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Title: Lying for Leninism
Author: Anarcho
Language: en
Topics: Leninism, IWW, letter, analysis
Source: Retrieved on 2nd August 2020 from http://struggle.ws/anarchism/writers/anarcho/zinoviev.html

Anarcho

Lying for Leninism

In January 1920, G. ZINOVIEV, President of the Central Executive

Committee of the Third International, sent a letter to the Industrial

Workers of the World. It appeared in a 1920 issue of One Big Union

Monthly, a regular publication of the IWW that appeared up until about

World War 2.

It is an interesting document. Given what Zinoviev wrote in the letter

and the actual conditions that existed in Russia at the time, we can

safely say that Stalinism did not invent doublethink or systematic lying

as a political principle. As we will prove, the arguments and

descriptions of Zinoviev amount to little more than a deliberate

distortion. In plain words, lies pure and simple.

It may be argued that Zinoviev lied because of the dire situation the

Russian Revolution was facing. By lying, he helped ensure that the

revolution was not defeated by gaining supporters for it in America and

elsewhere. However, such a position fails to understand the power of

truth nor the corrupting influence of lies. As the Italian Marxist

Antonio Gramsci once wrote, “to tell the truth is a communist and

revolutionary act.” A real social revolution cannot base itself on lies

as those taking part in it must be in a position to understand it,

criticise it and make the appropriate decisions to push it forwards. If

only a few have the truth, only they will have meaningful power.

Clearly, by systematically lying in his letter, Zinoviev showed that

Bolshevism and Soviet Russia were not communist nor revolutionary. By

lying Zinoviev did not defend the revolution, he betrayed its spirit

just as the Bolsheviks had betrayed its promise.

It may be argued that this critique is based on hindsight. Perhaps, but

the facts we document here were known at the time. As Kropotkin argued

(in his “Letter to the Workers of Western Europe”) one year before

Zinoviev wrote his letter to the I.W.W:

“the Russian revolution ... is trying to reach ... economic equality ...

this effort has been made in Russia under a strongly centralised party

dictatorship ... this effort to build a communist republic on the basis

of a strongly centralised state communism under the iron law of a party

dictatorship is bound to end in failure. We are learning to know in

Russia how not to introduce communism.” [Kropotkin’s Revolutionary

Pamphlets, p. 254]

Clearly, Kropotkin and other anarchists at the time were well aware of

the failures of the Bolshevik experiment, failures Zinoviev fails to

mention in his letter. As such, this analysis has strong similarities

with the work of anarchists in Russia at the time. Given that their

critique was a product of their experiences during the revolution, it

cannot be said that my analysis is purely the benefit of hindsight.

I shall present an anarchist analysis of Zinoviev’s comments. His words

are indented while mines are not. In addition,I will concentrate on the

divergence between Zinoviev’s rhetoric and the reality of the Bolshevik

Russia. His analysis of the class struggle in the USA at the time will

not be discussed.

** The Communist International to the I.W.W.

An Appeal of the Executive Committee of the Third International at

Moscow

COMRADES AND FELLOW WORKERS:

Now is no time to talk of “building the new society within the shell of

the old.” The old society is cracking its shell. The workers must

establish the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, which alone can build the

new society.

An article in the ONE BIG UNION MONTHLY, your official organ, asks, “Why

should we follow the Bolsheviks?” According to the writer, all that the

Bolshevik Revolution in Russia has done is “to give the Russian people

the vote.”

This is, of course, untrue. The Bolshevik Revolution has taken the

factories, mills, mines, land and financial institutions out of the

hands of the capitalists, and transferred them to the WHOLE WORKING

CLASS.

This is, of course, untrue for two reasons.

Firstly, the Bolsheviks may have given the Russian people the vote, but

they ensured that it counted for nothing. The Bolsheviks centralised

power into the hands of the Council of People’s Commissars, effectively

reducing the soviets to bodies carrying out the orders flowing from the

top. Moreover, they also systematically disbanded, by force, soviets

which had non-Bolshevik majorities elected to them. Needless to say,

marginalising and disbanding soviets hardly equals giving the working

class a meaningful vote. The Bolsheviks may have claimed to be in favour

of soviet democracy and power, but their actions proved otherwise

Secondly, the Bolsheviks did take “the factories, mills, mines, land and

financial institutions out of the hands of the capitalists” but they

were not “transferred” into the hands of the working class. Rather they

were transfered into the hands of the state and run by state appointed

managers. The working class did not manage or control the means of life,

others did. As such ownership was purely formal and hid the continued

wage slavery of the workers by judicial forms. Ultimately, ownership is

a juridical concept. What matters is whether workers manage their own

work. If they do not, then they are still alienated from both the means

of production and the product of their labour. The Bolsheviks had not

changed the social relationships within society, just who was telling

the working class what to do. The net effect of nationalising the means

of life simply meant different bosses for the workers. The Bolsheviks

claimed to be creating socialism but their actions proved otherwise.

Alexander Berkman provides an excellent overview of what had happened in

Russia after the October Revolution:

“The elective system was abolished, first in the army and navy, then in

the industries. The Soviets of peasants and workers were castrated and

turned into obedient Communist Committees, with the dreaded sword of the

Cheka [political para-military police] ever hanging over them. The

labour unions governmentalised, their proper activities suppressed, they

were turned into mere transmitters of the orders of the State. Universal

military service, coupled with the death penalty for conscientious

objectors; enforced labour, with a vast officialdom for the apprehension

and punishment of ‘deserters’; agrarian and industrial conscription of

the peasantry; military Communism in the cities and the system of

requisitioning in the country ... ; the suppression of workers’ protests

by the military; the crushing of peasant dissatisfaction with an iron

hand...” [The Russian Tragedy, p. 27]

The aim of this analysis is to show the realities of Bolshevik rule, as

summarised by Berkman, and the rhetoric of the Bolsheviks, as summarised

by Zinoviev. In the analysis that follows I will prove that the two do

no meet. Zinoviev was a leading member of the Communist Party who took

an active part in the Russian Revolution, Civil War and party meetings.

There is no way his letter could have been a product of ignorance and so

we have an example of the systematic lying usually associated with

Stalinism.

Before continuing, it is useful to indicate some of the hidden meaning

begin Bolshevik terminology. Once you understand that certain

expressions are mere euphemisms then Bolshevik rhetoric becomes easier

to decode and understand.

The key to understanding Zinoviev’s claims is to understand that for

Bolshevism there exists a great confusion between working class power

and party power. For example, Lenin argued in 1921 that ”[t]o go so far

in this matter as to draw a contrast in general between the dictatorship

of the masses and the dictatorship of the leaders, is ridiculously

absurd and stupid.” He stressed that ”[t]he very presentation of the

question — ‘dictatorship of the Party or dictatorship of the class,

dictatorship (Party) of the leaders or dictatorship (Party) of the

masses?’ — is evidence of the most incredible and hopeless confusion of

mind ... [because] classes are usually ... led by political parties... “

[Left-wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, p. 27 and pp. 25–6] If the

Bolshevik party is in power then the working class rules and so the

“dictatorship of the proletariat” and th “dictatorship of the party” are

effectively the same thing. Needless to say, they are not. If the party

holds power then the working class does not. If the party dictates then

it dictates to the working class.

This confusion of party power with working class power explains

Zinoviev’s claim that the Bolsheviks had transferred the means of

production to the “WHOLE WORKING CLASS.” If we take the term “WHOLE

WORKING CLASS” as a euphemism for the state, then his words are correct.

The Bolsheviks had expropriated the capitalist class by means of

nationalisation. This simply replaced the capitalist class with the

state, leaving the working class in exactly the same position as before.

