an argument against menshevism

[ColonelCossack]

last week i was sitting around and a social democrat of some sort came up to me and told me that revolution is never the way and that we can only reach equality (he declined from using the term communism) through peaceful protest and reforms- in short, menshevism, also known as utopian socialism. he cited that that was the policy of the VERY early labour party (now, of course, they are just a bunch of reactionary bastards), and that they gave the UK such blessings (and dont get me wrong, im very glad we have it) as the welfare state.

HOWEVER, I retorted that under a weak menshevik policy such as that, after only a short amount of time a bourgeois party (like the tories) would come along, voted in because of the influence of right wing media, and destroy what he had mentioned. this is almost exactly what is happening at the moment in the UK, with the tory party destroying the 50 year old welfare state- within 20 years it will be just as bad a condition as in america, i estimate.

Moreover, revolution, apart from stopping any capitalist party from moving in and destroying the things mentioned above, would provide a much faster way of achieving socialism and after that communism, stopping the need for unneeded capitalist exploitation.

[ColonelCossack]

even though no capitalist exploitation is necessary... i don't know why i wrote that bit at the end... it just ends capitalist exploitation QUICKER.

[Zanthorus]

Ok, first of all what you've described is not Menshevism. Menshevism was a tendency within the early Russian labour movement which crystallised around support for Julius Martov's proposal for party membership criteria in opposition to Lenin's proposal (With those supporting the latter becoming the Bolsheviks). The most notable feature of Menshevism was their belief that the upcoming Russian revolution would be a straightforward 'bourgeois revolution' in which it would be the job of revolutionary socialists to form the extreme left-wing of the revolutionary camp. There was nothing soft or reformist about Menshevism. Alexander Martynov even accused Lenin of being a class-collaborationist ("crass Jaurèsism") for advocating the participation of socialists in a revolutionary provisional government with other revolutionary democratic forces.

Second of all what you've described is not 'utopian socialism'. Utopian socialism was a term used by Marx and Engels' to designate socialists for whom socialism was based on a set of eternally valid principles rather than the class struggle between workers' and capitalists, and who as a result took up a sectarian attitude towards workers' struggles. There was also nothing reformist about the utopian socialists, quite the opposite. Their sectarianism with regards to workers' struggles usually led them to oppose anything short of complete socialist transformation (c.f Marx's caricature of a Proudhonist in Political Indifferentism).

Also, the person you were arguing with needs to get their facts straight with regards to the Labour party. The Labour Representation Committee which became the Parliamentary Labour Party was set up in 1900 by the TUC in order to give independent political representation to the trade-union movement after a series of landmark anti-trade-union rulings in court and the decline of the liberal party which had been the traditional party which trade-unionists looked to defend their interests on the political field. The first conference explicitly rejected the motion put forward by members of the Social-Democratic Federation to make socialism it's ultimate goal. It was only after the First World War and in the context of the radicalisation of workers' struggles which was occuring at the time when the Labour party started talking about common ownership of the means of production, and even then this was envisaged in Fabian terms as implying the ownership of the means of production by the British state (Whose colonies the party of course committed itself to maintaining).

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Couldn't say it better myself^^

There is a lot to say for revolutionary Menshevism, in the sense of mass party membership.

[blake 3:17]

Zanthorus is right in the historical details. What the OP is referring to is social democracy from 1945 up to some time in the 90s. At varying points social democracy was revolutionary, reformist, and has become reformism without any meaningful reforms.

The single biggest mistake genuine reformists make is viewing the State and bourgeois democracy as essentially neutral instruments which can be won for the oppressed and exploited through gradual means. While I disagree with that position, I respect it to a certain degree. The State is both an instrument of class domination and the product of class struggle. Bourgeois democracy is a system of exploitation but also one of individual and collective rights that those on the Left should be wary of surrendering.

We should also be aware that thus far no socialist revolution has eliminated oppression or exploitation. One of the great historic achievements of the Cuban revolution has been its ability to correct its own mistakes, rather than exacerbating them.

