Lessons of the October Revolution: build the proletarian vanguard party

Martin O’Malley, former State Secretary of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (SA Branch) spoke at an event at the Semaphore Workers Club in Adelaide to mark the centenary of the Great October Socialist Revolution. His speech follows:​

What a momentous occasion today is, celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Russian Revolution.

In 1848, 46 years prior, Karl Marx described the Paris revolution as the “first major battle between the two classes in which the modern society is divided”. This was the beginnings of modern class warfare.

The 1870-71 Paris revolution led to the first attempt at setting up proletarian revolutionary power, the Commune. Though very short lived (two months) the lessons developed and built on each day by the working class of Paris were invaluable. Unfortunately, the Paris revolution ended in defeat with the harshest lessons of all, absolute destructive reaction from the ruling class. Quelling the first attempt at proletarian control there was no mercy, no forgiveness, no justice, just slaughter to all and sundry whether involved or not, for challenging the absolute right of the bourgeoisie to rule.

The defeat in 1870 was the embryo of future success for working class battles, no more so than the Russian Revolution.

In 1917 Lenin led the revolutionary forces required to win working class control. He had studied the history of working class struggles and understood the fundamental lessons of the past. Through the application of Marxism, applied to the concrete conditions at the time and without sacrificing principles, Lenin shifted ground as required to meet the circumstances of the day, refusing to become bogged down in polemics when it was time for decision. He understood Marxism is a guide to action and all the conditions required were at hand. This was the key to success of 1917 and a fundamental lesson for all future battles including today.

While Marx declared the Paris revolution as the first battle between the working class and the ruling class (the proletariat and the bourgeoisie), the October Russian Revolution took a step further, which reverberated around the world, advancing the rule of the working class in a country consolidating a socialist state never before achieved.

100 years ago, the working class took total power and maintained it for decades, changing the world forever.

Huge changes for the working class were taking place not only in Russia but elsewhere in the world due to the achievements of the 1917 revolution and the USSR.

- Withdrawing Russia from the imperialist 1st world war. - Expropriated the big industries and made them public property. - Established 8 and 7 hours of working day and was about to make it 6 and 5. - Established free healthcare and free education, filled the schools and the universities. - Banned child labour -Established women’s rights, not only institutionally but in practice. - Guaranteed a complete welfare system for the helpless. - Created terror to the bourgeoisie all over the world forcing them to apply elements of social welfare and rights. - Pointed out people’s right in self-determination and fought against chauvinism and nationalism. - Clarified in practice just and unjust wars. - Won WW2 essentially losing 30 million people doing it. - Crushed fascism and Nazism.

The power and absolute rights of the ruling class had been shaken as never before. The fear of socialist contagion spread from country to country to the delight of the world wide working class. The vulnerability of the ruling class was open for all to see; they are forever more, “surplus to requirement”.

Since the 1917 revolution, China and other countries have also travelled the socialist road, some more successful than others, some reverting back through corrupt leadership divorced from the working class and the people. Capitalism is very resilient and has had the ability to reinvent itself time and time again through corruption and greed.

Historical facts about the revolution can easily be found in books and on the internet, but defining those historical facts will require more than the ability to read. To really make sense of it, we need to be part of the inevitable journey leading to the ultimate destiny of the working class as described by Karl Marx and continued by Lenin and many others.

Just knowing the history means nothing, unless we are prepared to participate and make our own history. We must concentrate on building a Proletarian Vanguard Party, which Lenin made very clear, is a prerequisite for the working class to successfully challenge the ruling class. This is a party for the most advanced and active working-class leaders to learn and teach and put into action lessons from the past tempered by current concrete conditions.   

In Australia we have a number of organisations which call themselves communist, socialist or other names, suggesting progressive politics. Each organisation has its own views as to what is required to combat capitalism (if that is their goal). Some of these organisations have working relationships with others, while some do not or will not. Some agree with Lenin, others do not. Those who do agree must continue working closer together and resolving issues which may cause division.

There is no longer a place for the ruling class or its system of capitalism, which, must be replaced with a system which shares the wealth produced by the working people and protects the fragile environment we all live in, ridding ourselves of exploitation and destruction of the earth. We need a Party untainted by the rules and the corruption of the ruling class, we will make our own working-class rules to benefit the masses of people not just the few.

The working class is not interested in what it sees as petty squabbles, it wants an organisation which will lead when it is required. It will not be led by pretenders or charlatans. The working class fully understands the consequences of getting it wrong. It is learnt at an early age through the workforce to keep one’s head down until the right time when workers are united with competent leadership.

The lessons of the past are good indicators of how we should organise. Listening to the working class is a good step in resolving these differences and is part and parcel of building a Proletarian Vanguard Party, showing the working class we do listen and understand what must be done.
 

A gift to the world’s peoples: lessons from the October Revolution

A speech by a CPA M-L comrade, at an event organised by the Communist Party of Australia in Sydney.

It’s an honour to speak tonight on behalf of the Communist Party of Australia Marxist-Leninist, alongside CPA, union and international comrades, to celebrate the momentous Red October.

We meet on the lands of the Sovereign Gadigal People of the Eora Nation. In 1792, 500 metres from where we gather, Bidjigal man Pemulwuy led an attack against the invaders. May this celebration also honour their spirit!

The lessons from the world’s first socialist state, are an enduring gift to the world’s people. The most important one is to listen to, and learn from the people.
 

The Russian Revolution succeeded because, through detailed study of Russia, Lenin and his comrades crystallised the ideas of the masses and analysed the forces arrayed against them. Mao describes this in simple words, “Seeking truth from facts.”

Lenin did not confuse his desire for change with reality. To lead effectively we have to be able to retreat as well as attack, to make compromises that lay the ground for future advance. Lenin and the Bolsheviks did just that.

Marx and Engels are quite clear that the people need a communist party. October 1917 proved why. “The Russian revolution would not have happened, could not have happened,” a young comrade writes in the latest Vanguard, “without a committed, tightly organised and disciplined Party, to make the ongoing analyses, to develop the strategies and tactics, to agitate consistently across the vast empire, to organise the people politically and militarily, and to possess the accumulated collective wisdom and courage to brave the tsarist and bourgeois repression and know when and how to strike.”

Then came the hard part - creating an utterly new system on the heels of world war amidst mass starvation, civil war, invasion, and later rising fascism and another world war.

Class struggle does not cease under socialism
In August 1917, in The State and Revolution, Lenin summarised Marx and Engels’ ideas on the state – that it is an organ for ruling class dictatorship, and that taking over of the existing state machinery of army, police, spies, courts and gaols would lead to disaster for the working class and their allies. In order to protect the revolutionary gains of the people, the old state must be smashed.

The vast majority of the people, led by the workers would exercise their dictatorship of the proletariat, over the tiny minority of former exploiters, desperate to restore their own rule.  There were tremendous gains for the people but errors were inevitable and some did great harm. There was no blueprint, no map. Most arose because the party was not well-steeled enough in Marxism-Leninism, including Lenin’s mighty philosophical legacy, and did not seek truth from facts.

