Constituent Assembly of Russia

[Sky]

The Provisional Government had blocked the convocation of an assembly throughout 1917 because they feared it would yield a majority to peasants who were more to the left than the Socialist-Revolutionaries. The Bolsheviks did not reject the idea of such a body, but they exhorted the people to a revolutionary struggle, pointing out that practice and the revolution tend to push parliamentary bodies into the background. Lenin in his writings proved that the soviet of workers’ deputies was a superior form of democracy than a parliamentary republic with a nominally representative constituent assembly. The result did not reflect the actual interrelation of political forces in the country because the influence of the working class and the Bolshevik party on the non-proletarian masses was incomparably stronger in the extra-parliamentary than in the parliamentary struggle. The SR electorate was part of the Russian peasantry, and political power was held in the city. Numbers could not be translated into power because the voice of the peasant carried far less weight than the enlightened worker or soldier. When the October Uprising in Petrograd began, the right-wing SRs mounted no challenge due to their powerlessness.

About half the electorate abstained from voting, suggesting tacit approval for the rule of the soviets. The machinery for handling the elections was in the hands of commissions appointed by the criminals in the Provisional Government, leaving the vote susceptible to fraud and sabotage. There was no clear winner in the election. The Bolsheviks polled 24 percent of the vote, the SRs 38 percent, the Mensheviks 3 percent, and the Cadets 4 percent. Nor did the election reflect the split of the Socialist Revolutionary Party whose Left faction supported soviet power. In the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, half of the SR delegates voted in favor of soviet power. Even a vote for the Socialist Revolutionary Party by the peasant did not equate to repudiation of soviet power: by October 1917 the agrarian policies of the Bolsheviks and SRs were indistinguishable. The peasant was not voting for the SR any more than he was voting for the distribution of land from the large estates. The election was held when the Soviet Government was still just becoming established and a sizable portion of the population was not acquainted with its decrees. Even the formal results, however, proved that the Revolution conformed to the laws of history: the Bolsheviks won in Petrograd, Moscow, on the Northern and Western fronts, in the Baltic fleet, and in 20 districts of the Northwest and Central Industrial regions. The majority of the working class and about half of the military voted for the Bolsheviks. When the Constituent Assembly convened, only 410 (including 140 Bolsheviks) deputies out of 715 even bothered to show up, suggesting that there was widespread apathy toward this body. The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly was wholly legal: by a decree of the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets, the Constituent Assembly ceased to exist. As we saw, the working people did not care about the disappearance of such a worthless body. By contrast, the Bolsheviks were able to lead demonstrations of 500,000 people in Petrograd against the policies of the Provisional Government during the June Crisis and the July Days.

[Guest1]

The constituent assembly is always held up by ultralefts and bourgeois historians as proof that the bolsheviks led a coup.

This is a pretty accurate analysis that dispels that myth.

[Labor Shall Rule]

I didn't know that half of the electorate didn't even vote. That is very interesting. This is excellent! :)

[Comrade Wolfie's Very Nearly Banned Adventures]

Interesting stuff, I studied the Russian revolution at school but the abolition of the Assembly by the Bolsheviks was put down to them being evil communists.

[chimx]

I don't think it is fair to devalue the importance of the Russian peasantry during the early 20th century, especially considering the urban proletariat was extremely weak and still very tied to the land. I would argue that culturally, urban dwellers were more similar to their rural counterparts than the urban proletariats of other countries due to the fact that most urban proletariats were only 1st or 2nd generation urban livers.

Second, you gloss over the fact that the Bolsheviks were huge backers of the CA originally until they realized that they couldn't win a majority. Win this realization came they scrambled to come up with a reason to block it. You can argue the legality all you want and that argument will always be irrelevant considering the political situation at the time -- but it seems pretty clear that the purpose of blocking the CA was a Bolshevik power grab.

If you are interested in arguing against the ultra-left, a much better line of argument is to point out that there was no great protest to the Bolshevik decision to block the CA. Russia's utter passivity to this power grab could provide some legitimacy, but you have to consider that there were significant social revolutions occurring in many areas of Russian life, not to mention a war. The public was generally fed up with Russian politics all together.

[Herman]

Yes, the closing down of the constituent assembly is used as an excuse to criticize the Bolsheviks for being anti-democratic. On the contrary, they believed in the soviets as the sole form of democracy, the basis of a new workers' democracy.

[chimx]

And, like I said, they also believed in the CA originally, until they realized they couldn't control it. How do you account for that?

[LSD]

Oh good, 'cause we didn't have enough history threads on Russia circa 1917... :rolleyes:


Lenin in his writings proved that the soviet of workers’ deputies was a superior form of democracy than a parliamentary republic with a nominally representative constituent assembly.

Not that it really needed "proving". Syndicalists had been saying for decades that the workers' council was the engine of real revolutionary change. Lenin, meanwhile, was too busy playing at bourgeois politics with his RSDLP buddies.

And, remember, the most important thing about the Constituent Assembly isn't that Lenin shut it down, it's that he pushed for it and then shut it down.

Opposing the creation of a new bourgeois elite structure could have been a valid principled stand, and indeed many leftists did oppose the CA from the begining for precisely that reason ....but the Bolsheviks were most certainly not among them.

No, the Bolsheviks the leading proponents for the creation of a CA, and campaigned mighty hard to win a majority of votes. It was only when they failed to do that, that the CA suddenly became so "inferior". Lenin could critisize the parliamentary system all he wanted after the fact, but his actions during the election speak for themselves.

And, indeed, the Constituent Assembly was vintage Bolshevik, it was everything they loved: centralized authority, formalized discipline, and the trappings of "democratic" republicanism. That's why for all their prattling about "power to the Soviets", what the Bolsheviks ended up creating was a parliamentary state.

The "Supreme Soviet" was basically a federal parliament, albeit a toothless one. It certainly did not reflect the "superior form of democracy" that Lenin invoked; indeed in practice it actually managed to be less representative than ordinary bourgeois "democracy"!

So was shutting down the Constituent Assembly "undemocratic"? No, because the CA was not and never would have been representative of the democratic will of the Russian people. But the pure hypocrisy and opportunism of Lenin et. al,'s actions surrounding the CA do reveal just how duplicitous and fundamentally arrogant the Bolsheviks really were.

I have no doubt that they genuinely believed that they had the "answers" to Russia's (and the world's) problems. And they were willing to do whatever it took to ensure that they were empowered to execute them.

"True believers", it doesn't get any scarrier...


About half the electorate abstained from voting, suggesting tacit approval for the rule of the soviets.

Or suggesting that they just didn't care. That's usually the reason people don't vote, 'cause they don't think it'll make a difference and because they'd rather spend their time concentrating on things that have a chance in hell of effecting something.

And, as it turned out, it's a good thing that they didn't vote, since their votes didn't end up counting for squat!

But interpreting voter apathy to indidcated "tacit approval" for the Bolsehvik coup is a pretty bizarre piece of historical revisionism. Unless you're suggesting that the Germans who didn't vote in 1933 were "tacitly" supporting Hitler.


The majority of the working class and about half of the military voted for the Bolsheviks.

And that matters because...?

You see this is the whole problem with the "dictatorship of the proletariat". Majoritarian "dictatorship" can be democratic but only if its genuinly majoritarian.

In a backwards feudal state, a "dictatorship of the proletariat" would mean 2% of the population (or more accurately, the "representatives" of 2% of the population) siezing absolute power and enact their will upon the general majority. Obviously that's not conducive to democratic "transition". And yet Bolshevik apologists speak about the Russian working class as if it were the entirely of the Russian populace!

Look, being pro-working class does not mean being anti-everyone else. There's nothing "wrong" or "evil" about peasants and small farmers. They are as much victims of capitalism as anyone and they certainly do not deserve our scorn.

A country in which they constitute a majority is not yet developmentally capable of communist revolution, but that's not their "fault" nor can such a revolution be "forced" upon them.

