Click on title to link to part one (of five, just click from part one) of YouTube's film clips detailing the highlights (and lows) of the life and death of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky. In Honor Of His Birthday Anniversary.
Showing posts with label soviets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label soviets. Show all posts
Thursday, November 07, 2019
In Honor Of The 100th Anniversary Of The Founding of The Communist International-From The Archives- *Honor The 91st Anniversary Of The Russian Revolution- From Leon Trotsky's "The History Of The Russian Revolution"-"The October Insurrection"
Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archives version of Bolshevik chief insurrection organizer Leon Trotsky's Volume Three, Chapter 46, "The October Insurrection", from his seminal "The History Of The Russian Revolution"
*A Red Partisan- John Reed's Bird's Eye View Of The Russian Revolution of 1917
Click on title to link to the fourth part of a four-part series by John Reed, up close and personal on the Russian revolution of 1917, originally published in "The Liberator" in 1918.
*The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-LessonsForToday- From The Film Archives-In Honor Of The Birthday Anniversary Of Bolshevik Leader Leon Trotsky
Click on title to link to part one (of five, just click from part one) of YouTube's film clips detailing the highlights (and lows) of the life and death of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky. In Honor Of His Birthday Anniversary.
Wednesday, November 07, 2018
*The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-LessonsForToday- From The Film Archives-In Honor Of The Birthday Anniversary Of Bolshevik Leader Leon Trotsky
Click on title to link to part one (of five, just click from part one) of YouTube's film clips detailing the highlights (and lows) of the life and death of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky. In Honor Of His Birthday Anniversary.
*From The Film Archives-In Honor Of The Birthday Anniversary Of Bolshevik Leader Leon Trotsky
Click on title to link to part one (of five, just click from part one) of YouTube's film clips detailing the highlights (and lows) of the life and death of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky. In Honor Of His Birthday Anniversary.
On His Birthday -In Honor Of The Anniversary Of The Russian Revolution Of 1905-From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky- The Dress Rehearsal To The Bolshevik-Led October 1917 Russian Revolution- “1905”- A Book Review
Book Review
1905, Leon Trotsky, translated by Anya Bostock, Random House, New York, 1971
The author of this book, a central Soviet leader of the Russian Revolution of 1905 and of the Bolshevik-led revolution in 1917 as well as one of the 20th century’s larger-than-life revolutionary figures, Leon Trotsky, noted, as have others, that the unsuccessful 1905 revolution acted as a “dress rehearsal” for the Bolshevik-led October 1917 revolution. And thus this book was intended to, and does, give a bird’s eye view from a key participant about the lessons to be drawn from the failure of that first revolution, both the strategic and tactical military and political lessons. And from reading many histories of the October of 1917 revolution from all kinds of political perspectives, Trotsky and Lenin at least, learned those lessons very well.
The presentations in this book actually were written in several different periods, the central part was written while Trotsky was in European exile in 1908(after a harrowing escape from the hazards of a court-imposed internal Siberian exile). Trotsky first hones in on a sociological, political, economic and cultural overview of the trends leading up to the 1905 events. He also analyzes the key “sparking” event, the January 9th march (old calendar) by the hat-in-hand workers to petition the Tsar for the redress of pressing grievances that turned into a massacre, the subsequent months long waves of political and economic strikes that forced some timid Tsarist constitutional innovations in October, the creation of the soviets (workers councils) in that period and its subsequent arrest as a body, and the pivotal, although unsuccessful, Moscow insurrection that ended the period of active revolutionary upheaval. Other parts of the book include polemics against various liberal and social democratic opponents (more on those below), the trial of the Soviet deputies, including Trotsky’s stellar use of the courtroom as a platform to defend the Soviet’s actions from strikes to insurrection. The very last part, which kind of puts paid to the period, is a detailed description of his Siberian escape, the stuff of legend.
A quick summary of the basic strategic concepts of the Russian revolution is in order here to make sense of what the various working class organizations (and others) were trying to achieve in the 1905 revolution. It comes down to three concepts: the Menshevik social-democratic view (also essentially shared by the liberal capitalists, the peasant-based social-revolutionaries, and most of the radical intelligentsia) that economically backward (compared to European capitalist and imperialist development), peasant-dominated (including vast peasant-dominated national minorities), and autocratic Russia was ripe for a bourgeois revolution of the Western-type led by the bourgeois before any thought of socialism could be projected; the Bolshevik social-democratic view which also argued for a bourgeois revolution of a more or less short duration but with the understanding that the Russian bourgeois was too tied to world imperialism to lead such a movement and also argued that it would be led by an alliance of the urban workers carrying the bulk of the peasantry with them (especially on the long unresolved land question); and, the Trotsky radical social-democratic view that the urban workers (and urban allies) also including that Russia mandatory peasant alliance would not only fight for the historic gains associated with the bourgeois revolution (quench land hunger, create a unified nation-state, form some kind of popular government with wide representation) but, of necessity, also form a workers and peasants government to start on the road to socialist construction. That is the core of his theory of permanent revolution (later, in the late 1920s, extended to other countries of belated capitalist development) associated thereafter with his name.
This thumbnail sketch does not do justice to all the intricacies of each position but, after reading this book one should understand those positions better and note, at least in passing, that Trotsky seems even in 1908 to have the better of the argument after having seriously drawn the lesson of his own experience and observed that the Russian bourgeoisie, for many reasons, had no heart to lead a revolution and were quite comfortable making its peace with Tsarist society. He also noted that the peasantry was too amorphous, too driven by its land hunger, and too scattered in the countryside to lead a modern revolution. But that is music for the future. Certainly even in 1908 (or earlier) as he was fighting a rear-guard action against his various political opponent, including Lenin) to defend his political perspectives he earned the title bestowed on him by George Bernard Shaw as the “prince of pamphleteers.” Even one hundred years later I am glad, glad as hell, that I am not the one that he is polemizing against with his pen. The wounds still would not have healed.
Of course the theory of permanent revolution, recognized as such or codified in full or not later by the Bolsheviks, turned out to be the fighting formula for the Bolshevik-led October revolution. The liberal bourgeoisie (led by the Kadet Party) turned out to be even more venal that it had been in 1905; the Mensheviks tried to pass a camel through the eye of a needle to try to keep giving power to the bourgeoisie, including taking part in their provisional government; and the social revolutionary-led peasantry turned to the Bolsheviks (at least important elements, including the peasant soldiers) when the latter supported land seizures by the poorer peasants. An attentive reader will see that scenario develop in embryo after reading this important eye witness work.