Facing enormous difficulties, Stalin’s leadership distorted the principles of democratic centralism, by undervaluing democratic discussion and overvaluing central control. Within the USSR itself, and in the Australian party, non-antagonistic contradictions among the people, were often treated as antagonistic ones, against the enemy. Here, sectarian abuse undermined discussion that could have charted a way forward.

An 1870’s idea - that all revolutionary parties should be directed from a common international centre – also took hold. Counter to Lenin’s theory and revolutionary experience, the Soviet party dictated what happened in Australia. In 1929, a Comintern official even ensured the Central Committee of the old Communist Party Australia was chucked out and a new one installed.

In 1989, Ted Hill, the CPA-ML’s founding chairperson, wrote in Communism and Australia, that the new committee demanded “direct transition from capitalism to socialism, and the immediate overthrow of capitalism in a country where capitalism was young, its working class immature and the Party also small and immature.” A political miracle! “Australians,” wrote Hill, “instinctively sensed the unreality of the Party’s position.”

But despite this, Stalin’s leadership oversaw great gains for the vast majority of Soviet people. They kept to the socialist path. Would we have done any better than they did in that uncharted new historical epoch? The point is to learn from the mistakes.

In Marxism, ‘Revisionism’ means talking socialism, while heading towards capitalism. Our two parties hold different views about why and when the revisionism arose, that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Vanguard outlines our view. But even deeper study of the facts, discussion and open minds are essential to a better understanding by us all. Revisionism reflects individual and collective failings, but the solution lies in thorough collective understanding, through all our individual efforts. We have to keep our eyes on the end point – the classless society of communism – to understand how to get there.

The ruling class uses this method. In Driving Disunity, the Business Council against Aboriginal Community Lindy Nolan quotes KPMG’s Peter Nash, that corporations “begin with the end in mind.”

Where are we now?
Across the world, people were inspired by newborn socialism. In China, Mao Zedong wrote, “All correct leadership is necessarily ‘from the masses, to the masses’. He meant, taking the scattered and unsystematic ideas of the masses and through Marxist study of reality making them concentrated and systematic, then going back to the people propagating and explaining the ideas till the people make them their own, and test them in action.  We do this over and over again, creating ever deeper understanding and more effective action.

Coming to that realisation has been a hard and slow process for Australian communists.

We strive to study Marxism-Leninism as a science, and integrate it into the minute details of Australia’s conditions. We stand against dogmatism, that squeezes facts into theory, like huge feet forced into Cinderella’s glass slipper. The ultimate test is practise, whether the Australian people take up our ideas in struggle.

We have to work closely with people who challenge the status quo, but if we only hang round in left blocs, with likeminded people, how can we know what the masses are even thinking, let alone lead them? Sectarianism at its heart, is separating ourselves from the masses.

However perfectly formed our denunciation of capitalism is, if it doesn’t correspond to the experience of the Australian people, we’ll soon be speaking to empty air. And like Lenin and Mao, we need to express deep truths in simple language.

That’s why the CPA ML worked with historian Humphrey McQueen to produce a booklet in everyday language summarising Marx’s Capital on this, its 150th anniversary, inviting them to read the real thing.

Many facts of where we stand are unpalatable. Yet other things are afoot too.

Most of my life, Australian people overwhelmingly believed the lie that we live in a democracy. Now they’re not so sure. And the word capitalism is more widely, and negatively, used than ever, so corporations are forced to construct, a human face for capitalism.

People are not stupid. They’re not rednecks. As facts accumulate, they learn. And right now, they know something is wrong – even those manipulated by a billion-dollar avalanche of divide and conquer lies.

The ruling class is right to fear our united peoples. Even without Marxism they are a mighty force. With it, they are unstoppable.

Invasion is the bedrock on which capitalism has been built here, when classless Aboriginal societies met the hideous class violence of penal colonialism and ‘civilisation.’ The battle cry of sovereignty has not been silenced down the years. It has much to teach us.

I stand with you tonight, on this CPA platform because the people’s needs demand it. Despite differences between how each party analyses the path to revolution in Australia, and the pitfalls of history, we have learned to challenge ideas, rather than throw labels at those whose ideas differ from our own.

The joint statement of our two parties, published in Vanguard, is evidence of this. I hope those who aspire to communism, and respect the people, can come together in the future. We have more in common than divides us.

We are a very, very long way from Lenin’s words about the state being acceptable to the peoples of this continent. But leave out the rhetoric. You don’t have to go far to find people who reckon it would be better if ordinary people ran this country – they just don’t believe it’s possible. The task is to create a communist party capable of leading them.

October Revolution Celebration in Melbourne

Bill F.

At the invitation of the International League of People’s Struggle (ILPS) 80-90 people attended a celebration of the Russian October Revolution, held in the Maritime Union hall in West Melbourne.

There was enthusiasm for unity and respect by people from different Parties, many of whom had dedicated their lives to struggle for a better world.

 

An extensive exhibition of revolutionary posters and old pamphlets drew much interest and sparked conversations and discussion prior to the formal proceedings. Some of the Parties and groups that had cooperated in planning the event also had tables with their literature and other items to sell or hand out.

 

There was a fairly positive emphasis on linking the struggles of the past to the need to step up struggle in the current conditions.

 

Eisenstein's film, Ten Days that Shook the World, traced the Russian Revolution through the turbulent years from 1895 to 1920, showing the enthusiasm of the united working class when their leadership is honest, dedicated, courageous and far-sighted like Lenin and his Bolshevik comrades.

This was followed by a Sri Lankan dance group, prior to the open discussion session. The celebration concluded with the singing of the ILPS anthem and then The Internationale in 4 different languages. There was a toast and a multicultural supper.

Discussion and comment In the discussion session, a comrade pointed out that the February and October Revolutions were not spontaneous mass outbreaks, but were the culmination of many years of organised, deep mass work by the revolutionary Bolsheviks; raising awareness and introducing revolutionary class consciousness, organising workers and peasants, leading struggles, listening and learning from the people, suffering defeats, enduring losses, and learning from experience.

​Armed with the principles of Marxism, Lenin and the Bolsheviks meticulously investigated and analysed specific conditions and class forces in Russia and the international situation.

​These, amongs many others, are important lessons that the revolutionary working class of Australia can learn from the legacy of the Great Russian October Revolution.

 

Another comrade offered a further contribution on “The factors which meant the working class were able to win this revolution …"

• An organised and disciplined Party with deep connections to the working class and working people

• The promotion of a revolutionary vision that a different society was possible, but this could only be achieved by replacing the old institutions and structures with new revolutionary forms

• The alliances built with the peasants – the main victims and cannon-fodder in the imperialist war1914-18 and also the soldiers and sailors at the front and the garrisons

• The courage and enthusiasm of the mobilised workers who had “nothing to lose but their chains” – who regarded the ruling class as discredited and bankrupt – who wanted Bread, Land and Peace, not war, famine and repression

• Finally, the inability of the ruling class to continue to govern in the old way: their decaying power in the face of the growing power and influence of the Soviets, the democratic working class bodies that carried the revolution forward. (Lenin’s Bolsheviks were not always in control. Only in the final months, after much struggle and harsh experience did the Bolshevik positions win out.)