Essential economic steps cannot be "skipped" as if they were primary school grades. Trying to force the will -- or the "vanguard" of the will -- of a fraction of a populace unto the country at large is not democracy and it's not "classlessness". It's tyranny, whether the particular tyrant happens to share your ideological line or not.


The constituent assembly is always held up by ultralefts and bourgeois historians as proof that the bolsheviks led a coup.

That's because they did.

You can justify the coup all you want, and I won't pretend that there aren't arguments in defense of it. But it was undeniably a coup.

[Sky]

But it was undeniably a coup.False. State power passed to the Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Soldiers' Deputies by a resolution of the Congress of Soviets on 24-25 October 1917. The Bolsheviks and other progressive forces acted in the name of the workers and soldiers represented by the soviets.

And, remember, the most important thing about the Constituent Assembly isn't that Lenin shut it down, it's that he pushed for it and then shut it down.
It was not "shut down". It was dissolved as a result of a resolution passed by the Congress of Soviets.

No, the Bolsheviks the leading proponents for the creation of a CA, and campaigned mighty hard to win a majority of votes. It was only when they failed to do that, that the CA suddenly became so "inferior".
Lenin had made it quite clear before the Constituent Assembly convened that it was not a proper form of democracy.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/dec/11a.htm


But interpreting voter apathy to indidcated "tacit approval" for the Bolsehvik coup is a pretty bizarre piece of historical revisionism. Unless you're suggesting that the Germans who didn't vote in 1933 were "tacitly" supporting Hitler.

This is a weird analogy. Hitler was not an incumbent in the 1932 elections. If the people want to get rid of an incumbent, they would logically rush to the polls.



In a backwards feudal state, a "dictatorship of the proletariat" would mean 2% of the population (or more accurately, the "representatives" of 2% of the population) siezing absolute power and enact their will upon the general majority.

Lenin's teachings prove that Russia had reached the capitalist stage of development.
http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/DCR99tc.html

[LSD]

False. State power passed to the Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Soldiers' Deputies by a resolution of the Congress of Soviets on 24-25 October 1917. The Bolsheviks and other progressive forces acted in the name of the workers and soldiers represented by the soviets.

You're taking class politics to a ridiculous extreme. The fact that the working class was a such a minority in Russia is not an indication that that minority should "take over", but rather that Russia was not ready for a Marxist revolution.

Tell me, if there were 100 workers in a country of 10 million, would you support those hundred establishing a "dictatorship" over the entire nation?

Revolution needs to be class-based, but it also needs to be popular.

Besides, this obession with "who the workers supported" misses the point entirely. An organization's class identity cannot be deduced simply by looking at voter rolls.

Unless you're claiming that "to its end", the CPSU was a proletarian party and the Soviet Government was a "workers' state", you must acknowledge that an organization can be effectively bourgeois even when its largely made up of proletarians.

For my part, I would contend that not only can "majority worker" political parties be bourgeois, but that they must be so. The party structure is, again, intrinsically capitalist in function. It doesn't matter what percentaqe of it's membership are technically workers, it will nonetheless always be fundamentally antithetical to proletarian organization.

Remember, fascist groups can be made up of workers too, that doesn't make them any less petty-bourgeois as organizations nor does it make them any less of a threat to the working class at large.

The American democratic party is almost entirely made of workers at its base, nonetheless because it is a bourgeois political party, its membership is wholly irrelevent.

The nature of political parties is that the leadership very rarely reflects the party at large. Ideologues and bureacrats are the only ones who have the dedication and energy to rise to the top. The rest barely have time to attend meetings.

At its hight, the CPSU counted something like 10% of the Soviet population among its members, around half of those were industrial workers. Despite the official tally, however, no one but the most die hard "revisionist" would claim that those 9 odd million workers had any say whatsover over state policy.

Stalin and Khruschev and Gorbachev did not differ to the "will" of the proletariat, they "judged" what was in the "popular interest" and acted accordingly. And they did so because that's what Lenin had done before them.

As I've repeated several times, power perpetuates itself and once it's established it does not dissapate without a fight. Lenin and his successors may have meant well, but because they operated within a centralized and anti-democratic power structure, they could not help but be oppressive.

A political party is designed to promote an ideology, the most "effective" means of doing this is to centralize and restrict power to those who are most expert in and most dedicated to the said ideology.

Obviously that's not conducive to democracy.

It was not "shut down". It was dissolved as a result of a resolution passed by the Congress of Soviets.

So in other words... it was shut down.

The Bolsheviks lost the vote, they passed a resultion in a Soviet which they controlled, and they disolved the Constituent Assembly; all of which was entirely extrajudicial. That Soviet had no legal political authority and no recognized authority to pass "resolutions" regarding the CA.

Now understand, I'm not saying that the Assembly shouldn't have been shut down. It was undeniably a bourgeois parliamentary instrument and served mainly to legitimate the restoration of the Russian political oligarchy. But let's not mince words here.

The Bolsheviks siezed power, you can justify that siezure all you want, but it's ridiculous to assert that it was anything but a coup.


Lenin had made it quite clear before the Constituent Assembly convened that it was not a proper form of democracy.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/leni...17/dec/11a.htm

Funny how that piece was only published in December of 1917, a full two months after the Constituent Assembly results were announced. As long as the Bolsheviks thought they might win, Lenin had nothing but good things to say about it; it was only once their defeat became clear that it suddenly became so "improper".

There's a word for that kind of convenient reconsideration: opportunism. And it's characteristic of both Lenin and the political line he founded. Not because the Bolsheviks didn't believe in what they were doing, but because they believed so strongly that they were willing to do whatever it took to see their mission accomplished.

It's the arrogance of certitude, the supreme inhumanity that can only come with being absolutely confident that one is "right" and one's actions "nescessary".

You see the problem with consequentialism has always been that consequences are, by their nature, unknowable. The ends might justify the means, but we can never be certain exactly what those means might bring about.

In the case of 1917 Russia, we have the advantage of 91 years hindsight, and we can say with absolute confidence that despite their intentions, everything the Bolsheviks did was ultimately futile. Not only did they fail to establish communism, or even workable socialism, but they established the framework for what would become one of the worst tyrannies in human history.

That's the thing about the real world, intentions don't matter. And so the real lesson to be learned from the Soviet debacle is that regardless of how confident you may be in your "revolutionary" purity or "dialectic" understanding, your self-assuredness is not a liscence for authority.

Democracy matters not as some abstract to be "transitioned" to, but on the ground day one. "Trusting" in "leaders", however well intentioned they might be, is simply not an option anymore.



But interpreting voter apathy to indidcated "tacit approval" for the Bolsehvik coup is a pretty bizarre piece of historical revisionism. Unless you're suggesting that the Germans who didn't vote in 1933 were "tacitly" supporting Hitler.

This is a weird analogy. Hitler was not an incumbent in the 1932 (sic) elections

And neither was Lenin an incumbent in 1917, but you're interpreting a lack of voter turnout at the 1917 Constituent Assembly to mean that the voters "tacitly" wished for the Bolsheviks to sieze power.

A more realistic analysis is that in 1917, as in 1933, most voter simply didn't trust any of the parties involved and so were reluctant to lend them their support.

Besides, I would remind you that by 1933, Hitler was on the verge of complete power. His party dominated the Reichstag and his paramilitary had unchallenged command of the streets. Even the most naive political analyst couldn't help but conclude that the Nazis were about to overthrow the Weimar republic.

And yet a great many voters nonetheless did not bother to turn out and challenge the Nazis. It's doubtful that they would have been effective even if they had tried, but what's relevent here is that most of them didn't tried.

Just like in Russia 25 years earlier, they just didn't see the point.


Lenin's teachings prove that Russia had reached the capitalist stage of development.

So then what went wrong?

You Leninists really do love playing both sides; on the one hand you claim that Russia was developed enough for a socialist economy, and on the other you caim that it was so poor and so full of peasants that the Bolsheviks had no choice but to do what they did.

