ON THE
FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION
By Pierre Frank
In 1917 the October Revolution was regarded by the governments of that time and treated in the world press as an episode of brief duration. Today, fifty years later, both friends and enemies recognize that the event was a momentous, if not the most momentous, date in human history. The Russian Revolution is certainly far from finished; on the contrary, signs of new bounds forward can already be discerned within it. But a balance sheet of October is all the more necessary to get an insight into that future.
October has become an important date for the general public primarily because the revolution brought about the transformation of Czarist Russia -- which combined a substratum of economic, social and cultural backwardness with the features of an imperialist and semicolonial power -- into the second power in the world. This transformation was accomplished in the course of a half century which encompassed two foreign invasions, a civil war, unparalleled human and material destruction and enormous expenditures for unproductive armaments.
Let us take, for comparison, the United States whose development fully flowered after the Civil War. The following fifty years bring us to the eve of U.S. entry into the first world war. Throughout that time this country did not experience any wars on its territory and engaged in only a few unimportant foreign expeditions. At the same time it received millions of European emigrants and an influx of European capital along with then. This is a comparison on a truly historical scale. The United States is clearly outclassed. On this scale the capitalist mode of production has shown itself to be very inferior to the socialist mode of production. And, on the socialist side of this balance sheet, we have not taken into account the harmful role of the bureaucratic leadership which we will deal with later on.
The building of socialism presupposes, first of all, an immense economic development to arrive at abundance. The Soviet Union has not yet achieved this; it is an international problem which cannot be resolved within the framework of a single country. However, the balance of the past fifty years cannot be measured solely by the economic progress. It is necessary to take into consideration the price paid by the masses for this progress and it is also necessary to draw up a political and cultural balance sheet. Finally, since the construction of socialism is involved, it is also necessary to inquire into the relations which existed during this period between the development of the Soviet Union and the progress of the world revolution.
The negative aspects -- the miserable living standards to which the worker and peasant masses were reduced for a long time, the total elimination of every element of workers and socialist democracy, and the intellectual conformism over the past forty years -- can be passed by in silence or regarded as negligible only by sycophants of the Soviet power. Lenin in his day never glossed over what he believed to be negative -- and the negative aspects increased enormously after his death.
The bourgeois criticisms can, be unhesitatingly dismissed. During that same period, not to mention the past, the capitalist system struck heavy blows at the masses through wars, unemployment and fascism with which the limited progress recently made in a very small part of the world pales in comparison. As for the Social Democrats, when they entered governments, they did so at the behest of the capitalists to curb and crush revolutionary movements or to deliver blows at the living and working conditions of the masses in periods of reorganization or readjustment of the capitalist economies.
The big break in the history of the Soviet Union and the Communist movement between the first years of the revolution and the subsequent period disfigured by Stalinism is nowadays denied only by ignorant people, numskulls or servitors of the Kremlin. How many controversies there were over Stalinism and the nature of the Soviet state of which nothing is heard but lingering echoes today! "De-Stalinization" has demonstrated to anyone who does not think in empty formulas that the bureaucracy was not engaged in building for "1984" the world that Orwell depicted with such great talent. The USSR is heading toward something very different from "state capitalism" or "bureaucratic collectivisn."
Henceforth the balance sheet will have to include the question of deciding whether or not Stalinism was unavoidable. This question is not only raised by apologists for Stalinism, by people anxious to cover up their Stalinist past or to ingratiate themselves with the post- Stalinists. There are those who sincerely view the problem in this manner and thereby switch over from a Marxist explanation of history to a belief in the ineluctability of accomplished facts in history. To explain, for example, the forces which have produced Stalinism or Nazism does
not mean that the victories of Stalinism or Nazism were inevitable. Is it necessary to conclude that "forced collectivization" and the Moscow Trials were inevitable? No, there is no great book where, according to divine decree, history is inscribed in advance.
Bureaucratic deformations were uwnavoidable in the USSR. These already existed in Lenin and Trotsky's time. They accompany, and will accompany, every victorious revolution in varying degrees, and not only in underdeveloped countries, for objective reasons which are nowadays well known. The transition from bureau~ cratic deformations to a frightful bureaucratic degeneration came as the consequence of a struggle over many years in which the Left Opposition was defeated.
