Why, what, when?
Submitted on 15 May, 2006 - 21:54
I want to hear from anyone.
I'm interested in the marxist movement in Briain/London and more importantly why it is so divided?
I would appreciate some answers from anyone
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I asked the same question
I asked that question about a year ago. The pluralism of socialism/Marxism seems very confusing for someone (like me) who generaly agrees with Marxist principles but doesn't see much difference between seperate socialist factions who seem to be very much at each other's throats.
It could actually be seen as a good thing because it reflects quite a broad range of opinion which leads to lots of healthy debate.
I, personally, think the left is so divided because we get bogged down in differences of opinion in relation to things like international politics or the definition of the former Soviet Union's economy/property relations.
If we talk about the NHS, pensions or education I think we could present a very united front. I think we should have debates amongst ourselves on any range of matters but present the commonly shared opinions to the general public.
I think there are lots of people, most in fact, that would benefit materially from socialist policies. Strengthening and protecting the NHS, gauranteeing decent pensions and encouraging trade unionism would benefit most people's quality of life. I'm sure it must be possible for a coalition of Socialist factions to present a cohesive argument regarding these issues and stick to that ground for the sake of public unity.
Reasons for disunity
Hi Sean,
Your questions are very reasonable ones. The disunity of the left is extremely harmful to the cause of socialism in Britain (and internationally). It's not just that a united socialist organisation would be substantially bigger than many competing ones; it's also that a larger, united force would be more than the sum of its parts, providing a much stronger pole of attraction both to currently unaffiliated socialists and to all those in revolt against exploitation and oppression.
You write: "It could actually be seen as a good thing because it reflects quite a broad range of opinion which leads to lots of healthy debate." Vigorous debate is a good thing. But I don't think that debate and unity are counterposed. The problem with the divided left groups that exist today is not that they debate too much, but that there is very little common political life, not only in terms of activity but debate too, between them. Debate and activity are not counterposed. The time when there was the most political discussion between the different groups was when the Socialist Alliance was functioning.
I also think it's wrong to suggest that left is divided because "we get bogged down in differences of opinion in relation to things like international politics or the definition of the former Soviet Union's economy/property relations." Yes, there are a lot of debates on this website about such obscure issues; but in fact the major debates dividing the activist left today are about very important issues (including international ones). The different position of the AWL and SWP on Iraq, it seems to me, is not just a matter of ideological taste - it's a crucal question of political orienation. Are we with the Iraqi workers' movement or with its executioners?
But why can't these differences be debated and hammered out within a united socialist organisation? The basic reason seem to me to be that most of the left has a highly undemocratic internal life and a culture which discourages rather than fosters initiative, debate and new thinking. To put it another way, smaller groups like the AWL COULDN'T join the SWP as a faction, because there is no democratic space within the SWP for dissidents (and many of the smaller groups are little better themselves). In this way, lack of democracy makes left unity much more difficult. I also think that lack of free debate is responsible for the increasingly crazy bent of much of the left politically.
What we need to start with, as a prelude to unity, is cooperation through something like the Socialist Alliance, but unfortunately the SWP destroyed that in favour of the populist, non-working-class, non-socialist project of Respect. That's another reason why we've gone backwards rather than forwards in terms of unity over the last few years.
United campaigning on issues like the health service and trade union rights is essential too, you're right.
I'd be interested to hear other comrades' views.
Sacha Ismail
(SW London)
Small point
There is disagreement amongst AWL members about the definition of the former Soviet Union's economy/property relations, but we still all manage to cohabit in the same group!
I'm not saying there is no
I'm not saying there is no place for such debate Janine. This website is very much the place for such debate. I think its a bad thing when socialists divide up into small groups due to antagonisms over unsurmountable differences on these debates.
Perhaps it was wrong of me to use an example of a debate that is currently active on this board. I just wanted to illustrate the point about the public's perception of socialists - well meaning but ineffective. I think we have to take responsibility for that if we are going to change it
I wasn't suggesting that you
I wasn't suggesting that you were saying that, Sean!
My point was that disagreeing - whether over the nature of the former Soviet Union or whatever else - is not in itself a reason for the left to be divided into different groups.
The issue is how those disagreements are dealt with. One of the main reasons that the left is divided is because most of it does not tolerate disagreement. So the only way that people can argue for their point of view is to form a separate group.
Solution: a united socialist organisation that allows its members to disagree with each other and to argue out those disagreements. Whilst uniting in action, of course.
