Feature: The history of revolution and the future of anti-capitalism
by Sebastian Lamb
A century ago, prominent capitalists, politicians and writers in many countries warned that workers’ revolution threatened “civilization.” In 1919, many of Canada’s rulers saw the Winnipeg General Strike as verging on revolution (unfortunately, although the working people of Winnipeg showed great unity and militant workers in other cities struck in solidarity with them, the country wasn’t on the brink of revolution).
In Canada and most other advanced capitalist countries, to talk of revolution today seems utterly unreal. The real history of revolutions is buried. Most books and movies depict revolutions as eruptions of irrational violence whose inevitable result was tyranny. Today marketers use the term “revolutionary” to sell everything from anti-wrinkle cream to computers. The meaning of revolution isn’t clear at all.
Nevertheless, anyone who wants to see capitalism replaced by a better kind of society - one profoundly democratic and geared to meeting people’s needs in an ecologically sustainable manner - needs to cut through the confusion surrounding the idea of revolution. To do this, we need to look at the history of revolutions.
The word “revolution” has been used to refer to different things. In ancient times, it expressed the yearning of the poor for liberation. In the 1800s, after the French Revolution had shaken Europe and the Haitian Revolution challenged colonialism, revolution came to mean a radical change of society that would replace capitalism’s private property and narrow individualism with different priorities such as human needs and the common good.
The 20th century saw many revolutions - perhaps most famously the Russian Revolution of 1917 - and other upheavals. Yet the fate of the Russian Revolution sowed enormous confusion and numerous misconceptions about revolution and socialism. Few people understood how a genuine popular revolution had indeed taken place, but that the isolated and fragile rule of the working class supported by the peasantry was then subsequently destroyed from within. The Stalinist bureaucratic dictatorship that had consolidated itself by the end of the 1920s was the fruit of a counter-revolution, not the natural outgrowth of the revolution of 1917. This monstrous regime called itself “Communist” and used the language of revolution to justify exploitation at home and counter-revolutionary policies abroad. When it and others like it collapsed after 1989, many people concluded that revolution and an alternative to capitalism were now a thing of the past. Political and Social Revolutions
To sort all this out, our starting point should be to distinguish between two quite different kinds of revolution, which we can call political revolutions and social revolutions.
Political revolutions change the government or sweep away one set of state institutions (for example, those of a one-party regime or the personal rule of a dictator) and replace them with another (such as liberal democracy) without uprooting the power of the small minority of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and others who rule. Such revolutions may bring about real reforms, but they do not lead to a fundamental transformation of how society is organized.
The Nicaraguan Revolution of 1979 was an example of this kind of revolution. It involved considerable popular mobilization and an insurrection that toppled the brutal US-backed regime of Somoza. A radical nationalist government was formed by the Sandinista Front for National Liberation. It proceeded to carry out social reforms that improved the lives of people in the countryside and the cities. But the revolution never broke the power of the whole ruling class or replaced it with the direct democratic control of society by the country’s workers and small farmers. Nicaraguan capitalists continued to control much of the economy. The US government armed and funded vicious right-wing “contra” forces to fight the Sandinistas. In 1990 the Sandinistas lost parliamentary elections, and a right-wing government took office.
Social revolutions are more radical than political revolutions. They don’t just change governments or state institutions, they transfer ruling power in society from one class to another. Though all social revolutions have this in common, there have been several different kinds of social revolutions in the past four centuries.
One kind of social revolution promotes the development of capitalism. Such revolutions can be called bourgeois revolutions, although we shouldn’t think that many bankers and factory-owners took to the streets themselves. The English Revolution of the 1640s and the French Revolution of the 1790s were this kind of revolution. Both involved struggles among ruling-class factions and “middling” elements who mobilized the poor to serve their own interests. Significantly, radical movements of the poor also arose in these upheavals: the Levellers and Diggers in England and the sans-culottes in France. These revolutions eliminated social arrangements that stood in the way of the development of capitalism, which was a drawn-out process that took place over many decades.
