as the Bolsheviks were.

Lenin cynically proclaimed these councils as a superior form of democracy to Parliament just because their unstructured nature had made it easier for a minority calling itself revolutionary to come to power by manipulating them. WR has inherited this tradition and has not entirely freed itself from the Bolshevik tactic of organising as a “vanguard” to manipulate the “workers councils” they want set up.

On the other hand, socialists reject all forms of minority action to attempt to establish socialism, which can only be established by the working class when the immense majority have come to want and understand it. Without a socialist working class, there can be no socialism. The establishment of socialism can only be the conscious majority, and therefore democratic, act of a socialist-minded working class.

In these circumstances the easiest and surest way for such a socialist majority to gain control of political power in order to establish socialism is to use the existing electoral machinery to send a majority of mandated socialist delegates to the various parliaments of the world. This is why we advocate using Parliament; not to try to reform capitalism (the only way Parliaments have been used up till now, which has inevitably failed to do anything for the working class since capitalism simply cannot be reformed to work for their benefit), but for the single revolutionary purpose of abolishing capitalism and establishing socialism by converting the means of production and distribution into the common property of the whole of society.

No doubt, at the same time, the working class will also have organised itself, at the various places of work, in order to keep production going, but nothing can be done here until the machinery of coercion which is the state has been taken out of the hands of the capitalist class by political action.

In the passage from WR11 quoted at the beginning of this article we are criticised for saying that the working class “can defend itself through trade unions”. We do indeed say this. The existing trade unions are certainly not perfect – they are bureaucratic, they often collaborate with employers and governments, they engage in reformist politics – but at the moment, given the existing low level of consciousness among the working class, they are all workers have to defend themselves. Actually, we do not support the existing trade unions as such; what we say is that we are in favour of workers organising democratically and taking industrial action to defend their wages and conditions, and where possible improve them, against the encroachment of capital, an activity that has in the past sometimes brought them into conflict with the existing trade unions.

And it is not socialists who are “confused about who the working class is”. We say that the working class is composed of all those who are excluded from ownership and control of the means of production and who are consequently forced, in order to live, to sell their mental and physical energies for a wage or salary, irrespective of the job they do. The working class thus includes office workers and civil servants as well as factory workers and miners and, yes, policemen and members of the armed forces. Indeed, it is partly because we know that the state machine is manned largely by members of the working class that we are confident that the socialist working class majority will be able to establish socialism peacefully. For, when socialist ideas begin to spread among the working class it is most unlikely that those in uniform will remain unaffected. When a majority of workers generally are socialists, so will most of their fellow workers in the armed forces be.

Adam Buick

The State and the Socialist Revolution (1940)

Pamphlet Review from the January 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

The State and the Socialist Revolution by J. Martov. (International Review, New York.)

This pamphlet consists of a number of essays written during the years 1919-23 by the Russian Marxist, Martov

Who was Martov?

“Integer”, the translator, gives a detailed account of Martov in his Foreword. He was a Russian Marxist who accepted neither the point of view of the Bolsheviks, nor that of the Mensheviks, but was very well known in Russia for his writings both before and during the revolutionary days. He was “one if the founders and collaborators on the Iskra, the publication around which the Russian Social Democracy developed”. After 1917 he opposed the infliction of capital punishment on workers who thought differently from the Bolsheviks, and he demanded trial by jury for political prisoners. Because he persisted in examining critically the policy of the Bolsheviks, he was driven into exile, where he died, poverty-stricken and a victim of tuberculosis.

Martov’s writings are of particular interest to the working class, for therein he carefully examines the content and lays bear the meaning of the Russian Revolution. In addition, he covers such important questions as “Marx and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat” and “The Commune of 1871”.

It is worthy of note that Martov, possibly ignorant of the S. P. G. B., arrived at conclusions on a large number of subjects which coincide with the views of the Socialist Party of Great Britain expressed in the Socialist Standard in the early years of Bolshevik rule.

