The history of Bolshevism

[page 35]

Part nine in a series of articles by Alan Woods, Editor of the MIR, on the history of 1905: The October Strike to the December Insurrection The St Petersburg Sovlet leadership before their trial in earty 1906. Trotsky, the President of the Soviet Is In the second row, second left. Bolshevism.

In the Autumn of 1905, the revolution acquired an unprecedented sweep. At the head of the movement stood the weapon of struggle - the general strike. "In its extent and acuteness," as Lenin later recalled, "the strike struggle had no parallel anywhere in the world. The economic strike developed into political strike, and the latter into insur- Beginning with a small dispute at the Sytin printworks in Moscow, the printers' strike spread to 50 printshops within a few days and then rapidly became general throughout the city. Just when the movement in Moscow appeared to be dying down, on October 2 the St Petersburg printers came out in solidarity. At the same time, the railway workers struck, and elected delegates. By mid-October, three quarters of a million railwaymen were on strike. The strikes now became general, involving Moscow, Kharkov, Revel, Smolensk, Lodz, Minsk, Petersburg, Vilna, Odes- Kazan, Titlis and all the major centres. The working class, by making its power felt, drew behind it big sections of the middle class. The intelligentsia joined in the strike. 'In many places juries refused to sit, lawyers to plead, doctors to attend patients. Justices of the peace closed down their The strike was accompanied by mass meetings where the workers thrashed out tactics and discussed strategy and politics. Increasingly, soldiers began to participate in these meetings, expressworkers were beginning to organise militias for self-defence, to combat pogroms and keep order. In some places, the workers fighting squads went onto the offensive. There were clashes with cossacks in Yehaterinoslav and barricades in Odessa.

The role of the strike in general is to make the working class aware of itself as a living social force. The general strike is the highest expression of this. Lenin was fond of quoting the words of a German song: "All the wheels stand still if your mighty arms so will!" By participating in the strike movement, especially where this achieves an active participation, workers acquire a feeling of their own strength through unity. The strike is a levelling phenomenon, serving to bind together the most advanced, politically conscious workers with the broadest layers of the class, who are aroused in action from the inertia of 'normal' times.

Thus, in 1905, the September- October strike movement was sparked off not by the most experienced and advanced sections of the class, but by the more backward layers, such as the printers and bakers. In the course of struggle - prepared for by the experience of all the previous decades the masses rise above themselves, cas- 35

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MIR Autumn 1988: Bolshevism Part Nine

ting off the psychology of servile and passive obedience and begin to understand that what hitherto appeared impossible is now within their grasp. The slave begins to think and act like a free man, with a mind and a personality of his own, capable of displaying initiative and creativity, taking decisions, thinking, planning and acting as a conscious force.

Against this, the reformist trade union leaders reflect the past - that immense dead-weight of routine, habit and tradition which, in the words of Marx, "weighs like an Alp" on the consciousness of the masses. This is why every strike is successful only to the degree that it is organised from below by the workers themselves. Yet to talk about a 'spontaneous' movement is misleading. A strike can be 'spontaneous' only in the sense that it is not led from the tops, that the workers themselves take control of it. But every strike is always led by the most conscious, the most daring and courageous elements thrown up by the working class. These are the 'natural leaders' of the proletariat, who will invariably begin to draw revolutionary conclusions from their experience.

Soviets

In Russia, under the prevailing conditions, there was no opportunity for the creation of a mass reformist labour movement with a privileged labour aristocracy and an ossified bureaucracy at its head. The attempt to establish tame,

'Zubatov'

government controlled unions came to nothing. After the ninth of January, many of these unions became swiftly transformed by the masses into genuine organs of struggle.

The rapid development of the forces of Marxism in Russia, and the ease with which they placed themselves at the head of the mass workers' movement in 1905, can only be understood in the context of a politically virgin proletariat with no long history of reformist trade unions and parties. Very swiftly, the Russian Marxists were able to win over the best class fighters in the factories who in turn enabled them to play a dominant role in the mass movement.

In the absence of well-established mass trade unions, the striking workers moved to elect delegates who began to come together in improvised strike committees, which were generalised to include all sections of the class. The creation of these 'Soviets' in 1905 is a marvellous example of the creative genius of ordinary working people, once they enter the arena of struggle. Nowhere does the idea of Soviets

feature in the writings of the great Marxist thinkers prior to 1905. They were not foreseen in the pages of The Communist Manifesto, but were the invention of the Russian working class. The most authoritative and influential of these was the Petersburg Soviet which held its first meeting on the 13 October, with not more than 40 delegates present. The chairman of this meeting was the Menshevik, Zborovsky. Very soon, the Soviet embraced practically the whole of the Petersburg proletariat. Here was an extremely broad, democratic and flexible organ of struggle. One delegate was elected for every 500 workers. Small workshops combined to send a delegate. The trade unions were also permitted representation, as were the workers' parties. The petit-bourgeois democrats were represented by the Social Revolutionary Party. The anarchists were too insignificant to be represented in the Soviet

or system, were hey he v

executive. The same was true through-

of Byelostok, where they had the majority.

From distant exile, Lenin greeted the formation of the Soviets which, in a brilliant anticipation, he characterised as embryonic organs of workers' power. "I may be wrong," he wrote, "but I believe (on the strength of the incomplete and only 'paper' information at my disposal) that politically the Soviet of Workers' Deputies should be regarded as the embryo of a provisional revolutionary government. I think the Soviet should proclaim itself the provisional revolutionary government of the whole of Russia as early as possible, or should set up a provisional revolutionary government (which would amount to the same thing, only in another form)." 3. This, in essence, was what actually occurred in October 1917.

The October strike gave a mighty impetus to the revolutionary movement in the villages. In the last three months

of 1905, 1,590 cases of peasant distur-

bances were reported. There was a col-

ossal ferment among all the oppressed

nationalities. Finland, the Baltic region

and large areas of the Caucasuses

became virtual no-go areas, especially

after the anouncement of reforms in the

tsar's October Manifesto. The 'liberal'

prime minister, Witte, wrote in worried

terms to the tsar about the situation in

Finland: "During the second half of last

October events took place in Finland

which have no precedent in almost a

hundred years since the province has

been under Russian rule. A political

general strike was organised. A well-

armed and organised 'national guard'

(militia, AW) made its appearance,

which in many areas took over the role

of the lawful police, ordering it to lay

down its arms. Certain governors have been forced, under threats by the representatives of the local political parties, to resign their posts." 4. Similarly, the governor-general of Warsaw, Martynov, wrote that "the fantastic mood of Polish society and the hostility towards Russians have acquired hitherto unprecedented dimensions." 5. The Ukraine was also in a state of turbulance with mass protest meetings in Kiev and Odessa in October.

Splits were beginning to open up in the ranks of the autocracy. While Witte pleaded with the tsar to grant reform from above to head off revolution from below, General Trepov, the virtual dictator of Petersburg, issued the famous command to his troops: "Spare no cartridges!"

Thus, in embryo, all the factors were present for the passing of power into the hands of the working class. The weakness of the regime, faced with an explosion of popular anger, is revealed in the panicky tone of Witte's letters to the tsar, and the continual complaints about the lack of troops. Finally, even the thick-headed Nicolas was compelled to come to terms with reality and grudgingly concede the need to hold elections to a State Duma (parlia-

ment).

Tsar retreats

The tsar's Manifesto of the 17 October was hailed by Lenin as "the first victory of the revolution" . It was greeted by scenes of wild rejoicing on the streets. Crowds of excited people gathered in the city centres to discuss the situation. On the 18th, 19th and 20th of October, with no pre-ordained plan, the workers marched to the gaols with red flags to demand the release of political prisoners. In Moscow, the goals were forcibly opened up and the prisoners carried shoulder-high through the streets.

Despite the mood of euphoria, Lenin hammered home the idea that The Manifesto was only a tactical retreat and warned against constitutional illusions and playing at parliamentarianism: "There is talk of liberty, of popular representation: some hold forth on a constituent assembly. But what is being constantly, hourly and minutely lost sight of is that, without serious guarentees, all these fine things are but hollow phrases. A serious guarentee can be provided only by a victorious rising of the people, only by the complete domination of the armed proletariat and the peasantry over all representatives of tsarist power who, under pressure by the people, have

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'Death Stalks the barricades' by Borls Kustodiev, depicts the entry of the Senoyonosky retreated a pace but are far from having yielded to the people, and far from having been overthrown by the people. Until that aim is achieved there can be no real liberty, no genuine popular representation, or a really constituent assembly with the power to set up a new order in Russia.

