Part One: the Beginnings of Bolshevism

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Russia, October 1917, gave birth to the first workers state -andmark in the history of the international working class. Yet ¡ successful storming of the autocratic state of Tzarism under • leadership of the Bolshevik Party, germinated in the 1890s th the formation of Russian Social Democracy. fithout revolutionary! The working class, though itself ing no part of the great produc | forces in capitalist society prois through its labour the whole the wealth of society. It is an ressed and exploited class, ch can only overcome these ditions in the struggle to ithrow capitalist state power institute socialism.

Let despite this revolutionary of the working class, Its erial oppression prevents kers spontaneously understan5 the political tasks they tace. y need a political leadership ipped with the scientific hod of Marxism which enables to analyse the contradictory rement of the classes in society base programme on that lysis. Trotsky writes: *Were the proletariat as a whole able of grasping its historical de Unions)

TASK Lenin, too, made it clear that i task of a revolutionary party 15 introduce the science of Marxism o the workers movement: *We have said there could not e been Social Democratic (ie. plutionary) consciousness among ! workers. It would have to be rught to them from without. The tory of all countries INB, not t Russia] shows that the working is, exclusively by its own effort, ible to develop only trade union isciousness ie., the conviction it it is necessary to combine in ions, firth the employers, and ive to compel the government to 5 eat 1 Tabe he la. 01 -32)

The early debates in Russian cial Democracy were therefore Eisive in determining the Icome of the revolution. Without • ruthless struggle led by Lenin to lend the scientific principles of tuxism, the Russian proletariat ald: not have acquired the cipline or political consciousness seize state power. ,The Russian working class lieved Marxism, forged a olutionary party, only through • experiences of half a century of trial, disappointment, nfice, heroism, party asputes • splits in order to arm the rking class for the tasks history red before it. In our fight to Id revolutionary " leadership lay, we must draw on the hness of those struggles and periences, understanding that the dy circles of intellectuals and the tates they waged, though they ten appear bereft of political mificance, contained the seeds of 17.

PRESSURE

! Without the continuous coretical struggles against the rious forms of opportunism hich evolved in response to the intinued pressure of bourgeois bology on the world movement. cre would have been no molutionary movement in Russia. The history of the revolution #st start therefore with the 11. - heory there can be no revolutionary ol. 5, p. 369.

NARODNIK Although the Bolshevik Party did not arise until the 1903 split in Social Democracy, the foundations upon which it was built were laid in the preceeding years. It was from the late 1870s onwards that the working class emerged as significant force, and the first circles attempting to organise workers were formed; but it was to the Narodnik organisations that the first politically aroused workers turned.

The Narodniks talked in terms of "the people" (in effect the peasantry who constituted 80% of the population) not in terms of classes. They dismissed the leading role of the working class in the coming revolution.

They argued that Russia could bypass the stage of capitalist development - factory production, accumulation of capital, and the growth of the working class. Instead, the Narodniks pointed to the peasant commune as the future germ of a socialist system.

FIGHTERS

The earlier generation of Narodniks were courageous fighters against Tzarist repression. But with the rapid emergence of the working class they looked increasingly to the liberal brougeoisie who talked of "democracy' but fought to contain the proletariat, and adopted openly reactionary views. Writers like Krilenko glorified the "economic independence" of the peasantry - in reality exalting an economic system in which the peasantry were tied to the large landowners.

As early in 1889, when no workers party yet existed in Russia, Plekhanov at the First Congress of the Second (Social Democratic) International, stated that: "The Russian Revolution will either triumph as a revolution of the working class or it will not triumph at all." The cornerstone of Bolshevism which assigned to the working class the leading role in the democratic and socialist revolutions was thus first articulated by Plekhanov.

CIRCLES

The embryonic Russian Marxist movement took the form of the circle or discussion group type of organisation. Steps in the direction of an All-Russian party of the working class went apace with the founding of the 'North Russian Workers League' in 1877-78.

Plekhanov, the father of Russian Marxism, also established with Axelrod the 'Emancipation of Labour Group' in 1883. This was a decisive break with the Narodniks because it recognised the need to build a party based on the working class. It also produced, in 1885, the first draft programme of the Social Democratic Party.

The first attempts to organise workers' circles were tentative and not always successful.. Many collapsed and were restarted later.

But these initial efforts to organise the Russian proletariat were given impetus by the strike movement in the mid-1890s which involved half a million workers.

