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Title: Theses on Bolshevism Author: Rudolf Sprenger Date: 1934 Language: en Topics: communist, Bolshevism, Russian revolution, nationalism, state capitalism Source: Retrieved on 16 July 2018 from https://libcom.org/library/theses-bolshevism-rudolf-sprenger Notes: Rudolf Sprenger's 1934 critique of the Bolsheviks and their role in the 1917 Russian Revolution. Rudolf Sprenger is the pseudonym of Helmut R. Wagner (1904-89), who was a member of the Rote Kämpfer during the 1930s and became later one of the leading protagonists of phenomenological sociology.
1. In Soviet Economy and the Soviet State, bolshevism has created for
itself a closed field of social practice. In the Third International, it
has organized an instrument for controlling and influencing the labor
movement on international paths. Its directives in matters of principle
and tactics are elaborated in "Leninism." The question arises: Is the
Bolshevik theory, as Stalin says, Marxism in the epoch of imperialism
and the social revolution? Is it, accordingly, the axis of the
revolutionary movement of the proletariat on an international scale?
2. Bolshevism obtained its international reputation in the proletarian
class movement, first, by its consistent revolutionary struggle against
the World War of 1914-18 and, secondly, by the Russian Revolution of
1917. Its world-historic importance lies in the fact that, under the
consistent leadership of Lenin, it recognized the problems of the
Russian. Revolution and at the same time created, in the Bolshevist
Party, the instrument by which those problems could be practically
solved. The adaptation of Bolshevism to the problems raised by the
Russian Revolution was brought about by 20 years of painstaking and
consistent development with the aid of insight into the fundamental
class questions involved.
3. The question of whether this successful mastery of its tasks entitles
Bolshevism to leadership, in theory, tactic and organization of the
international proletarian revolution involves, on the one hand, an
examination of the social bases and preconditions of the Russian
Revolution, and, on the other, of the problems of the proletarian
revolution in the great capitalist countries.
4. Russian society was decisively conditioned by its position between
Europe and Asia. While the more progressive economic force and the
stronger international position of Western Europe destroyed in Russia,
before the end of the Middle Ages, the first beginnings of a commercial
capitalist development, the political superiority of oriental despotism
created the foundations for the absolutist state apparatus of the
Russian Empire. Russia thus occupied, not only geographically but also
economically and politically, an intermediate position between the two
continents, combining their different social and political systems in
its own peculiar way.
5. This internationally ambiguous position of Russia has decisively
influenced not only its remote past, but also the problems of its
revolution in the first two decades of the 20th century. The capitalist
system in the era of imperialist upswing created two mutually opposed
but intimately interlaced centers: the highly developed capitalist
center of active imperialist advance in the strongly industrialized area
of Western Europe and North America, and the colonial center of passive
imperialist plunder in the agricultural regions of Eastern Asia. The
class menace to the imperialist system thus arises from both these
centers: the international proletarian revolution finds its pivot in the
highly developed capitalist countries of Europe and America, the
national agrarian revolution in the peasant countries of Eastern Asia.
In Russia, which stood at the dividing point between the spheres of
influence of the two imperialist centers the two revolutionary
tendencies were mingled.
6. The Russian economy was a combination of antiquated agrarian
production characteristic of Asia, and of modern industrial economy
characteristic of Europe. Serfdom in various forms survived in practice
for an enormous majority of Russian peasants. The small beginnings of
capitalist agriculture were thus hindered in their development. They
merely caused the breaking up of the Russian village, its indescribable
pauperization, while leaving the peasant chained to a soil which no
longer was able to nourish him. Russian agriculture, embracing
four-fifths of the Russian population and more than half the total
production, was until 1917 a feudal economy sprinkled with capitalistic
elements. Russian industry was engrafted upon the country by the czarist
regime, which wanted to be independent of foreign countries, especially
in the production of army supplies. Since, however, Russia lacked the
basis of a well developed system of handicrafts and the rudiments for
the building of a class of "free laborers," this state capitalism,
though born as mass production, created no wage-working class. It was a
system of capitalistic serfdom, and preserved strong traces of this
peculiarity down to 1917 in such features as the mode of wage payments,
barracking of the workers, social legislation, etc. The Russian workers
were therefore not only technically backward, but also to a great extent
illiterate and in large part directly or indirectly bound to the
village. In many branches of industry, the labor force was made up
mainly of seasonal peasant workers who had no permanent connection with
the city.
Russian industry until 1917 was a system of capitalist production
interspersed with feudal elements. Feudal agriculture and capitalist
industry were thus mutually penetrated with each other's basic elements
and had been combined into a system which could neither be governed by
feudal principles of economy nor furnish the foundations for an organic
development of its capitalistic elements.
7. The economic task of the Russian Revolution was, first, the setting
aside of the concealed agrarian feudalism and its continued exploitation
of the peasants as serfs, together with the industrialization of
agriculture, placing it on the plane of modern commodity production;
secondly, to make possible the unrestricted creation, of a class of
really "free laborers", liberating the industrial development from all
its feudal fetters. Essentially, the tasks of the bourgeois revolution.
8. It was on this foundation that the state of czarist absolutism arose.
The existence of this State depended on an equilibrium between the two
possessing classes, neither of which was able to dominate the other. If
capitalism furnished the economic backbone of that State, its political
prop was provided by the feudal nobility. "Constitution," ''right to
vote," and system of "self-government" could not conceal the political
impotence of all classes in the czarist State which, under the
conditions of the country's economic backwardness, produced a method of
government which was a mixture of European absolutism and Oriental
despotism.
