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Part eight of Alan Woods' series of articles on the history of Bolshevism.
1905-The Third Congress
On the twenty fifth of April 1905, the first genuinely Bolshevik party congress opened its doors in London. On the agenda were the following questions: 1) the armed uprising; 2) the attitude to the government's policy, including the slogan of the provisional revolutionary government; 3) the attitude to the peasant movement; 4) relations between workers and intellectuals
within the party; 5) party rules; 6) attitude to other parties (including Mensheviks); 7) the attitude to non-Russian Social Democratic ganisations; 8) the attitude to Liberals; 9) practical agreements the Social Revolutionaries, and ganisational questions. Present at Congress were 24 delegates with
the
the
the
Or-
the with
OI-
the full
voung rignis represenung 41 committees, as well as a number of other party groups, including the Vperyod editorial board and the Bolshevik Organisation Abroad, which had a consultative vote. Lenin was present, nominally as a delegate from Odessa.
Insurrection
The Congress took place in the white heat of revolutionary upswing. The party was faced with a whole series of pressing political and tactical questions: the attitude to the government's 'concessions' (the Shidlovsky Commission), the slogan of a parliament ('zemsky sobor'), the constituent assembly, armed uprising and the provisional revolutionary government, legal and semilegal work, the national and agrarian questions, and so on. But the question which dominated all others was the armed insurrection. Lenin was particularly emphatic about this: "The entire history of the past year," he argued, "proved that we underestimated the significance and inevitability of the uprising. Attention must be paid to the practical aspect of the matter." 1.
Lunacharsky ('Voinov') opened the debate. The revolution in Russia had already begun in the sense that the masses had decisively entered the arena of struggle. What was now needed, he argued, was to give an organised form to this semi-spontaneous movement. Otherwise, all the heroism and energies of the workers could be dissipated in disorganised and aimless local uprisings.
In the previous period, when the objective conditions for revolution were absent, the Russian Marxists, Plekhanov in the first instance, had laid heavy stress on attacking the voluntarist theories of the Narodniks, those
Kamenev.
"romantic revolutionaries' who imagined that all that was needed was a decisive push by small terrorist groups to 'detonate' the masses into action. For this subjective idealism, the problem of armed insurrection was something independent of time and space. For the Marxists, for whom the revolution must be the work of the workers themselves, it arises inevitably at a certain point in the development of the class struggle. Where the necessary objective conditions were absent, to put forward constantly the idea of insurrection and armed struggle is mere Blanquism. * They correctly concentrated on the slow work of developing Marxist cadres, emphasising theory and organisation, carefully husbanding resources and building links with the masses. But now, the entire situation had been transformed by the social earthquakes of war and revolution. After January 9, Martov's argument that you cannot 'organise' the revolution and his accusation of 'Blanquism' directed at the Bolsheviks smacked of sophistry. In reality, the Mensheviks' attitude flowed from their entire conception of the revolution as a bourgeois-democratic revolution in
* This term, which was commonly used by the Russian Marxists to denote revolutionary adventurism, takes its name from the famous French revolutionary and utopian communist, Luis Auguste Blanqui (1805-81) who based himself on an ultra-left, conspiratorial conception of the revolution, as the work, not of the masses but as a 'coup de main of a small revolutionary minority'. Despite his undoubted sincerity and personal courage, Blanqui's lack of theoretical understanding
which the working class must subordinate itself to the Liberal bourgeoisie. The question of organising the workers for an armed uprising did not enter into their scheme of things, because they saw the workers' role as merely backing up the Liberals, and forcing the autocracy to retreat under the pressure of strikes and demonstrations directed towards placing the Liberals in power.
The Bolsheviks, while not denying the bourgeois-democratic character of the revolution, saw things quite differently. They saw the working class as the main motor-force of the revolution, which would triumph, in spite of the cowardice and treachery of the 'progressive' bourgeoisie, only to the degree that the proletariat fought for and won its rightful place at the head of the nation, uniting behind its banner all the oppressed classes of society, in particular the peasantry. The role of the Social Democrats was no longer merely that of 'propagandist-enlighteners' but revolutionary organisers, not merely 'committee-men' but leaders of masses. whose duty it was to prepare for an all-out general strike, culminating in an all-Russia uprising against tsarism.
Strikes
Given the numerical weakness of the forces of Marxism, this may seem to have been an excessively ambitous aim. But it is necessary to bear firmly in mind the concrete conditions of the time. The Russian working class was politically virgin, consisting overwhelmingly of new layers freshly awakened to political life, with no fixed traditions of reformist or Stalinist mass organisations, and no deeply-rooted political prejudices. The lava of the revolution had not yet had time to harden into a solid crust of bureaucratic conservatism. This enabled the forces of Marxism in Russia very quickly to overcome their weakness and rise to the head of millions of leftward moving workers who had nowhere else to go.
After the shock of Bloody Sunday the consciousness of the masses was transformed. There was a wave of local
doomed him to play a negative role. "Blanqui, " wrote Engels, "is essentially a political revolutionary, a socialist only by sentiment, because of his sympathy for the sufferings of the people, but he has neither socialist theory nor definite practical proposals for social reforms. In his political activities he was essentially a 'man of action'. " 2. The modern ultralefts have faithfully preserved all of Blanqui's faults without possessing any of his virtues.
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strikes and demonstrations, often of a stormy character. One of the delegates recalled the electric mood in the factories: " After the January revolutionary week in Petersburg there was such a spate of anarchistic strikes that in many factories it was enough for only one of the workers to shout: 'Down tools, lads!' for a strike to break out, and anyone who spoke out against it, received from the others the tag of provocateur'." 3.
The danger was that the energies of the workers would be dissipated in this way. What was required was to try to unify the movement so as to be able to concentrate 'full strength at the point of attack'. The same delegate stressed the need to combat ultraleft adventurism and individual terrorism: "on the one hand, needless acts of petty terrorism, on the other, acts of senseless provocation, or clashes with the police and soldiers, when individual armed persons, by bringing their weapons into play, give the enemy reason and opportunity to fire upon and slaughter unarmed crowds." 4.
The delegates discussed in a businesslike manner all the technical details: the drawing up of 'strategic maps' of towns, the training of competent officers, the raising of funds, but above all the need for every branch to possess detailed knowledge of local conditions and the mood of the workers. Side by side with the technical and organisational preparation, there was to be a stepping up of the ideological, agitational and propaganda work, as an integral part of preparing for the overthrow of tsarism. Agitation was to be carried on, not only among the workers, but also among the intellectuals, students, youth, women, the non-Russian nationalities, and, as much as possible, among the peasants, beginning with the village poor. Special attention was devoted to work in the army, with the aim of winning over the soldiers to the side of the workers. The troops were to be leafletted, and a commission of experienced specialists was set up, under the control of the Central Committee, to work out a programme of transitional demands for soldiers.
