18.09.2002

Formulation nine and the possibility of peaceful revolution

Jack Conrad begins a series on peaceful revolution

Members of the Communist Party of Great Britain overwhelmingly voted in June 2002 for a new, updated version of the Weekly Worker's 'What we fight for' column. By far the most controversial change has been the ninth formulation: "Socialism can never come through parliament. The capitalist class will never willingly allow their wealth and power to be taken away through a parliamentary vote. They will resist, using every means at their disposal. Communists favour using parliament and winning the biggest possible working class representation. But the workers must be readied to make revolution - peacefully if we can, forcibly if we must."

There has been a chorus of objections and some heated exchanges - not least during August's Communist University. Rather than relying on taped speeches, hastily posted emails, rough notes and vague memories of private conversations, we have at our disposal a number of written contributions from the pages of the Weekly Worker. These can be counted as fully rounded and considered opinions. Comrade John Pearson - the CPGB's leading member in Manchester - damns the idea of peaceful revolution as amongst the "strongest indications of the rightward moves we perceive in our leadership".

Instead of a "touchy-feely" "gunpowderless revolution" he recommends "Marx's criticisms of the Paris Commune" and advocates the "dictatorship of the proletariat" as the only way to avoid the tragic fate of Chile in 1973 (July 11). Barry Biddulph - a former CPGB member - dismisses formulation nine as a "concession to left reformism". All "historical evidence" militates against "such an illusion". The "belief that there could be a peaceful path" has "always led" to the "political and literal" disarmament of the working class (July 25). Comrade David Moran - a CPGB supporter - considers violent revolution a "necessity". Besides the possibility of "bloodless revolution" he also counts the suggestion that there can be "full democracy during the epoch of the proletarian dictatorship" as amongst the "rank illusions" of Kautskyism and "treacherous social democracy in general".

The comrade writes of the dictatorship of the proletariat assuming a "dictatorial character" and equates that with employing "terroristic methods" (Weekly Worker August 22). In a subsequent polemic he repeats his insistence on "the necessity of violent revolution" and claims the mantle of that "zealot" Lenin in dismissing bourgeois democracy as a "sham" (September 12). I profoundly disagree with these and other such comrades. Evidently what motivates them in the main is a sincere hatred of capitalist exploitation and a burning desire to realise some kind of socialism. However, it is quite clear that their political approach is flawed, typically leftist and owes more to anarchism than Marxism. Indeed one could be forgiven for interpreting the sneering, total and inflexible denial of the possibility of peaceful revolution as being driven by a secret desire to exact blood revenge on the bourgeoisie and their agents - understandable but criminally wrong.

This might explain why their polemics against the CPGB's formulation nine reads as if we were relying on a constitutional and unarmed road to socialism consented to by Elizabeth Windsor, seconded by the House of Lords and blessed by Rowan Williams. Yet clearly that is not the case. Socialism is an act of working class self-liberation, and arming the people features in our minimum, immediate, programme: ie, it is a demand which is realisable under capitalist conditions. True, communists favour using parliament and gaining the biggest working class representation. That does not preclude the aim of securing a majority of seats in the House of Commons. Not because the socialist order can that way be smoothly legislated into existence. But because a parliamentary majority would provide a tremendous boost for working class confidence and prove that communists speak on behalf of the mass of the working class. Nevertheless formulation nine explicitly states: "Socialism can never come through parliament."

Communists operate in the enemy camp primarily in order to agitate and make propaganda so as to ready the working class "to make revolution". Obviously that can assume many different and varied forms - from thumping speeches in support of a routine trade union dispute to actually establishing a government. Any socialist-communist paliamentary government worth the name would be born out of mass struggle and be backed by combative workers' organisations. The first act of such a government must be to "arm the proletariat, disarm the bourgeois counterrevolutionary organisations, bring control over production, shift the main burden of taxation onto the propertied class and break the resistance of the counterrevolutionary bourgeoisie" - to use the crisp, staccato words of Comintern's 4th Congress in December 1922 (A Holt and B Holland (trans) Theses, resolutions and manifestos of the first four congresses of the Third International London 1980, pp397-98). It is sheer pigheadedness to dismiss out of hand peaceful revolution and equate the possibility with "disarming" the working class. On the contrary insistence on "the necessity of violent revolution" as a universal law irrespective of country and historical conditions is actually to politically disarm the working class and is, of course, utterly alien to the method of Marxism which insists upon a concrete analysis of concrete circumstances. Marx and Engels Marx and Engels were active revolutionary politicians for the whole of their adult lives. In 1848 they played a prominent role in the democratic revolution which broke out in their native Germany. Engels fought on the barricades and devoted considerable time and energy to mastering the art and science of war. But the scope of both men was fundamentally international. They concerned themselves with the development of the workers' movement in all countries. This found its highest expression with the formation of the International Workingman's Association in 1864.

