Origins of Soviet bureaucracy

[Kill all the fetuses!]

How one should conceptualize the bureaucracy of the Soviet Union? How does it arise? It's obviously not a choice of a single individual, but, as I understand, it arises out of particular material circumstances at hand. That's why, I think, Lenin said:

"Our State is not entirely a 'workers state'; we also have our peasants. Then our State is bureaucratic."

I've also seen Trotskyists attributing the Soviet bureaucracy to the backward conditions of the country and the failure of the world revolution to spread and support the Soviet Union. While I have a rather vague conceptualization of bureaucracy in my head, I would like that some more knowledgeable of you would share how you conceptualize it.

[therealdeal83]

well, you have the right idea. To learn more: first of course is revolution betrayed by trotsky, but it sounds like you heard the gist of that. there are also some nice writings by other people involved in the left opposition from 1923 to 27, including even zinoviev. there are some books with these but mostly out of print, and i don't think they are digitized.

from a materialist standpoint, it is as trotsky said -- there was a workers revolution but due to civil war and lack of industry (ussr was the "weakest link") the workers were unable to maintain political control of the country. the bureaucracy plays a kind of game where they try to balance the different interests of the still existing classes within the socialist society. in the end, they sided with the interests of the peasants and consolidated power by killing off or turning all the radical workers leaders.

[tuwix]

How one should conceptualize the bureaucracy of the Soviet Union? How does it arise? It's obviously not a choice of a single individual, but, as I understand, it arises out of particular material circumstances at hand. That's why, I think, Lenin said:

"Our State is not entirely a 'workers state'; we also have our peasants. Then our State is bureaucratic."

I've also seen Trotskyists attributing the Soviet bureaucracy to the backward conditions of the country and the failure of the world revolution to spread and support the Soviet Union. While I have a rather vague conceptualization of bureaucracy in my head, I would like that some more knowledgeable of you would share how you conceptualize it.

Soviet Bureaucracy was just an effect of the vanguardism. The vanguard party has become the major force of Russian bureaucracy. If the ideology didn't have a need for en elite which undoubtedly a vanguard party is, there wouldn't be so many people wanting to belong to that elite. And that elite was a foundation stone of the bureaucracy. And then bureaucracy were developing according to its own properties described in many books.

[Kill all the fetuses!]

Soviet Bureaucracy was just an effect of the vanguardism. The vanguard party has become the major force of Russian bureaucracy. If the ideology didn't have a need for en elite which undoubtedly a vanguard party is, there wouldn't be so many people wanting to belong to that elite. And that elite was a foundation stone of the bureaucracy. And then bureaucracy were developing according to its own properties described in many books.

Well, what I am looking for is a more elaborate and materialist exploration of the origins of the Soviet bureaucracy. Referring back to Lenin's comment, he clearly thought that the origins of bureaucracy lie in the State being not exclusively workers' state. I've seen Trotskyists attributing it to country's backwardness, civil war, failure of the world revolution to spread, opportunism and other things. What I want to know specifically, is how do you conceptualize that, i.e. how do you make sense of the link "country's backwardness => bureaucracy" and others.

I guess I am looking for a Leninist/Trotskyist explanation of bureaucracy more than an Anarchist one. But thanks nevertheless.

[Red Star Rising]

Soviet Bureaucracy was just an effect of the vanguardism. The vanguard party has become the major force of Russian bureaucracy. If the ideology didn't have a need for en elite which undoubtedly a vanguard party is, there wouldn't be so many people wanting to belong to that elite. And that elite was a foundation stone of the bureaucracy. And then bureaucracy were developing according to its own properties described in many books.

Vanguardism only causes elitism and bureaucracy when there is a huge gap in knowledge and education opportunities as was the situation in Russia. Russia just wasn't ready to be a worker's state and that meant that a small number held all the power and the people had a very limited involvement in their government. Stalin seizing power was the nail in the coffin.

[therealdeal83]

you have heard already the explanation. i think you just need to read more about the concrete circumstances to understand it better. there are many books and writings about this period in soviet history. I would also recommend the volume by eh carr called the interregnum

[Brutus]

Vanguardism only causes elitism and bureaucracy when there is a huge gap in knowledge and education opportunities as was the situation in Russia. Russia just wasn't ready to be a worker's state and that meant that a small number held all the power and the people had a very limited involvement in their government. Stalin seizing power was the nail in the coffin.

"Russia just wasn't ready"? Tell that to the starving workers who took power into their own hands in October. The problem was that the Russian proletariat was starved, frozen and denied medicine by the Allied blockade and shot at the fronts by the Whites and their imperialist allies during the civil war. The revolutionary workers of Petrograd formed Red Guards units and went to fight off the counter-revolution, and families moved from the starving cities into the countryside to find food because the Whites had sabotaged the railways and the peasants were either under White control or had to have their crops taken at gunpoint so the workers didn't starve. The population of Petrograd dropped from 2.3 million in 1917 to 722 thousand by the end of 1920. So the problem was that the Russian proletariat was decimated, not that it wasn't ready.

