02.08.2000

Land and Bolshevism - part three

Different attitudes towards the agrarian programme - which saw the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks furiously exchanging polemics at their 1906 'Unity' Congress in Stockholm - reflected and grew from deep-seated strategic disputes over the social composition, limits and prospects of the anti-tsarist revolution.

Both factions described the long awaited revolution as 'bourgeois democratic' - a conventional Second International formulation which correctly categorised Russia as essentially pre-capitalist. More than that. The country was therefore ready to move up to the next rung on the preset ladder of social progress and should expect a definite phase of capitalist economic development before moving on to socialism. However, for any of that to occur tsarism must necessarily first be overthrown and the survivals of serfdom uprooted. Here Bolsheviks and Mensheviks basically agreed.

Unlike the Socialist Revolutionaries - the biggest peasant party - neither faction considered that Russia stood on the threshold of socialism. Socialism does not equate to a crude rejection of capitalism. From Mikhail Bakunin's 1870 Lyon fiasco, to Stalin's 1928-32 first five-year plan collectivisation of agriculture, to Pol Pot's 1975-79 Kampuchean communism, to the battle for Seattle in November-December 1999, anti-capitalism in itself and by itself is purely negative.

Nor is socialism the egalitarian sharing out of one country's poverty by a benign elite of new boyars. Nowhere, as Marx explained, for example in 1850, can the socialist revolution be consummated "within the national walls" (K Marx, F Engels CW Vol 10, Moscow 1978, p56). Socialism, as the first stage of communism, must start from the wide horizons provided by capitalism at its most advanced, and is by definition a positive, international and proletarian, not merely a national anti-capitalist, task.

1. Bourgeois revolution and the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie

According to the Menshevik version of the evolutionary schema the immediate question confronting Russia was supporting, or even pushing, the bourgeoisie into power. Tsarism was viewed as an antiquated and semi-feudal obstruction on the linear ladder of progress. Before socialism and working class power could arrive on the historical stage the bourgeoisie would have to carry through its preordained tasks.

Once installed at the pinnacle of state power, as is their historical destiny, the bourgeoisie presides over capitalist progress. Inevitably, as an unintended consequence, a massive expansion of the working class and its organisations takes place. In due course a qualitative turning point is reached. The working class constitutes the majority of the population, and is thus ready in its turn for power, this time through a specifically socialist revolution. One distinct historical stage thereby follows the other all the way to socialism/communism.

The Mensheviks were inevitably prone to tailism. According to their programme the overthrow of tsarism had to be followed by the class rule, and a western-style parliamentary government, of the bourgeoisie. Its historically determined job was to develop capitalist production under conditions of bourgeois democracy - the bourgeoisie and democracy were wrongly, but invariably, seen as inseparable. If the forthcoming revolution against tsarism was bourgeois, reasoned the Mensheviks in their factional conference resolution of April-May 1905, then the working class and its party "must not aim at seizing or sharing power in the provisional government, but must remain the party of the extreme revolutionary opposition" (T Dan The origins of Bolshevism New York 1964, pp211-12).

So for mainstream Menshevik thinking the role of the working class was to critically align with, and press the reluctant bourgeois parties forward into their awaiting position as leaders of the revolution. Afterwards the workers' party withdraws to the wings as the "extreme opposition". Taking power, or participating as coalition partners in a revolutionary government, had to be avoided. Why? Because if the working class party seized power it would not be able to satisfy the needs of the masses; immediately establishing socialism was an illusion entertained only by non-Marxists such as the Socialist Revolutionaries. Like Pol Pot their socialism was peasant-based. Moreover if the working class aggressively pursued its own short-term interests or succumbed to the temptation of power it would lead the bourgeoisie to "recoil from the revolution and diminish its sweep" (ibid).

Lenin held to a similar evolutionary schema that informed the Mensheviks. However, as a consummate revolutionary Lenin never let a bad formulation get in the way of making a good revolution. His theory was rich and dialectical and therefore soars above the parched categories insisted upon by the Menshevik faction of the party. Russia might not be ready for socialism - if by that one means leaving behind commodity production, the wages system, the law of value and abstract labour. The existing social and economic material conditions of an infant capitalism emerging from the bowels of Asiatic backwardness explain why Lenin and the Bolsheviks described the coming revolution against tsarism as bourgeois.

