General strike or electoral circus

The student struggle against tuition increases has taken a new turn following the adoption of matraque law 78.  Recall that before being used against the student movement, this law was especially aimed at the working class, threatening any demonstration of over 50 people with heavy fines. --Leaving it to the police to decide whether or not the demonstration is legal, if they’ll accept the route or not. This law is not only an attack on the students, but on the working class as a whole. This is bourgeois ‘democracy’ for you, and this sort of law is not unique to Quebec. Faced with capitalism in crisis, several ‘democracies’ have passed similar laws or are in the process of doing so. In 2001, under the pretext of the ‘war on terror’, several states passed counter-terrorism laws, which in practice, attack working class struggles. In 2005, for instance, striking New York subway workers faced charges of terrorism. Recently a score of Montreal students were accused under a similar law passed by the federal government in 2001.

The struggle against rising tuition is spreading elsewhere in Canada, as well. Students have held actions in Ottawa and Toronto, with other groups spread across several provinces preparing to join them. A day of action took place June 5^th, with a demonstration in Toronto, as well as other Ontario cities.  BC students, as well, have declared solidarity with those in Quebec, condemning bill 78. Demonstrations in solidarity against this bill have been held in Ottawa, Toronto, Paris, Cannes, New York, London and Chile. This is no longer just a struggle against the rising cost of tuition. Since May 21, workers, unemployed, students and pensioners have been banging on pots and pans every evening at 8 o’clock, and great numbers of people are out in the streets to demonstrate that they’re fed up with bill 78, the mass arrests, police brutality, government corruption and austerity measures. We’ve lost count of the number of cities and towns participating in these nightly casserole demonstrations, and these as well are spreading throughout other Canadian provinces. This struggle is part of an international struggle against capitalism in crisis. It’s linked with that of workers in Greece, Spain, Portugal, China, India, France, the UK, the US and other parts of the world.

Although the casserole demonstrations are intended as an expression of outrage against state policies, one might question the outcome. Speaking at a Montreal business conference, Finance Minister Raymond Bachand, himself, welcomed these demonstrations as a creative and festive means of voicing an opinion without hurting the city’s tourist industry. As in the rest of the world, the bourgeoisie tries to divert struggle by persuading workers to vote in coming elections, in 6 months, a year, two years… At heart, this is what matters most to the unions and all political parties: Québec Solidaire, Parti Québécois, the Liberals, the CAQ and others, diverting all activity into the electoral circus. Elections are by no means an expression of “popular will”.  The election of this or that political party is determined by the interests of  big capital of which the bourgeois state is a servant. Elections are useless to the working class. It’s a terrain in which it has no real place, except when it comes time to marking an X every four years to elect the usual bourgeois, such as Charest, Marois, David, Khadir, Legault, etc. They’d have us believe that the ballot can help to “make change”. They perpetuate the illusion of democracy, in which all “citizens” are equal and the state is neutral.

While the Liberals and the CAQ are well known for openly serving the interests of large capitalist enterprise, others are nastier in a sense, more insidious, as is the case with Parti Quebecois nationalists and Québec Solidaire. While they denounce the implementaion of rightwing policies by the Liberals with matraque law 78, they insist that the government’s policies would “go against common Quebecois values”  No no such ‘common values’ exist. What typical nationalist, petty-bourgeois language, propagating illusions of capitalism’s “human face”, while failing to mention the working class and its struggle. Capitalism is bankrupt and for its survival it’s carrying out the same attacks everywhere: raising energy prices, attacking pensions, increasing tuition, creating new taxes, eliminating thousands of jobs in the public sector, cutting unemployment benefits, on top of massive factory closures.

The strength of the working class whose exploitation sustains bourgeois society, is in its collective action, led and organized on the basis of class. Only the working class, in resisting and abolishing this rotten system, will change society. Working class struggles in Greece, Spain, Portugal, China, India, France, UK, USA, in Chile and other parts of the world are forcing bourgeois factions to unite against the working class. Hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of demonstrators around the world are refusing austerity. The lying media is censoring these struggles in an effort to prevent the rise of international solidarity. The struggle of Quebec’s students and working class is not isolated.

Workers, the unemployed, students, pensioners, we’ve got to stop going along with our fake trade union friends and politicians, such as those from QS, who are simply interested in reforming capitalism. We have to quit begging the bourgeois state through petitions and votes. We must take control of the struggle from them. Otherwise, they will divert our struggles to the parliamentary circus or into negociation of our level of exploitation.

A general strike, is what we need to expand the struggle, as our brothers and sisters, the working class from Greece and Spain, have shown. They set an example for us by uniting more and more broadly in spite of nationalism and union corporatism, by rejecting politicians, and attacking the bourgeois state machine as a whole. For example, the Greek working class besieged parliament when it approved the measures demanded by the European capitalists. It’s the capitalists who are responsible for this crisis. It’s not for the working class to pay. A single slogan: unite with the working class of Greece and Spain through general strike.

Yes for a general strike! No to the electoral circus!

To end this barbaric system, we need a new society. A society intent on production to meet real human needs as opposed to a society bent on production for profit. A society in which the means of production and distribution would be within reach of all, socialized, without an exploiter to hold the reins and appropriate our socially produced wealth. A world where the environment is no longer seen as a huge profit reserve – for plunder and ruin – by the capitalist class as we see today. A world based on the participation of all, which could be expressed through new organs of co-ordination, of production, and of distribution, through a system of delegates elected and subject to recall at any time, and representing society as a whole.To achieve this, it is imperative to overthrow the bourgeois state along with its parliamentary ‘democracy’, the capitalist class’s usual smoke & mirrors trick for establishing and maintaining their dominance. It’s up to the working class, with its class party as a guide, to take power by ridding itself of the the class which exploits it, by destroying its State, and establishing its own institutions. Only the working class as a whole, though its own autonomous bodies, workers councils for example, may establish a new classless stateless society. This task can not be delegated, not even to the most and conscious class Party.

Internationalist Communists Klasbatalo                                     Printemps Érable 2012 

                                                           

cim_icm@yahoo.com                                    

Solidarity with Battaglia Comunista (PCint) which has suffered provocations in Parma (Italy)

We publish the comment of the Fraction of the  International Communist Left and want to indicate our whole internationalist solidarity with comrades of the Pcint-Battaglia Communista.

