Alienation in the Post Cold War Era
Chapter 12
How the Alienating Features of the
Socialist/Progressive Movement Contribute to Its Failure
(page 4)

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The Immature Bolshevik Leaders Capitulated To Stalin and the Aura of Power

The CP leaders identify with the Soviet Union and “father” Stalin to foster their power inside the mass communist parties. Their emotional security depended on their position inside the party which was dependent on their loyalty to Stalinism. But this security was achieved at the expense of feeling and thinking independently. As long as the personality remained alienated and weak, the socialist and communist parties provide the person with the security of the herd in a similar fashion to any other party and cult in capitalist society.

This emotional immaturity can be traced to the conduct of key Bolshevik leaders in the period before Stain rose to power. In his books the History of the Russian Revolution and My Life, Trotsky examined the psychological weakness of the most important Bolshevik leaders — weakness that led to opportunistic positions before the Russian revolution and to capitulation to Stalin later. While Trotsky does not give a full analysis on the interaction between the psychology of such leaders and the objective development of the revolution, his insights are nevertheless quite revealing. Two of the key Bolshevik leaders were Kamenev and Zinoviev. This is what Trotsky wrote about Kamenev:

“Although a Bolshevik almost from the very birth of Bolshevism, Kamenev had always stood on the right flank of the party. Not without theoretical foundation or political instinct, and with a large experience of factional struggle in Russia and a store of political observations made in Western Europe, Kamenev grasped better than most Bolsheviks the general ideas of Lenin, but he grasped them only in order to give them the mildest possible interpretation in practice. You could not expect from him either independence of judgment or initiative in action. A distinguished propagandist, orator, journalist, not brilliant but thoughtful, Kamenev was especially valuable for negotiations with other parties and reconnoitres in other social circles — although from such excursions he always brought back with him a bit of some mood alien to the party. These characteristics of Kamenev were so obvious that almost nobody ever misjudged him as a political figure. Sukhanov remarks in him an absence of ‘sharp corners.’ ‘It is always necessary to lead him on a tow line,’ he says. ‘He may resist a little, but not strongly.’ ”[2]

In other words, an opportunistic political character that impels one to dilute political principles, can always be traced to a weakness in the fundamental personality — to the inability to withstand social pressure and maintain independent thinking and initiative; to the fear of being ostracized, and of being a alone. It is always the case that when a person has a weak core, that person does not have a real nourishing connection to him/herself and to his/her closest friends and comrades. In such a case, political leaders including the best marxists and socialists, cannot withstand the adverse pressure that involves the defense of big political principles. Such leaders will be driven to embrace the prevailing views of their social milieu. In the case of Kamenev and many others Bolshevik and Communist Party leaders, this meant an abandonment of independent thinking and principles, which are exchanged for the security of the herd.

Kamenev and Zinoviev did not capitulate to Stalin overnight.[3] They went back and forth between Trotsky’s left opposition and Stalinism; they finally capitulated to Stalinism in 1926 when it was clear that Trotsky was losing. Thus they could not withstand the pressure of being in a small minority against impact of banishment from the party’s social milieu. In their case resistance against the Stalinists was also tantamount to risking their life.

Zinoviev’s opportunism was not as straight forward as Kamenev’s. Trotsky explains that on a superficial level his character seems to contain the opposite attributes to Kamenev’s political identity:

“Where Kamenev was a propagandist populariser, Zinoviev was an agitator, and indeed, to quote an expression of Lenin, ‘nothing but an agitator.’ . . . Lacking inner discipline, his mind is completely incapable of theoretical work, and his thoughts dissolve into the formless intuitions of the agitator. Thanks to an exceptionally quick scent, he can catch out of the air whatever formulas are necessary for him — those which will exercise the most effective influence on the masses. . . . Although far more bold and unbridled in agitation than any other Bolshevik, Zinoviev is even less capable than Kamenev of revolutionary initiative. He is, like all demagogues, indecisive.”[4]

Zinoviev’s capitulation to the social pressure of Stalinism and the Communist Party can be trailed to his demagogic character. It can be traced to the demagogue’s symbiotic relationship to others in general. The demagogue needs the cheering and the approval of the people in the street to achieve unity with others, to overcome the painful separateness. But underneath rules the anxiety of the insecure person who cannot think clearly and independently. The thoughts of the subjective demagogue do not come from the ability to assess the objective situation, but from the gut feelings of the ego that knows how to say to right things to get the caressing of the crowd. Underneath lies a damaged core that depends on the crowd’s approval to feel the self worth. Thus, Zinoviev who, depended on the approval of the crowd, also, like Kamenev, depended on the prevailing social mood of the Bolshevik party and ultimately on Stalin approval — such approval like in the case of many others Communists was more decisive than the principles of a humanistic socialist society that failed so miserably in the Soviet Union.

The question that comes to the mind is how does the material basis for the degeneration of socialists and progressive people relate to their social psychology? Or to put it differently, how does their character that clings to the psychology of the old society coincide with the material corruption and privileges that the old society always utilize to stop the threat of a genuine socialist revolution? The pressures that corrupts ordinary people also applies to socialists who gain bureaucratic privileges but who started as genuine revolutionaries that wanted to get rid of all the evilness of capitalism. The material privileges that comes from a secured bureaucratic position, is always the fundamental magnet that attract psychologically crippled people to positions of power. The drive for extra material comfort and privileges usually coincides with their psychological crippled features that drive them to power. Being the shepherd of the herd always brings the aura of success and a distorted feeling of eminence that covers up the real impotence. Both drives: the drive for material privileges and the aura of power compensate for the poverty of the soul.

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[2] Leon Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, Volume One, pages 273-4.

[3] For the sake of simplification, I do not explain their opportunistic history before October 1917. See Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution.

[4] Leon Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, page 285.