Martov’s Criticism of Bolshevism
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Date: Thursday, 23 August 2012 – 7:30pm
Event: Communist University 2012 Fringe Meeting
Venue: Glenthurston Apartments, 30 Bromley Road, London SE6 2TP
Directions: About five minutes walk from Catford rail station
“[Martov] recognized the Russian Revolution to be a progressive, pro-capitalist, national revolution that cleared the way for the solution of the economic backwardness of the country. He recognized the Russian Revolution as a “bourgeois” revolution, directed in part by the proletariat and impregnated with the utopianism typical of the proletariat of a backward country. He emphasized that the dictatorship of the Bolshevik “professional revolutionists” was not to be confused with the “dictatorship” of the working class, which, according to him, was impossible in a country like Russia. He foresaw that the pretensions to a program of world revolution affected by the Bolsheviks during their “heroic” period served as a sort of camouflage to protect their rule, and would in time give way again to the program of Russian “national socialism,” the traditional and real program of Bolshevism.
Martov expected the workers themselves to accomplish their emancipation. He believed that with historic experience, the working class would undergo a political and moral development and overcome in time the current Utopias and swindles in political theory and practice fostered among them by various sets of “leaders.” He understood that the socialist revolution could only take place in countries that were economically ripe for socialism. He understood that the political setup produced by the socialist revolution could never be the Jacobin dictatorship of a revolutionary minority but could only be the expression of the majority rule of the population. He believed that after the proletariat of the countries economically ripe for socialism had once seized power, it could never find itself in a situation where its rule was anything else but the majority rule of the population.”
– from Foreward by Integer (1938) to The State and the Socialist Revolution, articles by Martov written between 1919 and 1923.
Organised by The Socialist Party of Great Britain
Tonight (August 23rd) in South East Londonhttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/event/martovs-criticism-bolshevism-catford-0
There were 30 or so people present at the meeting including 9 members. The CPGB people argued that the real Lenin wasn’t the Lenin of What Is To Be Done nor the post-1917 Lenin (when he advocated a top-down party of professional revolutionaries to lead the working class) but the Lenin of 1905-1914 who was a leftwing Social Democrat whose hero was Kautsky and whose model was the German Social Democratic Party (a bit like Martov in fact, though they didn’t draw this conclusion!). We didn’t buy that one. Nor do most others calling themselves “Leninists” (as they do).We also discovered that they don’t think that Russia was capitalist (at least not after 1929), though it wasn’t clear what they did think it was. A return meeting might take place at which we can explain that commodity-production and wage-labour were never at any time abolished in Russia and that Lenin himself pointed out that capitalism under state control was the only possible economic course for Russia (as Martov had said all along).The meeting was recorded and presumably will be made available in due course for anyone to listen to.
Here’s the audio recording of the meeting -http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/audio/martovs-criticism-bolshevism
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