The revolt of the sailors at the Kronstadt naval base in March 1921
could appear as a marginal episode in that dramatic phase of Soviethistory marked by the end of the civil war, the exhaustion of warcommunism, the maturation and launch of the NEP. ---- Yet, "Kronstadt"has become a symbol, which has never stopped dividing. For supporters ofthe Bolshevik regime, its suffocation had been a "tragic necessity" tosave the revolution. For his critics, on the contrary, only the successof that insurrection would have prevented those processes ofbureaucratization that would later lead to Stalinism. For anarchism,"Kronstadt" (along with the elimination of Nestor Makhno's peasantmovement in Ukraine) marked the break with Bolshevism. Furthermore,according to Volin, it represents the culmination of popularintentionality, the explosive expression of the revolutionary potentialof the Russian people, of which the natural interpreter, so to speak,would have been anarchism.Within the broad international debate on Kronstadt, The KronstadtCommune played a certain role, an agile little volume written in 1938 torespond to the thesis of the "anti-proletarian" character of the revoltsupported by Trotsky. Its author, Ida Mett, was born into a BelarusianJewish family and was introduced to anarchism in Kharkov, Ukraine.Arrested by the Bolsheviks in 1923, she took refuge in Paris, where shewas Makhno's personal secretary until 1927 and she participated (she wasthe only woman) in the drafting of Arshinov's Platform. Although shedistanced herself from the "Dielo Truda" group, in the following yearsshe continued to participate in the campaigns of the anarchist movementof the time. In The Kronstadt Commune Ida Mett questioned the beginningof the authoritarian involution of the Russian revolution. Kronstadt,from his point of view, it marked the "limit between two eras", that is,between the spontaneous and popular phase of the Russian revolution andthe authoritarian one. The revolt posed two central issues, closelyconnected to each other and decisive for the very future of socialism.In fact, it was not only a question of the relationship betweensocialism and freedom, but also of the more general relationship betweenmeans and ends. The idea, writes Ida Mett, according to which the endjustifies the means is a corrupting principle, which contains withinitself the premises of authoritarian involution. Disputing the idea thatKronstadt was an anarchist uprising, Ida Mett points out that theinfluence of anarchists was directly proportional to the extent to whichanarchism defended "workers' democracy" against the monopoly of Lenin'ssingle party. it marked the "limit between two eras", that is, betweenthe spontaneous and popular phase of the Russian revolution and theauthoritarian one. The revolt posed two central issues, closelyconnected to each other and decisive for the very future of socialism.In fact, it was not only a question of the relationship betweensocialism and freedom, but also of the more general relationship betweenmeans and ends. The idea, writes Ida Mett, according to which the endjustifies the means is a corrupting principle, which contains withinitself the premises of authoritarian involution. Disputing the idea thatKronstadt was an anarchist uprising, Ida Mett points out that theinfluence of anarchists was directly proportional to the extent to whichanarchism defended "workers' democracy" against the monopoly of Lenin'ssingle party. it marked the "limit between two eras", that is, betweenthe spontaneous and popular phase of the Russian revolution and theauthoritarian one. The revolt posed two central issues, closelyconnected to each other and decisive for the very future of socialism.In fact, it was not only a question of the relationship betweensocialism and freedom, but also of the more general relationship betweenmeans and ends. The idea, writes Ida Mett, according to which the endjustifies the means is a corrupting principle, which contains withinitself the premises of authoritarian involution. Disputing the idea thatKronstadt was an anarchist uprising, Ida Mett points out that theinfluence of anarchists was directly proportional to the extent to whichanarchism defended "workers' democracy" against the monopoly of Lenin'ssingle party. that is, between the spontaneous and popular phase of theRussian revolution and the authoritarian one. The revolt posed twocentral issues, closely connected to each other and decisive for thevery future of socialism. In fact, it was not only a question of therelationship between socialism and freedom, but also of the more generalrelationship between means and ends. The idea, writes Ida Mett,according to which the end justifies the means is