Below is a refutation of Ben's defense of Lenin's suppression of
all opposing trends at
http://www.struggle.net/alds/essay_152_wrapper.htm It also
touches on some of the issues raised by him in Ch. 8 of his "Party
of the Future" book at http://leninism.org/pof/pof8.asp but is
primarily focused on the earlier essay. Ben, next time you update
the ALDS website could you please add this to it and either put a
link to it under essay 152 or post it as a comment on that essay.
At present lengthy comments cannot be posted in response to 152
because it is still on the old system with no paragraphs and only
600 characters.


Ukraine

Ben claims that there was no third alternative to the Bolsheviks or
the Reactionaries. Either you are with the Reds or you are with the
Whites; there are no other alternatives. This is false. Not only
was there an alternative, it was implemented in the Ukraine and
succeeded in defeating the Whites. Unfortunately, it was not able
to defeat the Bolsheviks, who violently suppressed it at the end of
the civil war.

This alternative was called the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army
of the Ukraine. In 1918 the Bolsheviks signed a peace treaty with
Germany & Austria, the Brest-Livok treaty. As part of that treaty
they gave up control of the Ukraine to the central powers. The
people living in Ukraine did not have a say in this and did not
particularly want to be ruled by the Germans. So they rebelled.
Out of this the RIAU was formed.

The RIAU, also called the Makhnovshchina (after one of the main
organizers - the Anarcho-Communist Nester Makhno) was organized
mostly by anarchists. It was not a traditional army but a
democratic one - with general assemblies, soldier committees,
elected officers, etc. It was voluntary, without conscription, and
made up mostly of poor peasants. Using guerilla warfare they
succeeded in not only driving out the Germans and Austrians but also
defeating Ukrainian Nationalists and two white armies (Denikin &
Wrangel's forces). Were it not for the RIAU the Whites may well
have won the civil war since they inflicted serious damage on
Denikin's army during his drive for Moscow. Peasants took over the
land and formed communes, village assemblies & free soviets (a
process that started after the February revolution). They also
acted to counter anti-semitic progromists. The Jewish historian M.
Tcherikover said, "of all these armies, including the Red Army, the
Makhnovists behaved best with regard the civil population in general
and the Jewish population in particular. ... Do not speak of pogroms
alleged to have been organised by Makhno himself. That is a slander
or an error. Nothing of the sort occurred." The RIAU did not
implement a state but handed power over to the peasants (or workers
in the cities), upon with the army was based. When militia forces
entered a city or town they posted on the walls notices to the
population such as:

"This army does not serve any political party, any power, any
dictatorship. On the contrary, it seeks to free the region of all
political power, of all dictatorship. It strives to protect the
freedom of action, the free life of the workers against all
exploitation and domination. The Makhno Army does not therefore
represent any authority. It will not subject anyone to any
obligation whatsoever."

True, the RIAU was far from perfect and had it share of flaws. The
hero worship of Makhno isn't terribly anarchistic and, like every
other faction in the revolution, there were elements of sexism. But
it was vastly superior to the totalitarian state implemented by
Lenin and Trotsky. The fact that they were able to defeat the
whites, nationalists and foreign imperialists without a state, let
alone the one-party dictatorship implemented by the Bolsheviks,
proves that Lenin's repressive policies were not necessary to defeat
the Whites as Ben claims. The imperialist invasion and conquest of
the Ukraine by the Bolsheviks, launched near the end of the civil
war, further shows how counter-revolutionary they really were. See
"History of the Makhnovist Movement" by Peter Arishnov and/or
http://www.infoshop.org/faq/secH6.html for more on this movement.

Why the Revolution Degenerated

Many anarchists in the 19th century predicted that if Marx's
"dictatorship of the proletariat" were ever implemented it would
result in the creation of a new ruling class which would exploit the
workers just as the old one did. The "dictatorship of the
proletariat" inevitably becomes a "dictatorship over the
proletariat." Mikhail Bakunin provided a materialist explanation
for this. Few predictions in the social sciences have come true so
dramatically. Not only in the USSR, but in every single instance
where "worker's states" have been implemented (at one point they
ruled a third of the world) this prediction has come true.

Lenin's suppression of opposing political tendencies did not come
about as a result of the civil war and conflict with the whites.
The repression against opposition trends began before the civil war
and so could not have possibly been caused by it. Ben has it
backwards. The civil war came about because of the suppression of
opposing trends. The repression came about not because of the civil
war but as a result of the process of the formation of a new
bureaucratic ruling class in the months immediately following
October.

