Workers’ revolt to revolution

[SonofRage]

From the latest Socialist Worker



"THE MASSES go into a revolution not with a prepared plan of social reconstruction, but with a sharp feeling that they cannot endure the old regime," wrote Leon Trotsky in his famous History of the Russian Revolution. Revolutions are windows of opportunity where the old habits of deference and passivity are suddenly destroyed on a mass scale among ordinary people.

But the dead weight of tradition dies hard. Alongside the process of "self-emancipation," where workers begin to develop their own capacity and strength in struggle, the old idea that change can only come from above still survives.

A revolution awakens millions of people who hitherto were passive, having little belief in their own capacity to run society. As a result, it first strengthens reformist consciousness--the idea that we must rely on others to change society for us.

Workers are accustomed to believing that they are incapable of running society--that insofar as change is possible, they must depend not upon themselves, but upon representatives who will act on their behalf. Mass struggle begins to break the sense of subordination and deference among ordinary people, but it does not wipe it out in one stroke.

The result is that in the first phase of every revolution, there is a general shift to the left in mass consciousness, but the center of gravity of mass consciousness remains reformist. There is a difference between the reformism of trade union and movement leaders, who are more or less "hardened" in their reformism, and the reformism of workers whose struggle points a way beyond reform but whose own consciousness at first still tells them that reform is the best they can expect.

In the first phase of a revolutionary movement, the spontaneous element predominates. Workers’ consciousness changes in struggle, but consciousness lags behind experience. As a result, workers are capable of overthrowing the system before they become fully aware of what alternatives they are capable of posing to it.

read more... (http://www.socialistworker.org/2004-1/485/485_09_Revolution.shtml)

I thought it was a pretty good and interesting article. Thoughts?

[The Feral Underclass]

What you have written sounds great but you did not post the rest of the article.

I was once a member of the Socialist Workers Party and also did some work for them suprisingly enough...

What they say is that the workers must have a revolutionary organization. Fine. I am all for that, and I am sure that in the beginning any movement would be dominated by ideologists, but it dosnt mean it has to remain that way. The movement shouldbranch out, forming networks within the working class and organizing without central authority or hierarchy.

The SWP do not want to do that. They want to centralize everything in a central command and create hierarchies within the party. The article says this.


"Without a guiding organization, the energy of the masses would dissipate like steam not enclosed in a piston-box," writes Trotsky. "But nevertheless what moves things is not the piston or the box, but the steam."

But why does this have to be done by a party vangaurd? They say this...


"The possibility that workers might be able to translate their power into more than just opposition to the way things are is not at first apparent to them--it becomes so only through a period of hard lessons in the course of struggle".

Still...why do we need a vangaurd...This can be done by conscious workers using anarchist organziation...They say this...


"Some move faster than others and are ready to take the lead. The role of revolutionary organization is to unite the most militant workers and activists in the struggle--those who have a clearer grasp of the possibilities for revolutionary change--so as to be able to turn revolutionary potential into reality".

They dont say anthing but reaffirm facts. I know this, they know this, everyone knows this, but they do little to explain why their form of organization is "better" than anarchist organization. Actually their form of organiztion is no more effective than anarchist organization and in fact creates two tiers of revolutionary struggle. Those who lead and those who are lead.

The point of building a movement and building a workers society is so that we can work co-operativly with the workers as revolutionaries. Build consciousness on a person to person basis. Not from Central committe to National Organizer to District Organizer to members. What liberation is that? Sure they can argue that it is the most effective way to do it. But they dont really know why.

They do say this however...


"As a result, workers are capable of overthrowing the system before they become fully aware of what alternatives they are capable of posing to it."

But this isnt true. The workers have the ability to undersrtand anything. What they presume is the question of time is limited. They wish to seize on oppotunities which do not take into consideration the historic position of the working class. Consciousness and understanding means more now than it did back in 1917. Our role as a revolutionary movement is not to accept that the workers will not understand but work to ensure they do.

[redstar2000]

THE MASSES go into a revolution not with a prepared plan of social reconstruction, but with a sharp feeling that they cannot endure the old regime," wrote Leon Trotsky in his famous History of the Russian Revolution. Revolutions are windows of opportunity where the old habits of deference and passivity are suddenly destroyed on a mass scale among ordinary people.

But the dead weight of tradition dies hard. Alongside the process of "self-emancipation," where workers begin to develop their own capacity and strength in struggle, the old idea that change can only come from above still survives.

This is what actually happened in Petrograd and other cities in 1917...Trotsky is generalizing this into a "universal rule",

But the Russian working class in 1917 was, in many respects, very backward. Most of them had never read Lenin, much less Marx. Most of them probably could not read!

