Was Stalinism a More Extreme Form of Bolshevism?

Introduction: Socialism, Bolshevism, and the Rise of Stalin

The Communist Manifesto describes socialism as a society without "classes and class antagonisms" (Arnove, 2000). In place of class society, "we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all" (Marx and Engels, 1967). Stalinism is, in many ways, the negation of socialism. It put an end to workers' control, democracy, a classless society, and the unity of the state.

Joseph Stalin became the leader of Russia after the death of Lenin in 1924 (Arnove, 2000). Stalin's dictatorship arose from the defeat of the Russian Revolution and the failure of revolution to spread to more advanced capitalist countries in Europe.

Stalinism is a term that describes the political and economic system implemented by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union. Building on the foundations laid by Lenin, who led the Bolsheviks, Stalin expanded the centralized bureaucratic system of the Soviet Union during the 1930s. This system is largely perceived as an extreme form of totalitarianism, as Stalin slaughtered many people to achieve his goals.

The Bolsheviks and Working-Class Democracy

Many historians have argued that Stalinist barbarism was the inevitable outcome of any attempt to make revolutionary change, and some have even suggested that it was a more extreme form of Bolshevism.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks led the workers to power, fighting against the bourgeoisie and those who opposed socialism (O'Mahoney, 2004). Far from substituting for the working class, the Bolshevik Party, through its leadership and farsightedness, allowed the working class to reach and sustain a level of mass action never before seen in history.

The Bolsheviks relied on a system of democratic working-class councils known as Soviets. Their goal was working-class democracy. According to O'Mahoney: "The Bolsheviks were fallible human beings, acting in conditions of great difficulty. Mistakes they may have made in the maelstrom of civil war and economic collapse are proper subjects for socialist discussion and debate. As their critic and comrade Rosa Luxemburg wrote in 1918, the Bolsheviks would have been the last to imagine that everything they did in their conditions was a perfect model of socialist action for everywhere at all times. But what the Bolsheviks never were was the root of the Stalinist counter-revolution, which amongst its other crimes, murdered most of those who were still alive in the mid-1930s."

The Bolsheviks stood their ground through good times and bad (O'Mahoney, 2004). The workers' risings were defeated in the West. Invasions and civil war destroyed the soviets. The Bolshevik Party was divided. One section followed a path that ended up leading the bureaucratic counter-revolution. The surviving central leaders battled the counter-revolution on a program of working-class self-defence and of renewing the soviets.

The Defeat of the Bolsheviks and the Emergence of Stalinism

Those Bolsheviks were lost to bloody defeat (O'Mahoney, 2004). Stalinism emerged in the wake of the Bolsheviks, rising above the murdered socialist hopes of the Russian and international working class. By the late 1930s, Stalin had killed the leading activists not only from the Trotskyist faction, but also from the Right Communist and even the Stalinist factions of the Bolshevik Party of the 1920s.

According to O'Mahoney: "Stalinism was not Bolshevism, any more than it was any kind of socialism. Trotsky, who was to die at the hands of Stalin's assassins, put it well and truly when he said that a river of working-class and socialist blood separated Stalinism from Bolshevism."

The Bolsheviks, who led the October Revolution, knew that a workers' state in an isolated and backward Russia could only survive if it spread and received major support for industrial development from economically advanced countries that had themselves made a workers' revolution (Arnove, 2000). A civil war in Russia, which lasted from 1918 to 1921, squelched the dreams of the Bolsheviks. Russia's supplies and trade were cut off, and the nation was forced into battle on multiple fronts. Industrial and agricultural productivity decreased as resources were directed to fighting the invading armies. The working class was literally decimated. Without a working class and without production, workers' control of production was impossible, and the workers' state became unhinged from its social basis.

Conclusion: Mortal Enemies

To those who argued that Stalin's tyranny grew naturally out of the Russian Revolution and the Bolsheviks' plans, the revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky rebuked that it was necessary for Stalin to liquidate the Bolshevik leadership of 1917 and systematically restructure the party to achieve his goals (Arnove, 2000): "The unimpeachable language of figures mercilessly refutes the assertion so current among the democratic intellectuals that Stalinism and Bolshevism are 'one and the same.' Stalinism originated not as an organic growth out of Bolshevism but as a negation of Bolshevism consummated in blood. The program of this negation is mirrored very graphically in the history of the Central Committee. Stalinism had to exterminate first politically and then physically the leading cadres of Bolshevism in order to become what it now is: an apparatus of the privileged, a brake upon historical progress, an agency of world imperialism. Stalinism and Bolshevism are mortal enemies" (Trotsky, 1937).