Workers' Liberty

For many, the term "revolution" evokes images of
a Stalinist-led army descending on them to create
a police state. Many revolutions in the twentieth
century, such as those in Eastern Europe, China,
Cuba and Vietnam, were in fact just like that.
Because of that many socialists think it more
prudent only to fight for reforms, or (as the
title of a recent book puts it) to "change the
world without taking power".

The AWL also fights for reforms, because
mobilising the working class for immediate
improvements is the best way to transform the
labour movement and prepare the working class to
make socialism. However, we reject the idea that
there is a "parliamentary road" to socialism.

The Westminster system is not democratic
enough to serve the working class. MPs are on
inflated salaries and only subject to election
every five years. The government controls
Parliament much more than Parliament controls the
government; and the government operates within
the framework of a huge unelected state machine.
Top civil servants, the police, the military and
judges are appointed, not elected. The secret
service is not accountable to governments. Key
economic decisions are made by the bosses of big
corporations and banks.

If serious socialists should fight our
way through all those obstacles to win a
parliamentary majority, the ruling class will try
to use its army and police against us. In Chile -
a country with longer parliamentary traditions
than almost all European countries - the army
made a coup in 1973 and imposed a military
dictatorship, killing thousands, in order to oust
a reforming, socialistic, elected government. In
the UK, when a (very tame) Labour government was
elected on the back of industrial militancy in
1974, "fairly senior" officers discussed a
military coup (so the top army commander, Michael
Carver, who told them they were over-reacting,
later revealed). In the early 1980s, when the
Labour Party swung left, the very respectable
Times newspaper editorialised that Labour must
not be allowed to form a government, even if it
should win a majority in a General Election. In
Australia in 1975, a leftish Labour government
was "sacked" by the Governor-General, acting on
the authority of the Queen. (The same happened in
New South Wales in 1931).

We are for democracy. We are for
parliamentary democracy against dictatorship. We
know that a better democracy cannot be won unless
and until the working class has tested the
potentialities of parliamentary democracy to
their limits. But a big push by the working class
to win decisive change through the channels of
parliamentary democracy will face the workers
with a choice between going over to direct action
and more responsive forms of democracy - workers'
councils, workers' militias, in a word revolution
- or submitting to capitalist counter-revolution,
"constitutional" or violent.

Working-class revolution is something
very different from the Stalinist stereotype of
"revolution" - even more different from it than
our sort of reforms are from the Blair-Brownite
notion of "reform".

Working-class revolutions break out when
the ruling class can no longer rule in the old
way and the workers are no longer willing to be
ruled in the old way. Workers' revolutions
involve the participation of millions in
politics, and generate thoroughgoing democratic
forms when we workers take control of our
destiny. A workers' revolution must be democratic
- an act of the overwhelming majority of the
workers, with sufficient backing from the rest of
the population to overwhelm the entrenched
conservative powers - or it does not happen at
all.

Workers' revolutions across the globe
have shown what the working class is capable of.

The Russian
revolution of 1917
The revolution in Russia was the high point of
working class history so far. The Russian working
class overthrew the Tsar (king) and then the
unelected temporary ("provisional") government
that took over from him. The Russian working
class took power and held it for some years. Only
once before, in Paris in 1871, had workers seized
power; andthey were smashed within two months
there.

The Russian revolution started on
International Women's Day - 23 February by the
calendar then in use in Russia (8 March by the
Western calendar). Thousands of angry women, some
of them textile workers, took to the streets of
the capital, St Petersburg, to protest about a
bread shortage and the World War. The next day
200,000 workers went on strike and marched into
the centre of the city, carrying placards
demanding "Down with the war" and "Down with the
Tsarist government". The following day students
and middle class people joined them.

Workers decided to organise new
committees of struggle, based on workplaces. On
27 February 1917 the St Petersburg Soviet of
Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies was formed.

The day before, soldiers fired on the
crowds, killing hundreds. But that prompted
regiments to mutiny. On 1 March 170,000 soldiers
joined the demonstrators. Soldiers and sailors
sacked officers who had tyrannised them. Some
officers were shot.

On 27 February, members of the (very
limited) Russian parliament began moves to oust
the Tsar, who until then had had dictatorial
power. On 2 March he abdicated and Russia became
a republic, run by a provisional government.

What then opened up was a period of "dual
power", where two forces - on the one side the
workers' and peasants' soviets and on the other
the provisional government - vied for power.

Russia on the
eve of 1917
Russia was a web of contradictions. It was the
world's fifth largest industrial power (18 per
cent lived in towns and cities), yet 75 per cent
of its 164 million people worked in farming. It
was the world's largest grain exporter, yet most
peasants lived in poverty. Per capita, more
children died young than in any other European
country.

