introduction
(2): arguing that subsequent revolutions cannot be called 'independent' revolutionary experiments, insofar as they consciously look to the experience of the Russian Revolution. fine, as motivating a study on the RR, but not that insightful when we consider the entirely different conditions that confronted those revolutions (e.g., China)
(3): enormous, key claim--leaders in these other countries (Chia, Cuba, Vietnam) consciously pursued anti-democratic arrangements, which they regarded as normatively superior to democratic arrangements (and not, because of a lesser evilism forced on them by cirmustance). this doesn't go very far, and needs substantiation, but is interesting nonetheless.
(4): yes--"the key question then becomes if, and to what degree and for how long, objective obstacles and crises confronting a successful revolutionary movement can justifiably be claimed as reasons to abridge democratic freedoms."
(4-5): insists that we speak about both economic and political democracy--for while the former is important, certainly, it is almost meaningless unless the larger plan (or 'market) is arranged at a national, bureaucratic level inaccessible to workers and citizens. fair point.
(5): "...the popular classes need political freedoms..."[of course, this is--normatively--question-begging, as he knows all too well; it is the task he has set himself]
(6): Bettleheim, accusing Mao of voluntarism, accuses the Bolsheviks (and Mensheviks) of determinism for the notion that socialism could not be built in Russia.
(7): key, crux of this text: "...while i would agree with Smith that, in broad terms, we cannot have a socialism of liberty while material scarcity prevails, he begs the question of whether something less than a democratic and libertarian socialism, yet better than Lenin and Stalin's Russia, might have been a viable alternative for the Soviet people..."
(9): insisting that political choices and competing ideologies, within and without, did matter "to the particular variety of non-socialist oder that was eventually established"
(9): key, "to say that the Soviet Russia of the early twenties was not likely to have witnessed a full-fledged revolutionary democratic socialism is not to say that whatever decisions the revolutionary leadershipmade were indifferent or of no consequence..."
(10): revisionists pushing back in several places--(a) myth of bolshevik party as monolith; (b) october revolution was not a coup; (c) bureaucratic apparatus was born months after the seizure of power.
(10): aimed at Stephen Cohen--yet, "what could have been a reasonable skepticism about he possibilities for authentic democratic institutions... has been transformed by some revisionists into an almost uncritical defense of Lenin's NEP and Bukharin's subsequent political line..."
(11): good, revolutionary revisionism, in his opinion, is victor serge and ante ciliga.
(12): democracy as opposed to revolution? not a chance, arguing Farber--unlike the "deep-lying Western sentiment that sees democracy as counterposed not only to the necessary use of violence but even to quick and decisive action as well..." [cites Kautsky, the proletariat cannot make war]
(14): four historical stages
- from February 1917, to November 1917 (or October)
- from November 1917, to beginning of Civil War in Summer of 1918
- Civil War and War Communism, from Summer 1918 to end of 1920
- from strike waves, Kronstadt and NEP (February-March 1921), to the interregnum after Lenin's death in 1924.
PART ONE: SOVIET DEMOCRACY UNDER ATTACK
Chapter One, The Rise and Decline of Democratic Soviets
(19): origins in October 1905, with 226 deputies from 96 factories/workshops and 5 trade unions--a true "worker's parliament"
(19): in May there may have been 400 soviets, in August 600--not long, then, before "dual power" emerged.
(20): by October 1917, there were 900 workers', peasants', soldiers' soviets in existence.
(20-21): the problem, though, as Rabinowitch noted, was not the dynamism of the soviets, which continued with the Left SRs in serious, trenchant opposition through the early part of 1918, but the ascendancy of the Sovnarkom.
(21-22): more-or-less sensible position the Bolsheviks had, on party-soviet relations; in the early part of the post-revolutionary era, there was not really much of an attempt to dominate the soviets.
(22): "The Bolshsevik's soviet electoral hegemony began to significantly erode in the country as a whole by the Spring of 1918..." Bolsheviks won about 48.5% of the vote, in June 1918 elections for the Petrograd Soviet. [though we haven't yet discussed why...] "Petrograd was the home of working-class Bolshevism, and for this party to elect somewhat less than half of the soviet delegates was indeed a very serious setback."
(22-23): decline in Kronstdat, as well, in April 1918 elections there.
(23): on country-wide scale, "representation in 100 county soviets declined from 66 pecent in mid-March 1918 to 44.8 percenti n the period from April to August 1918" [dating civil war to end-May, and war communism to June]
(23-24): discussion of who made up the remainder--conclusion seems to be that in urban areas, the Mensheviks were recovering, while in general (and in rural areas, specifically) it was Left SRs and especially non-party delegates.
(24): key--"in light of the central concerns of this study, it is particularly important to note that... Bolshevik armed force usually overthrew the results of these provincial soviets..."
(24): causes of this shift, of course, include Civil War, food crisis, unpopularity of Brest-Litovsk treaty, etc.
(25): key--"These types of pronouncements laid the basis for what soon (i.e., in 1919) became Lenin's fully explicit revision of the concept of the dictatorship of the whole proletariat by changing it into the dictatorship of the most advanced workers, i.e. the party. In sum, the Bolsheviks were beginning to lose the hegemony they had acquired in the working class ever since the struggle against Kornilov in the late Summer of 1917."
(26): absolutely--even if the opposition had no alternative program (as Rosenberg argues they didn't)"...given that the Bolsheviks had earlier proclaimed the superiority of the soviet system because of the rank-and-file's ability to recall its representatives, weren't then the workers entitled to remove the Bolsheviks from the government and find out if the opposition could do any better?"
(27): by the Summer of 1918, you have one-party rule in the Soviets--the Mensheviks and SRs were excluded in June (on CEC orders), and the Left SRs in July, after the assassination. [even though, "for a year and a half after this, opposition parties--including Mensheviks and Right SRs--were occasionally reinstated... but following a decree of 28 November 1919, a tiny number of appointed rather than elected non-Communist delegates were permitted to attend the Seventh Soviet Congress in December 1919... with no vote]
(27): key facts--Fourth Congress of Soviets in March 1918 was 65% Bolshevik, 22% Left SR, 11% Other, 27% non-Party; Seventh Congress in December 1919 was 97% Communist.
(27): The Eighth Congress of Soviets, in December 1920, was the last to accept opposition party delegates, without voting rights. At local level, you continued to have the odd opposition delegate, but only until 1921.
(27): in sum you have a dynamic where soviet democracy was degenerated as the opposition, it seems, became more and more popular (for a variety of reasons). this can give rise to a bevy of conclusions--but they all ought to be historically grounded.
(28): key--"it was not during the Civil War, but during the period from 1921 to 1922, as a political accompaniment to the economic 'retreat' of the NEP, that the one-party state was completely and fully established..."
(29): the end of the road--"in August 1922, the 12th All-Russian Congress of the Communist Party passed a resolution...which opened the way for the consolidation and systematization of the one-party state... it required that the Bolsheviks put an end to Menshevik and SR activities in trade unions, cooperatives, secondary schools, etc."
(29-30): increasing centralization and bureaucratization of the Soviets, too--(1) the soviet congresses... only met annually after November of 1918, after meeting every three months before that. (2) the CEC did not meet at all, in 1919! (after meeting every few days in the first half of 1918). there were attempts to revive it, meeting a few times in 1920 and 1921. (3) increasing power was going to the Party apparatus, particularly after the 8th Party Congress in 1922-23 (this was disenfranchising the Sovnarkom, too). party secretaries were replacing soviet officials as key holders of power at local level. [question of how this regeneration of the party happened, particularly given the serious weakness of party work in the aftermath of the revolution]
(30): "by 1921 the party had come to exercise administrative as well as political authority in the new society..."
