Louw Intheshadowofthepharaohs-Themilitarizationoflabourdebateandclassicalmarxisttheory

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In the Shadows of the Pharaohs: The Militarization of Labor Debate and

Classical Marxist Theory
Article in Economy and Society · May 2000

DOI: 10.1080/030851400360488
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militarization of labour
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Stephen Louw
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Economy and Society Volume 29 Number 2 May 2000: 239–263
In the shadow of the

pharaohs: the militarization
of labour debate and
classical Marxist theory
Stephen Louw
The Terror of History culminates in Revolution and

History is Terror because there is contingency
(Maurice Merleau-Ponty 1969: 91)
Abstract
This article considers the Bolsheviks’ proposals to militarize labour. While concerned
ostensibly to secure a steady supply of disciplined labour during the civil war, this was
clearly seen as a means to effect a transition to communism. Labour militarization was
understood as an instrument to suppress commodity production, which would help
usher in a new form of socialized labour. The theoretical roots of this policy can be
found in Marx’s writings on commodity production and ideology. Although Marx
believed that the commodity form would be overcome through endogenous structural
developments, there is no reason to suppose the forceful suppression of commodity
production cannot produce the same outcome.
Keywords: fetishism of commodities; militarization of labour; Russian civil war;

Trotsky; totalitarianism.
That the classical Marxists understood communism as an essentially homo-

geneous and transparent society is well known. On this, Marx is unambiguous:
with the development of capitalism the commodity form, and the contradictions
associated with it, will be overcome. Social relations will become progressively
more transparent as capitalism develops, subject less and less to the ‘anarchy’ of
Stephen Louw, Department of Political Studies, University of Witwatersrand, PO WITS,

Private Bag 3, 2050 Republic of South Africa. E-mail: slouw@global.co.za
Copyright © 2000 Taylor & Francis Ltd

ISSN 0308-5147 print/ISSN 1469-5766 online
240 Economy and Society
ex post co-ordination between autonomous productive units and increasingly to

systematic and routinized regulation. These latter continue not only to develop
the productive forces to a point where it is possible to create an abundance of
goods for consumption, but, by introducing ex ante forms of regulation within
and between productive units, create the preconditions for a planned economy.
It is on the basis of these developments that communism is said to emerge,
facilitated but in no way caused by the proletarian seizure of power. But what
happens if these developments fail to occur and a proletarian Party comes to
power committed to the abolition of commodity production and the introduction
of communism? Essentially, such a Party has two choices. It can choose to

abandon the vision of communism as a commodity-free society and explore
alternative conceptions of post-capitalist society. This means it has to turn its back
on classical Marxism, for the entire conception of history developed within this
tradition is dependent on these assumptions. Alternatively, it can remain faithful
to the central tenets of classical Marxism. In this case, it has no choice but to try
to introduce communism by administrative at, which, in practice, means that
social relations must be decommodi ed forcefully. Ironically, it was during the
debate on the militarization of labour that one of Trotsky’s opponents coined the
phrase that Trotsky would later use to denounce Stalin’s industrial policies: ‘You
cannot build a planned economy in the way that the Pharaohs built the pyramids’
(quoted in Deutscher 1989: 500). The Bolshevik attempt to militarize labour
during the Russian civil war is, we suggest, an example of such an attempt by a
new ruling élite to build a communist society through force and Terror.
At issue here is the intervention of the contingent in history (conceived as an
eschatology), and the Terror which any attempt to defend the logic of history
against the contingent must entail. By contingent is meant a non-necessary
intervention in a process – in this case, the secular developments that (for classi-
cal Marxists) constitute history. The contingent is by nature exogenous, that is
to say, its conditions of existence are different from those which (putatively)
drive history. Because it intervenes from the outside, its presence does not negate
the original claims of history. The presence of the contingent does not imply the
need to rethink conceptual foundations (Laclau and Mouffe 1985: ch. 1).
To illustrate this, we consider the Bolsheviks’ attempt to militarize labour
during the Russian civil war. Policies to this effect were proposed initially by
Trotsky, but were endorsed at the time by Lenin and Bukharin. While labour
militarization was clearly a response to wartime exigencies – the economy had,
in effect, collapsed, and Trotsky intended to organize labour along military lines
in order to effect a recovery – it was clearly understood as something more than
this. Labour militarization meant the suppression of commodity production and
was for this reason treated as an innovative response to the fact that the historical
preconditions for communism had yet to develop fully within the ‘womb’ of
Russian society.
In order to explore this we provide a brief overview of the classical Marxist
theory of commodity fetishism. The key point here is that, because ideology (at
least in the later Marx’s work) is understood as a consequence or product of the
Stephen Louw: In the shadow of the pharaohs 241
commodity form, by implication, the suppression of commodity relations

(whether ‘naturally’, i.e. by endogenous structural developments or through
political intervention) is also the suppression of ideology. Once people have
direct, unmediated access to the real, the mysti cation and ideological distor-
tions associated with capitalist society will be overcome. Thereafter we consider
the background to labour militarization in post-Revolution Russia, before focus-
ing on the theoretical arguments advanced by Trotsky and others in defence of
this. The interesting thing about these debates is how little emphasis is placed
on the short-term need to secure labour during the civil war. More importantly,
labour militarization was seen as a means to suppress commodity relations and

in this way help effect a transition to communism. In this sense, for classical
Marxists, the revolutionary Terror to which Trotsky’s proposals gave rise was
made necessary by the contingencies of history.
The mysti cation of the productive process in commodity-

producing societies
In commodity-producing societies, according to classical Marxists, the nature of

commodities, the links between producers and the nature of the valorization
process itself are mysti ed or fetishized. In broad outline, this means that the
appearance of both capital and labour is confused with its essence. Speci cally,
it means that the interconnectedness, or the social nature, of the capitalist pro-
ductive process is obscured, and its composite parts appear as if they are gov-
erned by their own independent logic: ‘Production relations are converted into
entities and rendered independent in relation to the agents of production’ (Marx
1984: 831). Although this mysti cation is regarded as an inevitable consequence
of commodity production – ‘all forms of society in so far as they reach the state
of commodity-production and money circulation take part in this perversion’ –
the precise nature of this fetishization is said to change as capitalism develops.
In the early stages of capitalism, Marx argues, the extraction of surplus labour
is a comparatively simple and direct process in which ‘the actual connection
impresses itself upon the bearers of the process . . . and remains in their con-
sciousness’ (Marx 1984: 826–7). With the advancement of capitalism, however,
and with the development of relative surplus value in particular, the nature of
the productive process is complicated considerably. Because of the development
of the commodity form, which penetrates an increasing array of social relation-
ships, the relations between subject and object are progressively mysti ed, as a
result of which the socio-historic origins of capital are mistaken for intrinsic, and
hence immutable, properties of capital. Thus Marx concludes that ‘The social
interrelations of labour in the direct labour-process seem transferred from
labour to capital’ (Marx 1984: 827; Engels 1978: 335). Capital appears – to both
worker and capitalist alike – as the source of these ‘social productive forces’
rather than ‘a de nite social production relation belonging to a de nite historical
formation of society’ (Marx 1984: 814, 830). Capital is ‘transformed more and
more from a relationship into a thing, but a thing which embodies, which has
absorbed, the social relationship, a thing which has acquired a ctitious life and
independent existence in relation to itself, a sensuous-supersensuous entity’
(Marx 1975: 483).
The argument is thus that commodity-producing societies are able to gener-
ate the illusion that their constitution is natural and inevitable, rather than socio-
political. Capital is treated as if it is the bearer of socio-natural properties, which
cannot be challenged, while the sale of labour-power is seen as a voluntary and
ahistorical activity. However, Marx believes that the nature and the effects of this
fetishization change as capitalism develops. As market relations are subject to

