I have posted a new review of a biography – hagiography? – by Victor Serge of Leon Trotsky which I have entitled The Trotskyist School of Falsification. Also at the end of this blog is a lengthy article by Ante Ciliga entitled “A Talk with Lenin in Stalin’s Prison” which is on the various oppositional Bolshevik groups he came across in Russian prison in the early 1930s.
I have posted a new review of a biography – hagiography? – by Victor Serge of Leon Trotsky which I have entitled The Trotskyist School of Falsification. Also at the end of this blog is a lengthy article by Ante Ciliga entitled “A Talk with Lenin in Stalin’s Prison” which is on the various oppositional Bolshevik groups he came across in Russian prison in the early 1930s. This article is a good supplement to my review, as it discusses both the politics of the Trotskyists (amongst others) and the root causes for the obvious failure of the revolution.
First, sad news – Terry Jones has died. I’m a Monty Python fan but also appreciated his writing (fiction as well as his political pieces in the Guardian) and TV documentaries on medieval life and the so-called barbarians. I remember seeing him on Breakfast TV (TV-AM?) in the late 1980s and he was asked why he had a watch on his belt and he answered “as an anarchist, I don’t like to be tied down to anything including time” (well, perhaps not the exact words but it was a long time ago!). I don’t know if he was being flippant or not, but as The Holy Grail showed someone in Monty Python knew what anarcho-syndicalism was.
Second, the Kate Sharpley Library has published a positive review of Our Masters Are Helpless: The Essays of George Barrett (contents here) by Barry Pateman. If you have not done so yet, please buy a copy – preferably from Freedom Press or another anarchist bookseller. He was an excellent writer and he presents anarchism as a common-sense theory, which it fundamentally is.
Third, the Johnson regime is as cringe-worthy as I feared. It, as would be expected, is all over the place and, as shown last year, seeking to escape even the most limited scrutiny aided by the 80 majority Boris Bimbos, who are nodding through the most significant transformation in British life without a thought. It shows how farcical things are, when more media space is given to Big Ben bonging (or not) on the 31st January than noting that the government is refusing to publish an impact analysis of Johnson’s “new” deal. Given that it is a worse version of May’s (which Johnson voted against twice after leaving the government in protest at it – well, the alleged reason for it is clear that it was purely for career purposes), we can understand why. That the new MPs seem happy to vote for something completely ignorant of its impact, well, what can you say – what role do they have? Other than provide a fig-leaf for an elected dictatorship?
We will see whether the new MPs representing ex-Labour seats actually represent anyone other than themselves and their career when it comes to the planned council cuts which repeats the “decade of austerity [which also] has disproportionately targeted deprived areas of the north and Midlands.” Who knows, this may not come to pass as how best to gather votes than show you get rewarded if you vote Tory and punished if you do not? However, utilising such blatant corruption may produce short-term benefits but – like serial lying (latest on the growing life expectancy class gap) – will undermine the fabric of the system. Yet more evidence that neo-liberalism has long been in decline and the right have no ideas.
Ah, but the voters voted for Johnson’s “oven ready” (i.e., half-baked) deal. But Parliament voted down the Lords defeat of the government which put back in the commitment to protect unaccompanied child refugees. This was in the Withdrawal Agreement at the time of the election. Johnson changed it after people had, allegedly, voted for his “deal” and so the Lords have amended the bill to be as it was – in this respect – the day the “sovereign people” cast their ballot. That Johnson changed it immediately afterward shows real contempt for the voters – that and the serial lying.
Talking of the Lords, one news presenter actually said with a straight face that moving the Lords to York was being considered in order to connect the voters with politics. He seems to have forgotten that the Lords is unelected. In the past, many a Brexiter liked to bemoan the “unelected bureaucrats” on Brussels while supporting the Lords – when not actually being part of the Lords – and, we should not forget, how the current “People’s” government has two unelected peers in it (one of whom was rejected by the electorate, the other who stood down to spend more time with her family). Yet the calls from “traditionalists” to abolish the Lords is due to it being full of “remoaners” have increased. Yes, it should be abolished (along with the monarchy and the other legacies of feudalism that remain) but I feel their newfound love of democracy was driven by how the majority of the unelected voted rather any principle.
Then we have the taking credit for Tory “achievements” over the past ten years (if they can be called that) while also proclaiming itself a “new” government, with a “new” perspective and so cannot be judged by the past (Tory!) government (it worked for Sarkozy, at least for a while – but then the French take to the streets rather than just grumble…). Slippery does not do this justice but we can expect more of it – in between the on-going Brexit saga. For the election campaign of lies was rooted in a single great one, namely that Johnson would “get Brexit done.” Given that the easy part is now finished, discussions over the future trading agreements can start – and these will not be done to any sensible degree by the end of the year due to the complexities involved.
I’m not sure whether the bluster from the Johnson minions is down to lying or ignorance. I can quite believe that Johnson, with his usual lack of concern over details, may not have read or understood his own “deal” (in spite of it being near identical to May’s which he voted against twice, with the addition he himself explicitly said no British PM would accept). The current Chancellor summarised the issues well back in 2016 (this article remains on his website still!):
“The world’s largest economic bloc, it gives every business in Britain access to 500 million customers with no barriers, no tariffs and no local legislation to worry about […] nearly half of our exports go to other EU nations, exports that are linked to three million jobs here in the UK. And as an EU member we also have preferential access to more than 50 other international markets […] Unless the exporting country submits to the importing country’s rules and local regulator, access will be denied. […] the negotiations themselves would be extremely lopsided, giving the upper hand to our rivals. Forty-four per cent of our exports go the EU, but only eight per cent of the rest of the EU’s exports come to the UK. One of the advantages of EU membership is that we get to negotiate wider and deeper trade deals from a position of strength. If we leave, the boot will be on the other foot – and that will put Britain at a serious disadvantage. […] a decade of stagnation and doubt […] Do businesses want the benefits and security of continued access to the Single Market, or the instability and uncertainty of a lost decade?”
Of course, he could have been lying back them (after all, he writes of “Labour’s record-breaking recession” when referring to the global crisis which originated in the USA) – for remain was expected to win, so career-wise it would have made sense. Now, of course, career prospects require being an enthusiastic Johnsonite and so he is now talking of diverging from the rules and regulations required to sell goods in the UK’s biggest export market. Makes sense for him, less so for the economy – so Is "f*** business" now government policy?
As a socialist, I want capitalism to end. However, precisely because I’m a libertarian socialist I think this can only be done in a positive way by the working class itself – it will not come about as some automatic consequence of a crisis or crash nor by government stupidity. We can work within the crisis to help mitigate the suffering and build an alternative but socialism needs to be wanted, not imposed by external forces (those Marxists who think their socialism is “scientific” because of the forthcoming – and still along awaited – collapse of capitalism are wrong). In short, I am not of the “the worse, the better” school – for the reasons Rocker indicated so I have little enthusiasm at the idea of the far-right of the Tory party harming capitalism due to their ideological blindness. Moreover, the negative impact of Brexit will be slow and steady, a continuation of the downward grind that has been in place since the Tories imposed austerity back in 2010. I doubt there will be a specific moment of decline – although this does not preclude another one of capital’s regular crises occurring – and I do not doubt we will see people proclaim that entering the transition period will mean that the “doomsayers” were wrong…
All of which confirms my socialism, btw. Given all the bureaucracy capitalism generates, any form of libertarian socialism (whether mutualism, collectivism or communism) would free up a lot of time and resources for better things – like cutting the working day, so we can get on with enjoying ourselves (as Kropotkin indicated back in 1913, in Part II of Modern Science and Anarchy).
Talking of “doomsayers,” I note that US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin replied to Greta Thunberg’s calls to decarbonise the economy as follows:
“After she goes and studies growth and economics in college she can come back and explain that to us.”
