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Bolşevizm Tarihi
1932 yılında Almanya’da yayınlanan ancak hemen ardından Naziler tarafından yasaklanan Bolşevizm Tarihi bugün artık bir klasik… Bolşevik düşüncenin bizzat Karl Marx’taki köklerinden Lenin’in farklı aşamaları üzerinden, Stalin’in 1932′deki taktiğine ve teorisine gelişiminin tarihine odaklanan bir çalışma olması dolayısıyla oldukça önemli…
Büyük Rus Devrimi’nin gölgesi hala dünya işçilerinin küçük bir bölümünü kendine çekmeyi sürdürüyor. Komünist Enternasyonal’in, dünya proletaryasının aktif hareketi üzerinde artık herhangi bir etkisi yok. Ancak Bolşevikler’in Rus Devrimi esnasında başardıkları, ölümsüz bir tarihi eylem olmayı sürdürüyor.
Büyük Rus Devrimi’nin gölgesi hala dünya işçilerinin küçük bir bölümünü kendine çekmeyi sürdürüyor. Komünist Enternasyonal’in, dünya proletaryasının aktif hareketi üzerinde artık herhangi bir etkisi yok. Ancak Bolşevikler’in Rus Devrimi esnasında başardıkları, ölümsüz bir tarihi eylem olmayı sürdürüyor.
- GenresNonfictionRussia
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1932
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May 15, 2019
This book was written in 1932; unfortunately, I found the author's "excuses" for the excesses of Stalin, annoying. Of course, 1932 was before the Great Purge - but still, there were excesses even before the Purge etc. It was unnerving to read the author's descriptions of the faction fighting within the Russian leadership and recount how Stalin's opponents were merely demoted after losing faction fights within the Central Committee; the same leading Bolshevik figures were later arrested, tortured, and then executed, as one by one Stalin eliminated or rather exterminated any and all possible opposition. This extreme, merciless repression hadn't happened by the time Rosenberg wrote his book but some of his seeming glossing over of the excesses (such as suppression of opposition to the communists, and the co-optation of the labor unions) is annoying.
The author obviously respects the Russian Revolution, which was the culmination of decades of revolutionary activity in Russia, but doesn't think the Bolsheviks established a Socialist state in Russia. Rather, he says its system was as Lenin had said in 1921 - a system of State Capitalism. He states that the Russian proletariat does not run the enterprises in which they work, nor do they have a say in how said enterprises are run, and that there are many capitalist features to economic life in Russia, as well as classes. He also denounces the lack of freedom and self-determination in Russia and the existence of a dictatorship of the proletariat, which he thinks would be superfluous or unnecessary in a society in which classes have been eliminated.
Still, aside from the lapses - in light of subsequent information and developments, such as Stalin's crimes and the Chinese Revolution - the book still is valuable as a recounting of the Russian Revolution, its successes and failures.
Quotes:
From the Preface:
"Ideas are the products of actual conditions and not of a vacuum."
From the Introduction (by Samuel J. Hurwitz, Brooklyn College of the CUNY):
"In 1927 [Arthur Rosenberg] ... left the [German] Communist Party, after becoming disillusioned, not with the belief that mankind could and would attain the good society, but with the Communist International's ability to reach that goal."
"[Marx and Engel's era] ... was a time of great ferment, when old standards seemed no longer relevant and new ones had not yet crystallized."
"In each country the socialist movement, no matter how large or small, was wracked by controversy."
"It is a secular faith based on the conviction that man's shortcomings are rooted not in his nature but in conditions in society that can be remedied."
"Rosenberg sees the "socialism" of Marx and Engels as essentially the attempt to achieve the values of liberalism -- freedom for all memes of society -- through the political activation of the masses. Marx's socialism stemmed from his desire "to raise the Germans from serfdom to freedom so as to make them men."
"[According to] ... Rosenberg, Marx sought an alliance with the working class to ensure the success of the democratic revolution that Europe was then facing."
"After the collapse of the revolutions of 1848-49, "the turning point which failed to turn," in Sir Lewis Namier's phrase, the Communist Party disintegrated."
"...Lassalle negotiated with Bismarck, who agreed to sponsor social reform if Lassalle's followers would not support the Liberals who were seeking political reform and Bismarck's overthrow."
