27) The Art of Insurrection

"Up to now the weakest link in the chain of necessary conditions has been the party. The hardest thing of all is for the working class to create a revolutionary organisation capable of rising to the height of its historic task" 
 

Meeting of the Petrograd Soviet

The role of ‘conspiracy’

Before reaching the concluding events of his history, Trotsky discusses the relationship between the ‘conspiracy’ of a minority and the mass insurrection of a majority in a revolution.

In summary, for a socialist revolution, both are required – the mass insurrection co-ordinated by a leadership who understand what “Marx and Engels called ‘the art of insurrection’. It presupposes a correct general leadership of the masses, a flexible orientation in changing conditions, a thought-out plan of attack, cautiousness in technical preparation, and a daring blow” (108).

Trotsky points out that in any class society, particularly with unstable régimes, a ‘conspiracy’ has a chance of succeeding – but only in order to replace one clique with another. To actually replace one social régime by another, a mass insurrection is required. But an insurrection is never purely spontaneous; it requires organisation – or ‘conspiracy’. Even the February revolution had been fertilised by the preceding movements although, without a clear leadership, ended up transferring power to the bourgeoisie.

“To overthrow the old power is one thing; to take the power in one’s own hands is another. The bourgeoisie may win the power in a revolution not because it is revolutionary, but because it is bourgeois. It has in its possession property, education, the press, a network of strategic positions, a hierarchy of institutions. Quite otherwise with the proletariat. Deprived in the nature of things of all social advantages, an insurrectionary proletariat can count only on its numbers, its solidarity, its cadres, its official staff” (109).

Appreciating their advantages, bourgeois historians do not discount revolutions as such – but what they vehemently oppose is the conscious preparation of an overthrow, the ‘conspiracy’ that can help bring about a social revolution and bring power to the working-class.

Party and Soviet

Lenin was a ruthless critic of those like the old Social Revolutionaries who believed in ‘individual terror’ or who argued for an adventurist seizure of power by a conspiratorial minority. He opposed any ‘Blanquism’ that claimed that correct insurrectionary tactics alone could guarantee victory.

As Trotsky explains: “An active minority of the proletariat, no matter how well organised, cannot seize the power regardless of the general conditions of the country” (110). However, Trotsky adds that the old French revolutionary, Auguste Blanqui, had been quite correct in stating that a successful insurrection did need to follow certain tactical rules – such as a centralised command and a well-calculated military plan. Blanqui’s overemphasis on the ‘barricade’ was based upon his life in nineteenth century Paris, but his general belief in the need for an organised plan still holds true.

The October revolution showed in practice that the soviet could become the organisation through which the working-class could not only prepare for and conduct insurrection, but also use as an instrument of government once having taken power.

“However, the soviets by themselves do not settle the question. They may serve different goals according to the programme and leadership. The soviets receive their programme from the party. Whereas the soviets in revolutionary conditions – and apart from revolution they are impossible – comprise the whole class with the exception of its altogether backward, inert or demoralised strata, the revolutionary party represents the brain of the class. The problem of conquering the power can be solved only by a definite combination of party with soviets – or with other mass organisations more or less equivalent to soviets” (111).

With a revolutionary party at their helm, the soviets can prepare the mass insurrection. But the leaders have to correctly diagnose the right moment for assault. Trotsky makes the comparison with a midwife needing to correctly judge when to assist with labour: “Moment here is not to be taken too literally as meaning a definite day and hour. Physical births also present a considerable period of uncertainty. Between the moment when an attempt to summon an insurrection must inevitably prove premature … and the moment when a favourable situation must be considered hopelessly missed, there exists a certain period – it may be measured in weeks, and sometimes in a few months – in the course of which an insurrection may be carried out with more or less chance of success. To discriminate this comparatively short period and then choose the definite moment – now in the more accurate sense of the very day and hour – for the last blow, constitutes the most responsible task of the revolutionary leaders. It can with full justice be called the key problem, for it unites the policy of revolution with the technique of insurrection – and it is needless to add that insurrection, like war, is a continuation of politics with other instruments” (112).

It would have been possible for the insurrection to have been summoned directly in the name of the party, rather than use the soviets. This would have had the advantage of being able to count solely on reliable Bolsheviks rather than having to involve the non-party members and Left SRs in the Military Revolutionary Committee and the Soviet. But it would too easily have risked losing the mass support that had been built up through the soviets. In practice, attempts to call action directly through the party gained little backing.

Trotsky points out that the millions taking part in the revolution consisted of three layers. The politically advanced industrial workers were ready to support the Bolsheviks acting alone. However, a greater layer, largely the soldiers, supported the party, but only in so far as they acted through the soviets. A third layer of more conservative workers, peasants and soldiers, former Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries would follow soviet decisions, but despite, rather than because of, the Bolsheviks now dominating there.

“The party set the soviets in motion, the soviets set in motion the workers, soldiers, and to some extent the peasantry. If you represent this conducting apparatus as a system of cog-wheels … the impatient attempt to connect the party wheel directly with the gigantic wheel of the masses – omitting the medium-sized wheel of the soviets – would have given rise to the danger of breaking the teeth of the party wheel, and nevertheless not setting sufficiently large masses in motion” (113).