The state is a hierarchical organization with a monopoly (or
near-monopoly) on the legitimate use of violence. It is a
centralized rule making body that bosses around everyone who lives
in its territory. It uses various armed bodies of people (police,
militaries) and coercive institutions (courts, prisons) to force its
subjects to obey it. It has a pyramidal structure, with a chain of
command and a few people on the top giving orders to those below
them. Because of this pyramidal structure and monopoly of force the
state is always the instrument by which a minority dominates the
majority.

It was precisely this kind of organization that the Bolsheviks set
up immediately following October. At the top of the pyramid was the
Council of People's Commissars or Sovnarkom, below it were several
other bodies. It made laws and set up various armed bodies of
people, such as the Cheka (secret police), which it used to coerce
the population into obeying it. It set up various bureaucracies
with which to run the country. In December of 1917 they created the
Supreme Economic Council to run the economy - the embryo of
centralized planning. They started nationalizing industries;
placing them under the control of the Supreme Economic Council.
They passed a decree on Worker's Control which actually undermined
worker's control; the factory committees were legalized but required
to obey the state planners rather then the workers in their factory.
This effectively killed worker self-management in favor of
centralized power (see "The Bolsheviks and Worker's Control" by
Maurice Brinton for more on this). Starting in March the regime
would begin to dismantle the committees in favor of one-man
management. All this resulted in the creation of a new,
bureaucratic ruling class. They exploited the peasants through
their grain requisitions, begun a few weeks before the start of the
civil war. Decisions under this immediate post-October were not made
by the working class but by the small group of commissars and
bureaucrats who ran the state (a tiny minority of the population).
The workers were not running the state at any point in time. The
state did not later degenerate but was an instrument of minority
rule from the moment it established its authority. This is clearly
shown by where decision making power lay: in the hands of the
Sovnarkom and hierarchical, bureaucratic organizations subordinated
to it. When the Sovnarkom makes the decisions the working class
does not.

The suppression of all opposition arose out of this process of class
formation and the class struggle between this new ruling class and
the previously existing classes. Both the Russian working class and
peasantry were highly combative and had just overthrown the
previously ruling class. Subjugating them to a new ruling class was
not easy and required massive amounts of repression, which is why
Lenin eventually suppressed all opposition. If this hadn't been
done the new ruling class would have been overthrown. In doing this
the Bolsheviks were not defending the working class (much of their
repression was directed at the working class), they were defending
their own dictatorship.

The repression of opposing groups (both left and right) could not
have been caused by the civil war because it started prior to the
start of the civil war. At first the repression was directed at the
right-wing socialists and supporters of the old ruling class.
Eventually the Cadet party (bourgeois democrats) was outlawed and
some of its leaders arrested.

Late winter and spring of 1918 saw rising working class opposition
to the Bolshevik regime. Life for most workers had not
significantly changed for the better and many began to organize
against the new regime. In March there were a number of peaceful
protests by workers against the Bolshevik regime and organizing
against the Bolsheviks by workers stepped up. They did this in a
manner similar to how they had struggled against the old bosses -
they formed worker assemblies and conferences of worker
representatives, which functioned similarly to the way the Soviets
originally had - as organizations (similar to spokescouncils)
designed to coordinate worker actions against the regime. The
Soviets by this time had degenerated into weak parliaments
controlled by the Bolshevik party and were denounced by the workers,
who claimed they "have ceased to be the political representatives of
the proletariat and are little more than judicial or police
institutions." They criticized the subordination of the factory
committees and demanded that they "out immediately to refuse to do
the things that are not properly their real tasks, sever their links
with the government, and become organs of the free will of the
working class, organs of its struggle." A worker assembly at the
Putilov Works, which had originally been a stronghold of Bolshevism
and supporter of the October revolution, passed a resolution on
March 19 saying:

"We, the workers of the Putilov Works, declare before the labouring
classes of Russia and the world that the Bolshevist government has
betrayed the ideals of the revolution, and thus betrayed and
deceived the works and peasants in Russia; that the Bolshevist
government, acting in our names, is not the authority of the
proletariat and peasants, but a dictatorship of the Bolshevik party,
self-governing with the aid of Cheka and the police ... We demand
the release of workers and their wives who have been arrested; the
restoration of a free press, free speech, right of meeting and
inviolability of person; transfer of food administration to
co-operative societies: and transfer of power to freely elected
workers’ and peasants’ soviets."

Several thousand workers participated in the assembly, only 21 voted
against the resolution.

In the spring of 1918 the Bolsheviks lost the elections to the
soviets. The Mensheviks and SRs, the only other parties on the
ballot, won by a large margin. Just a few months after coming to
power, most workers were opposed to the continued rule of the
Bolsheviks.

