April Theses: Lenin’s fundamental role in the Russian Revolution
It is 90 years since the start of the Russian revolution. More particularly, this month sees the 90th anniversary of the ‘April Theses’, announced by Lenin on his return from exile, and calling for the overthrow of Kerensky’s ‘Provisional Government’ as a first step towards the international proletarian revolution. In highlighting Lenin’s crucial role in the revolution, we are not subscribing to the ‘great man’ theory of history, but showing that the revolutionary positions he was able to defend with such clarity at that moment were an expression of something much deeper – the awakening of an entire social class to the concrete possibility of emancipating itself from capitalism and imperialist war. The following article was originally published in World Revolution 203, April 1997. It can be read in conjunction with a more developed study of the April Theses now republished on our website, ‘The April Theses: signpost to the proletarian revolution ’.
On 4 April 1917 Lenin returned from his exile in Switzerland, arrived in Petrograd and addressed himself directly to the workers and soldiers who crowded the station in these terms: “Dear comrades, soldiers, sailors and workers. I am happy to greet in you the victorious Russian revolution, to greet you as the advance guard of the International proletarian army... The Russian revolution achieved by you has opened a new epoch. Long live the worldwide socialist revolution!...” (Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution). 80 years later the bourgeoisie, its historians and media lackeys, are constantly busy maintaining the worst lies and historic distortions on the world proletarian revolution begun in Russia.
The ruling class’ hatred and contempt for the titanic movement of the exploited masses aims to ridicule it and to ‘show’ the futility of the communist project of the working class, its fundamental inability to bring about a new social order for the planet. The collapse of the eastern bloc has revived its class hatred. It has unleashed a gigantic campaign since then to hammer home the obvious defeat of communism, identified with Stalinism, and with that the defeat of marxism, the obsolescence of the class struggle and even the idea of revolution which can only lead to terror and the Gulag. The target of this foul propaganda is the political organisation, the incarnation of the vast insurrectionary movement of 1917, the Bolshevik Party, which constantly draws all the vindictiveness of the defenders of the bourgeoisie. For all these apologists for the capitalist order, including the anarchists, whatever their apparent disagreements, it is a question of showing that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were a band of power-hungry fanatics who did everything they could to usurp the democratic acquisitions of the February 1917 revolution (see ‘February 1917’ WR 202) and plunge Russia and the world into one of the most disastrous experiences in history.
Faced with all these unbelievable calumnies against Bolshevism, it falls to revolutionaries to re-establish the truth and reaffirm the essential point concerning the Bolshevik Party: it was not a product of Russian barbarism or backwardness, nor of deformed anarcho-terrorism, nor of the absolute concern for power by its leaders. Bolshevism was, in the first place, a product of the world proletariat, linked to a marxist tradition, the vanguard of the international movement to end all exploitation and oppression. To this end the statement of positions Lenin brought out on his return to Russia, known as the April Theses, gives us an excellent point of departure to refute all the various untruths on the Bolshevik Party, its nature, its role and its links with the proletarian masses.
The conditions of struggle on Lenin’s return to Russia in April 1917
In the previous article (WR 202) we recalled that the working class in Russia had well and truly opened the way to the world communist revolution with the events of February 1917, overturning Tsarism, organising in soviets and showing a growing radicalisation. The insurrection resulted in a situation of dual power. The official power was the bourgeois ‘Provisional Government’, initially lead by the liberals but which later gained a more ‘socialist’ hue under the direction of Kerensky. On the other hand effective power already lay, as was well understood, in the hands of the soviets of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies. Without soviet authorisation the government had little hope of imposing its directives on the workers and soldiers. But the working class had not yet acquired the necessary political maturity to take all the power. In spite of their more and more radical actions and attitudes, the majority of the working class and behind them the peasant masses, were held back by illusions in the nature of the bourgeoisie, and by the idea that only a bourgeois democratic revolution was on the agenda in Russia. The predominance of these ideas among the masses was reflected in the domination of the soviets by Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries who did everything they could to make the soviets impotent in the face of the newly installed bourgeois regime. These parties, which had gone over, or were in the process of going over, to the bourgeoisie, tried by all means to subordinate the growing revolutionary movement to the aims of the Provisional Government, especially in relation to the imperialist war. In this situation, so full of dangers and promises, the Bolsheviks, who had directed the internationalist opposition to the war, were themselves in almost complete confusion at that moment, politically disorientated. So, “In the ‘manifesto’ of the Bolshevik Central Committee, drawn up just after the victory of the insurrection, we read that ‘the workers of the shops and factories, and likewise the mutinied troops, must immediately elect their representatives to the Provisional Revolutionary Government’... They behaved not like the representatives of a proletarian party preparing an independent struggle for power, but like the left wing of a democracy” (Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, vol. 1, chapter XV , p.271, 1967 Sphere edition). Worse still, when Stalin and Kamenev took the direction of the party in March, they moved it even further to the right. Pravda, the official organ of the party, openly adopted a defencist position on the war: “Our slogan is not the meaningless ‘down with war’... every man remains at his fighting post.” (Trotsky, p.275). The flagrant abandonment of Lenin’s position on the transformation of the imperialist war into a civil war caused resistance and even anger in the party and among the workers of Petrograd, the heart of the proletariat. But these most radical elements were not capable of offering a clear programmatic alternative to this turn to the right. The party was then drawn towards compromise and treason, under the influence of the fog of democratic euphoria which appeared after the February revolt.
The political rearmament of the Party
It fell to Lenin, then, after his return from abroad, to politically rearm the party and to put forward the decisive importance of the revolutionary direction through the April Theses: “Lenin’s theses produced the effect of an exploding bomb” (Trotsky, p. 295). The old party programme had become null and void, situated far behind the spontaneous action of the masses. The slogan to which the “Old Bolsheviks” were attached, the “democratic dictatorship of workers and peasants” was henceforth an obsolete formula as Lenin put forward: “The revolutionary democratic revolution of the proletariat and the peasants has already been achieved...” (Lenin, Letters on tactics). However, “The specific feature of the present situation in Russia is that the country is passing from the first stage of the revolution - which, owing to the insufficient class consciousness and organisation of the proletariat, placed power in the hands of the bourgeoisie - to its second stage, which must place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants.” (Point 2 of the April Theses). Lenin was one of the first to grasp the revolutionary significance of the soviet as an organ of proletarian political power. Once again Lenin gave a lesson on the marxist method, in showing that marxism was the complete opposite of a dead dogma but a living scientific theory which must be constantly verified in the laboratory of social movements.
Similarly, faced with the Menshevik position according to which backward Russia was not yet ripe for socialism, Lenin argued as a true internationalist that the immediate task was not to introduce socialism in Russia (Thesis 8). If Russia, in itself, was not ready for socialism, the imperialist war had demonstrated that world capitalism as a whole was truly over-ripe. For Lenin, as for all the authentic internationalists then, the international revolution was not just a pious wish but a concrete perspective developed from the international proletarian revolt against the war - the strikes in Britain and Germany, the political demonstrations, the mutinies and fraternisations in the armed forces of several countries, and certainly the growing revolutionary flood in Russia itself, which revealed it. This is where the appeal for the creation of a new International at the end of the Theses came from. This perspective was going to be completely confirmed after the October insurrection by the extension of the revolutionary wave to Italy, Hungary, Austria and above all Germany.
