The 67th anniversary of the Russian revolution

Scan page 11

SOCIALIST ACTION NOVEMBER 1984 11 Sixty-seven years ago, on Nov. 7, 1917, the workers of Russia, supported by the peasantry and led by the Bolshevik Party, succeeded in overthrowing the state of the capitalists and landlords. In so doing, the Russian workers opened up a new historical epoch, the epoch of the socialist revolution.

Many lessons can be drawn from the Russian revolution: the interrelationship between democratic demands such as land reform or national liberation and the anti-capitalist struggle; the need to support the revolution by social overturns in the advanced countries, since socialism cannot be built within the confines of a single country; or the role of a revolutionary party in guiding the struggle, first against the old regime and later in creating the new society.

But one of the most important lessons of the Russian Revolution is, at the same time, the one most obscured by the passage of history: the lesson that ..-GOP '84 (continued from page 1: “GOP injects God into '84”) combined assault of right-wing politics and right-wing religion.

Prayer in public schools has been supported by both Republicans and Democrats, but the Supreme Court in 1963 blocked that effort to break down the barrier between church and state. Since the Court has swung so far to the right, the prayer people hope for a new, more favorable decision.

Until recently the church-state conflict has remained low key. Mainline Protestant churches have supported the First Amendment. Many have taken liberal stands on such issues as civil rights, war issues, and women's liberation. Membership in these churches has fallen. According to a series of polls, Americans' interest in religion in general has declined. In 1952, 75 percent of people asked said religion was very important to them. By 1983 that figure had dropped to 56 percent.

In the light of these figures why is religion an issue in this campaign? The answer lies in a combination of factors: a conservative administration and an alliance of the political far right with the ultra-right fundamentalist church as exemplified by Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority.

Evangelical and fundamentalist churches have long remained on the fringes of American religious experience. But radio and television have given new life to the Bible-thumping preachers of sin and salvation. Through radio a single preacher can reach a nationwide audience of millions. socialism can only be the product workers themselves.

In Russia, the revolution was not a coup d'etat which toppled Kerensky's Provisional Government only to impose a new set of rulers. Rather, the fall of the old regime culminated a process of the self-organization and mobilization of the workers in their own factory councils, motivated by the government's failure to do anything to relieve mass suffering, to pull out of World War I, to distribute the land, or to free the nations long oppressed by tsarism.

Intimately linked to the only source of workers' power, their role in economic production and distribution, these councils or "soviets" represented a new authority which undermined not only the Kerensky regime, but the rule of the boss at the shop floor level. It was all over for the Provisional Government when the bulk of the army, fed up by five years of war, began electing their own soldiers' councils affiliated to the workers' councils.

Within these councils, the workers The doctrine preached is simplistic, anti-intellectual, and authoritarian. The only truth is found in the Bible as interpreted by the ministers. Reason will not lead humanity to truth; only unquestioning faith in the scriptures can do that. All other religious denominations are not Christian, but agents of the devil who is contending with God for the souls of the American people. God has selected the United States as his chosen people.

But America must be cleansed of the moral rot that is corroding its Christian foundations. This moral rot, which is the work of the devil, takes the form of homosexuality, abortion, secular humanism as espoused by Protestants, and soldiers debated the programs of the contending political parties and elected (or recalled) their delegates to higher councils. Thus, within Russia a democratic hierarchy of soviets existed from top to bottom. This council-or soviet-state inherited power on Nov. 7, 1917, and began the socialist revolution.

Workers' democracy

Socialism, an international society in which the factories, mines, and other economic entities are no longer owned by private capitalists but are run by the workers themselves, cannot be imposed from on high. On the economic level, the transition to socialism begins with "workers' control, the right of employees to oversee their employers. Through experience, workers' control evolves into "workers management."

And the instrument of this progressive evolution is the factory council, the foundation of the Russian state in late 1917.

The USSR today is a far cry from the Soviet Russia of 1917. Soviet democracy withered under the concentrated fire of the Equal Rights Amendment, the United Nations, fluoridation of drinking water, and communism-socialism-lib eralism. Preaching in radio stations and churches is not enough to defeat the devil. Christians must get into politics.

In defense of capitalism Here an alliance with the political far right gives support to both forces. The Moral Majority's views on social questions echo those of the John Birch Society: Capitalism has been ordained by God; success in business is a sign of godliness; trade unions interfere with a businessman's God-given right to control his own property. The income tax must be abolished. Welfare destroys the bureaucracy is rooted in the continued existence of state property in the economy, a planned economy which does not follow the dictates of private profit. State property remains the legacy of the Bolshevik Revolution, a legacy which still poses the possibility of the transition to socialism.

This possibility remains shackled by the bureaucratic caste, and only a new revolution, overthrowing the bureaucracy, can release the potential of the collectivized economy. But only the workers themselves can overthrow the parasites and re-establish democratic self-rule.

The Polish workers, organized in Solidarnosc, have shown that the prospect of a political revolution in t'.: bureaucratized workers' states of Eastern Europe and Asia is no pipedream. The Polish workers, armed by the knowledge that without them the economy stops, challenged the fundamental basis of bureaucratic rule by demanding their proper place in the management of the economy, foreshadowing the creation of the factory councils.

Solidarnosc today is banned. But through it, the obscurred lesson of the Russian Revolution once again reared its head: Socialism can only be the product of the workers themselves.

moral fiber of the recipient. War with the Soviet Union is inevitable. We must prepare for it and win it.

Last July 300 fundamentalist ministers met with Reagan in the White House. They came to annoint Reagan as "God's chosen leader."

Reagan, who seldom goes to church, accepted the cloak of sanctity for the sake of the votes he might gain.

Motivation and shock troops The political and religious right have a perspective going beyond this year's election. They are reacting to a crisis of capitalism that has no solution under bourgeois democracy. They seek an authoritarian state with an ideology that will keep the masses in line. In the struggle for capitalist survival the political right is counting on the religious right to provide the motivation and the shock troops. What can develop from this alliance is essentially an American fascist It is by no means certain that the religious ingredient will build the mass movement for a fascist takeover. It is true, however, that thousands of young people have been recruited to the ultra-right religious movement, brainwashed, and deprived of the capacity for logical thought. They are reacting to the blind alley of capitalism and the threat of nuclear war.

If there were another pole of attraction—a vital growing labor movement, a mass movement of social struggle offering hope of a change-this turn to life-destroying religious cults could be deflected. The working class must mobilize and demonstrate that there is an alternative to Armageddon and nuclear destruction.

Scan page 12

STEELWO OGETHER & IN 1934 WITH MONDALE *D FERRARO WILL MAKE LE AMERICA NOAN AGA Mark Crabtree