This from the guy who proclaimed Trump’s tax-cuts would “pay for themselves”! Such arrogance is to be expected – anyone coming across the propertarians will recognise that refrain – although it ignores the many, many problems with bourgeois economics: one of which is the ignoring or dismissal of ecological issues – so indoctrination in economics allows you to forget that continuous growth within a finite area will not go. So it is not surprising that Thunberg has been calling for politicians to listen to the science for more than a year and they have not done anything about it (beyond the usual hypocrisy) – other than find excuses while the planet literally burns. As Greta says:
“My gap year ends in August, but it doesn’t take a college degree in economics to realise that our remaining 1,5° carbon budget and ongoing fossil fuel subsidies and investments don’t add up. 1/3”
I remember once reading a journalist (was it in the Guardian or The Evening Boris?) saying that if you have to strike then you had lost the argument. What nonsense – you can win the argument, have the facts completely on your side, and management can and will ignore you. You need to be able to turn words into action and then those in power will have to take your opinions into account. There is no other way – and so the school strikes need to continue and with the aim of becoming a mass strike. Yes, I know, easier said than done…
With that out of the way, I now return to the theme of this blog.
The Serge review raises many of the problems facing the revolutionary socialist movement, namely honesty in polemics and historical writing. It shows one of the key problems with Leninism, namely that while the Stalinists spread deliberate falsehoods, the Trotskyists usually lie by omission. Just to be clear, Trotskyists do spread falsehoods (often through ignorance, sometimes deliberately) as can be seen by almost any one of their polemics against anarchism. As Emma Goldman shows, this has been a problem for a long time:
“The average Communist, whether of the Trotsky or Stalin brand, knows about as much of Anarchist literature and its authors as, let us say, the average Catholic knows about Voltaire or Thomas Paine. The very suggestion that one should know what one’s opponents stand for before calling them names would be put down as heresy by the Communist hierarchy. I do not think, therefore, that John G. Wright deliberately lies about Alexander Berkman. Rather do I think that he is densely ignorant.” (Trotsky Protests Too Much)
Worse, the same can be said of their own tradition and its history. When it comes to this, the lies are usually by omission. Thus we see the suggestion that the Left Opposition favoured “workers’ democracy” – often backed by quotes – but the awkward fact that it had elsewhere defined this as democracy only within the party is not mentioned. Its defence of party dictatorship is omitted, although it obviously makes calls for “workers’ democracy” meaningless.
To be fair, the writer may not be aware of this and may be simply repeating others. However, it is often deliberate (this is the case with Serge in this work for he knows the context, being a participant who acknowledged it elsewhere at times). Take this Trotskyist review entitled “Bolsheviks in Power – Professor Alexander Rabinowitch’s important study of the first year of soviet power”. I agree that it is an important study by an important historian (his books on the Bolshevik Party in 1917 shows the reality of the party in stark contrast to the Stalinist – and Trotskyist! – myths, as explored in section H.5.12 of An Anarchist FAQ). It is important because it shows how the Bolshevik party soon lost popular support and retorted to gerrymandering and packing soviets to secure its position, on both the local (Petrograd) and national level (the Fifth All-Russian Congress). Our Trotskyist reviewers fail to mention this and the reader is subjected to this:
“It is somewhat ironic that Rabinowitch concludes Part Three with a brief chapter on ‘The Suicide of the Left SR’s.’ In it he reviews the assassination on July 6 of the German ambassador, Count Mirbach, ordered by the Central Committee of the Left SRs in hopes of provoking a German military attack. This assassination was seen by the Bolshevik Party as a ‘Left SR uprising,’ which Rabinowitch calls into question due to the obvious lack of preparation by other Left SRs, especially in Petrograd. Here Rabinowitch is far more forgiving of Spiridonova and other Left SRs than he ever is with either Lenin or Trotsky. Inexplicably so.”
Could it be because – as I recount in my review – Rabinowitch had showed how the Bolsheviks had packed the Fifth Congress and denied the Left SRs of their rightful majority? How the Bolsheviks had packed the Petrograd Soviet with “delegates” from their controlled organisations, so making the outcome of direct workplace elections irrelevant? That this was undoubtedly driven by a rising-tide of worker discontent with the new regime which produced a rank-and-file movement that the new regime repressed? These, amongst other things, could explain why Rabinowitch is “far more forgiving” of the Left SRs but our reviewers omit to mention these developments.
Still, the reviewers suggest that “when Rabinowitch focuses on the shifting structural relations between myriad party and soviet organizations, for instance, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of detail.” Perhaps the “amount of detail” Rabinowitch presents on the systematic undermining of Soviet democracy by the Bolsheviks got the better of them but they spend some time (unconvincingly) defending Trotsky over the “Shchastny Affair” and echoing “Rabinowitch [when he] pays considerable attention to the elections to the Constituent Assembly.” You would think socialists would be more interested in the elections to proletarian organisations, particularly if they were genuinely interested in “the political process which led, relatively rapidly, to the breakdown of the Soviet democracy which the Bolsheviks had championed”. Surely, as socialists, they would have noticed the importance of the facts related to soviet elections and working-class discontent rather than these?
Now, if you are genuinely interested in a socialism based on working class people having a meaningful say over their own lives and society as a whole, then what Rabinowitch documents is important. It cannot be omitted without producing a radically false account of developments but it was – so a classic example of falsification by omission. I do get the impression that most reviews by Trotskyists are designed not to get the membership to read the work in question but rather to bolster the faith of the readership, who now have no need to read this work for they have a summary which confirms their assumptions.
So we should not be surprised, for, like Serge’s book, this review is not about socialism but rather defending the Bolshevik Myth, as shown by this comment:
“an all-Bolshevik Sovnarkom was eventually formed. The relationship of this body to the Central Executive Committee (CEC) remained fluid and contentious.”
As readers of Lenin’s State and Revolution they would know that an executive above an executive above the Soviet Congress was not promised in that work. Rather, the soviets were to exercise both legislative and executive functions (as per the Paris Commune and previously urged by Proudhon) and so Bolshevik promises did not last the night… So Rabinowitch’s book is an important contribution to our understanding of the post-October dynamics and should be read.
All this is mild compared to the Sparts, as would be expected if you have ever come across them. Their review of Rabinowitch’s book is of note by its quoting from books without providing page numbers so making it hard to see if it’s accurate. An entirely sensible thing to do from their perspective, given the following:
“Rabinowitch would like to blame Lenin for it all, accusing the Bolsheviks of provoking the Left SRs and ‘fabricating’ a Bolshevik majority at the Fifth Soviet Congress. (The charge of ‘fabrication,’ admits the author, is based on ‘circumstantial evidence’ and a ‘nagging question’ over how the Bolsheviks retained a wide base of support.)”
Looking at the book, well the “nagging question” refers to the Petrograd Soviet elections rather than the Fifth Congress. After recounting how the Bolsheviks packed the Soviet with “delegates” from their controlled organisations, so making the workplace elections irrelevant as their majority was secure, Rabinowitch adds: “One is still left, however, with the nagging question of how many Bolshevik deputies from factories were elected instead of the opposition because of press restrictions, voter intimidation, vote fraud, or the short duration of the campaign.” (Rabinowtich, 251) He then lists other factors which suggest “soviet democracy” had become meaningless under the Bolsheviks.
As for the “circumstantial evidence” quote, he actually wrote “[t]here is, in fact, substantial circumstantial evidence that the huge Bolshevik Majority in the congress was fabricated” (288) and explained how the Bolsheviks packed the Congress by their control of the credentials commission. So, I would suggest, that it is the “substantial” omitted by the Sparts which is relevant, particularly as another historian has noted that part of the packing was done by means of the delegates from the “Committees of the Village Poor” which only the Bolsheviks supported: “This blatant gerrymandering ensured a Bolshevik majority… Deprived of their democratic majority the Left SRs resorted to terror and assassinated the German ambassador Mirbach.” (Geoffrey Swain, The Origins of the Russian Civil War, 176) In short, the Bolsheviks did the same at the national level as they had previously done in Petrograd – packed the body with “delegates” from groups they controlled, whose members at the National Congress were already represented by the village soviet delegates.
Which, of course, Marx did at the Hague Congress in 1872 to turn the International into a political party. I also remember the debate at one anti-Poll Tax Federation on why the Pollok Federation was affiliated to the Strathclyde Federation when its two constituent bodies (the West and East Pollok Groups) were also federated – all were groups led by Militant. This arrangement meant that the good folks of each group were represented twice and the Militant resolutions had extra votes. The congress voted that this was fine and given Militant’s dominant position in the Federation, this was unsurprising. The strange thing was, there was really no need to do this as Militant dominated in the Federation anyway – bar three or four independent local groups in which anarchists were active and one SWP-led group, they were well represented by delegates from valid groups. Militant did a lot of the ground-work so this was fair (although I am sure there were a few dubious mandates from groups without any real validity, particularly workplace related ones or “delegates” from union branches). However, that they felt the need to pack the Congress was significant.