(30): centralization of the Party apparatus, particularly after 1919 (loss of autonomy for local committees, at the expense of the Politburo and the Orgburo)
(30): 9th Party Congress, April 1920
(31-34): structural weaknesses of the Russian soviets
- party-soviet relations--in February parties were not that important, but their role increased in importance as the revolution advanced; this obviously threatened the autonomy of the soviets. (parties, moreover, acquired rights within soviets, to appoint officers, what have you--with this, 'internal discipline' threatened soviet democracy)
- disparities in representation; conflicts among multiple organs of representation; persons often attended who had no ties to the soviet.
- great weakness of the soviets amongst the peasantry, which was about 80% of the country in 1917. no more than 11% of rural districts had soviets in October 1917, it's estimated (though at higher geographic levels (county and province) soviets had been organized quite widely). As a result of all this, though, "peasants were often represetned... by outside intellectuals who did not fully understand [them]"
(35): Bolshevik rejection of the Soviets in November 1905--this is a bit tendentious, to read this into 1917 and after, given the infinite declarations of precisely the opposite sentiment. though Lenin is not to blame here, he says.
(36): until general strikes in October 1905, even the Mensheviks didn't have many links to the workers--they, like Bolsheviks, had concentrated on the radicalization of the intelligentsia.
(36-38): key, in sum-- in this discussion, Farber is acknowledging that Lenin was a critic of sectarianism when there were Bolsheviks who disregarded the Petrograd Soviet of 1905--but he's simultaneously arguing that, precisely because of his position on the primacy of the Party over non-party organizations in the tasks of the revolution, his support for Soviet democracy was only ever provisional and tactical. this, in other words, is an ideological predisposition to anti-democracy. this places Farber in the odd position, though, of completely disregarding State and Revolution as relevant to the theoretical formation of Lenin (or, at least, to Lenin in power). one thinks he recognizes this is a weak argument, for this reason. [our task is to think through whether this was really ever of anything more than rhetorical importance--does it explain anything substantive? ]
(39): Rosa Luxemburg on 'winning a majority'--not from 'majority' to revolutionary tactics, but from revolutionary tactics to a 'majority'. brilliant--and one can imagine 6 Spartacists in a room, chanting this in unison.
(39): Farber agrees, then, that you can have a revolutionary situation, where the act of revolution contravenes the will of the majority. But, very fairly, he is arguing that this is precisely why democratic institutions are so critically important--because they can compensate, as well as offering an institutional structure for post-revolutionary society.
(39): importance of the smychka, if a revolutionary Marxist perspective was to survive a peasant-majority society. moreover, the international context was seen as key--"the survival of the worker-peasant revolution in Russia was seen as dependent on its ability to act as a triggering or precipitating mechanism for a more general European workers' revolution that would then help Russia out of its backwardness." [this would be the place to ask if this was a realistic expectation, re: escaping backwardness, not just re: general revolution]
(40): his question (and THE pointed question, in a sense): "however, there is a far more serious problem that neither Luxemburg nor the bolsheviks discussed or theorized about: namely, what should revolutionaries do if they succeed in taking and retaining power, but their wager or projection fails insofar as maintaining popular support and a democratic society are concerned?"
(40): agrees that pre-October Bolshevik strategy was defensible, from a democratic-revolutionary point of view (seizing power, etc.) "Yet, while I believe Bolshevik strategy and tactics in this period were on the whole correct, it is also important to note that there were, within the Bolshevik Party, significantly different degrees of concern... with the serious problems involved in taking and/or holding on to power without majority support" [and Lenin was among those less concerned, he's arguing].
(41): looking at this through Lenin on the Soviets, in the July Days (and the Sixth Congress of the Bolshevik Party, July/August 1917), opposed by Voldarskii and Kharitinov [but couldn't the whole incident also be read as a reluctance to take power, precisely because of the lack of majority support? Farber is implying that Lenin was pushing for an immediate taking of power, not through soviets but through shop committees--this is not what I recall. though Farber's analysis of Stalin's resolution at the Congress seems right; look at the Rabinowitch, again]
(43): all of this, of course, was made immaterial by the August putsch attempt
(43-44): "War Communism" and Red Terror as "Stalinist Leninism" (Robert Tucker) -- not just exigencies, "the governmental euphoria with War Communism also implicitly revealed the political and ideological priorities of mainstream Bolshevism."
(44-46): main features of War Communism (Summer 1918 to March/April 1921)
- seizures of surplus grain (surplus defined very freely) [this had been carried out already by the PG, don't forget] this includes the structural invitation to the poor peasantry to press the kulak--farber is arguing that this stemmed from a misreading of the rural situation, with a distinctive poor stratum not beig that evident [marc ferro on village solidarity; the person on the State committee as much an alien as the kulak. but what about Lenin's intensive study of agriculture? surely we can't charge the Bolsheviks with a lack of interest, or awareness of this problem. farber is additionally arguing, interestingly, that there were Bolsheviks who argued that 'poor peasant' wasn't an intelligible political category]
- widespread nationalization of industry
- attempt to abolish money and trade [or celebrate their abolition?]
(47-48): "Yet War Communism, unlike the later New Economic Policy, had a special attraction for Bolsheviks..."
(49): what's more, despite the fact that he agrees objective necessity plays its part, Farber is here leaning towards suggesting that 'War Communism', in fact, exacerbated the situation confronting the Bolsheviks (it required extra administrative effort, a market could have helped give peasants' incentive to sow).
(49): opposition to 'War Communism'--Larin in 1918, Trotsky in 1920! Lenin, Farber's suggesting, was steadfast in support until the 'Green' peasant revolts in Tambov and the Ukraine, and Kronstadt.
(50): Lenin's position on the peasantry--on the one hand, revolutionary in their struggles with landlord; on the other hand, "inevitably becoming reactionary once they obtained their land." [Russian left-wing populism, on the other hand, was much more inclined to see the peasantry as revolutionary]
(50): "No wonder, then, that the Bolshevik Party hardly existed in the Russian countryside before the October revolution..." [and after the revolution, to a large extent]
(50): At Sixth Party Congress in 1917, no peasant delegates! (In January 1917, only about 7.6 percent of members were from rural areas). Even in 1920, the majority of rural districts had no party organizers.
(51): amongst delegates/activists, rural questions very low on the agenda
(51): when the Bolsheviks did finally recruit from rural areas, as a ruling party, careerism/opportunism were obviously rampant problems.
(51): reasons for prioritizing the industrial working class:
- corollary of classical Marxist projection
- peasantry's individualism bias, vs. collective organization of workers
- predisposition for international solidarity; presumably chauvinism amongst the peasantry
- strategic concentration of the proletariat assured it command over capitals
(53): important, re: War Communism: "...it was striking that a major and original contributor to the Marxist tradition had a difficult time reconciling himself to the unavoidable reality that allowing the existence of petty trade was... not a matter of voluntaristic choice... Instead, petty trade was a reflection of material reality, i.e. a very backward development of the still non-collective, petty commodity means of production..." [this is Farber's critique of Lars Lih's article on War Communism/NEP]
(54): in other words, again it's not just objective circumstance--"...I would insist on the inadequacy of Leninist and Bolshevik policies on the peasantry..."[not disputing that Russia was on a path to the proletarianization of the peasantry; but that this had certainly not 'come of age' in 1917]
(55): key conclusion: NEP, or something like it, may have been the only immediate policy option--NEP "may have been the only possible type of policy even if there had been a peaceful transfer of power to the Bolshevik-led soviets, no civil war, and a successful revolution in Germany..."
(55-58): key, Bolsheviks and the Constituent Assembly--"The Bolshevik rationale for the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly would have been justified from a democratic-revolutionary point of view only if we assume that their arguments in defense of the soviet system... represented a genuine and long-term commitment to that alternative form of democratic government..."
(57-60): interesting discussion of the weakness of Rosa Luxemburg's position on the Constituent Assembly and the Constitution
(60): Farber is willing to tolerate a contingent defense of disenfranchisement; but, agreed, that the principle of equal citizenship ought not to be incompatible with a post-revolutionary regime.
