Why all the Kautsky hate?

Certainly, but I was criticizing people who you portrayed to be completely unconcerned about form - "don't really give a shit if that occurs in the form of a political party, or workers councils, or any of those First International disputes."

you are confusing something, Die Gesellschaft was the SPD theoretical review until it was banned in 1933, it was refounded in 1954 as Neue Gesellschaft which merged in 1985 with the cultural-political review Frankfurter Hefte, founded in 1946 by the two moderate leftwing catholic antifascists Walter Dirks and Eugen Kogon, the review of the Institut für Sozialforschung was the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung (founded 1932) and the Archiv für die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung (which Carl Grünberg took to Frankfurt in 1923) ... for the Index of Die Gesellschaft, I would ask at the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, they should have something like it and are generally helpful

Try Karl Kautsky, Ultra-imperialism, (September 1914). I'm no fan of Kautsky, but the trots do tell some ridiculously tall tales around Kautsky, WW1 and ultra-imperialism. For e.g. on the eve of WW1 Kautsky came up with the theory of ultra-imperialism to claim that the economic and trading interests of the European great powers were too interlinked to make a world war possible. Then, once war broke out, that he supported the SPD voting for war credits. Both untrue.

The ultra-imperialism piece is an article for the paper - i.e. it's short and relatively easy to read. I would advise anyone sick of listening to the lies that trots spread about this particular point to invest the 5 minutes it takes to read.

The bit I bolded at the end is a point I was trying to make in my post- I think it is immensely important to use that as a starting point or spring board for this discussion. Roxwell seems to be suggesting that all modern nation-states and land mass of the Earth must be industrialized before the material conditions for socialism are met (hence the use of New Gunea as a rhetorical point earlier- as long as New Gunea is not an industrialized nation, socialism is not yet possible etc).

As far as Russia was concerned, the international wave of revolutionary struggle and increasingly militant and widespread strikes, insurrections, self-organization, etc in my opinion heralded the workers in the advanced nations creating mass movements towards socialism. That this revolutionary effort went the furthest in the former Russian empire shouldn't matter so long as its recognized the struggle for socialism is inherently an international effort that was taking shape in almost every nation between 1917-1927. If the increase in struggle and militancy we're seeing now was amplified several fold (committee's, assemblies, organized pro-revolutionary political groupings, etc as seen in Greece, Spain, UK, France, US, etc) is taken in a global context, and the workers in Venezuela or India began to take concrete revolutionary steps, it'd be stageist to suggest the latter struggle is doomed to failure by nature of revolutionary consciousness and struggle taking shape in a non-1st world nation to begin with.

Given that Marx seemed to accept that revolution was possible in the England of the late 19th century, can we ask in what way is Venezuela of 2011 more "backward" than England in 1881? Is "backwardness" even a materialist concept?

England in the late 19'th century was in its colonial prime and had access to vast amounts of wealth/resources around the globe. Venezuela isn't in that position as domestic oil is it's backbone. What up and coming industry did England not control in the late 19'th century?

To a certain point it's right that the Octobre revolution was a bourgeois revolution and Lenin didn't disagree with Kautsky on 'stageïsm':

So the disagreement between Kautsky and Lenin is not about material conditions and Blanquism.

I meant that after Hilfderding, from 1928-1933 Albert Salomon edited Die Gesellschaft and it featured critical theorists like Benjamin, Marcuse, Karl Landauer, Siegfried Marck and many more. I'm familiar with the FES but it doesn't have the journal online and so probably not much to expect from them (edit: I found here an index; albeit incomplete). Still, I'd like to read Kautsky's critique of Korsch.

But if workers in Venezuela or India came to see socialism didn't take hold in advanced capitalist nations what then should they do? Some peoples opinion is they should facilitate a bourgeois capitalist revolution in order to industrialize then lead the way in the future at an attempt at sparking a global revolution after industrialization. Lenin didn't openly let a true bourgeois revolution take place after it became apparent the global revolution wasn't happening....and hell, Stalin took it to a whole new level of fuckt not to mention Mao's attempt at socialism in China. Only now do we see China ready to implement actual socialism, in fact, I think China is in the best position out of all nations seeing it produces the most via industry. This wasn't the case when Mao took the helm but came to be after they "opened" up to a sort of capitalism as Lenin should have openly done. Marx praised capitalism for it's ability to industrialize then would condemn it to the dustbin of history in the next sentence because of the social relations it creates. In Marx and especially Engels view socialism was not suppose to be about the process of industrialization it was simply the process of workers taking over the means of production and thus society itself. In that simple sense every attempt we've seen at "socialism" has been a perversion of the original idea. The capitalists LOVE the outcome in most cases. Great anti-communist propaganda.

edit: include the quote the below is a response to

That's a political or relativist position though. There's no actual measureable index of what level of the development of the forces of production constitutes the boundary between "too backward for revolution" and "just right". Technological development is out, as the level of technology in 19th century England is lower than than in present day anywhere. So are we talking %population industrial workers vs peasants? What exactly?

Second, I don't recall Marx saying that England was an advanced industrial nation because of its empire (more the other way round, if anything). But in either case, being OPEC's 3rd largest oil exporter in the current economic setup (devalorisation of leading currencies against commodity indexes), should, apriori, present an opportunity for accessing a rentier share of global output.

The material measure of the development of the forces of production is not an idle question. Those marxists partisans of the intermediate "lower phase of communism", where exchange relations are retained, do so on the basis of Marx's argument in the Gothakritik that this stage is necessary in order to develop the forces of production to the point at which the "higher stage" of communism becomes possible. But, to my knowledge, no one has ever said what the measure of that development is and what the magic number is that allows the end of the "transitional stage".

But there's a first time for everything, so I'm all ears.

it seems to me more a general intellectualisation of the review which happened under Salomon than like a move into the direction of the "Frankfurter School"

Well here we can argue. I should say even before Salomon, there were critical theorists present, e.g. in 1926, an article by Friedrich Pollock right next to Hilfderding and the Mensheviks Dan and Raphael Abramovitch. Die Gesellschaft also published Franz Neumann and Otto Kirchheimer. Wiki shows the latter had a disturbing connection with Carl Schmitt (we have uncovered the proof for a social-fascist centre!).

Gobble Gobble.

If that is what you think I think then you have understood nothing I have said at all.

The material conditions for socialism have existed in England, France, Germany, the United States, Holland, and so forth have existed since sometime before World War I.

The material conditions for socialism now exist in Russia, Italy, Spain, Greece, --- probably the entirety of Europe. I do not have enough knowledge to know where else it may exist.

The material conditions for socialism may even exist in Venezuela.

But it does depend upon a balance of power in the world. Venezuela, Spain, Italy, and Greece could not hold out against a sustained and united Britain, Germany, and the U.S.

In the meantime "what should they do in Bolivia?" In the meantime "what should they do in Egypt?" and so forth. Should they, as Noa once suggested, do nothing at home and send their militants to us? That is my question to you which you avoid like the plague.

Please devoration1. Try to understand a point of view before you go trying to put it down with inane and inaccurate slanders. I know it is hard. I have tried to make it as easy as I could for you but uhhhm "some" people are just hopeless.

It is the idea of many of you that either “the whole world” is ready now for socialism or that no one is. That is not my idea and never has been.

The statement itself that "socialism is inherently an international effort" does come from Karl Marx - but the meaning that I see here on this website is an oddball twist that one might be able to contrive out of Rosa Luxemborg but I doubt even she would embrace. I believe it is nonsense.

What can I say; you're going over my head. Please excuse my unfathomable ignorance and help me understand- starting with:

Why do you judge the material conditions necessary for socialism country by country? As I asked earlier- if socialism cannot be established except on a worldwide scale, why not judge whether the world as a whole is ready for socialism?

What criteria are you using to judge when a certain country is ready for socialism? Why Germany, Holland, England before 1914 and countries like Russia, Spain today?

You're right; it isn't your idea and never has been. I haven't seen you give a reason why not; why it is important to judge the number of workers of a population and the industrialization level of every nation vs the global balance of forces as a whole.

I use "country" instead of using "spot on the earth." What else could I call "France"?

You cannot build "socialism" on a "spot on the earth" where there is no industrial infrastructure which is the result of accumulated surplus value congealed into physical plant and investment.

Now I might get in trouble for using "spot on the earth" where someone might take that to mean a vacant lot in the middle of a big city.

So I will revert to using "country" as the "lesser evil."

France, England, the United States, Germany and so on had already experienced the "primitive accumulation of capital" to an extent where there already existed sufficient plant and equipment to form an infrastructure for a modern industrial system. The majority of the people living in those "countries" were propertyless proletarians. A revolution, led by the proletariat was possible that could form a "dictatorship of the proletariat" that would not be a small minority of the population. Scarcity of goods and services was not a physical reality but rather a political fiction which could be overcome thru the exertion of political will.

In Russia in 1917 this was not true. In New Guinea today that is still not true.

But there was indeed a crisis there that resulted not in a "proletarian revolution" but rather a "dual revolution" of both "proletarian insurrection" and "peasant war."

You cannot create a 'dictatorship of the proletariat" where the "proletariat" is a minority of the population. You cannot move toward "socialism" with anything less than a dictatorship of the proletariat.

Here's some notes Lenin dictated in 1923 in which he virtually concedes that Kautsky and other "orthodox" Marxists were right to say that Russia (on its own) was not ripe for socialism in 1917 and therefore not ripe either for a genuine socialist revolution: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1923/jan/16.htm

To defend the Bolshevik seizure of power Lenin is forced to reverse the Marxist view that capitalism can only be overthrown by a working class that has first acquired the capacity to run a socialist society by working under capitalist conditions:

The answer of course is "everywhere in the writings of Marx and Engels" (and Kautsky).

I don't see Lenin conceding anything there. He battled Narodniks all his life, so it's unlikely he suddenly forgot about material conditions. And as has been pointed out repeatedly, with no small delight, Lenin argued for the need to implement state-capitalism, in other words, he definitely didn't believe Russia was ripe for a 'genuine socialist revolution' (Lenin is quite explicit about the bourgeois tasks/achievements of the revolution, i.e. land nationalization is a bourgeois reform).

It's interesting that you raise the issue of the capacity to run society. How did Kautsky propose to ensure this cultural level or economic insight? If you browse through his Labour Revolution it's clearly a more profound disagreement then the mere presence/absence of 'capitalist conditions' (remember that Kautsky spoke of a dictatorship of the proletariat in Menshevik Georgia).

By 1923 the world revolutionary wave was more or less over. The Bolsheviks found themselves managing a state which had become an organ of capital, and which was dragging them far from the direction they had intended in 1917 - in fact it was devouring them. Lenin had many intuitions that this was the case, but was not in a position to go to the roots of the problem, since this would have meant detaching the party from the state, and the entanglement was already too powerful. The left communists who saw most clearly the need to break from the state apparatus, like Miasnikov, were much less tied up in it in the first place.

What the Russian revolution showed very clearly is that not only can socialism not be built in one country, even its precondition, the political power of the working class, can only hold out for a very short time in conditions of isolation or siege.

Capricorn: Quotes are like ‘facts’: we choose them to substantiate our particular viewpoint. Here's another (reproduced from the thread "Lenin acknowledging the intentional implementation of State Capitalism in the USSR") with Lenin talking to the III Congress of the 3rd International, 1921:

It was clear to us that without the support of the international world revolution the victory of the proletarian revolution [in Russia] was impossible. Before the revolution and even after it, we thought: Either revolution breaks out in the other countries, in the capitalistically more developed countries, immediately, or at least very quickly, or we must perish. Notwithstanding this conviction, we did all we possibly could to preserve the Soviet system under all circumstances, come what may, because we knew that we were working not only for ourselves but also for the international revolution. We knew this, we repeatedly expressed this conviction before the October Revolution, immediately afterward, and at the time we signed the Brest-Litovsk Treaty.” (Minutes of the Third Congress of the Comintern, Russian edition, p.354.

Alexander: the last few posts on the above thread also try to address the question of ‘when was the world ripe for revolution’? as well as examining some actual conditions (of the economy and the proletariat) in Russia, 1917. They may (or may not) be of interest.

I think it might be worth looking at what just precedes that Lenin quote on post 101;

http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/subservience.htm

So Russia was ripe for a socialist revolution?

And bourgeois-democratic revolution was passed through and reached its conclusion and limits in 12 months.

And perhaps interestingly they had only made steps towards a socialist state, presumably not being one as yet, circa October 1918 when it was written I think.

