Bolsheviks and Mensheviks

[Mac]

I know that they are pretty much the same, but which do you prefer?

[thesadmafioso]

I don't prefer the theory, actions, and positions of the Bolsheviks to those of the Mensheviks, I fully support them over the Mensheviks. The Bolshevik party was one which led the proletariat to victory in Russia whereas the Mensheviks took a decidedly regressive political stance during the revolution as well as through most of their existence as a political faction. The Mensheviks were a collection of soft social democrats more supportive of reformism and revisionism than revolution while the Bolsheviks were an organization of dedicated Marxists and revolutionaries.

This is a rather nonsensical question, as the proper position on it has long since been decided by history.

Also, on a mostly unrelated note, my browsers spell checker doesn't seem to consider Menshevik to be a word while it recognizes Bolshevik, so I think the answer is pretty clear.

[bietan jarrai]

they are pretty much the same

yqyixwqiCag

[Mac]

While I agree, I would like to point out that Trotsky was first a menshevik.

[bietan jarrai]

The Bolsheviks were Marxists, not Trotskyists. The Mensheviks did not support the October Revolution, how the fuck can they be "pretty much the same" as Bolsheviks? They were two factions of the RSDLP, if they were pretty much the same there wouldn't be two factions...

[Mac]

I say they are "pretty much the same" because the only difference in their BELIEFS is that the mensheviks believed Russia had just left the feudal stage and therefore had to be encouraged through capitalism, while the bolsheviks wanted to go right to socialism.

[Mac]

And I'm pretty sure trotsky was a marxist.

[bietan jarrai]

I say they are "pretty much the same" because the only difference in their BELIEFS is that the mensheviks believed Russia had just left the feudal stage and therefore had to be encouraged through capitalism, while the bolsheviks wanted to go right to socialism.

The difference is the Mensheviks were reformists and the Bolsheviks were revolutionaries, that is kind of a huge difference.


And I'm pretty sure trotsky was a marxist.

Trotskyists may be marxists but marxists are not trotskyists.

[thesadmafioso]

While I agree, I would like to point out that Trotsky was first a menshevik.

That is actually an incredibly misleading assertion which is more fraudulent than it is true. Trotsky never really officially allied with either faction until 1917 when he finally became an associate of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Party and his reason for that was merely out of his opposition to the concept of the party splinting. On many issues of the time, Trotsky actually found himself very much in line with Lenin and the Bolsheviks, he just never officially identified with them until 1917.
He did not feel that it was a fitting direction for the organization in the context when he adopted the position, and I think there is a notable degree of validity behind that stance. When you examine the difficulties which the party was faced with in Russia in the early 20th century, the last thing they really needed was a major factional split.

Of course, history has since proven that split to of been more than justifiable, but at the time it was a conceivable position to hold. Even Trotsky since admitted some error in taking up that stance, so it is a largely banal and irrelevant point to make in using his so called 'Menshevism against him.

[thesadmafioso]

Trotskyists may be marxists but marxists are not trotskyists.

What? Marxists can very well identify with Trotskyism, that is absolute nonsense.

[bietan jarrai]

What? Marxists can very well identify with Trotskyism, that is absolute nonsense.
Surprising, that coming from a trotskyist :rolleyes:

[Ismail]

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia article on Menshevism covers it and its differences with the Bolsheviks quite well: http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Menshevism

After 1921 the Mensheviks weren't really distinguishable from the anti-communist, social-democratic parties in the rest of Europe.

[thesadmafioso]

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia article on Menshevism covers it and its differences with the Bolsheviks quite well: http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Menshevism

After 1921 the Mensheviks weren't really distinguishable from the anti-communist, social-democratic parties in the rest of Europe.

That was a pretty good article up until the obligatory stab at Trotskyism, but I guess that's what one should expect from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia then.


As a political current, Menshevism was not homogeneous but included a number of variations and shadings. One variety of Menshevism at the time of its origin was Trotskyism.

"Trotskyism" didn't even emerge until Menshevism had long since passed, and even then its foundations were still firmly revolutionary and in opposition to the basis on Menshevism.

[Mac]

The difference is the Mensheviks were reformists and the Bolsheviks were revolutionaries, that is kind of a huge difference. That's not what I was talking about. Notice my emphasis on POLITICAL BELIEFS.


That is actually an incredibly misleading assertion which is more fraudulent than it is true. Trotsky never really officially allied with either faction until 1917 when he finally became an associate of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Party and his reason for that was merely out of his opposition to the concept of the party splinting.
I didn't know, sorry.

[Iron Felix]

The Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were not the same at all. The Bolsheviks argued for a small, disciplined party of professional revolutionaries. The Mensheviks wanted a bigger party, allied with the liberals. We all remember who was more effective.

Regarding Trotsky, he was Lenin's ally against Plekhanov in Iskra. Lenin, Martov, and Trotsky, the younger generation, were against the older generation of Plekhanov. At the second congress of the RSDP, Lenin's faction(Bolsheviks)was against Martov's(Mensheviks). Surprisingly, Trotsky sided with Martov, and Plekhanov with Lenin. In 1904, Trotsky left the Mensheviks(if you consider his soft support for the Mensheviks "membership") because they were against reconciliation and wanted to ally with the liberals. Plekhanov left the Bolsheviks soon as well. We don't see anyone calling Plekhanov a Bolshevik, why should Trotsky be called a Menshevik? Trotsky was without a doubt a Bolshevik. Without a doubt, he was second only to Lenin in the party during 1917 and until Lenin's death.

[Mac]

okay, well screw this thread.

[Dave B]

There was no difference or dispute between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks pre 1917 over the issue that feudal Russia must pass to and through capitalism before communism could be put on the political agenda or whatever.

It is only lying the Leninists historians of the bourgeois intelligentsia who suggest such a thing, however you can not help being awe inspired by the ‘Fox News’ vanguardists educators of the working class in their success in perpetrating such a base repeated deception.

Socialism came after capitalism not after feudalism thus, yet again!

Lenin June 1914 “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,[1] 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”!


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

I mean what can you do to add to that, hang bells of it and draw a picture?


The actual difference that caused the split can be best seen from;

V. I. Lenin THE THIRD CONGRESS OF THE R.S.D.L.P. APRIL 12 (25) - APRIL 27 (MAY 10), 1905.

http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/TC05.html




It was about whether or not a workers party should participate in an interim or provisional government that would oversee the smooth transition from feudalism to capitalism in the bourgeois democratic revolution.

And thus temporarily enter the ‘marble halls of power’.


The Mensheviks were against the idea and the Bolsheviks were for it.

The Mensheviks took their position from the Turati letter written by Engels which said that in the, or during the bourgeois democratic revolution;


………., we must be conscious of the fact, and openly proclaim it, that we are only taking part as an "independent Party," which is allied for the moment with Radicals and Republicans but is inwardly essentially different from them: that we indulge in absolutely no illusions as to the result of the struggle in case of victory; that this result not only cannot satisfy us but will only be a newly attained stage to us, a new basis of operations for further conquests; that from the very moment of victory our paths will separate; that from that same day onwards we shall form a new opposition to the new government, not a reactionary but a progressive opposition, an opposition of the most extreme Left, which will press on to new conquests beyond the ground already won.


After the common victory we might perhaps be offered some seats in the new Government – but always in a minority. Here lies the greatest danger. After the February Revolution in 1848 the French socialistic Democrats (the Réforme people, Ledru-Rollin, Louis Blanc, Flocon, etc.) were incautious enough to accept such positions. As a minority in the Government they involuntarily bore the responsibility for all the infamy and treachery which the majority, composed of pure Republicans, committed against the working class, while at the same time their participation in the government completely paralysed the revolutionary action of the working class they were supposed to represent.

http://www.marx.org/archive/marx/works/1894/letters/94_01_26.htm

Referred to in the split debate at the ‘third congress’ which the Mensheviks used against the Bolshevik position, thus uncomfortably from Lenin;



Even less felicitous is the adducing of the second quotation from Engels. For one thing, it is rather odd of Plekhanov to refer to a private letter without mention of the time and place of its publication.[121] We could only be grateful for the publication of Engels' letters, but we should like to see their full text. We have, however, some information which permits us to judge of the true meaning of Engels' letter.


http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/TC05.html


Many of Fred’s ‘letters’, not all, were written for publication and advice and this was one of them.

The fact that the right wing Mensheviks, against the majority left Mensheviks, followed Bolshevik policy in 1917 is just one of those ironies of history.

Thus Again


V. I. Lenin The Aim of the Proletarian Struggle in Our Revolution 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


There was no split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks over idea of ‘state capitalism under communism’ prior to 1917 because, until then, the Bolsheviks hadn’t dared to propose it.

[Wired]

The Bolshevik centralization of the state seems so utterly contrary to the ideal of communism that I almost immediately went for "Menshevik" as my option but the Mensheviks collaboration with the representative democratic government, in my mind, is totally unforgivable.

Its a pretty close one. They're both disgusting and unforgivable methods. They both attempted to become the new bourgeoisie.

[Iron Felix]

Don't be fooled, Stalinism wasn't what the Bolsheviks had in mind.

[Wired]

Don't be fooled, Stalinism wasn't what the Bolsheviks had in mind.

You're telling me that the Bolsheviks did not support the centralization of the state?

[Dave B]

I am not a Menshevik, however I am not a lying Leninist and Trot intellectual either.

The lie is that that the Bolsheviks were leftists and the Mensheviks were reformist pro capitalist rightists etc.

So fair enough, lets take Lenin’s and the Bolshevik take on this, and in particular on Lenin’s take on the ‘black beast’ of Menshevism, the rightest traitor and Menshevik revisionist,Skobelev, who went into the provisional government.

V. I. Lenin Inevitable Catastrophe and Extravagant Promises



Today we must point out that the programme of the Menshevik Minister Skobelev goes even further than Bolshevism. Here is the programme, as reported in the ministerial paper, Rech:

“The Minister [Skobelev] declared that ’... the country’s economy is on the brink of disaster. We must intervene in all fields of economic life, as there is no money in the Treasury. We must improve the condition of the working masses, and to do that we must take the profits from the tills of the businessmen and bankers’. (Voice in the audience: ‘How?’)

’By ruthless taxation of property,’ replied the Minister of Labour, Skobelev. ’It is a method known to the science of finance. The rate of taxation on the propertied classes must be increased to one hundred per cent of their profits.’ (Voice in the audience: ’That means everything.’) ‘Unfortunately,’ declared Skobelev, ’many corporations have already distributed their dividends among the share holders, and we must therefore levy a progressive personal tax on the propertied classes.

We will go even further, and, if the capitalists wish to preserve the bourgeois method of business, let them work without interest, so as not to lose their clients.... We must introduce compulsory labour service for the shareholders, bankers and factory owners, who are in a rather slack mood because the incentive that formerly stimulated them to work is now lacking.... We must force the shareholders to submit to the state; they, too, must be subject to labour service.’”