"What is a constitution? A sheet of paper with the peoples' rights recorded on it. What is the guarentee of these rights being really recognised? It lies in the strength of those classes of the people that have become aware of these rights and have been able to win them. 6. And with crushing analyses the balance given moment:

longer strong enough to come out against the revolution openly. The revolution is not yet strong enough to deal the enemy a decisive blow. This fluctuation of almost evenly balanced forces inevitably engenders confusion among the authorities, makes for transition from repression to concession, to laws providing for freedom of the press and freedom of assembly." 7. The task of the revolutionaries in this situation was, while clearly understanding that the really decisive battles lay in the tuture, to grasp the opportunity with both hands, and make full use of the newly-won freedoms to build the party rapidly, extend its influence within all spheres of social life, and prepare for the inevitable showdown.

According to one estimate, there were about 8,400 'organised Bolsheviks' in 1905. Probably the Mensheviks had about the same. 8. But in the context of general pre-revolutionary ferment, the party's sphere of influence was far wider. The scope for action was vastly increased after the issuing of the October Manifesto. Martov recalls that: "All in all, throughout this period, on the eve of the October days, the Social Democracy in the ranks of the illegal organisations could assemble several thousands of workers, students, soldiers and peasants; but the sphere of its immediate organisational took in hundreds of thousands of people in town and countryside.

An absolutely key question for the linking up of the small number of organised Marxists to the broad mass of workers in struggle was the attitude towards the Petersburg Soviet. As we have Lenin, despite being seen, separated from the field of action by thousands of miles, was able immediately to grasp the significance of this striking new phenomenon. For their part, the Mensheviks, with their innate opportunism, found no difficulty in adapting to the prevalent mood among the workers. Their more flexible attitude permitted them to take inreglment to crush the December rising. itiatives in setting up Soviets, where they immediately won a head-start over the more cautious Bolsheviks. The Petersburg Mensheviks were far to the left of the Menshevik leadership in exile. In any case, under the impact of the revolution, even some of the Menshevik leaders began to move to the left, at least in words. Thus Fyodr Dan wrote to Kautsky in November 1905: "We live here as though in a state of intoxication. The revolutionary air affects people like wine." 10. In the course of the revolution, the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in capital had drawn closer together. By the Autumn they had already established a joint committee. But the Bolshevik central committee members in Petersburg were uneasy at the thought of a 'non-party' mass organisation existing side by side with the party. Instead of seeing the Soviet as an important field of action, they regarded it with hostility, On 27 October, the Bolshevik CC published a resolution which was made binding upon all Bolsheviks throughout Russia, recommending that the Soviets accept the party programme. and schematic position This sectarian completely ignored the need to establish a firm link between the advanced workers who stood on the ideas of Marxism and the mass of the politically untutored workers. It was tantamount to demanding that the working class as a whole should enter into the Marxist party, a completely unrealistic conception which, if pressed, could only lead to the isolation of the minority of advanced workers from the rest of the The crass formalism of this line of argument was conveyed in a number of articles in the Bolshevik paper, Novaya Zhizn', notably one which appeared in Number Six, over the signature of P Mendeleyev, where we read the following: "The Soviet of Workers' Deputies must not exist as a political organisation and the social democrats must withdraw from it, since its existence acts negatively upon the development of the social democratic movement. The Soviet of delegates can remain as a trade union organisation, or it cannot remain at all." 11. The same author goes on to propose that the Bolsheviks should present the Soviet with an ultimatum: either accept the programme of the RSDLP or else disband! The Bolshevik leaders justified their hostility to the the grounds represented "the subordination of consclousness to spontaneity"

went so far as to move a resolution on these lines in the Soviet. When it was turned down, the Bolshevik delegates, led by CC members Bogdanov and Knuyants, walked out. The other delegates merely shrugged their shoulders and proceeded to the next point on the From afar, Lenin followed the activities of his followers with dismay. His article, Our tasks and the Soviet of Workers' Deputies, 13. quoted above, was written in Stockholm in early November, when Lenin was on route to Russia, but not published until 1940. In it Lenin attempted, gently but firmly, to correct the mistakes of the Petersburg Bolsheviks. In the fifth issue of Novaya Zhizn', an article signed by a BM Knuyants ('Radin') posed the alternative: 'Soviet or Party'. Lenin replied: "I think that it is wrong to put the question in this way and that the decision must certainly be: both the Soviet of Workers' Deputies and the Party. The only question - and a highly

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MIR Autumn 1988: Bolshevism Part Nine

important one - is how to divide, and how to combine, the tasks of the Soviet and those of the RSDLP." And he adds, "I think it would be inadvisible for the Soviet to adhere wholly to any one party." 14.

Lenin goes on to explain the elementary fact that the trade unions and the Soviets should strive to embrace all sections of the working class, irrespective of nationality, race, creed or political affiliation. Only the fascist Black Hundreds should be excluded, and that within these organisations of the mases, the Marxists should fight to win a majority for their ideas, programme and tactics. "We do not shut ourselves off from the revolutionary people," wrote Lenin, but "submit to their judgement every step and every decision we take. We rely fully and solely on the free initiative of the working masses themselves." 15. This is Lenin speaking. A very long way from the malicious caricature of a 'Blanquist conspirator, manipulating the masses from behind the scenes!

Throughout 1905, Lenin was impatient at the slowness with which the committeemen inside Russia had turned to the masses and made use of the enormous opportunities that opened up. After the October Manifesto, the conditions for Party work radically changed. Freedom of assembly and the press had been won, as well as the right to organise in unions. Everywhere there was a ferment of ideas and discussion. On all sides, the workers and the youth were seeking a vehicle with which to express their instinctive aspirations to change society.

The workers actually organised in the party could be numbered in tens of thousands. But there was a vast periphery of hundreds of thousands crying out for socialist ideas. The old illegal press was hopelessly inadequate in this situation. Thus the Bolsheviks launched the legal Novaya Zhizn' with the assistance of Gorky and other writers and intellectuals. Gorky's wife acted as publisher. The editor was a poet, Minsky, and among the contributors were wellknown writers and poets, including Leonid Andreyev, Lunacharsky, Bazarov, and Gorky himself. In his first article in Novaya Zhizn' written shortly after his return to Russia in early November, Lenin yet again laid heavy stress on the need to open up the party. In answer to the committeemen who opposed this on the grounds that it would lead to a dilution of the party, Lenin wrote:

"Danger may be said to lie in a sudden influx of large numbers of non- Social Democrats into the Party. If that occurred the Party would be dissolved among the masses, it would cease to be 38

the conscious vanguard of its class, its role would be reduced to that of a tail. That would mean a very deplorable period indeed. And this danger could undoubtedly become a very serious one if we showed any inclination towards demagogy, if we lacked party principles (programme, tactical rules, organisational experience) entirely, or if these principles were feeble and shaky. But the fact is that no such 'ifs' exist. We Bolsheviks have never shown any inclination towards demagogy... we have demanded class-consciousness from those joining the Party, we have insisted on the tremendous importance of continuity in the Party's development, we have preached discipline and demanded that every Party member be trained in one or another of the Party organisations." 16. But having given due weight to the need to build on strong foundations, Lenin goes on to stress the other side of the equation in terms designed to put the narrow-minded 'committeemen' in their place:

"The working class is instinctively, spontaneously Social Democratic, and more than ten years of work put in by Social Democracy has done a great deal to transform this spontaneity into consciousness. Don't invent bogeymen, comrades! Don't forget that in every live and growing party there will always be elements of instability, vacillation, wavering. But these elements can be influenced and they will submit to the influence of the steadfast and solid core of Social Democrats..." 17. (My emphasis, AW).

Time and again in this period Lenin hammers home the need to open up the party, to recruit rapidly the new layers of workers and youth who are entering the struggle, to learn to speak the same language as the workers, to link up the activity of the small group of cadres with the activity of the newly-awakened masses. That same Lenin who argued in favour of restricting the membership in 1903, now wrote the following: "At the Third Congress of the Party I suggested

"We do not shut ourselves off from the revolutionary people,"

wrote Lenin, but "submit to their judgement every step and every decision we take. We rely fully and solely on the initiative of the working masses themselves."

that there be about eight workers to every two intellectuals in the Party committees. How obsolete that suggestion seems today! Now we must wish for new Party organisations to have one Social Democratic intellectual to several hundred Social Democratic workers." 18. And Lenin goes on to argue in favour of the immediate reunification of the two wings of the RSDLP: "It is no secret to anyone that the vast majority of Social Democratic workers are exceedingly dissatisfied with the split in the Party and are demanding unity. It is no secret to anyone that the split has caused a certain cooling-off among Social Democratic workers (or workers ready to become Social Democrats) towards the Social Democratic Party...

"Hence it is now possible not only to urge unity, not only to obtain promises to unite, but actually to unite - by a simple majority of organised workers in both factions.