"...the aims of the [Paris] Communards were quite different from [those] ... of the Communists."
"It was the organized, class-conscious workers who subordinated the ideology of revolution to the obtaining of practical concessions in the here-and-now."
"Lenin "resurrected the old revolutionary Marxism" by reviving "the original Marxism of 1848," and he created "the Bolshevism that stands in sharp contrast to western European Social Democracy."
"...there was a division between the "Slavophiles," who wanted Russia to remain an agricultural civilization, and the "Westerners," who looked to the industrialization and liberalism of the West as a solution."
"Increasingly large numbers of workers -- the "proletariat"-- acquired a stake in capitalistic society [with improvements in wages, hours, and conditions of employment] -- and were loath to risk its overthrow."
"[Lenin:] The doctrine of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophical, historical, and economic theories formulated by the educated representatives of the propertied classes, the intellectuals. The founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia..."
"[According to Lenin:] It was up to the intellectuals, such as Lenin, and such as Marx and Engels in the past, to lead rather than simply to represent the workers."
"...the Revolution of 1905... ....was precipitated by "bloody Sunday," when peaceful demonstrators, under the leadership of the priest, Gapon, who was also a police agent, were fired upon outside the Czar's palace, leaving a thousand dead."
"[Trotsky:] The organization of the party would take the place of the Party itself; the Central Committee would take the place of the organization, and finally a dictator would take the place of the Central Committee."
"Marx, in one of his apocalyptic moods, had seen the development of capitalistic enterprise as culminating in monstrous monopolies owned and controlled by a very few, with almost the entire population dispossessed of its property and forced into the ranks of the proletariat."
"The war not only made possible revolution in Russia; it also revealed that the Second International, which represented the socialist parties of all countries, was, like its constituents, not revolutionary."
"Like the Mensheviks, Lenin believed that a proletarian (socialist) revolution must be preceded by a bourgeois ("democratic") revolution."
"[Lenin:] We, the party of the Bolsheviks, convinced Russia. We snatched Russia from the rich for the poor from the exploiters for the toilers. We must now govern Russia."
"...the Bolsheviks were threatened by the actions of the peasantry, who, after seizing the land, insisted on tilling it on an individual basis and considering the fruits of their toil entirely their own."
"Even in Western European countries where the economy was more advanced than in Russia, Lenin did not call for immediate or total socialization; he called for a seizure of power and he advocated State Capitalism and the nationalization of the banks and great trusts and monopolies."
"The Kronstadt Rebellion of March 1921, in which soldiers and sailors took over the great naval base at Kronstadt and issued a demand for civil and political liberties and freedom of the peasants to control their own land, served notice that the unrest in Russia could not be contained."
"It was now necessary, said Stalin [in December 1927], systemically to uproot private capital as the basis of production both industrial and agricultural. The answer, in agriculture, lay in large-scale farming, using scientific methods and machinery."
"Writing in 1932, Rosenberg summed up the situation in Russia as "organized in accordance with a system of State Capitalism by means of which the governing bureaucracy contrives to maintain its hold over both classes [workers and peasants] of society."
From Chapter 1 - Marx to Lenin, 1843-1893
"...a new class was coming into existence in Germany which was no longer a patt of the middle-class order of society, which was completely outside society, and which could only achieve its own freedom by overthrowing the entire existing world-order. this class was the industrial proletariat."
"[Marx:] The emancipation of Germany means the emancipation of mankind. Philosophy is the directive impulse of this emancipation; its life-blood is the proletariat."
"[You may say that] Marxism and Liberalism are at bottom identical. They pursue a common aim: the destruction of a propertied, conservative order of society based upon family and tradition. That, however, is 'the fight against feudalism.'"
"The middle class... must attack the exiting order of society.... [it] cannot cry out against old fetters and then substitute new ones for them. It must demand the abolition of all fetters. Nor can the middle class substitute government by plutocrats for government by aristocrats. It must substitute the liberation of mankind."
"...the moment the middle-class revolution is victorious it must divorce itself from its own ideology. For in order to establish the power of money on the ruins of feudalism it is necessary to throw up fresh barriers against the un-propertied classes."