Note: There is no where else that this observation fits comfortably above so I will place it here. Those familiar with Trotsky’s role in the Bolshevik revolution as the military organizer of the Petrograd insurrection and later, under conditions of civil war, as War Commissar, where he led the red armies against the whites will be surprised to find that he was very perspective about the military necessities of the class struggle even in 1905. If one looks at the fastidiously dressed Trotsky in the famous picture taken of him in his prison cell while awaiting trial along with the other 1905 Soviet deputies one would not take him for a future class struggle warrior. Make that fact an added factor in my characterization of him as one of the 20th century's larger-than-life revolutionary figures.
Thursday, October 18, 2018
On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International (1938)- *From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky- The Popular Front In Spain, 1936
Click on title to link to Leon Trotsky's article on the Popular Front in the heat of the Spanish Civil War. Those who want to defend the concept, the POUM, the POUM leadership of Nin/Andrade/Maurin, etc.-Take cover.
Tuesday, November 07, 2017
*The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-LessonsForToday- From The Film Archives-In Honor Of The Birthday Anniversary Of Bolshevik Leader Leon Trotsky
Click on title to link to part one (of five, just click from part one) of YouTube's film clips detailing the highlights (and lows) of the life and death of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky. In Honor Of His Birthday Anniversary.
*The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-LessonsForToday- Up Close And Personal- John Reed and The Russian Revolution Of 1917
Click on title to link to the John Reed Internet Archives.
BOOK REVIEW
This is the Anniversary of the Bolshevik-led Russian Revolution. It is fitting that I review a book that did much to give Westerners a bird's-eye view of what happened during that tumultuous year. Forward To New Octobers!
Ten Days That Shook The World, John Reed, New American Library Edition, New York, 1967
I, on more than one occasion, have mentioned that for a detailed history of the ebb and flow of the Russian Revolution of 1917 from February to October of that year your man is the great Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Trotsky’s "History of the Russian Revolution" is partisan history at its best. One does not and should not, at least in this day in age, ask historians to be ‘objective’. One simply asks that the historian present his or her narrative and analysis and get out of the way. Trotsky meets that criterion. I have also mentioned in that same context that there are other excellent sources on this subject, depending on your needs. If you are looking for a general history of the revolution or want an analysis of what the revolution meant for the fate of various nations after World War I or its affect on world geopolitics look elsewhere. E.H. Carr’s "History of the Bolshevik Revolution" offers an excellent multi-volume set that tells that story through the 1920’s. Or if you want to know what the various parliamentary leaders, both bourgeois and Soviet, were thinking and doing from a moderately leftist viewpoint read Sukhanov’s "Notes on the Russian Revolution". If you need a more journalistic account for the period of the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks and the immediate aftermath, the book under review, John Reed’s classic "Ten Days That Shook the World" is invaluable.
If we do not, as mentioned above, expect our historians to be ‘objective’ then we have a lesser expectation of those journalists who write the ‘first draft of history’. Reed makes no bones about the fact that that he is a partisan of the Bolshevik-led social revolution that he was witnessing. He, nevertheless, tells his story reasonably well for those who are not partisans. Moreover, Reed seems to have been everywhere in Petersburg during those days. He is as likely to have been reporting from Petersburg’s Winter Palace, the seat of the Kerensky's Provisional Government, as Smolny, the seat of the insurgent Soviets. We can find him among the bourgeois politicians of the City Duma or at the Russian Army General Staff headquarters. Hell, he was also in Moscow when things were hot there as the Soviet forces tried to seize the Kremlin. He is at meetings large-Peasant Soviet size- or in some back room at Smolny with Trotsky’s Military Revolutionary Committee that directed the uprising. To that extent, as a free lancer on the move, he covers physically during this period much more territory than Trotsky could as central director of the action and thus has more first hand observations.
Reed’s style tends toward straight forward reportage with little obvious sense of irony in the various situations that he is witnessing. Of course, against Trotsky’s masterly ironic sense he is bound to suffer by comparison. Nevertheless Reed gets us into places like the City Duma and into the heads of various characters like the Mayor of Petersburg that Trotsky, frankly, displayed no interest in dealing with. Probably the greatest compliment that one could pay Reed is that he is widely quoted as a reliable source in many historical accounts from Trotsky on the winning side to someone like Kerensky on the losing side. For those who want a quick but serious overview of the dynamic of the October Revolution then here is your man. Add in his companion Louise Bryant’s separate account, "Six Month In Red Russia" (if you can find it), and some very good primary source poster, pamphlet and newspaper material in the appendices of Reed’s book and you are on your way.
BOOK REVIEW
This is the Anniversary of the Bolshevik-led Russian Revolution. It is fitting that I review a book that did much to give Westerners a bird's-eye view of what happened during that tumultuous year. Forward To New Octobers!
Ten Days That Shook The World, John Reed, New American Library Edition, New York, 1967
I, on more than one occasion, have mentioned that for a detailed history of the ebb and flow of the Russian Revolution of 1917 from February to October of that year your man is the great Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Trotsky’s "History of the Russian Revolution" is partisan history at its best. One does not and should not, at least in this day in age, ask historians to be ‘objective’. One simply asks that the historian present his or her narrative and analysis and get out of the way. Trotsky meets that criterion. I have also mentioned in that same context that there are other excellent sources on this subject, depending on your needs. If you are looking for a general history of the revolution or want an analysis of what the revolution meant for the fate of various nations after World War I or its affect on world geopolitics look elsewhere. E.H. Carr’s "History of the Bolshevik Revolution" offers an excellent multi-volume set that tells that story through the 1920’s. Or if you want to know what the various parliamentary leaders, both bourgeois and Soviet, were thinking and doing from a moderately leftist viewpoint read Sukhanov’s "Notes on the Russian Revolution". If you need a more journalistic account for the period of the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks and the immediate aftermath, the book under review, John Reed’s classic "Ten Days That Shook the World" is invaluable.
If we do not, as mentioned above, expect our historians to be ‘objective’ then we have a lesser expectation of those journalists who write the ‘first draft of history’. Reed makes no bones about the fact that that he is a partisan of the Bolshevik-led social revolution that he was witnessing. He, nevertheless, tells his story reasonably well for those who are not partisans. Moreover, Reed seems to have been everywhere in Petersburg during those days. He is as likely to have been reporting from Petersburg’s Winter Palace, the seat of the Kerensky's Provisional Government, as Smolny, the seat of the insurgent Soviets. We can find him among the bourgeois politicians of the City Duma or at the Russian Army General Staff headquarters. Hell, he was also in Moscow when things were hot there as the Soviet forces tried to seize the Kremlin. He is at meetings large-Peasant Soviet size- or in some back room at Smolny with Trotsky’s Military Revolutionary Committee that directed the uprising. To that extent, as a free lancer on the move, he covers physically during this period much more territory than Trotsky could as central director of the action and thus has more first hand observations.
