THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION Part 8 The Call for Workers" Contro

Scan page 4

TiThe mass upsurge of ebruary 1917 which overirew Tsarism had drawn into ruggle alongside the vantard forces of the working ess, not only backward and organised sections of surgeoisie of the city. : This tremendous braodening of e movement, though absolutely iential for the success of the rolution, had temporarily amped the class conscious minori of the working class.

When the Soviet was formed i majority of its deputies were mbers of the Socialist Revolonaries or Mensheviks, and the Isheviks were in a minority. Though the Soviet alone carried thority with the working masses I was already being forced to acentrate power in ads, the petit-bourgeois majority •Ine Soviet voluntarily agreed to nster power to the bourgeoisie I voted confidence in the Provisal Government.

It was in this way that the ration of 'dual power' was born. In the April Theses Lenin sums the nature of this dual power as lows: • The dual power is evident in : existence of two governments: b'is the main, the real, the actual ferment of the bourgeoisie, the •sional Government' of Lvov | Co.; the other is a supplemenaad parallel government, a "trolling' government in the pe of the Petrograd Soviet of ders' and Soldiers' Deputies, * holds no organs of state per, but directly rests on the dous and indisputable majority the people, on the armed ikers and soldiers"

TEMPORARY These two conflicting regimes id only temporarily exist side side with each other. The boursie could not for long tolerate masses interfering' in their airs - workers vetoing the isions of their management, tiers refusing to obey the orders their officers.

Neither could the fundamental nands of the working class and mantry be realised without abolIng the 'dual power' and vesting power in the soviets.

Balance between the Soviet and Provisional Government was sible only so long as the bourisie did not have the strength to sh the Soviets and while the ses still shared the illusion that Bad, peace and land" , the sands for which they had thrown the Tsar, could and Ild be granted by the Provisional emment. • the last article we saw how at its April Conference mat to re-orient the Bolshevik § in this new situation, to win party majority to the perspecof a struggle for the proletarian torship and to develop a ramme which could break the From Bolsheviks conscious need to i need to hands. faith of the masses in their petit-bourgeois leaders.

To struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat, however, did not mean an immediate call for armed insurrection:

"Our work must be one of criticism, of explaining the mistakes of the petit-bourgeois SR and social democratic parties, of preparing and welding the elements of a consciously proletarian Communist Party, and of curing the proletariat of the general petit-bourgeois intoxication... Only by overcoming this unreasoning trust (in the Provisional Government), and we can and should overcome it only ideologically, by comradely persuasion, by pointing to the lessons of experience, can we set ourselves free from the orgy of revolutionary , phrase-mongering and really stimulate the consciousness both of the proletariat and the masses in general"(Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution, April 1917).

April onwards the at the head of the class workers set cou t to ixplain' to the masse s the ake all power in their LEAD The Soviet leaders would not give a clear direction forward. Trotsky explains how this came about.

"In a revolutionary epoch the oppressed masses turn more easily and quickly to direct action, than they learn to give their desires and demands a formal expression through their own representatives. The more abstract the system of representation, the more it lags behind the rhythm of those events which determine the activity of the masses.....With all the advantages of their organic connection with the factories and regiments, the soviets are nevertheless representative organs, and are therefore not free from the qualifications and distortions of parliamentarism. The contradiction inherent in representation, even of the soviet form, lies in the fact that it is on the one hand necessary for the activity of the masses, but on the other hand easily becomes a conservative obstacle to it.....At any rate on the day after the April quarterinsurrection...the same deputies were sitting in the Soviet as the day before. Arriving once more in their accustomed seats, they voted for the motions of their accustomed leaders" • (History of the Russian Revolution, p. 329) The Petrograd Soviet in session But the April crisis was not entirely without outcome. The masses began to draw lessons from this experience and moved closer to the Bolsheviks. In the local Soviets the factory districts the Bolsheviks very rapidly won a majority. And from April onwards the Bolsheviks stepped up their agitation for workers' control, leading to the call for nationalisation.