This new definition of the proletariat’s tasks also brought another conception of the role and function of the party. There also the “Old Bolsheviks” like Kamenev were at first revolted by Lenin’s vision, his idea of the soviets taking power on the one hand and on the other his insistence on the class autonomy of the proletariat against the bourgeois government and the imperialist war, even if that would mean remaining for awhile in the minority and not as Kamenev would like: “remaining with the masses of the revolutionary proletariat”. Kamenev used the conception of “a mass party” to oppose Lenin’s conception of a party of determined revolutionaries, with a clear programme, united, centralised, minoritarian, capable of resisting the siren calls of the bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie and illusions existing in the working class. This conception of the party has nothing to do with the Blanquist terrorist sect, that Lenin was accused of putting forward, nor even with the anarchist conception submitting to the spontaneity of the masses. On the contrary there was the recognition that in a period of massive revolutionary turbulence, of the development of consciousness in the class, the party can no longer organise nor plan to mobilise the masses in the way of the conspiratorial associations of the 19th century. But that made the role of the party more essential than ever. Lenin came back to the vision that Rosa Luxemburg developed in her authoritative analysis of the mass strike in the period of decadence: “If we now leave the pedantic scheme of demonstrative mass strikes artificially brought about by order of the parties and trade unions, and turn to the living picture of a peoples’ movement arising with elemental energy... it becomes obvious that the task of social democracy does not consist in the technical preparation and direction of mass strikes, but first and foremost in the political leadership of the whole movement.” (Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions). All Lenin’s energy was going to be orientated towards the necessity of convincing the party of the new tasks which fell to it, in relation to the working class, the central axis of which is the development of class consciousness. Thesis 4 posed this clearly: “The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government and that therefore our task is, as long as this government yields to the influence of the bourgeoisie, to present a patient, systematic and persistent explanation of the errors of their tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses… we preach the necessity of transferring the entire state power to the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies.” So this approach, this will to defend clear and precise class principles, going against the current and being in a minority, has nothing to do with purism or sectarianism. On the contrary they were based on a comprehension of the real movement which was unfolding in the class at each moment, on the capacity to give a voice and direction to the most radical elements within the proletariat. The insurrection was impossible as long as the Bolshevik’s revolutionary positions, positions maturing throughout the revolutionary process in Russia, had not consciously won over the soviets. We are a very long way from the bourgeois obscenities on the supposed putschist attitude of the Bolsheviks! As Lenin still affirmed: “We are not charlatans. We must base ourselves only on the consciousness of the masses” (Lenin’s second speech on his arrival in Petrograd, cited in Trotsky, p. 293).
Lenin’s mastery of the marxist method, seeing beyond the surface and appearances of events, allowed him in company with the best elements of the party, to discern the real dynamic of the movement which was unfolding before their eyes and to meet the profound desires of the masses and give them the theoretical resources to defend their positions and clarify their actions. They were also enabled to orientate themselves against the bourgeoisie by seeing and frustrating the traps which the latter tried to set for the proletariat, as during the July days in 1917. That’s why, contrary to the Mensheviks of this time and their numerous anarchist, social democratic and councilist successors, who caricature to excess certain real errors by Lenin[1] in order to reject the proletarian character of the October 1917 revolution, we reaffirm the fundamental role played by Lenin in the rectification of the Bolshevik Party, without which the proletariat would not have been able to take power in October 1917. Lenin’s life-long struggle to build the revolutionary organisation is a historic acquisition of the workers’ movement. It has left revolutionaries today an indispensable basis to build the class party, allowing them to understand what their role must be in the class as a whole. The victorious insurrection of October 1917 validates Lenin’s view. The isolation of the revolution after the defeat of the revolutionary attempts in other countries of Europe stopped the international dynamic of the revolution which would have been the sole guarantee of a local victory in Russia. The soviet state encouraged the advent of Stalinism, the veritable executioner of the revolution and of the Bolsheviks.
What remains essential is that during the rising tide of the revolution in Russia, the Lenin of the April Theses was never an isolated prophet, nor was he holding himself above the vulgar masses, but he was the clearest voice of the most revolutionary tendency within the proletariat, a voice which showed the way which lead to the victory of October 1917. “In Russia the problem could only be posed. It could not be solved in Russia. And in this sense, the future everywhere belongs to ‘Bolshevism’.” (Rosa Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution). SB, March 2007.
[1] Among these great play is made by the councilists on the theory of ‘consciousness brought from outside’ developed in ‘What is to be done?’. Well, afterwards, Lenin recognised this error and amply proved in practice that he had acquired a correct vision of the process of the development of consciousness in the working class.
Comments
Thanks Gee
Thanks Gee
Vile Calumnies
"power-hungry fanatics who did everything they could to usurp the democratic acquisitions of the February 1917 revolution"?
Lets forget the vile calumnies then and see what Lenin had to say himself in his own April thesis of 1918, from the donkey's mouth so to speak;
"The proletarian dictatorship is absolutely indispensable during the transition from capitalism to socialism, and in our revolution this truth has been fully confirmed in practice. Dictatorship,however, presupposes a revolutionary government that is really firm and ruthless in crushing both exploiters and hooligans, and our government is too mild.
Obedience, and unquestioning obedience at that, during work to the one-man decisions of Soviet directors, of the dictators elected or appointed by Soviet institutions, vested with dictatorial powers (as is demanded, for example, by the railway decree), is far, very far from being guaranteed as yet.
This is the effect of the influence of petty-bourgeois anarchy, the anarchy of small-proprietor habits, aspirations and sentiments, which fundamentally contradict proletarian discipline and socialism.
The proletariat must concentrate all its class-consciousness on the task of combating this petty-bourgeois anarchy, which is not only directly apparent (in the support given by the bourgeoisie and their hangers-on, the Mensheviks, Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, etc., to
every kind of resistance to the proletarian government), but also indirectly apparent (in the historical vacillation displayed on the major questions of policy by both the petty-bourgeois Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and the trend in our Party called "Left Communist", which descends to the methods of petty-bourgeois revolutionariness
and copies the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries).
Iron discipline and the thorough exercise of proletarian dictatorship against petty-bourgeois vacillation—this is the general and summarising slogan of the moment"
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/apr/30.htm
The `praxis' of Lenins ideology is explained soon after by Felix Dzerzhinsky, interviewed in Novaia Zhizn (14th July, 1918)
`We stand for organized terror - this should be frankly admitted. Terror is an absolute necessity during times of revolution. Our aim is to fight against the enemies of the Soviet Government and of the new order of life.
We judge quickly. In most cases only a day passes
between the apprehension of the criminal and his sentence. When confronted with evidence criminals in almost every case confess; and what argument can have greater weight than a criminal's own confession'
[In December, 1917, Vladimir Lenin appointed Dzerzhinsky as Commissar for Internal Affairs and head of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage (Cheka).
In September, 1918, Dzerzhinsky instigated the Red Terror that followed the attempt by Dora Kaplan on the life of Lenin. He was also responsible for dealing with the sailors arrested during the Kronstadt Uprising. According to Victor Serge over 500 sailors were executed for their part in the rebellion.]
And from your typical `defender of the bourgeoisie' and , apologists for the capitalist order' Agnes Smedley, letter to Florence Lennon (December 1921)
'Much that we read of Russia is imagination and desire only. And no person is safe from intrigues and the danger of prison. The prisons are jammed with anarchists and syndicalists who fought in the revolution. Emma Goldman and Berkman are out only because of their international reputations. And they are under house arrest; they
expect to go to prison any day, and may be there now for all I know.
Any Communist who excuses such things is a scoundrel and a blaggard. Yet they do excuse it - and defend it. If I'm not expelled or locked up or something, I'll raise a small-sized hell. Everybody calls everybody a spy, secretly, in Russia, and everybody is under surveillance. You never feel safe.'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnes_Smedley
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAsmedleyA.htm
Dave B What's your
Dave B
What's your point?