"In France, [the middle class] ... had finally gasped [the reins of government] ... in the July Revolution of 1830. But in central and Eastern Europe monarchical feudalism reigned until 1848."
"It was Hegel... ...[who] drew attention to the contrast between the small minority which grew ever richer and the great majority which steadily became more and more impoverished."
"In Hegel's eyes each period in history constituted a unity. The world-spirit displayed itself similarly in politics and philosophy, art and religion."
"In countries like France and England... The ruling middle-class sought to conserve everything in the old feudal governmental system that could be of use in protecting the existing order against the masses."
"In the years preceding 1848... Such of the young middle-class intellectuals as were radically inclined, were ... unable to reconcile themselves to the plutocracy which had come to occupy the throne formerly occupied by feudalism."
"Feudalism still flourished in Germany. The Germany of 1847 stood politically where France had stood in 1788. ... The Radicals among the German intellectuals were the heirs of Hegel and developed his ideas to their logical conclusion. In the ranks of the young Hegelian revolutionaries stood Marx and Engels. Karl Marx risked the final step and placed himself and his ideas outside the pale of middle-class society. He was now able to turn the economic notions of Ricardo to his own purposes."
"[According to Marx]...the State is not the incorporation of eternal wisdom but only the political superstructure of a middle-class order of Society. The State falls with the destruction of that order of society."
"The police force maintained by the middle-class State and the cash-boxes of the capitalists are bitter truths with cannot be avoided by stripping them of their ideological coverings. The Revolution was the sole means of depriving the capitalists of power and of destroying them."
"Marxism is a book of fundamental principles whose final chapter is revolution."
"...the European proletariat [had] achieved little before 1848 in the way of independent thinking and organization."
"[Marx] ... sought to bring home to the German workmen abroad the nature of the historic mission which they were called upon to fulfill, and he founded the Communist Party with a mere handful of supporters. One the eve of the Revolution of 1848 Marx [& Engels] published [their] ... Communist Manifesto, which contained the Party's program."
"Marx set before the Communists the duty of working everywhere for the unification of the democratic movements throughout the world."
"Nevertheless, Marx did not intend to supplant nationalism by internationalism."
"The fall of the feudal Monarchy and the middle-class Liberals was to be followed by the rule of democracy--self-government by the proletariat."
"[Marx:] In its essence governmental authority is the utilization of the organized force of one class for the suppression of another. .... In place of the old middle-class order of society with its class division and differences there comes into being an association in which the free development of the individual is the preliminary condition for the free development of all."
"At last the State--that vehicle of middle-class and feudal government--would dissolve itself and in its place would appear voluntary association."
"...in [Marx's] ...view there should no longer be any State in the future, and its place should be take by a voluntary association of independent individuals. It was thus that he hoped to realize the highest ambition of the eighteenth-century revolutionaries--the perfect freedom and equality of mankind."
"Although he was a member of the Communist party, [Stephan] Born worked independently of Marx and Engels, and his great services were ignored by Marx despite the fact that they were conducted along strictly revolutionary lines."
"The only true Communism was the teachings and opinions of Marx himself. The only equal whom Marx then and subsequently recognized was Friedrich Engels, whose views he listened to. All the others who worked with Marx and Engels in promoting the movement were treated by them with contempt."
"On February 13, 1852, Engels...wrote [to Marx:] What have we to do with a party that is nothing more than a herd of asses, and that swears by us because its members look upon us as their equals?"
"[Marx and Engels] ... invariably remained loyal to [their views] ... and never bowed before the authority of their 'Party' in any weighty question. The 'Communists' of the 'Manifesto' were in truth only Marx and Engels themselves."
"The [1871 Paris] Commune proclaimed the substitution of self-government and free association for the centralized authoritarian State."
"The Paris Commune took a course that was very different from that visualized by Marx. Marx had postulated a centralized and ruthless revolutionary government, inspired by the mentality of 1793, which should beat down all enemies of the people by means of a concentration of all revolutionary forces."
"Marx had adopted the Commune of 1871 for his own purposes, an action unique in history in that the Commune was neither politically nor theoretically the work of Marx."
"The First International broke up in the 'seventies in consequence of its own internal dissensions and Marx's autocratic methods."
"...Communism changed from a revolutionary doctrine used by the extreme Radicals among the middle-class intellectuals to drive the working masses onward, to a professional ideology with whose help the class-conscious workman defended and improved his position within the middle-class order of society."
