This article is a partisan intervention. Being a communist means taking sides, specifically the side of the international working class and all oppressed peoples. As Marx and Engels wrote, communists “have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.”
In this case, this article will be taking the side of Russia’s workers, peasants, soldiers, women, Jews, and oppressed national minorities. And it will be taking the side of the Bolsheviks. That does not mean it will be blind to or uncritical of the grave errors they made — this would be a betrayal of Bolshevism itself, which demands cold assessment of our successes and failures.
The revolutionary epoch
One hundred and seven years ago, Russian workers and peasants overthrew one of history’s most repressive dictatorships and began to create a radically different society based on direct democratic rule. Trotsky described the revolution as the “forcible entrance of the masses into the realm of rulership over their own destiny.”
After the unsuccessful Russian revolution of 1905, Lenin wrote:
Revolutions are the locomotives of history, said Marx. Revolutions are the festivals of the oppressed and the exploited. At no other time are the masses of the people in a position to come forward so actively as creators of a new social order as at a time of revolution. At such times the people are capable of performing miracles, if judged by the narrow, philistine scale of gradual progress.
Twelve years later, the Russian people performed just such a “miracle” — they took history into their own hands. They put themselves in the driver’s seat.
The Bolsheviks, through the Congress of Soviets, performed many “miracles.” They immediately got Russia out of the barbaric first World War — at great cost, sadly. They smashed the bars of the “prisonhouse of nations,” as the Russian Empire was known, granting the right to self-determination to all subjugated peoples. They stemmed the tide of the anti-semitic pogroms that had been virulent under Tsar Nicholas II.
As the basis for all other changes they made, the Bolsheviks instituted workers’ democracy and began the transition to a socialist mode of production. They placed Russia’s productive forces under the democratic control of the workers and seized land and wealth from the aristocrats. They stripped the vampires of their fangs.
Women were granted full legal equality with men, with the recognition that laws and decrees were insufficient and only the beginning. Patriarchal property laws were abolished. The Bolsheviks began to socialize social-reproductive labor by creating communal nurseries, kitchens, and laundries. Abortion was made legal and available on demand. Mothers were granted paid maternity leave before and after birth. Laws against homosexuality were struck down and same-sex marriage was made legal. Free, universal education brought increased literacy and led to a cultural explosion. The revolution ushered in “a change in the soul, as Lunacharsky might put it, as much as in the factory,” as China Miéville wrote in October: The Story of the Russian Revolution.
Most fundamentally, as the basis for all other changes they made, the Bolsheviks instituted workers’ democracy and began the transition to a socialist mode of production. They placed Russia’s productive forces under the democratic control of the workers and seized land and wealth from the aristocrats. They stripped the vampires of their fangs.
Then, under the pressures of isolation, war, civil war, invasion by 14 countries, a decimated working class, and the nation’s inability to produce enough to meet its needs under these circumstances, the revolution faltered. And far too soon, the revolution and all its miracles were reversed. As Bolshevism was turned on its head, the Bolsheviks who led the revolution were systematically murdered.
Another world is possible
One lesson we can take from 1917 is that another world is possible. Revolution is possible, despite everything we are told. And not just any revolution is possible, as “all previous revolutions have only perfected the state machine,” but a proletarian revolution. That’s what we’re after: workers’ power.
A particular tool is necessary to make such a revolution: a revolutionary party. Despite the distance of a century, the Russian Revolution has much to teach us in this regard. As John Molyneux wrote in Lenin for Today:
The fundamental features of the class struggle from which the necessity of a revolutionary party derives — the hegemony of bourgeois ideology, the uneven development of political consciousness and confidence of the mass of the working class, the centralized power of the capitalist state, and the damaging and treacherous role of reformism—are still in place and will continue to operate for the foreseeable future.
Revolutionary theory
October was the culmination of three centuries of struggle against the Romanov dynasty. Much of the organized resistance took the form of anarcho-populist terrorism — assassinating tsars, killing cops, bombing palaces, and burning manor houses.