I Agree
Sacha,
I agree with your comments here. I think that if there were a large at least reasonably healthy, and open Workers Party many of the debates would be over very quickly. IF these debates take place between very small groups they can go on forever with each group continuing to be convinced of its correctness. If, however, the debate is taking place in the context of and in front of a large number of active workers, and in the context of day to day activity by those workers in that party, the debates themselves would be put into perpsepctive with the priorities of the mass of workers that made up the party, and the mass of those workers would either decide who was right and who was wrong, or would decide that the debate was pretty insignificant and those trying to influence them would move on to something else they did think more important.
But its partly because of that that Lenin didn't like the idea of having to argue with others in such a large workers party. He thought that opened the way to the true revolutionaries - of which he was convinced he was the reprsentation of - being dragged down into the swamp of backward ideas. That's why all those revolutionary parties that in some form follow in Lenin's tradition still to this day, whatever they might claim, prefer to protect their own purity over and above working selflessly for the building of a mass workers party. Of course Lenin didn't mind a big party per se, provided it was a big party that agreed with him, but if it didn't then it was time for another split, and as Trotsky sets out in his History of the Russian Revolution even under those conditions Lenin was prepared to split the Bolsheviks if he didn't get his own way, for example over not supporting the Provisional Government, and over his April Thesis.
I think that the Left also has been divided for so long that there are other considerations that mitigate against unity. A look at some of the worst groups such as the Healyites show that they were fiefdoms. None of us are the new man yet, and personal traits continue to be important. All politicians require an ego to some extent, and revolutionary politicians are no exception. There has to be some degree to which leaders of small groups consider themselves big fish in a small pool, and joining another pool with more and possibly bigger fish might not be a good move.
What is dissapointing is that in the one area where it might be thought that some joint activity and agreement could be reached - Trade Union activity - fares only slightly better than other areas of activity.
Arthur Bough
Thanks
I'm pleased to see that my questions have inspired a debate and thank all of you for responding.
It would seem from your comments that we are all resigned to the idea that that is the way things are and how it will always be.
Some of the comments seem to justify the divisions which as I see it only serve to divide and demoralise those people like myself, trade unionists and activists who want to make a positive change but do not want to involve themselves in the petty power struggles which occur between, rival marxist parties, for control of local trade union branches.
The problem I have is that all the disperate groups appear to follow the same doctrine, they all take a similar line on major issues and when they don't I get the distict impression they just feel they have to disagree. They even seem to operate and recruit in the same way.
It is not that I do not agree with the ideals of Marx or that I do not understand the politics and government in Britian, but rather that I feel there is another way which builds on socialist ideals which is more relevent to 21st century Britian.
So why can't Marxists just come together and, by doing so, massively increase their collective power?
The reason for me is that each individual 'socialist cell' is so hell bent on maintaining the 'purity of' and, let's face it, elitist executive bodies.
I don't want to sound too glum or indeed, wind anyone up and I really respect anyone who is willing to stand up and be counted but, having dirct experience of campaigning for and more importantly talking to members I represent I have come to realise how far removed traditional Marxism is from a modern society that is a million times removed (for workers in Britain) than that of Marx's era.
Of course the basic principals still apply, however, the perceived needs of a modern worker, the lives of modern workers have changed immensly.
One major issue that affects this is the fact that where Britian once made money from industry now we make most of our money from services. Therefore workers who were once defined as working class according to the profession they performed are now working in offices and call centres; jobs traditionally performed by the middle or lower middle classes.
They don't see themselves as part of the struggle, they are homeowners, they go on a foreign holiday every year, they work nine to five and drive home in a Mercedes!
in my opinion we need to work towards an 'opposition' that is not founded on a single idealogy, one that encompasses all the views of the people we know, we represent or people who know us.
Those, so called, middle
Those, so called, middle classes share an interest in beter pay and conditions, Good health care and pension provision with their blue collar counterparts. So the middle classes, mostly, aren't so much of a seperate class, they have become proletarianised. Consequently it should be possible to convince them of the benefits of socialist policies. The problem of disunity is a major stumbling block. This is partly due to the huge scope of socialist analysis. Many working class people have an image of socialist factions more concerned with taking cheap shots at each other over obscure points of analysis. I think we need to combine with other factions and present a united front, arguing for the things that are close to people's hearts.
