The Revolutions of 1917

The armaments industry of the First World War introduced on a broad front the methods Ford had pioneered in America: assembly lines and unskilled labor. The craftsmen lost status. At the same time, the production conditions of the war gave rise to complaints of overtime and rising consumer goods prices, not to mention pure shortages of goods.

On the other hand, the workers got a weapon in their hand. The conveyor belt is easy to stop. During artisanal production, a strike is difficult to organize, but in a conveyor belt industry it is easy. Just turn off the power. For the first time, the unskilled workers were actively involved in the movement, which received a powerful impetus.

In addition, there was a shortage of labor because so many were at the front. The period 1916-1920 was therefore a time of powerful labor movement mobilization.
It was most dramatic in the countries where defeats in the war discredited the old ruling class, i.e the whole of Central and Eastern Europe. In many countries, it was the ”workers’ councils” – a kind of local organization of the strike committees – that took over the functions of the crumbling state. In Russia, Petrograd’s Workers’ Council dominated the whole country for a few months in 1917.

But also in Scandinavia, workers dared action types they had never tried before. In Sweden, for example, there were over a hundred bread – or rather potato – seizures, linked to claims of worker control, picture below.

Everywhere, mobilization declined after a while. For the most part, the functionaries of the workers’ organizations chose to work with the bourgeoisie to return to approximately normal conditions, rather than to invest in something new and untried. It took different forms in different countries. In Russia, they supported a new government of radical middle-class intellectuals and ceased to exist after a period of destructive civil war. In Germany, the movement officials were seized by such a fear of the members’ activity that they called for extremist right-wing military forces to shoot them down. In Scandinavia, the movement functionaries channeled the movement into demands for universal and equal suffrage and the eight-hour day. Etc.

Almost everywhere, the disillusionment over the volatility of movement and power led to deep depression within the labor movement. In Russia, the movement completely disappeared in the general chaos. In most of Central Europe, authoritarian regimes could come to power without the labor movement being able to move a finger to stop them. In all industrialized countries, the labor movement was split in a ”reformist” fly that set up parliamentarism as a god and a ”revolutionary” one who saw the Russian government as a saviour. Nowhere was the same quest for hegemony maintained as before 1917.

Reading
Giovanni Arrighi: Marxist century - American century: The making and remaking of the world labor movement, in Samir Amin et al: Transforming the revolution, Monthly Review Pres 1990.
Russia: S.A. Smith: Red Petrograd, Cambridge University Press 1983
Edith Rogovin Frankel (ed): Revolution in Russia, reassessment of 1917, Cambridge University Press 1992.
Germany and Central Europe: F.L. Carsten: Revolution in Central Europe, University of California Press 1972
Sebastian Haffner: Die deutsche Revolution 1918-19, Kindler Verlag 1979.
Italy: Paolo Spriano: The occupation of the factories, Pluto Press 1975.