Nasser Paydar April 2000
The intertwining of the October workers’ revolution and its historical consequences with the history of human life in the twentieth century runs so deep that any fundamental examination of any aspect of the latter inevitably requires reference to the former. October a failed revolution that achieved none of its true objectives is incomparable to any other revolution in history in terms of its substance and the scope of its impact on human history. What unfolded under this name in Russian society was the impassioned prelude to an unavoidable and decisive battle between “history” and “prehistory,” in the true sense of the terms. Had October succeeded, humanity would have found itself on the threshold of establishing a world free from exploitation, class divisions, the state, and all forms of social inequality. The defeat of October was, precisely, the defeat of the world’s first great workers’ revolution in its attempt to usher in this phase of human history. It is precisely this fundamental characteristic that distinguishes the October Revolution from history’s other greatest and most decisive revolutions. No other revolution in any era has been defined by such a characteristic. The ultimate achievement of all prior revolutions such as the Great French Revolution was merely to replace a more backward form of exploitation, disenfranchisement, and class oppression with a more modern one. But October dawned with the banner of putting an end to every form of exploitation, deprivation, and the alienation of human beings from the fruits of their labour.
For those who understand October in this light recognizing its specific distinctions explaining the actual causes of the revolution’s defeat in Russia during the late 1910s holds a position of singular importance. In this context, October is not merely an event belonging to the past history of the labour movement or world history in general; on the contrary, it is a living, immediate reality whose lessons serve as a guiding light for the daily struggle of every class-conscious worker across the globe. The defeat of October signifies the continued captivity of humanity within the prison of capitalist barbarism, exploitation, and dispossession; it implies the inevitable, ongoing struggle of the world’s working and downtrodden masses to shatter this prison; it compels the working class and its conscious vanguard to probe the true roots of that defeat; and it underscores the necessity of learning from this political inquiry to pave the way for the advancement of their class movement against wage labour. Precisely for this reason, as long as capitalism persists and the proletarian movement to abolish this system continues, revisiting October and applying its lessons will remain an ongoing and essential imperative.
I, too, view October from precisely this perspective; through this lens, I perceive that the shadow of the shortcomings, errors, and misguided approaches that led to October’s failure continues to weigh heavily upon the outlook, program, and practical course of action of today’s “communist” activists within the labour movement even upon their ostensibly radical critiques of the deviations of Bolshevism within the Russian labour movement. Analyses of October to date even the most radical ones have indeed highlighted certain realities. The shared horizons of Russian Social Democracy and the Russian bourgeoisie at the time of the Social Democratic Party’s founding have been addressed, albeit in a formalistic and academic manner; the failure of Bolshevism to break with Social Democracy regarding the economic transition from capitalism to socialism has been examined, again in a largely scholastic or academic fashion. Criticism has been levelled at Bolshevism’s confusion regarding the planning for the abolition of wage labour, as well as the Bolshevik Party’s recourse to flawed policies such as the implementation of the NEP, the abolition of workers’ control, and the gradual ousting of workers from the soviets. These critiques have been made at the level I have described. But amidst all this, the most fundamental issue has remained entirely unaddressed. The question arises: had the Bolsheviks, for instance, overcome all their weaknesses, errors, or the traits they shared with Social Democracy, how would they have handled the Russian labour movement of the 1902–1917 period? This group of critics implicitly acknowledges that Bolshevism’s efforts to break away from its commonalities with Social Democracy were insufficient to prepare the Russian labour movement for a victorious socialist revolution. But they fail to articulate the specific operational substance, orientation, and practical policies that Bolshevism should have pursued within the labour movement during those years to enable the Russian working class to achieve such a level of readiness and preparation. If the analysis of the October Revolution and the lessons drawn from this monumental, historic working-class undertaking is to serve as a guiding light for the communist struggle of the working masses in today’s global context, then it is precisely this aspect that must be subjected to rigorous scrutiny. Any critique of October that lacks a comprehensive examination of this question is inevitably sterile, devoid of working-class or communist value, and even misleading.
