The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control

[Comrade-Z]

This is a paper I did for school concerning the question of whether or not the Bolsheviks supported workers' control of the means of production during the years 1917-1921. Enjoy! (The file is attached).

And feel free to distribute this file as widely as you wish.

[jaycee]

have u read my essay in the article submission section 'soviets role in the russian revolution' i would like to know what you think

[YKTMX]

Bibliography
Albert, Michael. What Is To Be Undone. Boston, MA: Porter Sargent Publisher, 1974. Available from http://www.zmag.org/WITBU/witbuTOC.html. Internet; accessed 24 January 2005.

Conquest, Robert. Stalin: Breaker of Nations. New York, NY: Penguin Books USA Inc., 1992.

CrimethInc. Workers' Collective. Rolling Thunder: An Anarchist Journal of Dangerous Living. Olympia, WA: CrimethInc. Workers' Collective, 2005.

Fitzpatrick, Sheila. The Russian Revolution. New York, NY: Oxford University Press Inc., 1994.

Goldman, Emma. My Disillusionment in Russia. New York, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1923. Available from
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/...nment/index.htm (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/goldman/works/1920s/disillusionment/index.htm). Internet; accessed 3 January 2006.

Heller, Mikhail, and Aleksandr Nekrich. Utopia in Power. New York, NY: Summit Books, 1986.

“A History of Anarcho-Syndicalism: Unit 12 – Russia II: 1917-1930.” Available from http://www.solfed.force9.co.uk/PDFs/SelfEd/unit12.pdf. Internet; accessed 10 April 2005.

Http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/ora/rev_party.html (http://Http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/ora/rev_party.html). Internet; accessed 3 January 2006.

Lenin, V. I. State and Revolution. New York, NY: International Publishers Co., Inc., 1932.

Muravchik, Joshua. Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism. San Francisco, CA: Encounter Books, 2002.

Pipes, Richard. A Concise History of the Russian Revolution. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1995.

Pipes, Richard. Three “Whys” of the Russian Revolution. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1995.

“The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control 1918.” Available from http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/russia/sp001861/1918.html. Internet; accessed 3 January 2006.

Volkogonov, Dmitri. Lenin: A New Biography. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1994.

Von Laue, Theodore H. Why Lenin? Why Stalin? Why Gorbachev? New York, NY: HarperCollins College Publishers, 1993.

Wolfe, Bertram D. Three Who Made a Revolution. New York, NY: The Dial Press, 1948.




I have to say that is one the most hilarious bibliographies I have ever seen.

Latent fascists and anarchists - together at last!


Your essay is, in my humble opinion, a pile of stinking crap.

If you ever have an original thought, PM me.

In the meantime, most of this rubbish was dispatched by Hal Draper a decade ago.

Still, I'm sure they'll love it at school.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/myth.htm

[Comrade-Z]

Latent fascists and anarchists - together at last!

Who are the latent fascists in my bibliography?


In the meantime, most of this rubbish was dispatched by Hal Draper a decade ago.

Okay, let's check it out...


It is a curious fact that no one has ever found this alleged theory [of workers not being able to move beyond trade-union consciousness] anywhere else in Lenin’s voluminous writings, not before and not after WITBD...In ordinary research, a scholar would tend to conclude that, even if Lenin perhaps held this theory in 1902, he soon abandoned it.

It seems reasonable to conclude from the actual internal workings of the party and especially from Lenin's actions after the revolution that he never made a significant departure from this stance. The questions must be posed: Did the rank-and-file of the Bolshevik Party [where the actual working class members were likely to be found] have control over Party policy and actions? Or was this decided by the leadership? And after the October coup, did Lenin act as if he thought they were capable of self-rule and revolutionary communist consciousness or not? For instance, how do you reconcile what you've claimed with Lenin's demand after the October coup that workers had to unquestioning obey the will of a single leader?


There it is – the whole theory laid out, the devilish crux of “Leninism”; and it turns out to be the product of Kautsky’s pen!

But Lenin certainly borrowed a lot from Kautsky and continued to agree with many of Kautsky's positions even after their split.


Originally posted by Lenin+--> (Lenin)This does not mean, of course, that the workers have no part in creating such an ideology.[/b]

I must at least applaud Lenin for this qualification. But I would go even further and say that a proletariat must by far have the dominant role in the forging of theory in order to have become truly revolutionary and communist. In fact, I think it would be a welcome development for workers organizations to completely expel bourgeois communist intellectuals and have the confidence to forge their own theory by themselves.


No one in the international movement was more forceful or frequent than Lenin in decrying and combating the spread of intellectuals’ influence in the movement. This is easy to demonstrate, but I will not take the space to do so here. In any case a mere couple of well-chosen specimens would not be enough. Just to cull the most virulent passages alone would fill a book. As against this indubitable fact, let us ask a question: can anyone cite any passage in which Lenin ever advocated increased influence, or predominant influence, by intellectuals in the party?

And here we are. On the one hand, Lenin decries the spread of intellecual's influence within the party, and then on the other hand, he continually affirms the "leading role of the Party" in the revolution, which can only mean the leading role of the bourgeois intellectual leadership of which he is a part, considering that the rank-and-file had no significant influence on party policy.


The Leninological myth that, according to Lenin’s “concept of the party,” the organization is to consist only or mainly or largely of bourgeois intellectuals – this is contrary to fact.

The party as a whole had many working class members, of course, but the party leadership, which was really the only section that mattered in terms of policy, was made up almost entirely of bourgeois intellectuals.


Lastly, since it is a question of a “party concept” alleged to be peculiar to Lenin and Leninism, we should find that it is not true of the other Russian socialist parties – the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries. But just the reverse is true.

Correct. Vanguardism and the predominance of bourgeois intellectuals concerning policy was not unique to the Bolsheviks. The Mensheviks and the SR's deserve equal, if not more criticism. If I had the wherewithal, I would write two more papers criticizing the Mensheviks and SR's with regards to workers' control and such.


WITBD asked what was to be done in this autocratic czarism in this year of 1902.

