History does not move in a straight line. I do not argue, this dictum has become a cliché. However, this is the case. If this were not so, we would still not argue about the significance of the October Revolution in the year of its centenary, and more than a quarter of a century after its death.
Neither the Bolsheviks nor any other party played a direct role in the February Revolution, which overthrew the Tsar, since the leaders of these parties were either in exile abroad, in Siberia, or in prison. However, the tireless work of the activists laid the foundation. The Bolsheviks were then in the minority even among the active workers in the large industrial centers of Russia, but by the end of the year their candidates systematically won the majority in all organizations of the working class - factory committees, trade unions and councils. The slogan “peace, bread, land” found a powerful response.
The time has come for the working class to take power. Should he have done it? How can a backward Russia with a huge rural population, for the most part illiterate, make the leap to socialist revolution? The answer was in the West - the Bolsheviks were convinced that socialist revolutions would soon overwhelm Europe, after which the advanced industrial countries would lend a generous helping hand. The October Revolution bet on the European revolution, especially in Germany.
We cannot replay the past and all the reasoning about what could have been, it is usually fruitless exercises. History is what it is. It would be easy and oversimplified to view the European revolution as a romantic dream, as many historians would like us to believe. Germany came close to a successful revolution, and probably would have made it if she had the best leadership, and if it had not been for the betrayal of the Social Democrats, who suppressed their own supporters and entered an alliance with the completely undemocratic military elite in Germany. This alone could radically change the 20th century. And it would give impetus to the uprisings that broke out across the continent.
Recall the words of British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, said in 1919, when he spoke of his concerns to Georges Clemenceau, Prime Minister of France:
“All Europe is saturated with the spirit of revolution. There is not only a deep sense of discontent, but anger and resentment among the workers over pre-war conditions. The entire existing order, in its political, social and economic aspects, is being questioned by the masses of the population from one end of Europe to the other."
Which country will be the first?
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Russia was the weakest link in European capitalism, and the tension of the First World War added to the conditions for revolution. But not to its inevitability. Here the analogy with the steam engine, expressed by Leon Trotsky, comes to life:
“Without a governing organization, the energy of the masses would dissipate like steam not enclosed in a cylinder with a piston. But it is not the cylinder or the piston that moves, but steam."
The October Revolution would not have occurred if it had not been for a huge amount of accumulated "social steam", without a mass of people who have set in motion, striving for the goal. The revolution faced incredible problems, believing that it could withstand the counter-offensive of the capitalist world, determined to destroy it. The revolution became a beacon for millions of people around the world, when strikes and demonstrations inspired by the Russian example swept across Europe and North America. Dockers and railroad workers in Britain, France, Italy, and the United States showed solidarity by refusing to load ships designed to support the counter-revolutionary white armies that killed without mercy. Armies, with the support of 14 interventionist countries, seeking to drown the revolution in blood.
The revolution survived. But the revolutionaries inherited a country in ruins, embargoed, which led to famine and epidemics. The industrial centers, having lost the working class, the base of the new government, the country was surrounded by hostile capitalist governments. There was one thing that the Bolshevik leaders agreed on: revolutionary Russia cannot survive without revolutions, at least in some European countries, both to provide aid and to create a socialist bloc large enough to survive. The October Revolution will fail if the European Revolution does not take place.
However, they found themselves in this situation. What to do? Without a strategic plan of action, with destroyed industry, depopulated cities and infrastructure, systematically destroyed by all armies hostile to the revolution - which survived seven years of revolution and Civil War - the Bolsheviks had no other option but to rely on their own resources available in Russia. These resources included workers and peasants. For this was the capital needed to rebuild the country and then to begin building the infrastructure that put Russia on the path to real socialism, and not to a distant goal lying somewhere in the future.
Discussions about this, centered on the pace and what can be sacrificed for the development of the industry, raged hotly throughout the 1920s. The isolation of Russia, the dispersal of the working class, the inability of the new working class, recruited from the peasantry, to defend its interests, and the centralization necessary to survive in a hostile environment - all this was compounded by increasingly protracted battles for political power between increasingly narrowing groupings, which stemmed from isolation, in which the country was located - which ended with the dictatorship of Stalin.
Privatization ends democratic control
But Stalin died, and the terror he used to hold on to power went away with him. And the political superstructure remained - one party controlling the economy, political and cultural life, an overly centralized economic system that steadily became more and more serious fetters for development. The Soviet system lagged behind large-scale reforms, including giving workers, on whose behalf the party rules, the right to vote in the management of factories (and the country as a whole). Once the Soviet Union collapsed and state-owned enterprises were transferred to private hands for a fraction of the value of these enterprises, the chance to build real democracy disappeared.
Real democracy? Yes. For without economic democracy there can be no political democracy. The capitalist world in which we live now bears witness to this. What if the people of the Soviet Union rallied for their own purpose? What if the factories of this huge country became democratized - some combination of cooperatives and state ownership under democratic control? This could have happened because the economy was already in the hands of the state. This could have happened because the overwhelming majority of Soviet people wanted just that. Not capitalism.
They were unable to intervene during perestroika. They did not understand what awaited them, as soon as the Soviet Union was dissolved, and Boris Yeltsin could impose shock therapy, which would plunge tens of millions into poverty and eventually lead to a 45% drop in GDP - which is much more than in the United States during the time of the Great Depression.
A revolution that begins with three words - peace, bread, land - and fights to implement this program against the imposed "shock therapy" - an expression for the violent privatization and destruction of social safety nets, coined by the godfather of neoliberalism, Milton Friedman, when he was the mentor of the dictator Chile Augusto Pinochet. Millions of people breathed life into this revolution; three people (the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus) put an end to it during a closed meeting. And in the background loomed the financial weapon of the capitalist powers, ready to use it.
The Soviet model cannot be restored. This does not mean that we have nothing to learn from her. One important lesson from revolutions that promise socialism (such as the October Revolution) and revolutions that promise a better life by building a mixed economy (such as the Sandinista revolution) is that a democratic economy, and therefore political democracy, must rely on popular control of the economy - or, to use the old-fashioned term, the means of production.
Leaving the bulk of the economy in the hands of capitalists is giving them the power to destroy the economy, as Nicaragua became clear in the 1980s and as Venezuela is now learning. The transfer of all enterprises into the hands of a centralized state and its bureaucracy reproduces alienation from those whose labor makes them work. It also leads to distortions and inefficiencies, as no small group of people, no matter how dedicated they are, can have all the knowledge necessary to make a wide range of decisions to keep the economy running smoothly.
The world of 2017 is not what it was in 1917: firstly, the looming environmental and global warming crisis today gives us an additional impetus to get out of the capitalist system. We need to produce and consume less, not more, unlike a century ago. We need everyone's participation, not bureaucracy. Planning from the bottom while maintaining flexibility, rather than rigid planning imposed from above. But we also need to learn from the many achievements of the revolutions of the 20th century - the ideals of full employment, universal access to culture, affordable housing and health care as human rights, decent pensions, and that it is offensive to exploit and restrain the development of other human beings for personal gain.
Moving forward in human history is not a gift from gods from above, or a gift from benevolent rulers, governments, organizations or markets - it is a product of the collective struggle of people on a sinful earth. If the revolution didn't work out or succeed, it simply means it's time to try again and do it better next time.
Pete Dolak