(61): key, on revolutionary 'gambling'--"...What is politically not acceptable from a revolutionary democratic point of view is the kind of gambling that involves highly voluntaristic social and economic policies. Given the economic backwardness of Russian society, such policies could not possibly have been carried out without the systematic mass coercion and oppression of at least a major party of the exploited and oppressed classes (e.g., the peasantry). Again, the notion that democratic working-class rule could survive in such a situation is surely utopian." [this is fair enough, though it is unclear that this explains (or objects to) all of what we want to understand in the Bolshevik case, as far as deviations from the democratic-revolutionary line are concerned--
Chapter 2, Workers' Control and Trade Union Independence
(62): executive summary: like soviets (which were political institutions for deepening of democracy), the deepening of economic democracy was "supported by the Bolshevik Party in the period between February and October of 1917... was reversed only a few months after October."
(62-63): 'factory committees' as a defensive tradition of resistance in Russia, particularly in the post-February day [like, but not identical to soviets, which had jurisdiction over a geographic area, and were composed of reps from work centers, military garrisons, etc.--and more oriented to political questions]
(63): Red Guards emerged out of the 'factory committees' -- were only put in the service of the soviets and the trade unions, later
(63): key, though Bolsheviks started agitating for workers' control in May 1917, "... the party of Lenin did not have a clear and unified view, let alone a theory, of the role of workers' control before and/or after the socialist revolution..."
(63-64): except between July and August, when he turned towards them for tactical reasons, Lenin was always more concerned with the soviets than with the 'factory committees.'
(64): key--"However, in its daily grassroots agitation, the Bolshevik Party rank-and-file propagated the slogan of workers' control and encouraged the factory committees' encroachment on management prerogatives... In the last analysis [though], workers' control by the factory committees was, for Lenin and mainstream Bolshevism, a crucial part of the struggle to overthrow capitalism. Nevertheless, the committees had not been much thought about as important working-class institutions in their own right..." [this is critical, but in need of inspection--in other words, he is arguing that the defense of worker control was always tactical, and never intrinsic]
(64-65): a few days after taking power, a generally formulated Decree on Workers' Control--most factory committees (which existed in most large factories) had some element of control in management (nearly 80 percent, in factories over 200). but the devil is in the specific implementation of this decree, of course; in this sense, all alternatives are still made possible, under this decree, from worst to best. [at some stage we will have to ask the obvious question, and fit it into this narrative--even if there were oppositionists who would say yes, do we think that worker control is ever practicable in a war-ravaged, backward economy?]
(65): two different sets of instructions promulgated:
- Petrograd Central Council of Factory Committees, 7 December 1917--very radical, recommending active intervention of workers. "thoroughgoing workers' management."
- emanating from the Supreme Council of National Economy (VSNKh)--highly centralized system of control "in which local factory committees would be subordinated to the control-distribution commission of the trade union of htat particular branch... these in turn would be subrodinated to regional councils... and ultimately to the VSNKh. Even more important was the stipulation that management functions remain in the hand of the employer..."
(66): key claim--"Towards the end of 1917, Lenin decided to centralize in reaction to the increasing radicalism of workers' control and the worsening of the economic crisis. To this end, he also began to turn away from the factory committees and towards the trade unions [which were more moderate, and more closely linked to the parties]..." [in other words, it is--again--here, both subjective/political considerations, and economic/outside exigencies. though a Leninist would clearly connect these two impulses--perhaps justifiably?]
(66): Larin, in November 1917: "'the trade unions represent the interests of the class as a whole whereas the Factory Committees only represent particular interests.'"
(67): the 81 nationalizations in December 1917 involved the creation of a board, which had former management and also factory committees represented--yet management was the prerogative of this board, and not the prerogative of the workers at the given factory.
(67): "Nonetheless... at the very least until March 1918, the center's attempt to control the nature and pace of nationalization, or more generally the economic life of the country, was not fully carried out in practice." [so worker control, as many would obviously argue, as a source of instability? see below, pg. 68]
(67): important, tracking the degeneration, though not as dramatic as I would have thought--on 28 June 1918, War Communism Decree on Nationalization appointed boards, one-third would be elected representatives, two-thirds would be appointed by the Sovnarkom. Farber is arguing, also, that the concept of management was being watered down, though, to inspection.
(68): key, acknowledgment that exigencies played their part--"the real problem of localism was not due to Anarcho-Syndicalist ideological and political influence but was instead a response to objective economic conditions... it was to bexpected that workers in each factory would tend to 'look out for themselves.'... this justified, if not centralization properly speaking, at least a consolidation of leadership functions." BUT--and this is Farber's key point, and where the Bolsheviks fall flat: there can be many forms of centralization, or coordination (a National Congress of Factory Committees, for example (which was proposed, but overruled on three separate occasions), rather than the Sovnarkom. Bolsheviks made a political turn towards a kind of centralization (the trade unions, and the boards) that favored their interests, rather than the cause of worker democracy. [is this a utopian position? i find it hard to maintain that it is. perhaps one might suggest that it would have been impossible to administer a system of national, working-class worker control. but would they have been worse off, had they tried?]
(69): by March 1918, Lenin is advocating 'one-man management', to replace the boards that had been established in late 1917. [though this was not, at all, implemented immediately--see the War Communism Nationalization Decree, for example. It was only by the end of 1920, really, that most factories (2,183 out of 2,843) were run without collective management; this was cemented by 1922]
(69): 9th Congress of the Party, March-April 1920, "confirmed the establishment of one-man management."
(69): increasing unpopularity of factory committees, insofar as factory committee activists were bound to the policies of an increasing unpopular party (and as a result, an increasing lack of internal democracy--reported as early as the early part of 1918, in some factories in Petrograd)
(71): this is the crux of his claim re: worker control--and, in fact, the morphology of his general position: "It may very well be that if objective conditions are highly unfavorable, as they were in the years subsequent to 1918, even the most democratic and proletarian political leadership would have been unable to maintain the achievements of workers' control... and union independence... Yet a national leadership strongly oriented towards rank-and-file control would not have permanently committed itself to the elimination of democracy. At the same time, it would probably have been more modulated and sensitive to the degree of despotism... of the various specific measures introduced." [it could still be the case, though, that democratic opposition to Bolshevik policy was utopian and not justified, even if this were true. farber's point, though, is to draw attention to the fact that the Bolsheviks made a virtue of this necessity, rather than always regard these setbacks as obstacles on the road to revolution, which tells us about their political formation--"prior to 1917, the concern with workers' power at the point of production was by and large alien to the social democratic tradition in Russia..."]
(71): Bogdanov and the Left Bolsheviks, in 1908-1909, were sympathetic to syndaclism.
(72): Farber suggesting that there was a total lack of thinking about the way in which institutions would be managed to meet revolutionary-democratic standards, prior to the Revolution. Perhaps, he's suggesting, because of Marxism's aversion to utopianism. Would more robust blueprint building have saved the revolution, though? Perhaps not, but it could not have hurt.
(7273): in sum, re:worker control, it was a failure of the political tradition from which the Bolsheviks came (not, as others might argue, cynical manipulation of the 'factory committees' to suit personal interests). "For Lenin the central problem and concern continued to be the revolutionary transformation of the central state; what happened at the point of production was derivative."
(73): Lenin on the Post Office and bureaucrats being paid 'workmen's wages' -- but not a challenge to the bureaucratic organization of work, except in this aspect, Farber's arguing. organizational efficiency and centralization hand-in-hand, in other words.
(74): in sum, "the period of War Communism turned out to be uniquely different from the first several months after the revolution and from the post-Civil War NEP. During War Communism, the government placed its main emphasis on the establishment of centralized state ownership and control of the economy with an ever-decreasing element of soviet and shopfloor worker control and ever-increasing element of labor compulsion." And then, precisely because it made a virtue out of this necessity (and didn't defend these as necessities, but as steps toward socialism), it revealed the hollowness of its political vision--in other words, all this was not simply of rhetorical importance. This seems the key kind of argument this book is making, re: the Bolsheviks.
