Socialist Education Bulletin, Nº 2, September 1973
SOME NOTES ON MAN’S SOCIAL NATURE
AND
THE CAPITALIST ROLE OF BOLSHEVISM
The Socialist Party of Great Britain, Education Committee
_____________________________________________________________________
SOME NOTES ON MAN’S SOCIAL NATURE
Bourgeois Prejudices about Man’s Nature
In Socialism free men and women will hold the means of production in
common and will organise production to serve the needs of the community
on the basis of equality and co-operation. Socialism will at once
provide a basis for solving present-day social problems and, in solving
them, will create a society in which men will best fulfil their social
nature.
With such a view Socialists inevitably become drawn into arguments
about “human nature”, partly because we ourselves are propounding a
theory of man in society. Those whose ideas about man are circumscribed
by the prejudices of capitalist society have difficulty in envisaging a
system of production in which the coercive economic pressures of an
exploitative society will not operate. Their thinking is limited by
their misconceptions about what they feel is “human nature” The vulgar
argument of the apologist for capitalism is familiar, though no more
valid for being so. It is argued that men are greedy, individualistic,
competitive, lazy, violent, etc. and that such behaviour expresses
unalterable characteristics of “human nature” .This being so, it is
argued, Socialism is impossible. One obvious contradiction in this
argument is that some of these prejudices cancel each other out. It is
not possible to argue, for example, that man is “naturally
competitive” and at the same time “naturally lazy” . This contradiction
underlines the superficiality of the argument. It is also significant
that opponents of Socialism always cite the worst aspects of human
behaviour. They stress the greediness and competitiveness of man under
capitalism, but obviously ignore the fact that even within a society
where the social and economic forces are almost universally divisive
there are many examples of co-operation, generosity and mutual concern.
In times of difficulty, politicians and others are very ready to make
spurious appeals to the interests of “the community” and “the nation”
as an emotional lever in attempting to get their way. Indeed it can be
argued that if bourgeois prejudices about “human nature” were in fact
true, even capitalism could not function.
The idea that man is naturally competitive and selfish is itself a
socially-determined prejudice, which seeks to rationalize economic
privilege in propertied society. The prejudice stems from class
interests. As well as this, it is part of man’s ignorant evaluation of
himself in a society which prevents him from bringing into fruition all
the best potentialities of his social nature.
However, the fundamental theoretical objection to the bourgeois
prejudice is that it assumes that society is the result or product of a
pre-existing human nature. The Socialist argument is that human
behaviour is the result of society and that society is the product of
men’s history. It therefore follows that in order to understand human
behaviour we must understand society. We must understand how the
pattern of individual lives is enacted against a background of social
and economic forces in actual historical situations.
Even a quick view of man in history shows that he is a complex being
capable of a wide range of behaviour and emotions. This extends from
cruelty and greed to generosity and even self-sacrifice, not only
within a society but in different situations within the same
individual. Significantly, opponents of Socialism always depict the
worst and most destructive examples of behaviour as expressing what
they think is the “essence” of “human nature”. We would not expect an
ill-considered prejudice to take into account the more hopeful aspects
of human behaviour conducive to co-operation, but nevertheless such
aspects exist. Most of the time, in fact, men are going about the
day-to-day course of their lives in a stable well-ordered manner
without recourse to any extremes of behaviour.
General assertions, from whatever source, that forms of human behaviour
such as greed or generosity express innate characteristics of the human
make-up, have no scientific basis and are of no value in understanding
man or dealing with the problems of improving society. What can be said
about man that is invariable in all forms of society throughout the
world and in history is that he is a social animal. This is to say that
man functions physically and emotionally about the practical problems
of survival and in his personal relationships as a social being.
The Social Origin of Man
Anthropological knowledge is now sufficiently advanced for us to trace
the general pattern of the biological-social evolution of homo sapiens
during the very long development of stone cultures in the Palaeolithic
period. The story that emerges from that period is not only the
biological evolution of homo sapiens from a variety of near hominid
species, but a simultaneous development of flint-working techniques
from the crude and primitive to the more complex and sophisticated.
The time scale of pre-history is still somewhat obscure, and a close
correlation between various types of fossil man and stone-working
cultures has not yet been established. What is known, however, is that
between at least 500,000 years B.C. and 20,000 years B.C. there took
place a gradually developing ability to fashion tools, by a succession
of different types of hominids which resulted ultimately in homo
sapiens and then the Neolithic revolution, that is to say, the practice
by which man came to understand agriculture and the domestication of
wild animals for farming, which became the basis of civilisation.