Soviet of. Deputies of Bank Employees, etc., to proceed to the adoption of feasible and practicable measures for the merging of all the banks into one single national bank, to be followed by the establishment of the control of the Soviets of Workers' Deputies over the banks ans syndicates and then by their nationalisation". • (Political Parties and Tasks of the Proletariat, Lenin Selected Works. vol VI p. 85-6)

PLOTTED Meanwhile, defeated inits frontal assault on the Soviets, the bourgeoisie plotted a more gradual offensive against the advanced sections of the working class.

A meeting of leading industrialists drew up a plan to institute a creeping lockout where factory after factory would be closed down on one pretext or another.

Central to this was the struggle step by step to break the illusions of the masses in bourgeois democracy and prepare the workers to take power through the development of workers' control. Vital was the fight to renew the leadership of the Soviets and strengthen the self-confidence of the workers they represented.

LOCK-OUT

The revolution would be blamed for the resulting industrial chaos. Trotsky describes how the lockout gave an impetus to the revolutionising of the masses.

"In the course of March and April, 129 small plants involving 9,000 workers were shut down; in May 108 with a like number of workers; in June 125 plants with 38,000 workers; in July 206 plants threw on the streets 48,000 workers. The lockout developed in geometric progression.... The manufacturers would refer to an absence of fuel, raw materials, accesories, credits. The factory committees would interfere in the matter and in many cases indubitably establish the fact of malicious dislocation of industry with the goal of bringing pressure EX From the 1 economic sa committees slogans of the to exercise industry. By had won th Petrograd fac their Confer resolution Lenin:

...lays sp all important is to be don actual "prese profits; 2) to commercial st workers a ma agencies; 4) organisation direction), 1 organisation, Soviets of Wi Peasants' Dep capitalists.....

"Let's get Let us have fr closer to pr the profits ma profits amour or more, to t no? Is comr left intact? workers to b control? Yer Collected Wor Faced witl lapse, the Co conferen "experts". Its state regulati was necessary "Contempi demand a re of the state: raw materi products....Siı it is necess control all cre The Soviet adopted these on the gover them.

Naturally refused, for class which sabotage. on the workers or holding up the government for subsidies......In several cases the sabotage was so obvious that as a result of the exposures of the shop committees the industrialists found themselves compelled to re-open the factories". (Trotsky, ibid., p. 385)

PERIENCE practical experience of botage, the factc were won to t che : Bolsheviks and beg san workers control in June the Bolshev iks e leadership of t the tory committees. At ence they passed vhich according to ecial emphasis on t he thing, that is, on wl lat le 1) to prevent t 'he rvation" of capital • tear off the veil of ecrecy; 3) to give t che jority on the conti rol to ensure that t the (of control a nd being "nationwid le" is directed by t the orkers' ', Soldiers' a nd uties and not by t he : down to busine ss! ewer excuses and ke iep actical matters! A LTe ade from war suppli es, iting to 500 per ce int ›e left intact? Yes or percial secrecy to be Yes or no? Are t he e enabled to exerc ise " or no?" (Len in, ks p. 45, June 1917 h the economic o olmpromisers conveni ied ce of econon nic conclusions were tl hat ion of economic 1 life orary conditic )ns gulative participati ion in the distribution of ials and finish Led nultaneous with t his ary to place unc Jer dit institutions"

Executive Commit! tee : proposals and call led nment to impleme int the government it was their own was organising the Meeting of a soldiers committee Lenin contrasted the extravagant promises of the Soviet ministers in the coalition government with their complete inaction.

"It is safe to say • that every single speech, every single article clearly and explicitly recognises the chief and principal measures of combatting and averting catastrophe and famine. This measure is control, supervision, accounting, regulation by the state, introduction of a proper distribution of Jabour power, etc., and it is just this which is not being done for fear of encroaching on the supremacy of the landowners and capitalists, on their immense fantastic and scandalous profits".