The Bolsheviks reacted to this resistance with terror. Where they
lost soviet elections they resorted to various forms of electoral
fraud; usually they simply disbanded Soviets after losing. In order
to maintain their rule they had to destroy the Soviets. There is a
long article about the elections at
http://www.angelfire.com/nb/revhist17/brovkin1.pdf This resulted in
a wave of worker and peasant protests and revolts, which the
Bolsheviks put down with force. On May 9th armed guards shot at a
group of workers in Kolpino protesting shortages of food and jobs.
This touched off a wave of strikes and labor unrest that resulted in
more arrests and attacks from the state. In early April Anarchist
organizations were raided; many anarchists were killed and many more
were arrested. This was the start of a major attack on the Russian
anarchist movement that eventually wiped it out. Continuing the
crackdown on anarchism, in early May Burevestnik, Anarkhia, Golos
Truda and other major anarchist papers were shut down by the state.
Other opposition groups suffered similar fates - the Mensheviks and
SRs both saw many of their activists arrested or killed and
publications censored. All of this occurred prior to the start of
the civil war.

This pre-civil war terror played a role in the start of the civil
war. The SRs, realizing they could not gain power electorally and
tired of being persecuted, let themselves be caught up in the
Czechoslovak adventure. A group of Czech troops who had been stuck
in Russia took up arms against the Bolsheviks on May 25, beginning
the civil war. The SRs formed a new government. They created a
coalition government and, being idiots, made reactionary republicans
and Monarchists part of that coalition. Soon after popular
uprisings against the Bolsheviks erupted in parts of Russia, which
the SRs took advantage of to expand their rule. The civil war began
as a war between the Bolsheviks and one of the rival socialist
groups they tried to suppress. The civil war did not cause the
suppression of rival trends, but rather the suppression of rival
trends was a catalyst that started the civil war.

The civil war accelerated the centralizing trends that were already
present in Bolshevik-controlled Russia and helped give an upper hand
to the more hard-line & repressive factions within the ruling class.
Power gradually transferred from the Sovnarkom to the party to the
Politburo. This process had already started prior to the civil war;
the civil war merely accelerated it. A similar process began in
SR-territory when the Red army launched a counter-offensive against
them in late summer of 1918. Their government was reorganized into
a much more centralized form, though still a coalition, and more
hard-line & repressive groups (in this case, reactionaries) gained
more power.

On August 31, 1918 SR assassins attempted to kill Lenin and nearly
succeeded. In response Lenin made the Red Terror official policy
and the few civil liberties Russians had left were shredded. A
bloody orgy followed as complete totalitarianism was implemented.
No movement in opposition to the party was spared from persecution;
even the Tolstoyan pacifists (who posed no threat to anyone) found
themselves in jail. At this point the civil war was still a war
between socialists. In November 1918 the reactionaries took
advantage of the high-level positions the SRs had stupidly given
them as part of the coalition and launched a coup deposing the SRs -
instituting a right-wing dictatorship under Admiral Kolchak. Two
months after the Red Terror was officially launched, eight months
after it was unofficially launched, the civil war was transformed
from a war between socialists into a war between Bolsheviks and
reactionaries.

From this point on the civil war was essentially a three-sided class
war: the new ruling class (Reds) vs. the old ruling class (whites)
vs. the workers and peasants (most greens & anarchists). Greens
were partisan groups formed mostly by peasants against both the reds
& the whites; their philosophy advocated semi-anarchic ideas.
According to the historian Orlando Figes:

"Some deserters formed themselves into guerilla bands. These were
called the Greens partly because they hid out in the woods and were
supplied by the local peasants; sometimes these peasant armies
called themselves Greens to distinguish themselves from both Reds
and Whites. They even had their own Green propaganda and ideology
based on the defense of the local peasant revolution. During the
spring of 1919 virtually the whole of the Red Army rear, both on the
Eastern and the Southern Fronts, was engulfed by these Green
armies." (A People's Tragedy, p. 599-600)

Throughout the civil war the Bolsheviks and the whites were
continually beset with worker and peasant unrest. The wave of labor
unrest caused by the shooting of protesters on May 9, 1918 continued
through the start of the civil war and culminated in a general
strike called for July 2. The state responded with mass arrests,
breaking up factory meetings and other standard union-busting
tactics that succeeded in defeating the general strike. Strikes,
insurrections and riots continued all throughout the civil war.
Conscripted troops often mutinied or deserted, sometimes joining the
greens. Ben's claim that that widespread peasant revolts against
the Bolsheviks only happened after the civil war is false. There
were numerous peasant revolts against them throughout the civil war,
some quite large. Whole provinces were engulfed in rebellion
including Tambov, Riazan, Tula, Kaluga, Smolensk, Vitebsk, Pskov,
Novgorod, Mogilev and even parts of Moscow. One peasant uprising
against the Bolsheviks at Simbirsk and Samara, the 'War of the
Chapany' (Chapany was the local peasant term for a tunic) in April
of 1919 had as it's main slogan 'Long live the Soviets! Down with
the Communists!" Similar events happened throughout the war in both
Red and White territory.