80% of the Russian population were peasants in 1917, which meant that the 10 million strong Russian proletariat would have to join with the European proletariat, or else make vast concessions to the peasantry. After the civil war, the isolated Russian proletariat was an even smaller percentage of the population.

The main problem was that the proletarian dictatorship was isolated, made worse by the fact that it was a minority.

The second problem is that the proletariat was battered, exhausted and decimated. The dictatorship of the proletariat became a dictatorship over the proletariat, and the Bolshevik party ceased to be a communist party. Lenin's policy of state capitalism as “the development of capitalism under the control of the proletarian state” became simply the development of capitalism.

[Red Star Rising]

"Russia just wasn't ready"? Tell that to the starving workers who took power into their own hands in October. The problem was that the Russian proletariat was starved, frozen and denied medicine by the Allied blockade and shot at the fronts by the Whites and their imperialist allies during the civil war. The revolutionary workers of Petrograd formed Red Guards units and went to fight off the counter-revolution, and families moved from the starving cities into the countryside to find food because the Whites had sabotaged the railways and the peasants were either under White control or had to have their crops taken at gunpoint so the workers didn't starve. The population of Petrograd dropped from 2.3 million in 1917 to 722 thousand by the end of 1920. So the problem was that the Russian proletariat was decimated, not that it wasn't ready.

80% of the Russian population were peasants in 1917, which meant that the 10 million strong Russian proletariat would have to join with the European proletariat, or else make vast concessions to the peasantry. After the civil war, the isolated Russian proletariat was an even smaller percentage of the population.

The main problem was that the proletarian dictatorship was isolated, made worse by the fact that it was a minority.

The second problem is that the proletariat was battered, exhausted and decimated. The dictatorship of the proletariat became a dictatorship over the proletariat, and the Bolshevik party ceased to be a communist party. Lenin's policy of state capitalism as “the development of capitalism under the control of the proletarian state” became simply the development of capitalism.

Russia was largely rural, industry wasn't developed enough for the proletariat to be a properly established urban class as it was in Britain and Germany where Marx and Engels were hoping revolution would happen. Sure, the civil war crushed all hope of a real workers state, but Russia wan't advanced enough for Socialism to be sustainable without support from the rest of the modern world.

[Brutus]

Russia was largely rural, industry wasn't developed enough for the proletariat to be a properly established urban class as it was in Britain and Germany where Marx and Engels were hoping revolution would happen. Sure, the civil war crushed all hope of a real workers state, but Russia wan't advanced enough for Socialism to be sustainable without support from the rest of the modern world.

So now you're saying that the working class can abolish the law of value, the wages system, and itself as long as the country is sufficiently developed? Socialism is- in the negative- the destruction of capitalism, and capitalism is worldwide by nature. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the transition between capitalism and communism, but it is still capitalism in the sense that a dying man is still a man. The revolution must be international, or the isolated workers' republics will cave in under the pressure of Capital sooner or later.

[Red Star Rising]

So now you're saying that the working class can abolish the law of value, the wages system, and itself as long as the country is sufficiently developed? Socialism is- in the negative- the destruction of capitalism, and capitalism is worldwide by nature. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the transition between capitalism and communism, but it is still capitalism in the sense that a dying man is still a man. The revolution must be international, or the isolated workers' republics will cave in under the pressure of Capital sooner or later.

Russia wasn't exactly capitalist - it was feudalist in many ways. And no, I did not say that, international revolutions absolutely is necessary but it would have to begin in a developed country where capitalist industry and thus the urban proletariat are fully established. This was not the case in Russia where there was still a large population of rural peasantry.

[Brutus]

Russia wasn't exactly capitalist - it was feudalist in many ways. And no, I did not say that, international revolutions absolutely is necessary but it would have to begin in a developed country where capitalist industry and thus the urban proletariat are fully established. This was not the case in Russia where there was still a large population of rural peasantry.

It doesn't matter where it begins, but where it ends. The revolution started and died in Russia, and the same would've happened elsewhere if the revolution was isolated. Even if the revolution began in, say, England- where there was a fully developed proletariat- then the capitalist blockade would've starved the country until it submitted to Capital again. If a revolution is isolated, it dies- regardless of location.

