Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III.
THE CHIEF STAGES IN THE HISTORY OF BOLSHEVISM.
The Years of Preparation for the Revolution (1902–1905).
The approach of the great storm is felt everywhere. There is a fermentation and preparation in all classes. Abroad, the emigrant press carries on a theoretical discussion of all questions pertaining to the Revolution. The representatives of the three main political currents, of the three principal classes—liberal-bourgeois, petit-bourgeois democratic (concealed under the guise of "Social Democrats" and "Socialist Revolutionaries") and proletarian-revolutionary—anticipate and prepare the approaching class-struggle in the open by their bitter and obdurate fight on questions of program and tactics. All the problems which the masses were solving in 1905–1906 and 1917–1920 by force of arms, can and should be traced in their embryonic form in the press of that time. Between these three main currents of thought, there are, of course, plenty of intermediary, transient, dwarfed forms. In other words, in the fight of press, parties, factions, groups, the political doctrines of the classes definitely crystalize themselves; there the classes forge the proper ideo-political weapons for the coming battles.
The Years of Revolution (1905–1907).
All classes come out into the open. All questions of program and tactics are tested by the action of the masses. A strike movement, unknown anywhere else in the world for its extent and acuteness, breaks out. The economic strike gives way to the political strike, which, in its turn, grows into a rising. The relations between the proletariat in the van and the vacillating, unstable peasantry in the rear, are tested practically. In the spontaneous development of the struggle, the Soviet form of organization is born. The disputes, in these days, on the significance of Soviets, anticipate the great struggle of 1917–1920. The interchange of parliamentary and non-parliamentary forms in the struggle, of the tactics of boycott and the tactics of participation in parliament, of legal and illegal methods, and likewise their interrelation and connection–all this is distinguished by wonderful richness of content. As far as the acquisition by masses and leaders, by classes and parties, of the fundamentals of political science is concerned, one month of this period was equivalent to a whole year of "peaceful," "constitutional" development. Without a general rehearsal in 1905, the victory of the October revolution of 1917 would have been impossible.
The Years of Reaction (1907–1910).
Czarism triumphant. All revolutionary and opposition parties are shattered. Depression, demoralization, schism, dispersal, renegacy, pornography instead of politics. A strenthening of the drift to philosophic idealism; mysticism, as the outer garb of counter-revolutionary tendencies. At the same time, it is the great defeat which gives the revolutionary parties and the revolutionary class a real and useful lesson, a lesson in historical dialectics, a lesson in intelligent understanding, ability and skill in carrying on the political struggle. Friends are better known in misfortune. Defeated armies learn their lesson well.
Triumphant Czarism is compelled, nevertheless, to push forward the disintegration of what remains of the pre-bourgeois, patriarchal state of Russia. She moves along the path of bourgeois development with remarkable rapidity. Illusions, originating outside of and above all classes, that it was possible for Russia to avoid capitalism, are crushingly shattered. The class-struggle assumes altogether new and more intense forms.
The revolutionary parties must continue their training. Heretofore they learned to attack. Now they understand that they must add to their knowledge of attack a knowledge of how best to retreat. It becomes necessary to understand—and the revolutionary class by its own bitter experience learns to understand—that victory is impossible without a knowledge both of how to attack and of how to retreat correctly. Of all the shattered opposition and revolutionary parties, the Bolsheviks effected the most orderly retreat, with the least damage to their "army." They, more than any other, preserved the nucleus of their party, suffered the fewest splits—in the sense of deep, irremediable splits—felt the least demoralization, and were in the best position to renew work on a large scale efficiently and energetically. The Bolsheviks only attained this by mercilessly exposing and throwing out the revolutionists of phrases, who did not wish to understand that it was necessary to retreat, that it was obligatory upon them to learn how to work legally in the most reactionary parliaments, in the most reactionary trade-unions, co-operatives, workmen's insurance and similar organizations.
The Years of Revival (1910–1914).
At first the revival was exceedingly slow; after the events in the Lena mines in 1912, somewhat more rapid. Overcoming immense difficulties, the Bolsheviks drove back the Mensheviks, whose role as bourgeois agents in the working-class movement was perfectly understood by the whole bourgeoisie after 1905, and who, therefore, were supported by that class against the Bolsheviks. But the latter would never have succeeded as they did if they had not pursued the right tactics of co-ordinating illegal forms of work with obligatory utilization of all "legal possibilities." In the most reactionary Duma the Bolsheviks won the whole labor vote.
The First Imperialist World-War (1914–1917).