From Chapter 2 - Revolution in Russia, 1893-1914
"The ideals of the French Revolution began more and more to penetrate Russia, where they were enthusiastically welcomed by the intelligentsia, which from this time onward walked step by step with the radical theorists of western Europe."
"The intelligentsia in Russia played a very important role in hastening the development of events. For the most part the educated and independent Radicals were aristocrats by birth."
"Young students of noble birth themselves destroyed all that their fathers had constructed and venerated. The French aristocracy destroyed itself in a a similar fashion in the eighteenth century before the outbreak of the French Revolution."
"A twofold development of Russian Socialism ...became possible: either through alliance with contemporary central and western European Labor movements or in a revival of the original Marxism of 1848. In choosing the latter path Lenin created the Bolshevism that stands in sharp contrast to western European Social Democracy and that claims with some justification to have resurrected the old revolutionary Marxism."
"[Lenin] ...saw his mission as the task of allying a number of clear-thinking, realist, and determined revolutionaries with the industrial proletariat."
"[Lenin] ...deprived this large body of sympathizers of all influence over the fortunes of the Party. In Lenin's eyes the Party meant the small circle of active conspirators--and nobody else."
"Lenin did not look upon work-people as being of little account. He was firmly convinced that the future belonged to the proletariat and he welcomed former factory-hands among the ranks of the professional revolutionaries. In his eyes, however, the immediate task of the Russian proletariat was to assist in achieving a middle-class revolution."
"The Russian Revolution in 1905...began...[when] The nation revolted after the defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War had undermined the authority of the Tsarist Government."
"The zenith of the [1905] Revolution was reached in the great strike in December of the Moscow workmen; this was broken by the government. From that moment the Revolution was a failure. The bravery of the revolutionary work people was not of itself sufficient to achieve the downfall of the Tsar."
"[Lenin:] ...the [1905] Russian Revolution...sought to achieve the eight-hour day, the confiscation of the vast estates of the nobility--in a word, all that the middle-class Revolution in France in 1792-3 had in great part accomplished."
"The Council of Workers' Delegates in St. Petersburg was so constituted that every five hundred workers were represented by a delegate."
"The Trade Unions were also represented in the Council, which was a revolutionary fighting organization for the purpose of accomplishing the downfall of Tsarism."
"Sincere Socialists have always been agreed that a national revolution is only possible if supported by the majority of the nation."
"Only if the army of millions could be mobilized would the overthrow of Tsarism be possible in Lenin's view, since the Army was for the most part recruited from the peasantry--and unless it mutinied no revolution could be successful."
"Nor need [victorious Social Democracy] ... become fearful if the upper middle class returned to Tsarism and feudalism in its terror of naked Democracy; for the working class in alliance with the peasantry, manual workers, and soldiers would be capable of destroying such an enemy. It is true that this would not mean the introduction of Socialism into Russia, and the country would still be living under the economic laws arising out of the right to private ownership of property."
"The Mensheviks in 1905 were modern and western European in their ideas. The Bolsheviks were thinking in the terms of 1848."
The author obviously respects the Russian Revolution, which was the culmination of decades of revolutionary activity in Russia, but doesn't think the Bolsheviks established a Socialist state in Russia. Rather, he says its system was as Lenin had said in 1921 - a system of State Capitalism. He states that the Russian proletariat does not run the enterprises in which they work, nor do they have a say in how said enterprises are run, and that there are many capitalist features to economic life in Russia, as well as classes. He also denounces the lack of freedom and self-determination in Russia and the existence of a dictatorship of the proletariat, which he thinks would be superfluous or unnecessary in a society in which classes have been eliminated.
Still, aside from the lapses - in light of subsequent information and developments, such as Stalin's crimes and the Chinese Revolution - the book still is valuable as a recounting of the Russian Revolution, its successes and failures.
Quotes:
From the Preface:
"Ideas are the products of actual conditions and not of a vacuum."
From the Introduction (by Samuel J. Hurwitz, Brooklyn College of the CUNY):
"In 1927 [Arthur Rosenberg] ... left the [German] Communist Party, after becoming disillusioned, not with the belief that mankind could and would attain the good society, but with the Communist International's ability to reach that goal."