 

“... the factors that meant the Bolsheviks were able to consolidate power and commence to build socialism…"

• The rapid formation of a Red Army to resist the counter-revolutionary White Guards and foreign imperialist armies which invaded Russia to crush the revolution

• The Brest-Litovsk Treaty that conceded land to Germany, but allowed the soldiers to return to bolster the Red Army and work in the factories and farms

• International support that frustrated the war plans of the imperialists – “Hands off Russia” campaigns, strikes, disruption of shipping, etc.

• And later, Lenin’s New Economic Policy that allowed a market economy to revive somewhat to provide greater food production and better distribution in the face of famine caused by years of war and counter-revolutionary sabotage – while the main industries continued to be nationalised

• And later still, Stalin’s Five-Year Plans which accelerated industrialisation, collectivisation and mechanisation of agriculture, set up the famous tractor stations, and smashed the hold of the kulaks over the rural communities”

 

Lenin fought on many fronts
At every stage – in the early years of Tsarist repression – in the complex political period of Dual Power in 1917 – and after the successful seizure of power in October, Lenin led the fight against opportunism and revisionism.
He resolutely condemned terrorism and the individualist tactics of the anarchists.
He struggled against the Mensheviks and class collaborators.
He fought against the betrayals of the Second International that supported national chauvinism and the imperialist war.
He stood against Trotsky’s positions on internationalist revolution and “neither peace nor war” at the Brest-Litovsk negotiations.

 

Lenin upheld the profound scientific teachings of Marx and Engels and led in the creation of a socialist reality that inspired workers all across the world. Our Party continues to honour his contribution to ideology and revolutionary practice and defines ourselves as Marxist-Leninist.

October Revolution: Culmination of the independent agenda of the working class.

Nick G.

The 1917 Great October Socialist Revolution was the result of the Bolshevik Party’s outlining for the Russian working class, its own independent class agenda, and doing patient mass work so that the Bolsheviks, as the vanguard of the working class, moved from a minority within the Petrograd Soviet to the majority.

Unlike the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, who held a majority on the Petrograd Soviet throughout most of 1917,  the Bolsheviks absolutely refused to surrender the initiative to the parties of the capitalists and landlords (the Cadets and Octobrists) in the Provisional Government.

Australia in 2017 is obviously not Russia of 1917. We are not engulfed in the midst of a war between rival imperialist blocs; we do not have a semi-feudal landlord class and overwhelming numbers of impoverished and uneducated peasants; we have unpopular politicians, but not an autocratic Tsar; there is no unity between our workers and huge segments of the armed forces, with the latter sick of war and openly fraternising with “enemy” troops across the trenches; our workers do not have representative organs set to rival, and ultimately replace, the government of the capitalists.

In short, we are not in a revolutionary situation and the revolutionary movement is tiny.

But a revolutionary movement there is, and it exists to position the best elements of the working class within the unions and community organisations to offer conscious direction and purpose to otherwise spontaneous and fragmented groups engaged in struggles that ultimately share the common thread of anti-imperialist independence and socialism.

In Australia today, the independent working class agenda draws connections between workers’ immediate struggles for wages, conditions and the right to organise and strike, and capitalist class relations, the capitalist state, imperialism and imperialist wars. The independent working class agenda promotes the interests of the entire working class.

The legal basis for class struggle in Australia is severely circumscribed. It is illegal in all but the circumstance of enterprise bargaining, and then the right to utilise the strike weapon is blunted by a cumbersome process, and the “matters pertaining” to such industrial action is very limited.

Workers are no longer able to hold “sympathy” strikes -  those expressions of class consciousness through which workers in industries not directly involved in a strike, nevertheless walked off the job to support their class brothers and sisters elsewhere.

Even the simple expedient of a picket line is under attack: we have to go through the pretence of a “community picket” to protect the union and its members from hefty fines and jail.

Most of the significant stoppages in recent times have been “breakout” strikes – defensive fightbacks against attempts by employers to lower wages and conditions.  There are very few examples of aggressive attempts by workers to win newer and better conditions, or to smash through what has been, for several years now, an effective wage freeze. 

It is true that some union leaders are prepared to push the envelope, but this rarely involves the patient education and long-term mobilisation of the membership; rather, there is the large-scale drawing down of union funds instead of the drawing in of members in struggle.

When union legal action over some issue is defeated (eg the recent decision by the Federal Court on penalty rates), there is no unleashing of the workers. Instead, union leaders vow to “continue the fight”, “continue to challenge”, “continue to speak out”. In other words, to continue to avoid direct action by the workers, and to keep on with the same old same old.

It is the less well-organised sections of the working class such as the hospitality industry with high turnover of labour and high casualisation that have been purposely targeted first by the ruling class to reduce wages through cuts to penalty rates. Combined with the anti-worker labour laws, organising and mobilizing of these workers in collective action in the workplaces against cuts to weekend rates involves slow patient mass work, not dissimilar to the decades-long struggle to organize non-trades production workers in the manufacturing industries in the 1940s and 1950s

We know that the correct approach is mass work with workers to patiently educate them in the necessity for their own independent class agenda, and their own struggle in support of that agenda. Lenin had no idea at the beginning of 1917, sitting in exile in Switzerland, that he would soon be back in Russia writing the April Theses and directing a revolutionary struggle for Soviet power. Nor is it given to us to know when and where, and in what form, a single spark might lead to a qualitative change in the consciousness of Australian workers and to their breaking through the legal restrictions on their ability to fight as a class against imperialism and its local hangers-on.

All we can say is that the time will come.  Sooner or later, and preferably sooner, some event or incident or issue will cause such an upsurge of anger that the workers will not be able to be held back. Our task is to win their trust and assist them to put spontaneity on a firm, purposeful and conscious footing.

On-going Lessons from the October Revolution

Josh S

 

The 1917 Russian revolution, though occurring a century ago, still provides salutatory lessons about many current issues including:

• the futility of terrorism.
• the nature of revolutionary resistance to state violence.
• the struggle for power and control of space.
• the need for leadership by a revolutionary party organisation.

 

The futility of terrorism

 

During the latter decades of the nineteenth, and in the early twentieth, centuries, many Russian revolutionaries sought to weaken or overthrow the Tsarist regime by attacks on, or assassinations of, nobles and government officials. However, not only were innocent people killed, but assassinated officials were merely replaced by others similar or worse, the masses were not roused or organised, and the anarchist or Narodnik groups were easily infiltrated by the secret police.