Reed’s style tends toward straight forward reportage with little obvious sense of irony in the various situations that he is witnessing. Of course, against Trotsky’s masterly ironic sense he is bound to suffer by comparison. Nevertheless Reed gets us into places like the City Duma and into the heads of various characters like the Mayor of Petersburg that Trotsky, frankly, displayed no interest in dealing with. Probably the greatest compliment that one could pay Reed is that he is widely quoted as a reliable source in many historical accounts from Trotsky on the winning side to someone like Kerensky on the losing side. For those who want a quick but serious overview of the dynamic of the October Revolution then here is your man. Add in his companion Louise Bryant’s separate account, "Six Month In Red Russia" (if you can find it), and some very good primary source poster, pamphlet and newspaper material in the appendices of Reed’s book and you are on your way.
Saturday, November 04, 2017
The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons- *From The Film Archives-In Honor Of The Birthday Anniversary Of Bolshevik Leader Leon Trotsky
Click on title to link to part one (of five, just click from part one) of YouTube's film clips detailing the highlights (and lows) of the life and death of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky. In Honor Of His Birthday Anniversary.
Friday, August 18, 2017
On The Anniversary of The Demise of the Soviet Union
On The Anniversary of The Demise of the Soviet Union-1991
Commentary
This August marks the Anniversary of an aborted coup by a segment of the Soviet bureaucracy that began the unravelling of the Soviet Union. Some anniversaries the international working class commemorates with a certain resignation that the event signals better times to come, like the Paris Commune. Some we commemorate with a burning desire for revenge, like the case of Sacco and Vanzetti. Some we gladly honor as a signpost for the future, like the Russian Revolution of 1917. This one, however, no militant leftist should think of with anything but chagrin.
If it was not apparent at the time of the coup, in the welter of ‘death of communism’ rhetoric since then, 17 years is enough to teach any honest militant that the demise of the Soviet Union has entered the books as a world historic defeat for the working class. If nothing else we have learned a very hard lesson about the value of even a degenerated workers state as a factor on our side in world politics. While no one wants to go back to the old Stalinist days, in Russia or anywhere else, damn we of the revolutionary left are in a tough spot today just at a time when we could use some help against international imperialism from even such a 'blunted' instrument. In any case, even if today I am forced to say this somewhat wistfully- Forward to new Octobers. We are, after all, even those who kick and scream about it all children of the Russian Revolution.
Commentary
This August marks the Anniversary of an aborted coup by a segment of the Soviet bureaucracy that began the unravelling of the Soviet Union. Some anniversaries the international working class commemorates with a certain resignation that the event signals better times to come, like the Paris Commune. Some we commemorate with a burning desire for revenge, like the case of Sacco and Vanzetti. Some we gladly honor as a signpost for the future, like the Russian Revolution of 1917. This one, however, no militant leftist should think of with anything but chagrin.
If it was not apparent at the time of the coup, in the welter of ‘death of communism’ rhetoric since then, 17 years is enough to teach any honest militant that the demise of the Soviet Union has entered the books as a world historic defeat for the working class. If nothing else we have learned a very hard lesson about the value of even a degenerated workers state as a factor on our side in world politics. While no one wants to go back to the old Stalinist days, in Russia or anywhere else, damn we of the revolutionary left are in a tough spot today just at a time when we could use some help against international imperialism from even such a 'blunted' instrument. In any case, even if today I am forced to say this somewhat wistfully- Forward to new Octobers. We are, after all, even those who kick and scream about it all children of the Russian Revolution.
Friday, April 14, 2017
*From The Pen Of John Reed- The Labor Struggle in Paterson, New Jersey, Circa 1913
Click on title to link to a labor article by John Reed on the famous 1913 strike in the Paterson, New Jersey textile mills. This will give the reader a better idea than the movie, "Reds",reviewed in this space on this date about Reed's credentials as a radical.
Wednesday, April 12, 2017
*"REDS"-The Movie-"Radical Chic"-The John Reed-Louise Bryant Romance
Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of a trailer on "Reds"
DVD REVIEW
REDS, THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION (ORIGINALLY RELEASED IN 1981)
The important contribution of John Reed to the revolutionary movement here in America before World War I and later during the Russian revolution and its aftermath has never been fully appreciated. Thus, Warren Beatty, whatever his personal motives, has done a great service in filming the life of this “traitor to his class” (and his Harvard Class of 1910) and partisan of the international working class.
As usual with such commercial enterprises the order of things gets switched in the wrong direction. The love affair between Reed (played by Beatty) and budding writer and early feminist Louise Bryant (played by Diane Keaton)(and a little third party intervention by playwright Eugene O’Neill, played by Jack Nicholson) is set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution not the other way around, but such is cinematic license. More than most film depictions this one mainly gets the story straight; Reed's early free-lance journalism tied to the Mexican Revolution; the bohemian life of pre-World War I Greenwich Village in New York City including it patronage by socialites like Mabel Dodge; the socialist fight against American participation in World War I; the fight among socialists (and anarchists) over support to the Russian Revolution; and, an interesting segment on the seemingly bewildering in-fighting in the early communist movement between the foreign-language federations and the Reed-led “Natives” (which included James P. Cannon,later a founder of American Trotskyism)that that ultimately had to be 'resolved' at Communist International headquarters in Moscow.
Those ‘natives’, the likes of Earl Browder, James Cannon and William Z. Foster, in the course of events would form the leadership of the party through most of the twenties when the cadre still wanted to make a revolution here and not just cheer on the Russian Revolution from afar. A nice touch in the film is the interweaving of commentaries by those, friend and foe, who knew or knew of Reed or were around during this time. See this movie.
Monday, March 13, 2017
*On The 100th Anniversary The Russian Bolshevik Revolution Of 1917-The Short Course- A Guest Commentary
Click on the headline to link to a "Workers Vanguard" article, dated February 26, 2010, concerning a lecture given in Britain about the highlights of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917.
Markin comment:
This is, whether you agree or disagree with its conclusions, one of the better short expositions, in one spot, on the issues around the fight for the Russian October revolution. Of course, this is only a short course. Militants who want to go further need to read Leon Trotsky's three volume, "History Of The Russian Revolution", and a myriad of other older and current views, friendly and hostile. But here is the basic outline of the issues that you will, of necessity, have to confront and have to address in your struggle to understand an important part of our common revolutionary history. Nicely done.