9. Politically, the tasks confronting the Russian Revolution were: the
destruction of absolutism, the abolition of the feudal nobility as the
first estate, and the creation of a political constitution and an
administrative apparatus which would secure politically the fulfillment
of the economic task of the Revolution. The political tasks of the
Russian Revolution were, therefore, quite in accord with its economic
presuppositions, the tasks of the bourgeois revolution.
10. Due to the peculiar social combination of feudal and capitalistic
elements, the Russian Revolution was also confronted with complicated
tasks. It differed in essence as fundamentally from the classic
bourgeois revolution as the social structure of Russian absolutism at
the beginning of the 20th century differed, say from that of French
absolutism in the 17th century.
11. This difference, corresponding to the dissimilar economic
foundation, found its clearest political expression in the attitude of
the various classes of Russia toward Czarism and the revolution. From
the standpoint of their economic interests, all these classes were
fundamentally in opposition to Czarism. In political practice, however,
this opposition differed not only in degree but was quite different also
in its aim and goal.
12. The feudal nobility fought fundamentally only for the extension of
its influence over the absolutist State, wishing to keep it intact for
the safeguarding of its privileges.
13. The bourgeoisie numerically weak, politically dependent and directly
bound to Czarism through state subsidies, made numerous shifts in its
political orientation. The Decembrist movement of 1825 was their only
revolutionary attack on the absolutist State. At the time of the
terrorist movement of the Narodniki in the 70's and 80's, they supported
the revolutionary movement passively for the purpose of strengthening
the pressure on Czarism. They also attempted to utilize, as a means of
pressure, the revolutionary strike movements down to the October
struggles of 1905. Their aim was no longer the overthrow but the reform
of Czarism. During the parliamentary period from 1906 to the spring of
1917 they entered upon a phase of cooperation with Czarism. Finally, the
Russian bourgeoisie, in flight from the consequences of the
revolutionary struggles of the proletarian and peasant masses arrived at
unconditional surrender to czarist reaction in the period of the
Kornilov Putsch, which was designed to re-establish the former power of
the Czar. It became counter-revolutionary even before the tasks of its
own revolution had been accomplished. The first class characteristic. of
the Russian Revolution is, therefore, the fact that as a bourgeois
revolution it had to be carried through not only without but directly
against the bourgeoisie. Thus arose a fundamental alteration of its
whole political character.
14. In conformity with their overwhelming majority, the peasants became
the social group which at least passively determined the Russian
Revolution. While the numerically less important capitalistic-middle and
upper-peasantry represented a liberal, petty-bourgeois policy, the
preponderant number of famishing and enslaved small peasants were forced
by elemental necessities into the course of violent expropriation of the
large estates. Unable to pursue a class policy of their own, the Russian
peasant elements found themselves compelled to follow the leadership of
other classes. Until February 1917 they had, on the whole, despite
sporadic revolts, been the firm basis of Czarism. As a result of their
massive immobility and backwardness, the 1905 revolution collapsed. In
1917 they were decisive in bringing about the end of Czarism, which had
organized them in great social units in the army, in that they passively
crippled the conduct of the war. By their primitive but irresistible
revolts in the villages during the further course of the Revolution,
thus doing away with the large estates, they created the necessary
conditions for the victory of the Bolshevik revolution which, during the
years of civil war, was able to maintain itself only by reason of their
further active assistance.
15. In spite of its backwardness, the Russian proletariat possessed
great fighting strength, due to the merciless schooling of the combined
czarist and capitalist oppression. It threw itself with enormous
tenacity into the actions of the Russian bourgeois revolution and became
its sharpest and most reliable instrument. As each of its actions,
through the clash with Czarism, became a revolutionary one, it developed
a primitive class-consciousness which in the struggles of 1917,
especially in the spontaneous taking over of dominant enterprises,
raised itself to the height of subjective communist will.
16. The petty-bourgeois intelligentsia played a distinct role in the
Russian Revolution. Intolerably restricted in material and cultural
matters, hindered in professional progress, schooled in the most
advanced ideas of Western Europe, the best forces of the Russian
intelligentsia stood in the forefront of the revolutionary movement, and
by their leadership imprinted upon it a petty-bourgeois, jacobinical
stamp. The Russian social-democratic movement, in its
professional-revolutionary leader-element, constitutes primarily a party
of the revolutionary petty-bourgeoisie.
17. For the class solution of the problems presented by the Russian
Revolution, there arose a peculiar combination of forces. The enormous
peasant masses formed its passive foundation; the numerically weaker but
revolutionarily strong proletarian masses represented its fighting
instrument; the small element of revolutionary intellectuals arose as
the master mind of the Revolution.
18. This class triangle was a necessary development of czarist society
which was ruled politically by the absolutist, independent State, based
on the disfranchised possessing classes; the feudal nobility and the
bourgeoisie. The peculiar problems involved in accomplishing the
bourgeois revolution without and against the bourgeoisie grew, out of
the necessity for the overthrow of Czarism, of mobilizing the
proletariat and peasantry in the struggle for their own interests and
thereby destroying not only Czarism but the existing forms of feudal and
capitalist exploitation. Numerically, the peasants would have been able
to handle the matter alone, but were politically not in a position to do
so as they were unable to actualize their class interests except by
subordinating themselves to the leadership of some other class element
which in a certain measure determined to what degree the class interests
of the peasantry were carried through. The Russian workers developed, in
1917, the beginnings of an independent communist class policy, but
lacked the social presuppositions for their victory, which as a victory
of the proletarian revolution would have had to be a victory also over
the peasantry. This was impossible for the Russian proletariat which, in
its various strata, numbered but ten millions. Accordingly they—just
like the peasants—had to subordinate themselves to the leadership of a
group of intellectuals not organically bound up with their interests.