forms of ex ante regulation, and as ownership becomes increasingly centralized
with the development of institutions like the joint stock company, the social
characteristics of labour re-emerge (see Marx 1984: 120, fn. 16, 436–8; Marx
and Engels 1983: 118; Engels 1978: 336–8, 1984: 908; Lenin 1977b: 269).
Through the socialization of the productive process the contradictory structure
of the capitalist mode of production is transcended, and the idea of a transparent
society becomes a reality rather than a utopian dream.
But, if the mysti cation of the capitalist mode of production played such an
important role in obscuring the exploitative nature of relations between capital
and labour, what happens once its inner logic is exposed? This is important for
our concerns, as Marx’s comments on this provide important clues as to the con-
ception of communist society to which the Bolsheviks’ labour policies were
intended to give effect.
In Marx’s earlier works, speci cally The German Ideology, ideology is treated
as an illusory reality with no effects of its own. Ideological relations are dismissed
as ephemeral misrepresentations of the real. In his later work, by contrast, Marx
began to explore the reciprocal interaction between ideological and material rela-
tions. Although he continued to treat ideology as something produced by the
material world – as a result of which ideology remains dependent for its exist-
ence on factors over which it has no control – Marx accepted that ideology is
more than just an illusory phenomenon, and that it has a real status. Thus,
whereas his earlier formulations saw ideological relations as a ‘phantom’ (The
Manifesto of the Communist Party) with no material effects, in Capital Marx sees
ideological relations as a necessary part of the capitalist economy. Ideological
relations are thus, as Étienne Balibar puts it, determined by ‘the structure of the
real’; they have effects which are necessary for the reproduction of the real.
Despite the inherent circularity of this argument, the implication of Marx’s
argument is clear: the capitalist economy produces the illusions necessary to
sustain itself, and for this reason the material world is not simply the subject of
re ection (Balibar 1973: 57; see also Brewster 1976; Eagleton 1991: 59, 85–7).
By periodizing Marx’s discussion thus, it is possible to reveal the presence of
two completely different conceptions. For if (in the latter) ideological relations
are themselves a product of ‘the real’, this not only short-circuits the efficacy of
‘superstructural’ relations, but, more speci cally, it negates any possible relation-
ship between historical process and the consciousness of men and women.
Although the ‘veil’ which has been inserted between the ‘essence’ and ‘appear-
ance’ of ‘things’ can be pierced by the science of historical materialism, there is
no direct relationship between the interpretation of events and the forces which
govern historical change. Marx makes this point clear when he tells us that,
although the discovery of the secret of commodity-producing societies can
‘destroy the semblance of the merely accidental determination of the magnitude
of value of the products of labour’, this ‘by no means abolishes that determi-
nation’s material form’. Instead, ‘re ections on the forms of human life, hence
also Scienti c analysis of those forms, takes a course directly opposite to their
real development. Refection begins post festum, and therefore with the results of
the process of development ready to hand’ (Marx 1986: 168).
Central to the classical Marxist distinction between commodity-producing
and non-commodity-producing societies is the belief that the mysti cation
which characterized the former will be absent from the latter. Once exchange
relations have been abolished, society will (it is claimed) no longer be divided
into autonomous groupings, and social relations will appear in their fullest, most
transparent, and obviously social, guise. ‘The veil is not lifted from the coun-
tenance of the social life-process, i.e. the process of material production, until it
becomes production by freely associated men, and stands under their conscious
and planned control’ (Marx 1986: 172). Under communism, Marx concludes,
things will appear as they really are, and ‘the real’ will present itself as it actu-
ally is. ‘The outward appearance and the science of things’ will coincide. Once
the commodity form has been transcended, ‘all science would be super uous’
(Marx 1984: 817). The difference between Marx’s two concepts of ideology is
just this. In the earlier formulations, Marx saw no necessary (or direct) relation-
ship between the real and ideological relations, as a result of which he was forced
to locate in the human subject (species being) the forces which would lead, ulti-
mately, to the maturation of a communist consciousness. In the second formu-
lation, by contrast, ideological relations are depicted as the direct product of the
real, as a result of which a transformation of the real is said to produce, auto-
matically, a transformation in consciousness. The transcendence of the
subject–object distinction (Lukács), and therefore of the distinction between
‘being’ and ‘consciousness’, is thus also the abolition of ideology.
Already the danger of Marx’s formulations are apparent, for this latter view
implies, as Balibar notes presciently, that the emergence of a transparent and
simple society – in which the distinction between the symbolic and the real is
eliminated – is merely the ‘automatic effect of the suppression of “commodity
categories” ’ (Balibar 1973: 58–9). Once the commodity form has been overcome
– whether through the ‘natural’ socialization of the productive process or
through coercion – and social relations are again uni ed and transparent, ‘the
real’ will no longer generate illusions about its nature. Ideology would, mutatis
mutandis, be impossible.
In the section which follows we suggest that this theoretical assumption lies
at the heart of the Bolsheviks’ proposal to militarize labour. If the emergence of
‘the real’ is (on Marx’s construal of history) produced by the suppression of
commodity categories, and if this is justi ed theoretically, then, it might be

asked, from the perspective of classical Marxism, what real harm can arise from
the adoption of repressive means to ensure its emergence? In terms which mirror
Hegel’s famous remark, Engels once insisted that ‘There is no great historical
evil without a compensating historical progress. Only the modus operandi is
changed. Que les destinées s’accomplissent’ (Marx and Engels 1975b: 439). This is
the attempt to transcend the ‘gap’ between prediction and events, the contin-
gency that gives rise to Terror.
The civil war and the militarization of labour
In this section we examine the actions of the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the
October Revolution. Rather than view these as a ‘Revolution against “Capital” ’,
as Gramsci and many in the ‘Western Marxist’ tradition have claimed, we
suggest that the Bolsheviks remained trapped within the con nes of the classi-
cal Marxist conception of history. The policies which they adopted are under-
stood best not simply as an attempt to eliminate the commodity form in a
country in which capitalism had only begun to take root, but, more signi cantly,
as a response to the failures of Marx’s theory which left unquestioned the foun-
dations upon which it was based.
It is common practice to divide the Bolsheviks’ initial economic policies into
three phases: state capitalism (until mid-1918), war communism (until early
1921) and the new economic policy (introduced at the Tenth Party Congress in
March 1921). State capitalism implied extensive state control of the economy,
the bulk of which remained under private ownership (Lars 1986: 773–4; Lenin
1977a: ch. 10), whereas the entire economy was nationalized almost overnight,
and both labour and capital markets were abolished, under war communism. The
new economic policy implied a gradual relaxation in the agricultural, consumer
goods and labour markets within a context of overall state control of the
economy, during which time co-operatives were expected to resocialize the
market.
What is less certain is the precise motivation for these policies. For many, the
introduction of war communism was made necessary by historical developments
in 1918. According to Maurice Dobb, war communism ‘emerges clearly as an
empirical creation, not as the a priori product of theory: as an improvisation in
the face of economic activity and military urgency in conditions of exhausting
civil war’ (Dobb 1966: 122). Others have described war communism as a ‘neces-
sary military measure’, in which forced requisitioning and central control of the
economy were introduced on an ad hoc basis, intended simply to ensure control
and to re-establish law and order in a rapidly disintegrating society.1 In some
cases, an attempt is made to paint a more nuanced picture, in which the inter-
relationship between the response to current exigencies and communist theory
is admitted. However the emphasis is placed squarely on the pressures of the
civil war, and attempts to justify war communism theoretically are either
downplayed or dismissed as ‘premature’ experiments. The best examples of this

are the ‘classic’ (almost apologetic) studies of E. H. Carr and Isaac Deutscher.
In our view, the relationship at stake is more complex and theoretically inter-
esting than this. It would clearly be foolish to try to understand war communism
in isolation from the historical context in which it was implemented, especially
the civil war which nearly destroyed the workers’ state. It is not difficult to show
that many of these policies were justi ed in theoretical (rather than overtly politi-
cal) terms because this provided a convenient discourse with which to legitimize
ad hoc practices. Clearly the theoretical certitude in classical Marxist theory
served as a useful (because unquestionable) smokescreen for the increasingly

