Parvus, Luxemburg and Kautsky on the 1905 Russian Revolution: The Relationship with Trotsky

by NICHOLAS S. WEBER

Leon Trotsky’s stature and importance, both as political actor and theoretician, in the Russian Revolution of 1905 is, except among Soviet analysts, beyond dispute. His celebrated theory of the ‘permanent’ or ‘uninterrupted’ revolution has been given its due. Less attention has been paid, however, to the problem of sources, though the in- fluence of Parvus has been understood, and the content of his thought discussed. When Alexander Helphand-Parvus appeared in Russia on the eve of her revolution, he was already thought of as Trotsky’s mentor and senior partner, and the theoretical model that evolved from their joint work has customarily been called the Trotsky- Parvus theory, or even the Parvus-Trotsky theory. This article is an attempt to reex- amine Parvus’ ideas, to reappraise his contribution to Russian revolutionary thought, and to suggest the precise places he specifically may have influenced his pupil. More than this, I would like to subject to extensive analysis certain materials from the writings of Karl Kautsky (who in 1905 was acknowledged as the German authority on Russia) and Rosa Luxemburg (who was certainly very close to Trotsky spiritually and emotionally as the leader of the Left in both the German and the Polish social democracies). If a collaboration of ideas is part of the Trotsky story in 1905, in some sense Kautsky and Luxemburg are very important.

Parvus

The victorious revolution will make that class which has been the main carrier of it, in time, the ruler of the government. Of course, we in the Russian Revolution act only to prepare the political rule of the bourgeoisie .... But from this it doesn’t follow that having conquered state power, we will concede it to our class enemies with a fight.

Parvus’

The discussion of Parvus relies on several articles from the Russian language news- paper Iskra, and two pamphlets.2 The burden of his writings attempts to demonstrate that, owing to the failure of Russian liberalism, Russia’s proletariat will have to lead the Russian bourgeois revolution and perhaps even carry it directly to a successful conclusion. Isaac Deutscher has commented on two principal ideas in the writing of Parvus which influenced T r o t ~ k y . ~ On the primary level was the theory of the Russian state as an ‘oriental despotism’ subjected to unrelenting pressure from the advanced

I . fskru, no. 112 (last issue), 1905. 2. The pamphlets form the preface to L.D. Trotsky, Do devyutugo yunvuryu (Petersburg, 1906). The

Trotsky work itself appears in the Sochineniyu (Moscow, 1925-27), pp. 50ff, and the Bez tsaryu. a pruvitel’stvo ruborheye, no. inf.

3. Isaac Deutscher, The Prophef Armed (New York, 1954), pp. 103-7.

40 Nicholas S. Weber

technological civilizations to the west. This theory was the groundwork for Parvus’ commitment to the doctrine of proletarian hegemony in the bourgeois revolutionP On a secondary level, Parvus analyzed the international relations of the modern world from, what was at the time, a specifically socialist point of view. Parvus spotted something that was not so self-evident two generations ago. The contemporary economic system, forged by the industrial and technological progress of the scientific age, was binding the world together in a network of interdependent relations, while the state units themselves were increasing in number and virulence. The resulting con- tradiction would ultimately explode the entire world economic system as the new capitalist giants attended to the business of war, armed, as they were, with almost un- limited destructive power. The contradiction could be resolved and the world spared the resulting war only via a Marxist revolution on a universal scale. The Neo-Marxist theory of imperialism would be put to good use by Parvus.

Parvus’ formulations were especially well-focused, and the intensity of his prophesies, as well as the vividness of his images, certainly influenced his pupil. That Parvus predicted the Russo-Japanese War only increased his reputation in the Rus- sian Marxist camp.

In his theory of the Russian state, he described that nation as an oriental despotism surrounded by a Chinese wall, an image already used by Plekhanov. The autocracy had hopes to force an opening in that wall, and it assumed that it could control the nature of the traffic through the open door.S Foreign technology and international in- vestment, for its industry, were needed to facilitate the process of partial and control- led modernization. Even if these limited aims could be effected, they could not be car- ried through to a successful conclusion without undermining the tsarist system itself. Modern technology and the old order, occidental influences and an Asiatic system would never function properly and harmoniously. Russian Westernization, further- more, could not stop half-way. To solve the basic pattern of contradictions, Russia would have to completely reconstitute her existence. This course was now, in effect, completely predetermined.

Russia had, since Peter the Great, been engaged in this attempt to modernize, to catch up with the advanced civilizations that flanked her. I t was a colossal problem, but Russia possessed a distinct advantage, her backwardness, and, especially her un- conquerable size. Her vast undeveloped spaces were able to drive Napoleon to defeat. The Crimean War changed everything. A Europe now industrialized was able to con- clusively demonstrate the inner weakness of both the government and society of tsarist Russia, even after 150 years of revolution ‘from the top’. The tsar understood and in- stituted the great reform, a massive change in the military and economic system to en- sure tsarist Russia’s ability to survive in the ‘modern’ technological world. The programme really required totalitarian energies and complete commitment. Both were lacking. The whole legacy of Russian history now weighed ponderously on her present state and her backwardness had become suicidal. That same backwardness, however, would compel Russia’s new proletariat to become the instrument of Russia’s redemption, indeed the only instrument, for Russia’s backwardness had cut the ground out from under the feet of her bourgeoisie.

4. The argument from ‘oriental despotism’ might have been picked up by Parvus from several sources available to him-from Plekhanov or from Marx himself. On the other hand, he might have been reading several non-Marxist historians such as Paul Miliukov, whose works were well-known at the beginning of the century. Trotsky later read these and admitted that Parvus had guided him in his own researches.

