One Man Management [Archive]

ComradeOm

23rd July 2009, 01:11

Surely one man management is opposed to socialism?You'll find very few people insisting that one man management was desirable, and indeed in that simple quote you provided Lenin stresses its "necessity". What was at stake was nothing less than the complete economic collapse of the Russian economy, as Lenin had laid forth in The Impending Catastrophe (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/ichtci/index.htm), which was having an extremely severe impact on the Russian proletariat. The hardships of the latter are well documented, and I've mentioned numerous times on this forum, and was of critical importance given the vital role that the proletariat was earmarked to play in the advance towards socialism. The rescue of the economy thus became a primary objective of the new Soviet government

You know from the debates in the Central Committee that we are not opposed to placing workers at the head, but we say that this question must be settled in the interests of production. We cannot wait. The country is so badly ruined, calamities—famine, cold and general want—have reached such a pitch that we cannot continue like this any longer. No devotion, no self-sacrifice can save us if we do not keep the workers alive, if we do not provide them with bread, if we do not succeed in procuring large quantities of salt, so as to recompense the peasants by properly organised exchange and not with pieces of coloured paper which cannot keep us going for long. The very existence of the power of the workers and peasants, the very existence of Soviet Russia is at stake. With management in the hands of incompetent people, with fuel not delivered in time, with locomotives, steamers and barges standing unrepaired, the very existence of Soviet Russia is at stake.From here (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/mar/15.htm). If the tone of the piece strikes you as apocalyptic then that is because the crisis facing the Soviet government was incredibly bleak

The above piece also notes the degree to which the quote that "there were no disputes in connection with the question (of one man management)" can be considered suspect, Lenin specifically introduces the topic as one that "...the Communist Party and the trade unions are more interested in than in any other, and which you too no doubt are keenly debating; I refer to the management of industry"

Misanthrope

23rd July 2009, 02:09

In defense of Lenin, Russia was not an ideal place for a socialist revolution, a peasant society. If the revolution took place in an industrialized nation then maybe it could have succeeded, disregarding the personal objectives of the opportunistic leaders. Socialism evolves out of industrialized capitalism not a backwards Tsarist economic hell hole. What these quotes do show is Lenin's anti-worker sentiment, "With management in the hands of incompetent people," (quoted from ComradeOm's post). I hear the same crap from capitalists.

Pogue

23rd July 2009, 14:08

ComradeOm

23rd July 2009, 14:53

But the point is ComradeOm, it was consistently Bolshevik policy, the policy of the state, to determine who would be running industry. These one man managers were not even elected, and they weren't accountable. Alot of the time they were former bourgeoisie officials from TsarismI'd imagine that in the vast majority of cases they were officials from the old state - that was the whole point of the programme. In order to salvage the economy, to keep it running on the most basic of levels, it was not possible to simply disregard the technical specialists and their experience/knowledge. From Lenin again:

All administrative work requires special qualifications. You may be the very best of revolutionaries and propagandists, and yet be absolutely useless as an administrator. But anybody who studies real life and has practical experience knows that management necessarily implies competency, that a knowledge of all the conditions of production down to the last detail and of the latest technology of your branch of production is required; you must have had a certain scientific training. These are the conditions we must satisfy at any cost

Now this is obviously a distasteful proposition for any socialist but two points have to be noted. In the first place it was assumed that these specialists would indeed be held accountable to the workers through the state apparatus. Worker oversight of the economy would have to substitute for direct control of the workplace and would continue to hold the whip over the remaining bourgeois specialists ("The working class, as a class, rules; it created Soviet power, holds that power as a class, and can take every supporter of bourgeois interests and fling him out neck and crop"). Unfortunately the degeneration of the Revolution eroded these checks; something that neither industrial management nor the economic collapse can be divorced from but probably a broader topic than the one at hand

Secondly, the reality is, as noted above, that the Bolsheviks were facing a crisis, they were gazing into the abyss of economic collapse. Now you and I can sit back in relative comfort and argue over the various merits of their decisions safe in the knowledge that we will never be in such a position ourselves. Can we criticise the decisions of the Soviet government? Of course, but these decisions and policies cannot simply be divorced from the reality of the day. In short, you cannot talk about one-man management without putting it in the context of the sheer annihilation through hunger facing the Russian proletariat in these years

Lenin boasted that he had advocated one man management since 1918That sounds about right. But contrast this to his initial stance (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/26.htm) on worker control in the immediate aftermath of the October Revolution. What changed between then and 1918? Nothing short than the continued and catastrophic deterioration of the economic and international situation

I don't see how if your trying to defend socialism, i.e. workers control, from bourgeois aggression, or your trying ot develop socialism in the face of bourgeois aggression, you'd go about implementing workplace dictatorship which actively removed power from the workersHmm? The Soviet government was trying to reach socialism and in doing so the maintenance of the proletariat as a class was a fairly important objective. I think that you're underestimating the dire impact that both the economic collapse and civil war had on the fabric of Russian society and the degree to which the actual existence of the industrial proletariat was threatened. The Bolsheviks were clearly unable to do both (ie, salvage the economy and further workers control) but, regardless of my disagreement with specific measures, I'll not fault them for trying

Pogue

23rd July 2009, 16:23

I'd imagine that in the vast majority of cases they were officials from the old state - that was the whole point of the programme. In order to salvage the economy, to keep it running on the most basic of levels, it was not possible to simply disregard the technical specialists and their experience/knowledge. From Lenin again:

Now this is obviously a distasteful proposition for any socialist but two points have to be noted. In the first place it was assumed that these specialists would indeed be held accountable to the workers through the state apparatus. Worker oversight of the economy would have to substitute for direct control of the workplace and would continue to hold the whip over the remaining bourgeois specialists ("The working class, as a class, rules; it created Soviet power, holds that power as a class, and can take every supporter of bourgeois interests and fling him out neck and crop"). Unfortunately the degeneration of the Revolution eroded these checks; something that neither industrial management nor the economic collapse can be divorced from but probably a broader topic than the one at hand

Secondly, the reality is, as noted above, that the Bolsheviks were facing a crisis, they were gazing into the abyss of economic collapse. Now you and I can sit back in relative comfort and argue over the various merits of their decisions safe in the knowledge that we will never be in such a position ourselves. Can we criticise the decisions of the Soviet government? Of course, but these decisions and policies cannot simply be divorced from the reality of the day. In short, you cannot talk about one-man management without putting it in the context of the sheer annihilation through hunger facing the Russian proletariat in these years

That sounds about right. But contrast this to his initial stance (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/26.htm) on worker control in the immediate aftermath of the October Revolution. What changed between then and 1918? Nothing short than the continued and catastrophic deterioration of the economic and international situation

Hmm? The Soviet government was trying to reach socialism and in doing so the maintenance of the proletariat as a class was a fairly important objective. I think that you're underestimating the dire impact that both the economic collapse and civil war had on the fabric of Russian society and the degree to which the actual existence of the industrial proletariat was threatened. The Bolsheviks were clearly unable to do both (ie, salvage the economy and further workers control) but, regardless of my disagreement with specific measures, I'll not fault them for trying

But the point is they didn't try. Faced with this crisis, they arogantly assumed that one man management was better and could protect the economy whereas workers control couldn't. What were they protecting? If you take away workers control, its no longer a revolutionary society. My point is, Lenin assumed the way to protect 'socialism' was one man management - that makes no sense.