The general upswing of the movement inevitably gave rise to a powerful desire for unity among the mass of the workers. As we have seen, the Menshevik workers inside Russia had moved sharply to the left under the impact of the revolution, while sections of the Menshevik leaders were pushed in the direction of centrism - that is, a tendency standing half-way between lett reformism and revolutionary Marxism. Precisely this was what convinced Trotsky that it was possible to re-unite the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, a mistake which he later rectified in 1917, when Lenin wrote: "As for conciliation (with the Mensheviks, AW), I cannot speak about that seriously. Trotsky long ago said that unification is impossible. Trotsky understood this, and from that time on there has been no better Bolshevik." 20. But in the Autumn of 1905, not only Trotsky but Lenin too, was in favour of unification of the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.

This process was given a powerful fillip by the events which followed the issuing of the October Manifesto. As Lenin had foreseen, what the autocracy gave with the left hand, it now prepared to take back with the right. Immediately the government organised and financed the fascist Black Hundred gangs to attack and murder Jews, socialists and "intellectuals' . In one month following October 17 anything up to 4,000 people were murdered, and a further 10,000 injured in bloody pogroms.

Where possible, the workers organisations came together and attempted to combat the racist gangs. In his memoirs, Pyatnitsky describes the horrific pogrom against the Jews in Odessa, and the formation of a united front of Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, Bundists,

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Chronology of the main events: 1905

JANUARY 4-7: Strike at the glant Putilov engineering works against the sacking of four members of Father Gapon's union. The strike spreads throughout St Petersburg, involving 140,000 workers.

JANUARY 9: March to the Winter Palace led by Gapon. Over 1,000 are shot dead and thousands wounded. While the movement ebbs in St Petersburg after 'Bloody Sunday', a wave of strikes spreads involving over one million workers across 122 towns. The ferment develops Into the countryside from the summer with strikes and widespread land, grain and cattle seizures.

APRIL 12: The Third Congress of the RSDLP convenes in London, boycotted by the Mensheviks.

MAY: General strike In the textile town of Ivanovo-Voznesensk, lasting 72 days. Town under the control of a Meeting of Representative Delegates', a soviet in all but name.

JUNE TO AUGUST: Following the defeat of a Russian fleet by the Japanese at Tsushima, sailors of the Black Sea fleet mutiny on the battleship Potemkin. The Potemkin sails into Odessa appealing for support from the workers. Eventually the

Dashnaks (Armenian nationalists) and supporters of Paol-Zion (a group set up in 1905 which attempted to combine Zionism with Marxism, a section of which joined the Bolshevik Party after the October revolution). Armed detachments were sent to try to defend the Jews, and initially succeeded in driving off the lumpen mobs, before coming up against the army and police whose superior forces compelled them to retreat, with some loss of life.

After October, the trend towards re-unification became irresistible. All over the country, branches of both factions passed resolutions demanding unity. Pyatnitsky describes how when the Odessa Social Democrats received the proposal for re-unification from the CC it was "met with a warm response from among the party members, the Mensheviks as well as the Bolsheviks. That was easy to understand: that our few available forces were weak and scattered had become evident to every Party member during the pogrom... It was obvious to the committee that the proposal of union would be passed by a great majority at the Party meetings of both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, for wherever the advocates of immediate unity spoke they were supported almost unanimously." 21. In Moscow and Petersburg the local committees had been working closely together even before October and had established a

movement in Odessa is put down but 10 days later peace is concluded with Japan.

SEPTEMBER: Printers strike in Moscow for a shorter working day and higher piece rates. Over 50 print works are out by September 24. On October 2 printers in St Petersburg come out in solidarity.

OCTOBER 7: Railway workers Join the movement. By mid-October, 750,000 were on strike. Very rapidly the strikes become general and spread to all major centres, drawing behind them big sectlons of the middle class. Schools and unlversities close.

OCTOBER 13:

burg Council, Deputles.

FIrst or

meeting Sovlet,

of the Peters.

of Workers'

OCTOBER 17: Tsar Nicolas 'October Manifesto', grudgingly elections to a state duma.

Issues his conceding

OCTOBER 26: The Alexandrovsky Works in St Petersburg begln a strike for the 8 hour day.

OCTOBER 27: Bolsheviks launch a paper, Novaya Zhizn'.

kind of federal structure.

The October Manifesto radically altered the social and political balance of forces in Russia. As Lenin had foreseen, the bourgeoisie, which had all along been striving to get a deal with tsarism at the expense of the workers and peasants, now treacherously deserted the revolutionary camp. The big capitalists and landowners united in a reactionary bloc - the so-called Union of 17 October, the 'Octoberists' which threw all its weight behind tsarist reaction. At the same time the "liberal' section of the bourgeoisie founded the

Decisive show-down

Constitutional Democrat Party, the 'Kadets' ', which came out in favour of a 'constitutianal monarchy', in effect acting as a left flank for the autocracy, covering up the bloody reality of tsarist rule with pseudo-democratic constitutional phrase-mongering. Lenin was particularly scathing in his attacks on this so-called 'progressive' wing of the bourgeoisie, sparing no opportunity to denounce them for their cowardice and treachery.

The going over of the liberals effectively cleared the ground for decisive action. It was now a question of

OCTOBER 31: St Petersburg Sovlet calls general strike around the struggle for the hour day.

NOVEMBER 4: Lenin returns to Russia from exile.

NOVEMBER 12: St Petersburg Soviet calls off the strike to ensure an organised retum to work.

NOVEMBER 26: Khrustalyov-Nosar, man of the St Petersburg Sovlet, rested.

chairis ar-

DECEMBER 2: Mutiny of the Rostov regtment in Moscow.

DECEMBER 3: The St Petersburg Sovlet is arrested, including Trotsky, now its chair. man.

DECEMBER 4-10: Moscow Soviet votes for a general strike and an armed Insurrectlon. Within two days 150,000 workers are on strike, militlamen begin to disarm police and soldlers, and barricades appear on the streets.

DECEMBER 16: Moscow votes to end strike. 1,059 in 9 days of fighting.

'either..or'. Behind the facade of a proferred constitution, the autocracy was prepared for a bloody settling of accounts. Such reforms as had been achieved had been conquered not by the liberal wheeler-dealers, but exclusively by the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat. Far from drawing in its horns after the October Manifesto, Lenin urged the working class to summon up all its forces for a decisive show-down.

The struggle to build the Party and to extend its influence over the broadest possible layers of the class now assumed the character of a race against the clock. In a series of internal conferences held in the Autumn, Lenin insisted on the opening up of the Party, and the introduction of the elective principle from top to bottom, in order to change the composition of the committees, with an influx of fresh new workers and youth. Pressure had to be applied on the 'committeemen' through the free airing of fresh views and criticisms from below and, where necessary, by the replacement of some of the older and conservative elements by new people who were capable of reflecting the real mood of the class.

The party's structures were radically altered to take account of the new conditions. Many factory branches were set up to underline the new turn. The newly-founded factory branches held

39

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MIR Autumn 1988: Bolshevism Part Nine

open meetings. The Lessner factory branch recorded an attendance of 70 workers at one such meeting. Further, a number of areas established workers' clubs, either on a district or factory basis. The Mensheviks originated this work. Their club at the Baltic Works in Petersburg had a membership of 120. Following their example, the mainly Bolshevik Vyborg district set up a club with 300 members. Normal membership for clubs of this type seems to have been around 200-300, at least in Moscow and Petersburg. A further development was the holding of city-wide aggregates, where the entire membership could get together and discuss the work. The district committees in big industrial areas were split into smaller units covering sub-districts. In some areas, the city committee even drew up their own rules in line with the special conditions prevailing in their areas. This was the case, for example, in Petersburg and Ivanovo-Voznesensk.

From all this we can see how extremely flexible Lenin's conception of organisation always was. At certain moments in its history, the Bolshevik Party laid heavy stress on centralism, for example, during the long periods when it was forced to work in underground conditions. But in periods when they were permitted to work in 'normal' legal conditions, the Bolsheviks, as we see here, favoured the most open and democratic forms of organisation.

As we have seen, the advent of legal conditions created vast scope for the party press. Ten days after the tsar's Manifesto was published, the first issue of Novaya Zhizn' came out. On Gorky's advice, the Bolsheviks entered into contact with liberal publishers who helped launch the venture. Gorky also played an indispensible role in obtainfrom well-to do writers and intellec-

tuals: Under these conditions, many

writers and poets, who would hitherto

never have dreamed of participating in revolutionary politics, became actively involved with the Bolsheviks through the party press. Well-known writers like

K Balmont and Leonid Andreyev, and

of course Gorky himself, contributed

articles and money.