Internationalist Communists - Klasbatalo

Solidarity with Battaglia Comunista (PCint) which has suffered provocations in Parma (Italy)

We publish here the "communique" that the comrades of the PCint-Battaglia Comunista (Internationalist Communist Tendency) have written after various and suspicious provocations recently held against them. We think highly important that all groups and militants claiming the Communist Left legacy express their solidarity with BC and the ICT. This expression of solidarity is obvious, by principle can we say, and must be expressed at any moment. But today, it seems to us that it is even more fundamental at the very moment the confrontation between the classes, between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, takes a wider scale than the last decades because the deepness and the impasse of capitalism's economical crisis. Everywhere, the bourgeoisie is obliged to attack massively and roughly the working class. Everywhere, it knows that these attacks will provoke inescapably workers reactions – they have already begun - which will be massive and increasingly "radical". It does prepare itself to it. Economically of course, but above all politically, ideologically, and at the repressive level too.

In Italy, the bourgeoisie has a great experience of the confrontation and the repression with the proletariat. In the years 1970, in front of the social movements initiated by the 1969 Italian "May" [called "Mai rampant" in French since it occurred during various months in the 1969 spring a year after the French May 68, translator's note], one of its essential weapons for derailing the proletariat off its class ground and to defeat it, had been the utilization of the police provocations and the cynical and systematic use of terrorism - through murderous bombings of so-called anarchists and in which the secrete services and policemen were often implicated as well as they were not very far from the terrorist actions realized by the Red Brigades... It appears today that the Italian bourgeoisie takes out again from its drawers this arm and this tactic putting back at first plan alleged threats of "violent" groups and various bombings and murders, one day on behalf of the mafia, the other one of the anarchists (FAI), the third on a "madman". So, it creates a "climate of tension" that the BC comrades underline and denounce in their communique and which does not limit itself to national scale events but also to a lot of local "incidents"... as in Parma where some of them have been provoked but "fascist" elements. It is in this context of "tension" that the PCint office in Parma has been "visited".

This tactic of tension has only one aim : hampering the inescapable revival of the workers struggles and the indispensable workers fight-back to the attacks they suffer ; and, for that aim, also attacking the political groups and militants of the class' vanguard who call for the destruction of the bourgeois State and for the Dictatorship of the proletariat. The utilization of terrorism enables to create the suspicion of these ones, to take the workers away from them, and to prepare thus their repression, their prosecution and their banning. The communists, as their class, have nothing to do with terrorism and they firmly denounce its use and "minority" actions which substitute to the mass action of the proletariat. Following the communique of the ICT comrades, we reproduce an extract of the Resolution on terrorism, terror and class violence – that we had adopted in the ICC in 1978 – which recalls why terrorism can't be a proletariat's arm and why it can't be today but utilized, manipulated, and even directly created by the bourgeoisie and its State. In front of these provocations which will certainly multiply, we claim the conclusion of the PCint comrades : "that's why we will carry on our communist fight and will defend our capacity of political action without withdrawing for one step".

Solidarity with the comrades of Battaglia Comunista !

The FICL, May 30th, 2012.

Communique of Battaglia Comunista

Serious Event at the Parma PCint Office.

During the night of Wednesday 16 to Thursday 17, unknown persons have get into our office in Parma, at borgo San Giuseppe 5, and have taken tens of volumes of the Dimitri Papaioannoy library. The following Friday morning, one comrade passing to the office found the mailbox pulled out and thrown in front of the door.

Facts as well worrying had already occurred in the previous weeks : one day, we realized that one of the two banners that we run up at the office entrance when we open it, had disappeared ; some days later, we found the other banner on the ground with a footprint on it.

It is obvious that these unknown persons have been able to open the door without breaking. We can't know who are the authors of these provocations towards us but they fit in a climate of tension which have not stop growing in the city after the criminal attack that the fascists of the Casapound have led with strikes of iron bars and knives Saturday May 11th afternoon against comrades of the anti-fascist committee of the Montanara district.

In these cases, we need to have solid nerves and much determination. As far as we are concerned, we won't let us being intimidated by anyone - as communists, we know that the bourgeoisie's hand is behind these provocations -, and we won't fall in the trap of the physical fight-back - it is exactly what the enemy class looks for. That's why we will carry on our communist fight and will defend our capacity of political action without withdrawing for one step

Battaglia Comunista, section "Guido Torricelli" of Parma.

Sunday, May 27th 2012.

(Translated into English by the FICL)

Resolution on terror, terrorism and class violence

(extracts, ICC, 1978)

We reproduce here after an extract of a programmatic document of the ICC which presents the communists' position in regards with the question of terrorism and which we carry on still today to defend as ours.

(...)

4. Capitalism is the last society in history to be divided into classes. The capitalist class bases its rule on the economic exploitation of the working class. In order to ensure this exploitation and intensify it as far as it can, the capitalist class, like all exploiting classes in history, resorts to all the means of coercion, oppression and repression at its disposal. It does not hesitate to use the most inhuman, savage and bloody methods to guarantee and perpetuate exploitation. The more it is confronted with internal difficulties, the more the workers resist exploitation, the more bloodily the bourgeoisie exerts its repression. It has developed a whole arsenal of repressive methods: prisons, deportations, murder, concentration camps, genocidal wars, and the most refined forms of torture. It has also, of necessity, created various bodies specialized in carrying all this out: police; gendarmes, armies, juridical bodies, qualified torturers, commandos and paramilitary gangs. The capitalist class devotes an ever-growing part of the surplus value extracted from the exploitation of the working class in order to maintain this repressive apparatus; this has reached the point where this sector has become the most important and flourishing field of social activity. In order to defend its class rule, the capitalist class is in the process of leading society to ruin and threatening the whole of humanity with suffering and death.

We are not trying to paint an emotional picture of capitalist barbarism; it is a prosaic description of its actual practice.

This practice, which impregnates the whole of social life and all relations between human beings, which penetrates into the pores of society, this practice, this system of domination, we call -- terror. Terror is not this or that episodic, circumstantial act of violence. Terror is a particular mode of violence, inherent to exploiting classes. It is concentrated, organized, specialized violence, planned, developed and perfected with the aim of perpetuating exploitation.

Its principal characteristics are:

a. being the violence of a minority class against the great majority of society;

b. perpetuating and perfecting itself to the point of becoming its own raison d’être;

c. requiring a specialized body which always becomes more specialized, more detached from society, closed in upon itself, escaping all control, brutally imposing its iron grip on the whole population and stifling any hint of criticism with the silence of death.

5. The proletariat is not the only class to feel the rigors of state terror. Terror is also imposed upon all the petty bourgeois classes and strata: peasants, artisans, small producers and shopkeepers, intellectuals and the liberal professions, scientists and students; it even extends itself into the ranks of the bourgeois class itself. These strata and classes do not put forward any historical alternative to capitalism; worn out and exasperated by the barbarism of the system and its terror, they can only oppose it with acts of despair: terrorism.

