Theses on the Revolution in Russia
Theses on the Revolution in Russia
Editors note: The following Theses were the result of an extensive discussion between the editors and Fredo Corvo (of leftdis.wordpress.com) and Aníbal (of https://inter-rev.foroactivo.com/). Of the conclusions reached the most decisive is that the period of revolution and counterrevolution in Russia was determined by the theoretical errors of Bolshevism and the external influence of the world situation, and not, as the KAPD and later GIC supposed, the agricultural composition of the Russian economy. This error on the part of the original council communists was an incomplete theorization of imperialism; without bringing the principles which Gorter and Pannekoek established in their analysis of the first world war to bear on the revolution in Russia, early council communists incorrectly identified the peasantry as the bearers of counterrevolution. This error was formally codified in Helmut Wagner's Theses on Bolshevism, which declared "Bolshevism, in principle, tactic and organization, is a movement and method of the bourgeois revolution in a preponderantly peasant country." (§66) In drafting these theses, we (M.S., S.S.) sought to take a step towards completing early council communist's theory of imperialism, and submit them to the consideration of the internationalist milieu.
Preface: The following theses are the preliminary result of a discussion of some comrades, reflecting the agreements they reached. As such, some questions have been clarified, and others have still to be discussed. The theses concentrate on imperialism and isolation as important factors in Russian revolution. They are not about the internal counterrevolution by Bolshevism in power, their mistakes on state capitalism and their crimes against the working class.
1) Imperialism is not the policy choice of any one state, but the historical phase of capitalism in which accumulation depends on the world market and all states are bound to capitalist accumulation. In this phase, no national state (or bourgeois) faction can stand outside of interstate competition and permanent militarization, regardless of their ideological self- presentation.
2) The First World War marked the definitive entry of capitalism into the phase of imperialism. WW1 was the consequence of the completion of the capitalist conquest of the most important regions of the Earth (end of colonial expansion, circa 1900). All national capitals became necessarily pitted against each other because the inherent dynamic of globalized capitalism is based on disputes over markets, territories, strategic military control, sources of raw materials and energy, and the control of labor flows. States signed treaties with other states, and eventually two blocs emerged that confronted each other on a global scale. Each capital, each bourgeois faction determines its place in the national capital and in the choice of one bloc against the other in the quest to gain as much advantage as possible from the redistribution of the earth into capitalist spheres of influence through imperialist war. To this end, each faction of the bourgeoisie sacrifices ‘its’ proletariat to intensified exploitation, trauma, and death. Thus, imperialist wars are not external deviations from capitalist development, but a concentrated form of interstate competition. War does not resolve’ capitalist contradictions; it redistributes power relations, territories, resources, and strategic positions, and temporarily displaces or reconfigures contradictions under specific economic, political, and military conditions. Any theory of revolution or class struggle that neglects or abstracts from this fact is necessarily incomplete [1].
3) The revolutions of 1905 and 1917 cannot be understood primarily within a national framework. They were moments in the crisis of the world imperialist system opened by the completion of the capitalist conquest of the earth about 1900. The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 shocked the colonialist states because it showed that a non-European state could be colonialist, or better: imperialist. The consequences of this war led to the revolution of 1905. October 1917 was a proletarian political revolution precisely because it expressed an international class response to imperialist war, not because of Russia’s level of economic development taken in isolation.
4) The revolutions of 1905 and February 1917 marked the weakening, respectively the collapse of tsarist state forms under pressure from war and capitalist contradictions, followed by efforts to strengthen the imperialist state by some political ‘reforms’. October 1917 marked the proletarian attempt to break that dynamic by transforming imperialist war into class war. The bourgeois/proletarian contradiction remained real, but the outcome was determined by the balance of class forces: where the workers’ councils failed to consolidate exclusive proletarian power, bourgeois and petty-bourgeois forces recompose state power in the form of the Sovnarkom [2].
5) In the imperialist phase, the classical schema of bourgeois revolutions loses its central explanatory value. Once capitalism is globally dominant, no “unfinished bourgeois tasks” open a new historical regime of progressive capitalist development in the classical sense; subsequent state and institutional restructurings reproduce the same imperialist system.