[Red Star Rising]

It doesn't matter where it begins, but where it ends. The revolution started and died in Russia, and the same would've happened elsewhere if the revolution was isolated. Even if the revolution began in, say, England- where there was a fully developed proletariat- then the capitalist blockade would've starved the country until it submitted to Capital again. If a revolution is isolated, it dies- regardless of location.
Revolution has a much greater chance of spreading when it begins in the most developed and powerful nation in the world (Britain had a mighty Empire don't forget which really held most of the economic cards). Russia still seemed foreign and backward to the people of developed Europe - they didn't exactly even want to follow its example.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

Revolution has a much greater chance of spreading when it begins in the most developed and powerful nation in the world (Britain had a mighty Empire don't forget which really held most of the economic cards). Russia still seemed foreign and backward to the people of developed Europe - they didn't exactly even want to follow its example.
If I remember correctly, the Italian revolutionaries in the period immediately after WW1 took up the call "let's follow Russia!" or some equivalent. Similar sentiment was felt by many in the workers' movement across Europe.

[bropasaran]

Origins of Soviet bureaucracy are in the victorious coup of the Bolsheviks.

Leninists advocated and established a principle they called ednolichie and ednonachalie, which means one-man-rule (monocracy) and one-man-command; most commonly translated as one-man-management; which they explicitly explained means having managers with dictatorial powers over the workers. The bolshevik obsession with "labor discipline" is nicely illustrated with Trotsky using term "militarization of labor", explaining how the "proletarian state" ruled by the "leaders of labor" must have authoriarian control over it's citizens in the same way (and amount) the army has control over it's soldiers.

The Party in 1984 has slogans like "war is peace" and "freedom is slavery", and if you think those sound crazy, it turns out that reality really is stranger then fiction, because those slogans basicaly come straight out of Lenin's writting, with his demented statements like "Dictatorial powers and one-man management are not contradictory to socialist democracy". And that's not the only time he says is- "There is absolutely no contradiction in principle between Soviet (that is, socialist) democracy and the exercise of dictatorial powers by individuals."

He's literally capable of saying in one and the same sentence how the Communist Party is the "class-conscious spokesman for the strivings of the exploited for emancipation" and how the people must "unquestioningly obey the will of the Soviet leader, of the dictator". He actually held that the "revolution demands—precisely in the interests of its development and consolidation, precisely in the interests of socialism—that the people unquestioningly obey"; "unquestioning subordination to a single will is absolutely necessary".

Wow. Unquestioning subordination and obedience. If that's socialism, anyone sane, let alone someone interested in worker emancipation, must be vehemently anti-socialist. If we were to accept this convention of calling the bolshevik ideas "socialism".

As if anything could justify this proto-fascism, some crazy marxists actually want to try, saying how Lenin, Trotsky and the bolsheviks needed to advocate and establish slavery over the workers because of the civil war. This not only requires ignoring the facts that this was advocated and implement both before and after the civil war, it also requires ignoring what Trotsky and Lenin themselves said about it.

Trotsky whined about the civil war being an obstacle in their fight to establish this proto-version of the fuhrerprinzip: "I consider that if the civil war had not plundered our economic organs ... we should undoubtedly have entered the path of one-man management in the sphere of economic administration much sooner, and much less painfully."

Lenin was clear himself: "The whole attention of the Communist Party and the Soviet government is centred on peaceful economic development, on problems of the dictatorship and of one-man management. Not only the experience we have had in the stubborn civil war of the past two years leads us to such a solution of these problems. When we tackled them for the first time in 1918, there was no civil war and no experience to speak of. It was, therefore, not only the experience of the Red Army and of the victorious Civil War, but something more profound, something bound up with the tasks of the dictatorship of the working class in general, that has induced us now, as it did two years ago, to concentrate all our attention on labour discipline as the crucial factor in the economic development of socialism, and as the basis of the dictatorship of the proletariat as we understand it."

There's also the exuse "the material conditions did it", which, besides being nonsensical in itself, ignores that there was actually an entire territory, populated with a few million people, which abolished the state, the landlords, the politicians, the capitalists, and established a libertarian society- during the lives of Lenin and Trotsky. How did Lenin and Trotsky react to that? Did they say- well, it looks like there are totally different material conditions there, allowing them to actually achieve workers' emancipation? No, they actually waged war against them and eventually destroyed them.

Unfortunatelly for the anti-leninist marxists who want to assume that Lenin came up with this authoritarianism on his own, not only unrelated to, but despite being a marxist, this kind of elitism is actually based directly on Marx. As if it's not revealing enought that Marx thought that the workers will be emancipated through parliamentary representatives, he also held that the workers are incapable for self-management. Lenin's drivel about it is basically just a rewording of Marx' own view, even repeating the same rhetoric-

Lenin: "In regard to the second question, concerning the significance of individual dictatorial powers from the point of view of the specific tasks of the present moment, it must be said that large-scale machine industry—which is precisely the material source, the productive source, the foundation of socialism—calls for absolute and strict unity of will, which directs the joint labours of hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands of people. The technical, economic and historical necessity of this is obvious, and all those who have thought about socialism have always regarded it as one of the conditions of socialism. But how can strict unity of will be ensured? By thousands subordinating their will to the will of one. Given ideal class-consciousness and discipline on the part of those participating in the common work, this subordination would be something like the mild leadership of a conductor of an orchestra. It may assume the sharp forms of a dictatorship if ideal discipline and class-consciousness are lacking. But be that as it may, unquestioning subordination to a single will is absolutely necessary for the success of processes organised on the pattern of large-scale machine industry."