Presumably the Leftwing Narodniks mistake in 1914 was merely not suggesting the possibility of a fast tracked political bourgeois-democratic revolution that could be completed in a year.

However Lenin never actually said that; what he said it was that it was necessary for capitalism to develop further economically, through large-scale, machine, capitalist production, which would itself involve the numerical growth and maturity of the working class.

Left-Wing Narodism and Marxism

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/jun/19.htm

All that happened theoretically was that ‘the way to socialism, along steps, that would lead through the further development of (state) capitalism’, was to be ‘under communism’.

Which was of course a completely new idea.

V. I. Lenin Eleventh Congress Of The R.C.P.(B.) March 27-April 2, 1922

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/mar/27.htm

If you view the Bolsheviks, from a purely historical materialist perspective, as the latent (state) capitalist class, or if you like the early Bolsheviks as playing the part of Jacobins (as they were happy to do at the time) who ushered in the state capitalist proper a bit later.

Then it was just a another capitalist revolution, one of the best analyses came from of all people Ted Grant, even if I think he is far too generous towards “Lenin and Trotsky the Robespierres and Carnots of the Russian Revolution”.

Ted Grant Against the Theory of State Capitalism Reply to Comrade Cliff

( Grant knew he was lying, as he wanted to make clear to his fellow intellectuals when he quoted from; Left wing childishness and the petty-bourgeois mentality. Collected Works, Volume 27, page 335)

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/grant/works/4/9/reply_to_tony_cliff.html

Yes, Lenin certainly opposed the idea of even beginning a transition to socialism in Russia on its own, but only up until 1917. Prior to that he accepted the common Russian Social Democrat view that Russia would have to pass through a period of capitalism before it became economically and culturally ripe for socialism. He saw the coming revolution as a popular revolution against Tsarism that would establish a democratic republic within which both capitalism and the working class could develop.

In 1917, Tsarism having collapsed and having convinced himself that a European socialist revolution was imminent, he changed his mind on this and argued that Russia need no longer pass through the stage of a democratic republic and capitalism but could move directly to a working-class regime that could take some "steps towards socialism" (see here, note that he gives state capitalism as the main such step). It was on this basis that the Bolshevik party seized power in November 1917 and which it succeeded in holding on to.

But the expected European socialist revolution never materialised and the Russian working class proved culturally unprepared to run society through the soviets, so that in his last articles written in 1923 when he was incapacitated by a stroke (he died in January 1924) there are signs that he begun to wonder if the position he had taken up before 1917 (and which other Russian Social Democrats still held) was not the right one after all. At least that's how I would interpret the passage I quoted.

Incidentally, that he did have doubts about what the Bolsheviks had done and the impossible position (of wanting socialism but having to develop capitalism) in which he and they now found themselves is to his credit. He had taken a gamble and it didn't come off. That was his personal tragedy.

We all know Pol Pot was on to something The Maoist third worldists are also geniuses! I personally think the third world should invade advanced capitalist nations and enforce agrarian reform at the end of a bloody club. All jokes aside the advanced capitalist nations will usher in socialism not Yemen or Afghanistan. I agree with you.

Which is why I always have said the Russian "socialist" revolution was pre-mature and forced from the top down and in the end has perverted the meaning of socialism/communism. It's great propaganda for capitalists. Germany should have been the focus for all socialists at the time.

Capricorn wrote: “Lenin took a gamble and lost.” So poor Lenin’s view wasn’t merely to interpret the world, but to ‘chance’ it? Hmm. Maybe he, in common with the rest of the ‘left’ at the time, felt that the proletariat had nothing to lose but its chains – a fact rather reinforced by the surrounding reality: the mass slaughter that was the First Imperialist World War.

Whatever. Somewhat surprising in this discussion about attitudes to Karl Kautsky – and I don’t think he should be demonised any more than Lenin should - is the almost total absence of any reference to Germany. We’re all internationalists now, of course, but most appear to agree that they key to the evolution of international events prior to and after 1914 was not ‘backward’ Russia (Crud has yet to reply to arguments about this on another thread) but in the ‘advanced’ countries of capitalism, and in particular Germany.

