Communism Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! === Revolutionary wave of 1917–1923 === {{further|Revolutions of 1917–1923}} {{multiple image | align = right | total_width = 300 | image1 = Lenin in 1920 (cropped).jpg | caption1 = [[Vladimir Lenin]], founder of the [[Soviet Union]] and the leader of the [[Bolshevik party]] | image2 = Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R15068, Leo Dawidowitsch Trotzki.jpg | caption2 = [[Leon Trotsky]], founder of the [[Red Army]] and a key figure in the [[October Revolution]] }} In 1917, the [[October Revolution]] in Russia set the conditions for the rise to state power of [[Vladimir Lenin]]'s [[Bolsheviks]], which was the first time any avowedly communist party reached that position. The revolution transferred power to the [[All-Russian Congress of Soviets]] in which the Bolsheviks had a majority.<ref>{{cite book |author1-link=Jerry F. Hough |last1=Hough |first1=Jerry F. |author2-link=Merle Fainsod |last2=Fainsod |first2=Merle |date=1979 |orig-date=1953 |title=How the Soviet Union is Governed |location=Cambridge and London |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]] |page=81 |isbn=9780674410305}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Dowlah |first1=Alex F. |last2=Elliott |first2=John E. |date=1997 |title=The Life and Times of Soviet Socialism |publisher=[[Greenwood Publishing Group|Praeger]] |page=18 |isbn=9780275956295}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |author-link=David R. Marples |last=Marples |first=David R. |date=2010 |title=Russia in the Twentieth Century: The Quest for Stability |publisher=[[Routledge]] |page=38 |isbn=9781408228227}}</ref> The event generated a great deal of practical and theoretical debate within the Marxist movement, as Marx stated that socialism and communism would be built upon foundations laid by the most advanced capitalist development; however, the [[Russian Empire]] was one of the poorest countries in Europe with an enormous, largely illiterate peasantry, and a minority of industrial workers. Marx warned against attempts "to transform my historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe into a historico-philosophy theory of the {{lang|fr|arche générale}} imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself",<ref>{{cite journal |last=Wittfogel |first=Karl A. |date=July 1960 |title=The Marxist View of Russian Society and Revolution |journal=[[World Politics]] |location=Cambridge |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |volume=12 |issue=4 |pages=487–508 |doi=10.2307/2009334 |jstor=2009334 |s2cid=155515389 |quote=Quote at p. 493.}}</ref> and stated that Russia might be able to skip the stage of bourgeois rule through the ''[[Obshchina]]''.<ref>{{cite journal |author-link=Marc Edelman |last=Edelman |first=Marc |date=December 1984 |url=https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA3537723&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=00270520&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7E484b4f63 |title=Late Marx and the Russian Road: Marx and the 'Peripheries of Capitalism' |journal=[[Monthly Review]] |volume=36 |pages=1–55 |access-date=1 August 2021 |via=Gale}}</ref>{{refn|While the [[Bolsheviks]] rested on hope of success of the 1917–1923 wave of proletarian revolutions in Western Europe before resulting in the [[socialism in one country]] policy after their failure, Marx's view on the ''mir'' was shared not by self-professed Russian Marxists, who were mechanistic [[Determinism|determinists]], but by the [[Narodniks]]<ref>{{cite book |last=Faulkner |first=Neil |year=2017 |url=https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/45628/625271.pdf |title=A People's History of the Russian Revolution |edition=hardback |location=London |publisher=[[Pluto Press]] |pages=34, 177 |isbn=9780745399041 |access-date=18 August 2021 |via=OAPEN}}</ref> and the [[Socialist Revolutionary Party]],<ref>{{cite book |last=White |first=Elizabeth |year=2010 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lA_JBQAAQBAJ |title=The Socialist Alternative to Bolshevik Russia: The Socialist Revolutionary Party, 1921–39 |edition=1st hardback |location=London |publisher=[[Routledge]] |page= |isbn=9780415435840 |access-date=18 August 2021 |via=[[Google Books]] |quote=''Narodniki'' had opposed the often mechanistic determinism of Russian Marxism with the belief that non-economic factors such as the human will act as the motor of history. The SRs believed that the creative work of ordinary people through unions and cooperatives and the local government organs of a democratic state could bring about social transformation. ... They, along with free soviets, the cooperatives and the ''mir'' could have formed the popular basis for a devolved and democratic rule across the Russian state.}}</ref> one of the successors to the Narodniks, alongside the [[Popular Socialists (Russia)|Popular Socialists]] and the [[Trudoviks]].