The short answer depends on which branch of Marxism you mean.
If you are talking about libertarian Marxists such as council communists, Situationists and so on, then the answer is a resounding "yes." Like anarchists, these Marxists see a social revolution as being based on working class self-management and, indeed, criticised (and broke with) Bolshevism precisely on this question (as can be seen from Lenin's comments in Left-wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder on the question of class or party dictatorship). However, if we look at the mainstream Marxist tradition (namely Bolshevism), the answer has to be an empathic "no."
As we noted in section H.1.4, anarchists have long argued that the organisations created by the working class in struggle would be the initial framework of a free society. These organs, created to resist capitalism and the state, would be the means to overthrow both as well as extending and defending the revolution (such bodies have included the "soviets" and "factory committees" of the Russian Revolution, the collectives in the Spanish revolution, popular assemblies as in the current Argentine revolt and the French Revolution, revolutionary unions and so on). Thus working class self-management is at the core of the anarchist vision and so we stress the importance (and autonomy) of working class organisations in the revolutionary movement and the revolution itself. Anarchists work within such bodies at the base, in the mass assemblies, and do not seek to replace their power with that of their own organisation (see section J.3.6).
Leninists, in contrast, have a different perspective on such bodies. Rather than placing them at the heart of the revolution, Leninism views them purely in instrumental terms — namely, as a means of achieving party power. Writing in 1907, Lenin argued that "Social-Democratic Party organisations may, in case of necessity, participate in inter-party Soviets of Workers' Delegates . . . and in congresses . . . of these organisations, and may organise such institutions, provided this is done on strict Party lines for the purpose of developing and strengthening the Social-Democratic Labour Party." The party would "utilise" such organs "for the purpose of developing the Social-Democratic movement." Significantly, given the fate of the soviets post-1917, Lenin notes that the party "must bear in mind that if Social-Democratic activities among the proletarian masses are properly, effectively and widely organised, such institutions may actually become superfluous." [Marx, Engels and Lenin, Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 210] Thus the means by which working class can manage their own affairs would become "superfluous" once the party was in power. How the working class could be considered the "ruling class" in such a society is hard to understand.
As Oscar Anweiler summarises in his account of the soviets during the two Russian Revolutions:
"The drawback of the new 'soviet democracy' hailed by Lenin in 1906 is that he could envisage the soviets only as controlled organisations; for him they were instruments by which the party controlled the working masses, rather than true forms of a workers democracy. The basic contradiction of the Bolshevik soviet system — which purports to be a democracy of all working people but in reality recognises only the rule of one party — is already contained in Lenin's interpretation of the soviets during the first Russian revolution." [The Soviets, p. 85]
Thirteen years later, Lenin repeated this same vision of party power as the goal of revolution. In his infamous diatribe against "Left-wing" Communism (i.e. those Marxists close to anarchism), Lenin argued that "the correct understanding of a Communist of his tasks" lies in "correctly gauging the conditions and the moment when the vanguard of the proletariat can successfully seize power, when it will be able during and after this seizure of power to obtain support from sufficiently broad strata of the working class and of the non-proletarian toiling masses, and when, thereafter, it will be able to maintain, consolidate, and extend its rule, educating, training and attracting ever broader masses of the toilers." He stressed that "to go so far . . . as to draw a contrast in general between the dictatorship of the masses and the dictatorship of the leaders, is ridiculously absurd and stupid." [Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, p. 35 and p. 27] As we noted in section H.1.2, the Bolsheviks had this stage explicitly argued for party dictatorship and considered it a truism that (to re-quote Lenin) "an organisation taking in the whole proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship. It can be exercised only by a vanguard . . . the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised by a mass proletarian organisation." [Collected Works, vol. 32, p. 21]
Therefore, rather than seeing revolution being based upon the empowerment of working class organisation and the socialist society being based on this, Leninists see workers oorganisations in purely instrumental terms as the means of achieving a Leninist government:
"With all the idealised glorification of the soviets as a new, higher, and more democratic type of state, Lenin's principal aim was revolutionary-strategic rather than social-structural . . . The slogan of the soviets was primarily tactical in nature; the soviets were in theory organs of mass democracy, but in practice tools for the Bolshevik Party. In 1917 Lenin outlined his transitional utopia without naming the definitive factor: the party. To understand the soviets' true place in Bolshevism, it is not enough, therefore, to accept the idealised picture in Lenin's state theory. Only an examination of the actual give-and-take between Bolsheviks and soviets during the revolution allows a correct understanding of their relationship." [Oscar Anweiler, Op. Cit., pp. 160-1]
Simply out, Leninism confuses the party power and workers' power. An example of this "confusion" can be found in most Leninist works. For example, John Rees argues that "the essence of the Bolsheviks' strategy . . . was to take power from the Provisional government and put it in the hands of popular organs of working class power — a point later made explicit by Trotsky in his Lessons of October." ["In Defence of October," International Socialism, no. 52, p. 73] However, in reality, as noted in section H.3.3, Lenin had always been clear that the essence of the Bolsheviks' strategy was the taking of power by the Bolshevik party itself. He explicitly argued for Bolshevik power during 1917, considering the soviets as the best means of achieving this. He constantly equated Bolshevik rule with working class rule. Once in power, this identification did not change. As such, rather than argue for power to be placed into "the hands of popular organs of working class power" Lenin argued this only insofar as he was sure that these organs would then immediately pass that power into the hands of a Bolshevik government.