We advise the workers to read and reread this programme, to discuss it and go into the matter of its practicability.

The important thing is the conditions necessary for its fulfilment, and the taking of immediate steps towards its fulfilment.

This programme in itself is an excellent one and coincides with the Bolshevik programme, except that in one particular it goes even further than our programme, namely, it promises to take the profits from the tills of the bankers “to the extent of one hundred per cent”.

Our Party is much more moderate. Its resolution demands much less than this, namely, the mere establishment of control over the banks and the “gradual [just listen, the Bolsheviks are for gradualness!] introduction of a more just progressive tax on incomes and properties”.


Our Party is more moderate than Skobelev.


http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/lenin/works/1917/may/16b.htm

[Ismail]

Don't be fooled, Stalinism wasn't what the Bolsheviks had in mind.Ironic that your username is Iron Felix, seeing as how the actual "Iron Felix" died shortly after having denounced Trotsky and Co.

I don't see what "centralization of the state" has to do with "Stalinism" anyway. Dzerzhinsky wasn't exactly involved in decentralizing the state apparatus, nor was anyone from Lenin to Trotsky to Stalin to Zinoviev.

[S.Artesian]

I say they are "pretty much the same" because the only difference in their BELIEFS is that the mensheviks believed Russia had just left the feudal stage and therefore had to be encouraged through capitalism, while the bolsheviks wanted to go right to socialism.


No, the "only difference" is not a "theoretical difference." The difference that is real is practical-- that in the midst of the Russian Revolution, Mensheviks placed ministers in the bourgeoisie's Provisional Revolutionary Government. The Bolsheviks, particularly after Lenin's arrival, agitated for "no support" to the PRG.

The difference is that the Mensheviks opposed the taking of power by the soviets. They denounced they taking of power by the soviets. The difference is that the Mensheviks wanted "sovereignty" to center on a "constituent assembly" where the bourgeoisie could be represented, and the Bolsheviks insisted on "All Power to the Soviets" and dispersed the constituent assembly.

The difference in "beliefs" is in fact a difference in class orientation-- a difference in which class MUST take power.

Given Lenin and Trotsky and Bukharin, and the Left Social Revolutionaries their due. They acted on the need for the working class to assume power based on the organs of working class rule, the soviets. The Mensheviks acted on behalf of..... the bourgeoisie.

[S.Artesian]

There was no difference or dispute between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks pre 1917 over the issue that feudal Russia must pass to and through capitalism before communism could be put on the political agenda or whatever.
There was no split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks over idea of ‘state capitalism under communism’ prior to 1917 because, until then, the Bolsheviks hadn’t dared to propose it.

Uhhh..........yeah, right... the real split came down to a question of class. The question, the only question that counted in 1917 was, which organs of which class would hold power and determine the policy towards the war, towards the land question, towards the organization of property.

See that's what revolution does, it poses the question of power, power based on which organizations of which class.

All the theoretical confusion and clarification disappears when it comes to taking power.

That's when the real distinction is made. The Mensheviks opposed all power going to the soviets. The Bolsheviks supported that. The workers supported the Bolsheviks as being the only representatives who would lead the soviets to power.

Bolsheviks may have fucked it up royally soon after taking power-- still the distinction remains: the Bolsheviks were for proletarian power, the Mensheviks opposed the proletariat in power.

[A Marxist Historian]

You're telling me that the Bolsheviks did not support the centralization of the state?

Lenin was for the abolition of the state. Being practical, he understood that you couldn't do without the state altogether until society had evolved to socialism, so he was for smashing the capitalist state and creating a workers' state to keep the capitalists and other enemies of the workers in line.

In that context, naturally he was for centralization. Centralization is more effective than decentralization, as a general rule. But he was for democratic centralization. Democratic centralism as he put it.

By the way, this whole thread is silly. After all the arguments were said and done, after some 20 years of polemicizing and factionalizing and revolutionizing, the political difference between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks got pretty clear.

Bolsheviks were for socialism. Mensheviks were for capitalism, seeing socialism as a nice idea for the distant future.

That's the most basic political difference there is. And anybody who is for Menshevism is for capitalism, and really shouldn't be posting to Revleft in the first place.

Then you get to Revleft's favorite topic, namely are you for socialism in one country (Stalin) or world workers revolution (Marx, Lenin and Trotsky?). But that is a subject for another thread, or rather, for every other thread on Revleft on politics.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

Ironic that your username is Iron Felix, seeing as how the actual "Iron Felix" died shortly after having denounced Trotsky and Co.

I don't see what "centralization of the state" has to do with "Stalinism" anyway. Dzerzhinsky wasn't exactly involved in decentralizing the state apparatus, nor was anyone from Lenin to Trotsky to Stalin to Zinoviev.

True, but best indications are that Iron Felix would have supported Bukharin not Stalin. Certainly on economic questions, which is what he was denouncing Trotsky over, being a big NEP man.

Spent the last couple years of his life releasing prisoners and trimming back the overgrown security apparatus he was in charge of, which was vastly less necessary in NEP conditions. At the time he died, the Soviet Union had fewer political prisoners in jail than the USA did. Then things changed...

Trotsky, by the way, when the war ended was advocating moving towards replacing or at lest supplementing the Red Army with a popular militia. As he was Commissar of War, this kinda meant something.

The idea was dropped like a lead balloon when Frunze replaced him in that post in 1924, and never revived. Historians are still arguing over whether Frunze was a Zinoviev or a Stalin man, hard to tell as he died shortly thereafter.

Trotsky's plan actually would have been a form of decentralization, come to think of it. Decentralization isn't always bad, just most of the time.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

I am not a Menshevik, however I am not a lying Leninist and Trot intellectual either.

The lie is that that the Bolsheviks were leftists and the Mensheviks were reformist pro capitalist rightists etc.

So fair enough, lets take Lenin’s and the Bolshevik take on this, and in particular on Lenin’s take on the ‘black beast’ of Menshevism, the rightest traitor and Menshevik revisionist,Skobelev, who went into the provisional government.

V. I. Lenin Inevitable Catastrophe and Extravagant Promises





http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/lenin/works/1917/may/16b.htm


Pretty funny.

Skobelev was the Minister of Labor, the guy in charge of breaking strikes and forcing workers back to work. Lenin was being, shall we say, a bit ironical there.

What matters isn't what somebody says, it's what they do. If you just look at the Menshevik program, it probably sounds much more revolutionary than half of the posters on Revleft could stomach. So what?

Stalin wasn't wrong when he pointed out that paper will take anything written on it.

-M.H.-

[Dave B]

The Mensheviks were against the idea of a workers party going into government and taking power to run capitalism.


The Bolsheviks were always for the idea, but just provisionally, for a little bit .

The Bolsheviks in the end took the idea to its ultimate conclusion by introducing (state) capitalism into Russia and governing it for themselves.

(In 1905 the Mensheviks would have fainted at the suggestion of a workers party introducing and running state capitalism in Russia)


In fact Lenin was opposed to the likes of Bukharin who wanted to introduce ‘socialism’ into Russia in 1917-18.eg



15. Under no circumstances can the party of the proletariat set itself the aim of “introducing” socialism in a country of small peasants so long as the overwhelming majority of the population has not come to realise the need for a socialist revolution.

Such measures as the nationalisation of the land, of all the banks and capitalist syndicates, or, at least, the immediate establishment of the control of the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies, etc., over them—measures which do not in any way constitute the “introduction” of socialism………..


http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/tasks/ch09.htm

No, not socialism but state capitalism.

‘Socialism’ being in 1917, according to Lenin, the lower phase of communism as in the Gotha programme, thus;




But the scientific difference between Socialism and Communism is clear. What is usually called Socialism was termed by Marx the "first" or lower phase of communist society.

http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/SR17.html

State capitalism wasn’t socialism in 1917; now however the ‘leftwing childishness’ of modern neo Leninists might want to redefine things.

After having spent the last 100 years saying that Bolshevik Russia couldn’t be state capitalism because it was socialism

In the real world Lenin introduced state capitalism as a ‘gigantic step forward’ as anything else would have been;

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




And that the ‘well-known Marxist axiom that (state) capitalism is progressive as compared with feudalism, and that the idea of checking the development of (state capitalism) is a utopia (or later leftwing childishness and a petty bourgeois mentality) , and therefore ‘most absurd, reactionary, and harmful to the working people’ .

It was the Bolsheviks that undertook the ‘not very honourable task of putting a gloss upon the state capitalist noose’.

The Bolsheviks supported the constituent assembly and justified their coup d'état by claiming that the bourgeois classes had secret ambitions to prevent it.

The classes of the Bolshevik state capitalist bourgeois intelligentsia more like.

Thus;


On 7 October Trotsky read out a fighting statement at the Pre-Parliament. This was probably the first time he appeared as the main Bolshevik spokesman. Sukhanov describes the scene:………..




‘The officially stated aim of the Democratic Conference,’ Trotsky began, ‘was the elimination of the personal regime that fed the Kornilov revolt, and the creation of a responsible government capable of liquidating the war and promoting the convocation of a Constituent Assembly at the appointed time……………..



………. If the propertied elements were really preparing for the Constituent Assembly in a month and a half, they would have no grounds for defending the non-responsibility of the government now. The whole point is that the bourgeois classes have set themselves the goal of preventing the Constituent Assembly ...’


There was an uproar. Shouts from the right: ‘Lies!’

……….. The propertied classes, who provoked the uprising, are now moving to crush it and are openly steering a course for the bony hand of hunger, which is expected to strangle the revolution and the Constituent Assembly first of all.



‘Nor is foreign policy any less criminal. After forty months of war the capital is threatened by mortal danger. In response to this a plan has been put forward for the transfer of the government to Moscow. The idea of surrendering the revolutionary capital to German troops does not arouse the slightest indignation amongst the bourgeois classes; on the contrary it is accepted as a natural link in the general policy that is supposed to help them in their counter-revolutionary conspiracy.’


The uproar grew worse.

The patriots leaped from their seats and wouldn’t allow Trotsky to go on speaking. Shouts about Germany, the sealed car and so on. One shout stood out: ‘Bastard!’

……………………….The chairman called the meeting to order. Trotsky was standing there as though none of this were any concern of his, and finally found it possible to go on.

‘We, the Bolshevik fraction of the Social-Democratic Party, declare that with this government of national treachery and this “Council” we –’

The uproar took on an obviously hopeless character. The majority of the right got to their feet with the obvious intention of stopping the speech. The chairman called the speaker to order. Trotsky, beginning to lose his temper, and speaking by now through the hubbub, finished:

‘–……... We appeal to the people: Long live an immediate, honourable democratic peace, all power to the Soviets. All land to the people, long live the Constituent Assembly!’


All the Bolsheviks stood up and walked out of the assembly hall to the accompaniment of shouts ‘Go to your German trains!’

http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1989/trotsky1/15-towards.html

(I use Cliff as it is cut and paste-able, the same speech has been reported elsewhere with a acceptably similar translation.)