Lenin, whose older brother was hanged after a failed attempt on the life of the tsar, rejected individual terrorism. He wasn’t a Marxist yet, but Lenin could see that the ultra-left path was as much of a dead end as the reformist path. Both were fixated on “the powers that be” (the tsar, the Duma, the provisional government) rather than “the powers that will be” (the people themselves). Lenin called terrorists “liberals with bombs” because they had accepted this top-down logic. “Only with the masses, through the masses,” he would later tell Kropotkin, hinting at the very heart of Marxism: “the self-emancipation of the working class,” a distinctly bottom-up perspective.
Struggle itself is a bubbling cauldron that can produce magic — or the next best thing: dramatic shifts in consciousness. Revolutionary struggle opens up new vistas and can wipe away the muck of ages all at once. Decades can happen in weeks.
Great leaps forward in revolutionary theory were made during the decades of revolutionary struggle that preceded October. Struggle itself is a bubbling cauldron that can produce magic — or the next best thing: dramatic shifts in consciousness. Revolutionary struggle opens up new vistas and can wipe away the muck of ages all at once. Decades can happen in weeks.
Compare, for instance, the drab reformism of Karl Kautsky in 1900 to Lenin’s State & Revolution, the sparkling jewel of Marxist theory that emerged in 1917 from a forest hideout in Finland, written months before and interrupted by the October insurrection.
World War I exposed the sorry state of socialist politics around the world and thus the need to advance revolutionary theory. Most socialist parties backed “their own” countries. The German Social Democratic Party (SPD), by far the largest and most organized in the world, voted to support the German war effort. The internationalist socialists were devastated. Karl Liebknecht was distraught. Rosa Luxemburg considered suicide. In The Dilemmas of Lenin: Terrorism, War, Empire, Love, Revolution, Tariq Ali wrote:
Lenin immediately realized the scale of the disaster that had taken place. The German section of the Second International — its largest — had effectively dynamited internationalism.
Lenin responded with the incisive, provocative, and uncompromising slogan: “Turn the Imperialist War into a Civil War!” This intransigence in the face of conciliation became effectively a principle of Bolshevism.
Later, in early 1917, Lenin was so repulsed by European socialists who had “not yet broken away from the spirit of chauvinism and patriotism which has led to the complete crash of European socialism,” he fought to drop “Social Democratic” from the Bolsheviks’ party name. The Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, as it had been known for years, became the Communist Party. At the same time, he also criticized “democracy” as a façade that hid the domination of capital.
Two organizational innovations helped the revolution win popular support. One was created by the Bolsheviks: the revolutionary party. The other was created by the workers: workers’ councils or soviets.
In addition to terrorism and anarchism, Russian revolutionaries grappled with and ultimately rejected economism, which restricted struggle to the workplace and sectional economic concerns; legalism, which prohibited breaking the law; reformism; and trust in the Provisional Government. Until early 1917, most Bolsheviks had yet to reject stageism, the mechanistic view that, before a proletarian socialist revolution is possible, feudalism must be overthrown by a bourgeois-democratic revolution — made by an alliance with the bourgeoisie — and bourgeois democracy must be granted time to mature.
The inability to cast off ruling-class and other incorrect ideas led to crippling doubt and timidity at critical turning points. According to Miéville, many revolutionaries
had a sense that history was not yet theirs… [due to] a strange strain of self-limiting politics. … Here was the hesitancy of those whose socialism taught that a strategic alliance with the bourgeoisie was necessary.
The soviets: A new form of government
Lenin argued against insurrection before popular support was won. Fortunately, two organizational innovations helped the revolution win popular support. One was created by the Bolsheviks: the revolutionary party. The other was created by the workers: workers’ councils or soviets.