You can assert Lenin's "teachings" all you want, but do you actually deny any of the relevent facts. Do you deny that most of Russia was still semi-feudal in 1917? Do you deny that the vast majority of the population was not working class? It really doesn't take an expert in Marxism to recognize that 1917 Russia wasn't ready for anything approaching "socialism", but Lenin nonetheless thought that he could rewrite Marx and skip capitalism entirely.

Obviously he was wrong.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ I don't think you get the key differences between the "revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry" (essentially because the bourgeoisie is incapable of carrying out its own tasks, the proles and petit-bourgeoisie have to do those and then go further - but not so far as to skip capitalism altogether like what Trotsky proposed), permanent revolution, and a proper "proletocracy" (DOTP). :(

I, for one, will say that the Russia was NOT developed enough for a PROPER socialist economy, and that the Bolsheviks did what was historically necessary.

[Saorsa]

You're taking class politics to a ridiculous extreme. The fact that the working class was a such a minority in Russia is not an indication that that minority should "take over", but rather that Russia was not ready for a Marxist revolution.


On the contrary, Russia in 1917 was the country most ready for revolution in all of Europe and most likely in the entire world. Whether or not a country is ready for revolution is an entirely different matter to whether or not a country is ready for a swift transition to well established socialism.

Russia in 1917 was "the weakest link in the imperialist chain" (as Lenin put it), and was the only country whose internal contradictions, aggravated by the external contradictions of the first world war, were developed to such a point that the vast majority of the working masses (including the peasantry) has nothing to lose any more but their chains, and a whole lot to gain from rising up.

Russia was not ready for a swift and smooth transition to well developed socialism, and this made things more difficult for the revolutionary government, but it is not the reason workers power was lost in Russia. Anyway, that's an entirely different thread....


Tell me, if there were 100 workers in a country of 10 million, would you support those hundred establishing a "dictatorship" over the entire nation?

If there were 100 workers in a country of 10 million people (such a country has never existed anyway), the Communist Party would not have a large enough support base to be in a position to seize power in the first place. An irrelevant argument.

If the sky suddenly turned orange, how would that affect the results of the next Rugby World Cup?


The American democratic party is almost entirely made of workers at its base, nonetheless because it is a bourgeois political party, its membership is wholly irrelevent.


I'd be surprised by that. I don't know much about the class composition of the Democrats, but the class composition of the Labour Parties certainly are nothing like that any more. Anyway, Lenin was always quite clear that it is not the percentage of a Party's membership that is made up by workers that makes it a workers party, but more importantly it's political line and the actions of it's leadership. Although workers membership and support for a Party are an important factor, they are not the determining factor.


A political party is designed to promote an ideology, the most "effective" means of doing this is to centralize and restrict power to those who are most expert in and most dedicated to the said ideology.

Obviously that's not conducive to democracy.

Um... excuse me? That's the most ridiculous argument I've ever heard. You're saying that giving more important roles and responsibilities to people who know more about a Parties ideology and are better prepared to and more capable of carrying out those roles and responsibilities is somehow undemocratic?

By that line of reasoning, if Albert Einstein was chosen to be head of the International League of Scientists (made up organisation) over some guy who just got out of university, it would be undemocratic.

The leaders of the Bolsheviks were elected by the members of the Bolsheviks. It was a highly democratic organisation. The problem that you anarcho-syndicalist types have with it and other groups like it is that it was also disciplined, and was not afraid to succeed. Whereas anarcho-syndicalists (and many Trotskyites) sit back and endlessly go over the mistakes made by others, real or imagined, pausing only briefly to go out and do some "adbusting" and semi-political tagging, Communists like Lenin and the Bolsheviks are not afraid to get out there and win. To beat the other guys, without worrying endlessly about the possibility of that causing harm to them.



So in other words... it was shut down.


You're getting into semantics here. What matters is not the fact that it was "shut down" (or whatever other words you want to use to describe it), but why it was shut down and how it was shut down.


The Bolsheviks lost the vote, they passed a resultion in a Soviet which they controlled, and they disolved the Constituent Assembly; all of which was entirely extrajudicial. That Soviet had no legal political authority and no recognized authority to pass "resolutions" regarding the CA.

The Bolsheviks only put the CA into place in the first place because they had promised to do so earlier, the CA had been made irrelevant by the development of Soviet Power. They weren't bothering to campaign for the CA elections, as they were too busy campaigning for the more important Soviet elections, in which they won a large majority within the Worker's Soviet's and a slight majority within the Peasant's Soviets (along with the Left SRs).

The CA was superfluous , serving no purpose other than to distract from the real organs of worker's power, the Soviets. I thought you anarchist types were all against retaining unnecessary political structures... :confused:

And what do you mean "all of which was entirely extrajudicial. That Soviet had no legal political authority and no recognized authority to pass "resolutions" regarding the CA"? What's "extrajudicial"? The old legal system (which again, surely you would be opposed to as an anarchist type) had been cast onto the ashheap of history, it has no relevance to this issue. The Bolshevik revolutionaries were erecting a new legal superstructure, and they didn't have to play by the rules of the previous era. The Soviets had the authority to dissolve the CA because the Soviets were democratic organs representing the will and aspirations of the working masses of Russia - the CA was an unrepresentative, unnecessary and irrelevant farce.


The Bolsheviks siezed power, you can justify that siezure all you want, but it's ridiculous to assert that it was anything but a coup.


The seizure of state power by a disciplined and determined organisation is not necessarily a "coup". If it is carried out with the support and involvement of large sections of the classes that we as revolutionaries have aligned with, it is a revolution.

And anyway, this can again be treated as semantics. So what if it was a "coup"? What so bad about a "coup" that knocks down the oppressor and exploiter classes, and replaces them with the rule of the formerly oppressed and exploited classes? To my mind, that's a "coup" worth supporting!



A more realistic analysis is that in 1917, as in 1933, most voter simply didn't trust any of the parties involved and so were reluctant to lend them their support.


No, a realistic and objectively correct analysis would be that the reason voter turnout for the CA elections was so low was because the people were too busy participating in the Soviets.



And that matters because...?


You're right, it doesn't. None of the results of the CA elections matter, because they were unrepresentative of the population and were skewed by the activities of the Right SR's (who controlled the distribution of ballots) in the countyside. The CA, and everything to do with it, was irrelevant.

I'll continue this later... ;)

[Tower of Bebel]

The struggle for the constituant assembly was part of a tactic which would make sure the Bolsheviks wouldn't suffer from the effects of having an ultra-left stance towards the workers and peasants.

Even when the workers seized power in Petrograd, much of the masses in other parts of the country still campaigned for the CA in order to gain democracy.

Yet, when the CA was arranged the counter-revolutionaries seized the opportunity to threaten the newly former state of workers' councils.


In Russia, in the struggle with Tsarism, the Bolsheviks had put foward the slogan of a revolutionary constituent assembly as part of their program. They took account of the profound democratic aspirations of the workers, peasants and other exploited layers after years of autocratic rule. Depending on the relationship of class forces in a revolutionary situation, a constituent assembly can provide a forum for the representatives of the working class to win the widest mass support for a programme of revolutionary change. Even with the establishment of soviets in February 1917, the Bolsheviks still put forward the demand for a constituent assembly, which at this stage had been resisted by the provisional government. This did not prevent the Bolsheviks from April onwards putting forward the central demand of ‘All power to the Soviets’. It did not in any way inhibit them from explaining the advantages of soviet democracy over a constituent assembly.

