Self-Emancipation: A Genealogy and Implications for Democratic Socialism

• In Event: Poster Session: Politics of Communist and Former Communist Countries & Critical Political Science
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: CPS: Contesting Capitalism: Agency and Social Change

Abstract

A core idea of democratic socialism is “self-emancipation” and related concepts such as “self-activity”, “self-organization” and “self-determination.” The essence of self-emancipation was captured by Karl Marx in October 1864, in his draft of the inaugural rules for the International Working Men’s Association (often referred to as the First International). The very first line was clear: “the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves.” This paper argues that there is a hidden genealogy of the concept of self-emancipation, and suggests that uncovering this genealogy may help us to reimagine pivotal moments from history, specifically from the Russian revolutionary era, relevant to the present and future,

The concept of self-emancipation became central to the praxis of the Russian Left at the turn of the last century. For many, the theory of self-emancipation was embodied in practice in the early 20th century through the mass councils of workers, peasants and soldiers, most iconically in the soviets (councils) of the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917. However, the term “soviet” ultimately became attached to the name of the post-revolutionary Russian state, which evolved as a one-party autocracy – the very antithesis of self-emancipation. There is a tragic irony embedded in this aspect of the genealogy, a gap between practice and theory. Soviet practice has become associated with the Bolshevik (communist) wing of that Left; however, the self-emancipation theory which animated that Left, and the initial organizers of the soviets in both 1905 and 1917, came from the Menshevik (democratic socialist) wing of the movement. The latter wing was ruthlessly repressed by the post-revolutionary state.

According to Leopold Haimson, “samoupravlenie, samostoiatel’nost’ samodeiatel’nost’ [lit. self-government, autonomy, self-activity] were terms used by the Mensheviks to express the need for the ‘active involvement’ of workers in public affairs” and “were developed by the Menshevik editors of Iskra following their 1903 split with Lenin.” Menshevik leader Pavel Axelrod, in an influential article, the first part of which was published in late 1903 and the second in early 1904, outlined these ideas at some length. Axelrod argued that “the development of class self-awareness [class-consciousness] and the self-activity of the proletariat is a process of self-development and self-education of the working class,” the indispensable foundation for the “process of social-democratic self-development and self-education.” The then young Leon Trotsky argued that the publication of Axelrod’s article marked “the beginning of a new era [epoch] in our movement.” He contrasted “two opposing methods of work. . . . In the one case we have a party which thinks for the proletariat, which substitutes itself politically for it, and in the other we have a party which politically educates and mobilises the proletariat to exercise rational pressure on the will of all political groups and parties.”

It will also argue that uncovering this process demands an epistemic shift, to reflect upon several pivotal movements of subsequent Left praxis in the Russian revolutionary era: the Shidlovskii Commission which was the foundation from which came the 1905 soviet movement; the War Industries Committee which were the foundation from which came the 1917 soviets; the 1917 elections for the short-lived 1918 Constituent Assembly; the 1921 re-emergence of Soviet democracy in Kronstadt; and the implications of this history for understanding the roots of bureaucratization in the name of Marxist theory.

The authors of this paper share a political praxis over several decades in Canada, involved in a Left where the idea of self-emancipation was a central organizing concept. Methodologically, the paper will trace this genealogy in detail through original Russian language sources and extensive personal archives, indicating contours of self-emancipation. This paper is the result of reflections on some of the theory and practice of self-emancipation, and will conclude with some implications for the current moment of Left organizing and implications for the future.

Authors

• Abigail B. Bakan, University of Toronto

• Paul Kellogg, Athabasca University