So far as is known, pre-history begins with such stone cultures as the
Clactonian, which consisted of crude flakes, choppers and pebble tools,
and ended with the sophisticated techniques of the Upper Palaeolithic
when such cultures as the Magdalenian and Solutrean produced
exquisitely fashioned laurel leaf blades, arrowheads and chisels. These
improved techniques were accomplished by an animal finally identifiable
as homo sapiens which had acquired one crucially important advantage
over and distinction from all animals – the ability to accumulate his
experience socially. This was the ability of one generation, in terms
of knowledge and techniques, to improve the productivity of its
collective labour and then to pass on this experience socially to the
next generation.
Anthropologists have described a number of different behaviour patterns
as characteristically human: using tools; speaking, thinking abstractly
and being aware of being a distinct living organism; learning and
teaching the body of skills, thoughts and behaviour patterns which,
together with man-made tools and buildings, constitute “culture”. All
these are interconnected and depend on man’s biological nature and,
equally, on the fact that men live in societies. A tool-making,
speaking, culture-bearing outside society is just inconceivable.
Men are biologically suited to make and use tools because their upright
stance frees their hands and their binocular colour vision gives them
clear three-dimensional sight. They are biologically suited to speak
and think because of their speech organs and highly developed brain,
but speech could not have developed in man had men not also been social
animals. It has been plausibly suggested that men’s awareness of
themselves as separate living beings arose out of the work of making
tools; in tool-making a man has to concentrate his attention very
carefully on the material he is fashioning and the distinction between
“subject” and “object”, between “me” and “not me” could well, in the
course of biological evolution, have arisen from his. Speech, too,
probably arose out of another primitive work-process: hunting. Man’s
brain and nervous system, together with the prolonged dependence of
children on adults, also makes men biologically suited for learning and
culture-bearing. So the very physical equipment of homo sapiens are
physical attributes in the individual which evolved as part of the
mechanics of social existence.
The Social Nature of Man
Social organisation is the means of human existence, because society
organises human labour about the practical tasks of material survival.
Within this pattern of social activity the individual is involved, not
as a self-elected member enjoying a free choice as to whether or not to
take part, but as a being dependent on human social relationships for
acceptance and survival. The individual cannot opt in or out of society
since he only exists in and through society.
Society, then, is the organisation of labour. Culture, through the
development of knowledge and the refinement of techniques, is the
accumulation of social labour. Each succeeding generation, in the
practical activity of its own time, is able to encompass the
achievements of all its predecessors, and, on this basis of cumulative
social interaction, take itself forward. Thus do men make history and,
in changing their culture and society, change themselves.
It can be assumed that the life of Palaeolithic man was circumscribed
by the struggle for existence by small groups inhabiting local areas.
Tools were primitive and the
opportunities for individuals to engage in specialised activities
probably did not exist. Nevertheless he drew strength from the
cooperation of his small numbers about the practical tasks of hunting
and gathering. At this level the interdependence of the group also
provides succour and an emotional haven from the insecurities and
bewilderment that must have been present in the primitive mind.
During the Palaeolithic period the gradual refinement of flint-working
occurred over at least 500,000 years and culminated in homo sapiens and
later the Neolithic revolution. Since that time the accumulation of
techniques and the means of production have accelerated in pace through
successive systems of propertied class society. But culture could only
have developed on the enormous scale it has since the Stone Age because
men are social animals whose behaviour is learned and so socially
determined.
Today, the social nature of man, expressed in the production of wealth
is organised and spread over the entire planet. In modern capitalism
the production of raw materials, transport, communication, agriculture,
engineering, building, etc is elaborately integrated. Even an average
standard of living in a developed society is consumed against a world
background. To account for every productive process involved in the
production of a single commodity would eventually embrace the
organisation of labour at a world level. In the modern world the social
existence of every individual is enmeshed in a technical division of
labour which is global in its scope.
The Social Individual
That Man, the social animal, must enter into productive relationships
in order to live is as true now as it ever has been in history. More
complex modern society still arises from this basic condition of social
existence. Even in the modern world man does not exist socially just in
order to survive materially. As well as this, the acceptance of the
individual into a set of satisfactory personal relationships is
necessary to sustain personal stability and mental health. Within this
framework of practical social activity the individual finds his place
and gives to his life all the meaning that it requires. Because feeling
is personal, we are apt to think that existence is independent, but
feeling is the emotional language by which men communicate their social
interdependence.
