Debate and discussion: Bolshevik, not menshevik!
Although Eric Lee’s discussion article on Menshevism (printed on page 8 of Solidarity 3/66 but due to a human/machine error not attributed to him), raised some important points of which revolutionary socialists should take note, its basic line was factually wrong and politically disorienting.
First, Eric blames the Bolsheviks for the rise of Stalinism, citing repression carried out by the Soviet government soon after October 1917. What he fails to examine is the difference between authoritarian measures — many of which were indisputably excessive, wrong-headed and even in some cases criminally stupid — carried out by a workers’ revolution fighting almost literally the entire world for its survival, and totalitarian violence against the working class wielded by a bureaucracy freed from any relationship to the labour movement. Now, let me repeat this for the sake of clarity: I do not defend everything the Bolsheviks did in their struggle for survival. The banning of pro-soviet opposition parties such as the Menshevik Internationalists of Martov, for instance, was clearly a very serious mistake indeed.
Still less would I defend the Soviet Union of the early 1920s as an ideal blueprint for a workers’ state, as, it is true, the Bolshevik leaders came to do. The problem with Eric’s analysis is that, in locating the origins of Stalinism in the Bolsheviks’ desperate struggle to save the revolution, he passes over and blurs changes in the 1920s which in fact represented a qualitative break. To take one example from his article, it is simply not true that “the Gulag was launched under Lenin and Trotsky”. There is a mountain of historical analysis to suggest that the “labour camps” that existed in the early years of the revolution were tiny in number, did not represent a significant element of the economy, and provided their inmates with political freedoms which most prisoners do not enjoy in Britain today — all in stark contrast to Stalin’s gulags. Similarly, democracy in the Bolshevik party did not “come to an end” with the banning of factions in 1921, but with the political purges which heralded the rise of Stalin.
Again, this is not to argue that these measures were necessarily justified — simply that they qualitatively different from what came later. The Bolsheviks’ mistakes could have been corrected, whereas from the late 1920s, a new ruling class was in the saddle and a new revolution was necessary.
Second, although I am not an expert on this issue, it seems to me that Eric does Trotsky a disservice by comparing him to the Mensheviks of the 1930s. Although it is true that Mensheviks developed a critical analysis of the USSR, the party as a whole tended towards softness on Stalin on the grounds that sharp attacks on what they regarded as a genuine workers’ revolution could only lead to its overthrow by a right-wing regime. They favoured a “softly, softly” approach to eventually facilitate the replacement of the USSR by a bourgeois democracy, in contrast to Trotsky’s increasingly clear calls for a new workers’ revolution.
At the same time, more importantly, they were part of the reformist Second International which had overseen the defeat of the post-war revolutionary upsurge and they continued this tradition in the 1930s by supporting the Popular Fronts. Perhaps unsurprisingly, when the Mensheviks split after 1940, a minority became pro-Stalinists while the majority became Cold Warriors advocating US military intervention against the USSR. (Dallin, whom Eric cites as being close to Trotsky, was aligned with this majority.)
While the formal political analysis of some Mensheviks may have been similar to Trotskyism, therefore, their political stance was totally different. Whether pro- or anti-USSR, their basic approach was to look for “progressive” phenomena — bourgeois, Stalinist or whatever — to tag onto, in contrast to the Trotskyists’ insistence on working-class independence and struggle as the bottom line of socialist politics. In short, we were revolutionaries and they weren’t.
Third, I think Eric fundamentally misunderstands what the debate between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in October 1917 was about. The Bolsheviks did not argue, never argued and could not with their politics have argued that the creation of a socialist society was possible in backwards Russia. What they did argue was the Russian working class could, in alliance with the peasantry and other oppressed and exploited groups, take power as the advance guard of a revolution sweeping across Europe — a revolution which would ultimately make Russia a relatively unimportant backwater of an expanding socialist world. Was this perspective really mistaken? There were revolutions across Europe in 1917–23, but they failed precisely because the workers who made them were led by “socialists” who lacked the Bolsheviks’ revolutionary politics, ie, who were Mensheviks!
What the Mensheviks were disputing was not whether socialism could be built in Russia — everyone agreed that this was impossible — but whether the workers’ movement should take power in Russia as the prelude to international revolution. The isolation of the revolution in a backward country did lead to unexpected consequences in the form of Stalinism, but this was due to the dominance of Menshevik politics outside Russia, not Bolshevik politics inside it. Eric’s attempt to compare the Bolsheviks to Stalinist parties seizing power in China, Cuba, Vietnam, etc, is thus not only unworthy of him, but more than a little bit silly.
Last, what does all this imply for the debate about Iraq?
