Lozovsky, Strategist of the Proletarian Revolution

Add a subpage to this text

Read the help page for usage.

 

In November 1917 a struggle was raging in the higher circles of the Bolshevik Party around the question of coalition with the conciliators, the structure of the Soviet government, and the general direction of the government’s policies. Lozovsky, having joined the party not long before, submitted a “statement” to the Bolshevik faction of the [Soviet] Central Executive Committee on November 5, 1917. In spite of the proletarian victory that had been won, Lozovsky wrote the following on the refusal of the Bolshevik Central Committee to capitulate to the petty-bourgeois democracy:

“I don’t consider it possible in the name of party discipline to remain silent when I recognize, when I feel with all the fibers of my soul (!!), that the Central Committee’s tactic is leading to the isolation of the vanguard of the proletariat, to a civil war among the working people, and to the defeat of the great revolution.” The Bolshevik Central Committee agreed to include in the government some Mensheviks and SRs in the same proportion that they were represented in the [Second] Congress of Soviets. But they, being worthless Mensheviks, demanded for themselves a majority in the government. Lozovsky wrote in connection with this:

“I cannot in the name of party discipline be silent when Marxists, ignoring both reason and nature, do not want to face the objective conditions that absolutely compel us, under threat of complete ruin, to make an agreement with all the socialist parties.”

The conciliators demanded the removal from the Soviet government of Lenin and Trotsky “as the culprits directly responsible for the October Revolution.” The Bolshevik Central Committee decisively voted down this proposal. Lozovsky wrote on this score:

“I cannot in the name of party discipline give in to the personality cult; establish political agreement with all the political parties and secure our basic demands simply according to the term of office of some individual or other in the ministry; and cause a delay because of this, although there may be bloodshed at any moment.”

In conclusion Lozovsky demanded:

“… a party congress be called very soon for the resolution of the following question: will the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Bolshevik) remain a Marxist party of the working class or will it definitively enter on the path that has nothing in common with revolutionary Marxism?”

Not having elicited the right response, Lozovsky left the party within one-and-a-half or two years. Now, relying on Clausewitz, he is elaborating a theory of “strikes as wars conducted by other means.” This is just the task for him!