Instead of being wage slaves to a capitalist, they had become wage

slaves to the state.

We understand, and share with you, your disgust for the principles and

tactics of the “yellow” Socialist politicians, who, all over the world,

have discredited the very name of Socialism. Our aim is the same as

yours — A COMMONWEALTH WITHOUT STATE, WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, WITHOUT

CLASSES, IN WHICH THE WORKERS SHALL ADMINISTER THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION

AND DISTRIBUTION FOR THE COMMON BENEFIT OF ALL.

And yet these aims are to be pursued using means that are directly

opposite to them. The state, government and classes are to be used to

abolish state, government and classes. Workers shall administer

production and distribution, but first they are to be dispossessed of

such activity and placed under one-man management. Classes will be

abolished, but first the proletariat must remain the proletariat and

have no control over their work or workplaces. The state will be

abolished, but first it is necessary to strengthen it, create an army,

police and secret police (the Cheka) separate from the mass of people

(and in direct opposition to Lenin’s claims in State and Revolution).

Government must end, but first it must be turned into the dictatorship

of a party and become the most centralised the world has ever seen.

Indeed, Trotsky (in 1920) brought this nonsense to its height in his

infamous work Terrorism and Communism:

“Both economic and political compulsion are only forms of the expression

of the dictatorship of the working class in two closely connected

regions ... under Socialism there will not exist the apparatus of

compulsion itself, namely, the State: for it will have melted away

entirely into a producing and consuming commune. None the less, the road

to Socialism lies through a period of the highest possible

intensification of the principle of the State ... Just as a lamp, before

going out, shoots up in a brilliant flame, so the State, before

disappearing, assumes the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat,

i.e., the most ruthless form of State, which embraces the life of the

citizens authoritatively in every direction... No organisation except

the army has ever controlled man with such severe compulsion as does the

State organisation of the working class in the most difficult period of

transition. It is just for this reason that we speak of the

militarisation of labour.”

So, in order to ensure free labour under communism, the working class

must be subjected to the militarisation of labour. To ensure that the

state disappears, we must increase its power, scope and size. Yet we are

to believe that this militarisation of life and labour will have no

effect on those subject to it nor those who impose it. And supporters of

Bolshevism call anarchists utopians and idealists!

Ends are not independent of means, just as the end of a journey is

dependent on the path taken. You cannot end up in Paris if you follow

the signs leading to Rome. This means that how a socialist society would

look like and work is not independent of the means used to create it. In

other words, a socialist society will reflect the social struggle which

preceded it and the ideas which existed within that struggle as modified

by the practical needs of any given situation. If the means are

authoritarian, the ends will also be so. If the means deny freedom and

working class autonomy, then so will the ends.

Thus, if the end is a society of free and equal individuals co-operating

to manage their affairs then the means cannot be in contradiction to

them. If they are, if the means are based on inequality,

authoritarianism and hierarchy then the ends will also be marked by

inequality, authoritarianism and hierarchy.

This means that if the ends are specified as “A COMMONWEALTH WITHOUT

STATE, WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, WITHOUT CLASSES, IN WHICH THE WORKERS SHALL

ADMINISTER THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION FOR THE COMMON

BENEFIT OF ALL” then the means must reflect these goals. Thus the

revolution must be marked by organisations organised in a libertarian

way which will allow working people to manage their affairs directly,

without need for government or appointed managers. Instead of

centralising power at the top of the social pyramid, as the Bolsheviks

did, power must be decentralised back the hands of the working class and

their organisations. This means that workers’ self-management of

production must be encouraged, working class autonomy, freedom and

democracy protected and encouraged and working class administration of

society formalised. This is what the Bolsheviks failed to do. As Samuel

Farber notes, “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.” [Before Stalinism, p. 44]

This argument does not mean that anarchists think that we can jump

straight from capitalism to a fully developed socialist society. Of

course the capitalist class will resist and so a revolution will have to

defend itself. As Bakunin argued:

“the federative alliance of all working men’s associations ...

constitute the Commune ... all provinces, communes and associations ...

by first reorganising on revolutionary lines ... [will] constitute the

federation of insurgent associations, communes and provinces ... [and]

organise a revolutionary force capable defeating reaction ... [and for]

self-defence ... [The] revolution everywhere must be created by the

people, and supreme control must always belong to the people organised

into a free federation of agricultural and industrial associations ...

organised from the bottom upwards by means of revolutionary

delegation... “ [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 170–2]

However, if you seek a society without government, classes and state

then it can only be achieved by self-management and organisation from

below upwards. The experience of Bolshevism shows the clear linkage

between means and ends.

We address this letter to you, fellow-workers of the I.W.W., in

recognition of your long and heroic services in the class war, of which

you may have borne the brunt in your own country, so that you may

clearly understand our Communist principles and program.

We appeal to you, as revolutionaries, to rally to the Communist

International, born in the dawn of the World Social Revolution.

However, without presenting an accurate picture of the realities of the

Russian Revolution, of how Bolshevik “principles and program” had been

applied in practice, any such understanding will hardly be clear.

Essentially Zinoviev is asking us to judge Bolshevism by what it says

about itself, not what it actually does. In this, they differ sharply

from Marx who had argued that we must judge people by what they do, not

by what they say.

If we do judge the Bolsheviks by what they did, not by what they said,

then it quickly becomes clear that real revolutionaries cannot help but

reject the “principles and program” of Communism.

We call you to take the place to which your courage and revolutionary

experience entitles you, in the front ranks of the proletarian Red Army

fighting under the banner of Communism.

Ironically, the example of the so-called proletarian Red Army presents

us with a clear example of what is meant by the “banner of Communism.”

Let us quote the founder of this “proletarian” Red Army, Trotsky, on its

nature. Writing in 1922, he argued that:

“There was and could be no question of controlling troops by means of

elected committees and commanders who were subordinate to these

committees and might be replaced at any moment ... [The old army] had

carried out a social revolution within itself, casting aside the

commanders from the landlord and bourgeois classes and establishing

organs of revolutionary self-government, in the shape of the Soviets of

Soldiers’ Deputies. These organisational and political measures were

correct and necessary from the standpoint of breaking up the old army.

But a new army capable of fighting could certainly not grow directly out

of them ... The attempt made to apply our old organisational methods to

the building of a Red Army threatened to undermine it from the very

outset ... the system of election could in no way secure competent,

suitable and authoritative commanders for the revolutionary army. The

Red Army was built from above, in accordance with the principles of the

dictatorship of the working class. Commanders were selected and tested

by the organs of the Soviet power and the Communist Party. Election of

commanders by the units themselves — which were politically

ill-educated, being composed of recently mobilised young peasants —

would inevitably have been transformed into a game of chance, and would

often, in fact, have created favourable circumstances for the

machinations of various intriguers and adventurers. Similarly, the

revolutionary army, as an army for action and not as an arena of

propaganda, was incompatible with a regime of elected committees, which

in fact could not but destroy all centralised control.” [The Path of the

Red Army]

Trotsky admits that the “Red Army was built from above, in accordance

with the principles of the dictatorship of the working class.” Which

means, to state the obvious, appointment from above, the dismantling of

self-government, and so on are “in accordance with the principles” of

Bolshevism. These comments were not made in the heat of the civil war,

but afterward during peacetime. Notice Trotsky admits that a “social

revolution” had swept through the Tsarist army. His actions, he also

admits, reversed that revolution and replaced its organs of

“self-government” with ones identical to the old regime. When that

happens it is usually called by its true name, namely

counter-revolution.