Marx: "The labour of supervision and management is naturally required wherever the direct process of production assumes the form of a combined social process, and not of the isolated labour of independent producers. ... all labour in which many individuals co-operate necessarily requires a commanding will to co-ordinate and unify the process, and functions which apply not to partial operations but to the total activity of the workshop, much as that of an orchestra conductor. This is a productive job, which must be performed in every combined mode of production."


I can't recommend enough to anyone interested in this topic to read these chapters of An Anarchist FAQ,

the Secton H:

H.1 Have anarchists always opposed state socialism?
H.1.1 What was Bakunin's critique of Marxism?
H.1.2 What are the key differences between Anarchists and Marxists?
H.1.3 Why do anarchists wish to abolish the state "overnight"?
H.1.4 Do anarchists have "absolutely no idea" of what to put in place of the state?
H.1.5 Why do anarchists reject "utilising the present state"?
H.1.6 Why do anarchists try to "build the new world in the shell of the old"?
H.1.7 Haven't you read Lenin's "State and Revolution"?

H.2 What parts of anarchism do Marxists particularly misrepresent?
H.2.1 Do anarchists reject defending a revolution?
H.2.2 Do anarchists reject "class conflict" and "collective struggle"?
H.2.3 Does anarchism yearn "for what has gone before"?
H.2.4 Do anarchists think "the state is the main enemy"?
H.2.5 Do anarchists think "full blown" socialism will be created overnight?
H.2.6 How do Marxists misrepresent Anarchist ideas on mutual aid?
H.2.7 Who do anarchists see as their "agents of social change"?
H.2.8 What is the relationship of anarchism to syndicalism?
H.2.9 Do anarchists have "liberal" politics?
H.2.10 Are anarchists against leadership?
H.2.11 Are anarchists "anti-democratic"?
H.2.12 Does anarchism survive only in the absence of a strong workers' movement?
H.2.13 Do anarchists reject "political" struggles and action?
H.2.14 Are anarchist organisations "ineffective," "elitist" or "downright bizarre"?

H.3 What are the myths of state socialism?
H.3.1 Do Anarchists and Marxists want the same thing?
H.3.2 Is Marxism "socialism from below"?
H.3.3 Is Leninism "socialism from below"?
H.3.4 Don't anarchists just quote Marxists selectively?
H.3.5 Has Marxist appropriation of anarchist ideas changed it?
H.3.6 Is Marxism the only revolutionary politics which have worked?
H.3.7 What is wrong with the Marxist theory of the state?
H.3.8 What is wrong with the Leninist theory of the state?
H.3.9 Is the state simply an agent of economic power?
H.3.10 Has Marxism always supported the idea of workers' councils?
H.3.11 Does Marxism aim to give power to workers organisations?
H.3.12 Is big business the precondition for socialism?
H.3.13 Why is state socialism just state capitalism?
H.3.14 Don't Marxists believe in workers' control?

H.4 Didn't Engels refute anarchism in "On Authority"?
H.4.1 Does organisation imply the end of liberty?
H.4.2 Does free love show the weakness of Engels' argument?
H.4.3 How do anarchists propose to run a factory?
H.4.4 How does the class struggle refute Engels' arguments?
H.4.5 Is the way industry operates "independent of all social organisation"?
H.4.6 Why does Engels' "On Authority" harm Marxism?
H.4.7 Is revolution "the most authoritarian thing there is"?

H.5 What is vanguardism and why do anarchists reject it?
H.5.1 Why are vanguard parties anti-socialist?
H.5.2 Have vanguardist assumptions been validated?
H.5.3 Why does vanguardism imply party power?
H.5.4 Did Lenin abandon vanguardism?
H.5.5 What is "democratic centralism"?
H.5.6 Why do anarchists oppose "democratic centralism"?
H.5.7 Is the way revolutionaries organise important?
H.5.8 Are vanguard parties effective?
H.5.9 What are vanguard parties effective at?
H.5.10 Why does "democratic centralism" produce "bureaucratic centralism"?
H.5.11 Can you provide an example of the negative nature of vanguard parties?
H.5.12 Surely the Russian Revolution proves that vanguard parties work?

