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Title: How the Revolution was Lost?
Author: Anarcho
Date: July 16, 2008
Language: en
Topics: russian revolution, anti-Bolshevism, critique
Source: Retrieved on 28th January 2021 from https://anarchism.pageabode.com/?p=104
Notes: A critique of the standard Leninist account of the degeneration of the Russian Revolution, using the SWP’s How the Revolution was Lost (by Chris Harman) as its basis.

Anarcho

How the Revolution was Lost?

Part I

This year marks the 90^(th) anniversary of the Russian Revolution. While

the Bolshevik Myth appears to be on the decline, some radicals are some

infatuated with it and so, unfortunately, anarchists still need to

explain why Leninism lead to Stalinism. An effective way of doing so is

to contrast the claims of Leninists with reality. Chris Harman’s “How

the Revolution was Lost” is an attempt by the British SWP to explain the

rise of Stalinism while exonerating the politics of Bolshevism at the

same time.[1] First published in 1967 to mark the 50^(th) anniversary of

the revolution, this essay is still used by the party and contains all

the basic themes they, and other Leninists, use to defend the

Bolsheviks. Therefore, it is worth looking at in order to see how its

claims have survived recent research and whether the original assertions

bear up to analysis. They do not.

Needless to say, Harman places the blame on the degeneration of the

revolution on the civil war and the isolation of the revolution. In

effect, the exceptional circumstances facing the revolution were the

source of the deviations of Bolshevik policies from socialist ideas.

However, as Lenin himself acknowledged in 1917, “revolution ..., in its

development, would give rise to exceptionally complicated circumstances”

and “revolution is the sharpest, most furious, desperate class war and

civil war. Not a single great revolution in history has escaped civil

war. No one who does not live in a shell could imagine that civil war is

conceivable without exceptionally complicated circumstances.” [2] As

such, it seems difficult to blame the inescapable resistance by the

ruling class for the problems of a revolution. If it cannot handle the

inevitable, then Bolshevism is clearly to be avoided.

Got no class?

Harman sees the key as “the dislocation of the working class. It was

reduced to 43 per cent of its former numbers. The others were returned

to their villages or dead on the battlefield. In purely quantitative

terms, the class that had led the revolution, the class whose democratic

processes had constituted the living core of Soviet power, was halved in

importance... What remained was not even half of that class” as what was

left was atomised. Thus the “decimation of the working class” meant that

“of necessity the Soviet institutions took on a life independently of

the class they had arisen from.”

The major problem with this assertion is simply that the Russian working

class was more than capable of collective action throughout the Civil

War period — against the Bolsheviks. In the Moscow area, while it is

“impossible to say what proportion of workers were involved in the

various disturbances,” following the lull after the defeat of the

workers’ conference movement in mid-1918 “each wave of unrest was more

powerful than the last, culminating in the mass movement from late

1920.” For example, at the end of June 1919, “a Moscow committee of

defence (KOM) was formed to deal with the rising tide of disturbances

... KOM concentrated emergency power in its hands, overriding the Moscow

Soviet, and demanding obedience from the population. The disturbances

died down under the pressure of repression.” In early 1921, “military

units called in” against striking workers “refused to open fire, and

they were replaced by the armed communist detachments” who did. “The

following day several factories went on strike” and troops “disarmed and

locked in as a precaution” by the government against possible

fraternising. On February 23^(rd), “Moscow was placed under martial law

with a 24-hour watch on factories by the communist detachments and

trustworthy army units.” [3]

Nor was this collective struggle limited to Moscow. “Strike action

remained endemic in the first nine months of 1920” and “in the first six

months of 1920 strikes had occurred in seventy-seven per cent of

middle-sized and large works.” For the Petrograd province, soviet

figures state that in 1919 there were 52 strikes with 65,625

participants and in 1920 73 strikes with 85,645, both high figures as

according to one set of figures, which are by no means the lowest, there

were 109,100 workers there. In February and March 1921 “industrial

unrest broke out in a nation-wide wave of discontent ... General

strikes, or very widespread unrest, hit Petrograd, Moscow, Saratov and

Ekaterinoslavl.” Only one major industrial region was unaffected. In

response to the general strike in Petrograd, the Bolsheviks replied with

a “military clamp-down, mass arrests and other coercive measures, such

as the closure of enterprises, the purging of the workforce and stopping

of rations which accompanied them.” [4]

Given this collective rebellion all across the industrial centres of

Russia throughout the Civil War and after, it hard to take Harman

seriously when he argues that the working class had “ceased to exist in

any meaningful sense.”[5] Clearly it had and was capable of collective

action and organisation — until it was repressed by the Bolsheviks. This

implies that a key factor in rise of Stalinism was political — the

simple fact that the workers would not vote Bolshevik in free soviet and

union elections and so they were not allowed to. As one Soviet Historian

put it, “taking the account of the mood of the workers, the demand for

free elections to the soviets [raised in early 1921] meant the

implementation in practice of the infamous slogan of soviets without

communists,” although there is little evidence that the strikers

actually raised that “infamous” slogan.[6] It should also be noted that

Bolshevik orthodoxy at the time stressed that, to quote Lenin, that “the

dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised through an

organisation embracing the whole of the class ... It can be exercised

only by a vanguard.”[7] Zinoviev clarified what this meant: “the

dictatorship of the proletariat is at the same time the dictatorship of

the Communist Party.”[8]

Harman presents a somewhat contradictory account of the working class in

this period, arguing that many workers fled “returned to their villages”

and that “raw peasants from the countryside, without socialist

traditions or aspirations, took their place.”[9] Why would peasants come

to the starving towns when workers were fleeing them? Looking at the

strike wave of early 1921, the “strongest reason” for accepting that it

was established workers who were behind it was “the form and course of

protest” which reached “back through the spring of 1917 and beyond [and]

were an important factor” in its organisation.[10]

Clearly, Harman’s argument can be faulted. Nor is it particularly

original, as it dates back to Lenin and was first formulated “to justify

a political clamp-down” in response to rising working class protest

rather than its lack: “As discontent amongst workers became more and

more difficult to ignore, Lenin ... began to argue that the

consciousness of the working class had deteriorated ... workers had

become ‘declassed.’” However, there “is little evidence to suggest that

the demands that workers made at the end of 1920 ... represented a

fundamental change in aspirations since 1917.” [11] So while the ”

working class had decreased in size and changed in composition,... the

protest movement from late 1920 made clear that it was not a negligible

force and that in an inchoate way it retained a vision of socialism

which was not identified entirely with Bolshevik power ... Lenin’s

arguments on the declassing of the proletariat was more a way of

avoiding this unpleasant truth than a real reflection of what remained,

in Moscow at least, a substantial physical and ideological force.”[12]

This explains why working class struggle during this period generally

fails to get mentioned by the likes of the SWP. It simply undermines

their justifications for Bolshevik dictatorship.

Divide and Rule?

Harman argues that “to keep alive” many workers “resorted to direct

barter of their products – or even parts of their machines – with

peasants for food. Not only was the leading class of the revolution

decimated, but the ties linking its members together were fast

disintegrating.” This seems ironic, for two reasons.