So events of 1872 and 1918 are relevant today and worth noting – history does repeat itself at times, particularly with Trotskyists seeking to repeat the glories of Lenin and Trotsky!
Needless to say, the Sparts proclaim that the Left-SRs “opposed the Bolsheviks’ efforts to carry the class war into the countryside through the formation of Committees of the Village Poor” without mentioning that even Lenin had to later admit this policy was a disaster and was dropped but not before the damage was done and the peasantry alienated from the regime. They also take issue with the first review I discussed – not over the omissions but because of who they are (“Fake-Trotskyist Poseurs Promote Anti-Bolshevik Tract”) and because they are not critical enough of Rabinowitch and do not defend Lenin and Trotsky enough. As with page numbers, they provide no link to the review they are attacking – presumably they expect their readers to take their word for everything? The tone is enlightening and shows the same intolerance as Serge meet back in the late 1930s when he started to make minor criticisms of Bolshevik practice he had formerly extolled. Still, at least they did not completely omit the packing of the Soviets – although they did provide completely misleading quotes which the reader could not easily check – but seemed fine about it (or at least did not believe the claims and made no attempt to refute them). Both reviews suggest that party power remains the goal, not socialism, and any means are acceptable to achieve it – and maintain it.
So, all-in-all, I think George Orwell remains sadly all to correct even today: “to many people calling themselves socialists, revolution does not mean a movement of the masses with which they hope to associate themselves; it means a set of reforms which ‘we’, the clever ones, are going to impose on ‘them’, the lower orders”.
These reviews, like Serge’s biography, shows that we libertarians must rise to better standards than this – lying by omission is to be condemned along with actual falsehoods or – at best! – simple ignorance (reading an anarchist book before criticism anarchism would be a good start!). Of course, you cannot cover everything – omissions will occur, perhaps even significant omissions are made at times (hopefully by mistake). As Marx discovered after lambasting Proudhon, you simply discuss everything (and their interwoven histories) all at the same time. Any work will omit material, however what you decide to omit indicates what you consider as being important. What Serge and the two reviews above omit is significant and overlapping – but, then, they are defending Bolshevism rather than seeking to learn from the Russian Revolution….
Finally, on reviews, there is this one on Bloodstained: One Hundred Years of Leninist Counterrevolution (an excellent collection and I would recommend even if I had not contributed a chapter – so please get a copy, preferably from the publishers – and, no, I don’t get royalties!) which contains some howlers. For example:
“Cornelius Castoriadis has long written about socialism and revolution; however, he did not have firsthand experience of the events. Why, then, did the editors prefer his 1964 text, ‘The Role of Bolshevik Ideology in the Birth of the Bureaucracy,’ over numerous other retrospective, and similarly, critical accounts? Indeed, Castoriadis’ condemnation of Bolshevism, as well as Ian [sic!] McKay’s reassessment of Vladimir Lenin’s The State and Revolution (1917), a fifty-page chapter written especially for this volume, serves well the anti-Bolshevik perspective of the collection. This review will focus specifically on the 1920s-40s essays since they are also historical testimonies.”
The editors do indicate why the included this text (like the others) in their introduction and if you read the article by Castoriadis, you soon see why it was included, for it is an excellent summation of many of the reasons why the revolution failed. Indeed, I think it is one of the best short analyses of the period, one which gets to the heart of the issue. Yes, he did not have “firsthand experience of the events” but you do not need that to draw lessons from events (Marx was not in Paris in 1871!). Likewise with my chapter, which aimed to summarise relevant facts (not least the Bolshevik undermining of soviet, army and workplace democracy before the start of the civil war) and use them as support for a theoretical analysis of what went wrong. I also compare what was promised by Lenin with what was actually implemented, something which our reviewers does not seem to think is important… understandably, as many of the reasons the revolution failed can be traced back to the vision of socialism which the Bolsheviks tried to create (i.e., even without the civil war, some kind of bureaucratic class system would have been produced).
So first-hand accounts, while important, can hardly draw on the works of historians written decades after events… Then there is this classic:
“Witnesses like Luigi Fabbri (and Ian McKay in his critique of The State and Revolution [1917]), by contrast, suggest that anarchism is the authentic heir of Marxian thought.”
I am at a lost to understand what this means. I did not suggest that at all, but rather noted how Lenin moved towards certain long-standing anarchist conclusions (the need to replace the State with workers organisations) along with long-standing Marxist prejudices which utter undermined any process made by this move (such as centralisation, party power, etc.). Fabbri – writing in Italy, so hardly a “witness” like, say, Goldman or Berkman – likewise defends anarchist positions and notes the flaws in Marxism – but read it yourself as it is excellent and see if you can see what the reviewer sees. Unless, of course, by “Marxian thought” it is meant “socialist thought” and then I would agree, anarchism is the only authentic and viable form of socialism (quelle surprise, je suis anarchiste !). But, then, it later notes:
“Iain McKay, in his reading of The State and Revolution, writes that Lenin’s position ‘on the need for social transformation and opposition to both sides in capitalist conflicts had previously only been advocated by anarchists’ (p. 62). Of course, the bulk of his essay is devoted to the demonstration that Lenin and the Bolsheviks had betrayed these aspirations.”
And all the evidence of this – the packing and disbanding of soviets, the opposition to workers’ control, etc. – which I provide is ignored. Instead we get the platitude that “the history of the world wars reminds us that democratic governance is often compromised during wartime. Authoritarian and centralizing trends are the rule, even in countries where liberal and democratic traditions are well rooted.” In short, the bourgeoisie did it so why are you complaining the Bolsheviks did so? Except, of course, the former were seeking to secure minority rule while the latter were meant to be fighting for socialism… which shows the point Castoriadis made so well in 1964 is still as relevant to revolutionaries as it is lost on Leninists!
The book is essentially dismissed due to “anarchist partisanship that has inspired Bloodstained.” So more omission, as the facts and arguments presented are ignored in favour of “this book does not succeed in presenting a fair historical picture of the Bolshevik’s October Revolution, its main actors, and its outcomes. Even though the criticisms of the Bolsheviks are based on source materials, they articulate partisan arguments.” Which says it all… never mind the facts presented (or refuting them!), its written by anarchists!
And talking of facts, the reviewer states “[t]he open clash with the Bolsheviks was triggered by the elections to the Kronstadt Soviet. According to the Petropavlovsk resolution, deputies were not freely chosen nor were elections held by secret ballot.” Nonsense, as is well known (and recounted by Ida Mett, whose essential pamphlet the reviewer claims to have read as its included in Bloodstained) the revolt was “triggered” by the strike wave in Petrograd and the sailors sending delegates to see what was happening there. And I love the “according to” as this suggests opinion rather than a recording of the actual situation – the Kronstadt soviet, like other the soviets under the Bolsheviks, had not been freely since early 1918 (it had been disbanded by the Bolsheviks in July 1918 after the Left-SR revolt which occurred in response by the packing of the Fifth All-Russian Congress). The need for a party dictatorship had been Bolshevik policy since the beginning of 1919 (at the latest) so the resolution was simply reflecting the reality of the situation…
But enough, to return to Serge. He is important because he is regularly trotted out (pun intended) as an example of why anarchists should realise we are wrong and become Leninists. I remember one email decades ago saying even Kropotkin supported the Bolsheviks over Kronstadt and when I noted that this was impressive, given that Kropotkin was dead at the time, my correspondant acknowledged that he meant Serge – as if Serge’s politics when he was an anarchists were remotely like Kropotkin’s! One was an elitist-individualist who dismissed any notion of popular revolution in favour of living intensely now, the other was a communist-anarchist who studied the problems a social revolution would face in detail and urged anarchists to take part in the labour movement to both bring the popular revolt about and be in a position to make minimise the economic disruption it would cause, given the difficult circumstances it would face, and encourage the mass participation it needed to flourish (i.e., federal, down-up socio-economic organisation rather than centralised top-down hierarchies).
