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<title>How did Bolshevik ideology contribute to the failure of the Revolution?</title>
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<H1>How did Bolshevik ideology contribute to the failure of the Revolution?</H1>
<p>
It is a truism of Leninism that Stalinism has nothing to do
with the ideas of Bolshevism. Moreover, most are at pains to
stress that these ideas have no relation to the actual practice
of the Bolshevik Party after the October Revolution. To 
re-quote one Leninist:
<p><blockquote><i>
"it was overwhelmingly the force of circumstance which obliged 
the Bolsheviks to retreat so far from their own goals. They 
travelled this route in opposition to their own theory, not 
because of it -- no matter what rhetorical justifications were 
given at the time."</i> [John Rees, <i>"In Defence of October,"</i> 
pp. 3-82, <b>International Socialism</b>, no. 52, p. 70]
</blockquote><p>
His fellow party member Duncan Hallas argued that it was <i>"these 
desperate conditions"</i> (namely terrible economic situation
combined with civil war) which resulted in <i>"the Bolshevik Party 
[coming] to substitute its own rule for that of a decimated, 
exhausted working class"</i> anarchists disagree. [<b>Towards a 
Revolutionary Socialist Party</b>, p. 43] 
<p>
We have discussed in the appendix on <a href="append43.html">"What caused the degeneration of the Russian Revolution?"</a> why the various <i>"objective 
factors"</i> explanations favoured by Leninists to explain the
defeat of the Russian Revolution are unconvincing. Ultimately,
they rest on the spurious argument that if only what most
revolutionaries (including, ironically, Leninists!) consider
as inevitable side effects of a revolution did not occur, then
Bolshevism would have been fine. It is hard to take seriously
the argument that if only the ruling class disappeared without
a fight, if the imperialists had not intervened and if the
economy was not disrupted then Bolshevism would have resulted
in socialism. This is particularly the case as Leninists argue
that only <b>their</b> version of socialism recognises that the
ruling class will <b>not</b> disappear after a revolution, that we
will face counter-revolution and so we need a state to defend
the revolution! As we argued in 
<a href="secH2.html#sech21">section H.2.1</a>, this 
is not the case. Anarchists have long recognised that a 
revolution will require defending and that it will provoke a 
serious disruption in the economic life of a country.
<p>
Given the somewhat unrealistic tone of these kinds of assertions,
it is necessary to look at the ideological underpinnings of 
Bolshevism and how they played their part in the defeat of the 
Russian Revolution. This section, therefore, will discuss why 
such Leninist claims are not true. Simply put, Bolshevik ideology 
<b>did</b> play a role in the degeneration of the Russian Revolution. 
This is obvious once we look at most aspects of Bolshevik 
ideology as well as the means advocated by the Bolsheviks to 
achieve their goals. Rather than being in opposition to the
declared aims of the Bolsheviks, the policies implemented by
them during the revolution and civil war had clear relations 
with their pre-revolution ideas and visions. To quote Maurice 
Brinton's conclusions after looking at this period:
<p><blockquote><i>
"there is a clear-cut and incontrovertible link between what 
happened under Lenin and Trotsky and the later practices of 
Stalinism. We know that many on the revolutionary left will 
find this statement hard to swallow. We are convinced however 
that any honest reading of the facts cannot but lead to this 
conclusion. The more one unearths about this period the more 
difficult it becomes to define - or even to see - the 'gulf'
allegedly separating what happened in Lenin's time from what 
happened later. Real knowledge of the facts also makes it
impossible to accept . . . that the whole course of events 
was 'historically inevitable' and 'objectively determined'. 
Bolshevik ideology and practice were themselves important 
and sometimes decisive factors in the equation, at every 
critical stage of this critical period. Now that more facts 
are available self-mystification on these issues should no 
longer be possible. Should any who have read these pages 
remain 'confused' it will be because they want to remain 
in that state -- or because (as the future beneficiaries 
of a society similar to the Russian one) it is their interest 
to remain so."</i> [<b>The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control</b>, 
p. 84]
</blockquote><p>
This is unsurprising. The Leninist idea that politics of the 
Bolsheviks had no influence on the outcome of the revolution,
that their policies during the revolution were a product purely 
of objective forces, is unconvincing. The facts of the matter is 
that people are faced with choices, choices that arise from the 
objective conditions that they face. What decisions they make 
will be influenced by the ideas they hold -- they will <b>not</b> 
occur automatically, as if people were on auto-pilot -- and 
their ideas are shaped by the social relationships they 
experience. Thus, someone who favours centralisation and sees 
nationalisation as the defining characteristic of socialism 
will make different decisions than someone who favours 
decentralising power and sees self-management as the key 
issue. The former will also create <b>different</b> forms of 
social organisation based on their perceptions of what
"socialism" is and what is "efficient." Similarly, the 
different forms of social organisation favoured will also 
impact on how a revolution develops and the political 
decisions they make. For example, if you have a vision which
favours centralised, hierarchical organisation then those 
placed into a position of power over others within such 
structures will act in certain ways, have a certain world 
view, which would be alien to someone subject to egalitarian 
social relations. 
<p>
In summary, the ideas in people's heads matter, including during 
a revolution. Someone in favour of centralisation, centralised 
power and who equates party rule with class rule (like Lenin and 
Trotsky), will act in ways (and create structures) totally different 
from someone who believes in decentralisation and federalism. The
organisation they create will create specific forms of social 
relationships which, in turn, will shape the ideas of those subject
to them. This means that a centralised, hierarchical system will 
create authoritarian social relationships and these will shape 
those within them and the ideas they have in totally different 
ways than a decentralised, egalitarian system. 
<p>
Similarly, if Bolshevik policies hastened the alienation of working
class people and peasants from the regime which, in turn, resulted
in resistance to them then some of the "objective factors" facing
Lenin's regime were themselves the products of earlier political
decisions. Unwelcome and unforeseen (at least to the Bolshevik 
leadership) consequences of specific Bolshevik practices and 
actions, but still flowing from Bolshevik ideology all the same.
So, for example, when leading Bolsheviks had preconceived biases
against decentralisation, federalism, "petty-bourgeois" peasants, 
"declassed" workers or "anarcho-syndicalist" tendencies, this 
would automatically become an ideological determinant to the 
policies decided upon by the ruling party. While social 
circumstances may have limited Bolshevik options, these social
circumstances were also shaped by the results of Bolshevik 
ideology and practice and, moreover, possible solutions to 
social problems were also limited by Bolshevik ideology and
practice.
<p>
So, <b>political ideas do matter.</b> And, ironically, the very 
Leninists who argue that Bolshevik politics played no role 
in the degeneration of the revolution accept this. Modern 
day Leninists, while denying Bolshevik ideology had a negative 
on the development of the revolution also subscribe to the 
contradictory idea that Bolshevik politics were essential for
its "success"! Indeed, the fact that they <b>are</b> Leninists shows 
this is the case. They obviously think that Leninist ideas on 
centralisation, the role of the party, the <i>"workers' state"</i> and 
a host of other issues are correct and, moreover, essential for 
the success of a revolution. They just dislike the results when
these ideas were applied in practice within the institutional 
context these ideas promote, subject to the pressures of the 
objective circumstances they argue <b>every</b> revolution will face! 
<p>
Little wonder anarchists are not convinced by Leninist arguments
that their ideology played no role in the rise of Stalinism in
Russia. Simply put, if you use certain methods then these will be
rooted in the specific vision you are aiming for. If you think
socialism is state ownership and centralised planning then you
will favour institutions and organisations which facilitate that
end. If you want a highly centralised state and consider a state
as simply being an <i>"instrument of class rule"</i> then you will see 
little to worry about in the concentration of power into the hands 
of a few party leaders. However, if you see socialism in terms of
working class managing their own affairs then you will view such
developments as being fundamentally in opposition to your goals
and definitely <b>not</b> a means to that end.
<p>
So part of the reason why Marxist revolutions yield such anti-working 
class outcomes is to do with its ideology, methods and goals. It has
little to do with the will to power of a few individuals (important
a role as that can play, sometimes, in events). In a nutshell, the 
ideology and vision guiding Leninist parties incorporate hierarchical 
values and pursue hierarchical aims. Furthermore, the methods and 
organisations favoured to achieve (their vision of) "socialism" are 
fundamentally hierarchical, aiming to ensure that power is centralised 
at the top of pyramidal structures in the hands of the party leaders.
<p>
It would be wrong, as Leninists will do, to dismiss this as simply a 
case of "idealism." After all, we are talking about the ideology of a 
ruling party. As such, these ideas are more than just ideas: after 
the seizure of power, they became a part of the real social situation 
within Russia. Individually, party members assumed leadership posts 
in all spheres of social life and started to apply their ideology. 
Then, overtime, the results of this application ensured that the 
party could not be done otherwise as the framework of exercising 
power had been shaped by its successful application (e.g. Bolshevik 
centralism ensured that all its policies were marked by centralist 
tendencies, simply because Bolshevik power had become centralised). 
Soon, the only real instance of power is the Party, and very soon, 
only the summits of the Party. This cannot help but shape its 
policies and actions. As Castoriadis argues:
<p><blockquote><i>
"If it is true that people's real social existence determines 
their consciousness, it is from that moment illusory to expect 
the Bolshevik party to act in any other fashion than according 
to its real social position. The real social situation of the 
Party is that of a directorial organ, and its point of view 
toward this society henceforth is not necessarily the same as 
the one this society has toward itself."</i> [<b>The role of Bolshevik
Ideology in the birth of the Bureaucracy</b>, p. 97]
</blockquote><p>
As such, means and ends are related and cannot be separated.
As Emma Goldman argued, there is <i>"no greater fallacy than the
belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and 
tactics are another. This conception is a potent menace to social 
regeneration. All human experience teaches that methods and means 
cannot be separated from the ultimate aim. The means employed 
become, through individual habit and social practice, part and 
parcel of the final purpose; they influence it, modify it, and 
presently the aims and means become identical. . . The great and 
inspiring aims of the Revolution became so clouded with and 
obscured by the methods used by the ruling political power 
that it was hard to distinguish what was temporary means and 
what final purpose. Psychologically and socially the means 
necessarily influence and alter the aims. The whole history of 
man is continuous proof of the maxim that to divest one's 
methods of ethical concepts means to Sink into the depths of 
utter demoralisation. In that lies the real tragedy of the 
Bolshevik philosophy as applied to the Russian Revolution. May 
this lesson not be in vain."</i> In summary, <i>"[n]o revolution can 
ever succeed as a factor of liberation unless the MEANS used to 
further it be identical in spirit and tendency with the PURPOSES 
to be achieved."</i> [<b>My Disillusionment in Russia</b>, pp. 260-1]
<p>
If this analysis of the anarchists against Bolshevism is true 
then it follows that the Bolsheviks were not just wrong on one 
or two issues but their political outlook right down to the core 
was wrong. Its vision of socialism was flawed, which produced a
flawed perspective on the potentially valid means available to
achieve it. Leninism, we must never forget, does not aim for 
the same kind of society anarchism does. As we discussed in 
<a href="secH3.html#sech31">section H.3.1</a>, the short, medium and long term goals of both 
movements are radically different. While both claim to aim for 
"communism," what is mean by that word is radically different 
in details if somewhat similar in outline. The anarchist ideal 
of a classless, stateless and free society is based on a 
decentralised, participatory and bottom-up premise. The 
Leninist ideal is the product of a centralised, party ruled 
and top-down paradigm. 
<p>
This explains why Leninists advocate a democratic-centralist 
"Revolutionary Party." It arises from the fact that their 
programme is the capture of state power in order to abolish 
the <i>"anarchy of the market."</i> Not the abolition of wage labour, 
but its universalisation under the state as one big boss. Not 
the destruction of alienated forces (political, social and 
economic) but rather their capture by the party on behalf of 
the masses. In other words, this section of the FAQ is based
on the fact that Leninists are not (libertarian) communists; 
they have not broken sufficiently with Second International 
orthodoxy, with the assumption that socialism is basically 
state capitalism (<i>"The idea of the State as Capitalist, to
which the Social-Democratic fraction of the great Socialist
Party is now trying to reduce Socialism."</i> [Peter Kropotkin,
</b>The Great French Revolution</b>, vol. 1, p. 31]). Just as
one cannot abolish alienation with alienated means, so we 
cannot attack Leninist <i>"means"</i> also without distinguishing 
our libertarian <i>"ends"</i> from theirs.
<p>
This means that both Leninist means and ends are flawed. Both
will fail to produce a socialist society. As Kropotkin said
at the time, the Bolsheviks <i>"have shown how the Revolution is
<b>not</b> to be made."</i> [quoted by Berkman, <b>The Bolshevik Myth</b>,
p. 75] If applied today, Leninist ideas will undoubtedly fail
from an anarchist point of view while, as under Lenin, 
"succeeding" from the limited perspective of Bolshevism. Yes,
the party may be in power and, yes, capitalist property may
be abolished by nationalisation but, no, a socialist society
would be no nearer. Rather we would have a new hierarchical 
and class system rather than the classless and free society
which non-anarchist socialists claim to be aiming for.
<p>
Let us be perfectly clear. Anarchists are <b>not</b> saying that 
Stalinism will be the inevitable result of any Bolshevik
revolution. What we are saying is that some form of class
society will result from any such a revolution. The exact
form this class system will take will vary depending on the
objective circumstances it faces, but no matter the specific
form of such a post-revolutionary society it will not be a
socialist one. This is because of the ideology of the party
in power will shape the revolution in specific ways which, 
by necessity, form new forms of hierarchical and class 
exploitation and oppression. The preferred means of Bolshevism 
(vanguardism, statism, centralisation, nationalisation, and 
so on) will determine the ends, the ends being not communist
anarchism but some kind of bureaucratic state capitalist society
labelled <i>"socialism"</i> by those in charge. Stalinism, in this 
perspective, was the result of an interaction of certain 
ideological goals and positions as well as organisational 
principles and preferences with structural and circumstantial 
pressures resulting from the specific conditions prevalent at 
the time. For example, a Leninist revolution in an advanced
western country would not require the barbaric means used by
Stalinism to industrialise Russia.
<p>
This section of the FAQ will, therefore, indicate the key
areas of Bolshevik ideology which, when applied, will 
undermine any revolution as they did the Russian. As such, 
it is all fine and well for Trotskyist Max Shachtman (like
so many others) to argue that the Bolsheviks had <i>"convert[ed] 
the expediencies and necessities of the civil war period into 
virtues and principles which had never been part of their 
original program."</i> Looking at this <i>"original program"</i> we can 
see elements of what was latter to be applied. Rather than 
express a divergence it could be argued that it was this that 
undermined the more democratic aspects of their original program. 
In other words, perhaps the use of state power and economic 
nationalisation came into conflict with, and finally destroyed, 
the original proclaimed socialist principles? And, perhaps, 
the <i>"socialist"</i> vision of Bolshevism was so deeply flawed that 
even attempting to apply it destroyed the aspirations for 
liberty, equality and solidarity that inspired it? For, after 
all, as we indicated in 
<a href="secH3.html#sech31">section H.3.1</a>, the anarchist and 
mainstream Marxist visions of socialism and how to get there 
<b>are</b> different. Can we be surprised if Marxist means cannot 
achieve anarchist (i.e. authentic socialist) ends? To his 
credit, Shachtman acknowledges that post-civil war salvation 
"required full democratic rights"</i> for all workers, and that 
this was <i>"precisely what the Bolsheviks . .  . were determined 
not to permit."</i> Sadly he failed to wonder <b>why</b> the democratic 
principles of the <i>"original program"</i> were only <i>"honoured in the 
breach"</i> and why <i>"Lenin and Trotsky did not observe them."</i> The 
possibility that Bakunin was right and that statism and socialism 
cannot go together was not raised. [<i>"Introduction"</i> to Trotsky's 
<b>Terrorism and Communism</b>, p. xv] 
<p>
Equally, there is a tendency of pro-Leninists to concentrate
on the period between the two revolutions of 1917 when specifying
what Bolshevism "really" stood for, particularly Lenin's book
</b>State and Revolution</b>. To use an analogy, when Leninists do this
they are like politicians who, when faced with people questioning
the results of their policies, ask them to look at their election 
manifesto rather than what they have done when in power. As
we discuss in <a href="append41.html#app4">section 4</a> of the 
appendix <a href="append41.html">"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"</a> Lenin's book was never applied in
practice. From the very first day, the Bolsheviks ignored it.
After 6 months <b>none</b> of its keys ideas had been applied. 
Indeed, in all cases the exact opposite had been imposed. As
such, to blame (say) the civil war for the reality of "Bolshevik 
in power" (as Leninists do) seems without substance. Simply put,
<b>State and Revolution</b> is no guide to what Bolshevism "really"
stood for. Neither is their position <b>before</b> seizing power if
the realities of their chosen methods (i.e. seizing state power) 
quickly changed their perspective, practice <b>and</b> ideology (i.e.
shaped the desired ends). Assuming of course that most of their
post-October policies were radically different from their 
pre-October ones, which (as we indicate here) they were not.
<p>
With that said, what do anarchists consider the key aspects of
Bolshevik ideology which helped to ensure the defeat of the 
Russian Revolution and had, long before the civil war started,
had started its degeneration into tyranny? These factors are 
many and so we will, by necessity, concrete on the key ones. 
These are believe in centralisation, the confusion of party
power with popular power, the Marxist theory of the state, 
the negative influence of Engels' infamous essay <i>"On Authority",</i> 
the equation of nationalisation and state capitalism with 
socialism, the lack of awareness that working class economic 
power was a key factor in socialism, the notion that "big" was 
automatically "more efficient," the identification of class 
consciousness with supporting the party, how the vanguard 
party organises itself and, lastly, the underlying assumptions 
that vanguardism is based on.
<p>
Each one of these factors had a negative impact on the development
of the revolution, combined they were devastating. Nor can it be
a case of keeping Bolshevism while getting rid of some of these
positions. Most go to the heart of Bolshevism and could only be
eliminated by eliminating what makes Leninism Leninist. Thus some
Leninists now pay lip service to workers' control of production
and recognise that the Bolsheviks saw the form of property (i.e.,
whether private or state owned) as being far more important that
workers' management of production. Yet revising Bolshevism to 
take into account this flaw means little unless the others are
also revised. Simply put, workers' management of production would
have little impact in a highly centralised state ruled over by a
equally centralised vanguard party. Self-management in production
or society could not co-exist with a state and party power nor 
with <i>"centralised"</i> economic decision making based on nationalised 
property. In a nutshell, the only way Bolshevism could result
in a genuine socialist society is if it stopped being Bolshevik!
<p>
<a name="app1"><h2>1 How did the Marxist historical materialism affect Bolshevism?</h2>
<p>
As is well known, Marx argued that history progressed through distinct
stages. After his death, this <i>"materialist conception of history"</i>
became known as <i>"historical materialism."</i> The basic idea of this
is that the <i>"totality of [the] relations of production constitutes
the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which
arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond
definite forms of social consciousness . . . At a certain stage
of development, the material productive forces of society come
into conflict with the existing relations of production or --
this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms -- with the
property relations within the framework of which they have
operated hitherto. From forms of development of productive
forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an
era of social revolution."</i> [<b>A Contribution to the Critique of
Political Economy</b>, pp. 20-1]
<p>
Thus slavery was replaced by feudalism, feudalism with capitalism.
For Marx, the <i>"bourgeois mode of production is the last antagonistic
form of the social process of production"</i> and <i>"the productive 
forces developing within bourgeois society create also the 
material conditions for a solution of this antagonism."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>,
p. 21] In other words, after capitalism there would be socialism:
<p><blockquote><i>
"The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of 
production which has flourished alongside and under it. The
centralisation of the means of production and the socialisation 
of labour reach a point at which they become incompatible with
their capitalist integument. The integument is burst asunder.
The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators
are expropriated."</i> [Karl Marx, <b>Capital</b>, vol. 1, p. 929]
</blockquote><p>
Socialism replaces capitalism once the <i>"<b>proletariat seized
political power and turns the means of production into
state property."</b></i> By so doing, <i>"it abolishes itself as 
proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and class
antagonisms, abolishes also the state as state."</i> [Engels,
<b>The Marx-Engels Reader</b>, p. 713] 
<p>
Most Marxists subscribe to this schema of historical progress. 
For example, Tony Cliff noted that, <i>"[f]or Lenin, whose
Marxism was never mechanical or fatalistic, the definition
of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a <b>transition
period</b> meant that there could be <b>two</b> outcomes of this
phase: going forward to socialism, or backsliding to 
capitalism. The policy of the party would tip the balance."</i>
[<b>Revolution Besieged</b>, p. 364] 
<p>
Marxists, like Marx, argue that socialism was the society 
which would come after capitalism. Thus the Bolsheviks had 
the mindset that whatever they did there was only two 
possibilities: (their version of) socialism or the 
restoration of capitalism. However, this is based on a 
false premise. Is it valid to assume that there is only 
one possible post-capitalist future, one that, by definition, 
is classless? If so, then any action or structure could be 
utilised to fight reaction as after victory there can be 
only one outcome. However, if there is more that one 
post-capitalist future then the question of means becomes 
decisive. If we assume just two possible post-capitalist 
futures, one based on self-management and without classes 
and another with economic, social and political power 
centralised in a few hands, then the means used in a 
revolution become decisive in determining which 
possibility will become reality. 
<p>
If we accept the Marxist theory and assume only one 
possible post-capitalist system, then all that is 
required of revolutionary anti-capitalist movements 
is that they only need to overthrow capitalism and 
they will wind up where they wish to arrive as there 
is no other possible outcome. But if the answer no, then 
in order to wind up where we wish to arrive, we have to 
not only overthrow capitalism, we have use means that 
will push us toward the desired future society. As such, 
<b>means</b> become the key and they cannot be ignored or 
downplayed in favour of the ends -- particularly as 
these ends will never be reached if the appropriate 
means are not used.
<p>
This is no abstract metaphysical or ideological/theoretical 
point. The impact of this issue can be seen from the practice 
of Bolshevism in power. For Lenin and Trotsky, <b>any</b> and 
<b>all</b> means could and were used in pursuit of their ends. 
They simply could not see how the means used shaped the 
ends reached. Ultimately, there was only two possibilities
-- socialism (by definition classless) or a return to
capitalism.
<p>
Once we see that because of their flawed perspective on what
comes after capitalism we understand why, for the Bolsheviks,
the means used and institutions created were meaningless. We
can see one of the roots for Bolshevik indifference to working 
class self-management. As Samuel Farber notes that <i>"there is 
no evidence indicating that Lenin or any of the mainstream 
Bolshevik leaders lamented the loss of workers' control or 
of democracy in the soviets, or at least referred to these 
losses as a retreat, as Lenin declared with the replacement 
of War Communism by NEP in 1921."</i> [<b>Before Stalinism</b>, p. 44] 
There was no need, for such means had no impact on achieving
the ends Bolshevik power had set itself. As we discuss in 
<a href="append44.html#app6">section 6</a>, 
such questions of meaningful working class
participation in the workplace or the soviets were considered
by the likes of Trotsky as fundamentally irrelevant to whether
Bolshevik Russia was socialist or whether the working class was
the ruling class or not, incredible as it may seem.