Although it can also be used by certain sectors of the bourgeoisie, terrorism is essentially the mode of action, the practice of desperate classes and strata who have no future. This is why this practice, which tries to be ‘heroic and exemplary’, is in fact nothing but an act of suicide. It offers no way forward and only has the result of supplying victims to the terror of the state. It has no positive effect on the class struggle of the proletariat and often acts as an obstacle to it, inasmuch as it gives rise to illusions among the workers that there can be some other way forward than the class struggle. This is why terrorism, the practice of the petty bourgeoisie, can be and often is exploited judiciously by the state as a way of derailing the workers from the terrain of the class struggle and as a pretext for strengthening the terror of the state.

What characterizes terrorism as a practice of the petty bourgeoisie is the fact that it is the action of small, isolated minorities which never raises itself to the level of mass action. It is conducted in the shadows of little conspiracies, thus providing a favorite hunting ground for the underhand activities of agents of the police and the state and for all sorts of manipulations and intrigues. (...)

In this sense we have to reject the idea of a ‘workers’ terrorism’ which is presented as the work of detachments of the proletariat, ‘specialists’ in armed action, or which is supposed to prepare the ground for future battles by giving an example of violent struggle to the rest of the class, or by ‘weakening’ the capitalist state by ‘preliminary attacks’. The proletariat can delegate certain detachments for this or that immediate action (pickets, patrols, etc) but these are under the control of the movement as a whole; within the framework of this movement the resolute actions of the most advanced elements can serve to catalyze the struggle of the broad masses, but this can never be done through the conspiratorial and individualistic methods that characterize terrorism. Terrorism even when practiced by workers or groups of workers, cannot take on a proletarian character, just as the fact that the unions are made up of workers does not make them organs of the working class. (...)

6) (...)

The struggle of the proletariat, like any social struggle, is necessarily violent, but the practice of its violence is as distinct from that of other classes as are its projects and its goals. Its practice, including the use of violence, is the action of huge masses, not of a minority; it is liberating, the midwife of a new harmonious society, not the perpetuation of a permanent state of war of one against all and all against one. Its practice does not aim to perfect and perpetuate violence, but to banish the crimes of the capitalist class and immobilize it. (...)

Its invincible force resides (...) in its capacity to mobilize the whole mass of the class and to integrate the majority of the non-proletarian laboring classes and strata into the struggle against capitalist barbarism. It resides in the development of its consciousness and its capacity to organize itself in a unified autonomous way, in the firmness of its convictions and the vigor of its decisions.

These are the fundamental weapons of the practice, the class violence of the proletariat.

ICC, International Review 15, 1978.

Comments on the international significance of the presidential election in France.

We publish this text from Fraction of International Communist Left (FICL) because we are totally in agreement with its contents.

It is important at present because the bourgeoisie of Quebec speak about the elections to settle the student strike.

 « Working class participation in the electoral circus and in the various parliaments is the best means the bourgeoisie has found to divert the proletariat from its historic task, the emancipation of all humanity. Just as with fascism, “bourgeois democracy” is a terrain in which the proletariat has no real place. »

Basic positions of the Internationalist Communists – Klasbatalo!

***************

The result of the first round of the French presidential race comes at the very moment we end up this bulletin. These elections don't interest only the French bourgeoisie. Their results have an international significance, or at least European, at the time many countries of this continent will live new elections at the regular term of the previous mandates - Germany in particular - and at the very moment other national bourgeoisies provoke anticipated elections - such as in Netherlands. It is this international significance we want to highlight.

Actually, new configurations of the political apparatus are dawning with these elections which will tend to reproduce in the months and years to come. It is actually almost sure that the Socialist Party's candidate, François Hollande, will be the next French President (Note 1). The other outstanding fact of this election is the rising of a "Left of the Left" - the Front de gauche [Left Front] with Melenchon at its head - whose vertebral column is being the old stalinist apparatus of the PCF [French Communist Party]. This two political parties (PS and Front de gauche) of the Left of capital, far for being opposed one another as they attempt to make appear, are actually the two sharp edges of the single and same arm that the bourgeoisie intends to utilize today against the proletariat.

So we have a Left of "government" which will lead a policy in which the State intervention, State capitalism, will grow and strengthen, a neo-Keynesian policy - it is the meaning of Hollande's willingness to re-negotiate the "Stability Pact" with Merkel and the German bourgeoisie "to introduce some growth". It matters to underline that this willingness for "introducing a constituent of growth" in the European policy in front of the crisis is making progress within the different ruling classes : at the very moment the Dutch bourgeoisie is provoking anticipated elections, it is interesting to note that its fractions, up to now aligned on the "drastic reduction of the deficits and the sovereign debts" policy put forwards by Germany, wish to introduce "more growth". No illusion within the bourgeoisie : it knows that a possible growth "due to credit" won't solve the crisis. It knows that capitalism's contradictions express in a crisis of generalized over-production. And no illusion for the proletarians : this possible "growth" won't bring them any relief in their sufferings, nor pauses of the attacks they suffer. The willingness to impose, at least in Europe, an economical policy with a "constituent of growth" corresponds amongst the clever fractions of the bourgeoisie to their consciousness of the need to develop a European war industry even more efficient and a European defence which really deserves this name.

And we have with the Front de gauche a Left "called to remain in the opposition", with a "social" language, indeed "revolutionary" and "classist" one, which doesn't want to be "governing" and whose aim is to control, to flank, and to derail, then to defeat, the inescapable workers struggles in front the crisis and the attacks that the "Socialist governments" will hurl at. As doesn't stop claiming Melenchon, "we are here to go on for long !" The existence of the same kind of party is not new in Europe and the Party of the Left in Germany, Die Linke, exists now since many years, actually since the drastic measures of the German bourgeoisie has taken against the working class during the government of the... Socialist Schröeder.

Actually, the national bourgeoisies must adapt their State apparatus, and in particular the political apparatus, to the new conditions that the economical crisis imposes. In their great majority, in particular in Europe, the bourgeois teams in power are government teams which were formed before 2008, before the "sub-primes" crisis. They are marked by the "neo-liberal free-market" ideology and theories in fashion in the 1980's. And yet the bankruptcy of "economical liberalism" handicaps seriously and deeply today these teams at the economical as well as political level. Actually, politicians, economists and other high-ranking officials or specialists who were brought up with the liberal free-market ideology, can certainly not apply from one day to another with the maximum effectiveness, it means from the point of view of the bourgeoisie of course, the new State measures and the more direct and massive intervention of the State, to conduct neo-keynesian policies...

