Internationalist Discussion Forum

It was only in the wake of the terrible defeats the proletariat went through in the 1920s, particularly in Germany, and faced with the emergence in Russia of a society which dashed all their hopes, that a certain number of revolutionaries — like Otto Ruhle - began to abandon the position which had been unanimous in 1917. This was the time when ‘National Socialism’ in Germany was mobilizing the population for a new imperialist war, when anti—fascism was doing the same job in the democracies, and when ‘socialism in one country’ — really one of the most barbaric forms of capitalism — was being strengthened in Russia. Within certain revolutionary currents which had escaped the shipwreck of the Communist International, there began to be put forward a theory which saw the October Revolution as a bourgeois revolution of a ‘particular type’.1

In 1934, ‘Theses on Bolshevism’ were published in the organ of the council communist movement (Raetekorrespondenz, no.3 and International Council Correspondence). According to this text:

“7. The economic task of the Russian Revolution was, first, the setting aside of the concealed agrarian feudal system and its continued exploitation of the peasants as serfs, together with the industrialization of agriculture, placing it on the plane of modern commodity production; secondly, to make possible the unrestricted creation of a class of really ‘free labourers’, liberating industrial development from all its feudal fetters. Essentially, the tasks of the bourgeois revolution…

9. Politically, the tasks confronting the Russian Revolution were: the destruction of absolutism, the abolition of the feudal nobility as the first estate, and the creation of a political constitution and an administrative apparatus which would secure politically the fulfilment of the economic task of the Revolution. The political tasks of the Russian Revolution were, therefore, quite in accord with its economic suppositions: the tasks of the bourgeois revolution.”

Here we find, almost word for word, the position of the Mensheviks, who were among the most dangerous enemies of the proletariat. The only noteworthy difference was that the latter concluded from their analysis that it was necessary to give power to the classic parties and institutions of the bourgeoisie (Cadets, Provisional Government, Constituent Assembly) while the ‘councilists’ argued that carrying out this bourgeois revolution was the task of ‘Bolshevism’.

Why is it that some of the revolutionaries who had greeted October 1917 as a proletarian revolution finally ended up with the analysis of the Mensheviks?

In his book written in 1938, Lenin as Philosopher, Anton Pannekoek clarifies this point. Referring to Materialism and Empirocriticism he says:

“It may happen that in a theoretical work there appear not the immediate surroundings and tasks of the author, but more general and remote influences and wider tasks. In Lenin’s book, however, nothing of the sort is perceptible. It is a manifest and exclusive reflection of the Russian Revolution at which he is aiming.

Its character so entirely corresponds to middle—class materialism that, if it had been known at the time in Western Europe — but only confused rumours on the internal strifes of Russian socialism penetrated here — and if it could have been rightly interpreted, one could have predicted that the Russian Revolution must somehow result in a kind of capitalism based on a struggle". (Pannekoek, Lenin as Philosopher, The Merlin Press Ltd, 1975, p.97)

In short, the ‘key’ to the nature of the Russian Revolution, which it was not possible to find in the face of the imperialist war of 1914, nor in 1917 in the middle of great class confrontations in Russia and all over the world, nor in the protagonists of the revolution, nor in their methods or their proclamations and appeals to the proletariat of all countries — this key was really contained in a philosophical work published in 1908 and translated into other languages in 1927, somewhat late, because:

“If this work and these ideas of Lenin had been known in 1918 among western marxists, surely there would have been a more critical attitude against the tactics for world revolution.” (ibid, p.102)

In fact, the real reason for this late discovery was not that the marxists’ lacked information about certain of Lenin’s philosophical conceptions but the enormous disarray which the counter—revolution had imposed on the revolutionaries themselves, on those rare militants who were attempting to preserve the principles of communism in the teeth of the storm. A disarray and a disappointment which, as we shall see, led them to abandon the marxist method which had allowed the revolutionaries of 1917, including the Bolsheviks, to understand the real nature of the revolution which had broken out in Russia.

1 See: ‘The Epigones of Councilism’, International Review no.2; ‘The Degeneration of the Russian Revolution’ and ‘The Lessons of Kronstadt’, International Review no.3; ‘Platform of the ICC’, International Review no.5; ‘Contributions on Period of Transition’, International Review no.6; ‘The Communist Left in Russia’ International Review nos. 8 & 9; ‘Texts on the Period of Transition’, International Review no.11.