This explains his turn against the soviets after July 1917 when he considered it impossible for the Bolsheviks to gain a majority in them. It can be seen when the Bolshevik party's Central Committee opposed the idea of a coalition government immediately after the overthrow of the Provisional Government in October 1917. As it explained, "a purely Bolshevik government" was "impossible to refuse" since "a majority at the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets . . . handed power over to this government." [quoted by Robert V. Daniels, A Documentary History of Communism, pp. 127-8] A mere ten days after the October Revolution the Left Social Revolutionaries charged that the Bolshevik government was ignoring the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets, established by the second Congress of Soviets as the supreme organ in society. Lenin dismissed their charges, stating that "the new power could not take into account, in its activity, all the rigmarole which would set it on the road of the meticulous observation of all the formalities." [quoted by Frederick I. Kaplan, Bolshevik Ideology and the Ethics of Soviet Labour, p. 124] Clearly, the soviets did not have "All Power," they promptly handed it over to a Bolshevik government (and Lenin implies that he was not bound in any way to the supreme organ of the soviets in whose name he ruled). All of which places Rees' assertions into the proper context and shows that the slogan "All Power to the Soviets" is used by Leninists in a radically different way than most people would understand by it! It also explains why soviets were disbanded if the opposition won majorities in them in early 1918:
"Menshevik newspapers and activists in the trade unions, the Soviets, and the factories had made a considerable impact on a working class which was becoming increasingly disillusioned with the Bolshevik regime, so much so that in many places the Bolsheviks felt constrained to dissolve Soviets or prevent re-elections where Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries had gained majorities." [Israel Getzler, Martov, p. 179]
Thus the Bolsheviks expelled the Mensheviks in the context of political loses before the Civil War. The Civil War gave the Bolsheviks an excuse and they "drove them underground, just on the eve of the elections to the Fifth Congress of Soviets in which the Mensheviks were expected to make significant gains" and while the Bolsheviks "offered some formidable fictions to justify the expulsions" there was "of course no substance in the charge that the Mensheviks had been mixed in counter-revolutionary activities on the Don, in the Urals, in Siberia, with the Czechoslovaks, or that they had joined the worst Black Hundreds." [Getzler, Op. Cit., p. 181]
While we will discuss this in more detail in section 6 of the appendix on "What happened during the Russian Revolution?", we can state here that the facts are that the Bolsheviks only supported "Soviet power" when the soviets were Bolshevik. As recognised by Martov, who argued that the Bolsheviks loved Soviets only when they were "in the hands of the Bolshevik party." [quoted by Getzler, Op. Cit., p. 174] Which, perhaps, explains Lenin's comment that "[o]nly the development of this war [Kornilov's counter-revolutionary rebellion in August 1917] can bring us to power but we must speak of this as little as possible in our agitation (remembering very well that even tomorrow events may put us in power and then we will not let it go)." [quoted by Neil Harding, Leninism, p. 253]
All this can be confirmed, unsurprisingly enough, by looking at the essay Rees references. When studying Trotsky's Lessons of October we find the same instrumentalist approach to the question of the "popular organs of working class power." This is stated quite clearly by Trotsky in his essay when he argued that the "essential aspect" of Bolshevism was the "training, tempering, and organisation of the proletarian vanguard as enables the latter to seize power, arms in hand." As such, the vanguard seizes power, not "popular organs of working class power." Indeed, the idea that the working class can seize power itself is raised and dismissed:
"But the events have proved that without a party capable of directing the proletarian revolution, the revolution itself is rendered impossible. The proletariat cannot seize power by a spontaneous uprising . . . there is nothing else that can serve the proletariat as a substitute for its own party."