authoritarian and at times criminal practices of the Bolsheviks in power.
However, our reading of events suggests a more substantial theoretical inspira-
tion than this, for it implies that policies were chosen deliberately with the inten-
tion of effecting the transition to communism.
We begin by outlining the historical circumstances faced by the Bolsheviks.
Thereafter we examine the actual proposals, made primarily by Trotsky but sup-
ported by Lenin and Bukharin, to militarize labour, as well as their attempt to
justify these theoretically. In this way we return to the main theme of the article,
namely, the relationship between the theory of commodity fetishism and the
Bolsheviks’ conception of the transition to communism.
Labour procurement in a time of crisis
For the rst eight months of power the Bolsheviks’ economic and social ambitions
were modest. Concerned to take control of the commanding heights of the
economy, the Bolsheviks had yet to move decisively, or even to de ne with any
precision their conception of post-capitalist government. Their most pressing
concern was food, the supply of which gave the countryside important political
leverage. Unable to secure a state grain monopoly, or ‘food supply dictatorship’,
and crippled by a general collapse in economic fortunes, the Bolsheviks shifted
increasingly to a policy of forced requisitioning, or razverstka (Bordyugov 1995:
617). For a brief time, there was an attempt to x procurement quotas with the
collaboration of the peasants. As the civil war engulfed Russia, razverstka became
increasingly harsh, and peasants were forced to surrender the bulk of their
produce to the state. Clearly, the primary aims of razverstka were to enforce the
hegemony of the urban working class over the peasants, and to secure sufficient
food to feed the Red Army and state officials. Razverstka was not new to Russia,
having been introduced by A. A. Rittikh, the tsar’s agricultural minister, during
1916 (Lars 1986: 677). Neither was it concerned speci cally to decommodify
economic and social relationships. Razverstka was, however, understood to take
a different form under the new Soviet régime. In 1920, a Narkomprod handbook
for food officials suggested that the energetic enforcement of razverstka would
alter peasants’ consciousness, making them aware of the ‘tasks of Soviet power’
and causing them to think of themselves as ‘part of one social whole’ (quoted in
Patenaude 1995: 560). In the same year, Mikhail Kalinin, the chairman of VtsIK,
captured the utopian nature of Bolshevik thinking when he remarked that:
The very method of grain razverstka has changed, having become an edu-
cational measure. Never could any kind of book so captivate the peasant as the
grain monopoly. . . . He is beginning to be interested in where the grain taken
away from him is going, how it is used. . . . Thus, the peasant masses are
beginning to prepare themselves for participation in running the government.
(quoted in Patenaude 1995: 560)
The shift to razverstka marked the beginning of war communism. As the food
supply worsened, procurement quotas were raised, primarily at the expense of
peasant consumption levels. Increasingly, the Bolsheviks began to lose popular
support, and were dependent on force to maintain power. In this context, Lenin
set up the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-
Revolution and Sabotage, or Cheka, his political police which emerged to ll a
role more powerful and ominous than its tsarist predecessors. If this was not a
sufficient obstacle to the new state, the rst few years of Bolshevik power coin-
cided with a vicious civil war, which literally tore Russia apart. By late 1919,
however, it became clear that, although the ghting was far from over, the Red
Army would be able to withstand this threat. The more farsighted of the Bol-
shevik leaders began to consider ways to ensure that their consolidation of
political power was matched with an economic strategy able to effect a tran-
sition to communism. It is at this point that we situate our study, for the ques-
tions asked by the senior Bolsheviks take us back to the theoretical question
introduced earlier: how does one abolish commodity production in a country
in which industrialization had only just begun, and in which few, if any, of the
transformations predicted by Marx had occurred? Can one use the unantici-
pated exigencies of the civil war and war communist period to ‘skip’ the stage
of capitalism, at least to the point where it is possible to abandon the market
completely?
Here the most interesting proposals were made by Trotsky, but supported by
Lenin and Bukharin. Concerned about the almost complete collapse in labour
discipline during the civil war, Trotsky began to call for the introduction of a
‘universal labour duty’ and emphasized the need to encourage ‘socialist labour
discipline at all costs’ (Trotsky 1972: 103–4). Similarly, Lenin popularized the
slogan: ‘kto ne rabotaet, tot ne est’ (who does not work does not eat), which empha-
sized a universal obligation to labour (quoted in Nove 1981: 86).2 Thereafter a
series of resolutions brought the country closer to widespread labour conscrip-
tion. In December 1917 Lenin, in his correspondence with Dzerzhinsky over
the formation of the Cheka, proposed that the former bourgeoisie be issued with
certi cates stating the nature of their work and income (Dewer 1956: 41; Holman
1973: 318–34; Leggett 1986: 241). Thereafter various attempts were made to
force people to work for the state. In October 1918, a decree was passed auth-
orizing the conscription of members of the bourgeoisie for ‘socially necessary
work’, although this was motivated as much by the desire to humiliate the former
élite as it was to secure their labour power. In one case, professors from the uni-
versity of Petrograd were assigned the task of collecting wood and the removal
of trash (Lincoln 1991: 369). Unemployed persons were forbidden to refuse
work offered to them, with the proviso (seldom respected) that ‘the conditions
of work do not deviate from the scales established by the appropriate trade
unions’ (quoted in Bunyan 1976: 407). A more ominous indicator of events to
come was the issuing of ‘labour books’ to those between the ages of 14 and 55.
These replaced internal passports, kept a record of people’s activities, and could
be used to withhold ration cards or travelling permits (Carr 1985: 202).
Most of the initial attempts to procure labour power were co-ordinated