It was stated earlier from which perspective this article approaches the events of October. Here, I would add that this undertaking involves examining specific problematics issues that the Russian labour movement needed to resolve between 1902 and 1917 (and beyond) in order to usher in the socialist revolution. These concern specific political imperatives regarding the alignment of class forces imperatives that the Russian proletariat failed to adopt, leading inevitably to its defeat in October. It is now incumbent upon the global working class to make the realization of these imperatives the substance of its own ongoing movement, so that it may march forward triumphantly in future “Octobers.” This article explores these themes, beginning with the following fundamental question.
How does the workers’ revolution triumph?
The victory of the workers’ revolution hinges on the readiness of the working masses acting as a class to establish socialism. Answering the question of what level of organization and communist maturity the working class requires to achieve a socialist revolution is certainly no simple task. But there is no doubt that without a powerful socialist workers’ council movement and without the working class making the abolition of wage labour and the establishment of a socialist alternative to the existing society the core substance of its ongoing council movement there is no chance of truly dismantling the political power of capital. A call issued by a sect hovering above the workers under the banner of a “Communist Party” might well lead dissatisfied workers to temporarily shatter the capitalist state machine; however, the political power resulting from such an event would not constitute the rule of the working class. A provisional workers’ “state” even at the most rudimentary level or initial stage of its victory must essentially be a council-based organization rooted in the broad participation of workers, characterized by the readiness, mobilization, and firm resolve of that council structure to put an end to wage labour and dismantle all traces and consequences of capitalism. Formulations such as “the proletariat seizes political power and subsequently establishes socialism” offer no clear answer to any of the fundamental issues of the workers’ revolution. Political power can be seized either by a party or a leftist political group leveraging the widespread discontent of the working masses and their movement or by councils that have formed and consolidated as the vehicles for the class’s socialist struggle during the protracted process of class conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Both entities could implement programs under the banner of communism. However, in the first scenario, at best, a handful of idealists armed with a host of beliefs, slogans, and utopian ideas would seize political power over the heads of the workers. Nothing of significance would occur; merely the name and model of the capitalist state machine would change. In the realms of the economy, labour, production, and human livelihood, state ownership of capital would likely replace the private ownership held by individual capitalists. In the second scenario, conversely, the working class would have a far greater chance of abolishing wage labour, establish its own organization of labour and communist social order, and put an end to all forms of exploitation and class oppression. The socialist revolution is brought to victory by a working class that challenges the very foundations of capitalist exploitation as well as the political, civil, legal, and cultural structures, and ultimately all laws and social contracts congruent with wage labour. However, the meaning of being “oppositional” here is not merely expressing dissatisfaction with capitalism; rather, it entails a conscious, practical readiness possessing a clear, actionable plan alongside the class organization and social force necessary to establish socialism. The relationship between the working class and this clear, practical perspective linking the class’s ongoing organization and praxis, and the process of forging its social power, to the revolution and the plan for the socialist transformation of the status quo is an intrinsic yet highly complex and nuanced one. Mere worker protest against capitalist disenfranchisement and a belief in the necessity of changing the system even when coupled with the masses’ trust in a partisan group like the Communist Party, or the organized support of workers for such a party’s slogans and plans are by no means sufficient to realize the fundamental characteristics of this intrinsic relationship. A movement characterized by broad, conscious, council-based, and anti-capitalist participation involving the conscious, creative, and impactful engagement of individual workers is required to demonstrate the proletariat’s genuine readiness to carry out the socialist revolution. Step by step, and throughout every stage of its confrontation with capitalism, the working class must adopt the socialist alternative to the current reality embodied in specific plans, expectations, and demands as the platform for its offensive and struggle. Its organization and the exercise of its united power must become organically aligned with the prospect of achieving these goals. The class struggle of the working masses is a struggle against capitalism across all spheres economic, political, intellectual, and cultural and in every domain of social life. The working masses must perceive themselves within the very heart of this struggle as a class protesting against the entirety of the status quo, equipped with a communist alternative to that situation, and capable of replacing the current reality with a nationwide council-based organization for the socialist planning of labour and production. The working class’s readiness to shatter wage slavery can only be achieved through a struggle possessing these specific characteristics: a conflict between two profoundly contradictory visions of social existence, wherein the proletariat continuously transforms the goals, expectations, and demands inspired by one vision into a material force directed against the other, thereby evolving into a colossal class force capable of crushing the existing system and replacing it with the vision of a future society. Without pursuing a struggle defined by this approach and these hallmarks, the proletariat will not only fail to attain the readiness required for the socialist transformation of the old society but even assuming the collapse of the bourgeois state will be unable to establish