<p>
So if we accept Marx's basic schema, then we simply have to conclude
that what means we use are, ultimately, irrelevant as there is only
one outcome. As long as property is nationalised and a non-capitalist
party holds state power, then the basic socialist nature of the regime
automatically flows. This was, of course, Trotsky's argument with
regard to Stalinist Russia and why he defended it against those who
recognised that it was a new form of class society. Yet it is 
precisely the rise of Stalinism out of the dictatorship of the 
Bolsheviks which exposes the limitations in the Marxist schema of
historical development.
<p>
Simply put, there is no guarantee that getting rid of capitalism
will result in a decent society. As anarchists like Bakunin argued
against Marx, it is possible to get rid of capitalism while not
creating socialism, if we understand by that term a free, classless
society of equals. Rather, a Marxist revolution would <i>"concentrate
all the powers of government in strong hands, because the very
fact that the people are ignorant necessitates strong, solicitous
care by the government. [It] will create a single State bank,
concentrating in its hands all the commercial, industrial,
agricultural, and even scientific production; and they will
divide the mass of people into two armies -- industrial and
agricultural armies under the direct command of the State
engineers who will constitute the new privileged 
scientific-political class."</i> [<b>The Political Philosophy of
Bakunin</b>, p. 289] As Bolshevism proved, there <b>was</b> always an
alternative to socialism or a reversion to capitalism,
in this case <b>state</b> capitalism.
<p>
So libertarians have long been aware that actually existing 
capitalism could be replaced by another form of class society.
As the experience of Bolshevik tyranny proves beyond doubt,
this perspective is the correct one. And that perspective 
ensured that during the Russian Revolution the Makhnovists 
<b>had</b> to encourage free soviets and workers' self-management, 
freedom of speech and organisation in order for the revolution 
to remain socialist (see the appendix on
<a href="append46.html">"Why does the Makhnovist movement show there is an alternative to
Bolshevism?"</a>). In contrast, the 
Bolsheviks implemented party dictatorship, nationalisation
and one-man management while proclaiming this had something to
do with socialism. Little wonder Trotsky had such difficulties
understanding the obvious truth that Stalinism has <b>nothing</b>
to do with socialism.
<p>
<a name="app2"><h2>2 Why did the Marxist theory of the state undermine working class power?</h2>
<p>
As discussed in 
<a href="secH3.html#sech37">section H.3.7</a>, 
anarchists and Marxists have
fundamentally different definitions of what constitutes a
state. These different definitions resulted, in practice,
to the Bolsheviks undermining <b>real</b> working class power 
during the Russian Revolution in favour of an abstract
"power"</i> which served as little more than a fig-leaf for
Bolshevik power.
<p>
For anarchists, the state is marked by centralised power
in the hands of a few. The state, we argue, is designed
to ensure minority rule and, consequently, cannot be used
by the majority to manage their own affairs. Every bourgeois
revolution, moreover, has been marked by a conflict between 
centralised power and popular power and, unsurprisingly,
the bourgeois favoured the former over the latter. As such,
we would expect centralised power (i.e. a state) to be the
means by which a minority class seized power <b>over</b> the 
masses and never the means by which the majority managed 
society themselves. It was for this reason that anarchists 
refuse to confuse a federation of self-managed organisations 
with a state:
<p><blockquote><i>
"The reader knows by now that the anarchists refused to use 
the term 'State' even for a transitional situation. The gap 
between authoritarians and libertarians has not always been 
very wide on this score. In the First International the 
collectivists, whose spokesman was Bakunin, allowed the 
terms 'regenerate State,' 'new and revolutionary State,' 
or even 'socialist State' to be accepted as synonyms for 
'social collective.' The anarchists soon saw, however, 
that it was rather dangerous for them to use the same 
word as the authoritarians while giving it a quite 
different meaning. They felt that a new concept called 
for a new word and that the use of the old term could be 
dangerously ambiguous; so they ceased to give the name 
'State' to the social collective of the future."</i> [Daniel 
Guerin, <b>Anarchism</b>, pp. 60-1]
</blockquote><p>
This is no mere semantics. The essence of statism is the
removal of powers that should belong to the community as 
whole (though they may for reasons of efficiency delegate 
their actual implementation to elected, mandated and 
recallable committees) into the hands of a tiny minority 
who claim to act on our behalf and in our interests but
who are not under our direct control. In other words it 
continues the division into rulers and ruled. Any confusion 
between two such radically different forms of organisation 
can only have a seriously negative effect on the development 
of any revolution. At its most basic, it allows those in power 
to develop structures and practices which disempower the 
many while, at the same time, taking about extending 
working class "power."
<p>
The roots of this confusion can be found at the root of
Marxism. As discussed in 
<a href="secH3.html#sech37">section H.3.7</a>, Marx and Engels had 
left a somewhat contradictory inheritance on the nature and 
role of the state. Unlike anarchists, who clearly argued that 
only confusion would arise by calling the organs of popular 
self-management required by a revolution a <i>"state,"</i> the 
founders of Marxism confused two radically different ideas. On 
the one hand, there is the idea of a radical and participatory 
democracy (as per the model of the Paris Commune). On the other, 
there is a centralised body with a government in charge (as
per the model of the democratic state). By using the term 
<i>"state"</i> to cover these two radically different concepts, it 
allowed the Bolsheviks to confuse party power with popular 
power and, moreover, replace the latter by the former without 
affecting the so-called "proletarian" nature of the state. 
The confusion of popular organs of self-management with a 
state ensured that these organs <b>were</b> submerged by state 
structures and top-down rule. 
<p>
By confusing the state (delegated power, necessarily concentrated 
in the hands of a few) with the organs of popular self-management
Marxism opened up the possibility of a <i>"workers' state"</i> which is
simply the rule of a few party leaders over the masses. The <i>"truth
of the matter,"</i> wrote Emma Goldman, <i>"is that the Russian people
have been <b>locked out</b> and that the Bolshevik State -- even as
the bourgeois industrial master -- uses the sword and the gun
to keep the people out. In the case of the Bolsheviki this
tyranny is masked by a world-stirring slogan . . . Just because
I am a revolutionist I refuse to side with the master class,
which in Russia is called the Communist Party."</i> [<b>My 
Disillusionment in Russia</b>, p. xlix] In this, she simply saw
in practice that which Bakunin had predicted would happen.
For Bakunin, like all anarchists, <i>"every state power, every
government, by its nature and by its position stands outside
the people and above them, and must invariably try to subject
them to rules and objectives which are alien to them."</i> It
was for this reason <i>"we declare ourselves the enemies of every
government and state every state power . . . the people can
only be happy and free when they create their own life,
organising themselves from below upwards."</i> [<b>Statism and
Anarchy</b>, p. 136]
<p>
The <i>"workers' state"</i> proved no exception to that generalisation.
The roots of the problem, which expressed itself from the start
during the Russian revolution, was the fatal confusion of the
state with organs of popular self-management. Lenin argued in
<i>"State and Revolution"</i> that, on the one hand, <i>"the armed 
proletariat itself shall <b>become the government</b>"</i> while, on
the other, that <i>"[w]e cannot imagine democracy, not even 
proletarian democracy, without representative institutions."</i> 
If, as Lenin asserts, democracy <i>"means equality"</i> he has 
reintroduced inequality into the "proletarian" state as
the representatives have, by definition, more power than
those who elected them. [<b>Essential Works of Lenin</b>, p. 363, 
p. 306 and p. 346] Yet, as noted in 
<a href="secH1.html#sech12">section H.1.2</a>, 
representative bodies necessarily place policy-making in 
the hands of deputies and do not (and cannot) mean that
the working class <b>as a class</b> can manage society. 
Moreover, such bodies ensure that popular power can be
usurped without difficulty by a minority. After all, a
minority already <b>does</b> hold power.
<p>
True equality implies the abolition of the state and its 
replacement by a federation of self-managed communes. The
state, as anarchists have long stressed, signifies a power
<b>above</b> society, a concentration of power into a few hands.
Lenin, ironically, quotes Engels on the state being marked 
by <i>"the establishment of a <b>public power,</b> which is no longer 
directly identical with the population organising itself as 
an armed power."</i> [quoted by Lenin, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 275] As Lenin
supported <b>representative</b> structures rather than one based
on elected, mandated and recallable <b>delegates</b> then he has
created a <i>"public power"</i> no longer identical with the population.
<p>
Combine this with an awareness that bureaucracy must continue
to exist in the "proletarian" state then we have the ideological
preconditions for dictatorship <b>over</b> the proletariat. <i>"There 
can be no thought,"</i> asserted Lenin, <i>"of destroying officialdom 
immediately everywhere, completely. That is utopia. But to <b>smash</b> 
the old bureaucratic machine at once and to begin immediately to 
construct a new one that will enable all officialdom to be 
gradually abolished is <b>not</b> utopia."</i> In other words, Lenin 
expected <i>"the gradual 'withering away' of all bureaucracy."</i> 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 306 and p. 307] 
<p>
Yet why expect a "new" bureaucracy to be as easy to control as 
the old one? Regular election to posts does not undermine the 
institutional links, pressures and powers a centralised 
"officialdom"</i> will generate around itself, even a so-called
"proletarian"</i> one. Significantly, Lenin justified this defence
of temporary state bureaucracy by the kind of straw man
argument against anarchism <i>"State and Revolution"</i> is riddled
with. <i>"We are not utopians,"</i> asserted Lenin, <i>"we do not indulge 
in 'dreams' of dispensing <b>at once</b> with all administration, 
with all subordination: these anarchist dreams . . . are 
totally alien to Marxism, and, as a matter of fact, serve 
only to postpone the socialist revolution until human nature 
has changed. No, we want the socialist revolution with human 
nature as it is now, with human nature that cannot dispense 
with subordination, control and 'managers.'"</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 307] Yet anarchists do not wish to <i>"dispense"</i> with <i>"all 
administration,"</i> rather we wish to replace government <b>by</b> 
administration, hierarchical positions 
(<i>"subordination"</i>) with co-operative organisation. Equally, we 
see the revolution as a process in which <i>"human nature"</i> is 
changed by the struggle itself so that working class people
become capable of organising itself and society without 
bosses, bureaucrats and politicians. If Lenin says that
socialism <i>"cannot dispense"</i> with the hierarchical structures
required by class society why should we expect the same kinds
of structures and social relationships to have different ends
just because <i>"red"</i> managers are in power?
<p>
Thus Lenin's work is deeply ambiguous. He is confusing 
popular self-management with a state structure. Anarchists
argue that states, by their very nature, are based on 
concentrated, centralised, alienated power in the hands of
a few. Thus Lenin's <i>"workers' state"</i> is just the same as
any other state, namely rule by a few over the many. This 
is confirmed when Lenin argues that <i>"[u]nder socialism, 
<b>all</b> will take part in the work of government in turn and 
will soon become accustomed to no one governing."</i> In fact,
once the <i>"overwhelming majority"</i> have <i>"learned to administer
the state <b>themselves</b>, have taken this business into their
own hands . . . the need for government begins to disappear.
The more complete democracy becomes, the nearer the moment 
approaches when it becomes unnecessary. The more democratic
the 'state' of the armed workers -- which is 'no longer a
state in the proper sense of the word' -- becomes, the more
rapidly does <b>the state</b> begin to wither away."</i> Moreover,
<i>"[u]ntil the 'higher' phase of communism arrives, the Socialists
demand the <b>strictest</b> control, by society <b>and by the state,</b>
of the amount of labour and of consumption."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 361, 
p. 349 and p. 345] 
<p>
Clearly, the "proletarian" state is <b>not</b> based on direct, 
mass, participation by the population but, in fact, on giving 
power to a few representatives. It is <b>not</b> identical with
<i>"society,"</i> i.e. the armed, self-organised people. Rather 
than look to the popular assemblies of the French revolution, 
Lenin, like the bourgeoisie, looked to representative structures 
-- structures designed to combat working class power and influence.
(at one point Lenin states that <i>"for a certain time not only 
bourgeois right, but even the bourgeois state remains under 
communism, without the bourgeoisie!"</i> This was because <i>"bourgeois 
right in regard to the distribution of articles of <b>consumption</b> 
inevitably presupposes the existence of the <b>bourgeois state,</b> 
for right is nothing without an apparatus capable of <b>enforcing</b> 
the observance of the standards of right."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 346]).
<p>
Can we expect the same types of organs and social relationships
to produce different results simply because Lenin is at the head 
of the state? Of course not. 
<p>
As the Marxist theory of the state confused party/vanguard
power with working class power, we should not be surprised
that Lenin's <i>"State and Revolution"</i> failed to discuss the
practicalities of this essential question in anything but a
passing and ambiguous manner. For example, Lenin notes that
<i>"[b]y educating the workers' party, Marxism educates the
vanguard of the proletariat which is capable of assuming
power and of <b>leading the whole people</b> to socialism, of
directing and organising the new order."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 288]
It is not clear whether it is the vanguard or the proletariat
as a whole which assumes power. Later, he states that <i>"the 
dictatorship of the proletariat"</i> was <i>"the organisation of the 
vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose 
of crushing the oppressors."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 337] Given that
this fits in with subsequent Bolshevik practice, it seems
clear that it is the vanguard which assumes power rather
than the whole class. The negative effects of this are 
discussed in <a href="append44.html#app8">section 8</a>.
<p>
However, the assumption of power by the party highlights the
key problem with the Marxist theory of the state and how it
could be used to justify the destruction of popular power.
It does not matter in the Marxist schema whether the class
or the party is in power, it does not impact on whether the
working class is the <i>"ruling class"</i> or not. As Lenin put it.
<i>"democracy is <b>not</b> identical with the subordination of the
minority to the majority. Democracy is a <b>state</b> which 
recognises the subordination of the minority to the majority,
i.e. an organisation for the systematic use of <b>violence</b>
by one class against the other, by one section of the
population against another."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 332] Thus the
majority need not actually <i>"rule"</i> (i.e. make the fundamental
decisions) for a regime to be considered a <i>"democracy"</i> or
an instrument of class rule. That power can be delegated to
a party leadership (even dictatorship) without harming the
<i>"class nature"</i> of the state. This results of such a theory
can be seen from Bolshevik arguments in favour of party 
dictatorship during the civil war period (and beyond).
<p>
The problem with the centralised, representative structures
Lenin favours for the <i>"dictatorship of the proletariat"</i> is that
they are rooted in the inequality of power. They constitute in
fact, if not initially in theory, a power <b>above</b> society. As
Lenin put it, <i>"the <b>essence</b> of bureaucracy"</i> is <i>"privileged 
persons divorced from the masses and <b>superior to</b> the masses."</i>
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 360] In the words of Malatesta, a <i>"government,
that is a group of people entrusted with making laws and 
empowered to use the collective power to oblige each individual
to obey them, is already a privileged class and cut off from
the people. As any constituted body would do, it will 
instinctively seek to extend its powers, to be beyond public
control, to impose its own policies and to give priority to
its special interests. Having been put in a privileged position,
the government is already at odds with the people whose
strength it disposes of."</i> [<b>Anarchy</b>, p. 34] As we discussed
in appendix <a href="append41.html">"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"</a>, Lenin's regime provides 
more than enough 
evidence to support such an analysis.
<p>
This is the fatal flaw in the Marxist theory of the state.
As Bakunin put it, <i>"the theory of the state"</i> is <i>"based on this 
fiction of pseudo-popular representation -- which in actual 
fact means the government of the masses by an insignificant
handful of privileged individuals, elected (or even not
elected) by mobs of people rounded up for voting and never
knowing what or whom they are voting for -- on this 
imaginary and abstract expression of the imaginary thought
and will of the all the people, of which the real, living
people do not have the faintest idea."</i> Thus the state 
represents <i>"government of the majority by a minority in
the name of the presumed stupidity of the one and the
presumed intelligence of the other."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 136-7]
<p>
By confusing popular participation with a state, by ignoring
the real inequalities of power in any state structure, Marxism
allowed Lenin and the Bolsheviks to usurp state power, implement
party dictatorship <b>and</b> continue to talk about the working 
class being in power. Because of Marxism's metaphysical 
definition of the state (see 
<a href="secH3.html#sech37">section H.3.7</a>), actual working 
class people's power over their lives is downplayed, if not 
ignored, in favour party power. 
<p>
As parties represent classes in this schema, if the party is 
in power then, by definition, so is the class. This raises the 
possibility of Lenin asserting the <i>"working class"</i> held power 
even when his party was exercising a dictatorship <b>over</b> the 
working class and violently repressing any protests by it. 
As one socialist historian puts it, <i>"while it is true that 
Lenin recognised the different functions and democratic 
raison d'etre for both the soviets and his party, in the 
last analysis it was the party that was more important than 
the soviets. In other words, the party was the final 
repository of working-class sovereignty. Thus, Lenin did not 
seem to have been reflected on or have been particularly 
perturbed by the decline of the soviets after 1918."</i> [Samuel 
Farber, <b>Before Stalinism</b>, p. 212] This can be seen from how
the Marxist theory of the state was changed <b>after</b> the
Bolsheviks seized power to bring into line with its new role
as the means by which the vanguard ruled society (see 
<a href="secH3.html#sech38">section H.3.8</a>).
<p>
This confusion between two radically different concepts and
their submersion into the term <i>"state"</i> had its negative impact 
from the start. Firstly, the Bolsheviks constantly equated 
rule by the Bolshevik party (in practice, its central committee)
with the working class as a whole. Rather than rule by all the
masses, the Bolsheviks substituted rule by a handful of leaders.
Thus we find Lenin talking about <i>"the power of the Bolsheviks
-- that is, the power of the proletariat"</i> as if these things
were the same. Thus it was a case of <i>"the Bolsheviks"</i> having
<i>"to take the whole governmental power into their own hands,"</i>
of <i>"the complete assumption of power by the Bolsheviks alone,"</i>
rather than the masses. Indeed, Russia had been <i>"ruled by 
130,000 landowners"</i> and <i>"yet they tell us that Russia will
not be able to be governed by the 240,000 members of the
Bolshevik Party -- governing in the interests of the
poor and against the rich."</i> [<b>Will the Bolsheviks Maintain 
Power?</b>, p. 102, p. 7 and pp. 61-2]
<p>
However, governing in the <i>"interests"</i> of the poor is <b>not</b>
the same as the poor governing themselves. Thus we have the
first key substitution that leads to authoritarian rule,
namely the substitution of the power of the masses by the
power of a few members who make up the government. Such a
small body will require a centralised state system and,
consequently, we have the creation of a hierarchical body
around the new government which, as we discuss in 
<a href="append44.html#app7">section 7</a>, will become the real master in society. 
<p>
The preconditions for a new form of class society have been 
created and, moreover, they are rooted in the basic ideas
of Marxism. Society has been split into two bodies, the
masses and those who claim to rule in their name. Given this
basic inequality in power we would, according to anarchist
theory, expect the interests of the masses and the rulers
to separate and come into conflict. While the Bolsheviks 
had the support of the working class (as they did in the 
first few months of their rule), this does not equal mass
participation in running society. Quite the reverse. So 
while Lenin raised the vision of mass participation in 
the <i>"final"</i> stage of communism, he unfortunately blocked 
the means to get there. 
<p>
Simply put, a self-managed society can only be created by 
self-managed means. To think we can have a <i>"public power"</i> 
separate from the masses which will, slowly, dissolve 
itself into it is the height of naivety. Unsurprisingly, 
once in power the Bolsheviks held onto power by all means 
available, including gerrymandering and disbanding soviets, 
suppressing peaceful opposition parties and violently 
repressing the very workers it claimed ruled in <i>"soviet"</i> 
Russia (see <a href="append41.html#app6">section 6</a> of the appendix
<a href="append41.html">"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"</a>).
Significantly, this conflict 
developed before the start of the civil war (see 
<a href="append43.html#app3">section 3</a> of the appendix on
<a href="append43.html">"What caused the degeneration of the Russian Revolution?"</a> for details). So when popular support was lost, the
basic contradictions in the Bolshevik position and theory
became clear. Rather than be a <i>"soviet"</i> power, the Bolshevik 
regime was simply rule over the workers in their name, 
nothing more. And equally unsurprising, the Leninists 
revised their theory of the state to take into account the 
realities of state power and the need to justify minority
power <b>over</b> the masses (see 
<a href="secH3.html#sech38">section H.3.8</a>).
<p>
Needless to say, even electoral support for the Bolsheviks should 
not and cannot be equated to working class management of society.
Echoing Marx and Engels at their most reductionist (see 
<a href="secH3.html#sech39">section H.3.9</a>), Lenin stressed that the state was <i>"an organ or machine 
for the subjection of one class by another . . . when the State 
has become proletarian, when it has become a machine for the 
domination of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie, then we shall 
fully  and unreservedly for a strong government and centralism."</i> 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 75] The notions that the state could have interests 
of its own, that it is not simply an instrument of class rule but
rather <b>minority</b> class rule are nowhere to be found. The 
implications of this simplistic analysis had severe ramifications
for the Russian Revolution and Trotskyist explanations of both
Stalinism and its rise.
<p>
Which brings us to the second issue. It is clear that by considering 
the state simply as an instrument of class rule Lenin could downplay, 
even ignore, such important questions of <b>how</b> the working class 
can <i>"rule"</i> society, how it can be a <i>"ruling"</i> class. Blinded by the
notion that a state could not be anything <b>but</b> an instrument 
of class rule, the Bolsheviks simply were able to justify any
limitation of working class democracy and freedom and argue that
it had no impact on whether the Bolshevik regime was really a
"dictatorship of the proletariat"</i> or not. This can be seen from
Lenin's polemic with German Social-Democrat Karl Kautsky, where
he glibly stated that <i>"<b>[t]he form of government,</b> has absolutely 
nothing to so with it."</i> [<b>Collected Works</b>, vol. 28, p. 238] 
<p>
Yet the idea that there is a difference between <b>who</b> rules in a
revolutionary situation and <b>how</b> they rule is a key one, and
one raised by the anarchists against Marxism. After all, if the
working class is politically expropriated how can you maintain
that a regime is remotely "proletarian"? Ultimately, the working
class can only <i>"rule"</i> society through its collective participation
in decision making (social, economic and "political"). If working
class people are not managing their own affairs, if they have
delegated that power to a few party leaders then they are <b>not</b>
a ruling class and could never be. While the bourgeoisie can,
and has, ruled economically under an actual dictatorship, the
same cannot be said to be the case with the working class. Every
class society is marked by a clear division between order takers
and order givers. To think that such a division can be implemented
in a socialist revolution and for it to remain socialist is pure
naivety. As the Bolshevik revolution showed, representative
government is the first step in the political expropriation of
the working class from control over their fate.
<p>
This can best be seen by Trotsky's confused analyses of Stalinism.
He simply could not understand the nature of Stalinism with the
simplistic analytical tools he inherited from mainstream Marxism
and Bolshevism. Thus we find him arguing in 1933 that:
<p><blockquote><i>
"The dictatorship of a class does not mean by a long shot 
that its entire mass always participates in the management 
of the state. This we have seen, first of all, in the case 
of the propertied classes. The nobility ruled through the 
monarchy before which the noble stood on his knees. The 
dictatorship of the bourgeoisie took on comparatively 
developed democratic forms only under the conditions 
of capitalist upswing when the ruling class had nothing 
to fear. Before our own eyes, democracy has been supplanted 
in Germany by Hitler's autocracy, with all the traditional 
bourgeois parties smashed to smithereens. Today, the 
German bourgeoisie does not rule directly; politically 
it is placed under complete subjection to Hitler and his 
bands. Nevertheless, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie 
remains inviolate in Germany, because all the conditions 
of its social hegemony have been preserved and strengthened. 