loosely, originating typically from the middle ranks of the Party in response to
changing labour requirements in particular regions of Russia, rather than from
the leaders at the political centre. The rst attempt to systematize labour legis-
lation was the Labour Code of December 1918. The code struck an uneasy
balance between the protection of workers’ rights and the introduction of an
obligation for all citizens between the ages of 15 and 50 to work. Interrupted by
the outbreak of civil war, the code was never implemented systematically, and all
future Soviet attempts to regulate labour emphasized only the obligation of
workers to perform labour for the state.3
On 30 November 1918, the Workers’ and Peasants’ Council of Defence
(SRKO) was set up, chaired by Lenin, with Trotsky, Stalin, Nevsky, Bryukhanov
and Krassin as members. Although there were other bodies involved in labour
policy, the SRKO played an important role in bringing the economy under the
ambit of military law, especially the industrial and transport sectors, using its
emergency powers to suspend labour rights and conscript an increasing number
of occupations, age groups and even regions for state labour service. Still, this
was not enough, and in January 1920 general labour service was introduced for
the rst time. According to Dewer, this decree made provision for
(i) the call-up of the entire able-bodied population (men between 16 and 50,
women between 16 and 40) for occasional or regular work, to be performed
in addition to the normal employment; (ii) the use of unoccupied army and
naval units for civilian work; (iii) the transfer of skilled workers engaged in the
forces or in agriculture to state enterprises; (iv) the distribution of labour
according to the needs of the country’s economy.
(Dewer 1956: 48)
War communism thus saw the shift to direct state requisitioning of grain, and
an increasing tendency for the state to abolish the labour market. Coupled with
widespread economic disorder and uncontrollable in ation, monetary indicators
were effectively abolished. Signi cantly, this was interpreted by many as the
onset of the non-commodity society predicted by Marx (Cohen 1980: 93; Gerner
and Hedlund 1989: 38). Indeed, Preobrazhensky was so impressed with the
destruction of the money supply that he dedicated his rst major book, Paper
Money in the Epoch of the Proletarian Dictatorship, ‘to the printing presses of the
Commissariat of Finance – that machine-gun which shot the bourgeois régime
in its arse, the monetary system’ (quoted in Figes 1996: 726; see also Day 1975:
199). With the almost complete devaluation of the currency, the Bolsheviks
introduced coupon rationing as an alternative to money.
However – and this is the important point raised in our discussion of the com-
modity form – although the abandonment of state capitalism and the shift to war
communism was clearly prompted by contingent events, the policies which were
adopted were not selected on an ad hoc basis. Neither were they presented as
emergency measures. They were chosen deliberately, framed within the con-
tours of Marx’s general account of the transition to communism, and under-
stood and defended on these terms. This is the danger to which Balibar referred,
for it is clear that communism was understood here as the outcome of the sup-
pression of commodity categories. The abandonment of a labour market, and the
concomitant increase in state control over the utilization of labour power, was
thus depicted as a step in the direction of communism. The circumstances of
the day lent themselves to this approach. As Carr notes, ‘It was difficult to
contest the argument that the workers’ state, whose right to mobilise its citizens
for service at the front was disputed by nobody, was equally entitled to call up
those who were required to man the factories; and this conception of labour as
a service to be rendered rather than as a commodity to be sold was in theory the
hall-mark of everything that distinguished the loftier ideals of socialism from the
base mechanics of the capitalist wage-system’ (Carr 1985: 209).
One way to illustrate the ways in which the shift to coercive labour conscrip-
tion was understood is to consider the manner in which the Bolsheviks
attempted to organize the labour they conscripted.
The militarization of labour
To overcome the anarchy which had destroyed Russian industry, it became clear
that simply conscripting civilian labour was not enough, and ways had to be
found to organize and control this labour in a more useful (and supposedly scien-
ti c) manner. Organizationally, this appears to have been facilitated by the
setting up of a Main Committee for General Labour Service, operating under
SRKO and comprising, among others, representatives from the Commissariat
of War (Dewer 1956: 48). This contributed not only to the further militarization
of the Soviet state but also to the abolition of distinct spheres of responsibility,
an ominous precursor for the form of totalitarian rule which developed in the
1930s. In short, not only were workers and peasants expected to become soldiers,
but soldiers were expected to become workers.4
After the collapse of the Tsar, Lenin toyed with the idea that standing state
structures, especially the police and the army, be replaced with voluntary
(people’s) structures. In his ‘Third Letter from Afar’, Lenin called on his coun-
trymen to ‘smash’ the old state apparatus and ‘substitute a new one for it by
merging the police force, the army and the bureaucracy with the entire armed
people’ (quoted in Leggett 1986: xxix).
This was clearly nonsense, and Lenin soon came to realize that old forms of
authority would not only have to be preserved for some time, but could be fash-
ioned in ways which could assist the transition to communism. On Lenin’s
instructions, Trotsky developed the doctrine of labour militarization, which was
published in Pravda on 17 December 1919, and approved by the Central Com-
mittee on 22 January 1920 (Leggett 1986: 242). In a series of bold proposals,
Trotsky, then Commissar for War, proposed to adapt the methods which had
proved so successful in building the Red Army to production. Where possible,
these Military Labour Armies would be put to work in industrial areas, taking
control of the organization and administration of both civilian and conscripted

labour. This was not just the deployment of spare personnel in vital civilian tasks.
It involved the militarization of large areas of the Soviet Union, with the labour
army taking over control of general administration from local Party authorities
(Schapiro 1955: 254).
In the same way that he had introduced a rigid form of hierarchal organiz-
ation in the Red Army, in which elected soldier committees were abolished and
all subordinates were expected to follow the dictates of the centre or face harsh
consequences, so too did Trotsky intend to subordinate all sectors of the
economy to a central authority. The militarization of labour implied ‘a planned,
systematic, steady and stern struggle with labour desertion . . . the creation of a
penal work command out of deserters, and their internment in concentration
camps’ (quoted in Day 1975: 197). Production itself was organized along mili-
tary lines, and workers and trade unions alike were to be mobilized to ful l the
dictates of a consciously formulated economic plan. ‘Just as we once issued the
order “Proletarians, to the horse!” ’, Trotsky famously declared, ‘we now must
raise the cry “Proletarians, back to the factory bench! Proletarians, back to pro-
duction” ’ (quoted in Deutscher 1989: 493).
Lenin clearly supported Trotsky’s proposals and saw them as an integral
component of war communism. Signi cantly, for this fusing together of differ-
ent spheres of the social is of fundamental importance to the direction of sub-
sequent events in Soviet society, Lenin also accepted that the Commissariat of
War had the right to assume responsibility for the supply of labour (Deutscher
1989: 493). Thus Lenin endorsed Trotsky’s experiments in labour mobilization,
insisting that ‘The mobilisation of the entire able-bodied population by the
Soviet government, with the trade unions participating, for certain public works
must be more widely and systematically practised than has hitherto been the
case’ (Lenin 1965a: 114). However, Lenin and Trotsky found little support for
their more extreme version of labour conscription. By this point, their col-
leagues were weary of a general attempt to militarize labour and, most import-
antly, of allowing its architect, whom they feared, to preside over the entire
economy. ‘Trotsky’s opponents’, as Deutscher put it, ‘refused to believe that the
wheels of the economy could be set in motion by word of military command,
and they were convinced that it was wrong for a workers’ state to act as a press
gang towards its working class’ (Trotsky 1989: 493–5). So substantial was this
suspicion that, when Lenin endorsed Trotsky’s proposals at a trade union
conference, only two out of thirty-six trade union leaders voted to support
Lenin and Trotsky.
Despite initial opposition, two seemingly fortuitous developments, both of
which provide a rich indication of the nature of Lenin and Trotsky’s under-
standing of the measures needed to decommodify labour, led to the de facto intro-
duction of labour militarization.
The rst development was the institutionalization of ‘communist Saturdays’.
In order to boost moral, the Bolsheviks tried to popularize forms of proletarian
behaviour which they deemed ‘remarkable’ and ‘worthy of emulation’ (Lenin),
foremost among which were the groups of communists who volunteered to

perform unpaid labour to ensure that important strategic tasks were ful lled. On
10 May 1919, the rst 200 subbotniki performed 1000 hours of labour on the
Moscow–Kazan railway, a move which was followed by many other well-
publicized examples (Lincoln 1991: 325).
Signi cantly, both Lenin and Trotsky viewed the subbotniki as a key feature of
the dictatorship of the proletariat, containing in embryo the outline of a society
in which labour took the form of a service rather than a commodity, and not just
a cheap way to procure labour. With the enthusiasm characteristic of the day,
Lenin penned a pamphlet entitled A Great Beginning, dedicated to these ‘Heroic
Workers in the Rear’. Here Lenin argued that communist subbotniks ‘must be
given every assistance’ for in their actions they marked ‘the actual beginning of
communism’. The subbotniki were living proof that it was possible to overcome
the social division of labour under capitalism, and to ‘combine the last word in
science and capitalist technology with the mass association of class-conscious
workers creating large-scale socialist industry’ (Lenin 1965b: 431, 427, 423).
The subbotniki were seen by Lenin as a way to change human psychology, to
create the new work ‘habits’ necessary to facilitate a transition to communism.
According to Holman, Lenin argued publicly that the proletariat had two tasks,
to destroy the bourgeoisie and to create a new social order based on a different
form of labour.
The second task [Lenin insisted] is more difficult than the rst, for it cannot
possibly be ful lled by single acts of heroic fervour; it requires the most pro-
longed, most persistent, and most difficult mass heroism in plain, everyday,
work. But this task is more essential than the rst, because, in the last analy-
sis, the deepest source of strength for victories over the bourgeoisie and the
sole guarantee of the durability and permanence of these victories can only be
a new and higher mode of social production.
(Holman 1973: 318–20)
The subbotniki suggested to Lenin that this new form of labour was both poss-
ible and in the process of becoming. In the same vein, Trotsky described subbot-
niks as ‘not only a splendid example of Communist solidarity, but also the best
possible guarantee for the successful introduction of general labour service’. To
secure the latter, ‘Such truly Communist tendencies must be shown up in their
true light, extended, and developed with the help of propaganda’ (Trotsky 1961:
147). The extension through propaganda was, however, a misnomer, as subbot-