Recognising the vital importance of the workers’ councils in the revolution, the Spartacists baldly denounced all those who attempted to promote the idea of a constituent assembly. They failed to understand that while layers of workers still had illusions in parliamentary forms and in their reformist leaders, the most advanced, revolutionary wing of the proletariat would have to campaign to destroy those illusions and undermine the influence of reformism. While wide sections of the workers still looked to the constituent assembly as a way forward, and as the Spartacists had not yet gained overwhelming support, it was incorrect for the revolutionaries to reject on principle any idea of a struggle around the calling of a constituent assembly.
The Bolsheviks and the Constituent Assembly

Lenin, on 26 December 1918, had clearly put forward the Bolshevik position:

“This demand for the convocation of the constituent assembly was a perfectly legitimate part of the programme of revolutionary social democracy...While demanding the convocation of a constituent assembly, revolutionary social democracy has ever since the begining of the revolution of 1917 repeatedly emphasised that a republic of Soviets is a higher form of democracy than the usual bourgeois republic with a constituent assembly”


Lenin constantly explained that it was one thing to have a fully worked out theoretical position and another to apply it to concrete conditions. In November 1918 in Germany power was in effect in the hands of the workers’ and soldiers’ councils, but the proletariat was not conscious of its dominant position. As in February 1917 in Russia, the workers and peasants handed over power to the ‘compromisers’, who in turn handed it back to the bourgeoisie.
While the Bolsheviks, between February and October 1917, called for ‘All Power to the Soviets’, they also put forward the call for a Constituent Assembly, which had long been part of their programme. Even after October, when the workers’ soviets took power into their own hands, the Soviets went ahead in November with elections for a constituent assembly. It was seen as a means of consolidating support for the revolution among the more politically backward sections of the middle class and the peasantry, of legitimising the achievements of the soviets among all strata and in every corner of the country. The elections, however, reflected the weight of many sections who were lagging far behind the radicalised workers and peasants of the cities and surrounding areas. When the Constituent Assembly was convened in January 1918 it included a majority of delegates (predominantly right-wing Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks) opposed to the soviet government.
In Germany the call for a constituent assembly was still linked, in the eyes of advanced workers, with revolutionary aspirations; in Russia in 1918, when the soviets, the real democratic organs of the masses, had already carried through a social transformation, the constituent assembly was seized on by the landlords, capitalists, and supporters of the ‘White’ generals as a vehicle for counter-revolution. With a completely changed relationship of forces, the formal ‘democratic’ rights of a reactionary constituent assembly could not be allowed to threaten the socialist revolution, and the Assembly was therefore dispersed by the soviets. Under the conditions prevailing in Germany in 1918, where the working class had not taken power, the question of the constituent assembly was posed in a completely different way.

From: http://www.marxists.org/subject/germany-1918-23/sewell/chapter2.htm

[Sky]

The Bolsheviks siezed power, you can justify that siezure all you want, but it's ridiculous to assert that it was anything but a coup.To call the October Revolution is an exercise in voluntarism, which Marxism-Leninism wholly rejects. You would find in Lenin's writings condemnation towards the adventurist voluntarism of ultraleftists trying to seize power in the absence of a revolutionary situation. The Bolsheviks had no need to launch a coup because the history proves that capitalism is doomed by its own internal contradictions. The fact of the matter is the Revolution conformed to the objective laws of development.

At 2240 on October 25, the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets and of Workers and Soldiers Deputies began in Smolni. At the opening of the congress, 390 of the 649 delegates who had arrived were Bolsheviks. The congress proclaimed the transfer of all power to the soviets. On October 26 the Winter Palace was seized and the Provisional Government members were arrested. On October 26 the Congress of Soviets adopted the Decree on Peace and the Decree on Land, based on a report by Lenin. The congress elected an All-Russian Central Executive Committee and formed the first Soviet government headed by Lenin. With the establishment of the Soviet government began the building of the Soviet state—a state of a new type, a dictatorship of the proletariat.

On the basis of a profound study of world history and of the conditions under which capitalist society arose and development, its laws of development, and the antagonistic contradictions it contained, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels discovered the objective laws of social development. They proved the inevitability of a socialist revolution, the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the transition of society from the capitalist socio-economic system to that of communism. Lenin further developed all aspects of the Marxist theory of socialist revolution in the age of imperialism, the period when revolution came onto the agenda as an immediate practical task of the proletarian class struggle. Lenin scientifically proved that the world capitalist system had fully ripened for the socialist revolution by the beginning of the 20th century and that the imperialist stage is the eve of the socialist revolution.

A nationwide crisis had matured in Russia, embracing all spheres of social, economic, and political relations. In September and October there were strikes by the Moscow and Petrograd proletariat, the minersof the Donbas, the metalworkers of the Urals, the oil workers of Baku, the textile worker of the Central Industrial Region, and the railroad workers on 44 different railway lines. In these months alone more than a million workers took part in mass strikes. Workers control over production and distribution established in many factories and plants. This was an indication that the workers movement had risen to the highest stage of development. As a result of the political and economic struggle, the working class had to take power into its own hands.The policies of the bourgeois Provisional Government, opposed to popular interests, had brought the country to the brink of a national catastrophe. Disorder in industry and transport had intensified, and difficulties in obtaining provision had increased. Gross industrial production in 1917 had dncreased by 36.4 percent from what it had been in 1916. From March to October 1917 more than 800 enterprises had been closed down in the country. The production of iron, steel, coal, and petroleum had declined sharply. In the autumn, as much as 50 percent of all enterprises were close ddown in the Urals, the Donbas, and other industrial centers. Mass unemployment had begun. At the same time, the cost of living increased sharply. The real wages of the workers fell about 50 percent from what they had been in 1913. The regime resorted to issuing more paper money and contracting new loans. From the beginning of the war until February 1917 more than 8 billion rubles in paper money had been put into circulation but in the following eight months a total of 9.5 billion was released. In 1917 new paper money was used to cover some 65 percent of budget expenditures. Russia’s national debt in October 1917 had risen to 50 billion rubles. Of this, debts to foreign governments constituted more than 11 billion rubles. The country faced the threat of financial bankruptcy.



Besides, I would remind you that by 1933, Hitler was on the verge of complete power. His party dominated the Reichstag and his paramilitary had unchallenged command of the streets.

Support for the Nazis had declined between the elections held in March and November 1932. And don't forget that the German people repudiated the Nazis when they elected the geezer Hindenburg in the 1932 presidential election.

[Tower of Bebel]

It took me some time to puzzle this answer :). This post is an answer to LSD's statements. Maybe I should have ignored most quotes (since quotes with the same contents are gropued togheter).


Not that it really needed "proving". Syndicalists had been saying for decades that the workers' council was the engine of real revolutionary change. Lenin, meanwhile, was too busy playing at bourgeois politics with his RSDLP buddies.

I have no doubt that they genuinely believed that they had the "answers" to Russia's (and the world's) problems. And they were willing to do whatever it took to ensure that they were empowered to execute them.

"True believers", it doesn't get any scarrier...

Reductiones ad absurdum don't falsify words or statements. Using bold doesn't make things true.


So in other words... it was shut down.

The Bolsheviks lost the vote, they passed a resultion in a Soviet which they controlled, and they disolved the Constituent Assembly; all of which was entirely extrajudicial. That Soviet had no legal political authority and no recognized authority to pass "resolutions" regarding the CA.

Now understand, I'm not saying that the Assembly shouldn't have been shut down. It was undeniably a bourgeois parliamentary instrument and served mainly to legitimate the restoration of the Russian political oligarchy. But let's not mince words here.


And, remember, the most important thing about the Constituent Assembly isn't that Lenin shut it down, it's that he pushed for it and then shut it down.

Opposing the creation of a new bourgeois elite structure could have been a valid principled stand, and indeed many leftists did oppose the CA from the begining for precisely that reason ....but the Bolsheviks were most certainly not among them.

No, the Bolsheviks the leading proponents for the creation of a CA, and campaigned mighty hard to win a majority of votes. It was only when they failed to do that, that the CA suddenly became so "inferior". Lenin could critisize the parliamentary system all he wanted after the fact, but his actions during the election speak for themselves.

And, indeed, the Constituent Assembly was vintage Bolshevik, it was everything they loved: centralized authority, formalized discipline, and the trappings of "democratic" republicanism. That's why for all their prattling about "power to the Soviets", what the Bolsheviks ended up creating was a parliamentary state.