Legal parliamentarism, in the conditions of an extremely reactionary "parliament," renders most useful service to the revolutionary party, to the Bolsheviks. Bolshevik deputies go to penal servitude. In the emigrant press, all shades, all distinctions of social-imperialism, social-chauvinism, social-patriotism, consistent and inconsistent internationalism, pacifism and the revolutionary negation of pacifist illusions, find full expression. The learned fools and old women of the Second International who arrogantly and contemptuously turned up their noses at the many "factions" in Russian Socialism and the stubbornness with which they fought one another, were unable, when the war deprived them of their blessed "legality" in all the advanced countries, to organize anything even approximating such free (illegal) interchange of views and such free (illegal) hammering-out of the right views, as did the Russian revolutionists in Switzerland and other countries. Just because of this inability of theirs, both the downright social-patriots and the "Kautskians" of all countries have proved the worst kind of traitors to the proletariat. And if the Bolsheviks were able to attain victory in 1917–1920, one of the principal causes of this victory was that Bolshevism already, in 1914, had mercilessly unmasked all the abomination, turpitude and criminality of social-chauvinism and "Kautskianism" (to which Longuetism in France, the views of the leaders of the Independent Labor Party and the Fabians in England, and of Turati in Italy, correspond), while the masses, from their own experience, were becoming more and more convinced of the soundness of the views of the Bolsheviks.
The Second Revolution in Russia (from February to October, 1917).
Czarism, now hoary with age, had created, under the heavy blows of this tormenting war, a tremendous destructive power which was now directed against it. In a few days, Russia was turned into a democratic, bourgeois republic, more free, considering the state of war, than any other country in the world. The Government was beginning to be formed by the leaders of the Opposition and Revolutionary parties, just after the manner of the most "strictly parliamentary" republics. The fact that a man had been a leader of the opposition, though in the most reactionary parliament imaginable, aided him in his subsequent career in the Revolution.
The Mensheviks and the "Socialist Revolutionaries" mastered, in a few weeks, all the tricks and manners, arguments and sophistries of the European heroes of the Second International, of the ministerialists and other opportunist worthies. What we now read of Scheidemann and Noske, Kautsky and Crispien, Renner and Austerlitz, Otto Bauer and Fritz Adler, Turati and Longuet, of the Fabians and the leaders of the Independent Labor Party in England—all this seems to us, and, in reality, is, a dreary repetition, a paraphrase of an old, familiar song. The Mensheviks have long ago sung it to us. History has played a joke on us and made the opportunists of a backward country anticipate the opportunists of a great many advanced countries.
That all the heroes of the Second International suffered bankruptcy and disgraced themselves on the question of the role and significance of the Soviets and Soviet power; that the leaders of three very important parties which have now left the Second International (namely, the German Independent Social Democratic Party, the French Longuetists and the British Independent Labor Party) have especially "vividly" disgraced themselves on this question; that they have all proved slaves to the prejudices of petit-bourgeois democracy (quite in the spirit of the petit-bourgeois of 1848 who called themselves "social democrats")—all this conveys to us nothing new. We have already seen all of it in the example of the Mensheviks. History has played off this joke: in Russia, in 1905, Soviets were born: in February-October, 1917, they were tampered with by the Mensheviks, who went bankrupt because of their inability to understand the role and significance of the Soviets, and, now that the idea of Soviets has come to life the world over, spreading itself with tremendous rapidity among the proletariat of all countries, the old heroes of the Second International are also everywhere going bankrupt, because, like our Mensheviks, they are unable to understand the true role and significance of Soviets. Experience has shown that, on some very essential points in the proletarian revolution, all countries will inevitably have to repeat Russia's experience.
The successful struggle against what was in reality the parliamentary bourgeois republic, and against the Mensheviks, was begun by the Bolsheviks very cautiously, and, contrary to the view often met with in Europe and America, it was not at all without careful preparation. At the outset of the period indicated, we did not call for the overthrow of the government, but explained the impossibility of overthrowing it without a preliminary change in the personnel and disposition of the Soviets. We did not proclaim a boycott of the bourgeois parliament, of the Constitutent Assembly, but said—after the April, 1917, conference of our party officially, in the name of the organization—that a bourgeois republic with a Constituent Assembly is better than one without, but that a "workmen's and peasants'" Soviet republic is better than any bourgeois democratic, parliamentary, republic. Without such a careful, substantial, cautious and prolonged preparation, we could not have obtained victory in October, 1917, neither could we have maintained it.