Firstly, in 1918 Lenin had argued that “those who believe that socialism

will be built at a time of peace and tranquillity are profoundly

mistaken: it will everywhere be built at a time of disruption, at a time

of famine.”[13] Again, if Bolshevism becomes unstuck by the inevitable

side effects of revolution, then it should be avoided.[14]

Secondly, there is the issue of Bolshevik ideology. For example,

Bolshevik policies banning trade helped undermine a collective response

to the problems of exchange between city and country. For example, a

delegation of workers from the Main Workshops of the Nikolaev Railroad

to Moscow reported to a well-attended meeting that “the government had

rejected their request [to obtain permission to buy food collectively]

arguing that to permit the free purchase of food would destroy its

efforts to come to grips with hunger by establishing a ‘food

dictatorship.’”[15] Bolshevik ideology replaced collective working class

action with an abstract “collective” response via the state, which

turned the workers into isolated and atomised individuals.[16] Other

policies undermined working class collectivity. For example, in early

1918 Lenin stated that “we must raise the question of piece-work and

apply it ... in practice.”[17] As Tony Cliff (of all people) noted, “the

employers have at their disposal a number of effective methods of

disrupting th[e] unity [of workers as a class]. Once of the most

important of these is the fostering of competition between workers by

means of piece-work systems.” He notes that these were used by the Nazis

and the Stalinists “for the same purpose.”[18] Obviously piece-work has

different consequences (and aims?) when Lenin introduces it!

Combine these with the turning of the soviets and unions into

rubber-stamps for the Bolshevik party, the undermining of the factory

committees, the disbanding of solider committees and the elimination of

freedom of assembly, press and organisation for workers, little wonder

the masses ceased to play a role in the revolution!

From soviets to state

We must stress that this process started before the start of the Civil

war that Harman blames for all the problems of Bolshevism in power. He

states that “until the Civil War was well under way” the “democratic

dialectic of party and class could continue. The Bolsheviks held power

as the majority party in the Soviets. But other parties continued to

exist there too. The Mensheviks continued to operate legally and compete

with the Bolsheviks for support until June 1918.”

Given that the Civil War started on the 25^(th) of May and the

Mensheviks were expelled from the Soviets on the 14^(th) of June, it is

clear that Harman is being less than honest in his account. Indeed,

extensive evidence exists to disprove his assertions. Looking at

Getzler’s Martov (which Harman quotes to prove Bolshevik popularity in

October 1917), we discover that “Menshevik newspapers and activists in

the trade unions, the Soviets, and the factories had made a considerable

impact on a working class which was becoming increasingly disillusioned

with the Bolshevik regime, so much so that in many places the Bolsheviks

felt constrained to dissolve Soviets or prevent re-elections where

Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries had gained majorities.”[19]

The Bolsheviks expelled the Mensheviks in the context of political loses

before the Civil War. As Getzler notes the Bolsheviks “drove them

underground, just on the eve of the elections to the Fifth Congress of

Soviets in which the Mensheviks were expected to make significant

gains.”[20] Recent research disproves Harman’s claim and confirms

Getzler. “The Bolshevik’s soviet electoral hegemony began to

significantly erode” by the spring of 1918 with “big gains by the SRs

and particularly by the Mensheviks.” In all the provincial capitals of

European Russia where elections were held on which data exists, the

Mensheviks and the SRs won majorities and “Bolshevik armed force usually

overthrew the results” of these elections (as well as the resulting

workers’ protests).[21]

In Petrograd, the elections of June 1918 saw the Bolsheviks “lost the

absolute majority in the soviet they had previously enjoyed” but

remained the largest party. However, the results of these elections

where irrelevant as a “Bolshevik victory was assured by the numerically

quite significant representation now given to trade unions, district

soviets, factory-shop committees, district workers conferences, and Red

Army and naval units, in which the Bolsheviks had overwhelming

strength.”[22] Similar “packing” of soviets was evident in the Moscow

elections of early 1920. [23]

Rather than the Civil War disrupting the “democratic dialectic of party

and class,” it was in fact the Bolsheviks who did so in face of rising

working class dissent and disillusionment in the spring of 1918. In

fact, “after the initial weeks of ‘triumph’ ... Bolshevik labour

relations after October” changed and “soon lead to open conflict,

repression, and the consolidation of Bolshevik dictatorship over the

proletariat in place of proletarian dictatorship itself.” For example,

on June 20^(th) the Obukhov works issued an appeal to the unofficial

(and Menshevik influenced) Conference of Factory and Plant

Representatives “to declare a one-day strike of protest on June 25^(th)”

against Bolshevik reprisals against the assassination of a leading

Bolshevik. “The Bolsheviks responded by ‘invading’ the whole Nevskii

district with troops and shutting down Obukhov completely. Meetings

everywhere were forbidden.” Faced with a general strike called for July

2^(nd), the Bolsheviks set up “machine guns ... at main points

throughout the Petrograd and Moscow railroad junctions, and elsewhere in

both cities as well. Controls were tightened in factories. Meetings were

forcefully dispersed.”[24] The early months of Bolshevik rule were

marked by “worker protests, which then precipitated violent repressions

against hostile workers. Such treatment further intensified the

disenchantment of significant segments of Petrograd labour with

Bolshevik-dominated Soviet rule.” [25]

While Harman argues (in his discussion on Kronstadt, ironically enough)

that “for all its faults, it was precisely the Bolshevik party that had

alone whole-heartedly supported Soviet power,” the facts are that the

Bolsheviks only supported “Soviet power” when the soviets were

Bolshevik.[26] If the workers voted for others, “soviet power” was

quickly replaced by party power (the real aim). Harman is correct to

state that “the Soviets that remained [by the end of the civil war] were

increasingly just a front for Bolshevik power” but this had been the

situation before its start, not after its end! As such, his assertion

that “the Soviet State of 1917 had been replaced by the single-party

State of 1920 onwards” is simply unsupportable. The Bolsheviks had

consolidated their position in early 1918, turning the Soviet State into

a de facto one party state by gerrymandering and disbanding of soviets

before the start of the Civil War.

Thus, when Harman that argues that “of necessity the Soviet institutions

took on a life independently of the class they had arisen from,” the

“necessity” in question was not the Civil War, but rather the necessity

to maintain Bolshevik power (which Lenin continually identified with

working class power).

Harman maintains that “those workers and peasants who fought the Civil

War could not govern themselves collectively from their places in the

factories.” The obvious question arises as to why these workers and

peasants could not “govern themselves collectively” while in the Red

Army. The answer is simple — the Bolsheviks had eliminated soldier

democracy in March 1918 (again, before the start of the Civil War). In

the words of Trotsky, “the principle of election is politically

purposeless and technically inexpedient, and it has been, in practice,

abolished by decree.”[27] An army with appointed commanders is hardly an

environment for collective self-government and so it is little wonder he

does not mention this.

Unsurprisingly, Samuel Farber notes that “there is no evidence

indicating that Lenin or any of the mainstream Bolshevik leaders

lamented the loss of workers’ control or of democracy in the soviets, or

at least referred to these losses as a retreat, as Lenin declared with

the replacement of War Communism by NEP in 1921.”[28]

Top-down democracy is no democracy

Another problem was the Bolshevik vision of (centralised) democracy.

Trotsky is typical. In April 1918 he argued that the key factor in

democracy was that the central power was elected by the masses, meaning

that functional democracy from below could be replaced by decisions and

appointments from above as the government was “better able to judge in

the matter than” the masses. The sovereign people were expected to

simply obey their public servants until such time as they could “dismiss

that government and appoint another.” Trotsky raised the question of

whether it was possible for the government to act “against the interests

of the labouring and peasant masses?” He answered no! Yet it is obvious

that Trotsky’s claim that “there can be no antagonism between the

government and the mass of the workers, just as there is no antagonism

between the administration of the union and the general assembly of its

members” is just nonsense.[29] The history of trade unionism is full of

examples of committees betraying their membership. The subsequent

history Lenin’s government shows that there can be “antagonism” between

rulers and ruled and that appointments are always a key way to further

elite interests.