A different kind of social revolution took place in a number of “Third World” societies in the 20th century. The main fighters in these revolutions were peasants, but these revolutions were led by militarized anti-imperialist parties that were not democratically run by peasants themselves. Where they were victorious, these revolutions of national liberation broke the power of much-hated rulers backed by imperialism. Unfortunately, control of society passed from landlords and capitalists to a new ruling class of “Communist” officials who established one-party states on the model of the USSR and set about developing national industries. Revolutions of this kind took place in China, Cuba, Vietnam and elsewhere. Socialist Revolution
There is also another kind of social revolution, one that demonstrates the potential to establish the direct administration of social life by the democratically organised masses. These we can call socialist revolutions. Such revolutions are not started by revolutionary activists. They break out when deep-rooted social crises prompt the ruled to resist in ways that make it impossible for the rulers to carry on as they have. The resistance of the ruled can take many forms, from workplace occupations by wage-earners to street demonstrations by working-class and poor women to uprisings of indigenous people.
Whether growing out of political revolution, anti-imperialist struggle or other kinds of social crises, this type of revolution is distinguished from all others by the masses creating new democratic institutions through which they begin to run society themselves. These are organizations of socialist democracy (sometimes called workers’ democracy). They can take many forms, including workplace committees, neighbourhood or community assemblies, and councils of delegates from many such bodies. All of them are mass organizations, meaning that broad layers of people participate in them; they are not organizations of radicals and militants alone.
When masses of people create such democratic institutions of the exploited and oppressed alongside the established state, a situation of dual power emerges. This means that new forms of democracy that express the power of the majority coexist with the capitalist institutions through which a small minority dominates society. Dual power poses the most revolutionary question: which class will run society?
For this reason, a ruling class and its state will do everything they can to co-opt or crush the new forms of democracy. This threat can only be dealt with if the institutions of socialist democracy become supreme and suppress capitalist power in state and society. This can open the way to the long process of building a self-managed, ecologically-sustainable society that is free of the sway of capital. Revolutionary Breakthroughs
The first experience of socialist democracy was the short-lived Paris Commune of 1871. The working people of that city rose up and took power into their own hands through a radically-democratic government of recallable delegates for two months before they were crushed by force of arms. The Commune made possible a breakthrough in socialist theory and strategy because it showed that, as Karl Marx wrote, “the working class cannot simply lay hold on the ready-made state-machinery and wield it for their own purpose. The political instrument of their enslavement cannot serve as the political instrument of their emancipation.” Marx recognized the importance of the Commune, hailing its grassroots democracy as “the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economic emancipation of labour.”
Since then, dual power has arisen on a number of occasions. In Russia in 1905 and again on a larger scale in 1917, workers and peasants set up new democratic institutions including councils (called soviets), factory committees, and committees of rank and file soldiers and sailors. These formed the basis of the workers’ and peasants’ power that was established in 1917 but eventually succumbed to bureaucratic counter-revolution from within. The revolution in Germany in 1918-1919 also saw councils of workers and soldiers established. There the reformist Social Democrats and union officials remained the leadership of most of the workers’ movement and were able to channel the council movement into an accommodation with the capitalist parliamentary state. In Spain in 1936-37, dual power existed in Catalonia but lack of decisive revolutionary direction among workers and peasants led to its demobilization and repression by the Popular Front government.
Dual power also existed in the Bolivian Revolution of 1952. Workers’ councils were at the centre of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, crushed by the armed might of the USSR. In 1972-73, Chilean workers set up elected workplace-based committees called cordones, as well as some similar neighbourhood structures. Elements of dual power emerged in Portugal in 1974-75, and in Poland in 1981 before the Solidarity union movement was put down by Stalinist martial law. The popular committees and assemblies in France in 1968 and those created in Argentina after the uprising of late 2001 were not mass organizations of workers’ democracy, but they pointed in that direction.
These and other experiences don’t give us blueprints for the future. We don’t know what future revolutions will look like. But we can draw some important conclusions from history that help us distinguish between what takes people closer to the establishment of socialist democracy and what moves in other directions. Two stand out:
ONE: Successful socialist revolutions will involve general strikes run democratically by workers themselves, mass demonstrations and insurrections.
Dual power emerges out of mass strikes and other mobilizations that display high levels of self-organization. For dual power to be resolved in favour of socialist democracy, capitalist state power must be broken.
TWO: A working class that doesn’t democratically control all aspects of society can’t be fully self-governing.
