 On the night of the 7th of November, or I think the 25th of October in the Russian calendar at the time, a Tsarist commander reported to headquarters the following. The situation in Petrograd is frightful. There are no street demonstrations or disorders, but a regulated seizure of institutions, railroad stations and also arrests is in process. The Yunca patrols are surrendering without resistance. We have no guarantee that there will not be an attempt to seize the provisional government. In fact, of course, that was precisely what was taking place at that very moment. There was the beginning of the seizure of an arrest of the provisional government. That really was the crowning of the greatest ever revolution in human history. The insurrection itself is surely one of the most audacious and fascinating acts. In other words, the insurrectionary conquest of power by and for the working class. One of the most audacious acts in world history. An act, of course, with certain parallels with some other things in history, but really unique to be honest in the history of the world, as I will attempt to explain. Lenin was able to explain the next day in the opening session of the second congress of Soviets of Russia. He said, we shall now proceed to construct the socialist order, and then there was about five minutes of applause or something after that. Now, what has to be understood is the insurrection itself is different from the revolution as a whole. In fact, it's its highest expression, its most organised and conscious expression. It must be studied in its own right, but also because I think it sheds the great deal of light on the role of leadership and of organisation, and what exactly power is and what it means to grasp power and to use it to transform society. I think it's something very understudied, not just in general, but in our own movement and our organisation. But I think we should study it in some depth. It's also a study of it, this unique event that stands apart from all the other aspects of the revolution. A study of it is also extremely useful for clarifying and overcoming, if you like, the questions and problems raised by anarchism and the likes of the anarchists. Look as you see very specifically in very detailed concrete events what really is involved in changing society, and what must be involved in it, and what you have to do to achieve that. Now, it wasn't Marx, but really so much as the French revolutionary Blanqui, who really first kind of developed and popularised the idea of the revolutionary insurrection for socialist ends, for the socialist transformation of society, although for him his grasp of what socialism meant was somewhat vague and moralistic. But really he popularised the idea and also put it into practice several times. For that Marx really respected Blanqui, despite the massive criticisms and differences, he really respected Blanqui as a genuine revolutionary, which he certainly was, having spent most of his life actually in prison. He was a genuine revolutionary despite his shortcomings, and Marx praised him, or rather not so much praised him, but praised the French working class, for having Blanqui as really there in Spira, really a true revolutionary. Someone very bold and who put the conquest of power very clearly on the map. Lenin and the Bolsheviks, and specifically the act of insurrection in October 1917, all of these were accused of being Blanquiists essentially. And why were they accused? Why was it a criticism to say that you're a Blanquiist? What did that mean? And of course, why was that wrong? To say, from a Marxist point of view, to say that you're a Blanquiist as a criticism, is effectively to criticise you as an adventurist, or a volunteerist, or a substitutionalist, which terms really mean to substitute yourself for the class, for the mass movement essentially. Blanqui's ideas really were to have a conspiracy of hardened revolutionary, a hardened, very small cader, secretive cader, who would seize government buildings and institutions in secret, on behalf of the working class, and certainly very sincerely and honestly, I don't think that they were power hungry, as I said, Blanqui spent most of his life in prison and refused to relent in order to be let free. So very honestly so, but nevertheless conspiratorial in nature, no real involvement of the working class, and not basing it on an already existing mass revolutionary movement of the working class, very moralistic in character, like we volunteer ourselves to do this because we want to do it at this moment, not because the conditions are right. So it was very adventurist in that sense. The criticism, the Marxist criticism of that is fundamentally not a moralistic one, but that it doesn't work. It's necessary to involve the working class in a mass struggle for power and to, in fact, base yourself on an already existing mass movement. Not really just for moralistic reasons, but because, of course, the social transformation of society requires the working class to be actively involved in it. First of all, to defend it successfully, and secondly, of course, to make a success of building socialism. He can't do it without that, with a passive relationship of the working class to the insurrection. And that certainly is borne out by what happened with Blonkey and his movement. For instance, in 1839 his Society of Seasons, as it was called effectively his revolutionary party, in 1839 seized several French government buildings and basically proclaimed the end of the government and the establishment of a socialist one. However, within a day or two it was crushed totally, and it was crushed obviously because of the passivity of the working class, because they were isolated, essentially. And Blonkey was thrown into jail, and as I said, ended up spending most of his life in jail. And he had one or two other opportunities to organise very similar insurrections with the exact same results. And we have other examples in