The failure of capitalism and the relevance of Bolshevism

The relevance of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution today

Written by Lal Khan
Wednesday, 03 November 2010

As the ferocious crisis of Pakistani capitalism devastates society, we hear frantic cries of “revolution” from mainly the right-wing politicians and intellectuals. This reflects their utter desperation and impotent rage at the historical failure of their system to run society.

They refer to the French revolution, and go on about “bloody revolution” etc. Their intention is clear: it is to inculcate fear of “revolution” among the masses; but in reality it also reveals how terrified they are of such a prospect. However, in this hue and cry about revolutions they conveniently avoid mentioning the Bolshevik revolution as they are well aware of the real dangers that that tradition poses for this exploitative and oppressive system.

The Bolshevik, or the Russian Revolution, triumphed on November 7 (October 26 according to the orthodox Byzantine calendar) 1917. Apart from the heroic episode of the Paris Commune, for the first time millions of downtrodden workers and peasants took political power into their own hands, sweeping aside the despotic rule of the capitalists and landlords, and set out to create a socialist world order.

John Reed, the iconic American writer, described it in the following words, “No matter what one thinks of Bolshevism, it is undeniable that the Russian revolution is one of the greatest events in human history, and the rule of the Bolsheviki a phenomenon of worldwide importance.” (Ten Days that Shook the World, p.130).

For 70 years the apologists of capitalism vented their spleen against the Soviet Union. There was an avalanche of slander unleashed to blacken the image of the Bolshevik revolution and the nationalised planned economy that issued from it. They manoeuvred to identify socialism with the bureaucratic totalitarian regime which arose from the isolation of the revolution in a backward country.

However, in the early days the regime established by the revolution was neither bureaucratic nor totalitarian, but the most democratic regime yet seen on earth. For the first time in history the success of the planned economy was demonstrated, not in the pages of Capital, but in an arena comprising a sixth of the planet’s surface; not in the language of dialectics, but in the language of steel, education, healthcare and electricity.

In a gigantic and unprecedented experiment it was proved that it was possible to run society without capitalists, feudal landlords and money lenders. Despite the aggression of twenty one imperialist armies, tremendous objective difficulties and obstacles, the abolition of the market mechanisms and the introduction of the planned economy revolutionised the productive forces and laid the basis for a modern economy.

In the fifty years from 1913 (the height of the pre-war production) to 1963, total industrial output of the USSR rose by more than 52 times. The corresponding figure for the USA was less than six times. In a few decades a backward agricultural economy was transformed into the second most powerful country in the world. It developed a mighty industrial base, a high cultural level and more scientists than the USA and Japan combined. Life expectancy more than doubled and child mortality fell by nine times. Such economic advance, in so short a time, has no parallel in the world. Rents were fixed at about 6 percent of the monthly income. A small flat in Moscow, up until the early1980s, cost $17 per month, which included gas, electricity, telephone and unlimited hot water.

However, due to the defeat of revolutions in Germany (1918-23), China (1925-27), Britain (1926) and several other countries, the isolation of the revolution and primitiveness of the technology led to the beginning of the degeneration of the revolution. Under frightful conditions of economic, social and cultural backwardness, the workers’ democracy established by Lenin and Trotsky was replaced by the monstrously deformed caricature under Stalin.

After the death of Lenin we saw the rise of Stalin, embodying a bureaucratic clique that began to monopolise power. The four conditions laid down by Lenin were swept away. Trotsky fought for the ideas of October till his end when he was gruesomely assassinated by a Stalinist agent in 1940. In his State and revolution Lenin had clearly set the conditions for soviet power.

1. Free and democratic elections with the right of recall of all officials by the soviets (Punchayat).

2. No official must receive a salary higher than that of a skilled worker.

3. No standing army but an armed people.

4. Gradually, all the tasks of running the state should be performed by everyone in turn.

As the economy expanded, and technology became more advanced and the items produced ran into hundreds of thousand it became more and more difficult to run the system efficiently, for the bureaucracy that had usurped power. Unlike the development of capitalism which relies on the market for allocation of resources, a nationalised economy requires conscious planning and direction. Workers’ democracy is the same for the planned economy as is oxygen for the human body.

Ironically, the degeneration and collapse of the Soviet Union, if the basic conditions of the Bolshevik party set out in 1919 were not adhered to, were predicted by the leaders of the revolution themselves.

In 1921 Lenin said the following:

“Berlin is the heart of Germany and Germany is the heart of Europe. If there is no revolution in Germany the Russian revolution is doomed”.

In his epic work, Revolution Betrayed, Trotsky wrote in 1936:

“The fall of the present bureaucratic dictatorship, if it were not replaced by a new socialist power, would thus mean a return to capitalism with a catastrophic decline of industry and culture”.

How the post 1991 scenario has vindicated that! And yet the apologists of capitalism, the reformists, the former Stalinists and ex-lefts, try to maintain that the collapse of the USSR signified the demise of socialism.

Alan Woods wrote in 1997:

“What failed in Russia was not socialism, but a false model, a caricature of socialism… The demagogic attacks on socialism/Marxism/communism have an increasingly hollow ring, because they are made against a background of deepening crisis of capitalism”.

In the present severe crisis of capitalism and the agony of the masses that flows from this, nothing less than a revolution can emancipate the oppressed millions. The revolution that can ensure an end to this pain and misery and deprivation can be victorious and successful only if it is based on the ideas, methods and strategy of Bolshevism. The ruling classes will tremble in the coming historical period as the masses enter the arena of history to transform their destiny.