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Title: The Hunt for Red October
Author: Wildcat
Date: Autumn 1991
Language: en
Topics: Russian Revolution, USSR, council communism, Left Communism, Trotskyism, myths, state capitalism, anti-Bolshevism, libertarian communism, anti-state
Source: Retrieved on 30th August 2020 from https://libcom.org/library/hunt-for-red-october-wildcat

Wildcat

The Hunt for Red October

The article which follows this introduction views the Russian revolution

of October 1917 from the viewpoint of the inhabitants of Kronstadt, a

strategic island in the Gulf of Finland, which was universally regarded

as the most radical part of Russia, until it was militarily suppressed

by the Bolshevik government in March 1921. It measures theories of what

happened in 1917 against the events of February to October, to see what

relevance, if any, these events and theories have for the communist

project today...

“No-one can belittle the huge importance of the October revolution and

its influence on the course of world history and the progress of

mankind”, announced the chairman of the Soviet parliament in November

1990. Nevertheless, we’re going to try.

The article which follows this introduction views the Russian revolution

of October 1917 from the viewpoint of the inhabitants of Kronstadt, a

strategic island in the Gulf of Finland, which was universally regarded

as the most radical part of Russia, until it was militarily suppressed

by the Bolshevik government in March 1921.

This introduction measures theories of what happened in 1917 against the

events of February to October, to see what relevance, if any, these

events and theories have for the communist project today.

The view that the Soviet system, resulting from the tactical genius of

Lenin and the discipline of his party, is a great gain for humanity to

be defended by the working class, has been somewhat eroded by that

system’s collapse. So too has the orthodox Trotskyist variant of this

position.

Analyses which endorse October, but say that at some point between then

and now, Russia became capitalist, have more life in them. Immediately

after the second world war, various tendencies, for example Tony

Cliff’s, tried to make sense of the Red Army’s rule in Eastern Europe.

They worked out that wage labour prevailed in these countries, and

concluded that they were dominated by a form of capitalism, which they

called “state capitalism”. The problem was when the gains of October had

been lost.

This is not an academic question. Though we try to avoid the habit of

seeing today in terms of 1917, there are some lessons to be drawn from

then which still apply. We are still engaged in battles against the

manoeuvres of Leninists in the class struggle in the 1990’s. For this

reason alone, this obituary is worthwhile. On the other hand, the

funeral is long overdue. The conclusions of the following contributions

are necessarily general, and many of them are non-specific to the

Russian revolution.

The most dangerous of all errors made by non-Leninist tendencies

analysing the Russian revolution is the critique of Leninism as

undemocratic. Councilists and other democrats turn the ideology of

Leninism on its head. Instead of a benevolent genius leading a clear

minority through numerous dire straits to ultimate victory, councilists

saw an evil genius, with an undemocratic minority party, which seized

power without the approval of the majority of the working class, and

thus was bound to do no good. The conclusion they draw is that only when

the majority of the working class (usually in one country) have voted

for the revolution is it safe for it to take place. This idea has been

defended by councilists since the early twenties, and still finds an

echo in the revolutionary movement of today. Democracy can only hinder

the revolutionary minority. Depending on majority approval, whether in

one workplace, one city, or one country, will always prevent this

minority doing what needs to be done. As we argue throughout these text,

what went wrong in Russia was not the result of a minority substituting

itself for the working class.

MAJORITY RUHLES

The council communist movement arose in the 1920’s in response to the

Bolshevik counter-revolution and the manoeuvres of the German Communist

Party (KPD). The Communist Workers Party (KAPD) had emerged from a split

in the KPD, on the basis of opposition to parliament and trade unionism.

The council communists, most of whom came from the KAPD and its Dutch

equivalent, went further than the KAPD in their critique of the

Bolsheviks. Whereas the KAPD argued that the Soviet state, the official

communist parties around the world, grouped together in the Communist

International, became counter-revolutionary in 1921–22, the council

communists discovered that they had never been revolutionary at all.