"[Marx and Engel's era] ... was a time of great ferment, when old standards seemed no longer relevant and new ones had not yet crystallized."
"In each country the socialist movement, no matter how large or small, was wracked by controversy."
"It is a secular faith based on the conviction that man's shortcomings are rooted not in his nature but in conditions in society that can be remedied."
"Rosenberg sees the "socialism" of Marx and Engels as essentially the attempt to achieve the values of liberalism -- freedom for all memes of society -- through the political activation of the masses. Marx's socialism stemmed from his desire "to raise the Germans from serfdom to freedom so as to make them men."
"[According to] ... Rosenberg, Marx sought an alliance with the working class to ensure the success of the democratic revolution that Europe was then facing."
"After the collapse of the revolutions of 1848-49, "the turning point which failed to turn," in Sir Lewis Namier's phrase, the Communist Party disintegrated."
"...Lassalle negotiated with Bismarck, who agreed to sponsor social reform if Lassalle's followers would not support the Liberals who were seeking political reform and Bismarck's overthrow."
"...the aims of the [Paris] Communards were quite different from [those] ... of the Communists."
"It was the organized, class-conscious workers who subordinated the ideology of revolution to the obtaining of practical concessions in the here-and-now."
"Lenin "resurrected the old revolutionary Marxism" by reviving "the original Marxism of 1848," and he created "the Bolshevism that stands in sharp contrast to western European Social Democracy."
"...there was a division between the "Slavophiles," who wanted Russia to remain an agricultural civilization, and the "Westerners," who looked to the industrialization and liberalism of the West as a solution."
"Increasingly large numbers of workers -- the "proletariat"-- acquired a stake in capitalistic society [with improvements in wages, hours, and conditions of employment] -- and were loath to risk its overthrow."
"[Lenin:] The doctrine of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophical, historical, and economic theories formulated by the educated representatives of the propertied classes, the intellectuals. The founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia..."
"[According to Lenin:] It was up to the intellectuals, such as Lenin, and such as Marx and Engels in the past, to lead rather than simply to represent the workers."
"...the Revolution of 1905... ....was precipitated by "bloody Sunday," when peaceful demonstrators, under the leadership of the priest, Gapon, who was also a police agent, were fired upon outside the Czar's palace, leaving a thousand dead."
"[Trotsky:] The organization of the party would take the place of the Party itself; the Central Committee would take the place of the organization, and finally a dictator would take the place of the Central Committee."
"Marx, in one of his apocalyptic moods, had seen the development of capitalistic enterprise as culminating in monstrous monopolies owned and controlled by a very few, with almost the entire population dispossessed of its property and forced into the ranks of the proletariat."
"The war not only made possible revolution in Russia; it also revealed that the Second International, which represented the socialist parties of all countries, was, like its constituents, not revolutionary."
"Like the Mensheviks, Lenin believed that a proletarian (socialist) revolution must be preceded by a bourgeois ("democratic") revolution."
"[Lenin:] We, the party of the Bolsheviks, convinced Russia. We snatched Russia from the rich for the poor from the exploiters for the toilers. We must now govern Russia."
"...the Bolsheviks were threatened by the actions of the peasantry, who, after seizing the land, insisted on tilling it on an individual basis and considering the fruits of their toil entirely their own."
"Even in Western European countries where the economy was more advanced than in Russia, Lenin did not call for immediate or total socialization; he called for a seizure of power and he advocated State Capitalism and the nationalization of the banks and great trusts and monopolies."
"The Kronstadt Rebellion of March 1921, in which soldiers and sailors took over the great naval base at Kronstadt and issued a demand for civil and political liberties and freedom of the peasants to control their own land, served notice that the unrest in Russia could not be contained."
"It was now necessary, said Stalin [in December 1927], systemically to uproot private capital as the basis of production both industrial and agricultural. The answer, in agriculture, lay in large-scale farming, using scientific methods and machinery."
"Writing in 1932, Rosenberg summed up the situation in Russia as "organized in accordance with a system of State Capitalism by means of which the governing bureaucracy contrives to maintain its hold over both classes [workers and peasants] of society."