niks soon ceased to serve as a spontaneous display of communist solidarity and
were used so frequently that, as the American anarchist Emma Goldman
described it, they became an ‘arduous burden for all’. In 1920 as many as a half
million Moscow workers ‘celebrated’ May Day by donating unpaid labour to the
state (Lincoln 1991: 376). Those who failed to volunteer risked being labelled
‘counter-revolutionaries’.
The second and more significant development accompanied the cessation of
fighting on some fronts in early 1920. As noted above, in the later stages of the
civil war conscription of civilian labour had become the norm, and it was now
only a short step to accepting the idea of transforming the military into a
labour army. We have already referred to Trotsky’s article in Pravda, in which
the doctrine of labour militarization was spelt out. In January 1920, the Central
Committee of the Bolshevik Party approved this in principal, while delegates
to the Third all-Russian Congress of Councils of National Economy voted to
support Trotsky’s proposals for the introduction of ‘disciplinary courts for
labour’ with powers to impose penalties of forced labour, and for a labour book
which all workers were expected to carry. By this stage the need for a universal
labour service was so widely accepted that, according to a Bolshevik cited by
Carr, they regretted the destruction of ‘the old police apparatus which had
known how to register citizens not only in towns, but in the country’ (Carr
1985: 212–14).
Despite this logistical problem, ways were found to recruit labour, and as
many as six million people were put to work in the timber industry during the
rst half of 1920. In April 1919 forced labour camps were introduced to supply
convict labour. And, in an even more foreboding development, concentration
camps were introduced a few months later, in which counter-revolutionaries
were put to work (Carr 1985: 212–13). Finally, the Main Committee for General
Labour Service was formed in April 1920. Together with the Revolutionary Mili-
tary Council, the Main Committee was given the power to establish labour
service committees in the military (Dewer 1956: 48). This not only re ected the
extent to which labour militarization had become government policy, but it pro-
vided an organizational vehicle with which to ensure its implementation.
The rst substantial experiment in labour militarization occurred in early
1920.5 Afraid to demobilize soldiers, because, inter alia, of the social threat mil-
lions of unemployed men might pose to the régime (Figes 1996: 721), the Bol-
sheviks looked for ways to cling to their labour. On 15 January, the First
Revolutionary Labour Army Corps came into being in the Urals when the Third
Army decided to use its soldiers, who had remained idle since the defeat of
Kolchak, to assist with farming and the felling of timber. A Second Labour Army
Corps was formed in the Donbas in February, under the leadership of Dmitry
Os’kin. A Third Labour Army Corps was formed brie y in Petrograd, but this
was soon disbanded as a result of the war with Poland. The Fourth and Seventh
Red Army were converted into similar labour brigades, while a ‘Reserve Army
of the Republic’ was established to repair the Moscow–Kazan railway line
(Dewer 1956: 49; Lincoln 1991: 322, 377; Leggett 1986: 242–5; Deutscher 1989:
494–5; Carr 1985: 214–17; Erickson 1974: 208–19).
This was the starting point for a militarized labour policy that Trotsky (and
at this point Lenin) had hoped for. Trotsky, who was given the responsibility of
overseeing these labour brigades, intended each unit of the army to take a census
of the productive skills of its members and assign men to the workplace when
circumstances permitted. In a speech reported in Pravda on 16 January 1920,
Trotsky made this remarkable speech, in which he instructed workers to:
Display untiring energy in your work, as if you were on the march or in

battle. . . . Commanders and commissars are responsible for their detach-
ments at work as in battle. The political departments must cultivate the spirit
of the worker in the soldier and preserve the soldier in the worker. . . . A
deserter from labour is as contemptible and despicable as a deserter from the
battle eld. Severe punishment to both!. . . Begin and complete your work,
wherever possible, to the sound of socialist hymns and songs. Your work is not
slave labour but high service to the socialist fatherland.
(quoted in Deutscher 1989: 495)
Commenting on the Ninth Party Congress in March 1920 – at which Trotsky
delivered the economic report – Carr observes that ‘Though nobody else spoke
this language, Trotsky had behind him the authority of the central committee
and the Politburo; and the congress was still sufficiently under the impression
of military perils narrowly escaped, and of the almost insuperable economic
hazards ahead, to endorse the policy without overt dissent’. The congress
adopted a resolution which ‘cautiously’ approved the use of Red Army units to
perform essential labour services ‘for so long as it is necessary to keep the army
in being for military tasks’. Soldier-workers who neglected their labour duties
could be severely punished, even interned in concentration camps (Carr 1985:
215–16).
But in the end this was a false start. Most soldiers were unwilling to be slotted
into factories to which they had no historical links, and many were willing to
risk harsh punishment in order to return to their families. Moreover, the labour
armies proved to be inefficient and uneconomical in their use of resources,
taking a full day, on average, for fty conscripts to cut down and chop up a tree
(Figes 1996: 725). As would be the case in the years that followed, the many and
varied plans drawn up to co-ordinate the Russian economy were usually incom-
plete, inaccurate, in con ict with other plans, and hopelessly unrealistic
(Lincoln 1991: 377–8). With the defeat of Wrangel at the end of 1920, the
rationale for a militarized labour policy was again brought under review. And,
once the civil war had ended, most Bolsheviks, including Trotsky, saw a need to
restore temporarily some market relations to the economy. This ‘relaxation’,
against the Tenth Congress’ original intentions, spread rapidly throughout the
economy, as rst agriculture and then most forms of trade were liberalized, and
many factories were denationalized and allowed to operate with substantial
independence from the state. It was only in the late 1920s and 1930s, with
Stalin’s consolidation of power, that a systematic attempt was again made to

decommodify labour.
Theoretical foundations
The details of the Bolsheviks’ actions are well documented; for our purposes,
the interesting aspect of this ill-fated and inconclusive debate lies in the theor-
etical terms in which it was cast. For, perhaps more than any other debate in this
period, the question of labour militarization provides a useful prism through

which to consider the ways in which the actions of the Bolsheviks were framed
within the horizon of the classical Marxist tradition, and to consider the extent
to which the epistemological and ontological premises of Capital found reson-
ance on the stage of history. This takes us back to our earlier comments about
ideology and the suppression of the commodity form.
The two major theoretical attempts to link labour militarization to the tran-
sition to communism are Bukharin’s Economics of the Transition Period (1979)
and Trotsky’s Terrorism and Communism (1961), both of which appeared in 1920.
We have chosen to concentrate on Trotsky’s text, for it makes the most explicit
attempt to show how the collapse of the distinction between state and society –
as presented, for example, in Marx’s re ections on the Paris Commune – might
be effected, and can be used to address the questions raised in texts like The
Civil War in France and Lenin’s State and Revolution: how do we actually ensure
that the ‘state’ becomes a ‘non-state’, that ‘real’ democracy replaces the sham
of parliamentarism, and that a planned economy, administered consciously in
accordance with labour-times, replaces commodity production? Although
Bukharin clearly moved away from his earlier positions (shifting increasingly to
the centre, where he became the chief architect of the NEP), at no stage, in any
of his studies of the Russian Revolution and the rise of Stalinism, did Trotsky
alter or modify the theoretical problematic outlined in Terrorism and Communism
(Shachtman 1961: vii).6 Written with the express purpose of strengthening Bol-
shevik in uence over the various international socialist parties, Trotsky’s
defence of the dictatorship of the proletariat (the bulk of which was taken from
his articles and speeches during the civil war) was used in an attempt to exclude
both ‘right’ and ‘far left’ Parties from the newly formed Communist Inter-
national. Terrorism and Communism was nished on the eve of the Second Con-
gress of the Communist International (July/August 1920) in which Lenin and
Zinovev’s infamous twenty-one conditions of membership were adopted, a
move which helped to ensure Soviet dominance over all other communist
Parties (Shachtman 1961: vii).
Like Marx and Engels, Trotsky believed that the way in which labour is organ-
ized determines the nature of society. Although it would be preferable were
fundamental changes in labour organization to occur under peaceful circum-
stances (i.e. through the socialization of the productive process, the emergence
of the Joint Stock Company, etc.), what is important, Trotsky argues, is that a
proletarian government reorganizes production (and abolishes the commodity