The paper was published legally in

the name of Gorky's wife Maria

Fedorovna Andreyeva. The editor was

a poet, Minsky. This, however, was a

front for the real editorial board with

Krassin and Gorky in charge until Lenin

himself assumed control after his return

in November. Novaya Zhizn' became

the de facto official mouthpiece of

Bolshevism up to its closure in early

December. Its circulation was between

50,000 and 80,000, a major achievement

for a party which only a month or so

earlier had been underground. But this figure, important though it is, was dwarfed by the achievement of Trotsky who, together with Parvus, took over the former liberal paper Ruskaya Gazeta and transformed it into a popular and militant workers' paper with a low price (one kopek). Its circulation shot up from 30,000 to 100,000, reaching a staggering 500,000 by December. Likewise Nachalo, which was theoretically the organ of the Mensheviks replacing the defunct Iskra, but in practice was controlled by Trotsky, had a much bigger circulation than Novaya Zhizn'. 22.

Alongside the legal mass work, the Bolsheviks also stepped up the material preparations for armed insurrection. By the end of October the ferment in the villages had reached new levels, with 37% of European Russia affected, especially the central 'black earth' zone, Latvia, Estonia, Georgia and the Ukraine. The wave of peasant discontent in turn spread to the armed forces. There was a series of mutinies in the army and navy, which underlined the importance of work among the soldiers and sailors.

Trotsky

An outstanding organiser and technical worker, Krassin was put in charge of this secret and highly sensitive work. He was also responsible for the organisation of fighting groups. The local committees themselves established specialised units to obtain arms and set up these groups. This work was stepped up in the Autumn with the creation of underground bomb factories and arms dumps. Once again, Gorky played a key role in raising money for this work, which was partly funded by what was known as 'expropriations' , or raids on banks conducted by armed groups under Bolshevik control.

Such activities, however, had nothing in common with the latterday tactic of 'urban guerillaism'. This was no secret conspiracy carried out by small groups of terrorists behind the backs of the workers, but a conscious revolutionary strategy linked to the masses. The fighting sqmads were closely linked to the Soviets. Legal workers' clubs set up rifle ranges where workers learned to handle arms under the noses of the police. The bloody wave of pogroms posed the need for workers' selfdefence in a very concrete fashion. For their part, the Bolsheviks pressed for the formation of a united front involving the unity in action of all workers organisations and also petit-bourgeois democratic and nationalist groups - an agreement of all those forces who were

prepared to fight of the revolution Hundreds.

The first chairman of the Petersburg Soviet, GS Khrustalyov-Nosar was, like Father Gapon, an accidental figure, who played no independent role. In reality, the leading role in the Soviet was played by the 26-year old Trotsky. who subsequently became chairman after Khrustalyov's arrest in November. Trotsky wrote most of the proclamations and manifestos of the Soviet and gained enormous popularity with the workers.

then one of Lenin o unacolaborators, recalls that Trots-

ky "held himself apart not only from us but from the Mensheviks too. His work was largely carried out in the Soviet of Workers' Deputies and together with Parvus he organised some sort of separate group which published a very militant and very well-edited small and cheap newspaper (Nachalo, AW).

"I remember someone saying in Lenin's presence: 'Khrustalev's star is waning and now the strong man in the

Soviet is Trotsky! Lenin's face darken-

ed for a moment, then he said: 'Well,

Trotsky has earned it by his brilliant and unflagging work.' " 23.

The full significance of Lenin's reac-

tion can only be guaged if we realise

that precisely on this decisive question

- the attitude to the Soviet - the

Petersburg Bolsheviks made a fun-

damental error, which lost them the

opportunity of winning the majority of

active workers in the capital. The mis-

takes of the Petersburg Bolsheviks al-

lowed the Mensheviks to gain a majori-

ty in the Soviet. They had, indeed,

taken the initiative in setting the Soviet

up, but had no idea where this step

would take them.

Since the break with the Mensheviks

one year earlier, Trotsky had attempted

to maintain an independent position

between the Bolshevik and Menshevik

factions. This earned him a number of

justified rebukes from Lenin whose

attacks on 'Trotskyism' were closely

related to the need to hold in check the

strong 'conciliationist' tendency among

his own followers. But despite the sharp

differences over the question of unity -

differences which, in any case, became

increasingly irrelevant in the course of

the year - there can be no doubt that

on all political questions, there was a

very great affinity between Lenin and

Trotsky.

That Trotsky's general political

stance in 1905 stood very close to the

Bolsheviks is well attested to on both

sides. When the first issue of Trotsky's

Nachalo appeared, it was warmly wel-

comed by the Bolshevik Novaya Zhizn'

which wrote: "The first number of

in defence of the gains and against the Black

[page 41]

Nachalo has come out. We welcome a comrade in the struggle. The first issue is notable for the brilliant description of the October strike written by Comrade Trotsky." 24. While, technically, Nachalo was supposed to the organ of the Mensheviks, who had now wound up Iskra and put their resources into Nachalo, the later was firmly under the control of Trotsky and Parvus, whose line of the permanent revolution was in direct contradiction to the Menshevik policy of alliances with the bourgeois liberals. Thus, the Menshevik leader Dan wrote a grumbling letter to Kautsky: "In St Petersburg they founded a newspaper, Nachalo, which succeeded Iskra, and throughout November and December 1905 it carried the most radical pronouncements, hardly distinguishable from those in the Bolshevik paper, Novaya Zhizn'." 25. (My emphasis, AW). Martoy's biographer. Israel Getzler, makes the same point: "Thus Martov found himself in a minority on Nachalo which had become a propogator of Trotskyism rather than of Menshevism." 26. (My emphasis AW).

Moscow

About the theory of permanent revolution and the differences between Lenin and Trotsky in 1905 wë shall speak elsewhere. Suffice it to note that on all the fundamental questions of the revolution in 1905 there was virtually complete agreement between the two men. Despite the sharpness of the polemical struggle in the previous period, Lenin had a high opinion of Trotsky's achievements which contrasted favourably with the mistaken policies adopted by the Bolshevik committeemen inside Russia prior to Lenin's return. Thus Krupskaya. in the second Russian edition of her memoirs, in a passage which. along with much else, has been deleted from all subsequent editions. quotes from a letter written by Lenin in September, which has also not seen the light of day: "In the September letter written to 'Augustus' Ilyich wrote: To wait until you get complete agreement with the CC or among the agents is sheer Utopia. We don't want a coterie but a Party, dear friend!' In the same letter. replying to an indignant complaint that our people had been printing Trotsky's leaflets, Ilyich wrote: '...They are printing Trotsky's leaflets... dear me... there's nothing wrong with that provided the leaflets are tolerable and have been corrected!' " 27.

Throughout the Autumn, the stormcentre of the movement was in Petersburg. But by the end of November, the

workers of the capital were well-nigh

exhausted. After the issuing of the

October Manifesto, the liberal emp-

loyers, who had previously appeared

sympathetic to the revolutionary move-

ment, and even paid the wages of

striking workers, finally came out in

their true colours. The November strike

in Petersburg had involved even bigger

numbers of workers than in October.

But this was really the last desperate

effort of a working class gravely

weakened by months of struggle. Sens-

ing that the movement was beginning to

run out of steam, the employers

threatened a lockout, while the police and troops moved to break up workers'

meetings by force. Fearing that the

movement would disintegrate into a series of guerilla disputes which could

be crushed one by one, the St Peters-

burg Soviet decided to beat a tactical retreat and, on November 12, after a tense debate, called off the strike, in order to withdraw in a united and organised fashion, so as to preserve the forces of the working class, and prevent a demoralising defeat.

The defection of the bourgeois liberals tipped the balance in favour of the reactionary camp. General Trepov was now in the ascendancy. Fearing 'anarchy , the Liberals clung to his coat-tails. By November 26, the regime felt strong enough to arrest Khrustalyov on the premises of the Soviet Executive. The Soviet responded with the famous 'Financial Manifesto', written by Parvus, calling for the non-payment of taxes and withdrawal of bank deposits to hasten the financial crisis of the regime.

Even at this point, fresh new layers were entering the struggle every day: janitors, doormen, cooks, domestic servants, floor-polishers, waiters, laundresses, public bath attendants, pol icemen, cossacks - even the odd detective! Society had been stirred up to the depths. But the increasing radicalisation of the formerly politically inert mass disguised the fact that the 'heavy battalions' of labour were now almost exhausted. The December strike in Petersburg was far less unanimous than in November, involving at most twothirds of the workers of the capital. This fact indicated that the high-point of the movement in Petersburg had been reached, and the revolutionary tide was beginning to ebb.

The initiative now passed to the workers of Moscow. A mutiny in the Rostov regiment on December 2 gave rise to hope that the garrison might come over. But the local Bolsheviks hesitated and, seeing that the movement did not spread, the troops quickly lost heart. In a couple of days the mutiny was crushed. This defeat caused

a bad mood considerably them going workers.

