Stephen Smith's Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis 1890-1928 (Oxford University 2017)
An excellent critical review of the Russian Revolution.
He [Smith] sees this revolution as having raised fundamental questions regarding the reconciliation of justice, equality, and freedom even though he thinks that Bolshevik answers were flawed. In today’s world, he writes, where everything conspires for people to accept things as they are, the Bolshevik Revolution upholds the idea that the world can be organized in a more just and rational fashion. For all their many faults, he goes on, “the Bolsheviks were fired by outrage at the exploitation that lay at the heart of capitalism and at the raging nationalism that led Europe into the carnage of the First World War.” Millions across the world, who could not anticipate the horrors of Stalinism, “embraced the 1917 Revolution as a chance to create a new world of justice, equality and freedom.”
This entails, for example, an outright opposition to the now common very long contracts, labor-management committees to improve productivity and discipline the workforce, let alone worker representation in board of directors. In other words, revolutionaries should oppose anything that encourages workers to assume responsibilities without real power, let alone workers adopting the idea that this is “our company,” or that “we are all in this together.”
—Samuel Farber
The Russian Revolution Reconsidered
An excellent critical review of the Russian Revolution.
He [Smith] sees this revolution as having raised fundamental questions regarding the reconciliation of justice, equality, and freedom even though he thinks that Bolshevik answers were flawed. In today’s world, he writes, where everything conspires for people to accept things as they are, the Bolshevik Revolution upholds the idea that the world can be organized in a more just and rational fashion. For all their many faults, he goes on, “the Bolsheviks were fired by outrage at the exploitation that lay at the heart of capitalism and at the raging nationalism that led Europe into the carnage of the First World War.” Millions across the world, who could not anticipate the horrors of Stalinism, “embraced the 1917 Revolution as a chance to create a new world of justice, equality and freedom.”
This entails, for example, an outright opposition to the now common very long contracts, labor-management committees to improve productivity and discipline the workforce, let alone worker representation in board of directors. In other words, revolutionaries should oppose anything that encourages workers to assume responsibilities without real power, let alone workers adopting the idea that this is “our company,” or that “we are all in this together.”
—Samuel Farber
The Russian Revolution Reconsidered
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