Markin comment:
This is, whether you agree or disagree with its conclusions, one of the better short expositions, in one spot, on the issues around the fight for the Russian October revolution. Of course, this is only a short course. Militants who want to go further need to read Leon Trotsky's three volume, "History Of The Russian Revolution", and a myriad of other older and current views, friendly and hostile. But here is the basic outline of the issues that you will, of necessity, have to confront and have to address in your struggle to understand an important part of our common revolutionary history. Nicely done.
Monday, January 09, 2017
From The Lenin Archives- On The Anniversary Of January 9th (Old Style-The Start Of The Russian Revolution Of 1905) -Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution
Markin comment:
Although everybody and their brother and sister knew, especially after the defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, that Russia was ripe for revolution nobody knew when it would break out, that is, until the murderous events of January 9th 1905. When the Tsarist forces shot down, killed, and wounded hundred of unarmed workers and their families this intended "peaceful" event would trigger that long fuse to revolution.
***********
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution
1.
An Urgent Political Question
At the present revolutionary juncture the question of the convocation of a popular constituent assembly is on the order of the day. Opinions are divided on the point as to how this question should be solved. Three political trends are to be observed. The tsarist government admits the necessity of convening representatives of the people, but it does not want under any circumstances to permit their assembly to be a popular and a constituent assembly. It seems willing to agree, if we are to believe the newspaper reports on the work of the Bulygin Commission,[2] to an advisory assembly, to be elected without freedom to conduct agitation, and on the basis of restricted qualifications or a restricted class system. The revolutionary proletariat, inasmuch as it is led by the Social-Democratic Party, demands complete transfer of power to a constituent assembly, and for this purpose strives to obtain not only universal suffrage and complete freedom to conduct agitation, but also the immediate overthrow of the tsarist government and its replacement by a provisional revolutionary government. Finally, the liberal bourgeoisie, expressing its wishes through the leaders of the so-called “Constitutional-Democratic Party”,[3] does not demand the overthrow of the tsarist government, does not advance the slogan of a provisional government and does not insist on real guarantees that the elections will be absolutely free and fair and that the assembly of representatives will be a genuinely popular and a genuinely constituent assembly. As a matter of fact, the liberal bourgeoisie, the only serious social support of the Osvobozhdeniye trend, is striving to effect as peaceful a deal as possible between the tsar and the revolutionary people, a deal, moreover, that would give a maximum of power to itself, the bourgeoisie, and a minimum to the revolutionary people—the proletariat and the peasantry.
Such is the political situation at the present time. Such are the three main political trends, corresponding to the three main social forces in contemporary Russia. We have already shown on more than one occasion (in the Proletary, Nos. 3, 4, 5)[1] how the Osvobozhdentsi use pseudo-democratic phrases to cover up their half-hearted, or, to put it more bluntly and plainly, their treacherous, perfidious policy towards the revolution. Let us now see how the Social-Democrats appraise the tasks of the moment. Excellent material for this purpose is provided by the two resolutions that were passed quite recently by the Third Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party and by the “Conference” of the section which has seceded from the Party. The question as to which of these resolutions more correctly appraises the political situation and more correctly defines the tactics of the revolutionary proletariat is of enormous importance, and every Social-Democrat who is anxious to fulfil his duties as a propagandist, agitator and organiser intelligently, must study this question with the closest attention, leaving all irrelevant considerations entirely aside.
By the Party’s tactics we mean the Party’s political conduct, or the character, the direction and methods of its political activity. Tactical resolutions are adopted by Party congresses in order precisely to define the political conduct of the Party as a whole with regard to new tasks, or in view of a new political situation. Such a new situation has been created by the revolution that has started in Russia, i.e., the complete, resolute and open rupture between the overwhelming majority of the people and the tsarist government. The new question concerns the practical methods to be adopted in convening a genuinely popular and genuinely constituent assembly (the theoretical question concerning such an assembly was officially settled by Social-Democracy long ago, before all other parties, in its Party program). Since the people have broken with the government, and the masses realise the necessity of setting up a new order, the party which set itself the object of overthrowing the government must necessarily consider what government to put up in place of the old, deposed government. A new question concerning a provisional revolutionary government arises. In order to give a complete answer to this question the Party of the class-conscious proletariat must make clear: 1) the significance of a provisional revolutionary government in the revolution that is now going on and in the entire struggle of the proletariat in general; 2) its attitude towards a provisional revolutionary government; 3) the precise conditions of Social-Democratic participation in this government; 4) the conditions under which pressure is to be brought to bear on this government from below, i.e., in the event of there being no Social-Democrats in it. Only after all these questions are made clear, will the political conduct of the Party in this sphere be principled, clear and firm.
Let us now consider how the resolution of the Third Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party answers these questions. The following is the full text of the resolution:
“Resolution on a Provisional Revolutionary Government
“Whereas:
“1) both the direct interests of the proletariat and the interests of its struggle for the final aims of socialism require the fullest possible measure of political liberty and, consequently, the replacement of the autocratic form of government by a democratic republic;
“2) the establishment of a democratic republic in Russia is possible only as a result of a victorious popular insurrection whose organ will be a provisional revolutionary government, which alone will be capable of ensuring complete freedom of agitation during the election campaign and of convening a constituent assembly that will really express the will of the people, an assembly elected on the basis of universal and equal suffrage, direct elections and secret ballot;
“3) under the present social and economic order this democratic revolution in Russia will not weaken, but strengthen the rule of the bourgeoisie, which at a certain moment will inevitably try, stopping at nothing, to take away from the Russian proletariat as many of the gains of the revolutionary period as possible:
“The Third Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party resolves that:
“a) that it is necessary to disseminate among the working class a concrete idea of the most probable course of the revolution and of the necessity, at a certain moment in the revolution, for the appearance of a provisional revolutionary government, from which the proletariat will demand the realisation of all the immediate political and economic demands contained in our program (the minimum program);
“b) that subject to the relation of forces, and other factors which cannot be exactly determined beforehand, representatives of our Party may participate in the provisional revolutionary government for the purpose of relentless struggle against all counter-revolutionary attempts and of the defence of the independent interests of the working class;
“c) that an indispensable condition for such participation is that the Party should exercise strict control over its representatives and that the independence of the Social-Democratic Party, which is striving for a complete socialist revolution and, consequently, is irreconcilably hostile to all bourgeois parties, should be strictly maintained;
“d) that irrespective whether the participation of Social-Democrats in the provisional revolutionary government prove possible or not, we must propagate among the broadest masses of the proletariat the necessity for permanent pressure to be brought to bear upon the provisional government by the armed proletariat, led by the Social-Democratic Party, for the purpose of defending, consolidating and extending the gains of the revolution.”