Nevertheless, even at a time when the question of armed insurrection had been pushed to the fore by events, the fundamental task of the party was still that of winning over the masses. Without that, all the talk about overthrowing tsarism would have been so much empty chatter. The Congress, however, confirmed many of Lenin's fears that the Bolshevik activists inside Russia had been slow to react to changing conditions. Accustomed to functioning over a long period in small, closed circles in the underground, the 'commit-
Nadezhda Krupskaya.
teemen' were ill at ease in the mass movement and used every excuse to avoid getting too closely involved with it. A formalistic conception of organisation, discipline and centralism, together with certain ultraleft tendencies, served to cover up for an innate conservatism and cliquishness, inherited from the past. Lenin used the Congress as an arena to wage an implacable struggle against these tendencies.
On the question of participating in legal organisations such as trade unions, co-ops, insurance and benefit schemes, where the prevailing mood of the 'committeemen' was for a boycott, Lenin warned that: 'The Congress cannot lay down a hard and fast rule on this point. All methods should be used for agitation. The experience of the Shidlovsky Commission gives no ground whatever for a downright negative attitude," and went on to shock the advocates of boycott by asserting that it would be correct, under certain circumstances, to participate even in a rigged tsarist parliament: "It is impossible to reply categorically whether it is advisable to participate in the Zemsky Sobor. Everything will depend on the political situation, on the electoral system, and on other specific factors which cannot be estimated in advance. Some say that the Zemsky Sobor is a fraud. That is true. But there are times when we must take part in elections to expose a fraud." 5. And Lenin moved an addendum to the resolution on this question which stated: "As regards the actual and sham concessions which the weakened autocracy is now making to the democrats in general and to the working class in particular, the Social Democratic party of the working class should take advantage of them in order,
on the one hand, to consolidate for the people every improvement in the economic conditions and every extension of liberties with a view to intensifying the struggle, and, on the other, steadily to expose before the proletariat the reactionary aims of the government, which is trying to disunite and corrupt the working class and draw its attention away from its urgent class needs at the moment of the revolution." 6.
Lenin's flexible and dialectical understanding of revolutionary tactics and strategy clashed with the unyielding dogmatism of the committeemen, whose universe revolved around the axis of their narrow local circle, which they jealously guarded, on the one hand against the leadership 'in exile' , on the other hand against the demands of the workers for a greater say in the running of inner-party affairs. The class composition of the Congress itself left a lot to be desired, as one of the delegates, Leshchinsky ('Zharkov') commented: "Looking around me, at the composition of the present Congress, 1 am astonished that in it there are so few workers, and yet, that workers suitable to be sent to the Congress, without any doubt, could have been found." 7. This is borne out by Krupskaya, who says in her memoirs: "There were no workers at the Third Congress-at least none of any mark... There was no shortage of committeemen though. Unless this make-up of the congress is borne in mind a great deal of what the congress records contain will not be properly understood." 8.
In fact, the atmosphere at the congress became frequently heated, as Lenin tackled the prejudices of the 'practicos' head-on, while the latter did not conceal their resentment at the interference' of the 'exiles' . "The 'committeeman'," wrote Krupskaya, "was usually a rather self-assured person. He saw what a tremendous influence the work of the committee had on the masses, and as a rule he recognised no inner-Party democracy. 'Inner-Party democracy only leads to trouble with the police. We are connected with the movement as it is", the "committeemen' would say. Inwardly they rather despised the Party workers abroad who, in their opinion, had nothing better to do than squabble among themselves-'they ought to be made to work under Russian conditions.' The 'committeemen' objected to the overruling influence of the Centre abroad. At the same time they did not want innovations. They were neither desirous nor capable of adjusting themselves to the quickly changing conditions." 9.
Bogdanov moved a resolution, drawn up by Lenin, 'On the Relations between Workers and Intellectuals within the
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Social Democratic Organisation,' which, while recognising the difficulties under conditions of illegality, argued in favour of applying the principle of elections more broadly, to open up the party to the workers, to make room for the new, fresh layers on the party's leading committees.
This resolution called forth a storm of protest on the part of the committeemen. Kamenev ('Gradov') was first on his feet: "I must decisively speak against approving this resolution. This question of the relation between the intellectuals and workers in party organisations does not exist. (Lenin: It does exist!) No, it does not: it exists as an issue for demagogy-and that's all." 10. Others argued that there was no time or forces to train workers, basing themselves on the famous quote from What is to be Done? which incorrectly asserts that socialist consciousness must be brought to the workers from without. Thus, Romanov ('Leskov') complained: "It seems to me that here we are overestimating the psychology of the workers (sic!), as if the workers by themselves could become conscious Social Democrats. "11. (My emphasis, AW) Yet now the very author of What is to be Done? answered his critics by appealing to the class instinct of the workers, and deliberately shocked his audience by referring approvingly of the participation of the workers in the party organisation during the period of 'Economism'*:
Intellectuals
"It has been said here that the bearers of Social Democratic ideas are predominantly the intellectuals. That is not true. In the epoch of Economism, the bearers of revolutionary ideas were workers, not intellectuals... It is further asserted that at the head of the splitters are usually situated intellectuals. That observation is very important but does not settle the matter. I long ago advised in my written works that workers should be brought onto the committees in the greatest possible number. The period following the Second Congress was characterised by the insufficient implementation of this obligation-that is the impression I have got from my conversations with the 'practical workers'.... It is necessary to overcome the inertia of the committeemen (applause and hissing)... the workers have a class instinct, and with just a little bit of political experience they very quickly become staunch social-democrats.
* In the English 'Collected Works', this speech of Lenin's has, for reasons best known to the Stalinist editors, been left out. I quote here from the Congress minutes. AW
MIR Summer 1988: Bolshevism, Part eight
1905.0
Anton Lavinsky's 1926 poster for the film, The Battleship Potemkin.
would be very pleased if, in up of our committees, out of intellectuals there were eight 12.
the makeevery two workers:"
It is an interesting point, frequently overlooked, that many of the old worker 'Economists' of the Rabocheye Dyelo tendency subsequently joined the Bolsheviks whereas the Economist intellectuals, such as Martynov and Akimov, almost to a man, joined the Mensheviks.