Correct. In Czarist Russia, "democratic" centralism made sense. It was a "capable" strategy. However, one must ask, what exactly was it capable of doing? Was it capable of furthering the self-emancipation of the proletariat, or was it capable of smashing the Czarist State and paving the way for a Leninist despotism over the proletariat which would pave the way for modern capitalism in Russia?

A feasible plan that succeeds in taking you where you don't want to go isn't worth adopting in the first place.


It can easily be shown, from Lenin’s copious discussions of the professional revolutionary for years after WITBD, that to Lenin the term meant this: a party activist who devoted most (preferably all) of his spare time to revolutionary work.

Wow, sounds like so much fun! Where can I sign up? :o :lol:

I suppose this is an accurate harbinger of what modern Leninist parties are like for the rank-and-file members as well, eh? Well then, I'd have to say no thanks.


only non-workers can make up the party elite, hence only intellectuals. This conclusion is an invention of the Leninologists, based on nothing in Lenin.

No, this conclusion is based from an observation of what actually happened in the Bolshevik Party. A working class member in the upper echelons was exceedingly rare in the Bolshevik Party. If Lenin opposed this development, he certainly didn't oppose it vigorously enough to terminate it.


The claim that Lenin was hostile to “spontaneous” struggles verges on nonsense.

How, then, does one explain Lenin's reaction to the July Days in Petrograd, where he and the Bolsheviks tried to hold back the spontaneous action of the proletariat and hold it back from seizing power? I guess "spontaneous" action is okay as long as Lenin approves. But that's not spontaneity. Workers engaging in spontaneous action don't "ask for permission." They do what they want to do, very simply.

"We will ask nothing. We will demand nothing. We will take, occupy."

"Don’t beg for the right to live — take it!"


He [Lenin] thought he was putting forward a view of party and movement that was the same as that of the best parties of the International, particularly the German party under the leadership of August Bebel

Correct. Even more evidence that this organizational model doesn't work. Remind me again, what happened to the German Social-Democratic Party when WWI began?


Where there was no center at all, the demand for “centralism” was a call to establish a center. In 1902 there was no all-Russian party in existence at all.

Again, what is a party organization capable of doing? Removing Czardom and ushering in bourgeois capitalism? Yes. Furthering the self-emancipation of the proletariat? No.

The hard truth is that the best strategy for furthering proletarian self-emancipation in Russia at the time would have been to not establish a centralized organization at all, but instead to elaborate on the true nature of capitalism, explain the communist alternative as widely as possible, use the semi-revolutionary opportunities as best as possible in the direction of encouraging the proletariat to take control of society for itself, and ultimately wait 150 years for capitalism to exhaust itself, become a fetter on production, and naturally generate the discontent necessary for a spontaneous, leaderless, amoebic uprising of the entire proletariat, which by that point would have constituted an overwhelming majority of the Russian population.


Lenin
Under conditions of political freedom, our Party can and will be built entirely on the elective principle.

Nice rhetoric. But how did the Bolshevik Party actually function?


In November 1905 he stressed in an article that the socialist worker “knows there is no other road to socialism save the road through democracy, through political liberty. He therefore strives to achieve democratism completely and consistently in order to attain the ultimate goal – socialism.”

This is congruent with Lenin's rhetoric between February 1917 and November 1917. On the other hand, this is completely at odds with Lenin's actions between November 1917 and March 1918. Opportunism? In any case, Lenin wasn't very consistent on this issue, and his actions came down on the side of despotism.


The basic mistake made by those who now criticize WITBD is to treat the pamphlet apart from its connection with the concrete historical situation of a definite, and now long past, period in the development of our Party.

True, one must realize the historical context in which it was published. But one cannot deny that WITBD demonstrated that Lenin was open to that type of vanguardist organizational model. His return to that model after seizing power certainly demonstrates this.


There is nothing specifically undemocratic about the opinions so vigorously expressed in WITBD ... He never, when he wrote WITBD, intended that the “party of the proletariat” should drive and bully the workers, or even that it should make their revolution for them, and then govern Russia in their name but without taking the trouble to consult them.

But what happened in practice after the Bolsheviks seized power?

[ComradeOm]

How, then, does one explain Lenin's reaction to the July Days in Petrograd, where he and the Bolsheviks tried to hold back the spontaneous action of the proletariat and hold it back from seizing power?
This was one line that caught my eye. The obvious answer to your question is that Lenin knew that there was not enough popular support for revolution. He was right - had revolution been on the cards in July then it would have occurred regardless of Lenin's stance.

Being spontaneous is no substitution for being wrong. Some people on this forum tend to approve of glorious spontaneous failures.

[Comrade-Z]

have u read my essay in the article submission section 'soviets role in the russian revolution' i would like to know what you think

There are many things that you say with which I agree. I won't point those out, for reasons of brevity.

Overall, I agree that the soviets were the pre-eminent organs of working class rule and were to be supported.

I also agree that the interests of the bourgeois provisional government and the soviets were irreconcilable.

I also agree that the interests of the soviets and those of the Bolsheviks became estranged (although I think this happened much more quickly than you say).


During June and July 1917 the workers repeatedly proposed the overthrow of the provisional government. The Soviets organised many armed demonstrations including in Petrograd on 18th June. Workers were increasingly opposed to the ‘socialists’ who were part of the Provisional Government and also increasingly with the parties who supported it. This is shown by the fact that during the 17th July riot Kronstadt sailors and workers from the Putilov factory kidnapped (briefly) a ‘socialist’ member of the Provisional Government.

Hell yeah! Those good ol' Kronstadt sailors!


It is also significant that it was Trotsky who calmed the crowd down as it shows that the workers respect and trust in the Bolsheviks was growing.

This was a problem, though, because a truly revolutionary communist proletariat doesn't place "trust" in anyone. It only trusts itself, and it acts as a class for itself. The fact that some bourgeois intellectuals (Trotsky and co.) were able to dissuade the workers from their own self-emancipation shows that the Russian proletariat was not ready to take control of society.


One worker shouted at a Bolshevik member ‘take power you sons of *****es, take power when we give it to you.’

