The Mother of All Octobers
Revisiting the received history of the Russian Revolution
In American politics, an “October surprise” describes a late-breaking event that emerges in the final weeks leading up to the U.S. presidential election in November, boosting one candidate’s chances or damaging the other’s just as many voters are making their final decisions, and dramatically shifting the course of an election and the U.S. political landscape.
But what if we apply this concept to a historical event that not only upended the trajectory of a nation, but also reshaped the world order? The Russian Revolution of 1917, which started with the abdication of Czar Nicholas II in the February Revolution and culminated in the Bolsheviks seizing power in October of that year, was one such monumental surprise. Just as an October surprise can alter the outcome of a political campaign, the October Revolution shattered the existing Russian state, leading to the collapse of the centuries-old Romanov dynasty and setting the stage for the rise of Soviet socialism.
This revolution was not merely an unexpected twist in Russian history: it was a seismic shift that reverberated across the globe, challenging established powers and ideologies. To speak of it quite reductively, we could also say it arose following electoral victories that started with the 1907 election of 18 candidates from the Bolshevik faction of the Social Democratic Labor Party to the Russian Empire’s Second Duma—the parliament finally established after the Revolution of 1905, which arose following the infamous Bloody Sunday in St. Petersburg, when soldiers fired on peaceful demonstrators petitioning the czar for fairer wages and an eight-hour working day. Those protesters represented early-20th-century Russia’s industrial proletariat, with that economic class having only emerged in the Russian Empire in the barely four decades since the 1861 emancipation of the serfs finally brought feudalism to a close.
Despite the Duma’s limited influence, Vladimir Lenin nonetheless saw value in running candidates to use the platform for Marxist agitation and to build alliances with the peasantry, following from the working-class movement’s need for independence from both the liberal bourgeoisie and the reformist tendencies of the rival Mensheviks.
Surely Lenin must have read Karl Marx and Frederick Engels’ “Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League” (1850) while devising the aforementioned strategy. In it, Marx and Engels criticize both the liberal bourgeoisie for betraying the workers and the democratic petty bourgeoisie for seeking to maintain the existing social order. They urge workers to maintain their independence, resist alliances that would subordinate them, and continue their efforts until the proletariat achieves state power in a “Permanent Revolution” to ultimately establish a new society that abolishes private ownership of production and their consequent class antagonisms. To this end, the theorists advise the Communist League that:
Even where there is no prospect of achieving their election the workers must put up their own candidates to preserve their independence, to gauge their own strength and to bring their revolutionary position and party standpoint to public attention. They must not be led astray by the empty phrases of the democrats, who will maintain that the workers’ candidates will split the democratic party and offer the forces of reaction the chance of victory. All such talk means, in the final analysis, that the proletariat is to be swindled.
Those readers who recall our September bulletin on the American Communist Party might understand now why I feel some mild regret for expressing my sympathies with those who would only vote in the 2024 U.S. election for “None of the Above”—though it’s not like the ACP has a candidate in any race. Presumably they’ll run some in the next election cycle: after all, it’s one element of a strategy that’s worked before.
Of course, the Russian Revolution was hardly bloodless: arising after public dissatisfaction with World War I (and its cost of 1.8 million soldiers and half a million civilians) pushed the empire to collapse, and thereafter solidified in the Russian Civil War, with a death toll of up to 10 million, we shouldn’t present the Bolsheviks’ victory as a merely electoral one.
Still, they seem to have positioned themselves well for it: the Social Democratic Labor Party’s 1912 split into the Menshevik Party and Bolshevik Party meant they had to spend less time addressing party divisions, and—following the February Revolution that overthrew the czarist government and established a provisional government under Alexander Kerensky, the Bolsheviks’ efforts to mobilize the working class and peasants around the demands for bread, land, and peace helped them (again, to speak of it quite reductively) to launch a workers’ revolution in October 1917 and establish their workers’ state.
But the violence of the October Revolution and the Russian Civil War made a deeper impression on many observers than any political mandate. In his 2015 documentary Everything Is a Rich Man’s Trick, Francis Richard Connolly describes (at ~8:08) how international bankers and industrialists had profited tremendously from WWI, with companies like Remington (remembered mainly for typewriters) making vast fortunes through the supply of weapons, while banks benefited from the enormous loans made to governments to finance the war. The war also created a long-term financial gain, since nations would have to repay these loans with interest for decades. However, Connolly also tells us (at ~9:26–12:14):
That war was good for business was not the only lesson the ruling classes learned during this period. The Russian Revolution of 1917 terrified rich people all over the world. Watching Lenin and Trotsky taking over such a vast area of the globe, the kings and queens of Europe’s tiny sovereign states in particular became extremely nervous [that] the communist success in Russia should inspire their own working class to rise in revolt. Many of the crowned heads of Europe, like England’s George V, had been related to Czar Nicholas, and the brutal execution of the czar and his family—particularly the bayoneting of his daughters—sent a shockwave through the upper classes of every nation. Did a similar fate lie in store for the royal families of Holland, Sweden, Spain and England? This question was lying heavily on the thought of the elite when the First World War ended in 1918.