The First International was not founded on explicitly communist principles. In the words of Engels - writing the 1890 preface to the German edition of the Communist manifesto - the idea was to "weld together into one huge army the whole militant working class of Europe and America. Therefore it could not set out from the principles laid down in the Manifesto. It was bound to have a programme which would not shut the door on the English trade unions, the French, Belgium, Italian and Spanish Proudhonists and the German Lassalleans" (K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 27, London 1990, p58). The First International combined promoting the day-to-day economic struggles of the working class with the final aim of social liberation and ending class rule - made more precise in 1872 as social revolution and the conquest of political power by the working class. This clarification took on board the lessons of the Paris Commune of 1871, which provided the first example of a working class state in history. Marx's other clarification concerned the necessity of the working class forming its own independent revolutionary party within each country. All affiliates were urged to "combine" into "national bodies, represented by central national organs" (K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 23, London 1988, p7). Marx, Engels and the International - despite warning that an uprising would be premature - supported the Commune without the slightest hesitation. The Commune suffered a terrible end.

The counterrevolutionary forces butchered thousands and the working class cause in France was thrown back a generation. Nevertheless the Commune had worldwide significance. Marx certainly crystallised his ideas on the form that the future working class state would take. The workers could not simply lay hold of the bureaucratic-military state of the capitalist class and use it for their own purposes. They would have to break apart the old state apparatus, smash it up and put in place their own semi-state - an armed people, recallability of delegates, limits on delegates' pay to that of skilled workers, etc. That, wrote Marx to his friend Ludwig Kugelman in April 1871, "is essential for every real people's revolution on the continent" (K Marx and F Engels Selected correspondence Moscow 1955, p263). At the same time Marx treated the situation concretely - he allowed for the possibility of a peaceful revolution as well as the likelihood of violent uprising. In July 1871, a few months after the crushing of the Commune, Marx gave an interview to a certain R Lander, the London correspondent of the US-based journal The World.

Marx explained to him that the methods employed by the various national sections of the International should "include every form of working class activity". "In each part of the world," Marx continued, "some special aspect of the problem presents itself, and the workingmen there address themselves to its consideration in their own way ... In England, for instance, the way to show [manifest - JC] political power lies open to the working class. Insurrection would be madness where peaceful agitation would more swiftly and surely do the work. In France a hundred laws of repression and a mortal antagonism between classes seem to necessitate the violent solution of social war" (K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 22, Moscow 1986, p602). The last question posed to Marx by the gallant reporter concerned Britain (or "England", as the bad habit of the day would have it). Lander put it to Marx that Britain had a free press and a system which allowed minorities to become majorities and thus avoided any violence. Marx refused to be prescriptive. He conceded that the bourgeoisie in Britain "has always shown itself willing enough to accept the verdict of the majority so long as it enjoyed the monopoly of political power". But he warned: "As soon as it finds itself outvoted on what it considers vital questions we shall see here a new slave-owners' war" (ibid p606). Put another way, in respect of Britain, Marx advocated peaceful revolution and urged the working class to be vigilant against a bourgeois counterrevolution. Whether or not there was violence depended entirely on the ruling class. Marx and Engels came out with similar arguments to the ends of their lives. For example, in a speech to the London congress of the International, in September 1871, the official minutes record Marx saying the following: "We must tell them [all the governments] - we know that you are the armed force opposing the proletariat - we shall act against you peacefully wherever possible - and take up arms when that is necessary" (K Marx, F Engels CW Vol 22, Moscow 1986, p618). In other words even in Europe - where reaction reigned - Marx was advocating a formulation virtually indistinguishable from our "peacefully if we can, forcibly if we must".