That Serge can be pointed to just shows that Trotskyists just think one anarchist is the same as another, although they do get annoyed if you compare them to Stalinists – or even, heaven forbid, members of another Trotskyist sect! There are many anarchist schools, some better than others. Serge’s pre-1917 one was not one of the best, to put it mildly. For more context of Serge, see my previous two review articles:
So The Trotskyist School of Falsification can be considered the third part of a trilogy. Hopefully, the more people find out about Serge the more they question all their assumptions about anarchism, Bolshevism and the Russian Revolution. Indeed, I cannot help thinking that increasing familiarity with Serge’s writings explains the increasingly critical work of his first English-translator, Peter Sedgwick, as seen by his final article on him: “The Unhappy Elitist: Victor Serge’s Early Bolshevism,” History Workshop Journal 17 (Spring 1984) Even here, this seems exaggerated – “early” does not really cover the period from 1919 to the late 1930s, given he died in 1947 most of his time as a Marxist involved him shrilling for Bolshevism, as he does in the Trotsky biography.
I must note that this dishonesty in polemic within Marxist circles dates back to Marx himself – obviously, his disgracefully dishonest The Poverty of Philosophy. So I’m not holding my breath in this, I’m just hoping that anarchists are aware of the issues and do not take anything said by Marxists at face-value – which means checking every reference for dubious or unlikely claims, reading around the subject, and so forth. Time consuming, I know, but we do need to know and understand how we got where we are in order to go forward.
Originally, I was going to include a rare Kropotkin translation (“The Crisis of Socialism”) and discuss the Labour Party and its leadership campaign, but it was getting too long and was not going to be finished soon (the above related to the undesirability of the original Marxist vision Kropotkin mentions). So I’ve decided that will be the next blog, once I decide what article to post next (I have a list of talks to write up and a few other pieces I’ve not put on-line yet). Kropotkin, meanwhile, has been replaced by Anton Ciliga – a Leninist who, for a while, became part of the “ultra-left” after breaking with Trotsky (for a good overview, see Michael S. Fox’s “Ante Ciliga, Trotskii, and State Capitalism: Theory, Tactics, and Reevaluation during the Purge Era, 1935-1939,” Slavic Review Vol. 50, No. 1 [Spring, 1991] – here for those with JSTOR access, here for those without).
The Ciliga piece below seemed appropriate in its stead, given my comments above. It shows that even in prison the Trotskyists stuck to party dictatorship, fought amongst themselves and split into factions. But then, none of the best known Bolshevik oppositions really offered a real alternative (as discussed in an appendix to An Anarchist FAQ). I was going to – perhaps still will – include this in Volume 2 of A Libertarian Reader (currently resting in development hell, so it seems), although I’m now edging towards replacing it with his article on Kronstadt. The reason is simple enough, the Kronstadt article is shorter and covers the issues extremely well – it originally appeared in the revolutionary syndicalist La Révolution Prolétarienne (September 1938) before being translated and published by Freedom Press in 1942 as the pamphlet The Kronstadt Revolt. It was last published in The Raven: Anarchist Quarterly 8 (October 1989) – this is an excellent issue and worth getting your hands on.
Anton (or Ante) Ciliga is best known for his account of being a political prisoner in the Soviet Union in the late 1920s and early 1930s, The Russian Enigma. This is well worth reading, particularly Lenin, Also (Chapter 9 of Book 3). This is a different translation of the piece below, which as the article introduction notes was excluded from the first edition of the book: a complete edition was finally published in 1979 (The Russian Enigma [London: Ink Links Ltd, 1979]). I quoted from it a few times in An Anarchist FAQ, for his analysis was quite sound and he saw through Trotsky’s analysis quite easily.
Of course, many of those who broke with Trotsky over Stalinism moved to the right – Ciliga amongst them. These examples are used as a warning to the faithful, a cautionary tale – see what happens if you question the holy texts… I see no reason to deny their contributions to revolutionary politics even if they later change (after all, that Arshinov ended up rejecting anarchism and returned to the USSR does not make his History of the Makhnovist Movement any less important). People change – they can go from revolutionary politics to one which makes you wonder how they could have held the old positions or how they could hold the new ones knowing what they once advocated. You have to judge whether the change is justified or not – so Trotsky’s early anti-Leninism, while right, did not really get to the root of the issue as can be seen by his later embrace of the vanguardism and its inherent substitutism (due to his Marxism for we should remember that many Mensheviks only later took issue with What is to be Done? for sectional infighting purposes as it expounded notions shared by both sides – Lenin being at pains to prove its Marxian orthodoxy).
This applies to Serge as well – although his early individualist-anarchist positions actually explain his shift to Bolshevism by their common elitism. Sure, his Memoirs of a Revolutionary and some of his later writings make valid criticisms of Bolshevism, but too little, too late – and he still attacks those anarchists who made deeper criticism sooner as having “confused” politics… So I can see why the likes of the British SWP utilise him rather than denounce him as the orthodox Trotskyists do, these writings are far more appealing than the screeds groups like the Sparts produce (as is talking of the crushing of the Kronstadt rebels as being a “tragic necessity” rather than repeating the lies about them being White Guardists, for example). This does not make them correct, of course, nor accurate but they are (or used to be!) read beyond the sects and so need to be addressed to some degree.
But enough… more could be written and I do have other things to do. So I hope you find the Ciliga piece of interest and of relevance when looking at the remnants of the Leninist-left. It has never been republished although a pdf of the journal it originally appeared in is available.
Until I blog again, be seeing you….
A Talk with Lenin in Stalin’s Prison (1937)
Anton Ciliga
Politics, August 1946
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The following article is the original text of the ninth chapter, “You too, Lenin,” of my book, THE RUSSIAN ENIGMA. The publisher of the first (French) edition of my book thought that it was too long and compelled me to end the manuscript in a rather abrupt manner. I had to reduce the chapter on Lenin to about one-fourth of the original text. I felt that under these circumstances I should confine myself to posing the problem of Leninism and the twofold role of Lenin in the Russian revolution. Therefore, I was only able to hint at the answer to this tremendously important question. I could not give this answer, even less was I able to give the basis for arriving at it (as I had in the original unabbreviated text). For this reason, the separate publication of this chapter may be of interest.
Revolution in the sense of the real social liberation of the toiling masses of mankind as individuals cannot be achieved by becoming absorbed in or continuing one of the decadent phases of the last great revolution – the Russian revolution. It must take as its starting point the highest stage of this revolution, its past apex, its still unachieved aims….
The problems of “workers’ democracy” – political as well as economic – impelled the extreme Left Communist groups of the Russian Opposition (The “Workers’ Opposition,” the “Workers’ Group,” the “Democratic Centralism” Group) to submit to a critical analysis the entire experience of the Russian revolution, and not only its post-Leninist stage as the Trotskyite opposition did. These problems were: freedom for political parties versus the one-party-system; democratic versus bureaucratic management of nationalised industry; guarantees for the control of the government by the working class. All these extreme groups which were formed in the early years of the revolution, from 1919 to 1921, had, moreover, originated as movements which opposed, more or less distinctly, precisely the leadership of Lenin. During my stay in the Verkhne-Uralsk Isolator prison (from 1930 to 1933), the problem of the role of Lenin in the revolution was the subject of lively debate among the different opposition groups.
The Trotskyites
The Trotskyite opposition defended – officially and outside its own ranks – the thesis that “Lenin was always right.” In order not to contradict this dogma, Trotsky for a long time “recognised” that Lenin had been right in all the past discussions in which he differed with him. Trotsky also accepted the proposal of Zinovyev to call their opposition group “Bolshevik-Leninists.” Afterwards Trotsky made one correction in this dogma: namely, that so far as the theory of Permanent Revolution was concerned he, Trotsky, had been right and not Lenin. (This was, undoubtedly, Trotsky’s most valuable conception.) Trotsky, it is true, pointed out that, essentially, Lenin also had been for permanent revolution and that their differences, therefore, were rather a matter of nomenclature and, accordingly, not of great importance. From that time, the Trotskyite opposition adopted a new point of view: they maintained that there never had been any profound differences between Lenin and Trotsky, that essentially Lenin always wanted the same thing that Trotsky did and that, therefore, there had been only differences regarding details or nomenclature.
The Trotskyite Opposition thus reconciled historical Leninism and historical Trotskyism by renouncing a critical approach to both of them and by covering the most outstanding and valuable characteristics of both tendencies with the varnish of officialdom. To the Stalinist legend they opposed not a serious historical evaluation but another legend.