Created in 1905 from strike committees fighting for a shorter workday, the soviets represented a new form and a higher level of democracy. Soviets were highly sensitive to the changing moods and demands of the workers, peasants, and soldiers. According to Molyneux:
This shift from [geographical] areas to workplaces and barracks as the main unit of representation constituted a major advance in working class democracy. It meant that the election of a deputy could be the outcome of a collective discussion and debate rather than individualized, atomized voting. It also made exercising the right of recall much easier and more effective… It also makes it possible for the Soviet to reflect shifts in the views of the workers. This is very important in the midst of a revolution when, precisely because the masses are involved in daily struggle, the consciousness of the working class is changing very rapidly. And clearly workplace-based elections reinforce the class character of the democracy of the new state.
The soviets grew into an alternative form of social organization from that of the Provisional Government. This ultimately led to a situation of dual power. Something had to give — one power had to give way to the other.
The run-up to the revolution
Ferocious debates raged within the party, giving truth to the shorthand for democratic-centralism: “freedom of discussion, unity of action.” Lenin, who can be characterized by his “tactical flexibility interwoven with revolutionary intransigence,” was often opposed, and had to fight for his political positions. This was as it should have been — there were no free passes.
Lenin’s April Theses provide a dramatic example. When Lenin returned to revolutionary Petrograd from exile in Switzerland, he was all-business, barely greeting his comrades who had thrown a giant party to welcome him. Addressing the crowd, he demanded that the Bolsheviks take a sharp left turn. They should not only reject any compromise with the Provisional Government, but prepare for its overthrow.
The Bolsheviks built a democratic-centralist revolutionary party to hone their theory and practice to a knife-edge. Then, in the greatest achievement of the unity of Marxist theory and practice, they held that knife to the throat of the Russian ruling class.
“His speech unleashed bedlam,” according to Miéville, particularly among the “Old Bolsheviks” — the party leaders in their 30s. But after two weeks of around-the-clock debates, the Petrograd Bolsheviks voted for his position by 33 to 6 votes. In retrospect, the April Theses saved the revolution.
“All Power to the Soviets” became a Bolshevik slogan after Lenin noticed it on a protest banner in the spring of 1917 and made it central to their agitation. When conditions changed in the following weeks, Lenin retracted the slogan, considering its use a “leftist deviation.” In August, they rolled out the very catchy: “Complete Liquidation of the Dictatorship of the Counterrevolutionary Bourgeoisie!” As October approached and soviet power surged again, “All Power” was revived.
July of 1917 began with the spontaneous armed demonstrations known as the “July Days.” Later that month, when the Provisional Government was on the ropes again, workers surrounded the soviets’ executive committee and demanded, in the words of one sailor, “Take power, you son of a bitch, when it is handed to you!”
In August, fearing further reaction after the vicious state repression of the July Days, the Bolsheviks formed a tenuous coalition with the more conservative Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries. Lenin had claimed, quite incorrectly, that “not a single honest Bolshevik who had not taken leave of his senses completely would agree to any bloc” with these forces, “even in the event that a counter-revolutionary attack appeared genuine.” Miéville called this alliance a “grudging counter-counter-revolutionary collaboration.”
In September, Lenin assessed the balance of forces and finally advocated for the seizure of power. The Bolsheviks censored him and burned all but one copy of his letters criticizing them for their reluctance. Lenin threatened to quit the Central Committee to give himself the “freedom to campaign among the rank and file.” At an emergency meeting, the Bolsheviks finally voted for insurrection, with two opposing: Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev. Kamenev went so far as to publish vague hints about the planned insurrection — a devastating betrayal, though it ended up being inconsequential.
Because it was backed by the power of the Russian workers, peasants, and soldiers, the actual seizure of power in October was shockingly lacking in violence. As Neil Faulkner wrote in A People’s History of the Russian Revolution:
The very success of the October Insurrection hides its true character. The revolution is so ripe — the social crisis so deep, the authority of the government so hollowed out, the masses so willing to support decisive action — that, in the event, a few tens of thousands were sufficient to execute the popular will.
