Nasser Paydar
Communism Abolition of Wage Labour and Leninist Militant Reformism
If we look closely at the basic premises of the teachings of social democracy, we can easily and without the need for any armed eyes see the foundation of the theory of the two-organization of the party and mass organizations and the main foundation of this controversial historical heresy right here and in the depths of these teachings. Until this date, as we saw in the examination of various periods, the workers’ movement did not have the space to separate the economic from the political struggle or the struggle to impose the demands of the day on the bourgeoisie from the general struggle to change the objectivity. The various spheres of the proletariat’s struggle against capitalist exploitation and oppression were increasingly intertwined, and this continuity displayed the highest degrees of deepening and development of its day in the First International. Despite the conflict between its real internal tendencies, the labour movement, from the perspective of the masses and activists of this movement itself, had an anti-capitalist reality. The different approaches, with all the contradictions and conflicts of their fate and with all their different social horizons, did not have any special multi-organizational prescription or any special table of separation of the subordinates from the wise party ranks and the type of theories or strategies in their pockets for the daily struggle of the workers and for the process of its more conscious, organized, well-organized and stronger growth to the phase of authority and determination of the task with the capitalist system. Leaving aside these, as far as Marx and his sympathizers and companions are concerned, they did not join the turbulent current of the labour movement as intellectuals of the upper classes or professional revolutionaries beyond the working masses, but as real intellectuals, thinkers, activists, leaders and solution-makers within the labour movement. Not only did they not issue a fatwa to create two distinct organizations, trade union and political, or party and union, but they also fundamentally disrupted any such approach. Not only were they not praising the syndicalist movement, but they strongly condemned any form of union building outside the circle of direct struggle against the basis of capitalism. Not only did they not speak in praise of trade union struggles, but they also pushed the anti-wage labour movement of the working class to the internationalist level. Not only did they not give permission to separate the economic and political struggle in the hands of any worker, but they correctly referred the successful and efficient advancement of all forms of protest against capitalism in all spheres of social life to the construction of the International.
The real heretic of the two-organization in the world labour movement is social democracy or right-wing reformism within the working class. It is here that the establishment of two separate organizations for economic and political struggles becomes an organic necessity in relation to all theories, ideologies, strategies and social and class horizons. But let us see how and within what specific ideological, political and social articulation all these components are hinged together? Let us consider the basic components determining the identity and existence of social democracy:
1.Belief in the breadth of Darwinism’s coverage of the process of historical evolution of human societies and the belief in the adherence of this process to the destined and evolutionary course of replacing regressive forces by progressive and advancing forces of history. In this regard, the belief in the inevitability and compulsion of socialism as the ultimate goal and inevitable outcome of the process of struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.
2- The bourgeois and deeply reformist social narrative of socialism, insisting on the legal form of capital ownership as the fundamental indicator of capitalism and that the transformation of this form of ownership from individual to state or joint-stock will indicate the establishment of socialism. Belief in the perpetuity of wage labour and socialism based on the relationship of buying and selling labour power
3- Denial of revolution and the denial of the necessity of overthrowing the bourgeoisie, replacing revolution with parliamentarism and mobilizing all forces to achieve a party majority in the parliament of capital
4. Compromise and consensus of the working class with the bourgeoisie in resolving current class conflicts and avoiding any action that disrupts the productive, political and civil order of capitalism
5. Reform of capitalism and a firm belief in the possibility of reconciling the interests and objectives of continuing the capitalist mode of production with guaranteeing all rights, freedoms and life expectations of the working masses.
6. The labour movement is essentially a trade union movement, and the working masses, in class objectivity and without achieving consciousness, are neither in conflict with the capitalist existence, nor do they seek compromise and consensus with this system.
7. The class consciousness of the workers is neither a thoughtful expression of their working and living conditions and struggle, nor is it their conscious social and class existence, which, on the contrary, is the result of the discoveries and scientific achievements of the intellectuals of the upper classes.
All the above components and the resulting combination of all these beliefs, analyses and horizons of social democracy everywhere shouted in its every strand that the working class should create two distinct types of organizations in the arena of its struggle and confrontation with the bourgeoisie. It should gather all its forces and resources together so that thanks to this unity and organization it could talk to the bourgeoisie about the issues of livelihood and the development of its social facilities and, beyond these words, reach a consensus and agreement suitable to the expectations of its day. At the same time, it should strive for “socialism”!! and the replacement of the existing capitalist society with a more humane!! and fairer!! type of planning of work and production of this system!! To realize the goals and expectations of the first, social democracy asked the workers to organize themselves in clubs and trade unions and to establish a nationwide labour union from the gathering of these institutions. In the second case, that is, the manipulation, reform and reworking of capitalist society, the horizon and platform of struggle for social democracy was also very clear. The formation of a party, the effort to win the majority of votes, the electoral competition with other bourgeois parties and the acquisition of a parliamentary majority answered all the needs. The socialism of the leaders and thinkers of social democracy was in its entire fabric the same system of wage slavery. In their political perspective, this same system had to undergo some changes, and the realization of these changes depended on the adoption of new laws in parliaments and the replacement of unjust decrees, charters and contracts with their fair and humane!! and humanitarian!! alternatives. The political and social democratic party of the workers took on this important task, and the only mission of the workers was to play the role of a conveyor belt for the party’s entry into this institution through widespread participation in parliamentary elections.