This just one example of the “dictatorship of the proletariat”

destroying democracy exercised by the working masses and replacing their

democratic organisations with appointees from above.

The rationale behind this attack on working class democracy is

significant and worth discussing. It was used again and again by the

Bolsheviks to eliminate the gains of the revolution (for example,

workers’ self-management of production). Trotsky provided this rationale

on March 28^(th), 1918, when he gave a report to the Moscow City

Conference of the Communist Party. In this report he stated that “the

principle of election is politically purposeless and technically

inexpedient, and it has been, in practice, abolished by decree” and that

the Bolsheviks “fac[ed] the task of creating a regular Army.” Why the

change? Simply because “political power is in the hands of the same

working class from whose ranks the Army is recruited.” Of course, power

was actually held by the Bolshevik party, not the working class, but

never fear:

“Once we have established the Soviet regime, that is a system under

which the government is headed by persons who have been directly elected

by the Soviets of Workers’, Peasants’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, 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, and, therefore, there cannot be

any grounds for fearing the appointment of members of the commanding

staff by the organs of the Soviet Power.” [Work, Discipline, Order]

Of course, most workers’ are well aware that the administration of a

trade union usually works against them during periods of struggle.

Indeed, so are most Trotskyists as they often denounce the betrayals by

that administration. Thus Trotsky’s own analogy indicates the fallacy of

his argument. Elected officials do not necessary reflect the interests

of those who elected them. That is why anarchists have always supported

delegation rather than representation combined with decentralisation,

strict accountability and the power of instant recall. In a highly

centralised system (as created by the Bolsheviks and as exists in most

social democratic trade unions) the ability to recall an administration

is difficult as it requires the agreement of all the people. Thus there

are quite a few grounds for fearing the appointment of commanders by the

government — no matter which party makes it up.

Trotsky repeated this rationale when he argued in favour of

militarisation of labour and one-man management. As he put it, ”[i]t

would be the most crying error to confuse the question as to the

supremcy of the proletariat with the question of boards of workers at

the head of factories. The dictatorship of the proletariat is expressed

in the abolition of private property in the means of production, in the

supremacy over the whole soviet mechanism of the collective will of the

workers and not at all in the form in which individual enterprises are

administered.” [Terrorism and Communism] However, without economic power

at the point of production, without workers’ self-management, working

class political power would be weak. If capitalist economic relations

existed in production, then how could socialist political forms exist?

They cannot not and they did not. Trotsky’s “collective will of the

workers” is simply a euphenism for the Party. In the same work he argued

that “it can be said with complete justice that the dictatorship of the

Soviets became possible only by means of the dictatorship of the party”

and that there is “no substitution at all” when the “power of the party”

replaces the “power of the working class.” The party, he stressed, “has

afforded to the Soviets the possibility of becoming transformed from

shapeless parliaments of labour into the apparatus of the supremacy of

labour.” How labour could express this “supremacy” when it could not

even vote for its delegates (never mind manage society) is never

explained.

It could be argued that this “substitution” only came about due to the

terrible circumstances of the Civil War. This is not the case. Trotsky’s

counter-revolution in the Red Army occurred before its start, as did the

Bolshevik attacks on soviet democracy. Nor did Trotsky argue that this

“substitution” was the result of objective conditions, rather he

considered it as natural. He repeated this argument in 1937:

“The revolutionary dictatorship of a proletarian party is for me not a

thing that one can freely accept or reject: It is an objective necessity

imposed upon us by the social realities — the class struggle, the

heterogeneity of the revolutionary class, the necessity for a selected

vanguard in order to assure the victory. The dictatorship of a party

belongs to the barbarian prehistory as does the state itself, but we can

not jump over this chapter, which can open (not at one stroke) genuine

human history... The revolutionary party (vanguard) which renounces its

own dictatorship surrenders the masses to the counter-revolution ...

Abstractly speaking, it would be very well if the party dictatorship

could be replaced by the ‘dictatorship’ of the whole toiling people

without any party, but this presupposes such a high level of political

development among the masses that it can never be achieved under

capitalist conditions. The reason for the revolution comes from the

circumstance that capitalism does not permit the material and the moral

development of the masses.” [Trotsky, Writings 1936–37, pp. 513–4]

Capitalism is making desperate efforts to reconstruct its shattered

world. The workers must seize by force the power of the State, and

reconstruct society in its own interests.

By making this comment, Zinoviev confuses two things. Firstly, there is

the “power of the State” and, secondly, there is working class power to

reconstruct society. These two things are not the same. As Italian

anarchist Luigi Fabbri argued:

“It is fairly certain that between the capitalist regime and the

socialist there will be an intervening period of struggle, during which

preoletarian revolutionary workers will have to work to uproot the

remnants of bourgeois society ... relying on the strength of their

organisation ... the proletariat ... will need organusation to meet not

just the demands of the struggle but also the demands of production and

social life ...

“The mistake of authoritarian communists in this connection is the

belief that fighting and organising are impossible without submission to

a government; and thus they regard anarchists ... as the foes of all

organisation and all co-ordinated struggle. We, on the other hand,

maintain that not only are revolutionary struggle and revolutionary

organisation possible outside and in spite of government interference

but that, indeed, that is the only effective way to struggle and

organise, for it has the active participation of all members of the

collective unit, instead of their passively entrusting themselves to the

authority of the supreme leaders.

“Any governing body is an impediment to the real organisation of the

broad masses, the majority. Where a government exists, then the only

really organised people are the minority who make up the government; and

... if the masses do organise, they do so against it, outside it, or at

the very least, independently of it. In ossifying into a government, the

revolution as such would fall apart, on account of its awarding that

government the monopoly of organisation and of the means of struggle.”

[“Anarchy and ‘Scientific’ Communism”, in The Poverty of Statism, pp.

13–49, Albert Meltzer (ed.), pp. 26–7]

The state is a specific form of social organisation. It is based on the

delegation and centralisation of power. As Malatesta put it, anarchist

“have used the word State ... to mean the sum total of the political,

legislative, judiciary, military and financial institutions through

which the management of their own affairs, the control over their

personal behaviour, the responsibility for their personal safety, are

taken away from the people and entrusted to others who, by usurpation or

delegation, are vested with the power to make laws for everything and

everybody, and to oblige the people to observe them, if need be, by the

use of collective force.” [Anarchy, p. 13]

In this, the Bolshevik state was exactly the same as any other state. It

was based on the few (the Bolshevik leaders) governing the many (the

working class). That the few claimed to be doing it for the many does

not change the social relationships the state created. Nor does the

claims of those in power have any bearing to what they do. Stalin, for

example, argued that his rule expressed the interests of the working

class. If we look at what the Bolsheviks did, it is clear they acted

first and foremost to defend their own power, not that of the working

class.

The state is centralised to facilitate minority rule by excluding the

mass of people from taking part in the decision making processes within

society. This is to be expected as social structures do not evolve by

chance — rather they develop to meet specific needs and requirements.

The specific need of the ruling class is to rule and that means

marginalising the bulk of the population. Its requirement is for

minority power and this is transformed into the structure of the state

(and the capitalist company).

Ironically, the Bolsheviks faced the same problems as the bourgeois

during its revolution. The process of revolution in France and America

saw popular organisations being created by the working population (town

meetings in the USA, sections and communes in France). This caused the

bourgeois a problem. As Kropotkin put it, ”[t]o attack the central

power, to strip it of its prerogatives, to decentralise, to dissolve

authority, would have been to abandon to the people the control of its

affairs, to run the risk of a truly popular revolution. That is why the

bourgeoisie sought to reinforce the central government even more...”