Yet the bourgeoisie was both cowardly and counterrevolutionary. The bourgeois parties wanted a compromise deal with tsarism, not its overthrow through a people's revolution. In the absence of a revolutionary bourgeoisie - sans Cromwell, sans Washington, sans Marat - the working class could seize the leadership of the bourgeois democratic revolution. Consciousness, resolution and organisation are vital. But crucially success depends on winning the peasant masses as allies. They outnumbered the workers by a ratio of ten to one.

In contrast to the Mensheviks, Lenin insisted that to make any sort of far-reaching anti-tsarist revolution one had to take power. To fulfil the Party's minimum programme - a democratic republic, arming the people, separation of church and state, full democratic liberty, decisive economic reforms such as an eight-hour day, etc - it was necessary to establish a revolutionary government which embodied the democratic rule of the mass of the population. Lenin summed this up in the following famous algebraic formulation: the democratic dictatorship (ie, in Marxist terms, rule) of the proletariat and peasantry.

Such a regime could not bring full liberation for the working class. Economically Russia would continue to progress as a capitalist country - albeit one under the armed rule of the working class and peasant masses. Indeed the Bolsheviks envisaged a stage of controlled development of capitalist production and economic relations. Without that the working class could not grow in numbers, organisation and consciousness. Lenin argued that this last named subjective factor was in the final analysis bound up with objective conditions.

The Bolsheviks knew that the class balance of a revolutionary government of the proletariat and peasantry could not be determined in advance. The struggle itself decides. Needless to say, the Bolsheviks planned in their minimum programme and fought in practice for working class leadership. In other words a workers' state supported by the peasant majority. 'Bourgeois democratic' was therefore a category which for the Bolsheviks applied primarily to the economy, not the state.

Survival of worker and peasant rule in Russia depends not on the internal balance of forces alone. The fate of the Russian revolution lays in the hands of the world socialist revolution. What St Petersburg and Moscow begins New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Berlin, Milan, Paris, London, Birmingham and Glasgow must complete. Without sparking the external socialist revolution in the west, without a general conflagration, a working class-led regime in Russia was bound to be short-lived.

So the hybrid proletarian-peasant revolutionary regime must act to "rouse" the world revolution. The proletariat of advanced Europe and America would in turn help Russia move to socialism (which requires definite material conditions in terms of the development of the productive forces). Inevitably in Russia there would, with the course of economic progress, be a differentiation between the proletariat and the peasantry. But not necessarily a specifically socialist revolution: ie, the violent overthrow of the state. In short there would not be a democratic or bourgeois stage and then a socialist stage at the level of regime.

Democratic and socialist tasks are distinct and premised on different material, social and political conditions. But particular elements interweave. The revolution could, given the right internal and external conditions, proceed from democratic to socialist tasks through the proletariat fighting not only from below but from above: ie, from a salient of state power. The revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat thereby peacefully grows over into the dictatorship of the proletariat, assuming internal proletarian hegemony and external proletarian aid from a socialist Europe and America. Here is Lenin's theory elaborated in his pamphlet Two tactics of social democracy in the democratic revolution (see VI Lenin CW Vol 9, Moscow 1977, pp15-130).

In short, the Bolsheviks had a programme of permanent or uninterrupted revolution first developed by Marx and Engels for mid-19th century Germany. Revolution, like any living phenomenon, has many stages, or phases, but can proceed from the one to the next without stopping for a definite historical period. There may be momentary interruptions, but no lasting stabilisation. The second stage of the revolution is interpenetrated with the first and emerges from it organically. So the Bolsheviks had a perspective of taking Russia from tsarism to working class rule as part of a continuous, international, process. In contrast, as we have shown, the Menshevik programme was premised on a series of distinct and historically separated stages.