a corruptingprinciple, which contains within itself the premises of authoritarianinvolution. Disputing the idea that Kronstadt was an anarchist uprising,Ida Mett points out that the influence of anarchists was directlyproportional to the extent to which anarchism defended "workers'democracy" against the monopoly of Lenin's single party. that is,between the spontaneous and popular phase of the Russian revolution andthe authoritarian one. The revolt posed two central issues, closelyconnected to each other and decisive for the very future of socialism.In fact, it was not only a question of the relationship betweensocialism and freedom, but also of the more general relationship betweenmeans and ends. The idea, writes Ida Mett, according to which the endjustifies the means is a corrupting principle, which contains withinitself the premises of authoritarian involution. Disputing the idea thatKronstadt was an anarchist uprising, Ida Mett points out that theinfluence of anarchists was directly proportional to the extent to whichanarchism defended "workers' democracy" against the monopoly of Lenin'ssingle party. The revolt posed two central issues, closely connected toeach other and decisive for the very future of socialism. In fact, itwas not only a question of the relationship between socialism andfreedom, but also of the more general relationship between means andends. The idea, writes Ida Mett, according to which the end justifiesthe means is a corrupting principle, which contains within itself thepremises of authoritarian involution. Disputing the idea that Kronstadtwas an anarchist uprising, Ida Mett points out that the influence ofanarchists was directly proportional to the extent to which anarchismdefended "workers' democracy" against the monopoly of Lenin's singleparty. The revolt posed two central issues, closely connected to eachother and decisive for the very future of socialism. In fact, it was notonly a question of the relationship between socialism and freedom, butalso of the more general relationship between means and ends. The idea,writes Ida Mett, according to which the end justifies the means is acorrupting principle, which contains within itself the premises ofauthoritarian involution. Disputing the idea that Kronstadt was ananarchist uprising, Ida Mett points out that the influence of anarchistswas directly proportional to the extent to which anarchism defended"workers' democracy" against the monopoly of Lenin's single party. butalso of the more general relationship between means and ends. The idea,writes Ida Mett, according to which the end justifies the means is acorrupting principle, which contains within itself the premises ofauthoritarian involution. Disputing the idea that Kronstadt was ananarchist uprising, Ida Mett points out that the influence of anarchistswas directly proportional to the extent to which anarchism defended"workers' democracy" against the monopoly of Lenin's single party. butalso of the more general relationship between means and ends. The idea,writes Ida Mett, according to which the end justifies the means is acorrupting principle, which contains within itself the premises ofauthoritarian involution. Disputing the idea that Kronstadt was ananarchist uprising, Ida Mett points out that the influence of anarchistswas directly proportional to the extent to which anarchism defended"workers' democracy" against the monopoly of Lenin's single party.Kronstadt would therefore have opened the "gateway to workers'democracy", it would have marked the crossroads between workers'democracy and dictatorship, between socialism from above and that frombelow. The former won, but the echo of the challenge launched byKronstadt reverberated in the decades to come, as shown by theintroduction that Murray Bookchin, theorist of social ecology, wrote in1971 for the second English edition of Ida's The Kronstadt Commune Mett(the first was published by Solidarity in 1967) which is presented herefor the first time in Italian translation.As we will see, Bookchin takes the opportunity in Ida Mett's writing notonly to argue with authoritarian Marxism, but also to reflect on theeconomic and political transformations of the historical moment he wasexperiencing.In Bookchin's introduction, among other things, there also appears thatidea of a "third revolution" which will also be significantly found inÖcalan: despite the past hundred or more years, Kronstadt continues toraise those problems that question those who want to radically transformthe 'existing.Introduction by Murray Bookchin to The Kronstadt Uprising by Ida Mett,published by Black Rose Books (Montréal) in 1971.On March 1, 1921, the Kronstadt naval base on Kotlin Island, abouttwenty-five miles