H.6 Why did the Russian Revolution fail?
H.6.1 Can objective factors explain the failure of the Russian Revolution?
H.6.2 Did Bolshevik ideology influence the outcome of the Russian Revolution?
H.6.3 Were the Russian workers "declassed" and "atomised"?

http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/secHcon.html

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the Appendix : Anarchism and Marxism

Reply to errors and distortions in David McNally's pamphlet "Socialism from Below"
1. Introduction
2. Is anarchism the politics of the "small property owner"?
3. Does anarchism "glorify values from the past"?
4. Why are McNally's comments on Proudhon a distortion of his ideas?
5. Why are McNally's comments on Bakunin a distortion of his ideas?
6. Are these "quirks of personality" or "rooted in the very nature of anarchist doctrine"?
7. Are anarchists against democracy?
8. Are Leninists in favour of democracy?
9. Why is McNally wrong on the relation of syndicalism to anarchism?
10. Do syndicalists reject working class political action?
11. Why is McNally's claim that Leninism supports working class self-emancipation wrong?
12. Why is Marxist "class analysis" of anarchism contradictory?
13. If Marxism is "socialism from below," why do anarchists reject it?
14. Why is McNally's use of the term "socialism from below" dishonest?
15. Did Trotsky keep alive Leninism's "democratic essence"?

Marxists and Spanish Anarchism
1. Were the Spanish Anarchists "Primitive Rebels"?
2. How accurate is Felix Morrow's book on the Spanish Revolution?
3. Did a "highly centralised" FAI control the CNT?
4. What is the history of the CNT and the Communist International?
5. Why did the CNT not join the Workers' Alliance?
6. Was the October 1934 revolt sabotaged by the CNT?
7. Were the Friends of Durruti Marxists?
8. Did the Friends of Durruti "break with" anarchism?
9. Were the Friends of Durruti influenced by Trotskyists?
10. What does the Friends of Durruti's programme tell us about Trotskyism?
11. Why is Morrow's comments against the militarisation of the Militias ironic?
12. What is ironic about Morrow's vision of revolution?
13. Why do anarchists reject the Marxist "workers' state"?
14. What is wrong with Morrow's "fundamental tenet" of anarchism?
15. Did Spanish Anarchism aim for the creation of "collectives" before the revolution?
16. How does the development of the collectives indicate the differences between Bolshevism and anarchism?
17. Why is Morrow's support for "proletarian methods of production" ironic?
18. Were the federations of collectives an "abandonment" of anarchist ideas?
19. Did the experience of the rural collectives refute anarchism?
20. Does the experience of the Spanish Revolution indicate the failure of anarchism or the failure of anarchists?

Reply to errors and distortions in Phil Mitchinson's "Marxism and direct action"
1. How does Mitchinson impoverish the politics of the direct action groups?
2. Does anarchism "juxtapose" theory and action?
3. How does Mitchinson distort the London May Day demo?
4. Do anarchists really think "the bosses will do nothing to defend their system"?
5. How does Mitchinson misrepresent anarchist organisation?
6. How does Mitchinson define anarchism wrongly?
7. Does anarchism reject fighting for reforms?
8. Does anarchism see the state as the root of all problems?
9. Why is Mitchinson wrong about the "Abolishion [i.e. Abolition] of the state"?
10. Why is Mitchinson's comment that we face either "socialism or barbarism" actually undermine his case?
11. Why is Mitchinson wrong to assert anarchists do not believe in defending a revolution?
12. Would the "workers' state" really be different, as Mitchinson claims?
13. Is the Marxist "worker's state" really the rule of one class over another?
14. Why do anarchists reject the Marxist notion of "conquest of power"?
15. What caused the degeneration of the Russian Revolution?
16. Did anarchists reject "the need for organisation in the shape of trade unions"?
17. Why do anarchists reject political activity?
18. How do anarchists struggle for reforms under capitalism?
19. How does Mitchinson distorts the use of the term "Self-reliance"?
20. Is anarchism an example of "Philosophical idealism"?
21. How is Mitchinson's critique self-contradictory?
22. How did Trotsky make the trains run on time?
23. Can centralised planning meet the needs of the whole of society?
24. Is technology neutral?
25. Do anarchists ignore the "strength of the working class"?
26. What does Mitchinson's article tell about the nature of Trotskyism?