It was there, after all, that - on the surface at least – the working class had achieved its greatest success: the Social Democratic Party (SPD). A party – the party of the Second International – with (in 1914) a membership over 1 million, which in 1912 polled four and a quarter million votes (34.7 per cent of the total) making it the largest party in the Reichstag, with 110 deputies; a party which (in contrast to Britain) largely created the trade union machinery which ‘represented’ millions of members; which published 90 daily papers, had a women’s and youth section and employed some 3,500 people in the party, trade union and other bureaucracies. A party which over 35 years had campaigned for and won real reforms in the living conditions of the workers (with not a little help from the workers themselves!) .

A party which consistently opposed, in words, at every congress, the evident build-up to imperialist war and, just ten days prior to August 4, 1914, organised 27 anti-war meetings in Berlin alone and declared “Not a drop of any German soldier’s blood must be sacrificed to the power hunger of the Austrian ruling clique, to the imperialist profiteer”; an ‘internationalist’ party which ten days later voted for the war with the words “Our task is to ward off this danger [of Russian despotism], to safeguard the civilisation and independence of our own country...We do not leave the fatherland in the lurch in the hour of danger.”!

And the undisputed ‘Pope’ of this movement , which contained simultaneous tendencies to outright accommodation with capitalism, a revolutionary ‘left’ and all shades in between, the most respected Marxist theoretician of his age, was Karl Kautsky.

We know that at the turn of the century he led (after much hesitation and under pressure from others) a necessary and victorious battle against the ‘revisionists’ led by Bernstein who wanted to abandon outright the idea of a struggle for the overthrow of capitalism in favour of a gradual reform of it. Nonetheless, an examination of Kautsky’s arguments in this battle (cf The Social Revolution, 1902) led other SDP militants to fear that what Kautsky had thrown out the front door was being welcomed back through the window.

The polemics within the party deepened after 1905, with elements such as Luxembourg and Pannekoek (and, from outside Germany, Lenin) arguing that the conditions of capitalism (and therefore the proletariat) were changing; that it was no longer enough to put off the idea of revolution to some distant future; that too much emphasis was being placed on day-to-day improvements and conquering parliament (‘the minimum programme) at the expense of a revolutionary preparation for the seizure of power (‘the maximum programme’); that it was wrong to expect capitalism simply and inevitably to collapse through its own inner contradictions, and that war, not economic crisis, could signal capitalism’s bankruptcy.

Above all, they argued that the proletariat itself had responded to a change in capitalism by developing its own form of struggle far removed from the tightly controlled, regimented and pre-planned processions of Social Democracy and the unions – the mass strike (cf Italy, 1904, but above all, the Russian empire, 1905) in which economic and political struggles fed into each other and during the course of which the proletariat provided itself with its own organs to both discuss and execute policy – the workers councils or soviets.

And where was Kautsky in all this, prior to 1914? It was Kautsky, not Lenin, who developed the theory of ‘bringing consciousness from the outside’ and who in practice (though not in theory) insisted on the substitution of the party for the activity of the masses which must be subordinate to it. He opposed Pannekoek (labelling him an ‘anarchist’ – perish the thought!), and in answering him in ‘The New Tactics’, rejected the thesis that the state should be smashed. After an initial exchange with Luxembourg, Kautsky refused at first to even publish Luxembourg’s rejoinders, resolutely defending the status quo which was so grievously and damagingly to betray.

And when war did break out? It’s not enough to state (correctly) that ‘in private meetings’ Kautsky was against it and never voted for it (in fact, he advised the SDP Reichstag members to accept the war credits vote ‘but only if the war goals of the government were announced and a binding commitment undertaken that these were exclusively defense of the homeland, with no annexations sought or undertaken’. The majority told him, in effect, to fuck off with his ‘qualifications’ and voted for the war). However, the burning question posed was: how to mobilise against the war!

On this question Kautsky counselled silence and inactivity. His ‘Preparations for Peace’ (October 1914) – even allowing for the wartime state censorship – says absolutely nothing about the struggle against war “It is not the people who decide on peace, any more than on war”! On the need to build a new workers’ international, he theorised that Internationals could only work in peace time. He wasn’t represented at the tiny meetings of anti-war, pro revolution militants at Zimmerwald and Kienthal in 1915 and 1916; his attitude to the beginnings of the mass strike in Germany itself in 1916 - marked by solidarity strikes and demonstrations at the arrest of Karl Liebknecht following anti-war demonstrations launched by the Spartakus group – was one of disdain, if not outright opposition, afair.

