Customer Reviews

The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism

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This is not a history book. Rather, this book is history. The author wrote what is now a time capsule forever poised on the breaking edge of world events. The year was 1920. The Russian Revolution--despite huge difficulties due to World War I and, following that, attacks from the Western powers--was triumphant. Russell went to Moscow as a huge VIP, a world-famous mathematician/philosopher who believed in Socialism and Communism. Further, he considered capitalism both evil and doomed...And yet, and yet, as we'll see, Bolshevism was for Russell a step too far.

Russell had one of the best minds of the century. Writing this book, he was 48, at the height of his powers. It is altogether delightful to travel through history with a tip-top intelligence. Russell is rigorous, careful, precise, decent, and highly educated. He waltzes gracefully from point to point, fact to fact, deduction to deduction. Remember, he is in the very crucible of history, trying to make sense of events even as they unfold outside his window. I believe an entire college course could be made from this short book. Of course, students would have to read lots of additional material to run along side Russell and evaluate all the arresting things he says, for example: "Bolshevism combines the characteristics of the French Revolution with those of the rise of Islam; and the result is something radically new, which can only be understood by a patient and passionate effort of imagination."

Students taking such a course would understand what so many American intellectuals, all through the 20's, 30's, 40's and 50's, did not. Blinded by their love of Communism and their hatred of the West, they consistently aided and abetted what was the very definition of an evil government, the USSR under Stalin. Russell's mind is more subtle and sinuous. He wants a better world but sees that the Bolsheviks are willing to destroy everything to get it; but then it's not better, it's only rubble and death. Writing in 1920, when Lenin was in total control and Stalin was a minor figure, Russell nonetheless saw everything that was coming. He dissects the fanaticism, the many ways in which Bolshevism functions as a religion and its adherents become murderous ideologues.

Russell writes, with sadness but also alarm: "While some forms of Socialism are immeasurably better than capitalism, others are even worse. Among those that are worse, I reckon the form which is being achieved in Russia, not only in itself, but as a more insuperable barrier to further progress."

Aside: I ordered this book because I knew that Russell spent an hour with Lenin, a figure I wanted to know more about. Russell noted a cruel streak; for example, Lenin "described the division between rich and poor peasants, and the Government propaganda among the latter against the former, leading to acts of violence which he seemed to find amusing." This at a time when the country could not feed itself! I'm intrigued by cold-hearted intellectuals who think nothing of leveling what civilization there is in order to build their brave new worlds. Let us never forget Pol Pot who went back to Cambodia and killed 25% of his own country. In the field I mostly write about, education, there's our own John Dewey, who set out to dumb down an entire country so he could build his version of socialism. Lenin was a tough guy relative to the professorial Dewey, but I detect the same megalomania in both men.

Russell saw the outcome of Lenin's power grab in 1920. A power grab that hid behind the ideology of 'communism'. Because Russell is one of the clearest writers of English in history, i was able to read this in 2 hours.

I can't write as good as Russell, so i'll quote one paragraph.

"In the first place, [Bolshevism] makes much of the treachery of [capitalist politicians] constitutional movements, but does not consider the possibility of the treachery of Communist leaders in a revolution. To this the Marxian would reply that in constitutional movements men are bought,directly or indirectly, by the money of the capitalists, but that revolutionary Communism would leave the capitalists no money with which to attempt corruption. This has been achieved in Russia, and could be achieved elsewhere. But selling oneself to the capitalists is not the only possible form of treachery. It is also possible, having acquired power, to use it for one's own ends instead of for the people. This is what I believe to be likely to happen in Russia: the establishment of a bureaucratic aristocracy, concentrating authority in its own hands, and creating a régime just as oppressive and cruel as that of capitalism. Marxians never sufficiently recognize that love of power is quite as strong a motive, and quite as great a source of injustice, as love of money; yet this must be obvious to any unbiased student of politics. It is also obvious that the method of violent revolution leading to a minority dictatorship is one peculiarly calculated to create habits of despotism which would survive the crisis by which they were generated. "
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I love this comparision of communism with religion:

" Bolshevism is not merely a political doctrine; it is also a religion, with elaborate dogmas and inspired scriptures. When Lenin wishes to prove some proposition, he does so, if possible, by quoting texts from Marx and Engels. A full-fledged Communist is not merely a man who believes that land and capital should be held in common, and their produce distributed as nearly equally as possible. He is a man who entertains a number of elaborate and dogmatic beliefs--such as philosophic materialism, for example--which may be true, but are not, to a scientific temper, capable of being known to be true with any certainty. This habit, of militant certainty about objectively doubtful matters, is one from which, since the
Renaissance, the world has been gradually emerging, into that temper of constructive and fruitful scepticism which constitutes the scientific outlook. "
--

The rest of the book is filled with these types of insights.

In 1920, Russia was a disaster scene. Hunger and misery were widespread. It was a police state blockaded by the outside world. Is it fair, Russell asks, to judge Bolshevism in this context? Bolshevism was not entirely responsible for Russia's misery.

But Russell is critical of Bolshevism for its superficial understanding of human nature and human motivations, and for its ruthlessness. He concedes that its ideals were good, but its methods departed from its ideals. Nevertheless, he concludes that it was the right government for Russia at the time "because the possible alternatives are worse. If Russia were governed democratically, according to the will of the majority, the inhabitants of Moscow and Petrograd would die of starvation." With food in very short supply, peasants were reluctant to part with it for worthless paper money. Peasants, the vast majority of the population, would have abandoned the cities under a democratic system.

Bolshevism has the attributes of a religion, Russell decides. It entertains dogmatic beliefs and closes people's minds to scientific enquiry. Russell was not favorably impressed by Vladimir Lenin, calling him "an embodied theory." He likens him to Oliver Cromwell. He recommends that capitalist injustices be resisted non-violently and gradually, focussing on power at first, not money, and on "propaganda to make the necessity of the transition obvious to the great majority of wage earners."

Russell wrote this book in 1920. When he revised it in 1948 he found little need for change. Many of his predictions have come true. Despite its abstract topic, this book is a quick and easy read.

`Prescience'.

As regards Bolshevism, it is understandable that we might be unimpressed with anti-socialist critics who predicted catastrophe and nightmare for Russia in the aftermath of the 1917 revolution. What else would they have said? Even now, with the horrors in full view, I feel that the conservatives of the day have not been vindicated, given the alternatives. Rather, they bear a historical responsibility similar to that of the Stalinist fellow-traveler. More admirable are those who were decent, principled people who understood and sympathized with the goals of the revolutionaries but remained unwilling to lie for parties in the service of shared ends. In my opinion, the most admirable figures of the 20th century left are such internal critics. And Russell joins Orwell in being a superlative example of the internal critic.

The book is sufficiently short to render lengthy critique otiose; it is sufficient to note that Russell recognized Bolshevism to be a human tragedy in the making, and he saw and diagnosed the early tourist versions of fellow-traveler that Orwell would later face. What he recognized was not tragedy derivative of socialism qua socialism; it was the Bolshevik concentration of power and the unquestioning certainty of the Russian Communists in their own righteousness and eventual triumph. And he saw it when many socialists could not see it through war and blockade, thinking that the failures of Bolshevism were temporary effects of the reaction to it. (Here I am reminded of Cuba.) But Russell rightly points out that this is not the whole story: where external reaction explains failures it nevertheless amounts to internal failure, as Bolshevism means class war and reaction.

It's quick and doesn't dwell on 1920 socialist arcana. And as other reviewers have noted, it is itself of historical interest