Blake's Baby

23rd July 2009, 16:36

No, come on, be fair; he thought the best way to protect 'socialism' was for there to be a successful revolution in Germany. But the best guarantee of a successful outcome of the revolution in Germany was if 'proletarian Russia' could support the German working class. And he knew that the only way that could happen was if the gains of October were held on to. And he thought the best way to do that was to strengthen the Russian state. For that he needed economic stability - indeed growth. And that's why he advocated one man management. It was only supposed to be temporary, until the world revolution caught up with events in Russia.

It's a slippery logical chain that leads to the most horrendous anti-socialist actions (one man management, militarisation of labour, invasion of Poland, suppression of Kronstatdt etc) but it's not evil in itself. I really don't think Lenin saw that there was any choice. That doesn't mean I support him, but neither do I think he deliberately embarked on courses of action that he knew would be harmful to the revolution.

Pogue

23rd July 2009, 16:40

But there was a choice. I don't see how you can defend socialism by creating a strongly centralised state detached from the working class. Thats killing socialism.

Blake's Baby

23rd July 2009, 16:57

I agree with you that it kills socialism. I just don't agree that there's no possibility Lenin was just getting it wrong while making it up.

He thought - the Bolsheviks thought - all the parties from the 2nd International thought - that they had to seize state power. I think they were wrong. I don't however think that their wrong conception (they were just coming out of the phase of 'parliamentary socialism' remember) was either evil or bad faith. It was just wrong (and I think there are historic reasons for it, but that's another discussion).

But, having seized state power, they then thought they had to hang on to it. Again, not evil, not bad faith, just a mistake, based on the (reasonable) fear of a vicious White reaction, and the belief that Soviet Russia could help the German revolution militarily and logistically.

But if they had to hold on to power in Russia, how to do that? Obviously, ending the chaos in the economy was vital.

So, for the 'best' proletarian motives (preservation of the gains of October, supporting the German revolution etc), the the new Russian government found itself doing terrible things and then having to justify them.

Of course there were choices. I do think however that faced with them, the Bolsheviks saw the alternatives - institute economic planning by federated factory committees, leads to economic chaos, leads to population turning against Bolshevik regime, leads to White victory, leads to massacres of workers, communists, restoration of old order and defeat of German (therefore world) revolution - as being worse.

I really do think that when the Bolsheviks were instituting anti-revolutionary policies they justified it to themselves on the basis that it was only an emergency measure until the German revolution took the pressure off.

ComradeOm

23rd July 2009, 17:14

But the point is they didn't try. Faced with this crisis, they arogantly assumed that one man management was better and could protect the economy whereas workers control couldn't. What were they protecting? If you take away workers control, its no longer a revolutionary society. My point is, Lenin assumed the way to protect 'socialism' was one man management - that makes no sense.Eh... no. The socialisation of the workplace was obviously an extremely popular demand of the Russian proletariat in the run up to the October Revolution. After the transfer of power to the soviets these same workers naturally set about achieving this; Lenin's draft resolution on the issue (see link in post above) was not written in a vacuum but reflected what was actually occurring. Factory committees* did carve out new roles from themselves in the workplace (on an ad hoc basis and not always entirely replacing/destroying the previous management) and took on a major role in managing production. This was not always to the liking of central or regional soviets (which were setting up their own councils to deal with this) but was a continuation of a pre-October process

The results were of course disastrous. The crisis was obviously one inherited by the councils but they clearly failed to provide a way out of it. It was only in early 1918 (and late 1917) that the complete anarchy that prevailed in production (no pun intended) forced the Sovnarkom to halt the process of creating workplace councils, nationalise the remaining capitalist enterprises, and establish VSNKh. It would still be some months later before the principle of individual management was introduced across these nationalised industries

*Which incidentally, along with the trade unions, remained a bastion of Bolshevik support through these years and certainly within Petrograd. The idea that these were in opposition, or provided an alternative model, to the Bolsheviks is largely a fabrication

My point is, Lenin assumed the way to protect 'socialism' was one man management - that makes no sense. Lenin saw that one man management was a way to protect the proletariat from complete disintegration. Its hard to advocate economic experimentation on such a scale when almost 50% of the workforce are unemployed, production has almost ground to a complete halt, starvation is rife, and the workers are actually fleeing the cities en masse. See Rabinowitch's The Bolsheviks in Power for stats and info on the above period of economic chaos

Now you can of course insist that Lenin was wrong in his policies or otherwise mistaken but to suggest that he "didn't try" or that this was part of some Bolshevik masterplan is nonsense. The economic measures introduced by the Soviet government were logical reactions to a serious economic crisis that threatened the very foundations of Soviet power - the existence of the working class. You certainly cannot create socialism when the proletariat is dead or has retreated to the countryside

Pogue

23rd July 2009, 20:12

Eh... no. The socialisation of the workplace was obviously an extremely popular demand of the Russian proletariat in the run up to the October Revolution. After the transfer of power to the soviets these same workers naturally set about achieving this; Lenin's draft resolution on the issue (see link in post above) was not written in a vacuum but reflected what was actually occurring. Factory committees* did carve out new roles from themselves in the workplace (on an ad hoc basis and not always entirely replacing/destroying the previous management) and took on a major role in managing production. This was not always to the liking of central or regional soviets (which were setting up their own councils to deal with this) but was a continuation of a pre-October process

The results were of course disastrous. The crisis was obviously one inherited by the councils but they clearly failed to provide a way out of it. It was only in early 1918 (and late 1917) that the complete anarchy that prevailed in production (no pun intended) forced the Sovnarkom to halt the process of creating workplace councils, nationalise the remaining capitalist enterprises, and establish VSNKh. It would still be some months later before the principle of individual management was introduced across these nationalised industries

*Which incidentally, along with the trade unions, remained a bastion of Bolshevik support through these years and certainly within Petrograd. The idea that these were in opposition, or provided an alternative model, to the Bolsheviks is largely a fabrication

Lenin saw that one man management was a way to protect the proletariat from complete disintegration. Its hard to advocate economic experimentation on such a scale when almost 50% of the workforce are unemployed, production has almost ground to a complete halt, starvation is rife, and the workers are actually fleeing the cities en masse. See Rabinowitch's The Bolsheviks in Power for stats and info on the above period of economic chaos

Now you can of course insist that Lenin was wrong in his policies or otherwise mistaken but to suggest that he "didn't try" or that this was part of some Bolshevik masterplan is nonsense. The economic measures introduced by the Soviet government were logical reactions to a serious economic crisis that threatened the very foundations of Soviet power - the existence of the working class. You certainly cannot create socialism when the proletariat is dead or has retreated to the countryside

But this is just my point. They actively suppressed the factory committees. They were trying to create socialism, and Lenin and Trotsky decided they had the right to stop them from doing this. If they wanted socialism to flourish, why did they crush workers taking their own initiative?