This vision of top-down “democracy” can, of course, be traced back to

Marx’s arguments of 1850 and Lenin’s comments that the “organisational

principle of revolutionary Social-Democracy” was “to proceed from the

top downward.”[30] By equating centralised, top-down decision making by

an elected government with “democracy,” the Bolsheviks had the

ideological justification to eliminate the functional democracy

associated with the soviets, factory committees and soldiers committees.

The Bolshevik vision of democracy became the means by which real

democracy was eliminated in area after area of Russian working class

life. Needless to say, a state which eliminates functional democracy in

the grassroots will not stay democratic in any meaningful sense for

long.

Nor does it come as too great a surprise to discover that a government

which considers itself as “better able to judge” things than the people

finally decides to annul any election results it dislikes. This

perspective is at the heart of vanguardism, for in Bolshevik ideology

the party, not the class, is in the final analysis the repository of

class consciousness. This means that once in power it has a built-in

tendency to override the decisions of the masses it claimed to represent

and justify this in terms of the advanced position of the party. Combine

this with a vision of “democracy” which is highly centralised and which

undermines local participation then we have the necessary foundations

for the turning of party power into party dictatorship.

And it must be stressed that in the Bolshevik ideal was that the party

should seize power, not the working class as a whole. Lenin in 1917

continually repeating the basic idea that the Bolsheviks “can and must

take state power into their own hands.”[31] He equated party power with

popular power and argued that Russia would be governed by the Bolshevik

party. The question instantly arises of what happens if the masses turn

against the party? The destruction of soviet democracy in the spring and

summer of 1918 answers that question. In a clash between soviet

democracy and party power, the Bolsheviks consistently favoured the

latter — as would be expected given their ideology and so it is not a

great step to party dictatorship given the premises of Bolshevism.

Centralisation empowers the few, not the many

Long before the revolution, Lenin had argued that within the party it

was a case of “the transformation of the power of ideas into the power

of authority, the subordination of lower Party bodies to higher

ones.”[32] Such visions of centralised organisation were the model for

the revolutionary state. Yet by its very nature centralism places power

into a few hands and effectively eliminates the popular participation

required for any successful revolution to develop. The power placed into

the hands of the nineteen members of the Bolshevik party’s central

committee was automatically no longer in the hands of the working class.

As such, when Leninists argue that “objective” circumstances forced the

Bolsheviks to substitute their power for that of the masses, anarchists

reply that this substitution had occurred the movement the Bolsheviks

centralised power and placed it into their own hands. As a result,

popular participation and institutions had to wither and die. Moreover,

once in power, the Bolsheviks were shaped by their new position and the

social relationships it created and, consequently, implemented policies

influenced and constrained by the hierarchical and centralised

structures they had created.

This was not the only negative impact of Bolshevik centralism. It also

spawned a bureaucracy. Instead of the state starting to wither away “a

new bureaucratic and centralised system emerged with extraordinary

rapidity ... As the functions of the state expanded so did the

bureaucracy.”[33] This was a striking confirmation of the anarchist

analysis, which argues that a new bureaucratic class develops around the

centralised bodies. This body would soon become riddled with personal

influences and favours, so ensuring that members could be sheltered from

popular control while, at the same time, exploiting its power to feather

its own nest.

Part II

War! What is it good for?

The Bolshevik tradition has found a use for war, namely as justification

for the degeneration of Bolshevik policies. Harman argues that “the

tasks at hand in Russia were determined, not by the Bolshevik leaders,

but by the international imperialist powers. These had begun a ‘crusade’

against the Soviet Republic. White and foreign armies had to be driven

back before any other questions could be considered.” It is easy to

refute this claim by noting that fundamental decisions on important

“questions” had already been formulated before this “crusade” took

place. As well as the gerrymandering and disbanding of soviets, the

Bolsheviks had already presented economic visions. Lenin, in April 1918,

was arguing for one-man management and ”[o]bedience, 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.”[34] The first group of workers

subjected to this policy were the railway workers. As such, “the tasks

at hand” were determined by the Bolshevik leaders, who had answered

numerous “questions” before the White and foreign armies appeared

(which, according to Lenin, was inevitable anyway).

This makes Harman’s comment that after 1921 “the ‘red industrialists’

began to emerge as a privileged group, with high salaries, and through

‘one-man management’ in the factories, able to hire and fire at will”

seem inadequate. If, as Harman implies, this was a key factor in the

rise of Stalinism and state-capitalism, then, clearly, Lenin’s input in

these developments cannot be ignored. After advocating “one-man

management” and “state capitalism” in early 1918, he remained a firm

supporter of them. In early 1920 “the Communist Party leadership was no

longer distracted by the Civil War from concentrating its thoughts and

efforts on the formulation and implementation of its labour policies ...

The apogee of the War Communism economy occurred after the Civil War was

effectively over.” Indeed, one-man management only became commonplace in

1920.[35]

Clearly, you cannot blame an event (the civil war) for policies

advocated and implemented before it took place. Indeed, the policies

pursued before, during and after the Civil War were identical,

suggesting that Bolshevik policy was determined independently of any

“crusade.”

Socialism as State Capitalism

Then there is the Bolshevik vision of socialism. The Bolsheviks saw the

socialist economy as being built upon the centralised organisations

created by capitalism. They confused state capitalism with socialism.

“State capitalism,” Lenin wrote in May 1917, “is a complete material

preparation for socialism, the threshold of socialism” and so socialism

“is nothing but the next step forward from state capitalist monopoly.”

It is “merely state capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole

people; by this token it ceases to be capitalist monopoly.”[36] A few

months later, he was talking about how the institutions of state

capitalism could be taken over and used to create socialism.

Unsurprisingly, when defending the need for state capitalism in the

spring of 1918 against the “Left Communists,” Lenin stressed that he

gave his ”’high’ appreciation of state capitalism” ”before the

Bolsheviks seized power.”[37] And, as Lenin noted, his praise for state

capitalism can be found in his State and Revolution.

Given this perspective, it is unsurprising that workers’ control was not

given a high priority once the Bolsheviks seized power. While in order

to gain support the Bolsheviks had paid lip-service to the idea of

workers’ control, the party had always given that slogan a radically

different interpretation than the factory committees had. While the

factory committees had seen workers’ control as being exercised directly

by the workers and their class organisations, the Bolshevik leadership

saw it in terms of state control in which the factory committees would

play, at best, a minor role. It is unsurprising to discover which vision

of socialism was actually introduced: “On three occasions in the first

months of Soviet power, the [factory] committee leaders sought to bring

their model into being. At each point the party leadership overruled

them. The result was to vest both managerial and control powers in

organs of the state which were subordinate to the central authorities,

and formed by them.”[38]

Given his vision of socialism, Lenin’s rejection of the factory

committees and their vision of socialism comes as no surprise. The

Bolsheviks, as Lenin had promised, built from the top-down their system

of unified administration based on the Tsarist system of central bodies

which governed and regulated certain industries during the war (and,

moreover, systematically stopped the factory committee organising

together).[39] This was very centralised and very inefficient:

“it seems apparent that many workers themselves ... had now come to

believe ... that confusion and anarchy [sic!] at the top were the major

causes of their difficulties, and with some justification. The fact was

that Bolshevik administration was chaotic ... Scores of competitive and

conflicting Bolshevik and Soviet authorities issued contradictory

orders, often brought to factories by armed Chekists. The Supreme

Economic Council... issu[ed] dozens of orders and pass[ed] countless

directives with virtually no real knowledge of affairs.”[40]

Faced with the chaos that their own politics, in part, had created, the

Bolsheviks (like all bosses) blamed the workers for the failings of

their own policies and turned to one-management in April, 1918. This was

applied first on the railway workers. The abolishing the workers’

committees, however, resulted in “a terrifying proliferation of

competitive and contradictory Bolshevik authorities, each with a claim

of life or death importance ... Railroad journals argued plaintively

about the correlation between failing labour productivity and the

proliferation of competing Bolshevik authorities.” Rather than improving

things, Lenin’s one-man management did the opposite, “leading in many

places ... to a greater degree of confusion and indecision” and “this

problem of contradictory authorities clearly intensified, rather than

lessened.” Indeed, the “result of replacing workers’ committees with one

man rule ... on the railways ... was not directiveness, but distance,

and increasing inability to make decisions appropriate to local

conditions. Despite coercion, orders on the railroads were often ignored

as unworkable.” It got so bad that “a number of local Bolshevik

officials ... began in the fall of 1918 to call for the restoration of

workers’ control, not for ideological reasons, but because workers

themselves knew best how to run the line efficiently, and might obey

their own central committee’s directives if they were not being

constantly countermanded.”[41]

That it was Bolshevik policies and not workers’ control which was to

blame for the state of the railways can be seen from what happened after

Lenin’s one-man management was imposed.

The same terrible results reappeared as Bolshevik policy was imposed in

other industries. The centralised Bolshevik economic system quickly

demonstrated how to really mismanage an economy. The Bolshevik onslaught

against workers’ control in favour of a centralised, top-down economic

regime ensured that the economy was handicapped by an unresponsive

system which wasted the local knowledge in the grassroots in favour of

orders from above which were issued in ignorance of local conditions.

This lead to unused stock coexisting with acute scarcity and the centre

unable to determine the correct proportions required at the base.

Unfinished products were transferred to other regions while local

factories were shut down, wasted both time and resources (and given the

state of the transport network, this was a doubly inefficient). The

inefficiency of central financing seriously jeopardised local activity

and the centre had displayed a great deal of conservatism and routine

thinking. In spite of the complaints from below, the Communist

leadership continued on its policy of centralisation (in fact, the

ideology of centralisation was reinforced).[42]

A clearer example of the impact of Bolshevik ideology on the fate of the

revolution would be hard to find. Simply put, while the situation was

pretty chaotic in early 1918, this does not prove that the factory

committee’s socialism was not the most efficient way of running things

under the (difficult) circumstances. After all, rates of “output and

productivity began to climb steadily after” January 1918 and ”[i]n some

factories, production doubled or tripled in the early months of 1918 ...

Many of the reports explicitly credited the factory committees for these

increases.”[43]

Needless to say, Lenin never wavered in his support for one-man

management nor in his belief in the efficiency of centralism to solve

all problems, particularly the problems it itself created in abundance.

Nor did his explicit call to reproduce capitalist social relations in

production cause him any concern for, in Lenin’s eyes, if the primary

issue was property and not who manages the means of production, then

factory committees are irrelevant in determining the socialist nature of

the economy.

Post-October Bolshevik policy is a striking confirmation of the

anarchist argument that a centralised structure would stifle the

initiative of the masses and their own organs of self-management. Not

only was it disastrous from a revolutionary perspective, it was

hopelessly inefficient. The constructive self-activity of the people was

replaced by the bureaucratic machinery of the state. The Bolshevik

onslaught on workers’ control, like their attacks on soviet democracy

and workers’ protest, undoubtedly engendered apathy and cynicism in the

workforce, alienating even more the positive participation required for

building socialism which the Bolshevik mania for centralism had already

marginalised.

The pre-revolution Bolshevik vision of a socialist system was

fundamentally centralised and, consequently, top-down. This was what was

implemented post-October, with disastrous results. At each turning

point, the Bolsheviks implemented policies which reflected their

prejudices in favour of centralism, nationalisation and party power.

Unsurprisingly, this also undermined the genuine socialist tendencies

which existed at the time. Therefore, the Leninist idea that the

politics of the Bolsheviks had no influence on the outcome of the

revolution, that their policies during the revolution were a product

purely of objective forces, is unconvincing.

The Opposition

As Harman recounts, the Bolsheviks suppressed the opposition (in the

case of the anarchists, before the start of the civil war although he

does not mention this). As regards the Mensheviks, he argues that “their

policy was one of support of the Bolsheviks against the

counter-revolution, with the demand that the latter hand over power to

the Constituent Assembly ... In practice this meant that the party

contained both supporters and opponents of the Soviet power. Many of its

members went over to the side of the Whites (e.g. Menshevik

organisations in the Volga area were sympathetic to the

counter-revolutionary Samara government, and one member of the Menshevik

central committee ... joined it).” He quotes from Israel Getzler’s book

Martov (page 183) as evidence. What he fails to mention is that these

people were “expelled from the party” (and the Central Committee member

went “without its knowledge” to Samara). The Volga Mensheviks were

“sharply reproved by Martov and the Menshevik Central Committee and

instructed that neither party organisations nor members could take part

in ... such adventures.” These quotes, it should be stressed, are on the

same page as the one Harman references! Moreover, in October 1918, “the

party dropped, temporarily at least, its demand for a Constituent

Assembly.”[44] It would be harder to justify the suppression of the

Mensheviks if these facts were mentioned. Little wonder he distorts the

source material for his own ends.

The official Menshevik position was one of legal opposition to the

Bolsheviks as “any armed struggle against the Bolshevik state power ...

can be of benefit only to counter-revolution” and any member who ignored

this was expelled.[45] They developed a policy of “legal opposition

party” which was, as noted above, successful in period running up to

June 1918. Harman argues that “the response of the Bolsheviks was to

allow the party’s members their freedom (at least, most of the time),

but to prevent them acting as an effective political force.” In other

words, even those who legally opposed the Bolsheviks were crushed.

Little wonder working class collective power in the soviets evaporated.

Harman produces an impressive piece of doublethink to justify all this.

He argues that “in all this the Bolsheviks had no choice. They could not

give up power just because the class they represented had dissolved

itself while fighting to defend that power. Nor could they tolerate the

propagation of ideas that undermined the basis of its power – precisely

because the working class itself no longer existed as an agency

collectively organised so as to be able to determine its own interests.”

If the working class did not exist, nor could express itself

collectively, then why would Menshevik propaganda be harmful? And, of

course, Harman does not mention the fact that the Bolsheviks generally

blamed strikes and other forms of workers protest on opposition parties.

Nor does he mention that the Bolsheviks refused to “give up power”

before the start of the Civil War when they lost soviet elections.

Simply put, opposition ideas had to be suppressed because the workers

were capable of collectively determining its own interests and taking

collective action to realise them. The general strike in Petrograd which

inspired the Kronstadt revolt is proof enough of that.