The success of the Bolsheviks in overthrowing the Russian monarchy terrified the elites of Europe, and fear of the same fate influenced how they handled postwar Germany. The Dulles brothers, who played a significant role in drafting the Treaty of Versailles, imposed crippling reparations on Germany, which many (such as economist John Maynard Keynes) believed were designed to sabotage the postwar German economy. This led to hyperinflation and mass unemployment, allowing the international elite to buy German industry at low prices. However, Connolly argues (at ~12:47), the goal was not just to profit from disadvantaging their erstwhile adversary, but to strengthen Germany as a bulwark against Soviet socialism.
(For those interested in Connolly’s main focus—the 1963 JFK assassination—he identifies [at ~1:52:07] Curtis LaVerne Crafard and Jack Allen Lawrence as the president’s two killers, proposing they fired on him from a storm drain. I’ll leave the forensics to someone else, for now at least.)
Longtime readers will remember how Western imperialists also profited handsomely from investing in the subsequent Nazi regime, which indeed acted as an anti-Soviet bulwark. But besides that financial statecraft, the international response to the October Revolution offers other examples of how the ruling class attempted to counteract it. In particular, the British aristocracy seems to have taken some notable measures: in his 1920 editorial “Zionism Versus Bolshevism: A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People”, Winston Churchill identifies three main Jewish political ideologies: the “National Jews,” the “International Jews,” and the “Zionist Jews.” He praises the National Jews, who assimilate into their countries while maintaining their Jewish faith, as loyal citizens who contribute positively to society, such as in Britain and Russia. In contrast, Churchill criticizes the International Jews, whom he associates with Bolshevism. He argues that some atheistic Jews, like Leon Trotsky, played an outsized role in the Bolshevik Revolution and other subversive efforts—the “bad Jews” (as he identifies them in a header) whom, Churchill implies, represent some or another Jewish conspiracy to overthrow all sovereign nations.
Churchill views Zionism as a positive alternative to Bolshevism, with the conflict between Zionism and Bolshevism represents a pivotal struggle for the future of the Jewish people, with Zionism offering hope and national pride, while Bolshevism threatens to disrupt societal order. He proposes that the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine would offer Jews a sense of national identity that could counter the revolutionary, internationalist tendencies of Bolshevism. Interestingly, Churchill argues that Zionism aligns with British interests, and that Palestine could serve as a refuge for Jews while promoting global stability by depriving Bolshevism of Jewish advocates. Therefore, Churchill calls on “loyal” Jews to reject Bolshevism and support Zionism as a means of self-preservation and a way to benefit civilization at large.
That, of course, adds a fresh dimension to the concerns raised in our September bulletin that the establishment media might paint the American Communist Party’s principled anti-Zionism as a deranged antisemitism. But besides that, it adds evidence to Joti Brar’s argument—highlighted in our March dispatch—that the decision to support Zionist colonization in 1917 was influenced by the imperialist drive to dominate Middle Eastern oil resources (which became crucial for global industry and military power in the early 20th century) and to maintain a strategic settler colony in the region to ensure that monopoly powers could deny their rivals access to these resources. Thus, from the perspective of British aristocrats like Churchill, persuading the world’s Jewish population to adopt Zionism and reject the dreaded Soviet socialism would mean killing two birds with one stone.
But not everyone was wringing their hands with fear to watch the Russian Revolution, as Brar reminded us last month in another conversation with Garland Nixon.
While contrasting (at ~37:04) the decaying imperialist system with the growth and potential of the alternative path that anti-imperialist countries like China and Russia offer, Brar argues (at ~42:07) that the former consistently elevates incompetent and corrupt leaders, which reflects the system’s decline and inability to present a positive or hopeful future. Instead, capitalist republics resorts to fear and control because they lack the capacity to inspire, whereas the resurgence of countries like China and Russia has shown that it’s possible for developing countries to resist imperialism and pursue an independent path is possible.