By expropriating the bourgeoisie politically, Hitler saved 
it, even if temporarily, from economic expropriation. The 
fact that the bourgeoisie was compelled to resort to the 
fascist regime testifies to the fact that its hegemony was 
endangered but not at all that it had fallen."</i> [Trotsky, 
<b>The Class Nature Of The Soviet State</b>]
</blockquote><p>
Yet Trotsky is confusing the matter. He is comparing the 
actions of class society with those a socialist revolution. 
While a minority class need not <i>"participate"</i> <b>en mass</b> the 
question arises does this apply to the transition from class 
society to a classless one? Can the working class <b>really</b> 
can be <i>"expropriated"</i> politically and still remain <i>"the
ruling class"</i>? Moreover, Trotsky fails to note that the 
working class was <b>economically</b> and <b>politically</b> 
expropriated under Stalinism as well. This is unsurprising, 
as both forms of expropriation had occurred when he and Lenin 
held the reins of state power. Yet Trotsky's confused 
ramblings do serve a purpose in showing how the Marxist 
theory of the state can be used to rationalise the 
replacement of popular power by party power. With such 
ideological baggage, can it be a surprise that the 
Bolshevik replacement of workers' power by party power 
could be a revolutionary goal? Ironically, the Marxist 
theory of the state as an instrument of class rule helped
ensure that the Russian working class did <b>not</b> become the 
ruling class post-October. Rather, it ensured that the 
Bolshevik party did.
<p>
To conclude, by its redunctionist logic, the Marxist theory 
of the state ensured that the substitution of popular power 
by party power could go ahead and, moreover, be justified 
ideologically. The first steps towards party dictatorship 
can be found in such apparently "libertarian" works as 
Lenin's <i>"State and Revolution"</i> with its emphasis on 
"representation" and "centralisation." The net effect
of this was to centralise power into fewer and fewer hands, 
replacing the essential constructive working class 
participation and self-activity required by a social 
revolution with top-down rule by a few party leaders. 
Such rule could not avoid becoming bureaucratised and
coming into conflict with the real aspirations and interests 
of those it claimed to represent. In such circumstances, 
in a conflict between the <i>"workers' state"</i> and the actual 
workers the Marxist theory of the state, combined with 
the assumptions of vanguardism, made the shift to party 
dictatorship inevitable. As we discussed in 
<a href="append43.html#app3">section 3</a> of the appendix on
<a href="append43.html">"What caused the degeneration of the Russian Revolution?"</a>, 
authoritarian tendencies had surfaced before the civil war 
began. 
<p>
The strange paradox of Leninism, namely that the theoretical 
dictatorship of the proletariat was, in practice, a dictatorship 
<b>over</b> the proletariat comes as no surprise. In spite of Lenin 
announcing <i>"all power to the soviets"</i> he remained committed to 
a disciplined party wielding centralised power. This regime 
soon expropriated the soviets while calling the subsequent 
regime "Soviet." Rather that create the authoritarian tendencies 
of the Bolshevik state the "objective factors" facing Lenin's 
regime simply increased their impact. The preconditions for 
the minority rule which the civil war intensified to extreme
levels already existed within Marxist theory. Consequently, 
a Leninist revolution which avoided the (inevitable) problems 
facing a revolution would still create some kind of class society
simply because it reproduces minority rule by creating a <i>"workers'
state"</i> as its first step. Sadly, Marxist theory confuses popular
self-government with a state so ensuring the substitution of rule
by a few party leaders for the popular participation required to
ensure a successful revolution.
<p>
<a name="app3"><h2>3 How did Engels' essay <i>"On Authority"</i> affect the revolution?</h2>
<p>
We have discussed Engels' infamous diatribe against anarchism 
already (see 
<a href="secH4.html">section H.4</a> and subsequent sections). Here we 
discuss how its caricature of anarchism helped disarm the 
Bolsheviks theoretically to the dangers of their own actions, 
so helping to undermine the socialist potential of the Russian 
revolution. While the Marxist theory of the state, with its 
ahistoric and ambiguous use of the word "state" undermined 
popular autonomy and power in favour of party power, Engels' 
essay <i>"On Authority"</i> helped undermine popular self-management.
<p>
Simply put, Engels essay contained the germs from which Lenin 
and Trotsky's support for one-man management flowed. He provided 
the Marxist orthodoxy required to undermine real working class 
power by confusing all forms of organisation with <i>"authority"</i> and 
equating the necessity of self-discipline with <i>"subordination"</i>
to one will. Engels' infamous essay helped Lenin to destroy
self-management in the workplace and replace it with appointed
<i>"one-man management"</i> armed with <i>"dictatorial powers."</i>
<p>
For Lenin and Trotsky, familiar with Engels' <i>"On Authority,"</i> 
it was a truism that any form of organisation was based on 
<i>"authoritarianism"</i> and, consequently, it did not really matter
<b>how</b> that <i>"authority"</i> was constituted. Thus Marxism's agnostic
attitude to the patterns of domination and subordination within
society was used to justify one-man management and party 
dictatorship. Indeed, <i>"Soviet socialist democracy and individual 
management and dictatorship are in no way contradictory . . . 
the will of a class may sometimes be carried by a dictator, who 
sometimes does more alone and is frequently more necessary."</i> 
[Lenin, <b>Collected Works</b>, vol. 30, p. 476]
<p>
Like Engels, Lenin defended the principle of authority. The 
dictatorship of the Party over the proletariat found its 
apology in this principle, thoroughly grounded in the practice 
of bureaucracy and modern factory production. Authority, 
hierarchy, and the need for submission and domination is 
inevitable given the current mode of production, they argued. 
And no foreseeable change in social relations could ever 
overcome this blunt necessity. As such, it was (fundamentally)
irrelevant <b>how</b> a workplace is organised as, no matter what,
it would be <i>"authoritarian."</i> Thus <i>"one-man management"</i> would
be, basically, the same as worker's self-management via an
elected factory committee.
<p>
For Engels, any form of joint activity required as its
<i>"first condition"</i> a <i>"dominant will that settles all 
subordinate questions, whether this will is represented
by a single delegate or a committee charged with the
execution of the resolutions of the majority of persons
interested. In either case there is very pronounced
authority."</i> Thus the <i>"necessity of authority, and of
imperious authority at that."</i> Collective life, he 
stressed, required <i>"a certain authority, no matter
how delegated"</i> and <i>"a certain subordination, are
things which, independently of all social organisation,
are imposed upon us."</i> [<b>The Marx-Engels Reader</b>, p. 732]
<p>
Lenin was aware of these arguments, even quoting from this
essay in his <b>State and Revolution</b>. Thus he was aware
that for Engels, collective decisions meant <i>"the will of
the single individual will always have to subordinate 
itself, which means that questions are settled in an
authoritarian way."</i> Thus there was no difference if
<i>"they are settled by decision of a delegate placed at
the head of each branch of labour or, if possible, by 
a majority vote."</i> The more advanced the technology,
the greater the <i>"despotism"</i>: <i>"The automatic machinery
of a big factory is much more despotic than the small
capitalist who employ workers ever have been."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>,
p. 731] Thus Engels had used the modern factory system of 
mass production as a direct analogy to argue against the 
anarchist call for workers' councils and self-management
in production, for workers' autonomy and participation.
Like Engels, Lenin stressed the necessity of central 
authority in industry. 
<p>
It can be argued that it was this moment that ensured the
creation of state capitalism under the Bolsheviks. This 
is the moment in Marxist theory when the turn from economics 
to technics, from proletarian control to technocracy, from
workers' self-management to appointed state management 
was ensured. Henceforth the end of any critique of alienation
in mainstream Marxism was assured. Submission to technique under 
hierarchical authority effectively prevents active participation 
in the social production of values. And there was no alternative.
<p>
As noted in <a href="append41.html#app8">section 8</a> of the appendix
<a href="append41.html">"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"</a>).
and <a href="secH3.html#sech314">section H.3.14</a>, during 1917 Lenin did
not favour workers' self-management of production. He raised
the idea of <i>"workers' control"</i> after the workers spontaneously
raised the idea and practice themselves during the revolution.
Moreover, he interpreted that slogan in his own way, placing
it within a statist context and within institutions inherited
from capitalism (see 
<a href="secH3.html#sech312">section H.3.12</a>). Once in power, it was
(unsurprisingly) <b>his</b> vision of socialism and workers' control
that was implemented, <b>not</b> the workers' factory committees.
The core of that vision he repeatedly stressed had been 
raised <b>before</b> the October revolution.
<p>
This vision can be best seen in <b>The Immediate Tasks of the 
Soviet Government</b>, written by Lenin and published on the 25th 
of April 1918. This occurred before the start of the civil war
and, indeed, he starts by arguing that <i>"[t]hanks to the peace
which has been achieved"</i> the Bolsheviks had <i>"gained an opportunity
to concentrate its efforts for a while on the most important
and most difficult aspect of the socialist revolution, namely
the task of organisation."</i> The Bolsheviks, who had <i>"managed
to complete the conquest of power,"</i> now faced <i>"the principal
task of convincing people"</i> and doing <i>"<b>practical organisational
work.</b>"</i> Only when this was done <i>"will it be possible to say
that Russia <b>has become</b> not only a Soviet, but also a
socialist, republic."</i> [<b>The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet 
Government</b>, p. 2 and p. 8] 
<p>
Sadly, this <i>"organisation"</i> was riddled with authoritarianism 
and was fundamentally top-down in nature. His "socialist"
vision was simply state capitalism (see <a href="append41.html#app10">section 10</a> of the appendix <a href="append41.html">"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"</a>). However,
what interests us here is that his arguments to justify the 
"socialist" policies he presented are similar to those put 
forward by Engels in <i>"On Authority."</i> As such, we can only
reach the following conclusions. Firstly, that the <i>"state
capitalist"</i> vision of socialism imposed upon Russia by the
Bolsheviks was what they had always intended to introduce.
It was their limited support for workers' control in 1917 
that was atypical and not part of their tradition, <b>not</b> 
their policies once in power (as modern day Leninists 
assert). Secondly, that this vision had its roots in classical
Marxism, specifically Engels' <i>"On Authority"</i> and the 
identification of socialism with nationalised property
(see <a href="secH3.html#sech313">section H.3.13</a> for more on this).
<p>
That Engels diatribe had a negative impact on the development
of the Russian revolution can easily be seen from Lenin's
arguments. For example, Lenin argues that the <i>"tightening
of discipline"</i> and <i>"harmonious organisation"</i> calls <i>"for
coercion -- coercion precisely in the form of dictatorship."</i>
He did not object to granting <i>"individual executives dictatorial 
power (or 'unlimited' powers)"</i> and did not think <i>"the appointment
of individual, dictators with unlimited power"</i> was incompatible
with <i>"the fundamental principles of the Soviet government."</i>
After all, <i>"the history of revolutionary movements"</i> had <i>"shown"</i> 
that <i>"the dictatorship of individuals was very often the 
expression, the vehicle, the channel of the dictatorship of 
revolutionary classes."</i> He notes that <i>"[u]ndoubtably, the 
dictatorship of individuals was compatible with bourgeois 
democracy."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 28 and p. 32] It would be churlish
to note that previous revolutionary movements had not been
<b>socialist</b> in nature and did not aim to <b>abolish</b> classes.
In such cases, the government appointing people with dictatorial
powers would not have harmed the nature of the revolution,
which was transferring power from one minority class to 
another.
<p>
Lenin mocked the <i>"exceedingly poor arguments"</i> of those who objected,
saying that they <i>"demand of us a higher democracy than bourgeois
democracy and say: personal dictatorship is absolutely incompatible 
with your, Bolshevik (i.e. not bourgeois, <b>but socialist</b>) Soviet 
democracy."</i> As the Bolsheviks were <i>"not anarchists,"</i> he admitted
the need <i>"coercion"</i> in the <i>"transition from capitalism to 
socialism,"</i>
its form being determined <i>"by the degree of development of the
given revolutionary class, and also by special circumstances."</i> In
general, he stressed, there was <i>"absolutely <b>no</b> contradiction in
principle between Soviet (<b>that is,</b> socialist) democracy and the
exercise of dictatorial powers by individuals."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 32-3
and p. 33] Which is, of course, sophistry as dictatorship by a
few people in some aspects of live will erode democracy in others.
For example, being subject to the economic power of the capitalist
during work harms the individual and reduces their ability to
participate in other aspects of social life. Why should being
subject to "red" bosses be any different?
<p>
In particular, Lenin argued that <i>"individual dictatorial power"</i>
was required because <i>"large-scale machine industry"</i> (which is
the <i>"foundation of socialism"</i>) calls for <i>"absolute and strict
<b>unity of will,</b> which directs the joint labours of hundreds,
thousands and tens of thousands of people. . . But how can 
strict unity of will be ensured? By thousands subordinating 
their will to the will of one."</i> He reiterated that the 
<i>"<b>unquestioning subordination</b> to a single will is absolutely
necessary for the success of processes organised on the pattern
of large-scale machine industry."</i> The people must <i>"<b>unquestioningly 
obey the single will</b> of the leaders of labour."</i> And so it was
a case (for the workers, at least) of <i>"[o]bedience, and 
unquestioning obedience at that, during work to the one-man 
decisions of Soviet directors, of the dictators elected or 
appointed by Soviet institutions, vested with dictatorial 
powers."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 33, p. 34 and p. 44] 
<p>
The parallels with Engels' <i>"On Authority"</i> could not be clearer, 
as are the fallacies of Lenin's assertions (see, for example, 
<a href="secH4.html#sech44">section H.4.4</a>). Lenin, like Engels, uses the example of modern
industry to bolster his arguments. Yet the net effect of Lenin's
argument was to eliminate working class economic power at the
point of production. Instead of socialist social relationships,
Lenin imposed capitalist ones. Indeed, no capitalist would 
disagree with Lenin's workplace regime -- they try to create
such a regime by breaking unions and introducing technologies
and techniques which allow them to control the workers. 
Unsurprisingly, Lenin also urged the introduction of two 
such techniques, namely <i>"piece-work"</i> and <i>"applying much 
of what is scientific and progressive in the Taylor system."</i> 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 23-4] As Trotskyist Tony Cliff reminds us, 
<i>"the employers have at their disposal a number of effective 
methods of disrupting th[e] unity [of workers as a class]. Once 
of the most important of these is the fostering of competition 
between workers by means of piece-work systems."</i> He notes that 
these were used by the Nazis and the Stalinists <i>"for the same 
purpose."</i> [<b>State Capitalism in Russia</b>, pp. 18-9] Obviously 
piece-work is different when Lenin introduces it! Similarly,
when Trotsky notes that <i>"[b]lind obedience is not a thing to 
be proud of in a revolutionary,"</i> it is somewhat different when
Lenin calls upon workers to do so (or, for that matter, Trotsky
himself when in power -- see 
<a href="append44.html#app6">section 6</a> for Trotsky's 
radically different perspective on blind obedience of the 
worker to "his" state in 1920!).  [<b>Terrorism and Communism</b>, 
p. xlvii] 
<p>
The <b>economic</b> dominance of the bourgeoisie ensures the political
dispossession of the working class. Why expect the introduction
of capitalist social relations in production to have different
outcomes just because Lenin was the head of the government? In 
the words of libertarian socialist Maurice Brinton:
<p><blockquote><i>
"We hold that the 'relations of production' -- the relations 
which individuals or groups enter into with one another in 
the process of producing wealth - are the essential foundations 
of any society. A certain pattern of relations of production 
is the common denominator of all class societies. This pattern 
is one in which the producer does not dominate the means of 
production but on the contrary both is 'separated from them' 
and from the products of his own labour. In all class societies 
the producer is in a position of subordination to those who 
manage the productive process. Workers' management of 
production -- implying as it does the total domination of 
the producer over the productive process -- is not for us 
a marginal matter. It is the core of our politics. It is 
the only means whereby authoritarian (order-giving, 
order-taking) relations in production can be transcended 
and a free, communist or anarchist, society introduced. 
<p>
"We also hold that the means of production may change hands 
(passing for instance from private hands into those of a 
bureaucracy, collectively owning them) with out this 
revolutionising the relations of production. Under such 
circumstances -- and whatever the formal status of property 
-- the society is still a class society for production is 
still managed by an agency other than the producers 
themselves. Property relations, in other words, do not 
necessarily reflect the: relations of production. They 
may serve to mask them -- and in fact they often have."</i>
[<b>The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control</b>, p. vii-viii]
</blockquote><p>
The net effect of Lenin's arguments, as anarchist Peter Arshinov 
noted a few years later, was that the <i>"fundamental fact"</i> of the 
Bolshevik revolution was <i>"that the workers and the peasant 
labourers remained within the earlier situation of 'working 
classes' -- producers managed by authority from above."</i> He 
stressed that Bolshevik political and economic ideas may 
have <i>"remov[ed] the workers from the hands of individual 
capitalists"</i> but they <i>"delivered them to the yet more rapacious 
hands of a single ever-present capitalist boss, the State. The 
relations between the workers and this new boss are the same as 
earlier relations between labour and capital . . . Wage labour 
has remained what it was before, expect that it has taken on 
the character of an obligation to the State. . . . It is clear 
that in all this we are dealing with a simple substitution of 
State capitalism for private capitalism."</i> [<b>The History of the 
Makhnovist Movement</b>, p. 35 and p. 71] Moreover, Lenin's position 
failed to understand that unless workers have power at the point 
of production, they will soon loose it in society as a whole.
Which, of course, they soon did in Bolshevik Russia, even in
the limited form of electing a "revolutionary" government.
<p>
So while the causes of the failure of the Russian Revolution were 
many fold, the obvious influence of Engels' <i>"On Authority"</i> on 
the fate of the workers' control movement should be noted. After
all, Engels' argument confuses the issues that Bakunin and other 
anarchists were trying to raise (namely on the nature of the 
organisations we create and our relationships with others). If,
as Engels' argues, all organisation is <i>"authoritarian,"</i> then does
this mean that there no real difference between organisational
structures? Is a dictatorship just the same as a self-managed 
group, as they are both organisations and so both <i>"authoritarian"</i>? 
If so, surely that means the kinds of organisation we create
are irrelevant and what <b>really</b> matters is state ownership?
Such logic can only lead to the perspective that working class
self-management of production is irrelevant to socialism and,
unfortunately, the experience of the Russian Revolution tends to
suggest that for mainstream Marxism this is the case. The 
Bolsheviks imposed distinctly authoritarian social structures 
while arguing that they were creating socialism. 
<p>
Like Engels, the Bolsheviks defended the principle of authority. 
The dictatorship of the Party over the proletariat in the 
workplace (and, indeed, elsewhere) ultimately found its apology 
in this principle, thoroughly grounded in the practice 
of bureaucracy and modern factory production. Authority, 
hierarchy, and the need for submission and domination is 
inevitable, given the current mode of production, they argued. 
And, as Engels had stressed, no foreseeable change in social 
relations could ever overcome this blunt necessity. As such, 
it was (fundamentally) irrelevant for the leading Bolsheviks
<b>how</b> a workplace is organised as, no matter what, it would 
be <i>"authoritarian."</i> Thus <i>"one-man management"</i> would be, 
basically, the same as worker's self-management via an
elected factory committee. As Trotsky made clear in 1920, for
the Bolsheviks the <i>"dictatorship of the proletariat is expressed
in the abolition of private property in the means of production,
in the supremacy over the whole Soviet mechanism of the 
collective will of the workers [i.e. the party, which Trotsky
cheerfully admits is exercising a <b>party</b> dictatorship], and not
at all in the form in which individual economic enterprises
are administered."</i> Thus, it <i>"would be a most crying error to
confuse the question as to the supremacy of the proletariat
with the question of boards of workers at the head of the
factories."</i> [<b>Terrorism and Communism</b>, p. 162]
<p>
By equating <i>"organisation"</i> with <i>"authority"</i> (i.e. hierarchy)
and dismissing the importance of revolutionising the social
relationships people create between themselves, Engels opened
the way for the Bolsheviks' advocacy of <i>"one-man management."</i> His
essay is at the root of mainstream Marxism's agnostic attitude 
to the patterns of domination and subordination within society 
and was used to justify one-man management. After all, if 
Engels was right, then it did not matter <b>how</b> the workplace 
was organised. It would, inherently, be <i>"authoritarian"</i> and 
so what mattered, therefore, was who owned property, <b>not</b> 
how the workplace was run. Perhaps, then, <i>"On Authority"</i> 
was a self-fulfilling prophecy -- by seeing any form 
of organisation and any form of advanced technology 
as needing hierarchy, discipline and obedience, as being 
"authoritarian,"</i> it ensured that mainstream Marxism 
became blinded to the key question of <b>how</b> society was 
organised. After all, if <i>"despotism"</i> was a fact of life within 
industry regardless of how the wider society was organised, then 
it does not matter if <i>"one-man management"</i> replaces workers' 
self-management. Little wonder then that the continued alienation 
of the worker was widespread long before Stalin took power and, 
more importantly, before the civil war started. 
<p>
As such, the dubious inheritance of classical Marxism had
started to push the Bolshevik revolution down an authoritarian
path and create economic structures and social relationships
which were in no way socialist and, moreover, laid the 
foundations for Stalinism. Even if the civil war had not
occurred, capitalist social relationships would have been
dominant within "socialist" Russia -- with the only difference
being that rather than private capitalism it would have been 
state capitalism. As Lenin admitted, incidentally. It is
doubtful that this state capitalism would have been made to
serve <i>"the whole people"</i> as Lenin naively believed.
<p>
In another way Engels identification of organisation with 
authority affected the outcome of the revolution. As <b>any</b> 
form of organisation involved, for Engels, the domination 
of individuals and, as such, <i>"authoritarian"</i> then the nature 
of the socialist state was as irrelevant as the way 
workplaces were run. As both party dictatorship and 
soviet democracy meant that the individual was <i>"dominated"</i> 
by collective decisions, so both were <i>"authoritarian."</i> 
As such, the transformation of the soviet state into a 
party dictatorship did not fundamentally mean a change 
for the individuals subject to it. Little wonder that 
no leading Bolshevik called the end of soviet democracy 
and its replacement by party dictatorship as a "retreat"
or even as something to be worried about (indeed, they 
all argued the opposite, namely that party dictatorship 
was essential and not an issue to be worried about).
