Expropriation and Organisation

The world-war made the working class take a backward step both morally and intellectually. It brutalised almost every strata of the population; it set the most undeveloped elements of the proletariat in the forefront of the movement, and finally increased the necessitous state of the proletariat to such an extent, that it brought despair in the place of quiet thought and reflection. The war also encouraged primitive ideas in the working-classes, by developing the military way of thinking, that form of thinking which, as it is, lies very near the surface in the thoughts of the average unintelligent man, who imagines that mere power is the determining factor in the world history – as if one needed only the necessary force and recklessness to accomplish everything that one undertakes. Marx and Engels have always attacked and opposed this conception. In Engels’ classical book (Anti-Dühring) there are three chapters dealing exclusively with “theory of power” (3rd edition, pp.162-192). This theory, from beginning to end, is anti-Marxist. Engels did not hesitate to oppose it wherever it appeared in a revolutionary form. He was not of the view, so much upheld to-day, that one should never show up the mistakes of a movement, if it is a revolutionary proletarian movement, because one might, by so doing, weaken the force of the revolution. Obviously enough, one should not be too strict in judgment on the faults and follies in a revolution. The most difficult historical situation is that of a revolution, in which one stands face to face with a completely new situation, which it is impossible to survey. It would be the very cheapest form of Pharisaism for an observer, himself in a secure position, or regarding from afar, to blame too heavily the mistakes that are made by men who are in the centre of the fight, and who have to bear all its burdens and dangers. But on the other hand, it is absolutely necessary to blame mistakes that do not arise from conceivably false or insufficient information, but which proceed from an inherently false fundamental conception of things. They can be avoided only by overcoming such a conception; and they threaten every future revolutionary movement, if one allows them to pass uncriticised, or even defends them, and glorifies them in the supposed interests of the revolution.

Marx and Engels did not allow themselves to be hindered in such necessary criticism of the revolution, through, their “volcanic temperament”. This is proved by the criticism that Engels published in the Leipzig Volkstaat, in the autumn of 1873. The insurrection, which broke out after the proclamation of the Republic in Spain on the 5th July of that year, was, as early as the 26th January, practically defeated, with some few exceptions, the Cartaghenians prolonging the insurrection up to January 8, 1874. Thus, even before the rising was completely quelled, Engels published a very sharp criticism against “this absolutely shameful insurrection, which should be a warning to the rest of the world.”

This criticism appeared, in the series of articles on The Bakunists at Work (Volkstaat, 31st October, 2nd and 5th November), newly printed, 1894, in the magazine Internationales aus dem Volkstaat, by Friederich Engels (Berlin Vorwärts edition).

We recommend this work to the study of all who are busying themselves with Bolshevism. For Bolshevism is, in many respects, foreshadowed in that work, since the situation of the Spanish Revolution bears many analogies to that of the Commune of the present day. Engels began with a reference to the fact that, in Spain, the Internationalists in their majority belonged to the Bakunist Alliance, and he continues:

When, in February 1873, the Republic was proclaimed, the Spanish Alliancists wore in a very difficult position. Spain is a land so very backward in industry that, in that country, it is quite impossible to speak of an immediate and complete emancipation of the working classes. Before this is possible, again must pass through several preliminary stages on the road to development, and clear out of the way a vast number of obstacles. The Republic gave opportunity for the country to pass through these preliminary stages in the shortest possible period, and to remove the hindrances as soon as possible. But this occasion could only be put to any use through actual political participation on the part of the Spanish working-classes. (pp.17 and 18).

That would, however, have meant to participate in the voting for the Cortès and the National Assembly, and to have taken active part in the same. But the Bakunists wanted the immediate and complete emancipation of the working classes. As a means to this purpose, the parliamentary democracy, considering the then state of affairs in Spain, was absolutely incapable, however necessary it was as a means towards the development and the maturing of the proletariat. Participation in “any kind of vote appeared to them to be crime worthy of death.”