It wann durina this notind that Top left: Vera Zasulich: Top right: Lenin Leon Deutsch (left) with Paul Axelrod. was formed in 1895, and involved several members who were to play a leading part in the future party, including Lenin.

The result of these efforts was the first Party Congress of Russian Social Democracy in 1898. Eight representatives only were present. Before the work of this congress was disrupted by a police raid, it did manage to issue a manifesto written by Struve.

LEGAL MARXISM Later Struve was to become an arch opponent of the Russian revolution but during this period he, and other future representatives of the liberal bourgeoisie, were prepared to accept Marxism because it was able to demonstPlekhanov rate, in opposition to the Narodniks, that Russia could not avoid the capitalist path of development.

But Struve and the other 'legal Marxists', as they came to be known, recognising the future danger of their own class position, flinched from the tack of nroaniafor its leading role in the coming It was no coincidence that some of the 'legal Marxists' applauded individual acts of terrorism. Whereas terrorism assigns to the individual the prime agency of social change, Marxism looks to the working class, raised to its politically independent role to lead the masses.

Plekhanov and Lenin dia not reject individual terrorism on moral grounds but on the grounds of revolutionary expediency. For the terrorists, political activity is confined to an individual or smal groups and their organisation is inevitably conspiratorial.

The heroic act of self-sacrifice of such individuals is supposed to "stimulate' the masses into activity but in fact reinforces passivity and reliance on self-appointed 'heroes'. • It underestimates the raising of the political consciousness of the masses by means of a revolutionary programme; and, in place of the programme, it substitutes the bomb.

Whilst making these criticisms of individual terrorism, the revolutionary Marxists did not reject the use of mass terrorism in the form of the armed uprising, nor in the defence of the revolution against the armed counter-revolution.

Like the legal Marxists and the 'Economists'. the advocates of terrorism denied the leading role of the working class. Politics was the privilege of particular individuals or of the liberal bourgeoisie; the working class were to be restricted to their role - that of waging the economic struggle.

ECONOMISM

Which I Tenin changeover from localised circles and discussion group activity - to agitation and mass intervention of Social Democrats in the class The developments require a centralised political party. The Economists advocated a division of labour: that politics should be the concern of the liberal bourgeoisie, and that workers should interest themselves in nothing more than narrow trade union and wages struggles.

They saw no need therefore for a revolutionary party based on the working class. Their aim was rather to drive the workers into the kennel of the wages struggle.

One of the earliest tasks of the Russian Social Democracy was the winning of workers misled by these people who reflected the influence of the bourgeoisie in the labour movement.

Lenin took up the struggle against the 'Economists' in two ways: the call for the All-Russian Party, and the political news Lenin fought for an all-Russian Party of dedicated revolutionaries when the movement was stil dominated by propaganda circles, a practice Lenin christened 'primitiveness Zinoviev summarised Lenin's argument from What is to be Done:

"To limit yourself now, in this day, to discussion groups means to engage in primitive handicrafts and hair splitting when we need revolutionary factory production. We need to create an All-Russian Party with a division of labour in it where everyone knows what he must do and what his obligations are. But Lenin's proposed 'division of labour' was very different from that of the Economists. It centred on a firmly-structured party funetioning along the lines of democratic centralism.

Decisions would be aimed at and party leadership elected after full democratic discussion within the movement. But once these decisions had been made, the strictest centralised discipline was to be binding on all members. Only in this movement steel itself against hostile pressures and act decisively at crucial points.

NEW At that time Lenin's view of a centralised party in order to combat the spontaneous movement of the working class and raise its political consciousness was new.

Lenin's clear-sighted all-Russian perspective contrasted with the blurred localised vision of the old discussion group mentality.

The decision to publish Iskra in 1900, under the editorship of Plekhanov, Lenin, Martov, Axelrod, Potresov and Vera Lasulich, was precisely for the purposes of campaigning for a centralised all-Russian revolutionary party of the working class.

Iskra was seen therefore as a collective , organiser, breaking down localism and focussing the spontaneous struggles of the working class into a struggle for state power.

A continuous polemic was waged in the columns of Iskra against economism which in separating politics from workers' trade union struggles bowed to the spontaneity of workers and sought to contain them within the grooves of trade unionism. In What is to be Done? published by Iskra in 1902 Lenin argued:

"There is much talk of spontaneity. But the spontaneous development of the working class movement leads to the subordination to bourgeois

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INDIVIDUAL TERRORISM

THE PARTY PRESS: ISKRA