(74-75): what you did have in post-Revolutionary Russia (and this was as far as Lenin got, too) was individuals of proletarian backgrounds in high positions. but that is scarcely socialism--else Stalin might well be called history's greatest socialist.
(75): voluntary Saturday labor becoming compulsory Saturday labor by early 1921.
(76-77): Left Bolsheviks: alive to workers' control and management in a way that Lenin never was. Osinsky's argument that nationalization did not, at all, equal socialism; opposed to Tayloirsm; labor productivity did not mean labor intensity; an alternative national economic authority, involving workers, which repudiated syndicalism but protected the proletariat from bureaucratization. All this was criticized as 'petty-bourgeois wavering.' [Farber's larger point, again, is that even if these proposals wouldn't have worked at the time they were proposed--"the lack of mainstream Bolshevik consideration of and/or support for Osinsky's type of orientation could not but have negatively affected the possibilities for workers' democracy in subsequent years, as the economy gradually improved."
(77-80): Right Bolsheviks: opponents of workers' control (, but a position centered on "the general question of whether or not Russia was economically ripe for socialism." In other words, Lozovsky (and Riazanov) equated socialism with worker control, but think that it was on the agenda of the day--anticipating, instead, a lengthy transitional period of "state capitalism/socialism." At the same time, these were trade union leaders--and thus defended traditional civil liberties, against State and Party interference. [Farber is pointing to the tragic limitations of this and the Left position, but not making this explicit just yet]
(80): unions had played a less important role in the pre-October revolutionary process; Bolsheviks had never been as strongly represented in them, as in 'factory committees'
(80-82): key, debates on Trade Unions, at the Second Trade Union Congress in 1919, and even the First Congress in 1917, which were prefigurative, and more consequential than the famous debate at the 10th Congress of the Communist Party in 1921--in other words, politics, independent of objective exigencies, were revealed in this discussion. Already, at the first congress, Zinoviev (like Tomsky) was asking 'from whom do you need independence: your own government?' Certainly, Farber's point is defensible--trade union independence is not incompatible with support for the gov't. Menshevik case was made, though less convincing; Right Bolshevik case was made, which was very convincing (point about coercion coming to replace spontaneous, consensual solidarity).
(82-83): The Second Trade Union Congress cemented this--Lozovsky, who had been expelled by early 1918, continued to argue for the importance of independence; Tomsky declares, though, that no strikes could take place in Soviet Russia [though they are not outlawed]. "The two congresses did not fully clarify this issue [a State, however, popular, that has not eliminated hierarchical division of labor, needs to give workers the ability to defend themselves, from it]
(83-84): a 'syndicalist slip', at the Eighth Congress of the Communist Party in March 1919
(84-85): growth of the Communist Party, and its subsumption of the trade unions by means of the enforcement of party discipline within the organs, themselves--"...we are really speaking about the end of any significant policy debates within the trade union or in whichever organization the ruling party's fractionali discipline is being invoked..."
(85): extraordinary--at the Fourth All-Russian Congress of Trade Unions (in May 1921), Riazanov presented an amendment, which provided for 'normal methods of proletarian democracy... where the choice of leaders should be left to the trade unionists themselves.' This was supported by Tomsky--his credentials as a member of the Central Committee were duly withdrawn by Lenin, Stalin, and Bukharin. Riazanov was barred from future trade union work.
(85): suppression of the Congress of the Metalworkers' Union (also May 1921), which elected a Workers Opposition leadership-- Central Committee overruled this entirely, and didn't even let a dissident resign in protest!
(86-87): key, the debates over the trade unions that emerged at the 10th Congress in March 1921 had already been presaged by what happened, before--"In light of all that I have just described, the position taken by Lenin during the sharp debates on the unions at the March 1921 Tenth Congress appears to be far less consequential.. At this Congress, tRotsky and Bukharin argued for the complete statification of trade uions, whil the Workers' Opposition... supported the practical implementation of Point V of the 1919 Party Program, i.e., trade union administration of the entire economy." Lenin, of course, disagreed with the Workers' Opposition and Trotsky/Bukharin--but the "degree of autonomy" that he supported (b/c Russia was not yet a workers' state), Farber is arguing, is quite "meaningless"--"Lenin's resolution at the 1921 Congress made it clear that the thrust of his policies was not the strengthening of the defensive character of the unions... while the unions could not be said to have lost all of their previous power, it was clear that they were increasingly becoming 'transmission belts' for the party rather than defensive institutions and/or powerful economic and social policy makers" [two dynamics, documented earlier, seem particularly important in rendering this resolution impotent: the banning of opposition parties from the unions and the fraction discipline being imposed by the Communist party]
(87): contradiction between defensive trade unions and trade unions doing the work of the State, Farber argues, was never seen as temporary by the Bolsheviks, insofar as their independent politics were attributed to the 'surivials of capitalism' within the socialist system and were expected to last 'several decades'
(87): All this was cemented at the 11th Congress of the Communist Party (March-April 1922). Party dominance of trade union central committees; party members could be coopted rather than elected, etc., etc.
(88): some distasteful NEP provisions, for example (reduction in unemployment insurance, lengthening of the workday in dangerous jobs, etc.) could not then be imposed, because of the impotence of the trade unions.
(88): "In spite of all these developments, it still took some time before the independent initiatives of the working class were completely crushed, under Stalin's regime." [and here Farber gives strke statistics from the early 1920s to 1927, despite an official no-strike policy in the unions]
(88): conclusion--"The role that trade unions and factory committees should play in the post-revolutionary transition toward socialism has been inadequately theorized in the socialist and Marxist traditions..."
Chapter 3, Freedom of the Press
(90): importance of the Press, because of relatively high rates of literacy, particularly in urban centers (in 1918, 79% for males and 44% for women in country as a whole; 89% for males and 65% for females in Petrograd)
(90): before the revolution, of course, democratic (even if somewhat eclectic, involving some statification, with the goal of eliminating power of money over press--see 91-92) views on press freedom--"Unquestionably, this was closely connected to Lenin's vigorous support for democratic demands as a keystone of the struggle against Tsarism." Farber is suggesting that there could have been other ways to conceive of this; but this was, certainly, not substantively anti-democratic, even though it had problems.
(92): key--the transition to a closed Stalinist press, Farber is arguing, can be divided into three periods:
- (92-99) from October 1917 to the beginning of the Civil War in mid 1918: "a mixed press regime prevailed at this time. the press was still relatively open, but the government acted in a confused and arbitrary manner, while at the same time being comparatively mild in its repressive activities--unlike the situation after 1921..." [Sovnarkom announcement of a provisional/temporary/qualified ban on "hostile newspapers"--matter, though, had to be referred to the CEC because of opposition, where, on November 4th, it was Lenin/Trotsky vs. Left SRs/Riazanov/Larin. Lenin draws an analogy to the closing of the Tsarist press, which Farber says is completely untenable; Trotsky also makes some indefensible points about 'program-maximum' vs. 'program-minimum'. Though Farber doesn't think the opposition presented a long-term socialist alternative to the domination of money, they had a short-term solution to an urgent problem, he's arguing. The Bolshevik resolution which was approved, though it provided for other parties, didn't have much purchase, in practice--predisposed to abuses. Really, though, the point is that in this phase--there was inconsistent repression, sometimes even not carried out by local soviets (Mensheviks and Kadets had a newspaper until the Summer of 1918, he notes)]
- (99) "The Civil War that began in mid-1918 considerably accelerated the process of the disappearance of press freedom. Almost all of the opposition press was shut down, especially after the Left SR uprising of 6 July 1918... Yet the government was still somewhat tentative about this new press policy, and was later occasionally willing to permit opposition newspapers to reopen for publication. This was particularly true for groups and parties that coincided with the government in opposing the White counterrevolutionaries.." [Menshevik paper was re-opened on 22 January 1919; then closed on 26 February, etc., etc. ]
- (99-104): "it was only after the end of the Civil War that Lenin and the Bolsheviks firmly adopted policies that moved them a considerable distance towards what later became the Stalinist totalitarian model..." [famous letter to Miasnikov in August 1921 shows evolution of Lenin's views--in 1917 he had proposed a popular freedom of the press; here, his letter to Miasnikov is entirely undemocratic, and not anything that could be defended as 'conjunctural', Farber is saying--same goes for Trotsky in his rejoinder to Kautsky]
(103): key--the irony, he's noting, is that in the NEP period, the press was opened up to advertisements, etc. -- but still, nothing could be published that politically opposed the Communist Party. "this proves my earlier contention that the issue was not who published, but what was being published..." ["the party could not tolerate an open political life..."]