[Dave B]

It needs bearing in mind that for the entire marxist community the forthcoming and awaited inevitable capitalist revolution in Russia would be a progressive step in an 'anything but feudalism' kind of idea, feudalism was viewed then in a similar way as we would view fascism now say.



One group ie the Nardoniks, and the Anarchists, had some vague anti Marxist ideas that it would be possible to skip capitalism and move to some kind of socialism centred around the peasant agricultural economy.


And supporting the introduction of capitalism was an anathema. Lenin argued thus in 1905, perhaps bending the stick a bit too far for the more leftist new Iskra-ists (Mensheviks) in his enthusiasm for the introduction of capitalism thus in Two Tactics from 1905.




But it does not at all follow from this that a democratic revolution (bourgeois in its social and economic substance) is not of enormous interest for the proletariat. It does not at all follow from this that the democratic revolution cannot take place in a form advantageous mainly to the big capitalist, the financial magnate and the "enlightened" landlord, as well as in a form advantageous to the peasant and to the worker.

The new Iskra-ists thoroughly misunderstand the meaning and significance of the category: bourgeois revolution. Through their arguments.. [Menshevik].. there constantly runs the idea that a bourgeois revolution is a revolution which can be advantageous only to the bourgeoisie. And yet nothing is more erroneous than such an idea. A bourgeois revolution is a

page 43
revolution which does not go beyond the limits of the bourgeois, i.e., capitalist, social and economic system. A bourgeois revolution expresses the need for the development of capitalism, and far from destroying the foundations of capitalism, it does the opposite, it broadens and deepens them.

This revolution therefore expresses the interests not only of the working class, but of the entire bourgeoisie as well. Since the rule of the bourgeoisie over the working class is inevitable under capitalism, it is quite correct to say that a bourgeois revolution expresses the interests not so much of the proletariat as of the bourgeoisie. But it is entirely absurd to think that a bourgeois revolution does not express the interests of the proletariat at all.


This absurd idea boils down either to the hoary Narodnik theory that a bourgeois revolution runs counter to the interests of the proletariat, and that therefore we do not need bourgeois political liberty; or to anarchism, which rejects all participation of the proletariat in bourgeois politics, in a bourgeois revolution and in bourgeois parliamentarism. From the standpoint of theory, this idea disregards the elementary propositions of Marxism concerning the inevitability of capitalist development where commodity production exists.

Marxism teaches that a society which is based on commodity production, and which has commercial intercourse with civilized capitalist nations, at a certain stage of its development, itself, inevitably takes the road of capitalism. Marxism has irrevocably broken with the ravings of the Narodniks and the anarchists to the effect that Russia, for instance, can avoid capitalist development, jump out of capitalism, or skip over it and proceed along some path other than the path of the class struggle on the basis and within the framework of this same capitalism.



http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/TT05.html (http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/TT05.html)

In 1914 he repeated the same basic argument, which addresses the bafflement that you can get from Leninists foot soldiers on this issue I think;

Left-Wing Narodism and Marxism




The economic development of Russia, as of the whole world, proceeds from feudalism to capitalism, and through large-scale, machine, capitalist production to socialism.

Pipe-dreaming about a "different" way to socialism other than that which leads, through the further development of capitalism, through large-scale, machine, capitalist production, is, in Russia, characteristic either of the liberal gentlemen, or of the backward, petty proprietors (the petty bourgeoisie). These dreams, which still clog the brains of the Left Narodniks, merely reflect the backwardness (reactionary nature) and feebleness of the petty bourgeoisie.

Class-conscious workers all over the world, Russia included, are becoming more and more convinced of the correctness of Marxism, for life itself is proving to them that only large-scale, machine production rouses the workers, enlightens and organises them, and creates the objective conditions for a mass movement.

