Emma Goldman’s book (really a single book, though published in two separate volumes) is frequently cited as a powerful argument against Soviet communism, but having read it, I am honestly quite surprised at how poor and inconsequential the “arguments” or “criticisms” in the book are.
Goldman clearly went to Soviet Russia in 1919 wanting to impose her own anarchist and romantic notions on the revolution. The revolution inevitably disappointed her. She wasn’t willing to accept the revolution as it was – a workers’ and peasants’ revolution led by the Bolshevik party – but instead imposed her own fantasies on it. It is not uncommon that when a revolution happens, foreign intellectuals see in it what ever they want to see, and become angry when the revolutionary masses ultimately don’t correspond to their ideas.
Goldman worked for two years in Soviet Russia, engaged in museum work, trying to organize Russian anarchists and other opposition elements. After leaving Soviet Russia she published her slanderous book and also attacked the western revolutionary movement, which criticized her betrayal of the Russian revolution. Her book was immediately published by a large capitalist corporation and heavily promoted by anti-communist capitalist circles, exactly in the same way that Trotsky’s anti-Soviet and anti-Stalin articles were published by the largest capitalist newspapers.
Goldman criticized her publisher for splitting the book into two parts, claiming it was some kind of “unprecedented” censorship or something, but this seems only like a weak attempt to avoid criticism for publishing anti-communist propaganda through capitalist publishers.
The publisher didn’t censor the book in any way, and the two volumes of the book don’t strike the reader as at all different either in tone or content, both are equally anti-Soviet and ideologically the same. Perhaps the second volume contains details of somewhat lesser importance, and maybe the publisher originally planned to cut them for that reason, but they contain absolutely nothing that would be worth censoring by the capitalists.
Goldman claims she became disillusioned with the Russian revolution but didn’t want to criticize it while the civil war was still going on. In reality, it seems that for quite some time in Russia she tried to fit the revolution into her preconceived picture, although she explicitly denies this. She repeatedly claims to have understood since the beginning that since the Bolsheviks were a marxist party, they would inevitably have serious disagreements. But if that is so, it is difficult to understand how she could’ve imagined the revolution developing any differently – unless she hoped the Bolsheviks were overthrown, which she doesn’t ever say.
In reality, countless bourgeois commentators make basically similar mistakes to Goldman. They say “Lenin was dishonest and betrayed his principles” because “he talked about democracy, but now he talks about proletarian dictatorship”, “he talked about workers’ control” (which Goldman sees as anarchy) “but now he talks about labor discipline and planning” etc. etc. etc.
These are merely ignorant statements of people who know nothing about marxism or the revolution and reflect the fact that these commentators didn’t listen to Lenin or try to understand the true meaning of his words, but instead imposed their preconceived notions on them. Lenin always stressed, even in his classic work The State and Revolution, written before the October Revolution, that dictatorship and democracy are not abstract concepts, and are not absolutely mutually exclusive.
In reality, workers’ democracy means dictatorship towards the bourgeoisie, and bourgeois democracy means dictatorship of the capitalists over the workers. Of course, Lenin was trying to make workers understand this, and if some capitalist commentator didn’t understand it, he can be excused.
Similarly, it is totally naïve and prejudiced to imagine that Lenin ever supported or even advocated anarchy. Goldman and many other anarchists say explicitly or imply that they believed the Bolsheviks had adopted a de facto anarchist position in the October Revolution. They fail to realize the true meaning of Bolshevik politics, and fail to understand that policies must change depending on the situation.
The most common reason why capitalists claim Soviet communists were dishonest, is because they frequently changed their political line. In every field in Soviet life you see changes in political line. But what kind of changes? These changes were never changes of principle, but changes in applying those principles. The party was often quite explicit in the fact that their current policy was only temporary.
Lenin stressed that the land-reform was intended to destroy feudalism, but the end goal was always collective farming. Lenin also repeatedly said that the land-reform program was taken from the left-SRs, because it was the program the peasants wanted. This program talked about dividing the land as “socialism”, and made other inaccurate statements, which the Bolsheviks always remembered to criticize.
The policy of the NEP state capitalism was always described by Lenin as a temporary retreat. This policy was one of Lenin’s most controversial proposals, but even this policy he had already suggested in 1917 and even tried to implement. The state capitalist policy was not implemented in 1917 or 1918, only because of factors outside of Lenin’s control. The capitalist managers all refused to collaborate, which forced the workers to take full control of all factories, without any participation of the capitalists.
The policy of workers’ control actually meant, that capitalist managers should be used to help manage the factory, but the workers would “control” the capitalist manager, the manager would be responsible to them. This policy is similar to the commissar system adopted in the military, where tsarist officers were used, but political commissars were to check all their decisions and ensure their loyalty. This was necessary until working class generals and managers could be reared.