[Kropotkin, Words of a Rebel, p. 143]

The same problem faced the Bolsheviks. By centralising power under their

control, they effectively dispowered the working class. Thus the seizure

of “the power of the State” and workers “reconstruct[ing] society in its

own interests” are two logically opposite things. If the state power is

seized then the workers are not in power, the state is. If working

people are in a position to reconstruct society then they have the power

and so government does not exist. Bolshevism solves this problem by

simply playing with words — it confuses party power with workers power.

Or the Social Revolution

Will the capitalists be able to do this?

They will, unless the workers declare war on the whole capitalist

system, overthrow the capitalist governments, and set up a Government of

the working class, which shall destroy the institution of capitalist

private property and make all wealth the property of the workers in

common.

This is what the Russian workers have done, and this is the ONLY WAY for

the workers of other countries to free themselves from industrial

slavery, and to make over the world so that the worker shall get ALL HE

PRODUCES, and nobody shall be able to make money out of the labor of

other men.

It cannot be denied that the capitalist government had been overthrown

in Russia. Nor can it be denied that a government claiming to be “of the

working class” had been created. Nor can it be denied that the

institution of capitalist private property had been destroyed. However,

“all wealth” was not in the hands of the workers, nor had industrial

slavery been abolished, nor did the worker get all that he or she

produced.

As far as the means of production went, the worker did not manage them.

Rather, they were in the hands of state appointees. The role of workers

were, as Lenin had argued, simply to obey — just as they do in any

capitalist firm. Indeed, Trotsky wanted to militarise labour and his

ideas were introduced in many industries, most notably by himself on the

railways. In 1920, he “started by placing the railwaymen and the

personnel of the repair workshops under martial law. When the

railwaymen’s trade union objected, he summarily ousted its leaders and,

with the full support and endorsement of the Party leadership,

‘appointed others willing to do his bidding. He repeated the procedure

in other unions of transport workers.’” [Maurice Brinton, The Bolsheviks

and Workers’ Control, p. 67] He, like Mussolini, got the trains working

again but it had as little to do with socialism as Italian Fascism.

Trotsky’s perspective on this issue was simply following previous

Bolshevik arguments and practice to their logical conclusion. Rather

than being firm supporters of workers self-management of production, the

Bolshevik leadership opposed it from the start. Needless to say, such a

huge subject cannot be covered in this article. All we can do is present

a few important points and refer readers to Maurice Brinton’s The

Bolsheviks and Workers’ Control: 1917 to 1921 for details.

The Bolshevik leaders quickly started to undermine any form of workers’

self-management of production. Lenin argued in Six Theses on the

Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government for “obedience, and

unquestioning obedience at that, during work to the one-man decisions of

Soviet directors, of dictators elected or appointed by Soviet

institutions, vested with dictatorial powers.” These theses were written

between April 29^(th) and May 3^(rd), 1918. In other words, before the

start of the civil war at the end of May, 1918. Unquestioning obedience

of appointed dictators is the hall-mark of capitalist production

(“industrial slavery”) and not of socialism. The practice of Bolshevism

followed the theory.

As anarchist Peter Arshinov argued in 1923, a “fundamental fact” of the

Bolshevik revolution was “that the workers and the peasant labourers

remained within the earlier situation of ‘working classes’ — producers

managed by authority from above.” He stressed that Bolshevik political

and economic ideas may have “remov[ed] the workers from the hands of

individual capitalists” but they “delivered them to the yet more

rapacious hands of a single ever-present capitalist boss, the State. The

relations between the workers and this new boss are the same as earlier

relations between labour and capital ... Wage labour has remained what

it was before, expect that it has taken on the character of an

obligation to the State.... It is clear that in all this we are dealing

with a simple substitution of State capitalism for private capitalism.”

[The History of the Makhnovist Movement, p. 35 and p. 71]

Clearly, Zinoviev is not presenting an honest account of the situation

of workers in the so-called “dictatorship of the proletariat” nor

presenting an honest account of Bolshevik practice up to January 1920.

Trotsky’s dictatorship over the railway workers later that year was just

continuing the policies started by Lenin in 1918.

But unless the workers of other countries rise against their own

capitalists, the Russian Revolution cannot last. The capitalists of the

entire world, realizing the example of the danger of Soviet Russia, have

united to crush it. The Allies have quickly forgotten their hatred for

Germany, and have invited the German capitalists to join them in the

common cause.

Notice that Zinoviev mentions the foreign intervention in Russia and yet

does not indicate that this has had any significant impact on the

development of the Revolution. That Revolution “cannot last”

indefinitely, but, apparently, the gains of that revolution Zinoviev

lists in his letter still exist.This was a common feature of Bolshevism

at the time. It was only with the rise of Stalinism did Leninists start

to use the problems created during the Civil War as an excuse for the

anti-socialist and anti-democratic activities of Lenin and the other

Bolshevik leaders. As Victor Serge noted in his memiors, during this

period (later called “War Communism”) “any one who, like myself, went so

far as to consider it purely temporary was locked upon with disdain.”

[Memoirs of a Revolutionary, p. 115]

Also, we must point out a certain ingenuity in later Trotskyist

arguments that Stalinism can be explained purely by the terrible civil

war Russia experienced. After all, Lenin himself stated that every

“revolution ..., in its development, would give rise to exceptionally

complicated circumstances” and ”[r]evolution 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.” [Will the Bolsheviks Maintain

Power?, p. 80 and p. 81] If the Bolshevik political and organisational

form cannot survive during the inevitable period of civil war,

disruption and complicated circumstances associated with a revolution

then it is clearly a theory to be avoided at all costs.

Moreover, the attacks on working class autonomy (i.e. the disbandment of

soviets, the appointment of officers in the army and the appointment of

managers with “dictatorial” powers, repression against left-wing and

anarchist opponents) all started before the start of the Civil War and

so can hardly be blamed on it.

<snip>

In order to destroy Capitalism, the workers must first wrest State power

out of the hands of the capitalist class. They must not only SEIZE this

power, but ABOLISH THE OLD CAPITALIST APPARATUS ENTIRELY.

For the experience of Revolutions has shown that the workers cannot take

hold of the State machine and use it for their own purposes — such as

the Yellow Socialist politicians propose to do. The capitalist State is

built to serve capitalism, and that is all it can do, no matter who is

running it.

And in place of the capitalist State the workers must build their own

WORKERS’ STATE, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

In and of itself, the notion that the capitalist state being built to

serve capitalism is one anarchists had been arguing long before Lenin

wrote “State and Revolution” in 1917. As Kropotkin put it, Anarchists

“maintain that the State organisation, having been the force to which

minorities resorted for establishing and organising their power over the

masses, cannot be the force which will serve to destroy these

privileges.” [Kropotkin’s Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 170]

The question now arises of whether workers need to build their own state

or not. Anarchists answer no, of course. We argue that it is impossible

for the working class, as a class, to take power by means of a state.

They can only do so in self-managed organisations which eliminate

hierarchy. In Bakunin’s words, the ” future social organisation must be

made solely from the bottom up, by the free association or federation of

workers, firstly in their unions, then in the communes, regions, nations

and finally in a great federation, international and universal.” [Op.

Cit., p. 206]

By ending the division of society into governed and governors by

universal self-management in working class organisations, the working

class can destroy capitalism and resist attempts by minorities

(ex-capitalists, would be “revolutionary leaders”) to dominate them.

Only by forming new organisations structured in a self-managed way can a

new society be created. Giving power to a few leaders cannot do this.

Real socialism cannot be worked out by a handful of people sitting at

the centre, it has to be worked from below, by the people of every city,

town and village.