Naturally there were not a few anarchist hotheads and pompous phrase-mongers who stridently branded Marx's line as a sellout. Needless to say, the Hague congress of the IWA witnessed the expulsion of Mikhail Bakunin and his conspiratorial Alliance of Socialist Democracy. At a public meeting in Amsterdam on September 8 1872, to celebrate the congress, Marx stressed the need to avoid dogmatism. Different means apply to different countries at different times. Here is the relevant section of his speech: "One day the workers will have to seize political supremacy to establish the new organisation of labour; he [sic] will have to overthrow the old policy which supports old institutions if he wants to escape the fate of the early christians who, neglecting and despising politics, never saw their kingdom on earth. But we by no means claimed that the means for achieving this goal were identical everywhere. We know that the institutions, customs and traditions in the different countries must be taken into account; and we do not deny the existence of countries like America, England, and if I knew your institutions better I might add Holland, where the workers may achieve their aims by peaceful means. That being the true, we must admit that in most countries on the continent it is force which must be the lever of our revolution; it is force which will have to be resorted to for a time in order to establish the rule of the workers" (K Marx, F Engels CW Vol 23, London 1988, p255).

Engels was inseparable from Marx on this question - as on everything of importance. Writing the preface to the first English translation of Capital in November 1886, he concludes with this remark on the circumstances obtaining in Britain: "England is the only country where the inevitable social revolution might be effected entirely by peaceful and legal means." Engels underlines that Marx never forgot to add that the ruling classes can hardly be expected to "submit without a 'pro-slavery' rebellion" to this "peaceful and legal revolution" (F Engels 'Preface to the English edition' in K Marx Capital Vol 1, Moscow 1970, p6). Just prior to his death Engels touched a raw nerve when it came to the balance between peaceful and violent methods.

In his famous preface to Marx's Class struggles in France Engels offered the opinion that the old tactics of barricade fighting used by revolutionaries from 1789 to 1848 had become hopelessly dated. Since 1848 "the newly built quarters of the big cities have been laid out in long, straight, broad streets, tailor-made to give full effect to the new cannons and rifles. The revolutionary would have to be mad to choose of his own accord the new working class districts in the north or east of Berlin for a barricade fight. Does that mean that in the future street fighting will no longer play any role? Certainly not. It only means that the conditions since 1848 have become far more unfavourable for civilian fighters and far more favourable for the military." He goes on to develop his thoughts: "In future, street fighting can therefore be victorious only if this disadvantageous situation is compensated by other factors Accordingly, it will occur more seldom at the beginning of a great revolution than at its later stages, and will have to be undertaken with greater forces. These, however, may then well prefer, as in the whole great French Revolution or on September 4 and October 31 1870, in Paris, the open attack to passive barricade tactics" (K Marx, F Engels CW Vol 27, London 1990, p519).

These observations were, of course, broadly confirmed by the innovative fighting tactics employed by the Bolsheviks during the 1905 and 1917 revolutions. As is well known, the leadership of the Social Democratic Party in Germany was greatly perturbed by what Engels had written. Memories of Bismarck's anti-socialist laws were still fresh and the threat of new coercive measures produced unprincipled caution. Passages were doctored in the published version so as to give the impression that Engels - and by inference the SDP - were committed exclusively to legal and peaceful methods of struggle. Engels was furious. Writing in protest to Karl Kautsky - the 'baron' - he complained that he had been made to appear as a "peaceful worshiper of legality at any price" (K Marx, F Engels Selected correspondence Moscow 1955, p486). He also posted a letter to Marx's son-in-law, Paul Lafarge, in Paris, decrying the trick that had been pulled on him by Wilhelm Liebknecht and the German leadership. Engels made it clear that he was "preaching" peaceful tactics and opposition to force and violence "only for the Germany of today" and even then "with an important proviso". In France, Belgium, Italy and Austria "these tactics could not be followed in their entirety", he says, and in Germany they may become "inapplicable tomorrow" (K Marx, F Engels Selected correspondence Moscow 1955, p487). We can sum up the approach maintained by Marx and Engels in the 19th century - when the working class was still in its infancy and almost without exception continental Europe lay under the rule of autocratic monarchies and pseudo-democratic Bonapartist regimes, which limited the franchise and popular control through all manner of restrictions. They never insisted upon violent revolution as a universal law.