“The opposite danger was, however, no less real – the danger of letting slip a favourable situation as a result of inner frictions in the soviet system … the dependence of the party on the Soviet – which, in its turn, was appealing to the Congress of Soviets – introduced an element of indefiniteness into the insurrection which greatly and quite justly alarmed Lenin. The advantages of summoning it in the name of the Soviet were only too clear to Lenin but he understood sooner than others what difficulties would arise along that road” (114).

Lenin certainly started out favouring an insurrection summoned through he party – that was clearly the thought behind his first proposal to surround the Democratic Conference. At the C.C. on the 10th, Lenin’s resolution still contained no mention of the soviet as an organ of insurrection. However, by the meeting on the 16th, “the resolution proposed by Lenin concluded with an expression of ‘confidence that the Central Committee and the Soviet will indicate in good season the favourable moment and expedient methods of action’. The mention of the Soviet together with the party, and the more flexible formulation of the question of date, were the result of Lenin’s having felt out through the party leaders the resistance of the masses” (115).

The four conditions for revolution

Trotsky explains that intuition and experience are both vital for revolutionary leadership but, on their own, are insufficient. What is also required is to have a scientific understanding of how classes interact and what conditions give rise to a revolutionary situation.

The first required condition is that the ruling classes, unable to offer a way forward, lose faith in themselves. Their parties disintegrate as internal splits reveal their disorientation.

Secondly, the revolutionary class must have developed bitter hostility to the old order and be ready to wage a heroic struggle to change it.

The third political premise of a revolution is the discontent of the intermediate layers and their readiness to support a bold struggle by the revolutionary workers. Trotsky remarks that this is the least stable of the four conditions. The petty bourgeoisie is easily disheartened and can quickly shift to seeking salvation from the opposing camp. “Just as at flood tide the proletariat draws after it the petty bourgeoisie, so during the ebb the petty bourgeoisie draws after it considerable layers of the proletariat. Such is the dialectic of the communist and fascist waves observable in the political evolution of Europe since the [first world] war” (116).

Of course, the fourth key condition is the existence of a tightly organised and politically astute revolutionary party. Trotsky points as evidence – just from the time he was completing his history in 1932 – to “the Paris Commune, the German and Austrian revolutions of 1918, the Soviet revolutions in Hungary and Bavaria, the Italian revolution of 1919, the German crisis of 1923, the Chinese revolution of 1925-1927, the Spanish revolution of 1931”, to show that “up to now the weakest link in the chain of necessary conditions has been the party. The hardest thing of all is for the working class to create a revolutionary organisation capable of rising to the height of its historic task” (117).

Only in Russia in October 1917 had all the conditions required for a victorious and stable proletarian revolution been successfully brought together. Yet the Mensheviks had argued that backward Russia needed to exhaust all the possibilities of capitalist development before embarking on socialism. “This argument contained two mistakes, both fatal. Capitalism is not a national but a world-wide system. The imperialist war and its consequences demonstrated that the capitalist system had exhausted itself on a world scale. The revolution in Russia was a breaking of the weakest link in the system of world-wide capitalism” (118).

“But the falsity of this Menshevik conception appears also from a national point of view. It is indeed possible to affirm that capitalism in Russia has not exhausted its possibilities. But … capitalism is not an abstraction, but a living system of class relations requiring above all things a state power. That the monarchy, under whose protection Russian capitalism developed, had exhausted its possibilities is not denied even by the Mensheviks. The February revolution tried to build up an intermediate state régime … in the course of eight months it exhausted itself completely” (119).

What kind of majority?

The October insurrection could succeed because it could count on the backing of a genuine majority of the people. That is not to say that, if asked to vote in some referendum, a majority would necessarily have declared that they were ready to support revolution.

“Parliamentary consultations of the people are carried out at a single moment, whereas during a revolution the different layers of the population arrive at the same conclusion one after another and with inevitable, although sometimes very slight intervals. At the moment when the advanced detachment is burning with revolutionary impatience the backward layers have only begun to move. And when a great practical decision becomes unpostponable … that is the very moment when a referendum is impossible. The difference in level and mood of the different layers of the people is overcome in action. The advance layers bring after them the wavering and isolate the opposing. The majority is not counted up, but won over. Insurrection comes into being at exactly that moment when direct action alone offers a way out of the contradictions” (120).

In working out whether the correlation of forces was sufficient to take power, Lenin later explained: “ ‘The capitals, or generally speaking, the biggest centres of trade and industry ... decide to a considerable degree the political fate of the people – that is, of course, on condition that the centres are supported by sufficient local rural forces, although this support need not be immediate’. It was in this dynamic sense that Lenin spoke of the majority of the people, and that was the sole real meaning of the concept of majority” (121).

The scornful intellectuals like Sukhanov believed that the uneducated masses could never succeed in changing society. But the Bolsheviks were not afraid to stand at the head of the people – including the backward layers only now emerging onto the political scene. But the fundamental driving force of the October revolution was the proletariat, the working-class, with the workers of Petrograd to the fore. In their first rank stood the workers of the Vyborg district, which was therefore chosen as the starting-point for the insurrection.

Winning the soldiers to the side of the revolution was vital, but it had been the influence of the workers that started to win the troops over. It was the working-class that first came over to Bolshevism, while the SRs and Mensheviks were still relying on the support of the soldiers’ section in the soviets for support. It was the proletariat, at the decisive moment, that led the revolution.