As Brar tells us, these nations regained their confidence and recognized that imperialism (led by the U.S.) seeks domination rather than partnership, and emphasizes that imperialism only serves the interests of a small, wealthy elite that views everyone else is expendable. Yet, by resisting imperialist control, these countries have managed to strengthen their economies and see for themselves that, indeed, another way is possible outside of Western hegemony. But Brar traces that inspiration (at ~43:10–45:04) back more than a century:
That pole of attraction that gives people hope, that enthuses people that another way is possible, began with the Soviet Union, began after 1917, and particularly after the completion of the first five-year plan in the Soviet Union. By the mid-1930s, the world could see how extraordinary was the miracle that was taking place in the Soviet Union, how all the intractable problems were being solved, and how all the contradictions of society that we were told are just inherent in human nature somehow were being overcome. There was no exploiting class. There was no exploiting nation. And the people were living in work. There was no gender inequality. All these things were being addressed in a really civilized way, and the life of the people was being lifted up in a way where nobody was left behind. […] This huge economic miracle—of developing this backward peasant country into a modern industrial superpower with modern industry, modern agriculture, high technology, high culture, high education—all this was happening at the time of the Great Depression in the rest of the world. And so it was so clear to people: “Oh my gosh, these socialists, these communists are onto something. They’ve released the potential of their people in this most incredible way.” And we lost so much with the fall of the Soviet Union in terms of that sense of hope, that optimism, that we can do something better than this. But they’re starting to come back again.
While Connolly emphasizes the threat that the Bolsheviks represented for the ruling class of Western imperialism—and Churchill unwittingly supplies him with evidence for saying so—in contrast, Brar emphasizes how the Soviet Union’s transformation from a peasant country into a modern industrial superpower, despite the hardships of the Great Depression, inspired global hope, demonstrated that a society without exploitation and inequality was possible.
Of course, not everyone remembers the Soviet Union as an inspiration. Certainly not Jack Posobiec, veteran U.S. Navy intelligence officer and former broadcaster with One America News Network, who told Kim Iversen in July about his impression of the Russian Revolution and the Soviet socialism it inaugurated.
Here, Posobiec and Iversen share (at ~4:55) their personal experiences and journeys that led them to embrace populist ideologies of the right and left respectively. The former describes how his time in the intelligence community and witnessing the disconnect between government actions and the well-being of regular Americans prompted him to question the mainstream narratives. Meanwhile, Iversen discusses his transition from supporting Democratic politics to adopting a more populist stance after realizing the flaws and deceptions within the establishment.
From there, the discussion explores (at ~17:30) the motivations and factors that drive people towards revolutionary ideologies. Posobiec suggests that these ideologies stem from a desire for revenge and a willingness to inflict pain on those who disagree or have more wealth—thinking, I suppose, of the “pan-leftist counter-gangs” we’ve discussed now and then—while Iversen posits that most people adopt these ideologies with good intentions, seeking a more just and equal society, but the implementation often goes awry due to authoritarianism and the influence of self-interested actors.
But either way, both acknowledge the role of wealth disparity and economic inequality in fueling societal upheavals and revolutions throughout history. They argue that when the wealth gap becomes too significant, it creates conditions ripe for revolutionary ideologies to take hold, as seen in events like the Russian Revolution. Posobiec, however, seems (at ~18:26) to see such revolutions not just as a natural result of extreme wealth inequality, but as a moral failing of the dispossessed. Discussing the 2019 film Parasite, which tells the story of a poor family’s attempt to defraud a rich one, Posobiec tells us:
I remember watching that film, and seeing how it's getting all these awards and all these great reviews, and saying, “Wait a minute, the rich family didn’t do anything improper to the other family” [...] Nobody would comment on that […] They said, “It’s perfectly acceptable for them to do this” […] So I do think that there’s a strong narrative out there […] that people who have more deserve to suffer simply because they have more. Now, okay, does that mean from moral imperative that [the rich family] shouldn’t help? No, not necessarily, but that also doesn’t create a moral justification for [making them suffer].
Iversen shares (at 20:42–23:04) her own perspective:
I don’t know if […] they’ve created Marxism and socialism as a way to get back at [the rich] necessarily […] I think in their mind [Marxism is] the remedy to even out the playing field because […] so few people have been able to suck up all the resources. So I do think there’s two things going on there […] I don’t think that they’re thinking, in their minds, that Marxism and socialism is a way to get back at the wealthy people like a form of revenge. I really think they believe it’s just a better system. They believe that wealth distribution, that having a more [even] playing field is genuinely better than what we’ve got right now […] They believe that everything should be taken and distributed, but I don’t think that’s done out of hate […] I think that’s separate from their ideology […] I don’t think the ideology is stemming from the hatred […] It is different, and it matters. Like, the motivations matter. You have to know why a person hates you so much. It’s not because they hate you [that] they want to enact Marxism on you, [but rather,] they hate you because you won’t give them Marxism. That’s a whole different thing […] So, I don’t think that Marxism or socialism or communism is a form of revenge. I think the anger stems from the fact that these people don’t feel like they’re getting the just society that they’re seeking. [(emphasis mine)]
Still, Posobiec maintains his that some people, instead of seeking reform or self-improvement, prefer to tear down the systems that have brought society to its current state. As an alternative ideal to revolution, he suggests the platforms of figures like Teddy Roosevelt, who introduced reforms such as labor protections and curbing corporate excesses that mitigated social pressures during the Industrial Revolution—which Posobiec sees as key reasons the U.S. avoided the revolutionary upheavals seen in Europe and Asia.