19. The creation of the organized leadership of the Russian Revolution
and the development of an appropriate tactic is the merit of the
Bolsheviks. They accomplished the seemingly hopeless task of creating
the contradictory alliance between the peasant masses fighting for
private property and the proletariat fighting for communism, thus making
the revolution under its difficult conditions possible and assuring its
success by binding together this contradictory peasant-worker
combination with the iron links of their party dictatorship. The
Bolsheviks constitute the leadership party of Russia's revolutionary
petty-bourgeois intelligentsia; they accomplished the historical task of
the Russian Revolution, namely, the fitting of history to the back of
the bourgeois-revolutionary peasantry combined with the revolutionary
working class.
20. Bolshevism has all the fundamental characteristics of bourgeois
revolutionary policy intensified by the insight (taken over from
Marxism) into the laws of movement of social classes. Lenin's phrase,
"the revolutionary social democrat is the Jacobin linked with the
masses," is more than an external comparison. It is rather an expression
of the inner technico-political affinity with the movement of the
revolutionary petty-bourgeoisie of the French revolution.
21. The basic principle of Bolshevik policy—the conquest and exercise of
power by the organization—is jacobinical. The guiding line of the great
political perspective and of its realization through the tactic of the
Bolshevik organization fighting for power is jacobinical; the
mobilization of all suitable means and forces of society for the
overthrow of the absolutist opponent, combined with the application of
all methods which promise success; zigzagging and compromising with any
social force which may be used, if even for the shortest time and in the
least important sector of the struggle. The fundamental idea of
bolshevist organization, finally, is jacobinical., the creation of a
strict organization of professional revolutionists which will remain a
pliant tool of omnipotent leadership.
22. Theoretically, Bolshevism has by no means developed a thought
structure of its own which could be considered a closed system. It has,
rather, taken over the Marxist method of looking at classes and adapted
it to the Russian revolutionary situation, i.e., basically changed its
content while maintaining its concepts.
23. The one ideological achievement of Bolshevism is the connecting of
its own political theory as a whole with philosophical materialism. As a
radical protagonist of the bourgeois revolution, it falls upon the
radical philosophical ideology of the bourgeois revolution and makes it
the dogma of its own view of human society. This fixation upon
philosophical materialism is accompanied by a continual backsliding into
philosophical idealism which considers political practice as in the last
instance the emanation of the action of leaders. (Treason of reformism;
idolatry of Lenin and Stalin.)
24. The organization of Bolshevism arose out of the Social-democratic
circles of intellectual revolutionists and developed through factional
struggles, splits and defeats into an organization of leaders with the
dominant positions in the hands of the petty-bourgeois intellectuals.
Its further growth., favored by the continuously illegal situation,
established it as a political organization of military character, based
on professional revolutionists. Only through such a straight-laced
instrument of leadership could the Bolshevik tactic be carried through
and the historical task of Russia's revolutionary intelligentsia be
fulfilled.
25. The Bolshevik tactic, in the service of pursuing the conquest of
power by the organization, revealed—especially up to October 1917—a
powerful inner consistency. Its continual outer fluctuations were
essentially only temporary adaptations to altered situations and to
altered relations of forces between the classes. In accordance with the
principle of absolute subordination of the masses to the end, without
any consideration of the ideological effect on the classes which it led,
the tactic was overhauled even in apparently fundamental questions. It
was the task of the functionaries to make each of these manoeuvres
understandable to the "masses." On the other hand, every ideological
stirring among the masses, even when fundamentally in contradiction to
the party program, was utilized. That could be done because the only
issue was the unconditional capture of masses for its policy. It had to
be done because these masses, workers and peasants, had contradictory
interests and a completely different consciousness. Precisely for this
reason, however, the tactical method of Bolshevism reveals its
connection with revolutionary-bourgeois policy; it is, in fact, the
method of that policy which Bolshevism actualizes.
26. The goal which furnished the starting point of Bolshevism is the
overthrow of the czarist system. As an attack on absolutism, it is of
revolutionary-bourgeois character. To this goal is subordinated the
struggle about the tactical line within the Russian social-democracy. In
this struggle, Bolshevism develops its methods and slogans.
27. It was the historical task of Bolshevism to weld together, by its
leadership tactic, the rebellion of the proletariat and peasantry, who
stood on quite different social planes, to the end of common action
against the feudal State. It had to combine the peasant revolt (action
of the bourgeois revolution at the beginning of the development of
bourgeois society) with the proletarian revolt (action of the
proletarian revolution at the end of the development of bourgeois
society) into a unified action. It was able to do this only by reason of
the fact that it unfolded a grand strategy in which use was made of the
most diverse class stirrings and tendencies.
28. This utilization strategy begins with the willingness to capitalize
the smallest splits and cracks in the opponent's camp. Thus Lenin once
spoke of the liberal proprietors as "our allies of tomorrow," while at
another time he came out for support of the priests who turned against
the government because of their material neglect. He was also ready to
support the religious sects persecuted by Czarism.
29. The clarity of Lenin's tactic however reveals itself in the fact
that, especially as result of the experiences of 1905, he posed the
question of the "allies of the revolution" on the right line, in that he
turned more sharply against all compromises with the dominant capitalist
groups and restricted the policy of the "ally" and of compromises to
the. petty bourgeois and small-peasant elements, i.e. those elements
which, alone, historically, could be mobilized for the bourgeois
revolution in Russia.