ComradeOm

23rd July 2009, 20:41

But this is just my point. They actively suppressed the factory committees. They were trying to create socialism, and Lenin and Trotsky decided they had the right to stop them from doing this. If they wanted socialism to flourish, why did they crush workers taking their own initiative?"Crushing the workers" is extreme hyperbole and you know it. The Soviet government stepped in to nationalise industry and create a national economy body when it became obvious to all that the economy was plunging into an economic catastrophe without parallel in history. The post-October arrangements were deemed (correctly as it turns out) by the Sovnarkom and CEC of the Congress of Soviets to be unable to meet this challenge. This was not "suppression" and the factory committees would continue to play a meaningful economic/political role for some time

The question that you are posing is whether the Bolsheviks should have ignored this looming disaster and let ideology alone dictate their actions. To which I think Lenin's response is best: "Whatever the heroism of the workers, whatever their spirit of self-sacrifice, they cannot go on enduring all the torments of hunger, cold, typhus"

Pogue

23rd July 2009, 20:43

"Crushing the workers" is extreme hyperbole and you know it. The Soviet government stepped in to nationalise industry and create a national economy body when it became obvious to all that the economy was plunging into an economic catastrophe without parallel in history. The post-October arrangements were deemed (correctly as it turns out) by the Sovnarkom and CEC of the Congress of Soviets to be unable to meet this challenge. This was not "suppression" and the factory committees would continue to play a meaningful economic/political role for some time

The question that you are posing is whether the Bolsheviks should have ignored this looming disaster and let ideology alone dictate their actions. To which I think Lenin's response is best: "Whatever the heroism of the workers, whatever their spirit of self-sacrifice, they cannot go on enduring all the torments of hunger, cold, typhus"

So you, a socialist, don't think the workers could actually have controlled Russia, and so admit to and support that fact that Lenin did away with the factory committees? And you know the Sovnarkom was more than half made up of non-proletarians?

ComradeOm

23rd July 2009, 21:12

So you, a socialist, don't think the workers could actually have controlled Russia, and so admit to and support that fact that Lenin did away with the factory committees?I know that the ramshackle and ad hoc economic model that emerged in the immediate post-October period was unable to save Russia. Obviously this is not merely a matter of organisation (other factors were also at play) but the reality is that the emergence of factory committees with direct control over workshop activities (which is itself a gross simplification of what occurred) simply did not work. You can wish it were otherwise as much as you want but that will not change the fact that the collapse of the Russian economy sharply accelerated post-October as the productive forces of the country simply collapsed

And I've explained above that workers control, through political bodies, was still envisaged and that Lenin did not simply "do away with the factory committees". So stow your barbs and try to actually engage with the topic at hand

And you know the Sovnarkom was more than half made up of non-proletarians?And you know that it was entirely responsible to the CEC Congress of Soviets?

Pogue

23rd July 2009, 21:32

I know that the ramshackle and ad hoc economic model that emerged in the immediate post-October period was unable to save Russia. Obviously this is not merely a matter of organisation (other factors were also at play) but the reality is that the emergence of factory committees with direct control over workshop activities (which is itself a gross simplification of what occurred) simply did not work. You can wish it were otherwise as much as you want but that will not change the fact that the collapse of the Russian economy sharply accelerated post-October as the productive forces of the country simply collapsed

And I've explained above that workers control, through political bodies, was still envisaged and that Lenin did not simply "do away with the factory committees". So stow your barbs and try to actually engage with the topic at hand

And you know that it was entirely responsible to the CEC Congress of Soviets?

Where they the same Soviets made up of officials appointed by the Bolsheviks, or maybe the ones so undemocratic the Kronstadt sailors revolted over them?

Its telling you think Lenin could solve the economic problem but the working class couldn't. I think this shows your true colours.

ComradeOm

23rd July 2009, 21:47

Where they the same Soviets made up of officials appointed by the Bolsheviks, or maybe the ones so undemocratic the Kronstadt sailors revolted over them?What relevance does Kronstadt have with post-October economic policy? :confused:

Its telling you think Lenin could solve the economic problem but the working class couldn't. I think this shows your true colours.And I think this constant dodging and refusal to actually address the content of my posts pretty much sums up your own attitude. Tell me, did you ever intend to have a serious discussion on worker management during the Russian Revolution or was this a 'Bolshevik-baiting' exercise from the very first post?

Pogue

23rd July 2009, 21:50

What relevance does Kronstadt have with post-October economic policy :confused:

And I think this constant dodging and refusal to actually address the content of my posts pretty much sums up your own attitude. Tell me, did you ever intend to have a serious discussion on worker management during the Russian Revolution or was this a 'Bolshevik-baiting' exercise from the very first post?

I think Kronstatd is relevant because it was the expression of worker discontent at Bolshevik governance. One of the demands was fresh elections to the Soviet, which were corrupt, which means that you earlier claim about the Sovnarkom being accountable to the Soviets meaningless as both organs were corrupt and anti-working class.

I'm having a serious discussion, stop trying to jump ship by dismissing me as simply 'baiting' please.

ComradeOm

23rd July 2009, 21:57

I think Kronstatd is relevant because it was the expression of worker discontent at Bolshevik governance. One of the demands was fresh elections to the Soviet, which were corrupt, which means that you earlier claim about the Sovnarkom being accountable to the Soviets meaningless as both organs were corrupt and anti-working classYes, in 1921. No one, including the Kronstadt sailors themselves, seriously claimed that this was true in 1917. Unless you want to discuss the degeneration of the Revolution, a much broader topic and one I've hinted at above, then this is a complete red herring

Although it does illustrate a tendency common amongst critics of the Bolsheviks to skip from 1917 to 1921. I'd suggest that if you want to find out where things went wrong, and build a serious critique, then its the years in between that you want to study. But then again you have made it fairly clear that you consider the beginning of the end to be October 1917

Pogue

23rd July 2009, 22:05

Yes, in 1921. No one, including the Kronstadt sailors themselves, seriously claimed that this was true in 1917. Unless you want to discuss the degeneration of the Revolution, a much broader topic and one I've hinted at above, then this is a complete red herring

Although it does illustrate a tendency common amongst critics of the Bolsheviks to skip from 1917 to 1921. I'd suggest that if you want to find out where things went wrong, and build a serious critique, then its the years in between that you want to study. But then again you have made it fairly clear that you consider the beginning of the end to be October 1917

I'd say the end really was in 1918 when you could honestly say the Bolsheviks had consolidated state power and the working class had been defeated.

I'm not skipping from 1917 to 1921. I said that 1921 and Kronstadt was the pinnacle of all the events of 1917, 1918, 1919 and 1920. I think that the Bolsheviks betrayal of the working class built up to Kronstadt, which were the clear physical manifestation of the betrayal.

spiltteeth

23rd July 2009, 23:25

Pouge, first let me say that anarchists, like yourself, provide a very important function which forces everyone to examine and justify every hierarchy and power structure. Also, although I would not want to live in Soviet Russia and don’t think we ought to try to recreate it, I am a Marxist communist.
I think Lenin and his party had the best of intentions and was forced to make horrible compromises because of circumstances.
For instance, Lenin vehemently acclaimed closing down the Sukharev market, saying it was the symbol of the mentality of capitalism. “As long as the Sukharev market exists the capitalists can return to Russia and become stronger than we.” Shortly after that, when he witnessed the grinding poverty and economic situation in tatters, he reversed his position and reinstated the market.
Workers claimed many factories and ran them just fine. But look at transportation – the workers were doing a terrible job, it was in chaos. So Lenin, after just denouncing the bourgeois, had to go and hire many of them back, putting them back in their original places of power – but only AFTER trying it the other way –in this specific case anyway.