Although there were only 3.6 million
industrial workers in the factories and mines,
they were concentrated in a few regions and in
huge workplaces - giving them great political
clout.

The Russian working class was already
very political. It had risen against the Tsar in
1905, organising Soviets (workers' councils) - a
new form of democratic organisation. Although the
Tsar banned unions, Russian workers organised
many strikes in 1905-06 and again in 1912-14.

A Marxist workers' party was founded in
1898. It split into two factions in 1903 and into
two separate parties, called Bolsheviks and
Mensheviks, in 1912. In January 1917 the
Mensheviks had 100,000 members, half of them in
Georgia. The Mensheviks supported the provisional
government.

The Bolsheviks had 10,000 members. Many
of its leaders, such as Vladimir Ilyich Lenin,
were in exile. Bolsheviks inside Russia
critically supported the provisional government
and the war. When Lenin returned to Russia in
April, he led a debate in which the Bolsheviks
changed their policies and their slogans - to
"peace, bread, land" and "all power to the
soviets". Other workers' groups such as Leon
Trotsky's Mezhraiontsy joined the Bolsheviks
during 1917.

The biggest party was the Socialist
Revolutionary Party (SRs), based mainly on the
peasants. By mid 1917 the SRs had 700,000 members
in villages and in the army - and 300,000 members
in towns and cities.

Prices tripled between 1914 and 1916,
while wages only doubled. In the first two months
of 1917 strikes surpassed the level reached in
1913.

Workers' organisation
After the general strike and the fall of the
Tsar, workers went back to work with new ideas of
how factories should be run. Hated managers were
driven out and old rules discarded.

Workers organised factory committees to
represent their interests. The committees fought
for an eight-hour day and pay rises and took
control over hiring and firing, supplies and
guarding the factories - and imposed workers'
supervision of production. By October 1917
two-thirds of factories with 200 or more workers
had factory committees.

By October there were two million trade
union members, organised along industrial not
craft lines. Between February and October 1917,
2.5 million workers went on strike over higher
wages.

But the main organisations were the soviets. In
St Petersburg the soviet elected 1,200 deputies
within its first week. The movement spread. In
March and April 1917, 700 soviets formed, with
200,000 deputies. By October there were 1,400
soviets, around a third based on the peasants.

The basic soviet principle was that
delegates were directly elected by those they
represented. Delegates could be recalled and
replaced immediately. Representatives were not
privileged. They did not live life above and
apart from the workers, soldiers and peasants who
elected them.

The soviets ruled on a range of matters.
For example St Petersburg soviets' Order No.1
instructed soldiers to take their orders from the
soviet and set up committees in the forces -
undermining the power of the officers.
In June 1917 the first Russia-wide congress of
soviets was organised. Out of 777 delegates, 285
were SRs, 248 were Mensheviks and 155 were
Bolsheviks. The congress set up the Central
Executive Committee (CEC), run by the SRs and
Mensheviks.

Most of the soviets and factory
committees demanded peace. On 20 April foreign
minister Miliukov was exposed for secretly
supporting the Allies. Thousands of workers and
soldiers in St Petersburg protested saying "Down
with the Provisional Government". (Lenin
considered this slogan premature, though he
opposed the Provisional Government.)

Miliukov resigned and six Menshevik and
SR members of the soviet executive joined the
provisional government. War minister Kerensky
pushed for an army offensive in June.

On 3 July soldiers from the first machine
gun regiment demonstrated against the war. They
were joined by 20,000 sailors from Kronstadt and
thousands of workers, demanding "all power to the
soviets". Bolshevik party leaders thought that
any attempt to seize power at that time would be
premature, so joined the demonstrations while
advising caution and patience.

On 4 July soldiers surrounded government
headquarters, but were dispersed by loyalist
troops. Leading Bolsheviks were arrested or
forced into hiding. Kerensky became prime
minister and launched a crackdown.

Kerensky appointed Kornilov as commander
in chief of the army. On 26 August Kornilov
demanded civil and military authority. Kerensky
ordered Kornilov to step down. Kornilov responded
by ordering his troops to march on St Petersburg.
Kerensky asked the soviets for help. The workers
and soldiers drove Kornilov back.

The Bolsheviks had been working steadily
to educate and mobilise, emphasising basic
working-class organisation in place of the
flowery "revolutionary" declarations of the
Mensheviks and the SRs. Now they gained majority
influence in the working class as they mobilised
the workers and soldiers to fight Kornilov while
giving no political support to Kerensky.

The workers take power
The Kornilov events demonstrated the weakness of
the provisional government and the strength of
the soviets. The Bolsheviks increased their vote
in municipal elections in August. On 31 August
the St Petersburg soviet passed a Bolshevik
resolution calling for "all power to the
soviets". On 5 September the Moscow soviet passed
the same resolution. Over the next two weeks 80
other soviets also called for the seizure of
power.