history as well of such adventurous methods failing utterly, such as the Canton Commune, the Last Desperate Act of the Chinese Revolution of 1927, when the communists, realising how disastrous their policy of supporting Chiang Kai-shek had been, suddenly attempted to reverse all of that and go to the opposite extreme and just occupy the major city of Canton, or Guandro, as it's now known, without the support or involvement of the working class. I think about 300 people alone did this. And the workers were more or less just confused as to what was going on. And of course they were crushed, and thousands of them were executed. So that clearly doesn't work. You need mass participation. And nevertheless we have to say that we do, I think, owe a debt to Blonkey for putting this idea on the table. And it's not all wrong, and it's certainly in relation to this opportunist idea that you just gradually reform the bourgeois state out of existence or something. I would say that there's much to go for the idea of the seizure of power in that way. And we do need to have a seizure of power, but of course not an adventurous one, not a conspiratorial one or merely conspiratorial one. But if you read Lenin at the time in 1917, most specifically his article, which I sent around, I don't know if anyone read it, on the Marxism in Insurrection. He explains very clearly that the insurrection itself is not a mere conspiracy, that it has to be based not only on a mass party, not just a few hundred people or something, but a mass party, but not even just a mass party, but also actually the mass support of an advanced revolutionary class, an already existing revolutionary upsurge of the people. It needs that to draw strength from, to defend it, and to legitimise it, of course. And anyone who sees the seizure of power in the insurrection of October 1917 as a mere conspiracy and coup, just like Glomchay, which they were accused of doing by the Mensheviks and others, is, and even Rosa Luxemburg, I believe, accused them of that. Is ignorant of the whole history of the revolution up to that point, and especially Lenin's famous phrase, patiently explain, clearly the whole methodology of the Bolsheviks, and I think that the previous session really outlines it very well, was not adventurous, was not voluntary, just plowing on a head without reference to the mass movement. It was actually to patiently intervene consistently in the mass movement in a non-sectarian manner to support the mass movement, even in its errors, but obviously to criticise those errors and to patiently explain and to patiently win mass support for the revolutionary line of the Bolsheviks, which, of course, they successfully did. And Lenin also explains in this article that the insurrection would not have been possible to be carried out in June or July, which, as Nicholas explained, they were accused of trying to do, would not have been possible, because although in Petrogram, perhaps the conditions were sufficient, elsewhere they were not, the rest of the country was not there politically, essentially, and they would have been isolated. The peasantry was still really under the influence of the bourgeoisie and of the opportunists. Hadn't broken from them. You hadn't yet had the experience of the Cornelof coup or the attempt at the coup, which was of decisive significance, as we will discuss. And there was a lack of confidence. Also, in June and July, he points out that the enemy, the class enemy, the ruling class, the capitalists, had not lost fully confidence in themselves, were not divided, were not seen as confused and not having a way out, so clearly as they were by October. So clearly this was not a rash adventurous move. It was carefully prepared and planned for them. They waited for the right moment, the moment of mass support, essentially. Nevertheless, when the moment did come for the insurrection, when the conditions were there, Lenin was not only then in favour of it, it was urging for it quite aggressively, in fact, absolutely lacerating other members of the Bolshevik party who were prevaricating or were opposed to it for various reasons, and was urging and pushing relentlessly for the insurrection. And I think that is also something interesting to dwell upon. The brilliance of Lenin as an all-round Marxist, which is what obviously a Marxist has to be, a dialectician, not fetishising one particular position or tactic. Usually, if a political leader pushes caution and generally seems to hold things back, you become accustomed to thinking of that political leader as just always cautious, and usually that is the case. But Lenin actually was cautious when he needed to be very cautious and really urging patients and sobriety, etc. But then, when the conditions changed, grasped that and changed tack himself and pushed for the total opposite position in a sense for coming out for insurrection. In that article, which really sums up the internal debate and the problems, the political, you know, the working out of the political problems of the insurrection within the Bolshevik party before it was put into practice. In that article, Lenin quoting Marx refers to the insurrection as an art. And he says in doing so that that means you go on the offensive. When you have an insurrection, you have to take advantage of the concrete conditions that you find. You go on the offensive and you don't stop. You keep on exploiting the weaknesses of the enemy, going from victory to victory, pressing home your weakness, and exploiting any confusion that there is in the enemy's ranks. And what that means to say that it is an art in that way is basically to say that the insurrection is tactical in the highest degree. In other words, that it has a logic of its own that, of course, ultimately has to be informed by the general perspectives. And obviously if the Bolsheviks didn't have a perspective of the need of the workers to take power, they wouldn't have even had the idea of an