This is admitted also by anti-Bolshevik historians, such as Donald J. Raleigh who writes:
“The Titanik workers passed the first resolution in Saratov in May, demanding “workers’ control” over industry, an appeal that picked up dramatically in June and July. The Russian word kontrol’ translates best as “supervision.”… The growing popularity of workers’ control at this time was yet another expression of workers’ suspicion of their employers, and of fears of being locked out and laid off.” (Donald J. Raleigh, Revolution on the Volga : 1917 in Saratov, p. 161)
Lenin stated that this policy should be replaced with industrial management by the workers, once the workers had the necessary management skills. As is known, the problem with workers’ control in late 1917-early 1918 was that the workers didn’t really know how to manage factories, to buy raw materials, to decide prices, to handle book keeping etc. etc.
Its easy to take a given slogan “workers’ control”, “factories to the workers” etc., misunderstand their meaning, take them isolated from their context, and then pretend the Bolsheviks never said anything about state planning, scientific organization, nationwide book keeping and statistics, labor discipline etc. etc. Then it is easy to claim the Bolsheviks supposedly advocated anarchy, but later betrayed it. It is deception, and often times even self-deception, but the workers in Russia who knew exactly what workers’ control had always meant, were not deceived the same way foreign non-worker intellectuals like Goldman were able to deceive themselves, despite all the opportunities to learn the true facts.
Of course Lenin and the Bolsheviks didn’t always foresee and plan everything before hand. “War communism” and the policies associated with it, apparently emerged as an emergency measure which was not foreseen. Same goes with the “red guard attack on capital”, which took place in late 1917 and early 1918, which was somewhat related to the policies Goldman falsely believed were anarchistic.
Of course it is also completely valid and fair to try different policies to see if they work, and change them if they turn out to be failures or outmoded. But it should be said that changes of policy can be completely genuine and honest and not any kind of deception.
What else does Goldman say? The vast majority of the book contains endless complaints that despite the revolution, conditions in Russia still remain bad, children in orphanages are dirty, soldiers drink and buy sex, there is corruption, there is scarcity. The notion that the peasant soldier would immediately become a saint is particularly foolish and only demonstrates how out of touch with the masses Goldman was. It is the same kind of aristocratic anarchist sentiment as that of Kropotkin and Tolstoy, who romanticized the masses exactly because they were so distant from the masses.
Lenin always stressed the heroism of the masses, the strength of the proletariat, but also was keenly aware of the backwardness of many strata, and repeatedly reminded of the stubborn and long struggle to increase the educational and cultural level. Lenin repeatedly stressed that the peace-time work of education and economic construction of socialism is more difficult than simply waging the civil war.
Goldman often makes funny statements like ‘it is good the Bolsheviks organize healthcare, but why cannot something more cheerful be organized, rather than relatively drab institutions?’. What a silly and meaningless complaint. The country was in the middle of war and starvation, the people were brutalized by war and hunger.
In the conclusion of her book, she fully reveals her unscientific idealist views. She asks, why did the revolution take place in Russia but not elsewhere? She ignores the fact that the revolution also took place in Finland, Germany and Hungary. She ignores the fact that in those countries the revolution took place, but failed, mainly because there was not a sufficiently steeled communist party. Naturally as an anarchist she must do this. Instead she claims that Russians have a special psychology which makes them more revolutionary than others, and that is the reason for the revolution. This is a blatantly ridiculous explanation. It is derived from slavophilism and narodism, an influence of prince Bakunin.
Lastly she explains her views of how the Russian revolutionary society should be organized. She demands that capitalists should help manage industries. This is significant because it means she agrees with bolshevism and disagrees with typical anarchist criticisms of bolshevism. However, this otherwise decent point is destroyed because she says the capitalists must collaborate with the workers, without being forced through violence, and without being paid higher salaries. But why would the capitalists ever agree to such an arrangement?
The capitalists in some fields were forced at gun point, or through economic coercion, but usually they could be bribed with money. Naturally she doesn’t make any concrete proposal about how the capitalist experts could ever be persuaded to voluntarily help the workers. Her ideas epitomize how easy it is to make unreasonable demands and criticisms towards those actually carrying out the revolution.