Some Trotskyites went even farther: the Bohemian part of the “Militant Bolsheviks,” the pure Trotskyites, asserted that the differences between Lenin and Trotsky had always been profound but that Trotsky had always been right in these discussions. It was significant that the Trotskyites who were so prone to quote authorities always only quoted Trotsky on all questions of the present and the past. Lenin was not quoted at all – except in extremely rare instances.
The “Detsists”
For the “Democratic Centralism” group,” the attitude towards Lenin was a very painful problem. Unlike the Trotskyites, this group had been created by old (pre-1917) Bolsheviks. It was, therefore, “Leninist” in its general outlook and in its methods. When it made its appearance, in 1919, it was considered an opposition of the local apparatus (an “opposition of provincial governors”) to the central authorities. It opposed the bureaucratic centralism of Lenin’s Central Committee in the name of “Democratic Centralism.” The Detsists considered that Lenin was deviating from his own platform or was not drawing the necessary conclusions from his own principles. The group thus was formed on the basis of a defense of Leninism against Lenin. Unconsciously it opposed the Lenin of the period of the greatest revolutionary upheaval to the Lenin of the decadence of the revolution. It criticised Lenin’s practices from the point of view of the principles of his State and Revolution. However, in spite of all its profundity, this work which was written by Lenin in 1917 did not provide any answers to the new problems which had arisen during the subsequent course of the revolution. As a result, during the decade from 1919 to 1929 this group moved in a circle – either capitulating before Lenin’s ultimata, or submitting to the Trotskyites in their struggle against Stalin. Their attitude which was “plus royaliste que le roi” [“More royalist than the king”] proved to be sterile.
The Five Year Plan completely shattered the group. Its majority capitulated like most Trotskyites. Timofey Sapronov, one of the outstanding Bolshevik workers of Russia and a leading Detsist, characterised the attitude of the capitulators: “Their explanation is. We have been wrong since the NEP [New Economic Policy], classes are being liquidated and, therefore, the construction of socialism has been under way . . . That the worker has been getting hell in the American way – is considered by them as only the chips which are falling while such a gigantic job of woodcutting as the construction of full-fledged socialism is being effected; these they say, are the inevitable costs of the ultimate and most difficult stage of the liquidation of the last capitalist class – the petty bourgeoisie.”
From the Leninist point of view, the reasoning of those who capitulated had some logical foundation. Lenin’s entire post-October strategy was based upon the thesis that the only dangers for the proletariat and for socialism were the petty bourgeoisie and private capitalism. Lenin used a “hot iron” to eliminate all opposition forces who said that a self-sufficient bureaucracy and state capitalism were a menace to the working class. Following in the steps of Lenin, the Detsists declared on the eve of the Five Year Plan that “petty bourgeois counterrevolution” had been victorious and that the USSR had become a “petty bourgeois State.” Any other kind of counterrevolution was unthinkable from the point of view of Lenin’s conception…
And then suddenly came the Five Year Plan with its war against the petty bourgeoisie and its liquidation of this class. In this situation it was necessary to choose between remaining faithful to Lenin’s conception and recognising that the Five Year Plan was the fulfilment of the socialist program and, on the other hand, listening to what was actually happening and recognising, in spite of Lenin, the triumph of a “third force,” namely the bureaucracy and state capitalism. Those Detsists, who did not capitulate, adopted the last-mentioned point of view.
However, a reconsideration of values which rejected the essence of Lenin’s entire post-October conception and doubted the infallibility even of the pre-October Lenin, was necessarily slow and painful. As a result of the discussion of these problems, the small body of Detsists in the Isolator prison, which numbered 20 men, split into 3 or 4 groups. Some Detsists continued to assume that there were only occasional errors in Lenin’s attitude after the October revolution and that the party line as a whole became wrong only after the ascent of Stalin; others thought that even during Lenin’s lifetime, namely, at the time of the introduction of the New Economic Policy the bourgeois-democratic tendency of the revolution defeated its socialist tendency and that Lenin was not fully aware of what he was actually doing. A third group insisted that, in spite of its formal victory, the socialist tendency of the revolution had always been weaker than the petty bourgeois one.
The revision of Lenin’s theories affected not only the problem of state capitalism but also the problem of party dictatorship. Originally, when Lenin, in 1920, proclaimed the principle of party dictatorship and the “single party” system, the Detsists accepted this principle, in contrast with the Workers’ Opposition, which rejected it at once. However, the entire experience of party dictatorship induced them to break with their former conceptions. They now began to understand that without democracy for the workers there can be no democracy within the party. This revision of Lenin’s political theories was even more painful than that of his economic theories: later, when I was in exile, I had an opportunity to follow the various stages of this revision for two years. The final result of the revision was a profoundly critical – if not directly negative – attitude towards Lenin’s practices and theories during the period after the October revolution.
The “Workers’ Group”
The “Workers’ Opposition,” or, more precisely, its extreme wing, which in 1922 formed an independent organisation called the “Workers’ Group,” called the tune for a critical approach to the Lenin period of the revolution. Usually the adherents of this organisation were called “Myasnikovtsi” – after Myasnikov, a prominent Bolshevik worker who was the leader of the group and who had been one of the most colorful personalities of the Bolshevik revolution. The Workers’ Opposition and the Workers’ Group had also been created by “old” [pre-1917] Bolsheviks. Unlike the Detsists, however, they criticised from the first the policies of Lenin not only in particulars but in their entirety; the Workers’ Opposition opposed Lenin’s economic policy from 1919-1920; the Workers’ Group went even farther and also rejected the political “single-party” regime established by Lenin when the New Economic Policy was introduced. In the Isolator prison, the Workers’ Group had a well-educated, very active and firm leader in the person of Sergey Tiunov; incidentally, he was not totally without some Nechayev characteristics.
The Workers’ Group adopted as the basic principle of its platform the slogan of the First International formulated by Marx – “That the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves”; from the very beginning the group declared war on Lenin’s conceptions of dictatorship by the party and of a bureaucratic organisation of production which the latter had developed as decadence began to infect the revolution. Against Lenin’s policies, the Group demanded the organisation of production by the masses themselves, beginning with the workers of each factory. They demanded the control of the governmental power and of the political parties by the masses of the workers, who, as the real political masters of the country, were to have the opportunity to remove any party from power, including the Communist Party, if they considered that the party in question did not represent their interests any longer. In contrast with the Detsists and the majority of the Workers’ Opposition who limited the demand for “democracy for the workers” practically to the economic field and attempted to combine this demand with the “single-party” system, the Workers’ Group widened its struggle for “democracy for the workers” by demanding free political self-determination for the workers and free competition of political parties among the working people, believing that socialism could only come as the result of free creative work of the toilers. The Workers’ Group, therefore, from the very beginning considered that the alleged socialism which was being constructed under compulsion, was actually bureaucratic state capitalism.
In 1923, at the height of a wave of large strikes which were directed by the Workers’ Group, it addressed the Russian and the international working class by a special Manifesto in which it expounded its attitude in a clear and bold manner. This Manifesto condemned degenerating Bolshevism and its orientation away from the working class towards “Vozhdism” [rule by leaders, leadership principle]. This Manifesto was one of the most remarkable documents of the Russian revolution. Issued at the time of the internal collapse of the Russian revolution it sounded like the Manifesto of Babeuf’s “Equals” – at the moment of the internal collapse of the French revolution.
“Why So Excited, Comrade Ciliga?”
During the long time I spent in the Isolator prison, I kept away from these prison disputes about Lenin. I belonged to the younger generation of Communists who were educated to bow unquestioningly to Lenin’s authority and I considered it a matter of course that Lenin “always was right.” The results – the conquest and the preservation of revolutionary power – were in his favor. I and my generation concluded that, consequently, his tactics and means were correct.
After I arrived in the Isolator, I defended this point of view. I was quite disturbed by the critical remarks which the Detsist worker Prokopeni made during one of my first walks in the prison yard.
“Why are you so excited, comrade Ciliga, about Lenin’s fight against bureaucratism? In what way did he fight against bureaucratism? You refer to his article on the reform of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection which he wrote shortly before his death. Did he, however, in this article call for an organisation of the masses against bureaucratism? Not at all: he proposed there the organisation of a special board with highly paid officials. A top bureaucratic institution was to lead the struggle against bureaucratic methods.”