There was the possibility of peaceful revolution depending on the actual circumstances and the balance of forces in each country. Institutions, customs and traditions had to be taken into account, along with parliament's powers or lack of powers. Remember, the 1871 Commune began as the official city council of Paris. Peaceful methods are always to be preferred by the working class. Better to buy out the capitalist gang stage by stage over 10 years in you can than launch a civil war. We have no lust for mass slaughter nor desire to see the devastation of towns, farms and workplaces. Whether or not peaceful revolution is followed by violent counterrevolution depends largely on ruling class calculation on the one hand and on the other the ability of the working class to bring to bear overpowering force. In short Marx and Engels always emphasised the interests of living, breathing, feeling humanity. Their pronouncements contain not a trace of dogmatism or revolutionary posturing. Lenin's road Some of our critics appear to be vaguely aware of the flexible position advocated by Marx and Engels.

That is why we are answered with carefully selected quotes culled from Lenin and Trotsky which are meant to provide the answers for not only the 20th century but the indefinite future. Let us continue then by carefully examining Lenin's writings on peaceful revolution. His treatment of the subject is very instructive. For example, in the pamphlet A caricature of Marxism, published in 1916, we find Lenin discussing ways and means in exactly the same dialectical fashion employed by Marx and Engels. "All nations will arrive at socialism - this is inevitable - but all will do so not in exactly the same way; each will contribute something of its own to some form of democracy, some variety of the dictatorship of the proletariat, to the varying rate of socialist transformation in the different aspects of social life. There could be nothing more primitive from the viewpoint of theory, or more ridiculous from that of practice, than to paint, 'in the name of historical materialism', this aspect of the future in a monotonous grey." Lenin insists on the importance of what he understands by the dictatorship of the proletariat. However, he admits: "It cannot be denied that in individual cases, by way of exception - for instance, in some small country after the social revolution has been accomplished in a neighbouring big country - peaceful surrender of power by the bourgeoisie is possible, if it is convinced that resistance is hopeless and if it prefers to save its skin."

Civil war is, he says, much more likely but not to be wished for. The workers' movement recognises the possibility of civil war, "though violence is, of course, alien to our ideals" (VI Lenin CW Vol 23, Moscow 1977, pp69-70). I think this constitutes Lenin's general approach before the revolutions of 1917. Working as he was under the severe conditions of repressive tsarism and world war, one could understand it if Lenin had dismissed out of hand any mention of the possibility held out by Marx and Engels of peaceful revolution. But he did no such thing. He stood by their historical and materialist method: ie, a concrete examination of concrete circumstances.

Of course, Lenin could not ignore the regressive effects wrought by World War I and what that meant for countries such as Britain and the US, which Marx and Engels had often mentioned as exceptions. Before World War I Britain and the US were characterised by an absence of militarism and to a considerable degree by lack of bureaucracy. Britain was a naval superpower, but had traditionally eschewed maintaining a big standing army at home. The US spent a pittance on the military compared with Europe and, despite the exclusion of blacks and women from the franchise, operated with a relatively wide democracy. Put another way, Britain and the US were the least unfree of the major capitalist countries. World War I changed that. In the US and in particular with Britain the military budget grew to the point of hypertrophy. Democratic rights were curbed and class peace was imposed by countless draconian measures. In this respect then it is more than interesting to take note of Lenin's later writings where he specifically defended Marx's position on peaceful revolution. Eg, in Leftwing communism, where he discusses the possibility of a peaceful transition to socialism in a country like Britain before World War I. Lenin lists four main contributing factors that favoured such an outcome. One - the majority of the population were workers and there was an absence of peasants. Two - the working class had excellent organisations, trade unions, etc. Three - the workers possessed a comparatively high level of culture. Four - the habit of the bourgeoisie to settle political and economic matters through compromise.

"These were the circumstances which at the time gave rise to the idea that the peaceful subjection of the British capitalists by the workers was possible" (VI Lenin CW Vol 26, Moscow 1977, p344). Lenin later made similar observations on a number of occasions, though I freely admit that he reckoned conditions which might have permitted a peaceful revolution in the US and Britain had passed. Nevertheless Lenin is quite clear. No principle is involved and no revolutionary should tie their hands over whether or not the future would or would not allow a peaceful revolution. That is why one never finds Lenin ruling out peaceful revolution as a matter of principle. Eg, in February 1920 Lenin mused that if nine countries - including the big powers - have gone over to socialism, then in a tenth, small country, a peaceful transition would be entirely possible. It would be stupid to rule out such a scenario. Indeed Lenin looks positively upon the tactic of buying out the capitalists and, say, paying them five-ninths of their income in year one, four-ninths in year two, etc (see VI Lenin CW Vol 30, Moscow 1977, p361). Transparently Lenin was no dogmatist either.