off the coast of Petrograd, adopted a fifteen-pointprogram of political and economic demands, in open defiance of theBolshevik Party's control of the Soviet state .Almost immediately the Bolsheviks denounced the uprising as a "WhiteGuard plot," apparently another in the series of counterrevolutionaryconspiracies that had plagued the Soviet regime during the previousthree years of civil war. Less than three weeks later, on March 17,Kronstadt was subdued in a bloody assault by elite units of the RedArmy. The Kronstadt uprising, on the surface, had been little more thanan ephemeral episode in the bitter history of the civil war.However, today we can say that the Kronstadt uprising marked thedefinitive end of the Russian Revolution itself. Indeed, the characterand importance of the uprising were destined to become issues of bitterdispute within the international left for years to come. Today, althougha completely new generation of revolutionaries has emerged - ageneration almost completely unrelated to the events - "the Kronstadtproblem" has lost none of its relevance and significance. Indeed, theKronstadt uprising posed far-reaching questions: the relationshipbetween the so-called "masses" and the parties that profess to speak intheir name, and the nature of the social system in the modern SovietUnion. The Kronstadt uprising, in fact,The Kronstadt sailors were no ordinary military corps. They were thefamous "red sailors" of 1905, 1917 and the Civil War. By commonagreement (until the Bolsheviks began to revise history after theuprising) the Kronstadt sailors were considered the most reliable andpoliticized military elements of the newly formed Soviet regime.Trotsky's feeble attempt in later years to diminish their reputation byalluding to "new" social strata (presumably "peasants") who had replacedthe "original" Red sailors (presumably "workers") in Kronstadt duringthe civil war is a low outrage. Whether "peasants" or "workers" - andboth existed in varying numbers at the naval base - Kronstadt had longbeen the furnace of revolution. Its living traditions and its closecontact with "red Petrograd" served to transform men of almost allstrata into revolutionaries.In reality, Kronstadt had arisen as a result of a strike movement inPetrograd, a kind of uprising of the Petrograd proletariat. It cannot beoveremphasized that the demands of the Kronstadt sailors were notformulated in the confines of an isolated island in the Gulf of Finland:they were developed as a result of close contact between the naval baseand the restless workers of Petrograd, whose demands they wereessentially divided into fifteen points in the program. As IsaacDeutscher was forced to recognize, Bolshevik denunciations of theKronstadt uprising as a "White Guard plot" were simply unfounded.What were these requests? Ida Mett analyzes them in detail in her book.A glance shows that the political demands were centered on Sovietdemocracy: new Soviet elections, freedom of speech for anarchists andsocialist left parties, freedom of trade unions and peasantorganizations, release of anarchist and socialist political prisoners.Economic and institutional demands focused on easing the rigid traderestrictions imposed by the "war communism" period. The demands of theKronstadt sailors were the bare minimum to save the revolution frombureaucratic decay and economic strangulation.As a rule, there are two histories of revolutions. The first is theofficial story, the one that revolves around the conflicts of parties,factions and "leaders". The other, in the words of the Russian anarchistVolin, can be called the "unknown revolution": the rarely writtenaccounts of the independent and creative action of the revolutionarypeople. Marxist accounts, to a surprising extent, fall within theofficial form of historiography: popular aspects of the revolution areoften distorted to fit a predetermined social framework. The workersinvariably have their historical "role"; the farmers have their own"role"; the intellectuals and the Party, yet other "roles". The vital,often decisive, activity of the so-called "transition classes", likeworkers of peasant origin or declassed elements, it is usually ignored.This type of historiography, due to its simplistic dissection of socialreality, completely leaves out many crucial aspects of past and presentrevolutions (1). Events acquire an academic form that is put together byagendas, ideological clashes and, of course, the omnipresent "leaders".In the Kronstadt uprising, the "masses" had the effrontery to enter thehistorical scene once again, as they had done in February and October,four years earlier. In reality, the uprising marked the culmination andend of the popular movement in the