Again, this sentiment is demonstrative of the backwardness of the Russian proletariat at the time. A revolutionary communist doesn't place power in the hands of others. It seizes power for itself, regardless of what it is told to do. The revolutionary communist course of action for the entire Russian proletariat would have been to say, "Czarists, Kadets, Mensheviks, SR's, Anarchists, Bolsheviks: Fuck you all! We're taking power for ourselves!" Of course, I doubt the anarchists would have objected to this, as this was what they were encouraging all along.

In the end, it shouldn't have mattered one bit what the Bolsheviks did or said if the Russian proletariat had been advanced enough to achieve its own self-emancipation. The Russian proletariat would have just (rightly) ignored the Bolsheviks and proceeded to seize power for themselves.


The overthrow of the Provisional Government was not simply an attack on democracy, it was an attack on bourgeois democracy in favour of a working class democracy.

That's what the Bolsheviks had been promising and what the workers were hoping. How naive of them to trust politicians at their word.


Nevertheless the aims of the communists were always workers control over the economy and proletarian power through the soviets.

That was the rhetoric up until the Bolshevik seizure of power. Then the message became: OBEY!

I also don't like how the article completely skips the period between the Bolshevik seizure of power and the start of the Civil War, during which time the Bolsheviks nearly completed shearing the soviets of any real autonomous power.


Also at this point there were massive debates within the party and workers control of production and politics was also much more important than is often realised.

This debate was largely suppressed by 1921 at the latest.


Workers on many occasions...demanded nationalisation

Another backward demand on the part of the backward Russian proletariat.


...while others embraced the localised factory committees.

The correct course of action. But did the Bolsheviks encourage this? Or did they try to re-introduce one-man management and the militarization of labor?


This is shown by the massive expansion of soviet principles into production with ‘workers control of management…decreed on November 27 1917’

Notice the date. This was largely undone by the Bolsheviks by March 1918.


...The Soviets in the army and in the judicial system in which for a time all judges were elected.

Why didn't this continue? The workers just got bored with it and wanted to be subjected to cruel hierarchies again? Or did the Bolsheviks have a hand in it?


However the democratisation of the economy did often exasperate the already chronic economic crisis, and as Oskar Anweiler says many factory committees tended to make decisions with ‘little consideration for the national economy.’ However these problems could probably have been dealt with without loosing the fundamental principles of soviet rule and there was much debate within the Bolshevik Party and the workers movement at large about the best way to do this.

And we all know how these "debates" turned out...

And it is not a given that "democratisation of the economy" inevitably deepened the economic crisis in the first place. It seems "common sense" in our current society that democratisation always equals inefficiency. Do you think that's a coincidence? Who would benefit from such notions?...


The Civil war however subordinated all experimentation and other issues to the task of maintaining power against the counter revolution.

But the Bolsheviks dealt their most grevious blows to workers' control before the Civil War even began. And once the Civil War ended, workers' control didn't return, did it? Why not, if the Bolsheviks supported it? Why didn't the Bolsheviks support and even encourage what the Kronstadt sailors demanded in 1921, for instance? Why didn't the Bolsheviks support and even encourage the Makhnovites and their calls for workers' control, even after the Makhnovites had been indispensible allies during the Civil War? After all, Lenin was still alive and influential. The "Stalinist bogey-man" hadn't taken over yet.


The Civil war was a major reason for the degeneration of Soviet power and the emergence the party dictatorship.

This is where I emphatically disagree. The Civil War may have been a factor (which demonstrates even more concretely that a communist revolution cannot succeed in a backward country.) But the Bolsheviks had largely sheared the soviets of their power by March 1918, before the Civil War.


The idea was, at first to use the Soviet principle in the Red Army, however this was increasingly abandoned under the pressures of winning the military victory.

Why was the direct election of officers inferior, militarily, to authoritarian top-down command? Why didn't the Bolsheviks just arm the entire working class and dispense with any bourgeois-ified military structures, such as the Red Army, as good revolutionaries are supposed to do under any circumstance? After all, it worked militarily rather well in 1936 Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War (although there the workers' militias still didn't go far enough in smashing the State apparatus and dispensing with the bourgeois army, and got killed for it as a result).


While it was increasingly necessary to use capitalist methods of exploitation, as Trotsky said, ‘the workers must increase productivity’...

Why do you automatically make this assumption? If what you say here is true, then why be a revolutionary communist at all? If capitalism is the most efficient and most productive system we have, then why not become a reformist and just concentrate on making capitalism's production more equally distributed? Or maybe that is what you want to do...


However the Soviets had ceased to exorcise any real power by 1921

Try March of 1918.


any resistance within the Bolsheviks was defined to internal debates within the party.

Correct. This did not fully develop until Lenin and co. passed the "resolution on party unity" in 1921. Up until this time there was significant debate within the party leadership. I will give them that.


In 1922 he [Lenin] wrote ‘it (the state) did not operate in the way we wanted…The machine refused to obey the hand that guided it…as if it were driven by some mysterious, lawless hand’(this ‘mysterious hand’ was the economic laws of capitalism)

Excellent insight! I just had to point that out.


By 1923 Trotsky had moved into opposition against Stalin...

But remember that Trotsky had been one of the biggest proponents for the bourgeois-ification of the Red Army, the militarization of labor, the squashing of the Kronstadt sailors, etc.


In Conclusion, the Soviets were effective in achieving the immediate aims of the Bolsheviks

Yes.


such as the taking of workers political and economic power.

That was the Bolsheviks' stated aim.


However the Soviets aims became increasingly opposed to those of the Bolsheviks

Yes.


as a result of the isolation of Russia.

No. That may have been a factor, but the predominant reason was that the Bolsheviks very quickly came to oppose workers' control itself.

[YKTMX]

Who are the latent fascists in my bibliography?


What?

You quote a disgusting, filthy wretch like Muravchik and expect to be taken seriously? A man who thinks Mussolini was the 'logical heir' of Lenin.