That Lenin and the Bolsheviks were just power-hungry nutters out for power?
You quote Lenin in 1918 after six months of chaos in which Russian society nearly fell apart. But why not quote State and Revolution, or the decrees the Bolsheviks set out in the early days of power demanding workers control, etc?
The thing that many people forget is that the revolutionaries of the time still looked back to the Paris Commune where the failure of the Commune to effectively organise itself against both internal and external enemies was seen by many as the chief cause of failure of the revolution. They were afraid of another counter-revolutionary bloodbath. And lets not forget, by their own admission, the Whites were responsible for slaughtering far more people than the Bolsheviks even at their most bloodthirsty in this era.
Even the policy of one-man-management did not initially make inroads into proletarian control. The "dictators" were actually delegated from the Soviets (elected by workers). As the Soviets began to deteriorate, this changed and certainly by 1921 much of the revolution had been lost and only the Bolshevik dictatorship remained. By this point, the revolutionary currents that still existed were only able to do so in opposition to the regime. But they still saw themselves as Bolsheviks, ones that represented the true revolutionary spirit of Red October.
Left Communists have no hesitation about criticising the Bolsheviks many, many errors. Firstly, without hesitation they reject the notion of "Red Terror" and the use of violence within the working class to solve political disputes. They also disagree fundamentally with the idea that the party should take power. They would argue that these positions are a direct result of the negative experience of the Russian Revolution.
The Bolsheviks represented the strengths and weaknesses of October. The degeneration of the Russian Revolution sprang from several factors: the defeat of the international revolutionary wave, the resulting isolation of the revolution, the extreme social conditions in Russia (60% of the workforce was unemployed in Petrograd in 1918), the mistaken conceptions of the Bolsheviks on many issues, the immaturity of the Russian proletariat and many more.
Power-Hungry Nutters Out for Power
“What's your point?
That Lenin and the Bolsheviks were just power-hungry nutters out for power?”
Yes, that’s good at least we understand it other.
It is pretty much as the young Leon Trotsky, the Menshevik, put it, paraphrasing the Menshevik concerns and ‘understanding’.
Leon Trotsky, Our Political Tasks, PART IV: JACOBINISM AND SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
“Nor is there any doubt that to introduce the methods of the Jacobins into the class movement of the proletariat is and always will be the sign of the purest opportunism, sacrificing the historical interests of the proletariat for the fiction of a temporary benefit. In relation to the class struggle, which draws up its strength only as it develops, the guillotine seems as absurd as the consumers’ co-operative and Jacobinism as opportunistic as Bernsteinism.
Of course, if one tries to transpose the methods and tactics of Jacobinism into the field of class struggle of the proletariat, one ends up only with a pitiful caricature of Jacobinism, but not with Social Democracy. Social Democracy is not Jacobinism, much less a caricature of it. It is to be hoped that the ‘Jacobin, linked to the organisation of the proletariat, now conscious of its class interests,’ will in the end detach himself from it. But in so far as he keeps his Jacobin mentality of distrust and suspicion towards the unorganised forces and the future, he will show total inability to evaluate the development of the Party. ‘I know only two parties, that of the good citizens and that of the bad.’ The good citizens are those who today show favour to my ‘plan’ whether their political consciousness is advanced or not doesn’t matter.
’I know only two parties, that of the good citizens and that of the bad.’ This political aphorism is engraved on the heard of Maximilien Lenin and, in a gross way, sums up the political wisdom of the former Iskra. The practice of mistrust certainly was the basic trait of the Iskra team: the milieu in which they worked was that of the intelligentsia which showed its anti-proletarian nature in various ways. The old Iskra took it as its task not to enlighten the political consciousness of the intelligentsia, but to theoretically terrorise it. For the social democrats trained in this school, ‘orthodoxy’ is something very close to the absolute Truth of the Jacobins. Orthodox Truth ruled everywhere, even in the matter of co-option. Whoever challenged it was removed; whoever questioned it came under doubt.”
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1904/tasks/ch05.htm
All stemming from what is the essence of Leninism, the organisation, and the essence of the Marxists and the Mensheviks objections to it;
“From Blanqui's assumption, that any revolution may be made by the outbreak of a small revolutionary minority, follows of itself the necessity of a dictatorship after the success of the venture. This is, of course, a dictatorship, not of the entire revolutionary class, the proletariat, but of the small minority that has made the revolution, and who are themselves previously organized under the dictatorship of one or several individuals.
We see, then, that Blanqui is a revolutionary of the preceding generation.”
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/06/26.htm
Your Naivete in the difference between what they say they are going to do and what they do is quite touching;
“a state which in a revolutionary way abolishes all privileges and does not fear to introduce the fullest democracy in a revolutionary way. You will find that, given a really revolutionary-democratic state, state-monopoly capitalism inevitably and unavoidably implies a step, and more than one step, towards socialism! “ !917
“our task is to study the state capitalism of the Germans, to spare no effort in copying it and not shrink from adopting dictatorial methods to hasten the copying of it.” 1918
The problem for you, of
The problem for you, of course, is that Lenin's current was the only one who called for revolution, the only one who called for the Soviets to take power.
To counterpoise the "Marxist" Mensheviks against a "Jacobin" Lenin is simply hypocrisy. The Mensheviks - who you appear to echo - wanted a tranfer to a bourgeois republic which would develop Russian capitalism. More to the point, the Mensheviks were in favour of continuing the imperialist war on a "defensive" basis. It's noteworthy that in Lenin's absence, the Mensheviks were more than willing to reconsider a regroupment with that paragon of Marxist virtue, Stalin, who pursuing much the same policies.
Are you seriously suggesting that Lenin's call for a world revolution by the working class against the capitalists is "anti-Marxist"? Or is it rather that he didn't observe the forms of bourgeois democracy and wait for a parliamentary majority? While the rest of the pacifists and social chauvinists bewailed the war they were practically doing everything in their power to prevent the one thing that could have stopped the war - a workers' revolution.
The Bolsheviks, on the other hand, attempted to spread a revolution, not just in Russia but all the way across Europe and the rest of the world. They made many mistakes but to consider them less "Marxist" than the anti-proletarian currents who have never tired of condemning the Russian revolution since is just laughable.
It's amazing how such people always end up saying the same thing to the workers: it's much better not to struggle but if you have to, struggle for our nice bourgeois democracy.
You still haven't explained why "Lenin the dictator" called for "All Power To The Soviets" when the Bolsheviks were a minority in the Soviets. You still haven't explained why the first decrees the Bolsheviks enacted were ones formalising workers' control.
As for Lenin's confusions on state capitalism, we're discussing that on the other thread.
The Evil Mensheviks
As there can surely be no greater testimony than one hostile witness quoting another;
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“The Secretary himself could give me little information about labor conditions in the city and province, as he had only recently assumed charge of his office. "I am not a local man," he said; "I was sent from Moscow only a few weeks ago. You see, Comrade," he explained, evidently assuming my membership in the Communist Party, "it became necessary to liquidate the whole management of the Soviet and of most of the unions. At their heads were Mensheviki.
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They conducted the organization on the principle of alleged protection of the workers' interests. Protection against whom?" he raged. "You understand how counter-revolutionary such a conception is! Just a Menshevik cloak to further their opposition to us. Under capitalism, the union is destructive of bourgeois interests; but with us, it is constructive. The labor bodies must work hand in hand with the government; in fact, they are the actual government, or one of its vital parts. They must serve as schools of Communism and at the same time carry out in industry the will of the proletariat as expressed by the Soviet Government. This is our policy, and we shall eliminate every opposition."
