The Second Congress of the Comintern had set out the conditions under which soviets should be established. The Theses noted the creation of soviets in 1905, in the period of a rising revolutionary wave, and their decline in the period of counter-revolution. The same happened in 1917. In 1916, when a new revolutionary wave began, the Bolsheviks warned against their premature formation. That did not mean not discussing the idea of soviets with the masses, because one reason for not immediately advocating them is that the workers need to fully understand what they are.
This was at a time when there were attempts by Mensheviks and Social-democrats to neuter the revolutionary content of soviets, and turn them into parliamentary talking shops, standing alongside bourgeois parliamentary institutions. It was necessary that workers fully understood the soviets to be democratically elected, revolutionary organs of workers' power, standing in opposition to bourgeois-democracy, and preparing the ground for its overthrow. In the period between bourgeois-democracy and communism, the soviets represent The Dictatorship of The Proletariat.
It is necessary to educate the workers to understand this nature of the soviets, before they are established, because the process of establishing them, itself, takes time, requiring elections in workplaces and so on. But, establishing the soviets as revolutionary organs, rather than parliamentary talking shops is vital, because, for the insurrection that culminates the revolution, to succeed, the soviet needs to have ensured the arming of the workers, formation of militia, drawing in sections of the armed forces and so on. That simply cannot be done overnight.
Yet, this latter was precisely the view of the Stalinists, who opposed the creation of soviets during the period of revolutionary upsurge, when it was necessary to prepare for a challenge for power, and to guard against the danger of counter-revolution. The Stalinists argued that setting up soviets would scare away the bourgeoisie, and that soviets could only be set up on the eve of the proletarian insurrection.
Trotsky quotes from the February resolution of the ECCI, which blamed “Comrade N and others” for the absence of an elected soviet in Canton.
“The report in Pravda, written on the basis of first-hand documents (no.31), stated that there was a soviet government established in Canton. But it said nothing about the fact that the Canton Soviet was not an elected organ, that is, that it was not a soviet – for how can there be a soviet which has not been elected?” (p 145-6)
In other words, the soviet was a typical Stalinist, administrative construct, devoid of any real revolutionary content.
“The ECCI tells us now that a soviet is necessary for an armed insurrection, but not before. But when the insurrection is decided upon, it appears that there is no soviet! To set up an elected soviet is not at all an easy matter: it is necessary that the masses should know from experience what a soviet is, that they should understand its form, that they should have accustomed themselves in the past to the election of soviets. Of this, there was not a sign in China, as the slogan of soviets was declared to be a Trotskyist slogan precisely in the period when it should have become the nerve centre of the entire movement. When, however, a date was fixed in all haste for an insurrection so as to skip over their own defeats, they simultaneously had to appoint a soviet. If we were not to expose the roots of this error to the very bottom, the slogan of soviets itself might be turned into a noose for strangling the revolution.” (p 146)
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