The Road To The Future

Stormy days are ahead for the toiling masses everywhere, and unity is a life-and-death question. The capitalist system has become a murderous brake upon civilisation. It must be abolished and socialism established socialism, by removing the capitalist ownership of industry and exploitation that are the modern cause of poverty, war, and innumerable other social disasters.

Politicians are conscious liars—often proudly so. Indeed, that’s their job, to persuade people to support them regardless of their merits rather than because of them, and to justify the actions that the economy demands they make. Politicians confront journalists, grinning from ear-to-ear, knowing their interviewer knows that they are lying, as they dance through the empty ritual of a media interview.

The issue of taxation dominates contemporary political discourse, with each party competing to be the Party of Low Taxation, whilst simultaneously offering voters higher public services. Tories allege the tax burden has risen, Labour states that tax rates have been cut, endless streams of statistics are hurled in either direction, with illumination being no-one’s goal. In the meantime, leftists bleat and demand that Labour “tax the rich and make them pay”. On top of all that, the immense complexity of the taxation system and tax havens, coupled with intricate shifts in the economy and in methods of presentation, makes it a struggle to try to accurately find out what is really happening.

As a part of the politicians image campaigns, and their half-truthful manifesto, they pledged themselves to lower income tax when elected. In the manner of political debate, this allowed their speakers to state that they were going to lower taxes (that is, income tax) even as and when they were going about raising the overall tax burden. The shift from taxation directly on the point production to indirect taxation on consumption has been gradually going on.

There are limits, though, to the extent to which a government can exploit a monopoly or oligopoly to levy duties. If businesses are able to pass on the tax increase to the consumer in the form of higher prices this can cause problems. In some circumstances, if the price of a product rises alternative products are sought and demand is choked off. But since both tobacco and fuel, for example, are in their own ways essential with few if any substitute goods available, the result of any price increases caused by tax rises is that black markets and resentment grow up (as the state capitalist regimes in the former Soviet bloc found out). Recently the government has had to increase the amount of money spent on enforcing tobacco excise duty, which has eaten in considerably to its taxation gains.  Despite the tantalising promises of politically safe revenue for governments, there are limits to the amounts that can be levied through excise duties.

The reality of the government’s position is that the state is effectively a tax-farming business, and like other businesses, it is entirely subject to the ebbs and flows of the market. It can only raise so much taxation, from any given source and the economy as a whole, as the state of the market will bear. Given that the surplus value siphoned off via taxation is surplus value that cannot be re-invested for capital accumulation by the private sector, taxation represents a restriction upon the capitalist class. Hence, historically, high taxation has been seen as anathema by the capitalists. The amount of tax revenue the state can garner is entirely circumscribed by the needs of profitability.

State spending cannot add to the total of demand in the economy, all it can do is actuate demand, and guide it to overcome consumption problems (e.g. such as sustaining the reserve army of labour). In an economy without nationalised units of production—such as we now have—the best it can do is simply help circulate goods.

Capital can tolerate the lost potential valorisation in times of plenty, but when accumulation and profitability slow, it begins to resent the resources lost to unproductive expenditure. Given that taxation has risen from about 9 percent of GDP at the beginning of the century to nearly 40 percent now, a figure that both Labour and Tories seem unable to reduce, it is clear that taxation is becoming too burdensome upon capital.

Like a ragged, has-been stage magician, the government must keep on performing its budgetary tricks to give the appearance of doing something—anything—to keep hold of some sort of interest in its audience. Taxes go up, go down, and are moved from place to place in a blinding game of find the lady. Underneath it all is a watered-down version of an old illusion—the illusion that the state can control the economy, can direct its course, by playing around with its tax structure. That the act remains the same, time after time, will not stop the show, since the has-beens refuse to stop. They need booing from the stage.

Socialism—a system of society in which production would be controlled and directed by working people in the interest of the people is the alternative to the existing system. Apart from tolerating the existing system in the hope that by patching and mending in the hope that somehow or other it will become less and less unbearable— apart from this, socialism is the only alternative before the workers.