As for Krondstat, without justifying it, I’ll quote a fellow comrade, chegitz guevara (http://z11.invisionfree.com/Kasama_Threads/index.php?showuser=8),
“On the face of it, I find little wrong with their demands. In fact, only a month or so later, the Soviet Congress enacted many of those demands. In retrospect, it seems like a terrible and pointless event.

Things to keep in mind though. The Civil War in Russian had only just ended months before. Nine million people died in that war. Russian industry had collapsed. The populations of Petrograd and Moscow were half of their pre-war populations. Food production was down. And while the White's had been defeated, Wrangel's army sat across the border in Romania, being fed, clothed, and armed by the French. Russia was on the verge of collapse.

In only a short time, the ice would have broken up and the sailors at Kronstatd would have been able to blockade the capital and bring down the revolution. Would you risk everything, having only hung on to the revolution by the plaque on your teeth? Given the precarious situation and the lives of millions on your shoulders, would you do nothing? That's what was at stake. Better that the Bolsheviks were wrong about Kronstadt and crushed it, then have been right about it but have done nothing.”

PRC-UTE

24th July 2009, 15:27

But this is just my point. They actively suppressed the factory committees. They were trying to create socialism, and Lenin and Trotsky decided they had the right to stop them from doing this. If they wanted socialism to flourish, why did they crush workers taking their own initiative?

You seem to be ignoring the fact that workers control existed, and failed to end the crisis, and also that the factory councils didn't entirely disappear after one-man management was introduced.

I also think you are seriously unaware of how extreme the collapse of Russia's economy was. The proletariat was almost destroyed as a class. That aside, the best elements of it were either killed or exhausted and ill from years of civil war and famine.

Trotsky was correct to describe the early Soviet Union as a proletarian state without a proletariat. Much of its industry (and the proletariat to go with it) had to be rebuilt.

In such a situation faith in the spontaneity of the masses would be pretty useless.

Pogue

24th July 2009, 15:56

You seem to be ignoring the fact that workers control existed, and failed to end the crisis, and also that the factory councils didn't entirely disappear after one-man management was introduced.

I also think you are seriously unaware of how extreme the collapse of Russia's economy was. The proletariat was almost destroyed as a class. That aside, the best elements of it were either killed or exhausted and ill from years of civil war and famine.

Trotsky was correct to describe the early Soviet Union as a proletarian state without a proletariat. Much of its industry (and the proletariat to go with it) had to be rebuilt.

In such a situation faith in the spontaneity of the masses would be pretty useless.

If they were doing so badly why did Lenin and Trotsky actively supress them despite their attempts to create a nationwide confederation of factory committees, which would have allowed for more coordination?

And what write did the Bolsheviks have to determine whether or not the working class were failing?

ComradeOm

24th July 2009, 16:41

If they were doing so badly why did Lenin and Trotsky actively supress them despite their attempts to create a nationwide confederation of factory committees, which would have allowed for more coordination?Huh? Just think about that sentence, I mean really pause to run it through your head. If the factory committees were making an almighty mess of the economy (not necessarily true but stay with me) then why did Lenin and Trotsky decide (again, a gross simplification) not to further persist with the factory committees as the basis of the economy? You are perhaps familiar with the phrases 'throwing good money after bad' and 'fiddling while Rome burns'?

But really the above is riddled with error and inaccuracies. In particular your continued use of the term "supress" [sic] is absolutely ridiculous given both the reality of what happened and the picture painted in this thread. A lot of organisations were 'suppressed' in 1918, which you're well aware of, but the factory committees were not one of them. What actually occurred is that economic duties were increasing coordinated by the soviets at a local, regional and national level - for example the economic sections of the district soviets, SNKhSR, and VSNKh respectively. This was done on an ad hoc basis and without any real planning or direction from Moscow. There is far, far more to this picture than the evil Bolsheviks simply issuing directives from the centre and its absurd to attempt to reduce the incredibly complex economic transformation to this level

And what write did the Bolsheviks have to determine whether or not the working class were failing? You are really going to question as to whether or not there was a real economic crisis? The failure of the Russian economy to pull itself out of its nosedive post-October was self-evident to all

As for "writes" [sic], the Bolsheviks derived their mandate from the Congress of Soviets and the strength of this was bolstered by the elections to the constituent Assembly. Again the reality is that the Russian proletariat supported the Bolsheviks at this time

Dave B

24th July 2009, 18:47

I haven’t really had time to go through this thread properly so apologies for perhaps missing points. However I am going to throw in a quickly generated post before I go out in the hope that I am not going to be flamed by the moderator.

As people are throwing Lenin posts around, probably a really important, ‘classic’ or seminal and much quoted from one is Lenin’s ;

V. I. Lenin THE IMMEDIATE TASKS OF THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT;

Which is worth in that respect of being read in its entirety. However a sentence selected at random captures the flavour depending on your prejudice perhaps;

There is, therefore, absolutely no contradiction in principle between Soviet (that is, socialist) democracy and the exercise of dictatorial powers by individuals.

http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/IT18.html (http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/IT18.html)

Comrade ComradeOm makes on the surface of it a perhaps reasonable thesis that all this business of centralised party control, one man management etc etc or however the argument might be put. Was all the result of practical historical necessity given the appalling economic position they found themselves in etc etc.

What seems to be implied in this argument is that this somehow went against the grain and natural political propensities and theories of Leninism.

However deeply rooted in Bolshevik theory was the idea that the workers were too thick, intellectually challenged or culturally corrupted by capitalism blah blah to ever come to a higher communist level of consciousness without the paternalistic, tough love, guiding hand of the bourgeois intelligentsia and vanguard or in other words themselves.

V. I. Lenin, Theses on Fundamental Tasks of The Second Congress Of The Communist International june 1920

On the other hand, the idea, common among the old parties and the old leaders of the Second International, that the majority of the exploited toilers can achieve complete clarity of socialist consciousness and firm socialist convictions and character under capitalist slavery, under the yoke of the bourgeoisie (which assumes an inIinite variety of forms that become more subtle and at the same time more brutal and ruthless the higher the cultural level in a given capitalist country) is also idealisation of capitalism and of bourgeois democracy, as well as deception of the workers.

In fact, it is only after the vanguard of the proletariat, supported by the whole or the majority of this, the only revolutionary class, overthrows the exploiters, suppresses them, emancipates the exploited from their state of slavery and-immediately improves their conditions of life at the expense of the expropriated capitalists—it is only after this, and only in the actual process of an acute class struggle, that the masses of the toilers and exploited can be educated, trained and organised around the proletariat under whose influence and guidance, they can get rid of the selfishness, disunity, vices and weaknesses engendered by private property; only then will they be converted into a free union of free workers.

http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/lenin/works/1920/jul/04.htm (http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/lenin/works/1920/jul/04.htm)

There is I suggest a continuity of theory between the above from 1920 and from 20 years earlier in;

WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

We have said that there could not yet be Social-Democratic consciousness among the workers. It could only be brought to them from without.

http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/WD02i.html (http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/WD02i.html)

There was a big ‘mandatory nomination’ debate that basically involved the right of workers to appoint their own workplace managers as opposed to them being appointed by the Bolshevik party.