(104): a greater degree of openness in "book publishing" (Kadets could publish their party program in January 1918); though the purging of 'popular libraries' had been taking place, under the aegis of Lenin's wife, Krupskyaya
(106): total effect was a 'two-track cultural policy' , which liberated the intelligentsia, to an extent (NEP as a culturally 'fruitful epoch'), but entailed restrictions, still, on the masses (not unlike Gorbachev, Farber is saying--allow some innovation amongst the intelligentsia, but prevent mass popular unrest).
(106-111): in sum--we need a conception of press freedom that is not liberal capitalist (state not ok, but has no answer to capitalist control of media, can't understand takeover of media, and conditions of civil war), not authoritarian/Stalinist in inspiration (cannot have State monopoly on behalf of workers--quoting Trotsky to say, "in reality classes are heterogenous; they are torn by inner antagonisms.") "...socialist points of view would have to prevail on their own merits..."
(112): "In any case..., these limitations on press and media freedoms should be decided by courts directly responsible to the people who democratically elected them..."
Chapter 4, Repression
(113): key--"I would argue... that the unavoidably blood reality of revolutions dow not at all diminish the need for rational policies on the part of the politically conscious revolutionaries. If anything, it only increases their responsibility for attempting, insofar as feasible, to direct the revolutionary rage against rationally and selectively chosen targets..." [one must ask, as he goes on to say--is violence being deployed defensively, or in lieu of political/ideological struggle? right on; though one still needs a conceptual apparatus to defend the revolution against the 'Black Book' types]
(114): like freedom of the press, the initial post-revolutionary period was marked by a "state of arbitrary, inconsistent, and yet comparatively mild repressive activities." but omens, and predispositions, were there--Lenin on capital punishment, on Jacobin terror--"mainstream Bolshevism seems to have taken an almost perverse pride in an equally extreme moral relativism..."
(115): important--Marx and Engels on revolutionary terror, two senses: a 'positive' sense, in which it's a necessary feature of all truly revolutionary upheavals; a 'negative' sense, in which terror is used as a means of 'self-preservation' [here, terror becomes absurd, as Engels said]
(116): key, and the Red Terror, starting in August 1918--not, Farber is arguing, "instrumental or limited in scope" [in the sense of organized for the survival of the revolution], as some have argued. It was "also an instrument to impose what had become, in the course of the Civil War, the government's dogmatic and willfull (in the Robespierran sense) endorsement of the policies of War communism. In particular, these policies were being forced on a peasantry among whom the Bolshevik Party had no historical roots or support..." [it is, another words, a feature of the admired Bolsheviks of late 1917 becoming the hated Communists of late 1918, in the eyes of the peasantry. not just a result of armed political conflict with the Whites, but also a result of failed social and economic policies pursued intentionally against the masses.]
(117): about 50,000 people were put to death by the gov't, in the course of the Civil War [not including insurgents, or people who were killed by mobs, etc.]
(117): it was, of course, also carried out by the Whites.
(118): several disturbing features of the Red Terror:
- Cheka had no external controls (troika oversight became formal)--it was an administrative agency with de facto judicial powers. this lack of oversight made it highly prone to corruption [particularly the case in the Ukraine, he's noting]. "virtually all the formal trials held on the basis of a Cheka investigation took place without the presence of either the defendant or the prosecutor." [January 1920--Cheka rushed to beat the deadline after the Bolsheviks banned the death penalty]. None of this, Farber agrees with Serge, could be justified by the conditions behind the front lines, in Russia, where normal trials could easily have taken place.
- (120) broadening of punishments; use of 'collective punishments' to punish members of an association, group, etc. in mid-1919, there were some 13,000 hostages; Kamenev at the Sixth Congress in November 1918 had already called for the release of all non-essential hostages [a Latsis' logic, though his incredible statement was repudiated in Pravda; and Steinberg's objection, in late 1917 and early 1918]. This policy, Farber's noting, turned out to be quite disastrous in Bolshevik clashes with the 'Green ' peasant rebellions (often as a result of War Communist policy)--in Tambov from 1920-21, for example (see pg 122-123, where a horrifying decree authorizing the shooting of eldest breadwinners is promulgated)
(124-125): Mensheviks--majority line behind the Reds, against the Whites; in fact, reinstated to soviets in November 1918, after they recognized the 'October Revolution' as historically necessary; harassed by the Cheka, definitely, but were able to have meetings, have an office, etc. "The situation changed substantially at the end of the Civil War in 1921, when the Mensheviks still had significant, and probably growing, influence in the working class. Zinoviev is reported to have estimated that at that time as many as 90 percent of the union rank-and-file were opposed to the regime..." [about 3,000 members were arrested and banished, etc., etc.]
(125-126): Right SRs--many tended to be sympathetic to opposition parties in the Civil War; yet not much internal discipline (those not affiliated with counterrevolution were reinstated to the soviets in February 1919, briefly, after which they again split into many factions). [I'm quite interested in the logic behind these re-instatements--though Farber would clearly argue that they cannot figure into our overall assessment, being temporary blips during the Civil War]
(126): Left SRs--"in my estimation, the Left SRS and the Anarchists were... the only truly revolutionary forces in Russia besides the Bolsheviks..." Again, July 1918 is the key date, though Farber has a more Bolshevik-friendly narrative than Rabinowitch. War Communism put these two parties at logger-heads; however, a group of Left SRs were permitted a periodical in 1920, for a brief time.
(126-127): Anarchists--Bill Shatov sided with Bolsheviks, but most broke in the aftermath of the revolution. Some struggled against the regime--a bomb attack in September 1919, for example. "The last open and public Anarchist demonstration took place when Kropotkin died on February 8 1921" [some 20,000 strong, demanding release of prisoners]. "With the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the New Economic Policy, the suppression of the Anarchists became thorough and complete..."
(128): and this is perhaps his key point, against the traditional socialist narrative--"it is also questionable whether repressive activities were necessarily practical..."
(128-129): important--instead of those who are not with us, are against us--why not those who are not against us, are with us? "Such a policy would have been especially welcome at the time of growing isolation and loss of support for the Bolsheviks, even before the Civil War broke out in mid-1918." [in fact, the implication is that heavy-handedness and inhumanities contributed to the insurgencies--"the extent of the Bolshevik terror was one of the factors that made their victory in the Civil War more difficult."]
(129): there was revolutionary opposition to the Cheka, Farber is noting--the attitude that it was objectively explainable, or necessary, was not "universally shared at the time..." [begins with Steinberg as Commissar of Justice, of course, but includes also widespread opposition to the Cheka within soviets and the party]
(130): struggle of power between soviets and the Cheka, beginning in 1918--to whom did power belong? (80% of local soviets in October 1918 said that the latter should be subordinated to the former)
(131): opposition from individual leaders within the Bolshevik Party--Olminsky (who was on the editorial staff of Pravda from 1918 to 1920; with Bukharin as leader, interestingly, much was published that was opposed to the practice of the Cheka)
(132): the opposition from Revolutionary Tribunals, to the Cheka (established on 17 May 1918, as the proper judicial bodies to try counterrevolutionaries)--very hesitant to deploy the death penalty (only in 2% of all cases). But these were hollowed out as 1919 became 1920, and "the Cheka had clearly come out ahead..."