30. The two-class basis of Bolshevik Policy is expressed broadly in the
tactical slogan of the "democratic dictatorship of the workers and
peasants," which in 1905 was made the general guiding line of Bolshevik
policy and which still carried with it the illusionary idea of some sort
of parliamentarism without the bourgeoisie. It was later replaced by the
slogan of a "class alliance between the workers and peasants." Behind
this formula was concealed nothing but the necessity of setting both
these classes in motion for the Bolshevik policy of seizing power.
31. The temporary slogans under which these two classes determining for
the Russian Revolution were to be ruthlessly subordinated to the one
purpose of using be mobilized on the basis of their contradictory
interests the forces of these classes. In order to mobilize the
peasantry, the Bolsheviks as early as 1905 or thereabouts coined the
slogan of "radical expropriation of the landed proprietors by the
peasants." This slogan could be regarded from the peasants' standpoint
as an invitation to divide the big estates among the small peasants.
When the Mensheviks pointed out the reactionary content of the Bolshevik
agrarian slogans, Lenin informed them that the Bolsheviks had not in the
least decided what was to be done with the expropriated estates. To
regulate this matter would be the function of social-democratic policy
when the situation arose. The demand for expropriation of the large
estates by the peasants was thus of a demagogic character, but struck
the peasants on the dominant point of their interests. In like manner,
the Bolsheviks have also dropped slogans, among the workers, e.g. that
of the soviets. Determining for their tactic was merely the momentary
success of a slogan which was by no means regarded as an obligation of
principle on the part of the party with respect to the masses, but as a
propagandistic means of a policy having for its final content the
conquest of power by the organization.
32. In the period 1906-14, Bolshevism developed, in the combination of
legal with illegal activity, the tactic of "revolutionary
parliamentarism." This tactic was in accord with the situation of the
bourgeois revolution in Russia. With the aid of this tactic, it
succeeded in linking the day-to-day guerrilla warfare between the
workers and Czarism, and between the peasants and Czarism, into the
great line of preparation for the bourgeois revolution under Russian
conditions. In particular, each step in parliamentary activity on the
part of the Russian social democracy bore, in consequence of czarist
dictatorial policy, a bourgeois-revolutionary character. In its tactic
of mobilizing the two decisive classes of the Russian Revolution in the
altered situation between the revolution of 1905 down to the World War,
this aim was further pursued and the Duma was used as a tribune for its
propaganda among the workers and peasants.
33. Bolshevism has solved the historical problems of the bourgeois
revolution in feudal-capitalist Russia with the aid of the proletariat
as the active, fighting instrument. It has also appropriated the
revolutionary theory of the working class and transformed that theory to
suit its purposes. "Marxism-Leninism" is not Marxism, but a filling of
the Marxist terminology adapted to the needs of the bourgeois revolution
in Russia with the social content of the Russian Revolution. This theory
becomes, in the hands of the Bolsheviks, and in spite of its being a
means of understanding the class structure and tendencies of Russia,
also the means of veiling the actual class content of the Bolshevik
revolution. Behind the Marxist concepts and slogans is concealed the
content of a bourgeois revolution which had to be brought about, under
the leadership of a revolutionary petty-bourgeois intelligentsia, by the
united assault of a socialistically oriented proletariat and a peasantry
tied to private property, against czarist absolutism, land-owning
nobility and the bourgeoisie.
34. The absolute claim to leadership on the part of the revolutionary,
petty-bourgeois and jacobinical intelligentsia is concealed behind the
Bolshevik conception of the role of the Party among the working class.
The petty-bourgeois intelligentsia could expand its organization into an
active revolutionary weapon only on condition of attracting and making
use of proletarian forces. It therefore called its jacobinical party
proletarian. The subordination of the fighting working class to the
petty-bourgeois leadership was justified by Bolshevism on the theory of
the "vanguard" of the proletariat—a theory which it extended in practice
to the principle that the party is the embodiment of the class. The
Party, that is, is not an instrument of the working-class, but the
working-class an instrument of the Party.
35. The necessity for basing Bolshevik policy on the two lower classes
of Russian society is transcribed by Bolshevism into the formula of a
"class alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry" an alliance
in which logically antagonistic class interests are consciously lumped
together.
36. The demand for unconditional leadership of the peasantry is
disguised by Bolshevism with the formula of the "primacy of the
proletariat in the revolution." As the proletariat in its turn is ruled
by the Bolshevik Party, the "primacy of the proletariat" means the
primacy of the Bolshevik Party and its claim to governing both classes.
37. The Bolshevik pretension of seizing power with the support of two
classes finds its highest expression in the Bolshevik concept of the
"dictatorship of the proletariat." In conjunction with the concept of
the Party as the absolute leader-organization of the class, the formula
of the proletarian dictatorship naturally means mastery on the part of
the jacobinical-bolshevik organization. Its class content is furthermore
completely done away with by the bolshevik definition of the
dictatorship of the proletariat as the "class alliance between
proletariat and peasantry under the primacy of the proletariat." (Stalin
and the program of the Comintern.) The Marxist principle of the
dictatorship of the working class is thus distorted by Bolshevism into
the rule over two opposed classes by the jacobinical party.
38. The bourgeois character of the Bolshevik revolution is underscored
by the Bolsheviks themselves, in their revised slogan of the "people's
revolution," i.e., the common struggle of different classes of a people
in one revolution. That is the typical slogan of every bourgeois.
revolution which behind a bourgeois leadership brings masses of
petty-bourgeois peasants and proletarians into action for its own class
aims.
