The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

the world, especially since 1968. 794 These theses are the first explicit rejection of the proletarian experience of
the Russian revolution.
The ‘bourgeois’ nature of Bolshevism
Unlike all the left groups who quit the Komintern to make a critical balance-sheet of the action of the
Bolsheviks, the council communists rejected any real balance-sheet of the events of 1917 and the policies of the
bolshevism until Kronstadt. According to the council communists there was no discontinuity between the
bolshevik party of 1917 and the stalinist counter-revolution which liquidated it, between Lenin and Stalin. The
counter-revolution began when the bolshevik party took power in October 1917, substituting itself for the
workers’ councils.
According to the GIC and the other ‘councilist’ groups, the Bolshevik Party was not the most ‘radical’ party in
the workers’ councils but an organism “alien” to the proletariat. The GIC considered Bolshevism as an
expression of other social strata; they saw it as “petty bourgeois”, the “leading party of the revolutionary petty
bourgeois intelligentsia in Russia”. This stratum, like the Jacobin petty bourgeoisie in the French revolution,
aimed only at overthrowing ‘feudalism’ and setting up its own dictatorship over society. Its ‘centralist’
conception of organisation derived directly from Jacobinism, aiming at “the creation of a rigid organisation of
professional revolutionaries which would remain the obedient instrument of an omnipotent leadership”.
In the GIC’s view, the Bolshevik Party was not much different from the Socialist Revolutionary Party, drawing
its support from the Russian peasantry in order to carry through the “anti-feudal revolution”. The essential
difference was that Bolshevism, though an expression of the intelligentsia and peasantry, was also able to win
the backing of the proletariat: “The historic task of Bolshevism was to weld together two opposing revolts, that
of the proletariat and that of the peasantry, by taking the leadership and guiding them towards a common
objective: the abolition of the feudal state”.
To explain the immense echo the Bolsheviks had in the Soviets, which rallied to their slogan “all power to the
Soviets”, the GIC and the ‘councilist’ groups were obliged to talk about bolshevik ‘Machiavellians’. The whole
history of the Russian revolution should be in effect reduced to a plot: “The establishment of the Soviet state was
the establishment of the rule of the party of bolshevik Machiavelianism” (Thesis 57).
Thus, according to the GIC, the bolshevik party had been aware of the necessity to deceive the Russian
proletariat about the ‘bourgeois’ nature of the revolution and about the nature of the new power: the bolshevik
party’s dictatorship over society. To achieve its ends Bolshevism adopted a ‘maximalist’ tactic in order to gain
the confidence of the revolutionary workers. All the actions of the bolshevik party were basically tactical
manoeuvres aimed at deceiving the proletariat. Thus, the slogan “all power to the Soviets” was “launched by
Lenin after the February revolution with a tactical goal in view”. The same was true in October, since, according
to the GIC, “the Soviets were simply an instrument that allowed the party to seize power” (Thesis 39). The
October revolution was just a party coup d’Etat “sealing the Jacobin conspiracy” (Thesis 45).
The same “bolshevik machiavellianism” lay behind their internationalist position during the war and after
October 1917:
“During the First World War, the Bolsheviks continually represented the internationalist position with the slogan
“turn the imperialist war into a civil war”, and in appearance behaved like the most consistent Marxists. But
this revolutionary internationalism was part of their tactic, just as the turn towards the NEP was later on. The
794 Thus, the Theses on Bolshevism were particularly influential in the Scandinavian councilist movement in the 1970s. See
the translation by the Swedish group Internationell Arbetarkamp: ‘Teser om Bolsjevismen’, Internationell Arbetarkamp,
No. 3, Stockholm, 1973.
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