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http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/berkman/bmyth/bmch23.html
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There is a academic discussion of the role of the Mensheviks in the early part of the revolution, that we do not necessarily subscribe to at;
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http://www.angelfire.com/nb/revhist17/brovkin1.pdf
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http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/WSM_Forum/
Not much of a response to my
Not much of a response to my points Dave. You ignored the fact that it was the Bolsheviks who called for World Revolution. You make no effort to even defend the class nature of the Mensheviks - this is, of course, because the only defence you could muster would be one based on their respect for bourgeois democracy.
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Instead you quote annecdotal stories about Bolshevik repression of the Mensheviks. What argument do you think you are making here? I've already stated that both I and the ICC reject both Red Terror and the use of violence to solve political disputes within the working class. But we do this from the basis of defending the class autonomy of the proletariat, not the from the position of class pacifism which you seem to defend.
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I'll ask again, given that this article to which you're supposedly responding is about the April Theses. Why was it that Lenin's tendency was practically alone in Russia in calling for the Soviets to take power when the Bolsheviks were a minority within those organs? What was anti-Marxist about this? What was anti-Marxist about calling for a world revolution?
What Is Anti-Marxist About This?
The Class Struggles In France,Introduction by Frederick Engels, 1895
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“But we, too, have been shown to have been wrong by history, which has revealed our point of view of that time to have been an illusion. It has done even more: it has not merely destroyed our error of that time; it had also completely transformed the conditions under which the proletariat has to fight. The mode of struggle of 1848 is today obsolete from every point of view, and this is a point which deserves closer examination on the present occasion.
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All revolutions up to the present day have resulted in the displacement of one definite class rule by another; all ruling classes up till now have been only minorities as against the ruled mass of the people. A ruling minority was thus overthrown; another minority seized the helm of state and remodeled the state apparatus in accordance with its own interests.
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This was on every occasion the minority group, able and called to rule by the degree of economic development, and just for that reason, and only for that reason, it happened that the ruled majority either participated in the revolution on the side of the former or else passively acquiesced in it.
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But if we disregard the concrete content of each occasion, the common form of all these revolutions was that they were minority revolutions. Even where the majority took part, it did so—whether wittingly or not—only in the service of a minority; but because of this, or simply because of the passive, unresisting attitude of the majority, this minority acquired the appearance of being the representative of the whole people.”
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“The time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of unconscious masses, is past. Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organization, the masses themselves must also be in it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are going in for [with body and soul]. The history of the last fifty years has taught us that. But in order that the masses may understand what is to be done, long, persistent work is required, and it is just this work which we are now pursuing, and with a success which drives the enemy to despair.”
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I may deal with the Menshevik thing later, I am feeling a bit tired at the moment as I have just got back from the factory where I work in Manchester.
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Once again, you refuse to
Once again, you refuse to give a straight answer to a straight question and then find an inappropriate quote which has nothing to do with what is being discussed.
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Firstly, the whole proletariat in Russia was a minority in terms of the whole population, even in terms of the strange definition of "working class" the SPGB uses. Even today, given the persistence of backward economies that still regroup a large proportion of humanity in terms of the world population, the proletariat is still a minority or close to it. The logical conclusion of putting this fact together with your implication that no "minority" should ever take power condemns the working class to impotence. But then this is the logical conclusion of the SPGB's servile attitude to bourgeois democracy.
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The Bolsheviks did not "seize the helm of state and remodel the state apparatus". They called for the Soviets to take power and then dedicated themselves to winning a majority within those organs. It was the council form that dissolved the bourgeois state, not the Bolsheviks, even if the Bolsheviks were the most vigorous in calling for it and put themselves at the head of the movement. At this point in the Revolution the vast majority of the working class were behind the Bolsheviks anyway, which was why they had won a majority in the Soviets in the first place. New state forms then emerged from the Councils, forms that the Bolsheviks immediately inhabited based on their majority in the Soviets. This was a great mistake on their part.
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The problem for the Bolsheviks was that the seizure of power didn't magically solve all the economic problems that had been left over from the devastation of the economy. The early failures of the proletariat to stabilise the Russian economy, the pressure from all sides from counter-revolution and sabotage and (most importantly) the failure of the revolution to spread lead to the Bolsheviks using increasing repressive measures to keep Russian society together. Sectors of the working class, demoralised by these failures began to lose faith in the Bolsheviks, and began to retreat ideologically returning to Menshevism (who were calling for a return to bourgeois democracy and the bourgeois state).
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The fundamental mistake the Bolsheviks made was not in seizing power at Red October but in failing to accept the working class was retreating and believing they could substitute themselves for the workers. All this got them was a situation where they were forced to act more and more against the class, rather than being in the class and arguing for Marxist policies as they had done previously. This didn't happen all at once but was a drawn out process over several years. The last gasp of the workers self-activity was Kronstadt in 1921 and this took place in place in opposition to the Bolshevik state.
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The degeneration of Lenin's politics follows this general retreat of the working class and, as Luxemburg warned, more and more made virtue of necessity. The Bolsheviks' confusions (such as seeing state capitalism as some kind of step towards socialism, the disastrous notion of national self-determination, etc.) began to have more and more deleterious effects until finally the revolution had rotted from the inside out.
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As you may be beginning to realise, I am far from a Leninist. I believe the Bolsheviks were a proletarian current and that Red October was a proletarian revolution - but that hardly means I think they got everything right. Much of the Russian Revolution is about showing us what not to do.
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You, on the other hand, criticise the ICC for apparently making the same old mistakes as Lenin while you adhere to a party that adheres to tactics that were made obsolete over a hundred years ago. While accusing Left Communists of vanguardism because we support the idea of the working class organising itself in Soviets and seizing power, the SPGB talks about workers voting it into power in a bourgeois parliament! Against the Bolsheviks call for workers' self-activity you present parliamentary cretinism. You supposedly critique Lenin's view class consciousness while talking about yourselves being the educators of the working class. You couldn't make it up.
The Servile Attitude Of Engels To Bourgeois Democracy
Dear DG
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I think that at this point it may be useful to clarify our positions and essential differences.
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My position, or assertion if you like, is that I am a Marxist and that you who disagree with me are a Leninist. For me Leninism is not a development of Marxism but a distortion of it, or at best and adherence to those aspects of early ‘Marxism’ that Marx and Engels subsequently rejected.
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Those aspects of early ‘Marxism’ that I assert the Leninists still cling onto, that Marx and Engels later considered to have been ‘wrong’ ‘an illusion’ and ‘erroneous notions’
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Eg from Fred in 1895 we have;
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“But we, too, have been shown to have been wrong by history, which has revealed our point of view of that time to have been an illusion. It has done even more: it has not merely destroyed our error of that time; it had also completely transformed the conditions under which the proletariat has to fight. The mode of struggle of 1848 is today obsolete from every point of view, and this is a point which deserves closer examination on the present occasion.”
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/class-struggles-france/intro.htm
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I again assert that the SPGB position is that of later Marxism (undistorted ) and the acceptance and understanding that ‘the conditions under which the proletariat has to fight’ has been transformed.
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You provide us with an example yourself of the difference between the Leninist position and the later Marxist and thus SPGB/WSM position.
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You said on May 9, 2008 - 18:48 that
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“But then this is the logical conclusion of the SBGB's servile attitude to bourgeois democracy.”