Interestingly, however, despite his anti-communism, Posobiec isn’t shy about connecting contemporary U.S. interests in Ukraine to Western imperialism throughout the interview. He and Iversen clearly reject the stated motivations of promoting democracy and suggest that the conflict is driven by imperial ambitions, proxy wars, and access to resources like minerals and farmland. They criticize the lack of transparency and the political establishment’s use of moral justifications to garner public support for wars and interventions.
Naturally, we’d cast Posobiec as belonging to (what we’ve taken to calling) the traditionalist-reactionary sphere. Though any cursory glance through the archives of Radio Free Pizza will reveal our kitchen is full of Soviet sympathizers, a more careful search will also show that we’ve similarly cast as traditionalist-reactionary other analysts for whom we’ve nonetheless demonstrated a particular affection, as we did last month to Jay Dyer. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Dyer has also had something to say (in March of last year) about the Soviet Union.
Here, Dyer analyzes a document called “the Rakovsky interrogation”—purportedly an interrogation record of former Soviet ambassador Christian Rakovsky during the Stalinist purges in 1938—which suggests that Western banking and industrial elites funded and supported various revolutionary movements, including Bolshevism, as part of a broader strategy to advance their interests through perpetual revolution and destabilization.
Reviewing the interrogation, Dyer tells us (at ~43:12) how Rakovsky purportedly asserts that “true” Marxism, as envisioned by figures like Leon Trotsky, is a “religion of revolution” aimed at constant upheaval rather than establishing a utopian communist state, and argues that Stalinism betrayed this vision by consolidating power. Furthermore, he claims that Western banking and industrial elites funded and supported various revolutionary movements, including Bolshevism, as part of a broader strategy to advance their interests through perpetual revolution and destabilization—meaning that Western imperialists have a symbiotic relationship with Trotskyite socialism. But most importantly, Rakovsky asserts that the monetary system itself, based on debt and usury, is inherently destabilizing, and that it can only serve the interests of the financial elite rather than those of the proletariat. Though the interrogator, Gabriel, initially doubts the account, he becomes convinced as Rakovsky provides detailed explanations and historical examples—such as the role of Western financiers in funding the Russo-Japanese War and the rise of figures like Trotsky—to support his claims.
Though Dyer expresses reservations about the document’s authenticity, he notes its consistency with works by authors like Carroll Quigley (Dyer’s coverage of whom we referred to last month) and Antony Sutton, who have documented the involvement of Western financial elites in supporting various revolutionary movements. In his analysis, that involvement has broader implications for understanding the dynamics of power and revolution in the 20th century—broad enough that Dyer turned again to the subject last November and added further details to the global elites’ efforts to establish a technocratic world order through conflict and crises.
Though Dyer maintains that those elites funded Marx—and presumably he’d say the same about the Communist League mentioned above—he argues that they eventually saw Fabian socialism as more effective than Marxism in manipulating societies. After reviewing (at ~5:51) what he calls Marx and Engels’ “ten planks of the Communist Party” and assessing their implementation status—and finding some like progressive income tax and centralizing communication and transport control largely in place, while others around property abolition were less successful—Dyer describes the subsequent Fabian strategy that elites adopted after the failure of abrupt Marxist revolutions in the 19th century. As the analyst tells us, this strategy of gradual revolution included a seven-point strategy targeting Christianity, patriotism, constitutional rule of law, and other obstacles to global governance.
Despite his sure anti-communism, Dyer nonetheless argues that capitalism builds the infrastructure that will be later transitioned into technocracy. He terms this “corporate socialism,” with monopoly firms and centralized control still compatible with a Trotskyite socialism, and he cites Bolshevism as a predecessor of this corporate socialism, describing it again with reference to Sutton as completely funded by Western industrialists. In addition, Dyer speculates that then-coming Middle East wars and economic collapse could be manipulated to blame nationalism and religion, which—perhaps in concert with the gradual erosion of living standards—could precipitate cries for world order and transition societies into the long-standing goal of a worldwide corporate technocracy.
But Dyer would cite more than Sutton for information on Western finance backing the Bolsheviks: in the recommended reading at Jay’s Analysis, we find Dr. Richard Spence’s 2017 book Wall Street and the Russian Revolution: 1905–1925, which seems to have carried Sutton’s torch into the 21st century. In September 2023, Spence appeared on The Deep State Consciousness to discuss the involvement of American businessmen and Wall Street in supporting the Bolsheviks, describing how figures like William Boyce Thompson, Raymond Robbins, Charles Crane, and even Henry Ford—interested in profiting from Soviet Russia just as he (and many other American businessmen, including Prescott Bush) did from Nazi Germany—saw opportunities in the Bolshevik regime and were willing to do business with them, despite obvious ideological differences.