These "economical" politics present a fundamental political goal : the indispensable preparation of the main imperialist powers for the generalized war. At that level, the European bourgeoisie must tackle to this task with decisiveness and determination. And then to adjust as efficient as possible the attacks against the working class since this one will have to pay not only for the present crisis but also for the war economy. This "economical" policy against the working class which won't prevent from massive proletarian reactions, must be accompanied, completed, by a device of Left forces speaking "in the name of the working class", leaning on the unions apparatus and whose objective is to control as much as possible these struggles, to make them derail from their aim and their class demands, to sabotage and to defeat them.

From this point of view, Hollande's election in France will certainly end up with the procrastinations and the hesitations of Sarkozy's "foreign" policy who, pro-American by "personal liking" if so we can say, had finally to submit to the requirements of the profound tendencies of the imperialist interests of the French bourgeoisie which inexorably drive it to remain linked and aligned with Germany. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that his figure is not enough reliable at that level and that the coming to power of a convinced pro-European will mark a supplementary step in the development and the affirmation of a more determined imperialist policy, in a more asserted European diplomacy and policy of defence, in international initiatives towards the "emerging powers", China, Latin-America, which raise against the United-States, in the questioning of the dollar as "the international reserve currency", etc...

In this preparation to war, the bourgeoisie needs the greater order and stability. The ability of the new government teams to control and defeat the workers struggles with the action of radical Left opposition forces is a central necessity which comes to strengthen even more the necessary coming of new political teams and new political men that are not hampered by the politics of the past. Because, besides the sabotage of the workers struggles, the ultra-chauvinist language of Melenchon and the PCF in the name of the "revolutionary ideal of the 1789 French revolution and of the 1871 Commune de Paris" will complete at the ideological level the dirty work done in the very struggles. There too, Hollande needs Melenchon, both reunited around the French tricolour flag ! Both aim at chaining the French proletariat to it. No doubt that the other bourgeoisie will find their equivalents within their own ranks. Is not already the case with Die Linke in Germany ?

Far from representing a decline of the attacks against the proletariat and even less a relief for this one, the adaptation of the political apparatus of the bourgeois States, included and above all with Left governments, means that the ruling class is preparing to bring even stronger attacks. Far from representing a lull of the classes struggle, the coming of these new apparatus marks at the contrary the increase and the escalation of the class contradictions. Far from meaning a slack period, the coming of new government teams accompanied with radical Left forces in the opposition, means the worsening of the bourgeoisie's offensive against the proletariat.

The FICL, April 22nd 2012

http://fractioncommuniste.org/index_eng.php

1.We don't take too much risks betting on his election in 15 days according to the polls. But in case it won't happen and Sarkozy would finally be re-elected, we don't think this would question the basic question of our stance. The last "arguments" of the latter's electoral campaign, in particular his willingness to reconsider the European Stability Pact in favour to a policy of more sustained economical growth, the withdrawal of the French troops from Afghanistan - just for mentioning only these two significant elements amongst others -, take up the orientations put forwards by Hollande. The difference will be that Hollande's new team would be less marked by the orientations and the politics of the past and thus more capable to lead it than Sarkozy whose neoliberal past and its continual zigzags and hesitations at the level of the international politics have sowed doubt about his ability as State leader within the French bourgeoisie.

Red Squares: The Student Strike in Quebec

We publish this text from  Revolutionary Perspectives#61, Spring 2012, Magazine of the Communist Worker’s Organisation, affiliate (Britain) on the Internationalist Communist Tendency because we are totally in agreement with its contents even if we have  no organizational link with ITC.

Internationalist Communists - Klasbatalo

The Student Strike in Quebec Poses the Question, Only the Working Class Can Answer It

Largely unreported in the global media 170,000 students in Quebec (more than a third of the total) have now been on strike for three months. It has lasted so long that some journalists have taken to likening it to the movements in the Arab world and dubbed it “the Maple Spring”. The students in universities and GECEPS (colleges) are fighting to prevent a 75% hike in tuition fees over the next five years. It will come as no surprise to anyone that this is part of an austerity package of budget cuts announced by the Liberal Government of the province to “bring down the deficit” from $3.8 billion to $1.5 billion in a single year. On this level it has a familiar sound.

The Issue

The bitterness and extent of the conflict is however remarkable. Behind it lies two different visions of the world we live in. On the one hand you have students who uphold the right to a free education (something abandoned everywhere else some time ago). They point out that Canada is a signatory of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which calls for “the progressive introduction of free education”. On the other hand are the corporate interests promoted by the decidedly corrupt Jean Charest (1), the Liberal Prime Minister of the Quebec Government. Already under investigation for corruption over construction contracts his favoured project is the so-called Plan Nord. This will pave the way for the destruction of the ecosystem of Northern Quebec as it opens the area up to the likes of Rio-Tinto-Alcan, ArcelorMittal, IAMGold, Alcoa, Agnico Eagle, and Xstrata. All have already benefitted from promotional fees (worth $500 million) and huge government grants worth over $1.6 billion are planned over the next five years (2). The annual savings from the higher education fees hike would only be about £250 million. The connection has not been lost on the student movement

"On April 20, students demonstrated outside a job fair for Quebec’s Plan Nord — a major initiative to develop the province’s north — where Mr. Charest was speaking. One demonstrator was pepper sprayed in the face as he tried to enter the Palais des Congres. In his speech that day, Mr. Charest mocked the protesters and offered to give them jobs in the province’s north (3)."

Little wonder that two days later a quarter of a million demonstrated in Montreal on Earth Day. Many of the demonstrators pinned the small red squares which denotes the student movement to their clothes in solidarity with the strike. No wonder the Government would not negotiate and has poured vitriol on the students. It has tried to portray them as selfish spoiled brats who want everything for free. This flies in the face of the fact that they were not fighting for themselves but for the rights of those who would follow them. No wonder this Government rhetoric has incited its paid thugs (aka the police) to use unprecedented violence on peaceful demonstrators – a violence which makes anything seen so far in the “advanced democracies” look rather tame. No wonder it has cited the antics of a few who have responded with violence to condemn the whole movement when the real violence has been that of the state.