39. In view of the organization's struggle for power over the
revolutionary classes, every democratic attitude of Bolshevism becomes a
mere tactical chess move. This has been proved particularly in the
question of workers' democracy in the soviets. The Leninist slogan of
March 1917, "all power to the soviets," bore the typical two-class
aspect of the Russian Revolution for the soviets were the "councils of
workers, peasants and soldiers" (i.e. again peasants). Furthermore, the
slogan was mere tactic. It was put forth by Lenin in the February
revolution because it seemed to assure the "peaceful" transition of
control from the social-revolutionary Menshevik coalition to the
Bolsheviks by the increase of their influence in the soviets. When,
after the July demonstration, the influence of the Bolsheviks over the
soviets declined, Lenin temporarily abandoned the soviet slogan and
demanded the organization of other slogans of insurrection by the
Bolshevik Party. It was only when, as a result of the Kornilov Putsch,
the bolshevik influence in the soviets again sharply increased, that
Lenin's party again took up the soviet slogan. Since the Bolsheviks
regarded the soviets preponderantly as organs of insurrection instead of
as organs of self-government of the working class, they made it all too
clear that to them the soviets were only a tool by the aid of which
their party could take over the power. This has been demonstrated in
general practice, not only by their organization of the soviet state
after the conquest of power, but also in the special case of the bloody
repression of the Kronstadt rebellion. The peasant-capitalist demands of
this insurrection were granted by the NEP; its proletarian-democratic
demands, however, were drowned in working-class blood.
40. The struggle over the content of the Russian soviets led, as early
as 1920, to the formation of a genuine, though on the whole still weak,
communist current in the party. The workers' opposition (Utyanikov)
represented the idea of carrying through soviet democracy for the
working-class. Like all other serious oppositions of this nature, later
on, it was eradicated by imprisonment, exile and military execution, but
its platform remains as the historical starting point for an
independent, proletarian-communist movement against the Bolshevik
regime.
41. The attitude of the Bolsheviks toward the trade union question is
likewise determined from the point of view of control and leadership of
the workers by the Bolshevik party. In Russia, the Bolsheviks have
completely taken away from the trade unions their character of labor
organizations by governmentalizing and militarizing them by the
compulsory character imposed upon them after the conquest of power. In
other countries, the final result of the Bolshevik policy has been to
protect the bureaucratic, reformist trade-union organizations, and
instead of the breaking up of such organisations, the Bolsheviks have
advocated the "conquest" of their apparatus. They were bitter opponents
of the idea of revolutionary, industrial organizations because these
latter embodied democratic democracy. The Bolsheviks fought for the
conquest or renovation of organizations controlled by the centralistic
bureaucracy, which they thought to rule from their own command posts.
42. As a leader-movement of jacobinical dictatorship, Bolshevism in all
its phases has consistently combatted the idea of self-determination of
the working class and demanded the subordination of the proletariat to
the bureaucratized organization. In the discussion which took place,
prior to the war, on the question of organization within the Second
International, Lenin was a violent and vindictive opponent of Rosa
Luxemburg and supported himself outspokenly on the centrist Kautsky, who
during and after the war clearly revealed his policy of class betrayal.
Bolshevism had even then, as constantly since, proved that it not only
has no understanding of the question of developing the consciousness and
the class organizations of the proletariat, but that it also combats
with all means all theoretical and practical attempts to develop actual
class organizations and class policies.
43. Bolshevism has called the revolution of February the bourgeois
revolution, and that of October the proletarian revolution in order to
be able to pass off its later regime as proletarian class rule and its
economic policies as socialism. The absurdity of this division of the
revolution of 1917 becomes clear merely from consideration of the fact
that in that case a development of seven months would have sufficed to
create the economic and social presuppositions for a proletarian
revolution in a country which had just entered the process of its
bourgeois revolution, i.e. simply to leap an economic and social phase
of development that would at least require decades. In reality, the
revolution of 1917 is a quite unitary social process of transformation,
beginning with the collapse of Czarism and attaining its climax with the
victorious armed insurrection of the Bolsheviks on November 7th. This
violent process of transformation is that of Russia's bourgeois
revolution under the historically created, peculiar Russian conditions.
44. In this process, the party of the revolutionary, jacobinical
intelligentsia seized power on the two social waves of peasant and
proletarian mass insurrection and created in the place of the shattered
governing triangle, Czarism, nobility, bourgeoisie, the new governing
triangle, bolshevism, peasantry, working class. Just as the state
apparatus of Czarism ruled independently over the two possessing
classes, so the new Bolshevik state apparatus began to make itself
independent of its double class basis. Russia stepped out of the
conditions of czarist absolutism into those of Bolshevik absolutism.
45. Bolshevik policy attains, during the revolutionary period, its
highest point in the way of embracing and mastering the class forces of
the revolution. The acme of their revolutionary tactic is reached in the
preparation and carrying out of the armed insurrection. The question of
the violent uprising became for the Bolsheviks a question of an exact,
thoroughly scheduled and planned military action, the head of which as
well as its driving and controlling force was the Bolshevik Party with
its military formations. Conception, preparation and execution of the
armed insurrection by the Bolsheviks bear the obvious stamp of the
jacobinical conspiracy, (in the Russian Revolution again the only
possible policy) that is, of insurrection under the peculiar conditions
of carrying through the bourgeois revolution against the bourgeoisie.
46. The inner character of the Bolshevik revolution as a bourgeois
revolution reveals itself in its economic slogans. To the peasant
masses, the Bolsheviks represented the violent expropriation of the
large estates by the spontaneous action of the land-hungry small
peasantry. They perfectly expressed in their agrarian practice and
slogans (Peace and Land) the interests of the peasants fighting for the
security of small private property, hence on capitalistic lines, and
were thus, on the agrarian question, ruthless champions of
small-capitalist, hence not socialist-proletarian interests against
feudal and capitalist landed property.