form) so as to introduce a new ‘historical form of organization of labour’: social-
ism and then communism. Here Trotsky’s starting assumption is that in pre-
communist society labour is always performed under coercion. In his speech to
the Ninth Party Congress, he insisted that ‘As a general rule, man strives to avoid
labour. Love for work is not at all an inborn characteristic: it is created by econ-
omic pressure and social education. One may even say that man is a fairly lazy
animal’ (Trotsky 1961: 133, 144–5).7 Without really telling us why this should
change under communism, Trotsky maintained that ‘The problem before the
social organisation is just to bring “laziness” within a de nite framework, to

discipline it, and to pull mankind together with the help of methods and
measures invented by mankind itself ’ (Trotsky 1961: 133). Other senior Bol-
sheviks made similar points. Bukharin (1979) adapted V.M. Smirnov’s term,
‘primitive socialist accumulation’, and insisted that, just as capitalists had
accumulated capital through the exploitation of labour, so too would the prole-
tarian state use forced or conscripted labour in order to achieve socialist recon-
struction. Similarly, Lenin, at the Seventh Party Congress, argued that whereas
labour conscription was ‘ “a military catastrophe for the people” under capital-
ism [it] would represent “an enormous step towards socialism” if introduced by
a revolutionary-democratic Government under the supervision of the Soviets’
(quoted in Dewer 1956: 42, 52–9). Despite his earlier support for the Soviets
and factory committees, Lenin had for some time expressed an admiration for
Taylorist managerial principles. Like Alexei Gastev (the head of the Central
Institute of Labour) and the more extreme proponents of labour militarization,
Lenin quickly grasped the link between one-man and military-led management.
Although he clearly preferred a less coercive style of management, what Lenin
regarded as non-negotiable was the need to create a routinized, almost mechan-
ical, form of labour discipline.8
Because war-weary Russian workers and peasants were (understandably)
reluctant to work under adverse conditions with little to no material reward,
Trotsky argued that the only way to extract the necessary labour-time to save
Russian industry was through the extension of the ‘compulsory labour services’
that had, to some extent, already been introduced. Whereas the trade unions
were expected to recruit and organize skilled labour, unemployed and unskilled
labour had to be conscripted by the state. To do this it would be necessary to
devise ‘methods and organs’ both to conscript and to allocate labour to factories
and, most importantly, to consummate the break with all previous forms of
society; to ‘make clear to ourselves that the principle itself of compulsory labour
service has just so radically and permanently replaced the principle of free hiring
as the socialisation of the means of production has replaced capitalist property’
(Trotsky 1961: 135, 137). As is well known, Marx believed that under capitalism
labour was ‘free’ to the extent that workers were able to sell their labour power
to the capitalist of their choice. However, this apparent freedom concealed their
continued enslavement, for, by separating workers from the means of produc-
tion, capitalists ensured that workers remained captives of the system as a whole,
that they had no choice but to submit to the powers of capital. With this in mind,
Trotsky argued that labour which is organized consciously in accordance with
the interests of a proletarian government, despite its compulsory and repressive
nature, would be both more productive and more morally defensible than ‘free
labour’. For this reason, ‘We . . . oppose capitalist slavery by socially-regulated
labour on the basis of an economic plan, obligatory for the whole people and con-
sequently compulsory for each worker in the whole country. Without this we
cannot even dream of a transition to socialism’ (Trotsky 1961: 140). Just as the
planned economy would overcome the anarchy of commodity production, so too
would it abolish the power of the market over the sale and purchase of labour
power. Although compulsory, this was a ‘higher phase’ of labour. Economic insti-
tutions would thus have to be developed to ensure that labour power, like all
factors of production, is administered from a broader societal perspective. By
‘breaking’ down ‘commodity-fetishistic disguises’, Bukharin concurred, ‘Econ-
omic theory’ could ‘move towards thinking in natural units’ (quoted in Nove
1974: 185). Summarizing this argument, both as it pertained to the Russian
economy at the height of the civil war and in more universal terms, Trotsky
insisted that ‘The creation of Socialist society means the organisation of the
workers on new foundations, their adaptation to those foundations, and their
labour re-education, with the one unchanging end of the increase in the produc-
tivity of labour’. To achieve this, ‘The working-class, under the leadership of its
vanguard, must itself re-educate itself on the foundations of socialism. Whoever
has not understood this is ignorant of the ABC of Socialist construction’
(Trotsky 1961: 146, emphasis added).
The ‘element of material, physical, compulsion’ would (we are told) vary from
country to country, depending on the level of development of the productive
forces and the social and cultural conditions in the country in question.
However, Trotsky makes it clear that he regards such compulsion as a necessary
feature of any socialist transition: ‘obligation, and, consequently, compulsion,
are essential conditions in order to bind down the bourgeois anarchy, to secure
socialisation of the means of production and labour, and to reconstruct econ-
omic life on the basis of a single plan’ (Trotsky 1961: 140). Just as an army dis-
tributed its personnel in a deliberate manner, so too could workers be
‘distributed to the economic plan by the socialist State’. To ensure the survival
of the dictatorship of the proletariat it was necessary to establish the ‘obligatory
principle’, and to overcome any resistance to this process of allocation. This is
the militarization of labour, the means through which the social division of
labour will be overcome, and in which all spheres of society will be subordinated
to the conscious, rational and ethically defensible dictates of the plan: ‘we can
have no way to Socialism’, Trotsky suggested, ‘except by the authoritative regu-
lation of the economic forces and resources of the country, and the centralised
distribution of labour-power in harmony with the general State plan’ (Trotsky
1961: 142; see also Daniels 1991).
Although they would no longer be exploited by a minority class, Trotsky
argued that, until workers submitted voluntarily to the plan and until socialist
labour became a convention, i.e. until the requisite work habits and social com-
mitment had been engendered, some form of coercion would remain necessary
under communism. In this way we return to his original assumption: labour is
performed ordinarily under compulsion and, until the productive forces are
developed to the extent that material abundance removes the distinction between
particular interest groups, the proletarian vanguard would have to ensure that
the disparate interests of its citizens are linked together in a way that secures
their (theoretically determined) interests. As elsewhere, Trotsky sums up the
consequences of his argument in a brutally frank and essentially Machiavellian
way: ‘The whole question is: who applies the principle of compulsion, over
whom, and for what purpose? What State, what class, in what conditions, by what
methods?’ (Trotsky 1961: 144). It is this belief that allowed Trotsky to reply to
the critic to whom we referred earlier, who accused Trotsky of seeking to con-
struct communism in the same way that the Pharaohs had built the pyramids:
‘[Raphael] Abromovich, sees no difference between the Egyptian régime and our
own. He has forgotten the class nature of government. . . . It was not the Egypt-
ian peasants who decided through their Soviets to build the pyramids . . . our
compulsion is applied by a workers’ and peasants’ government’ (quoted in Howe
1978: 66).
In the Economics of the Transition Period Bukharin devoted an entire chapter
to this ‘Non-economic coercion in the transition period’. In the transition
period, Bukharin argued, ‘revolutionary violence must actively assist in the for-
mation of new relations of production’. Under the proletarian dictatorship, such
violence ‘is a force for cohesion, organisation and construction’ (Bukharin 1979:
158–9). Violence helps to remove the fetters on the continued development of
the forces of production, and it helps the new relations of production to emerge.
Because the dictatorship of the proletariat acts in the historical interests of the
working class, such compulsion is simply ‘the self-coercion of the working class’.
‘It is the conscious cohesive force of a fraction of the working class which for certain
categories subjectively represents an external pressure but which, for the whole
working class, objectively represents its accelerated self-organisation’ (Bukharin
1979: 163).
The militarization of labour thus refers to the organized direction of the
process of production under the command of the armed workers, and implies
that labour-times, rather than the law of value, serve as the basis of economic
administration. The fetishism associated with the commodity form gives way to
thinking about ‘natural units’, as social relations are revealed in increasingly
transparent guise.
Like the other features of the dictatorship of the proletariat, this ‘militariza-
tion’ is initially almost entirely coercive. As time progresses, and as the distinc-
tion between general and particular interests is eroded, people will (it is
suggested) begin to realize that the management of industry on society’s behalf
accords with their own interests. Instead of resisting their integration into the
social plan they will accept it, and there will no longer be a need for coercion.
The function of leadership will have shed its political character, and those in
command will be neither a socially distinguishable class nor a grouping with par-
ticular interests. ‘In a classless, stateless communist society’, Bukharin insists,
‘where, in place of external discipline, there will be the simple inclination to work
on the part of the normal social being, external norms of human behaviour will
become meaningless.’ Under communism, ‘Coercion, in any form whatsoever,
will disappear once and for all’ (Bukharin 1979: 166). This is precisely the type
of self-regulation anticipated by Lenin in his reference to a communist society
in which labour become ‘a habit’ without any need for externally imposed disci-
pline (Lenin 1977b: 212, 213, 312). Thus, the argument is that, by forcing people
to perform in a particular way, they could be ‘spiritually refashioned’ (Bukharin),