The history of social democracy is at the same time the history of the establishment of these dual formations. The party for the electoral struggle and securing a majority in parliament, the adoption of fair labour laws!! The repeal of oppressive decrees and charters, the presence in political power, the use of this power for socialist reforms and finally the establishment of socialism!! Whether it is humane and refined capitalism or a modified form of the wage slavery system. The union is also for having the power to struggle in everyday disputes with employers and to create conditions that will resolve the issues of livelihood and welfare to the extent possible in favour of the workers.
The theory of the two-organization party and union for the leaders of social democracy and reformism within the European labour movement, as we see, is a precisely continuous component of the articulation of social and class life of this approach. The horizon of socialism before social democracy discovers the simplest, most logical and most justified way of achieving itself in parliamentarism, and parliamentary struggle without the formation of a legal political party, alive and present on the scene of the social conflicts of the day, is a completely impossible and meaningless matter. When a fundamental change in the capitalist system is absolutely not in order, when the desired and expected developments are of a kind that do not require revolution, when the realization of all substitutions and transformations passes through the context of legal struggle, when the political power of the proletariat is to plan the system of wage slavery under the name and tradition of socialism, when this type of power can be easily obtained through legal and parliamentary struggle, when all matters are viewed from the perspective of social democracy, it is clear that the establishment of a political party relying on majority votes is considered an urgent and fundamental need of the working class. In such a situation, with such a view and alongside such a party, the necessity of a union movement is also a completely assumed and inevitable thing. We have seen earlier that within the framework of the vision and perception of social democracy, the labour movement is basically a trade unionist movement confined within the framework of horizons and thoughts that demand the survival of capitalism and is bound to obedience, interaction and acceptance of the existing existence. With these characteristics, this movement was considered, from the perspective of social democratic thought, not as an anti-wage labour movement with the capacity to fight capitalism, but essentially as a movement of consensus and compromise. The syndicalist organization strategy of the working masses was extracted from the depths of this view. Workers had to set about building unions and unions for the economic struggle against employers, and they voted for socialism and participation in the political struggle for the Social Democratic Party. Of course, they had to or could accept membership of the Social Democratic Party, and the class elites had the right to rise to the top ranks of the party. These conditions and criteria were all among the requirements for the survival of the two-organizational framework. It was in this way and within this context that social democracy was able to be the “party of the working class” within the dominant political power of capitalism. It planned the productive, political, civil and social order of capital and imposed it on the working masses. It made the reform of capitalism its agenda within the framework of ensuring the permanence of this system and convinced the working masses to accept the permanence of this system. It removed the working class from the orbit of the anti-capitalist struggle and erased the horizon of socialism that abolished wage labour from their sight. The two-organizational theory was the necessary mechanism for the realization of all these reactionary goals and anti-socialist prescriptions of the leaders of the Second International and the social democratic parties of Western and Northern Europe.
Bolshevism, the two-organization theory, and Lenin’s party theory
The social-democratic tendency within the Russian labour movement in the early years of the twentieth century cannot be considered a phenomenon separate from the structure of the theories, approaches, and policies of European social democracy. Many Russian social-democrats thought in the same way as social-democrats in other European countries on the important issues of the labour movement, the dissection of the capitalist system, the critique of bourgeois political economy, the material narrative of history, and everything related to the class struggle of the proletariat and the horizon ahead of this movement. The general outlines of the program of the Russian Social-Democratic Party, formulated in 1902 by the founders of this party, lay out the articulation of this commonality and similarity very clearly before us. The analysis of the capitalist mode of production as an economic system based on the anarchy of production and without reference to the basis of wage labour, the attribution of the economic crises of this system to the determining role of this anarchy and lack of planning, the stamping of trade unionism and bourgeoisness on every spontaneous movement of the labour movement, the explanation of socialism or the prospect of the workers’ revolution as a planned economic and social system free from capitalist competition, and in short, many of the viewpoints, types of perception, methods of cognition, and beliefs that determined the fundamental framework of the social democratic approach within the Second International are also clearly visible here. The Bolshevik Party program of 1917, emphasizing the validity of the formulations of the 1902 program of the Social Democratic Party, which was generally prepared by Georgi Plekhanov, states in explaining the economic basis and characteristic component of capitalist society:
“The characteristic of such a society is commodity production on the basis of capitalist production relations, under which the most important part of the means of production and exchange of commodities belongs to a small class of individuals, while the vast majority of the population consists of proletarians and semi-proletarians who, due to their economic position, are forced to sell their labour power permanently or for certain periods, that is, to rent themselves out to capitalists and to produce income for the upper classes of society by their suffering and labour.” In this definition, the private form of ownership of the means of production and exchange is presented as the basic indicator of the nature of capitalist production. No mention is made of other forms of capital ownership, such as state or cooperative ownership. Although the relationship of surplus value production or the relationship of buying and selling labour power is implicitly mentioned, the departure from the form of ownership and the emphasis on its private and individual aspects as a characteristic component of capitalist society have thrown a veil over what is the real foundation and foundation of the capitalist system. This definition leaves all the necessary ways open for calling the centralized and state planning of capitalism socialist. An event that, although in the economic discussions of 1924 onwards, in special discussions about the construction of socialism, completely engulfs the entire policies and planning of labour and production in society, we witness it occurring even before this date and right during the lifetime of Lenin himself. The subsequent sections of the program’s formulations on capitalist economics further complement this completely non-Marxian narrative and perspective. The explanation of the grounds for capitalist crises is a very specific example in this regard. Following the above paragraph and a little further down, the program adds:
“…the existence of this situation in bourgeois countries and the increasing growth of competition between them in the world markets makes it more difficult for them to sell goods that are produced in constantly increasing quantities. Excess production that manifests itself in the form of more or less severe industrial crises followed by more or less long periods of industrial stagnation. The inevitable result is the development of productive forces in bourgeois society”.