<p>
Perhaps this analogy by the SWP's Tony Cliff of the relationship
between the party and the working class provides an insight:
<p><blockquote><i>
"In essence the dictatorship of the proletariat <b>does not</b>
represent a combination of abstract, immutable elements
like democracy and centralism, independent of time and
space. The actual level of democracy, as well as centralism, 
depends on three basic factors: 1. the strength of the 
proletariat; 2. the material and cultural legacy left to 
it by the old regime; and 3. the strength of capitalist 
resistance. The level of democracy feasible must be indirect 
proportion to the first two factors, and in inverse 
proportion to the third. The captain of an ocean liner can 
allow football to be played on his vessel; on a tiny raft 
in a stormy sea the level of tolerance is far lower."</i> 
[<b>Lenin</b>, vol. 3, p. 179] 
</blockquote><p>
Ignoring the obvious points (such as comparing working class 
freedom and democracy to a game!), we can see shades of Engels 
in Cliff's words. Let us not forget that Engels argued that 
<i>"a ship on the high seas"</i> at a <i>"time of danger"</i> required 
<i>"the necessity of authority, and of imperious authority at 
that."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 732] Here Cliff is placing the party 
into the Captain's role and the workers as the crew. The 
Captain, in Engels argument, exercised <i>"imperious authority."</i> 
In Cliff's, the party decides the freedoms which working 
class people are allowed to have -- and so subjects them 
to its <i>"imperious authority."</i> 
<p>
Little wonder Bolshevism failed. By this simple analogy 
Cliff shows the authoritarian essence of Bolshevism and 
who really has <i>"all power"</i> under that system. Like the 
crew and passengers dominated by the will of the captain,
the working class under Leninism will be dominated by the party.
It does not bode well that Cliff thinks that democracy can be
<i>"feasible"</i> in some circumstances, but not others and it is
up to those in power (i.e. the party leaders) to determine 
when it was. In his rush to justify Bolshevik party dictatorship
in terms of "objective conditions" he clearly forgot his 
earlier comments that the <i>"liberation of the working class
can only be achieved through the action of the working class.
Hence one can have a revolution with more or less violence,
with more or less suppression of civil rights of the 
bourgeoisie and its hangers-on [a general catch-all category
which, if Bolshevik practice is anything to go by, can include 
rebel workers, indeed the whole working class!], with more
or less political freedom, but one <b>cannot</b> gave a revolution,
as the history of Russia conclusively demonstratives, without
workers' democracy -- even if restricted and distorted.
Socialist advance must be gauged by workers' freedom, by
their power to shape their own destiny . . . Without workers'
democracy the immediate means leads to a very different
end, to an end that is prefigured in these same means."</i>
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 110] Obviously if Lenin and Trotsky are the
captains of the ship of state, such considerations are
less important. When it is Lenin wielding <i>"imperious 
authority"</i> then workers' democracy can be forgotten and
the regime remain a <i>"workers' state"</i>!
<p>
By ignoring the key issue Bakunin and other anarchists drew
attention to by attacking <i>"authority"</i> (and let us not forget
that by that they meant hierarchical organisations in which
power is concentrated at the top in a few hands -- see
<a href="secH4.html">section H.4</a>), Engels opened up the way of seeing democratic
decision as being less than important. This is <b>not</b> to
suggest that Engels favoured dictatorship. Rather we are
suggesting that by confusing two radically different forms
of organisation as self-management and hierarchy he blunted
latter Marxists to the importance of participation and 
collective decision making from below. After all, if all
organisation is <i>"authoritarian"</i> then it matters little,
in the end, how it is structured. Dictatorship, 
representative democracy and self-management were all 
equally <i>"authoritarian"</i> and so the issues raised by 
anarchism can safely be ignored (namely that electing 
bosses does not equate to freedom). Thus the Bolshevik 
willingness to equate their dictatorship with rule by
the working class is not such a surprise after all.
<p>
To conclude, rather than the anti-authoritarians not knowing
<i>"what they are talking about,"</i> <i>"creating nothing but confusion,"</i>
<i>"betraying the movement of the proletariat"</i> and <i>"serv[ing] the
reaction,"</i> it was Engels' essay that aided the Bolshevik 
counter-revolution and helped, in its own small way, to lay
the foundations for Leninist tyranny and state capitalism.
[Engels, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 733] Ultimately, Engels <i>"On Authority"</i>
helped give Lenin the ideological premises by which to 
undermine workers' economic power during the revolution and
recreate capitalist social relations and call it "socialism."
His ill thought out diatribe had ramifications even he would 
never have guessed (but were obvious at the time to 
libertarians). His use of the modern factory system to 
argue against the anarchist call for workers' councils, 
federalism and workers' autonomy, for participation, for 
self-management, became the basis for re-imposing 
<b>capitalist</b> relations of production in revolutionary Russia. 
<p>
<a name="app4"><h2>4 How did the Bolshevik vision of "democracy" affect the revolution?</h2>
<p>
As discussed in 
<a href="secH3.html#sech32">section H.3.2</a>, Marx and Engels had left their
followers which a contradictory legacy as regards <i>"socialism
from below."</i> On the one hand, their praise for the Paris Commune
and its libertarian ideas pointed to a participatory democracy
run from below. On the other, Marx's comments during the German 
Revolution in 1850 that the workers must <i>"strive for . . . the 
most determined centralisation of power in the hands of the state 
authority"</i> because <i>"the path of revolutionary activity"</i> can 
"proceed only from the centre"</i> suggests a top-down approach. 
He stressed that centralisation of power was essential to overcome 
local autonomy, which would allow <i>"every village, every town and 
every province"</i> to put <i>"a new obstacle in the path"</i> the revolution 
due to <i>"local and provincial obstinacy."</i> [<b>Marx-Engels Reader</b>, 
p. 509] 
<p>
Building upon this contradictory legacy, Lenin unambiguously 
stressed the <i>"from above"</i> aspect of it (see 
<a href="secH3.html#sech33">section H.3.3</a> for
details). The only real exception to this perspective occurred
in 1917, when Lenin was trying to win mass support for his
party. However, even this support for democracy from below
was always tempered by reminding the reader that the Bolsheviks
stood for centralisation and strong government once they were
in power (see <a href="append44.html#app7">section 7</a>). 
<p>
Once in power, the promises of 1917 were quickly forgotten.
Unsurprisingly, modern day Leninists argue that this was
due to the difficult circumstances facing the Bolsheviks at
the time. They argue that the words of 1917 represent the
true democratic vision of Bolshevism. Anarchists are not
impressed. After all, for an idea to be useful it must be
practical -- even in "exceptional circumstances." If the
Bolshevik vision is not robust enough to handle the problems
that have affected every revolution then we have to question
the validity of that vision or the strength of commitment
its supporters hold it.
<p>
Given this, the question becomes which of these two aspects of
Marxism was considered its "essence" by Lenin and the Bolsheviks.
Obviously, it is hard to isolate the real Bolshevik vision of
democracy from the influence of "objective factors." However,
we can get a taste by looking at how the Bolsheviks acted and
argued during the first six months in power. During this period,
the problems facing the revolution were hard but not as bad as 
those facing it after the Czech revolt at the end of May, 1918.
Particularly after March, 1918, the Bolsheviks were in a position
to start constructive work as in the middle of that month Lenin
claimed that the <i>"Soviet Government has triumphed in the Civil 
War."</i> [quoted by Maximoff, <b>The Guillotine at Work</b>, p. 53]
<p>
So the question as to whether the Bolsheviks were forced into 
authoritarian and hierarchical methods by the practical necessities 
of the civil war or whether all this was inherent in Leninism all 
along, and the natural product of Leninist ideology, can be answered
by looking at the record of the Bolsheviks prior to the civil war. 
From this we can ascertain the effect of the civil war. And the
obvious conclusion is that the record of the initial months of 
Bolshevik rule point to a less than democratic approach which
suggests that authoritarian policies were inherent in Leninism
and, as such, pointed the revolution into a path were further
authoritarian policies were not only easy to implement, but had
to be as alternative options had been eliminated by previous 
policies. Moreover, Bolshevik ideology itself made such policies
easy to accept and to justify.
<p>
As discussed in <a href="append41.html#app6">section 6</a> of the appendix
<a href="append41.html">"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"</a>,it was during this period that 
the Bolsheviks started to gerrymander soviets and disband any 
they lost elections to. As we indicate in 
<a href="append41.html#app9">section 9</a> of the appendix
<a href="append41.html">"What happened during the Russian 
Revolution?"</a>, they 
undermined the factory committees, stopping them federating 
and basically handed the factories to the state bureaucracy. 
Lenin argued for and implemented one-man management, piecework, 
Taylorism and other things Stalinism is condemned for (see 
<a href="append44.html#app3">section 3</a>, for example). In the army, Trotsky disbanded 
the soldier committees and elected officers by decree.
<p>
How Trotsky defended this policy of appointing officers is 
significant. It mirrors Lenin's argument in favour of 
appointed one-man management and, as such, reflects the 
basic Bolshevik vision of democracy. By looking at his
argument we can see how the Bolshevik vision of democracy
fatality undermined the Russian Revolution and its socialist
content. The problems of the civil war simply deepened the
abscess in democracy created by Lenin and Trotsky in the
spring of 1918.
<p>
Trotsky acknowledged that that <i>"the soldier-workers and 
soldier-peasants"</i> needed <i>"to elect commanders for themselves"</i>
in the Tzarist army <i>"not [as] military chiefs, but simply 
[as] representatives who could guard them against attacks
of counter-revolutionary classes."</i> However, in the new Red
Army this was not needed as it was the <i>"workers' and
peasants' Soviets, i.e. the same classes which compose the
army"</i> which is building it. He blandly asserted that <i>"[h]ere
no internal struggle is possible."</i> To illustrate his point
he pointed to the trade unions. <i>"The metal workers,"</i> he
noted, <i>"elect their committee, and the committee finds a
secretary, a clerk, and a number of other persons who are
necessary. Does it ever happen that the workers should
say: 'Why are our clerks and treasurers appointed, and
not elected?' No, no intelligent workers will say so."</i>
[<b>Leon Trotsky Speaks</b>, p. 112-3]
<p>
Thus in less than six months, Lenin's call in <i>"State and
Revolution"</i> that <i>"[a]ll officials, without exception,
[would be] elected and subject to recall <b>at any time</b>"</i>
was dismissed as the demand that <i>"no intelligent workers"</i>
would raise! [<b>Essential Works of Lenin</b>, p. 302] But, 
then again, Trotsky <b>was</b> in the process of destroying 
another apparent <i>"principle"</i> of Leninism, namely (to
quote, like Lenin, Marx) <i>"the suppression of the standing
army, and the substitution for it of the armed people."</i>
[quoted by Lenin, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 300] 
<p>
Trotsky continues his argument. The Trade union committee,
he asserts, would say <i>"You yourselves have chosen the
committee. If you don't like us, dismiss us, but once you
have entrusted us with the direction of the union, then 
give us the possibility of choosing the clerk or the
cashier, since we are better able to judge in the matter than 
you, and if our way of conducting business is bad, then
throw us out and elect another committee."</i> After this 
defence of elected dictatorship, he states that the
<i>"Soviet government is the same as the committee of a
trade union. It is elected by the workers and peasants,
and you can at the All-Russian Congress of the Soviets,
at any moment you like, dismiss that government and 
appoint another."</i> Until that happens, he was happy to
urge blind obedience by the sovereign people to their
servants: <i>"But once you have appointed it, you must give 
it the right to choose the technical specialists, the clerks, 
the secretaries in the broad sense of the word, and in military
affairs, in particular."</i> He tried to calm the nerves of those
who could see the obvious problems with this argument by
asking whether it was <i>"possible for the Soviet government
to appoint military specialists against the interests of
the labouring and peasant masses?"</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 113]
<p>
And the answer to that question is, of course, an empathic 
yes. Even looking at his own analogy, namely that of a
trade union committee, it is obvious that an elected body
can have interests separate from and in opposition to those
who elected it. The history of trade unionism is full of
examples of committees betraying the membership of the unions.
And, of course, the history of the Soviet government under
Lenin and Trotsky (never mind Stalin!) shows that just because
it was once elected by a majority of the working people 
does not mean it will act in their best interests.
<p>
Trotsky even went one better. <i>"The army is now only in the process
of formation,"</i> he noted. <i>"How could the soldiers who have just 
entered the army choose the chiefs! Have they have any vote to 
go by? They have none. And therefore elections are impossible."</i> 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 113] If only the Tsar had thought of that one!
If he had, he would still be in power. And, needless to say,
Trotsky did not apply that particular logic to himself. After
all, he had no experience of holding governmental office or
building an army (or even being in combat). Nor did any of the
other Bolshevik leaders. By the logic of his argument, not only
should the workers not been allowed to vote for a soviet 
government, he and his fellow Bolsheviks should not have 
assumed power in 1917. But, clearly, sauce for the goose is
definitely <b>not</b> sauce for the gander.
<p>
For all his talk that the masses could replace the Bolsheviks
at the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, Trotsky failed to
realise that these proposals (and other ones like it) ensured
that this was unlikely to happen. Even assuming that the 
Bolsheviks had not gerrymandered and disbanded soviets, the
fact is that the Bolshevik vision of "democracy" effectively
hollowed out the grassroots participation required to make
democracy at the top anything more than a fig-leaf for party
power. He honestly seemed to believe that eliminating mass
participation in other areas of society would have no effect
on the levels of participation in soviet elections. Would
people subjected to one-man management in the workplace and
in the army really be truly free and able to vote for parties
which had not appointed their bosses? Could workers who were
disenfranchised economically and socially remain in political
power (assuming you equate voting a handful of leaders into
power with <i>"political power"</i>)? And does being able to elect
a representative every quarter to the All-Russian congress
really mean that the working class was really in charge of
society? Of course not.
<p>
This vision of top-down "democracy" can, of course, be traced
back to Marx's arguments of 1850 and Lenin's comments that
the <i>"organisational principle of revolutionary Social-Democracy"</i>
was <i>"to proceed from the top downward."</i> (see sections 
<a href="secH3.html#sech32">H.3.2</a> and
<a href="secH3.html#sech33">H.3.3</a>). By equating centralised, top-down decision making by an 
elected government with "democracy," the Bolsheviks had the 
ideological justification to eliminate the functional democracy 
associated with the factory committees and soldiers committees. 
In place of workers' and soldiers' direct democracy and 
self-management, the Bolsheviks appointed managers and officers 
and justified because a workers' party was in power. After all, 
had not the masses elected the Bolsheviks into power? This 
became the means by which <b>real</b> democracy was eliminated in 
area after area of Russian working class life. Needless to 
say, a state which eliminates functional democracy in the 
grassroots will not stay democratic in any meaningful sense
for long. At best, it will be like a bourgeois republic with
purely elections where people elect a party to misrepresent
them every four or so years while real economic, political
and social power rests in the hands of a few. At worse, it 
would be a dictatorship with "elections" whose results are 
known before hand.
<p>
The Leninist vision of "democracy" is seen purely as a means of 
placing the party into power. Thus power in society shifts to 
the top, to the leaders of the centralised party in charge of 
the centralised state. The workers' become mere electors rather 
than actual controllers of the revolution and are expected to 
carry out the orders of the party without comment. In other 
words, a decidedly bourgeois vision of "democracy." Anarchists, 
in contrast, seek to dissolve power back into the hands of 
society and empower the individual by giving them a 
direct say in the revolution through their workplace and 
community assemblies and their councils and conferences.
<p>
This vision was not a new development. Far from it. While, 
ironically enough, Lenin's and Trotsky's support for the 
appointment of officers/managers can be refuted by looking 
at Lenin's <b>State and Revolution</b>, the fact is that the
undemocratic perspectives they are based on can be found in 
Lenin's <b>What is to be Done?</b>. This suggests that his 1917 
arguments were the aberration and against the true essence 
of Leninism, not his and Trotsky's policies once they were 
in power (as Leninists like to argue). 
<p>
Forgetting that he had argued against <i>"primitive democracy"</i> in 
</b>What is to Be Done?</b>, Lenin had lambasted the opportunists and 
"present Kautskyists"</i> for <i>"repeat[ing] the vulgar bourgeois jeers 
at 'primitive' democracy."</i> Now, in 1917, it was a case that <i>"the 
transition from capitalism to socialism is <b>impossible</b> without 
some 'reversion' to 'primitive' democracy (how else can the 
majority, even the whole population, proceed to discharge state 
functions?)"</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 302] Very true. As Leninism in power
showed, the conscious elimination of <i>"primitive democracy"</i> in 
the army and workplace ensured that socialism <b>was</b> <i>"impossible."</i>
And this elimination was not justified in terms of "difficult"
circumstances but rather in terms of principle and the inability
of working people to manage their own affairs directly.
<p>
Particularly ironic, given Trotsky's trade union committee analogy
was Lenin's comment that <i>"Bernstein [the arch revisionist and
reformist] combats 'primitive democracy' . . . To prove that 
'primitive democracy' is worthless, Bernstein refers to the 
experience of the British trade unions, as interpreted by the 
Webbs. Seventy years of development . . . convinced the trade 
unions that primitive democracy was useless, and they substituted 
ordinary democracy, i.e. parliamentarism, combined with bureaucracy, 
for it."</i> Lenin replied that because the trade unions operated 
<i>"<b>in absolute capitalist slavery</b>"</i> a <i>"number of concessions to
the prevailing evil, violence, falsehood, exclusion of the poor 
from the affairs of the 'higher' administration 'cannot be avoided.' 
Under socialism much of the 'primitive' democracy will inevitably 
be revived, since, for the first time in history of civilised 
society, the <b>mass</b> of the population will rise to <b>independent</b> 
participation, not only in voting and elections, <b>but also in 
the everyday administration of affairs</b>"</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 361]
Obviously things looked a bit different once he and his fellow
Bolshevik leaders were in power. Then the exclusion of the
poor from the affairs of the <i>"higher"</i> administration was
seen as normal practice, as proven by the practice of the 
trade unions! And as we note in 
<a href="secH3.html#sech38">section H.3.8</a>, this <i>"exclusion"</i>
was taken as a key lesson of the revolution and built into the
Leninist theory of the state.
<p>
This development was not unexpected. After all, as we noted in
<a href="secH5.html#sech55">section H.5.5</a>, over a decade before Lenin had been less than 
enthralled by <i>"primitive democracy"</i> and more in agreement with
Bernstein than he lets on in <b>State and Revolution</b>. In <b>What
is to Be Done?</b>, he based his argument for centralised, top-down
party organisation on the experiences of the labour movement in
democratic capitalist regimes. He quotes the same book by
the Webb's to defend his position. He notes that <i>"in the 
first period of existence in their unions, the British workers 
thought it was an indispensable sign of democracy for all members 
to do all the work of managing the unions."</i> This involved <i>"all 
questions [being] decided by the votes of all the members"</i> and 
all <i>"official duties"</i> being <i>"fulfilled by all the members in 
turn."</i> He dismisses <i>"such a conception of democracy"</i> as 
<i>"absurd"</i> and <i>"historical experience"</i> made them <i>"understand 
the necessity for representative institutions"</i> and <i>"full-time 
professional officials."</i> Ironically, Lenin records that in
Russia the <i>"'primitive' conception of democracy"</i> existed in 
two groups, the <i>"masses of the students and workers"</i> and the 
<i>"Economists of the Bernstein persuasion."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 162-3] 
<p>
Thus Trotsky's autocratic and top-down vision of democracy has
its roots within Leninism. Rather than being forced upon the
Bolsheviks by difficult circumstances, the eroding of grassroots,
functional ("primitive") democracy was at the core of Bolshevism.
Lenin's arguments in 1917 were the exception, not his practice
after he seized power. 
<p>
This fundamentally undemocratic perspective can be found today in
modern Leninism. As well as defending the Bolshevik dictatorship
during the civil war, modern Leninists support the continuation of
party dictatorship after its end. In particular, they support the
Bolshevik repression of the Kronstadt rebellion (see appendix
<a href="append42.html">"What was the Kronstadt Rebellion?"</a>
for more details). As Trotsky put it in 1937, if the Kronstadt 
demand for soviet elections had been implemented then <i>"to free 
the soviets from the leadership [sic!] of the Bolsheviks would 
have meant within a short time to demolish the soviets themselves 
. . . Social-Revolutionary-anarchist soviets would serve only as 
a bridge from the proletarian dictatorship [sic!] to capitalist
restoration."</i> He generalised this example, by pointing to the
<i>"experience of the Russian soviets during the period of Menshevik
and SR domination and, even more clearly, the experience of the 
German and Austrian soviets under the domination of the Social
Democrats."</i> [Lenin and Trotsky, <b>Kronstadt</b>, p. 90] Modern day
Leninists repeat this argument, failing to note that they 
sound like leftist Henry Kissingers (Kissinger, let us not
forget, ensured US aid for Pinochet's coup in Chile and argued
that <i>"I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country 
go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people"</i>).
<p>
Today we have Leninists combining rhetoric about democratic
socialism, with elections and recall, with a mentality which
justifies the suppression of working class revolt because they
are not prepared to stand by and watch a country go capitalist
due to the irresponsibility of its own people. Perhaps,
unsurprisingly, previously in 1937 Trotsky expressed his support 
for the <i>"objective necessity"</i> of the <i>"revolutionary dictatorship 
of a proletarian party"</i> and, two years later, that the <i>"vanguard 
of the proletariat"</i> must be <i>"armed with the resources of the 
state in order to repel dangers, including those emanating from 
the backward layers of the proletariat itself."</i> (see 
<a href="secH3.html#sech38">section H.3.8</a>).
If only modern day Leninists were as honest!
<p>
So the Bolshevik contempt for working class self-government still
exists. While few, however, explicitly proclaim the logic of 
this position (namely party dictatorship) most defend the
Bolsheviks implementing this conclusion in practice. Can we
not conclude that, faced with the same problems the Bolsheviks
faced, these modern day Leninists will implement the same 
policies? That they will go from party power to party 
dictatorship, simply because they know better than those who
elected them on such matters? That answer seems all too 
obvious.
<p>
As such, the Bolshevik preference for centralised state power and
of representative forms of democracy involved the substitution of
the party for the class and, consequently, will facilitate the 
dictatorship <b>over</b> the proletariat when faced with the inevitable
problems facing any revolution. As Bakunin put it, a <i>"people's
administration, according to [the Marxists], must mean a people's
administration by virtue of a small number of representatives
chosen by the people . . . [I]t is a deception which would conceal
the despotism of a governing minority, all the more dangerous 
because it appears as a sham expression of the people's will . . .
[T]he vast majority, the great mass of people, would be governed
by a privileged minority . . . [of] <b>former</b> workers, who would
stop being workers the moment they became rulers or representatives,
and would then come to regard the whole blue-collared world from
governmental heights, and would not represent the people but 
themselves and their pretensions."</i> So the Marxist state would 
be <i>"the reign of the <b>scientific mind,</b> the most aristocratic, 
despotic, arrogant and contemptuous of all regimes. There will 
be a new class, a new hierarchy of real of bogus learning, and 
the world will be divided into a dominant, science-based minority 
and a vast, ignorant majority. And then let the ignorant masses 
beware!"</i> [<b>Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings</b>, p. 268, pp. 268-9
and p. 266]
<p>
In summary, Trotsky's deeply undemocratic justification for 
appointing officers, like Lenin's similar arguments for 
appointing managers, express the logic and reality of 
Bolshevism far better than statements made before the 
Bolsheviks seized power and never implemented. Sadly, 
modern Leninists concentrate on the promises of the
election manifesto rather than the grim reality of 
Bolshevik power and its long standing top-down vision of 
"democracy." A vision which helped undermine the revolution 
and ensure its degeneration into a party dictatorship presiding 
over a state capitalist economy.