its own council-based societal management as a class. If the labour movement, in the course of its confrontation with the bourgeoisie, fails to make the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism the foundation of its struggle and the basis for the council-based organization of the masses, then the establishment of socialism and the dismantling of the capitalist mode of production will remain little more than a utopia. This refers to a situation where workers have long heard from the political party standing over them and from communist activists within their own class, or read in bold print in party programs about the abolition of wage labour, the elimination of classes and the state, and the like; yet, in practice, they have clashed with the bourgeoisie solely over syndicalist demands, political freedoms interpreted through a bourgeois lens, modernism, secularism, nationalist aspirations, and similar expectations. Their current movement was not the movement to abolish mercenary work; They have not attacked the basis of capitalist exploitation from within the practical plans, demands, strategies and living solutions of the communists, and they have not made the real preconditions for the establishment of the Soviet and socialist labour organization as the beacon of their struggle. Communism for them is not the objective course of struggle, nor a platform for class expression and mass organization, or a vessel for independent class formation against capitalism, which, unlike a utopia in the hands of leaders, has been an incentive for the masses of the class to fall in love with the future miraculous Ness of the party. The working class with these characteristics can make a revolution in the presence of a political party and be delusional about this party and overthrow the existing government power of capital, but the day after the revolution, it will not have a better fate than it did yesterday and better than what happened to the working class of Russia.
Why did the October Revolution fail?
The points mentioned above served merely as a prelude to answering the question at hand. The October Revolution failed for the very clear reason that the Russian working class had not prepared itself to carry out a victorious workers’ revolution. Factors such as the “peasant composition of Russian society,” the onslaught against the revolution by both the “Axis” and “Allied” imperialist blocs, the civil war, the savage resistance of the Russian bourgeoisie, famine, and other similar elements despite their significant impact could at most act as catalysts in imposing this defeat upon the Russian labour movement. This is a fact demonstrated more convincingly by the course of events in the years following the October Revolution than by any theoretical argument. During those years, through its own labour, the Russian proletariat built one of the world’s greatest industrial and military giants doing so within that very same backward, famine-stricken “peasant” society and under the relentless onslaught of those same imperialist powers. Where it failed was in establishing a socialist organization of labour and a socialist civilization, and in abolishing wage slavery. The prevailing arguments to date claiming that abolishing wage labour in Soviet society was impossible without a revolution in Germany or other advanced nations of that era serve less as an expression of a Marx’s understanding of capitalism or a communist analysis of the actual requirements of the socialist economic transformation, and more as a warning to the proletariat to shun workers’ revolution and abandon class struggle. What explains the failure of the October Revolution is not any of the aforementioned causes nor even their aggregate but rather the Russian working-class movement’s lack of preparedness to establish a socialist organization of labour, life, and civilization, and to plan work and production based on the abolition of wage labour. This is a fact acknowledged by some contemporary communists. The problem, however, is that they reduce this entire lack of preparedness to the erroneous economic orientations and solutions adopted by the Bolshevik Party from 1925 onwards! This is precisely where the analyses ostensibly radical yet fundamentally reformist evade a genuine Marx’s understanding of the errors and shortcomings that led to the Russian working class’s defeat in the October Revolution. If we refuse to sacrifice proletarian communism and the very foundation of humanity’s liberation from the yoke of capital on the altar of “Leninism,” we have no choice but to seek the roots of the October failure within the outlook, practical course of action, solutions, and policies of Bolshevism: spanning the period from the years preceding the 1905 Revolution to the moment the last glimmers of hope for a victorious workers’ revolution faded in the wake of October. Throughout this period, Bolshevism was an active current within the Russian labour movement, yet it was not the force that organized and steered the working-class socialist movement. Guided by the teachings, directives, and calls of Bolshevism, the Russian proletariat albeit gropingly and in a fragmented manner carved out the path of its revolution, distinguishing it from Narodnik’s, Mensheviks, or Social Democracy. But it did not discover the path to its own socialist revolution through these teachings and policies alone. In the manifestos, propaganda, and proposed solutions of Bolshevism, socialism appeared more as an aspiration or a utopia than as a tangible, immediate alternative to capitalism one that the working masses could champion and practically realize through their ongoing struggle. The Russian working class believed in the possibility of liberation from exploitation, oppression, and deprivation as presented in the slogans, resolutions, and manifestos of the Bolshevik Party, and it was precisely on this basis that it rallied behind its Bolshevik vanguard. However, Bolshevism neither made the practical preparation for establishing a society that would concretely realize these aspirations a part of the labour movement’s agenda, nor did it possess the capacity to do so. Preparing workers for the founding of such a society did not constitute the foundation of Bolshevism’s political line and policies. Riding the wave of the Russian working masses’ beliefs, illusions, and hostility toward capital while overthrowing Tsarism and racing toward the establishment of state capitalism represented the maximum extent of what could be achieved through the policies, strategies, and course of action of Bolshevism.
