Die Neue Zeit
21st February 2009, 06:07
A very interesting read I came across by Lars Lih, which elaborates further on some of his comments last December in the Weekly Worker (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/750/rediscovering.html):
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_6976/is_4_7/ai_n28430632
I explore what we as historians of Russia can learn from the case of the French Marxists. To keep things interesting, I advance two seeming paradoxes. First, the undemocratic part of Lenin's legacy comes in large part from European Social Democracy, while the Russian context contributed to the democratic part. Second, the utopian dreams of a future society current during the pre-war Second International do not tell us very much about the so-called "utopian" episode of War Communism, but they do tell us much that we need to know about the New Economic Policy (NEP).
[...]
In Guesde's words: "At all times there have been, if I may so express myself, two proletariats in the proletariat. One is the proletariat of ideas, aware, knowing what it wants and where it is going; the other is the proletariat of facts, undecided if not refractory, that has always had to be towed along. And it will continue to be thus up to the revolution."
[...]
This complex of assumptions--the revolution will come only if the proletariat is convinced of its mission, "the socialist party must educate the proletariat, not the opposite," the workers' acceptance of their mission is nevertheless only an affaire du temps--gave rise to an innovative political strategy that can be labeled campaignism. Campaignism was a central feature of the German SPD and its attempts to create an "alternative culture" (the evocative title of vernon Lidtke's classic study on the subject). Like the SPD, the Parti Ouvrier carried on a permanent campaign, including the written word, the spoken word of rallies and study circles, and active protest demonstrations.
The reader will guess where I am heading. The Soviet system was what Peter Kenez termed a "propaganda state." Campaignism--now conducted by a monopolistic state--was its life-blood. This central institution of the Soviet system was lifted straight from the practices of the European Social Democratic parties and from the cluster of assumptions that surrounded these practices--all well in existence by the time the young Ul'ianov became a Social Democrat in the early 1890s.
[...]
Discipline became a central value for all Social Democratic parties. Looking back, we make a contrast between the disciplined Bolsheviks and the easy-going Social Democrats, but what struck observers at the time was the doctrinal and factional intolerance of both the French and the German parties.
[...]
For the Guesdists, every non-party manifestation of the worker movement or reform movement was acceptable only as a subordinate part of a party-dominated movement. This attitude was the institutional reflection of the insistence that only the revolutionary socialization of property could solve any deep-seated social ill. Thus no salvation outside the party: "No socialist movement is really serious if it is not directed by [the local branch of the Parti Ouvrier], which is the moral force of socialism."
[...]
We also automatically assume that Russian particularity will help explain the undemocratic distortions of what has been borrowed from Europe. When I compared the picture of international Social Democracy that emerged from my research on the Iskra period with the French perspective of Angenot and Stuart, however, I found something quite different. The Russian context caused the local Social Democrats to lay heavy stress on an aspect of Social Democracy that had a much lower profile in the French context. I refer to "political freedom," a term that referred specifically to rights of speech, of assembly, of association, and the like.
[...]
I can illustrate my point by comparing What Is to Be Done? to State and Revolution. These two Lenin productions are sometimes taken as emblematic of the bad, hard-line Lenin of 1902 versus the good, "libertarian" Lenin of 1917. From the point of view of political freedom, this standard contrast looks quite different. Precisely because of the Russian context, What Is to Be Done? stresses the centrality of political freedom. Precisely because State and Revolution marks a return to the European context, it downplays political freedom and breathes an atmosphere hostile to it.
When What Is to Be Done? was published in 1902, Lenin and his confreres insisted that overthrowing absolutism--also known as achieving political freedom--had to be the priority task of Russian Social Democracy. They hurled Kautsky's anathema against any Social Democrat who seemed to denigrate its centrality. Achieving political freedom was seen as a national task that would benefit Russia as a whole. If anything, the Bolsheviks were more single-minded in pursuit of political freedom than their party rivals. Lenin even went so far as to envisage Social Democratic minority participation (a taboo for most Social Democrats) in a revolutionary government dedicated to establishing political freedom.
[...]
Despite the general impression that "scientific socialists" refused on principle to describe the concrete details of the future society, Angenot has discovered that during the period of the Second International, they did exactly that, continually and at great length. Party spokesmen felt the need to provide these detailed descriptions of socialist society in order to rebut continual attacks on socialism's lack of realism and to provide the militant with a concrete final goal. These descriptions are not packaged as novels in the manner of earlier utopias but rather are hedged about with appropriate qualifications (only a scientific hypothesis about probable future trends, etc.).
[...]
So, in what ways did the doctrinal promise of the advantages of socialism influence Bolshevik policy? The usual scenario is that the Bolsheviks started off rather realistically, got progressively blinded by doctrine in the excitement of the civil war, and returned to disillusioned sobriety at the commencement of NEP. This scenario is the reverse of the truth.
[...]