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Now if my assertion that the SPGB/WSM position is that of later Marxism and contrary to yours, as a Leninist, we should be able to find an example of Marx/Engel’s ‘servile attitude to bourgeois democracy’ which would be similar to our own and thus the opposite of yours.
So from again; The Class Struggles In France, Introduction by Frederick Engels, 1895 we have;
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“And from that day on, they have used the franchise in a way which has paid them a thousandfold and has served as a model to the workers of all countries. The franchise has been, in the words of the French Marxist program, "transformé, de moyen de deperie gu'il a été jusqu'ici, en instrument d' émancipation"—they have transformed it from a means of deception, which it was heretofore, into an instrument of emancipation.
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And if universal suffrage had offered no other advantage than that it allowed us to count our numbers every three years; that by the regularly established, unexpectedly rapid rise in the number of votes it increased in equal measure the workers' certainty of victory and the dismay of their opponents, and so became our best means of propaganda; that it accurately informed us concerning our own strength and that of all hostile parties, and thereby provided us with a measure of proportion for our actions second to none, safeguarding us from untimely timidity as much as from untimely foolhardiness—if this had been the only advantage we gained from the suffrage, then it would still have been more than enough.
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But it has done much more than this. In election agitation it provided us with a means, second to none, of getting in touch with the mass of the people, where they still stand aloof from us; of forcing all parties to defend their views and actions against our attacks before all the people; and, further, it opened to our representatives in the Reichstag a platform from which they could speak to their opponents in Parliament and to the masses without, with quite other authority and freedom than in the press or at meetings. Of what avail to the government and the bourgeoisie was their Anti-Socialist Law when election agitation and socialist speeches in the Reichstag continually broke through it?
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With this successful utilization of universal suffrage, an entirely new mode of proletarian struggle came into force, and this quickly developed further. It was found that the state institutions, in which the rule of the bourgeoisie is organized, offer still further opportunities for the working class to fight these very state institutions. They took part in elections to individual diets, to municipal councils and to industrial courts; they contested every post against the bourgeoisie in the occupation of which a sufficient part of the proletariat had its say.
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And so it happened that the bourgeoisie and the government came to be much more afraid of the legal than of the illegal action of the workers' party, of the results of elections than of those of rebellion.
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http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/class-struggles-france/intro.htm
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As Marxists two of our central objections to Leninism is its programme for the politicisation, for want of a better word, of the working class, and its programme of insurrection or Jacobinism.
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In fact it was these two objections that led to the split between the Mensheviks and Lenin’s Bolsheviks and thus defined the difference between them.
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Thus in Lenin’s What Is To Be Done?
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“We have said that there could not have been Social-Democratic consciousness among the workers. It would have to be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness,”
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“In the very same way, in Russia, the theoretical doctrine of Social-Democracy arose altogether independently of the spontaneous growth of the working-class movement; it arose as a natural and inevitable outcome of the development of thought among the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia.”
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http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/ii.htm
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These ‘socialist intelligentsia’ being for us anyway the same kind of characters that Fred warned about, yet again with brilliant prescience, in his letter to Otto Von Boenigk in 1890, thus;
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“we can get along perfectly well without the other ‘intellectuals’. The present influx of literati and students into the party, for example, may be quite damaging if these gentlemen are not properly kept in check. “
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“The biggest obstacle are the small peasants and the importunate super-clever intellectuals who always think they know everything so much the better, the less they understand it.”
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http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_08_21.htm
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The Mensheviks, in splitting with the Bolsheviks, were in fact following Fred’s advice in attempting to keep these ‘socialist intelligentsia’ properly in check. The Leninist thought they knew better than the working class of whom they were not a part as they were members themselves of the ‘bourgeois intelligentsia’.
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The Mensheviks viewed Leninism as so much the ‘patronizing and errant lecturing of our so-called intellectuals’ and as such an ‘impediment’
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It is the posturing and assertions of the Leninist ‘socialist intelligentsia’ as regards to the democratic nature of the Bolsheviks even as early April of 1918 that is laughable.
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‘Everyone now readily “votes for” and “subscribes to” resolutions of this kind; but usually people do not think over the fact that the application of such resolutions calls for coercion—coercion precisely in the form of dictatorship. And yet it would be extremely stupid and absurdly utopian to assume that the transition from capitalism to socialism is possible without coercion and without dictatorship.’
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‘and Martovs, who chatter about the unity of democracy, the dictatorship of democracy, the general democratic front, and similar nonsense.’
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On the other hand, it is not difficult to see that during every transition from capitalism to socialism, dictatorship is necessary for two main reasons, or along two main channels
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‘Dictatorship is iron rule, government that is revolutionarily bold, swift and ruthless in suppressing both exploiters and hooligans. But our government is excessively mild, very often it resembles jelly more than iron.’
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‘Firstly, the question of principle, namely, is the appointment of individuals, dictators with unlimited powers, in general compatible with the fundamental principles of Soviet government? Secondly, what relation has this case—this precedent, if you will—to the special tasks of government in the present concrete situation?’
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‘There is, therefore, absolutely no contradiction in principle between Soviet (that is, socialist) democracy and the exercise of dictatorial powers by individuals.’
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‘It may assume the sharp forms of a dictatorship if ideal discipline and class-consciousness are lacking’
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‘And our whole task, the task of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks), which is the class-conscious spokesman for the strivings of the exploited for emancipation, is to appreciate this change, to understand that it is necessary, to stand at the head of the exhausted people who are wearily seeking a way out and lead them along the true path, along the path of labour discipline, along the path of co-ordinating the task of arguing at mass meetings about the conditions of work with the task of unquestioningly obeying the will of the Soviet leader, of the dictator, during the work.’
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That could have just as easily have rolled off the tongue of Joseph Goebbels
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‘The more resolutely we now have to stand for a ruthlessly firm government, for the dictatorship of individuals in definite processes of work, in definite aspects of purely executive functions, the more varied must be the forms and methods of control from below (as long as they continue to agree to be dictated to) in order to counteract every shadow of a possibility of distorting the principles of Soviet government, in order repeatedly and tirelessly to weed out bureaucracy.’
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http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/mar/x03.htm
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Otherwise as night follows day;
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‘We must combat the ideological discord and the unsound elements of the opposition who talk themselves into repudiating all “militarisation of industry”, and not only the “appointments method”, which has been the prevailing one up to now, but all “appointments”, that is, in the last analysis, repudiating the Party’s leading role in relation to the non-Party masses. We must combat the syndicalist deviation, which will kill the Party unless it is entirely cured of it.’
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http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/jan/19.htm
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This association of Menshevism with the rightwing of the Mensheviks is just another common deceit of the Leninist ‘socialist intelligentsia’ whose cleverness is limited to the art of lying and self-delusion.
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People can read for themselves what kind of thing the left Mensheviks like Martov were saying and decide for themselves what kind of people they may have been on the Marxist Internet Archive.
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http://www.marxists.org/archive/martov/index.htm
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.We are obviously not Mensheviks and we are not interested in dressing ourselves up in the costumes of the political movements of the past, much anyway.
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What they should have done is a difficult and a bit of a stupid question.
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Probably trying for some kind of democracy and to encourage the workers to get themselves organised into independent unions to defend themselves against the next set of intelligentsia and ruling class that was about to shit on them from an even greater height, as ever is the case.
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http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/WSM_Forum/
I don't have time to reply
I don't have time to reply to all your points, Dave, so I'm going to limit myself to a couple of them.
Firstly, I don't reject bourgeois democracy in an abstract sense. When capitalism was a healthy system and the bourgeoisie was a progressive class, it was possible for workers to struggle for reforms, make temporary alliances with the progressive fractions of the bourgeoisie etc. Marx and Engels supported parliamentary struggles on that basis because bourgeois democracy did have a progressive aspect to it.