The "Supreme Soviet" was basically a federal parliament, albeit a toothless one. It certainly did not reflect the "superior form of democracy" that Lenin invoked; indeed in practice it actually managed to be less representative than ordinary bourgeois "democracy"!

So was shutting down the Constituent Assembly "undemocratic"? No, because the CA was not and never would have been representative of the democratic will of the Russian people. But the pure hypocrisy and opportunism of Lenin et. al,'s actions surrounding the CA do reveal just how duplicitous and fundamentally arrogant the Bolsheviks really were.

Funny how that piece was only published in December of 1917, a full two months after the Constituent Assembly results were announced. As long as the Bolsheviks thought they might win, Lenin had nothing but good things to say about it; it was only once their defeat became clear that it suddenly became so "improper".

There's a word for that kind of convenient reconsideration: opportunism. And it's characteristic of both Lenin and the political line he founded. Not because the Bolsheviks didn't believe in what they were doing, but because they believed so strongly that they were willing to do whatever it took to see their mission accomplished.

It's the arrogance of certitude, the supreme inhumanity that can only come with being absolutely confident that one is "right" and one's actions "nescessary".

You see the problem with consequentialism has always been that consequences are, by their nature, unknowable. The ends might justify the means, but we can never be certain exactly what those means might bring about.

In the case of 1917 Russia, we have the advantage of 91 years hindsight, and we can say with absolute confidence that despite their intentions, everything the Bolsheviks did was ultimately futile. Not only did they fail to establish communism, or even workable socialism, but they established the framework for what would become one of the worst tyrannies in human history.

(For my opinion on the Bolsheviks joining the campaign for a Constituant Assembly, see my first post.)


You see this is the whole problem with the "dictatorship of the proletariat". Majoritarian "dictatorship" can be democratic but only if its genuinly majoritarian.

In a backwards feudal state, a "dictatorship of the proletariat" would mean 2% of the population (or more accurately, the "representatives" of 2% of the population) siezing absolute power and enact their will upon the general majority. Obviously that's not conducive to democratic "transition". And yet Bolshevik apologists speak about the Russian working class as if it were the entirely of the Russian populace!

Look, being pro-working class does not mean being anti-everyone else. There's nothing "wrong" or "evil" about peasants and small farmers. They are as much victims of capitalism as anyone and they certainly do not deserve our scorn.

A country in which they constitute a majority is not yet developmentally capable of communist revolution, but that's not their "fault" nor can such a revolution be "forced" upon them.

Essential economic steps cannot be "skipped" as if they were primary school grades. Trying to force the will -- or the "vanguard" of the will -- of a fraction of a populace unto the country at large is not democracy and it's not "classlessness". It's tyranny, whether the particular tyrant happens to share your ideological line or not.


You're taking class politics to a ridiculous extreme. The fact that the working class was a such a minority in Russia is not an indication that that minority should "take over", but rather that Russia was not ready for a Marxist revolution.

Tell me, if there were 100 workers in a country of 10 million, would you support those hundred establishing a "dictatorship" over the entire nation?

Revolution needs to be class-based, but it also needs to be popular.

To answer your emphasis on the DotP I quote a paragraph from "Lessons from Ocotber:


He [lenin] regarded the very conquest of power in Russia primarily as the impetus for a European revolution, a thing which, as he often repeated, was to have incomparably more importance for the fate of humanity than the revolution In backward Russia. With what sarcasm he lashed those Bolsheviks who did not understand their international duty. “Let us adopt a resolution of sympathy for the German insurrectionists,” he mocks, “and reject the insurrection in Russia. That will be a genuinely reasonable internationalism!”

It was not the Bolsheviks their intention to force a DtoP on the peasants, it was their intention to spread the Socialist revolution to Europe. A succesfull revolt of the European working class would have a (less) "forced" DtoP as the final result.

Btw, Lenin was in favor of "the dictatorship of the proletariat and poorer peasants". Only Trotsky had a much bigger emphasis on the proletariat than Lenin, yet the perspective of having a socialist revolution in Europe (in the near future) cleared the "differences" between both formulas.


Besides, this obession with "who the workers supported" misses the point entirely. An organization's class identity cannot be deduced simply by looking at voter rolls.

Unless you're claiming that "to its end", the CPSU was a proletarian party and the Soviet Government was a "workers' state", you must acknowledge that an organization can be effectively bourgeois even when its largely made up of proletarians.

For my part, I would contend that not only can "majority worker" political parties be bourgeois, but that they must be so. The party structure is, again, intrinsically capitalist in function. It doesn't matter what percentaqe of it's membership are technically workers, it will nonetheless always be fundamentally antithetical to proletarian organization.

We ((at least some of) my comrades and I from the Belgian section of the CWI) formulate it in another way: the revolutionary party is not a copy of socialist society. The revolutionary party is adapted to a capitalist society in order to campaign for the workers and aiding them towards socialism.

I have to admit, I don't have sufficient knowledge to explain how a party should operate after a socialist revolution.


As I've repeated several times, power perpetuates itself and once it's established it does not dissapate without a fight. Lenin and his successors may have meant well, but because they operated within a centralized and anti-democratic power structure, they could not help but be oppressive.

A political party is designed to promote an ideology, the most "effective" means of doing this is to centralize and restrict power to those who are most expert in and most dedicated to the said ideology.

Obviously that's not conducive to democracy.


The Bolsheviks siezed power, you can justify that siezure all you want, but it's ridiculous to assert that it was anything but a coup.

Power is an evil word. It makes my answer look odd:

There is a difference between having authority and having power. I don't believe the Bolsheviks (alone) had power "when they came to power". They had authority, because they struggled for the masses and their soviets.

The soviets had power, and as long as the Bolsheviks were part of it, they could share in power. Yet, during the civil war, the party took power from the soviets in order to defend the revolution from the counter-revolutionaries. This is not because there was a party on top, no, that would mean the Cadets had full power when they were sitting in the Winter palace acting against the soviets! The reason why the party was able to take the initiative from the soviets is because imperialism forced the country to fight it with equal weapons (since the revolution in Europe was ending).

After the end of the international revolutionary period power was never given back to the workers (of course, "it perpetuates itself").


So then what went wrong?

You Leninists really do love playing both sides; on the one hand you claim that Russia was developed enough for a socialist economy, and on the other you caim that it was so poor and so full of peasants that the Bolsheviks had no choice but to do what they did.

You can assert Lenin's "teachings" all you want, but do you actually deny any of the relevent facts. Do you deny that most of Russia was still semi-feudal in 1917? Do you deny that the vast majority of the population was not working class? It really doesn't take an expert in Marxism to recognize that 1917 Russia wasn't ready for anything approaching "socialism", but Lenin nonetheless thought that he could rewrite Marx and skip capitalism entirely.

Obviously he was wrong.

Leninists do not believe that Russia was ready for proper capitalist development, and certainly not for a socialist development. Remember Lenin's work on imperialism (1916) and Marx.

Lenin said history sometimes needed a push. You cannot use this sentence without analysing the whole situation. Lenin emphased the importance of correct analyses, tactics and perspectives.
History needed a push, not just because the Russian workers and peasants fought for democracy. No, because he knew that the conquest of power by the soviets and the Bolshevik party (what you call a coup) would trigger a socialist revolution in Europe (the revolution of February already triggered revolts amongst soldiers (france 1917) and workers (Germany 1917) in Europe.

In Lenin's words:


“Let us adopt a resolution of sympathy for the German insurrectionists,”[...]

[Louis Pio]

Sky, Alastair and Rakunin already pointed out exactly what I think about the subject. However im still amazed how people still pull out the question about the constotuent assembley on a site that is supposed to be revolutionary, but it shows quite well how the ideas Lenin fought still exists very well to this day wheter it is "reformists, "stalinists","maoists" or "left communists that put them forward".