I have heard of this stuff about skoblev breaking strikes etc I suspect it is more modern Leninist bullshit, he went on of course to be a good Bolshevik, in which case in his new position he may well have done.

[CAleftist]

Don't be fooled, Stalinism wasn't what the Bolsheviks had in mind.

Ideas don't drive conditions.

[RED DAVE]

I say they are "pretty much the same" because the only difference in their BELIEFS is that the mensheviks believed Russia had just left the feudal stage and therefore had to be encouraged through capitalism, while the bolsheviks wanted to go right to socialism.Comrade, that's a huge difference. In the end that difference was the difference between genuine support and leadership of the Russian Revolution and betrayal of the revolution.

RED DAVE

[S.Artesian]

The Mensheviks were against the idea of a workers party going into government and taking power to run capitalism.

No Dave, not hardly. The Mensheviks posted ministers to the Provisional Revolutionary Government. The Mensheviks supported the PRG. The Mensheviks opposed the soviets taking power.

Now I think that's a great spin you've put on the Mensheviks actually allying themselves with the bourgeoisie against the soviets--- "they didn't want the workers party going into government and taking power to run capitalism," I mean you should get a Cleo [the annual awards given out by the advertising industry for the best advertising] for that spin, twist, dive and reverse or maybe a Loganis, named after Greg Louganis, the olympic diving champion--- but such a twist collapses in face of actual history--- namely the Mensheviks joining the PRG and stumping for the constituent assembly as the organ of sovereignty.



The Bolsheviks in the end took the idea to its ultimate conclusion by introducing (state) capitalism into Russia and governing it for themselves.


(In 1905 the Mensheviks would have fainted at the suggestion of a workers party introducing and running state capitalism in Russia)
No, what they fainted at was the workers actually conducting a workers revolution, expropriating the bourgeoisie. Many Mensheviks had absolutely no problem reconciling themselves to the "state capitalism" that followed.


In fact Lenin was opposed to the likes of Bukharin who wanted to introduce ‘socialism’ into Russia in 1917-18.eg

Lenin also wrote that the revolution will now begin to construct the socialist order. He also wrote soviets plus electrification equals socialism, every cook can govern.

But more than that, Lenin alone was not the Bolshevik party. Bukharin was also a Bolshevik. And as much as he and other "left" Bolsheviks disagreed with Lenin and the "center" Bolsheviks [like Trotsky, and as distinct from the "right" Bolsheviks, Kamenev Rykov], he agreed on one critical thing, with which the Mensheviks did not, could not--"all power to the soviets."




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


Lenin is using the term "state capitalism" more or less as used by the Second International as sort of the last stage of capitalism, the ultimate in centralization and concentration of capital, prior to socialism. As is the path of most things with the Second International, the distinction is that the Second International envisioned, more or less, a seamless transition to state capitalism, and from state capitalism to socialism.

OTOH, what the Russian Revolution proved was that no such transition, seamless, was possible, and that a deeper analysis of state capitalism would show that the Second Intl was wrong in its characterizations, and Lenin was wrong in his characterization of the infant soviet republic as "state capitalist."



The Bolsheviks supported the constituent assembly and justified their coup d'état by claiming that the bourgeois classes had secret ambitions to prevent it.
Uh... no, not exactly. After the taking of power, and the Congress of Soviets, the Bolsheviks were more or less playing things very close to the chest-- clearly opposed to the CA, clearly intent on maintaining the soviets as the sovereign power, the basis for the state, but not wanting to cancel the CA out of hand.

That they did disperse the CA is no secret and no mystery, just as the bourgeoisie's ambitions were not secret. The CA demanded that the soviets cede power.

So which side are you on, Dave? The side of the CA or the side of the soviets. The Mensheviks took their side and the Bolsheviks theirs, and as much as the Bolsheviks fucked things up, any conscious revolutionist was obligated to stand with them and power to the soviets.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

What matters isn't what somebody says, it's what they do.

Kinda like Lenin saying there'd be no police or standing army in The State and Revolution?

[thesadmafioso]

Kinda like Lenin saying there'd be no police or standing army in The State and Revolution?

That quote was in reference to the state of the bourgeoisie, not the proletarian state. And he still did hold that they would wither away in conjunction with the workers state, he just never lived to see the day when such a point of historical development was reached.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

O rly?

"It is still necessary to suppress the bourgeoisie and crush their resistance. This was particularly necessary for the Commune; and one of the reasons for its defeat was that it did not do this with sufficient determination. The organ of suppression, however, is here the majority of the population, and not a minority, as was always the case under slavery, serfdom, and wage slavery. And since the majority of people itself suppresses its oppressors, a 'special force" for suppression is no longer necessary! In this sense, the state begins to wither away. Instead of the special institutions of a privileged minority (privileged officialdom, the chiefs of the standing army), the majority itself can directly fulfill all these functions, and the more the functions of state power are performed by the people as a whole, the less need there is for the existence of this power." - Lenin

[S.Artesian]

That quote was in reference to the state of the bourgeoisie, not the proletarian state. And he still did hold that they would wither away in conjunction with the workers state, he just never lived to see the day when such a point of historical development was reached.

Nobody has lived long enough to see the day when such a point of historical development was reached.

The issue here, although certainly not the issue of this thread, this OP, is did the actions of the Bolsheviks after taking power push that "hope to live long enough point of historical development" further into the future?

This is the point when we have to examine carefully what the Bolsheviks did in power and in the 3rd International and its impact on world revolution.

My view is that they pretty much fucked things up internally and internationally.

[A Marxist Historian]

The Mensheviks were against the idea of a workers party going into government and taking power to run capitalism.


They were? Then why did they do it?

Granted Martov had some objections, so he had to split out and form a "Menshevik Internationalist" party for a while.

And when he rejoined, the point had become rather moot, except in Georgia, where the Mensheviks, with Martov's full approval, ran the country on a capitalist basis for several years.



The Bolsheviks were always for the idea, but just provisionally, for a little bit .

The Bolsheviks in the end took the idea to its ultimate conclusion by introducing (state) capitalism into Russia and governing it for themselves.

(In 1905 the Mensheviks would have fainted at the suggestion of a workers party introducing and running state capitalism in Russia)

In fact Lenin was opposed to the likes of Bukharin who wanted to introduce ‘socialism’ into Russia in 1917-18.eg

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/tasks/ch09.htm

No, not socialism but state capitalism.

‘Socialism’ being in 1917, according to Lenin, the lower phase of communism as in the Gotha programme, thus;

http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/SR17.html

State capitalism wasn’t socialism in 1917; now however the ‘leftwing childishness’ of modern neo Leninists might want to redefine things.

After having spent the last 100 years saying that Bolshevik Russia couldn’t be state capitalism because it was socialism

In the real world Lenin introduced state capitalism as a ‘gigantic step forward’ as anything else would have been;

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

And that the ‘well-known Marxist axiom that (state) capitalism is progressive as compared with feudalism, and that the idea of checking the development of (state capitalism) is a utopia (or later leftwing childishness and a petty bourgeois mentality) , and therefore ‘most absurd, reactionary, and harmful to the working people’ .

It was the Bolsheviks that undertook the ‘not very honourable task of putting a gloss upon the state capitalist noose’.

As for your ignorant foolery about state capitalism, Lenin never claimed Russia had arrived at socialism, that was Stalin's bizarre notion. The question was what to do when the country was starving, industry had collapsed, and much of the working class had dispersed to the countryside or died in the Civil War.

In that context "state capitalist" measures, by which Lenin meant state measures favoring NEPmen and kulaks to get the economy going again and food into the workers' mouths, was the only sane thing to do, and had nothing whatsoever to do with any idea that the Soviet state sector was "capitalist," an idea Zinoviev came up with after Lenin died, to Trotsky's great annoyance. He thought it was just as much a revision of Marxism as Stalin's idea of "socialism in one country."



The Bolsheviks supported the constituent assembly and justified their coup d'état by claiming that the bourgeois classes had secret ambitions to prevent it.


Ah then, now we have it. You, like the Mensheviks, wanted to see a bourgeois government of the anti-working-class constituent assembly rather than a Soviet government.

The Mensheviks learned better when they got what they asked for and the Whites took over their "Constituent Assembly" regime in Siberia in 1918 and started executing them. So for a while the Mensheviks were on the Soviet side, until the lesson wore off.


The classes of the Bolshevik state capitalist bourgeois intelligentsia more like.

Thus;


http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1989/trotsky1/15-towards.html

(I use Cliff as it is cut and paste-able, the same speech has been reported elsewhere with a acceptably similar translation.)

I have heard of this stuff about skoblev breaking strikes etc I suspect it is more modern Leninist bullshit, he went on of course to be a good Bolshevik, in which case in his new position he may well have done.

I have a low opinion of Cliff's version of Bolshevik history, but that's just by the by.

More importantly, I will lazily link the Wikipedia entry about Skobelev. Likely it is accurate, as Skobelev just wasn't very important. There is an inverse relationship between the accuracy of a Wikipedia entry and the importance of the subject it covers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matvey_Skobelev

From it one can judge just how good a Bolshevik Skobelev was. Certainly not in Trotsky's opinion! He seems to have spent his career as a "Bolshevik" trying to reintroduce capitalism into the Soviet Union, in best "loyal" Menshevik style, like a whole wing of the Menshevik Party who saw the Bukharin wing of the Bolshevik Party as moving in their pro-capitalist direction.

As far as Lenin was concerned, that was the very worst and most dangerous kind of Menshevik.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

O rly?

"It is still necessary to suppress the bourgeoisie and crush their resistance. This was particularly necessary for the Commune; and one of the reasons for its defeat was that it did not do this with sufficient determination. The organ of suppression, however, is here the majority of the population, and not a minority, as was always the case under slavery, serfdom, and wage slavery. And since the majority of people itself suppresses its oppressors, a 'special force" for suppression is no longer necessary! In this sense, the state begins to wither away. Instead of the special institutions of a privileged minority (privileged officialdom, the chiefs of the standing army), the majority itself can directly fulfill all these functions, and the more the functions of state power are performed by the people as a whole, the less need there is for the existence of this power." - Lenin

Lenin is talking in State and Revolution about world workers revolution, not a revolution in backwards Russia. That's clear from every page.

Does he even mention Russia once in the entire book? Don't think so.

Yes, when economic development has got to the point that "people" and "working class" are more or less the same thing, and all capitalist states all over the world have been overthrown, on that day the state starts to wither away.

Not before.

BTW, in Paris, as opposed to the rest of France, yes the working class was the majority of the population in the year 1871. For that matter, France then was in general considerably ahead of Russia in 1917

-M.H.-

[thesadmafioso]

O rly?