Martov on “Soviets for All Countries”

After 1917, the Bolsheviks and their followers in other countries announced to the world that a new weapon, a new political form, had at long last been discovered which would enable the working class everywhere to win its emancipation. This “perfect” political form was, of course, the Soviet. Time and place were of no importance. All that was necessary was for the different peoples to make use of Soviets and each and every one of them would achieve Socialism. Soviets, the Bolsheviks claimed, would be equally efficacious in backward countries like Russia, Bulgaria and Hungary, and in highly industrialised countries like England and the United States. “Soviets are the perfect form of State. They are the magic wand by which all inequalities, all misery, may be suppressed”  (p. 14).

Martov ridiculed the Bolsheviks for their belief that revolutions were ready to break out everywhere, for their belief that workers and peasants, by embracing Soviets (a world merely meaning Council), could establish Socialism. He held the Marxian view that no political form can enable Socialism to be won, unless the material conditions are ripe for such a change, unless capitalism has reached a high degree of development. Says Martov: “No less than mystic is the concept of a political form that, by virtue of its particular character, can surmount all economic social and national contradictions” (p. 15).

Marx’s view on the impossibility of peasant communities passing directly to Socialism without passing through the intermediary stage of capitalism, can be found in his preface to the first edition of Capital. There Marx says: “And even when a society has got upon the right track for the discovery of the natural laws of its movement . . . it can neither clear by bold leaps, nor remove by legal enactments, the obstacles offered by the successive phases of its normal development.”

It can easily be seen, therefore, how little the Bolsheviks understood the teachings of Marx (whose apostles they claim to be), and how badly they followed the advice he had to give.

Reality has shattered all these illusions

To-day, we hear little of Soviets. The reality of experience has taught that they are not “a magic wand”.

Reality, too, shattered many of the Bolsheviks’ early illusions. In his essay on “Dictatorship of the Minority”, Martov shows how the Bolsheviks were forced by conditions of the time to change their tactics and ideas.

In 1917, Lenin urged that the Russian workers would shatter the old bureaucratic and oppressive features of the State, once they had gained political power. He wrote of “the substitution of a universal popular militia for the police”, of the “electiveness and recall at any moment of all functionaries and commanding ranks”, of “workers’ control in its primitive sense, direct participation of the people at the courts” (p. 17). Indeed, Lenin claimed that the triumph of the Bolsheviks would bring to the Russian workers a more real democracy than that found in capitalist countries with the parliamentary system.

This soon proved to be an idle dream. (And yet, perhaps, it was not so “idle”, since such talk helped Lenin and his clique to gain support and power.) In any case, the programme above outlined was soon abandoned. It was found impossible to put it into effect in face of the backward condition of industry and agriculture, and of the peasant outlook. Alread, by1919, Martov could observe that the machinery of State in Russia was being strengthened, and that the apparatus for repression was being improved and extended. Martov sums up the matter in these words:

  Reality has cruelly shattered all these illusions. The ‘Soviet State’ has not established in any instance electiveness and recall of public officials and the commanding staff. It has not suppressed the professional police . . . It has not done away with social hierarchy in production . . . On the contrary, in proportion to its evolution, the Soviet State shows a tendency in the opposite direction. It shows a tendency toward the utmost possible strengthening of the principles of hierarchy and compulsion. It shows a tendency toward the development of a more specialised apparatus of repression than before . . . It shows a tendency toward the total freedom of the executive organisms from the tutelage of the electors” (p. 18. Our emphasis).

Again, on page 55, Martov tells us how things developed after 1917.

  “In Russia the evolution of the ‘Soviet State’ has already created a new and complicated State machine, based on the ‘administration of persons’ as against the ‘administration of things’ based on the opposition of  . . . The functionary (official) to the citizen. THESE ANTAGONISMS ARE IN NO WAY DIFFERENT FROM THE ANTAGONISMS THAT CHARACTERISE THE CAPITALIST STATE” (Our emphasis).