insurrection. But nevertheless, once you've accepted that idea, it has its own logic. And you have to understand the very concrete conditions, what strategic points are important to occupy, what day of the week might be better to have an insurrection because of this or that consideration, that kind of thing, how ought you to pose in argument the need for an insurrection or how that kind of thing is what I think he's getting at when he says it's an art. There's no other way about it. You can't just satisfy yourself with general considerations of whether Bolsheviks will come to power eventually because it's in the law of history or something. It's in the sort of general schema of the revolution. You need to enter into the details of the concrete circumstances and actively create an insurrectionary situation and plan for it. Now, this whole debate that existed in the Bolshevik party about whether or not to have an insurrection and the winning of that debate, of course, was absolutely vital for having an insurrection in the right way and at the right time. Why did that happen? And I think it's very interesting to dwell upon this and that's why I find I think the insurrection so fascinating is precisely this conundrum of the proletarian revolution. In a pamphlet, a very important pamphlet that Trotsky wrote called Lessons of October, he wrote that I think in 1923 after a defeat in the German revolution. In that pamphlet, he explains how the proletariat is accustomed to weakness and the revolutionaries, socialist revolutionaries, especially are accustomed to weakness. In other words, as a revolutionary or as even a worker, you spend your entire life, obviously in a sense on the back foot, obviously not having power. To one degree or another, being aware that the enemy has power, being aware that it's not up to you to decide how society is run. And as revolutionaries, that means there's a certain cautiousness in how you behave. You can't be rash like Blanqui was. You have to carefully weigh up situations. You have to wait basically for the right time. You have to patiently explain, essentially. And that, of course, is absolutely correct. But there does come a moment, of course, when that isn't the case. And those moments are indeed very rare, but it does happen in a revolution where suddenly the working class and the revolutionary party are actually not on the back foot, are actually suddenly the strongest force and they may not realise it, but they are in fact the strongest force in society and have the ability to change society or to run and lead society. But being so accustomed to caution and afraid of rash steps, et cetera, it's natural for the revolutionaries, I think, and he says this, to bulk at that final step, if you like, to not see it when it's really there, to not really understand the power that you have, to be fearful of openly coming out actually for changing society on your terms. Not just in the abstract, but actually concretely as a specific task that you're going to organise. That's obviously entirely natural. That's what Lenin also meant when he said there's no one more conservative than a revolutionary. You spend your whole life talking about it as a future event and as an abstract thing and you grow so used to that. It's actually a very alien and strange thing to you to find yourself in that situation where actually possibly you could take power and maybe you ought to. It's quite a scary and strange situation for the Bolsheviks to be in. And indeed most of the leaders, maybe not the ranks of the Bolshevik party, but most of the leaders, both regionally and nationally in the Bolshevik party, spend pretty much the entirety of 1917, including right up to the insurrection, fearful of those kinds of steps in one way or another. And you see that, for instance, up to the insurrection as Enoviev and Kaminev writing a letter basically exposing the plans for the insurrection, a complete betrayal of party, discipline and unity. Lenin referred to them as strike breakers quite correctly in doing so and wanted to have them expelled from the party. They were so terrified that they were prepared to sabotage the insurrection and the party as a whole. And there were many, many other examples of that. Stalin, of course, was opposed to it and basically just disappeared for the whole of that time as he tended to do decisive moments. But that was quite a normal mood. In fact, Lenin went lacerating them, as I said, when attacking them as pathetic and not understanding the tasks of the day. It was writing them letters he was hiding at the time because of the July days and the reaction existed. Writing them letters, some of which were actually, I think one of them was burnt by the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party, so horrified and terrified, were they, by what he was saying. I would say that I don't think that attitude was necessarily repeated in the Bolshevik party as a whole and the ranks of it were probably more revolutionary. But the leaders who felt the weight of responsibility, I think, were much more cautious. Far too cautious. And that, I think, really, also Trotsky makes a connected point to this which is also fascinating, I think. Which is that he points out that because of this fact you see this very qualitative difference between the bourgeois revolution and the workers' revolution. Alan referred to this in his earlier talk saying that the bourgeois revolution doesn't really have to be that conscious of what it's doing, hence Cromwell thinking he was establishing the kingdom of God on Earth and not a capitalist society. The bourgeois revolution is more confused about itself and doesn't have such a high degree of planning and organisation because the bourgeois, even though they're an oppressed class under feudalism, have at their disposal various banking institutions such as the city played a key role in supporting Cromwell in the English revolution. They have the universities, they