In the years preceding the 1905 Revolution, the left-wing faction within Russian Social Democracy called upon the Russian worker to carry out a democratic revolution. This call urged the Russian labour movement to unite with the peasantry, condemn the liberal bourgeoisie’s compromise with Tsarism, assume leadership of the revolution, abolish feudalism, and pave the way for the development of European-style capitalism (1) all while preparing itself for the eventual “socialist revolution”!! Throughout the period from 1902 to 1917, the presence of Bolshevism within the Russian working class was defined by the advancement of precisely these slogans and solutions. All paths led to a democratic revolution one intended to benefit the bourgeoisie as a whole (2) and remove obstacles to capital accumulation (3) but one led by the proletariat!! Through this process, the workers were to secure their freedom, bread, and the eight-hour workday!! In these times, the bourgeoisie is being denounced simply because it seeks to appease the Tsar and strike a deal for a half-baked constitutional regime! Securing leadership of the movement is deemed the proletariat’s duty so that the democratic revolution does not fail! The working class is urged to form a political party or, in reality, to lend illusory support to the Bolshevik party on the grounds that its existence is a prerequisite for the democratic revolution’s victory! Throughout these years, within Bolshevik literature, socialism is portrayed as an ideal and an expectation for a future era of history, yet the entirety of this socialism amounts to nothing more than state capitalism. The Russian labour movement is told it must replace Tsarism with a power structure composed of workers and the downtrodden a state apparatus standing over the working masses, tasked with developing a European style of capitalism, albeit under the banner of the workers. There is no mention of workers’ councils, of organizing the broad proletarian masses through councils to struggle against capitalism, to prepare for a socialist society that abolishes wage labour, or to take control of planning labour and production. Nowhere are workers told that they should make the dismantling of the wage-labour relationship the buying and selling of labour power the objective of their immediate movement. Wresting factories and production centres from the hands of capitalists and placing them under the management of workers’ councils is not even a topic of discussion. The seizure of centres for the exchange and sale of goods, and the exercise of decisive council intervention in the distribution of products among the population, never cross the lips of the Bolsheviks. Challenging the foundations of capitalism and opening up the prospect of a communist way of life and civilization within the workers’ revolution find no place in Bolshevik strategies not even in their propaganda and outreach activities. Finally, translating a living, practical, and communist critique of the existing society into working-class consciousness and transforming that consciousness into a material weapon for the struggle of the working masses is not a concern for the Bolsheviks.
In its campaign to mobilize Russian workers for the democratic revolution, Bolshevism completely lost sight in both real and practical terms of the task of organizing the working masses’ fundamental struggle against wage labour. At that time, Russian society was witnessing the emergence of a ten-million-strong labour movement. During 1905, nearly three million workers participated in mass strikes against their wretched working and living conditions and their lack of political and social rights. (4) Moreover, during this same period amidst the 1905 revolution the Russian labour movement had demonstrated a profound and steadfast inclination toward organization based on councils. The working class was certainly far from achieving the readiness required to abolish wage labour; nevertheless, the proletariat’s socialist solution comprising the organization of workers into councils to combat the very foundations of capitalism, the preparation for a socialist society based on such councils, the planning of labour and production with the aim of abolishing wage labour, the mobilization of workers to exert decisive influence over the distribution of the fruits of their social labour, the rallying of peasants to abolish feudal and all other forms of private land ownership and to establish collective farms and work centres aligned with the socialist orientation, and the advocacy for the elimination of any state apparatus standing above the workers and the downtrodden had to be clearly and comprehensively articulated and propagated within the labour movement and among the peasantry of Russia. Bolshevism adopted no such approach, nor did it pursue such policies. Instead, the overthrow of the Tsar, the Party’s rise to power, the paving of the way for a European-style development of capitalism, and similar undertakings were regarded as the be-all and end-all; and ironically the mere execution of these very tasks was interpreted as fulfilling the prerequisites for opening the communist battlefront against capitalism!