The latter part is exactly in harmony with the first part and both of them are organically connected with the view of the leaders of the Second International on the capitalist mode of production. The root of the crisis is sought in competition and excess production of goods, and this means that by controlling competition and production planning, the source of the capitalist crisis can be dried up. Earlier, we saw that Karl Kautsky started from this point in explaining the crises of capitalism and reached the same conclusion. The program does not point to the real source of the crisis, which is the existence of capital itself and the relationship of surplus value production and the internal tendency of this relationship towards the decline of the interest rate, and inevitably, here too, similar to what we saw in the above formulation, it completely opens the way to maintain the relationship of buying and selling labour and the government and centralized form of this planning.
The above explanation of the capitalist mode of production naturally leads to a similar explanation of socialism. Accordingly, the program states in its subsequent paragraphs that: “By introducing social ownership of the means of production and exchange in place of private ownership and by introducing a planned organization of social production to ensure the well-being and all-round development of all members of society, the proletarian social revolution will abolish the division of society into classes and will thereby liberate all oppressed humanity, because it will put an end to all forms of exploitation of one section of society by another.”
With a deep and Marx’s review of the above points that determine the basic lines of Bolshevism’s views, horizons and analyses of capitalist society and its socialist alternative, firstly: one can rarely see any differences between these points and what, for example, Kautsky, as the intellectual representative of social democracy at the end of the 19th century, expressed. Secondly and more importantly, one can dig up and discover very clear and naked traces of all these bases of analysis and viewpoints in what would later occur in the days after the October Revolution and then during the establishment of “Soviet camp socialism” or state capitalism. Lenin’s emphasis, the most radical and leftist figure of the Russian working class socialist movement, just a year after the October Revolution, on being socialist!!! The part of the Russian economy that was owned by the state and under the control of the centralized planning of the Ministry of Economy (Vensenkha) is one of these traces and traces.
“… But what is the meaning of the word transition? Does not the meaning of this word, if we apply it to the economy, mean that in the existing system there are elements, parts and fragments of both capitalism and socialism? Everyone admits that this is so, but not everyone, while admitting this, thinks about what the elements of the various social and economic forms that exist in Russia are? And yet that is the whole point. We will mention these elements: 1) Patriarchal economy, that is, an economy that is largely natural and peasant in nature. 2) Small-scale commodity production (the majority of the peasants who sell grain belong to this group). 3) Private capitalism. 4) State capitalism. 5) Socialism….”
The fifth sector of the Russian economy, which Lenin here considers socialist, is simply that part of the economy of society that is planned by the Ministry of Economy and is owned by the Russian government of the day, in other words, areas of capital reserves that have been transferred from private ownership to state ownership. The relationship of buying and selling labour power is there with all its might, “Taylorism” as the superior and most efficient solution to increasing production imposes the greatest amount of mental and physical exhaustion on workers, and the working masses, especially following the widespread dissolution of the Soviets, are deprived of any kind of free intervention in determining the fate of their own labour and production processes. The state ownership of this part of Russian social capital is Lenin’s only and only valid criterion for considering these economic sectors as socialist!!!
In order to explore Lenin’s view of socialism even more closely, it would be good to pay close attention to other phrases that he brings up in the continuation of this discussion. He insists that “state capitalism is the threshold of socialism”!!! We will mention what he calls state capitalism below, but he himself gives an example as to why, in his view, this state capitalism plays the role of a threshold for socialism and says: “… everyone knows what this example is. It is Germany, in this country we are faced with the latest in contemporary big-capitalist technology and an organized organization that is subordinate to Junker-bourgeois imperialism. Throw away the words that have been emphasized and in place of the bourgeois-junker-imperialist military state, substitute another state, at least a state of another social order and with another class content, that is, a Soviet or proletarian state, and you will obtain the whole set of conditions that create socialism….”