Societies achieve conformity to their purpose and general standards not
only by laying down formal rules but by reinforcing these rules with
the alternative pressures of individual acceptance or rejection.
Friends who fall out, withdraw and reject by not speaking to each
other. Larger groups may sanction a member by expulsion or sending to
Coventry. A society punishes its members with banishment or
imprisonment. In all these cases it is accepted that imposed isolation
from the group is painful and therefore salutary. .
Through learning and imitation, through the habit of conformity,
through the interactive process or living within a group, the social
character of the individual is built up. Habits of speech, dress,
manners, attitudes and values are absorbed by the growing individual
through his experience of his immediate social environment and society
at large. Individuals can, through their own actions, change their
attitudes and values, and alter the material conditions of their life.
They can do this from the basis of their initial experiences and in
response to stimuli present in the general social environment. Through
men and their social environment acting and reacting on each other is
how social evolution occurs.
It is a basic need of the individual, in order to sustain healthy
stable existence, to be supported in his life by the acceptance and
approval of those with whom he has entered into a relationship, or
those with whom he has found a personal identity. In any culture at any
time in history, the life of the individual is indissolubly wrought
into a pattern of social existence. .
The Socialist argument is that, at this stage in social evolution, only
a social system based on world-wide common ownership and co-operation
can cater for man’s material needs, together with his needs as a social
animal in the quality of human relationships.
Further Reading
“Human Nature” is an immense subject which can perhaps be divided into
tine following sub-groups:
(a) The emergence of Man.
(b) Early societies.
(c) Early settled communities.
(d) Early civilizations.
(e) Communities in the Modern Era, reports of which substantiate
friendly and co-operative behaviour, non-competitive values, etc.
(f) Modern works on individual and social behaviour.
(g) General and theoretical works.
The list below, in which the books are marked according as how they fit
into the above sub-divisions, is a preliminary list. The Party would
not necessarily agree with all the remarks made in these publications
but Socialists will find them very
Useful. Note also the date of publication, especially of works on early
Man, since new archaeological discoveries mean that hypotheses are
subject to frequent revision. The dates in the list are for the latest,
revised editions of the works in question.
J. A. C. Brown, The Social Psychology of Industry (1954) (f)
V. Gordon Childe, Prehistory of European Society (1958) (g)
V. Gordon Childe, Social Evolution (Fontana, 1963) (g)
V. Gordon Childe, What Happened in History (Penguin, 1964) (g)
V. Gordon Childe, Man Makes Himself (Fontana, 1966) (g)
Grahame Clark, World Prehistory. A General Outline (1969) (g)
Grahame Clark and Stuart Piggott, Prehistoric Societies (Penguin, 1970)
(c)
W. le Gros Clark, The Antecedents of Man, An Introduction to the
Evolution of Primates (1971) (a)
Sonia Cole, The Neolithic Revolution (1970) (c)
Glyn Daniel, The First Civilisations (Penguin, 1971) (c)(d)
F. Engels, The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man
(1876) (a)
Per Høst, Children of the Jungle (1956) (a)
Jack Lindsay, A Short History of Culture (1962) (g)
R. Marshall, Artic Village (1940) (e)
M.F.A. Montagu, The Biosocial Nature of Man (1956) (g)
M.F.A. Montagu, On Being Human (1957) (g)
M.F.A. Montagu, Man in Process (1962) (g)
M.F.A. Montagu, Anthropology and Human Nature (1963) (g)
M.F.A. Montagu (ed.), Culture and the Evolution of Man (1962) (a)
M.F.A. Montagu (ed.), Culture: Man’s Adaptive Dimension (19680 (b)
M.F.A. Montagu (ed.), The Concept of the Primitive (1958) (b)
M.F.A. Montagu (ed.), Man and Aggression (1973) (g)
L. H. Morgan, Ancient Society (Meridian Paperback reprint of Kerr
edition, 1963) (g)
F. Mowatt, People of the Deer (1952) (e)
Scientific American, September 1960. Reprinted, with other articles, in
Readings in the Social Sciences (offprints 601-637),
Volume I (Library of Congress: 78:87222), 1969
D. Sahlins and E.R. Service (ed.), Primitive Social Organisation: An
Evolutionary Perspective (1962) (g)
Vernon Venable, Human Nature: the Marxian View (1946) (g)
L.A. White, The Evolution of Culture (1959) (g)
For criticisms of such books as Konrad Lorenz On Aggression, Robert
Ardrey Territorial Imperative and Desmond Morris The Naked Ape:
“The Myth of Man as a Killer”, Socialist Standard, June 1969.