have general power, and also they're not aiming to abolish privilege and class society as a whole. So it's a certain extent they can even bribe sections of the old ruling class if they can make money out of a new capitalist society. Probably many of the feudal landlords are quite happy to go along with it. So it's kind of, in a sense, it's easier or rather less has to be less resolute and clear about what it's doing, I think. Because the workers' revolution does aim to abolish class in a whole class system as a whole and privilege, et cetera, in its entirety. So you can't really bribe the old ruling class into accepting it. You can't sort of muddle your way through. I suppose you could say that reformism in the welfare state would be an equivalent attempt at bribing the capitalist into accepting socialism, gradually building it up around them like the bourgeoisie put its pieces in place for running a capitalist society. Obviously it didn't work because it's not in the capitalist's interest to give up all privileges and to live as ordinary people in a socialist society. So for that reason what Trotsky says is that the workers' revolution requires a party in the place of the press, the bourgeois press and the bourgeois universities and all the other institutions that even under feudalism the capitalists have. In the place of that the workers have the party which is far more clear, far more class conscious, far more aware of what its tasks really are than the bourgeois parties were in their revolution. And that also I think sums up the kind of weightiness of this decisive step that you're taking, which is really to begin the abolition of the class system as a whole. Hence the fractiousness of this debate within the Bolshevik party and hence in almost all other revolutions the failure of the party or the so-called revolution party of course turned out not to be to take that final decisive step to organise the taking of power. And Trotsky also points out that the point of view of those in the Bolshevik party opposed to the insurrections in particular Sinoviev of course came up with a whole host of excuses for why we shouldn't take power. They refer to just how dangerous the enemy was of course this makes sense in light of what I said about the revolution being used to being on the back foot. He refers to the artillery rain outside of Petrograd pointed at it and he lists a whole series of terrifying military kind of entanglements that he faced with. And of course none of it really materialised because in the act of organising an insurrection and showing a way forward they were able to actually dissolve those military organs essentially those reactionary military organs and the rank and file of them effectively were won over to the revolution and they were not able to use that but of course you can't find that out once and for all until you actually take that step although you can be pretty sure but you can't really prove that other than by the act of actually organising the seizure of power and Trotsky points out that of course had they not seized power and they certainly wouldn't have done I think had Lenin not been in the leadership of the party had they not done that then actually what would have happened is it would have petered out basically the masses would have become disillusioned because they would have begun to see the Bolsheviks as yet basically another version of the Mensheviks all talk and no action not actually prepared to do anything weak and prevaricating etc and they would have therefore become demoralised and wouldn't have organised an insurrection spontaneously and gone home essentially and then of course afterwards the sort of Bolshevik intellectuals could write these kind of it's a basically a self-fulfilling prophecy because afterwards you would say look the workers have become passive they obviously weren't prepared to fight for the revolution so good thing that we didn't organise any kind of rash insurrection and of course the middle class intellectuals are accustomed to dismissing the workers in that way not calling the workers out not trying to use their positions to inspire the workers they demoralise the workers and then blame the workers for that demoralisation that's quite a typical state of affairs and I think also that shows the genius of Lenin and the brilliance of Lenin as a revolutionary in that he understood and certainly put into practice the ability of a leadership to transform one in the same situation I think that's really clearly the key lesson of the Bolsheviks that the very same situation the very same balance of class forces can be transformed one way or another by the presence or otherwise of a determined leadership prepared to act and action decides everything in those kinds of circumstances and some people say well maybe Lenin wasn't really a materialist then maybe Lenin wasn't really a Marxist because he denigrated the iron laws of history and in place of them put the subjective power of leadership to change history almost at will which is of course nonsense it's not at will to be patiently explained for months they had to have a mass movement in place and also to be for their patient explaining to be successful it had to connect with the real mood the real situation and what was there and also obviously having decided on an insurrection to make a success of it they needed to have the active and passive support of the mass of the class to actually have the thousands of red guards and things that you need to actually do it again how do you manage to find your disposal thousands of red guards you can't just do that out of sheer will power so of course it's not anti materialist to say such a thing however a materialist understands that an individual or a party which is itself part of the structural society can alter what goes on in society can change the course of history depending on what its own position is now on to the insurrection itself and how it was done I