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However, they never abandoned the insurrectionary aspect to the revolution. Marx enthusiastically supported the Paris Commune which came into being thanks to a workers' uprising that kicked out the French Government. He praised the Commune, not for restoring parliamentary democracy, but for making parliamentary democracy effectively obsolete.
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Occasionally, Marx and Engels even said a revolution through the ballot box would be possible. They were wrong about this, of course, but it's understandable - they never witnessed the way that all states have been transformed into totalitarian states and the way that bourgeois democracy changed from being a vehicle of expression for different political currents to a tool of social control.
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Left communists reject parliamentary democracy because in this historic period, it is now impossible for the working class to express themselves in that arena. There are no longer any progressive fractions of the bourgeoisie - there are no longer any reforms to be won. Today, the real power doesn't lie in parliament but in the permanent state bureacracy, cross-party committees, etc. - decisions about policies are decided here and elections are geared towards getting the most effective PR team to present them to the rest of society. The governments that are elected are done so after gigantic exercises in psychological warfare designed by the bourgeoisie to get the desired result.
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Besides this, the goal of the working class in this epoch is to destroy capitalism and to do this it needs to prepare its own organs to manage its struggle and then manage society post-revolution. The bourgeois state cannot do this, so its completely pointless for the working class to try and take it over. Worse, attempts to do this simply integrate the parties that do this into the bourgeois state machine - this is precisely what happened to Social Democracy and led ultimately to its betrayal.
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The organs the working class needs to create are workers councils, formed bydelegates elected from sovereign mass assemblies of workers, that can be elected and recalled immediately by those assemblies. It is in these organs, formed in the heat of struggle by the direct self-activity of the workers, that pose the real threat to bourgeois power. It is here that mass discussion can place and collective action decided. When workers have reached this stage of struggle and are ready to take power for themselves, the organs for exercising that power are already in the hands of the workers - and this was the situation of "dual power" reached in Russia - why on earth would you say to the workers to abandon the tools and methods that they themselves have created to advance their struggle and take up one organised by the class enemy with the sole purpose of fogging their consciousness??
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As you continue to insist on calling me a "Leninist" - and use that term in a way that empties it of all real content, considering I disagree with Lenin on many, many issues - it's worth considering that Lenin himself actually advocated parliamentarianism as the revolutionary wave receded. In "Left Wing Communism", which you quoted earlier, he advocates electoral activity. This pamphlet was an outright attack on the political current that both I and the ICC trace our origins which rejected parliamentary activity altogether. Ironically, you have more in common with Lenin than you think - but don't worry, I won't start calling you a Leninist.
Parliamentary Democracy, Impossibilism & Reformism
Hi DG
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I d o not want to make it appear that I believe that just because Fred or Karl said something was so then it was. The situation we are in now is certainly different to what it was over a hundred years ago and we have a history from which we can learn from that was not available to them.
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As Fred had admitted they had been mistaken themselves and had learnt from historical events of their own time. So everybody is entitled to argue that they could have been wrong about certain things.
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However I cannot agree with you that they;
“they never abandoned the insurrectionary aspect to the revolution”
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And that they only occasionally;
“said a revolution through the ballot box would be possible.”
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As the opposite was the case in one of Fred’s last major works in The Class Struggles In France, Introduction by Frederick Engels;
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http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/class-struggles-france/intro.htm
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Although you could argue that he was referring to just ‘minority’ insurrections, nevertheless the thrust is clear; the new path forward was through the ballot box.
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As we are now doing the Paris Commune, capturing the political power of the ‘bourgeois’ state through the ballot box and the dangers of ‘the workers' party’ becoming the tagtail of a bourgeois party I would like to introduce another quote from;
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‘International Workingmen's Association 1871, Apropos Of Working-Class Political Action, Reporter's record of the speech made at the London Conference of the International Working Men's Association, September 21, 1871’;
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“Complete abstention from political action is impossible. The abstentionist press participates in politics every day. It is only a question of how one does it, and of what politics one engages in. For the rest, to us abstention is impossible. The working-class party functions as a political party in most countries by now, and it is not for us to ruin it by preaching abstention. Living experience, the political oppression of the existing governments compels the workers to occupy themselves with politics whether they like it or not, be it for political or for social goals. To preach abstention to them is to throw them into the embrace of bourgeois politics. The morning after the Paris Commune, which has made proletarian political action an order of the day, abstention is entirely out of the question.
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We want the abolition of classes. What is the means of achieving it? The only means is political domination of the proletariat. For all this, now that it is acknowledged by one and all, we are told not to meddle with politics. The abstentionists say they are revolutionaries, even revolutionaries par excellence. Yet revolution is a supreme political act and those who want revolution must also want the means of achieving it, that is, political action, which prepares the ground for revolution and provides the workers with the revolutionary training without which they are sure to become the dupes of the Favres and Pyats the morning after the battle. However, our politics must be working-class politics. The workers' party must never be the tagtail of any bourgeois party; it must be independent and have its goal and its own policy.
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The political freedoms, the right of assembly and association, and the freedom of the press — those are our weapons. Are we to sit back and abstain while somebody tries to rob us of them? It is said that a political act on our part implies that we accept the exiting state of affairs. On the contrary, so long as this state of affairs offers us the means of protesting against it, our use of these means does not signify that we recognise the prevailing order.”
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http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/09/21.htm
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At the time I think to opportunity for the working class to participate in the democratic process was comparatively recent. The reformism and Possibilism of the likes of Eduard Bernstein had not yet come to completely dominate working class politics, as it did later.
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I think Engels made his position quite clear on what he thought of what was to essentially become the British Labour Party position, Fabianism;
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Daily Chronicle Interviews Engels, end of June 1893;
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"Now, tell me what is your political programme?"
Engels; "Our programme is very nearly identical with that of the Social-Democratic Federation in England, although our policy is very different."
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"More nearly approaching that of the Fabian Society, I suppose?"
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Engels;"No, certainly not," replied the Herr, with great animation. "The Fabian Society, I take to be nothing but a branch of the Liberal Party. It looks for no social salvation except through the means which that party supplies. We are opposed to all the existing political parties, and we are going to fight them all.
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http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/bio/media/engels/93_07.htm
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Of course Karl did go along with what we would call reformism even at the end of his life but some ‘Marxist’ even then disagreed with him.
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The Programme of the Workers Party, Preamble
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“After the programme was agreed, however, a clash arose between Marx and his French supporters arose over the purpose of the minimum section. Whereas Marx saw this as a practical means of agitation around demands that were achievable within the framework of capitalism, Guesde took a very different view: ‘Discounting the possibility of obtaining these reforms from the bourgeoisie, Guesde regarded them not as a practical programme of struggle, but simply ... as bait with which to lure the workers from Radicalism.’ The rejection of these reforms would, Guesde believed, ‘free the proletariat of its last reformist illusions and convince it of the impossibility of avoiding a workers ’89.’
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Accusing Guesde and Lafargue of ‘revolutionary phrase-mongering’ and of denying the value of reformist struggles, Marx made his famous remark that, if their politics represented Marxism, ‘ce qu'il y a de certain c'est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste’ (‘what is certain is that I myself am not a Marxist’). “
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http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/05/parti-ouvrier.htm
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Lafargue#cite_note-0
“Impossibilism was particularly popular in British Columbia in the early 20th century, through the influence of E.T. Kingsley. It is also the basis of the theory and practice of the oldest British Marxist party, the Socialist Party of Great Britain, which was founded in 1904.”
