10
Inevitabilities and Otherwise
As we reach for conclusions about the legacy of the Bolshevik revolution, we should recall the strands that interweave throughout this entire study. The utility of what has been broadly categorized as historical materialism, along with its connection to the possibility of democracy, merits additional comment. Related to this are the larger matters of historical inevitability and human freedom, and where the Bolshevik triumph and the Communist tragedy fit in to the questions of life’s meaning and of what to do next.
On this final point, we should recall Engels’s assertion, in a February 24, 1893, letter to Russian economist Nikolai Danielson, that “history is about the most cruel of all goddesses, and she leads her triumphal car over heaps of corpses, not only in war, but also in ‘peaceful’ economic development.”1 Yet Marxists insist history and economic development are the work of humanity, the product of human action and human labor. And it is a dubious proposition to claim that we individuals bear no responsibility for our actions—that the Goddess of History (or Economic Forces) makes us do what we do. And, in fact, We may not make history exactly as we please, but we do make our own history—
whether or not the outcomes are good, as they sometimes are, or evil, as they sometimes are. We must bear responsibility for our actions—even those we “didn’t mean to do.”
What are we to do with this implication that inhumanity is inherent in humanity? How does this relate to the matters explored in this volume, and what does it mean for the future? Such questions could certainly tilt in a conservative direction—toward the conviction that efforts to create a better world are doomed because people are inherently incapable of being better than they actually are. As William Henry Chamberlin emphasized in the 1950s—after he became a political conservative—“Human nature is fallible, even downright wicked,” and he approvingly quotes John Adams (the brilliant revolutionary-conservative Founding Father) to back up his contention that “every moral theorist will admit the selfish passions in the generality of men to be the strongest.”2 Conservatism as a political philosophy assumes the wisdom of conserving traditional power structures and customs, which naturally means opposing such revolutions as that led by the Bolsheviks. Even many liberals incline toward some form of conservatism in this sense.
There are crude and sophisticated varieties of conservatism. The crude variety portrays the Bolsheviks as monsters, cynically mouthing idealistic slogans in order to empower themselves through the suffering of all others. This understanding of historical reality is inconsistent with much of what is presented in these pages—and, I would argue, is inconsistent with what actually happened. The sophisticated variant of conservatism, on the other hand, can draw strength from what is presented here. If one’s opponents are worthy (as humane, intelligent, and truly well-meaning as a person can be), and if—despite all that—they are overwhelmed by the circumstances they seek to improve, and despite all of their best efforts they fail disastrously, then one has a powerful argument for the conservative proposition that “there is no alternative” (or at least none that is desirable) to traditional power structures and customs.
Opponents of revolution consider it inevitable that revolutions must turn out badly—that mass action to challenge and overturn existing power structures, for the purpose of creating a better society, will instead unleash the Furies of murder and mayhem, violence, and terror leaving in their wake something no better, or even far worse, than what existed before. Some tell us this is because “the masses” are too narrow or stupid or loutish or wicked—“the crooked timber of humanity.” A society of the free and the equal in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all remains an impossibility, human nature being what it is. Efforts to improve life qualitatively will always come to a bad end.
Dark Masses and Original Sin
Speaking personally, I have trouble with the underlying assumption in this conservative challenge. I know that my own people come from and are part of “the masses.” I have, in the course of my life, known many others like me. And I know that there has been narrowness, stupidity, loutishness, and wickedness among us—but I am inclined to see as an absolute truth that there is also much more, and much better, than that.
The psychological-emotional dimension of this truth deserves attention. As we live out our lives, it is very clear to me (I have been watching closely), some of us seem sometimes to be possessed by demons—crystallizing through complex combinations not only of innate passions and lusts and yearnings related to our genetic codes (including quirks that one or another of us may inherit), but also through the impacts and imprints of mistakes and sometimes horrific abuses from family members in our early life, as well as terrible pressures and oppressions from the larger society. But I have also seen what seem to be innate drives for self-determination (freedom), for creative activity, for genuine community with others. I have seen people caring about each other, nurturing, loving. I have seen families that are dysfunctional and families that—despite inevitable problems and conflicts—are vibrant and life-affirming. I have seen people who are troubled and do terrible things, and others who have been able to find and share happiness and reveal wondrous qualities. I have seen people struggle with and sometimes overcome their demons—in some cases only for a time, in other cases for the rest of their lives.