Russian Revolution - a movement thatthe Bolshevik Party fundamentally distrusted and shamelesslymanipulated. The overthrow of tsarism in February 1917 - a spontaneousrevolution in which none of the socialist parties and factions played asignificant role - paved the way for a vast popular movement. Havingshattered centuries-old institutions in just a few days, the workers andpeasants began on their own initiative to create new, completelyrevolutionary social forms. Historical accounts of the revolution rarelytell us that in the cities the most significant of these were not thesoviets, but rather the factory committees: workers' bodies establishedand controlled by workers' assemblies in the workshops. In villages,what are usually called "soviets" corresponded more closely to localpeasant committees, based on popular assemblies. In both cases, thecommittees were real organic social organisms, linked to forms ofdirect, face-to-face democracy. Regional soviets, however, wereessentially parliamentary bodies, structured as indirect or so-called"representative" political hierarchies. The latter culminated in remotenational congresses of the Soviets, controlled by a selected executivecommittee.The social history of the Revolution revolves around the fate of factorycommittees and village assemblies, not simply around clashing armies andduels between the Bolsheviks and their political adversaries. Thefactory committees demanded and, for a short time, acquired full controlof industrial activities. After October Lenin completely distrusted it.Already in January 1919, only two months after having "decreed" workers'control of the factories, the Bolshevik leader openly opposed thecommittees. According to Lenin, the revolution required "precisely inthe interests of socialism that the masses unquestionably obey the solewill of the leaders of the labor process." The committees were thusincreasingly deprived of any function in industrial operations, theirpowers were transferred to the unions, and finally the powers of theunions were handed over almost entirely to state-appointed managers.Worker control was aggressively denounced not only as "inefficient,""chaotic," and "impractical," but also as "petty-bourgeois" and"anarcho-syndicalist deviation."In the countryside, Bolshevik policy was characterized by distrust ofcooperatives and communal saddles - and by the expansion of the use offorced food requisitions. As I have indicated elsewhere, for Lenin thepreferred and most "socialist" form of agricultural enterprise was theState Farm, an agricultural factory in which the state owned the landand agricultural equipment, appointing managers who hired the peasantson a salary basis ( 2) . By 1920, the Bolsheviks had completely isolatedthemselves from the working class and peasantry, a fact that Leninopenly acknowledged. On the eve[of the Kronstadt uprising]: the sovietshad been reduced to a political shell, emptied of all content. Politicallife, public expression and popular activity had stopped; the Cheka, thesecret police established under Dzerzhinsky, herded revolutionaryopponents into prisons and concentration camps. In growing numbers, themost articulate spokesmen of independent Soviet parties and groups wereshot simply for expressing dissident opinions. Policies formulated underthe name "war communism" created near-famine conditions in the cities,blocking virtually all trade between city and countryside and imposingincreasingly demanding requisitions on the peasantry. The workers andpeasants may have won the civil war, but this much is certain: they hadlost the revolution. Only in this political and economic context can weunderstand the strikes that swept Petrograd in February 1921 and theKronstadt sailors' revolt. he massed revolutionary opponents in prisonsand concentration camps. In growing numbers, the most articulatespokesmen of independent Soviet parties and groups were shot simply forexpressing dissident opinions. Policies formulated under the name of"war communism" created near-famine conditions in the cities, blockingvirtually all trade between city and countryside and imposingincreasingly demanding requisitions on the peasantry. The workers andpeasants may have won the civil war, but this much is certain: they hadlost the revolution. Only in this political and economic context can weunderstand the strikes that swept Petrograd in February 1921 and theKronstadt sailors' revolt. he massed revolutionary opponents in prisonsand concentration camps. In growing numbers, the most articulatespokesmen of independent Soviet parties and groups were shot simply forexpressing dissident opinions. Policies formulated under the name "warcommunism" created near-famine conditions in