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossibilism
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http://www.worldsocialism.org/index.php
Dave, you say that "I d o
Dave, you say that "I d o not want to make it appear that I believe that just because Fred or Karl said something was so then it was. The situation we are in now is certainly different to what it was over a hundred years ago and we have a history from which we can learn from that was not available to them."
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And then you go right on to completely ignore - again - everything I said in my previous post which demonstrated why Engels and Marx were wrong on this question. I am not disputing whether Marx and Engels left open the possibility for "peaceful" revolution - they clearly did. The question is whether they are right.
Incidentally, in the first text you quote, Engels did not rule violent confrontation altogether:
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"Does that mean that in the future the street fight will play no further role? Certainly not. It only means that the conditions since 1848 have become far more unfavorable for civil fights, far more favorable for the military. A future street fight can therefore only be victorious when this unfavorable situation is compensated by other factors. Accordingly, it will occur more seldom in the beginning of a great revolution than in its further progress, and will have to be undertaken with greater forces. These, however, may then well prefer, as in the whole Great French Revolution on September 4 and October 31, 1870, in Paris, the open attack to the passive barricade tactics."
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Let's be clear - the conquest of democracy Engels described was an enormous victory for the working class at that time. It was no accident that the SDP was a beacon for the entire workers' movement!
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Marx and Engels attempted to analyze the contemporary reality which faced them in order to deduce the most appropriate tactics for the working class at that time. But the problem is that you are only applying the letter of Marx and Engels writings, rather than embracing their method. They would turn in their graves at the thought of their writings being used to justify tactics that history has made obsolete.
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Instead of even trying to engage with the analysis I provided of the contemporary bourgeois state, you quote Engels at me like a fundamentalist Christian trying to prove some theological point from the Bible! Likewise you ignore the analysis of the proletariat develops its class consciousness.
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I'll ask yet again - in a situation where the working class has formed its own mass unitary organs that have made parliamentary democracy irrelevant, why would you want workers to take a retrograde step and go cap-in-hand to the bourgeois state and ask for permission to take over? The thought simply beggars belief! The workers will take the decision to take power through debate and discussion in these assemblies and, when the decision is taken, they will take apart the bourgeois state and abolish its parliament
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On a practical historical level, there is a perfect example of what happened when a situation of dual power was reached and the workers were encouraged back into parliamentarianism - the German Revolution of 1918. This ended in the bloody repression of the working class by the Social Democrats who, like you, were horrified at the idea of the self-activity of the proletariat.
Men Of Action On The Barricades Again
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Hi DG
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Actually the passage you quote is quite interesting as there is some background to it that I will come next. However it is followed by what I hope self explanatory;
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“Does the reader now understand, why the ruling classes decidedly want to bring us to where the guns shoot and the sabers slash? Why they accuse us today of cowardice, because we do not betake ourselves without more ado into the street, where we are certain of defeat in advance? Why they so earnestly implore us to play for once the part of cannon fodder?
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The gentlemen pour out their prayers and their challenges for nothing, for nothing at all. We are not so stupid. “
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“The irony of world history turns everything upside down. We, the "revolutionaries," the "rebels"—we are thriving far better on legal methods than on illegal methods and revolt. The parties of order, as they call themselves, are perishing under the legal conditions created by themselves. They cry despairingly with Odilon Barrot: la légalité notes tue, legality is the death of us; whereas we, under this legality, get firm muscles and rosy cheeks and look like eternal life. And if we are not so crazy as to let ourselves be driven into street fighting in order to please them, then nothing else is finally left for them but themselves to break through this legality so fatal to them.”
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The critical passage concerning your or Fred’s ‘Does that mean that in the future street fighting will no longer play any role? Certainly not.’ appears towards the end and I will come to it.
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The passage that you quote does stand out of context from the rest and there is a reason for it.
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It was a threat or a counter threat. At the time the German government was threatening in effect to break the ‘democratic contract’ and restrict or limit the right of the workers to participate in elections. Fred was basically saying that if you remove the democratic rights of the working class (or the constitution) we the workers would be free to take action into our own hands, by violent measure if required.
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Anyway towards the end Fred says this;
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“But do not forget that the German empire, like all small states and generally all modern states, is a product of contract; of the contract, first, of the princes with one another and, second, of the princes with the people. If one side breaks the contract, the whole contract falls to the ground; the other side is then also no longer bound, as Bismarck demonstrated to us so beautifully in 1866. If, therefore, you break the constitution of the Reich, Social-Democracy is free, and can do as it pleases with regard to you. But it will hardly blurt out to you today what it is going to do then.”
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He is saying or threatening that it may involve ‘the future street fighting’ or that the workers may have to or would have to resort to that the as only method left to them.
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Given the tense situation at the time the German SDP wanted and did take the passage and threat that you quoted out of the text along with most of the passage I have just quoted. As I said it was a threat to the government of what the workers might do if the constitution was revoked, democratic voting rights taken away etc.
Fred was pretty pissed off as he wanted the threat in, thus in a letter about it being taken or edited out he said in Engels To Kautsky, In Stuttgart, London, April 1, 1895;
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Dear Baron,
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Postcard received. To my astonishment I see in Votwärts! today an extract from my “Introduction,” printed without my prior knowledge and trimmed in such a fashion that I appear as a peaceful worshipper of legality at any price. So much the better that the whole thing is to appear now in the Neue Zeit so that this disgraceful impression will be wiped out. I shall give Liebknecht a good piece of my mind on that score and also, not matter who they are, to those who gave him the opportunity to misrepresent my opinion without even telling me a word about it ...
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Strangely enough I actually mentioned this passage recently on one of our lists discussing or raising the question about what we might have to do if the state removed or interfered with the democratic process immediately prior to us obtaining a class conscious majority. I would imagine that opinions might vary within the WSM on this issue but I think that is a separate question.
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. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/spopen/message/7390
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The main issue, as I think Fred thought, is that if the democratic process is there then use it, as a first option.
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I think the idea that Karl and Fred were not committed to taking control of the ‘bourgeois’ state by the democratic or parliamentary method, if available, really is a non runner, ask the Anarchists. The big split wasn’t just about a cat-fight between two over inflated ego’s.
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So for another quote including a reference to the Paris Commune just to make it a bit of a challenge; Engels to Philipp Van Patten, In New York, London, April 18, 1883
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“Since 1845 Marx and I have held the view that one of the ultimate results of the future proletarian revolution will be the gradual dissolution of the political organisation known by the name of state. The main object of this organisation has always been to secure, by armed force, the economic oppression of the labouring majority by the minority which alone possesses wealth. With the disappearance of an exclusively wealth-possessing minority there also disappears the necessity for the power of armed oppression, or state power.
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At the same time, however, it was always our view that in order to attain this and the other far more important aims of the future social revolution, the working class must first take possession of the organised political power of the state and by its aid crush the resistance of the capitalist class and organise society anew. This is to be found already in The Communist Manifesto of 1847, Chapter II, conclusion.
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The anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the political organisation of the state. But after its victory the sole organisation which the proletariat finds already in existence is precisely the state. This state may require very considerable alterations before it can fulfil its new functions. But to destroy it at such a moment would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly-conquered power, hold down its capitalist adversaries and carry out that economic revolution of society without which the whole victory must end in a new defeat and in a mass slaughter of the workers similar to those after the Paris Commune.”
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http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/letters/83_04_18.htm
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My major antipathy is towards Leninism and the articles on this site singing eulogies to him. Once the majority workers reach full class consciousness I suppose they will democratically decide for themselves how they go about it. I as one of them would always advocate that we attempt first the method that is most likely to involve a peaceful transition.