Now what did they want to put in the place of an election campaign? The working-men’s council, as a means for the “immediate and complete emancipation of the working-classes,” had not yet been discovered. The Bakunists proclaimed a general strike, and the dividing up of Spain into numberless small Cantons; along with, from the very start, the splitting up of the whole movement into a series of local movements, and the declaration of the revolution. The end of the story was not merely the collapse of the movement, the ruin of the Spanish Internationale, but also “the abnegation of the principles hitherto preached by the Bakunists” (p.32), which they had to give up, one after the other, as a result of the force of circumstances.

Is it any different in Russia to-day? It is true that, at the outbreak of the present revolution among the working classes of Russia, it was Marxism and not anarchy that was reigning. As a Socialistic theory, Marxism has never, received such general recognition as in Russia.

For decades the Russian Socialists had made a virtue out of necessity, and espied in the backward character of their agrarian problems a certain advantage. They thought that what there was of the village communism, in regard to land, made it particularly easy for them to establish and build up modern Socialism. It was the great service of the Marxists in Russia, led by Axelrod and Plechanoff, to fight for recognition of this conception, and by a long and weary struggle to succeed, in view of the undeveloped state of the Russian proletariat and of Russian society in general, in making the inevitable revolution from the outset take on only a bourgeois character, even if the proletariat was called upon to play a prominent part in it. This view was triumphant in the Russian Socialist movement, so long as the Revolution did not bring the proletariat into power, which had for its programme the problem of immediate emancipation; and also so long as Socialism was professed by the intellectuals and a certain high level of the working-classes. Consistent Marxism was thrown into a very difficult position when the Revolution set in motion the really great mass of the Russian people, who were conscious only of their needs and desires, and who did not care at all whether what they desired was, under the then circumstances, possible and socially advantageous. In the case of the Bolsheviks, Marxism had no power on the situation. The mass psychology overruled them, and they allowed themselves to be carried away by it. Doubtless in consequence of this they have become the rulers of Russia. It is quite another question what will and must be the end of it all. By making the blind will of the masses the motive force of the Revolution, they threw overboard the Marxist system, to the victorious ascendancy of which they had, in a large measure, contributed. With their scientific knowledge, and as the result of the popularity of Marx’s name, they thought they had settled everything by taking a Marxist motto, the motto of “the dictatorship of the proletariat.” With these words they hoped to gain absolution from all sins against the spirit of Marxism.

The Revolution came as a result of the war. The soldiers were tired of it and would no longer fight. The Bolsheviks made themselves the most formidable representatives of the disinclination to continue the war. They insisted on the dissolution of the army by every means in their power, caring not a bit whether this should be favourable to the German military autocracy or not. If this military autocracy did not win, and it came to a German Revolution, the Bolsheviks were certainly not responsible for that.

The complete collapse of the army gave complete freedom to the lower classes. The peasants immediately insisted on confiscating the landed property, and dividing it up into private property. It was impossible to avoid these large estates being given over to the peasantry, but the problem should have been tackled in such a way, that the technical advantages obtained from these estates should not be lost. But that would have required time, and besides, the peasants would not wait.

The Bolsheviks won the peasants over to their side, by introducing anarchy in the country, and by allowing every community to have a free hand; so that the destruction of these estates went on in the most primitive fashion, with technical loss and the destruction of many means of production. In return, however, the peasants allowed the Bolsheviks a completely free hand in the towns in which they had already likewise won over the working classes; so that these latter were obedient merely to the Bolsheviks’ will, and took no regard for the actual conditions of things.

The proletariat was starving. It felt itself repressed and exploited, so it demanded with increasing energy the immediate throwing off of the capitalist yoke. To satisfy its will there was no time for study or reflection. With a few heavy blows the whole edifice of Russian capitalism lay in ruins. The substitution of Socialism for capitalism embraces two questions – one of property, and the other of organisation. It claims the abolition of private property in regard to means of production, and the transformation of social property in the form of a State and communistic property. It also claims the substitution of a socialistic in place of a capitalistic organisation of the management and of all such functions in one complete economic whole. Of these two transformations, that concerned with property is more simple. Nothing is easier than to expropriate a capitalist. That is a mere question of force, and not necessarily to be connected with any social theory. Long before there was such a thing as industrial capitalism, at the time, namely, of mere commercial and monied capital, we find similar expropriation of merchants, bankers and money-lenders, through the feudal lords and princes, and indeed through the people themselves. In the Middle Ages, not only were the Jews often expropriated; but despite the piety of the time, from time to time also the treasury of a church, or of a particular order would be confiscated. For instance, Philip IV of France, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, expropriated the enormously wealthy order of the Knights of the Temple. Long before there was such a thing as modern Socialism, many good, naive people often regarded the noble robbers, who despoiled the rich in order to give to the poor, as benefactors of the human race. To carry out this form of Socialism was easy enough. It was in keeping with the undeveloped state of the Russian proletariat that Bakunin in 1864, immediately before the war and the Commune, in his manifesto to the Russian youth of the time, pointed to the way taken by the Russian robber-captain, Stenka Razin, who in 1667 formed a band of robbers, with whom he lived four whole years in South Russia, until the Government overpowered and killed him.