the cities, blockingvirtually all trade between city and countryside and imposingincreasingly demanding requisitions on the peasantry. The workers andpeasants may have won the civil war, but this much is certain: they hadlost the revolution. Only in this political and economic context can weunderstand the strikes that swept Petrograd in February 1921 and theKronstadt sailors' revolt. In growing numbers, the most articulatespokesmen of independent Soviet parties and groups were shot simply forexpressing dissident opinions. Policies formulated under the name of"war communism" created near-famine conditions in the cities, blockingvirtually all trade between city and countryside and imposingincreasingly demanding requisitions on the peasantry. The workers andpeasants may have won the civil war, but this much is certain: they hadlost the revolution. Only in this political and economic context can weunderstand the strikes that swept Petrograd in February 1921 and theKronstadt sailors' revolt. In growing numbers, the most articulatespokesmen of independent Soviet parties and groups were shot simply forexpressing dissident opinions. Policies formulated under the name "warcommunism" created near-famine conditions in the cities, blockingvirtually all trade between city and countryside and imposingincreasingly demanding requisitions on the peasantry. The workers andpeasants may have won the civil war, but this much is certain: they hadlost the revolution. Only in this political and economic context can weunderstand the strikes that swept Petrograd in February 1921 and theKronstadt sailors' revolt. Policies formulated under the name of "warcommunism" created near-famine conditions in the cities, blockingvirtually all trade between city and countryside and imposingincreasingly demanding requisitions on the peasantry. The workers andpeasants may have won the civil war, but this much is certain: they hadlost the revolution. Only in this political and economic context can weunderstand the strikes that swept Petrograd in February 1921 and theKronstadt sailors' revolt. Policies formulated under the name of "warcommunism" created near-famine conditions in the cities, blockingvirtually all trade between city and countryside and imposingincreasingly demanding requisitions on the peasantry. The workers andpeasants may have won the civil war, but this much is certain: they hadlost the revolution. Only in this political and economic context can weunderstand the strikes that swept Petrograd in February 1921 and theKronstadt sailors' revolt. From Kronstadt rose the cry for a "Third Workers' Revolution", not acounter-revolution to restore the past. By crushing the uprising, theBolsheviks managed not only to block a third revolution, but to pave theway for the Stalinist regime. Later, history would take its fiercerevenge: many of the Bolsheviks who had played a role in the repressionof Kronstadt would pay with their lives in the bloody purges of the 1930s.The main value of Ida Mett's work is the insight it offers us into thepopular movement, a movement on which the outcome of all revolutionaryupheavals depends. She takes us away from party and Soviet congresses,from "leaders" and political factions, to let us enter the very soul ofthe revolutionary process. We realize the political intuitions developedin the streets and in the barracks; we are brought into the molecularprocesses of underlying movement; we come into contact with theextraordinary spirit of popular improvisation, the enthusiasm and energythat distinguish revolutionary people on the move. For these reasonsalone, Mett's short work deserves an in-depth reading, because what isat stake in his account of Kronstadt is not only the Russian Revolution,The Bolshevik Party did not "make" the Russian Revolution; he dominatedthe revolution and strangled it. He played no role in February 1917,when Tsarism was overthrown; in October, eight months later, the partytook power on its own, not on behalf of the soviets or factorycommittees. Without a doubt, conscious revolutionary organizations or,at least, active groups of revolutionaries were needed in 1917. The realproblem, however, was whether these revolutionary groups were able todissolve into the social forms created by the revolutionary people (bethey factory committees or soviets) or whether they transformed into apower separate from these social forms, manipulating and ultimatelydestroying them. The Bolshevik Party was constitutionally incapable oftaking the first direction; its hierarchical and centralized structure,not to mention the mentality of its leaders, had simply converted theparty into a mirror image of the bourgeois state apparatus it claimed tooverthrow.During the