From Chapter 1 - Marx to Lenin, 1843-1893
"...a new class was coming into existence in Germany which was no longer a patt of the middle-class order of society, which was completely outside society, and which could only achieve its own freedom by overthrowing the entire existing world-order. this class was the industrial proletariat."
"[Marx:] The emancipation of Germany means the emancipation of mankind. Philosophy is the directive impulse of this emancipation; its life-blood is the proletariat."
"[You may say that] Marxism and Liberalism are at bottom identical. They pursue a common aim: the destruction of a propertied, conservative order of society based upon family and tradition. That, however, is 'the fight against feudalism.'"
"The middle class... must attack the exiting order of society.... [it] cannot cry out against old fetters and then substitute new ones for them. It must demand the abolition of all fetters. Nor can the middle class substitute government by plutocrats for government by aristocrats. It must substitute the liberation of mankind."
"...the moment the middle-class revolution is victorious it must divorce itself from its own ideology. For in order to establish the power of money on the ruins of feudalism it is necessary to throw up fresh barriers against the un-propertied classes."
"In France, [the middle class] ... had finally gasped [the reins of government] ... in the July Revolution of 1830. But in central and Eastern Europe monarchical feudalism reigned until 1848."
"It was Hegel... ...[who] drew attention to the contrast between the small minority which grew ever richer and the great majority which steadily became more and more impoverished."
"In Hegel's eyes each period in history constituted a unity. The world-spirit displayed itself similarly in politics and philosophy, art and religion."
"In countries like France and England... The ruling middle-class sought to conserve everything in the old feudal governmental system that could be of use in protecting the existing order against the masses."
"In the years preceding 1848... Such of the young middle-class intellectuals as were radically inclined, were ... unable to reconcile themselves to the plutocracy which had come to occupy the throne formerly occupied by feudalism."
"Feudalism still flourished in Germany. The Germany of 1847 stood politically where France had stood in 1788. ... The Radicals among the German intellectuals were the heirs of Hegel and developed his ideas to their logical conclusion. In the ranks of the young Hegelian revolutionaries stood Marx and Engels. Karl Marx risked the final step and placed himself and his ideas outside the pale of middle-class society. He was now able to turn the economic notions of Ricardo to his own purposes."
"[According to Marx]...the State is not the incorporation of eternal wisdom but only the political superstructure of a middle-class order of Society. The State falls with the destruction of that order of society."
"The police force maintained by the middle-class State and the cash-boxes of the capitalists are bitter truths with cannot be avoided by stripping them of their ideological coverings. The Revolution was the sole means of depriving the capitalists of power and of destroying them."
"Marxism is a book of fundamental principles whose final chapter is revolution."
"...the European proletariat [had] achieved little before 1848 in the way of independent thinking and organization."
"[Marx] ... sought to bring home to the German workmen abroad the nature of the historic mission which they were called upon to fulfill, and he founded the Communist Party with a mere handful of supporters. One the eve of the Revolution of 1848 Marx [& Engels] published [their] ... Communist Manifesto, which contained the Party's program."
"Marx set before the Communists the duty of working everywhere for the unification of the democratic movements throughout the world."
"Nevertheless, Marx did not intend to supplant nationalism by internationalism."
"The fall of the feudal Monarchy and the middle-class Liberals was to be followed by the rule of democracy--self-government by the proletariat."
"[Marx:] In its essence governmental authority is the utilization of the organized force of one class for the suppression of another. .... In place of the old middle-class order of society with its class division and differences there comes into being an association in which the free development of the individual is the preliminary condition for the free development of all."
"At last the State--that vehicle of middle-class and feudal government--would dissolve itself and in its place would appear voluntary association."
"...in [Marx's] ...view there should no longer be any State in the future, and its place should be take by a voluntary association of independent individuals. It was thus that he hoped to realize the highest ambition of the eighteenth-century revolutionaries--the perfect freedom and equality of mankind."
"Although he was a member of the Communist party, [Stephan] Born worked independently of Marx and Engels, and his great services were ignored by Marx despite the fact that they were conducted along strictly revolutionary lines."
"The only true Communism was the teachings and opinions of Marx himself. The only equal whom Marx then and subsequently recognized was Friedrich Engels, whose views he listened to. All the others who worked with Marx and Engels in promoting the movement were treated by them with contempt."