When Put Pravdy reaffirmed the well-known Marxist axiom that capitalism is progressive as compared with feudalism, and that the idea of checking the development of capitalism is a utopia, most absurd, reactionary, and harmful to the working people, Mr. N. Rakitnikov, the Left Narodnik (in Smelaya Mysl No. 7), accused Put Pravdy of having undertaken the "not very honourable task of putting a gloss upon the capitalist noose".

Anyone interested in Marxism and in the experience of the international working-class movement would do well to pander over this! One rarely meets with such amazing ignorance of Marxism as that displayed by Mr. N. Rakitnikov and the Left Narodniks, except perhaps among bourgeois economists.

Can it be that Mr. Rakitnikov has not read Capital, or The Poverty of Philosophy, or The Communist Manifesto? If he has not, then it is pointless to talk about socialism. That will be a ridiculous waste of time.
If he has read them, then he ought to know that the fundamental idea running through all Marx’s works, an idea which since Marx has been confirmed in all countries, is that capitalism is progressive as compared with feudalism. It is in this sense that Marx and all Marxists "put a gloss" (to use Rakitnikov’s clumsy and stupid expression) "upon the capitalist noose"!


Only anarchists or petty-bourgeois, who do not under stand the conditions of historical development, can say: a feudal noose or a capitalist one—it makes no difference, for both are nooses! That means confining oneself to condemnation, and failing to understand the objective course of economic development.

Condemnation means our subjective dissatisfaction. The objective course of feudalism’s evolution into capitalism enables millions of working people—thanks to the growth of cities, railways, large factories and the migration of workers—to escape from a condition of feudal torpor. Capitalism itself rouses and organises them.


Both feudalism and capitalism oppress the workers and strive to keep them in ignorance. But feudalism can keep, and for centuries has kept, millions of peasants in a down trodden state (for example, in Russia from the ninth to the nineteenth century, in China for even more centuries). But capitalism cannot keep the workers in a state of immobility, torpor, downtroddenness and ignorance.

The centuries of feudalism were centuries of torpor for the working people.

The decades of capitalism have roused millions of wage-workers.
Your failure to understand this, gentlemen of the Left Narodnik fraternity, shows that you do not understand a thing about socialism, or that you are converting socialism from a struggle of millions engendered by objective conditions into a benevolent old gentleman’s fairy-tale!


http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/jun/19.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/jun/19.htm)

This general opinion was laid out by Kautsky; the earlier idea that because of the still prevalent primitive communists of the Russian Mir system that "Russia" could be easily absorbed into the socialism that sprang from western capitalism was abandoned ie in:




……..and that Russia must pass through capitalism in order to attain socialism and that also Russia must in this respect pass along the same road as had Western Europe. Here as there socialism must grow out of the great industry and the industrial proletariat is the only revolutionary class which is capable of leading a continuous and independent revolutionary battle against absolutism.


http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1905/xx/rsdlp.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1905/xx/rsdlp.htm)


Once that position was established amongst the Marxists, the only issue was how far to go in getting involved in overthrowing feudalism and by necessity ushering in capitalism.

The Mensheviks were to the left of the Bolsheviks as in; as little as possible.

V. I. (http://www.revleft.com/1909/feb/12.htm)Lenin (http://www.revleft.com/1909/mar/23.htm)The Aim of the Proletarian Struggle in Our Revolution (http://www.revleft.com/vb/index.htm#i); 1909




The establishment of a democratic republic in Russia will be possible only as the result of a victorious popular uprising, whose organ will be a provisional revolutionary government.... Subject to the relation of forces and other factors which cannot be determined exactly beforehand, representatives of our Party may participate in the provisional revolutionary government for the purpose of waging a relentless struggle against all attempts at counter-revolution, and of defending the independent interests of the working class."

The Menshevik resolution read: "...Social-Democracy must not set out to seize power or share it with anyone in the provisional government, but must remain the party of extreme revolutionary opposition."