Not surprisingly his flexibility in theory and skilful ability to manoeuvre in practice can be seen in its greatest richness in the testing months spanning February to November 1917. Lenin not only granted that a peaceful revolution was possible: he tried his best to actually bring one to fruition in Russia. In his polemic comrade Moran does not deny that Lenin strove for a peaceful revolution in 1917. However, he says not only was Lenin incorrect but the conditions that existed in Russia can never occur again - although he modestly goes on to claim not to know the future. As an aside we must also take issue with comrade Peter Manson. Rightly defending the possibility of a peaceful revolution, he suggests that Lenin only advocated it in Russia specifically "from March to July 1917" (Weekly Worker September 5). Actually, while comrade Manson's overall case is well expressed and well founded, as we shall show, on this detail he is mistaken. Returning from his exile in Switzerland, Lenin made the celebrated call for a second revolution. Bolshevik leaders in Petrograd - most prominently Lev Kamenev and Joseph Stalin - were gob-smacked. They envisaged the party operating as the extreme left wing of the post-February order. But Lenin was not demanding a putsch. His perspective was centred on the necessity of winning the working class and peasants to complete the revolution, which had been stalled and kept half-way by the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries. At the time they enjoyed a clear majority in the soviets. The task of the Bolsheviks was to win a majority and complete the revolution by bringing peace, giving land to the peasants and putting state power into the hands of the soviets of workers, peasants and soldiers. That could be carried our using peaceful methods. Russia was the freest country in the world and there existed dual power. Real authority lay with the soviets - spontaneous products of the revolution and thoroughly democratic. The soldiers would only obey orders from the soviets and the workers had armed themselves. But the leadership of the soviets was intent on steadily handing power to the provisional government, a government committed to restoring bourgeois order in Russian and maintaining Russia's involvement in the inter-imperialist bloodbath which had already reduced half of Europe to ruination. Hence Lenin, writing in April 1917, emphasises the peaceful tactics of the Bolsheviks - or Pravdaists, as he called them (his proposal to change the name to Communist Party - the proper "scientific title" - had already been tabled).

"Pravda and its followers," he says, "do not preach violence. On the contrary, they declare most clearly, precisely and definitely that our main efforts should now be concentrated on explaining to the proletarian masses their proletarian problems, as distinguished from the petty bourgeoisie which has succumbed to chauvinist intoxication"(VI Lenin CW Vol 24 Moscow 1977, pp110-111). Either the soviets or the provisional government must win. The key for the Bolsheviks lay in the peaceful struggle of party with party for influence in the soviets. And events moved in their favour. On July 1 400,000 soldiers and workers marched in Petrograd - the slogans were predominantly Bolshevik.