Naturally, Martov, like the S.P.G.B., held the view that the form of State in Russia was not as advanced as the “democratic parliamentarism” found in Western Europe. Whilst ridiculing the democracy of the more highly developed  capitalist countries, the Bolsheviks did not fail to make use of the features of repression existing in those countries (p. 19).

To put the whole matter briefly, after the Russian upheaval of 1917, as before it, the State Power continued to be in the hands of a minority, though it was a different minority (p. 19).

What was the historic role of the Bolsheviks?

In his Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, Engels showed that after the proletariat has gained political power for the purpose of introducing Socialism, the State would become unnecessary, and die out. “State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of the processes of production” (Our emphasis).

If the conclusions of Engels given above contain the truth, the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks was not followed by the introduction of Socialism. Or why the continued development and strengthening of the Russian State Power?

What DID the capture of political power by the Bolsheviks mean? Briefly stated, it meant this. The Bolsheviks became the instruments for the furthering of a capitalist revolution in Russia.

After a life-time of experience of working-class movements, Engels, in his preface to The Class Struggle in France, wrote:

  The time has passed for revolutions accomplished through the sudden seizure of power by small conscious minorities at the head of unconscious masses . . . As soon as the situation calls for the total transformation of the social order, the masses must participate in it directly, and they must have an understanding of what is at stake and what must be won. This is what the history of the last half-century has taught us” (Quoted by Martov, pp. 57-8).

Both Engels and Marx knew from experience that before there could be a Socialist revolution, capitalism must have reached a high stage of development for “no social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room within it have been developed; and new higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society” (Marx’s Preface to the Critique of Political Economy).

The Bolsheviks, however, thought it possible for an active minority, representing the vague aspirations of the workers, to gain political power before the capitalist revolution itself had been completed. (See Martov, pp. 58-60.) What would happen if such a minority gained a political victory over the capitalist classes?

Marx himself answers this question in clear-cut terms in his article, “Moralising Criticism”. Briefly stated, his answer is the following: In those circumstances, the minority become merely the tools of the capitalist class, which has not been virile enough to gain or hold power. Such a minority finds itself in the position of having to develop and run capitalism for a class unable, at the time, to do it successfully itself. Hence, let it be remembered, in running capitalism, the minority will be compelled to use its power to keep the working class in its slave position. Says Marx:

  Its victory will only be a point in the process of the bourgeois (capitalist) revolution itself, and will serve the cause of the latter by aiding its further development. This happened in 1794, and will happen again as long as the march, the movement, of history will not have elaborated the material factors that will create the necessity of putting an end to the bourgeois methods of production and, as a consequence, to the political domination of the bourgeoisie” (p. 59, Martov’s emphasis).

Hence, we see the real content and meaning of the Russian Revolution. It was “only a point in the process of the capitalist revolution itself”.  The Bolsheviks, finding Russia in a very backward condition, were obliged themselves to do what had not been done previously, i.e., develop capitalism. The Bolsheviks performed the task of setting Russian capitalism on its feet and helping it through a very stormy period. “For the proletariat can score a victory over the capitalists—and not for the capitalists—only when the march of history will have elaborated the NECESSITY (not merely the objective POSSIBILITY) of putting an end to the capitalist methods of production” (p. 59).

We had hoped to include in this article reference to two other essays by Martov; first, “Metaphysical Materialism and Dialectical Materialism”, and secondly, “Marx and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat”, but, owing to lack of space, we must leave them for a future issue.

Enough, however, has been said to show that we consider The State and the Socialist Revolution worthy of careful study. Like the books by Gide and Yvon, reviewed already in the Socialist Standard, Martov’s appears to add further proof of the correctness of the attitude taken up by the S.P.G.B. [about] the Russian Revolution.

We recommend it to all workers. We are confident that, if widely read, it will dispel many of those illusions which have been hindering the growth of a solid Socialist movement during the past twenty years.

Clifford Allen

(The State and the Socialist Revolution is obtainable from the Literature Secretary, 42 Great Dover Street, London, S. E. 1. Post free, 1s. 1d.)