[Marxism] Revolution

["Graham M." <gkmilner@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear M.,
My feelings about revolution in general have probably changed a bit as I
have gotten older.   Reading Edmund Burke's 'Reflections on the Revolution
in France' was actually a bit of a revelation to me, although in the
university essay I wrote comparing and contrasting Burke's book with Tom
Paine's 'The Rights of Man' I strongly defended the French Revolution and
Paine's radical-democratic position..   'The Rights of Man' is a great book,
and it sold in hundreds of thousands of copies in the 1790s.   Paine puts a
clear case for radical social and political change, equality, liberty and
civil rights.   And he even has in there a programme for social welfare -
pensions and social security for all: the book was way ahead of its time.
But there is perhaps something shallow about Paine's rationalism, which
seems to me to be a bit simple-minded, and not entirely an adequate response
to many of Burke's arguments.   Somehow Burke taps into what all
conservatives base themselves on: tradition; the hold that custom has on
social behaviour, and an 'organic' view of society and political
institutions.   There is no doubt that Burke's 'Reflections', for all the
book's obnoxious asides about the 'swinish multitude', etc, and its elitism
and incredible class chauvinism, is steeped in political wisdom born of long
involvement in public affairs.

My own views on the French Revolution have altered a bit over the years.
Whereas in the 1970s I read with appreciation and approval George Lefebvre,
Albert Soboul and George Rude - historians who saw the event from a Marxist
perspective, and who could see it as a bourgeois-democratic revolution - I
would now be prepared to at least consider the older view, much more current
in the early to mid 19th century, of writers like Carlyle and Dickens.
After all, in the popular mind, isn't the French Revolution still often
associated with the tumbrils and the guillotine - a view that Dickens' 'A
Tale of Two Cities' made the predominant one, at least in the
English-speaking world?   But I question your expressed opinion that 'many
groups in history have taken power and the result has always been the same;
Russia being a particularly startling case of rapid deterioration' (pardon
me for paraphrasing your message).   Isn't this position really one that
reads out of the historical process the possibility of progressive change? -
that old French adage to the effect that 'the more things change, the more
they stay the same' comes to mind.   I believe that Karl Marx and Frederick
Engels, and those in the Marxist tradition who came after them, are right to
see this bloody revolution business as being a regrettable necessity for
historical progress.   A while ago I watched again on T.V. the film 'Glory',
about a regiment of black soldiers fighting in the US Civil War.   That film
showed the bloodyness and destructiveness of a conflict that Marx
nevertheless unhesitatingly characterised as a progressive 'revolution' -
the second phase of the American bourgeois-democratic revolution.
Elsewhere, Marx made the famous remark about the historical process
resembling 'that hideous pagan idol that marks out advance by drinking blood
from the skulls of the slain', or similar words.   Of course Marx was in
hopes that in a fully socialist or communist society the existence of
violence engendered by the class struggle  would be replaced by peaceful
evolution.

The Russian Revolution was conceived by its proponents as the initial phase
of a worldwide transition from moribund, imperialist capitalism, to an
international federation of socialist republics.   No wonder that figures
like Winston Churchill, who orchestrated the British involvement in the
foreign military intervention in support of the White, counter-revolution in
Russia, saw the urgency of 'strangling the infant in its cradle', with
reference to the revolutionary socialist regime in Russia.   I don't think
one can justify describing the enterprise of the Russian October Revolution
as 'criminal' because it had an internationalist perspective and was based
on the awareness of the vital need for the revolution to extend to the
advanced capitalist countries.   I would consider that Rosa Luxemburg's
assessment, in her pamphlet 'The Russian Revolution', is more appropriate:
Luxemburg observed that the Bolsheviks had 'restored the honour of
international socialism' by taking power in Russia, and that in the light of
this event 'the future everywhere belongs to "Bolshevism"'.   Of course,
Luxemburg was critical of some aspects of Bolshevik policy, but the main
thrust of what she said was the direct opposite of Kautsky's attempt to
denigrate the October Revolution.

A mutual friend of ours a few years ago said to me that one 'shouldn't throw
out the socialist baby with the Stalinist bathwater', when considering the
Russian Revolution.   I think that there are important lessons for
socialists to derive from the experience of the development of Bolshevik
socialism in Russia, and these vital lessons from the positive example of
the proletarian revolution in Russia have to be preserved, while a Marxist
examination and analysis  is made of the reasons for the degeneration of the
revolution and the consolidation of Stalinist totalitarianism.   My own view
is that Trotsky's writings, and his political example, are crucial for
providing that understanding.   But Trotsky, like Marx or Lenin, was
obviously not always right, and sometimes he was completely wrong - but his
contribution has to be considered fairly, and the useful content of his
ideas and example incorporated into the programme and practice of the
contemporary socialist movement.   That's my own personal view, anyway.

Best regards and socialist solidarity,

Graham

(Graham Milner)




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