By Eddie McCabe
If ever you debate the merits of socialism versus capitalism, it will only be a short while before you encounter some variation of the argument “But socialism leads inevitably to dictatorship”. Such is the enduring legacy of Stalinism – the bureaucratic dictatorships that existed in the former Soviet Union for most of the 20th century.
Many brutal dictatorships have labelled themselves ‘socialist’ or ‘communist’, often to cynically disguise their distinctly anti-socialist features. But there is an understandable if misguided reason why many people equate socialism with dictatorship: a genuine socialist revolution happened in Russia in October 1917, when the working class overthrew the Tsarist autocracy and capitalism, and established the most radically democratic state the world has ever seen – but this revolution, tragically, did end in dictatorship.
All the enemies of socialism proclaim that this outcome was inevitable. But this is fundamentally false, and it relies on a distorted account of what actually happened before, during and after the revolution.
Opponents say the October Revolution was a coup by the Bolshevik Party led by Vladimir Lenin. But the Bolsheviks’ clarion call was “All power to the soviets” – democratically elected councils of workers, peasants, soldiers and sailors. And the soviets, representing the overwhelming majority of the working masses, took power in Russia. The elected leaders of the soviets took control of the state institutions, while workers took control of factories, peasants took control of land, and soldiers took control of garrisons and battalions.
They also say the Bolsheviks established a one-party dictatorship, but in the first years of the revolution many parties were represented in the soviets. However, these first years was not simply a time of revolutionaries freely experimenting in workers’ democracy and socialist planning; rather, it was an incredibly arduous time of rebuilding from the ruins of the First World War, while also repelling the vicious attacks of the proto-fascist White Army, and 14 imperialist armies who invaded to crush the revolution.
As the civil war raged, the parties within the soviets increasingly divided into two main camps: those for and against saving the revolution at all costs (by winning the civil war) – with those in favour joining the Bolsheviks, as the leading revolutionary force, and those against taking up arms against the new state. In these life and death circumstances, measures to curtail the right to organise against the state were taken.
But these measures were explicitly intended to be temporary, and could have been overturned as peace and stability were attained. Unfortunately, the revolution faced two other major problems: poverty and economic backwardness, and isolation.
Genuine socialism is the idea of utilising the economic and technological developments made possible by capitalism to advance society further, through democratic planning. But in Russia in 1917, three quarters of the population was illiterate, industry was concentrated in a small number of cities, and the country was virtually bankrupt.
Genuine socialism also cannot develop in one country alone; it has to spread internationally – for very practical political and economic reasons. Isolation means it can be more easily strangled by the hostile capitalist world that surrounds it. The revolutionaries in Russia banked on a European revolution coming to their aid, which despite coming close – particularly in Germany, Italy, Hungary, Finland, and Austria – failed to materialise.
In conditions of such hardship, when workers were struggling to feed their families, participating in the democratic running of society became unworkable. These conditions of scarcity allowed a bureaucracy to develop throughout the new workers’ state, which placed its own self-serving needs above those of the revolution. The bureaucracy found a capable leader in Stalin, who over years consolidated all power within his hands.
Stalin’s dictatorial rule represented a complete betrayal of the revolution led by the Bolsheviks. Indeed it necessitated the murder and exile of almost all of the leaders of 1917. It overturned liberatory policies such as the legalisation of divorce, abortion and homosexuality; it cut across potential revolutions abroad whose success could have threatened its own position; and it oversaw a horrifically repressive social regime.
This was a political counter-revolution, which led to the eventual collapse of the Soviet state. It was a terrible outcome for a revolution with such incredible potential, but far from being inevitable it was bravely resisted by many genuine revolutionaries. Their legacy was to document the truth of what transpired, so the revolution and counter-revolution could be really understood, and their crucial lessons learnt for the revolutions of the future.
Victor Serge was one of those revolutionaries, and he put it well when he said: “It is often said that ‘the germ of all Stalinism was in Bolshevism at its beginning’. Well, I have no objection. Only, Bolshevism also contained many other germs, a mass of other germs, and those who lived through the enthusiasm of the first years of the first victorious socialist revolution ought not to forget it. To judge the living man by the death germs which the autopsy reveals in the corpse – and which he may have carried in him since his birth – is that very sensible?”