They defended a simplified Marxist “stages” theory of history, taking at

face value the claim that there had been a series of “bourgeois

revolutions” which overthrew the old feudal social relations and

substituted capitalist ones. These revolutions included the English in

the 1640s, the French in 1789, and the German in 1848. The capitalist

outcome of these revolutions was inevitable, notwithstanding the

involvement of the proletariat. The clearest defence of this position

can be found in From the Bourgeois to the Proletarian Revolution by Otto

Ruhle [1]. For our critique of the concept of bourgeois revolutions, see

the article in Wildcat 13 [2].

The councilists argued that Russia could not give birth to a proletarian

revolution because it was too backward. This argument is the same as

that put forward by most of the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks prior to 1917.

Capitalism in Russia, precisely because it had taken root late, was more

advanced than that of England. Petrograd had the biggest factory in the

world. The fact that the territories of the Russian Empire were full of

peasants could not make a workers’ and soldiers’ uprising in Petrograd

capitalist “in essence”.

Even if Russian capitalism had been backward, this is beside the point.

Petrograd was a link in a chain of industrial cities which stretched

around the world, and its workers knew it. That is why they responded to

Lenin’s calls for an internationalist revolution.

Councilists were if anything more dogmatic and didactic in their

interpretation of Marxism than their Leninist opponents:

“According to the phaseological pattern of development as formulated and

advocated by Marx, after feudal tsarism in Russia there had to come the

capitalist bourgeois state, whose creator and representative is the

bourgeois class.” ([3], p13).

But the tsars of Russia were capitalist from Peter the Great (1689–1725)

onwards. Their religious beliefs did not make them feudal. The tsars,

with the aid of foreign capital, had developed Russian capitalism, in

particular in the shipping and related industries, creating a modern

industrial base in Petrograd and Moscow. “Unlike in Western Europe, the

State did not merely supervise the new industries; it directly managed

the bulk of heavy industry, and part of light industry, thereby

employing the majority of all industrial workers as forced labour” ([4],

p3). “State capitalism” was not introduced by the Bolsheviks.

We therefore reject the councilist analysis of the origins, course and

outcome of the Russian revolution. However, they do have the merit of

being the first to point out the evidence for the capitalist nature of

the Bolshevik regime and the social relations it supervised. In 1920,

Otto Ruhle refused to take his place in the Communist International in

Moscow, as the KAPD had instructed. His journey through Russia had

completely disillusioned him with the idea that socialism was being

built there. Ruhle attacks the Bolsheviks’ national liberation policy,

their giving the right of self-determination to the nations (in other

words, to the bourgeoisie) of Finland, Poland, etc. as “the outcome of

bourgeois political orientation” ([5], p14). He ridicules their giving

land to the peasantry, though what the Bolsheviks should have done

instead, he does not say. He attacks the treaty of Brest-Litovsk which

brought peace between the Soviet state and German imperialism, giving

the latter one last chance to step up the fight against both the Entente

powers and its own working class. Ruhle points out that “nationalisation

is not socialisation” and describes the Russian economy as “large-scale

tightly centrally-run state capitalism... Only it is still capitalism”.

He equates the massacre of the Kronstadt uprising of 1921 with the

suppression of the Paris Commune and the German revolution.

The “left communist” current, in common with Cliff and other

ex-Trotskyists, supports the Bolsheviks in the October revolution, but

argues that the revolution degenerated because of Russia’s isolation.

This point of view deserves to be seriously considered, before being

dismissed out of hand. The problem of when Russia was no longer a

workers’ state has caused tremendous problems to these groups, and most

of them have given up trying to answer the question.

But they are generally in agreement on the primary cause of the

degeneration: isolation. It is true that, if it were not supported by a

revolution in the rest of the world, the Russian revolution would

inevitably have led to capitalism. However, this is not why it did so.

The Bolshevik regime did not try to create communism, find itself

isolated, and end up implementing capitalist policies in spite of its

best intentions. On the contrary, it enthusiastically administered and

expanded capitalism — the exploitation of labour by means of the wages

system — from its very first day in office.