6) Internationalism is a material condition for the proletariat’s victory in the imperialist phase. The outcome of October depended on the extension of revolution beyond national borders; its isolation reflected the international defeat of the working class. However, international isolation should not hide the internal weaknesses of the Russian proletariat as a whole (such as ceding power from the councils to the Sovnarkom) and of its minority, the Bolshevik Party (such as the false theory of “state socialism”).
7) The degeneration of the Russian Revolution and consolidation of state capitalism were rooted in material isolation and international defeat but were also politically mediated through the strategic line of the Third International (especially 1920–1921), which increasingly subordinated international proletarian strategy to the policy of the Russian state.
8) Contemporary inter-imperialist rivalry reproduces, at a higher technical and historical level, the same strategic problems faced by the proletariat in 1914–1918: pressure on the working class to support one bloc against another. Analysis of the class struggle that removes the category of imperialism produces political disorientation.
9) Historical and theoretical work is assessed by its contribution to proletarian clarity and organization under current imperialist conditions. This does not exclude non-immediate research; it places both short-cycle and long-cycle inquiry within a class horizon. The decisive question is not how to classify 1917 within inherited schemas, but whether present theory equips the working class to confront imperialist war through an internationalist class line.
M.S., S.S., F.C., Aníbal
Endnotes
1) “To demonstrate this necessity to the social utopians, it is not at all necessary to argue that capitalism cannot continue to exist without expansion. This expansion, the opening up of other parts of the world as markets, suppliers of raw materials and, to demonstrate this necessity to the social utopians, it is not at all necessary to argue that capitalism cannot continue to exist without expansion. This expansion, the opening up of other parts of the world as markets, suppliers of raw materials and, finally, as reservoirs of labour, has existed in all periods of capitalism and is only now assuming an increasingly gigantic character. Imperialism is the particular form of expansion of the era in which the production of means of production has become the most important and dominant branch of industry. Domination by iron and steel entails a different policy from the former domination by the textile industry. The extraction of iron ore in Morocco requires a large capital enterprise, and this requires the political domination of the French government in Morocco. The export of locomotives, rails and cannons to Turkey requires the construction of railways and, therefore, the political control – immediate or indirect – of German capital in those countries. This is also necessary in order to exclude competitors. This political dominance cannot be obtained or defended in any other way than through the development of power, coercion, armament, military force and the construction of fleets. Why is this imperialism necessary? Not because capitalism would go bankrupt economically, could not continue without imperialism, or because there are feudal-military ruling cliques. But simply because the big capitalists want this imperialism. They want it because it is in their interest, because they make colossal amounts of money from it. And they can do it because they are the most powerful and control all of capitalism. Kautsky once said that imperialism was a question of power. [...] This is correct, but not in the sense that he meant. He said: this is not a question not of necessity, but of power – and by this he meant that the other capitalists, who had no interest in imperialism, could suddenly put an end to it as soon as they turned their power against the imperialists. Theoretically, this was certainly conceivable; but the fact that it did not happen in practice, that on the contrary imperialism continued to gain ground, already showed that there were flaws in the theory. Once again, he contrasted two things that go together. He said: imperialism is not necessary, but a question of power. We say: imperialism is a question of power, and therefore it is necessary. The development of capitalism has strengthened and increased the power of big business, which wants imperialism, and has steadily reduced resistance among the petty bourgeoisie, and even among the workers! That is why imperialism is now supreme, that is, necessary. Because this power and its growth are no accident, nor is the slower and future growth of the power of the proletariat, on which socialism depends. They have their origin in the economic development of modern capitalism.” (Anton Pannekoek, “The Economic Necessity of Imperialism”, 1916)
2) The Council of Peoples Commissars, or Russian Federative Soviet Republic (RSFSR)
ERRATA
Upon review, a comrade pointed out to us a serious flaw in a serious textual error is was found. The first published version of the first theses read: "Imperialism is not a state policy, but the historical phase of capitalism in which accumulation depends on the world market and all states are bound to capitalist accumulation." This gives the impression that we posit that imperialism is not a state policy at all, which directly contradicts what we state elsewhere: that in the imperialist era, imperialism is the policy of every state. At some point in the drafting process, the original phrasing of "imperialism is not the policy choice" of states was changed to "imperialism is not a state policy." The corrected version reads: "Imperialism is not the policy choice of any one state." We apologize for any confusion this might have caused.