“No, my foreign comrade,” continued Prokopeni, “at the end of his life Lenin was imbued with mistrust of the masses of the workers. At that time he was putting his stakes on the bureaucratic apparatus; since, however, he was afraid that the apparatus would go too far, he wanted to prevent mischief by the control of one part of the apparatus by another.” After a short silence, he added: “Of course, it is not necessary to shout it from the housetops. We don’t want to provide Stalin with extra arguments. But actually this is the truth.”
I was also prevented from studying the discussions of the past by the fact that my interest centered entirely in the problems of the present. In so far as I had, nevertheless, to deal with problems of history, it seemed to me that these groups exaggerated the importance of their old disputes with Lenin. In my opinion, the fate of the revolution was decided by the relation of class forces and not by the adoption of some formula or blueprint regarding problems of organisation.
The Organisational Problem – New Theories
With the carrying out of the Five Year Plan, the problems of the forms of organisation – both political and economic – suddenly again became a matter of immediate interest. Problems which, apparently, had been solved by history long ago, unexpectedly and with increased vigor became questions of the day. The elimination of the petty bourgeoisie and of private capitalism left only proletariat and bureaucracy on the scene. The question of the relationship between them and the question of “What is socialism and how can it be brought about” was now being solved through the medium of forms of organisation. Problems regarding the techniques of organisation were discovered to be social problems. The struggle of the toiling masses against bureaucratic oppression was now possible only as a struggle against the forms of organisation which were forced on society by the bureaucracy. These forms, however, were not invented by Stalin but were inherited by him from Lenin. With all its contradictions and somersaults, the Russian revolution was to some extent an organic whole. Therefore, it had become impossible to avoid a discussion of Lenin’s policies any longer.
In answer to the newly arising questions, the follower of Myasnikov, Tiunov, wrote several studies devoted to the historical debate on the problem of bureaucratic or socialist organisation of production. The studies centered in a criticism of the militarisation methods which Trotsky applied while organising the economy during the period of war communism [1918-1921]. A young Detsist, Yasha Kosman, wrote a brilliant piece of historical research on the so-called “trade union discussion.” He arrived at the conclusion that Lenin’s approach to the problem of the organisation of industry completely delivered the latter into the hands of the bureaucracy. The results were disastrous – by taking away the factories from the workers, the bureaucracy took the revolution away from them.
Another Detsist, Misha Shapiro, wrote a reply to this article in which he defended the traditional attitude of the Detsists, namely, that the debates on the different systems of the organisation of production did not affect any question of principles. According to Shapiro, the Workers’ Opposition represented the interests not of the workers but of the trade union bureaucracy. If their demand that the management of industry should be handed over to the trade unions had been fulfilled, the result would have been that the factories would be directed by trade union bureaucrats instead of party bureaucrats.
In order that the workers might have an opportunity to fight the bureaucracy they needed liberty: liberty of organisation, press, assembly. Through this reasoning, however, they arrived at the conclusion that there must be liberty for political parties, i.e., they agreed with the demand which had been raised by Myasnikov and condemned at the time by Lenin as well as by Trotsky and the Detsists. Even then a considerable number of Detsists and almost all Trotskyites continued to assume that “liberty for political parties means the downfall of the revolution.” “Liberty for political parties is Menshevism” – this assertion was considered unchallengeable by the Trotskyites. “The working class is socially homogenous and, therefore, its interests can be represented only by one party” – wrote the Detsist Davidov. “Why was it impossible to combine democracy within the party with an outside dictatorship of the party?” the Detsist Nyura Yankovskaya asked in astonishment. Dora Zak replied to Davidov: “Very well, the Paris Commune perished because there were many parties, but we have only one party left; why did our revolution perish?” The young Detsist Volodya Smirnov was, as the saying goes, consistent to the point of absurdity. His opinion was: There has never been either a proletarian revolution or a dictatorship of the proletariat. There has been only a “popular revolution” from below and a bureaucratic dictatorship from above. Lenin never had been an ideological representative of the proletariat. He was, from the beginning to the end, an ideological representative of the intelligentsia. Smirnov combined these evaluations with a general conception to the effect that a “new social formation” – state capitalism in which bureaucracy is the new ruling class is coming to the fore throughout the world, along different ways. He thus reduced to a common denominator Soviet Russia as well as Kemalist Turkey, the Italy of Mussolini, Hitler Germany and the America of Hoover and Roosevelt. In an article, “Communist Fascism,” he wrote that Communism was radical Fascism, and Fascism – moderate Communism. In this conception the forces and prospects of socialism remained somewhere in the clouds.
The majority of the Detsist faction (Davidov, Shapiro, etc.), found that the heresies of young Smirnov went too far and expelled him with much noise from the group.
“You Too, Lenin?”
Once I understood the importance of the old problems both for the understanding of the present and for the determination of the tasks of the future, I concentrated on studying them. The shades of interpretation in regard to these problems which existed among the various elements of the extreme Left, stimulated a critical and independent approach. I began to study these problems after the practical experience of the revolution and, therefore, my approach was necessarily different from that of the comrades who had split over these questions 10 years earlier. Having the opportunity of observing the results of 15 years of revolutionary history, I was able to judge the past with greater certitude and firmness. However, subjecting the “Epoch of Lenin” to a critical analysis, I necessarily penetrated the holy of holies of Communism and of my own ideology. I subjected Lenin to criticism – the leader and prophet who was surrounded not only by the immortal glory of revolution but by the legend and myth of post-revolutionary mystification. In spite of all the critical attitude of the milieu in which I lived, I could only timidly advance in this temple, obeying an inner voice which told me: the understanding of the experience and the lessons of the revolution must not stop before any obstacle, it must be as reckless as the revolution itself which did not stop before anything.
The farther I advanced in this temple the more often – for days, weeks, and months – I was overwhelmed by the fatal question:
“You too, Lenin? Is it true that you too were only great as long as the revolution and the masses were great, and that your revolutionary spirit was exhausted as soon as the strength of the masses failed and it became even weaker than they? Were you too able to betray the social interests of the masses in order to retain power? How your ability to retain power once impressed us naive people! Were you too able to prefer the bureaucratic conquerors to the conquered masses, to help this new bureaucracy to mount on the backs of the Soviet working masses, to suppress these masses when they were reluctant to acquiesce in the new submission, to slander them, to pervert the sense of their most legitimate aims? Lenin, Lenin – what is greater, your merits or your crimes?
“I am little impressed by your attempts at justification: that it is better that the bureaucrats sat on the back of the masses than that the former oppressors – the bourgeoisie and the landowners – returned to replace them. For the bureaucrats this is possibly very important, whether they or the bourgeoisie sit on the back of the masses; for the masses, however, this is not so very essential.
“I am little moved by the reasoning of your advocates, Lenin, who assert that, subjectively, you had the best intentions. It was you, Lenin, who told us to judge people not according to their subjective intentions, but according to the objective significance of their actions, according to what social groups profit by their activities and what social stratum is represented by the ideology which is reflected in their speeches . . . And, incidentally, in your own statements which, on the whole, are certainly very cautious, I find the proof that you were perfectly aware, even subjectively, of what you did objectively. Worse than that: at the moment when the bureaucratic dictatorship was being stabilised, you consciously slandered the masses when they resisted the triumphant bureaucracy (this fact can be proven!) This resistance, however weak, however trampled by the bureaucracy and perhaps necessarily doomed to defeat at that time – is the supreme legacy of the Russian revolution. And a new revolution – in Russia or anywhere else in the world – can begin only by carrying out the program of this workers’ opposition which had been crushed.
“This is the call from the past to the present, this is the continuity of human history, of its really progressive tendencies.
“Yes, your personal role in the revolution, your relation to the working masses and, in general, the relations between leaders and masses in the revolution were actually different from the way they were pictured by the official legend to which I was loyal for such a long time . . .”
The sun is setting behind the distant ranges of the Urals and sheds its last rays into the window of my cell across the barren steppe which extends from the mountain ranges to the prison. It is difficult . . . I look avidly through the bars . . . Mountains, sun, air, freedom, freedom . . . I am alone in my cell, my cellmate is in the hospital . . . I feel lonesome . . . I am burying Lenin.
What am I doing? Is this not an exaggeration, a delusion engendered by prison?
Let us see . . .
Lenin as a Counter-Revolutionary
Of course, in 1917, the situation looked like a competition between the masses and Lenin, which of them would advance farther, faster, bolder. Like a tornado they attacked and addressed their uncompromising challenge to all that was old, rotten, and mendacious in Russia and in the world. Yes, those were the days “which shook the world.” Russia was making its own and world history. And Lenin gained forever a place of honor in the hearts of the working people, in the pantheon of history because he had been able to sense the beating of the heart of humanity at the moment of its great liberating impulse, because he was on the side of the masses and gave them leadership in those days of their great daring and creativeness. This place is assured to him even if he, like Cromwell, were to be delivered to public contempt for a moment of history, to be, like the dead Cromwell, carried out of the grave to the gallows or trampled in the streets of Moscow – in retribution for the crimes he committed against the masses during the period of the decadence of the revolution or for the crimes committed by his successors . . .
Nevertheless, as soon as the old regime was overthrown and Lenin had taken power, a tragic gulf opened between him and the masses of the people. Imperceptible in the beginning, this gulf grew and widened and finally its consequences became fatal.
The masses of the workers instinctively aim at their full liberation, at the fulfillment of their final objectives. It is in the name of these objectives that the masses accomplish revolutions. Everything and at once. Now or never. This is the difference between a revolutionary period and a period of reform. The working masses of Russia went farther in smashing the old social order and in constructing a new one than had been originally intended by Lenin. The pressure of the masses was so strong, the situation so tense, that the masses pulled Lenin along. Such was the relationship between leader and masses at the moment when the revolution reached its highest flood.
Let the facts speak. After the October revolution, Lenin aimed not at the expropriation of the capitalists, but only at “workers’ control”: the control of the capitalists, who were to retain the management of their enterprises, by the organisations of the workers in the factories. The spontaneous class struggle defeated this plan of Lenin for class collaboration under his power: the capitalists answered by sabotage, the workers collectively took over one factory after the other . . . Only after the expropriation of the capitalists had been practically completed by the workers, did the Soviet government recognise it dejure by issuing a decree on the nationalisation of industry . . .
Later, in 1918, Lenin opposed to the drive of the workers towards socialism an entire system of state capitalism (“after the pattern of war-time Germany”), with most extensive participation by former capitalists in the new Soviet economy. Lenin did not stand for the complete destruction of the old, but for some equilibrium of the new and the old, for their co-existence. Lenin, who formerly denounced “class collaboration”, had then become its advocate . . . After he became the representative of power, he began to experience the pressures of various social forces on him and not of the workers alone as before; he became rather the spokesman of the statics of the moment than of the dynamics of the epoch.
The spread of the civil war brought a new correction to this rearguard philosophy of revolution. The downfall of the German and the Austrian Empires gave new fuel to the maximalist expectations of the popular masses: the task of immediate transition to socialism won official recognition. The year 1919 began, the apex of the Russian revolution, its 1793. And as we have seen, it also began thanks to the initiative of the masses and not to that of Lenin.
There is only one step from the apex of the revolution to its downfall and there, at that historical moment, Lenin played a most deplorable role. If it was characteristic of the period of social upheaval and the deepening of the revolution that the masses succeeded in pulling Lenin along, the decadence and the downfall of the revolution were marked by the open opposition of Lenin to the masses of the workers, by his victory over the masses.
Focus of Struggle: The Factories
Where did the struggle center at that time? In the basic nucleus of socialist initiative – in the fate of the factories taken away from the bourgeoisie. It was here that the break occurred between Lenin and the working class. This is also the key to understanding the twofold role of Lenin in the revolution.
The workers took over individual factories and organised production collectively in these factories. However, the connections between the individual factories, the organisation of production on a national scale began, thanks to the central government, to become the business of the apparatus of the nascent bureaucracy. This was already a dangerous sign of the weakness of the working class. The fate of socialism in Russia depended upon the ability of the working class to win control over the general direction of production. In order to effect a socialist organisation of society, in order to reorganise agriculture along socialist lines, the working class had first to achieve socialist organisation “at home” – in industry.
It would seem that this is an elementary truth. Nevertheless, as a rule it is forgotten when people discuss the fate of socialism and of the revolution.
After he had become the head of the apparatus, Lenin looked at this problem through the spectacles of the apparatus. This was keenly noted by the worker Milonov, a delegate to the 10th Congress of the Communist Party of Russia, who said: “Psychologically Lenin’s behavior is quite comprehensible. Comrade Lenin is the chairman of the Council of the People’s Commissars, he directs our Soviet policies. Obviously every movement, regardless of where it originates, which hampers this work of direction is considered a petty bourgeois and extremely harmful movement!” During the civil war the central bureaucracy actually increased its power, continuously taking over the management also of individual factories. Factory management which originally was appointed by the workers and employees of the factories was increasingly made up of appointees of the central authorities. Simultaneously management which in the beginning had been collective was surreptitiously transformed into one-man-direction. The workers began to lose their grip on the factories. This process continued on the initiative of Lenin against a sharp opposition by the working class portion of the Communist party, and by all prominent Bolshevik leaders of working class origin. At that time Tomsky was punished for this opposition by being exiled to Turkestan, for “party work” in that district; and earlier Sapronov had been sent to the Ukraine for “Democratic Centralism”.
After the end of the civil war, the struggle between bureaucracy and working class for the control of industry was renewed with redoubled vigor. It entered its decisive phase. It was this struggle which exploded the system of War Communism. The ideological leader of the Workers’ Opposition, Shlyapnikov, in an article published in Pravda during the discussion on the trade union problem before the 10th Congress of the Communist Party of Russia, openly characterised the essence of the conflict in the following words: “In our industry there is a system of dual rule – by the workers and by the bureaucrats. It is paralyzing production. The way out can only be found through a radical decision, through the single power either of working class socialism or of bureaucratic capitalism”.
Lenin’s Position
How did Lenin act at that moment? He also stood, like Shlyapnikov, for an uncompromising decision, only different from Shlyapnikov, he was for the single power of the bureaucracy. In a slip of his tongue Lenin once admitted that, under the surface of the “discussion on the trade union problem”, the real fight was for the elimination of the working class from the control of production. The statement of Lenin to which we refer reads: “If the trade unions, nine-tenth of whose membership are workers not affiliated with the party, were to appoint the management of industry what would then be the purpose of the party?” However, even the remaining tenth of the working class, the Bolshevik workers (workers who were party members) had the same demands as the workers who were not party members . . . A clear delimitation along class lines thus characterised this decisive debate: on the one hand the workers, whether affiliated with the party or not, who stood for working class socialism, and on the other hand the bureaucrats – party members or not – who were for bureaucratic state capitalism.
Lenin promised the workers the right to strike as a compensation for taking the factories away from them. As if the workers had made the October Revolution in order to obtain the right to strike . . .
The attitude of Lenin towards the “liberals” in his own, the bureaucratic, camp was also significant. When the groups of Trotsky, Bukharin and Sapronov, who maintained an intermediary position between Lenin and the Workers’ Opposition, proposed a mitigation of the exclusive bureaucratic control by the admission of workers to the organisation of production in a consultative capacity, Lenin opposed this proposal in the most categoric manner and applied very harsh “organisational measures” against them for their “vacillations” (at the 10th Congress of the Communist Party in March 1921).
Lenin indeed did not vacillate. After he had become the mouthpiece of the desires of party and Soviet bureaucracy, Lenin with unswerving firmness took away the factories from the workers, their basic revolutionary conquest, the sole lever with which the workers were able to advance the cause of their liberation, the cause of socialism. The Russian workers again became hired manpower in factories which did not belong to them. After that there was nothing left of socialism in Russia but words.