<p>
<a name="app5"><h2>5 What was the effect of the Bolshevik vision of "socialism"?</h2>
<p>
As we discussed in 
<a href="secH3.html#sech31">section H.3.1</a>, anarchists and most Marxists
are divided not only by <b>means</b> but also by <b>ends</b>. Simply put,
libertarians and Leninist do <b>not</b> have the same vision of 
socialism. Given this, anarchists are not surprised at the 
negative results of the Bolshevik revolution -- the use of
anti-socialist means to attain anti-socialist ends would
obviously have less than desirable results.
<p>
The content of the Bolshevik vision of "socialism" is criticised
by anarchists on two main counts. Firstly, it is a top-down,
centralised vision of "socialism." This can only result in the
destruction of working class economic power at the point of
production in favour of centralised bureaucratic power. Secondly,
for Bolshevism nationalisation, <b>not</b> workers' self-management,
was the key issue. We will discuss the first issue here and the 
second in the following section.
<p>
The Bolshevik vision of "socialism" was inherently centralised
and top-down. This can be seen from the organisational schemas
and arguments made by leading Bolsheviks before and immediately
after the Revolution. For example, we discover Trotsky arguing
in March 1918 that workplaces <i>"will be subject to policies 
laid down by the local council of workmen's deputies"</i> who,
in turn, had <i>"their range of discretion . . . limited in 
turn by regulations made for each class of industry by the
boards or bureaux of the central government."</i> He dismissed
Kropotkin's communalist ideas by saying local autonomy
was not <i>"suited to the state of things in modern industrial
society"</i> and <i>"would result in endless frictions and difficulties."</i>
As the <i>"coal from the Donets basin goes all over Russia, and
is indispensable in all sorts of industries"</i> you could not
allow <i>"the organised people of that district [to] do what they
pleased with the coal mines"</i> as they <i>"could hold up all the
rest of Russia."</i> [contained in Al Richardson (ed.), <b>In Defence 
of the Russian Revolution</b>, p. 186]
<p>
Lenin repeated this centralised vision in June of that year,
arguing that <i>"Communism requires and presupposes the greatest 
possible centralisation of large-scale production throughout 
the country. The all-Russian centre, therefore, should 
definitely be given the right of direct control over all
the enterprises of the given branch of industry. The 
regional centres define their functions depending on local
conditions of life, etc., in accordance with the general 
production directions and decisions of the centre."</i> He 
continued by explicitly arguing that <i>"[t]o deprive the 
all-Russia centre of the right to direct control over 
all the enterprises of the given industry . . . would be 
regional anarcho-syndicalism, and not communism."</i> [Marx, 
Engels and Lenin, <b>Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism</b>, 
p. 292]
<p>
Thus the Bolshevik economic ideal was centralised and
top-down. This is not unsurprising, as Lenin had promised 
precisely this when the Bolsheviks got into power. As in 
the Bolshevik party itself, the lower organs were controlled 
by the higher ones (and as we will discuss, these higher ones
were not directly elected by the lower ones). The problems 
with this vision are many fold.
<p>
Firstly, to impose an "ideal" solution would destroy a revolution 
-- the actions and decisions (<b>including what others may consider
mistakes</b>) of a free people are infinitely more productive and 
useful than the decisions and decrees of the best central committee. 
Moreover, a centralised system by necessity is an imposed system 
(as it excludes by its very nature the participation of the mass 
of the people in determining their own fate). Thus <b>real</b> 
socialisation must proceed from below, reflecting the real 
development and desires of those involved. Centralisation can 
only result in replacing socialisation with nationalisation and 
the elimination of workers' self-management with hierarchical 
management. Workers' again would be reduced to the level of
order-takers, with control over their workplaces resting not in 
their hands but in those of the state.
<p>
Secondly, Trotsky seems to think that workers at the base of
society would be so unchanged by a revolution that they would
hold their fellow workers ransom. And, moreover, that other
workers would let them. That, to say the least, seems a strange
perspective. But not as strange as thinking that giving extensive
powers to a central body will <b>not</b> produce equally selfish 
behaviour (but on a wider and more dangerous scale). The basic 
fallacy of Trotsky's argument is that the centre will not start 
to view the whole economy as its property (and being centralised, 
such a body would be difficult to effectively control). Indeed, 
Stalin's power was derived from the state bureaucracy which ran 
the economy in its own interests. Not that did not suddenly arise 
with Stalin. It was a feature of the Soviet system from the start. 
Samuel Farber, for example, notes that, <i>"in practice, [the] 
hypercentralisation [pursued by the Bolsheviks from early 1918
onwards] turned into infighting and scrambles for control among 
competing bureaucracies"</i> and he points to the <i>"not untypical 
example of a small condensed milk plant with few than 15 workers 
that became the object of a drawn-out competition among six 
organisations including the Supreme Council of National Economy, 
the Council of People's Commissars of the Northern Region, the 
Vologda Council of People's Commissars, and the Petrograd Food
Commissariat."</i> [<b>Before Stalinism</b>, p. 73] 
<p>
In other words, centralised bodies are not immune to viewing 
resources as their own property and doing as they please with
it. Compared to an individual workplace, the state's power to 
enforce its viewpoint against the rest of society is
considerably stronger and the centralised system would be 
harder to control. The requirements of gathering and processing
the information required for the centre to make intelligent
decisions would be immense, thus provoking a large bureaucracy
which would be hard to control and soon become the <b>real</b> power
in the state. A centralised body, therefore, effectively 
excludes the mass participation of the mass of workers -- power 
rests in the hands of a few people which, by its nature, 
generates bureaucratic rule. If that sounds familiar, it
should. It is precisely what <b>did</b> happen in Lenin's Russia
and laid the basis for Stalinism.
<p>
Thirdly, to eliminate the dangers of workers' self-management 
generating "propertarian" notions, the workers' have to have
their control over their workplace reduced, if not eliminated. 
This, by necessity, generates bourgeois social relationships 
and, equally, appointment of managers from above (which the 
Bolsheviks did embrace). Indeed, by 1920 Lenin was boasting 
that in 1918 he had <i>"pointed out the necessity of recognising 
the dictatorial authority of single individuals for the pursue 
of carrying out the Soviet idea"</i> and even claimed that at that 
stage <i>"there were no disputes in connection with the question"</i>
of one-man management. [quoted by Brinton, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 65] 
While the first claim is true (Lenin argued for one-man 
management appointed from above before the start of the Civil 
War in May 1918) the latter one is not true (excluding 
anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists and Maximalists, there 
were also the dissent <i>"Left Communists"</i> in the Bolshevik 
party itself). 
<p>
Fourthly, centralism was not that efficient. The central bodies 
the Bolsheviks created had little knowledge of the local 
situation and often gave orders that contradicted each other 
or had little bearing to reality, so encouraging factories to 
ignore the centre: <i>"it seems apparent that many workers themselves
. . . had now come to believe . .  . that confusion and
anarchy [sic!] <b>at the top</b> were the major causes of their
difficulties, and with some justification. The fact was that
Bolshevik administration was chaotic . . . Scores of competitive
and conflicting Bolshevik and Soviet authorities issued
contradictory orders, often brought to factories by armed
Chekists. The Supreme Economic Council. . . issu[ed] dozens
of orders and pass[ed] countless directives with virtually
no real knowledge of affairs."</i> [William G. Rosenberg, 
<b>Russian Labour and Bolshevik Power</b>, p. 116] The Bolsheviks, 
as Lenin had promised, built from the top-down their system 
of <i>"unified administration"</i> based on the Tsarist system of 
central bodies which governed and regulated certain industries 
during the war. [Brinton, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 36] This was very
centralised and very inefficient (see 
<a href="append44.html#app7">section 7</a> for
more discussion). 
<p>
Moreover, having little real understanding of the 
circumstances on the ground they could not compare 
their ideological assumptions and preferences to reality.
As an example, the Bolshevik idea that "big" was automatically 
"more efficient" and "better" had a negative impact on the
revolution. In practice, as Thomas F. Remington notes, this
simply resulted generated waste:
<p><blockquote><i>
"The waste of scare materials at [the giant] Putilov [plant]
was indeed serious, but not only political unrest had caused
it. The general shortage of fuel and materials in the city
took its greatest toll on the largest enterprises, whose
overhead expenditures for heating the plant and firing the
furnaces were proportionally greater than those for smaller
enterprises. This point -- explained by the relative constant
proportions among needed inputs to producers at any given
point in time -- only was recognised latter. Not until 
1919 were the regime's leaders prepared to acknowledge
that small enterprises, under the conditions of the time,
might be more efficient in using resources: and not until
1921 did a few Bolsheviks theorists grasp the economic
reasons for this apparent violation of their standing
assumption that larger units were inherently more
productive. Thus not only were the workers accused of
politically motivated resistance, but the regime blamed
them for the effects of circumstances which the workers
had no control."</i> [<b>Building Socialism in Bolshevik Russia</b>, 
p. 106]
</blockquote><p>
All in all, the Bolshevik vision of socialism was a 
disaster. Centralism was a source of massive economic 
mismanagement and, moreover, bureaucratisation from 
the start. As anarchists had long predicted. As we
discuss in <a href="append41.html#app12">section 12</a> of the appendix
<a href="append41.html">"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"</a>, 
there was an alternative in
the form of the factory committees and the federation.
Sadly this was not part of the Bolshevik vision. At
best they were tacked onto this vision as a (very)
junior partner (as in 1917) or they were quickly 
marginalised and then dumped when they had outlived 
their usefulness in securing Bolshevik power (as in 
1918).
<p>
While some Leninists like to paint the economic policies of
the Bolsheviks in power as being different from what they 
called for in 1917, the truth is radically different. For
example, Tony Cliff of the UK's "Socialist Workers Party"
asserts, correctly, that in April 1918 the <i>"defence of state 
capitalism constituted the essence of his economic policy 
for this period."</i> However, he also states that this was <i>"an 
entirely new formulation,"</i> which was not the case in the 
slightest. [Cliff, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 69] As Lenin himself 
acknowledged.
<p>
Lenin had always confused state capitalism with socialism. 
<i>"State capitalism,"</i> he wrote, <i>"is a complete <b>material</b> 
preparation for socialism, the threshold of socialism, a 
rung on the ladder of history between which and the rung 
called socialism <b>there are no gaps.</b>"</i> He argued that 
socialism <i>"is nothing but the next step forward from state 
capitalist monopoly. In other words, Socialism is merely 
state capitalist monopoly <b>made to benefit the whole 
people</b>; by this token it <b>ceases</b> to be capitalist 
monopoly."</i> [<b>The Threatening Catastrophe and how to 
avoid it</b>, p. 38 and p. 37] This was in May, 1917. A 
few months latter, he was talking about how the 
institutions of state capitalism could be taken
over and used to create socialism (see 
<a href="secH3.html#sech312">section H.3.12</a>). 
Unsurprisingly, when defending Cliff's <i>"new formulation"</i> 
against the <i>"Left Communists"</i> in the spring of 1918 he 
noted that he gave his <i>"'high' appreciation of state 
capitalism"</i> <i>"<b>before</b> the Bolsheviks seized power."</i> 
[<b>Selected Works</b>, vol. 2, p. 636]
<p>
And, indeed, his praise for state capitalism and its 
forms of social organisation can be found in his 
</b>State and Revolution</b>:
<p><blockquote><i>
"the <b>post-office</b> [is] an example of the socialist system . . .
At present . . . [it] is organised on the lines of a state
<b>capitalist</b> monopoly. Imperialism is gradually transforming
all trusts into organisations of a similar type . . . the
mechanism of social management is here already to hand.
Overthrow the capitalists . . . Our immediate object is to
organise the <b>whole</b> of national economy on the lines of
the postal system . . . It is such a state, standing on such
an economic basis, that we need."</i> [<b>Essential Works of 
Lenin</b>, pp. 307-8]
</blockquote><p>
Given this, Lenin's rejection of the factory committee's
model of socialism comes as no surprise (see 
<a href="append41.html#app10">section 10</a> of the appendix
<a href="append41.html">"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"</a>
for more details). As we noted in 
<a href="secH3.html#sech314">section H.3.14</a>, rather 
than promote workers' control, Lenin effectively undermined
it. Murray Bookchin points out the obvious:
<p><blockquote><i>
"In accepting the concept of worker's control, Lenin's
famous decree of November 14, 1917, merely acknowledged
an accomplished fact; the Bolsheviks dared not oppose 
the workers at this early date. But they began to whittle
down the power of the factory committees. In January
1918, a scant two months after 'decreeing' workers'
control, Lenin began to advocate that the administration
of the factories be placed under trade union control. 
The story that the Bolsheviks 'patiently' experimented
with workers' control, only to find it 'inefficient' and
'chaotic,' is a myth. Their 'patience' did not last more 
than a few weeks. Not only did Lenin oppose direct workers'
control within a matter of weeks . . . even union control
came to an end shortly after it had been established.
By the summer of 1918, almost all of Russian industry
had been placed under bourgeois forms of management."</i>
[<b>Post-Scarcity Anarchism</b>, pp. 200-1]
</blockquote><p>
Significantly, even his initial vision of workers' control
was hierarchical, centralised and top-down. In the workplace 
it was to be exercised by factory committees. The <i>"higher 
workers' control bodies"</i> were to be <i>"composed of representatives 
of trade unions, factory and office workers' committees, 
and workers' co-operatives."</i> The decisions of the lower bodies 
<i>"may be revoked only by higher workers' control bodies."</i> 
[quoted by Cliff, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 10] As Maurice Brinton notes:
<p><blockquote><i>
"there [was] . . .  a firm hierarchy of control organs . . .
each Committee was to be responsible to a 'Regional Council 
of Workers' Control', subordinated in turn to an 
'All-Russian Council of Workers' Control'. The composition 
of these higher organs was decided by the Party.
<p>
"The trade unions were massively represented in the middle 
and higher strata of this new pyramid of 'institutionalised 
workers' control.' For instance the All-Russian Council of 
Workers' Control was to consist of 21 'representatives': 5 
from the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the 
Soviets, 5 from the Executive of the All-Russian Council 
of Trade Unions, 5 from the Association of Engineers and 
Technicians, 2 from the Association of Agronomists, 2 from 
the Petrograd Trade Union Council, 1 from each All-Russian 
Trade Union Federation numbering fewer than 100,000 members 
(2 for Federations of over this number)... and 5 from the 
All-Russian Council of Factory Committees! The Factory 
Committees often under anarcho-syndicalist influence had 
been well and truly 'cut down to size'."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 18]
</blockquote><p>
As we note in <a href="append41.html#app10">section 10</a> of the appendix
<a href="append41.html">"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"</a>,
 this was a conscious preference
on Lenin's part. The factory committees had started to
federate, creating their own institutional framework of
socialism based on the workers own class organisation.
Lenin, as he had explained in 1917, favoured using the
institutions created by <i>"state capitalism"</i> and simply
tacked on a form of <i>"workers' control"</i> distinctly at
odds with the popular usage of the expression. He 
<b>rejected</b> the suggestions of factory committees themselves.
The Supreme Economic Council, established by the Soviet 
government, soon demonstrated how to really mismanage the 
economy. 
<p>
As such, the economic developments proposed by Lenin in
early 1918 and onwards were <b>not</b> the result of the
specific problems facing the Russian revolution. The
fact is while the dire problems facing the Russian
revolution undoubtedly made many aspects of the Bolshevik
system worse, they did not create them. Rather, the
centralised, bureaucratic and top-down abuses Leninists
like to distance themselves from where, in fact, built
into Lenin's socialism from the start. A form of socialism
Lenin and his government explicitly favoured and created
in opposition to other, authentically proletarian, versions.
<p>
The path to state capitalism was the one Lenin wanted to 
trend. It was not forced upon him or the Bolsheviks.
And, by re-introducing wage slavery (this time, to the state)
the Bolshevik vision of socialism helped undermine the 
revolution, workers' power and, sadly, build the foundations
of Stalinism.
<p>
<a name="app6"><h2>6 How did Bolshevik preference for nationalisation affect the revolution?</h2>
<p>
As noted in the 
<a href="append44.html#app5">last section</a>, unlike anarchism, for Bolshevism 
nationalisation, <b>not</b> workers' self-management, was the key 
issue in socialism. As noted in 
<a href="append44.html#app3">section 3</a>, Lenin had 
proclaimed the necessity for appointed one-man managers 
and implementing <i>"state capitalism"</i> in April 1918. Neither
policy was thought to harm the socialist character of the
regime. As Trotsky stressed in 1920, the decision to place 
a manager at the head of a factory instead of a workers' 
collective had no political significance:
<p><blockquote><i>
"It would be a most crying error to confuse the question as 
to the supremacy of the proletariat with the question of boards 
of workers at the head of factories. The dictatorship of the 
proletariat is expressed in the abolition of private property 
in the means of production, in the supremacy of the collective
will of the workers and not at all in the form in which 
individual economic organisations are administered."</i> 
[<b>Terrorism and Communism</b>, p. 162]
</blockquote><p>
Nor was this considered a bad thing or forced upon the
Bolsheviks as a result of terrible circumstances. Quite 
the reverse: <i>"I consider if the civil war had not plundered 
our economic organs of all that was strongest, most 
independent, most endowed with initiative, we should 
undoubtedly have entered the path of one-man management 
in the sphere of economic administration much sooner and 
much less painfully."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 162-3] As discussed
in the 
<a href="append44.html#app5">previous section</a>, this evaluation fits perfectly into Bolshevik 
ideology and practice before and after they seized power.
One can easily find dozens of quotations from Lenin 
expressing the same idea.
<p>
Needless to say, Trotsky's <i>"collective will of the workers"</i> 
was simply a euphemism for the Party, whose dictatorship 
<b>over</b> the workers Trotsky glibly justified:
<p><blockquote><i>
"We have more than once been accused of having substituted for the 
dictatorship of the Soviets the dictatorship of the party. Yet it 
can be said with complete justice that the dictatorship of the 
Soviets became possible only by means of the dictatorship of the 
party. It is thanks to the . . . party . . . [that] the Soviets 
. . . [became] transformed from shapeless parliaments of labour 
into the apparatus of the supremacy of labour. In this 'substitution' 
of the power of the party for the power of the working class there 
is nothing accidental, and in reality there is no substitution at 
all. The Communists express the fundamental interests of the 
working class."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 109]
</blockquote><p>
While Trotsky's honesty on this matter is refreshing (unlike his
followers today who hypocritically talk about the "leadership"
of the Bolshevik party) we can say that this was a <b>fatal</b> position 
to take. Indeed, for Trotsky <b>any</b> system (including the 
militarisation of labour) was acceptable as the key <i>"differences 
. . . is defined by a fundamental test: who is in power?"</i> --
the capitalist class or the proletariat (i.e. the party) 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 171-2] Thus working class control over their
own affairs was of little importance: <i>"The worker does not 
merely bargain with the Soviet State; no, he is subordinated 
to the Soviet State, under its orders in every direction -- 
for it is <b>his</b> State."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 168] This, of course,
echoed his own arguments in favour of appointment (see 
<a href="append44.html#app4">section 4</a>) <b>and</b> Lenin's demands for the <i>"exercise of 
dictatorial powers by individuals"</i> in the workplace (see
<a href="append44.html#app3">section 3</a>) in early 1918. Cornelius Castoriadis points
out the obvious:
<p><blockquote><i>
"The role of the proletariat in the new State was thus quite 
clear. It was that of enthusiastic and passive citizens. And 
the role of the proletariat in work and in production was no 
less clear. On the whole, it was the same as before -- under 
capitalism -- except that workers of 'character and capacity'
[to quote Trotsky] were to be chosen to replace factory managers 
who had fled."</i> [<b>The Role of the Bureaucracy in the birth
of the Bureaucracy</b>, p. 99]
</blockquote><p>
Trotsky's position, it should be noted, remained consistent.
In the early 1930s he argued (in respect to Stalin's regime) 
that <i>"anatomy of society is determined by its economic 
relations. So long as the forms of property that have been 
created by the October Revolution are not overthrown, the 
proletariat remains the ruling class."</i> [<b>The Class Nature of 
The Soviet State</b>] Obviously, if the prime issue is property 
and not who <b>manages</b> the means of production (or even <i>"the 
state"</i>) then having functioning factory-committees becomes 
as irrelevant as having democratic soviets when determining 
whether the working class is in power or not.
<p>
(As an aside, we should not by that surprised that Trotsky 
could think the workers were the <i>"ruling class"</i> in the
vast prison-camp which was Stalin's USSR, given that
he thought the workers were the <i>"ruling class"</i> when he and
Lenin headed the Bolshevik party dictatorship! Thus
we have the strange division Leninists make between Lenin's 
dictatorship and Stalin's (and those of Stalin's followers). 
When Lenin presides over a one-party dictatorship, breaks up 
strikes, bans political parties, bans Bolshevik factions, and 
imprisons and shoots political dissidents these are all 
regrettable but necessary steps in the protection of the 
"proletarian state." When Stalin does the exact same thing, 
a few years later, they are all terrible examples of the 
deformation of this same "proletarian state"!)
<p>
For anarchists (and other libertarian socialists) this was and 
is nonsense. Without workers' self-management in production,
socialism cannot exist. To focus attention of whether 
individuals own property or whether the state does is
fundamentally a red-herring. Without workers' self-management
of production, private capitalism will simply have been
replaced by <b>state</b> capitalism. As one anarchist active in
the factory committee movement argued in January, 1918,
it is <i>"not the liberation of the proletariat when many
individual plunders are changed for one very powerful
plunder -- the state. The position of the proletariat
remains the same."</i> Therefore, <i>"[w]e must not forget that
the factory committees are the nuclei of the future
socialist order"</i> nor must we forget <i>"that the state . . . 
will try to maintain its own interests at the expense 
of the interests of the workers. There is no doubt that 
we will be witnesses of a great conflict between the state 
power in the centre and the organisations composed 
exclusively of workers which are found in the localities."</i> 
He was proved right. Instead of centralised the Bolshevik 
vision of state capitalism, the anarchists argued that 
factory committees <i>"be united on the basic of federalism, 
into industrial federations . . . [and] poly-industrial 
soviets of national economy."</i> Only in that way could
<b>real</b> socialism be created. [quoted by Frederick I.
Kaplan, <b>Bolshevik Ideology and the Ethics of Soviet
Labour</b>, p. 163 and p. 166] (see 
<a href="append41.html#app7">section 7</a> of the appendix
<a href="append41.html">"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"</a>
for more on the factory committee movement).
<p>
The reason is obvious. It is worth quoting Cornelius 
Castoriadis at length on why the Bolshevik system was
doomed to failure:
<p><blockquote><i>
"So we end up with the uncontested power of managers in the 
factories, and the Party's exclusive 'control' (in reality, 
what kind of control was it, anyway?). And there was the 
uncontested power of the Party over society, without any
control. From that point on, nobody could prevent these two 
powers from merging, could anyone stop the two strata 
embodying them from merging, nor could the consolidation 
of an irremovable bureaucracy ruling over all sectors of 
social life be halted. The process may have been accelerated 
or magnified by the entry of non-proletarian elements into 
the Party, as they rushed to jump on the bandwagon. But this 
was a consequence, and not a cause, of the Party's orientation
. . .