The importance of revolutionary organization
For Marxists, theory and practice have little value apart from each other. Practice without theory is a car with no steering wheel. Theory without practice is just the steering wheel.
The Bolsheviks built a democratic-centralist revolutionary party to hone their theory and practice to a knife-edge. Then, in the greatest achievement of the unity of Marxist theory and practice, they held that knife to the throat of the Russian ruling class.
Working-class militants who have come to the conclusion that the whole system must go can be more effective if we work together in a single organization that can generalize from past and present struggles, develop and project our politics, and coordinate our efforts into a national movement.
The Bolshevik party was built on an uncompromisingly revolutionary Marxism — it had no reformist wing. In Russia Twenty Years After, anarchist-turned-Bolshevik Victor Serge wrote, “The Bolshevik Party, known for the firmness of their discipline, owed it more to the unity of its doctrine than to constraint.” Previously, in Year One of the Russian Revolution, Serge wrote:
The October Revolution offers us an almost perfect model of the proletarian party. Relatively few as they may be, its militants live with the masses and among them. Long and testing years — a revolution, then illegality, exile, prison, and endless ideological battles — have given it excellent activists and real leaders, whose parallel thinking was strengthened in collective action. Personal initiative and the panache of strong personalities were balanced by intelligent centralization, voluntary discipline, and respect for recognized mentors. Despite the efficiency of its organizational apparatus, the party suffered not the slightest bureaucratic deformation. No fetishism of organizational forms can be observed in it; it is free of decadent and even of dubious tradition; its dominant tradition is that of the war against opportunism — it is revolutionary down to the marrow of its bones.
Today, many revolutionary socialists grapple with the question of whether to join big-tent socialist organizations with a heterogeneous mix of reformist and revolutionary politics. Firebrand shares the Bolshevik view of socialist organization.
Working-class militants who have come to the conclusion that the whole system must go can be more effective if we work together in a single organization that can generalize from past and present struggles, develop and project our politics, and coordinate our efforts into a national movement.
We want every movement against exploitation and oppression to take up revolutionary politics, strategy, and tactics. We want to win decisive elements in decisive fights against capitalists, their state, and their police to revolutionary politics. We want the movement to advance toward revolution and learn and grow in the process.
The contradiction between the ruling ideas of society and capitalism’s tendency to make workers fight back creates mixed and uneven consciousness. Uniting the most advanced workers facilitates the process whereby those who hold a mix of progressive and regressive ideas can be convinced to become unequivocal champions of the exploited and oppressed, and the most convinced supporters of a socialist alternative. This is the essential purpose of vanguardism — it’s no great conspiracy.
Creating the preconditions
We must resist the temptation to consider ourselves, at this point, to be the vanguard, the revolutionary party, or even the embryo of such a party. That orientation tends to result in isolation, irrelevance, and ideological and organizational rigidity, rather than an openness to developing Marxism in order to better understand and escape our predicament. Instead, we hope to help create the preconditions for such a party to exist in the future.
Based on our own revolutionary theory, which is influenced by the Russian Revolution, one way we in Firebrand are working to create the preconditions of a revolutionary party is through the development of cadre, which Paul Le Blanc aptly defines as:
experienced activists, educated in political theory, analytically oriented, with practical organizational skills, who are able to attract and train new members of the revolutionary organization, and also to contribute to expanding effort and broader movements for social change. This means knowing something of the history of the class struggle and broad liberation struggles, knowing the economic and political realities of society, knowing how to size up the situation, knowing how to interact with others to help communicate that knowledge to them, knowing how to organize meetings and political actions.
The Bolsheviks were a fighting organization, not an idle book club. We too must be involved in popular struggles, learning from them and helping to advance them, and sharing and evolving Marxist theory in the process. We must understand and harness the way in which struggles for reforms can spill over into the struggle for revolution. That means patiently explaining and patiently listening, changing and being changed. It means working with others on the basis of narrow political agreement.