Reply to errors and distortions in the SWP's "Marxism and Anarchism"
1. What does the anti-globalisation movement tell us about the effectiveness of the "vanguard" parties like the SWP?
2. What does the SWP miss out in its definition of anarchism?
3. Why does mentioning the history of anarchism weaken the SWP's argument?
4. How is the SWP wrong about centralisation?
5. Why does the SWP's "picket line is 'authoritarian'" argument totally miss the point?
6. Why are the SWP's examples of "state functions" wrong?
7. What is ironic about the SWP's comment that workers' councils must "break up" the capitalist state?
8. How do the SWP re-write the history of the Russian Revolution?
9. How do the SWP re-write the history of the Spanish Revolution?
10. Do anarchists ignore the fact that ideas change through struggle?
11. Why do anarchists oppose the Leninist "revolutionary party"?
12. Why do the SWP make a polemical fetish of "unity" and "democracy" to the expense of common sense and freedom?
13. How does the Battle of Prague expose the SWP as hypocrites?
14. Is the Leninist tradition actually as democratic as the SWP like to claim?
15. Why is the SWP's support for centralisation anti-socialist?
16. Why is the SWP wrong about the A16 Washington D.C. demo?
17. Why does the SWP's Washington example refute the SWP's own argument and not anarchism?
18. Why is a "revolutionary party" a contradiction in terms?
19. Do anarchists operate "in secret"?
20. Why is the SWP wrong about Bakunin's organisation?
21. Why is the SWP's attack on Bakunin's organisation ironic?
22. Was the F.A.I. a "centralised and secret" organisation that shunned "open debate and common struggle"?
23. Do anarchists wait for "spontaneous upsurges by workers"?
24. Do anarchists blame workers "for being insufficiently revolutionary"?
25. Why does the history of centralised parties refute the SWP's arguments?

Reply to errors and distortions in John Fisher's "Why we must further Marxism and not Anarchism"
1. Why should "the so-called Anarchistic youth of today" be concerned that Trotskyists consider them allies?
2. What else do people learn about when they discover anarchism is more than "utter rebellion"?
3. What do anarchists think will "replace the smashed state machine"?
4. What did Trotsky and Lenin think must replace the bourgeois state?
5. Is the "proletarian 'state'" really a new kind of state?
6. Do anarchists "hope the capitalists do not make any attempts of counterrevolution"?
7. Are Anarchists simply "potential Marxists"?
8. Is Marxism a scientific?
9. What does the Russian Revolution tell us about Trotskyism?
10. Do anarchists reject "leadership"?
11. Does the Spanish Revolution show anarchism is flawed?
12. Does anarchism believe in spontaneous revolution?

http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/append3.html

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and the Appendix - The Russian Revolution:

What happened during the Russian Revolution?
1 Can you give a short summary of what happened in 1917?
2 How did the Bolsheviks gain mass support?
3 Surely the Russian Revolution proves that vanguard parties work?
4 Was Lenin's "State and Revolution" applied after October?
5 Did the Bolsheviks really aim for Soviet power?
6 What happened to the soviets after October?
7 How did the factory committee movement develop?
8 What was the Bolshevik position on "workers' control" in 1917?
9 What happened to the factory committees after October?
10 What were the Bolshevik economic policies in 1918?
11 Did Bolshevik economic policies work?
12 Was there an alternative to Lenin's "state capitalism" and "war communism"?
13 Did the Bolsheviks allow independent trade unions?
14 Was the Red Army really a revolutionary army?
15 Was the Red Army "filled with socialist consciousness"?
16 How did the civil war start and develop?
17 Was the civil war between just Reds and Whites?
18 How extensive was imperialist intervention?
19 Did the end of the civil war change Bolshevik policies?
20 Can the Red Terror and the Cheka be justified?
21 Did Bolshevik peasant policies work?
22 Was there an alternative to grain requisition?
23 Was the repression of the socialist opposition justified?
24 What did the anarchists do during the revolution?
25 Did the Russian revolution refute anarchism?

What was the Kronstadt Rebellion?
1 Why is the Kronstadt rebellion important?
2 What was the context of the Kronstadt revolt?
3 What was the Kronstadt Programme?
4 Did the Kronstadt rebellion reflect "the exasperation of the peasantry"?
5 What lies did the Bolsheviks spread about Kronstadt?
6 Was the Kronstadt revolt a White plot?
7 What was the real relationship of Kronstadt to the Whites?
8 Did the rebellion involve new sailors?
9 Was Kronstadt different politically?
10 Why did the Petrograd workers not support Kronstadt?
11 Were the Whites a threat during the Kronstadt revolt?
12 Was the country too exhausted to allow soviet democracy?
13 Was there a real alternative to Kronstadt's "third revolution"?
14 How do modern day Trotskyists misrepresent Kronstadt?
15 What does Kronstadt tell us about Bolshevism?

What caused the degeneration of the Russian Revolution?
1 Do anarchists ignore the objective factors facing the Russian revolution?
2 Can "objective factors" really explain the failure of Bolshevism?
3 Can the civil war explain the failure of Bolshevism?
4 Did economic collapse and isolation destroy the revolution?
5 Was the Russian working class atomised or "declassed"?
6 Did the Bolsheviks blame "objective factors" for their actions?

