The roots of 1917: Kautsky, the state, and revolution in Imperial Russia (Excerpts from article by Eric Blanc) As the Kari expulsion illustrates, the Finnish Social Democratic Party, unlike the German SPD, did not slowly evolve in an integrationist, class-collaborationist direction. Finland’s Social Democracy was unique among Europe’s mass socialist parties operating in contexts of political freedom in that it became more committed to revolutionary social democracy after 1905. Had Finland not been part of the Tsarist Empire, it is likely that the Finnish Social Democracy would have evolved down an accomodationist path similar to that of so many Western socialist currents, in which increasing bureaucratization and parliamentary integration relegated radical leaders to an internal minority by the eve of World War One. Yet, unlike every other legal socialist party in Europe, the Finnish social democracy directly took part in the 1905 revolution. The general strike in the fall radicalized urban and rural proletarians in Finland, sparking an explosive mass upheaval that swept out much of the party’s old guard leadership and brought in a new group of dedicated Marxists, committed to implementing a strict independent class perspective. So while the spread of revolutionary social democracy came relatively late to Finland, it played a pivotal role in breaking the workers’ movement from a longstanding tradition of alliances with the upper class. From 1905 onwards, the experience of Finnish socialism constitutes a particularly revealing test case for analyzing the political dynamics and possibilities of patient “orthodox” social democracy in a context of political freedom and parliamentary democracy. [...] As an extended discussion of the role of soviets during and after 1917 is beyond the scope of this paper, I will limit myself to a few comments. First, while the soviets represented a more direct form of democracy than envisioned even by the early Kautsky, the extent of the divergences should not be overstated. As we saw earlier, Kautsky similarly rejected bourgeois parliamentarism as a sham and called for a republic in which the separation between working people and the state would be broken down through the election of all state officials, the arming of the people, the extension of local self-government, and merging of executive and legislative powers. Such a proletarian parliamentary republic resembled the soviet model far more than any existing capitalist democracy. [...] A strong Finnish parliament and parliamentary tradition posed obstacles and opportunities that socialists did not face in the rest of the empire. Unlike in the other regions of imperial Russia, there was a long tradition of political freedom and a parliament in Finland; as advocated by “orthodox” doctrine for such conditions, the Finnish Social Democracy had a strong focus on parliamentary activity. In fact, the party won an absolute majority in the Finnish parliament in 1916 and sought (ultimately without success) for much of 1917 to use this institution to meet the basic demands of the working class. In such a context, it is not surprising that among neither the Finnish socialists nor the working class did there emerge a push to build workers’ councils in 1917. Late in the summer of 1917, the Russian Provisional Government in alliance with Finnish conservatives illegally dissolved Finland’s socialist-led parliament and called for new elections. [...] Finland in many ways confirms the traditional view of revolution espoused by Kautsky: Through patient class-conscious organization and education, socialists won a majority in parliament, leading the right wing to dissolve the institution, which in turn sparked a socialist-led revolution. The Finnish party’s “orthodox” preference for a peaceful, defensive, and parliamentary strategy did not ultimately prevent it from violently overthrowing the existing capitalist state and taking steps towards socialism. In contrast, the bureaucratized German Social Democracy actively upheld capitalist rule in 1918–19 and violently smashed efforts by revolutionary workers and socialists to overturn it. My argument is not that the Finnish experience shows the path that all workers’ revolutions will take in conditions of bourgeois democracy. Nor does it follow that Marxists must always seek to win a parliamentary majority before attempting to overthrow a bourgeois-democratic state or that soviet-like bodies cannot arise in parliamentary polities. The lessons of the 1918-23 German Revolution and other subsequent working-class upheavals undercut any simplistic schemas along those lines. Moreover, Finland showed not only the strengths but also the potential limitations of social democratic “orthodoxy”: a hesitancy to abandon the parliamentary arena; a tendency to be overly-defensive; an overemphasis on peaceful tactics; and an underestimation of mass action.