As a result of the resistance of the other classes to the new ruling
class an extremely repressive police state was implemented to
maintain the power of the new ruling class. There have been many
instances of ruling classes implementing totalitarianism when it was
needed to keep themselves in power. That is how fascism came about.
The Bolsheviks did this in order to keep themselves, the new ruling
class, in power much as the German & Italian bourgeoisie implemented
Fascism to keep themselves in power. The center of power went from
the Sovnarkom to the central committee to the politburo. The
ideology of the Bolsheviks changed to match their practice.

Whereas prior to the revolution most Bolsheviks favored a highly
democratic state after coming to power they came to believe in a
one-party state. The party was a very effective means of organizing
the ruling class and was already available to them as they
consolidated their power. At first this one-party state was viewed
as just being particular to Russia under their present circumstances
but eventually they came to the conclusion that Workers' rule would
take this form in all societies. Trotsky is not unusual in this
regard:

"The revolutionary party (vanguard) which renounces its own
dictatorship surrenders the masses to the counter-revolution ...
abstractly speaking, it would be very well if the party dictatorship
could be replaced by the ‘dictatorship’ of the whole toiling people
without any party, but this presupposes such a high level of
political development among the masses that it can never be achieved
under capitalist conditions"

Note the new justification here: workers are too stupid ("lack the
political development") to rule themselves. The main justification
used for the state prior to the revolution had been that it would be
necessary in order to defeat counter-revolutionaries. Most
Bolsheviks believed that what they had created was not the rule of a
new bureaucrat-capitalist ruling class but the rule of the workers &
peasants. They equated their own rule with the rule of the peasants
& workers. This new justification fit well with their new position
as ruling class - since workers opposed their rule (which they
confused with worker's rule) the workers were not fit to govern
themselves. They needed a vanguard to stand over them and defeat
"wavering" elements of the working class that wanted to rule itself.

Kissinger-esque Justifications

There are no circumstances in which it is ever acceptable to
implement a police state (or any other kind of state). A police
state can never be used to defend workers' rule because all police
states have a tiny minority ruling at the top over the proletariat.
Implementing a police state guarantees that the workers will not
rule. It is probably correct that had the SRs or the Mensheviks
come to power it would have resulted in the rule of the capitalist
class. But the Bolshevik dictatorship resulted in the rule of the
capitalist class anyway. I'm referring here not only to the
eventual downfall of the USSR but the fact that the Bolsheviks
established themselves as a new state-capitalist ruling class
shortly after coming to power. Their dictatorship was defending one
capitalist class against a different capitalist class - NOT the
workers against the capitalists. All of the political parties
represented different forms of capitalism. The only real way to end
bourgeois rule would have been the anarchist solution using partisan
warfare along the lines of the Makhnovista. The triumph of any of
the parties, including the Bolsheviks, meant the triumph of
bourgeois rule.

Ben's defense of Lenin's dictatorship is the same as the defenses
offered by John Ashcroft, Henry Kissinger, and the CIA. They claim
that repressive measures are necessary in order to "stop the
terrorists" and other boogeymen. They too reject both "pure
democracy" and "pure repression." The CIA only imposes police
states on other countries when it is needed to maintain US
imperialism. When it is not necessary they do not usually impose a
police state. If it is necessary both Ben & the CIA will use
extreme terror to force their vision of how the world should be
organized on everyone. Ben complains about people associating
Leninism (or his brand of Leninism) with police states but the fact
that he believes that it is acceptable under some circumstances to
impose police states makes the association a valid one. It is no
different from associating the CIA with brutal dictatorships.

Ben hopes that conditions in the future are such that it won't be
necessary to shoot us in order to achieve his goals, but if it is
necessary he will do so (as shown by his support for Lenin's police
state). If Ben's "workers' state" ever comes about we will organize
against it and attempt to overthrow it. If we are successful it
will be necessary for him to impose a police state if he does not
want it to be overthrown. Given that he thinks this "workers state"
is required for the salvation of humanity it is not unlikely that
his philosophy would lead to the imposition of a police state if
working class resistance against it was too high.