“Man: Ape in Wolf’s Clothing?”, Socialist Standard, September,1969.
“The New Litany of ‘Innate Depravity’ or Original Sin Revisited”, M.F.
Ashley Montagu, in Man and Aggression.
(If any members, particularly those with specialist knowledge of the
subject, would like to suggest additions or point out any errors which
may have crept in we would be grateful to hear from them).
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THE CAPITALIST ROLE OF BOLSHEVISM
I. Tsarist Russia
Bolshevism, in theory and practice, was a capitalist-revolutionary
movement rising out of the peculiar social and historical conditions of
Tsarist Russia. In the absence of a strong and independent capitalist
class the task of leading the popular struggle against Absolutism fell
to another group, the intelligentsia.
In mid-nineteenth century Russia there was no constitution, the Tsar
being the sole ruler. The Russian scene had certain feudal aspects
notably the division of society into legal estates (nobles, clergy,
merchants, serfs). On the other hand there were aspects of oriental
despotism. The Tsar was the sole ruler and “father of the people”; the
bureaucrats who manned the state machine from Ministers downward were
his servants. A vast and centralised bureaucratic machine had been at
the disposal of the Tsars since the time of Peter the Great, who ruled
from 1689 to 1725. This tsar had pursued a policy of modernisation,
that is, of taking what was useful for western Europe to bolster up the
autocracy. He established a standing army, a regular system of taxation
and a civil service open to all. This latter led to the creation of a
new “estate” in the official hierarchy, the state officials. When, in
later times, the autocratic state interested itself in education,
health and other technical matters to these were added a group of
people officially designated as the “intelligentsia of diverse ranks”
professional people of non-noble origin working for the central or
local government. These, together with writers, journalists and
impoverished nobles (and the sons of the lesser clergy), provided the
basis of that peculiar but important group, the Russian revolutionary
intelligentsia.
Intelligentsia, now part of most languages, is a Russian word. In other
languages as well as in Russian it refers to the same sort of people
teachers, social workers, doctors, lawyers. But while in capitalist
Britain or Germany such people are mostly members of the working class,
in mid-nineteenth century Russia there was as yet no working class. But
the intelligentsia were still a distinct social group.
Thus at this time Russia was a powerful Absolutist state and was
regarded as the main threat to “Liberty” by the European liberals, and
also by Marx. But Russia was not unaffected by the events that had
taken or were taking place in Europe. The philosophers of the French
Enlightenment were read by educated Russians and the French Revolution
itself had a deep effect. Even in the eighteenth century people had
called for an end to the autocracy and for the liberation of the serfs.
The first action took place in December 1825 when a group of
revolutionaries officers from the noble class tried to seize power.
The plotters came to be known as the Decembrists and can be said to be
the beginning of the Russian revolutionary tradition.
Secret revolutionary groups continued to exist for the next three
decades. In the eighteen-fifties, a poet and collaborator of Alexander
Herzen suggested a plan for revolutionary organisation and for the
strategy it should pursue. Of particular relevance for tracing the
origins of Bolshevism is Ogarev’s theory of how a revolutionary group
should be organised. It should, he said, be a secret society under the
control of a self-appointed and full-time centre which would give all
the orders. In other words, he insurrection should be led by
professional revolutionaries. An organisation called Land and Liberty
was formed in 1861 and 1862 on these lines by people around
Chernyshevsky.
Ogarev got his ideas from a reading of Buonarotti’s Conspiracy of the
Equals, the account of the plot associated with Babeuf in the French
Revolution, in which Bounarotti took part. This book was widely read by
revolutionaries all over Europe and the secret society was a common
organisational form used by revolutionary democrats and nationalists.
After the advent of scientific socialism the remaining Utopian
Communists who adhered to secret societies were known as Blanquists,
after Auguste Blanqui.
The Russian revolutionary movement had a “socialist” tinge from the
start and the slogans of bourgeois liberalism had no attraction for it.