Burdened with such a programme, the Mensheviks were doomed to constantly look over their shoulders at the bourgeoisie with a combination of concern and frustration. As events took on their own momentum they urged caution and pulled things back time and again so as not to lose touch with their laggardly ascribed agent of progress. The Bolsheviks in contrast had every reason to encourage revolutionary boldness and the self-activity of both the workers and peasants.

2. Limits of the agrarian revolution

Unsurprisingly the Bolsheviks accused the Mensheviks of 'softness' and 'pessimism'. Not to be outdone, the Mensheviks replied in kind. Revealingly they accused the Bolsheviks of lacking sobriety and of all things ... suffering from 'optimism'. In strategic terms this was most sharply expressed in disputes over the agrarian programme and the scope of the peasant revolution against landlordism.

Plekhanov, speaking on behalf of the Mensheviks at the 1906 'Unity' Congress, rounded on Lenin for his optimism. He linked the demand for the revolutionary nationalisation of land with the realisation of the democratic worker-peasant republic. The draft agrarian programme of the Bolsheviks, said Plekhanov, could only apply in the most auspicious circumstances. All difficulties were avoided by resort to the most optimistic assumptions. Lenin was therefore accused of employing a "utopian" way of thinking and veering towards anarchism. The agrarian programme of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party - the forerunner of the Communist Party - must, insisted Plekhanov, "be armed at all points": ie, it must be ready to meet unfavourable circumstances (quoted in VI Lenin CW Vol 13, Moscow 1977, p344).

In reply Lenin insisted that Plekhanov and the Mensheviks completely misunderstood the "optimism" of the Bolsheviks, which he mockingly said "scares" them. The optimism of the Bolshevik's draft agrarian programme stemmed from a conviction that the peasant revolution against landlordism would succeed and consequently bring about a corresponding state form. Since the 1861 abolition of serfdom Russia had been developing along Junker-bourgeois lines which had now, in 1906, reached an impasse. Peasant discontent was palpable and manifested itself in violent outbreaks throughout 1905 and into 1906. Peasants occupied the landlords' estates. Such spontaneous actions were a direct threat to the capitalist class and the tsarist state itself.

It stands to reason that to be generalised to the point of victory over landlordism peasant revolt required an "exceptionally favourable combination of circumstances". It required peasant energy, revolutionary determination and initiative, admitted Lenin (VI Lenin CW Vol 13, Moscow 1977, p346). Suffice to say every Marxist knows that peasant life by its very nature imposes the tyranny of distance, individuality and disorganisation. Plekhanov himself wrote brilliantly on the subject. However, the Bolsheviks were not relying on the peasant revolution in isolation. Their programme held out the prospect of the proletariat winning the peasants over to its side as allies. That was perfectly feasible if the working class selflessly championed peasant rights, interests and promised to satisfy their land hunger. An approach crystallised in the Bolshevik's central demand for the nationalisation of all land.

The peasant revolution against landlordism would not, and could not, directly bring about socialism. But it would replace Junker-bourgeois progress with peasant-capitalist progress in the countryside. Furthermore, in Lenin's considered opinion, such a "radical agrarian revolution" was only possible if accompanied by a "radical political revolution" (VI Lenin CW Vol 13, Moscow 1977, p346).

Anything approaching this outcome would obviously be greeted as a triumph for peasant socialism by the Socialist Revolutionaries. But, far from bringing about the quasi-socialism of peasant democracy, the conversion of peasants into free capitalist farmers along American lines would actually produce the "quickest and most decisive bankruptcy" of peasant socialism. Following Marx, the Bolsheviks insisted that the Socialist Revolutionaries' criticism of the landlord-capitalist variety of capitalism is hardly the same thing as a scientifically verifiable programme of positively overcoming capitalism in general.

The Bolsheviks declined to invest all their hopes in the peasant revolution. Either peasant-capitalist progress with nationalised land and a democratic republic or landlord-capitalist progress under the tsarist monarchy will win. Either outcome implies the development of capitalism and an intensification of the contradiction between the working class and capital. So, whatever the situation vis-à -vis agrarian reform, the cause of genuine international socialism must be defended and advanced by the "purely" proletarian party.