A Wider Struggle is Needed

In the face of this the tenacity of the students has been admirable. Militant and resolved though the students have been they cannot win this fight alone. Some them know this, and have made attempts to reach out to rest of the society and, in particular, to the wider working class. They have not done enough of this but they have also come up against the hypocrisy of the unions. The unions have supported the strike verbally (how often do they do that with workers?) but have not once organised a single day of solidarity action with the students. This is because they are in reality part of the corporate management of the state. In recent years they have signed hundreds of deals to ensure the profitability of Quebecois capitalism which has led to lay-offs, speed-ups and wage freezes for workers. And this weekend the union leaders were the ones who “brokered the deal”, as one of our comrades put it, to get the student leaders into signing away the principal aims of the fight.

When it comes to negotiating a defeat behind closed doors no-one can compete with the union leadership. The deal that was finally stitched up was nothing less than a complete climbdown for the students. The fees will rise but over seven years rather than five and the way is open for further fees rises in the future. A committee is to be set up to look at further savings from university budgets which might then reduce administrative fees students have to pay. But as its composition is dominated by business and government this is unlikely to find any and the Government has already said it is unlikely to make savings.

Not surprisingly the leaders of the three student organisations have held this last clause out as a sop to the movement to hide their sell-out. It is equally unsurprising that they have not been able to sell the deal to their members.

The stakes are indeed high. Global capitalism in crisis cannot renege on its need to make us all pay for its plight. By resisting its attempts to turn back the clock the Quebec students are implicitly posing an entirely different mode of social organisation. If capitalism can only offer more misery, more debt and worsening conditions of existence it is time to explicitly reject it. But the students can only pose the question. The answer can only be given by the working class as a whole. The movement has to widen to become a full-scale anti-austerity movement which takes in the fears and aspirations of the majority of society. This is not going to come about any time soon but the anger and rage of this movement has to be built on. What is needed is an organisation which recognises explicitly that capitalism offers no future. We need to abolish the society that puts profits before people, that needs money for its functioning and its state to repress all opposition. It is time for a communist programme.

Jock

(1) And opinion polls suggest that he and his Liberal Party cronies will be thrown out at the next election this year (as happened after the last big student revolt in 1990).

(2) See “Violence budgetaire” by Michel Chossudovsky at mondialisation.ca

(3) news.nationalpost.com

Thursday, May 17, 2012

email: uk@leftcom.org

website: http://www.leftcom.org

DEFENCE OF THE PROLETARIAN CHARACTER OF OCTOBER 1917

We publish this text of the Internationalist Communist Tendency because we are totally in agreement with its contents and with the presentation that does the Fraction of the International Communist Left even if we have no organizational link with ITC and FICL.

DEFENCE OF THE PROLETARIAN CHARACTER OF OCTOBER 1917

1917, The Proletariat Takes Power

(Internationalist Communist Tendency)

We reproduce here an article of the ICT about the seizure of power by the proletariat in Russia in October 1917. Actually, this article is a chapter of a pamphlet of the Communist Workers Organization that the comrades have decided to re-publish parts on their web site (www.leftcom.org). This chapter deals only with the October days, the very ones of the workers insurrection and of the seizure of power by the "Soviets" or "workers councils" - organs of the proletarian insurrection and of the exercise of power, it means the dictatorship of the proletariat, as Trotsky defined them.

We want to underline the merit of this text for its capacity to present, concretely, how the soviets as forms of organization of the whole Russian proletariat, were able to realize their historical task under the leadership of the Communist Party (the Bolshevik Party), genuine political vanguard of the proletariat. And how this one could pull itself up at the level of its task only thanks to the revolutionary mobilization of workers and soldiers masses and at the cost of internal political struggles within the very Party. In short, one of the qualities of the text is to highlight and to emphasize the "dialectical relationship" which concretely established at that moment between the Party and the whole revolutionary class and which guaranteed the success of the workers insurrection.

Thus, this text ruins the thesis ceaseless repeated according to which October 1917 was a simple "coup d'Etat" organized by a minority of professional revolutionaries led by Lenin's iron hand. One of the arguments of this thesis is that the insurrection, more particularly the storming of the Winter Palace, Kerenski's government building, occurred in a city where calm was prevailing and that it has been a success because the weakness of the armed defenders of the bourgeois government. The ICT text responds, it could not be clearer, to this problem. It shows that it is precisely the strength and the massive mobilization of the proletariat, politically regrouped around the Bolshevik Party, and even sometimes being ahead of this one or of important fractions of this one, which enabled that the State bourgeois power felt down then as a ripe fruit, with few confrontations and victims. This "easiness" of the insurrection is, all the contrary, the expression of the strength and the high consciousness of the great masses of the proletariat at that very moment and of their direct and massive participation to the seizure of power ; it is the antithesis of the "coup d'Etat" imposed by a minority.

As well, the text rejects the mystification of an homogeneous and decided Bolshevik Party or being under one single man's iron rule, it means under Lenin's. All the contrary, it highlights how the vanguard Party itself was living through the same kinds of hesitations and contradictions as the whole class and how the political fight to win the Party to the insurrection has been difficult and even could have been lost. And how it is precisely the strength and revolutionary mobilization of the proletarian masses, on which Lenin and some fractions of the Party leaned on, which enabled to lead the struggle against those who opposed to the insurrection within the very organs of the Bolshevik leadership.

Finally, and lesson as much important, the ICT comrades' article enlivens how Lenin and the Party were guided by two essential class principles which enable them to be at the level of the situation : the first one can be defined as the need of the destruction of the bourgeois State and the setting up of the Dictatorship of the proletariat ; this principle directs and defines all the communist politics in the revolutionary periods as well as in the periods when the classes struggle is less acute and more "daily", included when the proletariat is not massively mobilized(Note 1) ; the second one, as well permanent and fundamental, is proletarian internationalism. Just a word on this : it is precisely the Bolsheviks' internationalist vision, which can't be reduced to the only denunciation of the imperialist war but which includes the call for civil war, for the destruction of the bourgeois State and to the setting up of the Dictatorship of the proletariat - here is the genuine and consequent class internationalism - which enables them to understand the absolute necessity to set up the power of the soviets as first pressure point for the whole international proletariat while the imperialist war, the 1st World War, was carrying on (Note 2) ; and as concrete, material, factor with above all the international dimension of the struggle against the imperialist war and for the international revolution.

We can see it, the article of the ICT comrades is not an "historical" text about a past experience whose lessons could eventually been drawn and then "passing to other thing". At the very moment capitalism is falling into deep crisis which obliges the bourgeoisie to attack fiercely the proletariat in all countries and, at the same time, to prepare the only outcome it can present in front of its economical bankruptcy, it means the generalized war, the lessons of October 1917 become again essential for the very development of the class fight of today ; and for presenting the proletarian and communist alternative to capitalist barbary. The ICT text comes to recall us the actuality of the Russian Revolution, of its principles and its lessons, and the flagship it is for the historical struggle of the international proletariat.