“And the facts speak for themselves: after the October revolution Lenin

did not want the expropriation of the capitalists, but only ‘workers

control’; control by the workers’ shopfloor organizations over the

capitalists, who were to continue to retain management of the

enterprises. A fierce class struggle ensued, invalidating Lenin’s thesis

on the collaboration of the classes under his power: the capitalists

replied with sabotage and the workers’ collectives took over all the

factories one after the other... And it was only when the expropriation

of the capitalists had been effected de facto by the worker masses that

the Soviet government recognized it de jure by publishing the decree on

the nationalization of industry. Then, in 1918, Lenin answered the

socialist aspirations of the workers by opposing to them the system of

State capitalism (‘on the model of wartime Germany’), with the greatest

participation of former capitalists in the new Soviet economy.” (A.

Ciliga, The Russian Enigma [6], pp 283–284).

The Bolsheviks were already imprisoning their revolutionary opponents

before the outbreak of the civil war in 1918. They had already tried to

strike deals to keep the capitalist managers in charge of the factories.

As Mandel shows in The Petrograd Workers and the Soviet Seizure of Power

[7], the factory committees frequently came into conflict with the

Bolsheviks, who wanted to dissolve them into the trade unions. He also

quotes the leather manufacturers’ organisation in Petrograd to the

effect that the Bolshevik trade unionists were preferable, as people

with whom jointly to manage production, to the “anarcho-communist”

factory committees. Clearly, to some extent, the factory committees

attempted to continue the revolution after October in the teeth of

Bolshevik opposition. We do not however idolise the factory committees,

as does Brinton in The Bolsheviks and Workers’ Control [8]. Though

containing useful information, it should be read in conjunction with

Factory Committees and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat [9], in which

Goodey shows how simplistic it is to see the committees as the goodies

and the Bolsheviks as the baddies.

Relations of production inside Russia never ceased to be capitalist.

Hardly any attempt was made to abolish wage labour and the law of value,

and none by the Party. The Bolsheviks did carry out nationalisations,

under pressure from the factory committees, but these had nothing to do

with communism.

In “Left-Wing” Communism [10] written two and a half years after the

October uprising, Lenin argued that in Russia the trade unions were “and

will long remain” a necessary means for “gradually transferring the

management of the whole economy of the country to the hands of the

working class (and not of the separate trades), and later to the hands

of all the toilers”. Lenin didn’t claim that at that time the working

class even managed the economy. They had not even instituted workers

management, let alone socialism. He argued that state capitalism was a

step on the road to socialism, and urged Russian socialists to “study

the state capitalism of the Germans, to adopt it with all possible

strength, not to spare dictatorial methods in order to hasten its

adoption” (On “Left” Infantilism and the Petty-Bourgeois Spirit, cited

in E.H. Carr, [11], p99).

Lenin and the Bolsheviks conceived of a long period of transition,

during which workers would gradually exert more and more control over

production and society as a whole, eventually, after many years,

converting it into socialism (see [12], pp 12–13, citing Lenin, [13],

p245). This would be assisted by “general state book-keeping, general

state accounting of the production and distribution of goods”, and would

be “something in the nature, so to speak, of the skeleton of a socialist

society”.. In the meantime, the state would be in control of capitalist

relations of production. Any Marxist should be able to work out that a

state which is in control of capitalism — wage labour — is a capitalist

state. In order to run the economy, it has to impose work discipline,

and all the accompanying forms of repression which capitalism is heir

to. The idea of a “workers’ state” which will gradually transform wage

labour into the free association of producers is an un-Marxist utopia.

The involvement of the working class in the administration of

capitalism, through Soviets, etc., just leads it into managing its own

exploitation.

Supporters of the notion of a “workers’ state” will admit that,

initially, such a state is in charge of a capitalist economy. What will

prevent it becoming a capitalist state is the intentions of the people

running it. They — organised in the Party — want to create communism.