 

These desperate, idealistic rebels had no understanding of the need to educate, organise and lead the masses, particularly the working class, to overthrow the regime. They believed that heroic actions would create fear and paralysis in the regime and set an example for the passive masses, and this would all somehow lead to the downfall of the regime.

 

More recent terrorists, whether so-called revolutionaries in, for example, the USA, Europe and South America, or religious fundamentalists, have been variously motivated by:

 

• the desire to strike symbolic blows against capitalism, governments, and/or the armed forces, or the West, opponents of Islam, Shi’ites, or other supposed apostates;
• the belief that terrorist acts will inspire the masses to join the revolutionary struggle;
• the intention to incite the state to repress the people, who will then rise up against the state;
• the belief that military acts are educative for the population, giving them the confidence to challenge the state.

 

However, the terrorist actions have served only to:

 

• isolate the terrorists and enable governments to belittle and vilify opponents, and label all activists under the same umbrella;
• allow governments to get away with increased repression, and curtailment of hard-won civil liberties;
• alienate many in the population who either are unimpressed and remain passive, or who then support, or rally to, the government;
• fail completely to educate, organise and lead the population to take their own action leading to mass revolutionary action.

 

These terrorist acts, whether indiscriminate or targeted, are not only callously murderous, they have always been and always will be futile and counter-productive – they have never led, and never will lead, to the overthrow of governments or systems.

 

The nature of revolutionary resistance to state violence.

 

The use of violence in revolutionary struggle must be careful, responsible and calibrated. It must serve the political struggle, and must involve the masses in appropriate, careful ways.

 

Initially, the people, under the leadership of communists who understand the violent nature of the capitalist state, will take defensive measures to protect themselves against state violence and repression, and/or against violent attacks or repression by criminals, armed gangs etc. These people's actions may involve overt mass actions, covert organised actions, or actions by types of people's militias on behalf of the people and their struggle. In every case, the actions need to be part of an overall political strategy, and to be carefully planned so that the people are protected as much as possible.

 

The recent attacks on the Burmese military by the so-called Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, in response to the vicious repression of Rohingyas, seem to be sheer adventurism; they appeared to have no capacity or preparedness to protect the Rohingya from government reprisals.

 

In contrast, during the Vietnam war, the Viet Cong were very careful to avoid the association of the population in contested areas with Viet Cong military actions; indeed, the people often posed as government supporters or innocent bystanders, demanding government protection or that the government honour its promises; claiming that youths who had run off into the jungle to avoid being drafted into the South Vietnandese puppet army had been “kidnapped by the Viet Cong”. These tactics were developed by the National Liberation Front and local people working together.

 

The long period during which the revolutionary forces develop their military strength, experience and knowledge, and the people learn that political and military revolution is required to solve their basic problems, is often called the “strategic defensive”. The government forces are not challenged to major battles in fixed positions. The revolutionary forces gradually build their capacity and organisation, spread their influence over wider areas and gradually tie down the enemy, limit its ability to manoeuvre and attack at will, and force it to adopt a more and more defensive posture in larger and larger formations, and therefore, in fewer and fewer positions.

 

In Russia in 1917, the February Revolution overthrew Tsarism, and freed the hands of the bourgeoisie to pursue a slightly more modern, less constrained capitalist system, and to continue to pursue Russia's imperialist objectives in World War 1. The February revolution was in fact achieved by the workers of the major cities, the unrest in the countryside, and rebelliousness in the armed forces. The workers, and soldiers and sailors, established representative organisations, called Soviets, through which they attempted to define and pursue their demands, and to exercise political influence.

The Revolution was appropriated by the bourgeoisie, and remnants of the old feudal classes, aided by weak, opportunist organisations, like the Mensheviks and (so-called) Socialist-Revolutionaries, who constantly compromised with, and toadied to, the bourgeoisie. These latter groups held leadership of the Soviets and trade unions. The Bolsheviks waged a relentless struggle during 1917 to convince the workers, soldiers/sailors and peasants that a complete change of social and political system was required, and that the Soviets should take power to achieve the change.

 

That struggle involved intensive organisation and agitation around key popular demands to win support.

 

It also involved strong political actions to defend the people and their newly won rights. Soldiers and sailors elected committees which demanded a role in military decision-making. They overthrew the absolute control of the officer class and the death penalty in the armed forces, and resisted vigorously the Provisional Government's attempts to re-introduce it. They expelled, punished and sometimes executed the worst officers. They increasingly refused to obey orders unless these were endorsed by the relevant Soviets. They took their own independent action to protect the revolutionary forces. They increasingly became an independent political and military force as they realised that fundamental changes were required to end Russia's involvement in the War, and to provide land, food and hope to the Russian masses.

 

As well as agitation, the Bolsheviks also organised their own members and the working class, particularly in the big factories, into workers militias, independent of the Government. There was intense struggle during 1917 as the workers militias got organised, took arms, trained, and forced employers to pay the wages of workers on militia duty, while the Government tried every effort to circumscribe the independent workers militias and to bring them under government control. The workers militias enrolled women (for the first time ever Russia), kept peace and order in working class districts, distributed food in an attempt to avert famine, kept factories working as many employers tried to undermine the growing movement by closing factories to starve the working class into submission, regulated industrial disputes between employers and workers, protected meetings, and released political prisoners.

 

These militias and their actions taught the workers about the need for, and possibility of, completely replacing the old regime with new people’s organs, and prepared for the overthrow of the government and its armed forces.

 

The struggle for power and control of space

 

The period between the February and October Revolutions was a period of Dual Power, as the people's organised forces challenged the old system and gradually neutralised its forces, took power in increasing aspects and areas, until by October, the regime was sufficiently weak and isolated, and the few military forces that it could muster were easily and quickly defeated., the Socialist revolution achieved, and power was formally vested in the Soviets.

 

The revolutionary military process during 1917 was closely linked to the strategic political process, which itself involved organising and educating the masses, particularly the workers, soldiers and sailors, and to some extent the peasantry, although the latter's actions in attacking landlords, burning manor houses and seizing land were probably less organised and largely spontaneous. The military defeat of the feudal/capitalist system was the culmination of long-term political struggle and strategy, and went through defensive and stalemate stages before the offensive in October.

 

Subsequently, the remnants of armed forces loyal to the bourgeoisie or even Tsarism, combined with the intervention of 14 capitalist countries which were aghast that Russia had both left the War and had a Socialist revolution, mounted a counter-revolution. The ensuing civil war bled Russia dry, but the courage, determination and inspiration of the Soviet people, of all nationalities, again with strong clear leadership of the Bolshevik Party, enabled the revolution to defeat the counter-revolution, and then the construction of socialism.

 

The need for leadership by a revolutionary party organisation

 

The difference between the failed terrorist attacks of the nineteenth century and the unsuccessful Revolution of 1905, was due to two key factors:

 

(1) The overall political and military situation. By 1917, the whole Russian system was collapsing; people were starving, crops were unplanted or unharvested because peasants were sent off to the war, the transport system was in chaos, and soldiers were being slaughtered or dying of cold, hunger and disease at the front. But the tsarist regime and its feudal and capitalist supporters would not, could not, change course because of their subservience to, and reliance on, French and British capital.

