January 18, 2006: The Bolsheviks failed to smash the state
The Bolsheviks failed to smash the state. Instead, they fused with it. This was the tragedy of their circumstances: the tragedy of the civil war.
This is the meaning of the "commissar" system. The Tsarist state apparatus remained intact. But it had armed representatives of the Soviet added to it. The purpose of the commissars was to point guns at the heads of the "professionals". This is the system which led to Red victory in the civil war: Tsarist officers with guns to their heads.
How many officers? There's a story that Lenin was shocked when Trotsky told him. Tens of thousands.
It wasn't only the army, but the entire governing apparatus, which remained in place, unsmashed. The Stalinist bureaucracy was the marriage of the former Tsarist state apparatus with the commissars. The USSR was the continuation of the old Tsarist empire. That's true in an extremely literal, material sense, department by department.
I'm not making this up. This is the general direction of Lenin's analysis of the nascent Soviet bureaucracy during his final period of activity. I don't know that he ever drew the explicit conclusion that the revolution had captured the state rather than smashing it. I think that's the right conclusion, though.
It's interesting to me that we don't like to talk about this. Well -- maybe this is all wrong, and that's the reason! I don't think so. I think it's right, and it's one of those screaming silences we on the far left have lived within while refusing to discuss.
Have we ever answered the question, "What went wrong in Russia?". I don't think so. Every time we've talked about that we've gotten into the minutiae of the faction fights and the Left Opposition and we've recited the standard incantations: Leninist Norms, the Tenth Congress, the failure of the German revolution. None of this is wrong, it's just not the answer. Rather, it's the answer to a different question. So that we conclude with one or another attempt to theorize the mode of production at a high level of abstraction: "degenerated workers' state", "state capitalism", "bureaucratic collectivism", "social-imperialism", depending on one's sectarian current. Each of which dances away from the issue.
The Reds were unable to smash the state because the necessity of winning the civil war forced their hands.
What implications does this have for the prospect of the withering away of the state?
Comments
Interestingly, the Chinese Communists seem to have carefully preserved the structures of the Nationalist state apparatus as they moved from the countryside into the cities. There were no urban insurrections, no particular disruptions. Signs went up saying, "Go back to work!" The same police officers, the same administrators. Eventually, a Communist became the new manager or department head. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. The state wasn't smashed, it was captured by force, and the upper reaches of management and control were replaced by cadres.
I'm not deeply familiar with the Chinese revolution -- this is merely what I've recently been reading. If anybody's an expert, can you set me straight? Is this what happened?
Posted by: Mark Phillips | January 27, 2006 06:33 PM