Socialist Worker Russian Revolution centenary series

[jondwhite]

Socialist Worker are running a series of articles to mark the centenary of the Russian Revolution, here's two of interest to us;

https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/44045/Why+its+better+to+be+Bolshie

https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/44046/Who+were+the+Mensheviks

[ALB]

The Socialist Standard will be doing something similar each month from March to November, reprinting extracts from articles on Russia publised at the time.One thing we will need to avoid during this year of the overthrow of Tsarism and the Bolshevik coup is being too closely associated with the Mensheviks. Although some Mensheviks had a better understanding than the Bolsheviks of what was possible (and what was not) in Russia after the overthrow of the Tsar in March 1917, they were still reformist Social Democrats as an article in the April 1932 Socialist Standard pointed out:

Quote:

A reader at St. John, New Brunswick, asks the following questions :—What was the programme, or principles, in brief, of the Mensheviks and the Left Social Revolutionaries, now under a ban in Russia? Have these extinct organisations much in common with the S.P.G.B. ?Yours, etc., M. WASSON.Reply. (….)In 1920 when a British Labour Delegation visited Russia the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries each issued a full statement of their position. These were included in the Report of the Delegation (Published by the Labour Party and Trades Union Congress, London).If the Mensheviks could be judged solely on this declaration of Socialist principles there would be little to find fault with.The S.R. declaration, on the other hand, contains little about principles, and is not in any real sense a Socialist declaration at all. It is merely a propaganda effort to justify the tactics of the S.R. Party and to blacken the Bolsheviks.The important thing is that the Menshevik document referred to above, although issued by the Central Committee of the Party, does not give anything like a full and true picture. Rather it represents the views of certain individuals on Socialist principles, completely divorced from the actions of the Party. This characteristic of the Mensheviks is one often found in the Labour Parties of Western Europe and elsewhere.Let us look at certain of their actions.The Mensheviks permitted their members to support the war—-in flat contradiction of' the Socialist principles they were supposed to understand and accept.The Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries (and the Bolsheviks) belonged to the Second International before the war. They accepted the absurd claim that that body and its affiliated parties were Socialist.The Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries are still affiliated to the "Labour and Socialist International" and still push the reforms which make up the only stock-in-trade of that non-Socialist body.It will be seen, therefore, that the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries have no more in common with the S.P.G.B. than any of the other reformist parties which find it convenient to cover over their reformist programmes with a gloss of Marxian phrases and ideas.ED. COMM.

[jondwhite]

Here they argue 'LGBT+ rights are inseperable from the fight for socialism'https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/44093/Sexual+liberation+in+the++Russian+RevolutionNot sure this is quite accurate.It seems 'LGBT+ rights' can be obtained independently of the 'fight for socialism' since the Soviet Union wasn't socialist or 'fighting for socialism',  but that discrimination against LGBT (direct or indirect) does hinder the cause of socialism reaching all working-class people.

[jondwhite]

More claims that Bolshevik struggles are "inseperable" from other struggles this time from Weekly Workerhttp://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1144/the-inferno-erupts/

[ALB]

Socialist Standard April 1932 wrote:

In 1920 when a British Labour Delegation visited Russia the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries each issued a full statement of their position. These were included in the Report of the Delegation (Published by the Labour Party and Trades Union Congress, London).If the Mensheviks could be judged solely on this declaration of Socialist principles there would be little to find fault with.

The Menshevik document in question has now been published on the internet:https://www.marxists.org/archive/martov/1920/07/thesis.htmIt is very revealing. Quite a radical document, giving quite a different picture to that sometimes painted of the Mensheviks.

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