In any event, Martov and the Menshiviks disliked Lenin’s attitudes and policies on the matter, and protested against the result. Lenin wrote –
“Examining the behaviour of the Martovites since the Congress, their refusal to collaborate on the Central Organ (although officially invited by the editorial board to do so), their refusal to work on the Central Committee, and their propaganda of a boycott—all I can say is that this is an insensate attempt, unworthy of Party members, to disrupt the Party—and why? Only because they are dissatisfied with the composition of the central bodies; for, speaking objectively, it was only over this that our ways parted, while their subjective verdicts (insult, affront, slurs, ousting, shutting out, etc., etc.) are nothing but the fruits of offended vanity and a morbid imagination.
[…]
“Anyone who values Party work and action in the interests of the Social-Democratic labour movement will refuse to tolerate such wretched sophistries as a “legitimate” and “loyal” boycott of the central bodies; he will not allow the cause to suffer and the work to be brought to a standstill because a dozen or so individuals are displeased that they and their friends were not elected to the central bodies; he will not allow Party officials to be subjected to private and secret pressure through threats of non-collaboration, through boycotts, through cutting off of funds, through scandal-mongering and lying tales.”
***
RETROSPECTIVELY…
History Today: The Bolshevik-Menshevik Split –
“In his notes at the time Lenin called his group ‘hards’ and his opponents ‘softs’. When a delegate lamented that uncomradely attitudes were spoiling the congress, Lenin sharply replied that, on the contrary, he relished a good open fight instead of endless inconclusive talk. His attitude was attacked as elitist and tyrannical. The youthful Trotsky, now and for years to come a Menshevik, reportedly told Lenin at one point, ‘That’s dictatorship you’re advocating,’ to which Lenin replied, ‘There is no other way.’'”
14 years later, the Russian Empire disintegrated during World War I.
Following his plans and programs to their logical conclusion, Lenin seized control of the Provisional Government from the more moderate Alexander Kerensky.
Julius Martov sought a reconciliation and moderation with Lenin and the Bolsheviks, but failed to reach it.
Wikipedia: Julius Martov –
“At the Soviet, Martov's faction was however isolated. His view was denounced by Trotsky. This is best exemplified by Trotsky's comment to him and other party members as they left the first meeting of the council of Soviets after 25 October 1917 in disgust at the way in which the Bolsheviks had seized political power: "You are pitiful isolated individuals; you are bankrupts; your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on — into the dustbin of history!". To this Martov replied in a moment of rage, "Then we'll leave!", and then walked in silence away without looking back. He paused at the exit, seeing a young Bolshevik worker wearing a black shirt with a broad leather belt, standing in the shadow of the portico. The young man turned on Martov with unconcealed bitterness: 'And we amongst ourselves had thought, Martov would at least remain with us.' Martov stopped, and with a characteristic movement, tossed up his head to emphasize his reply: 'One day you will understand the crime in which you are taking part.' Waving his hand wearily, he left the hall.”
What’s fascinating is that both Lenin and Martov seem fundamentally correct in their arguments.
Lenin’s argument is that by having a maximally egalitarian and inclusive party, nothing would get done.
Martov’s argument is that by centralizing authority, you’d wind up with a brutal dictatorship.
Both arguments seem correct in retrospect.
***
DUBIOUS BATTLE #4: RANK
We continue our series on Dubious Battle – the long-running conflicts through all of history, that go back and forth, those with no single right answers – only tradeoffs.
This chapter presented a particular challenge – what exactly is rank?
Clearly, some societies place a greater premium on rank than others.
Clearly, some organizations place a greater premium on rank than others.
Clearly, there’s very different outcomes for societies that explicitly codify rank and those that do not.
Clearly, there’s very different outcomes for societies that explicitly formalize policies against rank and those that do not.
We all know much of this, more-or-less intuitively.
But when it comes to actually discussing it in writing, some challenges arise. We all broadly get what rank is and what some of the implications are; we can point to two societies or two organizations and notice which puts more premium on rank; we can infer correctly many of the things that happen with a greater or lesser emphasis on rank.
But when it comes to actually nailing down the definitions, guidelines, and tradeoffs for rank, things become murkier. Certainly, Lenin was arguing for an organization was more rank-based than Martov’s. This is basically inarguable. But rank – for both good reasons and bad – is often illusive, called different things, sometimes formal, sometimes informal…
And of whether rank is appropriate and good, or inappropriate and bad, is one of the most recurring and longest-running in history; it goes back and forth, ever and ever, ad infinitum, and likely will until the end of time.