The steps to take, on thé other hand, argued Lenin, were simple:

"It would be enough to arrest fifty to a hundred financial magnates and bigwigs, the chief knights of embezzlement and of banks, the capitalist syndicates and all the contractors 'working' for the government under workers control". (Lenin, Collected Works vol 25 p. 58, June 20th 1917).

step forward from the limited elements of control being exercised by the workers in the factorires could be made without encroaching on private property and challenging the bourgeois Provisional Government.

The Mensheviks tried to scare the working class with the technical complexities of production and the impossibility of running industry without the capitalists.

Lenin replied: ''There is not the slightest technical difficulty in the way of amalgamation of the banks; and if the state power were revolutionary not only in word (ie. if it did not fear to do away with inertia and routine), if it were democratic not only in words (ie, if it acted in the interests of the majority of the people), it would be enough to decree confiscation of property and imprisonment as the penalty for managers, board members, and big shareholders, for the slightest delay or TOT attempting to conceal documents or accounts. It would be enough for example to organise the poorer employees separately and to reward them for detecting fraud and delay on the part of the rich, for nationalisation of the banks to be effected as smoothly and as rapidly as possible". (Vol. 25 p. 321).

The fight for workers' control, which had grown out of the struggle against the lockout and economic sabotage, fulfilled two important functions.

It eroded the power of the capitalists in industry, and at the same time convinced the working class through its own experience of the impossibility of going further without destroying the political power of the capitalists and concentrating all power in the Soviets as instruments of the proletarian dictatorship.

It was on the basis of the experience of control that the masses were prepared to overthrow the Provisional Government.

The October Revolution, however, did not bring to an end the struggle for workers' control. The immediate task facing the Soviet government was to develop from workers' control in the factory to a system of state regulation of the production and distribution of goods.

The banks and the major monopolies were nationalised, but wholesale nationalisations were excluded. First the resistance of the individual employers to state regulation had to be broken and more important, the working class had to gain the technical experience necessary to take over direct management of Workers' control continued to develop, after October, stimulated and backed up by the Soviet power. The nationalisation of industry developed gradually sector by sector as the masses began to gain experience of administration and learned to break the resistance of the technical experts and utilise them under workers. management.

It was only the allied wars of intervention and the civil war which cut short this process and forced the abrupt nationalisation of all industries by decree in June 1918.

Scan page 5

With the upsurge of working • Class militancy in Spain, the explicit class collaboration of the Communist and Socialist parties each seeking alliances with "liberal" sections of the capitalist class - has been one of the main forces leading class conscious workers towards parties which at least claim to be further to the left.

Three of these in particular have grown rapidly in the last few months and have played a significant role in the wave of strikes and other actions since Franco's death.

These are the Labour Party (Partido del Irabajo - Pi), the Workers' Revolutionary Organisation (Organizacion Revolucionaria de los Trabajadores мам ORT) and the Spanish Communist Movement (Movimento Comunista de Espana - MCE).

1i 5.

POLICIA students firms, and workers' participation in the running of all public services (health, transport, social security, etc.).

Such • demands, however, are presented in the movement's press not as elements in a programme of struggle but more as a list of desirable objectives in contrast to the recent economic measures of fascist economics minister Villar Mir.

CONTRAST And the MCE's correct if very incomplete criticisms of the CP are in startling contrast to its own political position until recently as an ally of the Socialist Party in the equally class collaborationist Democratic Platform, which, it argued bizarrely, was significantly to the left of the Junta.

The MCE only withdrew from the Platform just before its union with the Junta.

A much smaller group is the Communist Organisation of Spain (Bandera Roja).

----- pull-quotes -----

arkers, but also the mass of asant soldiers and the petit-

"We must at once prepare the Soviets of Workers' Deputies, the