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat

Many members of the I.W.W. do not agree with this. They are against “the

State in general.” They propose to overthrow the capitalist State, and

to establish in its place immediately the Industrial Commonwealth.

The Communists are also opposed to the “State.” They also wish to

abolish it — to substitute for the government of men, the administration

of things.

But unfortunately this cannot be done immediately. The destruction of

the capitalist State does not mean that capitalism automatically and

immediately disappears. The capitalists still have arms, which must be

taken away from them; they are still supported by hordes of loyal

bureaucrats, managers, superintendents, foremen, and trained men of all

sorts, who will sabotage industry — and these must be persuaded or

compelled to serve the working class; they still have army officers who

can betray the Revolution, preachers who can raise superstitious fears

against it, teachers and orators who can misrepresent it to the

ignorant, thugs who can be hired to discredit it by evil behavior,

newspaper editors who can deceive the people with floods of lies, and

“yellow” Socialists and Labor fakers who prefer capitalist “democracy”

to Revolution. All these people must be sternly suppressed.

Zinoviev simply fails to understand that “stern suppression” cannot be

the means to liberation. As Malatesta put it:

“If some people ... have assumed the right to violate everybody’s

freedom on the pretext of preparing the triumph of freedom, they will

always find that the people are not yet sufficiently mature, that the

dangers of reaction are ever-present, that the education of the people

has not yet been completed. And with these excuses they will seek to

perpetuate their own power.” [Errico Malatesta, Life and Ideas, p. 52]

Moreover, the strength of a revolution depends on the working masses

being its masters. As Alexander Berkman argued, “the strength of the

revolution ... First and foremost, [is] in the support of the people ...

If they feel that they themselves are making the revolution, that they

have become masters of their lives, that they have gained freedom and

are building up their welfare, then in that very sentiment you have the

greatest strength of the revolution... Let them believe in the

revolution, and they will defend it to the death.” Thus the “armed

workers and peasants are the only effective defence of the revolution.”

This strength can only exist in liberty, so no attempt can be made to

“defend” the revolution against mere talk, against the mere expression

of an opinion. To “suppress speech and press is not only a theoretical

offence against liberty; it is a direct blow at the very foundations of

the revolution... It would generate fear and distrust, would hatch

conspiracies, and culminate in a reign of terror which has always killed

revolution in the pass.” [ABC of Anarchism, pp. 80–81 and p. 83] Only a

regime which no longer had the support of the working masses could

“sternly suppress” opposition viewpoints. If the revolution sincerely

reflected the interests, ideas and needs of the working people, then no

amount of reactionary talk could get people to abandon their freedom.

Zinoviev’s comments simply indicate how unpopular the Bolshevik

dictatorship had become in the eyes of the Russian masses (in early

1921, Zinoviev declared that the government’s support among the working

class had been reduced to 1 per cent).

Zinoviev is confusing two things. First, there is the issue of the

defence of a revolution. Second, there is the question of the state. The

two are not the same. The former can be achieved without a government,

by empowering, arming and organising the whole revolutionary people. The

state, we must stress, is the empowering, arming and organising a

minority of a revolutionary people and the disempowering, disarming and

dis-organising of the rest.The difference is important.This can be seen

from the Russian Revolution.

The Bolshevik state used its armed forces to suppress workers’ protests

and organisations all during the Russian Civil War. Zinoviev himself was

the head of the Petrograd Soviet which, in 1919, sent troops to break

strikes in the city. In 1921, in response to a wave of strikes and the

rebellion of Kronstadt, he was the head of the “Petrograd Defence

Committee” which was “vested with absolute power throughout the entire

province” and ” took stern measures to prevent any further disturbances.

The city became a vast garrison, with troops patrolling in every

quarter. Notices posted on the walls reminded the citizenry that all

gatherings would be dispersed and those who resisted shot on the spot.

During the day the streets were nearly deserted, and, with the curfew

now set at 9 p.m., night life ceased altogether.” [Paul Avrich,

Kronstadt 1921, p. 142]

Ultimately, centralised power is used to impose the will of the leaders,

who use state power against the very class they claim to represent:

“Without revolutionary coercion directed against the avowed enemies of

the workers and peasants, it is impossible to break down the resistance

of these exploiters. On the other hand, revolutionary coercion is bound

to be employed towards the wavering and unstable elements among the

masses themselves.” [Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 24, p. 170]

In other words, whoever protests against the dictatorship of the party.

Of course, it will be replied that the Bolshevik dictatorship used its

power to crush the resistance of the bosses (and “backward workers”).

Sadly, this is not the case. First, we must stress that anarchists are

not against defending a revolution or expropriating the power and wealth

of the ruling class, quite the reverse as this is about how a revolution

does this. Lenin’s argument is flawed as it confuses the defence of the

revolution with the defence of the party in power. These are two totally

different things.

The “revolutionary coercion” Lenin speaks of is, apparently, directed

against one part of the working class. However, this will also

intimidate the rest (just as bourgeois repression not only intimidates

those who strike but those who may think of striking). As a policy, it

can have but one effect — to eliminate all workers’ power and freedom.

It is the violence of an oppressive minority against the oppressed

majority, not vice versa. Ending free speech harmed working class

people. Militarisation of labour did not affect the bourgeoisie. Neither

did eliminating soviet democracy or union independence. As the dissident

(working class) Communist Gavriii Miasnokov argued in 1921 (in reply to

Lenin):

“The trouble is that, while you raise your hand against the capitalist,

you deal a blow to the worker. You know very well that for such words as

I am now uttering hundreds, perhaps thousands, of workers are

languishing in prison. That I myself remain at liberty is only because I

am a veteran Communist, have suffered for my beliefs, and am known among

the mass of workers. Were it not for this, were I just an ordinary

mechanic from the same factory, where would I be now? In a Cheka prison

or, more likely, made to ‘escape,’ just as I made Mikhail Romanov

‘escape.’ Once more I say: You raise your hand against the bourgeoisie,

but it is I who am spitting blood, and it is we, the workers, whose jaws

are being cracked.” [quoted by Paul Avrich, G. T. Miasnikov and the

Workers’ Group]

This can be seen from the make-up of Bolshevik prisoners. Of the 17 000

camp detainees on whom statistical information was available on 1

November 1920, peasants and workers constituted the largest groups, at

39% and 34% respectively. Similarly, of the 40 913 prisoners held in

December 1921 (of whom 44% had been committed by the Cheka) nearly 84%

were illiterate or minimally educated, clearly, therefore, either

peasants of workers. [George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenin’s Political

Police, p. 178] Unsurprisingly, Miasnikov refused to denounce the

Kronstadt insurgents nor would he have participated in their suppression

had he been called upon to do so.

It is clear that there the suppression that Zinoviev is advocating was

not being directed just against the enemies of the revolution, but

rather against all those who opposed the Bolshevik government, including

workers. This can only occur when power is centralised into the hands of

a few, when the revolution creates a new “state” rather than organising

the defence of a free society.

Moreover, Zinoviev is also confusing the revolution with a fully

developed socialist society. Anarchists and syndicalists are aware that

it is not possible to “immediately” create “the Industrial

Commonwealth,” if by that it is meant a fully communist society.

Anarchists are well aware that “class difference do not vanish at the

stroke of a pen whether that pen belongs to the theoreticians or to the

pen-pushers who set out laws or decrees. Only action, that is to say

direct action (not through government) expropriation by the

proletarians, directed against the privileged class, can wipe out class

difference.” [Luigi Fabbri, “Anarchy and ‘Scientific’ Communism”, in The

Poverty of Statism, pp. 13–49, Albert Meltzer (ed.), p. 30] As such,

immediately after all a revolution there will be need to defend it

against attempts to overthrow it and re-introduce class society.