The Bolsheviks were a fighting organization, not an idle book club. We too must be involved in popular struggles, learning from them and helping to advance them, and sharing and evolving Marxist theory in the process.
We need a revolutionary culture that extends across organizations and encourages struggle, study, deep engagement with the questions of our time, and comradely and principled debate, rather than sectarian moralizing or opportunistic faux agreement.
If we disagree today, we should not write each other off as being irretrievable. If we can communicate, articulate our politics, and stay oriented on the enemy, we may agree tomorrow — or agree enough to work together, at least. May the best politics emerge and prove themselves to be so before the eyes of the working class and the oppressed. The road ahead of us is long and winding. The ground beneath our feet is constantly shifting, opening up new possibilities and closing off others. Just as great victories and terrible losses lay ahead of us, so too do different groupings and opportunities to advance struggle.
The counterrevolution
To return to 1917, though we may assess it differently, we all know how the story ends. Socialism is not possible under conditions of economic scarcity. It is not possible without a strong, engaged working class holding the reins. And socialism is not possible in one country. The Russian Revolution became a holding action that held out as long as it could for support that never came, particularly from the unrealized German Revolution.
That was the promise of 1917 — that society could be remade without a tiny minority living off of and ruling over the vast majority, that it could be remade to serve human need. In 2024, that promise remains elusive and alluring.
Weeks after the Russian Revolution, Trotsky wrote:
We rest all our hope on the possibility that our revolution will unleash the European revolution. If the revolting people of Europe do not crush imperialism, then we shall be crushed — that is indubitable. Either the Russian Revolution will raise the whirlwind of struggle in the West, or the capitalists of all countries will crush our revolution.
And this is exactly what happened. Fourteen countries attacked Russia from without and within and supported the counterrevolutionaries in the Civil War that immediately broke out. Decimated by war and famine, the class that made the revolution, the class that the survival of the revolution was dependent on, was cut from beneath it. An unchecked bureaucracy developed in its absence. As Serge wrote in 1937:
It is often said that ‘the germ of all Stalinism was in Bolshevism at its beginning.’ Well, I have no objection. Only, Bolshevism also contained many other germs, a mass of other germs, and those who lived through the enthusiasm of the first years of the first victorious socialist revolution ought not to forget it. To judge the living man by the death germs which the autopsy reveals in the corpse — and which he may have carried in him since his birth — is that very sensible?
This doesn’t mean the Bolsheviks bear zero responsibility for the Stalinist counterrevolution — we can and should pick apart their decisions. We can debate the exact date of when and why things started to go south with the Bolsheviks, but in the face of such crises, they “established a one-party dictatorship, and tended to project its authoritarian and ruthless policies as being more than simply extreme emergency measures,” as Paul Le Blanc noted in Unfinished Leninism: The Rise and Return of a Revolutionary Doctrine.
Conclusion
In his History of the Russian Revolution, Trotsky quotes a former Tsarist general as saying,
Who would believe that the janitor or watchman of the court building would suddenly become Chief Justice of the Court of Appeals? Or the hospital orderly manager of the hospital; the barber a big functionary; yesterday’s ensign the commander-in-chief; yesterday’s lackey or common labourer burgomaster [mayor]; yesterday’s train oiler chief of division or station superintendent; yesterday’s locksmith head of the factory?
Well, the Bolsheviks believed it, I believe it, and you should too! Every cook can govern. That was the promise of 1917 — that society could be remade without a tiny minority living off of and ruling over the vast majority, that it could be remade to serve human need. In 2024, that promise remains elusive and alluring.
We study the Russian Revolution because it represents the pinnacle of working-class self-organization and self-emancipation. Workers took power. This core change must be made in order to end exploitation and oppression — even in order to achieve the stated goals of liberal democracy. Without workers’ power, any reforms we might achieve will be partial and under constant threat of reversal. We did it once and we can do it again. And we must.