But, despite all the passionate arguments put forward by Lenin and his supporters, the majority remained obdurate. Burning with indignation, Lenin again intervened: "I could hardly keep my seat when it was said that there are no workers fit to sit on the committees. The question is being dragged out: obviously there is something the matter with the Party. Workers must be given places on the committees. Oddly enough, there are only three publicists at the Congress, the others being committee-men: it appears however that the publicists are for placing the workers, whereas the committee-men for some reason are quite wrought up over it." 13.
In the end, Lenin remained in a minority, and the resolution was rejected, on the grounds that there was 'no need' for a special resolution on this subject. Subsequent events were to show just how right Lenin was.
Nevertheless, the Third Congress marked an historic landmark. The basic ideas of Lenin on the leading role of the for easilute chase independ hee nand
mistrust of the Liberals, was adopted without dissent. The party's policy on the agrarian question (Lenin led off in this debate) was radically changed to include the confiscation of all the big
landlords estates and the setting up of peasant committees. From this point onwards, the revolutionary solution of the agrarian problem lay at the heart of the Bolsheviks' revolutionary strategy. The Party Rules approved at the Second Congress were basically reaffirmed, although Lenin made it abundantly clear that they were not to be interpreted in a narrow sense, but that the party organisation should be quickly opened up to include the best of the workers and the youth. With the bitter experience of the split still fresh in everyone's memory, he also insisted on including in the Rules clear and specific guarantees for the rights of minorities within the party. Minorities were to have the right to express their point of view freely at all levels of the party, subject only to the condition that the raising of differences should not be done in such a way as to disorganise and undermine the practical intervention of the party in the struggle against tsarism and capitalism.
Weekly paper
The Congress launched a new weekly paper, Proletary, to replace the Vperyod, and elected a new central committee to replace the old conciliationist one. The Congress thus resolved the old unsatisfactory division between the party's central organ, central committee and party council, reducing these to a single centre, the CC, which was later divided into two parts, the exterior and the interior. Lenin, for the time being, remained outside Russia, whilst the "Russian Bureau' of the CC, based in St Petersburg, was made up of Bogdanov, Krassin and Postolovsky, with Rumyantser later being co-opted on. Lenin was, in effect, in charge of the
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MIR Summer 1988: Bolshevism Part eight 'Foreign Bureau of the CC which maintained close links with the Russian Bureau. but also had direct links with the local party committees, with whom on a regular corres- The Congress had given a much needed boost to the morale Bolsheviks, who began to grow at a considerable pace. New branches and district committees were set up. Factory cells were established, as well as Bolshevik trade union factions, designed to take advantage of the new opportunities for legal trade union work in which, however, the Mensheviks had gained a head-start. Bolshevik agitation and propaganda was carried by small specialised groups of 10 to 12 people. Each agitator-organiser was responsible for a single district. The opportunities for carrying socialist ideas to the workers were now immense. Millions of leaflets were published by both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in the course of "The old forms of propagan- "were dead and writes Krupskaya.
propaganda had turned into agitation. With the colossal growth of the working class movement, verbal propaganda and even agitation as a whole could not meet the needs of the movement. What was needed was popular literature. a popular newspaper. literature for the peasants and for the non-Russian nationalities."
These. and other pressing needs. immediately raised the question of finance. The question ot arms, too. required large sums of money. David Lane. on the basis of a study of the Bolshevik and Menshevik press. concludes that. in February. the St Petersburg Bolshevik Committee raised a total of 2,400 roubles (f240), of which 265r was spent on the press and 375r on organisation. There was a separate arms fund of 1,295r. of which 850r had already been spent. If we include a further 981r represented by a separate strike fund, this means that the total income of the St Petersburg Bolsheviks in February 1905 was about £468 (ten roubles equalled one pound). However, in just the first two weeks of July, the expenditure of the Bolsheviks had risen to 800r on arms, 540r on organisation and 156r on literature.
"The Mensheviks' income from February to 15 March," according to "was larger than the Bolsheviks, being 4,039r (2,000r of which came from one contributor): of this sum, 1,250r were spent on arms, 'organisation' in various regions came to 1,126r and 630r were spent on the printing presses." 15.
"The budget of the revolutionary organisations, consisting in the period 1901-02 of a few hundred roubles, by mid-1905 had grown to tens of thousands of roubles a year." 16. Even so, neither the Bolsheviks nor the Mensheviks could keep up with the Everywhere there was a thirst for the written word. The workers wanted to know. The old Iskra had a print-run of around 10-15,000 (fortnightly, although for a brief period it appeared weekly). Now the audience for a revolutionary socialist newspaper was at least ten or printshops could not keep up with the needs of the moment. But the possibility of launching a legal paper did not arise until later in the year when Trotsky and Parvus took over the old liberal Ruskaya Gazeta and transformed it into a legal organ of the Marxists. With its low price of one kopeck, and its popular style, circulation shot up from 30,000 to 100.000, reaching a staggering 500,000 by December. By comparison, the Bolshevik legal paper Novaya Zhizn'. 'New Life', had a circulation of 50.000 which was still fives times more than the total print run of the old Iskra. But that was not until the Autumn. In the meantime, the local party groups had to make do with whatever leaflets and other material they could duplicate hand-operated mimeograph machines.
In his history of the Social Democracy. Martov gives a whole series of figures for the financial state of both Menshevik and Bolshevik groups in 1905. which show how far the demands of the situation outstripped the income raised from the members in subs. Thus, the Baku committee, in February, raised a total of 1,382 roubles, of which only 38 (3%) came 'from workers'. 'A typical local committee would consist of not more than a dozen people. Every member of a committee had a direct responsibility for some aspect of the work, either press, finance or agitation, or responsibility for a particular district or factory. These were linked to the workers through party circles.'
Only 14% of the income of the Sebastopol committee came from subs. The situation in Riga was better, only amounted to 22%. However, in the Bolshevik stronghold, Ivanovo- Voznesensk, the corresponding figure was 53%. 17. Both factions received large donations from wealthy sympathisers. But the Mensheviks, with their far looser organisation, were always far more dependent upon this source than the Bolsheviks, who strove for, and finally achieved, an organisation built upon the kopecks of the workers-the only real foundation for a workers' party. By contrast, we have already seen how, in early 1905, almost half of the income of the Mensheviks came from a single contributor. On the according to the same 15 February, source, the Petersburg Mensheviks' income totalled 247r "of which 200r were from a sympathiser." 18. The situation with the Jewish Bund was completely different. Despite their opportunistic policy, the Bund had a well-established, centralised working class organisation, about which Lenin spoke enviously more than once. Fifty per cent of their needs were met from the workers dona- The scope for the work inside Russia was now considerably easier. Although arrests were still made, sentences tended to be more lenient. Sometimes the local police were overruled by liberal The police provincial governors.