think that the insurrection as is known was an extremely smooth affair really especially in Petrograd which is of course the decisive place very well organised and very calm and peaceful as the quote I gave at the beginning of the talk indicated but that was possible I think because of the perspectives that the Bolsheviks had because the confidence that they had in the masses the political tactics they worked out on the basis of those perspectives were so brilliant in particular as Trotsky points out using the defensive mask of Soviet legality in order to organise technically the taking of power and again that was possible because of their perspectives and understanding of the revolution the Bolsheviks from the beginning in fact in the case of Lenin right back to 1905 understood the Soviets as for what they really in implication were which is potential organs of working class power not just talking shops or nice ways to check the bourgeois and hold them to push the bourgeois in a certain direction but actually it's a new kind of power structure according to the interests and position of the working class in society and therefore their existence alongside a bourgeois parliament in the case of the provisional government meant a situation of dual power and that meant that that situation could not last forever you can't have dual power in society for a sustained period of time you can't have two different powers resting on different classes with different interests sort of sitting side by side and sort of checking one another at one time one of them is going to have to dominate the other and dismiss it but for a period of time of course it did have to essentially get the approval of the Soviets for anything it wanted to do and that's really dual power amazingly no one else really seemed to grasp the significance of that the Mensheviks, the SRs and others didn't really see what it was I think neither did Stalin and others they saw it as a sort of check on just another kind of instrument like I don't know like having a kind of left wing newspaper might be an instrument to influence politics an instrument with which you might influence the political setup or what was happening in society rather than as an actual organ of power which it clearly was but the Bolsheviks under Lenin's leadership understood that and they therefore could pose certain demands such as all power to the Soviets which at first glance may not appear revolutionary or may not appear as sectarian which they were accused of being well it wasn't sectarian but it may appear as a sort of mild demand just saying well look that the Mensheviks should run society through the Soviets but of course they understood that the Mensheviks couldn't do that and that was because the Bolsheviks to run society that would really mean fundamentally the working class leading the revolution and pushing the bourgeoisie out so they could pose that as a demand knowing that it wouldn't be fulfilled by the opportunists and in posing it of course they would win the kudos for posing it and would be able eventually to win to take that power themselves through the Soviets so they understood that and therefore I think the whole tactics of the insurrection really flowed from that understanding quite brilliantly and the situation of dual power had developed quite dramatically towards clearly was developing towards a sort of a finale if you like by the time of the certainly by the time of the Cornelof Cw which again the others didn't really understand the significance of but if you did understand it as a situation of dual power the Cornelof Cw was obviously deeply significant in what it meant the Cornelof Cw or attempted Cw was obviously an attempt first of all by the provisional government to crush the Soviets because the Cornelof Cw happened because the provisional government under Kerenski's leadership called in Cornelof Cw who was the head of the army to move out to move into Petrograd various troops that were not going to be as loyal to the Soviets as the troops in Petrograd were who'd been effectively won over to the Bolsheviks and to the Soviet power structure he called in new troops or wanted to be called in new troops by Cornelof Cw in order to sort of undermine the revolutionary troops that were in Petrograd so that in itself the mere doing of that in itself already indicated an attempt to end dual power by the provisional government Cornelof then obviously to get a step further by actually saying why not why don't I take power and clear out all of the revolutionaries that are also in the provisional government the Menshaviks and others that are sitting in the provisional government that wanted to take power as a military dictator and then of course Kerenski fearing being supplanted himself had no one to turn to but the Soviets themselves and basically the Bolsheviks who he then organised a committee of defence or proposed a committee of defence to the Bolsheviks and others to defend the revolution against the counter-revolution of Cornelof they think they hill the Bolsheviks were really sectarian and wouldn't agree to work with them but actually the Bolsheviks of course understanding the significance of this event that it meant the decisive struggle for power between the Soviets and the bourgeoisie agreed to it and seeing this instrument as a potential instrument for insurrection and they agreed to it and basically then took it over and the Cornelof coup of course armed the working class or rather the reaction against the Cornelof coup armed the working class effectively under the leadership of the Bolsheviks and it created a red guard of 25,000 armed workers essentially to defend the city from Cornelof and in this way I think you can see that the Cornelof coup is all important political lesson it gave the working class creating that final push I think of the working class into the arms of the Bolsheviks by making the workers see the danger of counter-revolution but it