"The heroes of Muravchik’s book are Samuel Gompers and George Meany, for their role in making America “impervious to socialism.” “Pure and simple unionism,” Gompers style, supposedly represented “true” trade unionism uncorrupted by middle-class socialist intellectuals who cared nothing for “meliorating the immediate conditions of the workers.” The historic opposition of Gompers’s American Federation of Labor to the inclusion of women, blacks, Mexican Americans, Chinese Americans, or most unskilled laborers in the labor movement is ignored, as is the autocratic nature of the unionism that he consolidated. Meany is praised for being an enthusiastic Cold Warrior who purged Communists from American unions and “rid[ding] the movement of racial discrimination.” The truth is that Meany opposed the historic March on Washington in 1963, and whatever efforts he did put toward anti-racist measures—such as lobbying for the 1965 Civil Rights Bill—were done in order to stave off criticisms for having done little in the past; he was far more interested in fighting Communists (and left critics) than fighting racists. Muravchik, of course, identifies with Meany’s support of the Vietnam War and his animosity toward the peace movement (Meany once denounced peaceniks as “fags”). He glosses over the merger of the foreign operations of the AFL-CIO with the counterintelligence sections of the CIA and their reactionary consequences both in Latin America and at home. He repeats the falsehood that Meany molded the labor movement “into a mighty force in American life.”

What about Pipes?


"Bolshevism and fascism were heresies of socialism."


And hard-right cold warriors like Conquest?

As to your exhaustive, in the worst possible sense, 'rebuttal' of Hal Draper:


For instance, how do you reconcile what you've claimed with Lenin's demand after the October coup that workers had to unquestioning obey the will of a single leader?


It's one quote I know that Anarchists like to fawn over. As if one quote can overturn a lifetime's committment to democracy.

The quote goes like this:

"unquestioning submission to a single will is absolutely necessary for the success of labour processes that are based on large - scale machine industry .... today the Revolution demands, in the interests of socialism, that the masses unquestioningly obey the single will of the leaders of the labour process".

So, what he's saying that, in the face of a Fascist insurgency, and in the face of economic collapse and famine, the interests of the masses would be to have as efficient a labour process as possible. Does this mean Lenin was 'opposed' to workers' control? No, of course not. It simply states that in Russia, at that time, with all the backwardness and contradictions, large scale industry, in the short-term, might be more efficient with 'single leaders'.

To take this particular suggestion and then impute an 'opposition to workers' control' onto Lenin's whole career is, quite simply, absurd.


But Lenin certainly borrowed a lot from Kautsky and continued to agree with many of Kautsky's positions even after their split.


Yes, and Draper says why. Kautsky was, at the time, a very influential figure in Western Marxism. And it was he who came up with the 'trade union consciousness' theory - which Lenin reproduced in WITBD. And he criticised it in WITBD.


But I would go even further and say that a proletariat must by far have the dominant role in the forging of theory in order to have become truly revolutionary and communist. In fact, I think it would be a welcome development for workers organizations to completely expel bourgeois communist intellectuals and have the confidence to forge their own theory by themselves.


Any particular reason for this? It sounds nice?


The party as a whole had many working class members, of course, but the party leadership, which was really the only section that mattered in terms of policy, was made up almost entirely of bourgeois intellectuals.

Another fantasy of the anarchists. Illiterate Russian steel workers working 12 hour shifts and struggling to feed their families in a war-torn country can 'lead the revolution' in their off-time - at the weekend, perhaps?

The laws of economics, politics and physics combine to ensure that 'bourgeois intellectuals' MUST 'lead' a party?

A Putilovski were brave and glorious, but could they edit Pravda?

In any case, the assumption implicit here, that the Bolshevik 'leaders' were somehow seperate from the masses is blatantly false.

These particular 'bourgeois intellectuals', in their spare time, were being elected to the head of the first ever Soviets, being exiled, shot, imprisoned, arrested, writing revolutionary papers, pamphlets, leading illegal anti-war activities, sneaking around Europe - I'm sure any Harvard professor would recognise it.

Lenin and Trotsky were certainly not proletarians in the Economic sense, neither were they 'bourgeois'. They were figures, central figures, in an organic movement of the Russian proletariat. They lived by that movement and they died by it.

While anarchists, like our friend here, were busy torturing Communists and hiding in the Ukraine.

Pathetic.


Hell yeah! Those good ol' Kronstadt sailors!


They were sailors FROM Kronstadt. One group of sailors from a particular time period.

Just like the White anti-Semitic rebellion in 1921 was conducted by A DIFFERENT set of sailors 'from' Kronstadt.


I also don't like how the article completely skips the period between the Bolshevik seizure of power and the start of the Civil War, during which time the Bolsheviks nearly completed shearing the soviets of any real autonomous power.


What were the immediate goals of the Bolshevik government after the seizure of power?

1. To end the war
2. To settle the land question
3. To feed the population

The Bolsheviks were not syndicalists, and neither were the Russian people. They believed in gaining and holding onto state power. Therefore, you have to deal with the major concerns of the Russian masses. These are the goals of a Marxist.

Not having mastobatory fantasies about an Anarcho-Syndicalist utopia in the middle of famine hit, early 20th century Russia.


Another backward demand on the part of the backward Russian proletariat.


It's amazing how the comrade can excoriate the Bolsheviks for not 'protecting workers' control', yet, at the same time, he can't shut up about how 'backward' and 'unrevolutionary' the Russian workers were.

You have to ask yourself, if the comrade was opposed to the Bolsheviks overthrowing the Kerensky government, and he thinks the Russian proletariat is too stupid and backward to take control for itself, what exactly is his feeling about what SHOULD have happened?

Discounting Nestor Makhno riding into Moscow on a white horse.


Try March of 1918?

What is this date? Where are you getting it from?

[QUOTE]

[chuq]

The only thing that I can say is the Tsar abdicated on March 2, 1918 and was then arrested on March 8th. Could be we are speaking of the uncertainty of who was possibly in control early in 1918. Seems to me there was a succession of several people in charge.

If this is not the answer to what about the date, then I am lost and would appreciate enlightenment.

[Comrade-Z]

The only thing that I can say is the Tsar abdicated on March 2, 1918 and was then arrested on March 8th. Could be we are speaking of the uncertainty of who was possibly in control early in 1918. Seems to me there was a succession of several people in charge.

I think you are a little confused. That all happened during March of 1917.

