‘All Power to the Soviets’

Wellred

Core Argument

Chapter Digest: ‘All Power to the Soviets’

This chapter reconstructs Lenin’s strategic conception of the socialist revolution, arguing that it was fundamentally opposed to both Blanquist putschism and the notion that violence is an inevitable prerequisite for working-class victory. The core claim is that the revolutionary task is nine-tenths a matter of winning the masses, not seizing power by a determined minority. Lenin’s insistence on the slogan ‘Patiently explain’ reflected the concrete situation of 1917, when the Bolsheviks were a minority in the Soviets, dominated by reformist Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries. The party’s duty was to participate in daily struggles and advance slogans corresponding to the real stage of the movement’s consciousness, not to agitate for premature insurrection.

The slogan ‘All power to the Soviets’ meant transferring power to the reformist-led Soviets, not to the Bolsheviks. Lenin repeatedly stated that if the reformist leaders took power, the Bolsheviks would limit themselves to peaceful struggle for a majority inside the Soviets. He argued that a peaceful transfer of power was possible and probable, and that civil war would be impossible if the reformists broke with the bourgeoisie. The reformists’ refusal to take power, especially after the defeat of Kornilov, prepared the way for catastrophe. Lenin insisted that the notion that revolution necessarily meant bloodshed was a reactionary lie.

The Bolsheviks won majorities in the Soviets and the army not by agitating for insurrection, but by exposing the contradiction between the reformist leaders’ words and deeds. A peaceful revolution was prevented only by the cowardice and treachery of those leaders. The chapter polemicises against ultra-left sects detached from reality, arguing that emphasising the inevitability of violence before winning the masses disorients cadres and alienates workers. A Marxist tendency concretely prepares for power by winning the masses through a programme of transitional demands linking immediate struggles to the expropriation of capital. When the Bolsheviks were a minority, Lenin understood that the masses sought the easiest solution and trusted reformist leaders, noting in July 1917 that the masses still looked for an easy way out through a bloc of reformists, but there was no way out.