The ‘Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry’

The previous lesson explained how Lenin was at first on his own amongst the Bolshevik leadership in trying to redirect his Party towards a policy of building for socialist revolution. Part of the reason for this was due to sections of the Bolshevik leadership clinging on to Lenin’s earlier formulation of the need to build a “Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry” – as first discussed in Lesson Three.

The Party had always argued that only the unity of these two classes could guarantee that the bourgeois revolution would sweep away the old feudal refuse of monarchy and landlords. In the words of one of the older leaders, Olminsky: “The coming revolution must be only a bourgeois revolution. That was an obligatory premise for every member of the party, its continual and unchanging slogan right up to the February revolution of 1917, and even some time after.” [Chapter Sixteen of Trotsky’s ‘History of the Russian Revolution’ ²⁵ ]

This is why Lenin’s opponents argued that, since the bourgeois tasks such as the confiscation of the landed estates had not yet been carried out, there was no place for talk of socialism, or a Paris Commune-style proletarian state power. As the old worker-Bolshevik Tomsky argued: “The democratic dictatorship is our foundation stone. We ought to organise the power of the proletariat and the peasants, and we ought to distinguish this from the Commune, since that means the power of the proletariat alone.” [Chapter Sixteen ²⁵ ]

Lenin countered these arguments in his ‘Letters on Tactics’. Quoting Engels, he pointed out: “Our theory is not a dogma, but a guide to action”. Lenin explained how Marx and Engels had always ridiculed the “mere memorising and repetition of ‘formulas’, that at best are capable only of marking out general tasks”, when these can only offer general outlines that have to be “modifiable by the concrete economic and political conditions of each particular period”. Lenin pointed out bluntly that his old formula was “already antiquated”. It now needed to be modified in the light of actual events. [Lenin, Letters on Tactics ²⁸]

A new situation had arisen where “reality shows us both the passing of power into the hands of the bourgeoisie (a ‘completed’ bourgeois-democratic revolution of the usual type) and, side by side with the real government, the existence of a parallel government which represents the ‘revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry’. This ‘second government’ has itself ceded the power to the bourgeoisie.” [Lenin, Letters on Tactics ²⁸]

In a direct response to Kamenev's criticism in Pravda, Lenin asked: “Is this reality covered by Comrade Kamenev's old-Bolshevik formula ...? It is not. The formula is obsolete. It is no good at all.” He added: “A new and different task now faces us: to affect a split within this dictatorship between the proletarian elements ... and the small-proprietor or petty-bourgeois elements. The person who now speaks only of a 'revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry’ is behind the times, consequently, he has in effect gone over to the petty-bourgeoisie against the proletarian class struggle.” [Lenin, Letters on Tactics ²⁸]

In other words, whereas Lenin’s old formula in the past correctly explained the need for the workers and peasants to rely on their own forces, clinging to it now meant supporting the very bourgeois power that was incapable of carrying out the tasks of the bourgeois revolution.

Lenin knew full well that the bourgeois tasks of the revolution had not yet been carried out but understood that Soviet activity could carry out these tasks far more effectively than any parliamentary republic. Furthermore, the Soviets were exactly the essence of the Paris Commune type state, relying on the masses’ own participation in decision-making and with no army standing apart from the people. Therefore, although not calling for ‘immediate’ socialism as Kamenev was alleging in Pravda, Lenin saw that the soviets, once freed from the influence of the Compromisers, could begin to take steps towards a socialist society.

Finally, in answer to those Bolshevik leaders like Rykov who argued that the socialist revolution must begin in the industrialised West before backward Russia could begin to move towards socialism, Lenin replied: “You cannot say who will start and who will finish.” [Chapter Sixteen ²⁵ ]

Trotsky also adds that Lenin had written in his ‘Farewell Letter to the Swiss Workers’, confident in particular in spurring on the German workers: “‘Here [in Russia] socialism cannot immediately conquer but ... our revolution [can be] a prologue to the worldwide socialist revolution'. In this sense Lenin first wrote that the Russian proletariat will begin the socialist revolution.” This perspective of the international socialist revolution being sparked off by the movement of the Russian workers and peasants was, as Trotsky says: “The connecting link between the old position of Bolshevism, which limited the revolution to democratic aims, and the new.” [Chapter Sixteen ²⁵ ]

Lenin now saw that the only way forward was, in Trotsky's words: “The preparation of a union of the workers and peasants under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party - that is, the dictatorship of the proletariat.” Lenin was, in effect, taking up the idea that Trotsky had put forward in theory of ‘Permanent Revolution’, “the idea that the Russian proletariat might win the power in advance of the Western proletariat, and that in that case it could not confine itself within the limits of the democratic dictatorship, but would be compelled to undertake the initial socialist measures. It is not surprising, then, that the April Theses of Lenin were condemned as Trotskyist.” [Chapter Sixteen ²⁵]

Divisions within the peasantry

Trotsky explains how Lenin was concerned that some of the Bolshevik leadership might be underestimating the ability of the peasantry to act as an independent force - not as a socialist ally of the workers, but as an obstacle to them. At the Bolshevik Party Conference at the end of April, Lenin warned that: “It is not permissible for a proletarian party to rest its hopes at this time on a community of interest with the peasantry. We are struggling to bring the peasantry over to our side, but they now stand - to a certain degree consciously - on the side of the capitalists. … To try and attract the peasant now means to throw ourselves on the mercy of Miliukov.” [Chapter Twenty of Trotsky’s ‘History of the Russian Revolution’ ²⁹ ]

At the same time Lenin advised careful attention to the agrarian question, urging the Bolsheviks to propose that the peasants should rely on their own initiative to seize the land, putting it under the control of the Peasants’ Soviets, instead of waiting for the Constituent Assembly, as the ‘Compromisers’ directed. This should be an ordered takeover that would actually then help increase food production for the workers and soldiers, not hinder it.