"It is still necessary to suppress the bourgeoisie and crush their resistance. This was particularly necessary for the Commune; and one of the reasons for its defeat was that it did not do this with sufficient determination. The organ of suppression, however, is here the majority of the population, and not a minority, as was always the case under slavery, serfdom, and wage slavery. And since the majority of people itself suppresses its oppressors, a 'special force" for suppression is no longer necessary! In this sense, the state begins to wither away. Instead of the special institutions of a privileged minority (privileged officialdom, the chiefs of the standing army), the majority itself can directly fulfill all these functions, and the more the functions of state power are performed by the people as a whole, the less need there is for the existence of this power." - Lenin

That quote does not conflict with my analysis of the other selection which you provided. Lenin is just speaking to standard the functions of the proletarian state which would be need to be undertaken in a revolutionary situation. Actions which are initiated by the proletarian state are done so by the workers and in their interests, state power in this context refers to the bourgeoisie state.

And this does not refute the reality of conditions which dictated the necessity of maintaining the institutions of the proletarian state.


Nobody has lived long enough to see the day when such a point of historical development was reached.

The issue here, although certainly not the issue of this thread, this OP, is did the actions of the Bolsheviks after taking power push that "hope to live long enough point of historical development" further into the future?

This is the point when we have to examine carefully what the Bolsheviks did in power and in the 3rd International and its impact on world revolution.

My view is that they pretty much fucked things up internally and internationally.

You are certainly correct, that point of communism has yet to be attained.

And I agree with you from 1927 onward in regards to the actions of the Comintern, once it fell under Stalin's sway it ceded any promise as an organ of international revolutionary agitation.

[S.Artesian]

And I agree with you from 1927 onward in regards to the actions of the Comintern, once it fell under Stalin's sway it ceded any promise as an organ of international revolutionary agitation.

I think the decay started a bit sooner, internally-- maybe even by 1918 as the Bolsheviks turn against the Left SRs, rely more and more on the Cheka, really botch the requisitioning of grain from the countryside.

And internationally-- before 1927 for sure. But that's another thread.

[Dave B]

It might be helpful to establish the facts;

Right up to circa April 1917 it was general Marxist and Bolshevik policy and theory, to assist and play a part in the overthrow of the feudalist Tsarist autocracy; which meant following on from that the inevitable ‘progressive’ introduction of the bourgeois democratic republic, and capitalism.

Anything else being the ‘absurd utopianism of raving reactionary leftwing Narodism and of the petty bourgeoisie’ etc etc.

There was a debate within wider Marxist circles, and outside the Russian one, about how far a Marxist workers party should go in supporting the introduction of the bourgeois democratic republic, in Russia.

Its ‘consummation’, job done and ‘victory’, being the convocation of a ‘popular constituent assembly’.

The hazard being that by going too far, the workers party would end up ‘ignominiously’ comprising themselves in administering capitalism.

The Mensheviks had took the general European leftist position that going into the provisional revolutionary government would be a step too far.

The Bolsheviks had taken the position that it was permissible.

The Mensheviks and Bolsheviks appealed to the ultimate arbiter and theoretical pope of Marxist theory, Kautsky, for a resolution of the conflict.

Kautsky actually came down on the side of the Bolsheviks to the outrage of the Mensheviks.

I have no need to defend Menshevism.

However the mainstream majority Menshevik opinion in 1917 was, as it happens, against adopting the ‘greater conviction’ of the pre 1917 Bolshevik policy of participating in the provisional government to ensure the convocation of the ‘popular constituent assembly’.

The Bolsheviks maintained, in open and right to the end, Trotsky’s “long live the popular constituent assembly” position.

I don’t dispute for one moment that the ‘bastard’ vanguardist Leninists recently arrived on ‘German trains’, “play cards close to their chest”.

That is my criticism of lying Leninism in a nutshell, they say one thing and do another.

Justified by the idea that it is only the bourgeois intelligentsia and literati, acting in the interest of the working class of course, that can understand the ‘historic process as a whole’.

And if the working class were to see the cards open on the table they may become confused.

So then, we come to the constituent assembly itself as elected by universal suffrage etc in a fairly decent turnout and despite the confusion and novelty of the situation, a relatively creditable election as elections go.

Lenin’s stuff, after he closed the constituent assembly, about people not knowing what they were voting for and party lists etc didn’t seem to occur to him or the Bolsheviks up to and at the point of the election, that came shortly after.

Then we have the idea that the elected constituent assembly itself was a nest of White- Guardist counter revolutionaries.

The majority ,elect, described themselves as ‘Socialist Revolutionaries’ (perhaps playing their cards close to their chest like the Bolsheviks), and the Kadets (who would probably in modern terms would be actually placed as left of centre liberal reformist) had a token presence at about 5 % if that.

The big capitalist class and the white guardist counter revolutionaries were no more in control of the constituent assembly ‘elect’ than the Bolsheviks, and their paymasters in the German government were.

Now sure enough we all have our reservations about the non recallable, un-delegated ‘representative’ democracy and how it can be compromised by an elite.

But the Bolsheviks in the end gave us a demonstrable lesson, that we shouldn’t have needed, on the potential and real ‘vanguardist’ corruption of the soviet council communist position, with their ‘dictatorship of one party’, because ‘we have won’, or seized power.

In April 1918 (before NEP) Lenin, in his ‘leftwing childnishness’, and consistent with his previous theory, advocated (state capitalism) as a progressive advance from feudalism.

And in fact for Lenin in 1918, his ‘childish’ leftwing opponents to state capitalism probably came out of the same of kindergarten as the ‘schoolboy’ ‘raving’ leftwing Narodniks who thought Russia could ‘skip’ the (state) capitalist stage.


Then we have the class issue of the soviets and Bolsheviks etc.

The Bolsheviks, as the bourgeois intelligentsia, didn’t represent the interests of the worker class, they represented the interest of themselves as the literati, jealous of the power of the actual ownership of the capitalist class, and which for them, the bourgeois intelligentsia, was due to intellectuals like themselves, the co-ordinating managerial class of our white collar S Artisan.


I am bored now with littering posts with quotes, stuff in inverted comma’s and anything else I can back up with factual quotes if required on request,

[S.Artesian]

Sorry to bore you with historical facts, no matter what the Mensheviks said, they sent ministers to the PRG; they insisted that sovereignty must reside with the Constituent Assembly.

How do you account for the fact that the Mensheviks allied with the SRs, and the "liberal" capitalists [who weren't so liberal], besides spinning in that the Mensheviks were trying to prevent the workers from entering the PRG by doing so themselves?

The issue isn't if the White Russians, or the reactionaries controlled the Constituent Assembly. The issue is what organs of what class would, could, take power and execute the program of ending the war, expropriating the landlords, expropriating the bourgeoisie.

Stick with your constituent assembly if you like, but don't tell me you're not defending the Mensheviks when you do so.

And what's up with the remark about the Bolsheviks arriving on "German trains." That's what those among the bourgeoisie and their allies who wanted to continue the war claimed. That's patriotic jingoism at its best and worst. Why are you repeating that crap?

[Thirsty Crow]

Sorry to bore you with historical facts, no matter what the Mensheviks said, they sent ministers to the PRG
I'm sorry for bumping in with this little bit of a contribution, but I think that there's too much letters in this abbreviation: the Provisional Government never incorporated any notion of revolution in its official name, which signals what class interests it was designed to protect (as if the history itself isn't enough!), which also reflects on both the Constituent Assembly with its refusal to acknowledge the Soviets as the sites of legitimate power and Mensheviks involvment in this affair.

In short, there was no PRG, only PG.

[A Marxist Historian]

It might be helpful to establish the facts;

Right up to circa April 1917 it was general Marxist and Bolshevik policy and theory, to assist and play a part in the overthrow of the feudalist Tsarist autocracy; which meant following on from that the inevitable ‘progressive’ introduction of the bourgeois democratic republic, and capitalism.

Anything else being the ‘absurd utopianism of raving reactionary leftwing Narodism and of the petty bourgeoisie’ etc etc.


Dave the Menshevik is claiming that he has never even heard of Trotsky and his "permanent revolution" idea, which was far from limited to him. Prominent German Social Democratic leader Parvus had a very similar conception, Luxemburg was interested in it though she didn't really agree, and so was Karl Kautsky for that matter!

And Lenin and the Bolsheviks had a "two stage revolution" conception, hoping that their idea of a "revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry" would touch off a socialist revolution in Germany, enabling rapid advance to a second socialist stage of the Russian Revolution.

Or, in short, Dave is full of crap.


There was a debate within wider Marxist circles, and outside the Russian one, about how far a Marxist workers party should go in supporting the introduction of the bourgeois democratic republic, in Russia.

Its ‘consummation’, job done and ‘victory’, being the convocation of a ‘popular constituent assembly’.

The hazard being that by going too far, the workers party would end up ‘ignominiously’ comprising themselves in administering capitalism.

The Mensheviks had took the general European leftist position that going into the provisional revolutionary government would be a step too far.

The Bolsheviks had taken the position that it was permissible.

The Mensheviks and Bolsheviks appealed to the ultimate arbiter and theoretical pope of Marxist theory, Kautsky, for a resolution of the conflict.

Kautsky actually came down on the side of the Bolsheviks to the outrage of the Mensheviks.


From this apparently we are supposed to conclude that the Bolsheviks, like Kautsky, were renegades, whereas the Mensheviks, whatever their faults, were the true orthodox Marxists. Hilarious.

And a "Constituent Assembly" is ... job done and victory.

In that case, for Dave the Menshevik I guess the White dictatorship murdering the workers in mass, which is what the "Constituent Assembly" regime in Siberia led to in real life, was "job done and victory." Well, even most of the Mensheviks knew better than that.

Dave isn't just a Menshevik, he is a counterrevolutionary Right Menshevik.


I have no need to defend Menshevism.

However the mainstream majority Menshevik opinion in 1917 was, as it happens, against adopting the ‘greater conviction’ of the pre 1917 Bolshevik policy of participating in the provisional government to ensure the convocation of the ‘popular constituent assembly’.

The Bolsheviks maintained, in open and right to the end, Trotsky’s “long live the popular constituent assembly” position.

I don’t dispute for one moment that the ‘bastard’ vanguardist Leninists recently arrived on ‘German trains’, “play cards close to their chest”.

That is my criticism of lying Leninism in a nutshell, they say one thing and do another.


Ah yes, Lenin was a German spy. Why am I not surprised?

Dave criticised the Bolsheviks for saying one thing and doing another. But when I point out that it was the Mensheviks, not the Bolsheviks, who participated in counterrevolutionary provisional governments attacking the working people, he is silent.

That is because he is a right wing hot air artist.


Justified by the idea that it is only the bourgeois intelligentsia and literati, acting in the interest of the working class of course, that can understand the ‘historic process as a whole’.

And if the working class were to see the cards open on the table they may become confused.

So then, we come to the constituent assembly itself as elected by universal suffrage etc in a fairly decent turnout and despite the confusion and novelty of the situation, a relatively creditable election as elections go.