‘morally refashioned’ (Trotsky) and ‘re-educated’ (Lenin), and would eventually
lose their non-proletarian identities and be incorporated fully into communist
society. It was only in the ‘higher stage of communism’ that the locus of power,
which Bukharin describes as ‘both a state and not a state’ (Bukharin 1935: 77)
and which Trotsky describes as a ‘semistate’ (Trotsky 1989: 65), will ‘merge’ with
and ‘dissolve’ into society. Until the concrete-empirical proletariat and the his-
torical being of the proletariat coincide, there will still be a separation between
the ‘advance guard’, or ‘vanguard’, and the rest of the proletariat.
Again we return to the idea that productive activity will become a matter of
mere routine under communism, a factor anticipated by Marx in his discussion
of the socialization of (and hence the simpli cation of the structure of) the pro-
ductive forces under capitalism, and by Lenin in his insistence that adminis-
tration under communism could be compared to the ling and checking of
documents in a post office (Hudson and Louw 1992). Similarly, Trotsky tells us
that, once the material premises of communism have been obtained, labour will
have ‘ceased to be a burden, will not require any goad, and the distribution of
life’s goods, existing in continual abundance, will not demand . . . any control
except that of education, habit and social opinion. Speaking frankly, I think it
would be pretty dull-witted to consider such a really modest perspective
“utopian” ’ (Trotsky 1989: 45–6). It is only once this occurs that administrative
command would lose its authoritative dimension. These terms mirror com-
pletely Marx and Engels’ discussion of the vertical division of labour under com-
munism – in which they acknowledge the need for a distinction between
conception and execution, and wish to retain the functional advantages of
specialization without allowing this to give rise to new relations of unaccount-
able power or privilege (Marx 1986: 476–9; Engels 1983: 377–8).
In this way, the two central aspects of the militarization of labour are fused.
On the one hand, it allows for the development of the productive forces through
the construction of a conscious and all-embracing plan. On the other hand, by
setting such a plan in motion it becomes possible to transcend the general/par-
ticular distinction as a result of which society as a whole would come to accept
that communism is the true and authentic expression of their ‘being’. This is the
transformation of the real to which we referred earlier, which (as Balibar warned)
was intended to produce, automatically, a transformation in consciousness. By
eliminating commodity production, the Bolsheviks believed that they were able
to render social relations transparent and to free the historical ‘being’ of the pro-
letariat. It was to this ultimate end, and not simply short-term exigencies, that
coercion was directed.
In the shadow of the pharaohs
At this point it is necessary to return to the question: what is the relationship

between Marx and Engels’ theory of commodity fetishism (and of history more
generally) and the Bolsheviks’ proposals to militarize labour? The spectre of

Marx’s legacy is not only an important historical question, but is of consider-
able importance to those who still hope to defend a radical form of democracy.
Marx clearly did not anticipate that the suppression of commodity relations
would occur in isolation from the structural preconditions for communism
which he identi ed (development of the productive forces, bifurcation of classes
and the simpli cation of social relations, etc.). However, Marx gave his follow-
ers every reason to suspect that the use of coercion was the way both to consol-
idate power and to achieve communism if the circumstances facing a workers’
state were less than ideal (and could they ever be?). After all, Marx did not criti-
cize the workers for seizing power prematurely in Paris in 1848. Instead, he
rebuked them for failing to use sufficient force to defend the Commune.
As we have seen, the suppression of commodity relations in the aftermath of
the October Revolution entailed more than just the consolidation and defence
of the new Soviet state. It involved an attempt to create a communist society
through the elimination of commodity production. Although it will indeed be
difficult to nd any explicit call for the ‘spiritual refashioning’ or ‘re-education’
of labour in Marx or Engels’ texts, this is simply because they believed that this
development would occur ‘naturally’, as a result of the structural transform-
ations which force capitalism’s transcendence. For example, if we consider Marx
and Engels’ discussion of ‘value’, in which they see a logic establishing a de -
nite relationship between all commodities/goods, we nd that the ideal of com-
prehensive planning implies little more than an administrative process in which
the sum total of social labour might be allocated rationally, using the ‘wants of
society’ rather than those of particular interest groups as a guide. Here Marx,
anticipating subsequent Bolshevik arguments, argued that the need for exter-
nally imposed discipline would ‘become super uous under a social system in
which the labourers work for their own account’ (Marx 1986: 447). But this
necessarily assumes that individual communist citizens accept that their own and
society’s interests are identical. Similarly, in his discussion of the ‘combined
working day’, Marx claimed that ‘When the worker cooperates in a planned way
with others, he strips off the fetters of his individuality, and develops the capa-
bilities of his species’ (Marx 1984: 83).9 If this fails to occur, however, we are
given no basis upon which to understand how comprehensive ex ante regulation
on the basis of labour-time can imply anything other than the authoritative allo-
cation of labour. It is only by insisting that the reduction of heterogeneous labour
to this common unit of measurement is in accordance with the substantive inter-

est of the species that Marx and Engels are able to avoid the charge that the shift
from the administration of persons to the administration of things might entail
anything other than the true manifestation of human interests. If this anthropo-
logical assumption does not hold, and if the ‘things’ implied in these directly
comparable labour-times do not accept spontaneously their integration into the
plan, then surely the shift towards militarized labour is a very short one indeed?
In response to this it could be argued that Lenin and Trotsky (whose initial
idea it was) endorsed the NEP, and supported the introduction of some material
incentives to labour. This, however, marked no more than a temporary ‘retreat’