How did Bolshevik ideology contribute to the failure of the Revolution?
1 How did the Marxist historical materialism affect Bolshevism?
2 Why did the Marxist theory of the state undermine working class power?
3 How did Engels' essay "On Authority" affect the revolution?
4 What was the Bolshevik vision of democracy?
5 What was the effect of the Bolshevik vision of "socialism"?
6 How did Bolshevik preference for nationalisation affect the revolution?
7 How did Bolshevik preference for centralism affect the revolution?
8 How did the aim for party power undermine the revolution?

Were any of the Bolshevik oppositions a real alternative?
1 Were the "Left Communists" of 1918 an alternative?
2 What were the limitations of the "Workers' Opposition" of 1920?
3 What about Trotsky's "Left Opposition" in the 1920s?
4 What do these oppositions tell us about the essence of Leninism?

Why does the Makhnovist movement show there is an alternative to Bolshevism?
1 Who was Nestor Makhno?
2 Why was the movement named after Makhno?
3 Why was Makhno called "Batko"?
4 Can you give a short overview of the Makhnovist movement?
5 How were the Makhnovists organised?
6 Did the Makhnovists have a constructive social programme?
7 Did they apply their ideas in practice?
8 Weren't the Makhnovists just Kulaks?
9 Were the Makhnovists anti-Semitic and pogromists?
10 Did the Makhnovists hate the city and city workers?
11 Were the Makhnovists nationalists?
12 Did the Makhnovists support the Whites?
13 What was the relationship of the Bolsheviks to the movement?
14 How did the Makhnovists and Bolsheviks differ?
15 How do the modern followers of Bolshevism slander the Makhnovists?
16 What lessons can be learned from the Makhnovists?

http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/append4.html

[Ritzy Cat]

I agree with the sentiment that the soviet bureacracy was born out of the vanguard party. While I doubt Lenin really had such tyrannical aims, he himself was "democratic" in the context of the vanguard party, it created a cocktail party for the "seasoned revolutionaries" to be able to take over the ruins of the empire themselves.

Thus began the "Communist Party".

[Kill all the fetuses!]

So I read "The Revolution Betrayed", partly to get a better understanding of the Soviet bureaucracy. Trotsky used that word very often in the book and yet I don't really think I had that "eureka" moment with regards to this particular question.

Would it be correct to conceptualize bureaucracy as absence of democratic decision making at that particular juncture? It might not necessary be a result of dictatorship - it might as well arise out of a democracy where people decide that there is no point in meeting to discuss situation X every time, so they create a general rule how situation X should unfold and so there is a sort of bureaucracy at that particular juncture. In this same way, it might simply be a rule-based imposition of a dictator.

Is this way of thinking any good? Can someone provide with a better way of conceptualization?

[Sabot Cat]

To supplement the human explanation with, I guess, a more materialist understanding: the Cheka simply had better equipment to arrest and shoot dissenters, as well as superior organization and military intelligence to any group which might have saw an unchecked secret police as a bad thing.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

Victor Serge talks about the emergence of the bureaucracy in Year One of the Revolution:


The State was still so weak that, given the incompetence of the normal institutions for their work, it often became necessary. to resort to the system of Extraordinary Commissions equipped with dictatorial powers. One Extraordinary Commission of this kind was set up to organize the provisioning of the army. Nothing but harm to the progress of centralization could come from the functioning of such Commissions.

In every administrative organ, the revolutionary proletariat found itself using a substantial corps of employees and functionaries belonging to the old petty-bourgeoisie of the cities. In one year, from the first six months of 1918 to the first six months of 1919, the membership of the only trade union for Soviet officials quadrupled, from 114,539 to 529,841. The general scarcity imposed both a census of consumers and a census of all available products. What techniques could be applied, what personnel could be employed? Everything had to be improvised from scratch, with personnel that were often corrupt and were in any case, by reason of their social origins, totally unfitted to grasp Socialist principles and the implacable necessities of the class struggle.

The mass of folk bent all their ingenuity into getting what they needed out of the stock of products; the party bent all its efforts to the task of allocation, as a first priority, to the army, the workers, the children and the mothers. But it entrusted the execution of its directives to bureaux who twisted them, while dubious elements in the population carried on massive fraud. Documents, minutes, government bonds, ration cards formed a phenomenal mass of paper, serving a variety of purposes: accounting, rationing, the classification of the populace into categories, the means of fraud and the livelihood of the corps of functionaries, who were hostile to the régime in their immense majority. Typical of the indignation against this bureaucracy was a slogan that we find in one journal: ‘Up against the wall with the bureaucrats!’

I think the bureaucracy emerged due to a variety of reasons but chief among them were the need to distribute resources for the Civil War effort, the lack of qualified genuine revolutionaries capable of taking on the job or being sent to the front leading to a reliance on the petty-bourgeois officials of the old regime being given the job and also an emergence, alongside the industries, agriculture and other enterprises taken into the hands of the workers' state, of a black market trading goods that so many relied upon due to shortages which fermented corruption.