It is, however, essential that the “Industrial Commonwealth” be

introduced as soon as possible if by that term we mean workers’ direct

management of society by their own organisations which, in turn, are run

and controlled by them directly. As Murray Bookchin puts it:

“There can be no separation of the revolutionary process from the

revolutionary goal. A society based on self-administration must be

achieved by means of self-administration ... Assembly and community must

arise from within the revolutionary process itself; indeed, the

revolutionary process must be the formation of assembly and community,

and with it, the destruction of power. Assembly and community must

become ‘fighting words,’ not distinct panaceas. They must be created as

modes of struggle against the existing society, not as theoretical or

programmatic abstractions... The factory committees ... must be managed

directly by workers’ assemblies in the factories... neighbourhood

committees, councils and boards must be rooted completely in the

neighbourhood assemble. They must be answerable at every point to the

assembly, they and their work must be under continual review by the

assembly; and finally, their members must be subject to immediate recall

by the assembly. The specific gravity of society, in short, must be

shifted to its base — the armed people in permanent assembly.”

[Post-Scarcity Anarchism, pp. 167–9]

In this sense, it is essential that an “Industrial Commonwealth” is

created immediately as ”[o]nly freedom or the struggle for freedom can

be the school for freedom.” [Malatesta, Life and Ideas, p. 59] This,

however, does not mean that defence of the revolution is not essential,

it is. And it is a defence against attempts to introduce new tyrannies

just as much as it is a defence against overthrown ones.

To break down the capitalist State, to crush capitalist resistance and

disarm the capitalist class, to confiscate capitalist property and turn

it over to the WHOLE WORKING CLASS IN COMMON, — for all these tasks a

government is necessary — a State, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat,

in which the workers, through their Soviets, can uproot the capitalist

system with an iron hand.

This is exactly what exists in Russia today.

Unfortunately what “exists in Russia” was somewhat different that this.

The “soviet power” (i.e. the Bolshevik government) had, by the time

Zinoviev wrote this letter, had become little more than the dictatorship

of the Bolshevik party. As Zinoviev himself admitted later in 1920:

“soviet rule in Russia could not have been maintained for three years —

not even three weeks — without the iron dictatorship of the Communist

Party. Any class conscious worker must understand that the dictatorship

of the working class can by achieved only by the dictatorship of its

vanguard, i.e., by the Communist Party ... All questions of economic

reconstruction, military organisation, education, food supply — all

these questions, on which the fate if the proletarian revolution depends

absolutely, are decided in Russia before all other matters and mostly in

the framework of the party organisations ... Control by the party over

soviet organs, over the trade unions, is the single durable guarantee

that any measures taken will serve not special interests, but the

interests of the entire proletariat.” [quoted by Oskar Anweiler, The

Soviets, pp. 239–40]

Clearly, Zinoviev knew that the Russian workers had no real say through

their soviets. The Communist Party made all the decisions and the

workers, like workers in a capitalist society, had to carry them out (or

be classed as an enemy of the revolution and either shot or imprisoned).

BUT THIS DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT IS ONLY TEMPORARY.

We, Communists, also want to abolish the State. The State can only exist

as long as there is class struggle. The function of the Proletarian

Dictatorship is to abolish the capitalist class as a class; in fact, do

away with all class divisions of every kind. And when this condition is

reached then the PROLETARIAN DICTATORSHIP, THE STATE, AUTOMATICALLY

DISAPPEARS — to make way for an industrial administrative body which

will be something like the General Executive Board of the I.W.W.

Taking this literally, then Zinoviev is admitting that the working class

in Russia are still proletarians, still dispossessed from the means of

production and are not, in fact, running society in their own interests.

The way to abolish the proletarian class, as a class, is for the working

class to expropriate capital directly and place it under workers

self-management. If this is not done, then that class remains

proletarian and so remains subject to wage slavery, exploitation and

oppression. In Russia, the economic position of the working class had

not changed.

This was admitted by Lenin in Left-wing Communism: An Infantile

Disorder. He noted, in passing, that the trade unions “are, and will

long remain, a necessary ‘school of Communism’, a preparatory school for

training the proletariat to exercise its dictatorship, an indispensable

organisation of the workers for gradually transferring the management of

the whole economy of the country to the hands of the working class (and

not of separate trades) and later to the hands of all the toiling

masses.” [p. 34] If the working class does not manage the economy, then

who does? If the working class does not do so, then it clearly is still

the proletariat and the revolution has not changed its economic position

at all. As such, “revolutionary” Russia was still a class society in

which the proletariat was still following orders in production. Needless

to say, the new ruling class of party officials and bureaucrats did not

want to loose their power to the old ruling class, but the position of

the proletariat had not changed.

In a recent leaflet, Mary Marcy argues that, although the I.W.W. does

not theoretically recognize the necessity for the Dictatorship of the

Proletariat, it will be forced to do so IN FACT at the time of the

Revolution, in order to suppress the capitalist counter-revolution.

This is true, but unless the I.W.W. acknowledges beforehand the

necessity of the Workers’ State, and prepares for it, there will be

confusion and weakness at a time when firmness and swift action are

imperative.

However, it is to confuse the defence of a revolution and the various

working class organisations needed for the ex-proletariat to run society

in its own interests with “the workers’ state” which is the source of

weakness. To consider the creation of a new state as simply defending a

revolution implies a lack of understanding of both. As Malatesta argued:

“But perhaps the truth is simply this: ... [some] take the expression

‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ to mean simply the revolutionary

action of the workers in taking possession of the land and the

instruments of labour, and trying to build a society and organise a way

of life in which there will be no place for a class that exploits and

oppresses the producers.

“Thus constructed, the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ would be the

effective power of all workers trying to bring down capitalist society

and would thus turn into Anarchy as soon as resistance from

reactionaries would have ceased and no one can any longer seek to compel

the masses by violence to obey and work for him. In which case, the

discrepancy between us would be nothing more than a question of

semantics. Dictatorship of the proletariat would signify the

dictatorship of everyone, which is to say, it would be a dictatorship no

longer, just as government by everybody is no longer a government in the

authoritarian, historical and practical sense of the word.

“But the real supporters of ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ do not

take that line, as they are making quite plain in Russia. Of course, the

proletariat has a hand in this, just as the people has a part to play in

democratic regimes, that is to say, to conceal the reality of things. In

reality, what we have is the dictatorship of one party, or rather, of

one’ party’s leaders: a genuine dictatorship, with its decrees, its

penal sanctions, its henchmen and above all its armed forces, which are

at present [1919] also deployed in the defence of the revolution against

its external enemies, but which will tomorrow be used to impose the

dictator’s will upon the workers, to apply a break on revolution, to

consolidate the new interests in the process of emerging and protect a

new privileged class against the masses.” [Malatesta, No Gods, No

Masters, vol. 2, pp. 38–9]

The Workers’ State

What will be the form of the Workers’ State?

We have before us the example of the Russian Soviet Republic, whose

structure, in view of the conflicting reports printed in other

countries, it may be useful to briefly describe here.

The unit of government is the local Soviet, or Council, of Workers’, Red

Army, and Peasants’ Deputies.

The city Workers’ Soviet is made up as follows: each factory elects one

delegate for a certain number of workers, and each local Union also

elects delegates. These delegates are elected according to political

parties — or, if the workers wish it, as individual candidates.

The Red Army delegates are chosen by military units.

For the peasants, each village has its local Soviet, which sends

delegates to the Township Soviet, which in urn elects to the County

Soviet, and this to the Provincial Soviet.