For evidence that the Bolsheviks had already suppressed workers' control by March of 1918, there are these parts of my paper:


Yet, just four months after the November coup, it had become clear that the Leninist definition of “workers’ control” bore no resemblance to what many workers had thought to be the case. At this time delegates from the largest factories in Petrograd and from other industries adopted a declaration that stated:

“…We, the workers of Petrograd, have in our majority accepted this change of government, made in our name but without our knowledge or participation…. Moreover, the workers have supported the new government, which declared itself a workers’ and peasants’ government and promised to carry out our wishes and respect our interests…. We have patiently endured famine and adversity. In our name all those whom the new government has designated its enemies have been cruelly repressed. Hoping that the promises it gave would be kept, we resigned ourselves to the eradication of our liberty and our rights. But four months have gone by already, and we see that our trust has been cruelly abused, that our hopes have been brutally stamped out.”

That's a primary source for ya.


However, starting in January 1918, the Bolsheviks sought to transform it into a permanent institution with the capability of “ the Soviet system under control.”1 In order to bring the soviet councils under CPC (Bolshevik) control and dislodge the control the workers had achieved over the means of production, the Bolsheviks resorted to arresting soviet council and trade union leaders who would not submit to Bolshevik directions. Free elections in the soviets were abolished in all but name.


In March 1918 delegates from local plants and factories in Petrograd held an emergency convention. They stated, “The unions have lost their independence and no longer serve to organize the defense of workers’ rights. The Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies seem to fear the workers. They do not allow new elections, but have entrenched themselves; they have become government bodies and no longer express the opinions of the working masses.”

Another primary source.


The workers' committees running industry were castrated in 1917-1918 ([b]before the civil war, the devastating effects of which are the constant excuse for Trotskyist and Stalinist apologists) in preparation for one man management.
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/ora/rev_party.html
(This is a site that I reference with a footnote in my paper.)

Furthermore, if you Read Emma Goldman's My Disillusionment in Russia, she documents many instances of suppression of workers' control even upon arriving in Russia in early 1918.


You quote a disgusting, filthy wretch like Muravchik and expect to be taken seriously? A man who thinks Mussolini was the 'logical heir' of Lenin.

Good point. Muravchik's book is rather wretched, as a whole. 100 years from now he's going to look very foolish for calling the fall of socialism at this premature date. Heck, his hypothesis has already been disproven by events in the past 5 years alone. Although the one reference to his book that I did use was consistent with everything else I had found, so I wouldn't dismiss that scrap of evidence outright. What's the saying? Even a deaf owl occasionally finds a mouse, or something to that effect.

And honestly, my history teacher strongly recommended that I include that source in my paper somehow. I think he knows deep down that, in order to get a good grade, one needs to use bourgeois historian sources. And he's probably right, unfortunately. So there. I admit, I am compromising with the System somewhat, although in a way that hopefully ended up doing net harm to the ruling class by writing this paper.

Pipes' stuff was, on the whole, very detailed and reasonably objective--as much as one could expect from a bourgeois historian. Sure, some of his generalizations are idiotic, but doesn't delve into that for the most part with the sources of his that I used. Most of his stuff is solid, though.

Conquest's book is likewise well-researched. Obviously it was written with an agenda in mind, and one must recognize that, but there are still good things one can draw from it.


So, what he's saying that, in the face of a Fascist insurgency, and in the face of economic collapse and famine, the interests of the masses would be to have as efficient a labour process as possible. Does this mean Lenin was 'opposed' to workers' control? No, of course not. It simply states that in Russia, at that time, with all the backwardness and contradictions, large scale industry, in the short-term, might be more efficient with 'single leaders'.

But why was workers' control suppressed before the Civil War and foreign intervention? And after?

I will give you this: Russia was rather backward and in dire economic straits. That's a partial excuse, which also, by the way, lends more evidence to the proposition that one cannot create communism from a society just leaving behind feudalism.


Any particular reason for this? It sounds nice?

My own reasoning suggests that the proletariat must be fully capable in all aspects of taking care of itself and managing itself before it can successfully take control of society for itself. As long as it is dependent on bourgeois intellectuals for theory, the proletariat will always be subject to the good (or bad) graces of this intelligentsia. If the intelligentsia (purposefully or inadvertently) screws the proletariat over by dispensing awful, disastrous theory, then the proletariat is screwed. I don't want this to be a possibility by the time communist revolution rolls around.


A Putilovski were brave and glorious, but could they edit Pravda?

The Putilovskis of the next era of (real) communist revolutions will be able to edit Pravda, and this small fact will be just one miniscule factor among many contributing to their success.


In any case, the assumption implicit here, that the Bolshevik 'leaders' were somehow seperate from the masses is blatantly false.

I'm sure Lenin, Trotsky, and co. got out of their offices at the Kremlin to mingle with the "peons" from time to time to give speeches for reasons of morale, public opinion, etc. (We have the pictures to prove that). In that sense they were not "separate." But the communication was almost solely one-way. Neither the Russian masses nor the Bolshevik rank-and-file had significant influence on Bolshevik policy.


These particular 'bourgeois intellectuals', in their spare time, were being elected to the head of the first ever Soviets, being exiled, shot, imprisoned, arrested, writing revolutionary papers, pamphlets, leading illegal anti-war activities, sneaking around Europe...

I have no doubt that they sacrificed time, effort, and well-being to advance the cause, as they perceived it. Even Emma Goldman noted this--that the Bolshevik officials she met seemed to honestly be tyring to do the right thing and exerting much effort and worry over it--even Lenin and co. Goldman then goes right on to ask how it could be possible that such well-meaning people could be so boneheaded when it came to things like workers' control.

My problem with them was that they opposed workers' control, very simply. They and their programme were incorrect insofar as advancing proletarian self-emancipation.


What were the immediate goals of the Bolshevik government after the seizure of power?

1. To end the war
2. To settle the land question
3. To feed the population

Sounds like a bourgeois revolution. That makes sense, because that's what most people in Russia (a predominantly peasant country at the time) wanted. That's what most of them were ready for, ultimately.


The Bolsheviks were not syndicalists, and neither were the Russian people. They believed in gaining and holding onto state power.

That's correct. This is exactly what you'd expect from people who are ushering in modern capitalism.


Not having mastobatory fantasies about an Anarcho-Syndicalist utopia in the middle of famine hit, early 20th century Russia.