The outcome of this struggle was not predetermined. Stalinism was not a simple. phenomenon. It embraced the degeneration of the isolated workers’ state, the degeneration of the Bolshevik party as a party of the Soviet proletariat, the decomposition of the leadership of the Bolshevik party in the face of the mounting bureaucratismn, the degeneration of the Communist International andi its sections. Each of these phenomena had its own dialectic of development, distinct from that of the others. The fate of the Communist International was not the same as that of the Soviet state or that of the various Communist parties.
Between Trotsky, who tirelessly defended the program of October, and the pragmatic Stalin, who was as much the instrument as the director of the bureaucracy, were inserted the successive political errors (tardily and poorly understood) committed by Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin and others which considerably weakened the resistance of all the organisms to the gangrene of bureaucratism by provoking the decay of the leadership of the Bolshevik party.
Those who believe that Stalinism was inevitable deprive themselves of un~ derstanding the dual role of the Soviet bureaucracy and are thus incapable of establishing a precise balance sheet of the revolution. For they do not know how to dissociate the dynamic belonging to the productive forces liberated by October from the role played by the bureaucracy in relation to this dynamic, an executive role which functions far more as a brake than as an accelerator. It is certainly impossible to measure such things mathematically. Nonetheless, it is noteworthy that Stalin's successors have all, more or less explicitly, referred to this opposition between the power of the productive forces and the bad use which was made of them by Stalin's policies, at least, in their view, from a certain date.
The obvious objection can be made that these men express themselves in this manner because they need a scapegoat. But, whatever be the motivation for their observation, it is an implicit recognition of the harm wrought by the bureaucracy in Soviet society. They reserve this judgment for the past period of Stalin's rulership. But we think it likewise applicable to the period of "de-Stalinization" in which the bureaucracy retained its direction of society while exhibiting a certain degree of "liberalization."
The contradictions between the forces of this society and its leadership have become more and more flagrant precisely because economic development has now attained a high level. The reforms having been put into effect only from above, they produce less and less results. The society emanating from the October Revolution which has been subjected to such constraint and coercion from Stalinism wants to express itself. Having no independent political organs at its disposal, it is beginning to do so in those circles where ideas are dealt with daily, among the intelligentsia. The Brezhnev- Kosygin leadership has continued the orientation against free expression in the cultural field imparted by Khrushchev during his last year in office.
"De-Stalinization" has not only more clearly disclosed the existing antagonism between Soviet society and its leadership. If it be taken into account that the "de-Stalinization" began almost fifteen years ago, that the principal reforms were enacted in the first five years, and that it has given only limited results, these very facts confirm that it will be impossible to put an end to bureaucratic power by simple reformist interventions, and that it will be necessary to resort to a revolutionary struggle, to the political revolution envisaged by Trotsky, in order to restore a regime of Soviet democracy which, by itself, will give an impulsion to the productive forces incomparably greater than any previously known.
In the imternational arena the dual role of the bureaucracy is apparent throughout its, career. It has, certainly, defended the mode of production engendered by October because it draws the substance of its privileges from it. But it has done so in its owm manner which was to seek incessantly, even during the war, notably at the Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam conferences, a global agreement with world imperialism for the establishment and maintenance of the status, quo.
In accord with this objective, whenever all those anywhere in the world who rose up against capitalism turned hopefully toward the Soviet Union to find support there, the leaders of the Kremlin and the
Communist parties offered them a policy which restricted and often broke their revolutionary upsurges. Hence a heavy succession of defeats. Let us mention only the darkest: the defeat of the Chinese Revolution of 1925-27 after Moscow had hailed Chiang Kai-shek as the "hero" of this revolution; the paralysis of the German proletariat in the face of the rise and victory of the Hitlerites when the Stalinist leadership, in line with its "third period" policies, declared that the Social Democracy was "the main enemy"; the defeat of the Spanish Revolution of 1936-38 in which the Stalinists and Social Democrats resurrected a pseudo bourgeois-—democracy incapable of standing on its own feet; the liquidation of numerous revolutionary movements for the benefit of the imperialist democracies in the immediate postwar period, notably in France and Italy, together with the abandonment of the Greek resistance fighters on two occasions in 1944 and 1947; the collapse of the Indonesian Communist movement whose opportunist policy was supported by both Moscow and Peking, etc.