Kronstadt

Turning to that revolt, Harman argues that “Kronstadt in 1920 was not

Kronstadt of 1917. The class composition of its sailors had changed. The

best socialist elements had long ago gone off to fight in the army in

the front line. They were replaced in the main by peasants whose

devotion to the revolution was that of their class.” This popular

assertion of Leninists has been refuted. Israel Getzler has demonstrated

that of those serving in the Baltic fleet on 1^(st) January 1921 at

least 75.5% were drafted before 1918 and so the “veteran politicised Red

sailor still predominated in Kronstadt at the end of 1920.” Further, he

investigated the crews of the two major battleships which were the focus

of the rising (and renown for their revolutionary zeal in 1917). His

findings are conclusive, showing that of the 2,028 sailors where years

of enlistment are known, 93.9% were recruited into the navy before and

during the 1917 revolution (the largest group, 1,195, joined in the

years 1914–16). Only 6.8% of the sailors were recruited in the years

1918–21 (including three who were conscripted in 1921) and they were the

only ones who had not been there during the 1917 revolution.[46]

Harman argues that this change in “class composition” was “reflected in

the demands of the uprising: Soviets without Bolsheviks and a free

market in agriculture.” However, the Kronstadt rebellion did not raise

either of those demands. As Paul Avrich notes, ”’Soviets without

Communists’ was not, as is often maintained by both Soviet and

non-Soviet writers, a Kronstadt slogan.”[47] As for agriculture,

Kronstadt demanded “the granting to the peasants of freedom of action on

their own soil, and of the right to own cattle, provided they look after

them themselves and do not employ hired labour.”[48] This was point 11

of 15, indicating its importance in their eyes. Ironically, most

workers’ strikes during the civil war period raised the demand for free

trade (including the general strike in Petrograd which the Kronstadt

sailors rebelled in solidarity with).

In reality, what the Kronstadt rebellion demanded first and foremost was

free elections to the soviets, freedom of assembly, organisation speech

and press for working people and the end of party dictatorship: “In

effect, the Petropavlovsk resolution was an appeal to the Soviet

government to live up to its own constitution, a bold statement of those

very rights and freedom which Lenin himself had professed in 1917. In

spirit, it was a throwback to October, evoking the old Leninist

watchword of ‘All power to the soviets.’”[49]

Little wonder Harman distorts its demands.

The German Revolution

Harman quotes Lenin from 7^(th) March 1918: “The absolute truth is that

without a revolution in Germany we shall perish.” The idea that

“isolation” was the root of Russia‘s problems is commonplace. However,

on closer inspection the idea that a German revolution would have saved

the Russian one is flawed.

As, according to Harman, “direct workers’ power had not existed since

1918,” we need to compare Germany in the period 1918–19 to Russia in

1917–18. Simply put, Germany was in as bad a state as Russia. In the

year the revolution started, production had fallen by 23% in Russia

(from 1913 to 1917) and by 43% in Germany (from 1913 to 1918). Once

revolution had effectively started, production fell even more. In

Russia, it fell to 65% of its pre-war level in 1918, in Germany it fell

to 62% of its pre-war level in 1919. Thus, in 1919, the “industrial

production reached an all-time low” and it “took until the late 1920s

for [food] production to recover its 1912 level ... In 1921 grain

production was still ... some 30 per cent below the 1912 figure.” Of

course, in Germany revolution did not go as far as in Russia, and so

production did rise somewhat in 1920 and afterwards. What is significant

is that in 1923, production fell dramatically by 34% (from around 70% of

its pre-war level to around 45% of that level). This economic collapse

did not deter the Communists from trying to provoke a revolution in

Germany that year, so it seems strange that while economic collapse

under capitalism equates to a revolutionary situation, a similar

collapse under the Bolsheviks equates to a situation where revolution is

undermined.[50]

Thus, if a combination of civil war and economic disruption caused the

degeneration of the Russian Revolution, then why would a similarly

afflicted Germany help Russia? Equally, Russia and Germany both prove

Kropotkin’s argument that a revolution means “the unavoidable stoppage

of at least half the factories and workshops,” the “complete

disorganisation” of capitalism and that “exchange and industry suffer

most from the general upheaval.” Ultimately, it seems strange that

Harman blames the side effects of every revolution for the failure of

the Russian one.[51]

Part III

Bolshevism and Party Dictatorship

While Harman notes that the idea of extending the revolution abroad was

“Bolshevik orthodoxy in 1923,” yet he fails to comment on that other

Bolshevik orthodoxy at the time, namely dictatorship by the party.

Harman notes that “in 1923 when the Left Opposition developed, it was

still possible for it to express its views in Pravda, although there

were ten articles defending the leadership to every one opposing it.” He

claims “there can be no doubt that in terms of its ideas” it was “the

faction in the Party that adhered most closely to the revolutionary

socialist tradition of Bolshevism ... It retained the view of workers’

democracy as central to socialism.” One of their “three interlinked

central planks” was that “industrial development had to be accompanied

by increased workers’ democracy, so as to end bureaucratic tendencies in

the Party and State.”

The only problem with this is that it is not true. He fails to mention

that in 1923, Trotsky (leader of the Left Opposition) was arguing that

“if there is one question which basically not only does not require

revision but does not so much as admit the thought of revision, it is

the question of the dictatorship of the Party, and its leadership in all

spheres of our work.” He stressed that “our party is the ruling party

... To allow any changes whatever in this field, to allow the idea of a

partial ... curtailment of the leading role of our party would mean to

bring into question all the achievements of the revolution and its

future.”[52]

Trotsky was just stating mainstream Bolshevik ideology, echoing a

statement made in March 1923 by the Central Committee (of which he and

Lenin were members) to mark the 25^(th) anniversary of the founding of

the Communist Party. It sums up the lessons gained from the revolution

and states that “the party of the Bolsheviks proved able to stand out

fearlessly against the vacillations within its own class, vacillations

which, with the slightest weakness in the vanguard, could turn into an

unprecedented defeat for the proletariat.” Vacillations, of course, are

expressed by workers’ democracy. Little wonder the statement rejects it:

“The dictatorship of the working class finds its expression in the

dictatorship of the party.” [53]

Needless to say, Harman fails to mention this particular Bolshevik

orthodoxy (which dates back to at least 1919). He also fails to mention

that the 1927 Platform of the Opposition (a merger of the Left and

Zinoviev Oppositions) shared this perspective, ironically attacking

Stalin for weakening the party’s dictatorship: ”[the] growing

replacement of the party by its own apparatus is promoted by a ‘theory’

of Stalin’s which denies the Leninist principle, inviolable for every

Bolshevik, that the dictatorship of the proletariat is and can be

realised only through the dictatorship of the party.” As Harman does not

bother to mention this particular “principle,” we cannot discover how

party dictatorship and workers’ democracy can be reconciled.[54]

Given this Bolshevik orthodoxy, it seems incredulous that Harman states

that “if at home objective conditions made workers’ democracy

non-existent, at least there was the possibility of those motivated by

the Party’s traditions bringing about its restoration given industrial

recovery at home and revolution abroad.” After all, party dictatorship

was the prevailing Bolshevik orthodoxy. Those Bolsheviks, like

Miasnikov’s Workers’ Group, who stood for real workers democracy had

been expelled and repressed.[55] Ida Mett shows a greater appreciation

of reality: “would not a revolution in another country have been

influenced by the spirit of the Russian Revolution? When one considers

the enormous moral authority of the Russian Revolution throughout the

world one may ask oneself whether the deviations of this Revolution

would not eventually have left an imprint on other countries. Many

historical facts allow such a judgement. One may ... have doubts as to

whether the bureaucratic deformations of the Bolshevik regime would have

been straightened out by the winds coming from revolutions in other

countries.”[56]

A “new” class?

Harman’s article is an attempt to show how Leninism and Stalinism were

different, that the former was a new class (state capitalist) system.