themselves were losing their nerve. Under these circumstances, the local committees were able to meet almost A typical local committee would consist of not more than a dozen people. Every member of a committee had a direct responsibility for some aspect of the work, either press, finance or agitation, or responsibility for a particular district or factory. These were linked to There were also social democratic student organisations, and beyond these a wider 'periphery'
of sympathisers. As soon as even one worker joined in a factory, he or she was expected to begin working under the direction of the local committee. We have already seen some of the negative features of the 'commit- . But it would be wrong to lose sight of their positive side. These were professional revolutionaries, dedicated to the party, hard-working and selfsacrificing. Working under difficult conditions, they were almost always on the move. They lived a hand-to-mouth existence, on very low wages, around 25-35 roubles a month, funds permitting, which was not always the case! Some had a private income. others were sometimes forced to do part-time jobs. we have seen, Some, like Krassin, as
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MIR Summer 1988: Bolshevism, Part eight
The Ivanovo-Voznesensk 'Meeting of Representative Delegates'. a soviet in all but name.
worked as a 'cover', which sometimes gave rise to amusing circumstances: "In St Petersburg there was an insurance company, not inaptly named Nadezhda ('Hope') whose directors made it their policy to employ as clerks men known to be active revolutionaries: they found that, although they seldom remained with the firm for long owing to the high incidence of arrests, they were exceptionally honest." 19.
Donations
Like the Mensheviks, the Bolsheviks also had some wealthy sympathisers who were systematically tapped for cash. Well-heeled civil servants, Zemvstvo liberals, doctors and other professional people provided money through donations, put up full-timers and even hid fugitives. In Odessa, the director of a big printing works "always helped out in a financial crisis." The industrialist Savva Morozov donated 2,000 roubles a month to Krassin from late 1903 onwards. As the amount of money raised from subs, paper and literature sales was nowhere near enough to meet the demands of the new situation, such donations became very important. Maxim Gorky, whose fame as a writer was already established, played a key role in raising this kind of money, enlisting the aid of many other writers and prominent intellectuals, whose enthusiasm had been aroused by the revolution. Students and other middle class people were approached for donations. Even the odd landowner, like A Tsurupa, gave regular contributions.
Throughout the Spring of 1905, the pendulum swung continually to the left. After the massacre of the Ninth of January, the movement in St Petersburg
temporarily ebbed, as the workers of the capital cautiousiy took stock of the position. The May Day demonstration in St Petersburg was not a success, with only a few hundred turning out. However, the more backward provinces were now being roused to struggle. On the first of May, 200,000 workers struck in nearly 200 towns throughout Russia. The textile workers were well to the fore. On 12 May, a general strike broke out in the Bolshevik stronghold of Ivanovo-Voznesensk, a textile town with 70,000 workers, lasting 72 days. By this time the Ivanovo-Voznesensk Bolsheviks numbered more than 400. Negotiations were conducted by elected factory delegates who met in a 'Meeting of Representative Delegates', a soviet in all but name. Out of 128 delegates, of whom 23 were women, about 30 were Bolsheviks.
The Ivanovo-Voznesensk soviet kept order in the town, issued proclamations, set up a militia and controlled the press, thus in practice imposing freedom of the press, speech and assembly. Daily mass meetings enabled the mass of workers to learn and exchange experiences. The peasants in the surrounding districts looked hopefully towards the soviet to which they directed petitions. The militant unity of the proletariat and peasantry was thus being forged, not in words but in deeds, by the movement of the workers themselves. From the 23 May the local party got out a regular bulletin on the course of the dispute. By the end of June, the Ivanovo-Voznesensk Bolshevik organisation had grown to 600 members, with 15-20 factory organisations.
In the textile town of Lodz in Poland, the funeral of a worker killed by Cos-
sacks turned into a mass political demonstration on May 15 with slogans such as 'Down with Tsarism!' and 'Long live the Revolution!' A wave of strikes and demonstrations swept through Poland and Lithuania, culminating in the 23 June general strike and uprising in Lodz, and solidarity demonstrations in Warsaw and Odessa.
Soviets
The strike wave which gripped almost all the industrial areas throughout the Spring and Summer assumed an increasingly political character. Whereas in March, less than 30% of strikes were political, between April and August the figure had risen to 50-70%. Everywhere, the workers' elected representatives in the factory committees and strike committees led the way. And all that a 'soviet' is-at its inception-is an enlarged strike committee, an organ of struggle in the fight of the workers against the employers. The soviets in Russia, those marvellously effective, flexible and representative organisations of the workers, were not the invention of Lenin or Trotsky. Nowhere do they feature in the writings of Marx and Engels. They were the product of the inventive genius and initiative of ordinary working men and women. The Soviets were destined to play a central role in the whole development of the revolution, particularly during and after the great October strike.
Not only the urban workers but the peasantry was also gradually being drawn into the orbit of the revolution. Throughout the Summer there were peasant disturbances and strikes of agricultural labourers in the Baltic area,
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the Ukraine, Don, Kuban and the Caucusus. In some areas, the peasants virtually took over whole areas and ran their own affairs. The Mensheviks tried to use this as backing for their theory of "revolutionary self-government" . But the truth was that, unless the working class took power, such local outbreaks could only have an episodic character.
Taking cognisance of the new situation in the villages, the party had already re-drafted its agrarian programme to include the confiscation of all landowners'. • government, church, monastic and crown lands. The changed atmosphere in the villages opened up for the first time big possibilities for social democratic work among the peasants. Although the party was still weak here, some circles were established in areas like Nizhegorod, Samara, Saratov, Kazan and Tver. Lenin insisted on the establishment of purely social democratic groups in the villages, composed of farm labourers and rural proletarians. Only then would they seek agreements for joint work with other revolutionary-democratic groups. But the prior condition was not to blur over the distinction between workers and peasant small proprietors.
An interesting pen portrait of the work of Bolshevik agitators in the villages is to be found in Sholokhov's famous novel And Quiet Flows the Don, which describes how the Bolshevik Stockman organised a group of Cossacks around a poetry and literacy circle: "After long sifting and testing, a little group of the Cossacks began to meet regularly in Stockman's workshop. Stockman was the heart and soul of the group and he worked straight towards a goal that only he fully understood. He ate into the simple understanding and conceptions like a worm into wood, instilling repugnance and hatred towards the existing system. At first he found himself confronted with the cold steel of distrust, but he was not to be repulsed. Even that could be worn away." 20.
This ferment in the villages had important repercussions in the armed forces, which were overwhelmingly of peasant composition. However, as so often happened in the history of revolutions, the revolt flared up first in the fleet, with its more proletarian class make-up.