Ben's justifications for Lenin’s dictatorship cannot possible
justify the suppression of the Workers Opposition faction of the
Bolsheviks party. The mass rebellions at the end of the civil war
(including the Krondstadt mutiny) forced the ruling class to
implement reforms. There were two proposals - a left-wing one
advocated by the worker's opposition and a right-wing one, the New
Economic Policy. The right-wing one was implemented and the workers
opposition was not only defeated but banned. All factions within
the Bolshevik party were banned, making Stalin's rise to power much
easier since no one was allowed to organize against him.

Nor can it justify the imperialism engaged in by Soviet Russia in
the early 20s. They invaded not only Ukraine, where the anarchists
had defeated the bourgeoisie, but also other states, which had
become independent of the Russian Empire during the course of the
revolution & civil war.

The Past Matters

All Leninist revolutions have historically resulted in repressive
one-party dictatorships. This is a logical outcome of the way in
which they come to power. A highly centralized vanguard party comes
to power through a violent revolution in which they encourage
rebellion on the part of the oppressed classes and promise them a
socialist society that will solve their problems and make their
lives much better. This results in a highly combative Peasantry &
Working class, which requires the use of high levels of repression
to keep them under control. The vanguard seizes power, making
itself the new ruling class. It must use high levels of repression
to keep itself in power because it comes to power on the back of a
wave of class-conscious worker & peasant uprisings. It takes the
form of a one party state because that is the form it uses to seize
power - the vanguard party. This necessitates further repression
because it is more difficult for a party-state to convincingly
present itself as a democratic state. After they've been in power a
while, and have defeated the workers & peasants, the vanguard can
decrease the level of repression (and sometimes do) because they no
longer face a major threat from rebellious workers & peasants. The
means you use will determine the ends you get. Using a centralized
vanguard party to wage revolution will result in a society similar
to it - a centralized party-state.

Anarchists predicted the history of the Marxist movement in the 19th
and early 20th century. Proudhon warned that implementing Marx's
statist ideas would result in "barracks socialism" and Stirner made
similar criticisms. Probably the most prophetic was Mikhail
Bakunin. He predicted that Authoritarian Socialist movements (such
as Marxism) would take two possible routes. One was the path of
becoming enmeshed in electoralism, which would result in them
becoming what Ben calls the "bribed strata." This prediction was
correct, with the Social Democrats being the first major example of
a revolutionary movement using electoralism and, as a result,
becoming reformist. The second was that they would not rely
extensively on the ballot but instead come to power through
revolution. This would result in the rule of the "Red Bureaucracy"
which would exploit the proletariat just as the old ruling class
had. He was correct, on both counts. In 1919 Errico Malatesta
claimed that Lenin & Trotsky "are preparing the governmental
structures which those who will come after them will utilize to
exploit the Revolution and do it to death. They will be the first
victims of their methods and I am afraid that the Revolution will go
under with them. History repeats itself; mutatis mutandis, it was
Robespierre's dictatorship that brought Robespierre to the
guillotine and pave the way for Napoleon." This too happened, we
call it Stalinism. Nearly twenty years before the Russian
Revolution Kropotkin claimed that "Should an authoritarian Socialist
society ever succeed in establishing itself, it could not last;
general discontent would force it to break up, or to reorganize
itself on principles of liberty." The fall of the USSR proved this
correct as well.

There have been over 30 "workers states" implemented; ALL of them
have resulted in exactly what anarchists predicted. Even the few
(non-Leninist) examples of "workers states" which did not rely on
state terror resulted in the rule of the red bureaucracy. The
Marxist movement has followed exactly the path anarchists predicted:
becoming either reformist or implementing the rule of a bureaucratic
elite. This has happened over and over again, every time proving
anarchist predictions correct. Predictions based on Marxist theory
have proven incorrect, but predictions based on anarchist theory
have proven correct. Marxists can invent all the ad hoc hypotheses
in the world but that doesn't change this. As Marx himself said,
what people _do_ is as important as what they say. Leninists have
implemented one-party dictatorships EVERY time they have come to
power. EVERY "workers state" has always been ruled by the red
bureaucracy. It does not matter what rhetoric is used to justify
it, these are the inevitable outcomes of Leninism and "workers
states." Rita Mae Brown defined insanity as "doing the same thing
over and over and expecting a different result." History shows what
"workers states" leads to, if we try to do it again we will get the
same bad results. It would be insanity to expect anything else.


Joe R. Golowka

"Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization,
based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust
the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians,
generals, and county commissioners." - Edward Abbey