When I was in India a wise man told that what everyone wants is peace of mind. Our best selling point is that only socialism can offer peace of mind through secure employment and high quality health and social security. If we can concentrate on the issues that are central to most people's lives we should be able to convince them that we share common interests and these can best be achieved through collective action. We can win people's hearts by offering peace of mind; something market forces wil never provide
I Agree
I agree with most of the comments you make here - BUT. You can take a horse to water, and so on.
In previous posts I have made many of the comments you make here. Such as:
New Thinking
which also contains links to other posts I've made in a similar vein.
I have made the point that both Marx and Engels thought that the main job for Marxists was to build the workers party. In the Communist Manifesto they wrote that the Communists do not create a party separate from the other workers parties, and they stuck to that opinion to the end, Engels repeating this mantra right up until his death in writings relating to the way Marxists should operate in the US in the workers movement. Marx wrote a thorough criticism of the German Gotha Programme, which was established when two German socialist groups came together but despite this criticism, which was basically that the Marxists had signed up to a Progamme that contained a number of errors, he commented that "one step forward of real progress is worth a dozen programmes". His argument was essentially that they should have settled on a less comprehensive Programme that was correct in what it said, than a fukller programme that contained errors. Engels in his "Anti-Duhring" spoke of the great step forward that this unity of the socialists had brought in similar terms to those you outline. In fact his purpose for writing the book was to head off the potential for a split being organised by Duhring and his followers, and to minimise its effect should it happen, because of the damage to the workers movement that such disunity would bring.
That didn't mean that either Marx or Engels thought arguing out principles was irrelevant. Far from it. Most of Marx's poltical writings are polemics against others within the socialist/anarchist camp. Nor were they averse to engaging in real politik against their opponents in these struggles within the Labour Movement, but the point was that the context was a struggle within the workers movement, within the TRade Unions, and within the workers parties. That in fact was the best way in which these disputes could be resolved, praxis, and at the same time it educated the workers in these parties through the debate. Its no wonder that these workers parties experienced massive grwoth from nothing in the late 19th century, and have been in decline throughout the 20th century, after Marx and Engels advice was dropped.
And Marx and Engels, whose theory was based on a continual analysis of the facts rather than being some kind of dogma, would have been the first to have recognised that the working class of today has undergone huge changes from that of the 19th century or even first half of the century, and that Marxists should adapt their theory and practice accordingly. But in the most important aspects the dynamic that they outlined of class struggle continues, the basic contradiction between the interests of Capital and Labour. And the increasing number of people employed in services rather than manufacturing does not mean we have all now become middle class, quite the opposite, it means jobs that were once considered middle class have been proletarianised. Ask a nurse or someone working at McDonalds, which are both service industries whether they think they are middle class. Nor does the fact that workers have possessions change this at all. I suppose the first workers that bought a bicycle thought they had made a great advance during the 19th century, and in fact there were many periods of prosperity during the 19th century where certain groups of workers did very well. It didn't change anything. They were still workers. If they stopped selling their labour--power voluntarily or by being thrown out of work, the veneer of propsperity soon disappeared. Most of the prosperity of western nations was built up in the post war period, when labour was in relatively short supply, when capitalism was entering one of its long upswings of growth, and where consequently no better conditions could have existed for workers to icnrease their share of the cake. BUt in the last 25 years a lot of that has been eroded, despite appearances. People who own houses now for the first time are likely to be still paying off the mortgages on them after they retire. The Mercedes and other possessions have often been bought with credit raised on the back of inflating house prices. In Britain and the US in particular public and personal debt levels are at record levels as governemnts and individuals haev attempted to hang on to living standrads built up during that post war boom, by mortgaging their future prosperity. Its one of the reasons people are now being told they will have to work till they drop to pay for their pensions.
That may all cause one almighty crisis depending on how that debt is liquidated. I am currently hopeful it won't as the world economy goes into another long upswing. But I am not at all of the opinion that continuing rising propsperity for workers is bad for socialism. Quite the opposite. Rising propsperity is precisely the conditions under which socialists and TRade Unionsts can demand a bigger share of the cake for workers. But in doing so we have to look at other means of securing the longer term position of the working class, of increasing its economic and social power and weight in society, just as the bourgeoisie increased its power and weight 200 years ago. To me that means that the rising wealth of the working class, already existing, for example in pension funds, should be put to work directly under the control of workers to meet the needs of workers rather than being simply controlled by the capitalists as cheap finance for their own ends. WE should demand that all pension funds be put under workers control as a basic democratic demand that workers should be able to control their own money. Workers should then begin to use this finance in other ways to further their own interests, and to increase their economic and social power. For instance, by developing their own co-operative financial institutions transforming the Co-op Bank and UNity Trust, into powerful institutions. They shopuld use this and the credit possibilities that such financial institutions provide to invest in co-operative businesses in profitable areas of the economy, and to transform the Co-op into an efficient, and good quality provider of retail services, which at the same time fulfils the role TRessell set out for Local Government of setting the standrad that private firms have to come up to for wages and conditions. We should use these resources to invest in those areas of daily life within working class communities where ordinary people can take control of other aspects of their life such as childcare, policing the community etc., and thereby reduce reliance on the bourgeois state. And having done all that we should use the increased power that this would bring to the working class for workers to use it to negotiate better wages and conditions from employers.