[chimx]

Here is a time line of proclamations and events:

"if the Soviets were to win [power], the Constituent Assembly would be certain to meet; if not, there would be no such certainty." -Lenin, Summerish 1917

"In order for the Constituent Assembly to take place . . ., in order for decisions of the Constituent Assembly to be fulfilled . . . the Congress of Soviets . . . [must] take into its hands both power and the fate of the Constituent Assembly." -Main Bolshevik Newspaper, October 3, 1917

"The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies has opened. . . . The Soviet Authority will insure the convocation of the Constituent Assembly on the date set." -Lenin, October 26 1917

---

elections for Constituent Assembly occur in November 1917:

Socialist-Revolutionary Party --- 380
Bolsheviks --- 168
Constitutional Democratic Party --- 17
Mensheviks --- 18
Others --- 120
---

"lolcats, no more CA for you" -Lenin January 1918

--

It should be noted that after the provisional Bolshevik government closed the CA, SRs staged a demonstration to protest this power grab, and the Bolshevik government violently broke up the demonstration.

[Tower of Bebel]

It should be noted that after the provisional Bolshevik government closed the CA, SRs staged a demonstration to protest this power grab, and the Bolshevik government violently broke up the demonstration.
My question is, what made the Bolsheviks do this? What was the reason for the demonstration and which wing of the SR's organized the demo?

[Btw, I have posted a link to a serie of graphics on the elections from the year 1917. They can be found in the sticky for primary sources for students (yet, my link is a secundary source, so it you must scroll down to find it)].

[chimx]

At this point, Left-SRs were in cahoots with the Bolsheviks and the provisional government. It was the regular SRs that held the demonstration. Lenin by this time had publicly stated that the Constituent Assembly was "counterrevolutionary".

Interestingly, it was an anarchist sailor that was physically responsible for forcibly shutting down the Constituent Assembly on Bolshevik orders.

[Tower of Bebel]

^^^ I don't think you get the key differences between the "revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry" (essentially because the bourgeoisie is incapable of carrying out its own tasks, the proles and petit-bourgeoisie have to do those and then go further - but not so far as to skip capitalism altogether like what Trotsky proposed), permanent revolution, and a proper "proletocracy" (DOTP). :(

I, for one, will say that the Russia was NOT developed enough for a PROPER socialist economy, and that the Bolsheviks did what was historically necessary.

I (again) question "your" analysis of the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat and (poorer) Peasants vs. Permanent Revolution".

Both Lenin's and Trotsky's internationalism does away with any difference between both formulas. The "Bolshevik" formula of the Dictatorship of both proletariat and peasants was the solution to a future revolution in Russia without the possibility of having an international or at least European revolution at the same time. The imperialist war made an end to this perspective and gave way to growing unrest amongst the workers in the (semi-)capitalist countries.

correct me if I'm wrong.

[Devrim]

The constituent assembly is always held up by ultralefts and bourgeois historians as proof that the bolsheviks led a coup.

Which 'ultralefts' are these? Or are you just trying amalgamation techniques again?

Devrim

[chimx]

At 2240 on October 25, the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets and of Workers and Soldiers Deputies began in Smolni. At the opening of the congress, 390 of the 649 delegates who had arrived were Bolsheviks.

Also, this is false. Bolsheviks did not have a true majority, only a plurality.

I looked it up and found out you are getting this number from Trotsky's history of the Russian Revolution. If you look, he even says that not everybody in his 390 number were members of the Bolshevik party. Other historians have more accurately put the number at 300.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I (again) question "your" analysis of the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat and (poorer) Peasants vs. Permanent Revolution".

Both Lenin's and Trotsky's internationalism does away with any difference between both formulas. The "Bolshevik" formula of the Dictatorship of both proletariat and peasants was the solution to a future revolution in Russia without the possibility of having an international or at least European revolution at the same time. The imperialist war made an end to this perspective and gave way to growing unrest amongst the workers in the (semi-)capitalist countries.

correct me if I'm wrong.

Meh. The RDDOTPP theory was already factoring in the possibility of European socialist revolutions, but at least acknowledged that, even if said revolutions were successful, Russia would remain a thoroughly capitalist country - albeit of a state-capitalist variety with a "revolutionary-democratic" political superstructure (and on the political superstructure there are the key differences between Lenin's approach and the bureaucratic approach taken by Stalin and his successors (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?t=64704)). Trotsky, on the other hand, basically said that successful revolutions elsewhere would enable Russia to skip capitalism altogether.

Now, as for you suggesting the possibility of building "revolutionary democracy" in one country, I've got this for you (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?t=64704).

[Axel1917]

Sky, Alastair and Rakunin already pointed out exactly what I think about the subject. However im still amazed how people still pull out the question about the constotuent assembley on a site that is supposed to be revolutionary, but it shows quite well how the ideas Lenin fought still exists very well to this day wheter it is "reformists, "stalinists","maoists" or "left communists that put them forward".

Same here, and I also find the claims of the ultra-lefts and anarchists laughable, as they basically say that 8000 Bolsheviks managed to suddenly destroy the "popular will" of millions of people. For 8000 people to do that, it would require magical powers. And how do they explain the fact that the Bolsheviks managed to defeat a foe far more powerful than they were - nearly two dozen imperialist armies? The facts are clear: The Bolsheviks had the support of the bulk of the population! That is why they were able to take power with very little bloodshed (the bloodbath did not begin until the imperialists intervened.).

People should read through Ted Grant's work, Russia: From Revolution to Counter-Revolution. It is full of analysis and it totally demolishes the bourgeois/anarchist/ultra-left propaganda directed against October. Online at http://www.marxist.com/russia-revolution-counterrevolution-116.htm

[chimx]

So the majority of the population didn't vote for the Bolshevik party in elections to the 2nd Congress of Soviets because they actually supported the Bolsheviks? And the reason that peasants voted for the SRs in the CA instead of the Bolsheviks was because they secretly really supported the Bolsheviks?

No, obviously this isn't true. The reality is that the Russian population had given up on Russian politics and the Bolsheviks monopolized on this public sentiment by seizing power.

[kromando33]

So the majority of the population didn't vote for the Bolshevik party in elections to the 2nd Congress of Soviets because they actually supported the Bolsheviks? And the reason that peasants voted for the SRs in the CA instead of the Bolsheviks was because they secretly really supported the Bolsheviks?

No, obviously this isn't true. The reality is that the Russian population had given up on Russian politics and the Bolsheviks monopolized on this public sentiment by seizing power.
Maybe you should use a little self-criticism yourself to realize that you're 'legitimacy at the ballot box' line is a fundamentally reactionary position. In contradiction the people will both consciously and unconsciously work against their own interests, this is a weapon of the bourgeois state. The Provisional govt and CA were fundamentally bourgeois liberal parliaments, and Russia at that time was till a bourgeois dictatorship. The Bolsheviks only contributed because of Leninist practicality, their is a different between the Bolsheviks being involved in the CA (but really wanting to overthrow it entirely) and the SR's and Mensheviks etc, who just wanted to conform to the bourgeois ruling class. The Bolsheviks took the most revolutionary and Marxist position they could, they toppled the bourgeois regime and replaced it with the proletarian regime of soviets.

Maybe comrade you should analyze your own political line before you speak, you will soon realize a little self-criticism could correct your revisionist and deviationist attachment to bourgeois parliamentarianism.

[chimx]

So, according to you, the 2nd All Russian Congress of Soviets was a bourgeois and reactionary parliamentarian body? Because the Bolsheviks didn't have a majority there either.

Now, please tell me more about this "most Marxist position". It was my understanding that any political apparatus, be it parliamentarian, monarchical, etc, is only a superstructure to societies underlaying production relationships.

Its true, the Bolsheviks did squash the bourgeois government that had grown in the February revolution, but how had Russia's productive capacities truly changed to warrant a proletarian dominated superstructure -- especially when demographically, workers constituted somewhat like %15 of Russia's total population? How is ignoring societies production relationships the "most Marxist position" one could take?