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I am always a bit suspicious of what always sound like to me these Macho men of action spoiling for a fight who in my experience, more often than not, are the first to disappear to the back when things kick off.
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There is more on the background to the ‘we will fight them on the barricades type stuff below, although I do not like the spin they put on it.
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Engels wrote this Introduction to Marx’s work The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850 between February 14 and March 6, 1895 for the separate edition that appeared in Berlin in 1895.
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When publishing the Introduction, the Executive of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany urgently requested Engels to tone down the excessively, revolutionary (or so they believed) tenor of the work by couching his ideas in more cautious terms due to the Reichstag’s debate of the bill on “preventing a coup d'état” submitted by the government in December 1894 and discussion throughout January-April 1895.
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In a letter to Richard Fischer of March 8, 1895, Engels criticised the irresolute stand by the Party leadership and their attempts to act strictly within the bounds of legality. However, forced to reckon with the opinion of the Executive, he agreed to omit a number of passages and modify some of the definitions. The galley proofs where these changes were made and the manuscript of the Introduction allow us to completely reconstruct the original text. In the present edition, the deletions and the changes are pointed out in the footnotes.
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Some Social-Democratic leaders used this work to try and present Engels as a supporter of a strictly peaceful transfer of power to the working class. With this end in view, on March 30, 1895 Vorwärts, the central printed organ of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany, featured an editorial entitled “Wie man heute Revolutionen macht”, which contained a biased selection from the Introduction made without Engels’ knowledge.
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Profoundly indignant, Engels lodged a resolute protest against the distortion of his views, addressing it to Wilhelm Liebknecht, editor of the Vorwärts. In a letter to Karl Kautsky of April 1, 1895 Engels emphasised that with the publication of the Introduction in Die Neue Zeit “this disgraceful impression may be erased”. However, both in the separate edition of Marx’s work and in Die Neue Zeit (Nos 27 and 28, 1895), the Introduction appeared with the same omissions. The full text was not published even after the threat of a new anti-socialist law in Germany had failed to materialise (in May 1895, the bill was voted down).
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http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1895/03/06.htm#n449
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I am not trying to dodge questions by the way just trying to deal with one issue at a time. I would like to get out of the way, for what it matters, what Karl and Fred meant. And that wouldn’t matter anything if it didn’t matter to some. I generally prefer to take Karl and Freds ideas just as a useful focal point for discussion rather than as a gospel to follow.
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http://www.worldsocialism.org/index.php
Dave . Engels is quite clear
Dave
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Engels is quite clear in that passage. The limited insurrectionary struggles of the past were no longer fruitful because the ruling classes had deveoped their powers of repression. However, the working class could still have to take up an armed struggle but if so, it would take a different form form the past: it would take place at the conclusion of the revolutionary process rather than at its beginning and would occur in a more massive form. This was the real content of the Marxist critique of Blanquism - not a pacifist rejection of "violence" and certainly not a rejection of a seizure of power. Rather it had to be seizure of power by the majority of the proletariat.
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It was also true that, at that time, he regarded legal struggle as the most effective form in Germany because of the concrete gains Social Democracy was making. But he did not reject a return to the armed struggle if this process was revoked by the bourgeoisie or failed for some other reason.
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The question then becomes has the process failed? History answers decisively: yes! The SPGB looks at parliamentary democracy in purely formal terms. Luxemburg, in Reform or Revolution, shows why this idea is flawed: "Indeed, in accordance with its form, parliamentarism serves to express, within the organisation of the State, the interests of the whole society. But what parliamentarism expresses here is capitalist society, that is to say, a society in which capitalist interests predominate. In this society, the representative institutions, democratic in form, are in content the instruments of the interests of the ruling class. This manifests itself in a tangible fashion in the fact that as soon as democracy shows the tendency to negate its class character and become transformed into an instrument of the real interests of the population, the democratic forms are sacrificed by the bourgeoisie, and by its State representatives. That is why the idea of the conquest of a parliamentary reformist majority is a calculation which, entirely in the spirit of bourgeois liberalism, pre-occupies itself only with one side–the formal side–of democracy, but does not take into account the other side, its real content."
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Luxemburg describes here the reality of parliamentary democracy in capitalist society. Parliament could, within limits, allow the proletariat to express its interests because of its form but it could never be a vehicle for the proletariat to take over society unless the influence of the capitalists and capitalism could first be eliminated. This paradoxical situation is what renders parliamentarianism ultimately useless as a vehicle for the seizure of power - to truly do so, capitalism must first be destroyed outside of parliament! Adhering to a parliamentary struggle thus condemns the proletariat to permanent subserviance to the bourgeoisie.
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The bourgeoisie seem to understand this point far more clearly than the would-be revolutionaries of the SPGB. The major response to the revolutionary upsurge across Europe in 1917-1923 was rapidly introduce - or extend - democracy and suffrage. The Russian ruling class attempted it in Frebruary 1917. The Germans in 1918 abolished the Kaiser state under the rule of the Social Democrats with the full co-operation of the military. In 1918, the British bourgeoisie abolished the last restrictions on the male vote and introduced votes for women (the electorate tripled from 7 million to 21 million!). With the exception of the Russian case, all these actions served to disperse the revolutionary energy of the working class and prevented it seizing power. Of course, so-called "socialist" parties came into power in some instances - and immediately set about putting the working class back in its place.
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What were the bourgeoisie so afraid of? The mass movements of workers across Europe. From Russia to Germany, workers responded to war and crisis in the same way. They formed mass assemblies and elected councils to co-ordinate the actions of those assemblies on a national (and at some moments, international) scale. In all cases these councils were so powerful that the bourgeois state lost much of its practical relevance. The Kerensky government in Russia had to ask the permission of the Soviets to get its own troops to obey it! In Russia, Hungary and Bavaria in Germany, these councils took formal power for varying periods of time.
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The concrete experience of the proletariat over the last 100 years has shown decisively that Engels' hope for a peaceful transition through parliamentarianism (which in itself was overemphasised) was totally illusionary. Parliament is, instead, a weapon of the ruling class and this is no more evident than in their use of democracy over the same period. Two world wars, a cold war, and numerous wars since have all been fought in the name of the sacred right to choose our exploiters. Moreover, the gigantic mobilisation of resources during elections should in itself make revolutionaries pause for thought. Why is it that every bourgeois current, from the fascists right through the extreme left all want us to go out and vote? Why is voter turnout such a worry for the ruling class? Why is it that "voter apathy" is always most prevelant among the poorest sectors of society? The revolutionaries of the SPGB should think a bit more about the company they're keeping.
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Contrasting the deadening weight of parliamentarianism with the vigorous self-activity of the working class organised in its mass assemblies and councils simply speaks for itself. The councils will be the vehicle for struggle, then revolution and finally the transformation of society into communism. They are the only form that can express the most wide-ranging democracy within the working class, unlike the archaic, obsolescent carcass of bourgeois parliaments.
whether in the third world
whether in the third world and the first world, parliamentarism is bankrupt and counter-revolutionary. participating in it for whatever "revolutionary" purpose in only derailing the development of the prolettarian revolution.
...which is why
...which is why organizations of the Communist Left don't participate in Parliament (and differently named but analagous institutions), and one major reason why the Stalinist, Maoist, Trotskyist, and Social-Democratic organizations can be termed counter-revolutionary.
Conciseness is a virtue, and people reading you can probably extrapolate, but it's always good to finish one's thoughts, to draw from them their logical conclusions.