I have seen much of this played out in that quintessential human quality—humor. I have seen humor that is incredibly cruel, on many levels and in many ways. But I have also seen humor that is liberating and loving and fine—a manifestation of the healthiest, the most spontaneously creative and delightfully quirky, the best that is in humanity.
It is, of course, the broader historical canvass that is the focus of the present study—but here too the sweeping assertions of our collective wickedness and of the impossibility of a better world are not convincing. I confess that, as much as I know about history, there is still much that I do not know or comprehend. But from what I do know, I am aware of qualitative improvements in the human condition, by multiple measurements (greater life expectancy, greater health, greater knowledge, an expansion of rights for more and more people), despite the persistent—and sometimes increased—oppressions and dangers of our time. Revolutionary insurgencies have sometimes unleashed horrors, but sometimes they have unleashed admirable qualities in people, and have made it possible for things getting better for more and more people. What happened in ancient Athens that culminated in democracy, and certain things that happened in America that were animated by aspirations in the 1776 Declaration of Independence, and reflected in the 1863 Gettysburg Address and in the 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, can be best understood not as bringing perfection or “changing human nature” (whatever that is supposed to mean) but as improving the human condition.
If, however, we do not accept the sweeping strictures against revolution we must still take seriously the specific critiques of the Bolshevik revolution. In fact, the present volume also offers a particular critique. But the quite common critique positing the inevitability of what has come to be known as “Stalinism” (a repressive and sometimes murderous bureaucratic tyranny)—arguing that this was the logical and necessary outcome of the “Leninism” animating the Bolshevik revolution—is highly problematical. This is demonstrated by the fact that the party led by Lenin, which made the revolution, was animated by a vibrant internal democracy, while the party led by Stalin from the late 1920s onward was profoundly undemocratic. In fact, it was deemed necessary to repress and/or kill a majority of Lenin’s closest comrades—in the name of “Leninism,” to be sure.
If we are seeking an “original sin” to explain the post-1917 Communist tragedy, I would argue that it is not embedded in the ideas of Lenin and the structure of his party, nor can it be found simply in the personality of Stalin. We would be better served by turning our attention to larger and deeper historical realities. One aspect of what happened can be found in the context of foreign intervention, civil war, and economic embargo and collapse, which—as we have seen—generated authoritarian and brutalizing qualities that acquired immense potency among the Communists, within the ranks no less than within the leadership. Those who were Communists were people (neither demons nor angels)—and people are shaped by many elements, some genetic and others “environmental.” We have seen the traumas of violence in the Civil War that could not fail to generate never-ending ripples in conscious and unconscious thought and emotional life, partly repressed in the relative peace and mellowness of the NEP period, but quite capable of surfacing again, as they did, in the 1930s.
For that matter, there were traumas of horrific violence, impacting millions of people, generated before the Bolshevik revolution. One must consider the realities of the First World War and the ruthless imperialism and dehumanizing militarism inseparable from it. One must also consider—stretching down through the centuries—the multiple impacts of the tsarist autocracy and oppression from powerful landowners; the centuries of serfdom, with systematic violence combined with the persistent impacts of economic backwardness, famine, disease, and stunting cultural realities. The brutalizing effects of such things on peasant families involved destructive experiences of one generation rippling down in various ways into the emotional and psychological dynamics within families of the next, making themselves felt in the hearts and minds of multiple individuals in succeeding generations. Such experiential and successive intergenerational “rippling” would, obviously, have affected not only the vast peasant majority but also the working class, as well as all other strata of the population.
Regarding that rippling effect, psychologist Irvin Yalom notes that “each of us creates—often without our conscious intent or knowledge—concentric circles of influence that may affect others for years, even generations,” that “the effect we have on other people is in turn passed on to others, much as the ripples in a pond go on and on until they’re not longer visible but continuing at a nano level.” Through such rippling, you are “leaving behind something of your life experience; some trait; some piece of wisdom, guidance, virtue, comfort that passes on to others, known or unknown.”3 Long after some profound experience has taken place, long after one or another individual passes away, the impacts continue to be felt. Naturally, wisdom and virtue are not the only qualities that can ripple down from parent to child, from one person to another, down through generations.