[darktidus]

The Bolsheviks only contributed because of Leninist practicality, their is a different between the Bolsheviks being involved in the CA (but really wanting to overthrow it entirely) and the SR's and Mensheviks etc, who just wanted to conform to the bourgeois ruling class. The Bolsheviks took the most revolutionary and Marxist position they could, they toppled the bourgeois regime and replaced it with the proletarian regime of soviets.


You just perfectly described the attitude of the Leninists: they were manipulative opportunists, concerned with power and where it lay, little more.

As an aside, the old tactic of attempting to associate legitimate criticism of the excesses of power with bourgeous reaction is quite cowardly.

[kromando33]

You just perfectly described the attitude of the Leninists: they were manipulative opportunists, concerned with power and where it lay, little more.

As an aside, the old tactic of attempting to associate legitimate criticism of the excesses of power with bourgeois reaction is quite cowardly.
Opportunistic!?! Hardly! 'Leninism' in this regard in simply the practical and pragmatic attitude to transforming the social relations of production. 'Communism is soviet power plus electrification of the whole country' Lenin said, and this is the same practical attitude to communism that the Trots hate, they love for Marxism to be treated as Ivory Tower, to be some ultra ideological-spiritual concept rather than bothering to practically build socialism. Rather than meaningless criticism, Leninists seek to actually build socialism in our time, rather than having a belief out of a egotistical 'Hegelian' disease so you feel intellectually secure.

So, yes, if you like us Leninists are opportunistic, we will take any opportunity we can to overthrow the bourgeois state and replace it with a proletarian one, we want to build not be infantile criticizers.

[Devrim]

Sky, Alastair and Rakunin already pointed out exactly what I think about the subject. However im still amazed how people still pull out the question about the constotuent assembley on a site that is supposed to be revolutionary, but it shows quite well how the ideas Lenin fought still exists very well to this day wheter it is "reformists, "stalinists","maoists" or "left communists that put them forward".

It isn't the left communists who put them forward, and they didn't at the time. Actually at the time they were in the RCP(B)

Devrim

[Devrim]

Same here, and I also find the claims of the ultra-lefts and anarchists laughable, as they basically say that 8000 Bolsheviks managed to suddenly destroy the "popular will" of millions of people.

If you are talking about the anarchists attitude the the constituent assembly, you might be quite surprised to learn that it was actually an anarchist, A. G. Zheleznyakov, who dispersed it.

Devrim

[Tower of Bebel]

Now, please tell me more about this "most Marxist position". It was my understanding that any political apparatus, be it parliamentarian, monarchical, etc, is only a superstructure to societies underlaying production relationships.

Its true, the Bolsheviks did squash the bourgeois government that had grown in the February revolution, but how had Russia's productive capacities truly changed to warrant a proletarian dominated superstructure -- especially when demographically, workers constituted somewhat like %15 of Russia's total population? How is ignoring societies production relationships the "most Marxist position" one could take?

Lenin wasn't ignoring production relationships. He was an internationalist and the Revolution of October had to be signal to the European proletariat.

(edit) According to Jacob Richter, Lenin was far less thinking of a proletarian dominated superstructure than Trotsky.

[chimx]

Lenin wasn't ignoring production relationships. He was an internationalist and the Revolution of October had to be signal to the European proletariat.

Well it didn't "have to be", because it didn't happen. But what specifically about the Russian economy was so tied to Western Europe's economy that he thought it was inevitable? Anything in particular, or just a hunch?

[Tower of Bebel]

Well it didn't "have to be", because it didn't happen. But what specifically about the Russian economy was so tied to Western Europe's economy that he thought it was inevitable? Anything in particular, or just a hunch?

(Parts of the) Russian industrie was tied to the European bourgeoisie. ABut propaganda was the most important apsect of creating an international revolution.

[chimx]

Certainly not a significant sector of industry given how underdeveloped Russia's productive capabilities were.

How is it materialistic to think that Russian propaganda could change a countries production relationship?

[kromando33]

Certainly not a significant sector of industry given how underdeveloped Russia's productive capabilities were.

How is it materialistic to think that Russian propaganda could change a countries production relationship?
Don't know about propaganda, but socialism is proletarian power, and if anyone in the history of the world did more to empower the proletariat it was Stalin. When Stalin become General Secretary after Lenin's death the proletariat was minuscule, tiny, it was he who empowered the proletariat fundamentally by increasing it's size to the vast majority of the Soviet population. Regimes can thus be judged directly on Marxist standards, which are of course 'proletarianization', how much did you empower the dictatorship of the proletariat, and comrade Stalin certainly did this, he created a massive industrial worker base bigger than anywhere in the world in little over 10 years. To deny Stalin as the greatest Marxist ever is to deny reality.

[chimx]

I agree, it was minuscule. Like I said, I believe the number is around 15% of the total population.

I also agree that Stalin was one of the greatest Marxists, in that he understood more so than most, that history progresses through stages defined by production relationships. Stalin, being the good Marxist that he was, understood perfectly well that it was impossible to develop a socialist or communist economy in Russia, because such an economy has to naturally develop from the strides and gains of prior production relations. Since Stalin knew it wasn't possible to shift from a feudal to communist economy, he engineered a capitalist economy that was heavily overseen by Russia's state apparatus. To deny Stalin as the greatest Marxist ever is to deny reality.

[Tower of Bebel]

Certainly not a significant sector of industry given how underdeveloped Russia's productive capabilities were.

How is it materialistic to think that Russian propaganda could change a countries production relationship?

I thought you were talking about the European revolution instead of the production relationships. My fault.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I agree, it was minuscule. Like I said, I believe the number is around 15% of the total population.

I also agree that Stalin was one of the greatest Marxists, in that he understood more so than most, that history progresses through stages defined by production relationships. Stalin, being the good Marxist that he was, understood perfectly well that it was impossible to develop a socialist or communist economy in Russia, because such an economy has to naturally develop from the strides and gains of prior production relations. Since Stalin knew it wasn't possible to shift from a feudal to communist economy, he engineered a capitalist economy that was heavily overseen by Russia's state apparatus. To deny Stalin as the greatest Marxist ever is to deny reality.

:rolleyes:

Have you ever heard of "revolutionary democracy" as a possible "alternative" political superstructure overseeing capitalist development? You need to read Moshe Lewin (do a web search on him).

[LSD]

Russia in 1917 was "the weakest link in the imperialist chain" (as Lenin put it), and was the only country whose internal contradictions, aggravated by the external contradictions of the first world war, were developed to such a point that the vast majority of the working masses (including the peasantry) has nothing to lose any more but their chains, and a whole lot to gain from rising up.

Put in less ideological language, it was a poor stiffled country with few civil rights, widespread anger, and a corrupt autocratic government exposed by the failures of the Great War. No doubt it was rife for revolution; as the last feudal nation in Europe it was long past due a changing of the guard.

None of which has anything whatsoever to do with communism.


It was not the Bolsheviks their intention to force a DtoP on the peasants, it was their intention to spread the Socialist revolution to Europe. A succesfull revolt of the European working class would have a (less) "forced" DtoP as the final result.

Far be it for me to criticize Lenin's "genius", but that is a monumentally stupid plan. Impose a brutal dictatorship on the Russian people and hope that it will somehow "inspire" the rest of Europe to rise up in response.

How shocking that it didn't work... :rolleyes:

Not only was World War I Russia not a capitalist country, but it was also wholly irrevelevent to the European capitalist system. Russia in 1917 was a primarily feudalistic absolute monarchy, a relic of the middle ages and, relative to its size, one of the economically least important countries in the world.

It was only Lenin's blind Russian nationalism that convinced him that within Russia lay the "weak link" of capitalism. Obviously everyone likes to think that their political scene matters, and the Bolsheviks really wanted to believe that they could be the "vanguard" for a "world revolution"; but the fact is they just weren't that important.

In the end, the masses of Europe didn't give two shits for what was going on in the Urals, and the European bourgeoisie didn't skip a beat when they (temporarily) lost the Russian market. And so, rather predictibly, Lenin was left with his "grand plan" in tatters, running an ostensibly "workers" party in charge of a country with virtually no workers in it!