<p>
"Who is to manage production . . .? . . . the correct answer
[is] the collective organs of labouring people. What the 
party leadership wanted, what it had already imposed -- and 
on this point there was no difference between Lenin and Trotsky 
-- was a hierarchy directed from above. We know that this was 
the conception that triumphed. We know, too, where this 'victory'
led . . . 
<p>
"In all Lenin's speeches and writings of this period, what 
recurs again and again like an obsession is the idea that 
Russia ought to learn from the advanced capitalist countries; 
that there are not a hundred and one different ways of developing 
production and labour productivity if one wants to emerge from
backwardness and chaos; that one must adopt capitalist methods 
of 'rationalisation' and management as well as capitalist forms 
of work 'incentives.' All these, for Lenin, are just 'means' 
that apparently could freely be placed in the service of a 
radically different historical end, the building of socialism.
<p>
"Thus Trotsky, when discussing the merits of militarism, came 
to separate the army itself, its structure and its methods, 
from the social system it serves. What is criticisable in 
bourgeois militarism and in the bourgeois army, Trotsky says 
in substance, is that they are in the service of the bourgeoisie. 
Except for that, there is nothing in them to be criticised. The 
sole difference, he says, lies in this: '<b>Who is in power</b>?'
Likewise, the dictatorship of the proletariat is not expressed 
by the 'form in which individual economic enterprises are 
administered.'
<p>
"The idea that like means cannot be placed indifferently into 
the service of different ends; that there is an intrinsic 
relationship between the instruments used and the result 
obtained; that, especially, neither the army nor the factory 
are simple 'means' or 'instruments,' but social structures in 
which are organised two fundamental aspects of human relations 
(production and violence); that in them can be seen in condensed
form the essential expression of the type of social relations 
that characterise an era -- this idea, though perfectly obvious 
and banal for Marxists, was totally 'forgotten.' It was just 
a matter of developing production, using proven methods and 
structures. That among these 'proofs' the principal one was the
development of capitalism as a social system and that a factory 
produces not so much cloth or steel but proletariat and capital 
were facts that were utterly ignored.
<p>
"Obviously, behind this 'forgetfulness' is hidden something 
else. At the time, of course, there was the desperate concern 
to revive production as soon as possible and to put a collapsing 
economy back on its feet. This preoccupation, however, does not 
fatally dictate the choice of 'means.' If it seemed obvious to
Bolshevik leaders that the sole effective means were capitalist 
ones, it was because they were imbued with the conviction that 
capitalism was the only effective and rational system of 
production. Faithful in this respect to Marx, they wanted to 
abolish private property and market anarchy, but not the type of
organisation capitalism had achieved at the point of production. 
They wanted to modify the <b>economy,</b> not the relations between 
people at work or the nature of labour itself.
<p>
"At a deeper level still, their philosophy was to develop the 
forces of production. Here too they were the faithful inheritors 
of Marx -- or at least one side of Marx, which became the 
predominant one in his mature writings. The development of the 
forces of production was, if not the ultimate goal, at any rate 
the essential means, in the sense that everything else would 
follow as a by-product and that everything else had to be 
subordinated to it. . . 
<p>
"To manage the work of others -- this is the beginning and 
the end of the whole cycle of exploitation. The 'need' for a 
specific social category to manage the work of others in 
production (and the activity of others in politics and in 
society), the 'need' for a separate business management 
and for a Party to rule the State -- this is what Bolshevism 
proclaimed as soon as it seized power, and this is what it 
zealously laboured to impose. We know that it achieved its 
ends. Insofar as ideas play a role in the development of history 
-- and, <b>in the final analysis</b>, they play an enormous role --
the Bolshevik ideology (and with it, the Marxist ideology 
lying behind it) was a decisive factor in the birth of the 
Russian bureaucracy."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 100-4]
</blockquote><p>
Therefore, we <i>"may therefore conclude that, contrary to the 
prevailing mythology, it was not in 1927, or in 1923, or even 
in 1921 that the game was played and lost, but much earlier, 
during the period from 1918 to 1920. . . . [1921 saw] the 
beginning of the reconstruction of the productive apparatus. 
This reconstruction effort, however, was already firmly set 
in the groove of bureaucratic capitalism."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 99] 
In this, they simply followed the economic ideas Lenin had 
expounded in 1917 and 1918, but in an even more undemocratic
way. Modern-day Leninism basically takes the revolutionised 
Russia of the Bolsheviks and, essentially, imposes upon it 
a more democratic form of government rather than Lenin's 
(and then Stalin's). Anarchists, however, still oppose the 
economy.
<p>
Ironically, proof that libertarians are right on this issue 
can be found in Trotsky's own work. In 1936, he argued that
the <i>"demobilisation of the Red Army of five million played 
no small role in the formation of the bureaucracy. The 
victorious commanders assumed leading posts in the local 
Soviets, in economy, in education, and they persistently 
introduced everywhere that regime which had ensured success 
in the civil war. Thus on all sides the masses were pushed 
away gradually from actual participation in the leadership
of the country."</i> [<b>The Revolution Betrayed</b>] Needless to
say, he failed to note who had abolished the election of
commanders in the Red Army in March 1918, namely himself 
(see 
<a href="append44.html#app4">section 4</a>). 
Similarly, he failed to note that the
<i>"masses"</i> had been <i>"pushed . . . from actual participation
in the leadership of the country"</i> well before the end of
the civil war and that, at the time, he was not concerned
about it. Equally, it would be churlish to note that back
in 1920 he thought that <i>"'Military' qualities . . . are 
valued in every sphere. It was in this sense that I said 
that every class prefers to have in its service those of 
its members who, other things being equal, have passed 
through the military school . . . This experience is a 
great and valuable experience. And when a former regimental 
commissary returns to his trade union, he becomes not a bad 
organiser."</i> [<b>Terrorism and Communism</b>, p. 173]
<p>
In 1937 Trotsky asserted that <i>"liberal-anarchist thought 
closes its eyes to the fact that the Bolshevik revolution, with 
all its repressions, meant an upheaval of social relations 
in the interests of the masses, whereas Stalin's Thermidorian 
upheaval accompanies the reconstruction of Soviet society in 
the interest of a privileged minority."</i> [Trotsky, <b>Stalinism
and Bolshevism</b>] Yet Stalin's <i>"upheaval"</i> was built upon the 
social relations created when Lenin and Trotsky held power. 
State ownership, one-man management, and so on where originally 
advocated and implemented by Lenin and Trotsky. The bureaucracy 
did not have to expropriate the working class economically -- 
"real" Bolshevism had already did so. Nor can it be said that 
the social relations associated with the political sphere had 
fundamentally changed under Stalin. He had, after all, 
inherited the one-party state from Lenin and Trotsky. In a 
nutshell, Trotsky is talking nonsense. 
<p>
Simply put, as Trotsky himself indicates, Bolshevik 
preference for nationalisation helped ensure the creation
and subsequent rise of the Stalinist bureaucracy. Rather
than be the product of terrible objective circumstances
as his followers suggest, the Bolshevik state capitalist
economic system was at the heart of their vision of what
socialism was. The civil war simply brought the underlying
logic of vision into the fore. 
<p>
<a name="app7"><h2>7 How did Bolshevik preference for centralism affect the revolution?</h2>
<p>
The next issue we will discuss is centralisation. Before 
starting, it is essential that it be stressed that anarchists
are <b>not</b> against co-ordinated activity and organisation
on a large scale. Anarchists stress the need for federalism
to meet the need for such work (see 
<a href="secA2.html#seca29">section A.2.9</a>, for
example). As such, our critique of Bolshevik centralism is
<b>not</b> a call for "localism" or isolation (as many Leninists
assert). Rather, it is a critique of <b>how</b> the social
co-operation essential for society will be conducted. Will
it be in a federal (and so bottom-up) way or will it be in
a centralised (and so top-down) way?
<p>
It goes almost without saying that Bolshevik ideology was 
centralist in nature. Lenin repeatedly stressed the importance 
of centralisation, arguing constantly that Marxism was, by its 
very nature, centralist (and top-down -- 
<a href="secH3.html#sech33">section H.3.3</a>). Long 
before the revolution, Lenin had argued that within the party
it was a case of <i>"the transformation of the power of ideas 
into the power of authority, the subordination of lower Party 
bodies to higher ones."</i> [<b>Collected Works</b>, vol. 7, p. 367]
Such visions of centralised organisation were the model for
the revolutionary state. In 1917, he repeatedly stressed that 
after it the Bolsheviks would be totally in favour of 
<i>"centralism"</i> and <i>"strong state power."</i> [Lenin, <b>Selected 
Works</b>, vol. 2, p. 374] Once in power, they did not disappoint.
<p>
Anarchists argue that this prejudice in favour of centralisation
and centralism is at odds with Leninist claims to be in favour
of mass participation. It is all fine and well for Trotskyist
Tony Cliff to quote Lenin arguing that under capitalism the
<i>"talent among the people"</i> is <i>"merely suppressed"</i> and that it
<i>"must be given an opportunity to display itself"</i> and that
this can <i>"save the cause of socialism,"</i> it is something else
for Lenin (and the Leninist tradition) to favour organisational
structures that allow that to happen. Similarly, it is fine to
record Lenin asserting that <i>"living, creative socialism is the
product of the masses themselves"</i> but it is something else to
justify the barriers Leninist ideology placed in the way of it
by its advocacy of centralism. [quoted by Tony Cliff, <b>Lenin</b>, 
vol. 3, p. 20 and p. 21] 
<p>
The central contradiction of Leninism is that while it (sometimes) 
talks about mass participation, it has always prefers an 
organisational form (centralism) which hinders, and ultimately 
destroys, the participation that <b>real</b> socialism needs.
<p>
That centralism works in this way should come as no surprise.
After all, it based on centralising power at the top of an
organisation and, consequently, into a few hands. It was for
this precise reason that <b>every</b> ruling class in history
has utilised centralisation against the masses. As we 
indicated in 
<a href="secB2.html#secb25">section B.2.5</a>, centralisation has always been 
the tool of minority classes to disempower the masses. In 
the American and French revolutions, centralisation of state 
power was the means used to destroy the revolution, to take 
it out off the hands of the masses and concentrate it into 
the hands of a minority. In France:
<p><blockquote><i>
"From the moment the bourgeoisie set themselves against the
popular stream they were in need of a weapon that could enable
them to resist pressure from the bras nus [working people];
they forced one by strengthening the central power . . . 
[This was] the formation of the state machinery through which 
the bourgeoisie was going to enslave the proletariat. Here is 
the centralised state, with its bureaucracy and police . . . 
[it was] a conscious attempt to reduce . . . the power of
the people."</i> [Daniel Guerin, <b>Class Struggle in the First 
French Republic</b>, p. 176]
</blockquote><p>
The reason is not hard to understand -- mass participation and 
class society do not go together. Thus, <i>"the move towards 
bourgeois dictatorship"</i> saw <i>"the strengthening of the central 
power against the masses."</i> [Guerin, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 177-8] <i>"To 
attack the central power,"</i> argued Kropotkin, <i>"to strip it 
of its prerogatives, to decentralise, to dissolve authority, 
would have been to abandon to the people the control of its 
affairs, to run the risk of a truly popular revolution. That 
is why the bourgeoisie sought to reinforce the central 
government even more."</i> [<b>Words of a Rebel</b>, p. 143] 
<p>
Can we expect a similar concentration of the central power 
under the Bolsheviks to have a different impact? And, as 
discussed in appendix
<a href="append41.html">"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"</a>
we find a similar marginalisation 
of the working class from its own revolution. Rather than 
being actively participating in the transformation of 
society, they were transformed into spectators who simply 
were expected to implement the decisions made by the
Bolsheviks on their behalf. Bolshevik centralisation 
quickly ensured the disempowerment of working class people. 
Unsurprisingly enough, given its role in class society 
and in bourgeois revolutions.
<p>
In this section of the FAQ, we will indicate why this process 
happened, why Bolshevik centralisation undermined the socialist 
content of the revolution in favour of new forms of oppression 
and exploitation.
<p>
Therefore, anarchists argue, centralism cannot help but generate
minority rule, not a classless society. Representative, and
so centralised,  democracy, argued Malatesta, <i>"substitutes 
the will of a few for that of all . . . and in the name of 
a fictitious collective interest, rides roughshod over every 
real interests, and by means of elections and the vote, 
disregards the wishes of each and everyone."</i> [<b>Life and 
Ideas</b>, p. 147] 
<p>
This is rooted in the nature of the system, for democracy 
does not mean, in practice, <i>"rule by all the  people."</i> 
Rather, as Malatesta pointed out, it <i>"would be closer to 
the truth to say 'government of the majority of the 
people."</i> And even this is false, as <i>"it is never the case 
that the representatives of the majority of the people are 
in the same mind on all questions; it is therefore necessary 
to have recourse again to the majority system and thus we 
will get closer still to the truth with 'government of the 
majority of the elected by the majority of the electors.'"</i> 
This, obviously, <i>"is already beginning to bear a strong 
resemblance to minority government."</i> And so, <i>"it is easy 
to understand what has already been proven by universal 
historical experience: even in the most democratic of 
democracies it is always a small minority that rules and 
imposes its will and interests by force."</i> And so centralism
turns democracy into little more than picking masters. 
Therefore, anarchists argue, <i>"those who really want
'government of the people' . . . must abolish government."</i> 
[<b>The Anarchist Revolution</b>, p. 78]
<p>
The Russian Revolution is a striking confirmation of this 
libertarian analysis. By applying centralism, the Bolsheviks 
disempowered the masses and concentrated power into the 
hands of the party leadership. This places power in a
distinct social class and subject to the pervasive effects
of their concrete social circumstances within their 
institutional position. As Bakunin predicted with amazing
accuracy:
<p><blockquote><i>
"The falsehood of the representative system rests upon the
fiction that the executive power and the legislative chamber
issuing from popular elections must, or even can for that
matter, represent the will of the people . . . the instinctive 
aims of those who govern . . . are, because of their 
exceptional position diametrically opposed to the instinctive
popular aspirations. Whatever their democratic sentiments
and intentions may be, viewing society from the high position
in which they find themselves, they cannot consider this 
society in any other way but that in which a schoolmaster
views the pupils. And there can be no equality between
the schoolmaster and the pupils. . . Whoever says political
power says domination. And where domination exists, a more
or less considerable section of the population is bound
to be dominated by others. . . those who do the dominating
necessarily must repress and consequently oppress those 
who are subject to the domination . . . [This] explains
why and how men who were democrats and rebels of the reddest
variety when they were a part of the mass of governed
people, became exceedingly moderate when they rose to
power. Usually these backslidings are attributed to treason.
That, however, is an erroneous idea; they have for their
main cause the change of position and perspective . . .
if there should be established tomorrow a government . . .
made up exclusively of workers, those . . . staunch
democrats and Socialists, will become determined aristocrats,
bold or timid worshippers of the principle of authority,
and will also become oppressors and exploiters."</i> [<b>The
Political Philosophy of Bakunun</b>, p. 218]
</blockquote><p>
However, due to the inefficiencies of centralised bodies, 
this is not the end of the process. Around the new ruling 
bodies inevitably springs up officialdom. This is because 
a centralised body does not know what is happening in 
the grassroots. Therefore it needs a bureaucracy to gather 
and process that information and to implement its 
decisions. In the words of Bakunin:
<p><blockquote><i>
"where is the head, however brilliant it may be, or if
one wishes to speak of a collective dictatorship, were it
formed of many hundreds of individuals endowed with 
superior faculties, where are those brains powerful enough
and wide-ranging enough to embrace the infinite multiplicity
and diversity of the real interests, aspirations, wishes
and needs whose sum total constitutes the collective will
of a people, and to invent a social organisation can which
can satisfy everybody? This organisation will never be
anything but a Procrustean bed which the more or less
obvious violence of the State will be able to force 
unhappy society to lie down on. . . Such a system . . .
would lead inevitably to the creation of a new State,
and consequently to the formation of a governmental
aristocracy, that is, an entire class of people, having
nothing in common with the mass of people . . . [and
would] exploit the people and subject them."</i> [<b>Michael
Bakunin: Selected Writings</b>, pp. 204-6]
</blockquote><p>
As the bureaucracy is permanent and controls information 
and resources, it soon becomes the main source of power 
in the state. The transformation of the bureaucracy from 
servant to the master soon results. The "official"
government is soon controlled by it, shaping its 
activities in line with its interests. Being highly 
centralised, popular control is even more limited than 
government control -- people would simply not know where 
real power lay, which officials to replace or even what 
was going on within the distant bureaucracy. Moreover,
if the people did manage to replace the correct people, 
the newcomers would be subject to the same institutional 
pressures that corrupted the previous members and so
the process would start again (assuming their did not
come under the immediate influence of those who remained
in the bureaucracy). Consequently, a new bureaucratic 
class develops around the centralised bodies created by 
the governing party. This body would soon become riddled
with personal influences and favours, so ensuring that 
members could be sheltered from popular control. As 
Malatesta argued, they <i>"would use every means available 
to those in power to have their friends elected as the
successors who would then in turn support and protect
them. And thus government would be passes to and fro in
the same hands, and <b>democracy,</b> which is the alleged
government of all, would end up, as usual, in an 
<b>oligarchy,</b> which is the government of a few, the
government of a class."</i> [<b>Anarchy</b>, p. 34]
<p>
This state bureaucracy, of course, need not be dictatorial 
nor the regime it rules/administers be totalitarian (for
example, bourgeois states combine bureaucracy with many
real and important liberties). However, such a regime is 
still a class one and socialism would still not exist --
as proven by the state bureaucracies and nationalised 
property within bourgeois society.
<p>
So the danger to liberty of combining political <b>and</b> 
economic power into one set of hands (the state's) is 
obvious. As Kropotkin argued:
<p><blockquote><i>
"the state was, and continues to be, the chief instrument 
for permitting the few to monopolise the land, and the 
capitalists to appropriate for themselves a quite
disproportionate share of the yearly accumulated surplus 
of production. Consequently, while combating the present 
monopolisation of land, and capitalism altogether, the 
anarchists combat with the same energy the state, as
the main support of that system. Not this or that special 
form, but the state altogether . . . The state organisation, 
having always been, both in ancient and modern history
. . . the instrument for establishing monopolies in favour 
of the ruling minorities, cannot be made to work for the 
destruction of these monopolies. The anarchists consider, 
therefore, that to hand over to the state all the main 
sources of economical life -- the land, the mines, the 
railways, banking, insurance, and so on - as also the 
management of all the main branches of industry, in 
addition to all the functions already accumulated in 
its hands (education, state-supported religions, defence 
of the territory, etc.), would mean to create a new 
instrument of tyranny. State capitalism would only 
increase the powers of bureaucracy and capitalism. True 
progress lies in the direction of decentralisation, both 
<b>territorial</b> and <b>functional</b>, in the development of the 
spirit of local and personal initiative, and of free 
federation from the simple to the compound, <b>in lieu</b> of 
the present hierarchy from the centre to the periphery."</i>
[<b>Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets</b>, p. 286]
</blockquote><p>
Thus we have the basic argument <b>why</b> centralism will 
result in the continuation of class society. Does the
Bolshevik experience contradict this analysis? Essentially,
it confirms to Kropotkin's predictions on the uselessness
of "revolutionary" government:
<p><blockquote><i>
"Instead of acting for themselves, instead of marching 
forward, instead of advancing in the direction of the 
new order of things, the people confiding in their 
governors, entrusted to them the charge of taking 
initiative. This was the first consequence of the 
inevitable result of elections. . .  Shut up in the 
city hall, charged to proceed after the forms 
established by the preceding governments, these ardent 
revolutionists, these reformers found themselves 
smitten with incapacity and sterility. . .  but it 
was not the men who were the cause for this failure 
-- it was the system.. . 
<p>
"The will of the bulk of the nation once expressed, 
the rest would submit to it with a good grace, but 
this is not how things are done. The revolution bursts 
out long before a general understanding has come, and 
those who have a clear idea of what should be done 
the next day are only a very small minority. The 
great mass of the people have as yet only a general 
idea of the end which they wish realised, without 
knowing much how to advance towards that end, and 
without having much confidence in the direction to 
follow. The practical solution will not be found, 
will not be made clear until the change will have 
already begun. It will be the product of the 
revolution itself, of the people in action, -- 
or else it will be nothing, incapable of finding 
solutions which can only spring from the life of 
the people. . . The government becomes a parliament 
with all the vices of a middle-class parliament. 
Far from being a 'revolutionary' government it 
becomes the greatest obstacle to the revolution and at 
last the people find themselves compelled to put it out 
of the way, to dismiss those that but yesterday they 
acclaimed as their children. 
<p>
"But it is not so easy to do so. The new government 
which has hastened to organise a new administration 
in order to extend it's domination and make itself 
obeyed does not understand giving up so easily. Jealous 
of maintaining it's power, it clings to it with all the 
energy of an institution which has yet had time to fall 
into senile decay. It decides to oppose force with 
force, and there is only one means then to dislodge 
it, namely, to take up arms, to make another revolution 
in order to dismiss those in whom the people had placed 
all their hopes."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 240-2]
</blockquote><p>
By the spring and summer of 1918, the Bolshevik party
had consolidated its power. It had created a new state,
marked as all states are by the concentration of power
in a few hands and bureaucracy. Effective power became
concentrated into the hands of the executive committees
of the soviets from top to bottom. Faced with rejection 
at soviet election after soviet election, the Bolsheviks
simply disbanded them and gerrymandered the rest. At 
the summit of the new state, a similar process was at 
work. The soviets had little real power, which was 
centralised in Lenin's new government. This is discussed
in more detail in <a href="append41.html#app6">section 6</a> of the appendix
<a href="append41.html">"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"</a>. 
Thus centralisation 
quickly displaced popular power and participation.
As predicted by Russia anarchists in November 1917:
<p><blockquote><i>
"Once their power is consolidated and 'legalised', the 
Bolsheviks -- who are Social Democrats, that is, men of 
centralist and authoritarian action -- will begin to 
rearrange the life of the country and of the people 
by governmental and dictatorial methods, imposed by 
the centre. The[y] . . . will dictate the will of the 
party to all Russia, and command the whole nation. Your 
Soviets and your other local organisations will become 
little by little, simply executive organs of the will 
of the central government. In the place of healthy, 
constructive work by the labouring masses, in place 
of free unification from the bottom, we will see the 
installation of an authoritarian and statist apparatus 
which would act from above and set about wiping out 
everything that stood in its way with an iron hand. 
The Soviets and other organisations will have to obey 
and do its will. That will be called 'discipline.'"</i>
[quoted by Voline, <b>The Unknown Revolution</b>, p. 235]
</blockquote><p>
From top to bottom, the new party in power systematically 
undermined the influence and power of the soviets they 
claimed to be ensuring the power of. This process had 
begun, it should be stressed <b>before</b> the start of
the civil war in May, 1918. Thus Leninist Tony Cliff
is wrong to state that it was <i>"under the iron pressure
of the civil war"</i> which forced the Bolshevik leaders
<i>"to move, as the price of survival, to a <b>one-party
system.</b>"</i> [<b>Revolution Besieged</b>, p. 163] From the 
summer of 1918 (i.e. before the civil war even started),
the Bolsheviks had turned from the first of Kropotkin's 
"revolutionary" governments (representative government) 
to the other, dictatorship, with sadly predictable results.