Meanwhile, the mood in the factories of Moscow reached fever pitch. The workers were impatient for action. On December 4, the Moscow Soviet passed a motion congratulating the soldiers or their uprising and expressing the tore that they would come over to the side: the people. But by the time the iri ass dry, the soldiers revolt had beer ces:ed.

Lenin had repeatedly express: anxiety about a premature up-see He recognised that the party's forces were still weak, the fighting squads to: -prepared, to take on the full might cine state. Above all, the massive resemes :: the peasantry had only begun to e?:: the field of battle. More than once -e expressed the hope that the final show. down between the workers and the re=ime should be put off till the Spring B:: Lenin understood very well that the revolution cannot be directed like an orchestra under a conductor's baton Krupskaya vividly conveys Lenin's attitude: "In answer to a question about the timing of the uprising he said: I would put the uprising off till the Spring, but we shan't be asked anyway'." 28.

among reduced over to

the the the

soldiers and prospect of side of the

Insurrection

A year later, in November 1906, a member of the Bolshevik CC, speaking at a conference of fighting organisations of the RSDLP, complained that some comrades "have too mechanical a conception of the circumstances which gave rise to the December uprising in Moscow and are painting too simplified a picture of the role of the CC in the calling of this uprising. The CC - so it appears - just pressed a button and the insurrection burst forth. If the CC hadn't done this, the uprising would not have taken place!" 29. In reality, the Moscow uprising did not take place according to a definite plan. The workers were pressing for action. There was a mood of expectation in the factories, and everyone sensed the approach of the decisive moment. Zemlyachka, one of Lenin's closest associates in the early days, recalls that when local Bolsheviks got up to speak in the Soviet they saw that the issue was no longer in doubt: "it was written on the workers faces." 30. There was a unanimous vote in favour of a political general strike and an armed insurrection.

Although the initiative came from the Bolshevik workers, the Mensheviks and SRs also participated in the uprising,

41

[page 42]

MIR Autumn 1988: Bolshevism Part Nine

which cruelly revealed the unpreparedness of the revolutionaries. There were only 2,000 armed men, backed up by a further 4,000 militiamen, 'druzhniki, without weapons. Of these, 250- 300 | were Bolsheviks, 200-250 Mensheviks and about 150 SRs. The rest were made up of the militias of the students, telegraph employees and other non-party groups. There were not enough arms to go round, but the rebels counted on the support of the population and hoped that a sufficient number of the troops would go over to tip the balance in their favour.

The insurrection started as a result of a spontaneous movement from below. The initial spark appears to have been a government provocation - troops were sent to disperse a couple of workers' meetings. There were demonstrations

clashes betwen soldiers and militiamen. The first barricades were thrown up, and hostilities began in earnest.

Despite their misgivings, the Moscow party did not stand aside, but threw themselves into the battle, with the intention of giving it an organised and disciplined character. The militiamen immediately set about energetically disarming not only policemen but soldiers. On December 10 the masses came out onto the streets to throw up barricades, which appeared with lightening speed. These served to slow down the troops and hinder the movement of cavalry. Despite their overwhelming superiority in numbers and fire-power, the troops frequently found themselves in difficulties. Surrounded by a hostile population, they found themselves assaulted on all sides by an unseen enemy, in the form of small and mobile groups of militia. More than once, the authorities must have held their breath at the sight of a city of one million inhabitants, the great majority composed of 'the enemy', locked in combat with an army of partially demoralised and unreliable troops.

The Moscow workers fought heroically, but the lack of arms, poor coordination and absence of military skill began to tell at last. Once the barricades had been built, the unarmed populace could only play the role of onlookers. Their passive support boosted the morale of the fighting units and enabled them to hold out for longer than anyone had the right to expect. Finally, on December 16, only one district, Presnya, still remained in rebel hands. That

the Soviet executive committee voted to end the strike. As an act of defiance, the Presnya Social Democratic district committee voted to end the strike only on the evening of December 18. The gesture was of no avail. By nightfall of December 17, Presnya fell

42

to the government forces. The Moscow rising was at an end. The death toll according to the Moscow Medical Union was 1,059, of whom 137 were women and 86 children. The big majority were ordinary citizens. Casualties among fighting men on both sides were amazingly few. Only thirty five soldiers were killed, including five officers. Then began the bloody chapter of mass arrests, shootings and deportations.

When news of the Moscow rising reached Petersburg, Lenin called a meeting of CC members and activists plus the representatives of the united Bolshevik and Menshevik military organisation. The Menshevik side included VA Antonov-Ovseyenko, who in 1917 was to lead the assault on the Winter Palace, and twenty years later was murdered by Stalin.

It was clear that only the spread of the movement to other areas could save the uprising. But given the exhausted state of the Petersburg workers, there was no chance of getting them to follow suit. Support was therefore limited to the sending of arms, while Al Rykov was sent with another CC member, MF Vladimirsky, to attempt to co-ordinate operations in Moscow. On December 13 the Bolshevik- Menshevik centre issued a joint declaration entitled 'Support the Moscow Uprising!', appealing to the workers of Russia not to allow the government to put down the insurrection

Defeat

There were, in fact, a whole series of armed uprisings - in Kharkov, Donbas, Yekaterinoslav, Rostov-on-Don, the Northern Caucasuses, and Nizhni Novgorod. The national question lead to violent upheavals in Georgia and the Baltic provinces in particular. Even before the Moscow rising there was a general strike and insurrection in Latvia. In Georgia, too, the December general strike gave rise to an armed uprising in the workers' district of Tiflis (Tblisi), led by the legendary 'Kamo' (Ter-Petrosyan).

These movements notwithstanding, the Mosce rising did not succeed in arousing the proletariat of St Petersburg. The absence of an uprising in the capital meant that the government could concentrate its forces on crushing the workers of Moscow, and then put down the local movements one by one.

Bitterly disappointed at the failure of the Petersburg working class to come to the aid of the rising, some sections of the Social Democrats initially blamed the workers of the capital for the defeat.

Such reactions in a moment of despair, are perhaps understandable. But in later years, an entirely false interpretation of these events was unscrupulously put in circulation by the Stalinists, beginning with Stalin's notorious Short Course which claims that "the St Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies, being the Soviet of the most important industrial and revolutionary centre of Russia, the capital of the tsarist empire, ought to have played a decisive role in the revolution of 1905. However, it did not perform its task (!), owing to its bad, Menshevik leadership: As we know, Lenin had not yet arrived in St Petersburg, he was still abroad. The Mensheviks took advantage of Lenin's absence to make their way into the St Petersburg Soviet (?) and to seize hold (?) of its leadership. It was not surpris ing under these circumstances that the Mensheviks Khrustalev, Trotsky (!. Parvus and others managed to turn the St Petersburg Soviet against the polic of an uprising." 31. This is a particularly crass way of expressing a theme which has since been repeated in a variety of keys. But this ignorant slander was answered in advance by Lenin, who on innumerable occasions expressed his complete solidarity with the general tactical line adopted by the St Petersburg Soviet.

In her memoirs of Lenin, Krupskaya recalls the prevailing mood among the St Petersburg working class at the time: "The Central Committee," she wrote, "called upon the proletariat of St Petersburg to support the uprising of the Moscow workers, but no coordinating action was achieved. A comparatively raw district like the Moskovsky responded to the appeal, but an advanced district like the Nevsky did not. I remember how furious Stanislaw Wolski was-he had been agitating in that very district. He lost heart at once and all but doubted whether the proletariat was as revolutionary as he had thought it to be. He failed to take into account that the St Petersburg workers were worn out by previous strikes, and most important of all they realised how badly organised and poorly armed they were for a decisive struggle with tsarism. And it would be a struggle to the death, they had the example of Moscow to tell them." 32.

Even in a revolutionary situation, different layers of the working class move at different speeds and at different times. To use a military analogy, the Achilles' heel of the 1905 revolution consisted of the fact that the bulk of the reserves were moving into action at a time when the advanced guard was worn out by the struggle, and incapable of continuing the struggle. This explains the apparently contradictory fact that

[page 43]

the more backward working class districts were prepared to come out while the more advanced sections did not respond.