The party's work among soldiers and sailors was even more difficult than work among the peasants. On the eve of the 1905 revolution, there were only three organised party groups in the armed forces. However, in the course of the revolution, this number increased to a total of 27 groups. 21. Military defeats created an explosive mood of discontent
MON CAN
P207E
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Workers' strike In Moscow. in the ranks, making them ever more receptive to social democratic agitation. News of the annihilation of the Russian fleet at Tsushima, (27-28 May, 1905) had an especially electrifying effect on the sailors. As so often happens in naval mutinies, the leading role was played by the petty officers, normally drawn from the most able and intelligent of the sailors, whose close proximity to the officers gives rise to a deep-seated contempt for the latter. The tensions and conflicts aroused by the arrogance and incompetence of the naval officers become increasingly unbearable when they are related to matters of life and death, in time of war. Precisely such a clash between the petty officers and officers led to the outbreak of the famous mutiny on the battleship Prince Potemkin Tavrichesky on June 14 1905, immortalised in Eisenstein's classic film The Battleship Potemkin.
The immediate issue was the bad food. But the underlying cause was the general discontent with the conduct of the war, and the piling up of unbearable contradictions over decades and generations. The Black Sea fleet had set out for the southern port of Odessa precisely when that city was in the grip of a general strike. No amount of military discipline and police surveillance could prevent the bacilli of revolution from reaching the ships anchored only a few miles away.
The mutineering crew arrested all the officers, except the commander and six others who were killed. The sailors elected a committee from their midst which took the bold initiative of sailing into Odessa to appeal for support from the workers. A great crowd assembled around the corpse of the able seaman Grigory Valulinchuk, killed by an of-
ficer. A massive demonstration took place, and mass meetings were held in which social democratic agitators participated. This showed both the strong and the weak side of the spontaneous, elemental movement of the masses. All the elements were present for a decisive linking-up of the army with the revolutionary people. But in the absence of a conscious leadership, the "floating republic" could only have the character of an episodic development, which nevertheless was an anticipation of the going over of the soldiers and sailors to the side of the Soviets in 1917.
These events left the Odessa authorities thunderstruck. For a time they did not know what to do. In practice, power was in the hands of the workers. But they acted with no clear perspective, no overall policy or plan. This allowed the authorities time to concentrate their forces against Odessa. A naval force was sent against the Potemkin, which succeeded in escaping to Rumania, but the revolution in Odessa was brutally suppressed.
The mutiny on the Potemkin therefore failed to lead to an insurrection, which was implicit in the situation. But it did not pass off without leaving its imprint. Terrified at the scale of the mass movement and the signs of inner decomposition in the armed forces, the government announced the holding of elections to the State Duma (parliament). Ten days later peace was concluded : with Japan under humiliating terms. It is not generally realised that. despite her earlier reverses, from strictly military point of view, Russia had everything to gain from continuing the war. Japan's reserves of men and money were nearly exhausted. But the rapid termination of the war was essential for the preservation of the autoc-
The ending of the war and the announcement of elections was greeted with elation by the bourgeois liberals. "The Japanese," proclaimed one of them, "will not enter the Kremlin, but the Russians will!" 22. However, closer acquaintance with the detalis of Bulygin's proposals soon poured cold water over this precipitate and naive optimism.
Bulygin, the creature of the autocracy, had worked out what Lenin described as "the most reactionary constitution in Europe." It gave the vote to the landowners, bourgeois, propertyowning peasants and the urban middle class, while the workers, the village poor, women and servicemen-that is to say, the overwhelming majority of the population-were excluded. To add insult to injury, the Duma would only have consultative powers! The whole elaborate construction was a lie and a
[page 43]
deceit behind which continue as before.
From this moment on, the Duma occupied a central position in the tactical discussions of all social democratic tendencies. The Bolsheviks immediate-
of a ve boy out To position on the
Mensheviks was ambiguous. In the Caucusus, focal point for the most backward and opportunist wing of Menshevism, they openly called for participation. However, in general, the mood of the Menshevik rank and file was against this. The Bolsheviks proposed a united front to the Mensheviks and the Social Democratic organisations of the nationalities for a boycott campaign. At local level, the Bolsheviks
• Menshevik workers acted in unison. The petit bourgeois Social Revolutionaries also supported the boycott. Even the Liberals of the 'Union of Unions' were compelled to come out in opposition, at least in words.
Boycott
The government's granting of autonomy to the universities, in itself an apparently secondary
measure, represented a major turning- point. The doors of the establishments of higher education were suddenly thrown open and through them poured the masses, thirsting for ideas, and eager to participate in the arena of public debate. Up to this point, the students had been involved in a passive student 'strike' refusing to turn up to classes. This was on the point of being broken when the whole movement took an entirely different direction. Throughout the Autumn, the campuses • and lecture theatres were the focal points of heated discussions. Beginning with the students, these debates became known to the workers who soon understood that here, at last, was a place they could meet and discuss unmolested by the police. "Alongside the students' uniforms in the lecture theatres," wrote an eyewitness, "ordinary clothes and, above all, workers overalls were to be seen with ever increasing frequency." 23.
The explosion on the campuses showed that the pendulum was still swinging rapidly to the left, with new layers being drawn into the struggle. This was the fundamental consideration which determined the Bolsheviks attitude to the question of a boycott at this stage, although at the Third Congress Lenin was very careful to insist that the party should keep its options open on this question. More than anyone else, Lenin understood the need for extreme flexibility on all tactical and organisational questions and not to get carried away by
Sailors from the Potemkin. ultra-left moods which would only serve to separate the advanced elements from the majority of the class.
The organic opportunism of the Menshevik leaders meant that they were heavily inclined towards parliamentarianism, although the pressure of the radicalised rank and file prevented them from revealing their hand too early. Among the Bolsheviks, however, there was a considerable number of the "committeemen" in particular who advocated the "boycott" tactic as an absolute panacea, outside of time and space. This ultra left tendency, the product of a lack of understanding of theory and the dialectical method of Marxism, led to serious mistakes later on, as Lenin honestly admitted
In the given situation, the boycott of the "Bulygin Duma" project was absolutely correct. The revolutionary wave was still gathering in strength. The terms of the new constitution fell so far short of the expectations aroused that
Footnotes
1. Lenin, 'Collected Works', volume 8, p370.
2. Marx and Engels, 'Selected Works', volume 2, p381.
3. Tretiy s'yezd RSDRP (Protokoly), p110.
p.375.
8. 'Memories of Lenin', p/25.
10.
11.
12.
ibid.
