(This piece is based on a lecture delivered by Cliff Slaughter in the 1960s)
As we prepare to celebrate the 108th Anniversary of the October Revolution, the world stands on the brink of a situation more explosive than that which led to the eruption of World War I and eventually the Revolution itself. It is necessary to draw the lessons of the October Revolution as our class confronts the breakdown of the world capitalist system in the 21st century.
The Revolution did not fall from the sky. Eight months prior to the October Revolution, Russia had experienced another revolution, the February Revolution. Tsarism, the most despised and brutal autocracy on Earth which had ruled for 300 years, was overthrown by a massive movement of workers, peasants and soldiers. The Russian workers, who had toiled in destitution and misery under the bloody rule of the Tsar, were surrounded by a mass of peasants living in almost medieval conditions. The February Revolution led to the establishment of a "democratic" provisional government and the creation of Workers' Councils (Soviets), and in the conditions then existing in Russia this gave the impression of massive victory and produced a significant wave of euphoria.
This sentiment overcame many Russian socialists, including Bolshevik leaders in Petrograd such as Stalin and Kamanev, who demanded critical support for the new bourgeois government and nearly provoked Lenin to resign from the Party. However, after eight months of “liberal” government lack of action and compromise in the face of an escalating threat of a counterrevolutionary coup, by October, the working population had overthrown the provisional government and the ruling class standing behind it and installed their own socialist workers' government!
In April, Lenin had shocked the crowd that gathered to welcome the famous revolutionist when he exited the "sealed train" upon his return to Russia from exile in Switzerland. After the February Revolution, he didn't celebrate the beginning of a new era; instead, he started a new struggle: "Down with the Provisional government! All Power to the Soviets!" At that time, even many of his comrades believed that the presence of workers councils were a guarantee of a truly "democratic" development. But this situation was not sustainable. Given the power of the working class and its organizations, Lenin saw this "democratic" stage as a situation of "dual power" and a priceless window of opportunity for socialist revolution. The organized power of the working class and its allies could not co-exist with the state of the reactionary Russian capitalists and landlords - the former would either smash this machine or be trampled by the counter-revolution of the latter.
The most important lessons in the history of the global workers' movement can be found in Lenin’s bold attempt to readjust consciousness to the objective situation. The uncompromising revolutionism of Lenin and Bolshevism led workers and peasants through the necessary experiences that proved to the masses that the seizure of state power was necessary.
The global working class came to achieve its greatest victory during the 1917 Russian October Revolution and forever altered the course of world history. It was unequivocally demonstrated that the working class could rule and begin the creation of a new society while abolishing the capitalist class. Under the leadership of the Bolsheviks, the working class had gained and held political power for the first time in history over 1/6 of the world. The course of the Russian Revolution had vindicated the strategic approach initially developed by Leon Trotsky, the theory of permanent revolution, which had foreseen the outbreak of a socialist revolution in backwards Russia as a manifestation of the international working class’ struggles to take power and overturn over-ripe capitalism on a world scale.
When Trotsky joined the Bolsheviks in the middle of 1917, Lenin remarked that "from that time there was no better Bolshevik." Together Lenin and Trotsky oversaw the alliance of workers with the masses of the peasantry and soldiers and ultimately victory in the Russian Civil War. As Lenin later said, “Could any one point out to me another man who could organize an almost model army in a year and even win the respect of military experts? We have such a man!”
The Bolshevik Party was, ultimately, not a party like other parties. It was an organization steeled in the struggle against all opportunism, and steeped in the theoretical traditions of Marxism. Following the start of World War I, the Marxist Internationalists, most significantly the Bolsheviks, fought against the Second International's betrayal of socialist internationalism and support for war. The rise of Bolshevism and the role it played in the turbulent events of 1917 were prepared by and vindicated the centrality of this fight.
The Bolshevik Party demonstrated through its struggle that socialist internationalism is the fundamental element of the real struggle for power. The fate of the Russian Revolution, which resulted from the systemic global contradictions of capitalism, was inseparably connected to the progression of the world socialist revolution.
The Bolshevik Party was different in other ways. The Bolsheviks were a Party based ultimately not on the "labor aristocracy" and the intelligentsia, but a dynamic movement connected to the young and most exploited sections of the working class. As Trotsky noted:
"Bolshevism when underground was always a party of young workers. The Mensheviks relied upon the more respectable skilled upper stratum of the working class, always prided themselves on it, and looked down upon the Bolsheviks. Subsequent events harshly showed them their mistake. At the decisive moment the youth carried with them the more mature stratum and even the old folks."
There was a meaningful and vibrant interplay of viewpoints between the various layers of the movement within and around the Bolsheviks. There were numerous disagreements within the party, befitting an organization that knew how to turn to the revolutionary masses. Lenin frequently found himself on the losing end of such disputes, which occasionally became public despite party discipline.
The essential element in the victory of the Revolution was ultimately the Marxist leadership of the most far-sighted and intransigent Bolsheviks. It is the approach of this leadership that the international working class must deepen our understanding of. However, it is not enough to imitate the Leninist "combat party" as an empty formalism. As Trotsky put it:
"The moral qualities of every party flow, in the last analysis, from the historical interests that it represents. The moral qualities of Bolshevism - self-renunciation, disinterestedness, audacity and contempt for every kind of tinsel and falsehood - the highest qualities of human nature! - flow from revolutionary intransigence in the service of the oppressed. The Stalinist bureaucracy imitates in this domain the words and gestures of Bolshevism." [emphasis added]
Today Marxism and Internationalism must become wedded to the most militant and oppressed sections of the international working class, on the basis shown to us by Lenin and Trotsky: one that combines the utmost revolutionary intransigence against capitalism, against imperialism and against all sorts of nationalist and anti-Marxist revisionism, with the necessary degree of organizational flexibility and connection to the aspirations of the most revolutionary layers of the working class!
Study the lessons of the October Revolution!
Forward to the world socialist revolution!
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