The Bolshevik party had 400,000 members
by October. Lenin urged them to organise for the
taking of power. The party voted to do so through
the second soviet congress on 20 October. Trotsky
headed the Military Revolutionary Committee
(MRC), responsible for practical preparations,
including the organisation of Red Guards.

Kerensky moved against the Bolsheviks,
attempting to shut their printing press. He and
the Mensheviks managed to postpone the soviet
congress by five days. However, on 24 October Red
Guards occupied strategic positions and stormed
the Winter Palace, where the provisional
government met.

Next day, at the soviet congress, Lenin
announced that the provisional government had
been overthrown and called on the soviets to
assume power. As the Mensheviks and most SRs
walked out, Trotsky said: "Your role is played
out. Go where you belong, into the dustbin of
history."

For most workers, soldiers and peasants,
soviet government meant freedom and equality: a
government of the toilers. The workers'
government proclaimed its aim: "the abolition of
exploitation of man by man, the elimination of
the division of society into classes, the
ruthless suppression of the exploiters, the
establishment of a socialist organisation of
society and the victory of socialism in all
countries".

Before the end of 1917 the soviet
government issued 100 decrees. It stopped the
war; distributed land to the peasants;
nationalised industry, putting it under workers'
control; introduced the right to divorce,
self-determination of nations and a shorter
working day.

France 1968
France in May 1968 gives us a picture of what a
socialist revolution will be like in developed
capitalist countries. But few would have believed
it even a month before. In 1967 a one-day general
strike failed abysmally and academics argued that
the French working class had been tamed.

Students in Nanterre University provided
the spark, campaigning for the right to stay in
each other's rooms after 11pm and about
overcrowding and course content. On 3 May 1968
they took their struggle to the Sorbonne
University in the centre of Paris.

Police attacked the demonstration and
hundreds were arrested. The Sorbonne was closed
and occupied by police. In response, 50,000
attended a students' demonstration on 7 May.

On 10 May, 30,000 assembled for another
demo. They saw riot police near the Sorbonne. So
they set up barricades. The police unleashed CS
gas and baton-charged the students, who fought
back.

Millions of French workers sympathised
with the students' struggle and condemned the
government's repression. The Communist Party
(CP)-led CGT union called a one-day general
strike. On 13 May over one million workers and
students demonstrated in Paris and other cities.

The next day workers at Sud-Aviation in
Nantes (led by Trotskyists and anarchists)
occupied the factory, demanding pay rises,
shorter hours and rights for casual workers. More
factories followed - notably Renault car
factories in Cléon and Billancourt. By the end of
the week two million workers were on strike.
Action committees brought together students and
the younger, more militant workers. There were
460 action committees in Paris by the end of May.

The general strike continued to grow. On
20 May over six million were out. By 24 May
between eight and ten million workers were on
strike. This was quadruple the number at the
height of strike action in France in 1936 and in
Britain during the general strike of 1926.

In the occupied factories discussion and
debate flourished. At Renault factories there
were discussions about workers' control and the
occupation. Almost half of all workers picketed.
They also put on films, plays and debated issues
like sexuality and contraception.

Even the police and the army were
affected. The police federation came out in
support of the strike (but not for long) and some
army units established action committees. And
still workers demonstrated. Half a million
marched through Paris on 29 May calling for
French president de Gaulle to resign.
Workers in Nantes formed a Central Strike
Committee. The committee organised food
distribution, the schooling of children and
traffic control. At the Nuclear Research Centre
in Saclay, workers set up a workers' council with
links to local farmers and provided medical aid
for injured students.

The government (with help from the
Stalinist CP) scrambled to stem the tide. On 27
May they offered a 30 per cent increase in the
minimum wage, a 10 per cent pay rise and a cut in
the working week. Workers at Renault Billancourt
simply booed. But, lacking a revolutionary
workers' political party which could lead a
struggle to generalise workers' organisations
like that in Nantes - or the Russian soviets of
1917 - the movement started to flounder and ebb.

The revolutionary left in France had
suffered harshly in the late 1940s and the 1950s.
Despite some recent growth, it was still tiny
before the explosion in May 1968. The biggest
group was only 300 members, almost all students.
Even apart from whatever mistakes they made in
1968, the revolutionaries just did not have the
forces to grow into a Bolshevik-type mass
revolutionary party in time.

On 30 May de Gaulle called National
Assembly elections for June. Police were sent
into occupied workplaces. Over the next two
weeks, despite heroic resistance, the strike
petered out. Factories and universities were
taken back by police. In the June elections,
Gaullists increased their majority.