The same observation holds good for the peasantry, without which the revolution in the towns was doomed to failure. Only in the course of 1906 did the movement in the villages assume however, the backbone of the working already been broken, athough this was far from clear at the time. Throughout the year 1906, there was a whole series of strikes and movements of the proletariat, which led Lenin to believe that revolution was still on the agenda. Far from criticising the Petersburg workers for not rushing to arms in December. Lenin gave the following evaluation of the situation: "Civil war is raging. The political strike, as such, is beginning to exhaust itself, and is becoming a thing of the past, an obsolete form of the movement. for instance. the famished and exhausted workers were not able to carry out the December strike. On the other hand, the movement as a whole, though held down for the moment by Turning point the reaction, has undoubtedly risen to a "The heroic proletariat of Moscow has shown that an active struggle is possible, and has drawn inte this strugge a large body of people from strata of the urban population hitherto considered politically indifferent. if not striking expressions of a trend' that has broken through all over Russia. The new form of action was contronted with gigantic problems which.

of course, could not be solved all Lenin's perspective. then. Was that the revolution had far from exhausted itself. The peasant movement was growing and might yet give a fresh impetus to the towns, particularly in the Spring The regime itself was in crisis. faced with the possibility of financial collapse. The inner cohesiveness of the armed forces was still in the balance. From this point of view, it was essential that the workers should husband their strength as far as possible for the decisive all- Russian struggle that lay ahead. And Lenin specifically warned the Petersburg workers against the danger of provocation: "It would be very much to the advantage of the government to suppress the still isolated actions of the proletariat. The government would like to challenge the workers of St Petersburg immediately, to go into battle under circumstances that would be most unfavourable for them. But the workers will not allow themselves to be provoked, and will know how to continue on their path of independent preparation With the wisdom of hindsight, it is possible to see that the period from the October strike to the December uprising marked the high tide of the 1905 revolution. With the defeat of the Moscow proletariat, the movement in the towns, despite the still powerful strike movement in 1906, had effectively been broken. The mighty upsurge of the peasantry came too late. The Party, which was weak and divided at the outset of the revolution, had grown impressively in the space of months, but the task of uniting and leadin bey my the cap milies of a ted endeavours and sacrifice. The incredible thing was not that the Russian Marxists had failed to lead the proletariat to victory in 1905, but the way in which a tiny handful of revolutionaries, with scarcely two decades of work them, had grown from insignificant propaganda circles to a powerwith tens of thousands activists leading hundreds of thousands of workers, in the space of just a few 1905 was a decisive turning-point. For the first time, revolutionary Social Democracy became a decisive force within the working class of the whole of Russia. Within a space of nine months, • Footnotes 1. Lenin, 'Collected Works', volume 31, p27 Trotsky, '1905', plll.

3. Lenin, 'Collected Works', volume 10, p21.

4. Semyenikov i Pankratova, 'Revolyutsiya 1905 goda, (a collection of government cut Coled Works; volume 10, documents) p22.

5. ibid, p224.

p460.

7. ibid, pp394-95.

D. Lane, 'The Roots of Russian See Communi Obsiehestvennoe Drizhenie w 9. Martov, Rossil, volume 3, p575.

10. Quoted in Ascher, 'Paul Axelrod and the Development of Menshevism', p241 11. Quoted by O.Anweiler, 'Los Soviet', p84.

12. ibid, p85.

Lenin, 'Collected Works', volume 10, 13.

pp19-28.

14.

ibid, pl9.

15. ibid, p27.

16. ibid, p31.

17. ibid, p32.

the movement underwen: a complete transformation. The conseousness of the workers advanced is leaps and bounds on the basis of great events. which shook the foundations of all the old beliefs, habits and traditions. compelling the working class to come to terms with the realities Di Is 04T existence. By a process of successive approximations. the working people political option another, from worker-priests and humble petitions, passing through economic strikes for better wages and conditions. constitutional reforms and imperial demonstrations and gromers street demonstrations defence squads, to the highest expression of the class struggle-the political strike and armed insurrec- At each stage, the breaking free of the masses from their old illusions was marked by the rise and fall of political trends and accidental figures of all Khrustalyov-Nosars for a brief instant loomed large upon the stage of history before vanishing forever leaving trace behind them. But the genuine revolutionary tendency represented by Bolshevism, despite all mistakes and inevitable ups and downs; advanced resolutely to its natural place at the head of the revolutionary proletariat. The theoretical, political and organisational weapons which enabled the Bolshevik Party to lead the workers to victory in October 1917 were forged in the white heat of the revolution of 1905, and tempered in the long dark night of reaction which followed 18. ibid, p30 (footnote).

19. ibid, pp37-38.

20. Trotsky, 'The Stalin School of Falsification', pl10.

21.

Pyatnitsky, 'Zapiski Bol'shevika', p87.

22. See Trotsky, 'My Life', pp177-78 23. Lunacharsky, 'Revolutionary Silhouettes, рбo.

24.

Quoted in Trotsky, 'My Life', p182.

25. See Ascher, op cit, pp241-42. 'Martov', pl10.

20. 1. Getzler, 27. Krupskaya, 'Memories of Lenin', 1930, pl44 28. ibid, pl32, 1960 edition 29. Quoted in 'Istoriya KPSS', volume 2, pl36.

30. ibid, p137 31. Stalin (and others?), 'History of the CPSU (B)', p128.

32. Krupskaya, op cit, p142, 1960 edition.

33. Lenin, 'Collected Works', volume 10, Pp93-94 34. ibid, p94.

43

[page 44]

Book Reviews

Nye Beva

and the mirage of socialism.

By Joh

Campber

Published Weidenfeld son, £15.95,

by and Nicol-

1987.

This book sets out to use the life of Aneurin Bevan as an indication that socialism in Britain is a mirage. Nevertheless it can still be useful in reminding us of the major battles in the labour movement that we can leam from. But even if we credit the author with attempting to be objective and factual, then we must emphasise his ignorance about the struggles to democratise the party by the left- wing rank and file.

Campbell recognises that Neil Kinnock's claim to the mantle of Nye Bevan, personally and politically, is "largely spurious". . As he remarks of Kinnock: "his overriding concer, quite candidly, is to be elected and he is well aware that in the present climate socialism is a liability. More explicitly even than Gaitskell and Wilson in 1959 or 1964, he is out to recapture the middle ground now occupied by the SDP/ Liberal Alliance" and "he is willing to stamp as hard as necessary on the left to keep socialism off the party's banner.

But Campbell also seeks to argue that today's left in the Labour Party bears no relation to "Bevan's understanding of socialism... By now the sentimental old Bevanites of the Tribune have been outflanked by the hard men of a new left, disingenously lead by the born again Tony Benn, intent not only on putting socialism back on the agenda for the first time since 1945, but imposing it on the party and the country by organised 'entrism' and an

44

intolerant form of democratic centralism"

This is the sort of stuff that is sucked up by the Goulds and Hattersleys to be spat out at the left in conferences and in TV interviews. It also betrays the author's SDP membership (not mentioned in the book). But of course it is a travesty to suggest that Bevan' 's struggles do not bear immediate similarities with the fight of the left today, particularly that of the Liverpool 47 disqualified councillors.

Bevan became a leader of the fight against the iniquities of the Poor Law system in the Welsh valleys and unequivocally supported the movement against cuts in poor relief that central government imposed on elected Board of Guardians in the early 1920s, including an incident when a "large crowd... beseiged the Board of Guardians for eighteen hours in the Tredegar workhouse in January 1923"

What would Neil Kinnock and Roy Hattersley have said about this "illegal' action? Central

government suspended Boards that refused to make cuts and sent in Civil Commissioners to slash rates of benefit. Campbell recounts that "Bevan was naturally in favour of central goverment taking over responsibility for protecting the helpless victims of the country's economic difficulties... but Chamberlain (then prime minister) replaced locally elected people with faceless rule by unelected officials ac-

countable to no one but

himself." The similarity with

present day Tory policies are

striking.

So is the response of the Labour leaders, then and now. In the 1926 general

strike, Bevan argued, the

TUC "had forged a revolu-

tionary weapon without having a revolutionary intention"

and, when elected for the first

time as an MP in the 1929

election which brought

Labour into office, Bevan

went to the Commons 'in a

mood of expectancy, but, I

must confess, also with mis-

Nye Beyon

AND THE MIRAGE DE

BALT

John campbell

givings. I had little confidence in MacDonald, Snowden and Thomas. They had as little appreciation of the issues involved on the political field as had the trade union leaders on the industrial." Bevan could justifiably claim that he himself did. He had been chairman of the Tredegar council of action in the 1926 general strike at the age of 28 and not a lorry moved without his permission. This is a different tradition than that of Neil Kinnock with his attacks on the miners pickets and his belated and brief appearance one misty morning over Christmas 1984 during the year long strike.

Tribune

If this book does nothing else it demonstrates how the right-wing of the labour movement organised to block the socialist aspirations of the party ranks. Bevan reflected to a degree those aspirations, partly through his earlier activities but above all through his central role in establishing the NHS.

Campbell recounts how Bevan opposed attempts by the right-wing to introduce charges in the NHS, saying he would resign from the Cabinet. Gaitskell, as the new chancellor of the day, insisted on imposing them even though they could have been avoided if cuts in defence spending had been made as Bevan suggested. In fact,

after Labour had lost the October 1951 election, largely as a result of Gaitskell's policies, it was revealed that defence had been underspent and there was plenty of slack to avoid NHS charges.