Many people will object by asking: “What about Kronstadt?” The essential decision on the fate of industry, i.e., actually the problem of socialism, had occurred before Kronstadt. Kronstadt was the attempt of an alliance of workers and peasants to react against the bureaucracy. Lenin and his bureaucracy were very much frightened by this alliance. After the crushing of the Kronstadt insurrection, the NEP (New Economic Policy) was the completion of an alliance between the bureaucracy and the (upper strata of) peasantry against the working class. Only at the time of the Five Year Plan the bureaucracy had become ready to attack its temporary ally – the middle stratum of peasantry and the kulaks. Having liquidated socialism in the economy, the power of the workers in the factories, bureaucracy faced its last task – the liquidation of the political power of the workers and the toiling masses. The organ of this power had been a special organisation which originated in the revolutionary process – the Soviets. The bureaucracy opposed to the political organisation of the masses – the Soviets – and to the economic organisation of the masses – the trade unions – the organisation in which there was least mass participation and in which the new bureaucracy was stronger than anywhere else – the party. On the initiative of Lenin, in addition to the prohibition of all political parties in the country except the Communist Party, all opinions and groups opposed to the bureaucratic leadership of the party were prohibited in order to prevent the possibility of a struggle for the interests of the masses within the party itself (Resolution of the 10th Congress of the Communist Party of Russia). The party became a subsidiary organ of the bureaucratic Caesar, just as the Soviets and trade unions had become a subsidiary organ of the party. A Bonapartist dictatorship over the party, the working class and the country was taking shape.
“Do It – But Don’t Say It”
I was startled when I found out that the leaders of the Communist Party were conscious of this at times. In 1920, Bukharin presented in his book, The Economics of the Transitional Period (page 115 of the Russian edition), a full-fledged conception of “proletarian” Bonapartism (“personal regime”). Lenin commented on this idea of Bukharin (see Leninskye Sborniki [“Leniniana”], volume 11, 1930), calling it: “Correct . . . but not the right word.” Do it, but don’t be so frank – this is the entire Lenin of that epoch, the epoch of his moving away from the working class into the camp of the bureaucracy. And Lenin knew how to disguise bureaucratic Bonapartism. “It is impossible to organise the dictatorship of the proletariat by universal organisation of the proletariat”, Lenin wrote, “because the proletariat is still so divided, so humiliated and here and there bribed”. The dictatorship of the proletariat could “consequently be carried out only by the vanguard which has concentrated the revolutionary energies of the class – the party”. The subsequent experiences of the revolution have unmasked the entirely bureaucratic essence of this conception of the dictatorship of the party over the class, the dictatorship of a chosen minority over the “backward majority” of the working class. Once again history confirmed the truth of the old workers’ hymn:
We want no condescending saviours,
No God, no Caesar and no Pope,
We workers ask not for their favours –
Ourselves alone can bring us hope!
(The Internationale, second stanza)
And of the old slogan of the labor movement: “The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves”. Modern revolutions must achieve integral socialism or become transformed by necessity into anti-proletarian, anti-socialist counter-revolutions.
The liquidation of the political power of the working class required, however, a solid “ideological basis”. The direct way – to call things by their names – was not practical: it was not convenient in a revolution which began in the name of the achievements of socialism to say suddenly: Here we are, the new masters and exploiters. It was much better to call the taking away of the factories from the workers a victory of the socialist type of production, the suppression of the working class by the bureaucracy – a strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat and to proclaim that the new exploiters of the working class were its vanguard. When the feudal lords could be the fathers of the peasants, the bourgeoisie – the vanguard of the people, why could the bureaucracy not become the vanguard of the working class? Exploiters consider themselves always the vanguard of the exploited . . .
The Workers Go Into Opposition
Lenin justified his policy by asserting that the working class was weak. He declared that by handing over the revolution to the bureaucracy he was saving it for the working class. The fruits of the future were to justify the concessions of the present. Today these fruits are ripe and their social significance is well known. The Russian working class must be given credit for having grasped at the time something. It understood that Lenin acted as if he were saying: “You, the workers, are being illogical, you want to achieve socialism immediately, but have not the necessary strength to do so. Since, however, you cannot be the masters of society, you must become its servants; this is the law of class struggle in class society. By submitting to the inevitable you will obtain from us everything that is possible.”
The workers had their conception of class struggle and acted as if they were answering Lenin: “No, it is you, comrade Lenin, who are illogical. If we don’t have the strength to become the masters of society, we must become an opposition. A class does not capitulate, but fights.”
The spontaneous working class resistance against bureaucratic encroachments showed that the working class was not so weak as was asserted by Lenin. If Lenin still had been at heart on the side of the workers he would have supported the working class opposition which arose in the country. Lenin, however, was already thinking and acting in the spirit of the bureaucracy and sensed in this strength of the working class a menace to the bureaucracy; he taught the working class a lesson of class struggle: a class which does not capitulate is suppressed by the conquerors. To the applause of the new bureaucracy of the entire country, Lenin exclaimed at the conclusion of the 10th Party Congress: “The opposition is now done and finished, now we have had enough of opposition”. As a matter of fact, this was the end of legalised opposition; instead, prison bars and places of exile were opened and, later, scaffolds erected for it.
In spite of these fundamental changes, the revolution continued to be called a “proletarian” and “socialist” one. Moreover, Lenin himself showed how to combine radical phraseology with actual suppression of the working class. When real workers who were the victims of bureaucratic pretensions protested against the bureaucratic mystification of socialism and demanded that their real interests be attended to, Lenin, unhesitatingly, declared that their demands were “petty bourgeois”, “anarchic”, “counter-revolutionary”. The vital interests of the working class were denounced as reflecting the narrow-minded point of view of the craft. The interests of the bureaucracy, on the contrary, were declared to be the “class interests of the proletariat”. The totalitarian bureaucratic regime which was being established in the country stigmatised everything that was socially and politically progressive as “counter-revolution” and initiated an era of monstrous lies, insinuations, and falsifications which, now, in its Stalinist – completed and perfected – phase is strangling all of Russia and poisoning the entire international, democratic public life.
Disturbed by this evolution, Shlyapnikov exclaimed at the end of the 10th Congress, speaking on Lenin’s resolution against the Workers’ Opposition: “Never in my life, during my 20 years of membership in the party did I hear or see anything more demagogic and more distorting of facts”. These words of Shlyapnikov sound like an angry echo of the words of Thomas Muenzer who denounced Doctor Luther as “Doctor Luegner” (Doctor Liar) for his pamphlets defending the cause of the Protestant princes against the Protestant peasants.
“This is what you, Lenin, had become at the end of your historical career!”
I look searchingly and with anger at the portrait of Lenin which is hanging above the table of my prison cell.
Before me there are two Lenins, as there are two Luthers and two Cromwells: the ones who bring about the ascent of the revolution and the ones who effect its decline. And this entire decisive historical change occurred within a period of two to three years of revolutionary turmoil – in the Russian revolution as in the revolutions which preceded it. And we, like the contemporaries of the preceding revolutions, have continued to discuss 10 or 20 years later whether this decisive change occurred or not!
“And, Lenin, your timid opposition during the last year of your life against unrestrained Stalinism was perhaps a personal tragedy for yourself, but, politically, it did not go beyond vacillation between Stalinism and Trotskyism, i.e., between the Black Hundreds and the liberal varieties of bureaucratism.”
The fate of the Bolshevik party, the fate of Lenin and Trotsky, confirmed once more that the most advanced parties and the greatest leaders are limited by conditions of place and time and, therefore, inevitably become, at a certain moment, conservative and deaf to the new requirements of the epoch. The legend of Lenin has unfolded itself to my eyes as the sanctification of the lies and crimes of the bureaucracy.
“In order to destroy the power of the bureaucracy, which was created by your hands, it is necessary to destroy you, Lenin, the legend of your infallible proletarian nature…”
“You did not help a weakened proletariat in the hour of its last ordeal, but hit it on the head. If the world needed one more lesson, you taught it: When the masses cannot save the revolution nobody else can save it in their place… Your experience, Lenin, shows that the proletarian revolution can be saved only by pursuing it to its conclusion, to the achievement of the complete liberation of the entire working people. A revolution which has not been continued to its goal inevitably degenerates into the domination of a majority of the working people by a new privileged minority. Modern revolutions must achieve socialism or inevitably become anti-socialist, anti-proletarian counter-revolutions.
“No gods, no icons”, I whispered quietly to myself…”
The portrait of Lenin which was suspended above the table of my cell is flung on the floor, torn to pieces . . .
It is dark in the prison cell . . . Outside, in the free spaces, there is night. The mountains and the steppes of the Urals are immersed in somber slumber. I feel sad and dejected . . .
For six months I was unable to speak, to talk aloud and describe what I thought and felt during the hour when I bid farewell to the legend of Lenin . . .