The problem is how do you begin to put forward ideas like that without a large workers party already existing. We have workers parties but they do not advocate policies that benefit and strengthen the working class. Moreover, however much we as Marxists might want to be able to work towards such a party and to use the existing channels, for example, the Labour Party those that control these parties are hostile to Marxist ideas, they have expelled Marxists from within their midst. My own feeling is that Marxists have largely brought that on themselves after Lenin because they have been more interested in building their own revolutoinary organisation than building the workers party. The article in relation to the General Strike and the British Communist Parties attitude to the Labour Party are examples of that. Lenin himself, spoke of the Communists supporting the labour Party like a rope supports a hanged man, and with the Bolsheviks imprisoning and shooting socialists in the Soviet Union during the Civil war, undertaken with some relish by Stalin, who Lenin called at the time his "Magnificent Georgian" its no little wonder that these reformist socialists saw the Communists as dangerous people they needed to keep away from, and undermine.
The starting point is to reject all those Leninist ideas about building the revolutionary party separate from the workers party, and instead for Marxists to return to Marx's dictumn about the main task being to build the workers party. It means that different groups continue to engage in open debate of ideas, but seek to find some basis of agreement around which common activity can take place. Perhaps, establishing some minimum programme for a workers party, as Engels put in relation to a US Workers Party, "On however, minimal a platform" would be a start. But the Marxist organisations at the moment are incredibly small, and I doubt they would attract many new recruits even were they to joint together on that basis. It seem to me that the only option in the circumstances, at least in Britain, is for Marxists to join the Labour Party. They would under present circumstances have to join as individuals, and argue as individuals keeping their organisation udnerground, until a more favourable climate exists, but Marxists have operated in far more intolerable conditions in the past, where there organisations were illegal, where you faced not just being thrown out of a party but thrown in gaol or shot.
Arthur Bough
More stuff on this website
There's a section on this site about left unity.
Workers' Liberty published a special issue of our magazine on this issue in January 1999.
We can learn from practical experiences of trying to build left unity - for example, the Socialist Alliance. We have over 120 articles in this section. Readers will notice that workers' Liberty opposed the close-down of the SA. It was the SWP and its satellites who ended this left unity initiative, and the Socialist Party which had damaged it previously by walking out.
The two best attempts at uniting socialists in Britain at the moment are the Scottish Socialist Party and the Socialist Green Unity Coalition. The AWL is involved in both. We are trying to get the SGUC to make progress in uniting the left in between elections.
In the recent council elections, AWL members stood as Socialist Unity candidates in Hackney Central, in a campaign which involved many socialists outside the AWL, and which received offical endorsement from RMT.
And I particularly like this article about left unity.
Never mind the SWP...
...but it really does seem to me -- from across the pond, admittedly -- that the AWL, the CPGB (Weekly Worker) and the Revolutionary Democratic Group, at least, all ought to be able to function in the same organization. (Well, at least if the CPGB leaves Respect, which it might -- the WW has featured plenty of critiques of Galloway and the SWP compromising with Islamists.)
Interestingly...
...if you study the history of Russian Social Democracy (which is what the Marxist movement was called at that time) before 1917, there was almost the same amount of infighting and factionalism as we see in the British left nowadays. However when the situation in the country changed, the great mass of workers supported the party with the "correct" line (mainly, opposition to the war) who were soon in a position to take power. The Sandinistas in Nicaragua were also a tiny group before the 1979 revolution there.
I'm not saying that Britain is in a comparable situation to pre-revolutionary Russia, but sometimes the important thing is to have the right idea in the right place at the right time, and if you do then sometimes your influence can spread very far very quickly. Joint work is good, but not if it means you have to abandon key principles.