Nobody who employs labor for profit can vote.

The question, of course, is whether working people have a meaningful

vote. Stalin organised elections, it did not mean that the Russian

workers and peasants had a say under Stalinism. The same can be said of

Lenin’s regime as well.

Samuel Farber provides a good summary of Bolshevik actions which made

the vote meaningless. In response to the “great Bolshevik losses in the

soviet elections” during the spring and summer of 1918 “Bolshevik armed

force usually overthrew the results of these provincial elections ...

[In] the city of Izhevsk [for example] ... in the May election [to the

soviet] the Mensheviks and SRs won a majority ... In June, these two

parties also won a majority of the executive committee of the soviet. At

this point, the local Bolshevik leadership refused to give up power ...

[and by use of the military] abrogated the results of the May and June

elections and arrested the SR and Menshevik members of the soviet and

its executive committee.” In addition, “the government continually

postponed the new general elections to the Petrograd Soviet, the term of

which had ended in March 1918. Apparently, the government feared that

the opposition parties would show gains.” [Samuel Farber, Before

Stalinism, pp. 23–4 and p. 22]

Bolshevik opposition to the soviet democracy started a few months after

the Bolsheviks seizure of power in the name of the soviets. A few more

examples are worth accounting.

After a demonstration in Petrograd in favour of the Constituent Assembly

was repressed by the Bolsheviks in mid-January 1918, calls for new

elections to the soviet occurred in many factories. “Despite the efforts

of the Bolsheviks and the Factory Committees they controlled, the

movement for new elections to the soviet spread to more than twenty

factories by early February and resulted in the election of fifty

delegates: thirty-six SRs, seven Mensheviks and seven nonparty.”

However, the Bolsheviks “unwillingness to recognise the elections and to

seat new delegates pushed a group of Socialists to ... lay plans for an

alternative workers’ forum ... what was later to become the Assembly of

Workers’ Plenipotentiaries.” [Scott Smith, “The Social-Revolutionaries

and the Dilemma of Civil War”, The Bolsheviks in Russian Society, pp.

83–104, Vladimir N. Brovkin (Ed.), pp. 85–86]

In Tula, again in the spring of 1918, local Bolsheviks reported to the

Bolshevik Central Committee that the “Bolshevik deputies began to be

recalled one after another ... our situation became shakier with passing

day. We were forced to block new elections to the soviet and even not to

recognise them where they had taken place not in our favour.” [quoted by

Smith, Op. Cit., p. 87] In the end, the local party leader was forced to

abolish the city soviet and to vest power in the Provincial Executive

Committee. This refused to convene a plenum of the city soviet for more

than two months, knowing that newly elected delegates were

non-Bolshevik. [Ibid.]

In Yaroslavl’, the newly elected soviet convened on April 9^(th), 1918,

and when it elected a Menshevik chairman, “the Bolshevik delegation

walked out and declared the soviet dissolved. In response, workers in

the city went out on strike, which the Bolsheviks answered by arresting

the strike committee and threatening to dismiss the strikers and replace

them with unemployed workers.” This failed and the Bolsheviks were

forced to hold new elections, which they lost. Then “the Bolsheviks

dissolved this soviet as well and places the city under martial law.” A

similar event occurred in Riazan’ (again in April) and, again, the

Bolsheviks “promptly dissolved the soviet and declared a dictatorship

under a Military-Revolutionary Committee.” [Op. Cit., pp. 88–9]

Anti-Bolshevik historian Vladimir Brovkin indicates that there “are

three factors” which emerge from the soviet election results in the

spring of 1918. These are, firstly, “the impressive success of the

Menshevik-SR opposition” in those elections in all regions in European

Russia. The second “is the Bolshevik practice of outright disbandment of

the Menshevik-SR-controlled soviets. The third is the subsequent wave of

anti-Bolshevik uprisings.” In fact, “in all provincial capitals of

European Russia where elections were held on which there are data, the

Mensheviks and the SRs won majorities on the city soviets in the spring

of 1918.” Brovkin stresses that the “process of the Menshevik-SR

electoral victories threatened Bolshevik power. That is why in the

course of the spring and summer of 1918, the soviet assemblies were

disbanded in most cities and villages. To stay in power, the Bolsheviks

had to destroy the soviets... These steps generated a far-reaching

transformation in the soviet system, which remained ‘soviet’ in name

only.” [“The Mensheviks’ Political Comeback: The Elections to the

Provincial City Soviets in Spring 1918”, The Russian Review, vol. 42,

pp. 1–50, p. 46, p. 47 and p. 48]

Brovkin presents accounts from numerous towns and cities. As an example,

he discusses Tver’ where the “escalation of political tensions followed

the already familiar pattern” as the “victory of the opposition at the

polls” in April 1918 “brought about an intensification of the Bolshevik

repression. Strikes, protests, and marches in Tver’ lead to the

imposition of martial law.” [Op. Cit., p. 11]

These are just a few examples of what was happening in Russia in early

1918. We must stress that the Russian Civil War started in late May,

1918 and the net effect of which was, of course, to make many dissident

workers support the Bolsheviks during the war. This, however, did not

stop mass resistance and strikes breaking out periodically during the

war when workers and peasants could no longer put up with Bolshevik

policies or the effects of the war.

Simple disbandment was just one of the many tactics used. Parties and

meetings were banded, activists arrested and opposition press censored

(if not suppressed). During the Civil War, the Bolsheviks repressed all

political parties, including the Mensheviks even though they

“consistently pursued a policy of peaceable opposition to the Bolshevik

regime, a policy conducted by strictly legitimate means” and

”[i]ndividual Mensheviks who joined organisations aiming at the

overthrow of the Soviet Government were expelled from the Menshevik

Party.” [George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenin’s Political Police, pp. 318–9

and p. 332]

The Bolsheviks also created institutional barriers to democracy.

Zinoviev’s comment that each local Union also elects delegates is an

example. It means, of course, that the workers have two delegates, one

for their place of work, another for their trade union. Why does the

local Union also get a delegate? Simple, because it allowed the

Bolsheviks to pack the soviet with “delegates” representing the trade

union officialdom, in other words, the Bolshevik party. As historian

Alexander Rabinowitch noted, the elections to the Petrograd Soviet in

the second half of 1918 saw continued Bolshevik control because of “the

numerically quite significant representation now given to trade unions,

[and] district soviets ... in which the Bolsheviks had overwhelming

strength.” [quoted by Samuel Farber, Op. Cit., p. 33]

Every six months the City and Provincial Soviets elect delegates to the

All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which is the supreme governing body of

the country. The Congress decides upon the policies which are to govern

the country for six months, and then elects a Central Executive

Committee of two hundred, which is to carry out these policies. The

Congress also elects the Cabinet — The Council of People’s Commissars,

who are the heads of Government Departments — or People’s Commissariats.

The People’s Commissars can be recalled at any time by the Central

Executive Committee. The members of all Soviets can be recalled very

easily, and at any time, by their constituents.

These Soviets are not only LEGISLATIVE bodies, but also EXECUTIVE

organs. Unlike your Congress, they do not make the laws and leave them

to the President to carry out, but the members carry out the laws

themselves; and there is no Supreme Court to say whether or not these

laws are “constitutional.”

Between the All-Russian Congresses of Soviets the Central Executive

Committee is the SUPREME POWER in Russia. It meets at least every two

months, and in the meanwhile, the Council of People’s Commissars directs

the country, while the members of the Central Executive Committee go to

work in the various government departments.