Notes
[1] “Revolutionary Struggle and Liberal Brokerage”, 1905: “The Democratic Tasks of the Revolutionary Proletariat”, 1905 and “The First Steps of Bourgeois Betrayal”, 1905. See present edition, Volume 8, pp. 486-94, 511-25–Ed.—Lenin
Go To The Lenin Internet Archive For The Other Chapters In This Work- Markin
Although everybody and their brother and sister knew, especially after the defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, that Russia was ripe for revolution nobody knew when it would break out, that is, until the murderous events of January 9th 1905. When the Tsarist forces shot down, killed, and wounded hundred of unarmed workers and their families this intended "peaceful" event would trigger that long fuse to revolution.
***********
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution
1.
An Urgent Political Question
At the present revolutionary juncture the question of the convocation of a popular constituent assembly is on the order of the day. Opinions are divided on the point as to how this question should be solved. Three political trends are to be observed. The tsarist government admits the necessity of convening representatives of the people, but it does not want under any circumstances to permit their assembly to be a popular and a constituent assembly. It seems willing to agree, if we are to believe the newspaper reports on the work of the Bulygin Commission,[2] to an advisory assembly, to be elected without freedom to conduct agitation, and on the basis of restricted qualifications or a restricted class system. The revolutionary proletariat, inasmuch as it is led by the Social-Democratic Party, demands complete transfer of power to a constituent assembly, and for this purpose strives to obtain not only universal suffrage and complete freedom to conduct agitation, but also the immediate overthrow of the tsarist government and its replacement by a provisional revolutionary government. Finally, the liberal bourgeoisie, expressing its wishes through the leaders of the so-called “Constitutional-Democratic Party”,[3] does not demand the overthrow of the tsarist government, does not advance the slogan of a provisional government and does not insist on real guarantees that the elections will be absolutely free and fair and that the assembly of representatives will be a genuinely popular and a genuinely constituent assembly. As a matter of fact, the liberal bourgeoisie, the only serious social support of the Osvobozhdeniye trend, is striving to effect as peaceful a deal as possible between the tsar and the revolutionary people, a deal, moreover, that would give a maximum of power to itself, the bourgeoisie, and a minimum to the revolutionary people—the proletariat and the peasantry.
Such is the political situation at the present time. Such are the three main political trends, corresponding to the three main social forces in contemporary Russia. We have already shown on more than one occasion (in the Proletary, Nos. 3, 4, 5)[1] how the Osvobozhdentsi use pseudo-democratic phrases to cover up their half-hearted, or, to put it more bluntly and plainly, their treacherous, perfidious policy towards the revolution. Let us now see how the Social-Democrats appraise the tasks of the moment. Excellent material for this purpose is provided by the two resolutions that were passed quite recently by the Third Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party and by the “Conference” of the section which has seceded from the Party. The question as to which of these resolutions more correctly appraises the political situation and more correctly defines the tactics of the revolutionary proletariat is of enormous importance, and every Social-Democrat who is anxious to fulfil his duties as a propagandist, agitator and organiser intelligently, must study this question with the closest attention, leaving all irrelevant considerations entirely aside.
By the Party’s tactics we mean the Party’s political conduct, or the character, the direction and methods of its political activity. Tactical resolutions are adopted by Party congresses in order precisely to define the political conduct of the Party as a whole with regard to new tasks, or in view of a new political situation. Such a new situation has been created by the revolution that has started in Russia, i.e., the complete, resolute and open rupture between the overwhelming majority of the people and the tsarist government. The new question concerns the practical methods to be adopted in convening a genuinely popular and genuinely constituent assembly (the theoretical question concerning such an assembly was officially settled by Social-Democracy long ago, before all other parties, in its Party program). Since the people have broken with the government, and the masses realise the necessity of setting up a new order, the party which set itself the object of overthrowing the government must necessarily consider what government to put up in place of the old, deposed government. A new question concerning a provisional revolutionary government arises. In order to give a complete answer to this question the Party of the class-conscious proletariat must make clear: 1) the significance of a provisional revolutionary government in the revolution that is now going on and in the entire struggle of the proletariat in general; 2) its attitude towards a provisional revolutionary government; 3) the precise conditions of Social-Democratic participation in this government; 4) the conditions under which pressure is to be brought to bear on this government from below, i.e., in the event of there being no Social-Democrats in it. Only after all these questions are made clear, will the political conduct of the Party in this sphere be principled, clear and firm.
Let us now consider how the resolution of the Third Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party answers these questions. The following is the full text of the resolution:
“Resolution on a Provisional Revolutionary Government
“Whereas:
“1) both the direct interests of the proletariat and the interests of its struggle for the final aims of socialism require the fullest possible measure of political liberty and, consequently, the replacement of the autocratic form of government by a democratic republic;
“2) the establishment of a democratic republic in Russia is possible only as a result of a victorious popular insurrection whose organ will be a provisional revolutionary government, which alone will be capable of ensuring complete freedom of agitation during the election campaign and of convening a constituent assembly that will really express the will of the people, an assembly elected on the basis of universal and equal suffrage, direct elections and secret ballot;
“3) under the present social and economic order this democratic revolution in Russia will not weaken, but strengthen the rule of the bourgeoisie, which at a certain moment will inevitably try, stopping at nothing, to take away from the Russian proletariat as many of the gains of the revolutionary period as possible:
“The Third Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party resolves that:
“a) that it is necessary to disseminate among the working class a concrete idea of the most probable course of the revolution and of the necessity, at a certain moment in the revolution, for the appearance of a provisional revolutionary government, from which the proletariat will demand the realisation of all the immediate political and economic demands contained in our program (the minimum program);
“b) that subject to the relation of forces, and other factors which cannot be exactly determined beforehand, representatives of our Party may participate in the provisional revolutionary government for the purpose of relentless struggle against all counter-revolutionary attempts and of the defence of the independent interests of the working class;
“c) that an indispensable condition for such participation is that the Party should exercise strict control over its representatives and that the independence of the Social-Democratic Party, which is striving for a complete socialist revolution and, consequently, is irreconcilably hostile to all bourgeois parties, should be strictly maintained;
“d) that irrespective whether the participation of Social-Democrats in the provisional revolutionary government prove possible or not, we must propagate among the broadest masses of the proletariat the necessity for permanent pressure to be brought to bear upon the provisional government by the armed proletariat, led by the Social-Democratic Party, for the purpose of defending, consolidating and extending the gains of the revolution.”