Narodniki, which these revolutionists were called, is the Russian for
“populist”. A second Land and Liberty, formed in 1876, later split in
two. One part, the People’s Will, under Tkachev, organised as a body of
professional revolutionaries aiming at a coup and using terror as a
weapon. The other part, the Black Partition, influenced by Bakunin saw
the end of Tsarism coming through the peasants rising and seizing and
dividing up the land. This split in the Narodniks was thus between
those who favoured a party of professional revolutionaries with a
political aim and those who favoured a broad-based popular movement
with a social aim.
The assassination of the Tsar in 1881 led to the break-up of the
revolutionary groups by the police. As a result there was a
turning-away in Narodnik circles from secret societies and professional
revolutionaries. But a few still supported the Ogarev-Tkachev theory.
Meanwhile, the Tsarist government had been pursuing a “liberal” policy.
The serfs were nominally freed in 1861. Local government and the
judiciary were reorganised. But the policy that was to have the most
significance was that of industrialisation. The state played an
important part in this together with foreign capital. Capitalism was
another of those useful devices, introduced after Peter the Great, to
increase the power of the autocracy. Actually, of course, it undermined
it. It led to the creation of a new class for Russia, the propertyless
wag-worker. The revolutionaries began to turn their attention from the
peasantry to this new working class. Many became Social Democrats and
Marxists.
That capitalism was introduced into Russia from above by the Tsarist
state working with Russian and foreign bankers is very important.
Modern large-scale industry was thus imported and was not the result,
as in the rest of Europe, of a process of evolution from petty industry
(as traced by Marx in Capital). This meant that Russian industry was
highly concentrated. In fact in 1913 there was a higher proportion of
large-scale enterprises in Russian industry than anywhere else in
Europe.
The social and political results of this concentration were the
dependence of the capitalist class on Tsarism and foreign capital and
its extreme isolation from the working class. Consider the working
class support given to the Liberals in Britain and the Radicals in
France up until the first world war. This was not to be repeated in
Russia. When the first real show-down with Tsarism came in 1905 the
workers turned not to their employers but to the revolutionary
intelligentsia for leadership .
This isolation and weakness of the Russian capitalist class and its
consequent inability to lead a mass popular movement against Tsarism,
is a very important point to grasp. For it meant that the traditional
bourgeois task of clearing away the relics of feudalism had to be
carried out in Russia by another group.
The Russian working class was recruited from the peasantry and legally
was not distinguished from them. In fact, at first they were almost
industrial serfs. There was no protective legislation; they often lived
in barracks near the factor, and went back to the country for part of
the year and when unemployed. In these circumstances the workers did
not see themselves as a class separate from the peasantry with separate
interests. On the other hand, the concentration of industry meant the
concentration of the workers too: in the metal industry of St.
Petersburg, the textile mills in and around Moscow, the coal mines of
the Donets basin and the oil wells of Baku. The working class first
made its presence felt in a series of strikes in the 1890’s but its
political significance did not become clear till the 1905 Revolution.
The bulk of the population were peasants. Before 1861 they were legally
obliged to work on the nobles’ estates. After 1861 their poverty forced
them to. In other words, only the legal form had changed. The peasants
continued to work the nobles’ land as well as their own. Most of the
peasants were organised in mir, or communes, within which the land was
periodically re-shared. Individual ownership of the land was rare. One
of the policies of the Stolypin government after 1905 was to encourage
peasant proprietorship and the break-up of the mir. To a certain extent
this succeeded but only in the areas producing products for the world
market or for Russian industry. Here a group of propertied peasants, or
kulaks, appeared. Amongst these grew up co-operatives and a nation-wide
co-operative bank. All the same, the bulk of the peasants remained
virtually landless or members of mir.
II. Russian Social Democracy
Those Russian revolutionaries who turned away from the peasantry to the
working class for the mass basis for the anti-Tsarist movement too up
Marxism and became the Social Democrat of Russia.
Marxist ideas first came to Russia in the eighteen-eighties. In 1883 a
group of Russian exiles, former members of Black Partition (that is,
Bakuninist anarchists) formed a Marxist group. The man behind this was
G. V. Plekhanov. At this time, Marxism was merely a theoretical weapon
aimed against the Narodniks. The Narodniks looked to the peasantry and
hoped to stir them up with a policy of assassination of Tsarist
officials (Plekhanov’s famous pamphlet on anarchism is directed mainly
against the idea of political assassination). However, the Narodniks
went further. They argued that Russia could avoid the capitalist stage
through which the rest of Europe was passing and proceed directly to
Socialism, using the peasant commune as a basis. Plekhanov’s polemics
were directed against this theory in particular. He proclaimed the
necessity of capitalism in Russia and that it would be the capitalist
class, aided by the working class, that would overthrow Tsarism.