To make the discussion even clearer, it is better to take a closer look at the characteristics of this proletarian state, the mere domination of which over the imperialist capitalist economy of today’s Germany is a sufficient condition for the socialist transformation of the economy of this country. Lenin himself, describing this state and its very vivid and striking example, the “proletarian state”! Today’s Russia writes: “The dictatorship is exercised by the proletariat organized in soviets. The proletariat itself is led by the Communist Party of Bolsheviks, which, according to the statistics of the last Party Congress (April 1920), has 611,000 members. The Party, whose Congress meets every year, is led by a Central Committee consisting of 19 people. Meanwhile, the current work in Moscow is carried out by even more limited bodies, namely, the so-called Organising Bureau and the Politburo, each consisting of 5 members of the Central Committee and elected at a plenary session of the Central Committee. Therefore, it follows that there is a completely calculated oligarchy. None of the state institutions in our republic resolves any important organizational or political issue without the guidance of the Central Committee….”
If we leave aside the first sentence of this paragraph and the reference to the role of the councils, which, firstly, have no role in the real world and, secondly, have no relation to the socialist councils of planning work and production, assuming that they have some limited executive functions, the rest does not depict any other phenomenon than a conventional state in all respects beyond the free will of the working class. We all know very well that the life span of the councils was very short, but let us assume that in the period in question there was still a ghost of these institutions, even in this case we are faced with a centralized political power of 19 people above the head of the working class, the existence of which implies the denial of any kind of free, conscious and socialist intervention of the working masses in the planning of work and production and their social destiny. Now let us return to Lenin’s explanation and description of the socialist economy. He believes that the mere domination of such a centralized state power over the capitalist economy of a country like Germany is enough for the entire economic relations of this society to become socialist!!
Those who have pondered or are pondering Lenin’s discussion of socialism, not beyond dry school prejudices, but with a Marx’s, class and communist perspective, understand very well that the gap between capitalism and socialism in these discussions is not the absolute presence or absence of the relationship of buying and selling labour power. As we saw above, he introduces state capitalism as the threshold of socialism!!! The state capitalism he is referring to are cooperatives and capitalist institutions under the ownership of private capitalists, which are at the same time under the supervision of the state. From Lenin’s point of view, as soon as the supervision of these institutions gives way to state ownership, the socialist transformation of the economy has been achieved!!! His strong emphasis on the role of individual ownership of capital and small-scale production as the most fundamental and blatant obstacles to the establishment of socialism in Russia stems precisely from this.
The real meaning of these emphases, along with the insistence on applying the term “gateway to socialism” to private capitalism under state supervision, is well clarified. At the same time, these emphases are also reminiscent of Kautsky’s explanation and conceptualizations of socialism.
The above issues, in addition to many other issues, such as Lenin’s decision to reduce the involvement of the Soviets in the planning of work and production in the years after the October Revolution, replacing the role of these Soviets with the centralized role of the Ministry of Economy, the implementation of the NEP program, Lenin-Donner’s claim that socialism in Russia would be the sum of electrification and the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the like, all of them, firstly, reflect the same narrative of the Party’s 1902 and 1917 programs on the question of socialism. Second, the joint articulation of Lenin’s narrative of socialism with the foundations of social democracy’s understanding of the beginning of the twentieth century of socialist economics. Thirdly, and finally, socialism in this perspective is more or less the same capitalism under the leadership of a party state over the working class, and it differs fundamentally from the Marx and labour narrative of socialism or communism of the abolition of wage labour.
Apart from what has been said, other components also linked the Russian Social Democratic Party and then Bolshevism or the dominant radical approach in the Russian labor movement to the foundation of the views of the leaders of the Second International, just as certain analyses, views and beliefs also cut the threads connecting Bolshevism and other parts of the social democracy movement. The Russian working class was not in any way in the conditions of its class chains in Western Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century. Here, talk of increasing wages and reducing working hours was not only not considered debatable demands that immediately brought the sword-wielding dictatorship of the tsarist state to the field in the land and time of the workers’ lives. There was no talk of freedom of speech, assembly, party formation and election campaigns. The severity of exploitation, disenfranchisement and oppression of the working masses recalled the life of the early years of the previous century much more than it evoked the situation of the German, Scandinavian and French working class. Apart from that, Russia was in a noticeably more backward condition than Western Europe, and the arrangement of class forces and the social weight of the Russian proletariat in the general atmosphere of class struggle within society were somewhat different from its German, French and English counterparts. The peasant movement played an important role here, and this movement, for its part, exerted pressure on the meandering approach of the labour movement. The Russian bourgeoisie also did not have the position of the bourgeoisie of Western European countries in terms of the degree of economic and political dominance in the social and historical structure of society at that time and did not essentially constitute the dominant political class.