5. Iskru, no. 61. 5 March 1904. Parvus’ important series of articles, Voina i revoiyutsiyu, began appearing i n the no 59 issue in February 1904. I t continued to appear for approximately one year, in nos. 61.62.79, 82, and 85. The last, ‘Balances and Prospects’, was dated 27 January 1905.

Pawus, Luxemburg and Kautsky on the 1905 Russiati Revolution 41

Modern capitalism, especially in the period after 1850, had become reactionary in general. Capitalism, Parvus stated,6 could no longer topple thrones, but would act to stabilize them. Russian capitalism was different; it had not become backward or reac- tionary. I t was reactionary from the beginning and even more reactionary in the mid- dle of the nineteenth century. This, in turn, was because of the combined pressures of the proletariat searching for economic justice-in the factories that the state forced on society-and that special burden of Russian history. Russia had no developed and dynamic middle class. Even if the Russian government wished to stake all on a capitalist reconstruction of society, it could not succeed because the bourgeoisie, the necessary partner, was not up to the task. If ever the Marxist belief was true, that capitalism could only succeed by destroying or transcending itself, it was here in Rus- sia.

I n the course of his analysis, Parvus developed these themes. The Russian state, he alleged, was mortgaged up to the hilt on foreign monies and investments in her business ventures, especially railroads. The declining capitalism of the West had become the bulwark of the existing imperial ediface. To the east, the younger and more dynamic capitalism of Japan was preparing to take the offensive.

In the next article of the series, Parvus asserted’ that a liberal-parliamentarian regeneration of Russia might have been possible, though far from likely, earlier. Had the government in 1861 forced a constitution on Russia, granted real civil liberties, abandoned the aristocracy, and solicited the development of a responsible middle class system, things might have worked out differently. The government was, however, not interested in such (revolutionary) reform. Under these conditions, could an immature and weak bourgeoisie have the will to compel the government to do what it had elected not to do? Now, at the beginning of the twentieth century, Russia was becoming industrialized. Could the middle class be willing to act resolutely when a disgruntled proletariat was already applying pressure on it?*

Furthermore, the half-heartedness of the 1861 reform failed to provide Russia with the possibility of a Western-style capitalist development under the hegemony of a strong and independent bourgeoisie. In order then to fully liquidate the old economic system, the tsarist government had to be liquidated as well. And i f the middle classes were too weak and degenerate to act, the new proletariat, of necessity, had to become master of the situation. Russia’s proletariat, Parvus believed, had already developed a class-consciousness that was greater than in the case of the Western working classes. Russian development had to be telescoped by Western standards. Her failure in I86 I meant that Russia’s future had to be, even temporarily, in the hands of her proletariat, rather than with the bourgeoisie.q

I n the preface to the Trotsky article, written during the early months ot’ 1905, Parvus elaborated on his analysis of the shortcomings of Russian liberalism, and why this meant that the Russian proletariat, alone, possessed the key to Russia’s future. Here, he emphasized that during the precapitalist period, Russia’s cities had developed in the Chinese style @o-kitaiskorny obraztsu) without concrete political significance. This was a basic departure from the experience of Western Europe. Trading did not bring, along with it, power; the tsar was not dependent on his traders. A kind of capitalist bourgeoisie had, indeed, developed, during this early period, and afterwards, comprising the industrialists, magnates, and their intellectual ‘lackeys’. Such a group was not expected to be genuinely revolutionary. N o intermediary class

6 . (bid. 7. Iskra, no. 62. 8. Ibid. In no. 59 he had already said that ‘the more the proletariat enters into the political life of a country,

9. Ibid. the more reactionary becomes the bourgeoisie.’

42 Nicholas S. Weber

had really developed as Russia had not produced a real petty bourgeois strata. I n Europe, i t was just this group which provided the soil for political democracy, classical liberalism, revolution. I f a petty bourgeoisie existed in Russia, it was located in the countryside-a perspective on things that Lenin shared. Rural discontent had reached colossal proportions, and it would be assumed that the proletariat would manipulate it, drawing the peasantry to its side. Parvus did not believe that rural discontent would rebound to the advantage of the struggling, infinitely weaker and almost non-existent city petty bourgeois. The agrarian revolution was a fact, and leadership of that revolu- tion had to be provided by the only class that could function in a consistently revolutionary manner, the proletariat.

He defined the revolution that Russia was entering into as bourgeois-democratic. From this it followed that the function of the proletariat would be to attempt to en- courage the development of a revolutionary petty bourgeoisie in the cities, and then to push this group, and thus the revolution, as far to the Left as possible. (There is cer- tainly nothing in this perspective that is different from what was the emerging Manshevik position from 1905.) At the same time, the task of the Russian workers in- volved something more:

The proletariat creates the Russian revolution, unites around it the people and society, but does not dissolve its own class interests in the common revolutionary front but raises its own program of Social Democracy. We must stand at the head of the revolution and be more revolutionary than the others.1”

The revolutionary turning point in Russia can only be accomplished by the worker. The Revolutionary Provisional Government will be a government of worker’s democracy. If the Social Democrats will stand at the head of the Rus- sian Revolution, then the government will be a Social Democratic one.”

This would appear to be the very first time that anyone in Russia suggested that a bourgeois-democratic revolution (under the hegemony of the proletariat) could end with a social democratic government. One is reminded of the famous title to his other principal pamphlet, Without a Tsar, but (with) a Worker’s Governmenf, in which Parvus wrote that ‘in the struggle against absolutism, the workers would stand alone, and perhaps ... ’

Several months later, in October,I2 Parvus reiterated this seemingly radical prognosis, that the class which had been the main carrier of the revolution would become the ruler of Russia. Here, he added ‘in time’, as the apparent failure of 1905 compelled him to recast his theory so that it could function as prophesy, as a predic- tion for the next revolution.