A theory which proclaimed the necessity of capitalism in Russia had
obvious attractions for the capitalist class and a few of its thinkers
spoke the language of Marxism, using the materialist conception of
history to further the interests of the Russian capitalist class. These
were known as “legal Marxists” but never attracted mass support.
The congress which founded the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party
met in Minsk, in Belorussia, in March 1898. The founders came from two
groups. One consisting of ex-members of the People’s Will party and
associates (including Lenin) who still adhered to the Ogarev-Tkachev
principles of organisation. The other of former followers of Bakunin
and Lavrov who rejected these principles. Thus the Social Democrats
were split on the same lines as had been the Narodnik revolutionaries.
When the famous Bolshevik/Menshevik split came in 1903 it was on just
these lines.
In any event, the congress was broken up by the police. A process of
thinking about organisation began amongst Social Democrats. Some in
Russia, including Lenin and Martov, stressed the necessity of a centre
to be organised around a journal. After consultations with the
Plekhanov group in Geneva this journal, Iskra, appeared for the first
time on December 1st, 1900. Plekhanov, Axelrod, Lenin and Martov were
among the six on the editorial board.
The Iskra group directed its attention against the “legal Marxists” and
against what was called “economism”. These argued that as the workers
were not concerned with politics but were only interested in economic
matters, the Social Democrats should also ignore politics. This, in
effect, amounted to abdicating the political struggle against Tsarism
to the capitalists. The same conclusion, though by a different route,
as the “legal Marxists”.
A very important pamphlet for an understanding of Bolshevism written by
Lenin was directed mainly against the Economists. The title What Is To
Be Done? was significant in that it was taken from the title of a novel
by Chernyshevsky, who had similar views on organisation to those of
Lenin. Briefly, Lenin argued that Tsarism would only be overthrown by a
party of professional revolutionaries leading the working class. The
working class were not capable, said Lenin, of reaching socialist
understanding by themselves (as the Economists claimed), so this would
have to be brought to them by the intelligentsia. Lenin’s organisation
theory provided for extreme centralism and submission by subordinate
organs to the will of a central committee, composed of course of
professional revolutionaries.
These theories (whatever their merit as a means of overthrowing Tsarism
and, remember, there were no western-type political parties in Russia
at this time) were so out of keeping with the democratic traditions of
European Social Democracy that they caused a split in the Iskra group.
Lenin was called a Blanquist. The split came to the surface at the
second congress of the RSDWP which was held in Brussels and London in
July and August 1903. When the question came up, thanks to the walk-out
of some delegates previously over another issue, Lenin’s supporters
emerged as the majority and hence were known as “the majority men” or
Bolsheviks. The others, headed by Martov, were “the minority men”
or Mensheviks.
1905 saw the outbreak of the first Russian revolution. Russia had been
defeated in the Far East by Japan and discontent was widespread. The
whole thing was sparked off when police opened fire on an unarmed
crowd, bearing ikons and pictures of the Tsar and led by a priest. This
was bloody Sunday, January 9. As a result there was a wave of political
strikes throughout Russia and peasant uprisings in the countryside. In
St. Petersburg and elsewhere were formed spontaneous workers’ councils
or soviets (which is the Russian word for council). In the absence of
trade unions and political parties the working class expressed itself
through these soviets. Under pressure, the Tsar granted a constitution
and a duma (roughly a deliberative council) was set up. Western-type
political parties, including a liberal party, the Constitutional
Democrats (or Kadets) appeared.
The 1905 revolution made two things clear: the bankruptcy of the
Russian capitalist class as a revolutionary force and the significance
of the working class, and perhaps even the peasantry, as such a force.
When the revolution had died down the Russian Social Democrats began to
assess the situation: All agreed that the coming revolution in Russia
could only be a bourgeois revolution. But if the capitalist class was
too weak and cowardly, who was to carry out this revolution?
To Lenin the answer was clear: the working class leading the peasants.
The RSDWP, thus, should aim at capturing political power not for
Socialism but for democracy. This Lenin summed up in the phrase “the
democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry”. This
became the perspective of the Bolshevik wing and when they met, on
their own, in Prague in 1912 they adopted as their three aims:
Democratic Republic, Eight-Hour-Day and Confiscation of the Land of the
Landowners.