<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |url=https://www.marxists.org/glossary/orgs/n/a.htm |title=Narodniks |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of Marxism |publisher=[[Marxists Internet Archive]] |access-date=18 August 2021}}</ref>|group=note}} The moderate [[Mensheviks]] (minority) opposed Lenin's Bolsheviks (majority) plan for [[socialist revolution]] before the [[Capitalist mode of production (Marxist theory)|capitalist mode of production]] was more fully developed. The Bolsheviks' successful rise to power was based upon the slogans such as "Peace, Bread, and Land", which tapped into the massive public desire for an end to Russian involvement in [[World War I]], the peasants' demand for [[land reform]], and popular support for the [[Soviet (council)|soviets]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Holmes |first=Leslie |title=Communism: a very short introduction |date=2009 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |isbn=978-0-19-157088-9 |location=Oxford, UK |pages=18 |oclc=500808890}}</ref> 50,000 workers had passed a resolution in favour of Bolshevik demand for transfer of power to the [[soviets]]<ref>{{cite book |last1=Head |first1=Michael |title=Evgeny Pashukanis: A Critical Reappraisal |date=12 September 2007 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-1-135-30787-5 |pages=1–288 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PYGNAgAAQBAJ&dq=october+revolution+50+000+workers&pg=PT83 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Shukman |first1=Harold |title=The Blackwell Encyclopedia of the Russian Revolution |date=5 December 1994 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |isbn=978-0-631-19525-2 |page=21 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ScabEAAAQBAJ&dq=october+revolution+50+000+workers&pg=PA21 |language=en}}</ref> Lenin's government also instituted a number of progressive measures such as [[Universal access to education|universal education]], [[universal healthcare|healthcare]] and [[Women in Russia|equal rights for women]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Adams |first1=Katherine H. |last2=Keene |first2=Michael L. |title=After the Vote Was Won: The Later Achievements of Fifteen Suffragists |date=10 January 2014 |publisher=McFarland |isbn=978-0-7864-5647-5 |page=109 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oyaxYvSG6gAC&dq=lenin+universal+literacy+after+the+vote+was+won&pg=PA109 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Ugri͡umov |first1=Aleksandr Leontʹevich |title=Lenin's Plan for Building Socialism in the USSR, 1917–1925 |date=1976 |publisher=Novosti Press Agency Publishing House |page=48 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gXknAQAAMAAJ&q=lenin+universal+literacy |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Service |first1=Robert |title=Lenin: A Political Life: Volume 1: The Strengths of Contradiction |date=24 June 1985 |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-1-349-05591-3 |page=98 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ntiuCwAAQBAJ&q=universal+education&pg=PA98 |language=en}}</ref> By November 1917, the [[Russian Provisional Government]] had been widely discredited by its failure to withdraw from World War I, implement land reform, or convene the [[Russian Constituent Assembly]] to draft a constitution, leaving the soviets in ''[[de facto]]'' control of the country. The Bolsheviks moved to hand power to the [[Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies]] in the October Revolution; after a few weeks of deliberation, the [[Left Socialist-Revolutionaries]] formed a [[coalition government]] with the Bolsheviks from November 1917 to July 1918, while the right-wing faction of the [[Socialist Revolutionary Party]] boycotted the soviets and denounced the October Revolution as an illegal [[coup]]. In the [[1917 Russian Constituent Assembly election]], socialist parties totaled well over 70% of the vote. The Bolsheviks were clear winners in the urban centres, and took around two-thirds of the votes of soldiers on the Western Front, obtaining 23.3% of the vote; the Socialist Revolutionaries finished first on the strength of support from the country's rural peasantry, who were for the most part [[Single-issue politics|single issue voters]], that issue being land reform, obtaining 37.6%, while the Ukrainian Socialist Bloc finished a distant third at 12.7%, and the Mensheviks obtained a disappointing fourth place at 3.0%.<ref name="Dando 1966">{{cite journal |last=Dando |first=William A. |date=June 1966 |title=A Map of the Election to the Russian Constituent Assembly of 1917 |journal=[[Slavic Review]] |volume=25 |issue=2 |pages=314–319 |doi=10.2307/2492782 |issn=0037-6779 |jstor=2492782 |s2cid=156132823}}</ref> Most of the Socialist Revolutionary Party's seats went to the right-wing faction. Citing outdated voter-rolls, which did not acknowledge the party split, and the assembly's conflicts with the Congress of Soviets, the Bolshevik–Left Socialist-Revolutionaries government moved to dissolve the Constituent Assembly in January 1918. The Draft Decree on the Dissolution of the Constituent Assembly was issued by the [[Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union]], a committee dominated by Lenin, who had previously supported a [[multi-party system]] of free elections. After the Bolshevik defeat, Lenin started referring to the assembly as a "deceptive form of bourgeois-democratic parliamentarianism."{{r|Dando 1966}} Some argued this was the beginning of the development of [[vanguardism]] as an hierarchical party–elite that controls society,<ref>{{cite book |last=White |first=Elizabeth |year=2010 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tFMuCgAAQBAJ |title=The Socialist Alternative to Bolshevik Russia: The Socialist Revolutionary Party, 1921–39 |edition=1st hardback |location=London |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=9780415435840 |access-date=18 August 2021 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> which resulted in a split between [[anarchism and Marxism]], and [[Leninist]] communism assuming the dominant position for most of the 20th century, excluding rival socialist currents.