Parvus accepted as dogma the proposition that the revolution was bourgeois, and that the proletariat must act in conformity with the inner logic of such a revolution. Perhaps, then, the workers would have to seize power, and even attempt to prolong its rule under adverse circumstances, hoping, of course, to bring the moment of the socialist stage of the revolution closer.” Like the Mensheviks of the period, he did not solicit such a development, but, at the same time, he repeatedly reminded his readers that the proletariat must not recoil from its tasks, now or in the future. Under no con- ditions should it be restrained by the leadership of the party (Menshevik?) and concede

Then, with a radical thrusting at possibility:

10. Parvus. preface, Do devyarago yanvarya, p. ix I I . Ibid. 12. See the citation that introduces this section. 13. Iskra, no. 112.

Parvus, Luxemburg and Kautsky on the 1905 Russian Revolutiori 43

political power to the bourgeoisie-or, at least, not without a complete fight. Any other course would be defeatisrn.l4

The concluding sections of the preface contain a declaration of faith in proletarian ‘possibility’, with some uncertainity as to how possible the possible was. Generally, Parvus was ambivalent as to the definition of the outer limits of the bourgeois revolu- tion. Nor was he clear as to whether the conquest of power by the workers during the course of such a revolution was the road to democracy or the road to socialism. In the preface the first meaning seems to be what he believed possible:

The workers’ government could not carry out the socialist transformation, but the very process of liquidating the Autocracy would seed the soil for necessary political work, and the Social Democratic government would d o better than any other in completing the tasks of the revolution . . .. Having begun the revolution . . . on it would rest the burden for its development and success.’5

His sense of the dynamics of the revolution is also revealed in his article in I s k m , no. 85:

The workers struggle against the political oppression by the capitalist class, but the workers are without rights-in Russia, they remain political slaves. They, therefore, demand political liberties in order to be in a position to fight for economic liberation. But, in fighting for political rights, it fights for liberty in general, and is in that struggle the representative of the whole people. The proletariat is the fighting force and the leading center of the revolution. I f the government is to yield, this will be achieved by the masses themselves. The revolution will then pass to the countryside ...

From the above, it would appear as if Parvus believed that the peasant revolution would only occur somewhat late in the process of the urban revolution. This would seem consistent with his general belief that the peasant could only follow the leadership provided by the proletariat. The real function of the peasant in the revolu- tion would be to ‘exaggerate the anarchy and thus weaken the government’.16 A pea- sant army could be organized by the proletariat, and act under its leadership, but, in the final analysis, the proletariat, in effect, would have to act alone.’’ At sometime in the future, the peasantry as a class would drop out of the revolution, leaving the burden of consolidation to the proletariat. A t this point, international aid would have to succour Russia’s proletariat.’*

I n f skra , no. 112, Parvus amplified on the problem of the international revolution. It is difficult to say whether he was over-reacting to the defeat of the revolution indhis prognosis. Here, he categorically insisted that socialism was impossible in Russia short of a socialist revolution in Europe, but he did not deny the possibility of a proletarian seizure of power in Russia, even in the absence of such a revolution in the West. Yet, at the same time, he also pointed out that ‘everything depends on the vic- tory of the Western Revolution and the action of the proletariat in it.”q ‘Everything’ is perhaps not what he meant; he probably meant ‘everything ultimately’. In the last analysis the Russian Revolution would have to merge with an international p;oletarian upheaval against capitalism if the Russian Revolution were ever to move beyond the limits of the bourgeois-democratic tasks of Russia’s revolution. It is doubtful that Parvus believed that the bourgeois revolution itself, or proletarian ac-

14. Parvus, Do deryatago yanvarya, p. X.

15. Ibid., p. ix. 16. Ibid., p. x. 17. iskra, no. 82. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid.

44 Nicholas S. Weber

tivity within the revolution, depended on an iaternational upheaval. The fall of ab- solutism at the least, was inevitable even if this had not occurred in the 1905 bourgeois revolution that was about to be concluded.

The final paragraph of the entire War and Revolution series expressed the totality of Parvus’ vision concerning the balances and prospects of the Russian Revolution:

We expect that on the given road that we have been attempting to explain, the working class of Russia will make the best use of the struggle in their interestc against the Autocracy and for the attaining of political power. But, according tc our calculations, we can predict even more. The world processes of capitalist development lead to a political upheaval in Russia, and this process cannot but reverberate on the political development of all countries. The Russian Revolu- tion will shake to the roots the political foundations of the bour eois world, and

thus led to formulate the perspectives of international socialism.2o

the Russian proletariat may well pla the role of the avant-guar d of the Socialist Revolution . . .. Following the strugg 7 e of the proletariat in Russia, we have been

The most striking part of this vision is undoubtedly Parvus’ sense of the revolution passing out of Europe into Russia, in light of previous capitalist development in that quarter, and then reverberating back on Europe, with Russia’s proletariat playing the avant-guard during the last stages of the process. These sentiments were not that original, seeming to re-echo what Engels had earlier suspected might happen.

Luxemburg

By content and form, this revolution is of a new type. Bourgeois-democratic in form, proletarian in reality, and in content and method, a transitional, form between the bourgeois revolutions of the past and the proletarian revolution of the future.

Luxemburg2’

Another radical perspective on the possibilities for a Russian revolution was expres- sed in the work of Rosa Luxemburg. Her 1918 brochure, unfortunately remembered only for its attack on the totalitarian features of Bolshevism, contains several impor- tant ideas which summarize her attitudes from the period of the first revolution. She defined the Russian Revolution as being the product of international developments plus the agrarian question. She insisted that the problems posed by the revolution codd not be.solved within the limits of bourgeois society.22 In one sense, there is a truism here; total emancipation could only come with socialism. But something more was implied. The bourgeois revolution itself had to move beyond the limits of bourgeois society to save itself.

