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Extract from Max Shachtman, Under the Banner of Marxism, Bulletin of the Workers Party, Vol. IV No. 1 (Part II), 14 January 1949, pp. 83–92.
An abridged version is included in the Workers’ Liberty book The Fate of the Russian Revolution: Lost Texts of Critical Marxism, Vol. 1.
Additional transcription by Einde O’Callaghan (indicated by square brackets).
The complete 120-page document is Shachtman’s response to a document written by his long-time collaborator, Ernest Erber, to explain his decision to resign from the Workers Party.
Marked up by A. Forse & Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The civil war that followed is clearly the fault of the Bolsheviks. Of that, there is no doubt in Erber’s mind. It’s notoriously true, too! If the Bolsheviks had not taken power, there would have been no need for a civil war to crush them! Even before the Bolsheviks took power, as a matter of fact, if the Soviets (we mean, of course, the teeming, democratic Soviets) had not existed at all, there might not even have been a Kornilovist-monarchist plot to drown them in a bloodbath. Indeed, we may even state it more generally: If workers were not so insistent and militant in trying to impose their modest demands on obstinate and reactionary employers, the latter would find no need of subsidizing thugs and fascists to beat and shoot workers. You can hear that philosophy expounded in any high school (third term), from a thousand pulpits and ten thousand newspaper pages: If labor gets unreasonable in its demands and doesn’t know its proper place, well then, we don’t like it, you know, but if that happens, Fascism just is inevitable. Yessirree! It’s notoriously true. It is also true that if you stop breathing altogether, not even your worst enemy will dream of strangling you.
Oh, wait a minute! Erber is not defending the bourgeoisie and the reaction! He’s really radical, and he doesn’t care much about what is done to the bourgeoisie. What upsets him is that the Bolsheviks took power and dispersed the Assembly in opposition to the workers. Do you see now? Listen to this little sneer, lifted right out of the literature of the professional anti-Bolshevik (and the professional anti-unionist, we might add):
“As for the masses who constituted the Soviets, Lenin held that they would be won to the idea in time. It was for the vanguard to act and explain later. Those of the workers who refused to accept this concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat had to be handled firmly, for their own good”.
Our little animal is a vicious one, isn’t he? Lenin was for imposing his dictatorship upon the masses and explaining to them later. And if they didn’t go along, why, shoot the rabble down – for their own good! He turned out pretty bad, this Lenin. Fights for months with democratic slogans; fools everybody, including the democratic Soviets which brought him to power on the crest of their upsurge and without a coup d’etat on his part, and then, a very few weeks later, the mask is off! He acts for their own good; he shoots them for their own good. There’s an authentic portrait of Lenin for you, an unretouched photograph of him!
What is the proof for this insolent charge? One proof is the famous “demonstration” of January 18, 1918, organized by the reactionary City Duma of Petrograd against the Soviet Power and for the Constituent Assembly. The “demonstration” was dispersed by Red Guards. To show the magnitude of this Bolshevik atrocity, Erber quotes an article by Maxim Gorky, “whose honesty as a reporter of the events can be accepted.” We hear Gorky burning with indignation at the charge that this was a bourgeois demonstration and denouncing the Bolsheviks for encouraging “the soldiers and Red Guards [to] snatch the revolutionary banners from the hands of the workers.”
Gorky’s honesty, guaranteed by Erber personally, makes him a good reporter of events! Gorky was, to be sure, an honest man and a socialist. But on revolutionary problems, he had no more qualification than the next man, except perhaps that he was warmly sentimental, almost always confused in the political conflicts of the Marxian movement, and a bitter enemy of the Bolshevik Revolution for a long time, above all, at the time it occurred. If Erber picks him out as his reporter of events, it is a clear case of like calling unto like. Erber is attracted by Gorky’s impressionism and by his confusion, which he likes to think is no greater than his own muddleheadedness.
You read Erber’s lurid quotation from Gorky, and your mind’s eye conjures up the image of Scheidemann, Noske and Ebert mowing down the German workers with machine guns. Erber has his countries, parties and men mixed up a little. Who was involved in this huge demonstration which, if you follow Erber, you might think was terminated with workers dead and dying by the thousands? Three days before Gorky’s anguished article, his own paper, Novaia Zhizn, reported the demonstration as follows: “About 11.30 some two hundred men bearing a flag with the words, ‘All Power to the Constituent Assembly,’ came across the Liteiny Bridge.” There is the imposing number of the Petrograd population that followed the clarion call of the bourgeoisie, the Mensheviks and the SRs to proclaim the sovereign rights of the Constituent Assembly which they had so successfully sabotaged for six months. One hundred plus one hundred, making a grand total of two hundred, all good men and true!
The other proof is this:
“Gorky is quite correct in asking what the bourgeoisie had to cheer about in the convocation of a Constituent Assembly in which the bourgeois party, the Kadets, held only fifteen seats out of 520, and in which the extreme right Social Revolutionaries, who had been identified with Kerensky, were thoroughly discredited”.
We will even try to explain to this innocent what the bourgeoisie had to cheer about. A Constituent Assembly with only 15 Kadets out of 520 seats and a majority for the SRs, even right-wing SRs, would give the bourgeoisie very little to cheer about, if this Constituent were proclaiming its sovereignty against the Czarist Duma. The same Constituent, however, in proclaiming its sovereignty against the revolutionary power of the democratic Soviets of the workers and peasants, would give the bourgeoisie, inside Russia and all over the world, plenty to cheer about. And it did cheer about it!! How explain that mystery? And how explain a few other mysteries?
Between them, the right-wing SRs and the Mensheviks had the majority of the seats in the Constituent. Since it was an ever-so-democratic Constituent, this must have meant that the two parties were supported by the majority of the population. The Constituent is dispersed by the Bolsheviks, who do not have the masses but who act for them and explain later, and who shoot them down for their own good. So far, so good. The outraged SRs and Mensheviks return to the outraged masses, with the declaration, as one of them put it, that
“The Constituent Assembly alone is capable of uniting all parts of Russia to put an end to the civil war which is speeding up the economic ruin of the country, and to solve all essential questions raised by the revolution.”
The masses want democracy and the solution of all these essential questions. The Mensheviks and SRs promise to solve them. In fact, Erber tells us, they are now really for peace and for land to the peasants. What is more, the roles are reversed on the matter of democracy. The Bolsheviks are for the despotic dictatorship over the masses and “democratic slogans became a weapon of their socialist opponents.”
We are in 1918. The Bolshevik power is established in only a very tiny part of Russia and consolidated in none. The anti-Bolsheviks have political control in a multitude of localities – the great majority – and they even have considerable armed forces at their disposal. The Bolsheviks do not have what Stalin, for example, has today: a huge, tightly-knit political machine, hordes of privileged bureaucrats, a tremendous army, an all-pervading and terrifying GPU, and the like. They cannot simply dispose of their opponents by force or terror, as Stalin does. It is still a fair and square political fight, with the big odds still apparently in favor of the “socialist opponents” who now have democratic slogans as their weapons and the democratic Constituent Assembly, in the flesh, as their banner.
The unexplained mystery, hidden to Erber behind seven of his own fogs, is this: How account for the fact that the “socialist opponents” get nowhere with their “democratic slogans” and their Constituent Assembly? Aren’t they the parties of the workers and peasants, as proved by the majority they registered at the opening of the Constituent? Aren’t they now armed to the toes with “democratic slogans” which, only a day ago, were so vastly popular with the masses that the cunning Bolsheviks won power with their aid? Thorny questions, aren’t they? But Erber is not going to get any thorns in his fingers if he can help it. Solution? He leaves the questions strictly alone.
That’s a solution for him, but it does not answer the questions. The answer gives us the second key to the mystification: The bourgeoisie had everything to cheer about in the convocation of the Constituent Assembly – everything. It could not expect to restore its power in its own name in the Russia of 1917–1918. But it could hope to restore it behind the stalking horse of bourgeois democracy, the Constituent Assembly and its Menshevik-SR champions. Shall we look into this point for a minute?
[Here for example we have the report of the U.S. Consul Dewitt Poole fo the American Ambassador in russia, written in Petrograd exactly one week after the final session] of the Constituent. he is reporting on his visit five weeks earlier to Rostov-on-Don “to investigate the question of the establishment of an American Consulate in that city.” During his visit, Mr Poole meets with notorious monarchist and Cossack counterrevolutionists like General Kaledin, General Alexeyev and others connected with General Kornilov. The anti-Bolshevik united front is being formed into a “Council” in the Southeast of Russia immediately after the Soviet Power is established and before the Constituent even assembles. Let us read, and with profit, every one of the lines that we have room to quote from Mr. Poole’s report:
“Negotiations are in progress for the admission to the Council of three representative Social Democrats, namely, Chaikovsky, Kuskova and Plekhanov; and two Social Revolutionaries, namely, Argunov and Potresov.
“On the conservative side the Council, as now constituted, includes, besides the three generals (Alexeyev, Kornilov and Kaledin), Mr Milyukov; Prince Gregory Trubetskoy; Professor Struve; Mr Fedorov, representing the banking and other large commercial interests of Moscow; two other Kadets or nationalist patriots yet to be chosen; Mr Bogayevsky, the vice ataman of the Don Cossacks; and Mr Paramonov, a rich Cossack. The Council will undoubtedly undergo changes in personnel, but a framework of an equal number of conservatives and radicals, not counting the three generals, appears to have been adopted.
“In pursuance of the agreement with Mr Savinkov, a proclamation to the Russian people has been drafted ... It refers to the suppression of the Constituent Assembly and asks for the support of the people in defending that institution. It is sound on the subject of the continuance of the war. The proclamation will be issued in the name of the league, unsigned, because it is frankly admitted that it has not yet been possible to obtain the names of persons who, it is thought, would be thoroughly acceptable to the people at large”.
Isn’t every line of our wonderful Mr Poole covered with mother-of-pearl, even though he never, we suppose, read Engels’ letter to Conrad Schmidt? What did the bourgeoisie have to cheer about in the convocation of the Constituent Assembly? Gorky didn’t know. Erber doesn’t know yet. False modesty prevents us from saying we know. But Generals Alexeyev, Kornilov and Kaledin – they know. Prince Trubetskoy – he knows. Gospadin Fedorov, “representing the banking and other commercial interests of Moscow” – he knows. Gospadin Paramonov, a Cossack who happens also to be rich – he knows. Alas, every one of them has passed from our midst to enjoy the reward of the pious; not one of them is alive today to tell Erber what he knows. And that’s a double pity, because the proclamation of the Council was so “sound on the subject of the continuance of the war” – which is another subject that is of interest to Erber.
General Denikin issued a proclamation on January 9, 1918, before the hideous Bolsheviks dispersed the Assembly, proclaiming the aims of his “Volunteer Army.”
“The new army will defend the civil liberties in order to enable the master of the Russian land – the Russian people – to express through their elected Constituent Assembly their sovereign will. All classes, parties, and groups of the population must accept that will. The army and those taking part in its formation will absolutely submit to the legal power appointed by the Constituent Assembly.”
This Czarist General did not have much luck either. He was ready to “absolutely submit” to the Constituent, but he couldn’t find anyone else who panted to follow his inspiring democratic lead. “The volunteer movement,” he wrote later in his souvenirs, “did not become a national movement ... At its very inception ... the army acquired a distinct class character.” Erber should be compelled by law – democratically enforced – to read this. There are classes in society and their interests are irreconcilable. Above all in revolutionary times, all groups, movements and institutions “acquire a distinct class character.” So distinct that a Czarist general finally sees it. But not Erber.
Here is another Czarist general, Kornilov, and here are five instructive points from his program of February, 1918:
“3) To re-establish freedom of industry and commerce and to abolish nationalization of private financial enterprises.
“4) To re-establish private property.
“5) To re-establish the Russian Army on the basis of strict military discipline. The army should be formed on a volunteer basis ... without committees, commissars, or elective officers ...
“8) The Constituent Assembly dissolved by the Bolsheviks should be restored ...
“9) The government established by General Kornilov is responsible only to the Constituent Assembly ... The Constituent Assembly, as the only sovereign of the Russian land, will determine the fundamental laws of the Russian constitution and will give final form to the organization of the state.”
It’s a double pity that Kornilov joined his ancestors in the unsuccessful attack on Yekaterinodar a few weeks later, so that he can’t explain what the bourgeoisie had to cheer about, either.
Maybe we can find a hint from the other paladin of the Constituent, General Alexeyev, who is also armed to the teeth with “democratic slogans” (after the Bolsheviks take power but not, we regret to note, before), plus 100,000,000 rubles appropriated for his democratic efforts by the no less democratic government of France. In a perplexed and gloomy letter to the Chief of the French mission in Kiev, the General writes in February 1918:
“The Cossack regiments coming from the front are in a state of complete moral dissolution. Bolshevik ideas have found a great many followers among the Cossacks, with the result that they refuse to fight even in defense of their own territory. [Alexeyev means, of course, that these stupid Cossack regiments refuse to fight for the French banks.] They are firmly convinced that Bolshevism is directed solely against the wealthy classes ... and not against the region as a whole, where there is order, bread, coal, iron and oil.”
We have found the hint! In the eyes of the masses, even of the politically backward and privileged Cossacks, the Constituent Assembly, the fight for it, the men and groups leading that fight, represent not democracy but the wealthy classes, the restorationists, the reaction and, at best, the compromisers and confusionists. In the eyes of the masses, the Bolsheviks and the Soviets represent the fight for freedom and the assurance that it can be won. They represent the movement “directed solely against the wealthy classes.”
That is why the Mensheviks and SRs, with all their votes, and with all their “democratic slogans” and their Constituent Assembly, never and nowhere inspired the masses, never and nowhere recruited them to the banner of struggle to overturn the Soviet Power, and succeeded only in bringing the most shameful discredit upon themselves. That is why the “anti-democratic” Bolsheviks consolidated the Soviet Power among the democratic masses in spite of odds almost without historical parallel. The “theoretical dispute” was decided freely by the masses, decided in struggle.
So far as main lines are concerned, could the Bolsheviks have followed some other course? Erber has an alternative to suggest. He writes:
“It is one of the unquestioned myths of our movement, that the Bolsheviks, once they were in power, had no other alternative but the course they pursued”.
[What did that course they actually took lead to? Erber knows. They fooled the masses into putting them into power. They shot down workers ... for their own good. They shot down socialists ... for their own good. They refused to dissolve the Soviet Power and, to maintain themselves, they terrorized everyone else. A terrible business, taken all in all. But there was once another myth about the Bolsheviks, and this is how it was once described:
“Far from the historical myth forged in the recent past by the anti-Bolshevik ‘moralizers,’ the Bolsheviks did not take power with any wickedly conceived plans for iron dictatorship and terror. Witness their naive generosity toward armed counterrevolutionaries in the first months, the so-called ‘honeymoon’ period, of the Soviet power. The morals of a revolutionary class are the morals of an army in combat. Its own code of conduct is bound to be conditioned by the sort of an enemy it faces and the conditions under which it fights. It is very naive – and most dangerous – to believe that the revolutionary forces will place adherence to a pre-conceived code of conduct above the need of survival in battle when confronted with those alternatives.”
Not bad. Who wrote it? Naturally, Erber, in one of his long series of documents, just a few years ago. Against whom did he write it? Against those who are “very naive and most dangerous,” that is, against muddleheads. Against whom, then? Against himself, in anticipation. But is it such a bad thing to dispel historical myths? No, it is an excellent thing. Any myth you dispel is a step in human progress. Only, it helps if you know how to distinguish myth from reality.
Now, what was the good, democratic, socialist, practical alternative course that the Bolsheviks could have pursued if they hadn’t revised Marx and dispersed the Constituent? Before we quote further from Erber, we must halt for a solemn moment. The reader would be well advised to make his peace with his Maker, for he is about to die laughing. He can save himself from this fate only by deciding to read no further, We, however, who like a good joke as well as the next man, can take the chance.] Instead of dispersing the Assembly, the Bolshevik course should have been – [press down hard on your sides now –]
“A government that was responsible to the Constituent Assembly, either an SR government or a coalition of the worker and peasant parties (Bolshevik, Menshevik, Left SR and Right SR parties) ... It would have experienced many internal crises and may have found it necessary to refer the disputes to the people in the form of new elections. However, such a government would have had a much wider base than the Bolshevik regime and the victory over the Czarist and bourgeois counter-revolution would have been far easier, quicker and less costly”.
[By Jupiter,] this is no commonplace genius we have here! What dazzling audacity and sweep of thought, hammerlock grip of logic, boulder-crushing simplicity, graceful persuasiveness of argument, blade-edge keenness of concept, anxiously-concealed modesty! [This is no small triumph. For thirty years now, annd longer, men and women of all faiths and estates have ripped their brains to shreds trying to find the answer to the question of how the bloody conflict of the parties of the Russian Revolution, and the consequences of this conflict, could have been averted.] How avert the conflict of the parties and its consequences? By stopping the conflict! By uniting the parties! By forming a coalition! Where? In the Constituent Assembly, the Temple of the Faith and Fountain of All Blessings.
How simple that would have been, had anyone been gifted enough to think of it in 1917–1918! Just take, as the first two ingredients for the coalition – the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks – and mix them together thoroughly. The Mensheviks, Erber told us, had the “policy of subordinating the aims of the revolution to the imperialist program of the bourgeoisie”. Lenin “advanced the policy of subordinating the revolution to the full or maximum socialist program of the proletariat”. After all, is that so much of a conflict in policy as to prevent men of good taste and good will from getting together? After all, don’t you have to be practical in politics? After all, when there’s a difference of opinion you can’t go biting a man’s head off. You compromise on a little point here and a little one there. You take a little, you give a little. All you needed, then, was for the Mensheviks to give a little to the “socialist program of the proletariat”, and for the Bolsheviks to give a little to the “imperialist program of the bourgeoisie”. That would be the least any reasonable person could do in all fairness to both classes.
Naturally, such a coalition “would have experienced many internal crises.” If not many, then at least a few. Erber is a statesman of the new day, and such things do not throw him into unseemly panic. A way can always be found by men of good will. If, for example, the first question on the agenda of the wonderful coalition, with its “much wider base”, was what to do with the Soviet Power, that could easily be disposed of. The Mensheviks and the SRs make a motion to dissolve the Soviet Power. The Bolsheviks and, let us say, the Left SRs oppose the motion. There is a fair and square discussion, two speakers on either side, with equal time for all, and then – the democratic vote. It is carefully counted by two impartial tellers. The Soviet Power is dissolved, so is the Red Guard. The revolution is buried in a simple but dignified casket. The Bolsheviks, democrats to the marrow of their bones, shrug their shoulders. “Guess we lost that one”, they say with perfect good humor. “What’s the next point on the agenda?” The first little internal crisis of the coalition, and just see how easily it was overcome! All we needed was men of good will, a sense of humor, and a thorough knowledge of Engels’ letter to Conrad Schmidt with glossary notes by Erber.
Well and good, the Grand Coalition is formed. The Mensheviks do not demand as the price for collaborating with the Bolsheviks that Lenin and Trotsky be kicked out summarily (as they did demand). The Left SRs promise that if there is a disagreement over signing a peace treaty with the Germans, they will not rush into the streets with rifles to overthrow the Bolsheviks or the coalition as a whole (as they did). The Right SRs also swallow themselves whole and agree to the coalition if the Soviets are suppressed. At last, the coalition is here. Now, “what”, asks Erber, “would have been the nature of the state that would have emerged under such a regime, and what would have been its social basis?” To this he answers:
“In its essentials it would have been what Lenin had in mind for Russia until February 1917, under the formula of a ‘democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’; a state which would have cleansed Russia of the vestiges of feudalism and curbed the power of the big bourgeoisie through the nationalization of monopolies and trusts, while leaving private enterprise and the market undisturbed. The participation of the workers in economic life through collective bargaining and measures of workers’ control of production would have been far more extensive and democratic under such a regime, despite capitalist economic relations, than was the case after a year of Bolshevik rule ...”
[It is hard to bring ourselves to discuss the merits of this mouldy piece of Scheidemannistic counterrevolution at any length. It shows such wilful ignorance of the social structure and class relations in Russia (we insist, wilful ignorance, because we know that Erber once knew something about them), that it has no claim at all to a detailed reply.]
One of the unique features of Russian social and political life lay precisely in the inseparability of the landlords and capitalists. It is precisely this feature of Russia that brought Marxists like Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg, Mehring and (the pre-war) Kautsky on one common side, against the Mensheviks on the other side. The real Marxists all agreed on at least this much: The coming bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia cannot be carried out under the leadership of the bourgeoisie because the real class and economic relations in Russia prevent it from conducting a struggle against the feudalist landlords with whom they are either identical or inseparably identified in a hundred social and economic ways. The democratic revolution can be carried out in Russia only under the leadership of the proletariat. Up to that point – agreement.
The disagreements began only after that point, and it is after that point that Trotsky developed his now familiar theory of the permanent revolution. Trotsky has demonstrated – which is of course the reason for Erber’s prudent silence on this score – that whatever Lenin’s formula may have been before the revolution, the actual course of events forced the workers, supported by the peasants, to take power. He has demonstrated in numerous writings that nobody has successfully challenged that, once in power, the working class and the Bolsheviks, who had not advanced the policy of the “full or maximum socialist program of the proletariat” (as Erber ignorantly or maliciously states), found themselves compelled to pass over to the “maximum program” in order to carry out the program of the democratic revolution. What compelled them? Among other things, and not least of all, the uncontrollable class reaction of the bourgeoisie. It understood what neither the Mensheviks nor their dim feeble echo understood: that the assault upon “the vestiges of feudalism” and the “curb” upon their own power, if carried through seriously, could not but be an assault upon its own class position, could not but mean the end of all its economic and social power. The only way to maintain “capitalist economic relations”, now so dear to Erber, was to abstain from a real cleansing of the stables of feudalism in Russia.
Why, at bottom, didn’t the Mensheviks use the “democratic slogans” as their weapons before 1918? Because they were wicked men without good will? No, they loved the workers and loved democracy. But to carry out the democratic slogans against the “vestiges of feudalism” and despotism, would have brought them into violent conflict with the bourgeoisie. It would have forced them to break with the bourgeoisie. It would have forced them to lead in the establishment of a democratic republic without the bourgeoisie and against it. But that is exactly what they could not do and did not do because they were tied to their dogma that, since the Russian Revolution is a bourgeois-democratic revolution, it must remain under the leadership of the bourgeoisie and within the framework of capitalist society. They remained captives of this dogma throughout the revolutionary storm. Result: they were paralyzed in the struggle for freedom, they lost the support of the workers, and came out of the revolution eternally and shamefully compromised.
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