 

(2) The steady construction and maturation of a revolutionary organisation that was capable of seeing what was required and of providing leadership to the people to achieve it.

 

As soon as the February Revolution occurred, clear differences were apparent among the supposed revolutionary parties. The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries could not see, refused to see, that merely overthrowing the Tsar would change little. They compromised and cowered, more afraid of militant uncontrolled masses than of the disastrous situation across the country.

 

The Bolsheviks, on the other hand, demanded that the revolution continue to a socialist conclusion, that power be taken by the people, in the form of the Soviets.

 

The Bolshevik Party had been steeled in struggle for decades, by the experience of struggle, and repression, jail and execution.

As a tight, experienced organisation, it had the capacity to pool information, perspectives and knowledge from across the whole Russian Empire, across all nationalities, and develop demands and strategies that responded to the political and military situations as they unfolded, and to the masses' needs and consciousness. It modified and refined strategies and tactics as situations changed, and these changes were implemented by the Party membership across the empire.

 

The leadership carefully analysed the changing situation, the strength of the government and of the revolutionary forces.

 

In late June, the workers of Petrograd and Moscow and some other industrial centres, were completely fed up with the Provisional Government and were ready for the next revolution. Spontaneous demands for a confrontation with the government and its armed forces broke out, and massive demonstrations were organised. The Bolshevik leadership realised that, as yet, there was insufficient support for an insurrection across the whole country, that rebelliousness in the armed forces had not matured enough, and that an uprising would be crushed. At the same time, they recognised that the revolutionary consciousness of the workers was the result of Bolshevik agitation, and that the Party still had to supply responsible leadership in this difficult situation. The Bolsheviks assumed leadership of the (early) July demonstrations which were attacked by the regime, but (doing the most difficult thing for a revolutionary organisation), reined in the spontaneity and adventurousness, and avoided the confrontation that the government tried to provoke. The movement had to take a step back, the Bolsheviks were hounded by the regime, and a military coup was prepared by the army and government leadership.

Although driven underground, the Bolsheviks kept agitating and organising across the empire, preparing the ground for a successful insurrection when the time was ripe.

 

The Russian empire covered many nationalities, who had long been oppressed by the great Russian chauvinism of the Tsarist regime. The overthrow of Tsarism created the opportunity for local bourgeois nationalists among most, if not all, nationalities, to agitate for secession from the empire, and the establishment of nationalist bourgeois or (semi-)feudal governments. The Bolsheviks, pooling information from across the empire, and determined to fight for a socialist revolution for all, agitated and organised both against the chauvinist Russian Provisional Government, and also against the opportunist local nationalist leaders, and advocated the maintenance of unity among all nationalities toward a socialist revolution across the whole empire.

 

After the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries deserted the socialist revolution, and used their leading positions in the Soviets and trade unions to oppose the continuation of the revolution, the Bolsheviks shelved their slogan “All Power to the Soviets” and adopted the strategy of concentrating their efforts on the workers and soldiers committees and the factories, steadily winning mass support which was organised into cells, committees and militia.

 

The Party had clear strategies for the development of Dual Power, for the organisation of workers militias, and for the preparation for the military insurrection. The Party carefully monitored events and the mass mood and consciousness, and the disposition and weaknesses of the enemy forces. It considered timing – when the enemy would be weak enough, and the people's forces strong and well enough organised, to stage the insurrection.

 

The Russian revolution would not have happened, could not have happened, without a committed, tightly organised and disciplined Party, to make the ongoing analyses, to develop the strategies, to agitate consistently across the vast empire, to organise the people politically and militarily, and to possess the accumulated pooled wisdom and courage to brave the tsarist and bourgeois repression and know when and how to strike.

 

Today's advocates of spontaneity, of movementism, of no organisation, of opposition without positive demands, of isolated acts, would do well to learn

The victory of the October Revolution was a victory over revisionism

Nick G.

The Great October Socialist Revolution, the centenary of which we celebrate this year, was the greatest practical vindication of genuine Marxism.

Its success was guaranteed by the leadership of the great V.I. Lenin and his unremitting struggles against every kind of bourgeois reformism and unprincipled opportunism.  In particular, it was his opposition to the watering down of Marxism, to the stripping away of its revolutionary essence, that educated the class-conscious workers of Russia, raising their ideological level to the point where, in the incredibly complex and ever-changing situation after the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in March 1917, they kept their eyes on the prize of a workers’ and peasants’ state rather than the bourgeois state of Kerensky, the Cadets and the Octobrists (parties of the capitalists and landlords).

Marx and Engels fought utopian and idealistic versions of socialism

Marx and Engels fought to establish their theories from the laws of dialectical and historical materialism. They analysed the history of class society from its inception through to the revolutionary upheavals of mid-nineteenth century Europe and wrote the Communist Manifesto in opposition to various types of utopian and idealist “socialism”. They also wrote at length to refute the influential, but unscientific, views of Duhring and Proudhon.

The ideological struggles led by Marx and Engels resulted, as Lenin noted, in the defeat of “pre-Marxist socialism”.  From that point on, bourgeois efforts to turn the workers from revolution and proletarian dictatorship could no longer stand “on its own independent ground, but on the general ground of Marxism, as revisionism” (Lenin On Marxism and Revisionism).

European revisionism

Scientific socialism extends recognition of the class struggle (which is in plain view of the blindest of Freddies) to the necessity for the overthrow of the capitalist ruling class by means of revolution. It requires that the workers smash the old machinery of state and create their own institutions to keep the restorationists of the old order in check.

Opportunists seeking to build parliamentary careers on the backs of the oppressed were then forced to “stand on the ground of Marxism” in order to fight it. Only as “Marxists” could they have the access to the advanced workers, could they have the credibility with the revolutionary vanguard of workers, that would enable them to divert the workers from the path of the revolutionary movement.

The German Eduard Bernstein was the first significant “Marxist” to “interpret” Marxism to support opposition to it.  He argued that the Marxism of the Manifesto was too impetuous, too youthful, and that in their later years, Marx and Engels matured to a point where achieving peaceful reforms through parliament was preferable to upheavals and revolution. Of course, it would be wonderful to peacefully legislate the ruling class out of existence, but it has never once happened in history. What Marx and Engels knew to be true still stands.

Other significant “Marxists” (some of whom were indeed Marxist at one time or another) included the Russian Plekhanov and another German, Karl Kautsky.
I
n 1895, Engels discovered that his introduction to a new edition of The Class Struggles in France, written by Marx in 1850, had been edited by Bernstein and Kautsky in a manner which left the impression that he had become a proponent of a peaceful road to socialism. On April 1, 1895, four months before his death, Engels wrote to Kautsky:

“I was amazed to see today in the Vorwärts an excerpt from my ‘Introduction’ that had been printed without my knowledge and tricked out in such a way as to present me as a peace-loving proponent of legality quand même (at all costs). Which is all the more reason why I should like it to appear in its entirety in the Neue Zeit in order that this disgraceful impression may be erased. I shall leave Liebknecht in no doubt as to what I think about it and the same applies to those who, irrespective of who they may be, gave him this opportunity of perverting my views and, what’s more, without so much as a word to me about it.”