Her polemic in this brochure was directed, in the main, against the Kautsky wing of the German party. Whatever else German social democracy might have been guilty of in her eyes, Luxemburg attacked it for echoing the old Menshevik programme of 1905. This programme, in the final analysis, insisted that the social democracy had to retreat, avoid seizing power even if the course of the revolution presented no alter- native to the proletariat because the ‘abstract requirements’ of a bourgeois revolution demanded that power go to the bourgeoisie. (Actually, the majoritarian socialist in Germany was far less radical than were the Russian Mensheviks in 1905 which sug- gests that her comparison was not really accurate.) Looking at Russia in 1918, and

20. Ibid. Deutscher, in The Prophet Armed, p. 104, cites this text in part and mentions Trotsky’s debt to it. 21. Rosa Luxemburg, ‘Russkaya revolyutsiya’, 1649, 1789, 1905 (Petersburg, 1906), p. 24. 22. Rosa Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution and Leninism or Marxism?, with an introduction by

B.D.Wolfe (Ann Arbor, 1961), p. 27.

Farvus, Luxemburg and Kautsk? on the 1905 Russian Revolution 45

suppressing the gnawing feeling that the logic of events in the Russian Revolution might produce a distorted type of society-the results of Russia’s misfortunes and her backwardness-Luxemburg predicted the necessity of a radical solution to Russia’s problems.

She pointed out, during the course of her analysis of Russia’s agrarian problem, that the Russian Revolution would see the telescoping of whole stages of revolutionary development into brief months, or even weeks:

The sweeping march of events leaped in days and hours over distances that formerly, in France, took decades to traverse. In this it became clear that Russia was realizing the result of a century of European development, and above all, that the 1917 revolution was a direct continuation of that from 1905 to 1907.23

Revolutions acquire their own momentum, and could not then be stopped, arbitrarily, at one abstract stage or another. The bourgeois revolution in Russia was bound to transcend itself, turning itself spontaneously into a socialist revolution:

The Golden Mean cannot be maintained in any revolution. The law of its nature demands a quick decision; either the locomotive drives forward full steam ahead to the most extreme point of its historical ascent, or it rolls back, of its own weight, again to the starting point at the bottom; and those who keep it with their weak powers half way up the hill, it but drags down with it, irredeemably into the

The crest of the revolutionary wave, to switch images, must be ridden, to insure the continuous development of the revolution, and to prevent any loss of its momentum. Proletarian activity in the bourgeois revolution might lead inevitably to a proletarian seizure of power. Menshevism had erred in not comprehending this necessity. Indeed in 1905 Menshevik doctrine had it that a seizure of power by the proletariat was to be sanctioned only for one reason, if a proletarian revolution in Europe had occurred previous to the revolution in

In 1905 Rosa Luxemburg was saying much the same thing. Her 1918 brochure has been duly remembered if only for its apparent anti-Leninism. Her more important writings from the period of the earlier revolution have been all but forgotten, col- lecting dust on the Slavonic shelves of the world’s libraries. They have yet to be translated into English. In her ‘Russkaya revolyutsiya’, which appeared in 1649, 1 789, 1905, she had already predicted that Russia’s bourgeois revolution would pass directly into the socialist as a result of its own inner dynamics and the pressure of international events.

Approaching Russia, as it were, from the West, she conceived of the 1905 events as the ‘last echo of the period of bourgeois revolutions in Europe’,26 as the final moment of an uninterrupted development of the social revolution which, beginning in France, had, during the course of the nineteenth century, involved much of Europe and had finally passed into Russia. That country must now be considered the major arena for the international revolution-bourgeois or socialist:

The current revolution in Russia is the last repercussion of the Great French Revolution which occurred 100 years ago. The entire following century had only, in actuality, fulfilled the work which had commenced in that revolution.

23. Ibid. 24. Ibid.. p. 3 I . 25. The nature of the Menshevik position is important, ifonly for the sake of perspective. This statement Of

their position was expressed in the Menshevik Conference resolution of that year. I t is analyzed in F.I. Dan. Proiskhozhdeniye bol‘shevizrna (New York, 1946). p. 375.

26. Luxemburg. ‘Russkaya revolyutsiya’, p. 25.

46 Nicholas S. Weber

Through an uninterrupted class struggle, the following period showed the con- tinuing separation of society into cla~ses.~’

Superficially, suggested Luxemburg, one could believe that Russia, owing to the nature of her government and society, would not be sucked into the vortex of this ex- panding revolution.2x On the contrary, the great economic changes that have occurred in Russia during the last decades of the nineteenth century have prepared her all the more for a bourgeois revolution. In fact, Russia was already straining at the limits of such a revolution. Several reasons for this seemingly unanticipated course of events are advanced, though, unlike Parvus, she did not dwell on the uniqueness of the Rus- sian situation as a type of explanation. She, however, saw that Russia had given birth to a proletariat which was able to ‘internalize’ the entire previous socialist tradition accumulated in the post- I848 period in An informed and self-conscious proletariat acting on maturing insights would emancipate Russia from the old tyranny by creating a modern society:

Her immediate, internal tasks would be the creation of a contemporary capitalist society with a class-bourgeois government, though in terms of form, a bourgeois revolution in Russia could only be accomplished by the working class, and not by the bourgeoisie. And, though Russia, during the course of the last century seemed to have been frozen and locked up, just the same, she had taken part in the common European tradition. And the working class in Russia will not be the appendage of the petty bourgeois, as was the case in all preceding revolutions, but will make its entrance as a fully self-conscious class, cognizant of its special class interests and tasks, as a working class led by the Social Democracy.”