But it is again basic materialism to point out that states develop

independently of the intentions of their functionaries. A state in

charge of capitalism cannot transform it into communism by willpower.

There has to be another way.

The concept of a “degenerated” workers’ state is absurd. States are

administrative bodies based on armed forces. They defend particular

social relations. A state cannot degenerate. It cannot gradually change

from defending the proletariat to defending the bourgeoisie. This would

involve a period of transition in which it abolished wage labour with

less and less enthusiasm, followed by a phase in which it defended it

with greater and greater vigour, divided by an interregnum in which it

couldn’t quite make up its mind!

To summarily demonstrate the nature of the Bolshevik regime, we will

briefly look at three areas of society in which the new regime

strengthened capitalism with a resolve which must have been the envy of

the liberals they had just overthrown.

The Extraordinary Commission to Fight Counter-Revolution, or Cheka, was

founded on December 8 1917 “to watch the press, saboteurs, strikers, and

the Socialist-Revolutionaries of the Right” (Daniels, [14] p90, citing

the Cheka’s founding decree, our emphasis). Strikers were now labelled

agents of the counter-revolution, and subject to rapidly increasing

repression, starting with “confiscation, confinement, deprivation of

(food) cards”, and ending with summary execution.

In March 1918, Trotsky abolished the elective principle in the army,

replacing elected officers with former tsarist officers who, “in the

area of command, operations and fighting” (in other words, everything),

were given “full responsibility” and “the necessary rights” ([15], p93).

One year after the revolution which destroyed the tsar’s army and navy,

Trotsky restored them.

Finally, in the economy, Lenin said in April 1918: “We must raise the

question of piecework and apply and test it in practice; we must raise

the question of applying much of what is scientific and progressive in

the Taylor system, we must make wages correspond to the total amount of

goods turned out...” ([16], p96).

And he didn’t just raise these questions, he answered them.

When a particular state imprisons strikers, decimates soldiers,

militarises labour, cooperates with factory owners and negotiates

territory with imperialist powers, its nature is clear. Such a state

defends the capitalist class and the capitalist mode of production

against the proletariat and the communist movement. Such was the nature

of the Soviet state created by the October revolution.

WE GOT THE POWER

Between February and October 1917, the working class had a significant

amount of power in Russia. Following the Petrograd mutiny of 27

February, when troops refused to shoot demonstrators and striking

workers and joined them, the whole edifice of tsarist autocracy

collapsed. Kerensky commented that throughout the whole of the Russian

lands, there was “literally not one policeman”. They crowded into the

jails to avoid lynching, taking the place of thousands of hardened

revolutionaries of all factions who wasted no time in getting stuck in.

From February to October, a situation of “dual power” existed, with a

weak bourgeois government and numerous organs of working class power.

Even at the lowest points during these eight months, when the

bourgeoisie was on the offensive, workers defied the bosses, and

soldiers and sailors chose which orders to obey. The Soviets of

Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, led by the Petrograd Soviet,

had more power than the Provisional Government, though they persistently

refused to use it to destroy the latter, in fact they propped it up by

sending ministers and giving it “socialist” credibility.

Finally on October 25, the Military Revolutionary Committee of the

Bolshevik-dominated Petrograd Soviet smashed the Provisional Government

and announced that the Soviets were now the power in the land. The

Congress of Soviets elected a government, the Council of People’s

Commissars, or SovNarKom, to which the Soviets now gave increasing

amounts of their own power. From the viewpoint of the working class, it

is difficult to find any major gains resulting from October. There is

one major exception: peace.

It is understandable that the Soviets, after much debate, accepted

Lenin’s arguments for signing a peace treaty with Germany. Most of the

Soviets initially bitterly opposed the idea, arguing that a

revolutionary war, even a guerilla war which would not actually beat

Germany, would hasten the advent of the world revolution. But the

argument that Russia was exhausted won the day. The Brest-Litovsk treaty

was disastrous for the working class. It freed German militarism from

fighting a war on two fronts, giving it the Ukraine, and boosted its

morale (its power over its own workers), which enabled it to launch the

March-July 1918 offensives on the Western front, prolonging the war.