The “peace-loving proponents of legality”, who sought to distort Marxism in their own image, later formed the core of those who placed defence of their respective fatherlands ahead of proletarian internationalism following the outbreak of the predatory imperialist war for the division of the world (1914-18).

Lenin denounced Plekhanov, Kautsky, and other leaders of the Second International as social-patriots (socialists in words, but bourgeois patriots in deeds), social-pacifists (socialist in words but pacifists rejecting revolutionary struggle against one’s own bourgeoisie in deeds), social-chauvinists (socialists in words, but reactionary chauvinists in deeds), social-nationalists (socialists in words but narrow bourgeois nationalists in deeds) and social-imperialists (socialists in words but supporters of imperialism in deeds).

These hyphenated “socialists” were the revisionists of a particular time and place, the time when competing capitalist ruing classes were using their “own” workers to kill other workers for the sake of a redivision of the colonies and financial spheres of interest of the world.

The fight for Red October

The February Revolution in Russia that led to the abdication of Nicholas II in March was the result of proletarian action but a gift to the capitalists and landlords.  The provisional government first of all refused to accept the overthrow of the Tsar, urging Nicholas to abdicate in favour of his young son who would ensure the Romanov dynasty via a Regency under his brother Michael. They wanted to keep as much of the old state intact as was needed for a more vigorous prosecution of the war effort.

From exile, Lenin exerted every effort to prevent revisionist elements from giving legitimacy to the new bourgeois rulers.  Intense struggles between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks were played out in the Petrograd Soviet and other centres of workers’ revolutionary organisation. The subsequent victory of the October Revolution was a victory over revisionist influence in the working class.

Building socialism means fighting revisionism

After the death of Lenin in 1924, the key leadership of the Soviet Union was taken up by Joseph Stalin who, together with the Soviet people, was relentlessly demonised and maligned by the international bourgeoisie and imperialists.  In the 1930s, at a time when the rest of the capitalist world was in deep economic depression wreaking enormous hardships, hunger, homelessness and poverty on the majority of the world’s people, the Soviet Union was in the throes of rapidly industrialising its economy and collectivisation of agriculture, able to provide full employment, housing, high standard free education and health, real equality for women, free child care, security for the people and promote vibrant and powerful  art and culture of the working people.

The key to the successful construction of socialism by Stalin and the collective leadership around him was confidence in the strength of the working class and its ally, the peasants.  Stalin, and the majority of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union maintained confidence in the working class to achieve their goals at a time when so many around him argued that building socialism in such a backward and impoverished country as Russia was impossible without simultaneous socialist uprisings in the more advanced European countries. They argued that support from the latter was an essential precondition for building socialism in Russia.

The people of the Soviet Union could not have achieved such momentous social and industrial progress without enormous confidence, support and enthusiasm for socialism and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Indeed, revisionism feeds primarily on the lack of courage, the lack of confidence in the ability of the people to surmount incredible difficulty, evident in backward, wavering sections of the working class and the petty-bourgeois elements that are drawn to it.

The strength of the economic and political foundations of the Soviet Union enabled it to withstand the horrific loss of life and destruction of cities and infrastructure that were inflicted by the Hitlerites, with the urgings and support from other imperialist powers, in World War 2.  Indeed, the turning tide of World War 2 was the succession of defeats inflicted on the Nazis by the Soviet Red Army.

Yet war took its toll. Up to 20 million Soviet people had died, and there was huge economic destruction. The greatly increased economic and military power of the USA was now mobilised against a weakened Soviet Union. The 1948 Berlin Airlift hammered this power imbalance home. Not all Soviet leaders maintained Stalin’s confidence in the future.

Revisionism an ever-present danger

Following Stalin’s death in 1953, Khrushchev - in the face of strong opposition by leaders such as Molotov and Kaganovich - together with his revisionist followers in the Party, used the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to rewrite essential teachings of Marxism, introducing economic and political policies that refuted the continuing class struggle under socialism on the one hand, and on the other, created and favoured a new privileged social and political elite, and sought cooperation with, rather than defeat of, imperialism.

Erroneous theories such as the “state of the whole people”, the “party of the whole people” and the “disappearance” of the dictatorship of the proletariat facilitated the anti-socialist activities of managers now given responsibility for pursuing profit at all costs including the reduction of wage costs by putting workers on the scrap heap. It enabled party and government leaders to make decisions about the allocation of socially- and increasingly, privately-appropriated surplus value that took away the leading role of the working class and vested it in a new bourgeoisie.  As the power and influence of this group grew it quite deliberately sought the restoration of capitalism in the USSR.  State-owned means of production were transferred, either overtly or covertly, to private hands and those that remained state-owned functioned as components of state monopoly capitalism.

With such a high level of centralisation and monopoly in the formation of private and state-monopoly capital under Khrushchev, the drive for capital accumulation inevitably took on an imperialist perspective, in the first place through the unequal economic and political relations embedded in COMECON (the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) and the East European “people’s democracies”.  The imperialism of the Soviet Union under Khrushchev and his heirs, carried out by a party and nation still cloaked in the garb of Marxism-Leninism, was correctly characterised through a revival of Lenin’s term “social-imperialism”.  The post-Stalin Soviet Union, unfortunately and regrettably, was indeed socialist in words, but imperialist in deeds.

The logical conclusion of Khrushchev’s revisionism was the formal dismantling of the great Soviet Union by Gorbachev in 1991, and its degeneration into a land of corrupt and gangsterish rulers and an increasingly impoverished populace.

The rejection of revisionism by the people of former Soviet Union is expressed in the continuing public support for Lenin and Stalin and longings for the socialist country before dismantling of socialism starting with the Khrushchev era. In contrast, there’s been no sign of support for Khrushchev and his successors.

Nor has revisionism disappeared.  The Chinese Communist Party invented the “Theory of the Three Represents” to facilitate its transformation from a party of the proletariat to a party of new capitalist elements.  According to the Chinese Communist Party its priority is to build “harmony” between classes. Mao Zedong had taught that contradiction resides in all things, that class contradictions and class struggle would exist throughout the entire socialist era, and that ideological struggle against bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideology would be required “for a fairly long period of time”.

History proves that in all Communist Parties existing in class societies, capitalist or socialist, revisionism is an ever-present danger, and class struggle doesn’t cease. In the circumstances of a party such as our own, a small party in a developed country, perseverance in building a revolutionary movement will always be under an immense pressure of bourgeois influence, ideas of class reconciliation, lack of scientific confidence based on dialectical materialism, and hence of revisionism. Nevertheless, we must persevere with the organisational, political and ideological principles drawn from scientific socialism, from Marxism-Leninism.