Lenin’s stuff, after he closed the constituent assembly, about people not knowing what they were voting for and party lists etc didn’t seem to occur to him or the Bolsheviks up to and at the point of the election, that came shortly after.

Then we have the idea that the elected constituent assembly itself was a nest of White- Guardist counter revolutionaries.

The majority ,elect, described themselves as ‘Socialist Revolutionaries’ (perhaps playing their cards close to their chest like the Bolsheviks), and the Kadets (who would probably in modern terms would be actually placed as left of centre liberal reformist) had a token presence at about 5 % if that.

Ah yes, those left of center liberal reformists the Kadets, who, as everybody knows, were enthusiastic supporters during the Civil War of massacring workers and Jews by the thousands.

And Kerensky's right wing "Socialist Revolutionaries," whose idea of socialist revolution was defending the right of the landlords to keep the land, against the revolting peasants who, misled by the name, had voted for them.

And basically sided with the Whites during the Civil War, though not quite as enthusiastically and bloodthirstily as the Kadets. At least until the Whites, and of course the Kadets, started locking them up in prison and murdering them, when Kolchak got tired of the meaningless "Constituent Assembly" facade.

This guy Dave is not a revolutionary, he is a counterrevolutionary and enemy of the Russian working class. If I were a moderator, I'd think seriously about restricting him.

-M.H.-


The big capitalist class and the white guardist counter revolutionaries were no more in control of the constituent assembly ‘elect’ than the Bolsheviks, and their paymasters in the German government were.

Now sure enough we all have our reservations about the non recallable, un-delegated ‘representative’ democracy and how it can be compromised by an elite.

But the Bolsheviks in the end gave us a demonstrable lesson, that we shouldn’t have needed, on the potential and real ‘vanguardist’ corruption of the soviet council communist position, with their ‘dictatorship of one party’, because ‘we have won’, or seized power.

In April 1918 (before NEP) Lenin, in his ‘leftwing childnishness’, and consistent with his previous theory, advocated (state capitalism) as a progressive advance from feudalism.

And in fact for Lenin in 1918, his ‘childish’ leftwing opponents to state capitalism probably came out of the same of kindergarten as the ‘schoolboy’ ‘raving’ leftwing Narodniks who thought Russia could ‘skip’ the (state) capitalist stage.


Then we have the class issue of the soviets and Bolsheviks etc.

The Bolsheviks, as the bourgeois intelligentsia, didn’t represent the interests of the worker class, they represented the interest of themselves as the literati, jealous of the power of the actual ownership of the capitalist class, and which for them, the bourgeois intelligentsia, was due to intellectuals like themselves, the co-ordinating managerial class of our white collar S Artisan.


I am bored now with littering posts with quotes, stuff in inverted comma’s and anything else I can back up with factual quotes if required on request,

[Dave B]

From this apparently we are supposed to conclude that the Bolsheviks, like Kautsky, were renegades, whereas the Mensheviks, whatever their faults, were the true orthodox Marxists. Hilarious.



The Congress of the Second International meeting in Amsterdam in August 1904 passed a resolution stating that Social Democrats ’cannot wish to take part in a government within the boundaries of bourgeois society’.

Karl Radek (bolshevik) The Paths of the Russian Revolution





What were the differences between the two tendencies in their analysis of the character of the Russian Revolution and of its motor forces? In Lenin’s pamphlet Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution (Summer 1905) we read this:


‘Finally, we will note that the resolution, by making implementation of the minimum programme the provisional revolutionary government’s task, eliminates the absurd and semi-Anarchist ideas of giving immediate effect to the maximum programme, and the conquest of power for a Socialist revolution. The degree of Russia’s economic development (an objective condition), and the degree of class-consciousness and organisation of the broad masses of the proletariat (a subjective condition inseparably bound up with the objective condition) make the immediate and complete emancipation of the working class impossible.

Only the most ignorant people can close their eyes to the bourgeois nature of the democratic revolution which is now taking place; only the most naive optimists can forget how little as yet the masses of the workers are informed about the aims of Socialism and the methods of achieving it. We are all convinced that the emancipation of the working classes must be won by the working classes themselves; a Socialist revolution is out of the question unless the masses become class-conscious and organised, trained, and educated in an open class struggle against the entire bourgeoisie. Replying to the Anarchists’ objections that we are putting off the Socialist revolution, we say: we are not putting it off, but are taking the first step towards it in the only possible way, along the only correct path, namely, the path of a democratic republic.

Whoever wants to reach Socialism by any other path than that of political democracy will inevitably arrive at conclusions that are absurd and reactionary both in the economic and the political sense. If any workers ask us at the appropriate moment why we should not go ahead and carry out our maximum programme we shall answer by pointing out how far from Socialism the masses of the democratically-minded people still are, how undeveloped class antagonisms still are, and how unorganised the proletarians still are.

Organise hundreds of thousands of workers all over Russia; get the millions to sympathise with our programme! Try to do this without confining yourselves to high-sounding but hollow Anarchist phrases — and you will see at once that achievement of this organisation and the spread of this Socialist enlightenment depend on the fullest possible achievement of democratic transformations.’



This was not just a passing thought, but the theoretical foundation of the entire position of Lenin and the Bolsheviks during the first revolution. How, therefore, did it differ from that of the Mensheviks?


The differences did not begin to show until it was a question of determining the role of the non-proletarian classes in the revolution and relationships with them. Starting off from the fact that the Russian Revolution would to begin with prepare the ground for the free development of capitalism — this concept was common to both Mensheviks and Bolsheviks —the Mensheviks concluded from it that leadership in the revolution must fall to the bourgeoisie. The Mensheviks combated in the most resolute manner the idea that the working class along with the peasantry must take power for the revolution to achieve its bourgeois democratic aims — if nothing more.

According to the Menshevik conception, the role of the revolutionary working class and its party had to be the role of a left opposition. The Mensheviks compared the efforts of the working class to conquer power along with the peasantry to Millerandism, to the participation of the Social Democracy in bourgeois governments towards the end of the nineteenth century, and prophesied that any attempt to participate in government would be a disaster for the Social Democracy.


On their side, the Bolsheviks demonstrated that, firstly, the Menshevik conception was completely schematic, and, secondly, that it was renouncing the radical victory of the bourgeois revolution. From the fact that the Russian Revolution was bourgeois in content it did not absolutely follow, they said, that the industrial bourgeoisie had to be its agent. The industrial bourgeoisie was too allied to Tsarism and feared the working class too much to be able to place itself at the head of the popular masses in the struggle against Tsarism. The entire history of the nineteenth century had already rendered it too conscious of its antagonism with the working class. But there was outside of the industrial bourgeoisie a bourgeois class whose interests cried out for the victory of the revolution. This was the peasantry.

The Bolsheviks explained that the peasantry had to struggle against Tsarism up to the final victory if it wished to obtain the land. The peasantry is a bourgeois class. But is it a class which must destroy the edifice of Tsarism in order to achieve its bourgeois aims? This class is uneducated, and is beginning to take its first steps. The task of the Social Democracy must be to lead in struggle, not only the working class, but the peasantry as well.

If the work of the Social Democracy were to be successful, if the masses of the people were to rise up against Tsarism, then the creation of a revolutionary government would be necessary, whose job it would be to lead the bourgeois revolution to its conclusion by a struggle against the forces of the old regime who could not be annihilated by a single blow.

The Bolsheviks saw in participation in this common revolutionary proletarian government a guarantee of the achievement of the revolution; they reproached the Mensheviks with wanting to limit themselves to an oppositional role, and abandoning the leadership a priori to elements who did not want the final victory of the revolution, but sought for a compromise with Tsarism. The controversies between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks just before and during the revolution consequently involved different relations with the peasantry on the one side and with the liberal bourgeoisie on the other. These differences also posed the question of the role of the working class in the revolution, the question of knowing if the working class should take the leadership during the revolution, or if it should leave the leadership to the bourgeoisie.


Trotsky and Parvus on the one side, and Kautsky and Rosa Luxemburg on the other, were already at this time expressing concepts differing from those of both tendencies of Russian Social Democracy. Beginning with Kautsky, who is now calling absurd and Utopian all those who dare to express a doubt about the correctness of Menshevik concepts, this is what he declared in reply to an inquiry from Plekhanov [Kautsky, The Driving Forces of the Russian Revolution and its Prospects, November ……………..

and so on


http://www.marxists.org/archive/radek/1922/paths/ch01.html

Lenin 1911



When we look at the history of the last half-century in Russia, when we cast a glance at 1861 and 1905, we can only repeat the words of our Party resolution with even greater conviction:

"As before, the aim of our struggle is to overthrow tsarism and bring about the conquest of power by the proletariat relying on the revolutionary sections of the peasantry and accomplishing the bourgeois-democratic revolution by means of the convening of a popular constituent assembly and the establishment of a democratic republic ".

http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/PRPPR11.html


Leon Trotsky; WHAT NEXT?
V: THE CHARACTER OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION


Since, in a bourgeois revolution, they (Mensheviks) were wont to say, the governing power can have no other function that to safeguard the domination of the bourgeoisie, it is clear that Socialism can have nothing to do with it, its place is not in the government, but in the opposition. Plekhanov considered that Socialists could not under any conditions take part in a bourgeois government, and he savagely attacked Kautsky, whose resolution admitted certain exceptions in this connection.


http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1917/next/ch05.htm


J. V. Stalin THE PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT AND SOCIAL-DEMOCRACYAugust 15, 1905


page 144


Let us examine this question. What are the arguments of the "minority"? First of all, they refer to the Amsterdam Congress. This congress, in opposition to Jaurèsism, passed a resolution to the effect that Socialists must not seek representation in bourgeois governments; and as the provisional government will be a bourgeois government, it will be improper for us to be represented in it. That is how the "minority" argues, failing to realise that if the decision of the congress is to be interpreted in this schoolboy fashion we should take no part in the revolution either.

It works out like this: we are enemies of the bourgeoisie; the present revolution is a bourgeois revolution -- hence, we should take no part in this revolution! This is the path to which the logic of the "minority" is pushing us. Social-Democracy says, however, that we proletarians should not only take part in the presant revolution, but also be at the head of it, guide it, and carry it through to the end.

But it will be impossible to carry the revolution through to the end unless we are represented in the provisional government. Obviously, the logic of the "minority" has not a leg to stand on.

One of two things: either we, copying the liberals, must reject the idea that the proletariat is the leader of the revolution -- and in that case the question of our going into the provisional government automatically falls away; or we must openly recognise this Social-Democratic idea and thereby recognise the necessity of our going into the provisional government. The "minority," however, do not wish to break with either side; they wish to be both liberal and Social-Democratic! How pitilessly they are outraging innocent logic. . . .