Although Bevan was the recognised leader of the left and of the constituencies, he failed to coordinate or organise this support when it came to challenging for the leadership of the party which, at this time, was elected only by the Parliamentary Labour Party. The right wing had the media while Bevan relied just on the Tribune Group of MPs, the nearest thing to an organised base. He knew the arguments as to why he should stand against the right wing although he often felt cowed by them and tended to counter their methods of horsedealing and

unenthusiasmanoeuvres tically with similar efforts, as opposed to mobilising a mass vote against the right.

After the 1950 and 1951 election set backs, Bevan rejected the view of the rightwing that people had voted Tory because they were 'content'. Bevan retorted: "If that were true, the answer would be another period of socialist education, not a muting of the socialist challenge... But is it the case that the socialist pulse beats more feebly than it did among the mass of Labour members?.. I have

[page 45]

been convinced for a long time that the great bulk of the membership of the trade unions as well as in the divisional parties is ready for a new forward thrust. The truth is that this thrust has failed to find expression in the upper reaches of the party."'

When the right talked of unity and no dissension, Bevan replied: "Unity must be achieved on the basis of policies which will inspire the party to fight, not by slurring over the issues which divide us. The Labour Party must have as its aim the establishment of a socialist society. Otherwise it will have no significance in the future life of the nation. It is in that faith that I have fought and will continue to fight so long as I have the strength to do so. Again after his defeat for the leadership in 1956, in words that seem particularly appropriate for Neil Kinnock and the new realists today. he warned: "This movement did not start yesterday. It is a very old one in its thinking. We do not need to go into conference to find out why we are here at all. You would have thought some of these people had only just arrived in the socialist movement. You would have thought that the history of the socialist movement began when they'

Worse The

A Fate rse Th

Debt.

Susan Georg

Published by Penguin, £4-50, 1988.

The Third World' debt crisis is arguably capitalism's most crushing indictment.

Rapacious

international bankers ever hungry for higher profits; with the often tacit approval of their governments, have poured loan after loan into the countries of the ex-colonial world quite aware that they can never be repaid. For them debt only

came into i. The history of the socialist movement looks as though it is beginning to end when they came into :

Do we bum the books? Dor:

we need to bother it i!:.

liam Morris. or Karl Mart. cr Keir Hardie?*

'Bevanism'

Compare some his condemnations of capitalism with the wimperings of the present leadership on the 1987 stock market crash and the Tory budget. In November 1937 the President of the Board of Trade called for 'confidence' and Bevan replied in the Tribune: "The position of the government is, therefore, that it is not the coming depression which causes fear of it, but the fear of it that causes the depression. The assumption apparently is that the more ignorant one is of the future the better it is likely to be. 'Economics', said Mr Stanley, 'is fifty per cent psychology'... What we need, apparently, is not statesmen but hypnotists, not scientists but witchdoctors, not confidence born of scientific prediction of the future, but confidence created by a political confidence trick. To the end of his life Bevan's writings and

becomes dangerous when it cannot be serviced; the longer the debt remains unpaid the longer they receive payment, in the form of interest, for the use of their money. For every 1% rise in interest rates there is a further $2bn-$6bn due in debt service - it is a tidy profit. From 1982. the year regarded as the point when debt went from being a problem to a crisis. until 1985, profits recorded by the US's top banks rose from 38% to 84°o. The value of their shares rose respectively from between 83% and 154%.

The risks involved in such ventures were offset by the power of the Federal government and the resources of the US Treasury who have gone

speeches reflected a Marxist indictment of capitalism, although during and after the war he did not consistently ac: io: or support workers in smugge Beranism maintaineirs imporarce ior so iong. as *as me reares promi- -er: expressio: oi that read e: Mantam running through me mar working class party, ever winer. Bevan himseli strayed tom these ideas. Militant's ability :o cap that thread and irve :* ther is responsible ior e success reluctantly recognised by the author. when he says "Tribune was to be Bevan's platform, later his mouthpiece and loyal supporter, for the rest of his life-apart from one traumatic breach towards the end. Until it was outflanked by Militant in the 1970s, it remained unchallenged as the organ of the Labour left."

Campbell comments of this militant socialist tradition of Bevan that 'in the moment of his death was born a conspiracy to strip his legacy of its uncomfortable content of fundamentalist socialism, a process gratefully continued by those in the Labour Party who call themselves his heir-

I did not think when I heard Bevan's speech at the emergency Labour Party conference in 1959-after a

to extraordinary lengths to preserve the solvency of US banking. But the generosity has not extended beyond the barracudas in the banking pool; the flip side of the coin reveals a rash of small banking failures and regional bank bankruptcies across the length and breadth of the USA.

The real consequences of the debt crisis are shouldered day and night by the men, women and children of the filthy, infested shanty towns and villages that are the feature and result of so-called 'development. For workers and peasants in the grip of the IMF austerity programmes crushing poverty is sometimes relieved only by death.

third Tory election victory -that the same battles against the right would still have to be fought. Bevan said at that conference: "We are going back to the House of Commons and we are going to fight the Tories. But we are not only going to fight them there. we are going to fight them in the constituencies and inside the trade unions. And we are going to get the youth! Let them start. Do not let them wait for the Executive for God's sake! Start getting your youth clubs, go in and start now! Go back home and start them and we will give all the help and encouragement we can.

Youth

Michael Foot in his biography of Bevan called this speech 'the last of his four greatest'. Campbell does not quote it anywhere but flowing from it came the formation of the Labour Party Young Socialists. A stark contrast in attitude and action to that of the present leadership who have used every manoeuvre and device to take control out of the hands of Labour's youth.

Dickinson

A Fate Worse Than Debt is a useful and highly informative introduction. Susan George outlines the background to the crisis and the role of organisations like the IMF and the World Bank.

She reveals the sometimes horrifying statistics that chart the consequences of debt and austerity in the borrowing countries.

One of the main reasons fo! the artificial length of the present 'boom' has been the super exploitation of the excolonial world by the advanced capitalist countries.

Worsening terms of trade led to a net inflow of capital to the developed capitalist world of $65bn in 1985. Debt ballooned to over $1 trillion or $1,000bn. Another feature

45

[page 46]

MIR Autumn 1988: Book Reviews

of the debt crisis has been the outright robbery and mismanagement of loans by corrupt governments. At least 15% of the Philippines debt of $26bn was appropriated by the Marcos family. Some may have been used on Imeldas' staggering collections of shoes and knickers. But even more went on projects like the Morong nuclear power plant which was commissioned from Westinghouse for $2.1bn in 1976. The debt servicing on this project was costing $500,000 a day by 1987. Although the reactor is ready to function, fortunately it does not: it was built in the middle of the Pacific 'fire rim' earthquake zone at the foot of a volcano!

Failure to comply with the IMF's 'adjustment' programmes to pay for debt means the loss of credit worthiness. Threat of default on payments is met by a counter threat of seizure of a nation's assets on land, sea or air. As one US Treasury official coldly put it: "Have you ever

Out of the

Dut of

Night

By Jan Valtin

Published rtress Books,

1988.

by £9.95,

Jan Valtin's Out of the Nigh is a gripping autobiographical account of the period from the Russian revolution to the rise of fascism. As a child, a sailor and a Communist, Valtin takes us through the revolutionary struggles in Germany from 1918 to 1923, to the four corners of the earth and through the horrors of German fascism including torture by the Gestapo. His experiences exemplify both the heroism and the tragedy of his generation of revolutionaries.

When first published in 1941 Out of the Night was a best seller, going on to sell a million copies in the US and to be translated into five

46

contemplated what would happen to the health of a country if the goverment could not get insulin for its diabetics?"

One study recently quantified the relationship between debt and mortality: for every additional $10 a year in per capita interest payments there was 0.39 a year less in life expectancy improvement for the people involved. In the 73 countries studied in the 1970s each person had forgone 387 days of life ie lost a year of life. In Peru infant mortality is estimated at 80 per 1,000 births. In the worst of the shanty towns half of new born babies die before they are one year old. This slaughter is the incalculable cost of world debt. And what is the reaction of those who preside over this? Oscar Trelles, ex- President of the Peruvian Senate commented in 1981:

"It is healthier to eat less; thin women are more attractive than fat ones, and • just because Jewish children had

other languages. From outset it was surrounded controversy, in the especially.

Its exposure of the cynical tactics and brutal methods of the Stalinists touched a particularly raw nerve. At the time even CP apologists who had gone along with the show trials of 1936-38 baulked at the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939 and the occupation of easter Poland and the Baltic states. The support picked up by the CP among so-called progressive intellectuals during the Popular Front'

period had been deeply undermined; this book served to further that process.