Notably, however, Spence seems inclined (at ~17:12) to chasten the aforementioned Sutton’s presentation of Western imperialist interest in the Bolshevik Revolution:
In […] Sutton’s […] work, the idea is that essentially all of the vast majority of American capitalists are behaving and thinking exactly the same way: they’re an undifferentiated mass. In the same way that we talk about things like the American government, the French government, the British government, is if this is a kind of collective, and it’s an institution, but within that, what you have is factionalism. Human beings are divided into cleats and factions. And therefore the U.S. government, the British government at any given time is never composed simply of one faction […] There are always differences of opinion. At no point in time, it would be extremely difficult to find any government at any point in time where everybody involved in decision-making within that government all agreed on everything […] And this is […] one of those little observations that […] the mysterious Sidney Reilly […] came up with[:] when you’re talking about governments, you’re just talking about a selection of individuals. And if you can sway or eliminate certain individuals, you can change the policy of a government. That is, if you change the balance of power between the individuals and factions that are part of it. And if you think about it in some ways, that’s really a key to sort of modern politics in many ways: you just have to alter the balance of power within this system in order to manipulate it or to control it. So there was a difference of opinion. And I think in [Sutton’s case], it’s an oversimplification of something which was a […] kind of chaotic system.
Spence’s critique of Sutton here prefigures another he levels (at ~21:56–25:46) later: that the researcher often accepted claims that fit his narrative without strong evidence, such as the unsubstantiated claim that Trotsky left the U.S. with an American passport authorized by President Wilson, or that Trotsky worked as a film extra in New York. Though intriguing, these stories were based on rumors and lacked factual basis, highlighting how repeated false information can gain acceptance as common knowledge.
The historian argues, therefore, that history is often a product of chaos and unintended consequences, with conspiracies rarely unfolding as planned. But with that said, Spence also suggests that the “mysterious figure” he mentioned—Sidney Reilly, an anti-Bolshevik crusader backed by British intelligence—may have in fact been acting in the Bolshevik’s interests, working to guide anti-Soviet plots onto the rocks, given the failure of practically every anti-Soviet conspiracy that involved him.
Perhaps Reilly’s British backing means that his operations supported the same agenda according to which, as Spence tells us (at ~41:12–47:12), Trotsky opposed making a separate peace with Germany during World War I while Russia’s allies continued fighting—unlike Lenin, who ultimately pushed for it. Spence discusses further (at ~1:12:03–1:18:27) the role of British intelligence in Trotsky’s travels: specifically Sir William Wiseman, the head of British intelligence operations while working as a banker in New York, who saw Trotsky as potentially useful in keeping Russia in the war. (Though his professional rival in Halifax, Canada apparently disagreed.) Despite his revolutionary background, Trotsky ultimately obtained necessary travel permissions to make his voyage with the cooperation of British intelligence, and later, as People’s Commissar for War in 1918, he was viewed by some British figures as a possible alternative leader to Lenin who would keep Russia at war: indeed, Trotsky refused to support the subsequent Brest-Litovsk Treaty and was more open to cooperating with former allies, even suggesting the possibility of resuming the war with Germany.
Interestingly, Spence’s interview also touches (at ~1:30:01–1:39:48) on the potential consequences of alternative historical outcomes to the Polish-Soviet War. In the summer of 1920, Poland—only independent then for two years following the collapse of the Russian Empire—capitalized on the Russian Civil War to expand its territory eastward, even occupying Kiev with the help of Ukrainian nationalists. However, the Soviet Red Army launched a counteroffensive and by August, advanced toward Warsaw. The critical Battle of Warsaw ensued, and despite the Red Army reaching the outskirts of the city, they overextended, which allowed the French-supported Polish forces to regroup and win, likely saving Poland from collapse.
Meanwhile, however, some German officers—still bitter over their country’s defeat in World War I and the Treaty of Versailles’ predatory terms—expressed their willingness to collaborate with the Soviets, seeing the potential to reignite a war against Britain and France. The Soviet commander, Tukhachevsky, even boasted of his intention to march westward, aiming to unify with Germany and spread socialism. If the Red Army had reached the German border, it might have sparked a new class-based conflict across Europe, potentially restarting World War I with new alliances, and the French—concerned about the spread of socialism—considered preemptively occupying Germany to stop Soviet advances.
Of course, any alliance between Russia and Germany would have represented a phenomenal development in the “Great Game” to which we referred in June. (Not to mention a disruption to any plans for establishing Nazi Germany as a defense against Soviet socialism, as Connolly argues above.) In fact, it seems to us that preventing economic cooperation between these countries motivated Western imperialists to sabotage the Nord Stream pipeline two years ago. I suppose then that, if Trotsky—at that time the People’s Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs—had indeed been an American or British asset, then had Tukhachevsky reached the German border, the Commissar would have found a reason to order the Red Army’s retreat and prevent any collaboration with German officers, regardless of his commitment to international socialism.