The Amsterdam Congress, however, had in mind the
page 145
permanent government of France and not a provisional revolutionary government. The government of France is a reactionary, conservative government; it protects the old and fights the new -- it goes without saying that no true Social-Democrat will join such a government; but a provisional government is revolutionary and progressive; it fights the old and clears the road for the new, it serves the interests of the revolution -- and it goes without saying that the true Social-Democrat will go into such a government and take an active part in consummating the cause of the revolution. As you see -- these are different things. Consequently, it is useless for the "minority" to clutch at the Amsterdam Congress: that will not save it.


Evidently, the "minority" realises this itself and, therefore, comes out with another argument: it appeals to the shades of Marx and Engels. Thus, for example, Social-Democrat obstinately reiterates that Marx and Engels "emphatically repudiated" the idea of entering a provisional government. But where and when did they repudiate this? …………………………….

…………What does Engels say according to the Mensheviks? It appears that in a letter to Turati he says that the impending revolution in Italy will be a petty bourgeois and not a socialist revolution; that before its victory the
page 147
proletariat must come out against the existillg regime jointly with the petty bourgeoisie, but must, without fail, have its own party; that it would be extremely dangerous for the Socialists to enter the new government after the victory of the revolution. If they did that they would repeat the blunder made by Louis Blanc and other French Socialists in 1848, etc.

In other words, in so far as the Italian revolution will be a democratic and not a socialist revolution it would be a great mistake to dream of the rule of the proletariat and remain in the government after the victory; only before the victory can the proletariat come out jointly with the petty bourgeoisie against the common enemy. But who is arguing against this? Who says that we must confuse the democratic revolution with the socialist revolution?


http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/PRG05.html


Lenin, March 26 (April 8) 1917




Russia is a peasant country, one of the most backward of European countries. Socialism cannot triumph there directly and immediately. But the peasant character of the country, the vast reserve of land in the hands of the nobility, may, to judge from the experience of 1905, give tremendous sweep to the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia and may make our revolution the prologue to the world socialist revolution, a step toward it.

http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/FLSW17.html

[A Marxist Historian]

A whole series of quotes out of context proving nothing except that Dave B. is a quote-monger.

And the quotes from Stalin prove less than nothing, as Stalin was a reviser of Marxism and Leninism.

By dodging and refusing to answer the charges I have directed against him, Dave the Counterrevolutionary Right Menshevik has provided strong evidence for their accuracy.

-M.H.-

[S.Artesian]

And against all that theorizing there stands the simple historical facts:

1. the Mensheviks posted ministers to the bourgeois government

2. the Bolsheviks did not

3. the Bolsheviks argued and acted for all power to the soviets.

4. the Mensheviks argued and acted for all power to the constituent assembly, in which the bourgeoisie, the landowners, and the royal bureaucracy would dominate.

[Dave B]

Sorry what charges am I dodging?

That I am a right Menshevik who believes in the Bolshevik policy of participating in a provisional revolutionary government?

Or I support the “Siberian constituent assembly” in its murder of ‘jews’.

You can call me a left Menshevik if you want although as an ‘ultra-leftist’ Impossibilist" it would be false.

And perhaps with wanting to extinguish me from Revleft we relive history.



For the public manifestations of Menshevism our revolutionary courts must pass the death sentence, otherwise they are not our courts, but God knows what.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/mar/27.htm


The stuff earlier on about the Mensheviks reconciling themselves to state capitalism was true to some extent, however not under the one party dictatorship of a ‘workers’ party.

[Dave B]

The Bolsheviks carried out the nationalisation of industry, of transport, banks, factories, etc., and thus awoke quite generally the belief that socialist measures were involved here. Nevertheless, nationalisation is not socialisation. Through nationalisation you can arrive at a large-scale, tightly centrally-run state capitalism, which may exhibit various advantages as against private capitalism. Only it is still capitalism. ……………


……….When the socialists in the Russian government, after the victory over tsarism, imagined that a phase of historical development could be skipped and socialism structurally realised, they had forgotten the ABC of Marxist knowledge according to which socialism can only be the outcome of an organic development which has capitalism developed to the limits of its maturity as its indispensable presupposition.

They had to pay for this forgetfulness by a wide, troublesome and victim-strewn detour which brings them in a space of time to capitalism.


To institute capitalism and to organise the bourgeois state is the historical function of the bourgeois revolution. The Russian Revolution was and is a bourgeois revolution, no more and no less: the strong socialist admixture changes nothing in this essence. So it will fulfil its task by throwing away, sooner or later, the last remnants of its "War-Communism" and revealing the face of a real, genuine capitalism.




http://www.marxists.org/archive/ruhle/1924/revolution.htm

[Dave B]

The Bolsheviks hadn’t always supported All power to the Soviets! Eg



What I have said may be summed up as follows: The peaceful path of development of the movement has come to an end, because the movement has entered the path of socialist revolution. The petty bourgeoisie, except for the poorer strata of the peasantry, is now supporting the counter-revolutionaries. Therefore, at the present stage the slogan "All power to the Soviets!" has become obsolete.

http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/SEC17.html

They say not all Bolsheviks supported that position of Lenin’s at the time, but then again not all Mensheviks supported going into the PRG.

In fact the majority and party centre were totally against it.

[Die Neue Zeit]

1918:

The Menshevik-Internationalists supported power to the soviets, however much I disagree with that kind of organ being "the form of worker-class rule" or any concrete worker-class political action, for that matter.

The Bolsheviks didn't support power to the soviets (by suppressing non-Bolshevik soviets), and were for more power to the party, however much I disagree with their retention of non-worker elements and with their discarding of majority political support from the working class as a whole.

[Ismail]

And the quotes from Stalin prove less than nothing, as Stalin was a reviser of Marxism and Leninism.Isn't it generally accepted, even by Trots, that from 1903-1924 (excepting a few months in early 1917) Stalin more or less just repeated the positions of Lenin and the Bolshevik leadership, first in Georgia and then during the civil war? I mean it's like me saying that quotes from Khrushchev in the 30's and 40's are not indicative of the general position of the Soviet state at the time because he openly denounced Stalin 10-20 years later, even though in the 30's and 40's he more or less just repeated general Soviet lines of the time.

Not that I'm taking Dave B's side here, but that's rather ridiculous.

[Dave B]

I have found Stalin a useful historical resource when following the position of the Bolsheviks over the period of say 1905-22.

I think that over that period he slavishly followed the mainstream Bolshevik and Lenin’s position.

Not only that he often in my opinion put the Bolshevik position across in a much more simple and accessible way that perhaps Lenin did himself.

That is not to say what wrote was just of some kind of dumbed down stuff.

His criticism of the Mensheviks left wing 2nd international position in 1905-6 over not participating in the bourgeois provisional revolutionary governments, and the Turati letter etc, was much ‘better’ than the one Lenin made a few months before.

Even though I would take the ‘Menshevik’ side.

His description of the ‘maximalist ultra leftist’ understanding of socialism in his ANARCHISM or SOCIALISM? in 1906-7 is quite good and an old favourite in the SPGB.


http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/AS07.html#c3


Even if that kind of thing then wasn’t as exceptional as it is almost comical now given, what he revised himself into.

I also thought that his criticism of the theory that Russia was still state capitalist in 1925 was quite substantial and a little bit of a challenge and much more impressive that the vacuous ‘one side of A4’ attempt by Trotsky in his Revolution Betrayed.

Which formed the ridiculous substance of the Totskyist position.

Stalin’s piece was ignored as it draws on Lenin’s ‘Tax in Kind’ and that led to ‘Leftwing Childishness’ and things that were better left not read.

Thus;



page 338

See how Lenin formulated our tasks when he gave the grounds for the New Economic Policy. Before me lies the draft of the pamphlet The Tax in Kind, written by Lenin, in which he clearly and distinctly gives the fundamental guiding lines:

http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/FC25.html


It was that, and Trotsky’s own opening diatribe on ‘socialism in one country’ that led the Magic circle of 1930’s Trot intellectuals to the existence of Lenin’s Leftwing Childishness and the subsequent consternation.

Thus from;

I. The Program of the International Revolution or a Program of Socialism in One Country? (Part 2)



At the beginning of the same year, i.e., 1918, Lenin, in his article entitled “On Left Wing Childishness and Petty Bourgeois Tendencies,” directed against Bukharin, wrote the following: “ If, let us say, state capitalism could be established in our country within six months, that would be a tremendous achievement and the surest guarantee that within a year socialism will be definitely established and will have become invincible.”

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1928/3rd/ti02.htm

A subtlety different translation from the official one, but who cares.

The Trot James Burnham for instance, who was a key player in the debates in 1930’s, knew exactly what was in it.

And I am not going to insult the intelligence of Tony Cliff, and his “I had a dream that state capitalism started in 1928”, or Ted Grant in his ad hominem against Cliff by even thinking that neither of them had read it.


As Ted, what a comedian, reminds Cliff of its existence with his quote from “(Left wing childishness and the petty-bourgeois mentality. Collected Works, Volume 27, page 335), dangerously close to the meat of it.

The following always cracks me up;



If Comrade Cliff's thesis is correct, that state capitalism exists in Russia today, then he cannot avoid the conclusion that state capitalism has been in existence since the Russian Revolution and the function of the revolution …[ or the gigantic step forward] ….itself was to introduce this state capitalist system of society. For despite his tortuous efforts to draw a line between the economic basis of Russian society before the year 1928 and after, the economic basis of Russian society has in fact remained unchanged.


http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/grant/works/4/9/reply_to_tony_cliff.html


As Alan Woods said at the Ted Grant Memorial Meeting;


“You know, Ted sometimes said to me that he didn't know why Lenin and Trotsky wrote so many books. Nobody reads them ………..”
http://www.marxist.com/revolutionary-ted-grant-memorial-meeting.htm


I have found it quite astonishing that for all our blabbering experts on the Russia revolution and the books they claim to have read none of them appears to have bothered to read the real thing for themselves.

I read fast admittedly, but I had read Lenin’s CW 1903-6 and 1917-18 in a few weeks.

I am not quite sure yet if Alan Woods was an idiot and dupe himself or not.

[A Marxist Historian]

Isn't it generally accepted, even by Trots, that from 1903-1924 (excepting a few months in early 1917) Stalin more or less just repeated the positions of Lenin and the Bolshevik leadership, first in Georgia and then during the civil war? I mean it's like me saying that quotes from Khrushchev in the 30's and 40's are not indicative of the general position of the Soviet state at the time because he openly denounced Stalin 10-20 years later, even though in the 30's and 40's he more or less just repeated general Soviet lines of the time.

Not that I'm taking Dave B's side here, but that's rather ridiculous.

Fair enough. But that was a quote from the year 1905, indeed the very beginning of the year 1905, and we are talking about the year 1917. I do think Stalin, at that time a not at all well known or prominent Bolshevik, might have oversimplified Lenin's position.

Actually it's unfair to Stalin to condemn Bolshevik positions on the basis of something Stalin wrote that early, at a point when he was certainly a very obscure and minor figure in the Bolshevik Party. That would be like condemning the APL for example on the basis of some posting by a fairly low level member of the organization here on Revleft. At least as unfair to said person as it would be to the APL.

