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Factory Committees in Russia “Today’s supporters of Lenin and Trotsky still parade their writings and their politics as relevant to the working class and to FACTORY COMMITTEES IN socialism. It is still necessary then to expose how fundamentally capitalistic their political approach was when faced with a THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION working class taking power where it mattered, in the workplace, through the factory committees, and in the community, through the local soviets. The negative side of this pamphlet is Bolshevism; the positive side is what workers achieved, and tried to achieve, even in defeat.” In this pamphlet” “The Experience of the Factory Committees in the Russian Revolution” by R.M. Jones prole.info The Experience of the Factory Committees in the Notes Russian Revolution [1] The Russian Revolution of February 1917, Marc Ferro, p112. [2] The Russian Enigma, Ante Ciliga, p13. by R.M. Jones [3] History of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky, p121. [4] Trotsky, p131. Introduction [5] October 1917 - A Social History of the Russian Revolution, Marc Ferro, p3. [6] quoted in Trotsky, p256. “For the Russian workman to live meant simply not to die.” [1] Before February [7] quoted in Workers’ Control and Socialist Democracy: The Soviet Experience, 1917, Russian workers endured military discipline in the work-place with compulsory Carmen Sirianni, p16. overtime, a high death rate in industrial ‘accidents’ and hunger once they got home. [8] quoted in Sirianni, p26. In 1905 they had taken on the Tsarist monarchy and created something entirely new [9] quoted in The Bolshevik Revolution, Volume 2, E H Carr, pp 67-8 in that struggle -- the soviet (or council). Twelve years later, after more than two [10] quoted in Ferro (October), p153. years of war and on a growing wave of strikes, they were ready to overthrow Tsarism. [11] quoted in Ferro (October), p151. In doing so, they once again created their own organizations -- soviets and factory [12] quoted in Ferro (October), p166. committees. As they destroyed the old, so they had to construct a new society. For the [13] quoted in Sirianni, p50. workers that meant changing the conditions of their lives, especially in their work. [14] quoted in Sirianni, P55 (from The Russian Revolution and the Factory ‘’For it is not machines nor factories, but human interrelationships that make the Committees, Paul Avrich, pp 69-70). essence of socialism.” [2] [15] quoted in Ferro (October), p118. Alongside the Russian workers’ attempts to create socialism -- not as some [16] quoted in Ferro (October), p120. abstract far-off utopia in a political party program, but through confronting and [17] quoted in Ferro (October), p62. changing the concrete reality of their everyday life -- were the activities of socialist [18] quoted in Ferro (October), p65. parties, supposedly sympathetic to working class aspirations. This pamphlet tells [19] quoted in Trotsky, p528. the story of the Russian workers’ struggle, in particular the efforts of the factory [20] Trotsky, p528. committees. The success of the Bolsheviks in defeating the working class and crushing [21] Trotsky, p799. all hope of socialism is the other side of the story. Today’s supporters of Lenin and [22] quoted in Trotsky, p1132. Trotsky still parade their writings and their politics as relevant to the working class [23] see Carr, pp 71-2. and to socialism. It is still necessary then to expose how fundamentally capitalistic [24] Carr, p73. their political approach was when faced with a working class taking power where it [25] quoted in Carr, p74. mattered -- in the workplace, through the factory committees, and in the community, [26] quoted in Sirianni, p101. through the local soviets. The negative side of this pamphlet is Bolshevism; the [27] quoted in Sirianni, pp 99-100. positive side is what workers achieved, and tried to achieve, even in defeat. [28] quoted in Ferro (October), p176. [29] quoted in Sirianni, p106-7. The February Revolution [30] quoted in Ferro (October), p177. [31] quoted in Carr, p116. It was the working class women of Petrograd who sparked off the revolution in [32] quoted in Carr, p191. (Carr says this aroused “the most obstinate prejudices” !) February. After weeks of strikes with police attacks on factories, the most oppressed [33] “Piece-wages (...) the most fruitful source of reductions of wages and capitalistic part of the working class, the women textile workers, took the initiative. Demands cheating.” “(...) the form of wages most in harmony with the capitalist mode of for bread and attacks on bakeries were superseded by a massive demonstration of production.” Capital, Volume 1, Karl Marx, p518, p521. women workers on International Women’s Day. The women had ignored a local [34] quoted in Sirianni, p149. Bolshevik directive to wait until May Day! The early slogan of “Bread!” was quickly [35] quoted in Carr, p183. followed by “Down with the autocracy! Down with the war!” By February 24th, [36] quoted in Ciliga, p21. half of Petrograd was on strike. The workers did go to their factories, not to work, [37] quotes from Ciliga, p280, p33, p108-9. but to hold meetings, pass resolutions and then go out to demonstrate. The Vyborg committee of the Bolsheviks opposed the strikes: “(...) since the committee thought the time unripe for militant action -- the party not strong enough and the workers 1 26 took place that year. having too few contacts with the soldiers -- they decided not to call for strikes but to The ‘Decemist’ Volodya Smirnov went further than the Workers’ Group : prepare for revolutionary action at some indefinite time in the future.’’ [3] “There never has been a proletarian revolution, nor a dictatorship of the proletariat in Unaware of how ‘unripe’ the time was, the workers pressed on with the Russia, there has simply been a ‘popular revolution’ from below and a dictatorship strike till 240,000 were out. Strikers and demonstrators clashed with armed police, from above. Lenin was never an ideologist of the proletariat. From beginning to and approached soldiers for support, above all for weapons. The Bolshevik Central end he was an ideologist of the intelligentsia.” The workers in Russia in 1917 went Committee finally got round to calling for a general strike just as the already further than Lenin intended in his schema of the stages the revolution ought to go existing strike was becoming an armed uprising. By the evening of February 24th through, so he held them back. He wanted the workers to supervise the capitalists the Vyborg district of Petrograd was held by the revolutionaries: the police stations who would still run the factories -- a policy of class collaboration. But the real class were wrecked, and the police kicked out altogether; prisoners were released, and struggle was fought out with owners sabotaging the economy and workers taking contacts made with neighboring districts. The following evening the 4th company over the factories. Against the socialist aspirations of the factory committees Lenin of the Pavlovsky Regiment mutinied and opened fire on police. On the 27th workers and the Bolsheviks offered state capitalism. In destroying the factory committees the ‘visited’ all the jails in Petrograd and released political prisoners. The soldiers had Bolsheviks ended all moves to socialism; in securing their unchallenged rule, they already come over to the revolution, when a single Bolshevik organization produced had to defeat the working class completely, and that they did. The fatal failing of an appeal to the army, which didn’t even urge the soldiers to support the workers. the factory committees was that they left politics to the soviets and the Bolsheviks, The speed and success of this revolution from below took all the socialists concentrating their efforts on economics. -- who had been propagandizing for a revolution for years by surprise. “The leaders In Spring 1928 a Yugoslav railway man who’d been in Russia during were watching the movement from above; they hesitated, they lagged -- in other the revolution said “The situation today is very different from what it was in my words, they did not lead. They dragged after the movement. The nearer one comes time; the manual worker is once more caught in the trap, the bureaucrats live as the to the factories, the greater the decisiveness.” [4] Instead of talking and writing, bourgeois used to live and their wives play a corresponding part. What is needed is a the workers and soldiers just got on and did it. They started to set up their own new revolution,” A skilled worker commented: “We live worse now than at the time organizations to meet their needs. The socialists now found the workers behaving in of the capitalists. If we had to face such starvation, if our salaries had been so low ways they hadn’t expected. “The leaders of the Revolution also did not understand in the days of our old masters, we would have gone on strike a thousand times. But that, once they themselves had invited the people to take over local affairs, the what can we do now?” Finally, the comment of a textile worker, himself a foreign people, who had had enough of being led and regimented, would eagerly respond to Communist: “Never in my life have I known such slavery as there is in my factory. If the idea of self-government through soviets, of ending the fighting; they would dream such a thing existed in a bourgeois country, I would have thrown a bomb at it a long of a new life.” [5] The workers would now only accept decisions from above if they time ago !” [37] agreed with them anyway. Faced with the ‘chaos’ of workers acting for themselves, calls for ‘discipline’ resounded from the Bolshevik Stalin, from the moderate socialist Gorky and from the patriotic anarchist Prince Kropotkin.
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