It might be argued that Bolshevism sought the overthrow of the Tsarist regime and the realization of democracy as a means to transition to socialism fair enough but the issue at hand is not about downplaying the overthrow of Tsarism or the attainment of political freedoms. Rather, the discussion centres on formulating a concrete socialist solution and pursuing all economic and political demands as well as social freedoms and rights as unified components of an all-encompassing struggle against capitalism. Bolshevism presented a radically different path to the Russian working class. The democratic revolution was viewed as a phase of the struggle that simultaneously served the interests of both the proletariat and the bourgeoisie! (5) The proletariat was called upon to spearhead this revolution in order to prevent the liberal bourgeoisie from compromising with the Tsar and to ensure the revolution’s victory. Bolshevism held that the working class had to take this course to pave the way for the capitalist development of society! to transform Russia from a backward Asian country into an advanced European society! and, finally, once all these successes were achieved, the time would come for the proletariat to prepare for socialism! The fact that all paths converged on the democratic revolution a consequence of the Bolsheviks’ own social-democratic perspective regarding the prerequisites for the socialist transformation of capitalist society entailed a host of other issues. The working class’s economic struggle which, through radical Marx s’ and socialist strategies, could have adopted a successful and sound anti-capitalist orientation was largely neglected (6); meanwhile, the pursuit of democracy and opposition to Tsarism framed as supra-class objectives swallowed up the entire energy, horizon, and expectations of the working masses’ class struggle.
The critique of trade unionism a hallmark of the Bolsheviks’ orientation failed to pave the way for a socialist battlefront for the working class; instead, it effectively anchored itself within the confines of bourgeois democracy, thereby consigning to oblivion the vital importance of a communist alignment of workers against the bourgeoisie in the economic sphere. While trade unionism was ostensibly criticized, its alternative a powerful, anti-capitalist workers’ council movement (an initiative pioneered by the workers themselves) was completely overlooked. The social-democratic conception of socialism swallowed up all revolutionary policymaking, goal-setting, and strategic initiatives. The organization of workers into anti-capitalist councils was neglected, and the Bolshevik Party usurped this role, positioning itself as a political organization standing above the working class. It was an organization that garnered worker support for its slogans and promises but played no part in advancing the working class’s direct struggle against capitalism or in the council-based organization of that nationwide struggle. It was a party that substituted a comprehensive denunciation of the absolute regime for a dissection of the conditions of labour, life, and proletarian exploitation conditions rooted in the wage-labour system and replaced the mobilization of the working class against wage labour with the struggle to overthrow the Tsar. It was a party in which workers placed their trust, opening up the most powerful fronts of political struggle at its call, yet were left deprived of the council-based vehicle necessary for their own struggle against wage labour.
Between 1902 and 1917, the left-wing tendency within Russian Social Democracy suffered from the fundamental and highly consequential weakness I have just alluded to; under the strain of these afflictions, the Russian proletariat failed to organize a communist movement with a clear vision, to formulate a genuine socialist solution, or to transform that solution into a platform for class struggle against capital. During this period, it drew a line against the Russian liberal bourgeoisie regarding the conduct of the bourgeois-democratic revolution; it diverged from Mensheviks’ on the resolution of the agrarian question; it clashed with the right wing of Social Democracy over organizational criteria concerning the concept of a “communist party”; and, at the outbreak of the imperialist war, it fiercely attacked Social Democracy’s capitulation to the warmongering global bourgeoisie but, for all this, it took no steps to organize its own soviet and socialist movement. Neither individually nor collectively did these fragmented episodes offer the workers even a glimmer of hope for establishing the conditions necessary to exercise independent soviet and class power against capital or to prepare for the socialist revolution. What could have aided the Russian working masses in this direction was the organization of an anti-capitalist movement aimed at abolishing wage labour. Under the pressure of the Social-Democratic conception of socialism, Bolshevism failed to accomplish this task.