Notes
[1] “Revolutionary Struggle and Liberal Brokerage”, 1905: “The Democratic Tasks of the Revolutionary Proletariat”, 1905 and “The First Steps of Bourgeois Betrayal”, 1905. See present edition, Volume 8, pp. 486-94, 511-25–Ed.—Lenin
Go To The Lenin Internet Archive For The Other Chapters In This Work- Markin
Monday, November 07, 2016
*Honor The Anniversary Of The Russian Revolution- From Leon Trotsky's "The History Of The Russian Revolution"-"The October Insurrection"
Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archives version of Bolshevik chief insurrection organizer Leon Trotsky's Volume Three, Chapter 46, "The October Insurrection", from his seminal "The History Of The Russian Revolution"
*Honor The 99th Anniversary Of The Russian Revolution- From Leon Trotsky's "The History Of The Russian Revolution"-"The October Insurrection"
Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archives version of Bolshevik chief insurrection organizer Leon Trotsky's Volume Three, Chapter 46, "The October Insurrection", from his seminal "The History Of The Russian Revolution"
Saturday, October 01, 2016
*On The Anniversary Of The Chinese Revolution- The Heroic Age of The Chinese Communist Party- 1921-1949- A Review
Click on title to link to Mao's "THE TASKS OF THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY IN THE PERIOD OF RESISTANCE TO JAPAN", May 3, 1937. Mao Tse-tung delivered this report at the National Conference of the Communist Party of China, held in Yenan in May 1937.
BOOK REVIEW
A History Of The Chinese Communist Party 1921-1949, Jacques Guillermaz, Random House, New York, 1972
I am using the then current spelling of names and places as they are used in this edition of the book.
For militant leftists the defense of October 1917 Russian Revolution was the touchstone issue of international politics for most of the 20th century. In the end the demise of the Soviet Union and the other non-capitalists states of East Europe in the early 1990’s formally, at least, put an end to that question in those areas. However, the issue of the fate of China in the first half of the 21st century is in an important sense the touchstone Russian question of international politics today. The question, forward to socialism or back to some neo-capitalist formation like those in Russia and East Europe to this reviewer is an open question today. With that perspective in mind, and not unmindful of the publicity given China recently as the host of the 2008 Olympics, it is high time that this reviewer spent more time on this issue than he has thus far in this space. As preparation, it is always best to get some historical background, especially so for that new generation of militants who are unfamiliar with the last hundred years of leftist history.
As I have recently mentioned in another China review in this space, that of Edgar Snow’s Red Star Over China, the Communist International and Russian Communist Party fights over strategy for the Chinese revolution between the Stalinists and the Trotsky-led Left Opposition in the mid-1920’s are must reading. As is the history of the defeat of the Second Chinese Revolution in the cities in 1927 and a little later. And I would add here, as well, an overview of the creation and evolution of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) before the seizure of power is also necessary, especially for those who were neither pro-Maoists in the 1960’s and 1970’s nor Soviet Stalinists in any period. To that end Jacques Guillermaz’s well-researched and reasonably balanced academic efforts is a solid way to get the basics of the Chinese Communist political perspective in this period down in the same way that Edgar Snow chronicled the organized soviets under the tutelage of the CCP in the late 1930’s.
I do not believe that it is incorrect to label the Chinese Revolution of 1949 and thus the CCP as extensions of the Soviet Russian and Bolshevik experiences. With this caveat, however, that after 1927 (if not before) these two experiences were reflected through a Stalinist prism. Thus, with the defeat of the Second Chinese Revolution and the exodus from the cities to the countryside the CCP’s strategy, tactics, organizational structure and political prospective changed in the same manner (if not to the same degree) that the Russian party’s changed. A very strong argument can be made, and is made in this book although tangentially, that the CCP was in essence the Eastern border guards for the Soviets rather than a though-going Bolshevik revolutionary organization fighting for political power in its own right-except when backed up against the wall by the Nationalist forces under Chiang kai-shek. That in turn created the distortions of politics and organization that were endemic to the early consolidation of CCP after 1949 and continue in diluted form today.
Needless to say that an academic (although quite readable) book that has detailed, in over four hundred pages, the history of early Chinese communism is not going to get its proper fully worked out review in this small space. However, I would point out the highlights that readers should think through as they read. A nice job has been done by Guillermaz in setting the framework of Chinese communism in the context of the first Chinese revolution of 1912, the various nationalist, anti-imperialist and left-wing tendencies that existed prior to the formation of the CCP in 1921 and the thorny question of the relationship between the CCP and the nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) that was to, in the end, lead to a massive quarter century battle between these two forces. To emphasize how very important the correct analysis (or in the actual case, incorrect) of that relationship were I would note here that Leon Trotsky changed and extended his Theory of Permanent Revolution (basically that worldwide, not just in the advanced capitalist countries, the proletariat would have to led the national liberation struggle and the fight for the first steps into socialism) based on the Chinese experiences. That, in the end, is how important those political fights were.
After a full exposition of the role of the CCP in the cities in the Second Chinese Revolution the key areas that this book is helpful in evaluating are the rather murky periods from the defeat in the cities until Mao’s accession of leadership in the mid1930’s. That period entailed the establishment of rural soviets in Kiangsi, the on again, off again Nationalist (KMT) campaigns to destroy the CCP-led peasant armies that culminated in the famous Long March to Yenan; the fight against the Japanese and then after the defeat of the Japanese in World War II the renewed fight for political power that culminated in victory in 1949.
Along the way we get a glimpse at the internal power struggle between the various factions, the role of the Soviet Union in those fights and the various factions in the post-World War II power struggle. Well done. I might also add, in conclusion, that this book was written at the tail end of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and just before the breakout pact with American imperialism under the Nixon-Kissinger worldwide anti-Soviet front doctrine so that we find out the fates of many of the early leaders of the CCP and other state and party functionaries as well as KMT personalities. There is more than enough information to bolster the case of those of us who still see the Chinese experience as a socialist one, if a rather wobbly one at this time.
BOOK REVIEW
A History Of The Chinese Communist Party 1921-1949, Jacques Guillermaz, Random House, New York, 1972
I am using the then current spelling of names and places as they are used in this edition of the book.
For militant leftists the defense of October 1917 Russian Revolution was the touchstone issue of international politics for most of the 20th century. In the end the demise of the Soviet Union and the other non-capitalists states of East Europe in the early 1990’s formally, at least, put an end to that question in those areas. However, the issue of the fate of China in the first half of the 21st century is in an important sense the touchstone Russian question of international politics today. The question, forward to socialism or back to some neo-capitalist formation like those in Russia and East Europe to this reviewer is an open question today. With that perspective in mind, and not unmindful of the publicity given China recently as the host of the 2008 Olympics, it is high time that this reviewer spent more time on this issue than he has thus far in this space. As preparation, it is always best to get some historical background, especially so for that new generation of militants who are unfamiliar with the last hundred years of leftist history.