It has taken an experience like that which the Vietnamese people are presently undergoing for larger sections of people to grasp that Soviet aid is not only quantitatively inadequate but that it is not intended to assure victory. It is rather designed to induce American inperialism to draw back to the extent required to undertake negotiations in accord with an illusory "peaceful coexistence." The Soviet bureaucracy does not push for victory but for "peace" in Vietnam, and that explains its hostility to the only realistic policy -- because it is revolutionary -- which Che Guevara formulated in these terms: "to create two, three...many Vietnams." The "socialism in one country" of the Soviet bureaucracy has cost and still costs the world socialist revolution dearly. The bureaucrats are more eager to plant the red flag on the moon than to see it triumph the world over.
The bureaucracy endeavors to falsify the balance sheet by concealing its misdeeds. The formula of "the cult of personality" serves less to make the truth known than to cast a veil over Stalinism. Its crimes remain in the shade, save for a few carefully selected "pehabilitations." Stalin's official history, crammed with lies, has been replaced by other official histories, following one after the other, replete with different lies and some half-truths. Let us run rapidly through the latest version of the history of the revolution and the Soviet Union presented by the Central Committee of the Communist party of the Soviet Union in its "Theses for the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution."
Before Lenin, according to these "theses," there were Marx and Engels. With Lenin and after him, there were only nameless figures. We are not told what men constituted the Central Committee which directed the revolution, what men formed the first Soviet government, who led the Red Army during the civil war, etc. We learn, on the other hand, that "the Trotskyites sought to deprive our Party and people of their faith that socialism could be successfully built in the USSR." How very felicitous was Stalin's perspective and its realization in contrast!
No forced collectivization took place, it seems, for we read in the theses that "the 15th Party Congress charted the political line for the gradual transition of the scattered peasant households to large-scale socialist production....The collective farms were set up in a fierce struggle against the kulaks. The resistance of the exploiting elements in the countryside was broken by the efforts of the working class and the rural poor in alliance with the middle peasants....Collectivisation...still further strengthened the alliance between the working class and the peasants..." It is hard to tell which is more repugnant, Stalin's calumnies against the Old Bolsheviks or these shameful lies about his dreadful policy in the rural areas.
Further on we read: "The triumph of socialism was legislatively recorded in the Soviet Constitution adopted in December 1936 by the Extraordinary 8th Congress of Soviets. This constitution fixed the socialist principles underlying the social and state system in the USSR and the broad social freedoms and rights of citizens, instituted a system of direct, equal and universal suffrage by secret ballot for elections to organs of power and enlarged the representation quota of all the Union and Autonomous republics, Autonomous regions and National areas in the highest organ of power." However, 1936 witnessed the Stalinist repression, the deportations, the beginning of the Moscow Trials. The Constitution was merely a smoke screen.
There is no reference in these "theses" to the entire nightmare that Soviet society has not yet come through. Or, more exactly, it is necessary to read some pages further on and learn that, on the occasion of the Twentieth Congress, Stalin was found guilty of "unwarranted (sic!] reprisals and other violations of socialist legality which inflicted harm on our society." A single point, and that's all. In substance, the wording of these theses conforms to the logic of the bureaucrats from whom they emanate; the Stalinist repression did not officially exist before the Twentieth Congress and so it could not be mentioned sooner.
It is also stated in this document that "During the stern years of the war the people fought under the leadership of the Communist Party....Huge organisational, Party and political work was conducted in the army by political workers who included prominent functionaries of the Party and Government." This anonymity has at least the advantage that Brezhnev and Kosygin's successors will not be obliged to fabricate new books from which certain names will have to be dropped. But these "theses" say nothing about that particular aspect of the leadership of the party that Khrushchev revealed at the Twentieth Congress and that no one has controverted, that Stalin never called a meeting of the Central Committee during the entire year.
We can't comment on everything. But it would be a pity to pass over the following, which appears toward the end, without saying a word about it: "a spirit of innovation and a bold search for the new are all inherent traits of our art." They'd better praise it themselves for no one else would think of doing so. It's clear that this passage in the "theses" refers to "socialist realism," and not to the literature and art in the first years of the revolution.