The working class moved beyond the February Revolution and, building upon its own spontaneous council movement, transitioned to the October Revolution. It sought to establish a society free from wage labour but lacked the necessary preparedness for such an undertaking. Even its councils instead of becoming a vehicle for broad participation and unified class struggle to establish a socialist organization of labour and a socialist civilization were transformed into executive instruments of a state standing above the working masses, serving the purpose of capitalist reconstruction. The slogan “All power to the soviets” one of Lenin’s most radical theses remained in practice merely a political tactic to dissolve the bourgeois-dominated Constituent Assembly and secure the seizure of political power by the Party. While the October Revolution did temporarily shatter the capitalist state machine, it failed to genuinely transfer political power to Russia’s workers’ councils. There is no doubt that the proletariat could not, overnight, build its own socialist, council-based form of labour organization upon the ruins of war, hunger, and famine amidst the dire straits of a society still held captive by the vicious onslaughts of two imperialist blocs and targeted by the unbridled rapacity of the global bourgeoisie. But if the revolution was to succeed, the working class had no other path available to it however arduous and convoluted that path might be. The formation of a regular army; the replacement of workers’ control with one-man management (7); the gradual dismantling of workers’ councils; the transfer of production and economy-wide planning to the Supreme Council of the National Economy (Vesenkha); the implementation of the NEP; the glorification of wage labour and the adoption of the Taylor system; and the delegation of societal administration to the Party’s Politburo none of these represented the embodiment of the working class’s council-based political power. Rather, they signalled the establishment of a state apparatus standing over the workers and marked a revolutionary shift toward the institution of state capitalism. In the implementation of these policies and the orchestration of these transformations, what was distorted and sacrificed was the international working class’s communist solution for ending wage slavery. At the most critical juncture in history, Bolshevism not only failed to play any role in advancing the revolution’s socialist objectives but also cloaked its all-out effort to establish state capitalism in the guise of communism. Contrary to some prevailing analyses, this action by Bolshevism was by no means reducible merely to the party leaders’ theoretical ambiguities regarding the abolition of wage labour. This failure was not a sudden or novel phenomenon for Bolshevism; nor was the Russian labour movement encountering the Bolshevik Party’s misleading tendencies for the first time at that specific stage of its existence. Those who hold such a view understand the relationship between a class’s theory and social solution and its class movement in a metaphysical manner. From the very beginning, and throughout the period leading up to that moment, Bolshevism under the sway of erroneous Social-Democratic conceptions and beliefs remained entirely oblivious to the task of organizing the Russian working class’s anti-capitalist movement and steering it toward the goal of abolishing wage labour. It failed to draw workers into the arena of direct struggle against the very foundations of wage slavery and did not organize their movement along socialist and council-based lines. In the general Bolshevik view even in its most radical iteration socialism was equated with a form of state capitalism; such an approach could certainly not steer the ship of the working masses’ anti-capitalist revolution toward the shores of victory.
Those who had not made the dismantling of the capitalist mode of production ending the status of their own labour products as capital and constructing a society free of the state and wage labour the core objective of their movement; those masses who had not made the establishment of such a society the central axis of the conflict between themselves and capitalism, nor organized themselves based on the imperatives of advancing such a struggle were inevitably ill-equipped to establish a council-based organization for labour planning and socialist civilization. The pact between Bolshevism and the Russian proletariat held that exploitation, class divisions, and inequalities would vanish during the socialist phase of the workers’ revolution. But *how* this would occur remained a matter for the future an unsolved mystery reserved for a later time. With the October Revolution, the Russian working class looking directly to Bolshevism awaited a miracle; yet Bolshevism, having spent two decades defining its leadership role within the labour movement merely by calling for supra-class insurrectionism, militant pro-capitalist reforms, and limited democracy, now appeared as a force incapable of performing miracles. The capitalist restructuring of society through centralized state planning imposed by a government standing over the workers yet acting in the name of a “workers’ and socialist state” was the only prescription Bolshevism offered the working class.