All of the above factors, whether the similarities and similarities between Russian and Western European social democracy or the serious differences between the current conditions in Russia and the position of the workers’ movement in this country compared to the countries of Western and Northern Europe, decisively influenced the content of the approach and the twists and turns of the strategic and fundamental passages of Russian social democracy. Lenin’s narrative about the various ways of organizing the workers’ movement could certainly not be excluded from the general trend of these influences. Here, and before examining the subject, it is necessary to recall one or two points. The current debates about Lenin’s view on the organization and participation of the working class have usually revolved around different and sometimes contradictory axes and have started from different points of departure. The largest part of the critical studies!! belongs to the spectrum of liberal critics and right-wing bourgeois circles. The bottom line of what they say is that Lenin’s narrative of the party is the antithesis of democracy and full of violence and dictatorship!! The second group of discussions belongs to tendencies of left reformism that consider the party’s unconditional religious and professional defence of Lenin’s theory as a necessary and compulsory condition for people to be communists!! And they consider criticism of Lenin to be the cause of the complete collapse of all the foundations of divine faith in “Marxism”, the proletariat and all their ideological wealth and possessions!!
These, as I have mentioned elsewhere in this article, are not communists of the anti-wage labour movement of the proletariat, but rather the robed, ascetic, and devoted followers of their ideological monastery. The third series of discussions again reflects the preoccupations of another section of left reformism, which makes the claim of criticizing the Soviet camp!! and Soviet camp socialism!! the guarantee of its empty supra-class radicalism, but the content of its criticism in the real and ongoing practice of class struggle has not and will not demonstrate anything other than the undiminished continuation of the same character and tradition of camp socialism. These people not only have no criticism of the Leninist theory of the party, but they also basically fully approve of all of Lenin’s discussions and theorizing about socialism. They do not make any difference between these theories and Marx’s view of socialism or communism of the abolition of wage labour. Their daily practice is the complete embodiment of all the approaches, traditions, and policies of the same camp parties, and their difference from the aforementioned parties, apart from some false claims!! is only the terrible situation of the sect and the process of their objective and historical extinction. And finally, the fourth group of discussions belongs to people who, in examining the Leninist theory of the party, have generally taken the path of the land of thought and have declared the imperialist view of the relationship between the object and the mind as the basis for recommending this type of organization for the labour movement.
The words of the first group or the democratic critics of Lenin’s party theory are not the subject of our discussion here at all. The task of these discussions is clear enough. The clamour and fuss of this group is a small corner of the superstitions, illusions and demagoguery that are ubiquitous in the capitalist system. The second and third views, despite some of their differences, practically form the top and bottom of the same canvas and, on the whole, have not gone any step beyond the confines of the internal and homegrown critics of bourgeois socialism and will not go any further. The fourth critical perspective is largely academic and is completely incapable of materialistic and class dissection of the issue. The root of the problem is not simply philosophical and theoretical misconceptions; every belief, thought and theory has a specific social, historical and class origin and reflects the horizons, type of outlook and expectations of a certain class or strata of society. In a word, none of the above tendencies, whether in opposition or in favour, have put forward any real explanation or correct statement about Lenin’s theory of the party. The very fundamental point is that Lenin’s discussion about the organization of the labour movement and his theory of communist party formation cannot be separated from the general articulation of his class beliefs and practice and the entire approach of Bolshevism in a specific response to the current and actual problems of the class struggle of the day within Russian society. Lenin’s theory of the Communist Party of the Proletarians was undoubtedly not the solution of communism to abolish wage labour for organizing the Russian working class, and it had no similarity to Marx’s view of organizing the anti-wage labour movement of the proletariat. What Lenin formulates in this regard is not the Marx’s strategy of the communist activists of the labour movement to truly open the path of anti-capitalist struggle of the working masses, but the current strategy of the left wing of social democracy to respond to the needs of the victory of an anti-feudal democratic revolution in the cradle of the dictatorship of the Tsar and the feudal lords. The irony of the story is that this same social democratic strategy and solution, under the pressure of the stubborn onslaught of the waves of the specific conditions of today’s Russian society, achieves a fate that first and foremost draws the rebellious criticism of the same social democracy of the leaders of the Second International!! At the same time, it also faces radical criticism from some prominent activists of the international labour movement. Why this is so, and the real framework of this theory, its real social democratic origins, its philosophy of changeability in the midst of the current class struggle of Russian society, and the conflict of this strategy with the Marx’s view of class struggle or the communism of the abolition of wage labour, are all topics that need to be explored. To do this, first of all, I will try to list once again the set of social, class, and historical components and data involved in the metabolism of this solution. These components are briefly as follows:
1. The defeat of some radical and anti-wage labour uprisings of the Western European working class and the retreat of communism abolishing wage labour, the occurrence of a period of booming capital accumulation in Europe and then the emergence of imperialist conditions of capitalist production, the rise of social democracy and the dominance of the social-bourgeois perspectives, analyses, strategies and solutions of this approach over the current labour movement of Western countries, the marginalization of Marx’s practical materialism and the essence of his revolutionary teachings in criticizing the foundations of bourgeois political economy, the anatomy of capitalist society, true communism abolishing wage labour, the reality of the labour movement and the anti-wage labour capacity of the proletariat and other issues related to the class struggle
2. The organic and comprehensive influence of Russian social democracy and the current leaders of this movement, including Lenin himself, on all the perspectives, analyses and solutions of social democracy of the leaders of the Second International
3. The terrible tsarist dictatorship in Russian society and the fierce pressure of this dictatorship on the labour movement, the lack of any political and social rights for the working masses, the prohibition of any form of struggle, organization and unity of the Russian proletariat.