also as well as that quite specifically organised the working class into armed detachments in order to defend the revolution and therefore also laid the technical basis for the seizure of power and this committee of defence that was created that gradually morphed into the military revolutionary committee was then used and pushed by the Bolsheviks as a means then there to defend the Soviets and specifically the second congress of Soviets which was coming up under their initiative to defend that to defend that against the counter-revolution and of course that wasn't a manufactured excuse really for using this military revolutionary committee of course it was a very real threat as the Cornelof coup showed but they posed it always in those defensive terms we need to develop and establish this military structure of the Soviets essentially to defend them from the threat of counter-revolution they always posed things very cleverly to really make the workers realise I think that we need to take power because you can't have dual power forever you can't have this situation we have to either carry out a revolution under our leadership or just give up to a counter-revolution they wanted to pose it in that way and in doing so of course they made it clear that the Bolsheviks weren't trying to take power for themselves before the revolution and that it should be the very revolution's own power structures in other words the Soviets which were all party institutions they weren't just Bolshevik institutions that it should be done through the Soviets in other words through Soviet legality and it therefore flowed from the general demand of all power to the Soviets it was an extension of that and of course as you may know Lenin actually generally disagreed with this not as a matter of principle but he found it to be another instance of prevaricating he thought that the time was right and he was really anxious at any looking for an excuse to delay the insurrection essentially which is what I think he saw this posing of it as something to defend the upcoming Congress of Soviets that meant a delay of the insurrection until the upcoming Congress of Soviets he saw that as a delay that it was dangerous and he thought once the time is ripe the situation is on such a knife edge and is so tense he sees that opportunity he can't afford to just delay and he saw the delaying as perhaps an excuse to do nothing actually now he was wrong in doing so and he effectively lost that argument to Trotsky and others but ultimately played a brilliant role and was absolutely decisive in pushing for the insurrection wouldn't have happened full stop I think if it weren't for him pushing and pushing it in that way and as Lenin was wanting to do I think he was bending the stick one way perhaps a bit too far but bending it against being pushed in the other direction in other words in an opportunist direction or in a reformist direction and perhaps bent it too far but nevertheless played an absolutely brilliant and decisive role in urging for this insurrection to take place so the committee offence then becomes the actual military revolutionary committee on the 16th of October as an all party institution of the Soviets i.e. not as strictly speaking a Bolshevik institution however the Mensheviks boycotted it by this point even though they originally proposed it in fact to make this point clear to the workers that it was not the Bolsheviks just seizing power because they wanted it but actually this was a legitimate organ of the workers own organisations the Soviets Nazimir was appointed the head of this of the military revolutionary committee and he was a left social revolutionary he was not a Bolshevik and in fact under Trotsky's proposal the way that the military revolutionary committee was formed was by taking in delegates from the Soviets from the soldiers Soviet delegates from the fleet that is the navy the railway union representatives from the factory committees as well which were slightly separate organisations to the Soviets and also from the Red Guards that had been created in the defence of Petrograd from Cornelof so you can see how it was quite clearly formed not as a party organisation but as an all party organisation of the Soviets although clearly under the Bolsheviks impetus and leadership and Nazimir then passed the resolution against the removal of troops and I'll explain this in a second from Petrograd in the soldiers section of the Petrograd Soviets by 281 to 1 and really from that point onward all of the decisive sections of the garrison of Petrograd of the soldiers in Petrograd really come under the organisational leadership of the military revolutionary committee and regarding regarding that I haven't explained this yet but this was really a decisive turning point in the struggle for power is it kind of like a sequel if you like or a much less dramatic sequel of the Cornelof attempt on power which was that after having called in Cornelof to bring in troops that were perhaps hostile to the revolution or loyal to the provisional government into Petrograd the provisional government attempted on the 11th of October to move the troops that were in Petrograd that were loyal to the revolution outside of Petrograd these troops had generally come under the leadership of the Soviet and were sympathetic to the Bolsheviks etc they issued an order they should be sent to the front to fight in the war and everyone immediately understood the significance of this and the danger of it hence Nazimir moving this resolution in the soldiers section of the Petrograd Soviet against that and when they did that, when they effectively nullified that order they had created not just political dual power but they had really stepped up into military dual power if you like now there was a situation where the military was obeying really the orders and the authority of the Soviet power structure and not that of the provisional government and Trotsky says that really