It is not so easy to organise as it is to expropriate. The capitalist concern is a complex organisation, which finds its intelligence in the capitalist himself, or in his representative. If it is desired to abolish capitalism, same form of organisation must be created, which should be possible of functioning as well, if not better, without the capitalist head. This is not so simple as was the procedure of Philip IV or of Stenka Razin; for it demands a certain set of conditions of a material as well as o£ a psychical order, a high development of capitalistic organisation, not only of production but also of the export and import of raw materials. Moreover, it also demands a proletariat, which is conscious of its duties, not only towards its own neighbours and comrades, but also towards society as a whole – a proletariat, moreover, which has become accustomed to voluntary discipline and self-administration through long years of mass organisation; and which, finally, is intelligent enough to distinguish the possible from the impossible, and the scientifically educated leader with character from an ignorant demi-god without a conscience. Wherever these conditions are not present, capitalism cannot with any success be permanently dissolved by Socialism. And even in those districts, and in those branches of industry in which these conditions are already sufficiently highly developed, the Socialistic organisation must be carefully prepared by a profound examination of the actual conditions. For the forms which the new organisations have, for the time being, taken on are not necessarily the best for all branches of industry, for all lands and all times. They are not “ready-made Utopias” or eternal “ideals.” Under certain circumstances they can differ a good deal, and must be adapted according to the prevailing conditions in the most business-like manner possible, if they are to have any success.

But both factors in socialisation, that is, expropriation and reorganisation, must remain in closest connection, if chaos and an absolute standstill are not to follow on the state of production that has hitherto existed. Philip IV or Stenka Razin could confine their activities to mere expropriation, for they had no intention of creating some new method of production. The transition to Socialism is not possible by this simple means. The masses were impatient. They would not wait. In order to appease them the Bolsheviks, when they came into power, cut the socialising process into two parts. They separated its factors one from the other, although the one without the other cannot live. They proceeded at first after Stenka Razin’s approved method, afterwards endeavouring to proceed with organisation as well as it would go. The two things that were intimately connected with one another, and could only work in conjunction, were separated and torn asunder. Lenin himself acknowledged this in April, 1918, in his book, The immediate problems of the Soviet Power.

Up to the present, the first consideration was to find measures for an immediate expropriation of the expropriators. Now the first thing to be done is to organise the finance and control of all business concerns, in which the capitalists have already been expropriated, as well as in all other concerns. (p.14)

Our work, which we have to accomplish with the aid of the proletariat, which consists in the organisation of the general financing, and control over the production and the distribution of material products, has been behind our efforts to secure the immediate expropriation of profiteers. In regard to the socialistic transformation in these departments (and they are very important and essential departments), we have been very backward; and we have remained backward for the very good reason that the financing and control have been far too little organised. (p.23)

Business concerns and branches of industry were expropriated without any attempt being made to discover whether their organisation on Socialist lines was possible. Even in such departments, where such organisation would have been possible, they were quite content, in the first place, with expropriation; because this alone was possible to carryout without preparation, and also because the working classes would not wait. But the consequences very soon showed themselves. Economic life in Russia is backward owing to the fact that its industry, in comparison with its agricultural life, employs but a very small section of the population; but inside this industry the most modern and up-to-date forms of large manufacture predominate. They had far surpassed the state of Parisian industry of 1871. For in this latter, in so far as anything can be said about socialisation at all, the form of productive associations alone came into question.