Hence "popular organs of working class power" are not considered as the "essence" of Bolshevism, rather the "fundamental instrument of proletarian revolution is the party." Popular organs are seen purely in instrumental terms, always discussing such organs of "workers' power" in terms of the strategy and program of the party, not in terms of the value that such organs have as forms of working class self-management of society.
This can be clearly seen from Trotsky's discussion of the "October Revolution" of 1917 in Lessons of October. Commenting on the Bolshevik Party conference of April 1917, he states that the "whole of . . . [the] Conference was devoted to the following fundamental question: Are we heading toward the conquest of power in the name of the socialist revolution or are we helping (anybody and everybody) to complete the democratic revolution? . . . Lenin's position was this: . . . the capture of the soviet majority; the overthrow of the Provisional Government; the seizure of power through the soviets." Note, through the soviets not by the soviets, thus indicating the fact the Party would hold the real power, not the soviets of workers' delegates. This is confirmed when Trotsky states that "to prepare the insurrection and to carry it out under cover of preparing for the Second Soviet Congress and under the slogan of defending it, was of inestimable advantage to us" and that it was "one thing to prepare an armed insurrection under the naked slogan of the seizure of power by the party, and quite another thing to prepare and then carry out an insurrection under the slogan of defending the rights of the Congress of Soviets." The Soviet Congress just provided "the legal cover" for the Bolshevik plans rather than a desire to see the Soviets actually start managing society. [The Lessons of October]
Thus we have the "seizure of power through the soviets" with "an armed insurrection under the naked slogan of the seizure of power by the party" being hidden by "the slogan" ("the legal cover") of defending the Soviets! Hardly a case of placing power in the hands of working class organisations. Trotsky does note that in 1917 the "soviets had to either disappear entirely or take real power into their hands." However, he immediately adds that "they could take power . . . only as the dictatorship of the proletariat directed by a single party." Clearly, the "single party" has the real power, not the soviets. Unsurprisingly, in practice, the rule of "a single party" also amounted to the soviets effectively disappearing as they quickly became mere ciphers for party rule. Soon the "direction" by "a single party" became the dictatorship of that party over the soviets, which (it should be noted) Trotsky defended wholeheartedly until his death (see section H.3.8).
This cannot be considered as a one-off. Trotsky repeated this analysis in his History of the Russian Revolution, when he stated that the "question, what mass organisations were to serve the party for leadership in the insurrection, did not permit an a priori, much less a categorical, answer." Thus the "mass organisations" serve the party, not vice versa. This instrumentalist perspective can be seen when Trotsky notes that when "the Bolsheviks got a majority in the Petrograd Soviet, and afterward a number of others," the "phrase 'Power to the Soviets' was not, therefore, again removed from the order of the day, but received a new meaning: All power to the Bolshevik soviets." This meant that the "party was launched on the road of armed insurrection through the soviets and in the name of the soviets." As he put it in his discussion of the July days in 1917, the army "was far from ready to raise an insurrection in order to give power to the Bolshevik Party." Ultimately, "the state of popular consciousness . . . made impossible the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in July." [vol. 2, p. 303, p. 307, p. 78 and p. 81] So much for "all power to the Soviets"! He even quotes Lenin: "The Bolsheviks have no right to await the Congress of Soviets. They ought to seize the power right now." Ultimately, the "Central Committee adopted the motion of Lenin as the only thinkable one: to form a government of the Bolsheviks only." [vol. 3, pp. 131-2 and p. 299]
In case anyone is in doubt what Trotsky meant, he clarified it in the book he was writing when he was assassinated: "After eight months of inertia and of democratic chaos, came the dictatorship of the Bolsheviks." [Stalin, vol. 2, p. 242] This is confirmed by other sources: "Within six weeks of the October revolution, Gorky's newspaper Novaya Zhizn lamented the rapidity with which life had run out of the Soviet movement: 'The slogan "All power to the Soviets,"' it concluded, 'had actually been transformed into the slogan "All power to the few Bolsheviks" . . . The Soviets decay, become enervated, and from day to day lose more of their prestige in the ranks of democracy.' The initial heroic stage — the stage of mass involvement and unsullied dreams — was already over." [Neil Harding, Leninism, p. 253]