debates that determined the fate of the factory committees,the left communist Ossinsky warned his party: «socialism and socialistorganization must be established by the proletariat itself, or they willnot be established at all; something else will be established - statecapitalism."The warning, issued in the early days of the revolution, was prophetic.It would be complete nonsense to argue that a state apparatus thatdeprives workers of any control over society can be considered a"workers' state".In fact, until 1917, all major factions of the Russian Marxist movementbelieved that Russia was facing a bourgeois revolution. Aside fromorganizational considerations, disagreements between the Bolsheviks andMensheviks focused primarily on the political role of the workers andpeasants in the coming upheaval.By calling for a "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat andpeasantry," the Bolsheviks essentially called the oppressed to apolitically dominant role. The Mensheviks, in turn, essentiallysubscribed to the idea that Russia needed a democratic, parliamentaryrepublic, governed by bourgeois parties. Neither Social Democraticfaction was naive enough to believe that backward, agricultural Russiawas ready for a "proletarian dictatorship," much less socialism.The success of the February Revolution, however, made Lenin turn towardsa "proletarian dictatorship", a position expressed in the famous slogan:"All power to the Soviets!".Significant as this shift may have been, it was not rooted in any beliefon Lenin's part that Russia was suddenly ready for a "workers' state."On the contrary: Lenin saw the "proletarian revolution" in Russiaprimarily as a stimulus for socialist revolutions in the war-tornindustrialized countries of the West, particularly Germany. For Lenin,the war had opened up the prospect of revolutions abroad, revolutionsthat could be sparked by a "proletarian revolution" in Russia. At notime was there any illusion that a "workers' state" or "socialism" couldbe established within the confines of a predominantly peasant country.The defeat of the Spartacist uprising in Berlin in January 1919 left theRussian Revolution completely isolated. Despite the Marxian jargon ofthe new Soviet regime, despite its red flags and the obvious hostilityof the traditional ruling classes at home and abroad, the fact remainsthat the revolution was increasingly retreating to a bourgeois level,because it was inconceivable that a An isolated, economically backwardcountry, besieged by political enemies on all sides, could advancebeyond capitalist social relations.But what kind of capitalist social relations were created by the OctoberRevolution? This is still a very thorny issue. The revolution hadeliminated the traditional Russian bourgeoisie and many of its politicalinstitutions.He had nationalized the land and all industry, an act unprecedented inthe modern history of Europe. Later, the Soviet regime would institute"planned production". All these changes in the first decades of the 20thcentury were considered incompatible with capitalism, even if Engels, inAnti-Duhring, had mentioned the theoretical possibility that they couldoccur in a bourgeois context.The problems created by the October Revolution were further complicatedby the terminology of the Bolsheviks themselves. Lenin had variouslydescribed the Soviet state as "state capitalist", "workers' state" and"peasant state with bureaucratic deformations", followed by Trotsky'ssenseless description of Stalin's dictatorship as a "degenerate workers'state". Lenin also complicated the problem by crudely describingsocialism as "nothing more than a state capitalist monopoly made for thebenefit of all the people." Thus, in the early years of the Sovietregime, it was difficult not only to find parallels for state capitalismin any existing capitalist country, but also to distinguish it from"socialism".Today, after half a century of capitalist development, we have a betterpoint of view. We can see that, apart from the few months in which thefactory committees controlled industry, the Russian Revolution had by nomeans transcended the bourgeois social and economic framework.Commodity production and economic exploitation were destined to prevailafter the October Revolution as before. Workers and peasants would bedenied control over Soviet society, just as they had been denied controlover Tsarist society. We also know that the nationalization of industryand planned production are perfectly compatible with bourgeois socialrelations. The historical trend of industrial capitalism has always beenin the direction of the centralization of capital, the development ofmonopoly, the fusion of industry with the state, economic planning