Of course the Bolsheviks were far from indifferent as to the two possible outcomes of the agrarian revolution as theorised by Lenin. According to the programme of uninterrupted revolution outlined above it is obvious that the interests of the working class are best served by the success of the peasantry against the landlords.

That, for the Bolsheviks, implied not passivity, but active intervention by the working class in the leadership of the peasant revolution. That in turn did not mean spreading anti-capitalist propaganda: rather propaganda aimed against landlord capitalism which also combats the illusions of peasant socialism and explains that the sufferings of the peasantry comes from the inadequate development of capitalism. The Bolsheviks refused to pander to the crude anti-capitalism of peasant socialism. There are many contemporary lessons here regarding those leftists who eagerly prostrate themselves before the anti-capitalism of the Greens, anarcho-environmentalists and third world charity mongers.

As a matter of fact the Bolsheviks were not disarmed before the prospect of Junker-capitalist progress. Their draft programme contained many demands specifically designed to help the peasants in their day-to-day struggle with the landlords. So the Bolsheviks did not rule out a "worse case" scenario, as charged by Plekhanov and other Menshevik spokespersons at the 'Unity' Congress.

The Mensheviks were trapped in a sort of programmatic dualism. On the one hand they accepted the need for a peasant revolution almost in spite of themselves. Nevertheless they were dogmatically bound to the idea that the bourgeoisie must come to power. A superficial notion, which must sooner or later arive at counterrevolutionary conclusions.

For the Bolsheviks the bourgeois democratic revolution was a category which included within its range of possible outcomes a peasant revolution led by the working class. Here we have a splendid example of concrete dialectical thought breaking through the shell of preconception. But the peasant revolution could fulfil its aims - abolition of landlordism, nationalisation of the land, and the sweeping away all vestiges of serfdom - only through smashing the old state machine. The standing army, landlordism, the tsarist bureaucracy formed a single political-economic system. The Menshevik idea of municipalising the landlords' estates while leaving the state machine intact was an obvious absurdity. The economic revolution in the countryside had to go hand in hand with a political revolution if it was to succeed. Both were difficult, but one relied on the other. The Bolsheviks therefore called for the peasants to go the "whole way" in their agrarian revolution (VI Lenin CW Vol 13, Moscow 1977, p350).

Revolution in the countryside must produce its corresponding political changes. Lenin demanded that the Party explain to the peasantry that the "best method of taking possession of the land in bourgeois society is by abolishing private ownership of the land, nationalising the land and transferring it to the state, and that such a measure can neither be carried out nor bear real fruit without complete democratisation not only of the local institutions, but the whole structure of the state, including the establishment of a republic, the abolition of the standing army, election of officials by the people, etc" (VI Lenin CW Vol 13, Moscow 1977, p350).

3. A necessary aside on Tony Cliff and orthodox Trotskyism

We have now finished our examination of the Bolshevik attitude towards the land question in Russia in the aftermath of the 1905 dress rehearsal. In part four I will discuss how the Bolsheviks applied their agrarian programme during the great year of 1917. To lay the ground for part four it is, I believe, useful to scotch a persistent and widely held Trotskyite myth: ie, that Lenin broke from his 1905 programme and became in terms of programme a Trotskyite. This, it hardly needs pointing out, has great relevance for the Bolsheviks' attitude towards the peasants. In part four I will show why the Bolsheviks actually put aside their long established agrarian programme and unashamedly stole the 242-point programme of the Socialist Revolutionaries - with one addition. State power had to pass to the workers' and peasants' soviets.

When it comes to the Trotskyite myth that Lenin became a Trotskyite, we can safely let the SWP's recently departed founder-leader Tony Cliff speak for the entire school. According to Cliff, up to 1917 Lenin "anticipated that a whole period would elapse between the coming bourgeois revolution and the proletarian socialist revolution" (T Cliff Lenin Vol 1, London 1975, p200). Evidently from what we have outlined above, here in Cliff we have a devious formulation. After all how long is "a whole period"? It also leaves unanswered what Cliff means by socialism and whether or not the October Revolution of 1917 actually ushered in not a working class-led state, but socialist relations of production and exchange.

