MOLLY'S ANARCHISM :

WHY I AM NOT A REVOLUTIONIST PART 3

I have alluded to my reasoning against "revolution" in the previous part of this post to the "special cases" of the Russian and Spanish Revolutions. Both of these revolutions had significant libertarian input, greater in the case of the Spanish one, but both failed. In the Spanish case it failed via military defeat at the hands of "the friends of the Revolution" ie the Communist controlled left even before it failed in military defeat against the fascists/traditionalists of Franco. Let's consider the Russian case first. The astute reader may notice that I hold to a modification of the "circulation of elites" position "supposedly" first laid out by the Italian sociologists Pareto and Mosca. This only partially true. I hold that this sort of result is almost inevitable under "revolutionary conditions" but that it can be avoided during a long reformist march towards a libertarian society. Russia is a case in point.

Though few leftists would admit it the trajectory of Russia would have been significantly better should the Bolsheviks never have come to power. At the time of their coup d'etat Russia was the most rapidly developing nation in the world. Russia would have achieved a far greater economic development under practically any regime, from the coalition of socialist parties that I might favour to any regime short of restoration of absolutism. Under any of these possible regimes Russia would never have had to pay the price in human blood- far greater than Hitler extracted- than Stalin parlayed into his version of economic development.

Russia gives a clear example of two different types of revolution, one that was inevitable and if left to continue along its normal course would have resulted in the sort of routine "circulation of elites" that revolutions usually produce. This revolution was relatively bloodless. It was the first revolution of 1917, the overthrow of the Tsar and the institution of a parliamentary regime. During this revolution the working class and the peasantry seized their opportunity to encroach on the power of the capitalists and the landlords. Left to develop on its own this revolution, supported as it was by the vast majority of the Russian population and embodying itself in parties such as the SRs and, to a smaller degree, the Mensheviks, would probably have attempted to reduce the gains made by the working class. The revolution in the countryside, however, would have been an unstoppable fait d'acompli long before a stable situation had been achieved and, besides, the SRs depended upon just this vast peasant majority of Russia for their support. The end result, a probable return of most of industry to the capitalists, with a larger nationalized sector and a reduction or even elimination of the gains of the working class.

As it happened, however, this first inevitable revolution was seized upon by professional revolutionaries who promised the moon but delivered a much greater defeat to the aspirations of the working class. The Bolshevik Revolution didn't simply turn the clock back a few years. They turned it back by centuries to a time of barbarism enforced by mass terror. Under the USSR the working class had far fewer rights than they would have had under the moderate socialists such as the SRs and the Mensheviks. They basically had no rights.

The great mistake of the majority of Russian revolutionary parties was the continuation of the war in an obviously war weary country. This may have been a matter of timing. Put their revolution a little later and the military situation would have been entirely different when American entry into WW1 would be pressing the German Empire much harder. But the Revolution occurred when it had to occur, and the decision of the Right SRs in particular to continue the war gave the Bosheviks the only opportunity they would ever have. They took it. The mistake of the anti-war socialists such as the Left SRs, the Maximalists and the Anarchists was to enter into coalition with a party of the Leninist type. That can easily be forgiven as the true nature of Leninism was hardly apparent at the time. After the better part of a century of tyranny and mass murder the nature of the beast is plain for all to see. There should be no illusions today.

The utopian dream turned into a totalitarian nightmare. The peasant Mir, so beloved of the SRs, was drowned in the blood of mass collectivization. The illusions that anarchists, mensheviks and SRs had about the libertarian potential of the Soviets were dissolved far more rapidly through electoral manipulation, control of the police and the army and the simple expedient of controlling the actual executive while the Soviets became nothing but forums for speeches. The Bolsheviks were far more realistic than their erstwhile allies.

A circulation of elites did indeed occur, though those with dreamy eyed visions of this time hardly know how many of the old ruling class found position and privilege in the new one. But the opening up of careers in a bloated state apparatus also led to "corruption from below". If the country was war weary so were the new bosses who flocked to the Bolshevik banner. They easily saw their own rise to power as evidence of the illusion that the working class ruled in Russia. Actually ex-workers ruled to a very large extent. Far better to accept a good salary, good rations and a modicum of power than to dream about some abstract ideal of "workers' control". It's far easier to imagine that the control of ex-workers is such a thing.

This is one of the problems with revolution. It always has and always will attract careerists to its banner. By opening up new continents of new ways of exercising power it is actually far more dismal in this regard than gradual reform. Reformism generates careerism as it institutionalizes slowly, but revolution opens the floodgates to a tidal wave of such things. This sort of tidal wave carries bigger and uglier things than the gradual building of institutions does. It attracts a type of person who is far less moral and far more brutal than the institutionalization of reform does.

Ah but, my anarchist comrades may say, we envisage no such thing as this type of revolution. We want a "libertarian revolution" where there will be no such new positions of power. All that I can say to this is that the Russian Revolution is the prime example of how the conditions of revolution modify the goals of the revolutionists. One can make a case that Lenin was a completely cynical liar when he laid out his more or less "libertarian" ideals in 'State and Revolution'. One can make out a case that both Trotsky and Stalin were vicious thugs who always believed in dictatorial power. One cannot make that case for the majority of the Bolshevik Party. They actually believed their own horseshit and they had no idea of the road they were going down.

Revolutions make their own conditions separate from the ideals of the revolutionists. They demand quick and effective action even if such action is detrimental in the long term. Peasant and worker cooperatives, as advocated by Kropotkin in his letters to Lenin, would have been an obviously economically superior way of ordering production under the sort of slow evolution that Russia might have taken under a non-Bolshevik socialist government. Under the conditions of civil war and foreign invasion forced requisition, with all that entails in the long term, was the only course open to the Bolsheviks. When food stock are down to a week's worth of starvation rations you don't have time for patient organization of distribution by voluntary agreement. THIS, I believe, is the worm in the apple of all anarchist belief in achieving anarchy by revolutionary methods. The disorder and chaos of a revolution makes quick and decisive action imperative, but this action leads to undesirable consequences. In 'The Conquest of Bread' Kropotkin recognized this fact, and he tried to lay out the need for as quick an attention to basic survival needs of the population as would be possible. The Conquest of Bread, however, was written in the 19th century, before history had laid out examples of just how disruptive revolutions can be and long before modern societies had become as intricately interconnected as they are now.

No, the Russian Revolution was the opening page in a book showing that it is impossible to achieve libertarian goals by revolutionary methods. It was, however, only page one. I'll continue the story later. Next time...the Spanish case.

Molly