But many would say I’m being too generous to conspiracy theorists like Sutton, even while entertaining a counterfactual, and I suspect that—despite how little of his love is lost on Trotsky—the frequently cited Caleb Maupin might stand among them. Or anyway, that’s my impression after I found occasion to ask him about Sutton more than a year ago.
Here, Maupin refutes (at ~56:54–1:03:43) Sutton’s claim that the Russian Revolution was a Wall Street conspiracy, arguing that American corporations doing business with the Soviet Union does not prove a conspiracy: companies like Ford Motor Company and General Electric did business with the Soviet Union simply for their own profit. Maupin dismisses the idea that Trotsky getting a visa is proof of a conspiracy, and argues that the late-arriving Trotsky had little to do with starting the Russian Revolution. Meanwhile, he claims that Trotsky had also been an asset of German intelligence and went by a false name, undermining Sutton’s argument that Trotsky returned to Russia on behalf of Allied imperialists. (Maupin also debunks theories not discussed here linking wealthy banker Jacob Schiff to funding the Bolsheviks, asserting that the organizations he supported were anti-Bolshevik.) Add all that to Trotsky’s subsequent betrayal of the USSR, and Maupin seems to have good for reason for criticizing the pervasive belief in conspiracy theories, for highlighting instead the importance of understanding divisions within the ruling class—as Spence does above—and for suggesting that these divisions could allow a united working class to challenge the power dynamics of the elite and assert alternative agendas.
I doubt it will surprise you to learn that Maupin’s not the only Marxist who has seen fit to refute theories like Sutton’s: among his comrades we can count Don DeBar, who in April appeared on Pasta2Go to talk about them.
“Some people say [the Russian Revolution] was organic, some people say it was a revolution bought off by the elites. Somebody who’s an expert on this whole situation is Don DeBar and I want to talk about it,” Craig “Pasta” Jardula says at the start—and so DeBar obliges, analyzing (at ~2:14–31:26) the historical context, socio-economic conditions, and key figures involved—including Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin—leading up to and surrounding the October Revolution in 1917 and its aftermath, including the civil war as foreign powers intervened to suppress the revolution. Covering the socio-economic landscape of Russia in the 19th and early 20th centuries, DeBar describes the stark contrasts we between the living conditions of the working class, peasants, and the ruling class, how these relate to the remnants of the Russian Empire, the feudal agricultural system, and the emergence of an industrial proletariat, and in turn to the growing discontent and revolutionary sentiment among the working-class masses.
Emphasizing that revolutions are not the product of a single individual but rather the culmination of societal forces and the actions of the masses, DeBar accordingly disagrees with those like Sutton who believe that the Russian Revolution had been funded or orchestrated by elites, arguing instead that it was a genuine workers’ uprising driven by the demands for bread, land, and peace. Indeed, DeBar notes (at ~31:27) that the aforementioned Churchill expressed his desire “to strange the Soviet experiment in the cradle”—hardly what one would expect if Western imperialists had uniformly agreed to fund the Bolsheviks.
From here, DeBar goes on to discuss how, with Lenin’s health failing, a power struggle ensued between Trotsky—whom DeBar notes (at ~17:46) previously advocated for accommodation with the bourgeoisie in 1903—and Stalin, who proposed consolidating power and rebuilding the industrial base to address the challenges faced by the new Soviet government. Stalin and his faction prevailed, and they embarked on industrializing and consolidating the Soviet Union, despite facing opposition from foreign powers. That opposition would doubtless account for what DeBar describes (at ~41:20) for the propagandistic depiction in Hollywood and Western media of communism as a repressive police state replete with surveillance and shortages.
In contrast, DeBar touches (at ~43:24) on the influence of the Bolshevik Revolution on subsequent events like the Chinese Revolution, with China having suffered throughout World War II the destruction of its industry—just as Russia had in World War I—and thereafter facing the need to organize a socialist state to govern a vast, multi-ethnic territory. (He also draws analogy [at ~46:03] between the New Soviet Man, which we discussed last March, and Chinese efforts to “make a new person by designing them” on the belief they could “re-engineer people’s thinking and that would result in a new world.”) Of course, these efforts speak in part to the need for revolutionary change to address pressing challenges such as poverty, hunger, and the threat of war. Accordingly, DeBar critiques the tendency to romanticize or oversimplify historical events and stress the importance of understanding the complex dynamics and motivations behind revolutions.
Certainly that falls in line with Spence, as discussed above. But I must admit, these admonishments and refutations don’t quite address the grander claim that Dyer inherits from Sutton and Quigley: specifically, that globalist interests supported both the fascists of Nazi Germany and the communists of Soviet Russia with the aim of synthesizing a technocratic “Third Way.” On that subject, then, it’s worth mentioning the analysis of Paul Temple, a communist contemporary to both. In Temple’s “Technocracy: A Totalitarian Fantasy” from March and April of 1944, he critiques the rise and ideology of the technocracy movement.