However, he fails to prove his argument. As Harman himself acknowledges,

the class structure of “state capitalism” already existed under Lenin.

In 1921 “it was objectively the case that power in the Party and State

lay in the hands of a small group of functionaries.” He argues that

“these were by no means a cohesive ruling class” and “were far from

being aware of sharing a common intent.” However, these groups were

“cohesive” enough to resist working class and peasant revolt in order to

defend their rule. During the 1920s, he argues, this changed: “the

bureaucracy was developing from being a class in itself to being a class

for itself.” Thus the class structure did not change during this time.

So we have a paradox. While (“objectively”) Lenin’s regime was state

capitalist, Harman argues that it was not. This is because the “policies

they [the bureaucracy] implemented were shaped by elements in the Party

still strongly influenced by the traditions of revolutionary socialism.”

Thus Lenin’s regime was not state capitalist because, well, Lenin was a

“revolutionary socialist” and he was in charge of it! Does this mean

that a capitalist state becomes less so when a Labour government holds

office? Thus Harman’s argument rests on the good intentions of those in

power. Eschewing any discussion of changing social relationships and

class structures, we are left with an example of philosophical idealism

at its worse, i.e. that ideas somehow determine the nature of a regime.

Harman argues that it is “often said that the rise of Stalinism in

Russian cannot be called ‘counter-revolution’ because it was a gradual

process ... But this is to misconstrue the Marxist method. It is not the

case that the transition from one sort of society to another always

involves a single sudden change.” While this is the case “for the

transition from a capitalist State to a workers’ State,” it is not the

case in the transition from feudalism to capitalism. In the transition

to capitalism, there are “a whole series of different intensities and at

different levels, as the decisive economic class (the bourgeoisie)

forces political concessions in its favour.” He argues that the

“counter-revolution in Russia proceeded along the second path rather

than the first.” Of course, the bourgeoisie was fighting against an

existing ruling class and its class position was already well defined.

Thus, Harman’s analogy undermines his argument as the bureaucracy also

built on its existing class position.

Harman acknowledges this by arguing that the “bureaucracy did not have

to seize power from the workers all at once” due to the “decimation of

the working class” and so its “members controlled industry and the

police and the army.” As such, it was already the ruling class (“It did

not even have to wrest control of the State apparatus to bring it into

line with its economic power” in Harman’s words). Thus, the “new” ruling

class “merely had to bring a political and industrial structure that it

already controlled into line with its own interests” and did so by

changing “the mode of operation of the Party” to bring it “into line

with the demands of the central bureaucracy.” This could be achieved

“only ... by a direct confrontation with those elements in the Party

which ... still adhered to the revolutionary socialist tradition.” In

other words, the bureaucracy was already (objectively) the ruling class

and so 1928 did not mark any change at all in the class structure of

Russian society and so does not, obviously, signify any change in the

nature of the regime. If Russia was state capitalist in 1928, it had

already been so under Lenin and Trotsky.

Thus Harman’s “analysis” of the rise of Stalinism concentrates on the

rhetoric of those in charge, not the class structure within society

(which he admits had not changed). In 1928, nothing changed beyond a

change in some of the management. This can be seen from Harman’s

assertion that Stalin “had a social basis of his own. He could survive

when neither the proletariat nor the peasantry exercised power.” Yet

this was true of the Bolsheviks under Lenin (to re-quote Harman, “direct

workers’ power had not existed since 1918”). Thus his attempt to justify

the SWP’s argument that Stalinism represented a new class system

fails.[57]

Harman ends by arguing that “there can be no doubt that by 1928 a new

class had taken power in Russia. It did not have to engage in direct

military conflict with the workers to gain power, because direct

workers’ power had not existed since 1918.” Indeed, “direct workers’

power” had been broken by the Bolsheviks long before 1928. In early

1918, “direct military conflict with the workers” had taken place to

maintain Bolshevik power, which had raised the “principle” of party

dictatorship to an ideological truism in 1919. Not that you would know

this from Harman’s account. As such, when he argues that “the one class

with the capacity for exercising genuinely socialist pressures – the

working class – was the weakest, the most disorganised, the least able

to exert such pressures” we are not surprised as the Bolsheviks had to

repress it to remain in power!

Discussing the tactics used against the Left Opposition, Harman states

that they were “likely to find themselves assigned to minor positions in

remote areas” and in 1928 Stalin “began to imitate the Tsars directly

and deport revolutionaries to Siberia. In the long run, even this was

not to be enough. He was to do what even the Romanoffs had been unable

to do: systematically murder those who had constituted the revolutionary

Party of 1917.” However, all this also occurred under Lenin. For

example, “Anarchist prisoners ... were sent to concentration camps near

Archangel in the frozen north” after Kronstadt.[58] Mensheviks were also

banished to remote locations, including Siberia. During the Civil War,

“Yurenev ... spoke at the [Bolshevik’s] Ninth Congress (April 1920) of

the methods used by the Central Committee to suppress criticism,

including virtual exile of critics: ‘One goes to Christiana, another

sent to the Urals, a third — to Siberia.’”[59] Given that the murder of

anarchists and other opposition socialists by the Cheka under Lenin was

commonplace, Harman seems to be complaining that Stalin implemented

within the party policies which had been used outside the party by

Lenin.

Therefore, a new class had taken power in Russia long before 1928, a

class of party leaders and bureaucrats who repressed the workers to

maintain their own power and privileges. What should be explained is not

the rise of Stalinism under these circumstances but rather how Trotsky

could still argue for party dictatorship in 1937, never mind in 1927,

and why the SWP consider him a leading exponent of “socialism from

below”!

Conclusion

All in all, Harman’s account of the degeneration of the Russian

revolution leaves much to be desired. He misuses source material, fails

to mention that the apparently “democratic” Left Opposition supported

the Bolshevik “principle” of party dictatorship and that Lenin had

advocated “one-man management” since early 1918. His accounts of

Kronstadt and the death of soviet democracy have failed to survive more

recent research (unlike anarchist accounts). The attempt to exonerate

Bolshevik politics for the rise of Stalinism simply fails. Bolshevik

politics played a key role in the degeneration of the revolution. Rather

than seeing “workers’ democracy as central to socialism” Bolshevism

(including its anti-Stalinist factions) raised the dictatorship of the

party over workers’ democracy into an ideological truism (and, of

course, practised it).

Once the distortions of Harman’s account are corrected and supplemented

by further research, it is not hard to agree with Maurice Brinton’s

conclusion that “there is a clear-cut and incontrovertible link between

what happened under Lenin and Trotsky and the later practices of

Stalinism ... The more one unearths about this period the more difficult

it becomes to define — or even to see — the ‘gulf’ allegedly separating

what happened in Lenin’s time from what happened later. Real knowledge

of the facts also makes it impossible to accept ... that the whole

course of events was ‘historically inevitable’ and ‘objectively

determined’. Bolshevik ideology and practice were themselves important

and sometimes decisive factors in the equation, at every critical stage

of this critical period.”[60]

Part of the problem is that Harman considers as “the essence of

socialist democracy,” namely “the democratic interaction of leaders and

led.” [61] In other words, a vision of “socialism” based on the division

between leaders (order givers) and led (order takers). Rather than

seeing socialism as being based on self-management, the Bolshevik

tradition equates rule by the party with rule by the working class.