47. Nor with regard to the workers were the economic demands of the
Bolshevik revolution filled with a socialist content. Lenin on several
occasions repelled with distinct sharpness the Menshevik criticism that
Bolshevism represented a utopian policy of socialization of production
in a country not yet ripe for it. The Bolshevists declared that in the
revolution it was not at all a question of socialization of production,
but of control of production by the workers. The slogan of control of
production served the attempt to maintain capitalism as a force for
technical and economic organization of production, but depriving it of
its character of exploitation. The bourgeois character of the Bolshevik
revolution and the Bolshevik self-restriction to this bourgeois economic
character, as opposed to the consolidation of the results of the
overthrow of 1917, could not be shown more clearly than in this slogan
of control of production.
48. The elemental force of the workers' attack, on the one hand, and the
sabotage of the dethroned employers on the other, meanwhile drove the
Bolshevik industrial policy further into taking over the. industrial
enterprises by the new governmental bureaucracy. The state economy which
at first throughout the period of war communism, almost choked from
overorganization (Glavkism), was denoted by Lenin as state capitalism.
The designation of the Bolshevik state economy as socialist is a product
of the Stalinist era.
49. Lenin himself had, however, no other fundamental conception of
socialization of production than that of a bureaucratically conducted
state economy. To him, the German war economy and the postal service
were illustrations of socialist organization i.e. economic organization
of an outright, bureaucratic character, centralistically controlled from
above. He saw only the technical, not the proletarian, social side of
the socialization problem. Lenin likewise based himself, and with him
Bolshevism in general,, on the concepts of socialization propounded by
the centrist Hilferding who in his "Finance Capital" had sketched an
idealized picture of a completely organized capitalism. The actual
problem in socializing production, i.e. the taking over of the
enterprises and the organization of economy through the working class
and its class organisations, the shop councils; Bolshevism has
completely passed it by. It had to be passed by because the Marxist idea
of the association of free and equal producers is directly. opposed to
the essence of the rule of a jacobinical organization, and because
Russia did not possess the social and economic conditions necessary for
socialism. The socialization concept of the Bolsheviks is therefore
nothing but a capitalist economy taken over by the State and directed
from the outside and from above by its bureaucracy. The Bolshevik
socialism is state-organized capitalism.
50. During the World War, the Bolsheviks represented a consistently
international standpoint under the slogan "Convert the imperialist war
into civil war" and had apparently conducted themselves as consistent
Marxists, But their revolutionary internationalism was as much
determined by their tactic in the struggle for the Russian Revolution as
was later their swing to the NEP. The appeal to the international
proletariat was only one side of a large-laid policy for international
support of the Russian revolution. The other side was the policy and
propaganda of "national self-determination" in which the class outlook
was even more definitely sacrificed than in the concept of "people's
revolution," in favour of an appeal to all classes of certain peoples.
51. This double-faced "two-class internationalism" of the Bolsheviks
corresponded to the international situation of Russia and of her
revolution. Russia stands between the two centers of the imperialist
world system, geographically and sociologically. In Russia, where the
active imperialist and the passive colonial tendencies met, the system
collapsed. The reactionary classes of Russia were incompetent to put it
together again, as their decisive defeat in the Kornilov Putsch and
later in the civil war has proved. The only real danger threatening the
Russian revolution was that of imperialist intervention. Only military
invasion on the part of imperialist capital could strike down Bolshevism
and restore Czarism—the old regime which had been built into the world
system of imperialist exploitation both as an instrument and as material
at the same time. The problem of active defense of Bolshevism against
world imperialism consisted, therefore, in counter-attacking in the
imperialist centers of power. This was brought about through the
two-sided international policy of Bolshevism.
52. With the standpoint of the international proletarian revolution,
Bolshevism propagated an internal attack by the international
proletariat on the center of world imperialism in the highly developed
capitalist countries. With the policy of "the right to national
self-determination" Bolshevism propagated an attack by the oppressed
peasant peoples of the Far East on the colonial center of world
imperialism. In a double-phased international policy adjusted to
tremendous perspectives, Bolshevism attempted to lengthen the
proletarian and peasant arms of its revolution into the international
stretches of world capitalism.
53. The position of Bolshevism on the "national question" is practical,
hence not merely an expedient of the bourgeois revolution of its own
country—a revolution which wished to strike Czarism with the aid of the
national instincts of the oppressed peasant elements and nationalities
of the Russian Empire. It is, at the same time, the peasant
internationalism of a bourgeois revolution which was accomplished in the
age of world imperialism and which could hold out in the meshes of the
imperialist net only with the aid of an internationally oriented and
activated counter-policy.
54. As instruments of Bolshevist leadership for this policy of
international support for the bourgeois revolution accomplished on
Russian soil, Bolshevism attempted to create two international
organizations: the Third International to mobilize the workers of the
highly developed capitalist countries, and the Peasant International as
an organization for Bolshevik mobilization of the oriental peasant
peoples. As the final guiding thought of this international double-class
policy there appeared the idea of the world revolution, in which the
international (European-American) proletarian revolution and the
national (mainly Oriental) peasant revolution were to be riveted into a
new international unity of bolshevik world policy under the strict
leadership of Moscow. Thus the concept of "world revolution" has for the
Bolsheviks an altogether different class content. It no longer has
anything in common with the international proletarian revolution.