After the bloody defeats of the German Revolution – which Kautsky first and foremost blamed on the corrosive effects of the Russian revolution! (see his Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany, 1924) – he could do nothing better than to urge all dissidents to re-unite with the ruling Socialist Party. The party to which, in 1918, Bismarck and German capitalism had entrusted the running of the country; the party which created the Frie Korps; the party which consciously tried to contain and then behead the proletarian revolution and its councils (30,000 dead; Luxembourg, Liebknecht and countless other revolutionaries assassinated).

Perhaps, Yoda, this admittedly one-sided appreciation of Kautsky ‘in practice’ might go some way to answering ‘Why All the Kautsky Hate?’ (though personally, I don't think hate in this context is useful - Kautsky was not the only German marxist militant thrown into utter confusion by the change in period and the onset of the war).

Best post of the thread ^^

I'd only add that these numbers don't show the extent of Kautsky's orthodoxy in German socialist movement. His Die Neue Zeit had about 3000, at most 10000 subscribers (to compare, that's less than the Socialist Worker now).

Yes this is a problem even in our digital age. The key journal of the anti-war Left was the journal Lichtstrahlen Monatliches Bildungsorgan für denkende Arbeiter (1913-1916) AKA Zeitschrift für Internationalen Kommunismus (1918-1921) AKA Zeitschrift für Wissenschaftlichen Kommunismus

After the murder of Luxemburg, Liebknecht, and after a lot of USDP people died as well (like its founder Haase, who had read the agreement with the war credits out of party discipline, but had strongly opposed it) there was really a limited amount of debate left on the left. I mean a Dutch (future-)councilist like Pannekoek paused his political writings all together.

It's what Lenin himself said in the 1923 article I quoted from:

Of course the Bolsheviks were only "victorious" in that they held on to power, but without the power to do anything else than develop capitalism, as it happened in the form of a despotic and totalitarian form that lasted longer than any other 20th century dictatorship and whose consequences outside Russia were to split the working class movement in the rest of the world and drag the name of "socialism" through the mud putting millions of workers off the very idea of socialism.

I'm afraid that's the legacy of Bolshevism but I will concede that if Lenin had seen this he would have been appalled and no doubt revised his view of the Bolsheviks' "victory".

hmm, so you're not defending Lenin after all as it looked on first sight. On this point though, as you note, the Bolsheviks, and by all means bring up as many quotes from Stalin you like, and the Mensheviks, were in agreement with Kautsky.

and what if the Mensheviks had stayed in power? They'd done the same. And what if the proletariat stayed in power (without forming political parties somehow)? You either have to conclude that they'd have done the same as Lenin or that it was impossible.

or would he? If you're talking about NEP he would have defended it.

But let's stay with the situation in Germany. If Kautsky wiped the floor with Lenin (and even more so with Pannekoek) on the issue of the state, then let's hear the SPGB or whatever people defending democracy make it known that they are Kautskyites and defend this; http://marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1924/labour/ch02_c.htm If nobody takes up the challenge, I have no problem playing devil's advocate.

Noa: Sorry, but I really haven’t got a clue (my problem?) what you’re saying here. Attack Lenin? Defend Lenin? On what, exactly? My premise (err, not exactly mine alone) is that the ‘Russian Revolution’ of 1917 wasn’t a ‘Bolshevik coup’ nor a ‘bourgeois revolution’ but an authentic seizure of power by the proletariat, in tandem with a revolutionary minority which it had produced (the Bolsheviks) – the first salvo in a world proletarian revolution that was defeated -primarily in the advanced countries of capitalism, and specifically in Germany.

Capricorn: certainly bourgeois ideology (both of the Stalinist variety and of the ‘democracies’) insists that Lenin=Stalinism=communism. That’s the ‘legacy’ they’d like us to draw. Point is: do we today go along with it? I’m happy to discuss, ad nauseum, the errors of the Bolsheviks and Lenin which facilitated this ‘legacy’ – and they are legion – but only from the starting point that October 17 was an expression of the potential of the working class, and that this potential was achieved not ‘in spite of’ the political minorities, but in large measure because of them.