Is the cup half empty, or is the cup half full?  Are we inspired by October 1917, or gutted by December 1991? Times are tough and the Australian people are yet to build leadership or mass organisations capable of overthrowing capitalism. Yet, under the most difficult circumstances imaginable, the Soviet people managed to do just that. There can only be one answer: the cup is neither half full nor half empty: it is overflowing with lessons to integrate into Australian reality.

Lenin’s victory over revisionism, and the creation of the first workers’ state in history, continue to inspire us.

Honour and learn from the Great Russian October Socialist Revolution!

Joint statement: CPA and CPA (M-L)

The Communist Party of Australia and the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist), the names of which enshrine the objective of the revolutionary working class, jointly honour the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917 in this, its centenary year.

While acknowledging differences in some aspects of ideology, politics and organisation, we are united in professing the significance of what was undoubtedly the greatest political event for the revolutionary working class movement of the Twentieth Century.

The October socialist revolution was the first successful coming to power of the working class, but not the first attempt to do so. The Parisian workers established the Commune in 1871 but were eventually defeated and slaughtered by the French bourgeoisie.

Marx and Engels, the pioneer analysts of the economic laws of motion of capitalist economy, drew important lessons from the failure of the Paris Commune. One of these was that it had proved impossible to maintain a working class state power through reliance on the old machinery of government, including its political, judicial and coercive (army, police, gaols) institutions.

Lenin and his Bolshevik comrades utilised the economic and political theories of Marxism, and further developed theories on the role of a required vanguard party, on methods of revolutionary struggle, on new political, judicial and coercive institutions, and on the fight against the watering down of Marxism by opportunists and revisionists, to the point where it was appropriate to refer to the whole of these teachings as Marxism-Leninism.

The Great October Socialist Revolution inspired workers and other exploited people around the world. It lit a spark which inspired peoples' movements for liberation across the world, including in Australia. Empowered by the revolution and the Communist Party, Soviet workers enjoyed expanded educational opportunities, free basic health care, improved housing, a rich cultural life, and women were supported to enter the workforce on the basis of equal pay for equal work. All this in a society untouched by the ravages of the Great Depression, a society in which unemployment was abolished. Inevitably, given the rising strength of US imperialism in particular, and the massive losses suffered by the Soviet Union and its people in World War Two which broke the back of fascism in Europe, there were both gains and losses.

The Revolution led to the foundation of the Communist Party of Australia in 1920, from which both the current CPA and CPA (M-L) derive, and lifted the spirits of workers engaged in many trade union and other struggles. Historic gains were made by these struggles that featured Communist leadership and the influence of its revolutionary ideology.

Poll after poll and public outpourings in recent years testify to a genuine support and longing by the Russian people for the conditions of the socialist era in the Soviet union.

While this sentiment has yet to develop into a qualitatively different phenomenon – conscious mass revolutionary struggle for a refreshed attempt at building socialism – our two Parties are confident that the peoples of the former socialist Soviet Union will sooner or later embark on that path.

Our two Parties absolutely reject the defeatist view that, with the ending of the first Soviet Union, socialism has failed. The main class contradictions and class struggle between labour and capital, revealed by Marx and Engels, and further enriched by Lenin, have not disappeared, but are sharper than ever.

Class struggle has intensified around the world. The resolution of the antagonistic contradiction within the capitalist relations of production, between social production and private appropriation, can only be resolved through the revolutionary working class and its allies, led by a genuine Communist Party of the working class, replacing the capitalist means of production and its state apparatus, and building a new socialist society that serves the needs and interests of the people and the environment.

The revolutionary change towards socialism and communism proceeds unevenly, there are both advances and temporary set-backs, but the principal trend is towards communism. This is the dialectical principle and practise of Marxism-Leninism. The Australian revolutionary movement can learn a great deal both from the giant achievements, and some retreats, in the prosecution of revolutionary change.

The revolutionary communists in Australia pay tribute to and honour the legacy of the Great October Socialist Revolution by learning the lessons from the work of the Bolshevik Communist Party and the revolutionary masses in the years leading up to the revolution, and later in building socialism.

The greatest tribute we can pay to the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917 is to absorb the lessons from its experiences and struggles and apply them to building a revolutionary mass movement and revolutionary communist party in Australian conditions.
In 2017 in Australia we are witnessing aggressive and increasingly draconian attacks on Australian workers through anti-trade union legislation, the rise of racist and arguably neo-fascist movements like the Hanson and Bernadi Parties, a lowering of ordinary living standards through low or non-existent wage growth, unemployment, under-employment and casualisation, and a housing crisis driven mainly by speculation and tax laws that favour the rich.

There is no doubt that these factors will become more acute in the future.

Our two Parties have absolute confidence that the Australian people will ultimately heed and learn from the example and lessons of the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917 and build socialism in our country.

Glory to the Great October Socialist Revolution!

Workers of the world, unite!

Never forget the great October Revolution of 1917!

Vanguard December 2013 p. 4

A comrade from the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) delivered this talk at a meeting held in Melbourne to commemorate the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. The meeting was organised by the Communist Party of Australia and hosted by the Democritus Club.

“I’d like to thank the organisers and the hosts for this opportunity to say a few words about the Great Russian Revolution of 1917.

“Throughout history oppressed classes have launched revolts and revolutions against their rulers and against the economic and political systems that supported them.

“The Bolshevik revolution in 1917 was the first where class conscious proletarian workers were the leading force, supported by allies in the peasant class and more far-sighted elements of the petty-bourgeoisie and intellectuals. The core of revolutionary organisation was the Bolshevik Party, led by Vladimir Lenin.

“This revolutionary core was able to mobilise the working class and build the necessary alliances with the peasants, with the soldiers and sailors, with other progressive forces that carried the revolution to victory. What started earlier as a popular demand for “bread, peace and land” became a political-scientific demand; “All power to the Soviets!”

“After the seizure of state power, Lenin and his comrades worked tirelessly to consolidate the new working class state – to meet the expectations of the people in a country devastated by feudalism, autocracy, war, famine and social unrest. At the same time, they had to resist and defeat organised counter-revolution and the intervention of foreign armies.

“Yet, against all odds, the Soviet people were able to build an advanced industrial base and establish an efficient system of collective agriculture and mechanised farming. Education, art and culture flourished, and were accessible to every citizen. Even then, the Soviet state faced sabotage and slander from the imperialist powers and various attempts to derail the revolution from within.

“The hatred of the reactionary forces culminated in the massive Nazi invasion of June 1941. The Soviet Union was alert, and able to conserve enough strength and resources to frustrate the German advance and to stall it on the approaches to Leningrad and Moscow. When the heroic defenders of Stalingrad broke the siege and counter-attacked, the Red Army routed the fascists. The die was cast, and the Red Army moved forward to liberate half of Europe.