Like Parvus, Luxemburg reasoned that the proletariat would be called upon, by history to play the leading role in Russia’s democratic revolution. and would place for itself the task of completing that revolution.” On the other hand, she insisted that the primary concern of the socialists would not be to legislate the maximum programme of the social democracy, but to attempt to create a bourgeois-capitalist milieu favourable to the furtherance of the class interests of the proletariat.j2 This in itself was not a radical prognosis. The socialists would clear the path for democracy. Simultaneously, however, she, again like Parvus, held out the possibility of a proletarian seizure of power, while adding that the proletariat in power would not use that power except to advance the common interests of bourgeois society which admit- tedly included the immediate interests of the proletariat as well. Somewhere along the way-not quite precisely defined-the proletariat would step down from power, leav- ing the state in the hands of the class for whom the revolution was made in the first place.” Yet even if this occurred, Luxemburg believed that middle class rule would be only nominal. Effective power would remain in the hands of the proletariat, for ‘the classes summoned by the revolution to power act with unparalleled weakness, while the working classes, subordinate in form, in its position acts with unparalleled force.’4

27. Ibid., p. 23. 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid., p. 26. As a European, she may have been less aware of some of the unique features of the Russian

experience, such as the existence of oriental despotism, appealed to both by Plekhanov and Parvus. 30. Ibid., p. 25. 31. Ibid., p. 27. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid. 34. Luxemburg believed that the liberals had dropped out of the revolution: the proletariat might have to

seize power in order to guarantee the calling of a constituent assembly, etc.. and then resign. As J.P. Nettl put it in Rosa Luxemburg, vol. I (London, 1966). p. 339: ‘Presumably, the worker’s provisional government-having held the fort-would then be replaced, and would resign its temporarily arrogated power into bourgeois republican hands.’ Nettl believed that Parvus had gone further, but as ha. been demonstrated in our analysis of Parvus, there is some ambiguity as to what he exactly anticipated.

Parvus, Luxemburg and Kautskv on the 1905 Russian Revolution 47

This interesting dialectic in her thought is more developed than in Parvus’ writings. It may have resulted from her strong belief, partially modified by 1917, that, however broad the horizons of a bourgeois revolution might be construed, a bourgeois revolu- tion was still a bourgeois revolution.

On the tactical level, Luxemburg sensed that in Russia the struggle of the proletariat could not be waged on a parliamentary battleground, and that this fact separated Russia from Europe. Thus, Kussia’s revolutionary class-and there was only one-would have to forge a weapon, the mass strike, suitable to the nature of the battlefield. It is during the course of her discussion of this new weapon, that she defined the Russian Revolution as ‘bourgeois-democratic in form, and proletarian- socialist in reality’, or a new kind of bourgeois revolution.”

She further declared, perhaps in some contradiction to what she had suggested earlier, that during the course of the revolution the ‘problem of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the realization of socialism’ would be placed on. the order of the day. The problem of socialism would be at least posed in Russia, though she continued to assert that the conditions for its solution were not yet present.‘h

I n attending to Rosa Luxemburg on the subject of the Russian Revolution, i t must be kept in mind that she was a radical Western socialist: in viewing the situation, she went probably as far as she could in terms of a Marxist logic that was fashioned by the proletarian struggle in Germany to comprehend what was happening in Russia with objectivity and sensitivity. The agrarian aspects of the revolution, for example, were barely touched on in this 1906 brochure, and her emphasis on the purely proletarian aspects of the revolution may account for later criticism levelled against her, often un- fairly, that she underestimated the peasantry. Ultimately, in the pamphlet, resolving some of the tension in her arguments, she concluded that the revolution would grow over into its socialist stage.” The concept of ‘growing over’, the Russian pererastunij’e, has already become an important ideological construction in the radical mind.

Since Luxemburg played down the role of the bourgeoisie and emphasized the proletariat’s-which, in itself, whetted the appetites of her critics-why did she insist, so strongly, on the bourgeois character of the revolution‘? The answer is not very dif- ficult, and should be pointed out in order to avoid conceptual confusion. Russian society had not yet solved those problems which were rooted in an early stage of capitalist development, even, if simultaneously, problems were being posed which could only be anticipated in the later stages of its development. Absolutism had not yet been toppled; a bourgeois society was still in its infancy. Thus, the revolution i n terms of its principal tasks was still bourgeois. At the same time, however, the development of a factory system in Russia added a new dimension to the problem of the Russian Revolution. The struggle against autocracy in the industrial age, with the parallel battle against capitalist exploitation, would result in a combination of tasks, different in range and scope than in preceding revolutions; a position that echoes Plekhanov’s.

I n certain respects, Luxemburg thought Russia more advanced than Germany. Russia’s revolution was bourgeois, approaching its limits, and becoming socialist all at the same time. The fruits of victory might have to go to the bourgeoisie. Indeed, such an end might be even desirable and necessary, but i t was not beyond possibility that the revolution would be of a new type in which the proletariat might come to power and attend to certain socialist tasks. The proletariat would be both creating the preconditions for a viable democratic society and, if only in anticipation, beginning

35. Luxemburg. ‘Russknya revolyutsiya’, p. 28 36. [bid. 37. Ibid.

48 NicholarS. Weber

the job of legislating socialist measures. These would be accomplished, as it were, simultaneously. The ‘combined tasks’ that Plekhanov had talked about would be made, in some sense, to coincide, contrary to Pelkhanov’s own conclusion. The line between purely bourgeois revolution with proletarian activity within it and the socialist revolution itself was blurred. This blurring was indeed quite characteristic to much of the revolutionary thought from 1905.