It is impossible for us to say exactly what effect a refusal by the

working class to accept Brest-Litovsk would have had. Certainly the

Germans would have advanced towards Petrograd, but a communist guerilla

war would have tied up vast numbers of troops, bringing forward the

collapse of the Central Powers and the wave of Revolutions which

eventually brought them down in November 1918. There was certainly a

readiness for a fight, as shown by the debates in the Soviets, and by

subsequent events in the Ukraine, where a large anarchist army fought

the counter-revolution with considerable success, until it was

suppressed by the Red Army (see Voline, The Unknown Revolution, [17]).

The Russian revolution was not defeated primarily because Russia was

isolated by the civil war and the defeat of the German revolution — it

had already been seriously undermined from within before isolation had a

chance to take hold. Of course, the invasion of White Russian and

imperialist armies in the summer of 1918 took its toll of surviving

revolutionary gains, not least because it enabled the Bolshevik

government to impose capitalist discipline and the militarisation of

labour. But the Soviet government was already defending capital against

communism before the outbreak of the civil war. So “isolation” is a

feeble excuse. The suppression of Kronstadt in 1921, the most

spectacular act of the Bolshevik counter-revolution, was the culmination

of four years of constant attacks on the working class revolution of

February 1917. Lenin succeeded where Kerensky had failed.

Nor were the Bolsheviks forced to conduct the civil war in the way they

did by circumstances beyond their control. Insurgents in the Ukraine

were capable of holding Soviet congresses to organise the struggle

against the White armies. The Red Army under Trotsky ruthlessly

liquidated such attempts to conduct a communist civil war against

counter-revolution. Voline cites Trotsky’s order no. 1824 of June 4,

1919, which calls participation in a Soviet Congress of insurgents in

various regions of the Ukraine, “an act of high treason”, and forbids

it: “In no case shall it take place” ([18], pp596-597). Whilst the

“anarchist bandits” were fighting Denikin’s offensive, the Red Army

attacked them from the rear.

One of the causes of the 1921 uprising was the capitalist organisation

of the Red Army. This was not a consequence of the civil war, preceding

it by four months. The arbitrary brutality of bourgeois military

discipline is neither necessary nor possible in a class struggle army.

We only have to look at Makhno’s partisans to see this (see Arshinov,

[19]). Another was corruption. The armed guards who checked people

bringing in food from the countryside took bribes to allow black

marketeers through, and took what they wanted for resale or for

themselves.

It is quite clear from Trotsky’s account [20] that the Bolshevik Party

consistently tried to hold back the class struggle up to October 1917

until they were in a position to dominate the government which resulted

from the insurrection. Had Kornilov taken Petrograd in August 1917, he

would have murdered the left-wing leaders, yet when sailors from the

Aurora visited Trotsky in prison, he urged restraint! ([21], 2, p233).

THE FIREHOSE

Some of the writings and speeches of Bolshevik leaders at this time are

impressive. Lenin’s April Theses [22] served to radicalise the Bolshevik

apparatus in 1917. The depth of this radicalisation can be gauged by the

introduction of one-man management a year later. The State and

Revolution [23], Lenin’s most revolutionary work, was not published

until 1918, when the counter-revolution was well under way, thus made no

positive contribution. The Bolsheviks talked of a “commune-state”, of

“the arming of the whole people”, of the “abolition of the police, the

army and the bureaucracy”, and proceeded to create a capitalist police

state which disarmed the working class and gave birth to the biggest

bureaucracy the world has ever seen. The more radical elements of

Bolshevik propaganda had the effect of disguising a social democratic

party as a communist one.

The Bolsheviks were, of all the Russian underground groups, the most

opposed to the formation of Soviets in 1905. In February 1917,

“Inside Russia, the most active group in St. Petersburg, the Bolsheviks,

refused requests for arms from the strikers and tried to dissuade them

from further demonstrations, convinced that the tide was on the ebb and

that consolidation was needed.” ([24], p39).