As I have recently mentioned in another China review in this space, that of Edgar Snow’s Red Star Over China, the Communist International and Russian Communist Party fights over strategy for the Chinese revolution between the Stalinists and the Trotsky-led Left Opposition in the mid-1920’s are must reading. As is the history of the defeat of the Second Chinese Revolution in the cities in 1927 and a little later. And I would add here, as well, an overview of the creation and evolution of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) before the seizure of power is also necessary, especially for those who were neither pro-Maoists in the 1960’s and 1970’s nor Soviet Stalinists in any period. To that end Jacques Guillermaz’s well-researched and reasonably balanced academic efforts is a solid way to get the basics of the Chinese Communist political perspective in this period down in the same way that Edgar Snow chronicled the organized soviets under the tutelage of the CCP in the late 1930’s.
I do not believe that it is incorrect to label the Chinese Revolution of 1949 and thus the CCP as extensions of the Soviet Russian and Bolshevik experiences. With this caveat, however, that after 1927 (if not before) these two experiences were reflected through a Stalinist prism. Thus, with the defeat of the Second Chinese Revolution and the exodus from the cities to the countryside the CCP’s strategy, tactics, organizational structure and political prospective changed in the same manner (if not to the same degree) that the Russian party’s changed. A very strong argument can be made, and is made in this book although tangentially, that the CCP was in essence the Eastern border guards for the Soviets rather than a though-going Bolshevik revolutionary organization fighting for political power in its own right-except when backed up against the wall by the Nationalist forces under Chiang kai-shek. That in turn created the distortions of politics and organization that were endemic to the early consolidation of CCP after 1949 and continue in diluted form today.
Needless to say that an academic (although quite readable) book that has detailed, in over four hundred pages, the history of early Chinese communism is not going to get its proper fully worked out review in this small space. However, I would point out the highlights that readers should think through as they read. A nice job has been done by Guillermaz in setting the framework of Chinese communism in the context of the first Chinese revolution of 1912, the various nationalist, anti-imperialist and left-wing tendencies that existed prior to the formation of the CCP in 1921 and the thorny question of the relationship between the CCP and the nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) that was to, in the end, lead to a massive quarter century battle between these two forces. To emphasize how very important the correct analysis (or in the actual case, incorrect) of that relationship were I would note here that Leon Trotsky changed and extended his Theory of Permanent Revolution (basically that worldwide, not just in the advanced capitalist countries, the proletariat would have to led the national liberation struggle and the fight for the first steps into socialism) based on the Chinese experiences. That, in the end, is how important those political fights were.
After a full exposition of the role of the CCP in the cities in the Second Chinese Revolution the key areas that this book is helpful in evaluating are the rather murky periods from the defeat in the cities until Mao’s accession of leadership in the mid1930’s. That period entailed the establishment of rural soviets in Kiangsi, the on again, off again Nationalist (KMT) campaigns to destroy the CCP-led peasant armies that culminated in the famous Long March to Yenan; the fight against the Japanese and then after the defeat of the Japanese in World War II the renewed fight for political power that culminated in victory in 1949.
Along the way we get a glimpse at the internal power struggle between the various factions, the role of the Soviet Union in those fights and the various factions in the post-World War II power struggle. Well done. I might also add, in conclusion, that this book was written at the tail end of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and just before the breakout pact with American imperialism under the Nixon-Kissinger worldwide anti-Soviet front doctrine so that we find out the fates of many of the early leaders of the CCP and other state and party functionaries as well as KMT personalities. There is more than enough information to bolster the case of those of us who still see the Chinese experience as a socialist one, if a rather wobbly one at this time.
*Honor The Chinese Revolution of 1949- A Guest Commentary
Click on title to link to Leon Trotsky's 1940 last article "The Great Lesson Of China"
Honor The 60th Anniversary Of Chinese Revolution
Below is a commentary, from the Trotskyist perspective, on the question of extension of the Chinese revolution-the need for political revolution.
Guest Commentary
Workers Vanguard No. 938
5 June 2009
Tiananmen 1989: Incipient Proletarian Political Revolution
June 4 marks the 20th anniversary of the Chinese government’s bloody suppression of mass protests centered on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The imperialists and their media mouthpieces have seized on the anniversary to falsely portray those protests as a movement favoring capitalist counterrevolution under the banner of Western-style “democracy.” In the two excerpts printed below, taken from articles published in Workers Vanguard before and after the Tiananmen massacre, we underscored that the mass upheaval—which began with students but increasingly drew in workers chafing under the impact of pro-capitalist “market reforms”—heralded the beginning of a proletarian political revolution against the Stalinist rulers of the Chinese bureaucratically deformed workers state.
* * *
The imperialists would like to see in the Beijing spring the flowering of a pro-Western mass movement. Some of the students’ appeals are clearly aimed at the American media, such as the banner proclaiming (in English) “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death.” But as an April 27 march of 150,000 students attracted the support of an even larger number of workers, the marchers responded by chanting “Long live the proletariat!” And over and over they sing the Internationale, the historic anthem of the socialist working class. Again on the weekend of May 20-21, as the regime headed by Deng Xiaoping and Prime Minister Li Peng ordered troops to remove student hunger strikers, workers streamed into the square to stand with them. But while the workers have been massively present in the protests, they have not yet mobilized behind their own class program—to oust the bureaucratic misleaders of the Chinese deformed workers state and establish the rule of proletarian soviets….
Most dramatic is the immobilization of the army. Li Peng’s order for a military crackdown was essentially ignored. Not only were the units which ventured into the capital surrounded by the populace, subway workers and management refused to transport them underground. The 38th Army, which is based in Beijing and includes many draftees from the capital, reportedly refused to move on the crowds. (The commander’s daughter is supposed to be among the hunger strikers.) Now a letter has surfaced from seven former high-ranking military leaders, and signed by more than 100 officers, opposing bringing troops into the capital: “The army absolutely must not shoot the people” (New York Times, 23 May). The Paris Libération (18 May) quotes a former officer saying, “the situation in China currently rather resembles Hungary in 1956, except there is no possible Soviet intervention to save the regime.”
In the face of this explosion of mass discontent, Deng called for “tough tactics,” to “spill blood” if necessary to stop the protests; Gorbachev warned against “hotheads.” While Bush and other Western leaders worry in public about “stability” in Beijing, privately they talk of counterrevolution. But it’s far from clear that the inchoate mass upsurge is going in any such direction. What the Chinese working people urgently need is genuine communism, a genuinely Marxist and Leninist communist party to replace the bureaucratic regime with workers and soldiers soviets at the head of the poor peasantry. Instead of the nationalism of the Chinese Stalinists from Mao to Deng, which has led China into a counterrevolutionary military and diplomatic alliance with the U.S. against the Soviet Union and Vietnam, what’s needed is communist unity against imperialism.