This is what we will investigate this chapter.
***
ON AUTHORITY
There’s many great writings on rank, authority, and command – but the majority of these are written from a military or business perspective, and thus are often treated as automatically suspect by people who are not already amenable to their conclusions.
For those people, the essay On Authority by Freidrich Engels might shine some light. Engles, of course, was Marx’s closest colleague and friend, the co-author of the Communist Manifesto, and the editor of Kapital.
It’s worth noting that he was already 52-years-old when he wrote this essay; it was not an immature piece of writing.
Engels –
“A number of Socialists have latterly launched a regular crusade against what they call the principle of authority. It suffices to tell them that this or that act is authoritarian for it to be condemned. This summary mode of procedure is being abused to such an extent that it has become necessary to look into the matter somewhat more closely.
“Authority, in the sense in which the word is used here, means: the imposition of the will of another upon ours; on the other hand, authority presupposes subordination. Now, since these two words sound bad, and the relationship which they represent is disagreeable to the subordinated party, the question is to ascertain whether there is any way of dispensing with it, whether — given the conditions of present-day society — we could not create another social system, in which this authority would be given no scope any longer, and would consequently have to disappear.”
Spoiler: Engels answers no.
Continuing,
“Supposing a social revolution dethroned the capitalists, who now exercise their authority over the production and circulation of wealth. Supposing, to adopt entirely the point of view of the anti-authoritarians, that the land and the instruments of labour had become the collective property of the workers who use them. Will authority have disappeared, or will it only have changed its form? Let us see.”
He gives first the example of a steam-powered cotton spinning mill, and notes the coordination needed to run it. Then he gives a striking example –
“Let us take another example — the railway. Here too the co-operation of an infinite number of individuals is absolutely necessary, and this co-operation must be practised during precisely fixed hours so that no accidents may happen. Here, too, the first condition of the job is a dominant will that settles all subordinate questions, whether this will is represented by a single delegate or a committee charged with the execution of the resolutions of the majority of
persona interested. In either case there is a very pronounced authority. Moreover, what would happen to the first train dispatched if the authority of the railway employees over the passengers were abolished?
“But the necessity of authority, and of imperious authority at that, will nowhere be found more evident than on board a ship on the high seas. There, in time of danger, the lives of all depend on the instantaneous and absolute obedience of all to the will of one.”
Engels, is of course, correct on this point. The line “the first condition of the job is a dominant will that settles all subordinate questions” is the key one. If two people disagree on train timetables, how will it get settled? If they both depart the station at the same time, on the same rail line, the trains crash.
It’s basically inarguably true.
Engels continues –
“When I submitted arguments like these to the most rabid anti-authoritarians, the only answer they were able to give me was the following: Yes, that's true, but there it is not the case of authority which we confer on our delegates, but of a commission entrusted! These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. This is how these profound thinkers mock at the whole world.”
It’s an argument that Laozi or Wittengenstein would nod at.
The word authority bothers some people, but they do not dispute that some sort of authority-ish structure is needed to ensure the trains don’t crash.
We are not speaking metaphorically here at all – this is literally true. You need a very clear chain of command on rail lines specifically to ensure trains do not crash into each other, are not ill-maintained, and so on. If one train falls behind its timetable leaving the station, there needs to be clear and enforced guidelines of how fast it can go, how to make up its new timetable so as not to crash into other trains, and so on.
Engels, of course, did not come up with this – it recurs time and time again, in all sorts of writings and thinkings. It is basically true.
***
THE ROOT OF RANK IN COMMISSIONED DUTIES
Seemingly arbitrary authority bothers a great many people – and we’ll get to that in a moment – but we can see the roots of rank in commissioned duties.
There are certainly risks and downsides to unchecked authority, but certain types of roles always evolutionarily result in a chain of command established in them – a failure to do so leads to being destroyed.
In Roman Republican times, the highest ordinary-times office was “Consul” – it was something like a modern Presidency. Though, unlike a modern Presidency, two consuls were elected every year.
This usually worked well – it meant that you didn’t have sole authority in a single person, with all the downsides that came with it.
But in a situation that requires cohesion and coordination, it was potentially disastrous.
When Hannibal invaded Rome, he quickly defeated many Roman consuls and commanders who rashly pursued him into ambushes and unfavorable terrain.
Eventually, the Romans appointed Fabius Maximus as Dictator – rare sole authority.
For his term as Dictator, Fabius refused to battle Hannibal. The Romans would pick off foraging bands of Hannibal’s Carthaginian invaders, but would flee from any direct confrontation.