"On February 13, 1852, Engels...wrote [to Marx:] What have we to do with a party that is nothing more than a herd of asses, and that swears by us because its members look upon us as their equals?"
"[Marx and Engels] ... invariably remained loyal to [their views] ... and never bowed before the authority of their 'Party' in any weighty question. The 'Communists' of the 'Manifesto' were in truth only Marx and Engels themselves."
"The [1871 Paris] Commune proclaimed the substitution of self-government and free association for the centralized authoritarian State."
"The Paris Commune took a course that was very different from that visualized by Marx. Marx had postulated a centralized and ruthless revolutionary government, inspired by the mentality of 1793, which should beat down all enemies of the people by means of a concentration of all revolutionary forces."
"Marx had adopted the Commune of 1871 for his own purposes, an action unique in history in that the Commune was neither politically nor theoretically the work of Marx."
"The First International broke up in the 'seventies in consequence of its own internal dissensions and Marx's autocratic methods."
"...Communism changed from a revolutionary doctrine used by the extreme Radicals among the middle-class intellectuals to drive the working masses onward, to a professional ideology with whose help the class-conscious workman defended and improved his position within the middle-class order of society."
From Chapter 2 - Revolution in Russia, 1893-1914
"The ideals of the French Revolution began more and more to penetrate Russia, where they were enthusiastically welcomed by the intelligentsia, which from this time onward walked step by step with the radical theorists of western Europe."
"The intelligentsia in Russia played a very important role in hastening the development of events. For the most part the educated and independent Radicals were aristocrats by birth."
"Young students of noble birth themselves destroyed all that their fathers had constructed and venerated. The French aristocracy destroyed itself in a a similar fashion in the eighteenth century before the outbreak of the French Revolution."
"A twofold development of Russian Socialism ...became possible: either through alliance with contemporary central and western European Labor movements or in a revival of the original Marxism of 1848. In choosing the latter path Lenin created the Bolshevism that stands in sharp contrast to western European Social Democracy and that claims with some justification to have resurrected the old revolutionary Marxism."
"[Lenin] ...saw his mission as the task of allying a number of clear-thinking, realist, and determined revolutionaries with the industrial proletariat."
"[Lenin] ...deprived this large body of sympathizers of all influence over the fortunes of the Party. In Lenin's eyes the Party meant the small circle of active conspirators--and nobody else."
"Lenin did not look upon work-people as being of little account. He was firmly convinced that the future belonged to the proletariat and he welcomed former factory-hands among the ranks of the professional revolutionaries. In his eyes, however, the immediate task of the Russian proletariat was to assist in achieving a middle-class revolution."
"The Russian Revolution in 1905...began...[when] The nation revolted after the defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War had undermined the authority of the Tsarist Government."
"The zenith of the [1905] Revolution was reached in the great strike in December of the Moscow workmen; this was broken by the government. From that moment the Revolution was a failure. The bravery of the revolutionary work people was not of itself sufficient to achieve the downfall of the Tsar."
"[Lenin:] ...the [1905] Russian Revolution...sought to achieve the eight-hour day, the confiscation of the vast estates of the nobility--in a word, all that the middle-class Revolution in France in 1792-3 had in great part accomplished."
"The Council of Workers' Delegates in St. Petersburg was so constituted that every five hundred workers were represented by a delegate."
"The Trade Unions were also represented in the Council, which was a revolutionary fighting organization for the purpose of accomplishing the downfall of Tsarism."
"Sincere Socialists have always been agreed that a national revolution is only possible if supported by the majority of the nation."
"Only if the army of millions could be mobilized would the overthrow of Tsarism be possible in Lenin's view, since the Army was for the most part recruited from the peasantry--and unless it mutinied no revolution could be successful."
"Nor need [victorious Social Democracy] ... become fearful if the upper middle class returned to Tsarism and feudalism in its terror of naked Democracy; for the working class in alliance with the peasantry, manual workers, and soldiers would be capable of destroying such an enemy. It is true that this would not mean the introduction of Socialism into Russia, and the country would still be living under the economic laws arising out of the right to private ownership of property."
"The Mensheviks in 1905 were modern and western European in their ideas. The Bolsheviks were thinking in the terms of 1848."
August 30, 2012
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