It's amazing how the comrade can excoriate the Bolsheviks for not 'protecting workers' control', yet, at the same time, he can't shut up about how 'backward' and 'unrevolutionary' the Russian workers were.

You have to ask yourself, if the comrade was opposed to the Bolsheviks overthrowing the Kerensky government, and he thinks the Russian proletariat is too stupid and backward to take control for itself, what exactly is his feeling about what SHOULD have happened?

Correct. Workers' control in Russia at the time was bound to fail eventually, in some way. I'm simply pointing out one agent that helped bring that about (the Bolsheviks).

The strictly marxist answer is that workers' control in Russia at the time was impossible. The anarchist answer is to encourage workers to try it anyways...maybe they will learn really fast, or at least, in the process of crashing and burning, learn useful lessons for the future for themselves and the worldwide proletariat as a whole. I'm more inclined to go with the anarchist answer.

Whereas, on the other hand, the Bolsheviks immediately stamping out workers' control ended up teaching the worldwide proletariat fewer lessons in a much longer time-span, it seems to me (although, still, those lessons were very essential, such as: don't trust leaders!) In other words, it advanced communist revolution less quickly than a more prolongued experiment in workers' control in Russia would have.

Besides, in hindsight it is obvious that workers' control had no chance of working in Russia. But they didn't know that at the time. Thus, shooting for as much workers' control as poosible made sense at the time. For all they knew, maybe stateless communism was within reach.

It seems to me that it's always a good idea to aim as high and as radical as possible. We don't definitely know what's possible until we try things. For instance, for all we know right now, stateless communism is possible in Europe today. But we wouldn't know for sure until people tried it. Thus, in the event of a revolution I'd encourage the proletarians in Europe to push things as far as possible, and see for themselves just what is possible.

Edit to add one more thing:


Discounting Nestor Makhno riding into Moscow on a white horse.

If that had happened, we'd be talking about an "anarchist" Stalin instead of a "communist" Stalin, as crazy as that sounds. No, actually, the concept of a "communist" Stalin is just as crazy as the concept of an "anarchist" Stalin. I guess it was just historical chance that Russia got treated to a modernizing Czar who called himself "communist" instead of "anarchist." Either way though, the same things would have happened, roughly speaking.

Edit #2 to add this:


Just like the White anti-Semitic rebellion in 1921 was conducted by A DIFFERENT set of sailors 'from' Kronstadt.

That conjecture is laughable. Look at their list of demands. Do those demands strike you as being the work of an anti-semitic White-Guard rebellion, as Lenin and co. (and you) claimed?

And I don't doubt that there was some change in personnel from 1917 to 1921. But to have Kronstadt go from a bastion of left-communism and anarchism to a bastion of anti-semitic white-guard rebellion? Please.

The self-interest that Lenin and co. had for making these absurd accusations is as visible as shit on snow.

[YKTMX]

But Lenin and the Bolsheviks never thought that socialism, or communism, could be created in Russia alone.

They were quite clear that the only way the revolution could survive was by it spreading to other countries. And this wasn't just 'blind hope', there were major revolutionary movements in Austria, Bulgaria, Poland and, of course, Germany. When the civil war was over, no such revolutionary potential still existed. Which explains why the revolution continued to degenerate after the Civil war, just like Lenin and Trotsky said it would. Consider, for instance, Lenin's battles with the bureaucracy, and Trotksy and the LO.

So, please, don't act like you've just 'revealed' that socialism wasn't possible in Russia at that time - we all know.

Lenin asks, can the Bolsheviks retain state power?


now that, thanks to capitalism, the material apparatus of the big banks, syndicates, railways, and so forth, has grown, now that the immense experience of the advanced countries has accumulated a stock of engineering marvels, the employment of which is being hindered by capitalism, now that the class-conscious workers have built up a party of a quarter of a million members to systematically lay hold of this apparatus and set it in motion with the support of all the working and exploited people—now that these conditions exist, no power on earth can prevent the Bolsheviks, if they do not allow themselves to be scared and if they succeed in taking power, from retaining it until the triumph of the world socialist revolution.


http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/01.htm

Emphasis is mine.


In order to save this exhausted and ravaged country from new ordeals of war we decided to make a very great sacrifice and informed the Germans of our readiness to sign their terms of peace. Our truce envoys left Rezhitsa for Dvinsk in the evening on February 20 (7), and still there is no reply. The German Government is evidently in no hurry to reply. H obviously does not want peace. Fulfilling the task with which it has been charged by the capitalists of all countries, German militarism wants to strangle the Russian and Ukrainian workers and peasants, to return the land to the landowners, the mills and factories to the bankers, and power to the monarchy. The German generals want to establish their “order” in Petrograd and Kiev. The Socialist Republic of Soviets is in gravest danger. Until the proletariat of Germany rises and triumphs, it is the sacred duty of the workers and peasants of Russia devotedly to defend the Republic of Soviets against the hordes of bourgeois-imperialist Germany. The Council of People's Commissars resolves: (1) The country's entire manpower and resources are placed entirely at the service of revolutionary defence. (2) All Soviets and revolutionary organisations are ordered to defend every position to the last drop of blood. (3) Railway organisations and the Soviets associated with them must do their utmost to prevent the enemy from availing himself of the transport system; in the event of a retreat, they are to destroy the tracks and blow up or burn down the railway buildings; all rolling stock-carriages and locomotives-must be immediately dispatched eastward, into the interior of the country. (4) All grain and food stocks generally, as well as all valuable property in danger of falling into the enemy's hands, must be unconditionally destroyed; the duty of seeing that this is done is laid upon the local Soviets and their chairmen are made personally responsible. (5) The workers and peasants of Petrograd, Kiev, and of all towns, townships, villages and hamlets along the line of the new front are to mobilise battalions to dig trenches, under the direction of military experts. (6) These battalions are to include all able-bodied members of the bourgeois class, men and women, under the supervision of Red Guards; those who resist are to be shot. (7) All publications which oppose the cause of revolutionary defence and side with the German bourgeoisie, or which endeavour to take advantage of the invasion of the imperialist hordes in order to overthrow Soviet rule, are to be suppressed; able-bodied editors and members of the staffs of such publications are to be mobilised for the digging, of trenches or for other defence work. (8) Enemy agents, profiteers, marauders, hooligans, counter-revolutionary agitators and German spies are to be shot on the spot.