After a year had elapsed, Fabius laid down his dictatorship – and it was back to the Two Consul system.
This would lead to the largest military disaster in Roman history.
With their suspicion of kings and sole authority, Roman law and tradition mandated that when both Consuls were present at the head of a single army, they would alternate which day they led the army –
“Consuls were each assigned two of the four legions to command, rarely employing all four legions at once to the same assignment, however, the Senate feared a real threat and not only employed all four legions into the field, but all eight, including allies. Ordinarily, each of the two consuls would command his own portion of the army, but since the two armies were combined into one, Roman law required them to alternate their command on a daily basis.”
This led to a nearly farcical situation –
“Varro, in command on the first day, is presented by contemporary sources as a man of reckless nature and hubris, who was determined to defeat Hannibal. While the Romans were approaching Cannae, a small portion of Hannibal's forces ambushed them. Varro successfully repelled the attack and continued on his way to Cannae. This victory, though essentially a mere skirmish with no lasting strategic value, greatly bolstered the confidence of the Roman army, perhaps to overconfidence on Varro's part. [The second Consul] Paullus, however, was opposed to the engagement as it was taking shape. Unlike Varro, he was prudent and cautious, and he believed it was foolish to fight on open ground, despite the Romans' numerical strength. This was especially true since Hannibal held the advantage in cavalry (both in quality and quantity). Despite these misgivings, Paullus thought it unwise to withdraw the army after the initial success, and camped two-thirds of the army east of the Aufidus River, sending the remainder to fortify a position on the opposite side. The purpose of this second camp was to cover the foraging parties from the main camp and harass those of the enemy.”
Yes, farcical.
The two military commanders, alternating who was in charge, had different opinions about how the battle should be conducted.
Hannibal, understanding well his adversary’s political structure, took advantage of this –
“The two armies stayed in their respective locations for two days. During the second day (August 1), Hannibal, aware that Varro would be in command the following day, left his camp and offered battle, but Paullus refused.”
Hannibal went on to harass and skirmish on Paullus’s command day, knowing he would not give battle, and then set up his battlelines with one of the most famous military traps in history – one of the first instances of a double envelopement completely surrounding the Romans, and massacring them.
Between 50,000 and 75,000 Romans were killed that day, and another 10,000 captured – a mind-boggling large number of people in a pre-modern society – it was the worst defeat in Roman military history.
A policy of aggressive battle was foolhardy enough in light of the lessons that came before, but a policy of allowing the enemy to harass and harry you, and then giving battle at the time and place of his choosing, was the worst of all worlds.
Divided military command in a crisis is usually fatal.
***
FORMAL AND INFORMAL RANK
After Cannae, Fabius was not recalled as Dictator – but he was made Consul mid-year with an old friend of his retiring the position to him; the next year, the two served as joint Consuls; the third year out, Fabius’s son was elected Consul.
This gives us another building block to understand rank – it need not be formalized into an official office.
Having shown prescience and having developed the only effective strategy against Hannibal, Fabius’s wisdom became accepted among the Romans. At that point, he did not need the formal office of dictator to have has policies enacted.
Note well – the stronger one’s authority on the grounds of effectively discharging one’s duties, prestige, and a lack of opposition means less need for formal rank.
Famously, some 250 years after Fabius’s time, Augustus Caesar reigned with only the title “Princeps” – First Citizen – more-or-less the same title Napoleon Bonaparte reigned with during his most stable years. Stalin, taking a page from the same playbook, was only “General Secretary of the Communist Party” for much of his reign – feeling no need to be formally elected. Deng Xiaoping, likewise, never held the officially-highest offices in the People’s Republic of China.
But likewise, informal roles do not provide permanent cohesion or coordination– when Augustus’s best candidates for successor died before him, the less-capable Tiberius became his successor – with the constant threat of civil war in those days, less-divided a
uthority was thought to be needed. Tiberius’s rank of Emperor was formalized into an official office, a formalization that Augustus had never needed.
***
THE SHININING PRESTIGE OF FORMERLY DUTY-BASED OFFICES
One of the great tragedies of rank is that any office that’s held by a very successful person will gain prestige; to claim the same office as any past highly successful leader is to become associated with them.
American Presidents today still inherit much of the prestige and stateliness of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln; likewise, new powers are developed in an office through a mix of grants of formal legal authority, tradition forming when a past innovative activity worked well and no one objected to it, and unrescinded emergency powers.
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