Lenin,
'Collected
ibid p376.
Tretiy s'yezd, Krupskaya,
pl24.
'Memories
ibid ppl24-125.
Tretiy s'yezd, ibid p265.
ibid p262.
even a section of the Liberals were opposed. The democratic aspirations of the masses collided against the solid wall of the bureaucratic-police regime. Only by the revolutionary overthrow of tsarism and a clean break with the past could the ground be cleared for the introduction of a genuine democracy. The exact nature of the transformation and the role of the different classes in the revolution were the subject of heated debate within the ranks of the workers' movement, which will be dealt with later. But to all but the blindest reformist, it was evident that on the order of the day stood, not parliamentarianism but a revolutionary general strike and armed insurrection to overthrow the autocracy. This perspective was amply corroborated by the high tide of the revolution which was ushered in by the October strike in St Petersburg and culminated in the December uprising in Moscow.
13.
p411.
14. Krupskaya, op cit, pl27.
15. David Lane, 'The Roots Communism', p78.
16. Martov, 'Obshehestvennoe Rossil, volume 2, p63.
17. ibid, volume 3, p569.
18. D.Lane, op cit, p78.
19. JLH Keep, 'The Rise Democracy in Russia, p181.
20. Sholokhov, And Quiet Don', p259.
21. Istoriya
22. Bernurd p485.
23.
Lenin, 'Collected Works'
of
KPSS, volume 2, Pares, 'A History
op cit, volume 1
p90.
of Russia',
[page 44]
Book Reviews
Jam
Maxton By William Knox.
Published by lanchester University
Press. Price £4.95
1987.
In the turbulent years that followed the first world war, the industrial conurbation of Clydeside was turned into a
battlegrevolutionary round-"the Petrograd of the British Isles"-in the words of the legendary Scottish Marxist, John MacLean.
Although the movement in Glasgow was eventually defeated with the military occupation of the city by 12,000 troops in February 1919, the labour movement emerged from these events immensely strengthened. In vivid contrast to the general election of 1918, when Labour had won only one of the 15 Glasgow seats, by 1922 the city was a stronghold of the Independent Labour Party (ILP). In 10 Glasgow constituencies the party swept to power and the formidable group of left-wing MPs went on to become infamous in the eyes of the British establishment as 'the Red Clydesiders'
The most prominent of these was James Maxton (or Jimmy Maxton as he was better known on Clydeside) a powerful and charismatic orator who later went on to become one of the most illustrious figures in the history of the British labour movement. This book is an interesting albeit short and somewhat sketchy introduction to the life of Maxton, tracing his development from his early days as a Tory student at Glasgow University to his ultimate isolation as the solitary remaining ILP MP before his death in 1946 at the age of 62.
Maxton was born into a conservative lower middle class family and only began to grope towards the ideas of socialism as a result of his
experience a
working schoolteacher amidst the poverty and squalor of the slums of the East End of Glasgow. According to his own account, he was finally converted to socialism as a result of attending John MacLean's monster open-air political meetings. Although Maxton never adopted the thoroughgoing revolutionary programme of his mentor, the influence and example of MacLean left its imprint on Maxton's own character.
Thus, even after spending almost a quarter of a century in Westminster, Maxton remained an incorruptible individual who shunned the comforts and privileges of parliamentary life. Along with the other 'Red Clydesiders', he continued to live a spartan existence, abstaining from alcohol, lodging in modest accommodation and remaining openly contemptuous of those Labour MPs who had been sucked into the social whirlpool of London high society.
Banned
Maxton and the other Clydeside MPs built up enormous popularity among the Scottish working class as they launched one broadside after another against capitalism and its apologists. In one famous incident in 1923 they were banned en masse from the House of Commons for denouncing the Tories as child murderers, to the acute embarrassment of the respectable Labour leaders.
As Knox demonstrates, throughout the 1920s and especially in the aftermath of the 1926 general strike, Maxton moved steadily further to the left. In the Cook-Maxton Manifesto, drawn up jointly with the miner's leader AJ Cook in 1928, Maxton called for "an unceasing war against capitalism and opposition to compromises with the political philosophy of our capitalist opponents."
At a later stage, following the bitter experience of the Ramsay
MacDonald-led
james Maxtan
minki LIVES
po cookie nyyt Of C
Labour government which collapsed in ignominious disarray in 1931, Maxton for a period even drew close to the ideas of Leon Trotsky. He enraged not only the Labour establishment, but the Stalinist leaders of the British Communist Party by his appraisal of Trotsky, then living in exile on the remote and deserted island of Prinkipo, as "the greatest individual menace to the capitalist order... who is feared also by, the rulers of Soviet Russia. However, while recommending Trotsky's masterpiece, History of the Russian Revolution for "a wide knowledge of social affairs, a deeper understanding of the real workings of history and a clearer view of the tasks of a working class movement"
Maxton himself failed to fully absorb and apply the methods of Trotsky.
It is a weakness of this biography that Knox does not seriously attempt to analyse Maxton's failure to build a viable mass alternative to reformism and Stalinism. A number of glaring political errors committed by Maxton and his co-leaders of the ILP are glossed over by the author. For instance, albeit in a half-hearted fashion, he attempts to defend the decision of Maxton and the ILP to abandon the Labour Party following the debacle of the 1929-31 Labour government. Yet the author himself provides striking evidence of the grievous
consequences of disaffiliation for the ILP and for the labour movement as a whole. He reveals that within five months of leaving the Labour Party, between July and November 1932, membership of the ILP had plunged by 50% and the number of branches slashed from 653 to 450- the most serious haemorrage being from the industrial areas of Scotland and the North of England.
Decline
Having cut itself off from the traditional mass political organisation of the British working class, the ILP entered a period of terminal decline while the Labour Party itself gradually recovered from the trauma of 1929-31. Perhaps the most tragic aspect of the decision was that it actually strengthened the stranglehold of the right wing leaders of the official labour movement by drawing away a layer of the most advanced and committed left wing militants in a period when the Labour Party itself was undergoing
profound upheaval. Had it remained as an organised force within the official Labour Party, the ILP could have had a decisive impact on the political direction of the labour movement in the tempestuous pre-war years.
Even as an independent organisation the ILP could have played a more influential role within the working class had
[page 45]
it anchored itself firmly with the perspectives and programme of Marxism. Instead, amidst the raging political storms of the 1930s and 1940s the ILP was swept in one direction and then another. At one stage flirting with the ideas of Trotskyism, at another stage accommodating themselves to Stalinism and reformism, Maxton and the other ILP leaders were tortured by confusion and indecision. This led Trotsky to characterise the ILP as a 'centrist' organisation, which in the terminology of Marxism means a political grouping standing midway between reformism and revolution. Lacking precision of programme and unable to distinguish itself clearly from either the Communist Party or the official Labour leadership, like other centrist parties in Western Europe, the ILP dwindled into a sect and eventually
Solidarity Forever
IWW: An or istory of the
Wobblies.