—“Upheaval in China” (WV No. 478, 26 May 1989)
* * *
The June 4 massacre at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square brought China to the brink of civil war. The mass outpouring of defiance heralded the Chinese proletarian political revolution against the corrupt and despised Stalinist bureaucracy. For the moment the Deng regime has weathered the storm and is now cracking down, striking first and hardest at the working class. But the decrepit bureaucratic caste, which has opened the doors of China to massive capitalist encroachment and shamelessly allied itself with U.S. imperialism, can be shattered. The central lesson of the Beijing spring and the urgent task which stands before the Chinese workers is the forging of an authentic communist party, an internationalist vanguard….
The Western media usually describes the oppositional forces in China as “the student movement for democracy.” But it was the beginnings of a working-class revolt against Deng’s program of “building socialism with capitalist methods” which gave the protests their mass and potentially revolutionary nature. Organized workers’ contingents started to participate in the marches, and it was the threat of a general strike which led Li Peng to order martial law in mid-May. Moreover, the outpouring of hundreds of thousands of working people into the streets stymied the regime’s attempted crackdown then. When the troops attacked unarmed people in Beijing on June 4, thousands of workers battled them with whatever came to hand….
The present repression may restore a certain surface stability to China for awhile. The working class has been forced back but has by no means been crushed. The unemployment, inflation and gross inequality spawned by Deng’s “reforms” will continue to fuel popular discontent….
The only road forward remains the proletarian political revolution to oust the Stalinist bureaucracy, combined with socialist revolution against capitalist rule—not least in Hong Kong, Taiwan and strategic Japan. For Lenin’s Communism! For a Chinese Trotskyist Party, section of a reforged Fourth International!
—“Defend Chinese Workers!” (WV No. 480, 23 June 1989)
Honor The 60th Anniversary Of Chinese Revolution
Below is a commentary, from the Trotskyist perspective, on the question of extension of the Chinese revolution-the need for political revolution.
Guest Commentary
Workers Vanguard No. 938
5 June 2009
Tiananmen 1989: Incipient Proletarian Political Revolution
June 4 marks the 20th anniversary of the Chinese government’s bloody suppression of mass protests centered on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The imperialists and their media mouthpieces have seized on the anniversary to falsely portray those protests as a movement favoring capitalist counterrevolution under the banner of Western-style “democracy.” In the two excerpts printed below, taken from articles published in Workers Vanguard before and after the Tiananmen massacre, we underscored that the mass upheaval—which began with students but increasingly drew in workers chafing under the impact of pro-capitalist “market reforms”—heralded the beginning of a proletarian political revolution against the Stalinist rulers of the Chinese bureaucratically deformed workers state.
* * *
The imperialists would like to see in the Beijing spring the flowering of a pro-Western mass movement. Some of the students’ appeals are clearly aimed at the American media, such as the banner proclaiming (in English) “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death.” But as an April 27 march of 150,000 students attracted the support of an even larger number of workers, the marchers responded by chanting “Long live the proletariat!” And over and over they sing the Internationale, the historic anthem of the socialist working class. Again on the weekend of May 20-21, as the regime headed by Deng Xiaoping and Prime Minister Li Peng ordered troops to remove student hunger strikers, workers streamed into the square to stand with them. But while the workers have been massively present in the protests, they have not yet mobilized behind their own class program—to oust the bureaucratic misleaders of the Chinese deformed workers state and establish the rule of proletarian soviets….
Most dramatic is the immobilization of the army. Li Peng’s order for a military crackdown was essentially ignored. Not only were the units which ventured into the capital surrounded by the populace, subway workers and management refused to transport them underground. The 38th Army, which is based in Beijing and includes many draftees from the capital, reportedly refused to move on the crowds. (The commander’s daughter is supposed to be among the hunger strikers.) Now a letter has surfaced from seven former high-ranking military leaders, and signed by more than 100 officers, opposing bringing troops into the capital: “The army absolutely must not shoot the people” (New York Times, 23 May). The Paris Libération (18 May) quotes a former officer saying, “the situation in China currently rather resembles Hungary in 1956, except there is no possible Soviet intervention to save the regime.”
In the face of this explosion of mass discontent, Deng called for “tough tactics,” to “spill blood” if necessary to stop the protests; Gorbachev warned against “hotheads.” While Bush and other Western leaders worry in public about “stability” in Beijing, privately they talk of counterrevolution. But it’s far from clear that the inchoate mass upsurge is going in any such direction. What the Chinese working people urgently need is genuine communism, a genuinely Marxist and Leninist communist party to replace the bureaucratic regime with workers and soldiers soviets at the head of the poor peasantry. Instead of the nationalism of the Chinese Stalinists from Mao to Deng, which has led China into a counterrevolutionary military and diplomatic alliance with the U.S. against the Soviet Union and Vietnam, what’s needed is communist unity against imperialism.
—“Upheaval in China” (WV No. 478, 26 May 1989)
* * *
The June 4 massacre at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square brought China to the brink of civil war. The mass outpouring of defiance heralded the Chinese proletarian political revolution against the corrupt and despised Stalinist bureaucracy. For the moment the Deng regime has weathered the storm and is now cracking down, striking first and hardest at the working class. But the decrepit bureaucratic caste, which has opened the doors of China to massive capitalist encroachment and shamelessly allied itself with U.S. imperialism, can be shattered. The central lesson of the Beijing spring and the urgent task which stands before the Chinese workers is the forging of an authentic communist party, an internationalist vanguard….
The Western media usually describes the oppositional forces in China as “the student movement for democracy.” But it was the beginnings of a working-class revolt against Deng’s program of “building socialism with capitalist methods” which gave the protests their mass and potentially revolutionary nature. Organized workers’ contingents started to participate in the marches, and it was the threat of a general strike which led Li Peng to order martial law in mid-May. Moreover, the outpouring of hundreds of thousands of working people into the streets stymied the regime’s attempted crackdown then. When the troops attacked unarmed people in Beijing on June 4, thousands of workers battled them with whatever came to hand….
The present repression may restore a certain surface stability to China for awhile. The working class has been forced back but has by no means been crushed. The unemployment, inflation and gross inequality spawned by Deng’s “reforms” will continue to fuel popular discontent….
The only road forward remains the proletarian political revolution to oust the Stalinist bureaucracy, combined with socialist revolution against capitalist rule—not least in Hong Kong, Taiwan and strategic Japan. For Lenin’s Communism! For a Chinese Trotskyist Party, section of a reforged Fourth International!
—“Defend Chinese Workers!” (WV No. 480, 23 June 1989)
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