March 2012, la FICL

Note I :We can't develop here on this question. Let's just mention that the experience of the Bolshevik Party and above all Lenin's - we could also to some extent quote Trotsky  - since the beginnings of the Russian Social-Democracy is marked by their ability to judge every situation and to determine the communist intervention in relation to this principle, in relation to the relationship to the bourgeois State, it means the necessary and inescapable political class confrontation with this one and at all moment, at all steps, of the classes struggle.

Note 2 : The concrete and real dimension of the internationalism of the Bolshevik Party is particularly to be underlined here since it is challenged by the new "innovators" who call it into question as we underline it in the presentation we make of Onorato Damen's text, The Russia we love and defend, written in 1943 and that we reproduce in this issue of our bulletin.

1917, The Proletariat Takes Power

"On the evening of October 24th the Provisional Government had at its disposal little more than 25,000 men. On the evening of October 25th, when preparations were underway for the storming of the Winter Palace, the Bolsheviks assembled about 20,000 Red Guards, sailors and soldiers before that last refuge of the Provisional Government. But within the palace there were not more than 3000 defenders, and many of those left their posts during the night. Thanks to the Bolsheviks’ overwhelming superiority there were no serious battles in the capital from October 24th to October 26th, and the total number of those killed on both sides was no more than 15, with no more than 60 wounded.

During these critical hours, as all the main strategic points in the city passed under Bolshevik control (telephone and telegraph exchanges, bridges, railroad stations, the Winter Palace etc.), Petrograd continued on the whole to go about its normal business. Most of the soldiers remained in the barracks, the plants and the factories continued to operate, and in the schools none of the classes were interrupted. There were no strikes or mass demonstrations such had accompanied the February Revolution. The movie theatres (called cinematographias in those days) were filled, there were regular performances in all the theatres, and people strolled as usual on the Nevsky prospect. The ordinary non-political person would not even have noticed the historic events taking place; even on the streetcar lines, the main form of public transportation in 1917, service remained normal. It was in one of those streetcars that Lenin, in disguise, and his bodyguard Eino Rahya travelled to Smolny late on the evening of the 24th."

Thus the Soviet “dissident” historian, Roy Medvedev describes the October Revolution. This picture of Lenin going to the revolution on a tram also conforms with Trotsky’s view of those days.

"Demonstrations, street fights, barricades — everything comprised in the usual idea of insurrection — were almost entirely absent. The revolution had no need of solving a problem already solved. The seizure of the governmental machine could be carried through according to plan with the help of comparatively small armed detachments guided from a single centre ... the very fact that the resistance of the government came down to a defence of the Winter Palace, clearly defines the place occupied by October 25th in the whole course of the struggle. The Winter Palace was the last redoubt of a regime politically shattered during its eight months existence and conclusively disarmed during the

preceding two weeks." (The Russian Revolution, p.1138).

The Russian privileged classes had expected an orgy of looting and murder, political chaos and the collapse of human morality. Instead they were faced with an ordered transition which must have been even more terrifying for them. The proletarian masses had shown they had no need of rulers but could found their own forms of government. Of course, this was later turned into a criticism of the October Revolution by the historians of our class enemy who portrayed the proletarian revolution only in terms of its final act. They could thus spread the legend that this was simply a putsch, a coup d’etat by a small, fanatical, group whilst the masses passively sat on the sidelines. It is surprising that such a myth has not collapsed under the weight of its own absurdity. Apart from the fact that the Bolshevik Party had 300,000 members or the fact that it had the active support of nearly every soldier in Petersburg

(about 300,000 men), how was it possible for them to have debated publicly the seizure of power in the press for all to read for a fortnight before the final arrest of the Provisional Government? Establishing the proletarian nature of the October Revolution is not our aim here since we take this as a given fact. What we need to look at are the circumstances under which that revolution took place, to examine not only how the proletariat made the Bolshevik Party its instrument but also how the tactics of the Bolsheviks were tested in the complex situation of September and October 1917.

Can the Bolsheviks Win State Power?

The fate of the bourgeois order in Russia was sealed from the moment that the armies of the Kaiser occupied Riga in August 1917. Instead of the promised victories the Germans were now poised to go all the way to Petersburg. Lenin, however, had been arguing for insurrection from the moment he realised that the other so-called socialist parties (the Mensheviks and the S.R.s), true to their theory of supporting a bourgeois system, did not intend to support soviet power. But the Bolshevik Central Committee seemed to be ignoring his letters. What was worse for him was that, as he sat in hiding, the Bolshevik Central Committee seemed to be falling for Kerensky’s attempts to bolster his tottering rule. In the aftermath of the defeat of Kornilov the Provisional Government called a “Democratic Conference” to try to rally the parties represented in the soviet around bourgeois rule. To Lenin’s horror the Bolshevik Central Committee fell for this ruse and participated in this charade (Lenin singled out Trotsky for special praise for arguing for a boycott of this assembly). Furthermore, they also agreed to participate in the so-called “Preparliament” which Kerensky hoped to use to legitimise the position of his unelected government.

Lenin responded in a text called From a Publicist’s Diary in which he denounced the Central Committee:

There is not the slightest doubt that at the top of our Party there are noticeable vacillations that may become ruinous ... Not all is well with the “parliamentary” leaders of our Party; greater attention must be paid to them, there must be greater workers’ supervision over them ... Our Party’s mistake is obvious. The fighting party of the advanced class need not fear mistakes. What it should fear is persistence in a mistake …"(Selected Works, Vol. II, pp. 340-1).

Not only did the Bolshevik leaders around Kamenev persist in mistakes, but they made them worse by suppressing all Lenin’s criticisms of their approach to the Democratic Conference and the future insurrection.

Although Lenin wrote thousands of words to stimulate them into action they ensured that the key passages were edited out. In frustration Lenin finally submitted his resignation from the Central Committee but “reserving for myself freedom to campaign amongst the rank and file”.

