In this centenary year of the Russian Revolution (there were actually two of them—the February Revolution and the October Revolution) much is being written about it. The New York Times, following in a long-standing American tradition, cf. Ten Days That Shook the World and the movie inspired by it, Reds, is romanticizing it. In his article at The Week Ryan Cooper probes into a lot of the political machinations and minutiae of the Russian Revolution in an exploration of how the revolution went wrong:
But it is simply not the case that Marxism — an arid and over-elaborate doctrine, very interesting in some ways and clearly mistaken in others — is some turn-crank formula for purges and dictatorship. All the European labor parties were officially Marxist for decades, which led only to generous welfare states and some experimentation with government-owned industry. The Nordic countries became the most decent nations that have ever existed through policies that have direct roots in an early 20th century socialist movement that was fervently Marxist.
So if Marxism didn’t doom the Russian revolution, what did?
The obvious culprit is the incomprehensible chaos and brutality of its circumstances. Immediately before the revolution, something like three million Russians had died in the First World War. The rapid collapse of Tsarism and the Provisional Government empowered the most hardline and radical factions on all sides. Immediately after the revolution, the Bolsheviks had to fight a civil war against virtually every other faction in Russia, many of them murderous reactionaries armed by Western powers. Winning required yet more brutal tactics and fighting, killing roughly 10 million more people in the process. It’s at that point when truly awful authoritarianism started to set in.
Make no mistake: the revolution was a colossal failure. Regardless of the dreamy suppositions of its supporters, particularly here in the United States, it did not usher in a workers’ paradise. It resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of Russians and stunted Russia’s economic, political, and social development for most of the last century.
What doomed the revolution was the revolution. Although they may carry the guns and wave the pitchforks, revolutions are not started or won by peasants and workers. They are always internecine warfare, pitting one group of elites against another. That has been true of every revolution from the Glorious Revolution 400 years ago to the American, French, and Russian Revolutions, Mao’s Long March, and the Cuban Revolution of 60 years ago.
William of Orange, George Washington, Marat and Robespierre, Lenin, Mao, and Castro were neither workers nor peasants.
Russia had no group of even more or less benign but decisive liberal democrats waiting in the wings to assume power. They had the corrupt, brutal aristocracy or the corrupt, brutal intelligentsia.
In the case of the Russian Revolution a group of intellectuals led by Lenin replaced the Tsarist aristocracy. The mechanics of the revolution and human nature ensured its failure.
Were the European labor parties Marxist during the period of their greatest successes though? My general sense is that they were Marxist when acting as opposition to the government, and they had abandoned Marx by the time they had a chance to govern. With Keynes influence most became pro-capitalist.
Was Bismarck a Marxist?
Sweden would be even better if only they had wiped out their Kulaks.
Normal human beings reject Marxism (communism). Few people get excited about having the crappiest stuff and no chance of getting anything better. Newsflash: Poor people want to get out of poverty not increase the number of poor people.
Marxism can only be implemented by force, and normal human beings do not desire to oppress their fellow humans. The socio/psychopaths are left to implement the totalitarian regime. In totalitarian regimes, force is the ‘coin of the realm’, and the most forceful wins.
When socio/psychopaths compete, there is no limit to their craziness, and there is always another socio/psychopath who will happily advance the craziness to a higher level.
As such, Marxist regimes are necessarily run by mass murders, and reality has proven this. The violent repressive regimes of Russia, China, Venezuela, etc. are not unfortunate accidents. They are the expected result of a totalitarian ideology.
I remember being struck by my world history teacher remark that almost all revolutions fail in their goals and end in a bloody mess – with a couple of exceptions; the American one and I forget… maybe 1989 or Englands Glorious revolution.
He wasn’t American and not reflexively pro-American, so the message stuck.
Abruptly collapsing the existing order rarely encourages positive change.
I wonder how Russians think about it – with communism dead but liberal democracy of the Yeltsin era discredited as well.
Typically, the American Revolutionary War is characterized as a “conservative” revolution, i.e. it wasn’t promoted by radicals pursuing some utopian goal but by people who were just trying to hold onto the rights they thought they’d had all along. I think that’s only part right. I think the major difference was that the Americans who led the rebellion were liberal democrats who by and large didn’t seek power. Washington is obvious but that’s true of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe as well.
After his presidency John Adams retired from public life entirely to Peacefield, the 40 acre farm he’d bought while in France, and spent his time writing and, presumably, farming.
Some time back, Professor Taylor at OTB had a good post on revolution vs overthrow. A revolution replaces the type of government, and an overthrow replaces the people in power. (It may not be overthrow.)
The American Revolution did not replace the type of government. (Most of the governing bodies remained. The monarchy was not a big factor in the US.) The French revolution did replace the type of government. I believe he placed India into the overthrow column.
(I have most likely mangled much of his post. It was much longer and far more detailed.)