<p>
So far, the anarchist predictions on the nature of
centralised revolutionary governments had been confirmed.
Being placed in a new social position and, therefore,
different social relationships, produced a dramatic
revision on the perspectives of the Bolsheviks. They
went from being in favour of party power to being in
favour of party dictatorship. They acted to ensure
their power by making accountability and recall 
difficult, if not impossible, and simply ignored any
election results which did not favour them.
<p>
What of the second prediction of anarchism, namely that
centralisation will recreate bureaucracy? That, too,
was confirmed. After all, some means were required to 
gather, collate and provide information by which the 
central bodies made their decisions. Thus a necessary 
side-effect of Bolshevik centralism was bureaucracy, which, 
as is well known, ultimately fused with the party and 
replaced Leninism with Stalinism. The rise of a state 
bureaucracy started immediately with the seizure of power 
by the Bolsheviks. Instead of the state starting to 
<i>"wither away"</i> from the start it grew:
<p><blockquote><i>
"The old state's political apparatus was 'smashed,' but
in its place a new bureaucratic and centralised system 
emerged with extraordinary rapidity. After the transfer
of government to Moscow in March 1918 it continued to
expand . . . As the functions of the state expanded so
did the bureaucracy, and by August 1918 nearly a third
of Moscow's working population were employed in offices
[147,134 employed in state institutions and 83,886
in local ones. This was 13.7% of the total adult 
population and 29.6% of the independent population of
846,095]. The great increase in the number of employees 
. . . took place in early to mid-1918 and, thereafter, 
despite many campaigns to reduce their number, they 
remained a steady proportion of the falling population
. . . At first the problem was dismissed by arguments
that the impressive participation of the working class
in state structures was evidence that there was no
'bureaucratism' in the bureaucracy. According to the
industrial census of 31 August 1918, out of 123,578
workers in Moscow, only 4,191 (3.4 percent) were
involved in some sort of public organisation . . . 
Class composition is a dubious criterion of the level
of bureaucratism. Working class participation in state
structures did not ensure an organisation against
bureaucratism, and this was nowhere more true than
in the new organisations that regulated the economic
life of the country."</i> [Richard Sakwa, <i>"The Commune 
State in Moscow in 1918,"</i> pp. 429-449, <b>Slavic Review</b>, 
vol. 46, no. 3/4, pp. 437-8]
</blockquote><p>
The <i>"bureaucracy grew by leaps and bounds. Control over 
the new bureaucracy constantly diminished, partly because 
no genuine opposition existed. The alienation between 
'people' and 'officials,' which the soviet system was 
supposed to remove, was back again. Beginning in 1918, 
complaints about 'bureaucratic excesses,' lack of contact 
with voters, and new proletarian bureaucrats grew louder 
and louder."</i> [Oskar Anweiler, <b>The Soviets</b>, p. 242] 
<p>
Overtime, this permanent collection of bodies would become 
the real power in the state, with the party members 
nominally in charge really under the control of an 
unelected and uncontrolled officialdom. This was 
recognised by Lenin in the last years of his life.
As he noted in 1922:
<p><blockquote><i>
"Let us look at Moscow . . . Who is leading whom? The
4,700 responsible Communists the mass of bureaucrats,
or the other way round? I do not believe that you can
say that the Communists are leading this mass. To put 
it honestly, they are not the leaders, but the led."</i>
[quoted by Chris Harman, <b>Bureaucracy and Revolution
in Eastern Europe</b>, p. 13]
</blockquote><p>
By the end of 1920, there were five times more state
officials than industrial workers. 5, 880,000 were 
members of the state bureaucracy. However, the 
bureaucracy had existed since the start. As noted
above, the 231,000 people employed in offices in 
in Moscow in August 1918 represented 30 per cent 
of the workforce there. <i>"By 1920 the general number 
of office workers . . . still represented about a 
third of those employed in the city."</i> In November, 
1920, they were 200 000 office workers in Moscow, 
compared to 231 000 in August, 1918. By July, 
1921 (in spite of a plan to transfer 10,000 away) 
their numbers had increased to 228,000 and by October 
1922, to 243,000. [Richard Sakwa, <b>Soviet Communists
in Power</b>, p. 192, p. 191 and p. 193]
<p>
This makes perfect sense as <i>"on coming to power the 
Bolsheviks smashed the old state but rapidly created 
their own apparatus to wage the political and economic 
offensive against the bourgeois and capitalism. As 
the functions of the state expanded, so did the 
bureaucracy . . .  following the revolution the 
process of institutional proliferation reached 
unprecedented heights."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 191] And with
bureaucracy came the abuse of it simply because it
held <b>real</b> power:
<p><blockquote><i>
"The prevalence of bureaucracy, of committees and
commissions . . . permitted, and indeed encouraged,
endless permutations of corrupt practices. These
raged from the style of living of communist
functionaries to bribe-taking by officials. With
the power of allocation of scare resources, such
as housing, there was an inordinate potential
for corruption."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 193]
</blockquote><p>
The growth in <b>power</b> of the bureaucracy should not,
therefore, come as a major surprise given that had
existed from the start in sizeable numbers. However, 
for the Bolsheviks <i>"the development of a bureaucracy"</i> 
was a puzzle, <i>"whose emergence and properties mystified 
them."</i> However, it should be noted that, <i>"[f]or 
the Bolsheviks, bureaucratism signified the escape 
of this bureaucracy from the will of the party as 
it took on a life of its own."</i> [Sakwa, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 182 and p. 190] This was the key. They did not 
object the usurpation of power by the party (indeed 
they placed party dictatorship at the core of their 
politics and universalised it to a general principle for 
<b>all</b> <i>"socialist"</i> revolutions). Nor 
did they object to the centralisation of power and
activity (and so the bureaucratisation of life). 
They only objected to it when the bureaucracy was
not doing what the party wanted it to. Indeed, this
was the basic argument of Trotsky against Stalinism
(see <a href="append45.html#app3">section 3</a> of the
appendix on <a href="append45.html">"Were any of the Bolshevik oppositions a real alternative?"</a>).
<p>
Faced with this bureaucracy, the Bolsheviks tried
to combat it (unsuccessfully) and explain it. As
the failed to achieve the latter, they failed in the
former. Given the Bolshevik fixation for all things
centralised, they simply added to the problem rather
than solve it. Thus we find that <i>"[o]n the eve of 
the VIII Party Congress Lenin had argued that 
centralisation was the only way to combat 
bureaucratism."</i> [Sakwa, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 196] 
<p>
Unsurprisingly, Lenin's "anti-bureaucratic" policies
in the last years of his live were <i>"organisational
ones. He purposes the formation of the Workers'
and Peasants' Inspection to correct bureaucratic
deformations in the party and state -- and this
body falls under Stalin's control and becomes
highly bureaucratic in its own right. Lenin then
suggests that the size of the Workers' and Peasants'
Inspection be reduced and that it be merged with
the Control Commission. He advocates enlarging the
Central Committee. Thus it rolls along; this body
to be enlarged, this one to be merged with another,
still a third to be modified or abolished. The
strange ballet of organisational forms continues
up to his very death, as though the problem could
be resolved by organisational means."</i> [Murray 
Bookchin, <b>Post-Scarcity Anarchism</b>, p. 205]
<p>
Failing to understand the links between centralism
and bureaucracy, Lenin had to find another source
for the bureaucracy. He found one. He <i>"argued that 
the low cultural level of the working class prevented 
mass involvement in management and this led to 
bureaucratism . . . the new state could only reply 
on a minuscule layer of workers while the rest were 
backward because of the low cultural level of the 
country."</i> However, such an explanation is by no
means convincing: <i>"Such culturalist assertions, 
which could neither be proved or disproved but 
which were politically highly effective in 
explaining the gulf, served to blur the political 
and structural causes of the problem. The working 
class was thus held responsible for the failings 
of the bureaucracy. At the end of the civil war 
the theme of the backwardness of the proletariat 
was given greater elaboration in Lenin's theory 
of the declassing of the proletariat."</i> [Sakwa, 
<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 195] Given that the bureaucracy had
existed from the start, it is hard to say that a
more <i>"cultured"</i> working class would have been in
a better position to control the officials of a
highly centralised state bureaucracy. Given the
problems workers in "developed" nations have in
controlling their (centralised) union bureaucracies,
Lenin's explanation seems simply inadequate and,
ultimately, self-serving.
<p>
Nor was this centralism particularly efficient. You need 
only read Goldman's or Berkman's accounts of their time 
in Bolshevik Russia to see how inefficient and wasteful 
centralisation and its resultant bureaucracy was in practice 
(see <b>My Disillusionment in Russia</b> and <b>The Bolshevik Myth</b>, 
respectively). This can be traced, in part, to the 
centralised economic structures favoured by the Bolsheviks.
Rejecting the alternative vision of socialism advocated
and, in part created, by the factory committees (and
supported wholeheartedly by the Russian Anarchists at
the time), the Bolsheviks basically took over and used 
the <i>"state capitalist"</i> organs created under Tsarism as 
the basis of their "socialism" (see 
<a href="append44.html#app5">section 5</a>). As
Lenin promised <b>before</b> seizing power: 
<p><blockquote><i>
"<b>Forced syndicatisation</b> -- that is, forced fusion into
unions [i.e. trusts] under the control of the State -- this 
is what capitalism has prepared for us -- this is what the 
Banker State has realised in Germany -- this is what will 
be completely realisable in Russia by the Soviets, by the
dictatorship of the proletariat."</i> [<b>Will the Bolsheviks
Maintain Power?</b>, p. 53]
</blockquote><p>
In practice, Lenin's centralised vision soon proved to be
a disaster (see 
<a href="append41.html#app11">section 11</a> of the appendix
<a href="append41.html">"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"</a> 
for details). It was highly
inefficient and simply spawned a vast bureaucracy. There
was an alternative, as we discuss in 
<a href="append41.html#app12">section 12</a> of the appendix
<a href="append41.html">"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"</a>, the 
only reason that industry did not totally collapse in Russia 
during the early months of the revolution was the activity of 
the factory committees. However, such activity was not part 
of the Bolshevik vision of centralised socialism and so the 
factory committees were <b>not</b> encouraged. At the very moment 
when mass participation and initiative is required (i.e. 
during a revolution) the Bolsheviks favoured a system which 
killed it. As Kropotkin argued a few years later:
<p><blockquote><i>
"production and exchange represented an undertaking so 
complicated that the plans of the state socialists, 
which lead to a party directorship, would prove to be 
absolutely ineffective as soon as they were applied to 
life. No government would be able to organise production 
if the workers themselves through their unions did not 
do it in each branch of industry; for in all production 
there arise daily thousands of difficulties which no 
government can solve or foresee . . . Only the efforts
of thousands of intelligences working on the problems 
can co-operate in the development of a new social system 
and find the best solutions for the thousands of local 
needs."</i> [<b>Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets</b>, pp. 76-7]
</blockquote><p>
No system is perfect. Any system will take time to develop
fully. Of course the factory committees made mistakes and, 
sometimes, things were pretty chaotic with different 
factories competing for scarce resources. But that does 
not prove that factory committees and their federations 
were not the most efficient way of running things under 
the circumstances. Unless, of course, you share the 
Bolsheviks a dogmatic belief that central planning is
always more efficient. Moreover, attacks on the factory
committees for lack of co-ordination by pro-Leninists
seem less than sincere, given the utter lack of 
encouragement (and, often, actual barriers) the
Bolsheviks placed in the way of the creation of 
federations of factory committees (see 
<a href="append41.html#app9">section 9</a> of the appendix
<a href="append41.html">"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"</a> for further details). 
<p>
Lastly, Bolshevik centralism (as well as being extremely
inefficient) also ensured that the control of production 
and the subsequent surplus would be in the hands of the 
state and, so, class society would continue. In Russia, 
capitalism became state capitalism under Lenin and Trotsky
(see sections 
<a href="append44.html#app5">5</a> and 
<a href="append44.html#app6">6</a> for more discussion of this).
<p>
So Bolshevik support for centralised power ensured that 
minority power replaced popular power, which, in turn, 
necessitated bureaucracy to maintain it. Bolshevism 
retained statist and capitalist social relations and, 
as such, could not develop socialist ones which, by 
their very nature, imply egalitarianism in terms of 
social influence and power (i.e. the abolition of 
concentrated power, both economic and political). 
Ironically, by being centralists, the Bolsheviks 
systematically eliminated mass participation and 
ensured the replacement of popular power with party 
power. This saw the rebirth of non-socialist social 
relationships within society, so ensuring the defeat 
of the socialist tendencies and institutions which had 
started to grow during 1917.
<p>
It cannot be said that this centralism was a product 
of the civil war. As best it could be argued that the 
civil war extenuated an existing centralist spirit 
into ultra-centralism, but it did not create it. After 
all, Lenin was stressing that the Bolsheviks were 
<i>"convinced centralists . . . by their programme and 
the tactics of the whole of their party"</i> in 1917. 
Ironically, he never realised (nor much cared, after
the seizure of power) that this position precluded 
his call for <i>"the deepening and extension of democracy 
in the administration of a State of the of the proletarian 
type."</i> [<b>Can the Bolsheviks Maintain Power?</b>, p. 74 and 
p. 55] Given that centralism exists to ensure minority 
rule, we should not be to surprised that party power 
replaced popular participation and self-government 
quickly after the October Revolution. Which it did.
Writing in September 1918, a Russian anarchist portrays 
the results of Bolshevik ideology in practice:
<p><blockquote><i>
"Within the framework of this dictatorship [of the proletariat]
. . . we can see that the centralisation of power has begun to
crystallise and grow firm, that the apparatus of the state is
being consolidated by the ownership of property and even by an
anti-socialist morality. Instead of hundreds of thousands of
property owners there is now a single owner served by a whole
bureaucratic system and a new 'statised' morality.
<p>
"The proletariat is gradually being enserfed by the state. The
people are being transformed into servants over whom there has
risen a new class of administrators -- a new class . . . Isn't
this merely a new class system looming on the revolutionary
horizon . . .
<p>
"The resemblance is all too striking . . . And if the elements
of class inequality are as yet indistinct, it is only a matter
of time before privileges will pass to the administrators. We
do not mean to say . . . that the Bolshevik party set out to
create a new class system. But we do say that even the best
intentions and aspirations must inevitably be smashed against
the evils inherent in any system of centralised power. The
separation of management from labour, the division between
administrators and workers flows logically from, centralisation.
It cannot be otherwise . . . we are presently moving not 
towards socialism but towards state capitalism.
<p>
"Will state capitalism lead us to the gates of socialism? Of
this we see not the slightest evidence . . . Arrayed against
socialism are . . . thousands of administrators. And if the
workers . . . should become a powerful revolutionary force,
then it is hardly necessary to point out that the class of
administrators, wielding the state apparatus, will be a
far from weak opponent. The single owner and state capitalism
form a new dam before the waves of our social revolution. . . 
<p>
"Is it at all possible to conduct the social revolution 
through a centralised authority? Not even a Solomon could
direct the revolutionary struggle or the economy from one
centre . . ."</i> [M. Sergven, cited by Paul Avrich, <b>Anarchists 
in the Russian Revolution</b>, pp. 123-5]
</blockquote><p>
Subsequent developments proved this argument correct. Working
class revolts were crushed by the state and a new class society
developed. little wonder, then, Alexander Berkman's summary of 
what he saw first hand in Bolshevik Russia a few years later:
<p><blockquote><i>
"Mechanical centralisation, run mad, is paralysing the
industrial and economic activities of the country. Initiative
is frowned upon, free effort systematically discouraged. The
great masses are deprived of the opportunity to shape the
policies of the Revolution, or take part in the administration
of the affairs of the country. The government is monopolising
every avenue of life; the Revolution is divorced from the
people. A bureaucratic machine is created that is appalling
in its parasitism, inefficiency and corruption. In Moscow
alone this new class of <b>sovburs</b> (Soviet bureaucrats)
exceeds, in 1920, the total of office holders throughout
the whole of Russia under the Tsar in 1914 . . . The 
Bolshevik economic policies, effectively aided by this
bureaucracy, completely disorganise the already crippled
industrial life of the country. Lenin, Zinoviev, and other
Communist leaders thunder philippics against the new Soviet
bourgeoisie, - and issue ever new decrees that strengthen
and augment its numbers and influence."</i> [<b>The Russian 
Tragedy</b>, p. 26]
</blockquote><p>
Bakunin would not have been remotely surprised. As such, 
the Bolshevik revolution provided a good example to support 
Malatesta's argument that <i>"if . . . one means government
action when one talks of social action, then this is still the 
resultant of individual forces, but only of those individuals
who form the government . . . it follows. . . that far from 
resulting in an increase in the productive, organising and
protective forces in society, it would greatly reduce them, 
limiting initiative to a few, and giving them the right to do
everything without, of course, being able to provide them 
with the gift of being all-knowing."</i> [<b>Anarchy</b>, pp. 36-7] 
<p>
By confusing <i>"state action"</i> with collective working class 
action, the Bolsheviks effectively eliminated the latter 
in favour of the former. The usurpation of all aspects of
life by the centralised bodies created by the Bolsheviks
left workers with no choice but to act as isolated individuals.
Can it be surprising, then, that Bolshevik policies aided the 
atomisation of the working class by replacing collective 
organisation and action by state bureaucracy? The potential
for collective action <b>was</b> there. You need only look at
the strikes and protests directed <b>against</b> the Bolsheviks
to see that was the case (see 
<a href="append43.html#app5">section 5</a> of the appendix on
<a href="append43.html">"What caused the degeneration of the Russian Revolution?"</a> for details).
Ironically, Bolshevik policies and ideology ensured that
the collective effort and action of workers was directed
not at solving the revolution's problems but resisting 
Bolshevik tyranny.
<p>
That centralism concentrates power in a few hands can be 
seen even in Leninist accounts of the Russian revolution. To
take one example, Tony Cliff may assert that the <i>"mistakes 
of the masses were themselves creative"</i> but when push comes 
to shove, he (like Lenin) simply does not allow the masses 
to make such mistakes and, consequently, learn from them. 
Thus he defends Lenin's economic policies of <i>"state 
capitalism"</i> and <i>"one-man management"</i> (and in the process 
misleadingly suggests that these were <b>new</b> ideas on 
Lenin's part, imposed by objective factors, rather than, 
as Lenin acknowledged, what he had advocated all along
-- see 
<a href="append44.html#app5">section 5</a>). 
Thus we discover that the collapse
of industry (which had started in the start of 1917) meant
that <i>"[d]rastic measures had to be taken."</i> But never fear,
<i>"Lenin was not one to shirk responsibility, however 
unpleasant the task."</i> He called for <i>"state capitalism,"</i>
and there <i>"were more difficult decisions to be accepted. To 
save industry from complete collapse, Lenin argued for the 
need to impose one-man management."</i> So much for the
creative self-activity of the masses, which was quickly
dumped -- precisely at the time when it was most desperately
needed. And it is nice to know that in a workers' state
it is not the workers who decide things. Rather it is
Lenin (or his modern equivalent, like Cliff) who would 
have the task of not shirking from the responsibility of
deciding which drastic measures are required. [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 21, p. 71 and p. 73] So much for "workers' power"!
<p>
Ultimately, centralism is designed to exclude the mass
participation anarchists have long argued is required by 
a social revolution. It helped to undermine what Kropotkin 
considered the key to the success of a social revolution 
-- <i>"the people becom[ing] masters of their destiny."</i> 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 133] In his words:
<p><blockquote><i>
"We understand the revolution as a widespread popular movement,
during which in every town and village within the region of 
revolt, the masses will have to take it upon themselves <b>the
work of construction upon communistic bases,</b> without awaiting
any orders and directions from above . . . As to representative
government, whether self-appointed or elected . . . , we place
in it no hopes whatever. We know beforehand that it will be able
to do nothing to accomplish the revolution as long as the people
themselves do not accomplish the change by working out on the
spot the necessary new institutions . . . nowhere and never 
in history do we find that people carried into government by
a revolutionary wave, have proved equal to the occasion.
<p>
"In the task of reconstructing society on new principles, separate
men . . . are sure to fail. The collective spirit of the masses
is necessary for this purpose . . . a socialist government . . . 
would be absolutely powerless without the activity of the people
themselves, and that, necessarily, they would soon begin to act
fatally as a bridle upon the revolution."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 188-190]
</blockquote><p>
The Bolshevik revolution and its mania for centralism proved
him right. The use of centralisation helped ensure that 
workers' lost any meaningful say in their revolution and 
helped alienate them from it. Instead of the mass participation
of all, the Bolsheviks ensured the top-down rule of a few. 
Unsurprisingly, as mass participation is what centralism 
was designed to exclude. Wishful thinking on behalf of the 
Bolshevik leaders (and their later-day followers) could not 
(and can not) overcome the structural imperatives of 
centralisation and its role in society. Nor could it 
stop the creation of a bureaucracy around these new 
centralised institutions. 
<p>
<a name="app8"><h2>8 How did the aim for party power undermine the revolution?</h2>
<p>
As well as a passion for centralisation and state capitalism, 
Bolshevism had another aim which helped undermine the revolution. 
This was the goal of party power (see see 
<a href="append41.html#app5">section 5</a> of the appendix
<a href="append41.html">"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"</a>
for details). 
Given this, namely that the Bolsheviks had, from the start, 
aimed for party power it should not come as too surprising 
that Bolshevik dictatorship quickly replaced soviet democracy. 
<p>
Given this obvious fact, it seems strange for modern day 
Leninists to blame the civil war for the Bolsheviks 
substituting their rule for the masses. After all, when 
strange for modern day Leninists to blame the civil war for 
the Bolsheviks substituting their rule for the masses. After 
all, when the Bolshevik Party took power in October 1917, it 
did "substitute" itself for the working class and did so 
deliberately and knowingly. As we note in 
<a href="append44.html#app2">section 2</a>, this
usurpation of power by a minority was perfectly acceptable
within the Marxist theory of the state, a theory which aided
this process no end.
<p>
Thus the Bolshevik party would be in power, with the <i>"conscious
workers"</i> ruling over the rest. The question instantly arises of
what happens if the masses turn against the party. If the 
Bolsheviks embody <i>"the power of the proletariat,"</i> what happens
if the proletariat reject the party? The undermining of soviet
power by party power and the destruction of soviet democracy in 
the spring and summer of 1918 answers that specific question
(see <a href="append41.html#app6">section 6</a> of the appendix
<a href="append41.html">"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"</a>). 
This should have come as no surprise, given 
the stated aim (and implementation) of party power plus the 
Bolshevik identification of party power with workers' power. It 
is not a great step to party dictatorship <b>over</b> the proletariat
from these premises (particularly if we include the underlying
assumptions of vanguardism -- see 
<a href="secH5.html#sech53">section H.5.3</a>). A step, we 
must stress, that the Bolsheviks quickly took when faced with 
working class rejection in the soviet elections of spring and 
summer of 1918. 