The Bolshevik opposition to the idea was two-fold.

First was the more ‘legitimate’ argument that that would tend to lead each individual production unit or factory or whatever to focus on its own parochial interests and the ‘stuff everybody else we will do what is good for us’ kind of thing. Which wouldn’t lead to or would go against the ‘harmonious’ integration of production etc.

Hence the accusations of syndicalism, were as the Marxist or Engelist theory goes these co-operatives would just degenerate into a dog eat dog competitive enterprises in a general economic environment that wouldn’t be that much different to capitalism.

Re stuff in Ante Duhring were Duhring was proposing a sort of syndicalism.

However again the second level of Bolshevik opposition to syndicalism did revolve around the stupid worker versus the clever paternalistic bourgeois intelligentsia position eg and there are plenty of other eg’s;

V. I. Lenin THE SECOND ALL-RUSSIA CONGRESS OF MINERS

Does every worker know how to run the state? People working in the practical sphere know that this is not true, that millions of our organised workers are going through what we always said the trade unions were, namely, a school of communism and administration. When they have attended this school for a number of years they will have learned to administer, but the going is slow.

We have not even abolished illiteracy. We know that workers in touch with peasants are liable to fall for non-proletarian slogans. How many of the workers have been engaged in government? A few thousand throughout Russia and no more. If we say that it is not the Party but the trade unions that put up the candidates and administrate, it may sound very democratic and might help us to catch a few votes, but not for long. It will be fatal for the dictatorship of the proletariat (Bolshevik party).

http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/SCM21.html (http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/SCM21.html)

The issue of a nominally ‘revolutionary worker’s party’ seizing power in the course of the overthrow of Tsarist Russia and being blown off course by ‘historical materialist’ circumstances beyond their control was dealt with by Fred;

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885/letters/85_04_23.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885/letters/85_04_23.htm)

The Mensheviks by comparison were horrified by the idea that they might be accidentally swept into power by the support of a ‘backward’ and class unconscious working class and necessarily peasant class and the Bolsheviks mocked them for it.

By the way I think that the anarchists, or many of them at first, and Bolsheviks were of one mind and that they could make a ‘go of it’.

By the middle of 1918 by the way even the Mensheviks had thrown in the towel and realised that things were in such a mess that state capitalism was the only option for the foreseeable future.
.

.

New Tet

24th July 2009, 19:38

But there was a choice. I don't see how you can defend socialism by creating a strongly centralised state detached from the working class. Thats killing socialism.

"There was a choice" sounds too much like Looneytarian Speak, wherein external, material forces are portrayed as passive objects awaiting our imperious will.

In other words, what people do, even smart ones, is often dictated by forces outside of their control. The farcical and tragic thing about it is that we often know exactly what we are doing and where it will lead but are impotent to change course and avert the consequence.

I think that Lenin really wanted worker control of the economy but knew that in the Russia of his time this was a mere pipe dream. He developed, instead, a hostility to 'the obscure object of his desire'. So he and his students semi-unconsciously brought about its complete antithesis.

Lenin and many of the smarter Bolshies around him saw it coming. The stress of that knowledge, overwork and sleepless nights must helped provoke his stroke.

In the end he tried set it right with his Last Will and Testament but it was too little, too late; Stalin was already too far up in his ascendancy and Trotsky, Bukharin (http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/index.htm), (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kamenev/index.htm)Kamenev (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kamenev/index.htm)and Zinoviev (http://www.marxists.org/archive/zinoviev/index.htm) were sleeping with the dogs.

PRC-UTE

25th July 2009, 02:10

If they were doing so badly why did Lenin and Trotsky actively supress them despite their attempts to create a nationwide confederation of factory committees, which would have allowed for more coordination?

And what write did the Bolsheviks have to determine whether or not the working class were failing?

Your problem is that you are operating with the assumptions that:

real working class power means a loose, decentralised confederation of workers councils, and since this wasn't the case the Soviet Union must have been a horrible dictatorship from the get-go;

that the Bolshevik party was not a working class party that fought for the proletariat in the class war, and did not have their support, because they were actually "state capitalist bureaucrats";

both of which are not true. The Bolsheviks remained a working class communist party, with the active support and participation of the workers themselves through the party. but nothing anyone says will convince you otherwise, because you are so dogmatic.

It's a bitter pill to swallow, but most of the factions that lost in the course of party struggles weren't all that popular. I would rather have seen the ideas of the workers opposition group implemented, but they didn't have enough support from the workers themselves.

Invariance

25th July 2009, 02:25

The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government in an epoch when the movement is not yet ripe for the domination of the class which he represents and for the realisation of the measures which that domination would imply. What he can do depends not upon his will but upon the sharpness of the clash of interests between the various classes, and upon the degree of development of the material means of existence, the relations of production and means of communication upon which the clash of interests of the classes is based every time. What he ought to do, what his party demands of him, again depends not upon him, or upon the degree of development of the class struggle and its conditions. He is bound to his doctrines and the demands hitherto propounded which do not emanate from the interrelations of the social classes at a given moment, or from the more or less accidental level of relations of production and means of communication, but from his more or less penetrating insight into the general result of the social and political movement. Thus he necessarily finds himself in a dilemma. What he can do is in contrast to all his actions as hitherto practised, to all his principles and to the present interests of his party; what he ought to do cannot be achieved. In a word, he is compelled to represent not his party or his class, but the class for whom conditions are ripe for domination. In the interests of the movement itself, he is compelled to defend the interests of an alien class, and to feed his own class with phrases and promises, with the assertion that the interests of that alien class are their own interests. Whoever puts himself in this awkward position is irrevocably lost. --- Engels, The Peasant War in Germany.
I think this applies to a number of the actions of the Bolsheviks, certainly in later years as conditions deteriorated and the hopes of international revolution faded.

Tower of Bebel

25th July 2009, 15:52

The Russian Revolution was already a huge mess when it started. You cannot just blame the Bolsheviks. At first the soviets were largely controled and even set up by the Menshevik and Social Revolutionary parties.
Remember, the first struggle of the Bolsheviks (1917) was to make the soviets independent from the Bourgeoisie (which controled the workers through their respective bourgeois workers' parties).

Just like in Germany where the SPD effectively controled the majority of the councils the Russian soviets were by themselves not capable of governing, let alone running society as a whole. In some areas the workers' were going in the right direction, but in the majority of cases things went awfully wrong.

This is not an arguement in favor of the "crushing" of Soviets, however.