Had they been around at the time one presumes that comrades Pearson, Biddulph, Moran and co would line up against Lenin's woeful ignorance of the supposed universal law of violent revolution. Peaceful revolution? Aaaagh! Can't Lenin grasp the timeless lessons of European history or remember all the horrors inflicted by counterrevolution? If they were serious they would form an opposition faction and challenge for leadership even at the risk of a damaging split. Lenin after all clearly displays the "strongest indications" of moving to the right. Imagine our comrades in 1917. Instead of Lenin's "touchy-feely" "gunpowderless revolution", comrade Pearson loudly demands dictatorship and violence as the only way to avoid the tragic fate of the 1871 Paris Commune. His lieutenant Barry Biddulph mocks Lenin's miserable "concession to left reformism" and perversely accuses him of promoting the "political and literal" disarmament of the working class. Meanwhile comrade Moran lectures on the "necessity of violent revolution" and denounces Lenin's conversion to Kautskyism. Laughable in 1917. Laughable in 2002. Thankfully time and again Lenin insisted upon his case for a peaceful transition. This was the best - perhaps the only - way to win over the wavering masses to Bolshevism. Let us cite three representative cases. Locus one - April 1917: "The capitalists call the soviets anarchy, because such an organisation of power does not commit the people beforehand and unconditionally to capitalist subjection, but provides liberty and order together with the possibility of a peaceful and gradual transition to socialism" (VI Lenin CW Vol 24, Moscow 1977, p120). Locus two - Lenin's speech to the first all-Russia congress of soviets in June 1917: "You know that revolution is not made to order, that revolutions in other countries were made by the hard and bloody method of insurrection, and in Russia there is no group, no class, that could resist the power of the soviets. In Russia, this revolution can, by way of exception, be a peaceful one" (VI Lenin CW Vol 25, Moscow, p23). Locus three - the article 'Is there a just peace?' in June 1917: "Only in Russia can power pass to the existing institutions, to the soviets, immediately, peacefully, without an uprising, for the capitalists cannot resist the soviets of workers', soldiers' and peasants' deputies" (VI Lenin CW Vol 25, Moscow 1977, p55). Yes, that is what objective conditions offered, and with each month that passed the number of Bolshevik delegates to the soviets steadily grew. The workers were being educated and becoming convinced. The peasant revolution stirred and would soon set the countryside aflame. What of comrades Pearson, Biddulph, Moran and co? I doubt they would have exercised any influence. Surely they would have been nothing but an irrelevant sect. But to illustrate how Lenin might have viewed them one can do no better than turn to the argument between himself and the strategically pivotal Petrograd committee of the party. In May 1917 Lenin and the central committee were insisting on "peaceful demonstrations" and making propaganda explaining the possibility of a peaceful transition. In this context Lenin clashed with the Petrograd committee over their issuing of the slogan - 'Down with the provisional government'. This untimely slogan was to go a "trifle more to the left", said Lenin. Under such volatile circumstances, however, shading is everything. That explains why Lenin did not mince his words. He forcibly attacked this "trifle" as a "very serious crime, as disorganisation" (VI Lenin CW Vol 24, Moscow 1977, p245). True, after July 4, the burning of Pravda's offices and Kerensky's anti-Bolshevik witch hunt, Lenin indignantly announced that, "All hopes for a peaceful development of the Russian Revolution have vanished for good."

Comrade Manson quotes this blunt statement, along with Lenin flatly describing the situation as posing either the "complete victory for the military dictatorship" or the "victory for the workers' armed uprising". There could no longer be "peaceful illusions" (VI Lenin CW Vol 25, Moscow 1977, pp179-80). Comrades Pearson, Biddulph, Moran and co might have joyfully celebrated. Lenin had at last seen the light and come round to their superior universal theory. But did dropping propaganda for a peaceful transition in July imply that Lenin had recanted? That he had previously been mistaken? Not at all.

Peaceful transfer of power to the soviets "was a slogan for the peaceful development of the revolution, which was possible and, of course, most desirable between February 27 and July 4 but which is now absolutely impossible" - this in a pamphlet 'On slogans' issued by the Bolshevik's Kronstadt committee and written in the middle of July 1917 (VI Lenin CW Vol 25, Moscow 1977, p186). He repeats the point in August 1917: "At the time [before July 4] the task in Petrograd was to give the movement a peaceful and organised character. That was a correct slogan" (VI Lenin CW Vol 25, Moscow 1977, p253). Though Lenin stated that "hopes for a peaceful development of the Russian Revolution have vanished for good", he was, as I have said, no dogmatist. In September 1917 general Kornilov moved Cossack and other such detachments towards the capital. He had a secret agreement with the provisional government to smother the revolution. Kornilov wanted himself installed as military dictator of Russia. Yet such was the outcry amongst the common people that Kerensky's provisional government was compelled to denounce him as a traitor. The soviets of Petrograd and Moscow defended their cities and sent out agitators to subvert Kornilov's army. The Bolsheviks took the lead and won enormous prestige. The period of reaction melted away along with Kornilov's troops and the revolutionary movement once again reasserted itself. The Bolsheviks gained majorities in one soviet after another.