There is something of an irony here. Angenot justly criticizes prewar Social Democracy's tendency to assume away the revolutionary period and its consequences, thus eliding "the probable large-scale crises and a very probable and long-lasting disorganization." In their supposedly most utopian period, the Bolsheviks made good this gap and insisted precisely on the inevitability of crises and disorganization. Not only has this dose of realism, probably the Bolsheviks' most original contribution to Marxist theory, been totally overlooked, but they have been saddled with the nutty belief that the devastated Russia of 1920 embodied the socialist paradise.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_6976/is_4_7/ai_n28430632
I explore what we as historians of Russia can learn from the case of the French Marxists. To keep things interesting, I advance two seeming paradoxes. First, the undemocratic part of Lenin's legacy comes in large part from European Social Democracy, while the Russian context contributed to the democratic part. Second, the utopian dreams of a future society current during the pre-war Second International do not tell us very much about the so-called "utopian" episode of War Communism, but they do tell us much that we need to know about the New Economic Policy (NEP).
[...]
In Guesde's words: "At all times there have been, if I may so express myself, two proletariats in the proletariat. One is the proletariat of ideas, aware, knowing what it wants and where it is going; the other is the proletariat of facts, undecided if not refractory, that has always had to be towed along. And it will continue to be thus up to the revolution."
[...]
This complex of assumptions--the revolution will come only if the proletariat is convinced of its mission, "the socialist party must educate the proletariat, not the opposite," the workers' acceptance of their mission is nevertheless only an affaire du temps--gave rise to an innovative political strategy that can be labeled campaignism. Campaignism was a central feature of the German SPD and its attempts to create an "alternative culture" (the evocative title of vernon Lidtke's classic study on the subject). Like the SPD, the Parti Ouvrier carried on a permanent campaign, including the written word, the spoken word of rallies and study circles, and active protest demonstrations.
The reader will guess where I am heading. The Soviet system was what Peter Kenez termed a "propaganda state." Campaignism--now conducted by a monopolistic state--was its life-blood. This central institution of the Soviet system was lifted straight from the practices of the European Social Democratic parties and from the cluster of assumptions that surrounded these practices--all well in existence by the time the young Ul'ianov became a Social Democrat in the early 1890s.
[...]
Discipline became a central value for all Social Democratic parties. Looking back, we make a contrast between the disciplined Bolsheviks and the easy-going Social Democrats, but what struck observers at the time was the doctrinal and factional intolerance of both the French and the German parties.
[...]
For the Guesdists, every non-party manifestation of the worker movement or reform movement was acceptable only as a subordinate part of a party-dominated movement. This attitude was the institutional reflection of the insistence that only the revolutionary socialization of property could solve any deep-seated social ill. Thus no salvation outside the party: "No socialist movement is really serious if it is not directed by [the local branch of the Parti Ouvrier], which is the moral force of socialism."
[...]
We also automatically assume that Russian particularity will help explain the undemocratic distortions of what has been borrowed from Europe. When I compared the picture of international Social Democracy that emerged from my research on the Iskra period with the French perspective of Angenot and Stuart, however, I found something quite different. The Russian context caused the local Social Democrats to lay heavy stress on an aspect of Social Democracy that had a much lower profile in the French context. I refer to "political freedom," a term that referred specifically to rights of speech, of assembly, of association, and the like.
[...]
I can illustrate my point by comparing What Is to Be Done? to State and Revolution. These two Lenin productions are sometimes taken as emblematic of the bad, hard-line Lenin of 1902 versus the good, "libertarian" Lenin of 1917. From the point of view of political freedom, this standard contrast looks quite different. Precisely because of the Russian context, What Is to Be Done? stresses the centrality of political freedom. Precisely because State and Revolution marks a return to the European context, it downplays political freedom and breathes an atmosphere hostile to it.
When What Is to Be Done? was published in 1902, Lenin and his confreres insisted that overthrowing absolutism--also known as achieving political freedom--had to be the priority task of Russian Social Democracy. They hurled Kautsky's anathema against any Social Democrat who seemed to denigrate its centrality. Achieving political freedom was seen as a national task that would benefit Russia as a whole. If anything, the Bolsheviks were more single-minded in pursuit of political freedom than their party rivals. Lenin even went so far as to envisage Social Democratic minority participation (a taboo for most Social Democrats) in a revolutionary government dedicated to establishing political freedom.
[...]
Despite the general impression that "scientific socialists" refused on principle to describe the concrete details of the future society, Angenot has discovered that during the period of the Second International, they did exactly that, continually and at great length. Party spokesmen felt the need to provide these detailed descriptions of socialist society in order to rebut continual attacks on socialism's lack of realism and to provide the militant with a concrete final goal. These descriptions are not packaged as novels in the manner of earlier utopias but rather are hedged about with appropriate qualifications (only a scientific hypothesis about probable future trends, etc.).
[...]
So, in what ways did the doctrinal promise of the advantages of socialism influence Bolshevik policy? The usual scenario is that the Bolsheviks started off rather realistically, got progressively blinded by doctrine in the excitement of the civil war, and returned to disillusioned sobriety at the commencement of NEP. This scenario is the reverse of the truth.
[...]
There is something of an irony here. Angenot justly criticizes prewar Social Democracy's tendency to assume away the revolutionary period and its consequences, thus eliding "the probable large-scale crises and a very probable and long-lasting disorganization." In their supposedly most utopian period, the Bolsheviks made good this gap and insisted precisely on the inevitability of crises and disorganization. Not only has this dose of realism, probably the Bolsheviks' most original contribution to Marxist theory, been totally overlooked, but they have been saddled with the nutty belief that the devastated Russia of 1920 embodied the socialist paradise.