(133): key--"On the whole, Lenin's position in the political spectrum inside the Bolshevik Party tended to be much closer to the Cheka than to its detractors and opponents..." Though he occasionally opposed excesses in individual instances AND acknowledged mistakes, the opposite was also true (remember his letter to Zinoviev, after Volodarsky's assasination). BUT "most important of all, Lenin did nothing substantive, from an institutional point of view, to significantly reverse the unlimited powers of the Cheka..."
(135): "Worst of all, the evidence indicates that terror remained for Lenin an instrument of political and social policy even after the end of the Civil War..."
(136): like Solzhenitsyn, tracing Stalin's labor camps to Lenin and Red Terror? Absolutely not. Civil War camps (closed in 1922) were distinct from the Northern Camps of Special Designation (SLON) which were opened in 1921 and 1922. In the former, prisoners were paid 70-75% of normal wages, they were in contact with the outside world, etc. The latter on the other hand, were very different--"Brutality was known in these camps," but political activity was still permitted for Leftists. Moreover, these were never put in place to assist the Russian economy. These were certainly part of the heritage of the Stalinist gulag, but not in any kind of immediate sense--it was via the Cheka..
(137): key, the concept of revolutionary 'excess' [in some sense, this is the crux]--"...The power of the working class and peasantry was only a shadow of its former reality by the time the Red Terror and War Communism came to an end in early 1921..." Part of this, Farber is implying, had something to do with the nature and character of the 'excesses'. In acknowledging this, we have to oppose Trotsky's understanding of 'revolutionary' excess. Fair. The fact that there is a such thing as unavoidable excesses (certainly, there are), does not capture what we are really concerned with--we are concerned with "excesses that occur as the result of conscious policy choices by the revolutionary leaders... Neither can we meaningfully talk about 'unavoidable excesses' if the policies of revolutionary leaders are such that they cannot possibly be carried out successfully without excesses. This was the case, for example, with... War Communism..."
(138-139): key--"an 'objective' analysis cannot ignore that political beliefs... had a dynamic of their own and were not merely a reflex response..." in explaining Stalin, then, objective exigencies are clearly telling; but you don't want to discount the fact that there a gutting of the democratic defenses, which began earlier, removed impediments to the consolidation of his regime. "Subsequent objective developments or timely changes of political course, particularly at the end of the Civil War in 1921, might have turned the tide in at least a somewhat different direction..."
(140-141): 'bad tendency' vs. 'clear and present danger' vs. 'incitement', re: free speech. the second, he's arguing, is appropriate for a violently challenged revolutionary government; the third, for a consolidated phase. the first, never.
(142): in sum, a government has the option of fighting counterrevolutionary elements politically, or militarily/police-wise. the second may very well be justified in times of civil war (when targeted, of course); but the first is, of course, preferable.
(143): enforce political agreement is never more useful than disagreement. an irrational fear of the counterrevolution, of this sort, is better understood as a fear of revolutionary weakness.
Chapter 5, Socialist Legality
(145): change in the class composition of the judiciary--by 1923, 76% of people's judges were workers and peasants.
(145): early Soviet policies on crime, before Stalin, quite enlightened--low limit made 17 years in 1918 (though some retreat from this in later years); guilt deleted from official vocabulary, b/c society was guilty; average length of terms decreased dramatically. "[but], by the Stalinist late twenties,... the number of people in Soviet prisons was significantly higher than even during the worst years of the Tsarist period..."
(146): despite objective exigencies, it is still important to explore the "revolutionaries' most fundamental legal principles..."
(147): certainly, during the Civil War, there was, with the general increase in arbitrariness of authority,we must ask whether that can explain everything. implication is that it cannot, in the case of legal principles.
(147): trial procedure--Cheka and the Revolutionary Tribunals took over from ordinary courts and investigative agencies; "we can clearly detect, particularly in the [closing of individual practices], the state socialist politics of War Communism rather than any situationally justified response to the Civil War emergency..." [as formulated, this is not as convincing as his earlier arguments, to be honest--but let's read on]
(147): restoration of the procuracy in 1921! [centralized political supervision of the courts]. But also restoration of the bar, etc.
(148): key, summary passage--nonetheless, "while at this time the Cheka was reorganized and its name changed to GPU, its arbitrary mode of operation remained fundamentally unchanged... this began to express itself in new areas. By the beginning of 1921, the ruling Communist Party had been left with very little popular support and a very small social base. The party had also acquired a bureaucratic apparatus and had virtually eliminated the participation of other partiess. This was followed shortly after by the banning of factions... All of this established the political basis for Lenin's apparently unproblematic legal assumption in November 1921... that the central party authorities... had the right to force judicial authorities to discontinue proceedings against members of the Communist Party..."
(148): staging of the SR trial, June 1922--"an attempt on the party of the Communist Party leadership to intimidate and squelch the anti-Bolshevik socialist parties that had experienced a certain resurgence after the end of the Civil War..." [littered with violations of due process]
(149): key--"It does not seem that the dire objective necessities posed by the Civl War... were the only or perhaps even the principal reasons for the existence of a large degree of legal arbitrariness during early Bolshevik rule. In fact, the central Bolshevik leadership shared certain notions and preconceptions about legality that greatly influenced if not determined how they responded to the Civil War... Furthermore, after the Civil War was over, the dreadful economic situation and very thin popular base of support for the regime further consolidated the regimes' negative attitude to legal curbs on its unlimited powers... Thus, one cannot but conclude that, even if the revolution had consolidated its power under highly favorable... circumstances, that would not have solved the major problems..."
(149): dictatorship of the proletariat, on Lenin's formulation, as brooking no legal obstacles [but really, can we accept this formulation as a key explanans of what came after 1917?]. at the same time, a commitment to revolutionary legality, particularly in the NEP period. "it seems that his attitude to legality was that of expediency at best and of contempt at worst..."
(151): he's tracing a contradictory Lenin, of sorts, but a mainstream Bolshevism that was, nonetheless, highly committed to a kind of socialist illiberalism, insofar as the individual no longer was thought to need protection from the State--that the adversary process, of prosecution and defense, was outdated. [I am finding this section much less convincing than the rest]
(152): Pashukanis' General Theory of Law and Marxism, anticipating the end of the juridical element, which had its roots in capitalism.
(153): BUT--"the efforts by Pashukanis and his followers to abolish law while worekrs' and peasants' democracy was retrogressing rather than advancing could only have the practical effect of increasing arbitrariness and power disparities..."
(154): at the same time, Pashukanis' thought would become something he would repudiate, in the hands of Krylenko, Stalin's principal jurist in the early 1930's [Pashukanis had determined that Soviet Russia was not yet ready for the elimination of the legal form]
(154): this changed again, with the Pop Front period, and the Constitution of 1936 which moved towards 'legal formalism' and 'democratic appearences'--the quintessentially Stalinist legal system, combining terror and legal formality, emerged. Pashukanis himself, was purged without trial ('denounced as an enemy of the people').
(154): Stuchka vs. Pashukanis, which Farber says reminds him of Rizazanov and Lozovsky's positions in the political and trade union areas.
(156): Lunacharsky's initial objections to the first decree abolishing old courts, in November 1917
(157): the fact that the law is superstructural, and revolution necessary, should not lead socialists to dismiss the law "as if it were consequential..."
(158): legal system (1) exercises the will of the ruling class over subordinate classes, but also (2) adjudicates struggles within the ruling class themselves [so this, he's arguing, has clear implications for the proletariat in power] Moreover, there will be--and this is related--clear conflicts between the State and individual groups, insofar as hierarchy is not at all abolished--to relinquish adjudication in these matters is suicide.
(159): agreed--law can help 'institutionalize' democratic practices, and the social and political conquests of the revolution--not just hamper it. "in sum, this new legal system would sanction theend of the old inequalities while helping to avoid the creation of new ones..." [in other words, against Pashukanis, we would in fact need a new legal system]
(159): yes--civil liberties/inalienable rights are clearly indispensable--here Farber is listing the standard [habeus corpus, prohibition of torture, suppression of the death penalty, public trial by jury of peers]--BUT amending one key feature of bourgeois society, by demanding the "democratic election of all judges, and the right for the mass of the working people to recall elected judges."