The great writer Maxim Gorky, reflecting on the post-1917 violence and the Civil War asked: “Who was crueler, the Whites or the Reds?” He concluded: “Probably they both were alike. You see, both one side and the other were Russians.” He complained that “the folk wants as far as possible to eat more and work less, have all rights and no duties,” although the continual violation of people’s rights throughout society and down through the generations caused the writer to add darkly that “the atmosphere of rightlessness in which . . . the folk is accustomed to live convinces it of the lawfulness of lawlessness.” The result can be terrible cruelty among those who are oppressed. Gorky—whose own youth was spent in the countryside—added that “cruelty . . . is what has tormented me all of my life.” Recounting Gorky’s bitter remarks of 1917–22, Bertram Wolfe notes that Gorky feared “Lenin’s seizure of power and his demagogic appeals for terror from below would give free rein to peasant cruelty until it wiped out the cities which to him were the center of culture and humaneness.” Wolfe continues that Gorky “saw the workingman as yesterday’s peasant, with the same limited horizon, anarchic cruelty and laziness.” Such comments correspond to Victor Serge’s troubling recollection that in the course of the Russian Revolution “a sort of natural selection of authoritarian temperaments” could be observed, adding that “the victory of the revolution deals with the inferiority complex of the perpetually vanquished and bullied masses by arousing in them a spirit of social revenge, which in turn tends to generate new despotic institutions. I was witness to the great intoxication with which yesterday’s sailors and workers exercised command and enjoyed the satisfaction of demonstrating that they were now in power!”4
Character Structures
A problem with such somber reflections on Russia’s “dark masses” is that their truth is undermined through overstatement. We have noted, in the course of this study, diverse personalities, different kinds of people—certainly the bad and the ugly, but also the insightful and caring and good. This is true of people in all strata of society. Relevant to this is an extensive sociopsychological study of German workers in 1929, conducted by researchers from the Institute for Social Research, commonly known as the Frankfurt School. The study, according to Erich Fromm (one of those directing the study), held that “the character structure” of the mass of human beings “forms the basis for . . . a political and social structure,” and it sought to determine character structures among a broad survey of German workers, largely to determine the likelihood of Adolf Hitler coming to power.5
One of the questions was, “Which men in history do you admire most?” Would the answer reflect an admiration for the powerful or those benefitting humanity? A respondent was deemed to have given an authoritarian answer if his or her list included the following choices: Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Marx, Lenin (admiration of the revolutionary leaders as authority figures and as conquerors). On the other hand, a democratic answer might correspond with choices such as these: Socrates, Kant, Pasteur, Marx, Lenin (admiration of the revolutionary leaders as men of principle and as innovators). An accumulation of such answers would give a sense of a person’s deep-held convictions, grounded in the structure of his or her character, which was shaped by various experiences, family life dynamics, social structures, economic conditions, and more over a period of years. According to Fromm, the study concluded that 10 percent of the respondents were classified as having authoritarian character structures, 15 percent were deemed to have democratic character structures, and 75 percent “were people whose character structure was a mixture of both extremes.”6
Fromm went on to distinguish various “character types” that might emerge within the revolutionary struggle. “Anyone can acquire an opinion,” he noted, “just as one can learn a foreign language or a foreign custom, but only those opinions which are rooted in the character structure of a person, behind which there is the energy contained in his character—only these opinions become convictions. The effect of ideas, while these are easy to accept if the majority proclaims them, depends to a large extent on the character structure of a person in a critical situation.” Specifically, “anyone can, for a number of reasons, participate in a revolution, regardless of what he feels.”7 Among those swept up in a revolutionary upheaval, and taking hold of revolutionary ideas (having to do with such things as “liberty, equality, fraternity” and “power to the people”), one can find what Fromm identifies as authoritarians, rebels, and fanatics, as well as those with genuinely revolutionary character.