4. The widespread presence of the peasant movement in the atmosphere of the current class struggle within Russian society, the demands and expectations of the vast mass of Russian peasants and the decisive pressure of their movement on the daily struggles of the working class.
5. The presence of various bourgeois oppositions on the stage of political disputes against the tsarist dictatorship and their dreams and expectations for the industrial and capitalist development of Russian society.
6. The weak position of the labour movement in terms of the history of the anti-capitalist struggle and its extensive fusion with the movements of other dissatisfied social strata and classes in society, the low level of political rupture of the Russian working masses from the bourgeois oppositions in comparison with the labour movement of France, England and other Western European countries at the beginning of the 20th century. Lenin’s theory of the party and the solutions of Bolshevism for organizing the Russian labour movement sees the decisive pressure of all these historical, class and social elements on the process of its fertilization, birth and development. The current Russian revolution was considered by Bolshevism to be a democratic and bourgeois revolution. This revolution, according to Lenin’s emphatic statement, was supposed to be more useful for the bourgeoisie and less for the proletariat!! Based on this analysis, the Russian working class must explore its interests in the revolution from within its bourgeois content!! In Lenin’s political vision, the revolution was intended to further realize the development of the European type of capitalist mode of production in Russia, solve the land problem of the peasants, respond to some of the dreams of the Russian liberal bourgeoisie, and ultimately pave the way for the establishment of socialism for the Russian working class!!!
The above points are all stated in Lenin’s discussions, and they all have coherence within the framework of his view of the current class struggle in Russia. The narrative of socialism within the system of these beliefs and analyses determines the main axis. To achieve this socialism, there is no need for a nationwide anti-capitalist and anti-wage labour organization of the working class. Addressing this task is the real need of a movement that wants to replace the relationship of buying and selling labour power with a nationwide soviet organization of direct, conscious, creative, and penetrating involvement of the working masses in the planning of all work and production and social order, but Lenin’s socialism was, in its main, a special version of the same socialism of Kautsky and the leaders of the Second International. Earlier in this passage, I mentioned some evidence, but the fact is that wherever Lenin spoke of socialism, he brought up and insisted on the same beliefs and the prevailing view of social democracy. Let us take a closer look at this paragraph from his report to the Ninth Congress of the Russian Communist Party:
“In what does class rule now manifest itself? The proletariat’s rule is manifested in the fact that the property of the capitalists and landlords has been abolished. The main text and content of all previous constitutions, even the most republican and democratic, was, in short, property. Our constitution has the right and has acquired the right to historical existence for itself because it was not just written on paper and property was abolished in it. The victorious proletariat abolished property and completely annihilated it. This is what class rule consists of. This rule manifests itself first of all in the question of property. When the question of property was practically solved, class rule was secured by this act…”
Let us remember that the above assessment by Lenin is made in the context of conditions in which no traces of any kind of socialist economic transformation are visible in Russian society, because in principle the process of realizing such an event never really began, but the problem does not end there. This assessment belongs to the time when Lenin himself writes with such clarity and sharpness in his article entitled “The Tasks of the Soviet Government”:
«…. Regarding the importance of the dictatorial power of a single person, from the specific point of view of the present moment, it must be said that any large-scale machine industry, namely the source and material basis of production of socialism, requires an unconditional and absolutely emphatic unity of will, directing the joint work of hundreds of thousands and tens of thousands of people. This necessity is obvious both technically and economically and historically, and all those who have thought about socialism have always recognized it as a condition of socialism. But how can the most emphatic unity of will be ensured? By subordinating the will of a thousand to the will of one…»
The aforementioned assessment is reported to the Party Congress on the margins of the situation, where the relationship between the purchase and sale of labour in Russian society has not suffered any damage, and the process of the decline of workers’ councils, the replacement of councils by committees called “Gulag” by the Ministry of Economy, the spread of “piecework” and “Taylorism” and one-man management is the bitter story of the daily life of workers throughout society.