The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government in an epoch when the movement is not yet ripe for the domination of the class which he represents and for the realisation of the measures which that domination would imply. What he can do depends not upon his will but upon the sharpness of the clash of interests between the various classes, and upon the degree of development of the material means of existence, the relations of production and means of communication upon which the clash of interests of the classes is based every time. What he ought to do, what his party demands of him, again depends not upon him, or upon the degree of development of the class struggle and its conditions. He is bound to his doctrines and the demands hitherto propounded which do not emanate from the interrelations of the social classes at a given moment, or from the more or less accidental level of relations of production and means of communication, but from his more or less penetrating insight into the general result of the social and political movement. Thus he necessarily finds himself in a dilemma. What he can do is in contrast to all his actions as hitherto practised, to all his principles and to the present interests of his party; what he ought to do cannot be achieved. In a word, he is compelled to represent not his party or his class, but the class for whom conditions are ripe for domination. In the interests of the movement itself, he is compelled to defend the interests of an alien class, and to feed his own class with phrases and promises, with the assertion that the interests of that alien class are their own interests. Whoever puts himself in this awkward position is irrevocably lost. --- Engels, The Peasant War in Germany.
I think this applies to a number of the actions of the Bolsheviks, certainly in later years as conditions deteriorated and the hopes of international revolution faded.Interesting. This is basicly the arguement put forward by Kautsky in his anti-Bolshevik workers. But he didn't have the guts to do it the other way around: against the SPD-USPD coalition.

Pogue

25th July 2009, 16:47

New Tet

25th July 2009, 17:36

But I'm not blaming the Bolsheviks for the whole failure, I'm pointing to specific counter-revolutionary acts they did which killed the revolution, such as suppression of any left wing critique of them, suppression of the factory committees, suppression of Kronstadt, etc.

The Russian revolution was never killed; it died, as it were, of natural causes.

All revolutions have a life-cycle. The USSR's was no different.

Its revolution lasted as long as the material bases that gave it impetus allowed.

After that, reaction sets in.

Likewise capitalism which, by the time of the October revolution, was already showing signs of advanced senility and premature decrepitude.

The revolution that gave birth to capitalism gave up the ghost a fucking long time ago. Capitalism has exhausted its material basis and is now operating on credit whose interest is, to say the least, astronomical.

Dave B

25th July 2009, 18:20

Actually the Peasant war in Germany quote in post 27 by invariance cropped in 1905 and was being used by the Mensheviks in opposition to the Bolsheviks

V. I. Lenin, SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY, AND THE PROVISIONAL, REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT

This is incredible, but true. The future historian of Russian Social-Democracy will have to record with surprise that at the very outset of the Russian revolution the Girondists of Social-Democracy tried to frighten the revolutionary proletariat with such a prospect! Martynov's pamphlet (as well as a host of articles and passages in the new Iskra ) is nothing but an attempt to daub the "horrors" of such a prospect. The ideological leader of the new-Iskrists is haunted by fear of "a seizure of power", by the bogy of "Jacobinism", of Bakuninism, of Tkachovism, and of all the other dreadful isms with which old wives on the fringe of the revolution are so eager to scare political infants.

Naturally, this is done not without "quoting" Marx and Engels. Poor Marx and poor Engels, what abuses their works have suffered through quotations! You remember how the maxim "Every class struggle is a political struggle"was invoked to justify the narrowness and backwardness of our political tasks and methods of political agitation and struggle? Now it is Engels who is made to give false evidence in favour of tail-ism.

In The Peasant War in Germany, he wrote: "The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government in an epoch when the movement is not yet ripe for the domination of the class which he represents, and for the realisation of the measures which that domination requires." One has only to read carefully this opening of the lengthy passage which Martynov quotes to see plainly how our tail-ender distorts the author's meaning. Engels speaks of a government that is required for the domination of a class. Is this not obvious? Applied to the proletariat, it consequently means a government that is required for the domination of the proletariat, i.e., the dictatorship of the proletariat for the effectuation of the socialist revolution.

Martynov fails to understand this, and confounds the provisional revolutionary government in the period of the overthrow of the autocracy with the requisite domination of the proletariat in the period of the overthrow of the bourgeoisie; he confounds the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry with the socialist dictatorship of the working class. Yet if we continue reading the quoted passage, Engels' idea becomes still clearer. The leader of the e~treme party, he says, will have to "advance the interests of an alien class, and to feed his own class with phrases and promises, and with the assurances that the interests of that alien class are its own interests. Whoever finds himself in this false position is irrevocably lost."

The underlined passages clearly show that Engels expressly warns against the false position that results from a leader's failure to understand the real interests of "his own" class and the real class content of the revolution. To make this clearer to the subtle mind of our Martynov we shall essay a simple illustration. When the adherents of the Narodnaya Volya, in the belief that they represented the interests of "Labour", assured themselves and others that 90 per cent of the peasants in the future Russian Constituent Assembly would be socialists, they put themselves in a false position which was bound to spell their irrevocable political doom, since these "promises and assurances" were at variance with objective reality.

Actually they would have advanced the interests of the bourgeois democrats, "the interests of an alien class". Are you not beginning to perceive a ray of light, most worthy Martynov? When the Socialists-Revolutionaries describe the agrarian reforms that must inevitably come about in Russia as "socialisation", as "the transfer of the land to the people", as the beginning of "equality in land tenure", they place themselves in a false position which is bound to lead to their irrevocable political doom, because, in practice, the very reforms for which they strive will bring about the domination of an alien class, of the peasant bourgeoisie, so that the more rapidly the revolution develops, the more rapidly will their phrases, promises, and assurances be refuted by reality.

Do you still fail to see the point, most worthy Martynov? Do you still fail to comprehend that the essence of Engels' thought is that it is fatal not to understand the real historical tasks of the revolution and that Engels' words are applicable, therefore, to the Narodnaya Volya adherents and the "Socialists-Revolutionaries"?

http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/SDPRG05.html#p282 (http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/SDPRG05.html)

SocialismOrBarbarism

25th July 2009, 19:38

I think this is far more than a measure regretfully accepted by the Bolsheviks. It seems to be at they very heart of Leninism. Take Trotsky, for example:

The Workers’ Opposition has come out with dangerous slogans.They have made a fetish of democratic principles. They have placed the workers’ right to elect representatives above the party, as it were, as if the party were not entitled to assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship temporarily clashed with the passing moods of the workers’ democracy. . . . It is necessary to create among us the awareness of the revolutionary historical birthright of the party. The Party is obliged to maintain its dictatorship ... regardless of temporary vacillations even in the working class ... The dictatorship does not base itself at every given moment on the formal principle of a workers' democracy ...Or Lenin...

... the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised by a mass proletarian organisation ... It can be exercised only by a vanguard.

The art of politics (and the Communist’s correct understanding of his tasks) consists in correctly gauging the conditions and the moment when the vanguard of the proletariat can successfully assume power, when it is able—during and after the seizure of power—to win adequate support from sufficiently broad strata of the working class and of the non-proletarian working masses, and when it is able thereafter to maintain, consolidate and extend its rule by educating, training and attracting ever broader masses of the working people. What does that sound like?

The Blanquists fared no better. Brought up in the school of conspiracy, and held together by the strict discipline which went with it, they started out from the viewpoint that a relatively small number of resolute, well-organized men would be able, at a given favorable moment, not only seize the helm of state, but also by energetic and relentless action, to keep power until they succeeded in drawing the mass of the people into the revolution and ranging them round the small band of leaders. this conception involved, above all, the strictest dictatorship and centralization of all power in the hands of the new revolutionary government.