-M.H.-

[S.Artesian]

I have found Stalin a useful historical resource when following the position of the Bolsheviks over the period of say 1905-22.

I think that over that period he slavishly followed the mainstream Bolshevik and Lenin’s position.

Not only that he often in my opinion put the Bolshevik position across in a much more simple and accessible way that perhaps Lenin did himself.

That is not to say what wrote was just of some kind of dumbed down stuff.

His criticism of the Mensheviks left wing 2nd international position in 1905-6 over not participating in the bourgeois provisional revolutionary governments, and the Turati letter etc, was much ‘better’ than the one Lenin made a few months before.

Even though I would take the ‘Menshevik’ side.

His description of the ‘maximalist ultra leftist’ understanding of socialism in his ANARCHISM or SOCIALISM? in 1906-7 is quite good and an old favourite in the SPGB.


http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/AS07.html#c3


Even if that kind of thing then wasn’t as exceptional as it is almost comical now given, what he revised himself into.

I also thought that his criticism of the theory that Russia was still state capitalist in 1925 was quite substantial and a little bit of a challenge and much more impressive that the vacuous ‘one side of A4’ attempt by Trotsky in his Revolution Betrayed.

Which formed the ridiculous substance of the Totskyist position.

Stalin’s piece was ignored as it draws on Lenin’s ‘Tax in Kind’ and that led to ‘Leftwing Childishness’ and things that were better left not read.

Thus;



http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/FC25.html


It was that, and Trotsky’s own opening diatribe on ‘socialism in one country’ that led the Magic circle of 1930’s Trot intellectuals to the existence of Lenin’s Leftwing Childishness and the subsequent consternation.

Thus from;

I. The Program of the International Revolution or a Program of Socialism in One Country? (Part 2)




http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1928/3rd/ti02.htm

A subtlety different translation from the official one, but who cares.

The Trot James Burnham for instance, who was a key player in the debates in 1930’s, knew exactly what was in it.

And I am not going to insult the intelligence of Tony Cliff, and his “I had a dream that state capitalism started in 1928”, or Ted Grant in his ad hominem against Cliff by even thinking that neither of them had read it.


As Ted, what a comedian, reminds Cliff of its existence with his quote from “(Left wing childishness and the petty-bourgeois mentality. Collected Works, Volume 27, page 335), dangerously close to the meat of it.

The following always cracks me up;




http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/grant/works/4/9/reply_to_tony_cliff.html


As Alan Woods said at the Ted Grant Memorial Meeting;


http://www.marxist.com/revolutionary-ted-grant-memorial-meeting.htm


I have found it quite astonishing that for all our blabbering experts on the Russia revolution and the books they claim to have read none of them appears to have bothered to read the real thing for themselves.

I read fast admittedly, but I had read Lenin’s CW 1903-6 and 1917-18 in a few weeks.

I am not quite sure yet if Alan Woods was an idiot and dupe himself or not.



WTF, Dave? Really WTFlyingF? Marxism is not the analysis of texts. Did the Mensheviks enter the Provisional Govt? Did the Mensheviks post ministers to the Provisional Government? Did the Mensheviks demand that the Bolsheviks "give back" the power seized in the October revolution? Did the Mensheviks insist that the proper "line" was that power should be concentrated in the Constituent Assembly and not the soviets?

Who cares what Lenin said about state capitalism, or Wood said Grant said or any of that c-r-a-p.

Who allied with the bourgeoisie over the question of WW1? Who allied with the PG? Who allied with the PG's proposed "land reform"?

[Dave B]

Did the Mensheviks enter the Provisional Govt? Did the Mensheviks post ministers to the Provisional Government? Did the Mensheviks demand that the Bolsheviks "give back" the power seized in the October revolution? Did the Mensheviks insist that the proper "line" was that power should be concentrated in the Constituent Assembly and not the soviets?


The following is from the implacable internationalist left Menshevik R Abramovitch Chapter Two of his book ‘The Soviet Revolutiuon’.

I have found it extremely reliable and have included in my brackets insertions for clarity?




At meeting of the Organisational Committee of the Menshevik Party with the editorial board of the Rabochaya Gazeta and the Bureau of the Petrograd Party organisation on April 24 and 25 (May 7, and 8) it was decided, by an overwhelming majority, that the party would not participate in a coalition government.


Niether the Socialist Revolutionaries nor the executive committee of the (Petrograd?) Soviet as such were prepared to join in a coalition without the Mensheviks.

Therefore at a meeting on April 28 (may 11) the executive committee (of the Petrograd soviet?) decided by 23 votes to 22 with several abstentions against the participation of representatives of the soviet in a coalition government.

But that position could not be maintained indefinitely. The right had lost the confidence of a majority of the people and the army.


A special delegation from frontline troops to the executive committee of the (Petrograd?) Soviet declared emphatically that only the formation of a strong coalition government under the leadership of the Soviet could save the army from complete disintegration.

The speeches of the army delegates made a deep impression.

At a subsequent meeting of the Executive Committee (of the Petrograd Soviet?) which lasted through the night of May 1-2 (14-15) the balance began to tip in favour of participation.

During a recess the parties held separate meetings.

A majority of (the) Mensheviks ( of the Petrograd soviet?) voted to reverse the line of laid down by the Organisational Committee ( of the Mensheviks), even though this was contrary to the statutes of the party.

The Socialist Revolutionaries, too, decided to participate.

In the executive committee of the (Petrograd) soviet, a motion was in favour of participation in a new government was then carried by 41 votes to 18 with 3 abstentions.

The Soviet was to be represented in the new government by Karensky; the Mensheviks N. Skobelev and Tseretelli ;and the …. Etc


I think it is clear from that that the Petrograd Soviet appointed, after general external pressure to do so from the ‘left’, concerned about leaving it under the control of the ‘right’ ;

the Mensheviks N. Skobelev and Tseretelli (with admittedly the apparent support of the Mensheviks that were on the EC of the Petrograd Soviet)

And that they were ‘appointed’ by the Petrograd Soviet against the wishes of the Menshevik centre and the ‘statutes of the party’.


Given the general chaos of the time, the Menshevik policy of decentralised democracy, and of organising a party conference to resolve the issue.

Problems over renegade Petrograd Soviet Mensheviks joining and supporting the PRG was a problem.

It is difficult to judge in fact the overall Menshevik viewpoint on it, but my general impression is that there was significant support for it amongst rank and file Mensheviks, perhaps a majority, whereas the majority of the ‘theoretical’ leadership was against it.

It has I think taken on a historical significance that, in retrospect, only the principled and theoretical leadership of the Mensheviks perhaps vaguely, appreciated at the time.

It was a mistake, but was seen at the time as a trivial and pragmatic question which was how the Bolsheviks had taken a position on it.

That Provisional Revolutionary Government in the June to September period despite all its numerous faults was an oasis of political freedom compared to what had gone on before it and more importantly after it.

And those shitty Mensheviks eg Martov stood up for the Bolsheviks and their right to express themselves after they came under pressure from the PRG following the hanky panky of the insurrectionary July days, was it?

They paid them back for that later in spades.

The idea that the Mensheviks didn’t give a shit about the Soviets is nonsense and the Mensheviks never said that the Soviets had become ‘obsolete’.

In fact the MRC which was ultimately taken over by the Bolsheviks and used for their coup d’etat was originally set up by the Mensheviks to prevent a white-guardist counter revolution- as Trotsky scoffed at the irony of it.


The inter relationship between the Soviets and the Constituent Assembly after its election, that the Mensheviks often referred to as the ‘dual power’, was something that was up for grabs later on after the Constituent Assembly had been convoked.


The idea of course was not that ‘power should be concentrated’ in the hands of the Bolshevik party.


Admittedly I did drift off track with my state capitalism stuff.

[S.Artesian]

The following is from the implacable internationalist left Menshevik R Abramovitch Chapter Two of his book ‘The Soviet Revolutiuon’.

I have found it extremely reliable and have included in my brackets insertions for clarity?

I think it is clear from that that the Petrograd Soviet appointed, after general external pressure to do so from the ‘left’, concerned about leaving it under the control of the ‘right’ ;

the Mensheviks N. Skobelev and Tseretelli (with admittedly the apparent support of the Mensheviks that were on the EC of the Petrograd Soviet)

And that they were ‘appointed’ by the Petrograd Soviet against the wishes of the Menshevik centre and the ‘statutes of the party’.


Given the general chaos of the time, the Menshevik policy of decentralised democracy, and of organising a party conference to resolve the issue.

Problems over renegade Petrograd Soviet Mensheviks joining and supporting the PRG was a problem.

It is difficult to judge in fact the overall Menshevik viewpoint on it, but my general impression is that there was significant support for it amongst rank and file Mensheviks, perhaps a majority, whereas the majority of the ‘theoretical’ leadership was against it.

It has I think taken on a historical significance that, in retrospect, only the principled and theoretical leadership of the Mensheviks perhaps vaguely, appreciated at the time.

It was a mistake, but was seen at the time as a trivial and pragmatic question which was how the Bolsheviks had taken a position on it.

That Provisional Revolutionary Government in the June to September period despite all its numerous faults was an oasis of political freedom compared to what had gone on before it and more importantly after it.

And those shitty Mensheviks eg Martov stood up for the Bolsheviks and their right to express themselves after they came under pressure from the PRG following the hanky panky of the insurrectionary July days, was it?

They paid them back for that later in spades.

The idea that the Mensheviks didn’t give a shit about the Soviets is nonsense and the Mensheviks never said that the Soviets had become ‘obsolete’.

In fact the MRC which was ultimately taken over by the Bolsheviks and used for their coup d’etat was originally set up by the Mensheviks to prevent a white-guardist counter revolution- as Trotsky scoffed at the irony of it.

The pressure from the "soldiers" needs to be clarified? What soldiers? From the Petrograd garrison. No, that wasn't the delegation that spoke to the soviet. It was a delegation from the front, and at that time, many such committees were "joint" councils of officers and enlisted men, and there were separate councils of officers only.

What you don't understand is that the revolution was developing, it was moving beyond the "bourgeois" form at the very moment the Mensheviks in the soviets, leading the soviets, attempted to enter, and resuscitate those bourgeois forms. You think that's a "principled" program? Sure it is for the bourgeoisie; for those who support capitalism.

It wasn't a "pragmatic mistake"-- and the position of the Bolsheviks, not the opinions of certain individuals, did not regard it as such. It was a principled alliance, one based on establishing the sovereignty of the bourgeois order against the power of the soviets.

You can mealy mouth all you want about renegade this, and pragmatic that, but if you're going to throw around the mud that the Bolsheviks were financed by the German military, expect others to take you apart without blinking an eye.


The inter relationship between the Soviets and the Constituent Assembly after its election, that the Mensheviks often referred to as the ‘dual power’, was something that was up for grabs later on after the Constituent Assembly had been convoked.


The idea of course was not that ‘power should be concentrated’ in the hands of the Bolshevik party.


