Bolsheviks

Martin Thomas discusses In Defence of Bolshevism and some other modes of politics. This book, by way of polemics and discussions from different eras, explains what “Bolshevism” means in the field of left-wing political organising. Another way of summing it up would be: the opposite of 38 Degrees. 38 Degrees is a left-wing movement which sees itself as exceptionally progressive, democratic, and attuned to “people power”. It declares that its “campaigns are chosen and led by our three million members”. Its leaders would, I guess, consider “Bolshevism” to be old-fashioned and too hierarchical...

In Defence of Bolshevism, the new book from Workers' Liberty, had its launch at a lively meeting in central London on 12 October. Edited by Sean Matgamna, the collection of texts by American Trotskyist Max Shachtman represents one of the greatest polemics in the Marxist tradition. It is the defence of a revolutionary socialist consciousness being developed in the working class as the irreplaceable pre-condition for the self- emancipation of the working class. Crucially, it describes the only type of party fit for the purpose of seeding, nurturing and growing this consciousness in the working...

The letter which this article replies to is here , towards the bottom, entitled " All states are racist endeavours " . Mike Zubrowski ( Solidarity 480) is right that to go from saying “all nation states are intrinsically racist” or “all states are racist endeavours” to saying that *Israel*, in particular, is “a racist endeavour”, and therefore should be suppressed (by another state, in fact by a conquering state) is illogical and antisemitic in its implications. It should also be said that claims that “all nation states are intrinsically racist” or “all states are racist endeavours” are an...

An open letter to Ashok Kumar It’s been said before, and it will bear saying again. If everything published by the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty in the last five decades were to disappear, and if future historians of socialism had to rely on what our political opponents said about us, then the historians would find it impossible to make political sense of the story. On the one hand we are people who do, and have always done, everything we can to help workers in their struggle against employers and governments. We throw everything we have into that. We preach working-class revolutionary...

Numerous commentators on the Russian Revolution also make comment and offer analyses of the civil war that followed. In his reply to Eric Lee ( Solidarity 455) Paul Vernadsky mentions how “...the Bolsheviks fought a civil war against the White generals and the imperialist powers”. I have no disagreement with what Paul Vernadsky has written (and I note it was a short letter not a full-length article), but it is necessary to add more detail. The Russian civil war that followed the revolution was a very complicated often confusing affair. The armies of the imperial powers never really posed a...

Sadly Eric Lee’s response to my review of his book on Georgia (Solidarity 454, 15 November) avoids the substance of my critique. Lee’s book argues that the Georgian Menshevik strategy between 1917 and 1921 was better than the Bolsheviks in Russia. Yet in Marxist terms, Bolshevik politics were far superior: The Bolshevik-led Russian workers made a socialist revolution in October 1917; the Georgian Mensheviks did not lead a revolution. The Bolshevik regime that resulted in Russia was a workers’ government; the Georgian Mensheviks led a bourgeois government. The Bolshevik government stopped...

The Russian Revolution has had all sorts of things grafted onto the image it projects to us. But what was it in reality? In the revolution, the workers and the farmers — and the soldiers who were mainly peasants — revolted against the ruling classes and the war. This was a tremendously democratic movement. It was a movement that created soviets, that is workers’ councils. No powerful state made the revolution. It was the people, the workers, the red guards in St Petersburg and Moscow, the factory militias. What they thought they were doing was liberating themselves from all future class rule...

Paul Vernadsky in his review of my book, The Experiment: Georgia’s Forgotten Revolution 1918-21 ( Solidarity 453), is right to highlight the importance of this period for today. And he comes to the heart of our disagreement at the very end of his essay when he refers to the idea that “an impoverished, backward society cannot skip historical stages”. He calls this “Menshevik dogma”. No, Paul, that’s not “Menshevik dogma”. That’s Marxism. But leaving aside whether that’s more Martov or Marx, that phrase has proven to be absolutely true. The last century showed us many examples of attempts by...

Paul Vernadsky reviews The Experiment: Georgia’s Forgotten Revolution 1918-21 by Eric Lee. Eric Lee’s mischievous new book, argues that the Georgian Menshevik republic was an alternative to the Bolshevik-led workers’ government, which came to power in October 1917. This is absolute fantasy, which confuses discussion of working-class politics at the time and the importance of the Russian revolution for today’s class struggles. Russia annexed Georgia in 1798 and the Transcaucasia region remained a largely underdeveloped part of the tsarist empire until the discovery of oil in the late nineteenth...

At the dawn of November 7th the men and women employed at the party’s printing works came to the Smolny and informed us that the Government had stopped our chief party paper and also the new organ of the Petrograd Soviet. The printing works had had their doors sealed up by some Government agents. The Military Revolutionary Committee at once countermanded the order, took both papers under its protection, and placed the high honour of protecting the freedom of the Socialist Press from counter-revolutionary attempts on the valiant Volhynian Regiment. After this, work was resumed and went on...