Thursday, June 29, 2017
Chuck Schumer Admits Bernie Was Right
Charles Ellis "Chuck" Schumer is an American politician, the senior United States senator from New York and a (corporate) Democrat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QOU6e7M_jc
The revolution gains strength
Paul D'Amato examines how the
events after the February Revolution set the stage for the struggle for
workers' power that played out through October.
June 14, 2013
THE FEBRUARY Revolution
created two governments in Russia.
One was official--the
Provisional Government, dominated by the Russian capitalists, who actually
feared the revolution and were intent on ending it as quickly as possible. The
other was unofficial--the soviets of workers' and soldiers' deputies, which
represented the depths of Russian society in revolt.
The moderate socialists--the
Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries--believed that these two institutions
could coexist. Indeed, they had insisted that the bourgeoisie, not the soviets,
should take power after February--and that the soviets, though they possessed
in reality more power than the Provisional Government, should yield to the
latter.
Yet these two centers of class
power were incompatible; one represented the interests of the capitalists and
landowners, the other, the working class and poor peasants. At some stage, one
was going to triumph over the other.
Only the Bolshevik Party
stated this truth plainly and openly. Leon Trotsky's first speech in the soviet
upon his return to Russia in May enunciated clearly (though he was not yet a
party member) the Bolsheviks' message to workers and oppressed peoples of
Russia: "Do not trust the bourgeoisie; control the leaders; rely only on
your own force."
All other parties save the
Bolsheviks proceeded to compromise themselves irrevocably in the eyes of the
Russian masses.
Even Nikolay Chkheidze, the
Menshevik chairman of the soviet, proclaimed in a statement committing the
soviets to support of the war effort: "The slogan for the revolution is
'Down with Wilhelm.'"
Series: The Russian
Revolution
In 2007, Socialist Worker
marked the 90th anniversary of the Russian Revolution of 1917 with a yearlong
series outlining its course and consequences.
By this time, the Russian army
was finished as a fighting force. For the Russian bourgeoisie and its
international allies, the purpose of promoting the war was primarily to
strangle the revolution.
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LENIN'S PLAN for the
Bolsheviks seemed straightforward and simple: "Patiently explain"
that all power must be taken by the soviets, and the experience of the working
masses would itself move them leftward. This approach proved stunningly
successful, winning the party thousands of new recruits.
But it also raised new and
more difficult tactical questions related to the uneven character of the
struggle--how to avoid the most advanced sections of the working class and
soldiers in Petrograd moving faster than other parts of the country and
creating a situation in which they would become isolated and crushed by the counterrevolution?
There were a number of factors
creating this danger. One, the soldiers of the Petrograd garrison, numbering
about 300,000, were quickly radicalized by their opposition to the military
offensive and the impending possibility of transfer to the front, so they felt
they had to act.
Second, the Petrograd workers,
particularly in the Vyborg district, where the city's major factories were
concentrated, had already by June, if not earlier, gone over to support
Bolshevik demands. The same was true for the sailors of Kronstadt and the
Baltic fleet. Third, anarchists were conducting a high-pitched agitation in
favor of immediate overthrow of the provisional government, and were gaining a
growing hearing.
All these factors were pulling
the Petrograd Bolsheviks to the left and compelling them to act.
The result was a series of
demonstrations; one in April, one in June, and one in July--each time larger,
better armed and more militant--which threatened to spill over into street
fighting and a premature bid for power in Petrograd.
Demonstrations were necessary
as a method of probing the enemy and counting forces. But there was the
constant danger of premature confrontations. Several times, Lenin and the
Bolshevik Central Committee had to pour cold water on the party's hotter heads.
The April crisis was prompted
by a note sent to the allies by Kadet Party leader Paul Miliukov--then minister
of war in the Provisional Government--fully committing Russia to carry through
its war obligations. A hastily organized demonstration of workers and armed
soldiers on April 20, involving some 30,000 participants, ended in clashes with
rightist forces.