In addition, their minds were clouded with patriotism (worse than the peasantry who had little idea of "Russia" as a country) and religion (not as grotesquely superstitious as the peasantry...but hardly clear-eyed rational atheists either).

Is Trotsky's "universal law" valid now and into the indefinite future?

How could it be? The class itself has changed in ways that Trotsky couldn't even begin to imagine. How much more will it have changed by the time proletarian revolution becomes a real possibility?

For all we know, the workers of the second half of this century might very well have a "plan of social reconstruction"...and, if not that, at least some very clear ideas of what is acceptable and what is unacceptable.

(Note that Trotsky implies that the Bolsheviks "did have" a plan of social reconstruction...which is not true, of course.)


The Petrograd Soviet of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies had within its grasp the ability to take the reigns of power, but it did not. This was recognized by the bourgeois politician Rodzianko, who told Cheidze, the reformist leader in the Petrograd soviet, "You have the power, you can arrest us all."

And one important reason for this is that Lenin and the Bolsheviks told them not to do it (in July 1917).

When power was seized, it was not "the workers" who did it; it was the Bolshevik Party in the name of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets.

You cannot confuse the seizure of power by a party--even a working class party--with the seizure of power by the working class itself.


There is a need, therefore, for an organization of revolutionaries that can fight inside the movement to break past the constraints of reformism and win the majority of workers to the idea that they must pose a new alternative to capitalism.

No one disagrees with that. The dispute is over the nature of that "organization of revolutionaries" and the kind of "new alternative to capitalism" that they propose.

A party despotism, such as the Leninists propose, will only generate a new capitalist class.


Without such a party, the revolutionary moment is lost and the movement either goes into decline or is militarily defeated. Either way, society begins to flow back into its old channels and "order" is restored once again.

No...for many reasons.

Petrograd did not "fail" in February 1917...the autocracy was overthrown and stayed overthrown.

Even failed revolutions on a sufficient scale make it "impossible" to restore the "old channels" to their former state. The old ruling class may return to power...but they can never rule again the way they once did.

Their "mystique" of invulnerable superiority is lost forever. Once you've chopped off the head of a king, you never look at kings quite the same way again.


"Without a guiding organization, the energy of the masses would dissipate like steam not enclosed in a piston-box," writes Trotsky.

There was no guiding organization in Petrograd in February 1917 (all of the socialist and anarchist groups were very small). But it was the autocracy that dissipated, not the revolution.

I wonder if perhaps Leninism will not ultimately be seen as a sign of the backwardness of even the most "advanced" part of the 20th century working class.

What is it, really, if not just another variant of "the old idea that change can only come from above"?

:redstar2000:

The RedStar2000 Papers (http://www.anarchist-action.org/marxists/redstar2000/)
A site about communist ideas

[SonofRage]

Originally posted by The Anarchist [email protected] 6 2004, 05:12 AM
What you have written sounds great but you did not post the rest of the article.

I was once a member of the Socialist Workers Party and also did some work for them suprisingly enough...
Socialist Worker is the newspaper of the ISO, not the SWP....

[The Feral Underclass]

They are one and the same thing my friend...The SWP's newpaper is also called the Socialist Worker. I believe the SWP started with the name International Socialist Organization.

[SonofRage]

In the United States, the SWP's paper is called the Militant and it is a very different group than the ISO

[The Feral Underclass]

Fair enough

[SonofRage]

My fault really, sometimes I forget that this is an international forum.

Getting back on topic, what are people's thoughts as far as how to strike the right balance between being organized and being free?

[God of Imperia]

Why not everyone be the leader for a week until everybody has been it for a week and then start all over again?

[BOZG]

TAT,

Hold your horses. As SonofRage already pointed out, the American SWP has nothing to do with ISO or the British SWP. The British SWP are members of IST (International Socialist Tendancy) so the above group who's paper is Socialist Worker is not linked to the British SWP either.



As for you being a member of the SWP, I can only laugh. You must have been extremely disillusioned at that point in your life ;)

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by [email protected] 3 2004, 05:30 PM
TAT,

Hold your horses. As SonofRage already pointed out, the American SWP has nothing to do with ISO or the British SWP. The British SWP are members of IST (International Socialist Tendancy) so the above group who's paper is Socialist Worker is not linked to the British SWP either.
Which I conceeded to be right..."fair enough" being the exact quote

[dark fairy]

systems won't always work just because they are systems... look at the U.S it works but obviosly it doesn't work for everyone... damn I look around man there are so many homeless here... damn! but wait i'll post again because there are just too many things hitting me at once :unsure: