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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. 99–108.
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.
Erber is still a little restless over the traces of what he learned when he was a Marxist. So he comes to the noteworthy conclusion that:
“Even the most perfect organization of the workers in industry, transport, communications, etc., will not guarantee a non-violent accession to power. Since the working class may be challenged by force on the democratic road to socialism, let it be prepared to take up arms not to overthrow a democratic state but to ‘win the battle of democracy’. Standing as the defenders of the best traditions of American democracy, its cause will be immeasurably strengthened. A Marxist in the United States can commit no greater folly than to view the workers’ road to power as culminating in an armed insurrection against a state that rests on political democracy”.
Against whom is all this pomposity directed? Against the Bolsheviks, perhaps? What democratic state did they overthrow with arms in hand? The state of Kerensky and Company (“Company” meaning the Mensheviks and SRs). And what was this state? We turn to the most authoritative reference work on the subject, Erber’s document, and read that the Kerensky “regime sought to stretch out its undemocratic authority as long as possible by repeatedly postponing the elections of a Constituent Assembly. If the revolution was to advance, Kerensky had to go.” Very well, go he did, along with everyone whose teeth were sunk in his coat tails.
Is it directed, perhaps, against Erber’s newly-acquired chums and exemplars, the Mensheviks and the SRs? They did indeed take up arms to overthrow a democratic state, the state of the “teeming, creative, democratic Soviets”. Is it directed against the Left SRs, that minority which sought to impose its will on the Soviet government with arms in hand because it disagreed with the decision to sign the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty? Or against the still tinier minority of anti-Bolshevik anarchists who likewise sought to overthrow the regime?
Or maybe it is directed against us here? Maybe he wants us to give a solemn pledge not to resort to armed insurrection against “a state that rests on political democracy”? Very well, we do not hesitate to give our pledge to Citizen Pompous Muddlehead, and therewith to state once more our credo.
We do not and will not call for armed insurrection to overthrow a “democratic state”, a “state that rests on political democracy”. It is an oath. The political infants who led the early communist movement in this country and who had little in common with Marx or Lenin – they issued such calls and advocated such a course. We – never! Not yesterday, not today, not tomorrow. We are not for violence in principle any more than we are for parliamentarism in principle. If anything, our principles call for an abhorrence of violence, as a capitalistic and uncivilised means of settling disputes among people. We are compelled every day to defend ourselves, with whatever organized strength we can muster, from the violence, open or concealed, with which the ruling classes impose their exploitation upon the masses. We are not putschists because we are not bureaucrats – and in every putschist, who has no confidence in the people, is concealed the bureaucrat, who has contempt for the people. Overthrow the bourgeois state by armed insurrection! Who, we? Not today and not tomorrow, and not if we had a hundred times as many members and followers as we have now!
The bourgeois state, bourgeois democracy, still has the confidence and support of the overwhelming majority of the people, including the working-class people. They think bourgeois democracy can solve all their basic problems. We Marxists do not. We believe that such a solution requires a working-class democracy, the rule of the proletariat, which develops into a more extensive and even more genuine democracy, the rule of all the people, which in turn develops into the end of all rule (democracy is a form of rulership) by dissolving into the classless society of socialism and communism. The workers do not share our belief. Can we even dream of imposing our views, the views of a tiny minority, by merely wishing, or by decree, let alone by armed insurrection?
Without abandoning our views for a moment, we say to the workers: Unite into your own economic and political organizations, free from the control and influence of your sworn class enemy. You have confidence in bourgeois democracy? Then organize your own political party. Challenge your enemy not only on the economic field but also on the political. Send your own representatives into the legislative bodies to work and fight for your interests. We say, with Engels, that “universal suffrage is the best lever for a proletarian movement at the present time”. We say, with Engels, that “universal suffrage is the gauge of the maturity of the working class”. We will therefore do everything we can to raise the red line in that thermometer which measures the maturity of the working class. “On the day when the thermometer of universal suffrage reaches its boiling point among the laborers, they as well as the capitalists will know what to do.”
But what Marxist would try to displace the bourgeois state with a workers’ state before that boiling point has been reached? Certainly no intelligent and educated Marxist would think of it, any more than he would think of walking out into the street with only his shirt on in winter time. A “state that rests on political democracy” is a state which, deservedly or not, still enjoys the confidence of the masses. To think of overturning such a state by armed insurrection under such conditions is putschist madness and adventurism, not revolutionary Marxism.
When the masses no longer have confidence in the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois state, when they have reached the point where they are ready to take the state into their own hands, ready to undertake a radical solution of the social problem, ready to take control of their own destinies – the situation changes! Once the masses have expressed their decision to take power and expressed it clearly and democratically – be their will expressed in the organs of parliament or in organs of their own which they find at hand or in organs of their own which they create spontaneously in the course of the struggle – the situation changes! If the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois state bow to the democratic will of the people, so much the better! As we wrote before, nobody would be more delighted than we and with us the whole working class. Up to now, however, history has been very frugal with examples of such bowing to the democratic will of the revolutionary people. But if there is nevertheless one chance in a thousand of that happening, then it is possible only if the working class confronts the bourgeoisie not with votes alone (the “boiling thermometer”) but with serried class strength, with organized power. Such power is nothing else than potential violence, that is, violence that can be summoned the minute the democratically rejected bourgeoisie tries to perpetuate its domination over the people by the use of armed force.
But what if the bourgeoisie and its state do not bow to the will of the people? What if the regime seeks “to stretch out its undemocratic authority as long as possible”? With all due respect to the fanatical democratism of the bourgeoisie and its state, we think such an alternative is ... quite possible. If it occurs, we will manage to say what Erber says about the Kerensky regime: It has to go! And if it does not go quietly, it will have to be pushed a little.
We, followers of Marx and Lenin, want to make sure that on the day the thermometer boils over – not today, not tomorrow, but on that day – “the laborers. .. as well as the capitalists will know what to do”. We want to make sure that on that day the laborers not only have enough votes in their hands, but enough power to enforce their will. Is that the folly of viewing “the workers’ road to power as culminating in an armed insurrection against a state that rests on political democracy”? Not at all! Erber is just repeating the drivel of the social democrats. What we Marxists call for is the good common sense of the workers’ road to power culminating in the armed dispersal – if the stubborn bourgeoisie insists on it – of the state which no longer enjoys authority among the workers, which no longer has the confidence or support of the people, which, therefore, no longer “rests on political democracy” in the real sense of the term. It is with this view that we want to imbue every socialist militant, every vanguard fighter, every worker whom we can reach with our voice and pen.
That, stated for the hundredth time, is our credo. Take note of it, O Pompous Muddlehead! Take note of it, all workers! Take note of it, too, Mr Public Prosecutor!
Why are we so impassioned and tenacious in our defense of Marx, of Lenin, of Luxemburg, of Trotsky, of the Paris Commune, of the Russian Revolution, from all their falsifiers and detractors? Out of academic considerations? Because we are mere historians concerned with an accurate record of our past? Because we are Talmudists with our noses buried in the ancient books of wisdom? We are revolutionary socialists, and the fight to keep our heritage clean is an indispensable part of our fight for socialism. Does anyone think we would consume all this paper just to prove that this one is a liar, that one a deserter, that one a muddlehead, the other one a traitor? There are more pleasant and important things to do in life.
We are fighting for socialist freedom, and in this fight we are now on the defensive. The working class is on the defensive all over the world. It is lacerated by defeats, it is confused and disoriented, it has lost a lot of confidence in its power. It has been backed into a corner like the quarry in a hunt. It is surrounded by baying hounds.
The hunters challenge it: “Give up! Surrender!”
The Stalinist dogs bark: “You cannot free your own self. Wherever you tried it yourself, you failed. You are too weak, too stupid, too undisciplined if left to your own democratic devices. You need an iron hand over you, an iron hand with a whip. Under Lenin’s Soviets, the state was feeble. Under Stalin’s GPU, the state has been consolidated and enormously strengthened. We have extended it over Europe and Asia. You must have a bureaucracy to lead you out of the wilderness!”
The bourgeois dogs bark: “You cannot free your own self. Wherever you tried it, you failed. You failed because there have always been the rulers and the ruled, and that is how it will always be. Look what happened in Russia! You tried, and you failed. Socialism is an ideal, but a Utopian ideal. Marx brought you Lenin. Lenin brought you Stalin. Under our rule you will at least have a bed to sleep in and unemployment insurance.”
The reformist dogs bark: “Learn the lessons of the Russian Revolution! Revolution brought you only misery. Lenin was a gambler and he lost. Don’t take power into your own hands. All evil flows from that. Just send enough of us to parliament and we will patch up the bourgeois state without you having to do a thing. Collaborate with the decent bourgeois elements, in plant and government and war, and don’t lose your temper and get violent. It will do you no good. Revolution only brings Stalinism.”
Erber whimpers: “Woe is me and woe is the world. Lenin ruined us all. I really don’t know what to say or do about it. I really don’t know what road you should take to get out of this universal ruin. Wait here, don’t budge. I’ll figure out something presently. But whatever you do, don’t follow Lenin, don’t take the road of revolution, don’t take power into your own hands.”
Hook nods philosophically: “Lord Acton was right, dear pupils. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I want no part of it.”
[Eastman and Louis waldman conclude: “vote for dewey.”]
Social interests shape ideas. Ideas serve social interests. The ideological campaign against Marxism is still what it always was: an integral part of the fight against socialism and the interests of the working class. The campaign against Lenin, the Bolsheviks and the Russian Revolution is still what it always was: an integral part of the fight to turn the working class away from the idea of taking their fate into their own hands. The attempt to bind and gag Rosa Luxemburg and kidnap her to an alien camp, so that we cannot hear what she really said and wanted, is still what it always was: an integral part of the turncoats’ campaign to dirty the great Russian Revolution so that their capitulation to democratic imperialism will look clean.
The defense of the Russian Revolution is the defense of Marxism. The defense of Marxism is the fight for socialism, the fight to drive away the baying hounds, to enable the working class to leap forward again with renewed confidence in its own strength, in its great emancipating mission, in its eventual triumph.
We are not idol-worshippers. We are not uncritical eulogists of Marx or Lenin or Trotsky or Luxemburg or the Russian Revolution itself. From its grandeur, we have learned what to do. From its decay, what not to do. We think we understand now more than we ever did before why Lenin, for all his disagreements with Rosa, called her an eagle. Even in her prison notes she wrote these words which are so timely thirty years later:
“Everything that happens in Russia is comprehensible and represents an inevitable chain of causes and effects, the starting point and end term of which are: the failure of the German proletariat and the occupation of Russia by German imperialism. It would be demanding something superhuman from Lenin and his comrades if we should expect of them that under such circumstances they should conjure forth the finest democracy, the most exemplary dictatorship of the proletariat and a flourishing socialist economy. By their determined revolutionary stand, their exemplary strength in action, and their unbreakable loyalty to international socialism, they have contributed whatever could possibly be contributed under such devilishly hard conditions. The danger begins only when they make a virtue of necessity and want to freeze into a complete theoretical system all the tactics forced upon them by these fatal circumstances, and want to recommend them to the international proletariat as a model of socialist tactics. When they get in their own light in this way, and hide their genuine, unquestionable historical service under the bushel of false steps forced upon them by necessity, they render a poor service to international socialism for the sake of which they have fought and suffered; for they want to place in its storehouse as new discoveries all the distortions prescribed in Russia by necessity and compulsion – in the last analysis only by-products of the bankruptcy of international socialism in the present world war.
“Let the German Government Socialists cry that the rule of the Bolsheviks in Russia is a distorted expression of the dictatorship of the proletariat. If it was or is such, that is only because it is a product of the behavior of the German proletariat, in itself a distorted expression of the socialist class struggle. All of us are subject to the laws of history, and it is only internationally that the socialist order of society can be realized. The Bolsheviks have shown that they are capable of everything that a genuine revolutionary party can contribute within the limits of the historical possibilities. They are not supposed to perform miracles. For a model and faultless proletarian revolution in an isolated land, exhausted by world war, strangled by imperialism, betrayed by the international proletariat, would be a miracle...
“In Russia the problem could only be posed. It could not be solved in Russia. And in this sense, the future everywhere belongs to ‘Bolshevism’.”
“The danger begins when they make a virtue of necessity”. That danger is inherent in every great revolution and every great revolutionary party suffers from it. The Bolsheviks were no exception. They could not be, especially given a socialist revolution, for which there was no blueprint worked out in advance and could not be. Improvization was imperative. What is remarkable is that in all this convulsive turbulence, so much order prevailed, so much was done according to plan, so much was done to turn the helm when the ship of state hit uncharted and unexpected reefs. In that respect, no revolution, no social transformation in history, even equalled the Russian Revolution.
“Es schwindelt”, said Lenin to Trotsky when the storm lifted the Bolsheviks to the first socialist power in history – it makes you dizzy. Everybody was made dizzy. The Bolsheviks alone kept their heads. The others lost them completely. The bourgeoisie, the landlords, international capital, plunged into their mad and sanguinary adventure to crush the revolution. The Mensheviks and SRs joined with what Engels predicted would be “the whole collective reaction which will group itself around pure democracy”. In the wild civil war that followed, in which millions of ordinary workers and peasants proved to be far fiercer and more intolerant toward the opponents of the Soviet power than the Bolsheviks themselves, there was no room for the “home-made wisdom derived from parliamentary battles between frogs and mice”. One by one, the parties and groups that took up arms against the Soviet Power were outlawed. No one has found another solution in civil war.
The Bolsheviks performed no miracles; they promised none. They were summoned to hold the first revolutionary citadel against frenzied and maddened besiegers until the relief columns of the Western proletariat could be brought forward. They held the citadel, better and longer than anyone expected, even they themselves. Julius Martov, the Menshevik leader, wrote in October 1921 that “The political tactic of our party in 1918 and 1920 was determined primarily by the fact that history had made the Bolshevik Party the defender of the foundations of the revolution against the armed forces of the domestic and foreign counter-revolution”. Alas, what he says about the Menshevik party is not true in its entirety, but only for a tiny part of it. What he says about the Bolshevik party is true in its entirety. But the Bolsheviks were not gods. In seeking to master necessity, they also had to bend to it. War, especially civil war, especially when your enemies on a world scale outnumber you a hundred to one, is not the ideal culture medium for democracy to flourish in. “The Bolsheviks have shown that they are capable of everything that a genuine revolutionary party can contribute within the limits of the historical possibilities. They are not supposed to perform miracles. For a model and faultless proletarian revolution in an isolated land, exhausted by world war, strangled by imperialism, betrayed by the international proletariat, would be a miracle”.
Once the civil war came to a triumphant end for the Soviet Power, necessity became more and more a virtue. What was imposed on the Bolsheviks by the exigencies of war was gradually transformed into an article of faith for the period of peace as well. One-party government, which is anything but abnormal in all countries at all times, and was just as normal and unexceptionable in Russia, was transformed to mean: Only one party can enjoy legal existence in the country. To this, Stalinism succeeded in adding: Only one faction can enjoy legal existence in the party. The extension of full democratic rights – not the right to armed putsches but full democratic rights – to all parties, without exception, would have strengthened the country and reinvigorated the Soviets themselves. It should now be clear that without the presence of other political organizations capable of freely debating (debating, not shooting at) the proposals presented to the Soviets by the Bolshevik party, the Soviets would rapidly and inevitably deteriorate to the position of a superfluous duplicate of the ruling party, at first only consulted by the latter, then disregarded by it, and finally discarded altogether for the direct rule of the party alone (the bureaucracy of the party at that!). In this process, the decay of democracy within the Bolshevik party and the decay of Soviet democracy went hand in hand, each having the same deleterious effect upon the other until both were suppressed completely and, along with them, all the achievements of the revolution itself. Deprived of the saving oxygen of revolution in the West, the democratic organism was suffocated. Poisons accumulated throughout the whole system which could not be thrown off, new poisons were added (necessity becoming virtue), and the Revolution moved tragically toward its death.
Of the period of decay, much has been written – in advance by Luxemburg, in his time by Lenin, later by Trotsky. Much more can be written and much more will be written as the distance of years sets off the Revolution in clearer perspective. We close no doors. We file away nothing as an absolutely closed case. But it does not follow that no conclusions at all can be drawn from the great revolution. It does not follow that anybody’s conclusions, no matter how superficial or trivial or reactionary, are as valid as any others. Our struggle has been hurled back – that is now a commonplace. But it does not follow that we start with tabula rasa – knowing nothing, learning nothing, believing nothing. From the grandeur of the Russian Revolution, we have learned something: the superiority of proletarian democracy to bourgeois democracy. From the decay of the Russian Revolution we have learned something: that proletarian democracy cannot exist for long if it is confined to one faction or one party, even if it be the revolutionary party, that it must be shared equally by all other working-class and even – under favorable circumstances – bourgeois parties and groups, for without it the proletarian party and the proletarian democracy both die and with them die the prospects of socialism.
These are not the happiest days for socialism. We know that. We know that the grotesque outcome of the Russian Revolution, the failure of the proletariat anywhere else to come to power, has raised more than one gloomy doubt about the social ability of the working class to reorganize society rationally, about the very possibility of a socialist future.
It is precisely in this regard that the Russian Revolution is our lasting triumph! It is precisely in this regard that the Russian Revolution continues to fortify our convictions!
What the Marxists claimed for decades, the Russian Revolution proved. What did it prove? That the rule of the capitalist class is not eternal. That the power of the capitalist class is not invincible. That the working class can overthrow the rule of capital and the bourgeois state, not in the books of Karl Marx, but in the living struggle of organized workers. To this day and hour we say: If the Russian working class could take power, the working class can take power in any other country under similar circumstances. This we consider proved.
To disprove it, it is only necessary to show that the Russian proletariat had national or racial characteristics which determined its victory and which are not to be found in any other proletariat. Or, it is only necessary to prove that no other country can ever reproduce a combination of circumstances similar to those which made possible the triumph of the Russian Revolution. Nobody has done this up to now. Until it is done, we regard as proved the ability of the working class to take power in its own name and for its own self. That’s a tremendous acquisition for the Marxian and working-class movements. Why should any socialist or even a non-socialist worker be fool enough to bagatellize this acquisition, let alone relinquish it?
“But surely you cannot claim that the Russian Revolution also proved that the working class can hold power and use it to usher in a socialist society!” We make no such claim. That, the Russian Revolution did not prove and, by itself, could not prove. But to prove that the proletariat has some basic and inherent social incapacity to hold power and establish socialism, you must be concrete, and not confine yourself to going from concept to concept to concept without once touching material ground. To be concrete, dear skeptic, to be scientific, you have to show why the Russian proletariat lost power. Merely to point to the fact that the proletariat, one hundred years after the Communist Manifesto, has not yet liberated itself, is not one whit more serious an argument to prove that it cannot liberate itself than pointing to the fact that the failure of generations of scientists to find a cure for cancer proves that cancer cannot be cured.
This brings us back to what is, after all, the very essence of the dispute over the Russian Revolution: Why did the proletariat lose power and, therewith, lose the indispensable instrument for constructing socialism?
Exactly ninety-nine per cent of the critics of Bolshevism answer the question in this way, at bottom: The Russian workers lost power because they took power. [Erber has joined the ninety-ine percent. As he now sees it,] Stalinism (the destruction of the Russian workers’ power) followed ineluctably from the seizure of power by the proletariat and Lenin’s refusal to surrender this power to the bourgeois democracy.
Exactly ninety-nine per cent of the revolutionary Marxists answer the question in this way, at bottom: The Russian workers lost power because the workers of the other countries failed to take power.
There is the difference. It is fundamental and yields to no compromise.
We also know that our “proof” is not final. There is no way of making it final in the realm of concepts. It can be made final only in struggle. By ourselves, we cannot provide this final proof. We will not even attempt it. The proletariat alone can provide this proof, in the course of the struggle which it must carry on in order to survive, and in which it must triumph if it carries it on to the end. The Russian proletariat, the Russian Revolution, proved all it could prove. The rest will come. And one of the not unimportant reasons why it will come is that we remain loyal to the fight for socialism. We remain defenders of the imperishable Bolshevik Revolution. We remain under the banner of Marxism.
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