The Russian factories were for the most part large concerns, and therefore the first thing that appeared necessary to be done, after the abolition of capital, seemed to be their nationalisation. In productive associations the wages of the labourer depend on his work and on his associates. The scale of these wages is determined by the number of products that are brought to market. They themselves must look after the buying and selling of raw materials. In the nationalised factories the workmen drew their money no more from the capitalists, as they had done before, but from the State. The maximum of their wages depended much less on their measure of productive activity than on the strength of their pressure on the power of the State. This latter power also had to look after the selling, as well as after the buying of raw materials. A well-disciplined and highly-intelligent working-class was necessary, a working-class which would recognise to what large extent the social prosperity, and therefore their own, depended on the productivity of their labour, in order, under these conditions, to make production successful and to keep it so. Moreover, from such a working class real production could be expected only if the necessary organising measures were taken which, apart from the workmen, as also apart from the State control and the consumers, would preserve the necessary influence on the single business concerns and the whole industrial branches; and also, if encouragement to work was created, which should supersede the dominating existence of capital.

From this time onwards, however, there was failing, not only organisation, but also the requisite intelligence and discipline of the working-classes. The more so, since the war and its results had put the most ignorant and most undeveloped sections of the proletariat in the wildest excitement. Certainly the Russian workman had derived a high sense of solidarity from his village commune; but the sphere of his influence was as limited as the village community itself, for it is really confined to a very small circle of his own personal comrades The larger social unity is for him a matter of indifference. The unfortunate results arising from these circumstances the Bolsheviks themselves regretted. Trotsky says in his book, Work, Discipline and Order will save the Socialist Soviet Republic, p.17: “The Revolution, which awakened a sense of human personality in the most oppressed and downtrodden, naturally took on at the beginning of its awakening an apparently anarchist character. This awakening of the elementary instincts of personality often shows a grossly egoistic or, to use a philosophical expression, an ego-centric character. It endeavours to acquire for itself all that it possibly can. It thinks only of itself, and is not at all inclined to have regard for the standpoint of the class in general. Hence the flood of all kinds of disorganising voices, and of individualistic, anarchistic, and grasping tendencies, which we observe especially in the broader spheres of the lower elements in the country, as well as in the midst of the earlier army, and also among certain elements of the working-classes.”

These were quite other elements than those which appeared in the Paris Commune, where men contented themselves with a modest wage in order to further Socialism. Under such circumstances, the form taken by production in the expropriated concerns is clear. The wages were raised as high as was possible, and hence there was only an economy of labour. In order to facilitate this, work by agreement was abolished. Then there were occasions, such as in the case of the Putilov works in Petersburg, which, in the period when they drew 96,000,000 roubles as a subsidy from the State, produced a total value of 50,000,000. It was only the unlimited employment of paper money that made it possible to avoid bankruptcy, which then seemed inevitable. If there was little work done in the factories, obviously the workmen withdrew, especially from the unpleasant, the dirty, and the heavy labour. How this kind of labour is to be established and assured in a Socialist community, in so far as it is indispensable, was a problem which has engaged the attention of Socialists of all times. Fourier thought to solve it by engaging “gutter snipes” for dirty work, youths who in preference wallow in mud. But this humorous solution was clearly not satisfactory. The only solution, in fact, which is in accordance with Socialist principles, and which could promise any success, is that it demands of technical science the elimination of all injurious and disagreeable elements in work, which is by its nature wearisome and prejudicial to health. So long as this is not possible there remains no other course than to make this section of labour attractive by means of particular privileges, either extraordinarily high wages or extraordinarily short working hours.

The Bolsheviks discovered a new solution. It did not at all correspond with Socialist principles, but with the mass psychology of excited working masses. In other words, they introduced compulsory labour, not, however, compulsory labour for those who had hitherto been paid labourers. Why impose on them compulsory labour? Under the influence of new conditions one factory after the other, whether on account of lack of raw material or of transport difficulties, had to close down, so that the number of workers who could find no work increased. Oh, no! Compulsory labour was imposed only on those who had been deprived of all privileges under the excuse that they did not work, namely, the bourgeois. Instead of the universal formal democracy, the Soviet Republic established the proletarian democracy. Only those who worked should have, political rights; only they should be sufficiently fed and protected by the State. The drones were to be deprived of all rights.