Although the Central Committee did not even discuss this resignation letter, it freed Lenin to take up private correspondence with individuals who were in other Party organisations. This once again revealed that Lenin was not an isolated figure battling against a mediocre party as all histories of the Russian Revolution make out. His struggle was against a party leadership which had become concerned more about the survival of the Party than the victory of the workers. Once the rest of the Party were aware of the issues they followed Lenin. The best example of this was the Petersburg Committee. When it learnt of the censorship of the discussion they were outraged against the Central Committee In fact the really interesting discussion about the need for insurrection took place in the Petersburg Committee. Here there was no element like Kamenev who wanted a deal with the Mensheviks, and who did not really accept the internationalist orientation of the Bolsheviks. This had developed out of the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences at the beginning of the First World War, and had been given new programmatic shape in Lenin’s Imperialism - the Highest Stage of Capitalism. The international question was now obvious in the concerns of the Bolsheviks in Petersburg. In the debate over the need for insurrection the most coherent opponent of Lenin’s was Volodarsky. He pointed to the backwardness of Russia and insisted that the Bolsheviks should mark time because the Russian Revolution could only succeed as part of a world revolution. Lenin’s s supporters agreed that the fate of the Russian Revolution was dependent on the fate of the world revolution. But they argued that the proletariat in backward Russia had been given a chance not yet offered to the working class anywhere else. The Russian workers must seize power and hold on whilst the European revolution developed.

This argument for not delaying any longer won the day. Lenin enshrined the internationalist position in his text The Crisis has Matured. This text like many others written in this period deserves to be read in full but we will content ourselves with just a few lines which indicate the internationalist essence of Bolshevism — the one factor that made it uniquely working class in the First World War.

"The end of September undoubtedly marked a great turning point in the history of the Russian revolution and, to all appearances, of the world revolution as well ... This stage may be called the eve of revolution. Mass arrests of party leaders in free Italy, and particularly the beginning of mutinies in the German army are indisputable symptoms that a great turning point is at hand, that we are on the eve of world-wide revolution ... And since of all the proletarian internationalists in all countries only we Russian Bolsheviks enjoy a measure of freedom - we have a legal party and a score or so of papers, we have the Soviets ... of both capitals on our side and we have the support of a majority of the people in a time of revolution - to us the saying “To whom much has been given, of him much will be required”, in all justice can and must be applied." (Collected Works, Vol. II, pp. 342-3).

It was an argument which won over the party, and on October 10th, the Central Committee voted to accept in principle the idea of organizing the insurrection. It was not simply a victory for one man, or even one party, but for the international working class. The problem now was how the insurrection would come about.

The Soldiers Become Bolsheviks

As we showed in the previous chapter, the Bolsheviks won enormous support for their policies well before the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets was called. In fact 80% of the worker delegates to that body were Bolshevik supporters. However, this does not mean that the proletariat was imbued with a communist consciousness since this would have been an impossibility under the prevailing conditions. What they did have were concrete demands which accumulated as 1917 wore on. They wanted an end to the war and its associated miseries of food shortages and inflation.

They had seen that coalition with the bourgeois Provisional Government only continued the war. Furthermore, the Germans continued to advance closer to Petersburg and it was widely believed that Kerensky aimed to allow it to fall into enemy hands so that the revolution there could be crushed. All this meant that the Bolsheviks were bound to increase their support since they were the only party which opposed the war in unambiguous terms and which had all along called for “All Power to the Soviets”. In October 1917 these issues became tied together as barracks after barracks voted not to obey orders to go to the front, and to listen only to the Soviets. Typical of these resolutions was that of the Egersky Guards Regiment on October 12th:

"The pulling out of the revolutionary garrison from Petrograd is needed only by the privileged bourgeoisie as a means of stifling the revolution ... We declare to all who listen that, while refusing to leave Petrograd, we will nonetheless heed the voice of the genuine leaders of the workers and poorer peasantry, that is the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. We will believe in and follow it because everything else is pure treachery and open mockery of the world revolution." (As quoted in Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks Come to Power, p. 227).

This resolution was passed as part of the final critical struggle for control of the forces in Petersburg. On October 9th Trotsky had been able to get a resolution passed in the Petersburg Soviet which called for peace, the removal of the Kerensky government and, most significantly, proposed that the defence of Petersburg be undertaken by the Soviet itself. As a result of its acceptance this proposal created the famous Military Revolutionary Committee which was to coordinate the practical seizure of power on October 25th. Contrary to later Stalinist myths, the committee was not set up as a premeditated coordinator of the takeover. It only became so because the Mensheviks refused to take part in it. The committee was thus composed solely of Bolsheviks and Left S.Rs who were united on the need to transfer power to the soviets. Furthermore, the resolution to set up the Military Revolutionary Committee came before the Bolshevik Central Committee finally accepted Lenin’s arguments about an immediate seizure of power. The final proof that the Military Revolutionary Committee was not foreseen as the organiser of the October Revolution was that Lenin, and most Bolsheviks (with the exceptions of Trotsky and Volodarsky) looked to the Bolsheviks’ own Military Organisation to carry out the practical preparations. However, the latter, which had gone in for adventurism in July, had been so severly criticised within the Party that it now did not want to get its fingers burnt again.

Their preparations were so deliberate and cautious that in the end they played a subsidiary, rather than a leading role.

The chief reason for this was, as with so many issues in 1917, the bourgeoisie’s imperialist desires to continue the war. The war had brought the fall of Tsardom, it would now finally bring the end of the Russian bourgeoisie and their social democratic lapdogs in the S.R.and Menshevik Parties. In view of the fact that Kerensky needed the Petersburg garrison at the front and in view of the fact that the troops would not go, Kerensky was in fact faced with a mutiny from the moment the troops put themselves under the leadership of the Soviet’s Military Revolutionary Committee. Once Kerensky and his Petersburg commander General Polkovnikov realised this, it was already too late. The Military Revolutionary Committee had managed to get commissars loyal to the Soviet elected in most of the regiments. When Kerensky realised he had few reliable troops in the capital he telegraphed for troops from the front but was told that the troops there were so “infested with Bolshevism” that they would refuse to move unless told the purpose of their transfer. In short the Provisional Government was already virtually paralysed. When Kerensky finally did act on October 23rd it was to call for the arrest of all the Bolsheviks who were out on bail after the July Days (this included all the military leaders of the Party), and to close down the Bolshevik press for sedition. But in order to carry out these measures he had to rely on cadets from officer training schools, a women’s shock battalion and a rifle regiment of war wounded. The forcible seizure of the Trud press where Rabochii Put, a Bolshevik paper addressed to workers, was published, was the signal for the Military Revolutionary Committee to react. The press was soon in workers’ hands again and troops loyal to the Military Revolutionary Committee persuaded those thinking of responding to Kerensky’s appeals to remain neutral. As with the Kornilov Affair, troops being moved towards the capital were also persuaded not to assist the counter-revolution.