[consuming negativity]

Bureaucracy is a result of the idea that rational thought is superior to other means of determining the best course of action in a given situation. This is the case no matter where the bureaucracy exists, and it is certainly not limited to the USSR.

People tend to believe that there is a best way to go about doing many things, and that if we all agree on a certain set of procedures that are generally good, we can get rid of inefficiency based on corruption, emotions, and all other human-caused errors. For example, we can set a system of requirements that a person can meet to qualify for a job, rather than just handing it out to whoever is arbitrarily stuck in that position by a friend without regard to merit. Seems like a good idea, right? And even though bureaucracies are notorious for causing irrational errors and making things difficult for us in unforeseen circumstances, they do tend to increase efficiency and this is demonstrably true.

The problem being, of course, that the relative efficiency we get from bureaucracy often isn't worth the dehumanization and subsequent frustration and hopelessness we get from having our emotions and personal thoughts all but completely devalued and rejected in favor of a set of rules we seem to be incapable of controlling. Our bureaucratic administrative organs begin to seem larger than ourselves in the same way we tend to see the economy as bigger than us due to the commodity fetishism which causes us to be alienated from the means of production and the products we produce. Or, in other words, we forget that the entire point of being efficient was to make us happy, and so we make ourselves miserable in the name of being rational for the sake of being rational. But I'm not sure there's a whole lot that can be done about it.

[John Nada]

I'll try to look for it, but IIRC Lenin spoke of a tsarist state bureaucracy that managed capitalism in Russia, or something like that. Could Trotsky's and others' criticism of Soviet bureaucracy be related to the tsarist bureaucracy, or maybe it alluded to to the Soviet bureaucracy turning into something similar to the tsarist one?
The problem being, of course, that the relative efficiency we get from bureaucracy often isn't worth the dehumanization and subsequent frustration and hopelessness we get from having our emotions and personal thoughts all but completely devalued and rejected in favor of a set of rules we seem to be incapable of controlling. Our bureaucratic administrative organs begin to seem larger than ourselves in the same way we tend to see the economy as bigger than us due to the commodity fetishism which causes us to be alienated from the means of production and the products we produce. Or, in other words, we forget that the entire point of being efficient was to make us happy, and so we make ourselves miserable in the name of being rational for the sake of being rational. But I'm not sure there's a whole lot that can be done about it.Maybe managerial/bureaucratic work could be turned into a job duty, rather than a career or social status. Workers often know how to do the management's job, sometimes better than the official management. Sometimes when a work site is short on hands the lower management will even do regular worker's jobs. Often workers don't get promoted due to workplace politics, since it's a ladder to the top.

It could be an elected position, abolished or swapped around at different shifts. I.e. "Oh fuck, do I really have to be team leader? Can't I have the privilege of being the janitor and scrub shit today. Have all of you no mercy?"

[consuming negativity]

I'll try to look for it, but IIRC Lenin spoke of a tsarist state bureaucracy that managed capitalism in Russia, or something like that. Could Trotsky's and others' criticism of Soviet bureaucracy be related to the tsarist bureaucracy, or maybe it alluded to to the Soviet bureaucracy turning into something similar to the tsarist one?

Maybe managerial/bureaucratic work could be turned into a job duty, rather than a career or social status. Workers often know how to do the management's job, sometimes better than the official management. Sometimes when a work site is short on hands the lower management will even do regular worker's jobs. Often workers don't get promoted due to workplace politics, since it's a ladder to the top.

It could be an elected position, abolished or swapped around at different shifts. I.e. "Oh fuck, do I really have to be team leader? Can't I have the privilege of being the janitor and scrub shit today. Have all of you no mercy?"

There is definitely a certain amount of prestige that comes from being the knowledgeable person or the one who is "in charge", so to speak. I think that even without the monetary incentive, there are natural leaders who would rise to the occasion and want to guide things. And, if they're good at it, I think people would be happy to listen to them because they feel the authority on that subject is legitimate. In the same way that both you and I would listen to a doctor over ourselves in many circumstances.

That's the thing about capitalism, though. It makes people seek out higher jobs that they really don't want to do and aren't qualified for because they want more money. Or, like you said, they get promoted based on tenure or because they're favored by the person who gets to make the decision. Perhaps in a socialist mode of production, bureaucracy would be even more efficient. It would be allowed to work without market influence and would be more heavily influenced by the people who are directly influenced by it, thus leading to a lot less of the problems we associate with the concept today. They could swap jobs and/or be elected differently and keep the same pay, too; sharing the prestige and also the stress associated with management. Based on the people and what they need rather than on the money and what accumulates it, with efficiency as a byproduct of reality.