This was apparently a great Socialist idea, which had only one small error. For nearly two years already the Republic of the working men’s councils had given the vote to the workers alone. And yet up to this very day no solution to the riddle “What constitutes a worker?” has been given. From different communists we get different answers. At the outset, these working men’s councils were none other than representative bodies of the paid labourers of the large factories. As such, they formed definite though limited organisations, which were very important for the Revolution. The “council idea” then proceeded to substitute a Central Council of the working-men’s councils for the National Assembly, which had arisen from the general elections. Nevertheless, the foundation of this Central Council would have been very shaky, if its establishment had been confined to the Workingmen’s Councils of the large factories. But as soon as they went outside this circle, and at the same time excluded the bourgeoisie from having a vote, they became utterly lost. The demarcation of the middle class from the working-class can never be accurately drawn. There will always be something arbitrary in such endeavour, which fact makes the council idea peculiarly liable to become a foundation for a purely dictatorial and arbitrary rule, but very little calculated to establish and build up a clear and systematic State constitution.

For instance, in the case of the educated class (intelligentsia) it rests entirely with the Soviet authorities whether they are to be reckoned as belonging to the middle class or not. The same applies to their right of voting, and also in respect to their being liable to compulsory labour.

In the Soviet Republic the bourgeois not only had to suffer the confiscation of all means of production and consumption, without any compensation whatever, and were not only deprived of all political rights; they were, at the same time, the victims of oppression, and they alone were liable to compulsory labour! They are the only people in Russia who are compelled to work, and at the same time the very people who are deprived of the vote, because they do not work! Moreover, in Soviet Russia, a man is not put into the class of workers or bourgeoisie according to the occupation that he for the moment has, but according to the occupation that he had before the Revolution. The bourgeoisie in this respect appears in the Soviet Republic as a special human species, whose characteristics are ineradicable. Just as a Black remains a Black, a Mongolian a Mongolian, whatever his appearance and however he may dress; so a bourgeois remains a bourgeois, even if he becomes a beggar, or lives by his work. And how he lives indeed!

The bourgeoisie are compelled to work, but they have not the right to choose the work that they understand, and which best corresponds to their abilities. On the contrary, they are forced to carry on the most filthy and most objectionable kind of labour. In return they receive not increased rations, but the very lowest, which scarce suffice to appease their hunger. Their food rations equal only a quarter of those of the soldiers, and of the working-men who are employed in the factories run by the Soviet Republic. Where these latter receive one pound of bread, the former get only a quarter of a pound; and where again the latter get sixteen pounds of potatoes, the others have only four. From all this we perceive not a sign of any attempt to place the proletariat on a higher level, to work out a “new and higher form of life,” but merely the thirst for vengeance on the part of the proletariat in its most primitive form. It thinks to gain happiness by being able to trample down those men who, by their destiny, have been in more favourable circumstances, who are better clothed, better housed and better educated than they themselves.

In setting free this “will” as the motive force of the Revolution, the Bolshevists have let things go much further, in certain cases than even they themselves have wished. Thus, for instance, the idea that the bourgeois of bygone days have now become merely beasts of burden, deprived of all rights, caused the workers who formerly were in the employ of such bourgeoisie to issue the following manifesto of the Working Men’s Councils of Murzilovka: “The Soviet gives herewith full power to Comrade Gregory Sareieff, according to his choice and orders, and for use in the artillery division, which is quartered in Murzilovka, in the district of Briantz, to requisition sixty women and girls of the bourgeois and financier class, and to hand them over to the barracks.” 16th September, 1918 (published by Dr. Nath Wintsch-Malejeff, What are the Bolsheviks Doing?, Lausanne 1919, p.10).

We should be doing an injustice to place the responsibility for this manifesto on the Bolsheviks, for it was certainly just as contrary to their wishes, as were the September massacres to the men of the Convention. But the thought that, in one single local Soviet organisation, hatred and contempt towards the bourgeois could reach such a stage is horrible in the extreme; for these men are deprived not only of all political rights, but even of the most elementary considerations of human dignity.