Quite a good criticism of Goldman’s book was published in the communist magazine the Liberator:
Goldman “spent thirty years preaching revolution in America and was arrested only six times. A modern rebel may well sigh for those halcyon days. Even so humble a servant of Bolshevism as the writer, drew four arrests, one indictment and one conviction in his first six months in the party. In Harris’ eyes Emma’s recent attack on Soviet Russia is “sublime,” “the noblest act of her heroic life.” He applauds her political inability to agree with anyone else. These impressionable liberals! Emma’s book on Russia is as valuable as Anna Louise Strong’s. Both spent two years traveling to and fro. Anna hails the Communists as servants of the revolution. Emma denounces them as traitors… Every chapter of Emma” Goldman’s book is a hodge-podge of accusations of inefficiency, graft, theft, suppression, execution, torture, but when the student jots down specific instances-the result is meager. There are pages of “proof” that Brest Litovsk was a betrayal. It is set forth in detail that the Russian bourgeoisie were never a menace…
Is this indefinite squawk the best Emma can do after two years’ investigation? Then Russia is far better off than I dared hope. [Communist] Bill Foster told us worse than that three years ago… No, she couldn’t bear to work with Bolsheviks, so she could not help education-nor could she build rest homes for workers-nor could she train nurses for war service. She waited for a job that would let her roam far and wide-then snapped it up. Happily she lacks the wit to lie tellingly. We can do no more than ignore her brand of “revolution,”… She chose the time for her attack well-the hungry days of 1922.” (The Liberator, Oct. 1924)
Berkman’s book The Bolshevik Myth is filled mostly with the same kind of unintelligent complaints and moralizing. Berkman was deported to Russia together with Goldman and some others, and also actively tried to organize Russian anarchists into an anti-bolshevik organization. He describes some meetings of different anarchist trends, including pro-Soviet anarchists, who he severely attacks constantly.
It should be said that many anarchists supported the October Revolution and actively worked with the Bolsheviks. Berkman and Goldman never did so, instead spending their time carrying out their own projects and making complaints. Russian pro-Soviet anarchists and various other groups such as “SR-Maximalists” usually were recruited into the Red Guard, the Red Army, the police force (militia). It might be somewhat ironic that these “libertarian” and anti-statist anarchists so often worked in institutions of organized state authority, such as the army and police, but that was what they were mostly suited for, as they lacked other skills and many anarchist groups had mostly been involved in armed actions. Some times the most violent and radical Red Guards were anarchists, though they were only a small number among the communist Red Guards. Among the Red Guards who dissolved the Constituent Assembly, were anarchists.
Many of these anarchists, practically all the most class conscious ones, later joined the Bolsheviks and recognized the unworkability of anarchistic theories. This is because 99% of Moscow anarchists were not “political anarchists”, but simply criminals who robbed people under the guise of “expropriation”.
Berkman’s criticisms and arguments against Soviet policies are totally unreasonable. He complains that food confiscation and suppression of the black market during the civil war were unnecessary. He joins the capitalists in defending free trade.
He claims the Cheka was full of old criminals and old police which is false and doubly ironic considering that most anarchists were criminals, and those who were honest often served in the Bolshevik police.
Berkman complains about corruption and preferential treatment of soldiers, and some workers in key sectors, as if corruption could so easily have been totally eliminated, and as if all differences in wages and all monetary compensation could’ve been totally abolished right away. Its so easy to demand such things, but they were not feasible. Is it a surprise that during the war the army and those industries which produce weapons are top priority and must receive enough food and clothing? Is it a wonder that those engaged in hard physical work must receive more food than those engaged in mental work? Is it a wonder that the capitalists and others who refuse to work, do not receive anything, but had to live on their savings, especially since the Bolsheviks knew that the capitalists of course had a lot of savings?
Berkman loudly complains about the suppression of the left-SRs after their failed coup against the Bolsheviks. This is blatantly absurd, but additionally the bulk of the left-SRs simply denounced the coup attempt, changed their name to the Revolutionary Communist Party, and continued working in an alliance with the Bolsheviks, and were not banned. Berkman loudly complains about the closing of the Moscow anarchist clubs, which had accumulated huge amounts of weapons, consisted mostly of criminals and were robbing even foreign diplomats. They even robbed the Bolshevik Cheka leader Uritsky and left him naked in the street. The Cheka told the anarchists to “clean their own ranks” of robbers, but anarchist organizations were not outlawed.
Berkman also has the racist view that Cossacks were all inherently a reactionary race or nation. He claims the fact that Cossacks came to the Bolshevik side was a sign that the Bolsheviks were becoming reactionary. He has no understanding that there were class differences and a change in consciousness among the Cossacks. The Cossacks had been a special soldier caste in the tsarist empire, but since WW1 the young and poor Cossacks had started to side with the revolution. They even participated in the February revolution. The White Guards were able to organize only the rich Cossacks, while the poor joined the Bolsheviks.
Berkman totally rejects the NEP, claiming it meant a return to ordinary capitalism and made all kinds of statements about how the revolution was completely over, Soviet Russia was an ordinary capitalist state and he joined the united front of White Guards and capitalists all attacking Soviet Russia, seeing nothing positive in it. He also mentions meeting Kropotkin several times, saying that Kropotkin had no idea what to do and had not been involved in the revolutions, February or October, at all. Kropotkin sent some of his economic ideas to the Soviet government, which rejected them.
ML-Theory 