<p>
Nor was this destruction of soviet democracy by party power just
the result of specific conditions in 1917-8. This perspective had
been in Russian Marxist circles well before the revolution. As we
discuss in <a href="secH5.html">section H.5</a>, 
vanguardism implies party power (see, as
noted, <a href="secH5.html#sech53">section H.5.3</a> 
in particular). The ideas of Lenin's <b>What 
is to be Done?</b> give the ideological justification for party 
dictatorship over the masses. Once in power, the logic of 
vanguardism came into its own, allowing the most disgraceful 
repression of working class freedoms to be justified in terms of
"Soviet Power" and other euphemisms for the party. 
<p>
The identification of workers' power with party power has
deeply undemocratic results, as the experience of the 
Bolshevik proves. However, these results were actually
articulated in Russian socialist circles before hand. At 
the divisive 1903 congress of the Russian Social Democrats,
which saw the split into two factions (Bolshevik and Menshevism)
Plekhanov, the father of Russian Marxism, argued as follows:
<p><blockquote>
<i>"Every
particular democratic principle must be considered not in itself,
abstractly, . . . the success of the revolution is the highest
law. And if, for the success of the revolution's success, we
need temporarily to restrict the functioning of a particular
democratic principle, then it would be criminal to refrain 
from imposing that restriction. . . And we must take the same
attitude where the question of the length of parliaments is
concerned. If, in an outburst of revolutionary enthusiasm, the
people elect a very good parliament . .  . it would suit us 
to try and make that a <b>long Parliament</b>; but if the elections
turned out badly for us, we should have to try and disperse
the resulting parliament not after two years but, if possible,
after two weeks."</i> [RSDLP, <b>Minutes of the Second Congress 
of the RSDLP</b>, p. 220] 
</blockquote><p>
Another delegate argued that <i>"[t]here is not
a single one among the principles of democracy which we ought
not to subordinate <b>to the interests of our Party</b> . . . we
must consider democratic principles exclusively from the 
standpoint of the most rapid achievement of that aim [i.e.
revolution], from the standpoint of the interests of our
Party. If any particular demand is against our interests, we
must not include it."</i> To which, Plekhanov replied, <i>"I fully
associate myself with what Comrade Posadovksy has said."</i>
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 219 and p. 220] Lenin <i>"agreed unreservedly
with this subordination of democratic principles to party
interests."</i> [Oskar Anweiler, <b>The Soviets</b>, p. 211]
<p>
Plekhanov at this time was linked with Lenin, although this 
association lasted less than a year. After that, he became 
associated with the Mensheviks (before his support for Russia
in World War I saw him form his own faction). Needless to say,
he was mightily annoyed when Lenin threw his words back in 
his face in 1918 when the Bolsheviks disbanded the Constituent 
Assembly. Yet while Plekhanov came to reject this position 
(perhaps because the elections had not <i>"turned out badly for"</i> 
his liking) it is obvious that the Bolsheviks embraced it and 
keenly applied it to elections to soviets and unions as well 
as Parliaments once in power (see 
<a href="append41.html#app6">section 6</a> of the appendix
<a href="append41.html">"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"</a> 
for example). 
But, at the time, he sided with Lenin against the Mensheviks 
and it can be argued that the latter applied these teachings 
of that most respected pre-1914 Russian Marxist thinker.
<p>
This undemocratic perspective can also be seen when, in 1905, 
the St. Petersburg Bolsheviks, like most of the party, opposed 
the soviets. They argued that <i>"only a strong party along class 
lines can guide the proletarian political movement and preserve 
the integrity of its program, rather than a political mixture 
of this kind, an indeterminate and vacillating political 
organisation such as the workers council represents and cannot 
help but represent."</i> [quoted by Oskar Anweiler, <b>The Soviets</b>, 
p. 77] Thus the soviets could not reflect workers' interests 
because they were elected by the workers! 
<p>
The Bolsheviks saw the soviets as a rival to their party and 
demanded it either accept their political program or simply 
become a trade-union like organisation. They feared that it 
pushed aside the party committee and thus led to the 
<i>"subordination of consciousness to spontaneity"</i> and
under the label <i>"non-party"</i> allow <i>"the rotten goods of 
bourgeois ideology"</i> to be introduced among the workers. 
[quoted by Anweilier, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 78 and p. 79] In this, 
the St. Petersburg Bolsheviks were simply following Lenin's 
<b>What is to be Done?</b>, in which Lenin had argued that the 
<i>"<b>spontaneous</b> development of the labour movement leads to 
it being subordinated to bourgeois ideology."</i> [<b>Essential 
Works of Lenin</b>, p. 82] Lenin in 1905, to his credit, rejected 
these clear conclusions of his own theory and was more 
supportive of the soviets than his followers (although
<i>"he sided in principle with those who saw in the soviet
the danger of amorphous nonpartisan organisation."</i> 
[Anweilier, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 81]).
<p>
This perspective, however, is at the root of all Bolshevik 
justifications for party power after the October revolution. 
The logical result of this position can be found in the 
actions of the Bolsheviks in 1918 and onwards. For the
Bolsheviks in power, the soviets were less than important.
The key for them was to maintain Bolshevik party power and
if soviet democracy was the price to pay, then they were
more than willing to pay it. As such, Bolshevik attitudes
in 1905 are significant:
<p><blockquote><i>
"Despite the failure of the Bolshevik assault on the
non-partisanship of the [St.] Petersburg Soviet, 
which may be dismissed as a passing episode . . . 
the attempt . . . is of particular significance 
in understanding the Bolshevik's mentality, 
political ambitions and <b>modus operandi.</b> First, 
starting in [St.] Petersburg, the Bolshevik campaign 
was repeated in a number of provincial soviets
such as Kostroma and Tver, and, possibly, Sormovo.
Second, the assault reveals that from the outset the
Bolsheviks were distrustful of, if not hostile towards
the Soviets, to which they had at best an instrumental
and always party-minded attitude. Finally, the attempt
to bring the [St.] Petersburg Soviet to heel is an
early and major example of Bolshevik take-over techniques
hitherto practised within the narrow confines of the
underground party and now extended to the larger arena
of open mass organisations such as soviets, with the
ultimate aim of controlling them and turning them into
one-party organisations, or, failing that, of destroying
them."</i> [Israel Getzler, <i>"The Bolshevik Onslaught on the 
Non-Party 'Political Profile' of the Petersburg Soviet of
Workers' Deputies October-November 1905",</i> <b>Revolutionary
History</b>, pp. 123-146, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 124-5]
</blockquote><p>
The instrumentalist approach of the Bolsheviks post-1917
can be seen from their arguments and attitudes in 1905.
On the day the Moscow soviet opened, a congress of the 
northern committees of the Social Democratic Party 
passed a resolution stating that a <i>"council of workers
deputies should be established only in places where the
party organisation has no other means of directing the
proletariat's revolutionary action . . . The soviet of
workers deputies must be a technical instrument of the
party for the purpose of giving political leadership
to the masses through the RSDWP [the Social-Democratic 
Party]. It is therefore imperative to gain control of
the soviet and prevail upon it to recognise the
program and political leadership of the RSDWP."</i> [quoted 
by Anweilier, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 79]
<p>
This perspective that the party should be given precedence
can be seen in Lenin's comment that while the Bolsheviks
should <i>"go along with the unpoliticalised proletarians,
but on no account and at no time should we forget that
animosity among the proletariat toward the Social Democrats
is a remnant of bourgeois attitudes . . . Participation 
in unaffiliated organisations can be permitted to socialists
only as an exception . . . only if the independence of the
workers party is guaranteed and if within unaffiliated
organisations or soviets individual delegates or party
groups are subject to unconditional control and guidance
by the party executive."</i> [quoted by Anweilier, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 81] These comments have clear links to Lenin's argument
in 1920 that working class protest against the Bolsheviks
showed that they had become <i>"declassed"</i> (see 
<a href="append43.html#app5">section 5</a> of the appendix
on <a href="append43.html">"What caused the degeneration of the Russian Revolution?"</a>).
It similarly allows soviets to be disbanded if Bolsheviks
are not elected (which they were, see 
<a href="append41.html#app6">section 6</a> of the appendix
<a href="append41.html">"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"</a>). It
also ensures that Bolshevik representatives to the soviets
are not delegates from the workplace, but rather a 
"transmission belt"</i> (to use a phrase from the 1920s) 
for the decisions of the party leadership. In a nutshell,
Bolshevik soviets would represent the party's central 
committee, not those who elected them. As Oskar Anweiler
summarised:
<p><blockquote><i>
"The 'revolutionary genius' of the people, which Lenin had
mentioned and which was present in the soviets, constantly
harboured the danger of 'anarcho-syndicalist tendencies'
that Lenin fought against all his life. He detected this
danger early in the development of the soviets and hoped
to subdue it by subordinating the soviets to the party. The 
drawback of the new 'soviet democracy' hailed by Lenin in
1906 is that he could envisage the soviets only as 
<b>controlled</b> organisations; for him they were the instruments
by which the party controlled the working masses, rather
than true forms of a workers democracy."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 85]
</blockquote>
<p>
As we noted in <a href="secH3.html#sech311">section H.3.11</a>, 
Lenin had concluded in 1907
that while the party could <i>"utilise"</i> the soviets <i>"for the purpose 
of developing the Social-Democratic movement,"</i> the party <i>"must 
bear in mind that if Social-Democratic activities among the 
proletarian masses are properly, effectively and widely 
organised, such institutions may actually become superfluous."</i> 
[Marx, Engels and Lenin, <b>Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism</b>, 
p. 210] Thus the means by which working class can manage their 
own affairs would become <i>"superfluous"</i> once the party was 
in power. As Samuel Farber argues, Lenin's position before 1917 
was <i>"clearly implying that the party could normally fulfil its
revolutionary role without the existence of broad class 
organisations . . . Consequently, Lenin's and the party's
eventual endorsement of the soviets in 1905 seems to have been
tactical in character. That is, the Bolshevik support for the
soviets did not at the time signify a theoretical and/or
principled commitment to these institutions as revolutionary
organs to overthrow the old society, let alone as key
structural ingredients of the post-revolutionary order. 
Furthermore, it is again revealing that from 1905 to 1917
the concept of soviets did not play an important role in the
thinking of Lenin or of the Bolshevik Party . . . [T]hese
strategies and tactics vis-a-vis the soviets . . . can be 
fairly seen as expressing a predisposition favouring the
party and downgrading the soviets and other non-party class
organisations, at least in relative terms."</i> [<b>Before 
Stalinism</b>, p. 37] Such a perspective on the soviets can 
be seen once the party was in power when they quickly 
turned them, without concern, into mere fig-leafs for 
party power (see <a href="append41.html#app6">section 6</a> of the appendix
<a href="append41.html">"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"</a> 
for more details).
<p>
It cannot be mere coincidence that the ideas and
rhetoric against the soviets in 1905 should resurface
again once the Bolsheviks were in power. For example,
in 1905, in St. Petersburg <i>"the Bolsheviks pressed on"</i> 
with their campaign and, <i>"according to the testimony of 
Vladimir Voitinskii, then a young Bolshevik agitator, 
the initial thrust of the Bolshevik 'plan' was to push 
the SRs [who were in a minority] out of the Soviet, 
while 'the final blow' would be directed against the 
Mensheviks. Voitinskii also recalled the heated 
argument advanced by the popular agitator Nikolai 
Krylenko ('Abram') for the 'dispersal of the Soviet' 
should it reject the 'ultimatum' to declare its 
affiliation with the RSDP."</i> [Getzler, <b>Op., Cit.</b>, 
pp. 127-8] This mirrored events in 1918. Then <i>"at the 
local political level"</i> Bolshevik majorities were 
attained (<i>"by means fair, foul and terrorist"</i>) <i>"in 
the plenary assemblies of the soviets, and with the 
barring of all those not 'completely dedicated to 
Soviet power' [i.e. Mensheviks and SRs] from the 
newly established network of soviet administrative 
departments and from the soviet militias. Soviets 
where Bolshevik majorities could not be achieved 
were simply disbanded."</i> A similar process occurred 
at the summit (see 
<a href="append44.html#app7">section 7</a>). 
Thus <i>"the October 
revolution marked [the soviets] transformation from 
agents of democratisation into regional and local 
administrative organs of the centralised, one-party 
Soviet state."</i> [Israel Getzler, <b>Soviets as Agents 
of Democratisation</b>, p. 27 and pp. 26-7]
<p>
Can such an outcome really have <b>no</b> link at all with
the Bolshevik position and practice in period before
1917 and, in particular, during the 1905 revolution? 
Obviously not. As such, we should not be too surprised 
or shocked when Lenin replied to a critic who assailed
the "dictatorship of one party" in 1919 by clearly and
unashamedly stating: <i>"Yes, the dictatorship of one party!
We stand upon it and cannot depart from this ground,
since this is the party which in the course of decades
has won for itself the position of vanguard of the whole
factory and industrial proletariat."</i> [quoted by E.H.
Carr, <b>The Bolshevik Revolution</b>, vol. 1, p. 236] Or
when he replied to a critic in 1920 that 
<i>"[h]e says we understand by the words dictatorship of 
proletariat what is actually the dictatorship of its 
determined and conscious minority. And that is the fact."</i> 
This <i>"minority . . . may be called a party,"</i> Lenin 
stressed. [quoted by Arthur Ransome, <b>The Crisis in
Russia 1920</b>, p. 35] 
<p>
This perspective can be traced back to the underlying 
ideology expounded by the Bolsheviks before and during 
1917. For example, mere days after seizing power in
the October Revolution Lenin was stressing that the
Bolsheviks' <i>"present slogan is: No compromise, i.e.
for a homogeneous Boshevik government."</i> He did not 
hesitate to use the threat to <i>"appeal to the sailors"</i>
against the other socialist parties, stating <i>"[i]f 
you get the majority, take power in the Central
Executive Committee and carry one. But we will go
to the sailors."</i> [quoted by Tony Cliff, <b>Lenin</b>,
vol. 3, p. 26] Clearly soviet power was far from
Lenin's mind, rejecting soviet democracy if need 
be in favour of party power. Strangely, Cliff (a 
supporter of Lenin) states that Lenin <i>"did not 
visualise one-party rule"</i> and that the <i>"first
decrees and laws issued after the October revolution
were full of repetitions of the word 'democracy.'"</i>
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 161 and p. 146] He goes on to quote 
Lenin stating that <i>"[a]s a democratic government we 
cannot ignore the decision of the masses of the people,
even though we disagree with it."</i> Cliff strangely
fails to mention that Lenin also applied this not
only to the land decree (as Cliff notes) but also
to the Constituent Assembly. <i>"And even if,"</i> Lenin
continued, <i>"the peasants continue to follow the
Socialist Revolutionaries, even if they give this
party a majority in the Constituent Assembly, we
shall still say -- what of it?"</i> [Lenin, <b>Collected
Works</b>, vol. 26, pp. 260-1] But the Bolsheviks 
disbanded the Constituent Assembly after one session.
The peasants had voted for the SRs and the Assembly
went the same way as Lenin's promises. And if Lenin's
promises of 1917 on the Assembly proved to be of
little value, then why should his various comments 
to soviet democracy be considered any different? In 
a clash between soviet democracy and party power,
the Bolsheviks consistently favoured the latter.
<p>
Thus Bolshevik ideology had consistently favoured party
power and had a long term ideological preference for it.
Combine this aim of party power with a vanguardism position 
(see <a href="secH5.html">section H.5</a>) 
and party dictatorship will soon result. 
Neil Harding summarises the issue well:
<p><blockquote><i>
"There were a number of very basic axioms that lay at the
very heart of the theory and practice of Leninism with
regard to the party . . . It was the party that disposed
of scientific or objective knowledge. Its analysis of the
strivings of the proletariat was, therefore, privileged
over the proletariat's own class goals and a single
discernible class will was, similarly, axiomatic to
both Marxism and Leninism. Both maintained that it was
the communists who alone articulated these goals and
this will -- that was the party's principal historical
role.
<p>
"At this point, Leninism (again faithful to the Marxist
original) resorted to a little-noticed definitional
conjuring trick -- one that proved to be of crucial
importance for the mesmeric effect of the ideology.
The trick was spectacularly simple and audacious -- 
the class was defined as class only to the extent that
it conformed to the <b>party's</b> account of its objectives,
and mobilised itself to fulfil them. . . . The messy,
real proletarians -- the aggregation of wage workers
with all their diverse projects and aspirations -- were
to be judged by their progress towards a properly class
existence by the party that had itself devised the criteria
for the class existence."</i> [<b>Leninism</b>, pp. 173-4]
</blockquote><p>
This authoritarian position, which allows "socialism" to be
imposed by force upon the working class, lies at the core
of Leninism. Ironically, while Bolshevism claims to be <b>the</b> 
party of the working class, representing it essentially or 
exclusively, they do so in the name of possessing a theory
that, qua theory, can be the possession of intellectuals
and, therefore, has to be "introduced" to the working class
from outside (see <a href="secH5.html#sech51">section H.5.1</a> 
for details).
<p>
This means that Bolshevism is rooted in the identification of "class 
consciousness" with supporting the party. Given the 
underlying premises of vanguardism, unsurprisingly the 
Bolsheviks took "class consciousness" to mean this. If
the workers protested against the policies of the party, 
this represented a fall in class consciousness and, therefore, 
working class resistance placed "class" power in danger. 
If, on the other hand, the workers remained quiet and followed
the party's decision then, obviously, they showed high levels
of class consciousness. The net effect of this position was, 
of course, to justify party dictatorship. Which, of course,
the Bolsheviks did create <b>and</b> justified ideologically.
<p>
Thus the Bolshevik aim for party power results in disempowering
the working class in practice. Moreover, the assumptions of
vanguardism ensure that only the party leadership is able to judge
what is and is not in the interests of the working class. Any
disagreement by elements of that class or the whole class itself
can be dismissed as <i>"wavering"</i> and <i>"vacillation."</i> While this
is perfectly acceptable within the Leninist <i>"from above"</i> 
perspective, from an anarchist <i>"from below"</i> perspective it means
little more than pseudo-theoretical justification for party
dictatorship <b>over</b> the proletariat and the ensuring that a
socialist society will <b>never</b> be created. Ultimately, socialism
without freedom is meaningless -- as the Bolshevik regime proved
time and time again.
<p>
As such, to claim that the Bolsheviks did not aim to "substitute"
party power for working class power seems inconsistent with both
Bolshevik theory and practice. Lenin had been aiming for party
power from the start, identifying it with working class power.
As the party was the vanguard of the proletariat, it was duty
bound to seize power and govern on behalf of the masses and,
moreover, take any actions necessary to maintain the revolution
-- even if these actions violated the basic principles required
to have any form of meaningful workers' democracy and freedom.
Thus the <i>"dictatorship of the proletariat"</i> had long become equated 
with party power and, once in power, it was only a matter of time
before it became the <i>"dictatorship of the party."</i> And once this 
did occur, none of the leading Bolsheviks questioned it. The 
implications of these Bolshevik perspectives came clear after 
1917, when the Bolsheviks raised the need for party dictatorship 
to an ideological truism.
<p>
Thus it seems strange to hear some Leninists complain that the
rise of Stalinism can be explained by the rising "independence"
of the state machine from the class (i.e. party) it claimed to in 
service of. Needless to say, few Leninists ponder the links between 
the rising <i>"independence"</i> of the state machine from the proletariat 
(by which most, in fact, mean the <i>"vanguard"</i> of the proletariat, 
the party) and Bolshevik ideology. As noted in 
<a href="secH3.html#sech38">section H.3.8</a>, a key
development in Bolshevik theory on the state was the perceived need
for the vanguard to ignore the wishes of the class it claimed to
represent and lead. For example, Victor Serge (writing in the 1920s)
considered it a truism that the <i>"party of the proletariat must know,
at hours of decision, how to break the resistance of the backward
elements among the masses; it must know how to stand firm sometimes
against the masses . . . it must know how to go against the current,
and cause proletarian consciousness to prevail against lack of
consciousness and against alien class influences."</i> [<b>Year One of
the Russian Revolution</b>, p. 218]
<p>
The problem with this is that, by definition, <b>everyone</b> is 
backward in comparison to the vanguard party. Moreover, in 
Bolshevik ideology it is the party which determines what is
and is not <i>"proletarian consciousness."</i> Thus we have the party
ideologue presenting self-justifications for party power <b>over</b>
the working class. Now, is the vanguard is to be able to ignore 
the masses then it must have power <b>over</b> them. Moreover, to be 
independent of the masses the machine it relies on to implement 
its power must also, by definition, be independent of the masses. 
Can we be surprised, therefore, with the rise of the "independent"
state bureaucracy in such circumstances? If the state machine is 
to be independent of the masses then why should we expect it not 
to become independent of the vanguard? Surely it must be the 
case that we would be far more surprised if the state machine 
did <b>not</b> become "independent" of the ruling party?
<p>
Nor can it be said that the Bolsheviks learned from the 
experience of the Russian Revolution. This can be seen 
from Trotsky's 1937 comments that the <i>"proletariat can 
take power only through its vanguard. In itself the 
necessity for state power arises from the insufficient 
cultural level of the masses and their heterogeneity."</i> 
Thus <i>"state power"</i> is required <b>not</b> to defend the 
revolution against reaction but from the working 
class itself, who do not have a high enough 
<i>"cultural level"</i> to govern themselves. At best, 
their role is that of a passive supporter, for 
"[w]ithout the confidence of the class in the vanguard, 
without support of the vanguard by the class, there can 
be no talk of the conquest of power."</i> While soviets 
<i>"are the only organised form of the tie between the 
vanguard and the class"</i> it does not mean that they 
are organs of self-management. No, a <i>"revolutionary 
content can be given . . . only by the party. This 
is proved by the positive experience of the October 
Revolution and by the negative experience of other 
countries (Germany, Austria, finally, Spain)."</i> 
[<b>Stalinism and Bolshevism</b>] 
<p>
Sadly, Trotsky failed to explicitly address the question 
of what happens when the <i>"masses"</i> stop having <i>"confidence 
in the vanguard"</i> and decides to support some other group. 
After all, if a <i>"revolutionary content"</i> can only be given 
by <i>"the party"</i> then if the masses reject the party then 
the soviets can no only be revolutionary. To save the
revolution, it would be necessary to destroy the democracy 
and power of the soviets. Which is <b>exactly</b> what the 
Bolsheviks did do in 1918. By equating popular power 
with party power Bolshevism not only opens the door 
to party dictatorship, it invites it in, gives it 
some coffee and asks it to make itself a home! Nor can 
it be said that Trotsky ever appreciated Kropotkin's 
<i>"general observation"</i> that <i>"those who preach dictatorship 
do not in general perceive that in sustaining their 
prejudice they only prepare the way for those who later 
on will cut their throats."</i> [<b>Kropotkin's Revolutionary 
Pamphlets</b>, p. 244]
<p>
In summary, it cannot be a coincidence that once in power
the Bolsheviks acted in ways which had clear links to the
political ideology it had been advocating before hand. As
such, the Bolshevik aim for party power helped undermine
the real power of working class people during the Russian
revolution. Rooted in a deeply anti-democratic political
tradition, it was ideologically predisposed to substitute
party power for soviet power and, finally, to create --
and justify -- the dictatorship <b>over</b> the proletariat.
The civil war may have shaped certain aspects of these
authoritarian tendencies but it did not create them.
<p>
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