Published by
Lawrence and Wishart, £6-95, 1987.
This book uniquely captures the fighting spirit of the Industrial Workers of the World, or as they were popularly known, 'The Wobblies'. Based on interviews with ex-IWW members it lays bare the hardship and oppression that millions of American workers suffered at the turn of the century-conditions that were the spur to the founding of the IWW in 1905.
songs
The IWW stood uncompromisingly for the class war. For them unions were the vehicle for the socialist transformation of society. The general strike, they believed, would be the ultimate weapon to bring the ruling
vanished trace.
The failure of the ILP to go all the way over to the ideas of revolutionary Marxism was partially a result of Maxton's own inadequate theoretical understanding. Knox's biography touches upon the fact that Maxton never showed any sustained appetite for the study of political theory. As the author reveals, in the final years of his life Maxton's literary diet consisted solely of cowboy novels and detective stories.
virtually
Theory
This aversion to theory was not a unique characteristic of James Maxton. Trotsky himself had commented on a number of occasions that one of the hallmarks of the leadership of the labour movement in Britain was a disdainful and even contemptuous attitude towards
class to its knees. All workers, irrespective of race, sex or nationality, were welcomed into the 'One Big Union', , as they called the IWW. This stood in stark contrast to its rival, the American Federation of Labour which stood for craft conservatism and class collaboration.
The IWW is often remembered for its songs. Thousands of its red song books, Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent, reached out into every mine, lumber camp and construction gang. Its best known writers were Joe Hill, who penned The Preacher and the Slave, and Ralph Chaplin, with Solidarity Forever. Most of the tunes were "stolen' from the Salvation Army or the 'Starvation Army' as they were known, and transformed with new words.
The Wobblies used brilliant methods of agitation. Bruce 'Utah' Philip relates how "a man would walk by carrying an umbrella and a briefcase and dressed in a tight suit with a string tie and a bowler hat. He looked just like a banker. He'd yell, I've been
MIR Summer 1988: Book Reviews
ideas and theory. This in turn was a consequence of the might of the British empire which had accumulated huge reserves of wealth and had enabled the early labour movement to win substantial reforms through practical activity alone. The necessity for a worked out, comprehensive strategy to overthrow capitalism and institute a new form of society was not dictated by the same sense of urgency as was the case in Russia and other European states.
Lacking a firm grasp of revolutionary theory, Maxton, as the most authoritative leader of the ILP, ultimately proved incapable of working out a clear socialist programme or of developing the strategy and tactics necessary to build a mass movement for socialist change in Britain. He ended up as a harmless rebel, an entertaining parliamentary orator who was patronised
robbed! I've been robbed! Help, I've been robbed!'
Everyone would rush over to him. When enough had crowded around, he'd shout, I've been robbed by the capitalist system!' And then the boys would jump out from the doorway and start singing Joe Hill's song, The Preacher and the Slave.
The IWW were industrial
on all sides and whom even Churchill could describe as "the greatest gentleman in the House of Commons.
Nevertheless Maxton will be mainly remembered not for his mistakes but for his burning passionate commitment to fighting the forces of oppression. His courage and loyalty to the working class movement stands in vivid contrast to the cynicism and careerism of so many Labour parliamentarians.. However, as any study of his life vividly illustrates, even the greatest individual socialist propagandists are invariably impotent in the face of the powerful forces which control society and that the building of a mighty Marxist movement, rooted in the mass organisations of the working class, remains the central task for socialists today.
McCombes
pioneers. They led the first sit down strike in Schenectady, New York, in 1906. They began the organisation of the immigrant workers that the AFL would not touch, scoring their first victory at the US Steel plant, McKee's Rocks, in 1909. The IWW's finest hour came in organising the strike by 20,000 textile workers in Lawrence-nearly
[page 46]
MIR Summer 1988: Book Reviews 30 different nationalities took part.
But the IWW's main success came out West in the lumber camps, mines and harvest fields where class conflict was at its rawest. The Agricultural Workers Organisation was the IWW's outstanding union. Formed in 1915 it launched the mobile job delegate (shop steward) system, by 1917 it had 300 mobile delegates and 20,000 members. They managed to enforce the red card as the passport onto the freight trains. In the lumber camps of the South the IWW organised both black and white workers into a common union, in the Northwest they fought bitter battles against ruthless employers.
Trials Joseph Murphy relates one strike where they started shipping in scabs. We found out that the scabs were being hired in Minneapolis, so a bunch of us beat our way employment back to the agency that was shipping them and signed on. As soon as they put us on the train Washington, back to we started to unload all the first class scabs. So we just let the company take us across the country until we got back to Town Creek, Washington.
They took us off the train. As we came up to the site, we started to sing: 'Hold the fort for we are coming, union men be strong. Side by side we battle onward, victory will come? That really pissed them off. They had fed us, wined and dined us, all the way from Minnesota, thinking we were scabs, and all the were a bunch of time we Wobblies.
The IWW suffered ferocious attacks by the bosses and their hired gangs. In the Everett massacre, five were killed when deputies opened fire on a boat attempting to dock. Joe Hill was judically murdered in Salt Lake City In the Centralia massacre, IWW Wesley organiser Everest was castrated and lynched. In 1917 in Bisboe, Arizona, two thousand armed deputies raided the homes of striking miners, 1,200 strikers were loaded onto a train and left in the middle of the New Mexico desert. Only the intervention of army officers saved their lives. In 1919 during the Palmer Raids, thousands of IWW members were arrested, hundreds of immigrant workers were deported In three major show trials, the IWW were sentenced to long terms in prison-they were charged under the criminal syndicalism law which outlawed union organising.
The state raids broke the back of the IWW and it never recovered. Its aim of organising the mass of unskilled workers temporarily was defeated. The book offers no real reasons for the failure of the IWW. The IWW were limited by their syndicalist ideas, believing that the trade union struggle alone, culminating in the general strike, would defeat the ruling class. This ignored the power of the state machine and its armed bodies of men. The Russian revolution, led by a revolutionary party, became the model for thousands of IWW activists, who joined the fledgling American Communist Party. Tragically, most of the IWW leaders, prison, failed to follow this path.