Lenin’s theory of the Party views socialism in this way. This plan extracts the real foundation of its theoretical articulation from the analyses and horizons of contemporary European social democracy and people like Kautsky and then sets about generalizing and applying them to the specific conditions of Russia and in relation to the problems of the current revolution and the future of the labour movement in this country. The Party is founded to bring the workers’ revolution to its destination, to fulfil the expectations of the broad masses of the peasantry, to bring to the workers an 8-hour working day, the right to strike, freedom of association, and the achievement of certain subsistence demands. In this regard, and in the pursuit of realizing these expectations and aligned horizons of different social classes and strata, this party is also going to dig the tunnel of the proletariat’s struggle for the socialist revolution!!
Let us not forget another important point. Russian Social Democracy, based on what it gained from the source of the teachings of contemporary European Social Democracy, believed that the proletariat, that is, the class that owns the party in its social existence and spontaneous class movement, is not a fighter against wage labour, but is essentially a trade unionist and that the victory of its current struggle does not go beyond the boundaries of subsistence demands and the price of its labour power! Apart from all this, this party was formed in the context of conditions in which the tyrannical dictatorship of the Tsar directly suppressed any opposition movement of any kind and in every corner of Russia.
The left wing of Russian Social Democracy (later Bolshevism) and Lenin himself, with these characteristics, with this kind of view on socialism, the labour movement, the political power of the working class, the requirements for preparing the socialist revolution and finally the current revolution and the current problems of the class struggle in Russia, rely on the theory of two organizations of Social Democracy for organizing the Russian labour movement. At the same time, considering the specific conditions of society at the time, Bolshevism and Lenin made these two organizations not a mechanism for parliamentary struggles, nor a platform for a smooth and peaceful transition to socialism, but rather a strategy for overthrowing the tsarist dictatorship, carrying out a democratic revolution and seizing political power, establishing the “dictatorship of the proletariat and peasants,” and finally paving the way for the socialist revolution and the establishment of socialism!!
In the previous sections of this discussion, we saw that the theory of two formations determined an organic and completely continuous link in the chain of beliefs, analyses, horizons, deterministic materialism and class reformism of social democracy. This theory did not have such a coherent scaffolding for Bolshevism. The basis of the differences between Mensheviks’ and Bolshevism also lay here. Mensheviks was the Russian version of the most right-wing approach to social democracy. The Western counterparts of Mensheviks based their degenerate anti-socialist reformism on at least a few inches of the emergency retreat of the bourgeoisie and this or that slight improvement in the livelihood of the workers. These, the Mensheviks, on the contrary, were very crudely and recklessly determined to hang the Russian working class in the depths of the swamp of hunger, disenfranchisement and horrific class oppression, on the gallows of the same terrible reformist strategies, policies and solutions. The opposite was true of Bolshevism and Lenin. The Bolsheviks understood well the marked difference in economic, political, and social conditions between Russian society and Western Europe, and they considered the disastrous consequences of the hanging of right-wing reformism for the working masses and the lower strata of society. The left wing of Russian Social Democracy, in determining its campaign strategy, focused very seriously on the aforementioned distinctions from the very beginning, and in this regard, first of all, it demarcated a specific axis with the teachings and solutions of the leaders of Social Democracy. The emphasis on revolution, the necessity of force, the overthrow of the Tsarist dictatorship, and the conquest of political power determined the main thread of this fundamental axis. The party of professional revolutionaries built the real foundations of its credibility right here and on this axis. All evidence indicates that at the time in question there was no real boundary or demarcation between Bolshevism and Social Democracy. We saw above that the criterion for distinguishing capitalism here was also the private property of the owners of capital. Socialism did not go beyond the scaffolding of capitalism without competition and planned by the state. The labour movement, in its spontaneous existence and natural context of class conflicts, also bore the stamp of trade unionism very hard and hot on its forehead, and precisely on this basis, the organization of this movement against wage labour could not be the agenda of Bolshevism. On the contrary, the trade union struggle for the achievement of everyday demands, the formation of trade unions to advance these struggles, and the transformation of these struggles and trade union organizations into fighting forces under the command of the party in the campaign to overthrow the tsarist government were issues that attracted the full attention of the leaders of Bolshevism. The basis of the approach to the type of organization of the working class was the same theory of two organizations discovered by social democracy. The fundamental difference was that here the party had to lead a revolution and take the leadership of the revolution out of the hands of the Russian liberal bourgeoisie and the right wing of social democracy. For this, Bolshevism needed a party of professional revolutionaries. A party that, based on all the evidence and taking into account all the points we have mentioned above, could not be an anti-capitalist organization with the horizon of abolishing wage labour of the working class. The party was formed in the name of the Russian working class because its founders wanted the proletariat to play a role in the victory of the present revolution, in the name of this proletariat they were taking steps towards replacing the tsarist government with the dictatorship of the workers and peasants, and finally, it was by relying on the power of this proletariat that they could, in the next steps, seize all political power and establish state planning of labour and production. At the same time, the party must:
It was composed of professional revolutionaries because the field of movement and the power of the workers’ flight, based on the prevalent teachings of social democracy, did not go beyond the boundaries of trade unionism and simple campaigns for improving wages.