I have long argued that the post-October 1917 regime was a proletarian-peasant alliance - albeit with bureaucratic deformations and a Communist Party substituting for the active leadership role of proletariat - till the 1928 counterrevolution within the revolution. Nevertheless the idea that the USSR was socialist represented a Stalinite conceit that was still to come. Only in the mid-1930s did Stalin announce that the Soviet Union had completed the transition to socialism.

For its own reasons Trotskyism has set up Lenin as an advocate of the "theory of stages" - by definition a cardinal sin for any self-respecting Trotskyite. First stage, the anti-tsarist revolution. Though it could not be led by the bourgeoisie neither could it go beyond bourgeois norms. A democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry would for a "whole period" witness and encourage capitalist development, albeit under democratic conditions. Only after such a "whole period" could the working class think about putting forward its own distinctive social agenda.

Actually, as we have illustrated above, such a theory of artificial stages in Russia was advocated by the Mensheviks. The long and the short of it being that in the event that a popular revolution proved successful in Russia the proletariat puts the bourgeoisie in power. Lenin explicitly rejected this mechanical theory. The main political slogans of the Bolsheviks were 'abolish the monarchy' and 'for the democratic republic'. If their popular uprising proved successful - and remained under proletarian hegemony - the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry would not meekly make way for the bourgeoisie. Yes, capitalism would be "strengthened": ie, allowed to develop. But there would be strict limitations. Not only an eight-hour day, full trade union rights and complete political liberty, but an "armed proletariat" in possession of state power. The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry would wage a "relentless struggle against all counterrevolutionary attempts", not least from the bourgeoisie.

So why does Cliff mischievously present Lenin's theory as no more than a variation on a Menshevik schema? Cliff, along with the usual run of orthodox Trotskyites, wants us to believe that Lenin was essentially a Menshevik programmatically up to April 1917. Trotsky supposedly had an altogether superior theory. Trotsky is approvingly quoted, by implication against Lenin, as stating that in his view "power must pass into the hands of the workers" through a revolution "before the politicians of bourgeois liberalism get the chance to display to the full their talent for governing" (quoted in T Cliff Lenin Vol 1, London 1975, p202).

The peasants are for Trotsky "absolutely incapable of taking an independent political role". The proletariat can however from the vantage point of state power align the peasantry to itself. Furthermore the proletarian political domination is incompatible with "its economic enslavement". Therefore, reasoned Trotsky, the workers are "obliged to take the path of socialist policy" (quoted in ibid, p202). Thankfully in April 1917 Lenin saved himself by apparently undergoing a Trotskyite conversion. Lenin's 'Letters from afar' and the documents now widely known as the April theses "marked a complete break" with the old notion of a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. (ibid Vol 2, p124). Conditions of dual power which proceeded from the fall of Tsar Nicholas II and the establishment of dual power exposed the "bankruptcy" of the 'old Bolshevik' formula (ibid p128). Predictably Cliff condescendingly writes that before 1917 Trotsky "differed fundamentally from Lenin in his view of the nature of the coming Russian revolution" (ibid Vol 1, p201).

Cliff has to admit that Trotsky badly misjudged the Bolsheviks. He did not realise that Bolshevism would have to break through the "bourgeois democratic crust" of their programme - because they based themselves on the dynamic of the struggle (ibid Vol 1, p205). Of course, we need not rely only on Cliff vis-à -vis Lenin and Trotsky. We can use Trotsky's own words concerning the course of Russian history, which embraced periods of defeat and reaction and three revolutions - 1905, February and October 1917. In essence Trotsky took a centrist, "conciliationist" position from 1903 until May 1917, when he returned from the USA and placed himself "at the disposal of the Bolshevik Party". Trotsky later maintained that until then his "revolutionary ideas or proposals amounted to nothing but 'phrases'". Lenin on the other hand carried out "the only truly revolutionary work". That was, a contrite Trotsky argues, "work that helped the party take shape and grow stronger" (L Trotsky The challenge of the Left Opposition: 1923-25, New York 1980, pp265, 267). Was Trotsky right in this assessment? In my opinion there can be no doubt about it.