The Mensheviks, though agreeing that the Russian capitalist class was
weak, did not come to the same conclusion. They argued that it was not
the task of a socialist party to aim at political power for anything
less than Socialism; the workers should push the capitalists to take
power and so retain its own independence to struggle for Socialism (and
reforms) within the democratic state. Social Democrats, they said,
should not be organising themselves into a secret party of professional
revolutionaries but should be organising a mass workers’ party through
which the working class could learn independence and self-confidence.
The main Menshevik thinkers were Axelrod and Martov.
Thus the Bolsheviks aimed at political power, to be achieved by
insurrection, to introduce democracy. The Mensheviks, while not opposed
to insurrection, aimed at developing working class consciousness. It is
all too easily assumed that the difference between Menshevism and
Bolshevism was that between the reformist and the revolutionary
position. Though those who were Revisionists and reformists were to be
found amongst the Mensheviks, the disagreement was about the bourgeois
not the socialist revolution.
As far as the socialist revolution was concerned there was no
difference between the two wings. Up till 1917 the Bolsheviks were
orthodox Social Democrats. They were members of the Second
International. They accepted that Socialism could only be
international, the materialist conception of history and Marxian
economics. Like the Mensheviks they had a reform programme.
A third view was that of Trotsky, which though not all that important
at the time, later became so as part of Bolshevik theory when accepted
by Lenin and the Bolsheviks in 1917. Trotsky in fact only joined the
Bolsheviks in August of that year.
Trotsky accepted the Bolshevik view that the only revolutionary class
in Russia were the working class. But he argued that if, in the course
of the bourgeois revolution, the workers were to get power they would
not stop at introducing democracy but would begin to make inroads into
capitalism. The revolution would begin as a bourgeois one and finish up
socialist. This was what Trotsky meant by “permanent revolution” (a
phrase borrowed from Marx). Trotsky did not think that Socialism could
be established in Russia alone. The success of the socialist revolution
in Russia would depend, he said, on that of the socialist revolution in
Europe.
To complete the picture of Russian revolutionary politics at this time,
a word about the Social Revolutionaries. These were descendants of the
Narodniks, and opponents of Marxism, who had organised themselves in
1902 into the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries. They claimed
Socialism as their aim, but their view of “socialism” was unscientific
and utopian, based on co-operatives and the peasant commune. Their main
plank was their land programme (to be stolen and implemented by the
Bolsheviks in 1917): confiscation of the land of the landlords and its
division amongst the peasantry. They carried out assassinations and saw
the revolution as the work of “the toilers” (all those who worked,
peasants and workers) led by the revolutionary intelligentsia. Nor were
they against the idea of a Jacobin-style dictatorship to destroy the
old order. The left-wing of the Social Revolutionaries in fact
supported the overthrow of the Provisional Government in October 1917
and for a few months shared power with the Bolsheviks.
Conclusion
We see, then, the theoretical problems that the weakness of the Russian
capitalist class caused for the Social Democrats there. Out of their
discussion one very useful suggestion emerged: that a bourgeois
revolution could be carried out without the capitalist class and even
against them. Some, like Plekhanov, denied this but the idea got around
and was, as we have seen, a cornerstone of Bolshevik theory and
practice.
A further article will recount here the events of 1917. Suffice it to
say that the Russian revolution was carried out against the capitalist
and landlord class by a party of professional revolutionaries leading
the working class and peasantry.
The Bolsheviks claimed that this was a socialist revolution since it
overthrow the rule of the capitalist and landlord classes and replaced
it by that of the working class (and poor peasants). This whole claim
is based on one assumption: that the Bolshevik party represented the
working class. But, as we have seen, Bolshevism in preaching minority
action by professional revolutionaries was in a tradition going back to
the great French bourgeois revolution. The Bolsheviks represented not
the workers but the intelligentsia to whom had fallen the task of
sweeping away the barriers to capitalist development in Russia..
Further Reading
Leopold H. Haimson, The Russian Marxists and the Origins of Bolshevism
Bertram D. Wolfe, Three Men Who Made a Revolution
R. Sprenger, Bolshevism
Theodore Dan, The Origins of Bolshevism
W. J. Fishman, The Insurrectionists (see Socialist Standard, November
1970)
M. E. Falkus, The Industrialization of Russia, 1700-1914
V. I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done (reviewed Socialist Standard, July 1970)
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