from the policies adopted during the civil war. By now, the economy had col-
lapsed, a peasant war had broken out, and the industrial workers and sailors at
Kronstadt had rejected openly the Bolsheviks’ right to govern in their name.
Even though some senior Bolsheviks began to pursue the idea of an alternative
route to communism, the conception of communism itself was never opened to
question. At no stage did either Lenin, Bukharin or Trotsky ever question the
theoretical justi cation for the ‘compulsory organization of labour’, and it is
worth noting that the introduction of the NEP – at the end of the civil war –
combined a partial relaxation of economic control with a more general clamp-
down on opposition parties and a tightening of Bolshevik control over political
life. Pointing to the nature of the NEP ‘compromise’, Lenin justi ed this restric-
tion of political freedoms at the Eleventh Party Congress (March 1922) in a way
which illustrates our point clearly: ‘When an army is in retreat, a hundred times
more discipline is required than where the army is advancing, because during an
advance everybody presses forward. If everybody started rushing back now, it
would spell immediate and inevitable disaster.’ Thus, Lenin continued, ‘When
a real army is in retreat, machine-guns are kept ready, and when an orderly
retreat degenerates into a disorderly one, the command to re is given, and
rightly too’ (Lenin 1965c: 282). These metaphors capture cogently the way in
which both Lenin and Trotsky subsumed their discussion of economic organiz-
ation into a general theory of the march of history (HISTOMAT) – of its
‘advances’ and ‘retreats’ – and a conception of absolute knowledge (DIAMAT).
Similarly, at no stage did Trotsky ever acknowledge the huge ‘gap’ which had
developed between the Bolshevik Party and the workers in Russia. So absolute
was his faith in the ability of the Bolshevik Party to represent the (predeter-
mined) interests of the proletariat that, as Baruch Knei-Paz points out, Trotsky
‘took it for granted that the working class itself was exercising control and direc-
tion of the use of Terror’. Throughout his discussion of the militarization of
labour, ‘There is not the slightest suggestion . . . that it was the Bolshevik Party,
much less a handful of men, which decided how and against whom Terror was
to be exercised. And this is, of course, because Trotsky identi ed the Party
directly with the proletariat’ (Knei-Paz 1978: 250). Because the proletarian dic-
tatorship acts in the interests of the vast majority of society, such repression is
justi ed in essentially theoretical and, for classical Marxists, supposedly scien-
ti c terms.
There is little doubt that this was not the exact theory of communist tran-
sition developed by Marx and Engels. However, this use of coercion and Terror
to construct communism, this step into the shadow of the Pharaohs, was made
necessary by the ‘gaps’ which emerged in classical Marxist theory; and the sol-
utions posed were derived, logically, from the terms in which this theory was
cast. If capitalism does not negate its own negation with the inexorability of a
natural process, and if the identity of the negation or anti-thesis is known ex ante
to those with a scienti c understanding of the world, then what real harm can
ow from the use of force and compulsion to ensure its unfolding? Alternatively
put, if the telos of history is known, what space is there for competing concep-
tions of the good, for the defence of alternative forms of society, and for a chal-
lenge to those who claim to embody advance knowledge of this telos? Indeed, if
a communist society is supposed to be ‘transparent in its simplicity’ (Marx) and
to have direct undistorted knowledge of itself once commodity production has
been transcended, then on what possible terms might such competing concep-
tions be based?
It was because the classical Marxists equated modernization and modernity,
and because they saw in Enlightenment rationality the key to the uplifting of the
human spirit, that Marxism became a science, to be applied in any historical
context, and treated as an expression of the ‘being’ rather than the conscious
choice of subjects. And it was because of this ‘substitutionism’ that the Bolshe-
viks believed that this science could be applied, through Terror if need be, to
ensure that history unfolded in the way that Marx anticipated. The difference
between the coercion associated with labour militarization policies and that
adopted in most countries in times of national crisis – although usually in less
extreme form – is precisely this. For Trotsky, Lenin and Bukharin, if not for the
entire Bolshevik Party, Terror was justi ed theoretically. It not only served an
emergency function, but it was a tool with which to transcend the ‘gap’ between
Marx’s theory and Russian realities, a means to facilitate the passage of history.
Merleau-Ponty’s claim, reproduced at the head of this article, captures the argu-
ment well: ‘The Terror of History culminates in Revolution, and History is
Terror because there is contingency.’ The Bolsheviks’ policies in the aftermath
of the October Revolution were, ultimately, a response to the contingencies of
that history which Marx and Engels claimed to discover in the structure of the
commodity form.
Acknowledgements
This article has pro ted enormously from the advice and encouragement of
Peter Hudson, as well as the helpful suggestions made by the anonymous refer-
ees of Economy and Society.
Notes
1 For a review of this literature, see Roberts (1970: 238–44). English translations of
many of the relevant documents for the crucial period of April–December 1918 can be
found in Bunyan (1976).
2 This principle was incorporated in the 1936 Soviet Constitution, and in the various
drafts of the Soviet Penal Code.
3 For general overviews of the continuity between labour policy in the 1918–21 period
and subsequent developments under Stalin, see United Nations (1953); Dallin and Nico-
laevsky (1947); and Swianiewcz (1965).
4 The Bolsheviks were not the rst to attempt to transform civilian into military labour.
This had been tried by a succession of Russian leaders since Peter the Great, most notably
by Count Alexei Arakcheev in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars. On this, see Jenkins
(1969). For this reason, the Bolsheviks’ labour militarization proposals were given the
popular label ‘Arakcheevshchina’ (Pipes 1990: 707).
5 We have concentrated on industrial militarization. For the attempts to militarize agri-
culture, see Patenaude (1995: 562–5).
6 Indeed, the book went through a second edition and was translated into French, with
a new preface by the author, as late as 1936: almost a decade after Stalin came to power.
7 Although he develops his argument in a different form, it is precisely this assump-
tion about ‘toil-aversion’ that constitutes the basis for G. A. Cohen’s (1987) in uential
construal of Karl Marx’s Theory of History.
8 Signi cantly, Gastev and other prominent supporters of Taylorist workplace organiz-
ation had come to express the same idea, and were quick to recognize the bene ts of
planning factory production on military lines. Figes’ description of the Taylorist
movement is characteristically amusing and insightful.
Hundreds of identically dressed trainees would be marched in columns to their
benches, and orders would be given out by buzzes from machines. The workers were
trained to hammer correctly by holding a hammer attached to and moved by a
hammering machine so that after half an hour they had internalised its mechanical
rhythm. The same process was repeated for chiselling, ling and other basic skills.
Gastev’s aim . . . was to turn the worker into a sort of ‘human robot’. . . . Since Gastev
saw machines as superior to human beings, he thought this would represent an
improvement in humanity. Indeed, he saw it as the next logical step in human
evolution.
(Figes 1996: 722, 744–5)
9 The ‘combined working day’ refers simply to the development of consciously
controlled forms of labour, and does not necessarily imply communism.
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In the shadow of the

The Terror of History culminates in Revolution and

Keywords: fetishism of commodities; militarization of labour; Russian civil war;

That the classical Marxists understood communism as an essentially homo-

Stephen Louw, Department of Political Studies, University of Witwatersrand, PO WITS,

Copyright © 2000 Taylor & Francis Ltd

ex post co-ordination between autonomous productive units and increasingly to

of communism? Essentially, such a Party has two choices. It can choose to

commodity form, by implication, the suppression of commodity relations

labour militarization was seen as a means to suppress commodity relations and

The mysti cation of the productive process in commodity-

In commodity-producing societies, according to classical Marxists, the nature of

fetishization change as capitalism develops. As market relations are subject to

commodity categories, and if this is justi ed theoretically, then, it might be

The civil war and the militarization of labour

downplayed or dismissed as ‘premature’ experiments. The best examples of this

served as a useful (because unquestionable) smokescreen for the increasingly

Labour procurement in a time of crisis

Most of the initial attempts to procure labour power were co-ordinated

The militarization of labour

control of the organization and administration of both civilian and conscripted

foremost among which were the groups of communists who volunteered to

147). The extension through propaganda was, however, a misnomer, as subbot-

Display untiring energy in your work, as if you were on the march or in

Stalin’s consolidation of power, that a systematic attempt was again made to

period, the question of labour militarization provides a useful prism through

proletarian government reorganizes production (and abolishes the commodity

social organisation is just to bring “laziness” within a de nite framework, to

to perform in a particular way, they could be ‘spiritually refashioned’ (Bukharin),

In the shadow of the pharaohs

At this point it is necessary to return to the question: what is the relationship

generally) and the Bolsheviks’ proposals to militarize labour? The spectre of

to this common unit of measurement is in accordance with the substantive inter-

incentives to labour. This, however, marked no more than a temporary ‘retreat’

Balibar, Étienne (1973) ‘Self criticism: Bukharin, Nikolai (1935) ‘Marx’s

Bunyan, James (1976) Intervention, Civil Communism” or the besieged: a study of

Bolshevik Revolution: A Political York: The Dial Press.

Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick communism”: a re-examination’, Slavic

Vol. 1, Moscow: Progress Publishers. the Emergence of Soviet Industrialisation,

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The mysti cation of the productive process in commodity-

commodity categories, and if this is justi ed theoretically, then, it might be

social organisation is just to bring “laziness” within a de nite framework, to