29th July 2009, 05:28

What does that sound like?

To the Narodovoltsi, the term political struggle is synonymous with the term political conspiracy ! It must be confessed that in these words P. L. Lavrov has managed to bring out in bold relief the fundamental difference between the tactics in the political struggle adopted by the Narodovoltsi and by the Social-Democrats. Blanquist,[10] (http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1897/dec/31b.htm#fwV02E113) conspiratorial traditions are fearfully strong among the former, so much so that they cannot conceive of political struggle except in the form of political conspiracy. The Social-Democrats, however, are not guilty of such a narrow outlook; they do not believe in conspiracies; they think that the period of conspiracies has long passed away, that to reduce political struggle to conspiracy means, on the one hand, immensely restricting its scope, and, on the other hand, choosing the most unsuitable methods of struggle. Everyone will understand that P. L. Lavrov’s remark that “the Russian Social-Democrats take the activities of the West as an unfailing model” (p. 21, col. 1) is nothing more than a polemical manoeuvre, and that actually the Russian Social-Democrats have never forgotten the political conditions here, they have never dreamed of being able to form a workers’ party in Russia legally, they have never separated the task of fighting for socialism from that of fighting for political liberty. But they have always thought, and continue to think, that this fight must be waged not by conspirators, but by a revolutionary party based on the working-class movement. They think that the fight against the autocracy must consist not in organising conspiracies, but in educating, disciplining and organising the proletariat, in political agitation among the workers which denounces every manifestation of absolutism, which pillories all the knights of the police government and compels this government to make concessions. Is this not precisely the kind of activity being conducted by the St. Petersburg League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class? Does not this organisation represent the embryo of a revolutionary party based on the working-class movement, which leads the class struggle of the proletariat against capital and against the autocratic government without hatching any conspiracies, while deriving its strength from the combination of socialist and democratic struggle into the single, indivisible class struggle of the St. Petersburg proletariat? Brief as they may have been, have not the activities of the League already shown that the proletariat, led by Social-Democracy, is a big political force with which the government is already compelled to reckon, and to which it hastens to make concessions? Both the haste with which the law of June 2, 1897, was passed, and the content of that law clearly reveal its significance as a concession wrung by the proletariat, as a position won from the enemy of the Russian people. This concession is a very tiny one, the position won is very small, but the working-class organisation that has succeeded in forcing this concession is also not distinguished for breadth, stability, long standing or wealth of experience or resources. As is well known, the League of Struggle was formed only in 1895-96, and its appeals to the workers have been confined to hectographed or lithographed leaflets. Can it he denied that an organisation like this, if it united, at least, the biggest centres of the working-class movement in Russia (the St. Petersburg, Moscow-Vladimir, and the southern areas, and also the most important towns like Odessa, Kiev, Saratov, etc.), if it had a revolutionary organ at its disposal and enjoyed as much prestige among the Russian workers generally as the League of Struggle does among the St. Petersburg workers—can it be denied that such an organisation would be a tremendous political factor in contemporary Russia, a factor that the government would have to reckon with in its entire home and foreign policy. By leading the class struggle of the proletariat, developing organisation and discipline among the workers, helping them to fight for their immediate economic needs and to win position after position from capital, by politically educating the workers and systematically and unswervingly attacking the autocracy and making life a torment for every tsarist bashi-bazouk who makes the proletariat feel the heavy paw of the police government—such an organisation would at one and the same time be a workers’ party organisation adapted to our conditions, and a powerful revolutionary party directed against the autocracy. To discuss in advance what methods this organisation will resort to in order to deliver a smashing blow at the autocracy, whether, for example, it will prefer insurrection, a mass political strike, or some other form of attack, to discuss these things in advance and to decide this question now would be empty doctrinairism. It would be akin to generals calling a council of war before they had mustered their troops, mobilised them, and under taken a campaign against the enemy. When the army of the proletariat fights unswervingly and under the leader ship of a strong Social-Democratic organisation for its economic and political emancipation, that army will itself indicate the methods and means of action to the generals. Then, and then only, will it be possible to decide the question of striking the final blow at the autocracy; for the solution of the problem depends on the state of the working-class movement, on its breadth, on the methods of struggle developed by the movement, on the qualities of the revolutionary organisation leading the movement, on the attitude of other social elements to the proletariat and to the autocracy, on the conditions governing home and foreign politics—in a word, it depends on a thousand and one things which cannot be guessed, and which it would be useless to try to guess in advance.

Tasks of the Russian Social-Democrats (http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1897/dec/31b.htm#fwV02E106)
(http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1897/dec/31b.htm#fwV02E106)
And so on.:rolleyes:

Do you think Lenin is lying in this instance? Or did he simply just change his mind later on? Do you even understand the devastating attacks he laid upon the Narodniks (the real Blanquists) in these early years? And yet you basically call him one? Does that really make sense to you?

It's quite clear that by calling Leninism a form of Blanquism you're simply being a dishonest, partisan hack instead of being open to the truth of the matter (which is pretty typical of your kind).

EDIT: Here's another one (emphasis mine):

Still less can there be any suggestion of a serious change in the attitude of the workers’ party towards the other opposition parties. In this respect, too, Marxism has mapped out the correct line, which is equally remote from exaggerating the importance of politics, from conspiracy (Blanquism, etc.), and from decrying politics or reducing it to opportunist, reformist social tinkering (anarchism, utopian and petty- bourgeois socialism, state socialism, professorial socialism, etc.).

A Protest By Russian Social-Democrats (http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1899/sep/protest.htm)
(http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1897/dec/31b.htm#fwV02E106)

Nwoye

31st July 2009, 18:53

By leading the class struggle of the proletariat, developing organisation and discipline among the workers, helping them to fight for their immediate economic needs and to win position after position from capital, by politically educating the workers and systematically and unswervingly attacking the autocracy and making life a torment for every tsarist bashi-bazouk who makes the proletariat feel the heavy paw of the police government—such an organisation would at one and the same time be a workers’ party organisation adapted to our conditions, and a powerful revolutionary party directed against the autocracy. To discuss in advance what methods this organisation will resort to in order to deliver a smashing blow at the autocracy, whether, for example, it will prefer insurrection, a mass political strike, or some other form of attack, to discuss these things in advance and to decide this question now would be empty doctrinairism. It would be akin to generals calling a council of war before they had mustered their troops, mobilised them, and under taken a campaign against the enemy. When the army of the proletariat fights unswervingly and under the leader ship of a strong Social-Democratic organisation for its economic and political emancipation, that army will itself indicate the methods and means of action to the generals. Then, and then only, will it be possible to decide the question of striking the final blow at the autocracy; for the solution of the problem depends on the state of the working-class movement, on its breadth, on the methods of struggle developed by the movement, on the qualities of the revolutionary organisation leading the movement, on the attitude of other social elements to the proletariat and to the autocracy, on the conditions governing home and foreign politics—in a word, it depends on a thousand and one things which cannot be guessed, and which it would be useless to try to guess in advance.
wait, isn't the whole last portion of that quote essentially the same as Rosa Luxemburg's concept of spontaneous organization? The concept that the organization methods of the working class and of the workers state will develop out of the specific historical conditions of the revolution, and out of the spontaneous reaction to those conditions? To be concise, "the workers leading themselves". Doesn't this kind of completely go against the Leninist notion of a vanguard party leading the working class to revolutionary consciousness and the correct form of organization?