Luxemburg also resurrected the old socialist concept of the ‘permanent revolution’, used by Marx himself in the 1850 period, especially in the sense that both the bourgeois and proletarian stages are part of one continuous revolution with both phases under the hegemony of the proletariat. To guarantee the success of Russia’s bourgeois revolution, it would have to have an uninterrupted development from one phase to the next since the proletariat, in effect, was alone on the field of battle. Writing in Neue Zeit in February 1905, she pointed up the need den revolutionaren Zustand in Permanenz zu erhalten.

Luxemburg had attempted to broaden the concept of the bourgeois revolution. Her main point of departure was that the logic of the historical situation would have to guide policy. In an important sense, the future of the revolution, then, was open- ended. The social democracy would have to bend itself to the flow of events and allow, or even encourage if necessary, a proletarian seizure of power, even if only as an ex- pedient to get ‘bourgeois things’ done:

Thus it will not be just in terms of logic as a defined revolutionary type, but historically defined by the state of class relations in society . . . that the revolu- tion will be accomplished. The society that will be created in Russia will reflect a unique de~elopment .~~

I f the revolution in Russia terminated in a dictatorship of the proletariat, this would be only a natural response to the givens:

The strength, organization, and class consciousness of the proletariat in Russia have reached such a high level that it will pass beyond the limits of bourgeois society . . .. All this represents a new stage in the evolution of bourgeois society and, thanks to the absence of stability in the equilibrium of forces in class rela- tions, this will lead to a constantly expanding storm; storms, interrupted by shorter or longer pauses, will distinguish themselves by greater or lesser intensity until finally there will be one outcome: the socialist revolution and the dic- tatorship of the pr~letariat .)~

What happened in the Russian Revolution would then affect the whole world. ‘The Russian Revolution has concluded sixty years of peaceful parliamentary growth of the bourgeoisie of Europe. Now, with the Russian Revolution, the world enters a new phase . . . from capitalist to socialist . . .. It is only a matter of time.” Luxemburg had reiterated the now traditional theme that the bourgeois revolution in Russia would sound the signal for the proletarian upheaval abroad, etc. She seems, however, to have added something to the formula: Russia’s revolution of the bourgeois-type would be the first spontaneously to turn itself into a socialist revolution in the very process of completing the bourgeois revolution under the ‘hegemony of the proletariat.’

Kautsky

The center of the revolution has shifted from the West to the East. In the first half of the nineteenth century it lay in France and then in England. In 1848, Ger-

38. Ibid., p. 27. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid.

Parvus, Luxemburg and Kautskql on the 1905 Russian Revolution 49

many entered the list of revolutionary nations, just as England left it . . .. From 1870 all traces of revolutionary striving have begun to leave the bourgeoisie of all countries. To be a revolutionary now, is to be a socialist . . .. The Franco- Prussian War has shifted the center ofgravity into Germany . . .. Now we can an- ticipate a new shift ... to Russia.

Kautsky4’

The bourgeois revolution, completed by the socialist proletariat, the deadly enemy of the bourgeoisie, and completed by a proletariat whose revolutionary mood is, in essence, a quaint combination of insurrection against the pre- bourgeois. against unbearable conditions, and, at the same time, an indignant response against the tendencies of contemporary developments in economics.

Kautsky42 One of the most important of Kautsky’s pamphlets, the Motive Forces and

Perspectives of the Russian R e v o I ~ t i o n , ~ ~ was published in Russia in 1906 with a favourable preface by Lenin. The Russian Bolshevik leader agreed with Kautsky that the Russian Revolution was neither bourgeois nor socialist, and more tellingly, that it was a bourgeois revolution carried out by the proletariat and the peasantry against the vacillations of the bo~rgeois ie .~~

In this pamphlet, Kautsky, in agreement with Lenin, assumed that the road to vic- tory would be in alliance with the peasantry. ‘The Russian Revolution in no sense can carry the proletariat to an independent seizure of power, to di~tatorship.’~~ The Dvizhushchiya sily contains a detailed class analysis of the Russian Revolution. It makes a powerful comparison between the Russian and the French Revolutions, and was an attempt to demonstrate the peculiarities of the history of Russia and her revolution while suggesting at the same time the real relationship between the two ex- periences. Like Parvus, and unlike Luxemburg, he attended to the implications of oriental despotism in his examination of the formation of Russia’s class structure.

Government power was justified and historically progressive in all societies. I n Rus- sia, the pressure of this power, coupled with technological backwardness, had, however, all but sucked dry the resources of political-economic activity. The enor- mous tax burden which rested so heavily on all classes prevented the evolution of a healthy internal market. This alone according to Kautsky could enable Russia to properly compete successfully on the world scene. A vicious cycle followed: the low level of economic productivity hindered the growth of a dynamic urban culture, further crippling economic growth potential. The regime was forced to rely heavily on foreign investments, and no financially independent merchant class could develop. (This was even more strongly put than in Parvus’ writings.) Her petty bourgeois stratum was backward, reactionary, and an t i~emi t ic ;~~ foreign capital supported the Russian throne; the petty bourgeois which in Europe led revolutions, had in Russia neither the power to bolster up the old state, nor the effective will to take the lead in overturning it.