Militarily there were now no obstacles to a seizure of power by the working class but there remained the question of when and how. This debate, which had raged in the Bolshevik Party throughout September, had still not been finally resolved despite the famous vote of October 10th. Whilst some members of the Military Revolutionary Committee wanted the immediate overthrow of Kerensky, other Bolsheviks still saw such an uprising as either wrong or premature. Trotsky summarised the situation correctly:

"The government is powerless; we are not afraid of it because we have sufficient strength ... Some of our comrades, for example Kamenev and Riazanov, do not agree with our assessment of the situation. However we are leaning neither to the right or to the left. Our tactical line has been developed by developing circumstances. We grow stronger every day. Our task is to defend ourselves and gradually to expand our sphere of authority so as to build a solid foundation for tomorrow’s Congress of Soviets." (Quoted in Rabinowitch, p. 253).

This was not how Lenin liked it of course. After seven weeks of campaigning for an immediate uprising against a defeated enemy, he could not contain himself. For the second time in a month he disobeyed the Central Committee’s instructions to remain in hiding and took his famous tram ride to the Bolshevik headquarters at the Smolny Institute. He had already sent an appeal to lower levels of the Party urging them to act before the Central Committee. It was a summary of all he had argued before:

"History will not forgive revolutionaries for procrastinating when they could be victorious today (and they certainly will be victorious today), while they risk losing much tomorrow, in fact they risk losing everything. If we seize power today, we seize it not in opposition to the soviets but on their behalf. It would be a disaster, or a sheer formality, to await the wavering vote of October 25. The people have the right and are in duty bound to decide such questions, not by a vote, but by force, in critical moments of the revolution ... The government is tottering. It must be given the deathblow at all costs. To delay action is fatal."

In fact, both positions contain important elements of the truth. Trotsky recognised that there was no further chance for a new Kornilov to appear.

He saw that things were quickly enough as it was to a final denouement (and Trotsky was amongst the most active in ensuring the process was speeded up). Trotsky also knew something Lenin didn’t, namely, that the composition of the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets would be overwhelmingly for the overthrow of the Provisional Government. Lenin feared that it would still contain enough Mensheviks and S.Rs to postpone any decision on soviet power until the Constituent Assembly, “which cannot possibly be favourable to us”, met. He wanted to present the other “socialist parties” with a fait accompli. If the Mensheviks rejected it then they would expose themselves as bourgeois in front of the working class. In fact this is almost how things turned out.

Proletarian October

The October Revolution has been called the best planned revolution of all time. A militant proletariat, steeled in battle and with its own political instrument in the Bolshevik Party, took power in the most orderly of mass actions in history. However this should not obscure certain facts which are characteristic of the relation of party and class. The Bolshevik Central Committee never, at any time, decided on the date for insurrection. It was simply overruled by the march of events and it was the Bolshevikcontrolled Military revolutionary Committee of the Petersburg Soviet which directed the final attack. Even here though, the real political leadership of the Bolshevik Party lay, not in the committee rooms of Smolny, but on the streets.

When Kerensky sent cadets to close the bridges over the Neva (thus cutting Petersburg’s centre from the working class districts on the Vyborg side) just as he had done in July.

"... they were challenged by an irate crowd of citizens, many of them carrying weapons. Forced to give up their arms the cadets were escorted humiliatingly back to their academy; as nearly as can be determined, this action took place without any specific directives from the Military Revolutionary Committee. Similarly, as soon as the struggle for the bridges began, Ilyin-Zhenevsky, also acting on his own, saw to it that garrison soldiers took control of the smaller Grenadersky and Samsonevsky bridges …" (Rabinowitch p.261).

In short, despite all the planning and all the debates the revolution was not the work of a minority simply leading a passive majority. The Bolsheviks as a military directing centre were not as well-prepared as Stalinist histories have made out. Their real success as a leadership of the working class was in imbuing the mass movement with clear goals that it could follow. Thus the Liteiny Bridge was shut by workers acting on their own consciousness of the importance of the situation, whilst an individual Bolshevik (Ilyin-Zhenevsky) doesn’t wait for instructions form the “centre”, but can act on his own initiative in accordance with the demands of the situation. As we have shown throughout this document, the Bolsheviks’ fitness for the revolutionary task was not the result of some assumed infallibility is strategy and tactics but in the fact that it was a party genuinely rooted in the class conscious vanguard of the working class - and a party capable of learning from its mistakes. In this sense it was the organiser of the proletariat in the October Revolution.

Without its general direction of the class vanguard the October Revolution would have become another heroic failure to put on a historical list that is already too long.

The final evidence of the Bolsheviks’ leadership of the masses came in the figures of the allegiance of the delegates to the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets which gave the Bolsheviks 300 and the S.Rs 193 (of which half were Left S.Rs who supported the overthrow of the Provisional Government), whilst there were 68 Mensheviks and 14 of Martov’s Menshevik Internationalists. The remainder were mainly non-affiliated but, as the voting soon showed, largely followed the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks supported a motion by Martov to establish a coalition government of all the socialist parties, but this was sabotaged by the Mensheviks and S.Rs, who made it clear they were walking out of the Congress. They hoped to mobilise the proletariat against the Bolsheviks but in fact, as the proletariat supported the Bolsheviks they simply walked, in Trotsky’s words, into “the dustbin of history”. This one Menshevik-Internationalist, Sukhanov, realised when he alter wrote:

"By quitting the Congress , we ourselves gave the Bolsheviks a monopoly of the Soviet, of the masses and of the revolution."

Despite further attempts by Martov’s Menshevik Internationalists to try to form a coalition including those parties which rejected soviet power, the Congress now overwhelmingly endorsed the insurrection. At about the same time the Winter Palace fell into the hands of the working class and the members of the Provisional government were arrested – the only arrests made by the working class. Kerensky had earlier escaped to try to rally frontline troops. This turned out to be another demonstration of the overwhelming victory of the Bolsheviks since his efforts almost ended with his own arrest. Disguised as woman, he fled Russian to write increasingly mendacious memoirs at Harvard law School over the next half century.

Meanwhile Lenin has emerged from the shadows of hiding to greet the Congress of Soviets with the simple statement “We shall now proceed to construct the socialist order”. The real history of the Russian working class revolution had begun…

A List of the Main Books Referred to in this Text

J. Carmichael, A Short History of the Russian Revolution, 1980.

E.H.Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution (Volume One), 1972

M. Ferro, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1985.

N. Harding, Lenin’s Political Thought, 1983.

M. Leibman, Leninism under Lenin, 1980.

A. Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks Come to Power, 1979.

F. Raskolnikov, Kronstadt and Petrograd, 1982.

N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917, 1984 (Princeton, NJ).

L. Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, 1977.