by Nicholas Wurst
Worcester, MA
SMART-TD Local 1473 (personal capacity)
In 1917, the working class of the Russian Empire rose up and seized power, toppling the Tsarist regime and establishing the first workers’ state. The revolution was carried out by mass democratic organizations called soviets. How did the Soviet Union end up in the grips of repressive Stalinist bureaucracy? What was the Left Opposition (LO) which led the fight against Stalinism, and what key political questions lay at the heart of the battle to save the workers’ revolution in Russia and around the world?
Soviets were workers’ councils that emerged as workers organized themselves into grassroots democratic bodies during the 1905 revolutionary attempt. 1905 and its aftermath helped to clarify the key political questions regarding how the working class was to seize power. During this period, the revolutionary Marxist Bolsheviks sharpened their politics and strengthened their organization. In 1917, the Bolsheviks won a majority in the soviets and led the working class to take power in the “October Revolution,” creating a new government based on those same soviets.
The soviets and Bolsheviks were characterized by democratic debates at all levels. However, by 1937, the Bolsheviks – by now renamed the Russian Communist Party (RCP) – and the Soviet state were in the grips of Joseph Stalin’s “Great Purge.” All dissent was punished with forced exile, imprisonment, labor camps, and executions. Workers’ democracy was replaced by bureaucracy. This repression propped up the political ideas of Stalin and his supporters, which represented a major departure from the politics of the October Revolution. The purge was also carried out in the Communist or “Third” International (Comintern) and its member parties around the world, tragically misleading revolutionary efforts.
Stalin and his ideas did not go unchallenged, however. In October 1923, 46 members of the RCP declared their opposition. They built the LO and recruited tens of thousands of workers and youth. Many LO leaders were notable Bolsheviks, including Leon Trotsky, holding important positions in the party and government. They were veterans of the decades of revolutionary struggle leading up to October 1917 and the first five years of the workers’ state.
The LO and subsequent Trotskyist organizations fought Stalin and others throughout the international Communist movement for correct tactics in many revolutionary opportunities in a number of countries. This battle helped distill the most crucial lessons of revolutionary socialist strategy from 1917 and how they can be applied in a broad variety of situations. If the 21st-century socialist movement wants to seriously fight for workers’ power, these lessons have to be relearned.
Why Did Stalinism Develop?
Bureaucracy
Following the Russian Revolution, the country endured a devastating civil war against counter-revolutionary “White” armies, backed by the invasion of 19 imperialist armies seeking to crush the new workers’ government. Coupled with the economic crisis and failed revolutions in a number of other countries, the rank-and-file of the soviets and many RCP organizations became hollowed out. The civil war forced the party to adopt strict discipline and a semi-military mindset. The RCP increasingly relied on appointed party officials and full-time party workers to fill the vacuum left by the decline of rank-and-file leadership. Stalin used his position as the head of the party’s full-time apparatus to consolidate power.
Economic Crisis
The new Soviet state inherited the underdeveloped Tsarist industry and agriculture. During the civil war, it was forced to aggressively requisition food from the peasantry. The party hoped to kickstart the economy and regain the support of the peasantry with the “New Economic Policy” (NEP) which reintroduced a market economy in the agricultural sector. It ended requisitions which lowered prices and made food more available. It also allowed an upper layer of peasants, who owned more land and exploited other peasants for labor, to grow in wealth and power at the expense of the rest of the peasantry. In the industrial sector, the lack of effective planning and coordination made basic manufactured necessities expensive and inaccessible to both urban workers and the peasantry.
Isolation
The Bolsheviks knew that the underdeveloped economy of the Tsarist empire meant that the new Soviet state would struggle to survive. The only hope was for workers in other countries to overthrow their respective capitalist classes and establish a federation of socialist nations that could assist one another. The Bolsheviks tried to build the international socialist movement by launching the Comintern, which gathered together organizations around the world who shared their revolutionary outlook. However, the failure of revolutions in the years following 1917—notably in Hungary, Germany, China, and Britain—left the Soviet Union isolated economically and politically. Stalinism played an increasingly larger role in these failures as it solidified its control over the Comintern.
The Left Opposition Defends the Ideas of the Russian Revolution
Permanent Revolution
Since the early days of Marxism, capitalism has been understood as an international system. This not only means that workers of different countries share the same fundamental interests, but that as a matter of strategy, socialism has to be fought for in every corner of the globe. Capitalism and socialism cannot coexist, as capitalism will be driven to try and regain access to the markets and labor power of a socialist nation in order to extract profit. Foreign capitalist powers will also want to overthrow socialism as a warning to their own working class.