Lenin was at pains to point out that his policy was not to ignore the peasant movement, not to argue for some kind of proletarian ‘coup’, but to patiently win over the soviet majority, in which indeed the peasantry dominated through its soldier delegates. However, the idea running throughout Lenin’s thinking was that the workers must not rely on the whole peasantry, as this could lead to the revolution being held back in fear of alienating the wealthier elements. Instead, the aim had to be to split the semi-proletarian labourers and poor peasants away from the more capitalist layer.

As Lenin wrote in April: “We cannot confine ourselves to the general Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies alone, for the wealthy peasants are also capitalists and are always liable to wrong or cheat the agricultural labourers, day-labourers and poor peasants. Therefore, separate organisations for these groups of the rural population must be set up immediately both within the Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies and as separate Soviets of Deputies from the agricultural labourers” [Lenin, ‘Political Parties in Russia and the Tasks of the Proletariat’. ³⁰]

In fact, as we shall see in upcoming lessons, the agrarian revolution did indeed develop but with the antagonisms within the peasantry themselves being far less significant than the antagonism between the peasantry as a whole and the landowners. Therefore: “The soviets of farm-hand deputies attained significance only in a few localities. The land committees ... became the instruments of the whole peasantry, who with their heavy-handed pressure converted them from chambers of conciliation into weapons of agrarian revolution.” [Chapter Twenty ²⁹ ]

Trotsky in agreement with Lenin

From now on, Lenin and Trotsky put forward essentially the same perspective for the revolution, if one which really confirmed Trotsky's original idea of ‘Permanent Revolution’ [see Lesson Three]. In truth, even beforehand, the differences between their two approaches had never been as great as the Stalinists later tried to make out.

Trotsky himself was unable to take part in the debate within the Bolsheviks in April since he did not reach Petrograd until May 4^th, after the British Naval Police had prevented him from travelling earlier on a ship from Canada. Nevertheless, the similarity of his analysis with Lenin’s is clear in the articles Trotsky was writing at the time for ‘Novy Mir’, a Russian daily paper in New York.

As early as March 6^th, Trotsky had written: “An open conflict between the forces of revolution at whose head stands the city proletariat, and the anti-revolutionary liberal bourgeoisie temporarily in power, is absolutely inevitable ... the revolutionary proletariat ought to oppose its revolutionary institutions, the soviets of workers’, soldiers' and peasants’ deputies, to the executive institutions of the Provisional Government. In this struggle the proletariat, uniting around itself the rising popular masses, ought to make its direct goal the conquest of power. Only a revolutionary workers’ government will have the will and ability, even during the preparation for a Constituent Assembly, to carry out a radical democratic clean-up throughout the country, reconstruct the army from top to bottom, convert it into a revolutionary militia and demonstrate in action to the lower ranks of the peasants that their salvation lies only in supporting a revolutionary workers’ regime.” [Appendix II to Volume One of Trotsky’s ‘History of the Russian Revolution’ ³¹ ]

Trotsky continued on March 8: “The agrarian question will drive a deep wedge into the present aristocratic bourgeois social-patriotic bloc. What personal choice Kerensky makes will make no difference. It is another matter with the peasant mass, the rural lower ranks. To bring them over to the side of the proletariat is the most urgent unpostponable task. It would be a crime to try to accomplish this task by adapting our policy to the national-patriotic limitedness of the village: the Russian worker would commit suicide if he paid for his union with the peasant at the price of a breaking of his ties with the European proletariat. But there is no political need for this …” [Appendix II to Volume One ³¹ ]

Demonstrating his confidence in the leading role of the working-class, Trotsky sums up the post-revolutionary situation as follows: “The peasantry always has two faces, one turned towards the proletariat, the other toward the bourgeoisie. But the intermediary, compromising position of ‘peasant’ parties like the SRs, can be maintained only in conditions of comparative political stagnation; in a revolutionary epoch the moment inevitably comes when the petty bourgeoisie is compelled to choose. The SRs and Mensheviks made their choice from the first moment. They destroyed the ‘democratic dictatorship’ in embryo, in order to prevent it from becoming a bridge to the dictatorship of the proletariat. But they thus opened a road to the latter - only a different road, not through them, but against them. The further development of the revolution must obviously proceed from new facts, not old schemas. Through their representatives the masses were drawn, partly against their will ... into the mechanics of the two- power regime. They now had to pass through this in order to learn by experience that it could not give them either peace or land. … But it is quite evident that a political turning of the workers and soldiers toward the Bolsheviks, having knocked over the whole two-power construction, could now no longer mean anything but the establishment of a dictatorship resting upon a union of the workers and peasants. In case the popular mass had been defeated, only a military dictatorship of capital could have risen on the ruins of the Bolshevik party. ‘The democratic dictatorship’ was impossible in either case. In looking towards it, the Bolsheviks had actually to turn their faces towards a phantom of the past. It was in this position that Lenin found them when he arrived with his inflexible determination to bring the party out on a new road.” [Chapter Sixteen ²⁵]