Factional Debate and Sects
There is a big difference between heated factional debate within the context of the workers movement, and sect building. As I said above Marx and Engels were not averse to engaging in sharp debate with opponents because they were clear on the importance of having clarity of ideas. But despite that they still considered building the real workers movment the priority as witnessed by Marx's position in relation to the Gotha Programme, Engels motivation for writing Anti-Duhring, and his numerous writings in relation to building a Workers Party in the US.
As far as the Bolsheviks are concerned there is a lot of mysticism and romanticism. From the time of "What is to be Done" its clear lenin intended building a tight Party of people that agreed with him. Despite the split in the RSDLP, however, the Bolsheviks and mensheviks continued to work together - actually to a far greater degree than today those who all claim to follow in the Bolshevik tradition are capable of doing. There was also a great deal of toing and froing between the two organisations. And despite what Lenin intended the Bolsheviks to be like the reality is that there was little difference between the Bolsheviks and mensheviks at the outbreak of the war, or even the outbreak of the revolution despite Lenin going into rages about that fact from his exile. When Stalin returned the Bolsheviks took a sharp turn to the right.
Its just not tenable to posit the idea that workers and peasants suddenly came over to the Bolsheviks because the Bolsheviks had the right ideas. From the time Lenin got his way over the April Thesis by threeatening to split the Bolsheviks their line had been pretty consistent, but there was no large comng over to the Bolsheviks, in fact the July Days saw the exact opposite. Had the Bolsheviks suddenly been overwhelmed by a mass of class conscious workers recognising the correctness of heir ideas they would have won an overwhelming majority in the Constituent Assembly, but they didn't. The reason the Bolsheviks won support is the same reason that the extreme wing of any revolution tends to win support it sits on the top of the wave. The workers and peasants wanted some pretty basic things like the end of the war, and some prospect of food. They knew they couldn't go on in the old way, and supported those that appeared to offer the best chance of bringing the old way to an end. The provisional Government had failed to bring that about, and those associated with it were tainted. In the end the Bolsheviks through better organisation, and probably some manipulation of what were pretty undemocratic organisations as Trotsky describes them - the Soviets - was able to establish control over an alternative centre of power from which to launch an attack onthe State power i.e. to carry through a political revolution that in many ways at its first stage was more similar to a coup d'etat.
The extent to which this was not based on any clear understanding of its ideas or worked out class consciousness amongst the workers and peasants is demonstrated by the fact that the workers failed to take control of the factories and farms after the first flush of the revolution which was about dispossessing the owners. Rather these former owners are allowed to come back and run the factories, just as state officials are allowed to run the state apparatus.
The fact that the Sandinistas were able to pull off a similar trick, or even the mullahs in Iran in 1979 merely proves that in such conditions where the masses are rising up against the old order, a well organised elitist group can take advantage of the situation and put itself at the head of the movement without the masses necessarily having any real udnerstanding of what that group stands for. It might be an effective way of carrying through a poltical revolution, but it is absolutely no basis for the construction of socialism. That requires a fully class conscious working class capable not just of some short lived heroic action, but of a long slog, a commitment and desire to take control of society itself, and not through the agency of some Party or elite. That kind of class consciousness does not arise spontaneously over a few weeks or months it has to be built over many years. And a small Leninist sect whose concern is to merely build its own organisation rather than to commit itself to the building of the Workers party is no basis for that kind of work.
Arthur Bough
But,
in neither Russia nor Nicaragua did things work out to well so did the organisations that workers moved to in these extreme times ACTUALLY have the correct ideas or just the ones that were more appealing under the extreme conditions rather like the Nazis had ideas that were appealling to large numbers under extreme conditions, but which few here would agree were the right ideas?
Arthur Bough
Arthur
I agree with you to some extent over the nature of the Bolshevik assumption of power. This also goes some way to explain the slide into Stalinism. However the Russian working class had been politically educated by the 1905 revolution and as we saw in France in 1968, political consciousness can spread like wildfire in the right conditions.
But I wasn't saying that the workers flocked to the Bolsheviks because they agreed with Lenin's ideas about party organisation or tha nature of capitalism in Russia. They did so because the Bolsheviks had the right tactical ideas concerning the war and land rights. But those tactics flowed directly out of the Bolsheviks' underlying politics.
I think my underlying point was probably to defend the AWL's insistence on political clarity and proper debate even though that can sometimes come across as sectarian pernickitiness.
