Matthew Mercer
The 1917 Russian Revolution was an explosion of democracy created by millions of ordinary Russian workers, peasants and soldiers. For the first time the exploited and oppressed population took power and held control over Russian society, in an attempt to build a society based on human need and social solidarity. However, within a few short years all semblance of working-class democracy had been crushed by a brutal Stalinist counter-revolution, from which a new bureaucratic, state-capitalist ruling class violently re-asserted everything about capitalism which the revolutionaries had fought against to begin with. How could such a counter-revolution have occurred from within the Bolshevik Party itself, which in 1917 had been the most radical, leading force within the revolution? This question is hotly contested to this day. Both Stalinists and capitalist ideologues have argued that Lenin naturally led to Stalin. While Stalinists made this case as an attempt to legitimise the ostensibly socialist regime in Russia, outright defenders of capitalism use the revolution’s failure to argue that all revolutionary challenges to the system are inevitably doomed to result in dictatorship. This session will make the Marxist case about the true historical legacy of Lenin and the pre-Stalin Bolsheviks, as well as explain the causes of the revolution’s tragic defeat.