Under these conditions, state ownership of capital was labelled “socialism” (8), and the centralized power of the Party’s Politburo was termed the “dictatorship of the proletariat” (9). “One-man management” in factories and centralized economic planning by the *Vesenkha* were interpreted as the process of the economy’s socialist transformation; meanwhile, the NEP originally the bourgeoisie’s dream for capitalist development was recast as the proletariat’s springboard for accelerating the transition to socialism (10). The revolution had failed, and its leadership even its most radical and uncompromising figure was compelled to reveal to the world its true perspective on capitalism, socialism, the workers’ revolution, and all issues concerning class struggle and the ideal of human emancipation. In the history of the global labour movement, two monumental events towers above all others two events that delivered the most profound shocks to the history of human existence. Class-conscious workers across the globe are intimately familiar with the names of these two brilliant historical milestones. Everyone is familiar with the Paris Commune and the October Revolution. Both of these revolutions ended in defeat. In the case of the Paris Commune, the workers realized they had been defeated; yet, in the case of October, the working class remained unable to grasp this reality for a long time. The defeat of the Commune served as a lesson for the subsequent offensives of the labour movement, while simultaneously marking the beginning of a series of successive defeats. To break free from the grip of this chain of defeats, the global working class must make a communist critique of the errors and weaknesses of the Russian labour movement spanning the years 1902 to 1917 and beyond a guiding light for its own ongoing class struggle.
Footnotes
1-Lenin, *Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution*: “Marxists are convinced that the Russian revolution is a bourgeois revolution. What does this mean? It means that the democratic reforms in the political system and the social and economic reforms that have become essential for Russia do not, in themselves, bring about the collapse of capitalism and the end of bourgeois rule; on the contrary, they actually pave the way for the first time for the broad and rapid development of capitalism along European, rather than Asian, lines, and for the first time make possible the rule of the bourgeoisie as a class.”
2- Lenin, same article: “The bourgeois revolution is of the utmost benefit to the proletariat. The bourgeois revolution is absolutely essential for the proletariat. The more complete, decisive, and consistent the bourgeois revolution, the more assured the proletariat’s struggle for socialism will be. This conclusion may seem novel, strange, or paradoxical only to those ignorant of the ABCs of scientific socialism; furthermore, this conclusion implies that the bourgeois revolution is objectively more beneficial to the proletariat than to the bourgeoisie…”
3- Lenin, ibid.,
4- *History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union*, Tudeh Party translation,
5- Lenin, source no. 2,
6- Lenin, *What Is to Be Done? *
7- Lenin, *The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government*: “Regarding the significance of individual dictatorial power from the specific perspective of the present moment, it must be said that large-scale machine industry which is precisely the source and material productive foundation of socialism demands an absolute and strictly enforced unity of will, directing the joint labour of hundreds of thousands and tens of thousands of people.” This necessity is evident from technical, economic, and historical standpoints alike, and all those who have reflected on socialism have invariably recognized it as a prerequisite for socialism. Yet, how can the most resolute unity of will be ensured? Through the subordination of the wills of a thousand to the will of one.”
8- Lenin, “The Ninth Congress of the Russian Communist Party”: “In what does class rule manifest itself now? The rule of the proletariat manifests itself now in the fact that the property of landowners and capitalists has been abolished. The substance and content of all previous constitutions even the most republican and democratic among them boiled down, in essence, to property. Our constitution is justified and has earned its right to historical existence precisely because it is not merely written on paper; within it, property has been abolished. The victorious proletariat abolished property and completely eradicated it. That is what constitutes class rule. This rule manifests itself, above all, in the question of property. Once the question of property was practically resolved, class rule was thereby secured.”
9- Lenin, “Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder”: “The dictatorship is exercised by the proletariat organized in the Soviets.” “The proletariat itself is led by the Bolshevik Communist Party… The Party, whose congress convenes annually, is led by a Central Committee composed of 19 members. Furthermore, day-to-day operations in Moscow are conducted by even smaller bodies namely, the so-called Organizational Bureau and the Politburo each consisting of five Central Committee members elected at the Committee’s plenary session; the conclusion to be drawn is that a thoroughly calculated oligarchy exists. No state institution in our Republic resolves any significant political or organizational issue without the guidance of the Central Committee.”
10- Lenin, “On the Tax in Kind”