Let us examine more closely the supposed "fundamental" difference between Trotsky and Lenin. Cliff supplies us with an extensive quotes from Trotsky's Results and prospects published in 1906. Trotsky outlines his application of the theory of permanent revolution to Russia. Like Lenin he dismissed any revolutionary potential of the bourgeoisie. The working class had to form a revolutionary government "as the leading force". They would do so in "alliance with the peasantry". But, given the circumstances of Russia, the fact of proletarian state power would destroy the "borderline between the minimum and maximum programme; that is to say, it places collectivism on the order of the day".

One should not interpret such a formulation to mean Trotsky imagined a backward and isolated Russia as ripe for socialism. No communist then believed any such thing. Trotsky, to his credit, remained implacably hostile to "national socialism" till his untimely death in 1940 (L Trotsky The permanent revolution New York 1978, p159). On the contrary Trotsky understood that the revolution would have to be permanent, or uninterrupted, if the working class in Russia was not to be "crushed". European revolution was vital.

All in all, to any objective observer the differences with Lenin's theory are therefore evidently those of nuance. True, in Results and prospects and in Lenin's so-called replies there was a very unrewarding polemic between the two men. Factional interests produced more heat than light in both cases. Trotsky dismissed out of hand any suggestion of a "special form of the proletarian dictatorship in the bourgeois revolution". He was intent on rubbishing and equating both the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. Lenin in his turn attacked Trotsky for "underestimating" the importance of the peasantry by raising the slogan 'Not a tsar's government, but a workers' government'.

On the basis of such evidence Trotsky is no doubt right when he concludes that Lenin had "never read my basic work". The above slogan was proclaimed not by Trotsky, but his friend and collaborator Parvus: "Never did Lenin anywhere analyse or quote", says Trotsky, "even in passing, Results and prospects" (ibid p166). Moreover he goes on to cite the "solidarity" that existed between himself and the Bolsheviks during and immediately after the 1905 revolution. And for those who demonise the term 'stage' and belittle Lenin, Trotsky's boast that he "formulated the tasks of the successive stages of the revolution in exactly the same manner as Lenin" should provide food for thought (ibid p168). The same can be said for Trotsky's proud affirmation about how "Lenin's formula" closely "approximated" to his own "formula of permanent revolution" (ibid p198). Cliff can claim that Trotsky's theory was far superior to Lenin's democratic dictatorship. But that only shows he had an agenda which owes very little to the actual revolution and less still to the truth.

What of Lenin carrying through a "complete break" with his theory of the democratic dictatorship in order to lead the October Revolution, as artlessly claimed by Cliff? Here was a myth in part created, hatched and fostered by Trotsky himself after Lenin's death in 1924. No doubt he was desperate to counter the campaign against 'Trotskyism' launched by the triumvirate of Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev. By pretending that Lenin had become a Trotskyite in April 1917 he could enhance his own standing and at the same time highlight the secondary or negative role played by his opponents during 1917: Kamenev and Zinoviev famously 'scabbed' against Lenin's call for 'All power to the soviets' and a second revolution.

In February 1917 tsarism collapsed in the midst of a huge popular outburst. A provisional government was formed headed first by prince Lvov and, following his departure from the scene in July, by the Socialist Revolutionary Alexander Kerensky. The provisional government continued Russia's involvement in the imperialist slaughter, refused peasant demands for land redistribution and constantly delayed the convening of a constituent assembly. In short the proletariat and peasantry had "placed power in the hands of the bourgeoisie". Nevertheless Russia was the freest of the belligerent countries and alongside, and in parallel to, the provisional government there stood the soviets, or councils, of workers, soldiers and peasants. There was dual power.

What was Lenin's programme during this "first stage of the revolution"? Did he junk his old theory? Answering that question, with particular reference to the agrarian programme, will form the opening subject matter for the fourth, concluding, part of this article on Bolshevism and land.