For many early Marxists, the most likely candidates for revolution had been the economically developed European powers of Germany, Britain, and France. These countries were where the capitalist class had wiped out the former feudal ruling class in their own revolutions and where the working class and its organizations had greater numbers and power due to the scale and history of industrial development. The advanced manufacturing techniques in these countries also meant increased production that could provide enough goods for everyone if workers controlled the economy.
The difficulty Russian Marxists faced was how to fight for socialism in an underdeveloped country where productive capacity was limited. The Russian capitalist class hadn’t succeeded in completely overthrowing the feudal system. The working class was comparatively young, small, and weak, the majority of society were peasants, and productivity lagged behind Western Europe.
Some Russian socialists concluded that it wasn’t possible to fight for socialism until the Russian capitalist class swept out the feudal Tsarist system, drove the peasants off the land and into the factories, and modernized the production and distribution of goods. This meant the socialist movement should seek to align itself, at least for a time, with the “progressive” elements of the capitalist class, and help carry out capitalist development. Socialists would then be able to organize the working class into political parties and unions, and run in elections in the comparatively democratic parliamentary system as capitalism and the Russian working class developed. Revolution was for later. This was an attempt to emulate the powerful “Social Democratic” parties which had emerged in other European countries such as Germany that touted large memberships as well as electoral and legislative victories. The Socialist (or Second) International, the leading body of the international socialist movement before 1917, was made up of parties like these. This was the position of the Mensheviks, the faction in Russia that had opposed the Bolsheviks.
Leon Trotsky, however, began to champion the theory of “combined and uneven” development. It explained how capitalist development was not a formulaic process that would be exactly replicated in Russia or other underdeveloped countries. Through colonialism and imperialism, the capitalist powers introduced certain advanced elements of development in other countries, but always with the goal of extracting wealth. As a result, some elements of society would be highly modernized while others remained underdeveloped. The capitalist class of underdeveloped nations remained weak and subservient to foreign, imperialist capitalism, unable to carry out capitalist revolutions like had happened in the imperialist powers. Trotsky, Lenin, and the Bolsheviks drew the conclusion that in order to fight for socialism, the working class would have to take power and both eliminate the feudal Tsarist system and stillborn Russian capitalism. For the workers to take and hold onto power in Russia, there would need to be rapid socialist development at home and socialist revolution abroad.
The Revolutionary Party
By October of 1924, the LO was not only defending the idea of a planned economy as the way forward on the economic front, but also defending the basic internationalist outlook of the October Revolution. In contrast, the RCP leadership was defending the NEP market economy, and had also introduced the idea of “Socialism in One Country”. The theory, driven by the defeat of revolutions in other countries since 1917, stated that it was possible to develop healthy socialism in the Soviet Union without the aid of successful revolutions abroad, so long as the Communist Parties (CPs) of other nations could prevent their own native capitalist classes from acting against the Soviet Union. Once again, revolution was for later, and the primary task of the Communist movement around the world was to, instead, win the most favorable policies for the Soviet Union from their own capitalist class.
When revolutionary periods arose in China and Britain in 1925-1927, the CPs in both countries, acting on orders of the Stalinized Comintern, misled the working class and squandered the opportunities. A key factor in both was the Stalinist leadership of the Comintern making alliances with pro-capitalist forces at the cost of organizing for socialist revolution. In China, it ended with the slaughter of thousands of Communists in Shanghai at the hands of their “allies”.
General Strike in Britain
In Britain, one of the main strongholds of imperialism and capitalism, the British working class had organized a general strike in 1926 which paralyzed the country and even won support from parts of the rank and file of the army. As the situation became more dire for British capitalism, the British leadership of the “pro-Soviet” Anglo-Russian Committee joined with the rest of the British labor leadership and pressured workers to end the strike. The Committee leaders used their credibility as “friends of the Soviet Union” to defeat the left-wing of the labor movement which was arguing for the general strike to continue.
The Committee had been previously set up as a link between the Soviet and British unions with the hope of preventing British capitalist attacks on the Soviet state. Despite the Committee helping to undermine a revolutionary opportunity, Stalin and his allies continued to support the Committee and its British leadership throughout this betrayal and for over a year afterwards, when the Committee later dissolved itself, stating that the international labor movement had no right to “interfere” in British internal affairs. This was a preview to when Stalin later dissolved the Comintern in 1943, giving up even the appearance of supporting world revolution.