In the first half of his essay, Temple describes how technocracy originated during the Great Depression and gained public attention with grandiose promises and scientific jargon but faded when the New Deal took center stage. In 1942, Howard Scott revived the movement as “Technocracy, Inc.” with a more organized and flashy presence, emphasizing an extensive social program and exuding a fascist undertone.
Temple argues that technocracy’s claims of contributing valuable insights into modern society and incorporating socialist ideas are myths. Though technocracy traces its roots to 1919 with Thorstein Veblen’s work and the formation of the Technical Alliance, Temple decries Scott’s ideas as a crude vulgarization of Veblen’s more sophisticated theories. By the 1930s, technocracy attempted to statistically analyze the impact of technological advances on the economy, but their exaggerated claims and unscientific methods undermined their credibility.
Technocracy’s assertions, such as the notion that technology has rendered human labor non-essential, are dismissed as fantasies. Scott’s declarations about labor’s obsolescence are contrasted with the reality of mass-production industries where human workers then remained indispensable. The movement’s belief that technological improvements will automatically lead to the collapse of the current economic system is critiqued for its mechanical fatalism. This perspective reduces complex social dynamics to simplistic physical laws, ignoring the distinct nature of social and economic phenomena. Temple views the technocrats’ reliance on the physical sciences to explain society as a misapplication of scientific principles, leading to an unrealistic and ultimately totalitarian vision.
Temple continues his critique by focusing on technocratic theory’s oversimplified and mechanistic view of history and society. In his analysis, Scott’s interpretation of historical progress attributes meaningful social change solely to technological advancements—particularly the invention of the steam engine in the 18th century—dismissing earlier millennia as static and ignoring the socio-economic transformations that paved the way for technological developments.
Temple notes that Scott and his followers reject traditional economic concepts such as value, price, and money, viewing them as nonsensical from a scientific standpoint, and that they ridicule the use of variable standards like money for measurement. Accordingly, Temple argues that terms like “value” and “price” are meaningless to modern technologists—despite their importance of these concepts in understanding and managing a capitalist economy—and that Scott’s superficial understanding of economics conflates value with desire and dismisses the labor theory of value, which links a commodity’s worth to the amount of labor required for its production.
Furthermore, Temple asserts that Scott’s reliance on physical measures such as energy costs to replace monetary value is impractical and fails to address the complexities of economic systems. Technocrats proposed replacing monetary systems with “energy certificates”—a form of currency based on the energy expended in producing goods—which Temple criticizes as impractical and disconnected from the realities of economic planning, arguing that such a system would still be a form of rationing and fails to consider the nuances of supply, demand, and production capacity. While technocrats use the term “price system” to broadly criticize all forms of economic exchange—not just capitalism—Temple points out that this vague and all-encompassing definition renders their critique ineffective, obscuring the unique characteristics and challenges of capitalist economies, such as industrial crises.
Despite all of technocracy’s claims of scientific precision and objectivity, Temple finds that it offers an unrealistic and simplistic approach to societal organization. He likens technocratic theory to fascism, suggesting that it seeks to implement a controlled and undemocratic system under the guise of rational planning. Technocracy’s disdain for traditional economics and its authoritarian tendencies make it, in Temple’s view, a dangerous and totalitarian fantasy.
The second half of Temple’s essay delves into technocracy’s political ideology and organizational structure. Despite claiming to be apolitical, technocrats vehemently oppose democratic principles, viewing current democratic practices as too democratic: for example, Scott disparages democracy, likening collective human opinion to “mob hysteria” and dismissing workers’ demands for fair wages as “unscientific opinions.” Temple compares Scott’s technocracy to a dictatorship, with a hierarchical structure wherein leadership ascends based on “scientific” principles, but which merely mimics corporate management models like that of Bell Telephone, where appointments come from above without democratic input. Technocracy’s governance involves directors with lifetime tenures, accountable only to a top council, reflecting a rigid, autocratic regime.
Temple tells us further how Technocracy, Inc. envisions an autarchic North America, and promotes a chauvinistic nationalism extending to South America, over which Scott advocates exerting forceful dominance. Temple also notes how Technocracy, Inc. had adopted fascist-like uniformity and rituals, appealing to American prejudices by excluding “aliens and Asiatics” while placing Black members in segregated roles. Though technocracy had been isolationist with pro-German sentiments, opposing American involvement in foreign wars, its tune had shifted abruptly after Pearl Harbor to one supporting the war effort, aligning with government directives and proposing “total conscription” of men, industry, and wealth. This proposal, however, stops short of nationalizing industries, instead advocating for continued capitalist ownership and operation under government coordination, essentially preserving capitalist interests.