“Quite rightly, the Soviet Union was an inspiration to all oppressed and struggling working people. It showed that a revolution led by the working class could not only destroy the old power structures of a bankrupt ruling class, but also build and defend a socialist system where working people could enjoy a better life. It raised the vision of a future world based on the dignity of collective work and freeing the potential of humanity.

“Of course, the Soviet Union made mistakes, and there are still different opinions among communists and progressives about the ideological and political role of leading persons such as Stalin, Khrushchev, Gorbachev and others, and the way socialism can be won and consolidated.

“But that’s enough history for now. I will finish with a few words about our country.

“Revolutionary change in Australia will take a much different path. The core of capitalism in Australia is dominated by imperialism – the economic and finance/banking sectors service the needs of the largest US, European and Asian corporations, while the parliamentary leaders and military hierarchy sell themselves to US imperialism.

“The CPA (M-L), which celebrates its 50th year in March next year, has long had a program of revolution by stages; the first stage being the struggle for anti-imperialist national independence and the expulsion of imperialist economic, political, military and cultural domination, the nationalisation of the key industries and resources, and the establishment of participatory democracy led by the working class.

“We see these as the necessary steps to create the material and social conditions for the revolution to continue on to the stage of socialism. Defeating US imperialist domination of Australia is the most effective contribution the Australian working class can make to internationalism.

 

“We believe there is great potential for unity around these objectives and in facing the reactionary onslaught being rolled out by the Abbott government. The great Russian revolution showed that fundamental change for the working people is indeed possible.”

The dawn of a new era: the Great October Socialist Revolution

Vanguard November 2010 p. 6
Alex M.

The Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917 heralded the beginning of a new era for humankind. For the first time in history an avowed working class party not only dared to seize power, it did so with the declared intention of overthrowing the last vestiges of absolutism and building socialism.

The seizure of power in the old Russian capital of Petrograd was undertaken in the name of the Petrograd Soviet. Soviets were bodies of representatives from the working class and peasants, soldiers and sailors, first appearing around the time of the 1905 Russian revolution. Soviets sprang into being because in Tsarist Russia the working class and peasantry were denied any direct political representation.

The crushing of the 1905 revolution did not lead to the disappearance of Soviets, but it did drive leaders of Soviets into exile or imprisonment. Any dissent was crushed during Prime Minister Stolypin’s tenure in office which lasted from 1906 until he was assassinated in 1911. However, the experience of the 1905 Russian revolution and the appearance of Soviets had a profound influence on the thinking of revolutionaries in what were then called the Social Democratic parties (Socialist), throughout Europe and the rest of the world.

Twelve years later, with the dreadful carnage of the First World War seemingly set to drag on, Soviets of workers, peasants, soldiers and sailors once again came to exert a powerful influence in Russian society. The incompetence of Russian generals on the battlefields of the Eastern front against the German and Austro-Hungarian armies combined with the casualties, deprivations and the hunger of the general populace created the conditions for the removal of the Tsar and his replacement by a provisional bourgeois democratic government led by Alexander Kerensky.

The February revolution was the first of three revolutionary waves that shook Petrograd and other cities in Russia during 1917. The next upsurge, in July 1917, resulted in a set-back for the Bolsheviks. By late September, the continuation of the imperialist war by the bourgeois government of Kerensky, waves of mass desertions from the front and continued misery in the cities, mass unrest by the people again reached a head.

By October, Lenin judged that the time was ripe for the overthrow of Kerensky’s Provisional Government. The masses revolted. On the night of October 24th -25th armed detachments of workers arrested Kerensky’s ministers in the Winter Palace. The new era had begun.

Bolshevik leaders, such as Lenin, thought that with the war-weariness of the workers, peasants, soldiers, sailors and citizens of Europe, a spark such as the October uprising would precipitate revolutions in other European countries. There were outbreaks. In Hungary, the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic led by Bela Kun lasted from March to August 1919. In Germany, the period of November 1918 through to the proclamation of the Weimar Republic in August 1919 was the first of three periods of intense social and political unrest which brought Germany to the brink of a successful proletarian revolution.

The revolutionary upsurge in Europe in the immediate aftermath of the First World War really shook the world’s bourgeoisie and remaining aristocracies. It really did appear that worldwide proletarian revolution was a possibility. However, Russia’s history and the social, political and economic conditions at the time were different in revolutionary Russia to other European countries, where all the requirements for a socialist revolution were not fully developed or matured.

Revolution is a mass movement
One of the important features of the Bolshevik led revolution was that it was a mass movement. It was not a mere coup d’état, rather the majority of the people could see that the old order was crumbling and could not and did not represent their interests. There was a crisis of confidence not only in the old autocratic Tsarist regime, but also in the bourgeois Kerensky government which replaced it. Consequently, the majority of the Russian people became politically active, using tribunes like the Soviets to push for change.

A second important feature of the October revolution was the part played by the Bolshevik party. Acting as a directing force, channelling working class, peasant and soldier’s disaffection, the Bolsheviks were able to focus the people’s discontent.

Combining tactical flexibility with party discipline, Lenin’s party outflanked its political rivals such as the Mensheviks, not only offering up slogans that tapped into popular aspirations, but acting on them as well. The slogan ‘Peace, Land and Bread’ reflected the yearnings for peace of the Russian masses, bled white by the war. ‘Land’ represented peasant aspirations for a more equitable distribution of land and ‘Bread’ was the desire for relief from hunger that many were experiencing. The old bourgeois order could no longer continue, and the contradiction between the people, with the working class in the lead, and the bourgeois state, erupted in intense revolutionary conflict that shook the whole world.

Among the first decrees that the new Soviet Government promulgated were those offering peace to Russia’s belligerents, and another abolishing private property and distributing the landed estates amongst the peasants. Not only did this new government reflect the hopes and aspirations of the toiling masses, it strove to implement them, relying on the enthusiasm, energy and creative capacities of the workers and peasants to construct a new society.

Lessons from the 1917 Revolution
Australia’s history and conditions are vastly different to the situation in revolutionary Russia of 1917. For a start we do not face a revolutionary situation in Australia. For a start we do not face a revolutionary situation in Australia. Nor do we have the experience and background of feudalism and autocracy. Our bourgeois liberal democratic traditions provide limitations of social democracy that confine people to bourgeois class rule. There are nominal democratic rights that are confined to bourgeois parliamentarism and giving the illusion of democracy for the people. Our conditions are beyond the scope of what was available in Russia up until February 1917.

Bearing this in mind, it is still possible to highlight some general similarities between revolutionary Russia and contemporary Australia. There was and is disenchantment with the established political order. In Russia of course, the disenchantment reached very high levels. The same cannot be said for popular sentiment in Australia; though this appears to be changing, with more disaffected Labor voters casting about for alternatives.

The key similarity lies in the desire for working people to make a difference in not only their own lives but collectively, in the building of a more just and equitable international order. The Great October Socialist Revolution marked the beginning of real progress in the building of that order and for that reason its significance will not fade.