(160): only a representative majority can decide when certain civil liberties can be suspended.
(160): "...I would contend that nothing in the history of [really existing socialism] has invalidated the Paris Commune ideal of abolishing the separation of the executive and legislative powers. However, it could also be argued that neither is there anything in the history of these countries that has validated the ideal..."
(161): this doesn't require a bourgeois conception of rights, he's arguing--rather, "rights are social relations, which is reflected in the fact that the full specification of a right requires identification of the right holder as well as the person or agency against whom the right is held..."
(163): the question of rights under communism is immaterial, insofar as we are concerned with the necessity of defending rights under democratic socialism.
(163-164): the question of 'class justice' -- one can reward disadvantaged backgrounds in 'affirmative action', but not discriminate on a 'political basis' (i.e., compensate all civil war veterans; not only those civil war veterans who fight with the State) [example of layoff policies taken by factory committies in Petrograd in late 1917--not sacking workers according to political affiliations; and not 'seniority', but 'material need']
(166): In Russia, discrimination in the penal code according to class background, for example, was not in play, in principle, until 1924--before it was employed as a 'background factor', on the basis of which a crime might be assessed.
PART TWO: POLITICAL ALTERNATIVES
Chapter 6, Revolutionary Alternatives
(169): key--"I would argue that these different types of dissidents demonstrated a much better understanding of the importance of democratic institutions... than did [Lenin]. During the early post-revolutionary period, the Left oppositions emphasized what we would today call institutions of participatory democracy, while the Right raised objections relevant to the more traditional democratic rights and civil liberties..."
(169-170): Lenin's most consistent democratic position, post-revolution, concerned 'worker staffing'--but this is clearly limited in its import. No opposition to bureaucracy beyond this. No opposition to party hierarchy, beyond this. [can we say that this, really, is fair? only way to properly answer would be to systematically read Lenin]
(170): but did these different positions represent a political alternative? [interestingly/provocatively, he notes, "the political possibilities for change at this early time were in some ways greater thnan when Leon Trotsky and others attempted to organize a political opposition to Stalin in the less fluid period of the mid and late twenties..."; important additional note is the instability of political opposition--cf. Bukharin]
(171-172): Right Bolsheviks--Kamenev, Rykov, Riazanov, Lozovsky [Kamenev acknowledging weakness of soviets in December 1920; Lozovsky became a Stalinist, before being purged 'for being a Jew' in 1952; Riazanov, in fact, wanted the ban of factions, in 1921, to go even further and become a ban on temporary coalitions (since the former was targeted at the Left)]
(173-176): Left Bolsheviks--"the majority of the democratic objections... came from the Left rather than the Right.."
- The 'Military Opposition' and the Democratic Centralists--created in 1919; 'Military Opposition' opposed "the introduction of traditional forms of military discipline'--special living quarters, etc. (opposed by Trotsky); Democratic Centralists had a much broader range of concerns--group around Osinsky emphasized inadequacies of party center, another group criticized rights of soviets going to party committees. Together "placed even greater stress on arguing for reformst that would make the Central Committee of the party more representative and that would restore power to the executive committees of the local soviets..."; Shliapnikov proposal at Ninth Congress (March 1920), calling for three-way separation of powers between party, soviets, trade unions. "In sum, the Democratic Centralists maintained that the worst problem affecting the party was the decline of collective decision making and election of officers... Every possible measure (e.g. holding party conferences every three months) had to be taken to restore that lost balance" [the coherence of this group seems minimal]
- The Workers' Opposition--established in 1920, bigger and more broad than the Democratic Centralists. Far more proleatarian in its leadership (strong amongst Union of Metalworkers). "Demanded freedom of discussion within the party, complete abolition of the system of appointments, to be replaced by election to all posts, and the freeing of the highest soviet and trade union organs from too much interference by the Central Committee..." (concerned, also, with proletarian nature of party; proposed that everyone work as worker/peasant for three/four months a year). Most distinctive proposal was prepared for the Tenth Congress in March 1921--proposed the creation of an All-Russian Congress of Producers, which would take control of the economy. [strong in SE Russia; Ukraine]
(176): Neither of these groups opposed the banning of other political parties--that was the work of individuals, like Miasnikov and Riazanov.
(177): important--Maybe there could have been a 'tactical bloc' of democratic opposition, he's suggesting? (see also 181)
(177-178): the ideological obstacle to this alliance was that the Left and the Right were working with different conceptions of democracy--one rooted in civil liberties, one in deep, participatory democracy. [synthesis is of course possible; but here it was not politically on the cards]
(178): interesting--the French Revolution, which was at the back of their minds, underestimated the dangers in the event of the Russian Revolution. the latter was a social revolution of a much more comprehensive sort. moreover, it protected private property and thus bourgeois dictatorship, whereas the proletarian dictatorship could only be political (through the state). moreover, the capacities of the central state were much more pervasive, in 20th century Russia than in 18th century France (and the inherited apparatus in the latter was much weaker) (see also 215)
(181): the relative uselessness of labels of 'Left' and 'Right', when we look at Riazanov/Miasnikov vs. Dzerzhinsky; or think of Trotsky's attitude towards Stalin viz-a-viz Bukharin (though Trotsky did see the need for a 'United Opposition' in 1926-7) [instead, as Trotsky re-assessed in 1932- the Right was actually 'Left', from the perspective of the bureaucracy]
(183): the question of the peasantry--as much a problem in the early phases of the revolution, as it was for Bukharin and Trotsky, later. the early Left was seriously anti-peasant, much more so than Lenin [Osinsky advocate for harsh War Communism; though Miasnikov was different still, opposing NEP but supporting peasant unions; Panyushkin in Summer of 1921, advocating 'All power to the soviets, not to the parties'; the Kronstadt program, which called for worker and peasant soviet democracy]
(184): general pro-peasant sympathies in the Russian working-class
(185): The Left SRs--this party was weak politically and organizationally, but could have played a major role in 'peacefully integrating' the bulk of the peasantry into post-October.
(186): The Anarchists--organizational weakness, and a wide spectrum of groups. All-Russia Conference in Moscow in August 1918 argued for many positive things (opposed one-man management; opposed shift to trade-unions; opposed grain requisitions by state in favor of grain requisitions by peasant-worker committees), but also proposed much that was completely out of touch (abolition of Sovnarkom; immediate and radical revolution against gov't, in middle of Civil War!). Strong on democracy/autonomy, weak on need for organization at central level.
(187): in sum--"any potentially viable revolutionary alternatives to mainstream Bolshevism in this period would have had to be primarily, although not exclusively, centered around tendencies within the Bolshevik Party itself..."
(187): Victor Serge on 'mass of germs'...
Chapter 7, Lenin's NEP as an Alternative
(188): Civil War ends in November 1920 [though still fighitn 'green rebellion' in Tambov; Makhno's peasant revolt in Ukraine]. Working class is half its 1913 size; gov't has limited support amongst what does remain [Zinoviev's estimate is 10%, remember, though Trotsky disagreed]
(188): in early party of 1921, a strike wave accompanied by Menshevik resurgence [first economic demands; and then, later political demands]
(189): In sum, "the 'Green' peasant revolts in the Tambov and the Ukraine, large-scale strikes in Petrograd and Moscow, armed rebellion in Kronstadt--all of these events cumulatively demonstrated the isolation of the regime, despite its major victory against the Whites..."
(189-195): The Kronstadt Rebellion--sympathy with strikers in Petrograd; legnthy Kronstadt manifesto (pg. 190), calling for worker and peasant soviet democracy. Some demands anticipated NEP. "Communists belonging to all tendencies at the Tenth Party Congress joined in the attack on the garrison." No evidence for the claim made by Trotsky and others later (as late as his 1938 piece), that they demanded soviets without Communists (about 1/3 of those elected in pre-rebellion Soviet were Communists; the remainders belonged to no party). Emigre group in Paris and naval officers played no leadership or political role in the rebellion, even if they had given technical advice.