55. The international policy of Bolshevism was thus directed to
repeating the Russian Revolution on a world scale by simultaneous
utilization of the proletarian and the peasant-bourgeois revolutions and
thereby making the leadership of the Bolshevik party of Russia the
commander of a world bolshevik system of coupling together the
communist-proletarian and peasant-capitalist interests. This policy was
insofar positive as it has protected the Bolshevik State from
imperialist invasion by continually disquietening the capitalist States,
and thereby has given it time to build itself gradually into the world
imperialist system again by the capitalist methods of commercial
relations, economic agreements and non-aggression pacts. It has given
Russia the opportunity for an unhindered national building up and
extension of its own internal position. The two-front policy of
Bolshevism was negative in that on both sides the attempt to carry over
the active bolshevik policies onto a world scale has collapsed. The
experiment of the Peasant International has completely broken down with
the defeat of bolshevik policy in China. The Third International, after
the pitiful collapse of the Communist Party of Germany, is no longer a
factor in bolshevik world policy. The gigantic attempt to transplant the
bolshevik policy of Russia into world relations is historically a
failure, and proves the national, Russian limitations of Bolshevism. At
any rate, the bolshevik experiment in international Machtpolitik has
afforded time and space for the retreat of Bolshevism onto its national
(Russian) position and for the conversion to capitalist-imperialist
methods of international policy. Theoretically, this retreat found its
expression in the formula "socialism in one country," thereby removing
the international ties from the concept of "socialism" after the Russian
economic practice had already robbed it of its proletarian class
content, and turned it into a disguise of state-capitalist tendencies
found as well in reformism and in petty-bourgeois fascism.
56. Actually, it is unessential, now that we have the results of 15
years of the bolshevist State and of the bolshevist, international,
whether Lenin at or before the founding of the Comintern had or had not
a different idea about the effect of this bolshevist international. In
practice, Bolshevism with its concept of the "right to national
self-determination" has developed the tendencies to a world-bolshevik
Machtpolitik. It has also, through the Comintern, decisively contributed
to the result that the European proletariat was unable to rise to the
height of revolutionary communist insight and instead remained stuck in
the mud of reformist concepts revived by Bolshevism and decorated with
revolutionary phrases. Thus it has come about that the concept of the
"Russian Fatherland" has become the cornerstone of the whole policy of
the bolshevik parties, whereas for proletarian communism the
international working class stands at the center of all international
orientation.
57. The establishment of the Soviet State was the establishment of the
rule of the party of bolshevik Machiavellism. The sociological basis of
this state power, made independent of its supporting classes and
creating the new social element, of the bolshevist bureaucracy, was
composed of the Russian proletariat and peasantry. The proletariat,
enchained with the methods of compulsory membership in the trade unions
and the terrorism of the Tcheka, formed the basis of the bolshevistic,
bureaucratically conducted state economy. The peasantry concealed and
still conceals in its ranks the private capitalist tendencies of that
economy. The Soviet State in its inner policy was continually being
tossed back and forth between the two tendencies. It has attempted to
master them through violent organizational methods such as the five-year
plan policy and compulsory collectivization. In practice, however, it
has only increased the economic difficulties to the danger point of an
explosion of the economic contradictions by the intolerable
over-tensioning of the forces of the workers and peasants. The
experiment in bureaucratically planned state economy can by no means be
denoted as a complete success. The great international cataclysms
threatening Russia are bound to increase the contradictions of its
economic system till they become intolerable and may enormously hasten
the collapse of the hitherto gigantic economic experiment.
58. The inner character of Russian economy is determined by the
following circumstances: it rests on the foundation of commodity
production; it is conducted according to the viewpoint's of capitalist
profitability; it reveals a decidedly capitalist system of wages and
speedup; it has carried the refinements of capitalist rationalization to
the utmost limits. Bolshevist economy is state production with
capitalistic methods.
59. This state form of production also produces surplus value, which is
squeezed out of the workers in fullest measure. The Russian State does
not, to be sure, reveal any class of people who individually and
directly are the beneficiaries of the surplus-value production, but it
pockets this surplus value through the bureaucratic, parasitical
apparatus as a whole. In addition to its own quite costly maintenance,
the surplus value produced serves for the expansion of production, the
support of the peasant class and as a means of settlement for the
foreign obligations of the State. So that, in addition to the
economically parasitical element of the ruling bureaucracy, the Russian
peasants, as a distinct part of international capital, are the
beneficiaries of the surplus value produced by the Russian workers. The
Russian state economy is therefore profit production and exploitation
economy. It is state capitalism under the historically unique conditions
of the bolshevik regime, and accordingly represents a different and more
advanced type of capitalist production than even the greatest and most
advanced countries have to show.
60. The foreign policy of the Soviet Union has been subordinated to the
point of view of securing the position of the Bolshevist Party and of
the state apparatus which it controls. Economically, the Russian
government fought for support of its industrial construction, which was
pushed forward with the greatest exertions. The isolation of Soviet
Russia's economy led to a strenuous policy of doing away with the
compulsory autarchy while maintaining control of the foreign trade
monopoly. Commercial treaties, concessionnaire agreements, as well as
extensive credit arrangements, reestablished the bond of Russian state
economy with capitalist world production and its markets, into which
Russia entered partly as a courted customer and partly as a keen
competitor. On the other hand, the policy of economic attachment to
world capital compelled the soviet government to cultivate friendly and
peaceful relations with the capitalist powers. The principles of a
bolshevist world policy, where they were still propagated, were
opportunistically subordinated to the bare commercial treaty. The entire
foreign policy of the Russian government took on the stamp of a
typically capitalist diplomacy and thus, in the international sphere,
definitely tore bolshevist theory loose from bolshevist practice.