So where does this leave Rees' assertion that the Bolsheviks aimed to put power into the hands of working class organisations? Clearly, Rees' summary of both Trotsky's essay and the "essence" of Bolshevism leave a lot to be desired. As can be seen, the "essence" of Trotsky's essay and of Bolshevism is the importance of party power, not workers' power (as recognised by other members of the SWP: "The masses needed to be profoundly convinced that there was no alternative to Bolshevik power." [Tony Cliff, Lenin, vol. 2, p. 265]). Trotsky even provides us with an analogy which effectively and simply refutes Rees' claims. "Just as the blacksmith cannot seize the red hot iron in his naked hand," Trotsky asserts, "so the proletariat cannot directly seize power; it has to have an organisation accommodated to this task." While paying lip service to the soviets as the organisation "by means of which the proletariat can both overthrow the old power and replace it," he adds that "the soviets by themselves do not settle the question" as they may "serve different goals according to the programme and leadership. The soviets receive their programme from the party . . . the revolutionary party represents the brain of the class. The problem of conquering the power can be solved only by a definite combination of party with soviets." [The History of the Russian Revolution, vol. 3, pp. 160-1 and p. 163]
Thus the key organisation was the party, not the mass organisations of the working class. Indeed, as we discussed in section H.3.8, Trotsky was quite explicit that such organisations could only become the state form of the proletariat under the party dictatorship. Significantly, Trotsky fails to indicate what would happen when these two powers clash. Certainly Trotsky's role in the Russian revolution tells us that the power of the party was more important to him than democratic control by workers through mass bodies (see the appendices on "What happened during the Russian Revolution?" and "What was the Kronstadt Rebellion?"). Indeed, as we have shown in section H.3.8, Trotsky explicitly argued that a state was required to overcome the "wavering" in the working class which could be expressed by democratic decision making.
Given this legacy of viewing workers' organisations in purely instrumental terms, the opinion of Martov (the leading left-Menshevik during the Russian Revolution) seems appropriate. He argued that "[a]t the moment when the revolutionary masses expressed their emancipation from the centuries old yoke of the old State by forming 'autonomous republics of Kronstadt' and trying Anarchist experiments such as 'workers' control,' etc. — at that moment, the 'dictatorship of the proletariat and the poorest peasantry' (said to be incarnated in the real dictatorship of the opposed 'true' interpreters of the proletariat and the poorest peasantry: the chosen of Bolshevist Communism) could only consolidate itself by first dressing itself in such Anarchist and anti-State ideology." [The State and Socialist Revolution, p. 47] As can be seen, Martov has a point. As the text used as evidence that the Bolsheviks aimed to give power to workers organisations shows, this was not an aim of the Bolshevik party. Rather, such workers organs were seen purely as a means to the end of party power.
It is for this reason that anarchists argue for direct working class self-management of society. When we argue that working class organisations must be the framework of a free society they mean it. We do not equate party power with working class power or think that "All power to the Soviets" is possible if they immediately delegate that power to the leaders of the party. This is for obvious reasons:
"If the revolutionary means are out of their hands, if they are in the hands of a techno-bureaucratic elite, then such an elite will be in a position to direct to their own benefit not only the course of the revolution, but the future society as well. If the proletariat are to ensure that an elite will not control the future society, they must prevent them from controlling the course of the revolution." [Alan Carter, Marx: A Radical Critique, p. 165]
Thus the slogan "All power to the Soviets" for anarchists means exactly that — organs for the working class to run society directly, based on mandated, recallable delegates. As such, this slogan fitted perfectly with our ideas, as anarchists had been arguing since the 1860's that such workers' councils were both a weapon of class struggle against capitalism and the framework of the future libertarian society. For the Bolshevik tradition, that slogan simply means that a Bolshevik government will be formed over and above the soviets. The difference is important, "for the Anarchists declared, if 'power' really should belong to the soviets, it could not belong to the Bolshevik party, and if it should belong to that Party, as the Bolsheviks envisaged, it could not belong to the soviets." [Voline, The Unknown Revolution, p. 213] Reducing the soviets to simply executing the decrees of the central (Bolshevik) government and having their All-Russian Congress be able to recall the government (i.e. those with real power) does not equal "all power," quite the reverse — the soviets will simply be a fig-leaf for party power.
In summary, rather than aim to place power into the hands of workers' organisations, most Marxists do not. Their aim is to place power into the hands of the party. Workers' organisations are simply means to this end and, as the Bolshevik regime showed, if they clash with that goal, they will be simply be disbanded. However, we must stress that not all Marxist tendencies subscribe to this. The council communists, for example, broke with the Bolsheviks precisely over this issue, the difference between party and class power.