Combine this with a perspective which sees class consciousness as

resting in the party, we are left with a very small jump to the

Bolshevik orthodoxy of party dictatorship. After all, if the workers

reject the party then, clearly, their consciousness has dropped, so

necessitating party dictatorship over a “declassed” proletariat. Which,

of course, is exactly what the Bolsheviks did do and justify

ideologically. As Noam Chomsky summarises:

“In the stages leading up to the Bolshevik coup in October 1917, there

were incipient socialist institutions developing in Russia — workers’

councils, collectives, things like that. And they survived to an extent

once the Bolsheviks took over — but not for very long; Lenin and Trotsky

pretty much eliminated them as they consolidated their power. I mean,

you can argue about the justification for eliminating them, but the fact

is that the socialist initiatives were pretty quickly eliminated.

“Now, people who want to justify it say, ‘The Bolsheviks had to do it’ —

that’s the standard justification: Lenin and Trotsky had to do it,

because of the contingencies of the civil war, for survival, there

wouldn’t have been food otherwise, this and that. Well, obviously the

question is, was that true. To answer that, you’ve got to look at the

historical facts: I don’t think it was true. In fact, I think the

incipient socialist structures in Russia were dismantled before the

really dire conditions arose ... But reading their own writings, my

feeling is that Lenin and Trotsky knew what they were doing, it was

conscious and understandable.”[62]

Chomsky is right on both counts. The attack on the basic building blocks

of genuine socialism started before the civil war. Moreover, it did not

happen by accident. It was rooted in the Bolshevik vision of socialism.

For anarchists, the lessons of the Russian Revolution are clear. Working

class power cannot be identified or equated with the power of the Party

— as it repeatedly was by the Bolsheviks. What ‘taking power’ really

implies is that the vast majority of the working class at last realises

its ability to manage both production and society and organises to this

end. As Russia shows, any attempt to replace self-management with party

rule “objectively” creates the class structure of state capitalism.

Finally, we must stress that there is a counter-example which shows the

impact of Bolshevik ideology on the fate of the revolution and that

alternative policies could exist. This is the anarchist influenced

Makhnovist movement.[63] Defending the revolution in the Ukraine against

all groups aiming to impose their will on the masses, the Makhnovists

were operating in the same objective conditions facing the Bolsheviks —

civil war, economic disruption, isolation and so forth. However, the

policies the Makhnovists implemented were radically different than those

of the Bolsheviks. While the Makhnovists called soviet congresses, the

Bolsheviks disbanded them. The former encouraged free speech and

organisation, the latter crushed both. While the Bolsheviks raised party

dictatorship and one-man management to ideological truisms, the

Makhnovists they stood for and implemented workplace, army, village and

soviet self-management. This shows the failure of Bolshevism cannot be

put down to purely objective factors like the civil war, the politics of

Marxism played their part.

Only when working people actually run themselves society will a

revolution be successful. For anarchists, this meant that “effective

emancipation can be achieved only by the direct, widespread, and

independent action ... of the workers themselves, grouped ... in their

own class organisations ... on the basis of concrete action and

self-government, helped but not governed, by revolutionaries working in

the very midst of, and not above the mass and the professional,

technical, defence and other branches.”[64] By creating a (so-called)

workers’ state and so substituting party power for workers power, the

Russian Revolution had made its first fatal step towards Stalinism.

[1] Chris Harman, “Russia – How the Revolution was Lost,” first

published in International Socialism 30, Autumn 1967 and subsequently

reprinted as a pamphlet and included in Russia: From Workers’ State to

State Capitalism.

[2] Lenin, Will the Bolsheviks Maintain Power? (Sutton Publishing Ltd,

Stroud, 1997), p. 80, p. 81

[3] Richard Sakwa, Soviet Communists in Power: a study of Moscow during

the Civil War, 1918–21 (Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1987), p. 94, pp. 94–5,

p. 245

[4]

J. Aves, Workers Against Lenin: Labour Protest and the Bolshevik

Dictatorship (Tauris Academic Studies, London, 1996), p. 69, p.

109, p. 120

[5] The fact that the Russian working class was capable of collective

action was known in 1967. For example, Ida Mett: “And if the proletariat

was that exhausted how come it was still capable of waging virtually

total general strikes in the largest and most heavily industrialised

cities?” [Ida Mett, The Kronstadt Rebellion (Solidarity, London, date

unknown), p. 81] As such, ideological reasons explain Harman’s

assertions.

[6] quoted by Aves, p. 123

[7] Lenin stressed that this formula was applicable “in all capitalist

countries” as “the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, and so

corrupted in parts.” [Collected Works, vol. 32, p. 21]

[8] Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress 1920 (Pathfinder,

New York, 1991), vol. 1, p. 152

[9] Ironically, the Mensheviks blamed the rise of Bolshevik popularity

before the war and in 1917 precisely on its appeal to the “new

proletariat,” i.e. those new to the cities and still tied to its village

origin.

[10] Aves, p. 126

[11] Aves, p. 18, p. 90 and p. 91.

[12] Sakwa, p. 261

[13] Lenin, Collected Works, vol.27 p. 517

[14] It should be noted that the Russian revolution confirmed

Kropotkin’s argument that any revolution would see economic disruption

and dislocation (see Conquest of Bread and Act for Yourselves). Leading

Bolsheviks like Lenin, Trotsky and Bukharin came to realise this decades

later and, unlike their followers, saw it as a “law” of revolutions.

[15] David Mandel, The Petrograd Workers and the Soviet Seizure of

Power: from the July days 1917 to July 1918 (MacMillan, London, 1984),

p. 392

[16] As such, the Bolsheviks provided a good example to support

Malatesta’s argument that “if ... one means government action when one

talks of social action, then this is still the resultant of individual

forces, but only of those individuals who form the government ... it

follows... that far from resulting in an increase in the productive,

organising and protective forces in society, it would greatly reduce

them, limiting initiative to a few, and giving them the right to do

everything without, of course, being able to provide them with the gift

of being all-knowing.” [Anarchy (Freedom Press, London, 1974), pp. 36–7]

Can it be surprising, then, that Bolshevik policies aided the

atomisation of the working class by replacing collective organisation

and action by state bureaucracy?

[17] The Immediate Tasks Of The Soviet Government (Progress Publishers,

Moscow, 1970), p. 23

[18] State Capitalism in Russia (Bookmarks, London, 1988), pp. 18–9

[19] Israel Getzler, Martov: A Political Biography of a Russian Social

Democrat (Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1967), p. 179

[20] While the Bolsheviks “offered some formidable fictions to justify

the expulsions” there was “of course no substance in the charge that the

Mensheviks had been mixed in counter-revolutionary activities on the

Don, in the Urals, in Siberia, with the Czechoslovaks, or that they had

joined the worst Black Hundreds.” [Israel Getzler, Martov, p. 181]

[21] Samuel Farber, Before Stalinism: The Rise and Fall of Soviet

Democracy (Polity Press, Oxford, 1990), pp. 22–4

[22] Alexander Rabinowitch, “The Evolution of Local Soviets in

Petrograd”, pp. 20–37, Slavic Review, Vol. 36, No. 1, p. 36f

[23] Sakwa, p. 177

[24] William Rosenberg, “Russian labour and Bolshevik Power,” pp.

98–131, The Workers’ revolution in Russia, 1917, Daniel H. Kaiser (ed.),

(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987), p. 117, pp. 126–7 and p.

127

[25] Alexander Rabinowitch, “Early Disenchantment with Bolshevik Rule:

New Data form the Archives of the Extraordinary Assembly of Delegates

from Petrograd Factories”, Politics and Society under the Bolsheviks,

Dermott, Kevin and Morison, John (eds.) (Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1999),

p. 37

[26] As recognised by Martov, who argued that the Bolsheviks loved

Soviets only when they were “in the hands of the Bolshevik party.”