Of course, the AWL agrees that a socialist revolution is not immediately on the cards; of course we want the most democratic bourgeois regime possible to provide breathing space for the working-class movement to grow and develop. But does this mean that Iraqi socialists should support the occupation and the Iraqi bourgeoisie as a “progressive” lesser evil to the fascistic “resistance”? No, clearly not. The life chances of any sort of democracy in Iraq depend on the extent to which the working class becomes an independent factor in events. Genuine supporters of democracy in Iraq are Bolsheviks, not Mensheviks.
Sacha Ismail
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Russian Social Democracy
Sasha says:
… the difference between authoritarian measures — many of which were indisputably excessive, wrong-headed and even in some cases criminally stupid — carried out by a workers’ revolution fighting almost literally the entire world for its survival, and totalitarian violence against the working class wielded by a bureaucracy freed from any relationship to the labour movement.
Well this is a distinction without a difference. Were you a worker gaoled or murdered for striking, what would it matter to you what justifications the leadership make? Where was that society Lenin mused about in State and Revolution? Lenin had that book published in Germany in 1918 to try to win support for the Bolsheviks. There was no attempt to translate its message into reality in the Russian cities. The failure to deliver a Commune society in Russia was not just authoritarianism or bureaucratism. It was a consequence of the elite party culture of the Bolsheviks. The leadership became almost overnight a state party, not a workers party.
In the first nine months of 1920, 85,642 people were involved in strikes in the Petrograd province. According to one set of figures, there were only 109,100 workers there at the time! The Bolshevik response? Lenin regarded the workers as declassed, not real workers. Of course, real workers would have supported the Bolsheviks. The phrase ‘working class’ became a political slogan unrelated to the wishes of the men and women in the shops and factories. No one in the party leadership cared what the real working class were thinking. They just had to report to work – and no striking! Or else!
The Bolshevik struggle for survival was not just a struggle against the bourgeoisie. It was also a struggle against the Russian working class who, by spring 1918, did not want them in power. I suggest that the slip to Stalinism can be seen in this period, the time between the end of the civil war and the final ascendancy of Stalin. By 1926 when he faced down Bordiga, Stalin was fully in control of Party, state and Comintern.
Sasha says:
Still less would I defend the Soviet Union of the early 1920s as an ideal blueprint for a workers’ state, as, it is true, the Bolshevik leaders came to do.
But the USSR of the early ‘20s is not a workers state in any sense of the term. A non-elected government said it was ruling in the workers’ interests. Does that make the state a workers’ state? Bismarck missed a trick. I think we can see that the Russian Bolsheviks were in the great tradition of Kautsky and German Social Democracy in their substitutionist politics. Indeed, one thing Lenin never got to grips with is why the German Social Democrats failed in August 1914 (Rosa had some idea). Lenin’s failure to make sense of what had happened can be seen in his attack on Kautsky, the renegade. Lenin saw the failure of individuals, not a failure in the whole politics of Social Democracy.
I don't want to minimise the great revolution itself. But the very notion of a workers revolution is undermined by the party-state that emerged.
Sasha says:
The problem with Eric’s analysis is that, in locating the origins of Stalinism in the Bolsheviks’ desperate struggle to save the revolution, he passes over and blurs changes in the 1920s which in fact represented a qualitative break. To take one example from his article, it is simply not true that “the Gulag was launched under Lenin and Trotsky”. There is a mountain of historical analysis to suggest that the “labour camps” that existed in the early years of the revolution were tiny in number ...
So, Eric’s point is true after all. ‘Tiny in number’ – this is like the old Stalinist apologists' tricks. Can we not give up the idea, comrade Sacha, that it is right to use state power against socialist dissidents and striking workers? That is Stalinism. What Stalin did was different in degree, not in kind. The Cheka under the monster Dzierzynski was set loose on workers by Lenin. The Checka's brutality is beyond belief.
Sasha says:
Similarly, democracy in the Bolshevik party did not “come to an end” with the banning of factions in 1921, but with the political purges which heralded the rise of Stalin.
In 1921 Lenin told the Workers Opposition (Kollontai, Shlyapnikov and others) that the Soviet Government’s response to them might be the gun (CW 32: 206).
Ian Hebbes writes that by 1924: “the repression growing inside the Party and the ‘workers’ state’ apparatus drove Miasnikov and the Workers Group to abandon work inside these organisms - it was practically impossible.” Any survey of the literature shows that there was significant political repression after 1921. No fractions meant no fractions. That is what democracy coming to an end means – and, of course, oppositionists were no longer being accredited to party congresses and were being expelled en mass from the party.