In his discussion of a person with an authoritarian character structure, Fromm reflects that such a person “feels himself strong when he can submit and be part of an authority which (to some extent backed by reality) is inflated, is deified, and when at the same time he can inflate himself by incorporating those subject to his authority.” Fromm goes on to give a distinctive definition to the term rebel as “the person who is deeply resentful of authority for not being appreciated, for not being loved, for not being accepted.” This kind of rebel “wants to overthrow authority because of his resentment and, as a result, to make himself the authority in the place of the one he has overthrown.” A fanatic, as Fromm uses the term, “has chosen a cause, whatever it may be—political, religious, or any other—and he has deified this cause. He has made this cause an idol.” Fromm concludes, “By complete submission to this idol, he receives a passionate sense of life, a meaning of life; for in his submission he identifies himself with the idol, which he has inflated and made into an absolute.”8
Those manifesting a revolutionary character structure, Fromm writes, are free from “symbiotic attachment to the powerful ones above”—whether these be tsars or commissars or revolutionary idols. According to Fromm, “Full freedom and independence exist only when the individual thinks, feels, and decides for himself.” A person can be conditioned by conscious efforts and struggles to attain “a productive relatedness to the world outside himself, which permits him to respond authentically.” More than this, because he is “not caught up in the parochial worship” of existing custom and authority, and able to see alternative potentialities (for freedom, creative labor, genuine community) in himself and others, “the revolutionary character is the one who is identified with humanity and therefore transcends the narrow limits of his own society, and is able, because of this, to criticize his or any other society from the standpoint of reason and humanity.” Fromm adds that because of this, “the revolutionary character thinks and feels in what might be called a ‘critical mood’—in a critical key, to use a symbol from music,” which is “by no means anything like cynicism,” but rather “an insight into reality, in contrast to the fictions that are made a substitute for reality.” In addition, “power never becomes sanctified, it never takes on the role of truth, or of the moral or good. . . . He who is morally impressed by power is never in a critical mood, is never a revolutionary character.” Fromm concludes that this is “not necessarily a character type which has its place only in politics . . . but also in religion, in art, and in philosophy.”9
There are two other points Fromm makes, in passing, that deserve further development. One is that he is referring “not to a behavioral concept, but to a dynamic concept” (suggesting, therefore, the possibility of growth and change). The other is that “the majority of people of course have never been revolutionary characters,” but “there have always been enough revolutionary characters to get us out of the caves and their equivalents.”10 One could argue that the rippling effects that have helped to shape the character structures of the innumerable individuals who make up humanity have left us all with elements of the creative and destructive, of wisdom and fanaticism, of authority-worship and violence as well as profoundly humane and caring qualities. These—in different proportions—are latent in all of us. Elements of creativity and community have made their way into each of us, just as we all suffer damage, in more than one way, from the demons of the past. Among those with authoritarian character structures and those with revolutionary character structures, the combinations have decisively tilted one way or another, but each has been able to find a response among “the majority of people” precisely because such elements are latent in all of us. There exist dramatically different possibilities.
Such reflections bring to mind a line of thought developed almost four decades ago by Marshall Berman in his remarkable essay “All That Is Solid Melts into Air.” If all of us are an integral part of an inherently and dynamically “demonic” (self-absorbed/dehumanizing) system, then how can any of us free ourselves from the demonic forces? Berman says that this notion “cuts deeply against the twentieth-century Leninist ‘vanguards’ who . . . claim to transcend the vulgar world of need, interest, egoistical calculation and brutal exploitation.” He adds that “it raises questions about Marx’s own romantic image of the working class”—in fact, “how can we expect anybody to transcend all this?” He answers his own question by acknowledging the tension between Marxism’s critical insights and radical hopes, and then insisting on the necessity of demanding and struggling for genuine transcendence over the destructiveness—concluding that “to give up the quest for transcendence is to . . . betray . . . ourselves.”11
The Revolutionary Wager
Relevant here is Lucien Goldmann’s atheistic utilization of the “Pascalian wager”—a reference to the argument by philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) that all people bet with their lives either that God exists or does not. It makes more sense—according to Pascal—to live as though God exists (and to seek to believe in God). For the person who chooses God, if it turns out that God doesn’t exist, there is no great loss (only passing up the enjoyment of sinful but transient “pleasures”), while if God does exist such a person will receive the infinite pleasures of Heaven. “In his book The Hidden God,” comments Michael Löwy, Goldmann compares “religious faith and Marxist faith: both . . . believe in trans-individual values—God for religion, the human community for socialism. A similar analogy exists between the Pascalian gamble on the existence of God and the Marxist gamble on the liberated future: both presuppose risk, the danger of failure, and the hope of success. Both come down to a question of faith and are not demonstrable on the exclusive level of factual judgments.”12 One might add that for the Marxist, the only hope for “winning” such a wager is to recognize (as Abraham Lincoln once said) that “we cannot escape history,” that we must engage actively with it. One must commit one’s life to the revolutionary wager by (1) working with others to develop an understanding of the political, economic, and social dynamics of our age; (2) employing the most effective insights regarding the ongoing development of the analyses, strategies, tactics, and organizational forms needed for such change; and (3) on the basis of such understanding and insights, winning others to helping bring the changes that are needed.