[Getzler, p. 174]

[27] quoted by Brintin, The Bolsheviks and Workers’ Control 1917 to

1921: the State and Counter-Revolution, (Solidarity and Black and Red,

London and Detroit, 1975), pp. 37–8.

[28] Farber, p. 44

[29] Leon Trotsky Speaks (Pathfinder, New York, 1972), p. 113

[30] For those, like the SWP, who maintain that Leninism is “socialism

from below” Lenin explicitly denied this: “Bureaucracy versus democracy

is in fact centralism versus autonomism; it is the organisational

principle of revolutionary Social-Democracy as opposed to the

organisational principle of opportunist Social-Democracy. The latter

strives to proceed from the bottom upward, and, therefore, wherever

possible ... upholds autonomism and ‘democracy,’ carried (by the

overzealous) to the point of anarchism. The former strives to proceed

from the top downward.” [Collected Works, vol. 7, pp. 396–7]

[31] Selected Works, vol. 2, p. 329

[32] Collected Works, vol. 7, p. 367

[33] Richard Sakwa, ��The Commune State in Moscow in 1918,” pp. 429–449,

Slavic Review, vol. 46, no. 3/4, pp. 437–8

[34] Six Theses on the Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government,

contained in The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government, (Progress

Publishers, Moscow, 1970), p. 44

[35] Aves, p. 17 and p. 30

[36] The Threatening Catastrophe and how to avoid it (Martin Lawrence

Ltd., undated), p. 38 and p. 37

[37] Selected Works, vol. 2, p. 636

[38] Thomas F. Remington, Building Socialism in Bolshevik Russia:

Ideology and Industrial Organisation 1917–1921 (University of Pittsburgh

Press, London, 1984), p. 38

[39] Brinton, p. 36 and pp. 18–9

[40] William G. Rosenberg, Russian Labour and Bolshevik Power, p. 116

[41] William G. Rosenberg, “Workers’ Control on the Railroads and Some

Suggestions Concerning Social Aspects of Labour Politics in the Russian

Revolution”, pp. D1181-D1219, The Journal of Modern History, vol. 49,

no. 2, p. D1208, p. D1207, p. D1213 and pp. D1208-9

[42] Silvana Malle, The Economic Organisation of War Communism,

1918–1921 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1985), p. 232–3 and

pp. 269–75

[43] Carmen Sirianni, Workers’ Control and Socialist Democracy

(Verso/NLB, London, 1982), p. 109

[44] Getzler, p. 185

[45] quoted by Getzler, p. 183

[46] Getzler, Kronstadt 1917–1921: The Fate of a Soviet Democracy

(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983), pp. 207–8

[47] Paul Avrich, Kronstadt 1921 (W.W. Norton and Company Inc., New

York, 1970), p. 181

[48] Unlike Lenin’s capitalist NEP, the Kronstadt rebels demanded no

market for labour in agriculture and so their vision for agriculture was

socialist in nature.

[49] Avrich, pp. 75–6

[50] Tony Cliff, Lenin: The Revolution Besieged, vol. 3 (Pluto Press,

London, 1978); V. R. Berghahn, Modern Germany: society, economy and

politics in the twentieth century, 2^(nd) ed. (Cambridge University

Press, Cambridge, 1987).

[51] Kropotkin, Conquest of Bread (Elephant Editions, Catania, 1985), p.

[52] Leon Trotsky Speaks, p. 158, p. 160

[53] “To the Workers of the USSR” in G. Zinoviev, History of the

Bolshevik Party: A Popular Outline (New Park Publications, London,

1973), p. 213, p. 214. It should be noted that Trotsky had made

identical comments in 1921 at the Tenth Party Congress (see Brinton, p.

78).

[54] Given that Trotsky was still talking about the “objective

necessity” of the “revolutionary dictatorship of a proletarian party” in

1937, Harman’s comment that the Left Opposition “adhered” to the

Bolshevik tradition takes on a new meaning! Trotsky’s comment that the

“revolutionary party (vanguard) which renounces its own dictatorship

surrenders the masses to the counter-revolution” fits in well with

Bolshevik ideology in the run up to Stalinism. [Writings 1936–37

(Pathfinder Press, New York, 1978), pp. 513–4]

[55] Paul Avrich, “Bolshevik Opposition to Lenin: G. T. Miasnikov and

the Workers’ Group”, Russian Review, Vol. 43, No. 1; G. P. Maximoff, The

Guillotine at Work: twenty years of terror in Russia (data and

documents), (Chicago Section of the Alexander Berkman Fund, Chicago,

1940), pp. 268–71. The response of Trotsky to the state repression of

the Workers’ Group is significant, given that for most modern Leninists

he raised the banner of “authentic” Leninism against the obvious evils

of Stalinism. Tony Cliff notes that in July and August 1923 Moscow and

Petrograd “were shaken by industrial unrest ... Unofficial strikes broke

out in many places ... In November 1923, rumours of a general strike

circulated throughout Moscow, and the movement seems at the point of

turning into a political revolt. Not since the Kronstadt rising of 1921

had there been so much tension in the working class and so much alarm in

the ruling circles.” The ruling elite, including Trotsky, acted to

maintain their position and the secret police turned on any political

group which could influence the movement. As the “strike wave gave a new

lease of life to the Mensheviks ... the GPU carried out a massive round

up of Mensheviks, and as many as one thousand were arrested in Moscow

alone.” When it was the turn of the Workers Group, Trotsky “did not

condemn their persecution” and “did not support their incitement of

workers to industrial unrest.” Moreover, ”[n]or was Trotsky ready to

support the demand for workers’ democracy in the extreme form”(i.e.,

genuine form) they had raised it [Trotsky, vol. 3 (Bookmarks, London,

1991), pp. 25–7]

[56] The Kronstadt Revolt, p. 82

[57] It should be noted that Tony Cliff, the SWP’s founder and main

ideologue, considered Stalinism to be “state capitalism” not because of

capitalist social relationships within production but because it was in

military (and, to a lesser degree, economic) competition with the

capitalist West. Not only does this makes as much sense as calling

Native American tribes “capitalist” when they were fighting for survival

against the US Army, it also suggests that Lenin’s regime was also state

capitalist as it, too, was in (direct and indirect) military competition

with the Imperialist powers. Someone should have explained to him what

“mode of production” means.

[58] Paul Avrich, The Russian Anarchists (W.W. Norton & Company, New

York, 1978), p. 234

[59] E.H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, vol. 1 (Pelican Books, 1966),

p. 184

[60] The Bolsheviks and Workers’ Control, p. 84

[61] “Party and Class”, contained in Tony Cliff, Duncan Hallas, Chris

Harman and Leon Trotsky, Party and Class, (Bookmarks, London, 1996), p.

[62] Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky ( The New Press, New

York, 2002), p. 226

[63] Peter Arshinov, The History of the Makhnovist Movement (Freedom

Press, London, 1987); Alexandre Skirda,, Nestor Makhno Anarchy’s

Cossack: The struggle for free soviets in the Ukraine 1917–1921 (AK

Press, Edinburgh/Oakland, 2004); Michael Malet, Nestor Makhno in the

Russian Civil War (MacMillan Press, London, 1982).

[64] Voline, The Unknown Revolution (Black & Red/Solidarity,

Detroit/Chicago, 1974) p. 197