PRC-UTE

2nd August 2009, 07:45

I think this is far more than a measure regretfully accepted by the Bolsheviks. It seems to be at they very heart of Leninism. Take Trotsky, for example:

Or Lenin...

What does that sound like?

Yet one of your quotes from Lenin is on the need for attaining more extensive and deeper active support of the proletariat before launching a revolution, so that revolution can succeed (an analysis borne out by the failure of the spontaneous and failed July Revolution). Which doesn't really fit with your comparison of Leninism with Blanquism.

You can claim that Leninists are just trying to maniuplate the workers into revolution by adjusting their consciousnesses all you like, the fact is that the Leninist conception of revolution requires the active struggle of the masses. And that is not the same core ideas as Blanquism.

Die Neue Zeit

21st August 2009, 15:33

Cominternism, unfortunately, has some unsavoury historical precedents. It's not so much Blanquism that is the precedent (since Blanquists in the Paris Commune democratized the city) as opposed to Bakuninism and Sorelism.

Cominternism, also unfortunately including Lenin at this point, involved "moving the masses into action" the only way they could do it: reducing the political content of the program and focusing on economic aspects, banking on the notion that workers should "trust the party." This was also how "transitional slogans" erupted.

Tower of Bebel

21st August 2009, 17:43

Cominternism, also unfortunately including Lenin at this point, involved "moving the masses into action" the only way they could do it: reducing the political content of the program and focusing on economic aspects, banking on the notion that workers should "trust the party." This was also how "transitional slogans" erupted.
But this can only be understood in the light of two characteristics of the Comintern: One is the general idea of "the permanent crisis of capitalism", "imperialism as the highest or final stage of capitalism", "the death antagony of capitalism", "the fase of transition" or whatever the period was called. The second is the fear of isolation.

Btw, here's Luxemburg's own "Hands of Vladimir Lenin":

How to explain our success and the failure of the Blanquists? Quite simply by the fact that the famous ‘masses’ are no longer the same. Today they are made up of working class troops fighting tsarism, of men made socialist by life itself, of men who have been nurtured on hate for the established order, of men taught by necessity to think in Marxist terms. That is the difference. It is neither the leaders nor even the ideas they produce, but the social and economic conditions which rule out a common class fight of the proletariat and bourgeoisie.

Thus, since the masses are different, since the proletariat is different, one cannot speak today of conspiratorial, Blanquist tactics. Blanqui and his heroic comrades made superhuman efforts to lead the masses towards class struggle; they did not succeed at all, because they were faced with workers who had not yet broken with the system of corporations, who were still immersed in petty bourgeois ideology.

We social democrats have a much simpler and easier task: today we need only work to direct the class struggle, which has been inflamed with inexorable necessity. The Blanquists tried to drag the masses behind them, whereas we social democrats are today pushed by the masses. The difference is great – as great as that between a sailor who strives to realign the current to his boat and one whose task is to hold the line of a boat carried by the current. The first will never have enough power and will fail in his goal, while the second must only ensure that the boat does not deviate from its route, is not broken on a reef or beached on a sandbank.

In this sense comrade Plekhanov ought not to worry about the “revolutionary autonomy of the masses”. Such autonomy exists – nothing will hold it back and all the bookish sermons on its necessity (please excuse this expression, but we are unable to think of another) will only cause those who work with, and at the heart of, the masses to smile.

We would dispute comrade Plekhanov’s reproach to the Russian comrades of the current “majority” that they have committed Blanquist errors during the revolution. It is possible that there were hints of them in the organisational draft that comrade Lenin drew up in 1902, but that belongs to the past – a distant past, since today life is proceeding at a dizzying speed. These errors have been corrected by life itself and there is no danger they might recur. And we should not be afraid of the ghost of Blanquism, for it cannot be resuscitated at this time.

On the contrary, there is a danger that comrade Plekhanov and the partisans of the “minority” who fear Blanquism so much will go to the opposite extreme and ground the boat on a sandbank. We see this opposite extreme in the fact that these comrades fear above all remaining in a minority and are counting on the masses outside the proletariat. Hence the calculation favouring participation in the duma; hence the false rallying cries in the central committee directives to support the gentlemen of the Cadets, the attempt to revive the slogan, “Down with the bureaucratic ministry!” and other similar errors.

There is no danger that the boat will remain grounded on the sandbank: the tumultuous events of the revolution will soon carry forward the proletarian boat. But it would be a pity if we became diverted by such errors, if only for an instant.

In the same way, the notion of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” has taken on a different meaning from before. Friedrich Engels correctly stresses that the Blanquists were not dreaming of a dictatorship of “the entire revolutionary class, the proletariat, but of the small minority that has made the revolution”. Today things are quite different. It is not an organisation of conspirators who “made the revolution”, who can contemplate their dictatorship. Even the Narodnaya Volya people and those who claim to be their heirs, the Socialist Revolutionaries of Russia, have long ceased to dream of such a thing.

If today the Bolshevik comrades speak of the dictatorship of the proletariat, they have never given it the old Blanquist meaning; neither have they ever made the mistake of Narodnaya Volya, which dreamt of “taking power for itself” (zachvat vlasti). On the contrary, they have affirmed that the present revolution will succeed when the proletariat – all the revolutionary class – takes possession of the state machine. The proletariat, as the most revolutionary element, will perhaps assume the role of liquidator of the old regime by “taking power for itself” in order to defeat counterrevolution and prevent the revolution being led astray by a bourgeoisie that is reactionary in its very nature. No revolution can succeed other than by the dictatorship of one class, and all the signs are that the proletariat can become this liquidator at the present time.

Clearly no social democrat falls for the illusion of the proletariat being able to maintain itself in power. If it could, it would lead to the domination of its working class ideas and it would realise socialism. But it is not strong enough at this time, for the proletariat, in the strictest sense of the word, constitutes a minority in the Russian empire. The achievement of socialism by a minority is unconditionally excluded, since the very idea of socialism excludes the domination of a minority. So, on the day of the political victory of the proletariat over tsarism, the majority will claim the power which the former has conquered.

Concretely, after the fall of tsarism, power will pass into the hands of the most revolutionary part of society, the proletariat, because the proletariat will take possession of all posts and keep watch over them until power is placed in the hands of those legally called upon to hold it – in the hands of the new government, which the Constituent [Assembly], as the legislative organ elected by the whole population, is alone able to determine. Now, it is a simple fact that it is not the proletariat that constitutes a majority in society, but the petty bourgeoisie and the peasantry, and that, as a consequence, it will not be the social democrats who form a majority in the Constituent, but the democratic peasants and petty bourgeois. We may lament this fact, but we will not be able to change it.

Broadly speaking, this is the situation as the Bolsheviks understand it, and all social democratic organisations and parties outside Russia itself share this vision. Where Blanquism fits into it is difficult to imagine.

To justify his claim, if only in appearance, comrade Plekhanov is obliged to take the words of Lenin and his comrades out of context. Blanquism and Social Democracy (1906) (http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1906/06/blanquism.html)