In August, “The Bolshevik leaders themselves often joked about the

similarity of their warnings to the political leit-motif of the German

social democracy, which has invariably restrained the masses from every

serious struggle by referring to the danger of provocateurs and

necessity of accumulating strength.” ([25], 2, p311).

A generally held view of revolution is that timing is of the essence.

The prospective revolutionary class or party must choose its moment

well. Too early an insurrectionary attempt will provoke repression; too

late, and the revolutionaries will have missed their chance.

A proletarian revolution is only possible when the ruling class is in

severe crisis, which is likely to last for months. Such was the case in

Russia in 1917. In such situations, it is unlikely that the proletariat

will lose much by going on the offensive. Even in the normal day-to-day

life of capitalist society, it is unusual, though not unheard-of, for a

genuine revolutionary group (as opposed to a leftist one) to urge

restraint.

Military analogies are over-used in the class war, and often misleading.

The class war is fundamentally different from a war between states. The

workers are not an army until they start fighting. But in

straightforward physical confrontations between classes, an

understanding of timing, the balance of forces, and so on, is important.

We cannot condemn the Bolsheviks simply because they held back the armed

struggle. However, revolutionaries would not spend most of their time

trying to hold back the class where the government is weak and the

working class has real autonomous power in sections of society,

including the armed forces. They would not try to prevent strikes as the

Bolsheviks in the Vyborg district did ([26], 2, p10).

The Bolsheviks’ strategy of holding back the class war was not based on

fear of provoking the government (what would the government have done

when provoked that it couldn’t have done in any case?), but on the

argument that there was no coherent force to take power. They left the

Provisional Government in power while they were unsure of their ability

to provide an alternative administration. The government could not even

control the naval fort which defended Petrograd. So when Lenin urged

“caution, caution, caution”, he was trying to hold back the class

struggle until the Bolsheviks were in a position to use it for their own

ends. To do this, he needed a more disciplined party, so he described

Bolsheviks who had supported the slogan “Down with the Provisional

Government” against the more moderate official Bolshevik slogan “Long

Live the Soviet” as guilty of “a serious crime”. “Long Live the Soviet”

in July 1917 meant supporting the body which, as Lenin constantly

pointed out, was the main prop of the capitalist government.

In Petrograd, even at the militant Putilov factory, the Bolsheviks tried

to stop the July demo, but were swept aside by the workers. The party in

the Vyborg district decided it had to go along to “maintain order”

([27], 2, p17). Although Lenin did everything he could to prevent the

July 4^(th) armed demonstration, he explained why he had to support it

once it was inevitable: “For our party to have broken with the

spontaneous movement of the Kronstadt masses would have struck an

irreparable blow at its authority”.

Describing the genesis of the July Days, Trotsky admits: “With an

embarrassed shake of the head, the Vyborg Bolsheviks would complain to

their friends: ‘We have to play the part of the fire hose.’” ([28], 2,

p10). He candidly describes now he persuaded the 176^(th) regiment to

defend the “socialist” ministers against the demonstrators. When the

demonstrators demanded to see minister Tseretelli, leading Bolshevik

Zinoviev came out and spoke: “I appealed to that audience to disperse

peacefully at once, keeping perfect order, and under no circumstances

permitting anyone to provoke them to any aggressive action.” Trotsky

adds: “This episode offers the best possible illustration of the keen

discontent of the masses, their lack of any plan of attack, and the

actual role of the Bolshevik party in the July events” ([29], 2, p45).

It certainly does.

LOYAL OPPOSITIONS

Our critique of October is not that it was an undemocratic coup d’etat.

Firstly, because we do not believe that a majority of the working class

has to endorse an assault on state power by a minority, and secondly,

because the Bolsheviks did have the support of a large proportion of the

most militant workers. We would not quibble over the description of the

result of October as a “workers’ state”, since it was based on the

Soviets. But this is no guarantee that it will defend the interests of

the working class.