– It attracted the most active elements of the Russian labour movement because it was supposed to be the embodiment of the class power of the proletariat.
– It worked to organize a broad front of struggle against the political regime and the tyrannical dictatorship of Tsarism and did not make the discussion of organizing the working class against wage labour the daily preoccupation and content of its ongoing struggles.
– It gained the greatest and widest support of the working class for its goals, policies, programs and calls, and it used all this support, unanimity and comradeship in the process of the struggle for the establishment of the dictatorship of the workers and peasants, because the mission of the day of the revolution was assessed not as a struggle against capital, but as a wider and wider opening of the path to the development of the European type of capitalist mode of production.
– Led the labour movement, but not for the communism of the abolition of wage labour, but for the establishment of a society in which private ownership of capital would give way to state ownership.
The above are certainly not points that the Russian Social Democratic Party or Lenin himself formulated on the eve of the formation of the party or in general in the strategy of their class and political campaign. The discussion is absolutely not about the form and appearance and formal content of the formulations. What is essential is that the current practice of the party between 1902 and the years after the victory of the October Revolution everywhere consistently and systematically puts the same concepts, approaches and attitudes before the critical and insightful communists of today’s anti-capitalist movement of the world working class. In all circles of this long-term practice and struggle, Bolshevism was unable to break away from the real foundations of its strategy and class views from the social democracy of the end of the 19th century, and the theory of the two organizations of the party and the mass organizations of the working class was also one of these foundations and foundations. During the mentioned period, the Bolshevik Party launched important campaigns against social democracy and the solutions and strategies of the leaders of the Second International. The adoption of a deeply radical policy in relation to the imperialist war, the more or less radical criticism of Kautsky’s views on the imperialist conditions of capitalist production (with all its serious shortcomings and shortcomings), the criticism of Kautsky’s theory of the peaceful transition to socialism, the defence of the necessity of force to break the political power of the bourgeoisie, and the like, are the reports of these radical struggles and campaigns. The fundamental problem is that nowhere in the process of these acute disputes do we witness a break with the views of social democracy in the areas of the anatomy of capitalism, the narrative of socialism, the view of the reality of the labour movement and the requirements of organizing this movement against wage labour. The two-organization theory of social democracy for organizing the working class was also the foundation of the work of Bolshevism in this regard, but this theory underwent many changes here, as we have seen.
An important point in the context of this discussion is that the social-democratic framework of the theory in Russian society was not only changed by Bolshevism, but the Russian working class also left its mark on the process of its change in the most striking way. The Soviets, according to all the narrators of the events, were not the initiative of Bolshevism, but a natural, spontaneous and spontaneous movement of the Russian working class. The Russian labour movement in the period before the 1905 revolution turned to the establishment of Soviets on a very large scale. The fact that the Soviets were established in the time chain leading to the revolution absolutely did not confirm this vulgar, scholastic ruling of the heirs of the popular movements that the Soviets are only organs corresponding to the conditions of the uprising. In the class struggle and in the context of the view of revolutionary materialism, no ruling or verse has any place. In the sharp turn of the class struggle against the political regime, the working masses of Russia recognized the formation of Soviets as the most suitable bulwark for fighting and established them. They could have chosen this same form of organization in any circumstances and at any point in the history of their class struggle, simply by having the opportunity and the power. Contrary to what others think, the Councils were not the mechanism for assembling this inverted decree, which is specific only to the days of the uprising. Quite the contrary, they demonstrated the initiative and creative power of the working masses to discover the most appropriate forms of organization and, naturally, more than anything and most importantly, the organization of the anti-wage labour movement of the working class. It is very interesting that “everyone says something by analogy” and the leftist militant reformism of the world and Iran also deduced from the interests, tendencies, and expectations of the people and the bourgeoisie themselves that the Councils were only an organizational vessel for the uprising. The bitter irony of the story is that Bolshevism, under the pressure of the same political and theoretical themes of social democracy, used this radical and spontaneous movement of the working class not in order to strengthen the anti-wage labour movement of the working masses, but rather in order to seize political power by a party above the workers. In this regard, and as a continuous link within this chain, where the workers’ councils were supposed to take the entire planning of labour and social production into their own hands as a vessel for the general intervention of the working class, the decree was issued to dissolve them in favour of the “Vensenkha” and the centralized planning power of the party-state. In short, any separation of these issues from each other or any separation between the Bolshevism narrative of socialism and capitalism and the labour movement and the class organization of the workers and what happened in the years after the victory of this revolution and ultimately the complete defeat of the revolution, is a very misleading thing to do. The legacy of the two organizations of social democracy is also a link in this chain, and it is only from this perspective that its true texture and the effects emanating from it on the fate of the Russian working-class revolution can be understood.