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Franks |first=Benjamin |date=May 2012 |title=Between Anarchism and Marxism: The Beginnings and Ends of the Schism |journal=[[Journal of Political Ideologies]] |volume=17 |issue=2 |pages=202–227 |doi=10.1080/13569317.2012.676867 |s2cid=145419232 |issn=1356-9317}}</ref> Other communists and Marxists, especially [[social democrats]] who favored the development of [[liberal democracy]] as a prerequisite to [[socialism]], were critical of the Bolsheviks from the beginning due to Russia being seen as too backward for a [[socialist revolution]].{{r|Steele 1992, pp. 44–45}} [[Council communism]] and [[left communism]], inspired by the [[German Revolution of 1918–1919]] and the wide [[proletarian revolution]]ary wave, arose in response to developments in Russia and are critical of self-declared constitutionally [[socialist state]]s. Some left-wing parties, such as the [[Socialist Party of Great Britain]], boasted of having called the Bolsheviks, and by extension those [[Communist state]]s which either followed or were inspired by the Soviet Bolshevik model of development, establishing [[state capitalism]] in late 1917, as would be described during the 20th century by several academics, economists, and other scholars,{{r|Chomsky, Howard, Fitzgibbons}} or a [[command economy]].<ref name="The Soviet Union Has an Administered, Not a Planned, Economy, 1985">{{cite journal |last=Wilhelm |first=John Howard |year=1985 |title=The Soviet Union Has an Administered, Not a Planned, Economy |journal=[[Europe-Asia Studies|Soviet Studies]] |volume=37 |issue=1 |pages=118–30 |doi=10.1080/09668138508411571}}</ref><ref name="Gregory 2004">{{cite book |last=Gregory |first=Paul Roderick |author-link=Paul Roderick Gregory |url=https://www.hoover.org/press-releases/political-economy-stalinism |title=The Political Economy of Stalinism |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-511-61585-6 |location=Cambridge |doi=10.1017/CBO9780511615856 |quote='Although Stalin was the system's prime architect, the system was managed by thousands of 'Stalins' in a nested dictatorship,' Gregory writes. 'This study pinpoints the reasons for the failure of the system—poor planning, unreliable supplies, the preferential treatment of indigenous enterprises, the lack of knowledge of planners, etc.—but also focuses on the basic principal agent conflict between planners and producers, which created a sixty-year reform stalemate.' |postscript=. Quote is from Hoover Institution's press release about the book |access-date=12 August 2021 |via=[[Hoover Institution]]}}</ref><ref name="Ellman 2007">{{cite book |last=Ellman |first=Michael |author-link=Michael Ellman |title=Transition and Beyond: Essays in Honour of Mario Nuti |publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]] |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-230-54697-4 |editor1-last=Estrin |editor1-first=Saul |location=London |page=22 |chapter=The Rise and Fall of Socialist Planning |quote=In the USSR in the late 1980s the system was normally referred to as the 'administrative-command' economy. What was fundamental to this system was not the plan but the role of administrative hierarchies at all levels of decision making; the absence of control over decision making by the population ... . |editor2-last=Kołodko |editor2-first=Grzegorz W. |editor2-link=Grzegorz Kołodko |editor3-last=Uvalić |editor3-first=Milica}}</ref> Before the Soviet path of development became known as ''socialism'', in reference to the [[two-stage theory]], communists made no major distinction between the [[socialist mode of production]] and communism;{{r|Hudis et al. 2018}} it is consistent with, and helped to inform, early concepts of socialism in which the [[law of value]] no longer directs economic activity. Monetary relations in the form of [[Exchange value|exchange-value]], [[Profit (economics)|profit]], [[interest]], and [[Wage labour|wage labor]] would not operate and apply to Marxist socialism.{{r|Bockman 2011, p. 20}} While [[Joseph Stalin]] stated that the law of value would still apply to socialism and that the Soviet Union was ''socialist'' under this new definition, which was followed by other Communist leaders, many other communists maintain the original definition and state that Communist states never established socialism in this sense. Lenin described his policies as state capitalism but saw them as necessary for the development of socialism, which left-wing critics say was never established, while some [[Marxist–Leninists]] state that it was established only during the [[Stalin era]] and [[Mao era]], and then became capitalist states ruled by ''[[Revisionism (Marxism)|revisionists]]''; others state that Maoist China was always state capitalist, and uphold [[People's Socialist Republic of Albania]] as the only [[socialist state]] after the Soviet Union under Stalin,<ref name="Bland 1995">{{cite journal |last=Bland |first=Bill |date=1995 |orig-date=1980 |url=https://revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/BlandRestoration.pdf |title=The Restoration of Capitalism in the Soviet Union |journal=Revolutionary Democracy Journal |access-date=16 February 2020}}</ref><ref name="Bland 1997">{{cite book |last=Bland |first=Bill |date=1997 |url=http://ml-review.ca/aml/China/historymaotable.html |title=Class Struggles in China |edition=revised |location=London |access-date=16 February 2020}}</ref> who first stated to have achieved ''socialism'' with the [[1936 Constitution of the Soviet Union]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Smith |first=S. A. |year=2014 |title=The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |page=126 |isbn=9780191667527 |quote=The 1936 Constitution described the Soviet Union for the first time as a 'socialist society', rhetorically fulfilling the aim of building socialism in one country, as Stalin had promised.}}</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page