The French bourgeoisie, on the eve of the Great Revolution, was in a situation whose advantages were as glaring as the disadvantages of the Russian in 1905. There

41. Iskra, no. 118, March 1902. 42. Karl Kautsky, Perspektivy russkago osvoboditel’nago dvizheniya (Petersburg, n.d.), p. 4. 43. Karl Kautsky, Dvizhushchiya sily i perspektivy russkoi revolyutsii-otvet G . V. Plekhanovu (Peters-

44. Much of this preface can be found in English in Trotsky’s Permanent Revolution (Calcutta, 1930),

45. Dvizhushchiya sily, p. 30. 46. Ibid., p. 30. Kautsky paid little attention to the so called ‘big bourgeois’. The problem was to find out

burg, 1906).

pp. 59ff.

to what degree the ‘little bourgeois’ was capable of revolution.

50 Nicholas S. Weber

was no shortage of capital, few crushing debts; indeed, it was the monarch who was in debt to the burgher, mortgaged down almost to his last sou. When the Third Estate at- tempted to collect its debts, the king was caught and no amount of foreign loans- assuming there were any to be had-could have rescued Louis from his economic mis- eries. As chief creditor to the king, the French burgher was the holder of the balance of power in prerevolutionary France. At the same time, French society was generally prosperous. Unlike his Russian counterpart, the French peasantry was well off, far from being the crushed group many have believed it to be. The French bourgeois in 1789 was quite ready and able to escape from the womb in which it had been formed and nurtured. And to insure the triumph of the ‘Old Third’, all sections of that group could and did combine in one spectacular frontal assault on the Ancien Regime and its allies. The bourgeois interest could be further secured through an alliance with the nascent city proletariat. Kautsky of course admitted that as the revolution deepened, this united front would break down. Only revolutionary armies were able to release France from the network of contrydictions that had burst forth in civil society in the wake of the summoning of the Etates G&~e>aux.~’

Things were totally different in the Russia of 1905. The capitalist bourgeoisie was hardly expected to cooperate with the proletariat. Nor was there any worthy in- termediary class which would ally with the proletariat and attempt to win the al- legiance of the peasantry to some kind of positive revolutionary programme. The capitalist and proletariat stood opposed to one another, even at the very beginning of the revolution, for the simple reason that the capitalist was not interested in revolution at all; or if he was it would have to be a revolution that didn’t threaten his economic interests. The only feasible revolutionary grouping then, according to Kautsky, had to involve a proletarian-peasant connection.

In his Perspectives of the Russian Liberation Movement, Kautsky amplified on this analysis by suggesting that, if in terms of the peasantry, the Russian Revolution emulated 1789, from the point of view of the bourgeois-worker antagonism and the class struggle which propelled it, the 1905 revolution had already passed beyond 1789.48 The Russian Revolution was taking place in the thick of the industrial revolu- tion, while the peasantry had not yet been liberated, and this fact would determine the combined tasks of the revolution. Pondering on the lessons of 1905, Kautsky then reached the conclusion that if the fruits of victory had gone to the capitalists, it could only have been as a result of the labour of the working class. Obviously, this could not happen. The bourgeoisie could not have completed its own revolution by itself. Thus, since the proletariat had failed, naturally the victory went to the autocracy. Kautsky’s implication is clear. The only possible revolutionary victory in a bourgeois revolution could only have been a proletarian

The hegemonic alliance that might have won the revolution would be what Lenin called ‘the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry’. This, in itself, was a new idea in. the history of Europe’s revolutionary experiences. Neither proletariat nor peasantry had any real choice as to allies. The peasantry, he wrote in the Dvizhushchiya ~ily,~O had to embrace the radical parties, as the middle classes were not prepared to encourage the revolutionary anti-aristocratic instincts of the masses. The Russian bourgeoisie was not of the same stature as his French ancestor. (In France many aristocrats were sufficiently magnanimous to act against their own in- terests in 1789.) Kautsky did not veto, of course, so-called ‘temporary blocs’ with sec- tions of the urban petty bourgeoisie, on the part of the proletariat, but he reminded his

47. Ibid. See also his ‘Staraya i novaya revolyutsiya’, 1649. 1789, 1905. p. 6 . and the Perxpekriyv. p. 2 . 48. Perspektivy, p.6. 49. Ibid. 50. Kautsky, Dvizhushchiya sily, p. 25

51 Pawus, Luxemburg mid Kuutsk.ii O H the 1905 Russian Revolutiopz

reader that such blocs had minimum utility since the middle classes had precious little in common with the proletariat. Such a connection would do the proletariat more harm than good. The decision to work with the peasantry followed irresistibly from the moment the social democrat in Russia elected to follow events, to allow the revolution to go as far as it was wont, and from the moment he refused to concede vic- tory in advance to the bourgeoisie on the basis of a too schematic or mechanical theory of the bourgeois revolution.”

Kautsky admonished Russia’s social democracy to seize on such an alliance with the peasantry and insisted that i t should not be restricted to what was commonly known as the rural proletariat: ‘The actual community of interests for the entire period of the revolutionary struggle exists only between the proletariat and the peasantry. This must be the basis of all revolutionary tactics of the RSDRP.’5’ The socialists were asked to demonstrate to the peasantry the natural harmony of interests which united the two classes. The peasant must be made aware of the fact that their economic interest, even if restricted to the quest for private property, could only be satisfied through a worker-peasant alliance in revolution making. The bourgeoisie, let alone the aristocrat, would never allow the peasant the land without compensation. The gist of Kautsky’s theoretical position here was much closer to Lenin’s in this period than was Parvus’ or Luxemburg’s. H e never, of course, accepted Lenin’s organizational schema.

Kautsky’s revolutionary model became less secure as he attempted to project it into the future. What would happen after the proletarian interest had achieved state power, propelled into that condition by the elemental and only semi-conscious energies of the peasant masses? Could the peasantry be trusted after the revolution‘! This was a crucial problem; neither Parvus nor Luxemburg had given i t any real analysis. Most of the Russian Mensheviks tended to avoid the problem because of their formula that the proletariat should attempt to work with the urban petty bourgeoisie until capitalism was more fully developed, and to refrain from seizing power earlier. Kautsky, on the contrary, advocated that the proletariat must consider seizing power, and attend to the possible consequences flowing out of the decision to work in alliance with the rural masses.