andfinally the growing power of a bureaucratic apparatus over economic andpolitical life.Ironically, Trotsky could have understood how this trend developed inRussia if he had simply followed his concept of "combined development"to its logical conclusion. He saw (quite correctly) that tsarist Russia,a latecomer to European bourgeois development, necessarily acquired themost advanced industrial and class forms, instead of retracing theentire bourgeois development from its origins.He neglected to consider that Russia, torn by a tremendous internalupheaval that had dispossessed the traditional bourgeois classes andlandowners, might have anticipated capitalist development elsewhere inthe world - certainly, after the workers and peasants had beendispossessed of control on factories and land by the new bureaucracy.Hypnotized by the absurd formula according to which "nationalizedproperty is antithetical to capitalism", Trotsky did not recognize thatmonopoly capitalism itself tends to amalgamate with the State throughits own internal dialectic, which involves the concentration of capitalin an ever smaller number of businesses. Lenin's analogy between"socialism" and state capitalism thus became a terrifying reality underStalin:Fundamentally, the source of confusion about the "nature" of the socialsystem in Russia - the famous "Russian question" - lay in theincompleteness of Marxian economic analysis. Writing in the mid-19thcentury, Marx knew of only two phases of capitalist development:mercantilism and "laissez-faire" industrial capitalism. Although Capitalbrilliantly outlines the emergence of industrial from mercantilecapitalism, the discussion ends right where it needs to begin for us acentury later. We can see that the concentration of capital advancesinto another phase: the nationalization of capital. The "free market"turns into a monopolistic market and finally into a state-manipulatedmarket. The "anarchy of production" (to use Engels' expression) passesto the managed, "planned" economy, a planning system designed not onlyto avoid economic crises, but to promote the accumulation of capital.Capitalism follows its dialectic in almost classically Hegelian terms:from the state-controlled economy initiated by mercantilism to the "freemarket" established by industrial capitalism and back toneo-mercantilist forms, but on the new level created by technologicaland industrial growth. Marx could not have been expected to follow thisdialectic to its conclusion a century ago; for us to ignore it, acentury later, would be theoretical shortsightedness of the worstpossible kind. a planning system designed not only to avoid economiccrises, but to promote capital accumulation. Capitalism follows itsdialectic in almost classically Hegelian terms: from thestate-controlled economy initiated by mercantilism to the "free market"established by industrial capitalism and back to neo-mercantilist forms,but on the new level created by technological and industrial growth.Marx could not have been expected to follow this dialectic to itsconclusion a century ago; for us to ignore it, a century later, would betheoretical shortsightedness of the worst possible kind. a planningsystem designed not only to avoid economic crises, but to promotecapital accumulation. Capitalism follows its dialectic in almostclassically Hegelian terms: from the state-controlled economy initiatedby mercantilism to the "free market" established by industrialcapitalism and back to neo-mercantilist forms, but on the new levelcreated by technological and industrial growth. Marx could not have beenexpected to follow this dialectic to its conclusion a century ago; forus to ignore it, a century later, would be theoretical shortsightednessof the worst possible kind. Capitalism follows its dialectic in almostclassically Hegelian terms: from the state-controlled economy initiatedby mercantilism to the "free market" established by industrialcapitalism and back to neo-mercantilist forms, but on the new levelcreated by technological and industrial growth. Marx could not have beenexpected to follow this dialectic to its conclusion a century ago; forus to ignore it, a century later, would be theoretical shortsightednessof the worst possible kind. Capitalism follows its dialectic in almostclassically Hegelian terms: from the state-controlled economy initiatedby mercantilism to the "free market" established by industrialcapitalism and back to neo-mercantilist forms, but on the new levelcreated by technological and industrial growth. Marx could not have beenexpected to follow this dialectic to its conclusion a century ago; forus to ignore it, a century later, would be theoretical shortsightednessof the worst possible kind. Marx