As one might therefore expect, the technocrats’ agenda harshly targets labor, demanding compulsory national service and surrendering certain liberties for the war’s duration. Temple’s critique thus underscores technocracy’s totalitarian and anti-democratic nature, presenting a dystopian vision of a regimented, scientifically managed society devoid of individual freedoms and democratic processes.
On the whole, Temple’s critique of technocracy highlights the dangers of reducing societal progress to technological or financial terms, likening technocratic ideals to totalitarianism. Of course, the fact that technocracy gained its profile as a potential response to the Great Depression suggests that it finds greater kinship with fascism as a political response to capitalism’s economic crises (as we’ve previously discussed with reference to R. Palme Dutt), despite the associations provoked in Dyer’s term “corporate socialism.”
Furthermore, as Brar reminds us above, Stalin’s Five-Year Plans didn’t at all resemble the austerity long associated with fascism. Instead, the Soviet Union enacted policies that raised the standard of living for the masses, even while the rest of the world suffered through the Great Depression. We doubt, therefore, that the USSR could have survived World War II if it hadn’t thus earned the people’s support. While we still take note of aspects to Soviet life that might not match our ideals—such as a penchant for Taylorism, as a Radio Free Pizza reader mentioned in comments on a May bulletin—still, we must applaud the material gains that Soviet socialism delivered to the masses.
Those improvements to the working class’s quality of life, we should also note, seem to have arrived primarily under Stalin, who triumphed over his rival Trotsky as Lenin’s successor. With that in mind, it’s interesting to observe that Trotsky’s view of revolution as a path to international class liberation—as opposed to Stalin’s “socialism in one country”—might ironically serve the interests of a “religion of revolution” aimed at perpetual upheaval to advance the goals and interests of international finance, as Dyer describes the assertion of the supposed Rakovsky interrogation. Trotskyism, then, is a fair candidate for one of the radical ideologies to which Posobiec refers in his interview with Iversen: one motivated by the recognition of unjust economic disparities, but (supposedly, according to Rakovsky) engineered to advance the interests of financial elites empowered through the debt that revolutions engender, with no real intention of raising living standards or introducing democratic representation for the proletariat.
Naturally, then, it will surely behoove us to examine the Five-Year Plans under Stalin and other aspects of his “socialism in one country” for ideas to incorporate into the pitch for a socialism with American characteristics that we’ve been (cheekily) calling Libertarian Communism. Maybe another viewer of the aforementioned Maupin was thinking along the same lines when he commented in a livestream chat, “I was impressed reading what Stalin intended from his own writings because it’s a lot different than how he’s depicted, he was sort of a libertarian communist.”
(I doubt they were, of course, but still, it’s fun to think about it.)
Though theories linking Western finance to the Bolshevik Revolution have gained attention in recent decades, opportunistic business dealings between Western businesses and Soviet Russia don’t necessarily indicate orchestrated conspiracies. Spence, along with Marxists like Maupin and DeBar, stresses the role of larger societal forces in driving revolutions rather than elite manipulation. Meanwhile, Marxists of the period like Temple would wholly refute any analogy to be drawn between Soviet socialism and the technocracy proposed at the time, therefore casting into doubt any connection between it and the modern-day fascist globalism currently manifesting the latter. Their insights remind us that conspiratorial interpretations sometimes obscure the true complexity of historical events. Instead, they promote a nuanced understanding of the past, acknowledging the interplay of ideology, economics, and historical contingencies without resorting to deterministic narratives.
Indeed, it seems to us that any conspiracy at all must take advantage of an opportunity only present because of underlying factors, such as perceived injustices, economic disparities, and a mass desire for societal change. These arise under any regime as soon as the working class can no longer ignore the establishment’s failure to prioritize the well-being of ordinary people. Feudal regimes and capitalist republics alike may appeal to abstract ideologies as their excuses for not implementing the reforms that would prevent class conflict from escalating, and while the church under the former and media corporations under the latter may work to distract public discourse from the inequalities inherent in their modes of economic production, divisions within the ruling class inevitably present opportunities for the exploited class to assert an alternative agenda—unless their inability to seize those opportunities means that class tensions erupt into civil war.
Revisiting the Russian Revolution reveals that the events of 1917 were more than a localized upheaval—they were a global “October surprise” that reshaped world politics and economics, dramatically altering the course of events in ways few could have predicted. The Bolsheviks’ ability to mobilize workers and peasants, combined with the geopolitical tensions of the time, sparked a revolution whose effects echoed across decades, influencing international relations, ideological conflicts, and contemporary global struggles. This history underscores the fragility of political and social orders and how revolutionary moments, like modern political surprises, can ignite forces of change that reshape the future for generations. The October Revolution thus challenges not only power structures, but also the narratives that societies (and civilization-states) hold about themselves and their futures—precisely, that is, those narratives that we’re so interested here in (re-)articulating.