Class Consciousness amd the Bolsheviks
I've just got back from Spain yesterday, and after driving for 24 hours I'm still catching up on the sleep, so I'll keep this short and respond fuller later.
1. I have set out in other posts that there is a big difference between "class consciousness", and what I have called "revolutionary consciousness". The latter I have described as being where a class or a mass has reached a point where it can no longer tolerate the existing conditions. The reasons for this will always be located within various grievances. There main reason for revolt is to address those grievances. Yes as in Russia those grievances may be long standing, and ideas about how to address them may have been developed in previous struggles, but the fact is the scope of their consciousness is limited to dealing with those problems, they will support whoever appears to be able to provide the solution. That was clear in 1917. The Bolsheviks had very little support the vast majority of peasants suported the SR's, the vast majority of workers the Mensheviks. It was only when those parties failed to address the problems of the peasants and workers i.e. land reform, ending the war, and dealing with issues such as the 8 hour day, that the mass swung behind the Bolsheviks. But those limited issues did not constitute a fully worked out class consciousness, did not require those workers and peasants to have a clear vision of the society they had to create - particulalry that they had to create it and run it rather than leave that up to the Bolsheviks or someone else to do for them. MY point is that socialism is only possible when the vast majority of the working class does understand precisely that. Leninism says that can't happen prior to the revolution.
2. Yes in revolutionary situations people's ideas and cosnciouness change very, very rapidly, but it remains at the level of this revolutionary consciousness and does not transcend it to become true socialist class consciousness, only on the basis of long slow persistent years of education, and strengthening of the workers social position can that develop. Leninists have tended to see such necessary work as "routinism".
3. The Bolsheviks tactical ideas etc. I have just finsihed re-reading "The History of the Russian Revolution" while I was away. Every Trotskyist should read it, and read it critically rather than with rose tinted spectacles. The fact is that the idea of the Bolsheviks as some hard, disciplined, revolutionary organisation that had developed through Leninist organisational practices into a sharp ideologically pure cutting edge is a fantasy. The only Bolshevik for whom that could be said was Lenin himself. The rest were hopelessly muddled. There was no practical ideological or tactical differences between the Bolsheviks or Mensheviks or SR's in any of the decisive issues of the day prior to Lenin's return. And even after Lenin's return that situation continued until Lenin eventually bludgeoned the Party into accepting his April Thesis, but even then right up to the day of the insurrection the leading Bolsheviks such as Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Stalin opposed that orientation, opposed the idea of the insurrection and refused to go along with it in the case of Zinoviev and Kamenev leading to Lenin calling for them to be expelled - which was never actually implemented. The people who gave the majority to Lenin were in fact not the "old Bolsheviks", the people who precisely were the ones that had gone through years of Bolshevik ideological training, who had been kept away from the swamp, but were the thousands of raw workers that came into the party during the revolutionary period. Ironically, TRotskyists point to precisely the same kind of thing for explaining Stalin's control of the Party with the Lenin Levy.
So if that is the case what exactly was the benefit of Lenin's insistence on splitting the workers movement of building this ideologically pure Party? None at all. In fact it was exactly the opposite, it meant that the arguments Lenin had to have within the Bolshevik Party could have been had during all that time within the context of a wider workers' party, could much earlier have won to his aid those like Trotsky or Martov and their supporters who were much closer to Lenin on these important issues than the leading Bolsheviks, but who stood apart from the Bolsheviks. Moreover, as Trotsky points out much of the ideological degeneration of the Bolsheviks arose not as a result of the growth of the bureuacracy, but were in fact just the logical extension of the muddled thinking exhibited by these leading Bolsheviks back in 1917 on fundamental class issues. It is possible that without the Bolshevik New Model Army the insurrection may not have been carried out so efficiently, but as Trotsky points out the only reason that the Bolsheviks needed to carry out that insurrection was because they wanted to pre-empt the Second Congress of Soviets in taking that decision, to present it with a fait-accompli. Had a combined workers party existed all along then that would not have been necessary the same processes that led the Bolsheviks to become a majority in the Soviets would have led to their ideas dominating the workers party as a whole, the control of the Soviets would have resided with that workers party with the support of the Left SR's. In reality the insurrection was undertaken by forces that still gave their support to the Mensheviks and Left SR's as well as the Bolsheviks, technically under the direction of the Soviet MRC, but directed by the Bolsheviks Military Committee. Elsewhere after the Congress did decide to take the power the insurrection was organised by the Soviets.
Anyway, a lot to do, will come back later.
Arthur Bough