Lenin and his comrades made such a wager with the whole of their lives. They gambled and ultimately they lost—but, we have suggested, the gamble made sense. There were inspiring triumphs that came from their efforts, and the ultimate loss was not inevitable. The greater failure would have been never to have tried. To hold back, it can be argued, ensures the triumph of the demons of violence, oppression, and degradation. In struggling to free oneself from the grasp of the powerful demons that have taken shape out of rippling experiences of past devastations, there are no certainties and perhaps no “happily-ever-afters.”
The brutal fact remains that despite all of the deep-felt idealism and immensely heroic efforts, despite all of the powerful insights and inspiring achievements associated with the 1917 revolution, the demons of inhumanity were ever present. In addition to the revolutionary triumph, there was the triumphant crescendo of bureaucratic and murderous tyrannies we associate with Stalinism. Yet there were people—part of the 1917 triumph—who stood fast for what they believed in, and who resisted as best they could, and with the whole of their lives, the horrific degeneration. One can argue that the existence and struggles of this saving remnant have helped honor and preserve all that was good in the 1917 struggle for liberation.
The tragedy should not blind us to the moments of imperishable triumph. Nothing in the past ever vanishes—so the triumph is permanent, not transient. Even if all who experienced it, and all memories of it, were to vanish—what happened in the past will always be what happened in the past, and what we thought and felt and did (and all that we tried to do, even if we failed) will continue to have been so, forever. More than this, those living today and tomorrow can learn from the triumphs and tragedies of the past—and comprehending such things may help those who have made the wager for a better world avoid or overcome further tragedies, and to create human triumphs of creative labor, of life-enhancing freedom, and of genuine community.
Historical Materialism
Historical materialism, the analytical tradition associated with Karl Marx, focuses on the development of economic systems—activities and relationships that people enter into, and resources (including technologies) they use, to get the things that they need and the things that they want—as a decisive force in the shaping of culture, politics, and history. Related to this are three other fundamental suppositions: (a) the sense that socioeconomic classes (essentially, powerful minorities enriching themselves through the exploitation of laboring majorities)—with tensions and conflicts between them—play a decisive role in such development and shaping of culture, politics, and history; (b) the sense that there has been a succession of different economic systems interrelated with specific forms of class societies; and (c) the sense that the system assuming global dominance in the time of Marx—capitalism—was not only the most dynamic form of economy in human history but also one providing possibilities for a dramatic expansion of human freedom. Specifically, according to Marx, the working-class majority has the capacity to organize for the purpose of replacing capitalism with a liberating socialism. By successfully struggling to take power into its own hands, it can bring into being a new system, the economic democracy of socialism. We have obviously made use of such perceptions in the present study.
We have also made use of Leon Trotsky’s articulation (under the rubric of permanent revolution) of what Isaac Deutscher has termed a “quintessential element in classical Marxism.”13 This linked the revolutionary struggle for democracy—freedom of expression, end of feudal privilege, equal rights for all, rule by the people—with the struggle for socialism, a society in which the great majority of people would own and control the economic resources of society to allow for the full and free development of all. This orientation also linked the struggle for revolution in Russia with the cause of socialist revolution throughout the world. Applied to Russia, this involved three key points:
In another, related application of Trotsky’s articulation of the theory of uneven and combined development, our study of the Russian Revolution has placed Russia—both in its tsarist and early Soviet phases—somewhere on the continuum of “underdeveloped” or “developing” societies, with the interpenetration of capitalist political-economic “modernization” and precapitalist (or “premodern”) political culture. That continuum sits within the larger framework of a capitalist world economy involving an “international division of labor” or “economic interdependence and mutualism” or “imperialist relations” (all three of these may aptly describe the reality), shaping the internal development of that country. We have seen that this sets up a dynamic in regard to the incapacity of indigenous bourgeoisies to give consistent leadership to “bourgeois-democratic” revolutionary change (or democratic “modernization”). Rather, the contradictions and crises of the situation tended to generate a radicalization of struggles for democratic reforms, pushing them beyond the bounds of capitalist hegemony. An examination of the revolutionary process has given support to the utilization of Marxist class categories, particularly to the concept of “proletariat” and “proletarianization,” although we have been compelled to examine the concepts critically and utilize them flexibly (in the manner of Marx himself, we would argue). At the same time, it could be suggested that a more flexible utilization of the categories may have helped revolutionaries avoid some of the rigidities afflicting Bolshevik policies in regard to the peasantry.
