Date: Wed, 21 Aug 1996 00:18:34 +0100
From: m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Hugh Rodwell)
Subject: A 'recent' member of the Bolsheviks & October


Richard B, trying to squash Nick H, wrote:

>Note that I said "Trotskyist Party". Trotsky was then a member of the
>Bolsheviks (a recent one), and acting under the guidence of the party
>which certainly could not be described as a Trotskyist party. Even
>Trotskists would not claim that I think. I do not think I was wide of the
>mark at all.

A couple of things about this remarkably stupid statement:

1) Granting for the sake of argument that the Bolsheviks weren't a
Trotskyist party, they were even less a *Stalinist* party. Stalin's role in
October was not merely minimal but in fact negative. Stalin had a position
in the central bodies of the party, but he was no *leader* of the October
revolution or the revolutionary Bolshevik party in 1917, and neither were
the crew (the Molotovs etc) who later formed the core of the Stalinist
counterrevolution. They were dragged along by events, reluctantly.

So Richard shot his own balls off, not to put too fine a point on it.

2) The party that succeeded in carrying out the October Revolution was a
Bolshevik-Leninist party. This is in fact the kind of party Trotskyists are
fighting hard to build -- now in the teeth of scepticism and sneering from
Stalinists and those influenced by Stalinism, in the past in the teeth of
massive violence and assassinations. Not to mention the opposition of the
imperialists.

3) The most gobsmackingly imbecile thing about the statement is its
fetishization of the omnipotent and impersonal party, the Party-God. Of
course, in a sense, everyone in the party, including Lenin, was working
'under the guidance of the party'. Some were more responsive to its
guidance than others -- Stalin was most unresponsive. But that isn't the
point Richard is trying to make. He wants to belittle Trotsky as a 'new'
boy, and magnify Stalin as an 'old hand' in tune with the Party-God. Note
the debating point pettiness of the charge that Trotsky was a 'recent'
member. They were all members -- Lenin too. What sticks in Richard's craw
as a Stalinist is the fact that some members, such as Lenin and Trotsky,
led the Bolsheviks to the successful overthrow of the Menshevik republic
and capitalist property relations in Russia, not by any personal magic but
by correct revolutionary Marxist policies. But Richard doesn't deal in
policies but cheap psychologizing and finger-pointing. 'Recent member'!! We
all gasp in well-rehearsed horror!

I think it's time Richard filled in some of those schooling gaps of his and
found out just what happened in October, who represented the Bolsheviks
during 1917, who made the absolutely central decisions and who influenced
the party to provide the right guidance at pivotal moments. Here's a clue:
it wasn't Stalin.

Reading hints:

John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World   (American journalist's
eye-witness account, famous)

E.H. Carr: A History of Soviet Russia  (bourgeois historian provides
detailed backing for:

L. Trotsky: History of the Russian Revolution


Oh, and the October Revolutions of 1905 and 1917 that Trotsky led just
happened to be more pivotal events in the history of the twentieth century
than the Moscow show trials of the late 30s that Stalin directed to show
just what he could accomplish as undisputed leader of the world's first
proletarian state.


Cheers,

Hugh







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