The crisis of the ruling order that unfolded in Russia in 1917 brought on an enormous social upheaval, culminating in a revolution—a process of fundamental transformation of the society’s socioeconomic and political structures and institutions. This revolution—history’s first major attempt to transcend capitalism—inevitably provoked a counterrevolution that sought to turn back the clock. Such life-and-death struggles have recurred in the periphery and semi-periphery of the world capitalist system since 1917, right up to the present.
In what follows—going by the dictum that the truth is the whole, but without trying to achieve the impossible, comprehensiveness—I look at revolution and counterrevolution as interdependent processes, the latter inevitably accompanying the former, and whose principal base has been in imperialism. I stress the fact that post-revolutionary society, in its efforts to combat counterrevolution, not only had to overcome the appalling heritage of the past, but was also confronted with its own contradictions, and with the persistent threat that an exploiting class could reemerge. Instead of the intended socialization of the economy and democratization of the polity, what resulted was (largely) state ownership of the economy and stultifying bureaucratization of both the economy and the polity, a cultural revolution in China notwithstanding.Read More »