61. In the center of the foreign propaganda of the Comintern, Bolshevism
placed the thesis of "imperialist encircling of the Soviet Union" though
such a phrase did not harmonize in the least with the complicated lines
of imperialistic conflicts of interests and their continually changing
groupings. It attempted to mobilize the international proletariat for
its foreign policy and, through a partly parliamentary partly putschist
policy on the part of the communist parties, to create unrest in the
capitalist states from within and thereby strengthen the diplomatic and
economic position of the Soviet Union.
62. The oppositions between the Soviet Union and the imperialist powers
led to the ideological counterpropaganda of the Comintern under the
slogans: "Menace of War against the U.S.S.R.," "Protect the Soviet
Union." In that the workers were presented with these oppositions as the
only and determining ones in world policy, they were prevented from
gaining an insight into the actual realities of international politics.
The adherents of the communist parties became, before everything else,
blind and opportunistic defenders of the Soviet Union and were kept in
ignorance of the fact that the Soviet Union had long ago become a
full-fledged factor in imperialist world politics.
63. The continual cry of alarm about an imminent war by the combined
imperialist powers against the U.S.S.R. served in domestic politics for
justifying the intensified militarization of labor and the increased
pressure on the Russian proletariat. At the same time, however, the
Soviet Union had and has the greatest interest in the unconditional
avoidance of any military conflict with other States. The existence of
the bolshevik government depends internally in large measure on the
avoidance of all convulsions in the sphere of foreign politics, both
military as well as revolutionary. Therefore the Comintern has in
practice, in crying contradiction to its old theory and propaganda,
carried on a policy of sabotage of all real revolutionary proletarian
development and in the communist parties somewhat openly spread the
conception that the upbuilding of the Soviet Union must first be secured
before the proletarian revolution in Europe can be pressed further. On
the other hand, the Russian government has, to be sure, employed strong
gestures against imperialist powers for the sake of prestige, but in
practice always capitulated to them. The "sale" of the Manchurian
railway is an example of the unresisting capitulation of the U.S.S.R. to
the imperialist opponent. The overhasty recognition of the Soviet Union
by the United States at the same point of time is, conversely, a proof
that the imperialist powers, within the bounds of their policy of
opposing interests, also know how to give a positive value to the factor
represented by the Soviet Union. But especially has the Soviet Union
documented its bond with capitalism by arranging and extending
particularly close economic relations with Italian fascism and Hitler
Germany. The Soviet Union appears as a reliable economic, and hence also
political, support of the most reactionary fascist dictatorships in
Europe.
64. The policy of unconditional understanding of the U.S.S.R. with
capitalist and imperialist States has not only economic grounds. Nor is
it merely an expression of military inferiority. The Soviet Union's
"peace policy" is, rather, quite decisively guaranteed by the inner
situation of Bolshevism. Its existence as an independent state power
depends on its success in maintaining an equilibrium between the
dominated working class and the peasantry. In spite of the progress made
in industrializing the country, the position of the Russian peasantry is
still extremely strong. First, in its hands still rests in large
measure, in spite of all repressive policies from above, the decision
about the feeding of the country. Secondly, collectivization has
strengthened not only the economic, but also the political power of the
peasantry which as before is still fighting for private capitalist
interests. (For "collectivization" in Russia means a collective union of
privately owning peasants with the maintenance of capitalistic methods
of accounting and distribution.) In the third place, finally, a war and
the mass arming of the peasantry would form the conditions for a renewed
and violent peasant revolt against the bolshevist system; just as, on
the other hand, a revolution by the European proletariat would also make
probable an open rebellion by the Russian workers. On these grounds, the
policy of understanding between the Soviet government and the
imperialist powers is a life necessity of bolshevist absolutism.
65. The Comintern itself has become a tool for the misuse of the
international working class for the opportunist aims of national
glorification and the international security policy of the Russian
State. It arose, in its extra-Russian parts, from combining the
revolutionary cadres of the European proletariat. By utilizing the
authority of the bolshevik revolution, the organizational principle and
tactic of Bolshevism was forced upon the Comintern with the utmost
brutality and without regard for immediate splits. The executive
committee (E.C.C.I.)—another tool of the leadership of Russia's
governmental bureaucracy—was made the absolute commander of all
communist parties and their policy was completely cut loose from the
actual revolutionary interests of the international working class.
Revolutionary phrases and resolutions served as a cloak for the
counter-revolutionary policy of the Comintern and its parties, which in
their bolshevik manner became as adept in working class betrayal and
unrestrained demagogy as the social-democratic parties had been. Just as
reformism went down, in the historical sense, on the fusion of its
apparatus with capitalism, so the Comintern suffered shipwreck by the
connection, through its apparatus, with the capitalist policy of the
Soviet Union.
66. Bolshevism, in principle, tactic and organization, is a movement and
method of the bourgeois revolution in a preponderantly peasant country.
It brought the socialistically oriented proletariat and the
capitalistically oriented peasantry to a revolutionary uprising, under
the dictatorial leadership of the jacobinical intelligentsia, against
the absolutist State, feudalism and the bourgeoisie, for the purpose of
smashing feudal-capitalistic absolutism, and, in a great strategy of
turning everything to advantage, joined together the opposed proletarian
and peasant class-interests with the aid of insight into the class
character of the laws of social development.
67. Bolshevism is therefore not only unserviceable as a directive for
the revolutionary policy of the international proletariat, but is one of
its heaviest and most dangerous impediments. The struggle against the
bolshevik ideology, against the bolshevik practices and hence against
all groups seeking to anchor them anew in the proletariat is one of the
first tasks in the struggle for the revolutionary re-orientation of the
working class. Proletarian policy can de developed only from the
proletarian class ground. and with the methods and organizational forms
adapted thereto.