In backing the protest, the
Bolsheviks' Petrograd Committee issued slogans for the immediate overthrow of
the Provisional Government. This was in spite of an argument that Lenin had
made some days earlier:
The slogan "down with the
provisional government" is an incorrect one at the present moment,
because, in the absence of a...majority of the people on the side of the
revolutionary proletariat, such a slogan is either an empty phrase, or
objectively, amounts to attempts of an adventurist character.
Lenin later criticized the
Petrograd Committee for moving too far left when what was needed was not to
give battle, but to carry out a "peaceful reconnaissance of our enemy's
forces."
The April crisis caused the
first of a series of cabinet reshufflings that removed Muliukov and brought
moderate socialists into the Provisional Government.
The result was not to shift
the Provisional Government to the left, but, on the contrary, to compromise the
moderate socialists even more in the eyes of the masses, who could see that
even with socialists in it, the government was still committed to the war and
resistant to land reform.
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BY JUNE, it was clear that at
least in Petrograd, the Bolsheviks had won over the majority of the working
class, as well as a great deal of the military regiments stationed in the city.
The Bolsheviks had placed a
great deal of importance on winning over the soldiers--without whose support no
revolutionary overthrow could succeed--and had created a special organization,
the Military Organization, to conduct organizational and propaganda work among
the regiments.
On the Military Organization's
initiative, the party called a demonstration for June 10. Though party leaders
like Lenin viewed it as an opportunity to review the troops, Military
Organization leaders hoped it could be the signal for an armed confrontation
with the Provisional Government.
The Central Committee,
however, called off the demonstration when faced by a stern demand to cancel it
by the Executive Committee of the soviet--a move that created a great deal of
anger in the party ranks.
The Soviet Executive Committee
then decided to call its own demonstration on June 18 to advertise its own sway
among the masses. The protest was huge--almost half a million people. But
unfortunately for the soviet leaders, most of the factories and a majority of
the military garrison regiments marched under Bolshevik slogans--"All
Power to the Soviets"; "Down with the 10 Capitalist Ministers";
"Peace for the hovels; war for the palaces."
The June demonstration
convinced Military Organization leaders that the time was ripe for the seizure
of power.
But the question at this point
was not whether it was possible to seize power in Petrograd. The question was
whether such a seizure would create a "Paris Commune" situation, in
which the capital city became isolated from the rest of the country.
At a June 19 conference of the
Military Organization, Lenin argued, "If we were now able to seize power,
it is naïve to think that having taken it we would be able to hold it."
The party, he noted, had not yet even won a majority of delegates in the Petrograd
and Moscow soviets, let alone elsewhere in the country.
Yet the pressure for another
demonstration was great. The stage was now set for a far bigger clash than in
April.
Amid great fanfare from
rightist parties, the bourgeoisie, liberals and moderate socialists, War
Minister Alexander Kerensky announced a military offensive to begin on June 18
(the offensive collapsed not long after it started under a German
counterattack).
Under extreme pressure from
troops who didn't want to be sent to the front, the Military Organization
called for an armed demonstration to begin on July 3. The Bolsheviks' Central
Committee at first tried to stop the protest, but when it was clear it would
happen anyway, it decided to join it and give it as peaceful a character as
possible.
Confusion as to the aim of the
operation was apparent, however, in the fact that its participants couldn't
decide whether this was to be a demonstration which aimed to pressure the
soviets to take power (the position of the Central Committee), or an armed insurrection
to forcibly overthrow the Provisional Government (the position of the Military
Organization and the Kronstadt sailors).
In the end, the protests
resulted in various fruitless armed clashes that left hundreds dead. Though as
a rehearsal for the October Revolution, it did allow the revolutionaries to
measure the enemy's strength as well as their own, the July Days' initial
result was the flowering of reaction and an orgy of attacks on the Bolshevik
Party.
