By M.N. Motorin
Socialist revolution, just the way democratic communists stated, occurred truly world-wide. First it happened in Russia, then in Southern Finland, later in Hungary and then in Bavaria...
However, we must distinguish between a socialist revolution and a Soviet one. We must also understand that any socialist revolution is at the same time Soviet, but not every Soviet revolution is socialist.
In the modern world history there were four more victorious revolutions, besides the above mentioned, which weren’t socialist... The first and most obvious example is the well-known Paris Commune. It was the first one to create a Soviet form of government, however, its leaders were utopians of the Blanquist and anarchist type... Another example of the Soviet, but not socialist, revolution was our Russian sudden February-March revolution of the 1917, which spontaneously established Soviet power, first in Petrograd, which governed the entire country until the summer, and later in June of the same year governed the entire country...
This was not just bourgeois revolution, but specifically Soviet bourgeois revolution. While previous bourgeois revolutions in the West established parliamentary representational power, in Russia Soviet representational power was born very spontaneously...
The next was, in chronological order, Soviet, but not socialist, revolutions were Hungarian on October 30-31, 1918 and German on November 3, 1918. In both countries Soviets appeared.
Soviet revolution may happen and often happens spontaneously... One could mistakenly take it for an ordinary people’s revolution, if Soviet organs of power were not established. Soviet form of bourgeois revolution is more consistent in establishing democracy. Soviet form of revolution is the only one, which truly does it...
Politically, it is the more vanguard form of representational democracy compared to parliamentary democracy. Socialist revolution, contrary to a Soviet one, is necessarily organised. It must be prepared. Another important aspect: in order for a revolution not to turn into a Blanquist coup, majority of people must support it...
“Blanquism is seizing power by the minority, when Soviets of
workers and
other deputies is direct organizing of the majority of people.” (Lenin, “Letters about
Tactics”, 1917.)
The goals of a socialist revolution organised by scientific socialists are far more reaching than merely establishing democracy. The goal of the socialist revolution is creating conditions for the beginning of building a socialist society. Soviet revolution can be petty bourgeois in its goals, the way it was in Russian Soviets in spring 1917. In other words, the Soviets themselves are only a necessary means for construction of socialism, but do not guarantee it. Soviet power must become socialist for the construction of socialism to take place. Sometimes steps backwards are possible from socialist and Soviet power to its petty bourgeois form, and even to bourgeois parliamentary democracy. The example is Kronstadt rebellion of 1921. Socially left revolution (since right ones exist as well: national-socialist, bourgeois and, overall, non-social ones, such as national-liberation, Islamic and other clerical) may be simply “people’s” revolutions, which do not have as their aim building of socialism, or creation of the representational democracy in the form of Soviet power, but simply want to overthrow the elite... In this sense almost any people’s revolt is people’s revolution...
In “State and Revolution” chapter 3 Lenin said that a revolution is “people’s” with general democratic bourgeois goals, in which “masses of people and their overwhelming majority actively participate”. In this sense, the Kirgiz revolution of March 2005 or local events in Kondopog are people’s revolutions, in which masses consciously and actively stood up against the elite, even though they did not have any Soviet or, even more so, socialist goals... One must also remember the events in Karelia happened in the location where there is a well known “people’s enterprise”, which has collective form of ownership, which differs from both private and state ownership. This type of ownership is socialist propaganda in itself because people here for the first time begin to own what they produce. Here, there is no robbing of people of the results of their labour... Naturally, population of this region is more decisive and confident because these people begin to feel their economic independence and, therefore, strive for political self-governance.
Overall, the events in a small town in Karelia objectively mean
more
than the bourgeois media claims they do and more than it seems on the
first
sight. One must not forget that Lenin put forward the idea of
cooperation as
means to liquidate growing bureaucracy, in the sense of achieving
political
goals. There is a direct and very real
connection between politics and economics... The transition from state
to
collective property will not happen without political death of the
state. We will not be able to destroy the
newly born
after the socialist revolution “red” bureaucracy without implementing,
at some
point, cooperation, or similar collective property (we are talking
about
socialist cooperation, which Lenin mentioned many times, particularly
on
January 4-6, 1923).
Lenin always saw this danger and
pointed out
to it especially as early as in 1921. In the article “About Taxes
on Food
Production” Lenin talks about the stages of bureaucratisation that
had started,
which, if not killed, will destroy the movement to socialism, since
Soviet
power and bureaucracy are antipodes.
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