(192): key, the more sophisticated line of criticism is also untenable--Trotskyists have said that Kronstadt in 1921 was not Kronstadt in 1917, because the best socialist elements had gone to the front lines, and peasants had taken their place. "In fact, a smaller proportion of Kronstadt sailors were of peasant social origin than was the case with the Red Army troops supporting the government... recently published data [moreover] suggests that the class composition... had probably remaind unchanged since before the Civil War [b/c of technical needs in navy]." The vast majority of the navy had been recruited before and during the 1917 revolutions. "Indeed, what had changed dramatically in Kronstadt was not the sailors' class origins, but the navy's Communist Party membership... I would suggest that the principal causes of the Kronstadt rebellion are not to be found in some far-fetched sociological analysis of the supposedly changing class composition of the Kronstadt garrison, but at a more immediate level, i.e., the sailors' and civilians' profound political and economic discontent." [with War Communism; with economic crisis; and with specific political events, including the erosion of naval democracy (Trotsky abolished ship committees in January 1919, replaced with commissars])
(194): useful--"Specifically, the overall ideological climate in Kronstadt was very close to the politics of the Socialist Revolutionary Maximalists, a left-wing splitoff from the SR Party, politically located somewhere between the Left SRs and the Anarchists..." [anarcho-populism, involving radical demands but also terrorism]
(194): alternative political trend was well-established--even in January 1918, the Bolsheviks had only won 46% of the vote in the Kronstadt Soviet; elections in April 1918, Bolsheviks won only 29%. (By July, of course, Bolsheviks recovered a majority, because other parties had been banned).
(195-199): NEP as an alternative? In fact, though there were obviously important retreats from War Communism, there were also setbacksfor political freedoms--from "tentative repression" towards "complete and systematic repression of opposition parties and groups..." [though this gives Stephen Cohen a very easy out--NEP w/o repression...] This had, Farber's arguing, to do with Menshevik resurgence, insofar as they could fairly claim that their program had been vindicated. "After 1921, repression increasingly became an alternative to persuasion and the open struggle for mass political hegemony [and thus not justified by objective exigency, even in limited ways, like during the Civil War]"
(197-198): in sum, on NEP--"...Thus, in this period, we can also find a Lenin attempting to develop an economically very moderate perspective, moving toward a de facto socialism in one country, and intensely preoccupied by the growing national chauvinism and bureaucratization of Russian society. The latter concerns increasingly distroted and eventually made the Bolshevik leader quite hostile to Stalin's developing power... Nevertheless, at the same time, Lenin remained no less distant from conceiving or recommending democratic solutions to the problems of bureaucracy... The best thing that can be said about this strategy is that Lenin's government was trying to buy time... There is... something very disturbing about the politics of what has often been an unproblematic supoprt for the NEP frequently coupled with an admiration for Bukharin in his 'right-wing' phase in the 1920s. I would call this the'politics of the possible,' by which I mean the notion that it would have been utopian to expect democratic institutions from below in a countrly like the Soviet Russia of the twenties..." [absolutely agree with this]
(199): Trotsky's 'New Course' Policy of December 1923--should have demanded more 'from below', Farber's arguing.
(199): important--de facto socialism in one country, under Lenin's NEP, vs. de jure/brutal socialism in one country, under Stalin [is this tenable? Farber is arguing, following Claudin, that decisions in the Comintern were already subordinating the defense of the Russian state to international objectives, though not at all, he acknowledges, in the way this would happen under Stalin]
(200): odd claims, here, about Lenin's voluntarism re: building of socialism, and forsaking of international revolution--not sure I understand (January 1923). an incipient Third Worldism, Farber is noting, where Lenin no longer expects international revolution, but looking to India and China in March 1923. [it is not really useful,I would argue, to see in this anything but desperation]
(202): Lenin's various party reform proposals, including expanding the Central Committee to 50 or even 100 people.
(203): dismissing the Maoist objection that Lenin never saw the importance of waging struggle in the cultural realm (a la Cultural Revolution).
(203): Lenin's mistake in Poland (Trotsky, Dzerzhinsky, Radek, Stalin opposed)
(203): questionable overthrow of Menshevik gov't in 1921, in Georgia [why not self-determination of nations, Farber's arguing?--it was not a reactionary gov't]
(204): again, key--Farber is stressing that Lenin understood the bureaucratic obstacles that had developed within the party. But his concrete counter-proposals, he's arguing, are shockingly naive, and center on the question of origin/background, not on structural democracy. Not "true institutional reform".
(206): key--Acknowledging the necessity of 1917, the failure of the gamble on international revolution--"what else could have been done?" No Marxist or Socialist justification for Communists clinging on to power. So an alternative scenario: at the 11th Party Congress in 1922, a New Political Policy ought to have accompanied the NEP (a gamble against degeneration)--legalization of opposition groups pledging loyalty to Soviet government; open soviet elections; press facilities to oppositions; closing of labor camps; secret police under judicial control; amnesty for political prisoners. Certainly, he would had to have gone into negotiations, since other parties would have won elections--but he could go into them demanding certain first principles (sanctity of gains of October revolution, etc.)
(207-208): the mix of economic freedom and political repression actually incapacitated workers against NEP abuses by capitalists and bureaucrats
(208-209): key--this, tragically, was never on the cards, Farber has been arguing throughout, because "by 1921, the political views and practices of Lenin and maintstream Bolshevism had ceased to be significantly affected by democratic considerations and priorities... At least since the Civil War... at the very least, an indifference to democracy as a central element of socialism." [citing Trotsky on Workers' Opposition]. But also acknowledging the democratic character of much of Lenin's earlier political trajectory, including views on press, on national self-determination, etc. "In sum, there are sufficient politically democratic elements in Lenin's writings to have provided the basis ofr a society that would have been, on the whole, democratic and socialist.... This does not mean, of course, that there were no serious flaws... viz-a-viz soviet rule, workers' control, socialist legality, and particularly his failure to see democracy as the institutionalization of a participatory and democratic new way of life for the working class and its class allies..." [periodization--anti-democracy fully crystallized in the period 1921-1923, and robustly democratic views up until at least Spring of 1918]
(212): crux--was not a Marxist, but a worried, self-interested (even if justified by appeal to international revolution) response to the situation confronting them at the time of the Civil War--"reacting, more than anything else, to the fact that the ever-growing popular support that their party had enjoyed in the period of September 1917 to the early part of 1918 had begun to shrink by the Spring of 1918, as shown by the sharp decline of Bolshevik stregnth in the soviet elections held at the time..." It was in this context that predispositions degenerated into outright indifference towards economic and political democracy [in particular, insensitivity to majority opinion, which was the 'decisive flaw'--though he's not willing to read Lenin's post Civil War opinions back into 'What is to be done?']
(213): closer to Jacobinism, than Stalinism--a revolutionary arrogance and discipline.
(215): there are healthy, and unhealthy objections to utopianism--the unwillingness to think through strategy/tactics oriented around revolutionary democracy falls in the latter camp, clearly.
Epilogue
(216-217): ah, reflections on Gorbachev...
(220): "the effort to maintain the monopoly of political power has underlined the limits of Gorbachev's reform program..." [again, drawing a parallel to Lenin's NEP; fundamentally the polar opposite, he's suggesting, of the Trotsky of 1933-1940, who was committed to nationalized property, anti-bureaucratic democracy and revolutionary internationalism]
--
(1) partly, we have a question of assessing the impact of political/ideological predispositions, controlling for the impact of objective exigencies (and the failure of the international revolution), in explaining drifts away from revolutionary-democratic principles. BUT it strikes me that the additional comradely argument, here, is that very often that--under precisely those oppressive objective conditions that confronted the Bolsheviks--the policies pursued were very often not advisable, nor principled. they were not advisable insofar as they worsened the situation that confronted them. they were not principled, in the sense that they betrayed a less-than-robust commitment to the tasks of revolutionary-democratic transformation.
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