What working people don’t run for themselves will be under the control of others. So if institutions of socialist democracy become the public power governing society but workers don’t democratically run their own workplaces, working-class rule will be incomplete. Similarly, it isn’t enough for workers to occupy their workplaces and take over neighbourhoods: they need to replace capitalist state power with their own organizations of grassroots democracy.
Revolution in the 21st Century
Some people may more or less agree with this analysis of the history of revolutions, but argue that socialist revolutions aren’t going to happen again. After all, it’s been some years since the self-organization of working people has developed into a situation of genuine dual power. Why should we believe that such revolutions will ever happen again?
The only serious and honest way to answer this is to begin by clearly acknowledging that there are no guarantees. However, we do know that waves of revolutions of various kinds punctuated the 20th century. In recent years, deep social crises leading to massive popular revolts have wracked Indonesia, Ecuador, Argentina, and Bolivia. Class and other social struggles have intensified in many other countries. For instance, although the reforms of President Hugo Chavez and the movement in support of him among the people of Venezuela are not a revolution, it is entirely possible that confrontation between the US-backed anti-Chavez right-wing and the radicalizing masses could develop into a revolution of some kind.
Capitalism continues to produce crises. Millions of people in the “Third World” are being forced off their land and into working for wages. Water and other natural resources necessary to sustain human life are increasingly being turned into commodities that must be purchased. Economic power and naked military aggression are used to further privatization and profitable investment, as in Iraq today. Even in the richest imperialist countries, public services are being sold off and the conditions of work and life are deteriorating for the majority of people. Everywhere we are told that what is good for capital is good for us, a mantra that increasingly rings hollow for many.
These and other developments that prevent people from meeting their needs can create the conditions for huge mobilizations that shake society and startle complacent rulers. Although we cannot predict what kinds of struggles from below will break out in response to future crises, it would be rash to declare that we will never again see revolutions that will throw up forms of socialist democracy.
Moreover, in the era of capitalist globalization, a situation of dual power will likely be known and discussed internationally with incredible speed. The experiences of its heights of democratic self-organization will be transmitted around the world and fuel discussion among anti-capitalists about how to change the world. Anti-Capitalism and Revolution
Among people who consciously reject capitalism, there are many different understandings of how capitalism could be changed or replaced, and what could and should replace it. Many people who don’t hesitate to criticize capitalism for its many horrors do not in fact ultimately seek to abolish it but rather seek to regulate or reform it so that its objectionable features are eliminated (or at least held in check). For example, Susan George, an influential figure in the “movement of movements” against neoliberalism and war, argues for “vast injections of crisis-directed resources into the global economy” to promote environmental goals, reduce poverty and promote democracy. Others wish to see global capitalism dismantled in order to build a world of smaller-scale communities.
For supporters of socialist democracy, it is not global interconnectedness that is the problem, but the fact that global relations are organized in capitalist ways. Peasants are forced off their lands to make way for the building of mega-dams and for-profit health care replaces public care because the global economy is capitalist, not because it’s global. Changing its scale won’t make it any less profit-driven. It is this basic character that also explains why attempts to regulate capitalism cannot fundamentally change it. Mass struggles can wrest progressive reforms from national states and multi-national institutions to assist “Third World” countries, workers, women, indigenous peoples and other oppressed groups, and it is vital to build movements that fight for such reforms. But the rational and humane regulation of capitalism is impossible.
It is for this reason that the goal of anti-capitalists must be the abolition of capitalism, not its regulation or alteration. And it is the kind of social revolution that puts ordinary people themselves in control of society and sets off “explosions of life” that can open the way towards a society organized around democratic planning, cooperation, liberation from oppression and ecological sustainability. No radical government in the parliament of a capitalist state can open this road through a series of reforms - “onions can be eaten leaf by leaf, but you cannot skin a live tiger claw by claw” (RH Tawney). Nor can a seizure of power by a minority force acting in the name of the majority open the road to a democratic alternative to capitalism.
People who come to understand that capitalism must be replaced if humanity is to have a decent future need to decide if we are willing to make what French Marxist Daniel Bensa•d calls “the melancholy wager” that the revolutionary transformation of society is possible. There is no rational basis for proclaiming the inevitability of socialism. We can’t have that kind of religious certainty. We don’t even have reassurance that the odds are good. We can only look at the stakes and decide if we want to make a wager.