Neither do we argue that the party was internally undemocratic. The

Kommunist faction (see [30]), composed of some of the leading Bolsheviks

in Moscow, argued against the party’s decisions, saying that they

“Instead of raising the banner forward to communism, raise the banner

back to capitalism.” The left communists also opposed the Brest-Litovsk

treaty. When the civil war started, the left described the situation

inside Russia as “War Communism”. Housing was redistributed (see [31]),

rail and post were free, electricity and water free when available, rent

was abolished, and so, it appeared, was money. But in practice, most of

the food was obtained on the black market, otherwise even more people

would have died of starvation ([32], p101). Cannibalism also helped

supplement Russia’s meagre diet. Money was abolished only in the sense

that inflation devalued it to such an extent it was replaced with

barter.

Kollontai’s Workers’ Opposition advocated workers’ control of

capitalism, via the trade unions. Nowhere in The Workers’ Opposition

[33] does Kollontai understand that Russia is capitalist. The Workers’

Opposition were “the first” to volunteer for the supression of Kronstadt

in 1921 at the 10^(th) Party Congress. At this congress, the left

communists lurched to the right, defending private trade. After this,

factions were banned, sent to Siberia, or shot. There were nevertheless

numerous oppositions formally inside the Party even after this point,

some of them quite positive, for example Miasnikov’s Workers’ Group and

Bogdanov’s Workers’ Truth Group:

“The soviet, party, and trade-union bureaucracies and organizers find

themselves with material conditions which are sharply distinguished from

the conditions of existence of the working class. Their very well-being

and the stability of their general position depend on the degree to

which the toiling masses are exploited and subordinated to them.”

(Appeal of the Workers’ Truth Group, 1922, cited in [34], p147).

Other examples can be found in Daniels, [35], and Ciliga, [36]. The

latter describes the debates among oppositionists in prison and in exile

in the late twenties and early thirties, many of whom had managed to

work out what had gone wrong. But by this time it was too late.

FOR ANTI-STATE COMMUNISM

It is obvious that conditions today are far removed from 1917, so we

would not mechanically transfer the lessons of the proletariat’s

mistakes in Russia to today. However, there are some general points

which can be drawn from the Russian experience. Between February and

October, the proletariat had considerable power in Russia, but then

rapidly lost it, and a strong capitalist state was created. When class

warfare reaches a certain level, a Soviet state may emerge. However it

will only be a step on the road to communism if the revolutionary

workers refuse to accept the Soviet state as their own, and oppose it as

intransigently as they did its predecessor.

There is no substitute for the immediate task of socialising the entire

economy, abolishing money, destroying all bureaucratic hangovers of

capitalist rule, and rapidly internationalising the revolution. Any

organisation which tries to hold back these measures should be swept

aside.

There are no forms which guarantee the success of the revolution,

neither is there much point in trying to avoid particular forms, nor

making rules about which pre-ordained tasks each type of organisation

must take on or refuse. With obvious qualifications, Herman Gorter’s

1920 formulation against formalism still stands: “...during the

revolution, every Trade Union, every workers�� union even, is a political

party — either pro or counter revolutionary” (Gorter, [37]).

No one organisation, whether formally political or ostensibly economic,

will hold a monopoly of correct positions. The “revolutionary party” is

the sum of all individuals and organisations, whether formal political

organisations or not, which actually defend the needs of the social

revolution at a given moment. It is impossible to centralise such a

minority under one command. However, immense discipline and more

importantly, solidarity, will be required for such a party to act in a

unified way against the bourgeoisie and its well-organised political

forces, let alone its military ones.

This minority can certainly take any action — for example, the overthrow

of the state — which serves proletarian goals, without endorsement from

the majority of the working class. It cannot however impose communism —

this can only be the product of mass activity — therefore it does not

seek to create a new state power — a “workers’ state” — in place of the

old administration. It remains continuously in opposition to any state

which is set up, participating in organising the class war until its

final victory in the destruction of all states, and the creation of

world communism, a free association of producers, in which the freedom

of each is the condition for the freedom of all.