Revolution in China
China in the early 1900s was a massive country divided up between foreign imperialism and domestic warlords. Elements of modern industrial capitalism existed in some cities but in the country the agricultural land was still mostly owned by landlords and wealthy peasants, with most peasants owning no land at all. Two new opposing organizations had developed: The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and the Kuomintang party (KMT). The KMT wanted a strong, modern, unified capitalist China that could compete on equal footing with Japanese and European imperialism. With this aim, the KMT organized the National Revolutionary Army and went to war against the warlords. In 1923, the CCP was ordered to stop their own activity in building for a socialist revolution and instead merge forces with the KMT. The Comintern put forward the old Menshevik idea that China needed to undergo capitalist development before socialist revolution could be fought for. The Soviet Union began providing money, military advisors, and training to the KMT.
Despite serving as the left-wing of the KMT, the CCP were still restricted by their membership in the larger KMT party, the leadership of which maintained control over the army and crucial territories. The CCP lost the opportunity to grow their own profile among the working class, instead recruiting workers into the nationalist forces. In KMT-controlled territory, Chinese workers continued to organize unions and peasants seized land from landlords, running up against the new pro-capitalist KMT administrations. These workers and peasants still looked towards the CCP for leadership, but the CCP was not preparing for revolution and these forces went unutilized. When the nationalists decided that the Communists had outlived their usefulness and recognized the danger of the revolutionary situation, the KMT decided to move against the CCP, massacring thousands of Communists and other workers in Shanghai in 1927. This kicked off a war between the KMT and CCP which forced the CCP out of the cities. This severed its ties to the urban working class and resulted in the CCP adopting a military approach to revolutionary struggle, basing it on peasant guerilla warfare rather than the urban uprisings organized democratically through soviets, as had happened in the Russian Revolution.
The United Front
Shortly after the disaster in China, the Stalinist leadership of the Comintern shifted to its “Third Period” tactics. The best example of this was in Germany, where the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) denounced the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) including its millions of rank-and-file members as “Social Fascists.” The KPD was unwilling to make common cause with the still very powerful SPD against the Nazis, allowing the Nazis to come to power in 1933 without a serious fight to stop them.
Immediately after, the Comintern swung back to the mistaken strategy of the “Popular Front” which justified Communist Party alliances with pro-capitalist forces and political parties. This same tactic that led to disaster in Britain and China, doomed the Spanish revolution and many others.
While the Stalinists swung back and forth between alliances with capitalists and overt hostility to other workers’ organizations, the LO and its successors put forward the strategy of the “United Front.” They argued that any alliances between Communists and capitalist forces would cause the Communists to drop their demands and policies, limiting themselves to the lowest common denominator in fear of alienating their political “allies.” Meanwhile, in order to organize against the fascist threat, the LO proposed that the CPs fight alongside other workers’ organizations and parties on points of agreement, appealing especially to the rank-and-file even if the leadership was hostile to the Communists. Communists should not withhold criticisms or hide disagreements with other workers’ organizations but rather win rank-and-file workers over by showing why Communist politics were the most effective in action.
Political Revolution to Win Back Workers’ Democracy
Shortly after the Shanghai massacre, Stalin moved decisively to get rid of the LO and other anti-Stalin elements. In December 1927, the LO was expelled and their ideas were declared incompatible with the RCP. Heroically, the LO continued to organize public protests and meetings in spite of police repression and even attempted to run against the RCP in the 1929 elections. LO members were arrested and exiled to prison labor camps, with Trotsky exiled from the country. The LO continued to organize underground and even in the prisons.
Though the Stalinist regime and subsequent Stalinist states across the globe persecuted supporters of the ideas of the LO, the opposition maintained hope. They advocated for a workers’ political revolution in bureaucratized states, including in the Soviet Union where they argued that the working class had the ability to restore democracy and inspire other workers’ states. They argued that the planned economy of these states could be seized back from the bureaucracy and brought to their full potential. They foresaw that, without political revolution, the various states would come under intense pressure from international capitalism, resulting in their collapse and a wholesale restoration of capitalism – as happened in the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies – or the introduction of state capitalism and markets, as has happened in China, Vietnam, and other countries.
Revolution in the 21st Century
In the last two decades, we have witnessed many revolutionary movements around the world, from the “Arab Spring” in North Africa and the Middle East to the anti-austerity protests in Europe, the “Pink Tide” in Latin America, or mass protests, uprisings, and strikes in Asia. There will be more revolts and revolutions. Due to the collapse of Stalinism and the discrediting of Marxism in the ‘90s and early 2000s, many of these movements have not had a revolutionary socialist organization like the Bolsheviks. More workers and youth worldwide have been drawn to socialist ideas and are once again inspired by the 1917 revolution in Russia. It is crucial that the true history and lessons of the 20th-century revolutions, especially the October Revolution, be studied and understood. The ideas of the Left Opposition and the Russian Revolution have never been more relevant or necessary.
Independent Socialist Group 