Those of us who decide that there are good reasons for refusing to despair have the responsibility to try to make sure our political activity contributes both to meeting the needs of exploited and oppressed people today and to making future possibilities more likely, even though we cannot be certain about what the future holds. This means patiently organizing in workplaces and communities to build collective resistance to neoliberalism, war and oppression and cultivating an organized current of activists committed to a long-term socialist strategy and the renewal of socialism for the 21st century.
There are good reasons to think that people will again create highly democratic forms of self-organization on a large scale - situations of dual power. But what does it take for such situations to be resolved in favour of socialist democracy? Again, we need to look at history. Revolution and Political Organization
The experience of socialist revolutions in the 20th century have demonstrated that it is entirely possible for dual power to emerge, but for the ruling class to prevail. Only in the Russian Revolution of 1917 was the rule of the exploited and oppressed in the form of socialist democracy able to establish itself on more than a local scale with any degree of stability (a process of bureaucratic degeneration began within a year, for reasons that there is no space to explore here).
It’s difficult to cut through the thicket of myths, misunderstandings, distortions and lies that have grown up around the Russian Revolution. But the basic picture is this: in Russia, a situation of dual power was resolved in favour of the workers and peasants because there were organized political forces deeply rooted within the self-organizing and rapidly-radicalizing masses that a) had a clear strategy for victory (“All Power to the Soviets!”), b) were capable of assisting people to draw the conclusion from their own experiences that if they wanted to win their basic demands they had to take power into their own hands, and c) were able to act decisively and take the steps required to break the power of the weakened ruling class in the major cities.
In other words, there was an organized and consciously-revolutionary minority with enough political clarity and influence to provide effective leadership in the situation of dual power. By far the most important of the organizations of revolutionaries (whose numbers grew enormously during the course of 1917) was the Bolshevik Party. In 1917, this party was changed by an influx of radicalized workers. The experience of revolution also proved that the Bolsheviks’ theory about how revolution in Russia would unfold was partly wrong. But the party managed to reorient itself and adopted a strategy of fighting for the replacement of the Provisional Government, created after the overthrow of the monarchy, with the power of workers’ councils. Other revolutionary forces either joined the Bolsheviks or allied with them during the course of 1917.
It’s useful to contrast the Russian experience with the Spanish Revolution of 1936-1937 (wonderfully portrayed in Ken Loach’s film Land and Freedom). Many workers and peasants rose up in 1936 in response to a military coup against the newly-elected Popular Front government. Dual power existed in parts of Spain. Many workers and peasants were willing to struggle to defeat fascism and create a new society. Large numbers considered themselves anarchist or Marxist revolutionaries. But most supported the Popular Front of reformist socialists, Stalinist Communists and liberal republicans, soon joined or backed by the leaders of the important anarcho-syndicalist union CNT and the anti-Stalinist Marxist party POUM. In the name of anti-fascist unity, the Popular Front leadership demanded that there be no anti-capitalist action. This led the Popular Front to demobilize workers’ and peasants’ militias, end factory and land occupations, refuse to grant independence to Spain’s colonies, and ultimately, in 1937, repress the CNT and POUM. By 1939, the fascists had defeated the Popular Front.
There were revolutionaries in Spain who had clearly understood that the Popular Front’s path was disastrous and who recognized that neither the leaders of the anarchist movement nor the POUM were pursuing an alternative strategy for victory. But these clear-sighted radicals (anarchists like the Friends of Durruti group, Trotskyists and the left wing of the POUM) were too few and divided to have much influence. If their forces had been larger and better organized, the outcome of the Spanish Revolution might have been different.
The conclusion that we should draw from these and other revolutions of the past is not that the Russian Revolution is a model that can be copied. Nor is it that the absence of a revolutionary party is the only reason why other revolutions were not victorious. However, the political leadership of influential organizations of socialist activists rooted within mass movements has an indispensable role to play in revolutions. In a situation of dual power, every political current in society will argue about how to resolve the crisis. The consciously-revolutionary minority must have a winning strategy for the establishment of socialist democracy, and be up to the challenge of actively helping to create majority support within the masses for going all the way. The success of future revolutions will depend in part on whether this lesson of the 20th century becomes part of the renewal of anti-capitalist politics in the 21st.