[1] From the Bourgeois to the Proletarian Revolution, Otto Ruhle,

Revolutionary Perspectives, 1974 (out of print).

[2] 1789 and All That, Wildcat no. 13, London, 1989.

[3] From the Bourgeois to the Proletarian Revolution, Otto Ruhle,

Revolutionary Perspectives, 1974 (out of print).

[4] Notes on Class Struggle in the USSR, Red Menace, London, 1989.

[5] From the Bourgeois to the Proletarian Revolution, Otto Ruhle,

Revolutionary Perspectives, 1974 (out of print).

[6] The Russian Enigma, A. Ciliga, Ink Links, London, 1979.

[7] The Petrograd Workers and the Soviet Seizure of Power, D. Mandel,

MacMillan 1984.

[8] The Bolsheviks and Workers’ Control, M. Brinton, Solidarity, London,

1970.

[9] Factory Committees and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, C.

Goodey, Critique no. 3, Glasgow, 1973.

[10] “Left-Wing” Communism, an Infantile Disorder, V.I. Lenin, Progress

Publishers, Moscow, 1950.

[11] The Bolshevik Revolution, 2, E.H. Carr, Penguin, London, 1966.

[12] The Bolsheviks and Workers’ Control, M. Brinton, Solidarity,

London, 1970.

[13] Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?, V.I. Lenin, Selected Works,

4, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1950.

[14] A Documentary History of Communism, 1, ed. R.V. Daniels, Tauris &

Co., London, 1985.

[15] A Documentary History of Communism, 1, ed. R.V. Daniels, Tauris &

Co., London, 1985.

[16] A Documentary History of Communism, 1, ed. R.V. Daniels, Tauris &

Co., London, 1985.

[17] The Unknown Revolution, Voline, Black Rose Books, Montreal, 1975.

[18] The Unknown Revolution, Voline, Black Rose Books, Montreal, 1975.

[19] History of the Makhnovist Movement 1918–1921, P. Arshinov, Black &

Red, Detroit, 1974.

[20] The History of the Russian Revolution, L. Trotsky, Pathfinder, New

York, 1980 [3 vols. in one].

[21] The History of the Russian Revolution, L. Trotsky, Pathfinder, New

York, 1980 [3 vols. in one].

[22] The April Theses, V.I. Lenin, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1951.

[23] The State and Revolution, V.I. Lenin, Foreign Languages Press,

Peking, 1976.

[24] Clarity and Unity in the Russian Revolution, Communist Bulletin no.

10, Aberdeen, 1987.

[25] The History of the Russian Revolution, L. Trotsky, Pathfinder, New

York, 1980 [3 vols. in one].

[26] The History of the Russian Revolution, L. Trotsky, Pathfinder, New

York, 1980 [3 vols. in one].

[27] The History of the Russian Revolution, L. Trotsky, Pathfinder, New

York, 1980 [3 vols. in one].

[28] The History of the Russian Revolution, L. Trotsky, Pathfinder, New

York, 1980 [3 vols. in one].

[29] The History of the Russian Revolution, L. Trotsky, Pathfinder, New

York, 1980 [3 vols. in one].

[30] Theses of the Left Communists, N. Bukharin et. al., Critique,

Glasgow, 1977.

[31] The Russian Revolution, 1, W.H. Chamberlain, Grosset and Dunlap,

New York.

[32] The Russian Revolution, 1, W.H. Chamberlain, Grosset and Dunlap,

New York.

[33] The Workers’ Opposition, A. Kollontai, Solidarity, London.

[34] A Documentary History of Communism, 1, ed. R.V. Daniels, Tauris &

Co., London, 1985.

[35] The Conscience of the Revolution, R.V. Daniels, Harvard University

Press, 1960.

[36] The Russian Enigma, A. Ciliga, Ink Links, London, 1979.

[37] Open Letter to Comrade Lenin, H. Gorter, Wildcat, London, 1989.