His handling of the problem was tentative and cautious: he counted on revolutionary aid from abroad, but did not insist that such aid was the sine qua non for the success of the revolution ( in the sense of placing the proletariat in power, i f that is what had to occur). I n 1902 he had written that ‘Russia, which previously received revolutionary energy from abroad, may now become the source of revolutionary energy it~elf.’~.’ And he now expanded this in January of 1905 in predicting that ‘whatever the result of the current happenings, the Russian proletariat will come out of the revolution coequal with the European, and perhaps in the international struggle against all governments and all exploitation, will become its most advanced warrior.’“ I n his ‘Staraya i novaya revolyutsiya,’ he had written that the real revolution had only begun, and what happens in Russia ‘will unleash an era of European revolution and conclude with a dictatorship of the proletariat opening the road to a socialist reconstruction of society.”’ He envisaged the possibility that the proletarian revolu- tion in Europe would then thrust Russia into the higher stage of its own revolution, and, referring to the ‘tight chains of twentieth century international relations’, remarked on the mutual interconnection of the Russian and European revolutions.

51. Ibid. 51. Ibid.. p. 3 1 . 5 3 . Iskra, no. 18, March 1902. 54, Ihid.. no. X5. January 1905. 5 5 . 1640. 17<99. lY0.5. p. 10.

52 Nicholas S. Weber

He, too, anticipated a mutual reverberation until the long sought end of history was reached both in Russia and in Europe.

In another article from the period on the Russian Revolution, Kautsky synthesized much of his doctrine:

The revolution in Russia could not immediately result in the socialist regime. The economic conditions of the country are not nearly mature enough for this purpose. But the Russian Revolution would certainly give a strong impetus to the proletarian movement in the rest of Europe, and in consequence of the strug- gle that would flare up, the proletariat might come to power in Germany. Such an enormous outcome must have an influence on the whole of Europe. It must lead to the political domination of the proletariat in Western Europe, and create for the Eastern European proletariats the possibility of contracting the stages of their development, and copying the example of the Germans, artifically setting up socialist institutions. Society as a whole cannot artificially skip any stages of its development by imitating the more advanced countries, but it is possible, by such imitation, for constituent parts of society to hasten their retarded develop- ment, and, thanks to this, even to take their stand in the forefront of develop- ment, because they are not burdened with the ballast of tradition which the other countries have to drag along.. .. This may happen, but, as we have already said, here we leave the field of inevitability and enter that of possibility, and so things may happen

I n significant respects Kautsky here combined much of the Marxist tradition about the Russian Revolution (hastening retarded development through the activities of the proletariat in the bourgeois revolution) with the populist (that Russia has an advan- tage in being unburdened with the ballast of tradition that other countries have to drag a b o ~ t ) . ~ ’

Ultimately, the Russian Revolution had to be considered as a transitional type, his perspective here being especially close to Luxemburg’s. It was a revolution ‘which completes itself on the boundaries of bourgeois and socialist society, and aims at the destruction of the first, and prepares the second, compelling capitalist society to take a leap The revolution would be completed on the frontiers of bourgeois society, but not beyond it. Capitalist society would be compelled to take a leap forward, but only in the wake of an international upheaval could socialist construction seriously be begun.

Trotsky and the Germans The three writers examined in this chapter stand together in that their theory of the

bourgeois revolution included within it the perspective of a proletarian seizure of power within the course of that revolution. This represents a point of view that Marx never seriously entertained. The father of Russian Marxism, Plekhanov, believed that proletarian activity in a bourgeois revolution would change the quality of the predicted bourgeois victory by laying the real groundwork for a proletarian coup in the reasonably near future. He never, however, considered the possibility of a direct seizure of power by the workers during the bourgeois revolution itself. Luxemburg, Parvus, Kautsky, and, in a somewhat different way, Lenin and Trotsky, considered that the dynamics of the revolutionary experience itself would determine the terminal point of the revolution. They were in agreement that a mechanical or abstract theory of the revolution should not be allowed to hamstring the activities of the 56. Cited in L.D. Trotsky, Vzarhchirupartii (Petersburg, 1907), pp. 139-40. Kautsky had written this piece

for one of the German newspapers. 57. Not tha t his latter perspective could not have been acquired from Marx. 58. Kautsky. Dvbhushrhiya sily. p. 32.

Pmvus, Luxemburg and Kautsky on the 1905 Russian Revolution 53

revolutionaries. Russia’s bourgeois revolution taking place in an epoch of rapid in- dustrialization, and in the absence of a strong liberal class resulting from the pressures of a semioriental state, would be more complicated than any previous revolutionary experience. Thus, a direct seizure of power by the proletariat was not precluded. This vision of the originality of the Russian Revolution was the point of view that the writers discussed in this article passed on to Leon Trotsky and, certainly to a lesser ex- tent, to Lenin.

If it is true that Trotsky initially learned his Marxism from the Russian tradition as it had already developed before the turn of the century, before that fateful meeting at Lenin’s flat in Holford Square, in October 1902, when, as it were, he knocked on the door of history,59 the essence of ‘Trotskyism’ cannot be explained without reference to the writings of Parvus, Kautsky, or Luxemburg.

59. Deutscher, The Prophet Armed, p. 57. Trotsky admitted to having read and admired Plekhanov before the turn of the century-as well as Lenin’s celebrated study on the development of Russian capitalism. See Trotsky’s M y Life, p. 122, and pp. 150-55.