That is from February 1918.

I post it because the comrade seems to think that everything was just "hunky-dory" in Russia until the Civil War started.

In fact, the Soviet Government was at risk of collapse or being overthrown almost from the start.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/feb/21b.htm


Also, for anyone who's interested in 'primary sources' not wrenched from their context for use in some anarchist propaganda, here's the legislation on Workers Control drafted only a few days after the October revolution, in full.


1. Workers’ control over the production, storage, purchase and sale of all products and raw materials shall be introduced in all industrial, commercial, banking, agricultural and other enterprises employing not less than five workers and office employees (together), or with an annual turnover of not less than 10,000 rubles.

2. Workers’ control shall be exercised by all the workers and office employees of an enterprise, either directly, if the enterprise is small enough to permit it, or through their elected representatives, who shall be elected immediately at general meetings, at which minutes of the elections shall be taken and the names of those elected communicated to the government and to the local Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies.

3. Unless permission is given by the elected representatives of the workers and office employees, the suspension of work of an enterprise or an industrial estabhshment of state importance (see Clause 7), or any change in its operation is strictly prohibited.

4. The elected representatives shall be given access to all books and documents and to all warehouses and stocks of materials, instruments and products, without exception.

5. The decisions of the elected representatives of the workers and office employees are binding upon the owners of enterprises and may be annulled only by trade unions and their congresses.

6. In all enterprises of state importance all owners and all representatives of the workers and office employees elected for the purpose of exercising workers’ control shall be answerable to the state for the maintenance of the strictest order and discipline and for the protection of property. Persons guilty of dereliction of duty, concealment of stocks, accounts, etc., shall be punished by the confiscation of the whole of their property and by imprisonment for a term of up to five years.

7. By enterprises of state importance are meant all enterprises working for defence, or in any way connected with the manufacture of articles necessary for the existence of the masses of the population.

8. More detailed rules on workers’ control shall be drawn up by the local Soviets of Workers’ Deputies and by conferences of factory committees, and also by committees of office employees at general meetings of their representatives.



Warms the heart, no?

Also, in a rather lame rhetorical trick designed to discredit the whole process, the comrade continually refers to the 'October coup'. I think this probably reflects the type of reading he's doing on the subject (fascists, cold warriors etc). Even the most bitter anarchist hack would be a bit wary of referring to a "coup", mainly because it's a patent nonsense. Don't take my word for it, here's Martov, a Menshevik and not exactly a friend of Lenin, on the matter:

"Understand please," he [Martov] said. "What we have before us after all is a victorious uprising of the proletariat--almost the entire proletariat supports Lenin and expects its social liberation from the uprising".'4


On the White Rebellion, an interesting article can be found here (http://www.marxisme.dk/arkiv/bakan/90-krons.htm). Here's a snippet, relating to the class background of the White guard in 1921:


During the 1917 revolution the Kronstadt sailors were among the most politically advanced of the entire working class movement. Trotsky had relied on them during the revolution to lead forces all across the country during the years of invasion and civil war. Kronstadt sailors were at the political centre of an army composed largely of peasant recruits who had shifted very quickly and rapidly from reactionary backgrounds to Bolshevism.

But, as the Kronstadt sailors fought and led, so were they killed and wounded, and replaced in the Baltic Fleet by conscripts from the rural districts. The Bolsheviks called them rather unaffectionately 'peasant lads in sailor suits.'

As in all of Russia, when the civil war came to an end, the vanguard of the working class, the ones who had fought in the centre of the Red Army, were gone.

By 1921 more than three quarters of the sailors in the Baltic Fleet stationed at Kronstadt were recent recruits of peasant origin. This was a reversal of the situation in 1917, when the majority were recruited from the industrial centre of Petrograd, the heart of the workers' revolution in Russia.

Petrichenko, the leader of the uprising of March 1921, was himself a Ukrainian peasant, and later acknowledged that many of his fellow mutineers were peasants from the south who were in sympathy with the peasant opposition movement against the Bolsheviks.


And, oh dear, let's not forget what Ukranian peasants have a tendency towards:


Even Ukrainian politicians accepted that Anti-Semitism was widespread, Vinichenko a Ukrainian Nationalist leader wrote;

"Sons of shop keepers, kulaks, priests and Christians, they had from childhood been infected with the spirit of anti-Semitism".

Anti-Semitism amongst the Ukrainian peasantry was widespread and had been encouraged by the Tsarist government and its supporters, indeed it was accepted by the majority in society a ‘social norm’. So why did pogroms occur at intervals rather than being a constant feature of life, and how could peasants with strong anti-Semitic feelings work and trade with Jews ?


http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Congr...346/MAKHNO3.htm (http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Congress/1346/MAKHNO3.htm)


So, let's not pretend that Kronstadt rebellion was some great rebellion of the working classes. It certainly wasn't.

[Dean]

The problem with your paper is that you don't accurately portray Lenin's growth of personality throughout the so - called soviet experiment. It is indeed true that he centralized power more drastically than he had originally intended to, but this does not in any way point to the conclusion that his intentions were focused on power. That he attempted to reform the state up until the time of his death, and that he enacted the NEP shows that he genuinely tried to build the Russian economy and that he had a genuine, personal concern for the future of the state long after he could ween any benefit from that future but the satisfaction that he had helped to revolutionize it.

Lenin made a lot of mistakes, but he was not by any means a malignant person - in fact, the russian economy started rapidly growing and developing electricity just around the time of the october revolution, and todays capitalist centralization of economic power in Russia has devestated the economy and shown that the 'soviet' form of central economy has much more humanistic effect than free - market capitalism.

[Comrade-Z]

in fact, the russian economy started rapidly growing and developing electricity just around the time of the october revolution, and todays capitalist centralization of economic power in Russia has devestated the economy and shown that the 'soviet' form of central economy has much more humanistic effect than free - market capitalism.