The Stalinist press, particularly the American litexary journai The New Masses, launched a concerted campaign to denigrate the work as 'a hoax' with 'incredulities on every page'. The new edition appends with a postscript analysing the controversy and providing a detailed rebuttal of the Stalinists allegations.

The present process of 'Glasnost' in the Soviet Union with the rehabilitation

the by US

hunger in the Nazi concentration camps, it did not make them more stupid"

Driven by despair, depriva tion and hunger children are forced to beg and steal. Many sell themselves into prostitution. What they face is not life but an unending, death defying and heroic struggle to stay alive.

At the end of her book, Susan George considers what to do. "The debt crisis is a symptom - one among many - of an increasingly polarised world, organised for the benefit of a minority that will stop at nothing to maintain and strengthen its control and privilege". . Absolutley correct! Unfortunately, however, the author's own solution, what she calls the Third Solution' - debt, development and democracy - relies on this minority effectively giving up its control and privilege voluntarily for the good of the poor!

It amounts to this - the developing country would pay its interest payments into

of several 'Old Bolsheviks' and an acknowledgement of some of the crimes of Stalin lends a topicality to this republication. Today the substance of the book is unassailable. It shows particularly clearly that the crimes of Stalinism were not limited to the borders of the USSR but spread into the international working class movement.

This influence was not restricted to underhand tricks or individual acts of violence but extended to the broader political sphere. 'Eurocommunist historian Eric Hobsbawm has admitted that he has avoided writing recent history as he would have been unable, as a party member, to face it honestly. A new generation of socialists will be led to question the role of such "professors' and their parties by reading this book.

It must be said that, for a full, rounded-out analysis of the questions raised by the book, it will be necessary to look elsewhere. The strength of the work's style lies partly in its bold directness. There is

'National Development Fund', democratically controlled by a 'broad-based development fund management'. This fund would finance various projects for the community. For every payment into this Fund the donor banks and IMF would correspondingly write off their debt repayments! How can Susan George believe in this remedy when she quotes earlier the views of a Citicorp banker that "our strategy is not one of making loans but of making money"? Her dilemma is that, while advocating a solution within the confines of the present economic order, she marvellously exposes its constraints. Nevertheless her book puts a devastating case for change in terms of wasted resources and the potential that could be used if the world economy was planned and democratically controlled by and for the working class.

By

Joe

no attempt at a theoretical explanation of the events of the period. This feature of the book no doubt explains why capitalist publishers were happy to promote it as a best seller in the 1940s.

But by comparing this unblinking insiders view of the Comintern with the contemporary Marxist criticism to be found in the works of Leon Trotsky, Out of the Night can serve the very different function of providing a more concrete and vivid understanding of a period with important lessons for today. A clear introduction to the period covered by Valtin's book is provided in Ted Grant's pamphlet, The Rise and Fall of the Communist International. The roots of Valtin's tragedy lie in his inability to find an alternative to the Stalinist perversion of Marxism: his

weakness.

theoretical Modern Marxists should emulate his heroism, but cannot afford to repeat his tragedy.

By Paul Kershaw

[page 47]

We Sha Not Starve in Silence

A history of the ational Unemployer Norkers Movement

1920-46.

By Richard Croucher.

Published by Lawrence & Wishart,

£12.50, 1987.

From the mid-1920s to the

outbreak of war in 1939, the

unemployed workers move-

ment was led by sincere and

dedicated

Communist

workers, men and women.

But such gains as the Na-

tional Unemployed Workers

Movement (NUWM) made

were despite the zig-zag opportunism of the Communist Party. Even today, although the unemployed are still treated as second-class citizens and are relegated to the poverty trap, they still benefit from the fight put up by the NUWM.

While it would be an exaggeration to say that the NUWM brought about the welfare state (or what is left of it today, Richard Croucher is right when he says: "the NUWM laid the foundations for a new system of social benefits traditionally credited to the Beveridge Report."

Beveridge himself was disappointed in the way his ideas were implemented, as well he might have been; nevertheless the provision of social security all became less humilating than in the 1930s and the period of the infamous means test, the worst features being the 'on the parish' relief from the Board of Guardians. It is hard to conceive this would have happened without the work of the NUWM.

Many academic studies of the period including those on the left either completely ignore the role of the NUWM or greatly exaggerate it. But as Engels was fond of saying, facts are stuhhom thinas. All

the contemporary newspaper

reports show that in 1935 the NUWM did rouse whole communities to march against the new scales of benefit proposed by the National government. The NUWM organised mass demonstrations. In South

Wales these took on a

genuinely mass character

because of unity with the

miners union - bringing

300,000 onto the streets.

This momentarily forced the

government into retreat.

Croucher describes what fol-

lowed these upheavals:

"Oliver Stanley, the Minister

of Labour, announced next

day that Board benefit scales

were to be suspended and

claimants would be entitled

to UAB or PAC scales

whichever were the higher. In effect this meant that there

was to be no cut in benefit and the means test conditions were to be ignored. Wally Hannington, the 1 NUWM leader, then sent out a circular on 4 January 1935 under with the heading 'Smashing

victory for

NUWM."'

But the weakness of Croucher's analysis is that it does not adequately explain why from a peak of support in 1935, the NUWM declined into a hard core of Communist and militant workers capable only of organising publicity stunts such as laying down in snow-covered Oxford Street, or chaining themselves to town hall railings or gate crashing the Ritz hotel. Many of the lads performing these exercises were ex-members of the International Brigade in Spain.

And that was one reason for the decline - the loss of these cadres in the struggle in Spain as well as the recovery in the economy after 1935 with the expansion of the arms industry preceding the war. But this does not fully explain the withering away of the NUWM when on the eve of the war there were still one and a half million unemployed. Indeed, immediately after the outbreak of war, I personally led a demonstration of around 1,000 unemployed laid off from the old Morris works in Oxford

FROS

UND PRO

HUR

Cowley - so there was still a cause for the NUM to fight for.

Instead we must look to the policies of the NUWM leadership to explain its decline. And to give Croucher his due, he does describe in some detail the often sharp differences between Hannington in the NUWM and the Communist Party central committee which sought to direct his work. The Comintern attempted to interfere in the work of the NUWM.

They almost split the NUWM when they insisted on loose and vague 'unemployed councils' as an alternative to the union-like structure of the NUWM which at one time had 50,000 people paying dues. Hannington and the recently deceased Harry MicShane, the NUWM secretary in Scotland, tried to compromise with the Comintern 'directive' by proposing unemployed councils alongside the NUWM.

Anyway the Cominter's idea never caught on. But from then on the CP regarded Hannington with some suspicion and he was dropped from the central committee.

Croucher shows

CP's line had completely altered by 1938. The NUWM had become an embarrassment under the popular front policy of the Comintern which meant alliance and cooperation with the capitalist state. But he does not analyse the theoretical and social causes of this change in the CP line, which clearly lay with the false theories of Stalin and the leadership of the Cominter who now looked to support from the capitalist democracies to preserve their position, rather than mass action from the working-class.

This explains the decision o the CP to close down the NUWM on the eve of the war, despite many active NUWM branches and resistance from its membership. This attitude has been maintained by CP members on the TUC General Council when they opposed moves to form a successor to the NUWM in the early 1980s. It is an attitude that must and will be reversed when unemployment rises to new heights in the next world slump.

By Dudley Edwards

Since writing this revlew, Dudley Edwards has died at his home in Brighton. Dudley was personally active in the National Unemployed Workers Movement, forming branches of the NUWM In London, Brighton and Oxford. During his activity in the NUWM he joined the Communist Party, staying as a member for over 40 years, before breaking with Stalinism. He became active In the Labour Party for the next 26 years. On the day of his death he was to open a meeting room at the Brighton Unemployed Workers Centre, which was to be named after him. He will be sorely missed.

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FORTRESS BOOKS PO BOX 141 LONDON E2 ORL 01 985 7394 Just Out...

JAN VALTIN Out of the Also available from Fortress:

Liverpool-A City That Dared To Fight by Peter Taaffe and Tony Mulhearn £6.95 plus 90p postage softback, £14.95 plus £1.20 postage hardback. Send orders to Fortress Books, PO Box 141, London E2 ORL Cheques payable to Fortress Books. Long out of print, this classic autobiography sold nearly a million copies in five languages in the 1940s. Set in the turmoil of Europe between the wars, it follows the travels and struggles of the author, a revolutionary sailor. The description of the 1000 days he spent in the torture chambers of the Gestapo chills the spine. It was one of the earliest first-hand accounts of this horror to £7.95 plus £2.00 postage Peter Toaffe and Tony Mulhear