could not have been expected to followthis dialectic to its conclusion a century ago; for us to ignore it, acentury later, would be theoretical shortsightedness of the worstpossible kind. Marx could not have been expected to follow thisdialectic to its conclusion a century ago; for us to ignore it, acentury later, would be theoretical shortsightedness of the worstpossible kind.The development towards state capitalism appears as a trend in the Westmainly because the early economic and political forms still exert apowerful influence on social institutions.Although rapidly declining, notions of the "free market" and the"sovereign individual" continue to pervade economic relations in Europeand America. In Russia and many areas of the "Third World", however,state capitalism takes full form because the revolution breaks thepresent with the past, leading to the destruction of the old rulingclasses and institutions. "Socialism" in its accepted Marxist form tendsto become ideology in the strictest sense of the term precisely because,as Lenin observed, much Marxist socialism can be identified with statecapitalism. Marx's acceptance of the state - the "dictatorship of theproletariat",What might have happened if Kronstadt had succeeded? We would certainlyhave been spared a Stalinist development, a development that transformedthe entire world communist movement into an instrument of internationalcounter-revolution. In the end, it was not only Russia that sufferedbrutally, but all of humanity.The legacy left to us by Bolshevism in the forms of Stalinism,Trotskyism and Maoism has burdened revolutionary thought and practice asmuch as the betrayals of the reformist wings of the socialist movement.A victory for the sailors of Kronstadt could also have opened up a newprospect for Russia: a hybrid social development capable of combiningworkers' control of factories with an open market for agriculturalproducts, based on a small-scale peasant economy and communes. voluntaryfarmers. Of course, such a society in backward agricultural Russia couldnot have stabilized for long without external help; but help could havearrived if the revolutionary movement in Europe and Asia had developedfreely, without interference from the Third International. Stalinismcompletely precluded this possibility. By the end of the 1920s,virtually all sections of the Communist International had becomeinstruments of Stalinist policy,The Kronstadt crackdown in March 1921 was an act of truecounterrevolution, the suffocation of the popular movement at a timewhen Lenin, Trotsky and other leading Bolsheviks were leading the Sovietregime. To speak, as Trotsky does, of the "continuity" of the RussianRevolution in the 1930s, to describe the bureaucracy as the custodian ofthe October victories, to define Stalinism as merely a "Thermidorian"reaction: all this is purely senseless. There is neither continuity norThermidor, but only the staging of a vision that was stifled in 1921 andeven before. Stalin's rise to power merely underlined acounterrevolution that had begun earlier. Long before 1927, when theTrotskyist opposition was expelled, all social gains had been erased asfar as the Russian people were concerned. Hence the indifference of theworkers and peasants towards the anti-Stalinist opposition movementswithin the Communist Party.All conditions for Stalinism were prepared by the defeat of theKronstadt sailors and Petrograd strikers. We can choose to regret thesepopular movements, to honor the heroism of the victims, to inscribetheir efforts in the annals of the revolution. But above all, theKronstadt uprising and the Petrograd strike movement must be understood- as we would understand the lessons of all great revolutions - if wewant to grasp the content of the revolutionary process itself.Note1) In the Spain of 1936, in the Russian Revolution, in the ParisCommune, in the June uprising of the Parisian workers of 1848, as wellas in today's revolutionary movements, the most dynamic elements wereprecisely the members of these "transitional classes" . In the past theywere mainly artisans, workers of peasant origin and déclassés, with allthe mockery of Marx. Today they are made up of students, young people ofalmost all classes, intellectuals, déclassés and, in the "Third World",landless laborers and peasants.2) See Murray Bookchin, Listen Marxist!, Anarchos pamphlet, 1969 p.20[see for the Italian translation: M. Bookchin, Post-ScarcityAnarchism. Anarchism in the age of plenty, La Salamandra, 1979, pp.115-147, more recently published by Bepress, 2017].Il Cantiere n. 20 ottobre 2023 ilcantiere@autistici.orghttp://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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