We have also seen the importance in the revolutionary process of the interpenetration of popular ideologies and aspirations on the one hand and revolutionary theories and programs on the other, the dynamic (not manipulative) interplay between the projects of revolutionary vanguards and the inclination of masses of people to resist oppressive situations. We have noted that consciously organized groups competed to play such a vanguard role, and through a process somewhat akin to natural selection, a specific grouping cohered and evolved (with a programmatic orientation fundamentally independent from capitalist political currents) into a force capable of rallying mass support for a radical-democratic revolution. We have noted the great impact the revolution had internationally; in fact, the revolutionary leadership counted on revolutionary triumphs elsewhere to assist their own situation. On the other hand, the same fact inevitably generated the hostile international reaction among “the great powers” of the capitalist world, and we have taken note of the extremely negative effects that this reaction has upon the revolutionary process.
We have observed that the revolutionary leadership proposed a gradual transition from capitalism to socialism, via a left-wing variant of “mixed economy.” Our findings suggest a possible link between the mixed-economy policy and the ability to realize some measure of the “proletarian democracy” ideal. This notion is further supported by the fact that by 1923, thanks to the New Economic Policy (a modified mixed-economy variant), Russia’s Soviet Republic had attained a new stability accompanied by an abatement of political terror and by an expansion of channels allowing some free expression and a genuine measure of popular participation in shaping social policy.
The fact remains that what existed in the Soviet Republic was by no means an actual democracy, and the situation soon took a drastically authoritarian turn—although things might have been different had socialist revolutions triumphed in other countries. There were hopes that the mixed economy of the NEP might bring the tenuous development toward pluralist democracy, although we have also noted that the policy contained its own contradictions and was entering a crisis that raised questions about its long-term viability. In fact, we know that after the interlude of the NEP, the USSR experienced an intensification of authoritarianism and terror in the 1930s (to the degree that many peasants as well as workers and veteran Bolsheviks were destroyed).
One could argue that the revolutionaries were faced with a choice: either make such far-reaching compromises through the NEP that the revolutionary project (the “proletarian state” as well as socialist hopes) would pass out of existence, or shift to more radical, centralized anticapitalist policies. In either case, an increase in authoritarianism could have resulted. For those adhering to the original socialist project, the resolution, ultimately, involved not simply the internal resources of the revolutionaries and their country, but more decisively what happened outside of their country. In particular, there were two counterposed dynamics: on the one hand, the efforts of hostile powers to isolate, damage, and destabilize the revolution; on the other hand, the efforts of the revolutionaries of other lands (including those of the “hostile powers”) to draw their own countries onto the trajectory of “proletarian revolution” and postcapitalist development. To the extent that this latter effort failed, there was a diminished possibility of the revolution we have studied to achieve its stated goals.
The line of analysis developed in this study suggests that Russia’s revolution may have been necessary for the positive future development of that country. It can also be demonstrated that such revolutionary regimes as the early Soviet Republic—especially to the extent that hostile governments are not engaged in attempting to strangle or overturn them—can bring genuine material benefits to the working people and the oppressed (particularly in regard to health, education, social welfare, and so forth). What remains in question is the issue of democracy as defined by revolutionary Marxists, which also involves the possibility of socialism (by definition, an inherently democratic economic system)—as opposed to some form of authoritarian and bureaucratic rule over a collectivized economy.
A very common belief is that, as such post-Marxists as Max Nomad and James Burnham have most lucidly and powerfully argued, political and economic democracy (defined as majority rule or self-government by the people)—which is central to the definition of socialism—is humanly impossible.