Green Marxism

"Capitalist production collects the population together in great centres, and causes the urban population to achieve an ever-growing preponderance. This has two results. On the one hand it concentrates the historical motive force of society; on the other hand, it disturbs the metabolic interaction between man and the earth, i.e. it prevents the return to the soil of its constituent elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; hence it hinders the operation of the eternal natural condition for the lasting fertility of the soil...But by destroying the circumstances surrounding that metabolism...it compels its systematic restoration as a regulative law of social production, and in a form adequate to the full development of the human race...All progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time is a progress toward ruining the more long-lasting sources of that fertility...Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth — the soil and the worker." - Marx, Capital 

The planet and its peoples will not be saved without getting rid of capitalism. Capitalism’s need for accumulation and expansion makes it impossible to reconcile economic growth with ecological sustainability. 

Today’s economy has already created the basis for abundance where society can produce enough for all of us to live a decent comfortable and secure life.

People of the world must overthrow capitalism and establish world socialism where production is for human need instead of profit. 

Nothing short of a socialist revolution will save humanity and nature. As hard as it may be for Friday for Climate school-student protesters and XR activists to accept, pleading for reform, demanding governments bring in green regulations and legislations are futile calls, for the capitalists will turn a deaf ear to anything which will undermine their drive to make profits.

A further look at Russian History

Indeed, during and after the first world war a number of working class militants such as Luxemburg came to recognise that the traditional social democracy policy of seeking to win a parliamentary majority on an electoral programme of reforms of capitalism could never lead to socialism. Luxemburg was very much sympathetic to the Bolsheviks, just as many others were in this early period when information was still scanty and Bolsheviks message was the prevalent one. She had criticisms of "big" policies such as attitudes towards the peasants and nationalities.S

he also differed on the issue of the Constituent Assembly.

"To be sure, every democratic institution has its limits and shortcomings, things which it doubtless shares with all other human institutions. But the remedy which Trotsky and Lenin have found, the elimination of democracy as such, is worse than the disease it is supposed to cure; for it stops up the very living source from which alone can come correction of all the innate shortcomings of social institutions." 

It was never suggested a coalition or power sharing with "bourgeois" parties such as with the Cadets but with those parties recognised by workers as legitimate expressions of their politics and interests, the SRs and Mensheviks, particularly the Left of them. (for the sake of debate we have to focus on Russia ie Petrograd and Moscow and not the Ukraine and Georgia and other regions deserving their own analyses.)

Interesting that the offer of alliance you referred to with fellow workers parties was also the time that Lenin was still committed to the Constituent Assembly that Luxemburg and Martov both supported

"The compromise would amount to the following: the Bolsheviks, without making any claim to participate in the government... A condition that is self-evident and not new to the S.R.s and Mensheviks would be complete freedom of propaganda and the convocation of the Constituent Assembly without further delays or even at an earlier date. The Mensheviks and S.R.s, being the government bloc, would then agree (assuming that the compromise had been reached) to form a government wholly and exclusively responsible to the Soviets, the latter taking over all power locally as well. This would constitute the “new” condition. I think the Bolsheviks would advance no other conditions, trusting that the revolution would proceed peacefully and party strife in the Soviets would be peacefully overcome thanks to really complete freedom of propaganda and to the immediate establishment of a new democracy in the composition of the Soviets (new elections) and in their functioning. Perhaps this is already impossible? Perhaps. But if there is even one chance in a hundred, the attempt at realising this opportunity is still worth while." - Lenin

But notice, the implication that soviet power is a necessary condition. What was the standing and allegiance of the soviets towards in September? Did the Bolsheviks dominate the soviets? Your mention of July Days was a time when Lenin actually disavowed the power and independence of the soviets and even many of his grassroots Bolsheviks.

The storming of the Winter Palace, was done by a few hundred pro-Bolshevik soldiers planned by the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, of which Trotsky was the chair and which had a Bolshevik majority and which took its orders directly from the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party. So, although the soviets had played a part in overthrowing Tsarism and opposing the Kerensky government, the events of November were a Bolshevik take-over.

Were the mass of the Petrograd workers consciously involved in deciding on the revolution? No. On the morning of 7 November the workers of Petrograd woke up to find that in the night the Bolshevik Party had assumed power, the Bolsheviks had carried out a revolution while they were asleep.

The MRC was set up by the Soviet on the basis of defending Petrograd because it was rumoured of another potential Kornilov plot or an imminent invading German army. It was not set up on the basis that it would overthrow the provisional government. But then, under the pretext of organising the military defence of Petrograd from this phantom invading German army, Trotsky at the head of the Petrograd Soviet's Military Revolutionary Committee, took over the garrison unit by unit, through a system of commissars, first securing vital points like the train stations and telegraph office, then finally taking the Winter Palace'

"even when the compromisers were in power, in the Petrograd Soviet, that the Soviet examined or amended decisions of the government. This was, as it were, part of the constitution under the regime named after Kerensky. When we Bolshevists got the upper hand in the Petrograd Soviet we only went on with the system of double power and widened its application. We took it on ourselves to revise the order sending the troops to the front, and so we disguised the actual fact of the insurrection of the Petrograd garrison under the tradition and precedents and technique of the constitutional duplication of authority” - Trotsky - Lessons of October

It would be misleading to say that it was carried out by the proletariat organised in soviets as such. Were non-Bolshevik proletarians in District soviets aware this was coming? No. Were the Left-SR participants in the MRC? No. Were even the moderate wing of leading Bolsheviks supportive? No.

But as I said the actual action did receive popular endorsement as it was perceived to be resulting in a coalition of workers parties, not a Bolshevik one-party state. The total lack of opposition to the Bolsheviks and the absence of support for the Provisional Government reflected the sympathies of the workers. Support for the action after the event from the Soviet of Petrograd Trade Unions and the All-Russian Soviet of Factory Committees amongst others. The factory committees rallied to the Bolsheviks because the latter appeared to support the workers' aspirations. The majority of the members of the Petrograd Soviet were in favour of the overthrow of the Kerensky government, but did this mean they were in favour of the installation of a Bolshevik government? What they were in favour of was a coalition government formed by all the "workers" parties, i.e. the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, SRs and others. This was in fact favoured by many within the Bolshevik Party itself, but they were over-ruled by Lenin who went to great pains to disguise his party's coup as the formation of a soviet government, which it wasn't. Once they got governmental power the Bolsheviks side-lined the soviets almost straightaway. The soviets were always considered as a cover to secure Bolshevik power.

This leads us to another important divergence of our respective positions. Post-October and the situation of the soviets does find us disagreeing. Anarchists, Left SRs and Mensheviks scholars tend to coalesce in their criticisms of the treatment of the soviets by the Bolsheviks - and naturally enough, those sympathetic towards Lenin take a different view but surely the proof of the pudding is very much in the eating. The soviets were institutionalized by the July 1918 constitution, which voided them of all revolutionary and autonomous content.

To sort of sum up, within the Socialist Party, some members think Lenin and the Bolsheviks were genuine socialists who were inevitably bound to fail to introduce socialism because the conditions weren't there for this and that their method of minority dictatorship was mistaken. While other members believe they were elitists, Jacobinists or Blanquists, from the very start who were always going to establish the rule of a new elite even though they labelled themselves socialists.

Rather than Bolshevik elitism was an inevitable product of the decision to build state capitalism in Russia in the aftermath of the October revolution, it was the other way round, the decision to build state capitalism was an inevitable product of the Bolsheviks' elitism.

Both analyses are an advance on the degenerate party and deformed workers’ state propositions offered up.

Overall,the Socialist Party sympathises more with Martov's viewpoint than Luxemburg's. One was on the ground and the other was in a German prison during much of the key moments and we can imagine much of her sources were limited compared to an active participant...but again Luxemburg from a distance could perhaps see the wood rather than Martov who could only perhaps perceive the trees.

Outside the Socialist Party, this article resonates so it is deserving of being credited.

http://www.whatnextjournal.org.uk/Pages/Ratner/Prematur.html

IMPARTING LENINIST IDEAS

A look at Russian history

The Socialist Party views its primary role under the current circumstances it faces today as one of education - of making socialists. Our case has always been that understanding is a necessary condition for socialism, not desperation and despair.

Capitalism will always throw up situations where an escalation of class struggle towards socialism is possible, but the more workers there are who are consciously aware of the alternative to capitalism, the greater the likelihood there is of actually getting rid of the system. Upsurges in class struggle and periods of crisis in capitalism provide a potential revolutionary springboard. The contradictions, class relationships and miseries inherent to capitalism inevitably lead the workers to confront capital and when this happens there is, of course the potential for revolutionary consciousness to grow through the realisation of class position and the nature of capitalism. As the current recession within capitalism continues, squeezing and stamping down upon the working class ever more relentlessly, alongside the growing realisation of the failure of all forms of running the system; then there is definitely a growing potential for the escalation of struggle towards the overthrow of the system. However, how many times has the potential been there in past moments of escalated struggle and capitalist crisis only to disappear or to be channelled into reformist, pro-capitalist directions? Discontent over wages or conditions can be a catalyst for socialist understanding but so can many other things such as concern about the environment or war or bad housing or the just the general culture of capitalism

Nor is there any reason in our interactions with capitalism that dictates that fellow-workers must necessarily become revolutionary socialists. Experience could just as easily turn them towards the right as in the case of the rust states becoming Trump-supporters or Brexiteers, here in the UK.

 Paul Mattick said rather pessimistically:
“There is no evidence that the last hundred years of labour strife have led to the revolutionizing of the working class in the sense of a growing willingness to do away with the capitalist system…In times of depression no less in than these of prosperity, the continuing confrontations of labor and capital have led not to an political radicalization of the working class, but to an intensified insistence upon better accommodations within the capitalist system…No matter how much he [the worker] may emancipate himself ideologically, for all practical purposes he must proceed as if he were still under the sway of bourgeois ideology. He may realize that his individual needs can only be assured by collective class actions, but he will still be forced to attend to his immediate needs as an individual. It is this situation, rather than some conditioned inability to transcend capitalism. He may realize that his individual needs can only be assured by collective class actions, but he will still be forced to attend to his immediate needs as an individual. It is this situation, rather than some conditioned inability to transcend capitalist ideology, that makes the workers reluctant to express and to act upon their anti-capitalist attitudes” - "Marxism, Last Refuge of the Bourgeoisie"

Another apt observation is from Murray Bookchin in his "Anarchism , Marxism and the Future of the Left":

"...human beings cannot be free - except under very rare conditions, such as during revolutions and for limited periods of time; even then, they must still leave the barricades and return to work to satisfy their needs and those of their families. They have to eat , if you please..." 

Bookchin gave this example: "...In May 1937 in Barcelona, the workers had to conquer the Stalinist counterrevolution then and there. But they delayed, and after four days they had to leave the streets to obtain food..."

The Marxist case is that no force can cut short the natural development of society until it is ready for change.

Studies of 1905 and 1917 revolutions have differentiated between the creation of the soviets of those respective periods?

Although the February 1917 strikes were completely spontaneous, the soviets did not arise directly out of them as they had done in 1905. This time they resulted from the combined efforts of politicians and workers' leaders, the politicians of the Duma Committee and the members of the Workers' Group sitting on the Central Committee for the War Industries (an employers' and State organisation), attempted to organise elections in Petrograd for a Central Soviet. The impetus for this came from the latter group, which installed itself in the Tauride Palace on 27 February and set up a provisional executive committee of the council of workers' delegates, to which committee several socialist leaders and members of parliament attached themselves. It was this committee which called upon workers and soldiers to elect their representatives. This explains why, when the first Provisional Soviet met that very evening, it still contained no factory delegates.

The political parties saw them as a springboard to power, they manipulated and engaged in all sort of chicanery which explains why the intellectuals acquired decisive influence in the Petrograd Soviet and why this soviet so rapidly lost contact with the masses. They became the scene of factional and party in-fighting. The soviets proved to be the dispensable means to an end for the Bolsheviks.

 Once Bolshevik power was established the soviets simply became an emasculated rubber stamp for party rule. As early as December 1917, Maxim Gorky was able to write in the newspaper Novaia Zizn (No.195, 7 December 1917) that the revolution was not attributable to the soviets, and that the new republic was not one of councils, but of peoples' commissars.

Lenin’s own view on soviets had changed little from his attitude towards them after 1905:
"...if Social-Democratic activities among the proletarian masses are properly, effectively and widely organised, such institutions may actually become superfluous...that a most determined struggle must be waged against all disruptive and demagogic attempts to weaken the R.S.D.L.P. from within or to utilise it for the purpose of substituting non-party political, proletarian organisations for the Social-Democratic Party...that Social-Democratic Party organisations may, in case of necessity, participate in inter-party Soviets of Workers’ Delegates, Soviets of Workers’ Deputies, and in congresses of representatives of these organisations, and may organise such institutions, provided this is done on strict Party lines for the purpose of developing and strengthening the Social-Democratic Labour Party " - Draft Resolutions for the Fifth Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1907/5thdraft/6.htm

Trotsky said in History of the Russian Revolution that "The party set the soviets in motion, the soviets set in motion the workers, soldiers, and to some extent the peasantry." In other words, the soviets existed to allow the party to influence the workers. And we subsequently saw what happened if the workers in the soviets rejected the decisions of the Bolsheviks.

The essence of this debate is fairly simple. Did the Bolsheviks desire the working class to control its own destiny or did they use the working class as stepping stones to political power and a totally different agenda from one of workers self-management?

Once having assumed the reins of government, Lenin found himself in the position of having to preside over -- and, in fact, to organise -- the accumulation of capital. But, as capital is accumulated out of surplus value and surplus value is obtained by exploiting wage-labour, this inevitably brought them into conflict with the workers who, equally inevitably, sought to limit their exploitation.

Lenin justified opposing and suppressing these workers' struggles on the ground that the Bolsheviks represented the longer-term interests of the workers. Lenin never really advanced much beyond the idea of self-appointed liberators leading (willing or otherwise) the mass of people to freedom. He remained, in theory as well as practice, essentially a bourgeois revolutionary. The New Economic Policy was the outcome. Ignored was this on-the-scene appraisal by fellow-socialist Bill Casey:

"Production was in a straight-jacket, lethargy and indifference permeated the whole economy; the people were entirely lacking in a sense of time. Without the normal industrial development of production and some measure of buying and selling (war-communism was the order of the day) drift and indifference would gradually strangle the economy of the Soviet".

These observations were greeted with disgust and dismay by the other delegates. However, before Casey left Moscow, Lenin introduced  NEP which, in essence, provided for the very things which Casey recognised was needed to stabilise the Russian economy. In contrast to their hostile reception of Casey’s prognostications, the "yes-men" cheered and echoed Lenin’s belated pronouncements

Stalin did twist Marxism into the conservative ideology of a state-capitalist ruling class, but he was merely building upon Lenin's previous contortions of Marxism into the ideology of that same class while it was struggling for power.

We are not saying that the majority of Petrograd workers and soldiers didn't support the idea of a “soviet government”. They did. But they always viewed it as a coalition of sorts of all the workers' parties. Something Lenin only paid lip-service to.

Worth reading is
'Soviet State myths and realities 1917-21'
http://libcom.org/library/radical-tradition-one

"The history of the Russian Revolution as told in Soviet textbooks takes place in two phases: the rising of the masses against tsarist oppression, then against Kerensky's bourgeois democracy, engendered a process of radicalization of which the Bolsheviks were both inspirers and spokesmen, preparing the ground for the second phase of the revolution, October 1917. In other words, the communists perceive an historical and theoretical continuity between the autonomous origins of the councils and the Leninist theory of the State, a view which is held even by the anti-Stalinist Marxist-Leninists. This misrepresentation of the true course of events was essential in order to paper over the divergences between the masses and Bolshevik policy insofar as the Bolsheviks claimed, and still do claim, to incarnate the dictatorship of the proletariat."

Another useful source is

http://libcom.org/library/menshevik-comeback-vladimir-brovkin

"The heart of the matter was that the Mensheviks and SRs were winning in the elections to the soviets in addition to regaining control of local trade unions and dumas. The process of the Menshevik-SR electoral victories threatened Bolshevik power. That is why in the course of Spring and Summer of 1918, the soviet assemblies were disbanded in most cities and villages. To stay in power, the Bolsheviks had to destroy the soviets. Local power was handed over to ExComs, the Cheka, the military, and special emissaries with "unlimited dictatorial power". These steps generated a far-reaching transformation in the soviet system, which remained "soviet" in name only..."

Martov put forward a resolution demanding that the Bolsheviks form a coalition government with other left-wing parties. The resolution was about to receive almost total endorsement from the soviet representatives thus showing that the representatives in the soviet did NOT believe in all power to the Bolsheviks but then the majority of SR and Menshevik delegates made a far-reaching tactical error when they unadvisedly left the congress in protest over the Bolshevik coup.

The Bolsheviks did make what appeared to be gestures towards cooperation. On October 25th, the presidium was elected on the basis of 14 Bolsheviks, 7 Social-Revolutionaries, 3 Mensheviks and a single Internationalist. The Bolsheviks then trooped out their worker-candidates Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev and so on. When it came to forming a government, Kamenev read out a Bolshevik Central Committee proposal for a Soviet of People's Commissars, whereby "control over the activities of the government is vested in the Congress of Soviets and its Central Executive Committee". Seven Bolsheviks from the party's central committee were nominated, and thus Lenin and Trotsky came to sit at the top. 

The "workers' government" was now composed of professional revolutionaries and members of the intelligensia ranging from the aristocratic, like Chicherin and Kollontai, to the bureaucratic, like Lenin, via the landed bourgeois (Smilga), the commercial bourgeois (Yoffe) and the industrial bourgeois (Pyatakov). These were the sort of people who were accustomed to being a ruling class.

The management of production by the workers was one of the goals of the struggle, proclaimed by the Military Revolutionary Committee on 25 October 1917. That same day, the Second Congress of the Soviets solemnly approved the decision to establish workers control while specifying, however, that this meant controlling the capitalists and not confiscating their factories.

The Bolsheviks effectively re-defined "proletarian power" to mean the power of the party whose ideology was believed a priori to represent workers interests. "Who is to seize the power? That is now of no importance. Let the Military Revolutionary Committee take it, or 'some other institution', which will declare that it will surrender the power only to the genuine representatives of the interests of the people.'' Not "the people", not the "representatives of the people", but "the genuine representatives of the interests of the people" and that would be, of course, the Bolshevik Party led by Lenin. [my emphasis] Substitution of the party for the class. A take-over, not a revolution.

The SPGB is often asked the hypothetical question - "What would you have done in 1917?"

Well, broadly speaking, the role of a revolutionary organisation in a pre-revolutionary situation is to ensure the growth of proletarian power and the defence of the class. The Bolsheviks failed to do so, emasculating what workers organisations existed, sacrificing their independence and strength to the altar of their One Party Rule. From 1917 all vestiges of democratic self-reliance by the working class was removed piece by piece. "Soviet power" became a sham, and Bolshevik party functionaries took total control. I think we can understand Leninism more by accepting that they made choices that other Marxists were not prepared to make. The SPGB argue that Lenin despite his claims that he was the first to see the trend of conditions and adapt himself to these conditions, he was far from changing the course of history, it was, in fact, the course of history which changed him. Lenin made a great miscalculation. He believed that the working masses of the western world were so war weary that upon the call from one of the combatants they would rise and force their various governments to negotiate peace. Unfortunately these masses had neither the knowledge nor the organisation necessary for such a movement, and no response was given to the call. A read of contemporary Socialist Standards show that the SPGB also saw the events of 1919 as a false dawn.

There is no doubting the Bolsheviks sincerity, only their judgement. the Bolshevik leaders really did believe at this time that they were turning “Russia into a socialist country” can be gauged from a passage in an article included in this book that Zinoviev later wrote on his “Twelve Days in Germany”: “We are approaching a time when we shall do away with all money. We are paying wages in kind, we are introducing free tramways, we have free schools, a free dinner, perhaps for the time being unsatisfactory free housing, light, etc.”

In 1920, Zinoviev claimed, “the beginning of the proletarian revolution can be clearly seen...I am convinced that in two or three years, it will be said that this was the beginning of a new era. The proletarian revolution has a great chance in England.”

It was Martov argued that the workers in Europe were certainly discontented but that this was not an expression of socialist consciousness but of despair. Martov said that the Bolshevik party had “conquered state power in a country with a proletariat that was numerically insignificant, a country with an insignificant productivity of labour, with a complete lack of the basic economic and cultural preconditions for the organisation of socialist production - and these objective conditions presented the Bolsheviks with an insurmountable obstacle for the realisation of their ideals.” He went on to point out that “the development of the revolution in the West…is not going as quickly as the Bolshevik party had reckoned when it obtained state power through a fortunate confluence of circumstances and then used this power in an attempt to turn Russia into a socialist country by a radically accelerated path.” ( quoted by Lars Lih, I think)

The Bolsheviks had basically three options

(1) To share power with bourgeois parties.

(2) to entrench themselves in intransigent opposition and decline the responsibilities of power

(3) to try to seize power by force.

The last option was the Bolshevik solution. It failed to produce socialism and necessarily failed to do so because even in power and ruling by dictat, the commissars of the people, still found themselves face-to-face with hard economic reality, denying them the possibility of immediate establishment of socialism.

“... just four days after seizing power, the Bolshevik Council of People's Commissars (CPC or Sovnarkom) "unilaterally arrogated to itself legislative power simply by promulgating a decree to this effect. This was, effectively, a Bolshevik coup d'etat that made clear the government's (and party's) pre-eminence over the soviets and their executive organ. Increasingly, the Bolsheviks relied upon the appointment from above of commissars with plenipotentiary powers, and they split up and reconstituted fractious Soviets and intimidated political opponents."

Neil Harding, 'Leninism' quoted at the Anarchism FAQ http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/append41.html#app8

Trotsky said:

“Could the Communist Party succeed, during the preparatory epoch, in pushing all other parties out of the ranks of the workers by uniting under its banner the overwhelming majority of workers, then there would be no need whatever for soviets..."

This confirms the observation of Martov:

“The idea that the "Soviet system" is equal to a definitive break with all the former, bourgeois, forms of revolution, therefore, serves as a screen behind which - imposed by exterior factors and the inner conformation of the proletariat - there are again set in motion methods that have featured the bourgeois revolutions. And those revolutions have always been accomplished by transferring the power of a "conscious minority, supporting itself on an unconscious majority," to another minority finding itself in an identical situation."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/martov/1921/xx/decomp.htm

Just to end with this quote from Peter Tkachev, sometimes known as "the First Bolshevik" as his views is something they inherited, said:

“Neither now nor in the future is the people left to itself, capable of accomplishing the social revolution. Only we, the revolutionary minority, can and must accomplish the revolution and as soon as possible...The people cannot help itself. The people cannot direct its own fate to suit its own needs. It cannot give body and life to the ideas of the social revolution...This role and mission belong unquestionably to the revolutionary minority.”

Cited in Rudolf Sprenger's very useful pamphlet 'Bolshevism'

https://www.marxists.org/archive/wagner/1939/bolshevism.htm