I don't dispute that, on the whole, the State-capitalism in Russia initiated by the Bolsheviks has had a progressive and modernizing influence on Russia. It is also arguable that this method of preparing Russia for modern capitalism was more humane and more expedient than would have otherwised happened under an "orthodox" proto-capitalist setup where the bourgeoisie functions within an "orthodox" market distribution system to spur primitive capital accumulation, etc. For those reasons alone, Russia's period of State-capitalism deserves some credit.

But it wasn't workers' control.


They were quite clear that the only way the revolution could survive was by it spreading to other countries. And this wasn't just 'blind hope', there were major revolutionary movements in Austria, Bulgaria, Poland and, of course, Germany.

That was their sincere hope. But, alas, they were wrong.

Personally, I would feel very shaky about spurring on revolution in the U.S. today if I thought that the actual people of the U.S. couldn't do it themselves, but needed to be "instructed" by revolutions in Europe.

And besides, what kind of communist revolution is it where people have to be led and shown what to do? I think, at the bottom line, the people of Russia weren't ready for communist revolution, period, regardless of whether there had been revolutions in Germany, Austria, etc.

However, I'd like to clarify that I would have supported those workers who felt confident enough to set up their own experiments in workers' control (and note the fact that I say their own experiments. Under no circumstances would it be a good idea to set up workers' control for other people or force it on others.)

A 5-year experiment in workers' control in Petrograd alone would have been far more valuable than 70 years of State-Capitalism, in my opinion, as far as providing the worldwide proletariat with useful lessons and experience.

And even when the Bolsheviks discovered that they were wrong about world revolution at the time, they maintained their rule. It would have been much more valuable to the communist project to say, "Okay, proletarians, the Civil War is over. No worldwide revolution happened. Tough luck. Now, I don't want to sully the concept of communism with State-capitalism, so here's the deal: if you want communism and workers' control, fight for it! Take it. Create it yourself. It's up to you to suppress the bourgeoisie and create communism. We aren't going to hold your hand. We are dispersing the state apparatus. Here are the firearms. Do as you will." But of course, no ruling class is going to do that, and the Bolsheviks were most certainly by that point a ruling class.

Instead, the Bolsheviks didn't stop to think about the worldwide repercussions of maintaining a rigid state apparatus under the name of "socialism." They made the bourgeoisie's propaganda efforts much easier by actually representing "socialism" or "communism" as a fairly ugly system. They also had a deluded conviction that they could remain "virtuous" while in power, and once worldwide revolution happened elsewhere, they would be willing to just "turn the reins loose" in Russia and allow communist revolution. They didn't quite grasp the concept that being determines consciousness, or if they did, they refused to apply it to their own situations as new bosses at the head of a ruling class.


Warms the heart, no?

You say that legislation was enacted a few days after the October coup? How long did that legislation stay in effect in practice?

And concerning the October coup, at the risk of being labelled a "Redstar worshipper," I will refer you to October 1917, Revolution or Coup? (http://www.redstar2000papers.com/theory.php?subaction=showfull&id=1109888439&archive=&cnshow=headlines&start_from=&ucat=&)


So, let's not pretend that Kronstadt rebellion was some great rebellion of the working classes. It certainly wasn't.

I'm not sure if this is factual or not. I shall have to investigate it further. But assuming that it is true, then why not heed the Kronstadt demands anyways? Indeed, why not encourage those demands and the broadening of their application to every part of the Soviet Union? Even if the Kronstadt sailors were anti-semitic white-guardists (which I find unbelievable, for the following reason...), their demands are indisputably socialist in nature--workers' control and freedom for anarchists, left-SR's, etc. (but not Kadets or monarchists!) to give a few examples. The things like autonomy for the peasantry and its labor is not in conflict with workers' control or socialism (although it does conflict with communism, but of course Russia wouldn't have been ready for that anyways. Besides, Lenin himself was approving the same kind of stuff with NEP shortly thereafter.) Why not heed the Kronstadt demands?

[Dean]

I don't dispute that, on the whole, the State-capitalism in Russia initiated by the Bolsheviks has had a progressive and modernizing influence on Russia. It is also arguable that this method of preparing Russia for modern capitalism was more humane and more expedient than would have otherwised happened under an "orthodox" proto-capitalist setup where the bourgeoisie functions within an "orthodox" market distribution system to spur primitive capital accumulation, etc. For those reasons alone, Russia's period of State-capitalism deserves some credit.

But it wasn't workers' control.

I never claimed that it was worker's control; obviously, the implimentation of a dictatorial regime as opposed to the soviet system shows that the workers were losing power.

My point was that you seem to be attempting to find any means by which to criticize and attack the Bolsheviks, Lenin and Trotsky without giving any credit to opposing viewpoints. That both Lenin and Trotsky attempted to reform the state once they had little to gain economically from it and after they had been ousted by Stalin shows that they truly cared about the russian people and their freedoms. Their actions during the revolution can be argued as necessary or counterrevolutionary, but I think it is still apparent that they cared deeply for the russian people, whatever character flaws they may have had.

[Comrade-Z]

On the White Rebellion, an interesting article can be found here. Here's a snippet, relating to the class background of the White guard in 1921:

And here's an opposing article:

Kronstadt 1921: the end of the Bolshevik myth (http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20060317141947494)

[enigma2517]

But it wasn't workers' control.

Of course not, why (or how) could it be?

I don't need to reiterate how backwards Russia was at the time.

Be careful here...I think you're original paper here was written to show how workers control did not exist in the Soviet Union. Thats fine, I'll agree with you. However, I think some of your opponents here have made you infer that worker's control WAS possible.

This is pretty silly. I didn't read everything very closely and I might have missed something, but I strongly got the feeling that you were implying that a different solution could have existed.

Don't get me wrong, I am very much opposed to Leninism. Regardless, that type of heavy handed authoritarian socialism might have been the only thing that got Russia developed enough to stop the Nazi invasion in the 40's.

I would also like to address YKTMX:

Regardless of whether or not I agree with your analysis, I'm going to suggest that you change your attitude. You are overly belligerent. You talk down to people and that quite frankly doesn't do much to dispel the "elitist Leninist" notion. I value your input, but I think you can give some people a little more respect.