Let us close on international problems. "The rapprochement of the countries that have embarked on the socialist road and their consolidation in the socialist community falls in with the fundamental interests of the peoples..." But then to what, to what interests, does the absence of rapprochement and consolidation correspond? Why was there a Soviet-Yugoslav conflict? Why are there differences with Rumania? Not a word. Since the Sino-Soviet rift cannot be entirely omitted, a dozen lines are devoted to saying that Mao took up "a policy which combined petty-bourgeois adventurism with great-power chauvinism..." Take away the word "adventurism" and you have the policy of the Kremlin. Equal treatment is given in these theses -- a single line! -- to the subjects of the war in Vietnan, the threats against Cuba, and the experience of the People's Republic of Mongolia. The Communist International is entitled to a dozen lines in which we learn that it formed "eminent" leaders who, however, likewise remain nameless. The bureaucracy not only strives to hide its misdeeds; it even seeks to deny its own existence. It appears in these theses only through the references to the Soviet state where its members are included in the categories of workers and sometimes of the intelligentsia. Although they dispose of considerable privileges and a power such as a genuine possessing class has rarely held, it does not wish anyone to see the imprint of its footsteps. This "modesty," this ambition to be dissolved into "the people as a whole," testifies that the bureaucracy is in its own fashion aware of the parasitic role it plays in Soviet society.
We mentioned above the impossibility of calculating the liabilities owing to the bureaucracy in economic development. But human societies engage not only in material production; they also produce ideas. History shows, among other things, that all ruling classes have created their own ideologies to justify and consolidate their domination. The history of the Soviet Union shows that in almost half a century the bureaucracy of the country has produced no ideology of its own. Out of its own needs, it has concocted only a hodgepodge with Marxism transformed into an "ideology" and petty-bourgeois democracy. This is further testimony to its parasitic role and a manifestation of the bonapartist position it occupies between the proletariat and capitalisn.
This bankruptcy on the plane of ideas finds striking expression in the fact that the Soviet leaders from Stalin to those of today have offered no theory of the October Revolution, of the conquest of power by the proletariat in a country which had not carried out a bourgeois revolution. Moreover, the only theory which explains October, which is embodied in Lenin's "April Theses" of 1917 and many of Lenin's writings after October, the theory of the permanent revolution (as a number of informed people nowadays acknowledge) is still banned.
October inaugurated a new epoch for humanity, that of the transition from capitalism to socialism through the world revolution. In the fiftieth year of this era, we can say with undiminished assurance that nothing that has happened in the intervening years has invalidated the fundamental lessons of October. To be sure, the road to socialism has been shown to be more complicated than anyone imagined before October. The hopes of the first years of the revolution turned out to be exaggerated. But the postponements are essentially due to the subjective factor. The formation of the Communist parties was in a certain measure undertaken too late. At that time these formations were too inexperienced to know how to take advantage of the revolutionary situations in the European countries; after that they were too weak to resist the Stalinist degeneration.
Fifty years after October, the world presents an extremely variegated picture. The new mode of production encompasses one-third of this globe and a third of the human race. The revolution has begun by breaking the weakest links of capitalism; and its most advanced wing is today found paradoxically in the economically less developed countries, those where the building of a socialist society is the most difficult. On the organization-
al level, the workers' movement is dominated by bureaucratic leaderships imbued with the aberrant outlook of peaceful and parliamentary paths to socialisn.
A century after the foundation of the First International, there is no longer a mass international. A caricature of an international leadership is provided by Moscow's impotent "Peace Movement." Revolutionary Marxism does not, either nationally or internationally, head a mass organization. The Chinese peasant is learning to think in Marxist terms while the workers of the United States have yet to constitute a class political party of their own, on a scale corresponding to their weight, even of a reformist character.
This unexpected combination is a source of great confusion. Some people, who cling to obsolete schemas, deny that the revolution has made any progress, as if any document could have foreseen all the forms of development of world history, while others repudiate Marxism in order to replace it with ephemeral theories. Only the Fourth International has succeeded in interpreting the actual dialectic of the world revolution which has assumed such unanticipated forms and it has thereby enriched revolutionary Marxism since the days of the October Revolution and the Communist International of Lenin and Trotsky.
After the years of ebb in the revolution and the isolation of the first workers state, when the tide turned, the theoretical and political confusion bred by Stalinism still continued to impede the advancement of socialism. We are only at the first important steps on the road to a regroupment around the ideas of revolutionary Marxism. This fiftieth anniversary cannot be better celebrated than by carrying forward more vigorously than ever the task to which the Fourth International has been dedicated since its birth: to work for the reconstruction of new revolutionary leaderships and a revolutionary mass Marxist International which can assure the world victory of socialisn.
MAO