In examining the historical record, not to mention contemporary realities in the second decade of the twenty-first century, it is impossible to point to a socialist democracy that came into being anywhere. The most we can see in the historical experience is people making strides toward that goal. Sometimes they faced agonizing choices, as well as sometimes making painful and tragic mistakes in the process of trying to realize their socialist vision. In some cases, the “mistakes” were so terrible as to constitute crimes, and those struggling against such self-described “revolutionaries” have been the ones making a contribution toward realizing the socialist goal. As one socialist theorist, Hal Draper, once tried to explain regarding genuine rule by the people: “It is a direction, not a dogma. It is a line of struggle, not a finished utopia.”15
In a similar manner, Charles Tilly has projected the struggle for democracy as a kind of never-ending story, insisting that in modern times “democratization and de-democratization occur continuously, with no guarantee of an end point in either direction.” The processes that advance possibilities of rule by the people, according to Tilly, are determined by three processes. One process involves the development and integration into public politics of what he terms “trust networks”—which can include kinship groups, religious sects, revolutionary organizations, neighborhood and workplace councils, and locally rooted social movements. Another process essential for the advance of actual democracy is the limiting and pushing back of “categorical inequality”—social and economic no less than political. A third process involves limiting and overcoming the existence of autonomous and coercive power centers that operate outside the control of public politics.16
If we consider the material presented in this study, we can see that victories have been won by revolutionaries seeking to build revolutionary mass movements to overthrow oppressive tyrants and initiate basic social change. Victories have also been won over local and outside forces utilizing powerful resources to roll back or at least contain the revolution—although this victory exacted an incredibly high sacrifice of human lives, material needs, and hoped-for social programs, and to some extent the sacrifice of democratic and humanistic impulses and ideals.
Revolutionary movements, mass upheavals, and popular struggles against adverse conditions embrace and unleash a variety of tendencies. Under conditions of economic disaster and war, tendencies toward elitism and intolerance often win out over tendencies toward genuine egalitarianism and tolerance; this is exacerbated if there are scarce resources, because a minority will naturally tend to ensure its acquisition of material privileges, which requires intensified doses of ideological elitism and repressive intolerance to hold back the others. And this gives credence to the argument of Nomad and Burnham.
On the other hand, we have seen that sometimes—with the change of conditions—countertendencies can come to the fore allowing greater pluralism, tolerance, opportunities for egalitarianism and popular participation, and so on. Of course, “conditions” are complex and subject to being affected by such diverse factors (which often have contradictory effects—for example, the mixed blessings of the New Economic Policy). It is therefore risky to think in terms of the inevitability of oligarchy, socialism, or anything else. The fact that human beings are involved in all of this means, for example, that lessons learned from past experience can be applied to new realities in order to deflect repetitions of negative experience. It also becomes a factor in making the future difficult to predict. This suggests, too, that what did happen did not have to happen, that different outcomes were possible in history and that different outcomes are therefore possible in the future.
This does not mean that everything is “up for grabs” or that anything and everything can be possible. Specific dynamics and tendencies inherent in socioeconomic and political realities—as well as in the physical, material universe—happen to exist and will be part of (and part of determining) any future that unfolds. It would seem that the extent to which people are aware of these dynamics, tendencies, and realities correlates with how they make choices and decisions that can shape the future in such a way that generates a cooperative commonwealth—characterized by freedom, creativity, community, a decent life, and the flowering of human potential for each person. What we do—and what we fail to do—makes a difference.
The struggle for human liberation, for a society of the free and the equal, has been going on for centuries. There are many men and women whose efforts and sacrifices we can learn from, from whom we can gain strength and inspiration. In her 1918 critique of the Russian Revolution, for example, Rosa Luxemburg makes reference to a figure from German history, Ulrich von Hutten (1488–1523), a humanistic poet-activist who challenged the immense power of princes and churches, and her praise for the Russian revolutionaries links them with past heroes and heroines like Hutten as well as the future ones destined to endure:
What is in order is to distinguish the essential from the non-essential, the kernel from the accidental excrescencies in the politics of the Bolsheviks. In the present period, when we face decisive final struggles in all the world, the most important problem of socialism was and is the burning question of our time. It is not a matter of this or that secondary question of tactics, but of the capacity for action of the proletariat, the strength to act, the will to power of socialism as such. In this, Lenin and Trotsky and their friends were the first, those who went ahead as an example to the proletariat of the world; they are still the only ones up to now who can cry with Hutten: “I have dared!”
This is the essential and enduring in Bolshevik policy. In this sense theirs is the immortal historical service of having marched at the head of the international proletariat with the conquest of political power and the practical placing of the problem of the realization of socialism, and of having advanced mightily the settlement of the score between capital and labor in the entire world. In Russia, the problem could only be posed. It could not be solved in Russia. And in this sense, the future everywhere belongs to “Bolshevism.”17
The tragedies overwhelming such people as Luxemburg, Lenin, Trotsky, and the millions inspired by them cannot erase the triumph of who they were. Because of what they did and attempted, nothing can ever be the same.