Throughout September Lenin demanded the transfer of power from the unelected and discredited provisional government to the soviets. He favoured a compromise in the soviets between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries. Jules Martov and the Internationalist faction had eclipsed the centre and the right amongst the Mensheviks, and the SRs had cleaved into two, with Maria Spiridonova's left wing having a clear advantage in terms of popular support. These three blocs had in their hands the mass of delegates to the workers', peasants', and soldiers' soviets. Together they could form an authoritative and almost unassailable soviet government. This would amount to a peaceful revolution and reduce the chances of counterrevolution almost to zero. Lenin is definite: "An alliance of the Bolsheviks with the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, only an immediate transfer of all power to the soviets would make civil war in Russia impossible, for a civil war begun by the bourgeoisie against such an alliance, against the soviets of workers', soldiers' and peasants' deputies, is inconceivable; such a 'war' would not last even until the first battle; the bourgeoisie ... would not be able to move the Savage Division, or even the former number of Cossack units against the soviet government" (VI Lenin CW Vol 26, Moscow 1977, p36). Lenin brims with confidence. Russia has won the sympathy of the organised working class throughout the world. They form Russia's strategic reserve. Peaceful revolution in Russia "is essentially an international task" and if Russia could "break with imperialism and the imperialist war" it will inevitably accelerate the "workers' socialist revolution" (VI Lenin CW Vol 26, Moscow 1977, p38). Lenin even allows for the outside possibility that a peaceful revolution could come via way of a communist-socialist victory in elections to the Constituent Assembly: ie, a parliamentary body. Arguing "purely theoretically" and taking the question "in the abstract", he says the transition to soviet power could be accomplished legally if, "for instance", the Constituent Assembly, "convoked by the bourgeoisie", produced a "majority opposed to the bourgeoisie", if the majority belonged to the parties of the workers and poor peasants (VI Lenin CW Vol 26, Moscow 1977, p54). Kerensky and the right Mensheviks and right SRs were, of course, doing everything to obstruct, put off or prevent elections to a Constituent Assembly. They feared a Bolshevik-left majority ... and that could not be countenanced. In Lenin's September 1917 pamphlet 'The tasks of the revolution' the reader will find a whole section titled the 'Peaceful development of the revolution'.

Here Lenin once again calls for a Bolsheviks-SR-Menshevik alliance with the aim of convening the Constituent Assembly and putting power into the hands of the soviets: "By seizing full power, the soviets could still today" - and Lenin warns that this is probably their last chance - "ensure the peaceful development of the revolution, peaceful election of deputies by the people, and a peaceful struggle of parties inside the soviets; they could test the programmes of the various parties in practice and power could pass peacefully from one party to another" (VI Lenin CW Vol 26, Moscow 1977, p67). Such a course reduces the chances of violent counterrevolution to the barest minimum. The capitalists and their hangers-on would dare not resist and if they were foolish enough to rise up against a Bolshevik-Menshevik-left SR soviet government the balance of forces is so much against them that it would not amount to anything much. Only mild punishment, not terror, follows - confiscation of property and short-term arrest. As things turned out, the Bolsheviks were forced to take the initiative.

In October Lenin urges and urges again the central committee to organise an armed uprising to topple the provisional government. To delay is not only cowardly but is to invite an eventual holocaust against the workers of Petrograd and Moscow. Lenin is sure of success - if there is immediate action. He says "the chances are 10 to one that it will be a bloodless victory" (VI Lenin CW Vol 26, Moscow 1977, p141). In Petrograd he was certainly right. Only a handful died in what was to all intents and purposes a peaceful revolution. However, the Bolsheviks had no choice but to act without the Mensheviks. Martov - the Hamlet of the Russian Revolution - could sum up neither the necessary determination nor the courage to act in any kind of decisive fashion. He hesitated time and again and vacillated between grudging solidarity with the Bolsheviks and a yearning to re-cement Menshevik unity. Martov and his comrades stormed out of the second congress of soviets in protest against the Bolshevik insurrection. Yet, because the Bolsheviks organised virtually the whole of the advanced part of the working class in Petrograd and Moscow and commanded the loyalty of the urban-based soldiers and sailors, Martov felt obliged to critically support them against the whites. As to the left SRs, they did cement an uneasy alliance with the Bolsheviks. But by 1918 and the Brest-Litovsk treaty with Germany that broke down into mutual antagonism. Spiridonova tried to assassinate Lenin. The Bolsheviks were forced to govern alone and in a country that underwent three years of terrible civil war and suffocating isolation - brought about in no small measure by the abject failure of social democracy in Germany.

The resulting negative consequences for certain aspects of Marxist theory forms the opening section of the second part of this article. I believe that both Lenin and Trotsky made important mistakes. Of particular concern is their concept of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat'. I shall also counter the calumny that the CPGB is making "rightward moves" by turning to my programmatic work Which road? - first produced as a discussion article in 1983 and greatly expanded in 1991 and published as a full-sized book. Finally the argument will be presented that the possibilities of peaceful revolution are bound to increase in the 21st century.