Hebbes continues: “An account in Pravda in 1923 refers to the expulsion of 13 supporters of the Workers’ Truth from the RCP(B), 7 of whom were members of the collective. And later that year the Menshevik Socialist Herald, an émigré paper produced in Berlin speaks of 400 members of Workers’ Truth purged in a mass nation-wide expulsion of left communist elements.”
Wasn’t this, together with the banning of all other socialist parties, a key step in establishing the Stalinist state? We know the party leadership took these steps precisely because they wanted to introduce the NEP in the teeth of the Opposition. So ban the opposition. I cannot see a workers’ state in action here. I see a state claiming to act for the workers best interests. And that’s something I am very familiar with.
Sasha says:
The Bolsheviks’ mistakes could have been corrected
By whom? How? The oppositions were locked out of all state and party institutions. Do you mean the Party leadership could have changed their minds? Well, that could have happened in 1935, too. The phrase ‘could have been corrected’ does not distinguish 1924 from 1935.
Sasha says:
… in contrast to the Trotskyists’ insistence on working-class independence and struggle as the bottom line of socialist politics. In short, we were revolutionaries and they weren’t.
If only that had been the case! But who argued for the militarization of labour, for the Kronstadters to be shot like partridges? Trotsky played a full part in setting up the state apparatus that Stalin took over. In the key years of the early ‘20s, Trotsky was one of the Bolshevik leaders who crushed working class independence. How can you be independent of your own state? How can you be right against the Party? That haunting and inhuman question – how many times was it asked at the show trials?
Sasha says:
The Bolsheviks did not argue, never argued and could not with their politics have argued that the creation of a socialist society was possible in backwards Russia. What they did argue was the Russian working class could, in alliance with the peasantry and other oppressed and exploited groups, take power as the advance guard of a revolution sweeping across Europe — a revolution which would ultimately make Russia a relatively unimportant backwater of an expanding socialist world. Was this perspective really mistaken?
Everything depended on the German revolution. Why did the Russian Bolsheviks not plan their revolution with the Germans? Did they even consult them? We know the Russian leadership simply assumed that the German workers would rise to greet the Red Army. In East Prussia! Weren’t they seriously deluded? And inexcusably so, as the Germans, Kautsky, Luxemburg and Ruhle had told them Germany was not ready. In fact, the forced German revolution was a disaster as the German left were forced to rise prematurely to save Russia. The left were slaughtered and the German bourgeoisie looked around for thugs to protect them.
Sasha says:
There were revolutions across Europe in 1917–23, but they failed precisely because the workers who made them were led by “socialists” who lacked the Bolsheviks’ revolutionary politics, ie, who were Mensheviks!
No, no. Lenin being in the Bolshevik group is the reason they made the October revolution. Without Lenin, there was no prospect at all that Kamenev, Zinoviev, Stalin and company would have overthrown Kerensky’s government. That is, I cannot see that there was any doctrine or organisational feature of bolshevism itself that won the revolution. Look at the Russian Bolsheviks in March 1917 and see what I mean. Without Lenin, they were not going to storm heaven.
And don’t even think of What is to be done? We know from many sources that the Bolsheviks in 1917 were not the party of What is to be done?
Lenin was an ardent revolutionary and was the leader of an organisation that, by 1917, had deep roots in the working class – but most importantly for the revolution, the armed forces. As we know, Trotsky and his allies lead the revolution itself. They weren’t Bolsheviks, were they?
In my dotage, I’ve come to appreciate these words of Otto Ruhle, who was in Russia in 1921 when he wrote:
Centralism is the organisational principle of the bourgeois-capitalist age. With it the bourgeois state and the capitalist economy can be built up. Not however the proletarian state and the socialist economy. They demand the council system. For the KAPD - contrary to Moscow - the revolution is no party matter, the party no authoritarian organisation from the top down, the leader no military chief, the masses no army condemned to blind obedience, the dictatorship no despotism of a ruling clique; communism no springboard for the rise of a new Soviet bourgeoisie. For the KAPD the revolution is the business of the whole proletarian class within which the communist party forms only the most mature and determined vanguard.
$acha I$mail = Pro-Zionist & Islamophobe
Sacha Ismail is quite clearly an Islamophobe and pro-Zionist.
You can not be serious
I suspect that comment is sarcastic. If so, then please note that (a) sarcasm does not work in writing (b) it's not funny.
On the outside chance that it was actually meant seriously, I have a couple of questions. Firstly, how do you draw this "conclusion" from an article that doesn't mention Israel, Zionism, Islam or Muslims? Secondly, could you explain your use of dollar signs in your "spelling" of Sacha's name.