that point onwards that was actually the beginning of the insurrection although it was maybe not fully understood at that time the day before that on the 10th of October a resolution had passed in the Bolshevik Central Committee by ten votes to two in favour of organising the insurrection so by this time Lenin has won over the leadership of the Bolshevik party to the idea of insurrection and then of course this decisive thing kind of falls into the lap really of the Bolsheviks where the the Petrograd Garrison was attempted to be moved out but then wasn't and that really put the ball in their court it gave them control of the situation and from this point onwards the military revolutionary committee really goes forward and organises quite smoothly and brilliantly the dissolving of the power structures and the apparatus of coercion of the old state apparatus and absorbs them into the chain of command if you like of the military revolutionary committee and the Soviets the main one being the Petrograd Garrison that I've just mentioned but once that happened many other military organisations in and around Petrograd announced that they will really only follow orders of the Soviets also you have a much initiative being taken from below by the workers such as for instance orders for arms to be sent to the front and really being intercepted and by the workers in those arms factories basically saying no we're not going to do that actually we'll send those arms and ammunition to the red guards in order to arm the insurrection essentially there are many many examples along these lines another really good example is that of the bicycle men who were kind of an elite of the of the military who were not seen as loyal to the revolution because they were more elite essentially more privileged and obviously being on bikes kind of like a modern version of the cavalry I suppose slightly comical image that it creates but anyway they were ordered I can't remember the details but they were ordered I think to go in and to move into Petrograd in order to defend Petrograd and then coming insurrection which the provisional government was vaguely anticipating but I think what happened is that the bicycle men their leader wanted to check the order wasn't quite sure of the order or something so then kind of telephoned to someone in the army or something along those lines and that conversation was intercepted by troops that were loyal to the Soviets and to the military revolutionary committee and they informed the military revolutionary committee who then basically sent a message to these bicycle men to have a meeting with them which they then did and they basically won them over to the revolution to the insurrection or at the very least pacified them so they couldn't be used they couldn't be relied upon from that point on was to attack the insurrection or to attack the seizure of power and there were a great many events such as that in the seizure of power and you see at that time really that the military revolutionary committee was not all seeing eye because the workers have become so organized so interconnected with each other and so class conscious and determined under the bold and confident leadership of the Bolsheviks that they begin to take initiatives on their own behalf and they intercept things on their own initiative they hear things such as in this example and they relay it to the military revolutionary committee in general the military revolutionary committee is in touch with everything and the current commissars to sort of represent it in every military organization in and around Petrograd kept in touch with everything on the days of the insurrection revolutionary workers would go to to Smolny which was the building that housed the military revolutionary committee headquarters throughout the nights to get updates on what was going on because that was the epicenter that knew everything and in that way the working class of Petrograd became organized and self-aware to an unprecedented degree and able to go forward with extreme confidence and carry out the smooth seizure of power and I think that really proved correct Trotsky's point that the workers revolution is much more planned much more organized and conscious than is a bourgeois revolution which is somewhat of a more chaotic and incomplete affair as we know but the decisive step is still not taken here and this is something I would like to emphasize a lesson that we need to take from the insurrection the concreteness of it because it's not enough at this point just to have developed all of this interconnectedness of the workers even to arm the workers the decisive step is still not here taken that is to say the banks the post office the telegraph agency the power stations all of these key institutions of running society have not been seized and interconnected nor has the old government been arrested and publicly proclaimed and shown to be powerless nor has a new power been publicly announced and proven to be the only power that can run society that's really if you're going to run and create a new society on completely different lines on socialist lines that's obviously what you need to do you can't do what they did in the Spanish revolution where you kind of from below seized all of the factories the anarchist workers that's what they did they seized all of the factories and then being anarchists who don't like centralism and power thought that that was enough and they said we've created what they call a new social economy that's it we've taken the factories and that's it we've done it but of course they hadn't touched the old government they hadn't broken their link with the army they hadn't done all of those things they hadn't proclaimed to the world and that vagueness allowed the old state to kind of recover its nerve to re-establish some military organisation and to go on the offensive and to shut down workers control etc but of course in Russia they didn't do that