The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished Twentieth Century

One hundred years after the outbreak of World War I and the Russian Revolution, none of the problems of the twentieth century---devastating wars, economic crises, social inequality, and the threat of dictatorship---have been solved. In fact, they are posed even more sharply today. David North argues against contemporary historians who maintain that the dissolution of the USSR signaled the end of history (Fukuyama}, or the short twentieth century (Hobsbawm). Disputing postmodernism's view that all history is merely subjective narrative, North insists that a thorough materialist knowledge of history is vital for humanity s survival in the twenty-first century. ** BOOK REVIEW: The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished Twentieth Century by David North (Mehring Books) 2014 https://www.reddirtreport.com/rustys-reads/book-review-russian-revolution-and-unfinished-twentieth-century-david-north Andrew W. Griffin | April 14, 2015 Category: Rusty's Reads Socialist intellectual and historian David North has been a leading proponent of the works and writings of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky for four decades. Always putting forth his arguments and ideas forth in a reasoned and thoughtful manner, North (who authored In Defense of Leon Trotsky, reviewed here) has put together a new Mehring Books collection featuring a largely chronological sampling of the International Committee of the Fourth International’s North and his essays and reviews over the past 20 years or so. And over the course of over 300 pages and 15 chapters, North counters the “research” of revisionist historians who argue – unconvincingly – that Marxism and the Russian Revolution were doomed from the start due to what came later to be known as “Stalinism,” the authoritarian ideology that took hold after V.I. Lenin died and Trotsky was banished from the USSR, only to become a “man without a country” until an agent of Stalin assassinated him in Mexico in 1940. North, a Trotskyist and leader in the Socialist Equality Party, sets his sights on British communists and researchers like Eric Hobsbawm who “distort” historical facts through withholding facts, offering distortions and outright intellectual dishonesty. In an early chapter, “Leon Trotsky and the Fate of Socialism in the Twentieth Century: A Reply to Professor Eric Hobsbawm,” North offers up his lecture given in Sydney in 1998 where the author recounts Trotsky’s repeated warnings to the German Social Democrats and Stalinist German Communist Party (KPD) and how despite the rise of Hitler and Nazis, the German communists considered the Social Democrats to be “social fascists” and failed to form, along with the German working class, a united front against Hitler. In fact, North reminds us, Trotsky, in 1932, noted how Hitler’s victory did not “pave the way for a Communist victory,” it rather led to increased power by the dangerous fascists taking over Germany. Wrote Trotsky at the time: “Fascism is not merely a system of reprisals, of brutal force, and of police terror. Fascism is a particular governmental system based on the uprooting of all elements of proletarian democracy within bourgeois society. The task of fascism lies not only in destroying the Communist vanguard but in holding the entire class in a state of forced disunity …” Later, North notes that the defeat of the German working class (by the rise of Hitler and fascism) “marked a decisive turning point in the evolution of the Stalinist regime itself.” From here, Stalin and the USSR began forging “political alliances with imperialist states – democratic or fascist – depending on the circumstances – at the expense of the interests of the international working class.” This included the increased nature of the USSR’s “directly counterrevolutionary character” which included “the betrayal of the Spanish Revolution (1936-39), the massacre of Old Bolsheviks, the hunting down of revolutionary opponents of the Stalinist regime outside the borders of the USSR, and finally in the Stalin-Hitler pact.” North completely unravels Hobsbawm’s “shabby, pro-Stalinist apologetics,” exposing him – at least to this reader – as a dupe and a fool. Later chapters address North’s lectures address the problems inherent with trade unions, which in their current form are notoriously counterrevolutionary. “There is, to be sure, a definite link between trade unionism and the class struggler; but only in the sense that the organization of workers within trade unions derives its impulse from the existence of a definite conflict between the material interests of employers and workers,” adding that the historical evidence shows that trade unionism suppresses the class struggle. “The Causes and Consequences of World War II” is another particularly important chapter in North’s book (based on a 2009 lecture at San Diego State University), whereas he outlines the rise of U.S. imperialism in the wake of World War I (despite pacifism rising in popularity) and that allies like Britain and Winston Churchill “admired” fascist leaders like Mussolini. “By the time the United States achieved its victory over Germany and Japan in 1945, hundreds of millions of people were already in revolt against imperialist oppression,” writes North. “The task that confronted the United States was to stem the tide of global revolutionary struggle.” He adds that the U.S. “viewed the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 as an opportunity to finally establish the unchallenged hegemony of American imperialism.” And later in this chapter, North warns that as America’s steadily deteriorating economic position in the world increases – as it currently is – the “weaker” United States will seek to “offset this weakness through the use of military force,” and going on to offer parallels to such a scenario with “the policies of the Nazi regime in the late 1930’s.” After all, look how U.S. foreign policy continues to prop up fascist regimes like Ukraine, in hopes of preventing the pro-independence working class in that former Soviet republic from allying with others than the West. And more war. Writes North: “The insane logic of imperialism and the capitalist nation-state system, of the drive to secure access to markets, raw materials and cheap labor, of the relentless pursuit of profit and personal riches, leads inexorably in the direction of war.” So, we are essentially still in a 20th century holding pattern, despite being 15 years into the 21st century. We still live in an imperialist epoch, he notes. And that little will change until a new political leadership of the working class is developed. Later, while addressing the breakup of the USSR, during a 2005 lecture, North points out that “ignorance of history” and the “burden of decades of historical falsification” within the USSR during the decades of Stalinist bureaucracy, prevented the Soviet working class from orienting itself in a manner that could lead to interest in true Marxism and Trotskyism and lead to a resurgence in true socialist consciousness. North expounds on this by explaining that postmodernists have fled historical truth and offers examples – Jean-Francois Lyotard, Richard Rorty, Richard Pipes and others – have failed in truly educating their readers as to the trials and tribulations faced by the working class in a world that is still battling the demons of the 20th century. “(A)ll the horrors that confronted the working class during the last century – war, fascism, even the possibility of the extinction of all human civilization – threaten us today.” And this despite the faux-left intellectuals that North lambastes, who say that they fail to understand (or if they do, they don’t admit it) the immense impact the October Revolution of 1917 had on the working class and the world and that to fail to understand its continuing impact and be honest about it will only lead to catastrophe. David North’s lectures/writing style is accessible, despite being historically deep and analytical. The issues he addresses about the continuing impact of the October Revolution and the decisions – good and bad – continue to affect the United States and the world. Only time will tell what direction the working class takes as we continue our march deeper into the uncharted regions of the 21st century. The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished Twentieth Century is an important book and one that should be read from cover-to-cover by intellectually honest students of history, particularly in the face of official whitewashing and outright lies and distortions. If we fail to understand the past as it truly was, we are, as the old adage goes - "doomed to repeat it."