Is it really any wonder that things turned out as miserably as they did?

And, incidently, there's something rather despicable in the way the Lenin saught to use the Russian people as a part of his large-scale "plan" for Europe. Being a reasonably intelligent person, he had to realize that the chances of a Russian coup d'état precipitating a "world revolution" was pretty fucking slim.

And yet he was willing to subject the Russian populace to year after year after year of brutal top-down "proletarian" rule, clinging to the faintest hope that it might "inspire" people thousands of miles away to imitate his example. To me, it sounds like he was putting his ideological ambition above the practical needs of the people he was ostensibly "representing".

Not, again, that that's anything new. The problem with Lenin, and all other revolutionary "leaders" throughout history, has always been the overwhelming temptation of power: the irresistable urge to use ones position to do "good", regardless of whether anyone below them actually wants said "good" done to them.

It's Stalin and forced industrialization; it's Mao and the Great Leap; perversely, it's even Hitler and the Autobahn.

When people are certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they know what needs to be done, they will got to any lengths nescessary to see their will enacted.

The tragedy of history, of course, is that most of the time they're completely wrong.


If there were 100 workers in a country of 10 million people (such a country has never existed anyway), the Communist Party would not have a large enough support base to be in a position to seize power in the first place. An irrelevant argument.

Actually a rhetorical argument, and one that I notice you failed to actually address.

If the hypothetical was too Socratic for you, however, I'll rephrase the question into something a little more concrete: what percentage of the population must be workers before a "dictatorship of the proletariat" is acceptable?

You assert that 0.01% (100 out of 10,000,000) is too small a figure; and yet 1917 Russia's of about 10% is large enough. So I'm asking where you're drawing the line. Is 5% enough? Is 2%?

I would remind you that anything below 50% is by definition antidemocratic. That any time that a minority of the population exerts a "dictatorship" over the majority, whatever fancy ideological arguments they use to defend it, it is implicitly tyrannical.


Um... excuse me? That's the most ridiculous argument I've ever heard. You're saying that giving more important roles and responsibilities to people who know more about a Parties ideology and are better prepared to and more capable of carrying out those roles and responsibilities is somehow undemocratic?

Yes!

Parties, by their nature, centralize authority into the hands of the most "theoretically advanced". This is beneficial when the objective is to promote some ideological line. But working class revolution is not about ideology, it's about liberation.

The revolutionary process needs to be an emancipatory one. Workers need to learn to manage themselves and their work without "supervision" from anyone. Party-based action does not promote this. On the contrary, while any worker can join a "revolutionary" party, very few will ever be anything more than rank-and-file card carriers. The leadership will be composed of those who have the time and energy to play the bullshit bureaucratic game nescessary to rise through the ranks.

Someone working an 8 hour shift in a automotive factory does not have the time to sit on a "central committee" or "politburo". For most of us, party politics is a decidedly spectator sport.

Now, for bourgeois parties this isn't a problem. Their fundamental purpose is to promote some political line. An inactive membership is irrelevent so long as the party stays ideologically on message. When a bourgeois party takes power it aims to make changes, surely, but those changes are top-down in nature. Training average workers to be self-empowered is the last thing the bourgeoisie wants.

Political parties work for bourgeois changes to the bourgeois system. They do not work as an insurrectionary tool against the system itself. The proletariat cannot look to the "capitalist example" when attacking the foundations of capitalism itself.

A proletarian revolution is the only kind of revolution in history that seeks to enfranchise the masses. Accordingly, no historical revolutionary "models" can possibly apply.


By that line of reasoning, if Albert Einstein was chosen to be head of the International League of Scientists (made up organisation) over some guy who just got out of university, it would be undemocratic.

Absolutely, but then science is not a democracy, it can't be. If it were, the earth would still be the center of the universe.

Science and politics, however, are two very different things. The head of a science league has the authority to speak on behalf of that league, the head of a goverment has the authority to kill people.

And so while it is not at all important that the former position be chosen democratically, it is imperative that the latter be. It is only when a position has coercive authority that it must be democratic, otherwise there are litteraly a million ways that it could be filled.

An even better example than your "international league of scientists" would be a panel convened to construct a hydroelectric dam, to provide electricity to millions of people. Such a project is not only undeniably important, but also incredibly complex and multifaceted. There are a thousand considerations to be made and a hundred things that could go wrong.

Accordingly, there can be no doubt whatsoever that the members of such a panel should be people who know something about the subject matter! Experts in electricity, in hydodynamics, in environmental impact, etc...

But when these experts come to a conclusion and render a final plan, should they have the absolute authority to force that plan on the rest of the population? That is, does their expertise grant them the right to relocate millions and devastate vast acres of territory?

This question isn't entirely hypothetical, it's what recently happened in China. Experts drafted a plan and the plan was carried out. No one in the general population got to have a say in the matter.

You see, where democracy needs to come in is between the expertise and the power. There can be no doubt that we need smart people and smart plans, but intelligence is not a liscence for authority, and no plan, no matter how well crafted, can be forced onto a population without its consent.

So should Albert Einstein have been chosen as the head of some hypothetical "Science League"? Sure. But should that position have granted him any special political authority? Absolutely not.

The problem with Lenin was not that he was head of a political party, but that as head of that political party he was empowered to make fundamental decisions regarding life and death, with absolutely no democratic oversight whatsoever.


There is a difference between having authority and having power. I don't believe the Bolsheviks (alone) had power "when they came to power". They had authority, because they struggled for the masses and their soviets.

"Vanguard parties" promise liberation once they've been placed in power; we are expected to "trust" that when they become the bosses, things will "get better". The problem with this equation, however, is that it ignores the material basis of class relations. Once the "leadership" of a party is firmly in control, that leadership becomes the new ruling class.

Not the class that it supposedly "represents", but the party elite itself.

That's why every Leninist revolution has failed so spectacularly, that's why despite the dedication and best wishes of Communist leaders throughout history, the workers have yet to actually gain power anywhere. For a proletarian revolution to actually succeed, it must be a liberating process in itself. It must begin and end with the workers on the ground and it must be predicated on worker self-managment and motility.

"Iron discipline" or "centralization" is fundamentally antithetical to this aim and so any revolution predicated on those principles cannot help but fail. "Military-like" party organization may prove useful at overthrowing weak governments, but if coup d'états were our aim, we'd all be social-democrats.


Same here, and I also find the claims of the ultra-lefts and anarchists laughable, as they basically say that 8000 Bolsheviks managed to suddenly destroy the "popular will" of millions of people.

Not destroy, hijack.

The Bolsheviks used the popular anger and insurrectionary mood of the Russian people to propel themselves into power; and once they got there they utilized all the tools and structures of state power to secure their hold on the country.

The nature of state society is that a very small elite can rule a much larger underclass. How else do you explain the Romanov Dynasty lasting for three hundred years? The Czars didn't hold onto power because the Russian people loved living under their iron rule, but because political power is a self-perpetuating thing.


The facts are clear: The Bolsheviks had the support of the bulk of the population! That is why they were able to take power with very little bloodshed

So, let me get this straight, your basic argument is that any time a change in government is achieved bloodlessly, the new goverment must have the "support of the bulk of the population"?

No offense, but that has got to be one of the most idiotic things I have ever read on this forum, and I've read a lot of idiotic things. Did it honestly never occur to you that sometimes the "bulk of the population" might just not care? Or that they might be too afraid to shed blood over the change? Or the million and a half over reasons that a change in government might be effected without significant violence?

Seriously, are you so ignorant and naive that blindly accept a lack of violence as "proof" of legitimacy?


Leninists do not believe that Russia was ready for proper capitalist development

That's funny because your buddy Sky asserted precisely the opposite:

Lenin's teachings prove that Russia had reached the capitalist stage of development.

You people remind me of Christian fundamentalists arguing over the proper interpretations of Jesus' teachings. Isn't it about time that you all grew up and left this idol worshiping crap to the religious folks?