Admittedly I did drift off track with my state capitalism stuff.

Apparently, you don't get what Abramovitch is saying , these weren't "renegades" joint the PG, this was a vote taken of the majority when the Mensheviks and SRs dominated the soviets.... in April and May. That's the point.

The majority voted to enter the coalition. The Mensheviks did not "expel" those who had voted to join the coalition; the Mensheviks did not denounce those who had become ministers in the govt.

The pressure from the "soldiers" needs to be clarified? What soldiers? From the Petrograd garrison. No, that wasn't the delegation that spoke to the soviet. It was a delegation from the front, and at that time, many such committees were "joint" councils of officers and enlisted men, and there were separate councils of officers only.

What you don't understand is that the revolution was developing, it was moving beyond the "bourgeois" form at the very moment the Mensheviks in the soviets, leading the soviets, attempted to enter, and resuscitate those bourgeois forms. You think that's a "principled" program? Sure it is [I]for the bourgeoisie; for those who support capitalism.

It wasn't a "pragmatic mistake"-- and the position of the Bolsheviks, not the opinions of certain individuals, did not regard it as such. It was a principled alliance on the part of the SRs and Mensheviks one based on establishing the sovereignty of the bourgeois order against the power of the soviets.

"Prevent disintegration of the army"??? Revolutionists wanted the disintegration of the army-- defeatism over defencism.

You can mealy mouth all you want about renegade this, and pragmatic that, but if you're going to throw around the mud that the Bolsheviks were financed by the German military, expect others to take you apart without blinking an eye.

Your whole discourse is so full of smarmy innuendo it's enough to gag a maggot-- "hanky panky of the July days"-- WTF does that mean? What hanky panky-- this was a demonstration insisted upon by the workers in the Vyborg district, in the district soviets, in the factories, which demonstration the Bolsheviks opposed at the time, based on tactical considerations. So what hanky panky are you talking about? Maybe the hanky=panky of Kerensky who was calling a veritable congress of counterrevolution in Moscow during that same month?

And this:


That Provisional Revolutionary Government in the June to September period despite all its numerous faults was an oasis of political freedom compared to what had gone on before it and more importantly after it.

takes the fucking cake with a capital F. The freedom was the product of the soviets, of the working class, of the soldiers who opposed the war, of the peasantry seizing the estates. The freedom was not the product of the PG; indeed as members of the PG freely admitted, the PG only had such power as the soviets allowed it.

The fact is the PG could not survive; it had to give way to either reaction or completion of the revolution. And it is painfully clear to the most casual observer on which side you find yourself-- with the side of reaction. I'll take the revolution, warts and all.

[Kiev Communard]

That Provisional Revolutionary Government in the June to September period despite all its numerous faults was an oasis of political freedom compared to what had gone on before it and more importantly after it.

And those shitty Mensheviks eg Martov stood up for the Bolsheviks and their right to express themselves after they came under pressure from the PRG following the hanky panky of the insurrectionary July days, was it?

They paid them back for that later in spades.

The PRG was not an oasis of freedom you purport to describe. The leaders of the PRG would most likely have gone Ebert and Scheidemann if the circumstances had been more favorable to them, as the actions of Kerensky during the Kornilov putsch showed. The alliance between the Kerenskyites and the reactionary General Krasnov in the immediate aftermath of the October Revolution also testifies to ths fact. And I am not even mentioning the willingness of the Right SRs and Mensheviks to support the White regimes, which actually killed more than Lenin's Cheka in 1918, later.

[A Marxist Historian]

This is almost funny. The implacable internationalist left Menshevik Abramovitch? Abramovitch doubled as a central leader of the Jewish Bund, which was if anything even more enthusiastic about Kerensky than the mainline Mensheviks. Like Dave B., they saw Kerensky's Provisional Government as, as he put it, an "oasis of political freedom," much nicer than anything beforewards or afterwards in Russia.

Being the Jewish Bund after all, they weren't too thrilled about Mensheviks entering White regimes that slaughtered Jews. That is what his "leftism" boiled down to.

-M.H.-





The following is from the implacable internationalist left Menshevik R Abramovitch Chapter Two of his book ‘The Soviet Revolutiuon’.

I have found it extremely reliable and have included in my brackets insertions for clarity?






I think it is clear from that that the Petrograd Soviet appointed, after general external pressure to do so from the ‘left’, concerned about leaving it under the control of the ‘right’ ;

the Mensheviks N. Skobelev and Tseretelli (with admittedly the apparent support of the Mensheviks that were on the EC of the Petrograd Soviet)

And that they were ‘appointed’ by the Petrograd Soviet against the wishes of the Menshevik centre and the ‘statutes of the party’.


Given the general chaos of the time, the Menshevik policy of decentralised democracy, and of organising a party conference to resolve the issue.

Problems over renegade Petrograd Soviet Mensheviks joining and supporting the PRG was a problem.

It is difficult to judge in fact the overall Menshevik viewpoint on it, but my general impression is that there was significant support for it amongst rank and file Mensheviks, perhaps a majority, whereas the majority of the ‘theoretical’ leadership was against it.

It has I think taken on a historical significance that, in retrospect, only the principled and theoretical leadership of the Mensheviks perhaps vaguely, appreciated at the time.

It was a mistake, but was seen at the time as a trivial and pragmatic question which was how the Bolsheviks had taken a position on it.

That Provisional Revolutionary Government in the June to September period despite all its numerous faults was an oasis of political freedom compared to what had gone on before it and more importantly after it.

And those shitty Mensheviks eg Martov stood up for the Bolsheviks and their right to express themselves after they came under pressure from the PRG following the hanky panky of the insurrectionary July days, was it?

They paid them back for that later in spades.

The idea that the Mensheviks didn’t give a shit about the Soviets is nonsense and the Mensheviks never said that the Soviets had become ‘obsolete’.

In fact the MRC which was ultimately taken over by the Bolsheviks and used for their coup d’etat was originally set up by the Mensheviks to prevent a white-guardist counter revolution- as Trotsky scoffed at the irony of it.


The inter relationship between the Soviets and the Constituent Assembly after its election, that the Mensheviks often referred to as the ‘dual power’, was something that was up for grabs later on after the Constituent Assembly had been convoked.


The idea of course was not that ‘power should be concentrated’ in the hands of the Bolshevik party.


Admittedly I did drift off track with my state capitalism stuff.

[Dave B]

It would be helpful if people provided some facts about Mensheviks entering white guardist governments that killed ‘Jews’.



I will have to guess that it may have something to do with ‘Siberian Constituent’ assembly thing.

I am just going to wing this without checking the details. Around the end of 1918 some SR’s who had been elected to the constituent assembly set up shop or constituent assembly in exile somewhere near western Siberia they moved a few times I think and perhaps ended up in Omsk?


It was in one of the areas where the white guardist were active, in fact right at end of 1918 the white guardist carried out a coup d’etat and overthrew that government as well.

The Whites were a set of bastards and it wouldn’t surprise me if participated in pogroms at all.

I actually have no idea what the Bundists position was the on PRG.

The Bundist as far as I can gather were the “jewish’ section of the RSDP and tended to be allied to the Mensheviks.

They were secular ‘jews’ and were ‘jewish’ by culture with their own language and organised themselves on that basis.

That actually caused a bit of a problem in the RSDLP as sections in a working class party based on culture or ethnicity was an anathema to the concept of Marxism.

Having said that it is an old hoary problem in the ‘left’ with more modern problems of ‘black’ or ‘womens’ sections in Trot organisations etc.

The Mensheviks didn’t like the idea but tolerated it and some ‘Jewish’ Mensheviks were not in the Bundist section, although I think Abramovitch came from the Bundist section originally.

I thought that later he left the section to become part of the non Bundist part of the RSDLP and later Menshevik.

It is complicated I know.

The what turned out to be the Bolshevik wing of the RSDLP and Lenin was dead against the idea of a ‘Jewish’ section ie the Bundists.

Actually at the time of the split conference that was another one of the disputes, and the Bundist delegates walked out just before the final majority-minority vote, pissed off at being slagged off by Lenin and his friends.

If they had stayed they almost certainly would have voted with the Mensheviks and they may have won ‘the vote’ and the Bolsheviks would have been the Mensheviks.

Although at the end of the day it was just 50 or so Russian émigrés renting out London fishing club, I think.

I am not one to support ‘Yiddish’ sections in workers party at all.

But in defence of the Bundists and to put their position. They were discriminated in Russian law and as the state dealt with them in a different way they felt that they had their own problems etc.

They also did have an active left wing press and trade unions, often ‘jewish’ workers being exploited by ‘jewish capitalist, and they understood that.


In fact most of the real industrial workers in the RSDLP with cloth caps and dirt under their fingernails etc like me, were from the Bundist section for historical reasons that I won’t go into.

And that probably contributed the self conscious bourgeois intelligentsia and middle class of the RSDLP with their lily white hands and their idea of suffering being writers cramp tolerating them.

On the Bundists after 1917 there isn’t much as far as I am aware but there is the following which I presume is from the Bundist Mensheviks- it concerns the rolling up and imprisonment of delegates to one of their meetings at the time.

From the MI5 and Lockhart archive, who was a data miner for the British government who were keen to get an objective handle on what was going on, a fascinating resource.


Protest of the (Russian) Social Democratic Labour Party and of the Jewish Socialist Party sent to the executive Committees of all Socialist Parties of Europe and America, August 1918


.....`The imaginary dictatorship of the proletariat has definitely turned into the dictatorship of the Bolshevik party, which attracted all sorts of adventurers and suspicious characters and is supported only by the naked force of hired bayonets. Their sham socialism…………….'



In the continuing struggle against the Bolshevik tyranny which dishonours the Russian revolution, social democracy pursues the following aims.

1) To make it impossible for the working class to have to shed its blood for the sake of maintaining the sham dictatorship of the toiling masses or of the sham socialistic order, both of which are bound to perish and are meanwhile killing the soul and body of the proletariat.

2) To organise the working class into a force which, in union with other democratic forces of the country will be able to throw off the yoke of the Bolshevik regime, to defend the democratic conquests of the revolution…….'


And from R.H. Lockhart, 10th November 1918, document No,10 in ‘Bolshevism In Russia’


“the worst crimes of the Bolsheviks have been against their socialist opponents. Of the countless executions which the Bolsheviks have carried out , a large percentage has fallen on the heads of Socialists.”



The Mensheviks never ever supported the whites in any form whatsoever.


I am off out now so may come back to the other stuff later.

[S.Artesian]

I am off out now so may come back to the other stuff later.

Don't bother. You've failed to even engage with the historical facts of the Mensheviks' participation in the PG; their support for the constituent assembly in opposition to the power of the soviets. Which of course are the two critical, class, issues in this discussion.

You've parroted royalist and bourgeois propaganda about Lenin and Trotsky and the Bolsheviks on Berlin's payroll.

You're wasting everyone's time.