they actually did go forward and organise the taking of power so on that fateful night before the calling of the second congress of Soviets they seized power throughout the night all of these key places including especially of course the winter palace but also the post offices, the telegraph agency the telephone exchange the power stations, the water supply all of these were seized which was very easy to do because the workers in many of these places of course already supported the revolution but they were seized and then of course the government ministers were arrested in the winter palace bloodlessly all of it very bloodless very smooth in fact when this took place there were many examples of attempts at looting by perhaps of people on the street or maybe more rank and file elements of the insurrection who thought they could really take advantage of the situation and responsible red guards would stop them and would say don't stain the proletarian victory and even despite this there were still rumours circulated that it was all just chaos and they were looting and raping and pillaging which was false as the quote I gave at the beginning shows quotes from counter-revolutionaries astonishing they almost can't believe it's an insurrection an insurrection can't be surely this smooth and organised and open surely but it was and obviously many people concluded therefore it was a coup and it was a sort of conspiratorial seizure of power actually that proves precisely the opposite it proves that it was so popular and as I've described it was so well organised and it could be so well organised because of just how organised the working class had become that it could do it in such a smooth manner they also seized and this is of a special significance the state bank showing that they had learnt quite consciously learnt the lesson of the Paris commune where of course in a more spontaneous manner they seized Paris but didn't take the state bank and basically left that in the hands of the counter-revolution to finance and organise the counter-revolution which they did didn't do that in Russia obviously having learnt that lesson now at the final point then I just want to make is that in relation to this the anarchist conception of revolution the anarchist idea that you can you don't need a party in fact that a party is the biggest enemy of a revolution you don't need any kind of central apparatus to imagine that this degree this overturn of such tremendous significance that it doesn't just overwhelm the old power but put something in its place to imagine that that can be done that such a concrete act can be done without organisation and planning without making sure that you have loyal troops in all of the key strategic places of the city so that you can't be destroyed by the counter-revolution or starved into submission to imagine that just spontaneously emerges I think is frankly absurd and when you pose it in this clear and concrete way rather than talking in the vague abstraction as to whether or not leaderships are inherently bad or something when you pose it in that clear way I think it becomes so obvious that you couldn't do it in any other way you can I think organise a revolution spontaneously but you can't organise a socialist insurrection which you do need to have and we've seen in the February revolution that was effectively entirely spontaneous and without leadership also Tahris Square in Egypt a few years ago pretty much entirely spontaneous and without leadership and both of them did succeed in toppling the old regime or rather the figurehead of the old regime they did succeed in that but a socialist revolution isn't just the undermining of the old power and the sort of decapitating of the old power so that the new privileged and powerful can rush in and fill the vacuum which of course is what they did in February it's not just that it's a fundamental reorganisation of society that requires challenges and destroys even the old privileges and power of the old ruling class at every level so you can't just leave it to chance in that way you can't just satisfy yourself with removing the czar or some other figurehead you've got to if you're really serious about a socialist transformation of society you've got to grasp that it's not acceptable to the bourgeoisie the bourgeoisie can reconcile itself to losing Mubarak or the czar and then can take advantage of that new situation they cannot reconcile themselves using their banks their factories and all the rest of it which is really what a socialist transformation of society needs so you've got to be serious about this you've got a planet and also the workers need to know workers may be entirely revolutionary then all of the workers which is a bit over the top but let's just say all of the workers are in favour of a socialist revolution which you'll never have, you'll never have 100% of the workers but even if you did that still is not enough they need to know that it's being planned otherwise how is it going to happen is one random worker just going to put their hand up and say I propose that on the 15th of so and so we arrest the government and how are they going to make sure that all the other workers have understood that and are with them in it you need a universally recognised and legitimate instrument in other words a party that everybody knows the name of and supports to propose as Trotsky said to set a date for the insurrection and to actually concretely organise it not undemocratically of course to do it when you have the mass support and to canvass for that support and to make sure that and in doing so of course you actually give the workers more confidence not less it's not true what the anarchists say that somehow all leaderships just pacify and depress the workers actually they can raise them up to a higher level if they're a good leadership I think it's frankly ridiculous to imagine that can happen without such an instrument anyway I'll finish there