It is evident from the above that the Bolsheviks them selves, at an all-Bolshevik Congress, did not include in their official resolution any such "formula" as the dictator ship of the proletariat and the peasantry, but stated only that it was permissible to participate in the provisional government, and that it was the "mission" of the proletariat to "play the leading role"

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1909/aim/i.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1909/aim/i.htm)

That position was also quite eloquently and simply described by Stalin around the same time.



But it is good to see that the Mensheviks as orthodox Marxists are being pulled out of the trash can of history and having suffered enough and slandered by ‘Leninist historians’.

Even if they weren’t impossibilists and held onto ideas on the minimum programme, but didn’t almost all of them.

Of the European Marxists they also distinguished themselves by being in the internationalist anti war ‘Zimmerwald’ fraction.

.

[Zanthorus]

I'd would like to add to the above that although it is correct that prior to 1917 Lenin and the Bolsheviks thought that the Russian revolution would immediately usher in capitalism, Lenin did mention the possibility of the revolution accelerating the process of revolution in the West and leading to a kind of feedback effect resulting in an accelerated development towards socialism in Russia:


More will be accomplished in months of the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry than in decades of the peaceful, stupefying atmosphere of political stagnation. If, after the Ninth of January, the Russian working class, under conditions of political slavery, was able to mobilise over a million proletarians for staunch, disciplined, collective action, then, given the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship, we will mobilise scores of millions of the urban and rural poor, and we will make the Russian political revolution the prelude to the socialist revolution in Europe.- The Revolutionary-Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry


The revolutionary Social-Democrat will reject such a theory with contempt. He will not confine himself on the eve of the revolution to pointing out what will happen “if the worst comes to the worst”. Rather, he will also show the possibility of a better outcome. He will dream—he is obliged to dream if he is not a hopeless philistine—that, after the vast experience of Europe, after the unparalleled upsurge of energy among the working class in Russia, we shall succeed in lighting a revolutionary beacon that will illumine more brightly than ever before the path of the unenlightened and downtrodden masses; that we shall succeed, standing as we do on the shoulders of a number of revolutionary gene rations of Europe, in realising all the democratic transformations, the whole of our minimum programme, with a thoroughness never equalled before. We shall succeed in ensuring that the Russian revolution is not a movement of a few months, but a movement of many years; that it leads, not merely to a few paltry concessions from the powers that be, but to the complete overthrow of those powers. And if we succeed in achieving this, then ... the revolutionary conflagration will spread to Europe; the European worker, languishing under bourgeois reaction, will rise in his turn and show us “how it is done”; then the revolutionary upsurge in Europe will have a repercussive effect upon Russia and will convert an epoch of a few revolutionary years into an era of several revolutionary decades; then—but we shall have ample time to say what we shall do “then”, not from the cursed remoteness of Geneva, but at meetings of thousands of workers in the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg, at the free village meetings of the Russian “muzhiks”.- Social-Democracy and the Provisional Revolutionary Government

For the record, I am pro-Bolshevik (And don't really agree with El Granma that there is "a lot to say for revolutionary Menshevism". Menshevik-Internationalism perhaps, although that is another story), however a couple of times I have seen the idea that the Mensheviks were 'peaceful' and 'reformist' thrown around by liberals of a certain persuasion to convince themselves that there was some kind of alternative to the dastardly Bolshevik revolutionaries. Also, I am a fan of historical accuracy.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ There was no "revolutionary Menshevism" until at best the Menshevik-Internationalists. Recall that many Mensheviks in the late 1900s were in favour of liquidating the RSDLP, including Martov at the time! That's the basis of the more permanent Bolshevik-Menshevik split.

[Dave B]

Whilst not wanting to give the impression that I feel under any necessity to defend the liquidationist tendency in Russia when revolutionary parties were illegal and were suffering under brutal repression after 1906 say as the Mensheviks were in 1918 under the Bolshevik absolutism.



When they went into a second phase of 'liquidationism' when they attempted entryism into the Bolshevik party.

Perhaps Die Neue could give us a brief resume of what liquidationism was?