The main credit of the IWW was its call for industrial When the Committee of Industrial Organisations was formed in 1934 many ex- IWW members helped to storm the bastions of the steel and car plants to build a mighty force of four million union members. The last word must go to ex-wW member Jack Miller, quoted in the book, summing up the dream that inspired so many young workers: "We fought for material gains like beans, clothing and schooling, but we had a much larger vision We were not making a new building in the shell of the old, not a new city, not a new country-we were building a world.
What greater new task, what greater inspiration could there be than that we * I* W*W JOIN THE workers were the only ones who could do this? It would be enough just to save this world, but we were going to The Social Structure of the Early Christian By Dimitris J Kyrtatas.
Published by Verso, £24.95, 1987 Kyrtatas argues that Engels and Kautsky have got it all wrong-early Christianity that is. Contrary to what they said its recruits were not drawn mainly from the lower classes and its message was not a radical revolutionary one. Rather its recruits were 'socially mixed'. 'Educated' people quickly took up leading positions with a concerted effort being made almost from the start to attract members of the ruling class AUTO-WORKERS ONE BIG UNION build another and better one."
By Richard Knights into the church. Far from. having a revolutionary message, we are told that early Christianity was very conservative on issues such as slavery.
Unfortunately for Kyrtatas Communities. the evidence that Christians in the first and second centuries AD were generally from the lower classes is very strong: the lists of names and occupations given by Christian and pagan writers; or the frequency of comments like those from St Paul: "not many of you are of noble birth... God has chosen mere nobodies to overthrow the existing order"
This reference to overthrowing the existing order is important. The nature of the message of early Christianity is such as to make it inconceivable that it could have been addressed to anything other than an overwhelmingly lower class
[page 47]
audience. But before examining that message in detail, it is necessary to outline briefly the nature of the lower classes in the Roman Empire.
The economy was based or. agriculture and slavery.
There had been slave revolts before; eg Spartacus, but by the first century AD the slaves were generally ground down, "men without hope'. Many of them were employed on the gigantic estates of the ruling class. The small peasantry were weighed down with debt and taxation and frequently squeezed out by the giant estates. In the towns were the artisans and semiemployed labourers. It was there that Christianity had much of its success. But there was no sense of common purpose among these various classes.
Discontent
Christianity originated in Palestine. There the lower classes were sucked dry not only by Roman imperialism but also by a native aristocracy that Rome maintained in power. The hoarding of crops by the landlords to raise prices led to disastrous famines in AD25 and AD46. The most depressed part of Palestine was Galilee where Jesus originated. Among the people there was a seething discontent and a sense of despair at the prospect of improving their conditions. The success of Christianity can be explained by the way it latched onto both of these feelings: discontent and despair. It offered a political saviour for those who had no hope in making their own salvation.
Kyrtatas does not deal with important Christian revolutionary literature when considering the message of early Christianity, or with the subsequent revisionism of the hird and fourth century churc-. which involved massive censorship and rewriting. Our version of the New Testament cates to this period.
After that revision, it appears that the message of early Christianity was about 'religious devotion' and the
promise of an afterlife'. But the neglected evidence indicates that on the contrary, the message was really much concerned with material rather than spiritual matters.
Despite the church's later revisionism the original platform can to some extent be reconstructed. It had three main planks. Firstly, class hatred: landlords are condemned for exploitation (James V); the rich are viciously condemned (Luke VI); great satisfaction is taken
thoughts of future vengeance (Luke XVI).
Secondly, the Christians called for the overthrow of existing society and the creation of a new one: the 'Kingdom of God' '. Paul was accused of wanting to turn the world upside down (Acts XVII). He pledged that Christ would "abolish every king of domination, authority and power" . The new order was not going to be for the rich. Jesus said: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God". . The kingdom was to be in this world not up in heaven-and in the near future. It was to be an age of superabundance: "a grain of wheat would bear a thousand ears and every ear would have ten thousand grains and every grain would give ten thousand of the finest flour... " (Bishop Papias, early second century). Papias'
work was suppressed by the revisionists of the later church until 1575! It was also to be an age of 'communist' production and distribution: "earth the same for all, not divided by walls and fences, will then bear fruit more abundantly... no pauper is there, no rich man, nor any tyrant, no slave... no kings, no rulers but all share in common". . (Jewish Christian Syballine poem).
Finally, the kingdom was to be an international one.
Kautsky in his famous work, The Foundations of Christianity, emphasises the importance of this internationalist aspect. It finally caused Christianity to break with Judaism and become an independent force. Paul and
THE
SOCIAL STRUCTURE
OF THE
EARLY
CHRISTIAN
COMMUNITIES
DIMITRIS J. KYRTATAS Wid, an Intrecatien fu Gauffry de Ste. Crons
other internationalists had to conduct a struggle against those who wanted to keep the movement as a Jewish nationalist one. It is this struggle which explains the strange sounding arguments about circumcision and food laws. Paul was saying in effect let's scrap these requirements for membership because they hinder recruitment. His position was a minority for years. Ranged against him was not only Peter but James, brother of Jesus and president of the early church.
The third part of the early Christian platform was the claim that supernatural help would be forthcoming in establishing the new order. This caught the mood of the lower classes; they wanted revolution but despaired of their capability to achieve it. "Who is like unto the Beast?" asks the Book of Revelation.
Christianity offered the prospect of overcoming • the 'Beast' ie Rome, through supernatural assistance. The Christians took up the old Jewish idea of a Messiah or Christ, a magical saviour who would come from the stars with an army of angels.
In the early days the idea of supernatural help was a spur to revolutionary action rather than an excuse for inaction. Behind the story of Jesus' death lies clear evidence of an attempt to nudge the supernatural revolution along by force of arms. Jesus was arrested on the Mount of
Olives, a traditional gathering ground for rebels. He had led a riot in the Temple and had ordered his followers to buy swords. The names of these followers indicate that they were revolutionaries eg Simon the Zealot. The Zealots were the main Jewish revolutionaries at the time. Similarly, a few years later during the reign of Emperor Claudius, we read of a serious Christian inspired riot in Rome itself.
Contrary to Kyrtatas theory, Christianity did start out as a revolutionary organisation but the conditions of the time made its conservative transformation inevitable. Right from the start Christianity had its supernatural crutch, reflecting the simple despairing recognition that the objective conditions for a successful revolution were just not present. The
element superatural became increasingly an excuse for political passivity. Everything could be left to Jesus. He was increasingly deified while the individual Christian was told that salvation lay in abasement before this 'Son of God'. The original revolutionary intent was erased by spiritualisation. The kingdom of God was relocated: no longer would it consist of a new order in this world; rather it would be something that the faithful would only experience after death.
By Roy Davies
[page 48]
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