Needless to say, Zinoviev fails to mention a few facts. The All-Russian

Congress originally was meant to meet four times a year, but met only

once in 1919 and once in 1920. Obviously “the supreme governing body of

the country” was not considered that important for the actual governing

of the country.Between late 1918 and throughout 1919, the Central

Executive Committee of the All-Russian congress of soviets did not once

met in full session. In the first year of the revolution, only 68 of 480

decrees by the Council of People’s Commissars (the Communist government)

were actually submitted to the Soviet Central Executive Committee (and

even fewer were drafted by it). Clearly, the “SUPREME POWER” in Russia

was, again, considered irrelevent for those who did hold the real power.

Zinoviev clearly admits that, in practice, the soviets have delegated

their power to the “Council of People’s Commissars” which is the real

power in “the Workers’ State.” As he says, it “directs the country,” not

the working class. The working class “ruled” Russia in the same sense

they “rule” in any bourgeois democracy (i.e. they did not). When the

Kronstadt sailors rose in rebellion for free elections to the soviets in

February 1921, the response of the Bolsheviks was simply to repress

them.

Nor does he mention that the right of recall was undermined by the

Bolsheviks at an early stage. We have already discussed the disbandment

of soviets before the start of the Civil War in late May 1918.

Oligarchic tendencies in the soviets increased post-October, with

”[e]ffective power in the local soviets relentlessly gravitat[ing] to

the executive committees.” Local soviets had “little input into the

formation of national policy.” They quickly had become rubber-stamps of

the Communist government and “the party often disbanded congresses that

opposed major aspects of current policy.” [C. Sirianni, Workers’ Control

and Socialist Democracy, p. 204 and p. 203] Indeed, the Soviet

Constitution of 1918 codified this centralisation of power, with local

soviets ordered to “carry out all orders of the respective higher organs

of the soviet power” (i.e. to carry out the commands of the central

government).

The Organization of Production and Distribution

In Russia the workers are organized in Industrial Unions, all the

workers in each industry belonging to one union. For example, in a

factory making metal products, even the carpenters and painters are

members of the Metal Workers’ Union. Each factory is a local Union, and

the Shop Committee elected by the workers is its Executive Committee.

The All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the federated Unions is

elected by the annual Trade Union Convention. A Scale Committee elected

by the Convention fixes the wages of all categories of workers.

With very few exceptions, all important factories in Russia have been

nationalized, and are now the property of all the workers in common. The

business of the Unions is therefore no longer to fight the capitalists,

but to RUN INDUSTRY.

This is an obvious lie. It can best be exposed by looking at the events

of the Tenth Party Congress one year after Zinoviev wrote his letter.

The attempts by the Workers’ Opposition to introduce union running of

industry in 1921 was combated by Lenin and other leading Bolsheviks. If

the unions did run industry in 1920, then this debate would never have

occurred.

As part of the campaign against the Workers’ Opposition and Bukharin,

Lenin argued that ”[i]f we say that it is not the Party but the trade

unions that put up candidates and adminstrate, it may sound very

democratic ... [but it] will be fatal for the dictatorship of the

proletariat.” He also noted when using “the syndicalist phrase

‘mandatory nominations (by trade unions to management bodies)” and you

“neglect to add, there and then, that they are not mandatory for the

Party, you have a syndicalist deviation, and that is incompatible with

communism and the Party Programme... you are giving the non-Party

workers a false sense of having some increase in their rights, whereas

in fact there will be no change at all.” [Marx, Engels, Lenin, Anarchism

and Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 322, p. 324]

Similarly, in 1920 Lenin was boasting that in 1918 he had “pointed out

the necessity of recognising the dictatorial authority of single

individuals for the pursue of carrying out the Soviet idea” and even

claimed that at that stage “there were no disputes in connection with

the question” of one-man management. [quoted by Brinton, Op. Cit., p.

65] While the first claim is true (Lenin argued for one-man management

appointed from above before the start of the Civil War in May 1918) the

latter one is not true (excluding anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists,

there were also the dissent Left-Communists in the Bolshevik party

itself). In 1921, Lenin was again arguing that it “is absolutely

essential that all authority in the factories should be concentrated in

the hands of management ... under these circumstances any direct

intervention by the trade unions in the management of enterprises must

be regarded as positively harmful and impermissible.” [The Role of the

Trade Unions under the N.E.P.]

These facts, combined with the struggle of the Bolsheviks against

workers’ self-management after the October Revolution shows that

Zinoviev is simply lying, telling the I.W.W. what it wants to hear.

Hand in hand with the Unions works the Department of Labor of the Soviet

Government, whose chief is the People’s Commissar of Labor, elected by

the Soviet Congress with the approval of the unions.

In charge of the economic life of the country is the elected Supreme

Council of People’s Economy, divided into departments, such as, Metal

Department, Chemical Department, etc., each one headed by experts and

workers, appointed, with the approval of the Union by the Supreme

Council of People’s Economy.

The Supreme Council of People’s Economy was “dominated by

representatives of the upper echelons of the trade unions, party

nominees, and technical and adminstrative experts, with a slight

representation from (and no accountability to) the factory committees

... Policy was to be set by a seventy-to-eighty member Plenum, and daily

business conducted by a Bureau of fifteen.” [C. Sirianni, Workers’

Control and Socialist Democracy, p. 119]

In other words, the economic life of Russia was, in theory, conducted by

the orders of fifteen people just as its political life was conducted by

the orders of the handful of People’s Commissars. Hardly an example of

economic democracy!

In each factory production is carried on by a committee consisting of

three members: a representative of the Shop Committee of the Unions, a

representative of the Central Executive of the Unions, and a

representative of the Supreme Council of People’s Economy.

In other words, workers do not run industry and neither do the unions,

if we mean by unions their members rather than their bureaucracy.

Clearly, only one member of this committee is directly accountable to

the workers in the workplace and so they cannot be said to be

controlling production. Even this form of very limited workers’ control

was eliminated by the Bolsheviks. In 1919, 10.8% of enterprises were

under one-man management, by December 1920, 2,183 out of 2,483 factories

were no longer under collective management.

Also, although Lenin described the NEP (New Economic Policy) of 1921 as

a ‘defeat’, at no stage did he describe the suppression of soviet

democracy and workers’ control in such language. In other words,

Bolshevik politics did play a role, a key role, in the degeneration of

the Russian Revolution and to deny it is to deny reality. In the words

of Maurice Brinton:

”[I]n relation to industrial policy there is a clear-cut and

incontrovertible link between what happened under Lenin and Trotsky and

the later practice of Stalinism. We know that many on the revolutionary

left will find this statement hard to swallow. We are convinced however

that any honest reading of the facts cannot but lead to this conclusion.

The more one unearths about this period [1917–21], the more difficult it

becomes to define — or even 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.” [Op. Cit., p. 84]

Democratic Centralization

The Unions are thus a branch of the government — and this government is

the MOST HIGHLY CENTRALIZED GOVERNMENT THAT EXISTS.

It is also the most democratic government in history. For all the organs

of government are in constant touch with the working masses, and

constantly sensitive to their will. Moreover, the local Soviets all over

Russia have complete autonomy to manage their own local affairs,

provided they carry out the national policies laid down by the Soviet

Congress. Also, the Soviet Government represents ONLY THE WORKERS, and

cannot help but act in the workers’ interests.

Again, this is another blatant lie from Zinoviev. While there is no

denying that the Bolshevik government was the “most highly centralised

government that exists,” it can easily be shown that it was not the

“most democratic government in history.” Indeed, we have indicated as

much above, when we indicated Bolshevik disbandment of soviets and

repression of all forms of opposition. This is not surprising, given

that centralisation was designed to ensure minority rule.

Let us re-quote Zinoviev again: