 |
| Lenin and Trotsky on 2nd Anniversary of the October Revolution |
Introduction
The RCIT (Revolutionary Communist International Tendency), in
response to our article
‘Russia, China and the Unfinished Permanent Revolution”,
claims that we, the Liaison Committee of Communists (LCC), don’t
understand Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution. On the contrary we
do understand it and apply it as he did himself. It is the RCIT that
tries to turn Permanent Revolution into a pseudo-Trotskyist cover for
its adaptation to social imperialism. Social Imperialism is the
democratic petty bourgeois policy that imperialism can be progressive if
reformed by the mobilisation of the proletariat. We will show that
beginning with its semi-Cliffite method, the RCIT’s fetishism of
bourgeois democracy is a chronic form of centrism, in reality
objectively part of the permanent counter-revolution which we as
revolutionaries are pledged to expose and defeat.
The RCIT’s main argument against the LCC is that we are ultra-lefts
who claim that “nothing can change in any semi-colonial country at any
time without the dictatorship of the proletariat”:
“Desperately searching for a theoretical hook on which to
base their notions, the LCC looks to Trotsky who wrote the following in
his book on the permanent revolution:
“With regard to countries with a belated bourgeois development,
especially the colonial and semi-colonial countries, the theory of the
permanent revolution signifies that the complete and genuine solution of
their tasks of achieving democracy and national emancipation is
conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat as the
leader of the subjugated nation, above all of its peasant masses.”
From this fundamental insight of Trotsky the LCC derives … that
nothing can change in any semi-colonial country at any time without the
dictatorship of the proletariat. Poor pedants! From Trotsky’s statement
that “the complete and genuine solution of their tasks of achieving democracy and national emancipation” (our emphasizes) in the “countries with a belated bourgeois development, especially the colonial and semi-colonial countries”
the LCC distortedly concludes that not even one single aspect of
belated capitalist development can change in any country, at anytime,
anywhere in the world!” (RCIT ibid)
We agree with Trotsky’s quote. We say nothing about capitalist
development being impossible short of the Dictatorship of the
Proletariat. What we do say is that in the epoch of imperialism
capitalist development is based on state monopoly finance capital which
develops the forces of production unevenly, accumulating super-profits
in the imperialist states, and under-developing the forces of production
in the semi-colonies. Even imperialism is capable of making big changes
as it ravages what is left of nature, but these are mainly destructive
of the forces of production, and do not add up to the qualitative change
from semi-colony to imperialism.
This is entirely consistent with Lenin’s theory of imperialism and
Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution. It is exactly why Trotsky
explained that the
completion of the bourgeois
revolution is impossible except as part of the socialist revolution.
Following Lenin, we argue that semi-colonies are not economically
independent of imperialism and cannot accumulate sufficient capital to
become imperialist themselves. Therefore, only Russia and China could
make this transition, having escaped semi-colonial servitude by making
socialist revolutions and remaining economically independent after the
restoration of capitalism. And that is why we don’t agree that South
Korea and Israel are new imperialist powers. We see them as US
dependencies, whose economic growth is subsidised in order to maintain
them as armed outposts of US imperialism.
We think that the RCIT has a fetish of ‘bourgeois democracy’ that is
inseparable from its view that imperialist super-exploitation and
oppression of semi-colonies can under “exceptional circumstances” allow
them to become imperialist.
By ‘fetish’ we mean Marx’s view that
capitalist production relations are inverted as exchange relations
misrepresenting value as inherent in commodities rather than as socially
necessary labour time. This fetishism is reproduced in the capitalist
state creating the illusion that it is separate from society and hence
is not determined by society.
If you believe that semi-colonies can become imperialist then you
must subscribe to the illusion that bourgeois democracy can be used by
the proletariat in the imperialist countries to moderate the drive for
super-profits enabling the semi-colonial masses to can carry through a
national revolution that wins economic independence from imperialism
short of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Hence capitalist
state-centred fetishism underlies the illusion that bourgeois democracy
today is still capable in ‘exceptional’ circumstances of being
‘progressive’, that is, social imperialism. Finding such ‘exceptional
circumstances’ is no more than selecting isolated ‘facts’ that confirm
the RCITs pre-existing bourgeois democratic fetish.
We can see this empiricist method in operation when the RCIT promotes
the illusion that bourgeois democracy, even when expressed in popular
fronts, or popular front parties, are a ‘lesser evil’ to Stalinism in
Russia and Yugoslavia, military dictatorships in Thailand and Egypt, and
fascism in Brazil. We will prove below, that Marx, Lenin and Trotsky
never confused ‘bourgeois democracy’ with ‘workers democracy, and so
never saw one form of class rule, the bourgeois democratic dictatorship,
as capable of smashing another form, bourgeois reactionary
dictatorship, whether it be the Prussian Army in 1871 or German and
Spanish fascism in 1933. The RCIT is in danger of becoming a Menshevik
apologist for the bourgeois popular front as a part of the ‘democratic
revolution’ and a necessary stage in capitalist development preparing
the conditions for the dictatorship of the proletariat.
In this article we argue that the key to understanding the
counterrevolutionary role of Menshevism is the concept, program and
strategy of Permanent Revolution. Conceived by Marx in
1850, continued in the transitional program of Lenin and Trotsky, it is
the strategy of the historic struggle of the proletariat to break
through the ideology of bourgeois democracy by means of workers
democracy and to complete the permanent revolution with the abolition of
classes and the birth of communism.
From bourgeois to proletarian ‘permanent revolution’
According to Trotsky the Permanent Revolution has three aspects: the
proletarian revolution would complete the bourgeois revolution; the
permanent revolution would continue through the development of socialism
to communism; third, the permanent revolution is an international
revolution. These aspects are united in Marx’s conception of Permanent
Revolution:
“The permanent revolution in the sense which Marx
attached to this concept, means a revolution which makes no compromise
with any single form of class rule, which does not stop at the
democratic stage, which goes over to socialist measures and to war
against reaction from without; that is, a revolution whose every
successive stage is rooted in the preceding one and which can end only
in the complete liquidation of class society”. (L. Trotsky The Permanent Revolution, Pathfinder edition, p. 130. Introduction)
Trotsky acknowledges that Marx applied the concept to the bourgeois
revolution in France to signify the struggle of the French bourgeoisie
to prevail against Napoleon. To counter Napoleon Bonaparte’s illusion
that his state stood “above” bourgeois society and was free to draw on
the national treasury, the bourgeoisie conspired to create a grain
shortage, delaying Napoleon’s Russia campaign by two months and causing
its defeat. This was a victory in the ‘permanent revolution’ of the
bourgeoisie over Napoleon’s ‘permanent war’ as an intolerable expense to
the economy. However, the bourgeoisie soon had to resort to the
‘Bonapartist’ state standing “above” society in order to suppress the
unruly national proletariat. This marked a decline of the progressive
bourgeoisie into its opposite, a reactionary bourgeoisie.
The failure of the bourgeois revolutions of 1848 was proof of the
beginning of the end of the progressive bourgeoisie in Europe. The
Prussian bourgeoisie feared the proletariat more than the feudal
Junkers, signalling to Marx that the time for the proletarian revolution
had begun. While the feudal regime remained in place and Prussian
capitalism remained backward, only the proletarian revolution could
develop the forces of production. As Trotsky puts it:
“In 1848 a class was needed that would be able
to take charge of events without and in spite of the bourgeoisie, a
class which would not only be prepared to push the bourgeois forward by
its pressure but also at the decisive moment to throw its political
corpse out of the way…The proletariat was too weak, lacked organization,
experience and knowledge. Capitalism had developed sufficiently to
render necessary the abolition of the old feudal relations, but not
sufficiently to bring forward the working class, the product of the new
industrial relations, as a decisive political force.” (‘Results and Prospects’, in The Permanent Revolution, p. 56-57, ibid)
The failed bourgeois revolutions of 1848
The RCIT quotes the example of the revolutions of 1848 against us, claiming it proves we don’t understand Permanent Revolution:
“Let us give yet another example which unmasks the LCC’s
wooden, mechanistic way of thinking. In his book, Trotsky illustrated
his concept of permanent revolution with the case of Germany. There he
explained that the failed bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1848
resulted in the absence of democracy:
“The concept of the permanent revolution was advanced by the
great Communists of the middle of the nineteenth century, Marx and his
co-thinkers, in opposition to the democratic ideology which, as we know,
claims that with the establishment of a ‘rational’ or democratic state
all questions can be solved peacefully by reformist or evolutionary
measures. Marx regarded the bourgeois revolution of 1848 as the direct
prelude to the proletarian revolution. Marx ‘erred’. Yet his error has a
factual and not a methodological character. The Revolution of 1848 did
not turn into the socialist revolution. But that is just why it also did
not achieve democracy. As to the German Revolution of 1918, it was no
democratic completion of the bourgeois revolution, it was a proletarian
revolution decapitated by the Social Democrats; more correctly, it was a
bourgeois counter-revolution, which was compelled to preserve
pseudo-democratic forms after its victory over the proletariat.”” (RCIT ibid)
Marx recognised that the failure of the bourgeois revolution in
Prussia in 1848 to bring about bourgeois democracy did not lead directly
to the proletarian revolution. That is a fact.
But Marx also
said that while the failure of the bourgeois revolution did not
immediately turn into a successful proletarian revolution, it was the
prelude to the ‘permanent revolution’:
“Although the German workers cannot come to power and
achieve the realization of their class interests without passing through
a protracted revolutionary development, this time they can at least be
certain that the first act of the approaching revolutionary drama will
coincide with the direct victory of their own class in France and will
thereby be accelerated. But they themselves must contribute most to
their final victory, by informing themselves of their own class
interests, by taking up their independent political position as soon as
possible, by not allowing themselves to be misled by the hypocritical
phrases of the democratic petty bourgeoisie into doubting for one minute
the necessity of an independently organized party of the proletariat. Their battle cry must be: The Permanent Revolution.” (‘Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League,’ March 1850. The Revolutions of 1848, p. 330, Pelican edition)
In the same address to the Communist League in 1850, Marx writes the
‘petty bourgeois democrats’ try to limit the proletarian revolution to
the reforms conceded by the bourgeoisie rather than “make the revolution
permanent.” Bourgeois ‘democracy’ then is already
counter-revolutionary, holding back rather than advancing the permanent
revolution:
“While the democratic petty bourgeois want to bring the
revolution to an end as quickly as possible, achieving at most the aims
already mentioned, it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent
until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from
their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power
and until the leading countries of the world – that competition between
the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive
forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers. Our
concern cannot simply be to modify private property, but to abolish it,
not to hush up class antagonisms but to abolish classes, not to improve
the existing society but to found a new one.” (Marx, ibid, p. 323) [Our emphasis]
Here Marx is stating clearly that to “make the revolution permanent”
it is necessary to “abolish private [capitalist] property”. Implicit in
his statement is his view that this requires the end of bourgeois
democracy which is premised on the reproduction of private property.
During the 1840s, Marx in his ‘Early Writings’[i]
formulated his concept of the capitalist state as derived from the
fetishised reality of exchange relations, where the private interests of
individuals as buyers and sellers of commodities becomes represented as
the ‘general interest’ in a state form standing above society.
Bourgeois democracy then functions to reproduce capitalist property and
the class contradiction between labour and capital, by masking that
contradiction in the ideology of national unity. Social Democracy is merely the incorporation of that ideology into the program of Social Democratic parties.
The RCIT does not realise that Trotsky is making the same point when he refers to the German counter-revolution of 1918.
The
‘democratic petty bourgeoisie’ (the Social Democrats) used the
“pseudo-democratic forms conceded” by the bourgeoisie to mask the
counter-revolution as the ‘victory of the permanent revolution’.
The failure of the revolution was due to the failure of the Communist
Party of Germany (KPD) to win the masses from reactionary ‘bourgeois
democracy’ to the revolutionary ‘proletarian democracy’ of the armed
insurrection and dictatorship of the proletariat. Following Marx,
Trotsky is pointing out that it is the petty bourgeois democrats who
paint the “pseudo-democratic forms” as the victory of the permanent
revolution to mask the bourgeois counter-revolution. To prove that Marx
and Trotsky are one on this question we need to go back to the Paris
Commune and the first major test of permanent revolution.
Lessons of the Paris Commune
If the failed revolutions taught Marx and the First International
that it was time for the proletarian revolution, the Paris Commune
drowned ‘bourgeois democracy’ in the blood of the Communards. The Paris
Commune proved that the revolution that failed in ‘backward’ Prussia had
also been accompanied by a retreat in the great French Revolution. Such
was the fear of the rising proletariat on the part of the French ruling
class that it found its expression in the Second Empire of Louis
Bonaparte who came to power in a coup d’état in December, 1851, and
installed himself emperor. In July, 1870, Bonaparte declared war on
Prussia against much popular opposition in France. He was defeated soon
after at Sedan, when his army surrendered, and two days later a Republic
was declared in Paris with massive support across France. However the
National Assembly of the Republic was dominated by bourgeois and petty
bourgeois, who rushed to make an armistice and negotiate peace with
Prussia, so as to conspire to defeat the workers Commune of Paris.
“Armed Paris was the only serious obstacle in the way of
the counter-revolutionary conspiracy. Paris was, therefore, to be
disarmed…The seizure of her artillery was evidently but to serve as a
preliminary to the general disarmament of Paris, and, therefore, the
revolution of 4 September. But that revolution had become the legal
status of France. The Republic, its work, was recognized by the
conqueror in the terms of the capitulation. After the capitulation it
was acknowledged by all the foreign powers, and in its name the National
Assembly had been summoned. The Paris Workingmen’s revolution of 4
September was the only legal title of the National Assembly seated at
Bordeaux, and of its executive.” (Marx, The Civil War in France, pp.198-9, Part 2)
Marx and the 1
st International declared support for the
Republic and its defence against the Prussian army. The thrust of its
position was to defend the Republic against both Prussian and the
reactionary National Assembly:
“Let the sections of the International Working Men’s
Association in every country stir the working classes to action. If they
forsake their duty, if they remain passive, the present tremendous war
will be but the harbinger of still deadlier international feuds, and
lead in every nation to a renewed triumph over the workman by the lords
of the sword, of the soil, and of capital. Vive la republique”. (‘Second address of the General Council’, p.186)
Thiers
[ii]
could not overthrow the legitimate Republic that replaced the Second
Empire of Louis Bonaparte without making a reactionary military alliance
with Bismarck. The armed workers of Paris, supported by the 1
st
International, had to defend a bourgeois republic against a French
royalist reaction backed by the Prussian state. But they could only
defend the republic as a Workers Republic.
As a result of the
experience of the Commune, Marx and Engels drew the conclusion that the
Workers Republic had to smash the bourgeois state and create the
Dictatorship of the Proletariat, or suffer defeat.
Thus the bourgeois ‘permanent revolution’ had turned into its
opposite, the ‘permanent counter-revolution’, conceding French national
sovereignty to the Prussians to impose the bourgeois dictatorship in its
most naked form with the slaughter of the Communards. Better a national
defeat for France than the defeat for private property! Yet from the
ashes of the heroic Commune the proletariat emerged for the first time
on the world stage of ‘permanent revolution’:
“If the Commune was thus the true representative of all
the healthy elements of French society, and therefore the truly national
government, it was at the same time, as a working men’s government, as
the bold champion of the emancipation of labour, emphatically
international. Within sight of the Prussian army, that had
annexed to Germany two French provinces, the Commune annexed to France
the working people all over the world.” (Class Struggles in France, p. 216 Part 3) [Our emphasis]
Marx’s conclusion, and subsequently that of Lenin and Trotsky, was
that after 1871 the epoch of the proletarian ‘permanent revolution’ had
opened. The material forms of revolutionary ‘workers democracy’ that
arose in the Commune to defeat the reactionary ‘bourgeois democracy’ of
the National Assembly, that is,
direct representation, right of recall, workers councils, workers militias, etc., were now an example to be held up internationally. Henceforth, the ‘permanent revolution’ was the
strategy
that transformed the unfinished bourgeois tasks of the national
revolution, agrarian reform, the bourgeois republic, and so on, into
socialist tasks, where nations became the workers socialist republics,
agrarian reform became peasant communes on nationalised land, and
bourgeois democracy became the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
Moreover, it becomes clear that the concept of the strategy of permanent
revolution reflects Marx’s
transitional method that the minimum
program for the bourgeois republic must be combined with the maximum
socialist demands for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat in a
transitional program.
Marx Critiques the Gotha Program
The defeat of the Paris Commune coincided with the beginning of the
transition of world capitalism from its competitive stage to the
monopoly capitalism of the imperialist epoch. This led to a period of
several decades of economic growth in Europe where the export of capital
began to produce super-profits in the colonies giving rise to high
living standards in the top layers of the proletariat in the imperialist
countries. As a result, these layers called by Engels ‘bourgeois
workers’, and Lenin, the ‘labour aristocracy,’ began to identify their
economic interests with imperialism. This was reflected in the divisions
in the International, and the emergence of a majority backing Lassalle
at Gotha in 1875.
The Gotha Program was a retreat from the Marxist program to the petty bourgeois national socialism of Lassalle.
It was a retreat from the permanent revolution of the Commune on the question of socialism, internationalism and communism.
First, Marx critiqued its adaptation to the Prussian state, putting
bourgeois democratic demands on the police state of Bismarck for
graduated taxes, free education, and state aid for workers cooperatives.
The overthrow of labour exploitation was replaced by the utopia of a
“free state” regulating wages, taxes and funding education, welfare and
employment. This ‘free state’ was the same state that had recently
helped put down the Commune.
Second, Marx asks:
“And to what is the internationalism of the German
workers’ party reduced? To the consciousness that the result of their
efforts ‘will be the international brotherhood of peoples’ – a
phrase borrowed from the bourgeois League of Peace and Freedom and
which is intended to pass as an equivalent for the international
brotherhood of the working classes in the joint struggle against the
ruling classes and their governments. Not a word, therefore, of the international role
of the German working class! And this is how it is meant to challenge
its own bourgeoisie, which is already fraternally linked with the
bourgeoisies in all other countries, and Herr Bismarck’s international
policy of conspiracy!” (‘Critique of the Gotha Programme’, The First International after Marx, p.350. Part 1) [Our emphasis]
Third, its program is confined to the ‘present national state’ which
means ‘their own state, the Prusso-German Empire’, and doesn’t speak of
the Dictatorship of the Proletariat or the transition from socialism to
Communism. Marx states:
“…Between capitalist and communist society lies a period
of revolutionary transformation from one to the other. There is a
corresponding period of transition in the political sphere and in this
period the state can only take the form of a revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.” (ibid, p. 355) [Our emphasis]
It is clear by 1875, that in Marx’s conception, permanent revolution
is a process, not a sudden leap over the bourgeois revolution, and
completed only when the proletarian revolution is complete. That is, it
is a
strategy, which is more or less continuous and
uninterrupted, except by advances and retreats, and complete only when
socialist society culminates in communist society
. Lenin and
Trotsky would speak of an ‘epoch’ of the permanent revolution in 1905.
The permanent revolution would extend for an indeterminate ‘epoch’ and
would be completed only when the revolution in Russia had unified its
three aspects, finishing the bourgeois revolution as socialist
revolution, incorporating that into the international socialist
revolution, and making the transition to communism.
1905 and “The Permanent Revolution”
The RCIT claims that we do not understand Trotsky’s Permanent Revolution, and quote from
The Permanent Revolution.
“Desperately searching for a theoretical hook on
which to base their notions, the LCC looks to Trotsky who wrote the
following in his book on the permanent revolution:
“With regard to countries with a belated bourgeois development,
especially the colonial and semi-colonial countries, the theory of the
permanent revolution signifies that the complete and genuine solution of
their tasks of achieving democracy and national emancipation is
conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat as the
leader of the subjugated nation, above all of its peasant masses.”
From this fundamental insight of Trotsky the LCC derives … that
nothing can change in any semi-colonial country at any time without the
dictatorship of the proletariat. Poor pedants! From Trotsky’s statement
that “the complete and genuine solution of their tasks of achieving democracy and national emancipation” (our emphases) in the “countries with a belated bourgeois development, especially the colonial and semi-colonial countries”
the LCC distortedly concludes that not even one single aspect of
belated capitalist development can change in any country, at anytime,
anywhere in the world!” (RCIT, ibid)
Do we say: “That nothing can change in any semi-colonial country at
any time, without the dictatorship of the proletariat”? We have already
rejected this as untrue. We agree with Trotsky and consistently argue
for his conception of the Permanent Revolution. The RCIT seems to think
however, that up to the present day capitalism under “exceptional
circumstances” can develop the forces of production in semi-colonies
even if this leads to “incomplete” and “pseudo” solutions to its
historic tasks. Well, we have pointed out that the bourgeoisie has had
more than a century in which to continue with its historic mission in
opposition to the
already existing proletarian permanent revolution. Since 1850 its “mission” is clearly a permanent counter-revolution to suppress the permanent revolution!
More critical at this point in our argument is that the RCIT seems to
think that because capitalism developed the forces of production in
imperialist Russia
in 1905 that this refutes our argument that semi-colonies cannot become
imperialist after the First Imperialist War. They imply that if it
could happen in Russia in 1905, why not in this
same imperialist epoch could we not expect new imperialisms to arise “in
exceptional circumstances” in the former workers states of Russia and
China and the capitalist semi-colonies such as South Korea and Israel
right up to the present?
Why not? For the very reason that Trotsky and Lenin knew that in 1905
imperialist Russia was a hybrid, a combination of modes of production,
in which to develop the forces of production further the bourgeoisie had
to be overthrown. Not because it was an “exception” from other
imperialisms, but because it represented the extreme contradiction
between advanced finance capital and backward Russia that was determined
by the laws of state monopoly capital. Russia was a hybrid conjunction
of the Tsarist feudal state and parasitic finance capital to create the
conditions for maximum super-exploitation and hence maximum state
oppression. Far from an ‘exceptional’ case opening the way for future
‘exceptional’ cases, Russia for Lenin and Trotsky expressed the extreme
contradictions of imperialism and its decay as a system. The
contradiction between its feudal backwardness and modern capitalist
industry meant it was the ‘weak link’ in the imperialist chain that
would be the first to fall to permanent revolution and start a chain
reaction to bring an end to capitalism as a mode of production.
All three aspects of the ‘permanent revolution’ were put to the test in Russia in 1905 when Trotsky published his theory of
The Permanent Revolution.
Trotsky took Marx’s concept and applied it to Tsarist Russia. He argued
that Russia had developed in a belated and uneven way so that the
bourgeoisie was even weaker than those of France and Germany in 1848.
The working class was concentrated in the cities in modern industry
recently developed by French and British finance capital and more
politically advanced than French and British workers! The urban
proletariat was prepared by Tsarist reaction and modern industry
sufficiently to lead the poor peasant masses in a Permanent Revolution
to complete the bourgeois tasks in a proletarian revolution.
The reception was mixed. The Mensheviks took their centrist position
for a bourgeois revolution led by the bourgeoisie. Lenin agreed with
Trotsky that, despite important differences over whether it would be
necessary to share power with the peasants in the early stages of the
revolution, the revolution would be led by the proletariat to overthrow
the Tsar and would have to proceed ‘uninterrupted’ to the socialist
revolution. Lenin took Trotsky’s side stating that the permanent
revolution was not ‘a single blow’ or ‘leap’, and while uninterrupted,
would take a “whole historical epoch” which could not be predicted in
advance. Despite attempts by the reformists to exaggerate the split
between Lenin and Trotsky on the question of Permanent Revolution, Lenin
quotes Trotsky in November, 1905, to express his agreement with him.
Trotsky recounts this episode in
The Permanent Revolution quoting Lenin
:
““Comrade Trotsky said that the proletarian revolution
can, without halting at the first stage, continue on its road, elbowing
the exploiters aside; Lenin on the other hand, pointed out that the
political revolution is only the first step. The publicist of Nasha Zhizn
would like to see a contradiction here…The whole misunderstanding
comes, first, from the fear with which the name alone of the social
revolution fills Nasha Zhizn; secondly, out of the desire of
this paper to discover some sort of sharp and piquant difference of
opinion among the Social Democrats; and thirdly, in the figure of speech
used by Comrade Trotsky; “at a single blow”.
In No 10 of Nachalo, Comrade Trotsky explains his idea quite unambiguously:
“The complete victory of the revolution signifies the victory of the proletariat”, writes Comrade Trotsky.
“But this victory in turn implies the uninterruptedness of the
revolution in the future. The proletariat realises in life the
fundamental democratic tasks, and the very logic of its immediate
struggle to consolidate its political rule poses before the proletariat,
at a certain moment, purely socialist problems. Between the
minimum and the maximum programme (of the Social Democrats) a
revolutionary continuity is established. It is not a question of a
single “blow”, or of a single day or month, but of a whole historical
epoch. It would be absurd to try to fix its duration in advance.””” [Our emphasis] ibid p. 210)
In his speech to the Fifth Party Congress in 1907 Trotsky explains
why the proletariat is ready to play the role in the Russia of 1905 of
the sansculottes in the French revolution. Capitalism has not grown as
in Europe but been introduced from above by imported British and French
finance capital funding state loans to set up modern industry.
“As a result of this process there appeared among us as
the main force in the towns, at the moment of the bourgeois revolution,
an industrial proletariat of an extremely highly developed social type.
This is a fact. It cannot be disputed, and must be taken as the basis of
our revolutionary tactical conclusions…As the petty bourgeoisie urban
democracy in the Great French Revolution placed itself at the head of
the revolutionary nation, in just the same way the proletariat, which is
the one and only revolutionary democracy in our cities, must find a
support in the peasant masses and place itself in power – if the
revolution has any prospect of victory at all.” (‘Speech at the Fifth
Party Congress’, London, 1907, ibid p. 217)
For Trotsky, the epoch of Permanent Revolution now included Russia in
1905 with the first of three revolutions, when already the Petersburg
Soviet characterised itself as proletarian! He and Lenin had no truck
with the Mensheviks who thought that Russia’s backwardness meant that
the proletariat had to play the historical role of ‘assisting’ the
bourgeoisie to take power and complete its bourgeois revolution to
prepare the conditions for the socialist revolution.
If we understand Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution correctly
as an application in a particular capitalist country of Marx’s more
general formulation, we can see that it is true to Marx. Trotsky is at
one with Marx:
“The permanent revolution in the sense which Marx
attached to this concept, means a revolution which makes no compromise
with any single form of class rule, which does not stop at the
democratic stage, which goes over to socialist measures and to war
against reaction from without; that is, a revolution whose every
successive stage is rooted in the preceding one and which can end only
in the complete liquidation of class society”. (ibid p. 130)
To repeat: the Permanent Revolution finishes the bourgeois
revolution. It does not stop at the “democratic stage” because bourgeois
democracy is counter-revolutionary. It has to be smashed by proletarian
“revolutionary democracy” which continues the transition from socialism
to communism and finally succeeds as world communism. For Lenin and
Trotsky Permanent Revolution was a class strategy as understood by Marx.
It had begun in the mid-19
th century when the bourgeois
revolution was already in decline. By 1905 in Russia the Permanent
Revolution was part of the program of the revolutionary Marxists against
the ‘evolutionary’ Marxists. It was now a part of the subjective
reality in the program of the revolutionary party developing the theory
and practice of Marxism in the epoch of decaying imperialism, facing
war, revolution and counter-revolution. Included in the concept of
permanent revolution is the end of “democracy,” no longer bourgeois
democracy, but “revolutionary proletarian democracy,” which is abolished
along with the “liquidation of class society” in communist society.
War, Revolution and Counter-revolution
The onset of the imperialist epoch in the late 19
th
century marked the qualitative change from the progressive bourgeoisie
developing the forces of production in the epoch of competitive
capitalism to a reactionary bourgeoisie now parasitical on the forces of
production, monopolising and destroying those forces. The majority of
the 2
nd International represented the rise of the labor
aristocracy adapting to social imperialism. This was the current of
‘evolutionary’ socialism critiqued by Marx and Engels in the Commune and
the Gotha Program. This was the program of the democratic petty
bourgeois who believed that the workers could transform the capitalist
nation state by relatively peaceful, parliamentary means. Against the
‘evolutionary’ socialists were the minority ‘revolutionary’ socialists,
who since 1871 had rejected the program of bourgeois democracy as
reactionary, and stood on the transitional program of permanent
revolution. The workers’ struggle for ‘democracy’ necessitated the
‘smashing of the bourgeois state’ and the imposition of the Dictatorship
of the Proletariat.
The First Imperialist War was proof of this in the extreme, as the
imperialists went to war using their workers as cannon fodder and their
parliamentary bourgeois democracies to provide war credits. After the
historic 4 August 1914 betrayal of the majority of the 2
nd
International, the flag of Permanent Revolution was kept aloft by the
Bolsheviks of 1905 who formed the core of the tiny Zimmerwald Left
against the betrayal of the SPD majority and Kautskyite centre. The
imperialist defence of the nation was at the expense of other nations,
proving that capitalism had now outstripped the national state as a
progressive force in developing the forces of production. Now the
bourgeois nation states and nationalist ideology were in a reactionary
retreat from the bourgeois revolution and transmitting its imperialist
ideology into the ranks of the workers via the petty bourgeois democrats
and the betrayals of Social Democracy.
The Zimmerwald Left position was to keep alive the program of
permanent revolution. It called on workers to turn the imperialist war
into a civil war, uniting the proletariat across national borders to
overthrow the imperialist nations ruled by feudal remnants in league
with the imperialist bourgeoisie and their reformist agents in the
working class. Utopian? No! The Bolsheviks knew that imperialist war had
both revolutionary and counter-revolutionary aspects. The experience of
war by the working classes proved to them that bourgeois democracy was a
fraud and their instinct even without a revolutionary party and program
was to refuse to fight imperialist wars. After 3 years of mutual
destruction, the Russian workers in uniform rejected imperialist war for
civil war, as did the German workers in uniform who mutinied after 4
years of slaughter.
Bolshevism wins in Russia but loses in Germany
Put to the test in 1917 the February Revolution proved that the
proletariat was advanced and that the bourgeoisie was weak, frightened
of the proletariat, and conspiring with the remnants of Tsarist reaction
to smash the revolution. The Mensheviks continued to support the
bourgeoisie as the revolutionary class. The Old Bolsheviks around
Stalin, Kamenev, etc., were ready to support the popular front
government as the lesser evil to the Tsarists and imperialists. Only
Lenin and Trotsky were in agreement on the Permanent Revolution. They
shared the same dialectical or transitional method. Both saw that the
Permanent Revolution combined the minimal and maximum program in what
would later become for Trotsky the Transitional Program. The workers
would take power on the basis of soviet majorities, rapidly complete the
bourgeois tasks by forming a socialist republic with a national army
that would complete the civil war; fight imperialism with weapons and
with diplomacy to advance the revolutions everywhere, especially in
Europe; adopt land reform to win over the poor peasants, and when
convinced that they had won over the Kulaks (middle peasants), abolish
the Constituent Assembly.
But the Permanent Revolution in Russia was not finished. It had to
spread to Europe, in particular Germany; otherwise it would succumb to
counter-revolution. It had to advance its international aspect in order
to advance its socialist aspect. As we know the imperialists called off
their war and ganged up on the Soviet Union so there were more retreats
than advances. The isolation of the Permanent Revolution in the Soviet
Union with the defeat of the German revolution set back the
international revolution.
The lesson of the Permanent Revolution
in Russia had been that either workers took power, or the bourgeois
popular front would usher in the fascist counter-revolution.
In Germany, the rotten role of Social Democracy and the Kautsky
centrists combined with a weak Communist Party led to the isolation and
defeat of the armed workers uprisings.
We come back to the RCIT on its view (above) that even after the
counter-revolution in Germany in 1918 the defence of the “incomplete and
pseudo” forms of bourgeois democracy is part of the permanent
revolution. We have already shown that we agree with Marx that 1848
marked the failure of a bourgeois revolution and the opening of the
permanent revolution. And this was confirmed by a growing Bonapartist
reaction and the Prussian army’s bloody repression of the Paris Commune
in 1871. Now we are asked by the RCIT to swallow that, after the First
Imperialist War for super-profits and the defeat of the German
revolution, the proletariat should defend bourgeois democracy in its
“pseudo-democratic forms” in the Weimar Republic. Perhaps the RCIT mean
the right to vote for the same ‘disguised popular front’ that put the
noose around the workers necks. Perhaps the RCIT is referring to a
posthumous right to vote for the proletarians slaughtered at the hands
of the Freikorps and the fascists. Is the RCIT saying that such
‘pseudo-democratic’ concessions would obligate revolutionaries to
“defend bourgeois democracy” in the Weimar Republic against the
fascists?
Broué quotes from the resolution on the united front tactic at the
Fourth Congress of the Comintern in 1922, specifically about the
“Workers Government” in Germany in 1918-19:
“In 1918-1919, Germany had experienced a
‘Social-Democratic workers’ government’. These were not revolutionary
workers’ governments, but ‘disguised coalitions between the bourgeoisie
and the counter-revolutionary workers’ leaders’: “These ‘workers’
governments’ are tolerated in critical periods by the enfeebled
bourgeoisie, in order to deceive the proletariat about the true class
character of the state, or even to divert the revolutionary offensive of
the proletariat and gain time with the help of corrupted workers’
leaders. Communists must not take part in such governments. On the
contrary they must pitilessly demonstrate to the masses the real
character of these false ‘workers’ governments’. In the period of
capitalist decline, in which our main task is to win the majority of the
proletariat for the revolution, these governments can objectively
contribute to the process of decomposition of the bourgeois regime.”” (Quoted in P. Broué, The German Revolution, p. 672 Chapter 34 ‘The Development of the Tactic’)
Such a ‘disguised coalition’ we would call a ‘popular front’ today. We would
not
have supported such a ‘workers’ government’ against fascism in Germany.
The SPD was in a coalition with the army to put down workers risings,
and the army was constitutionally independent of the Government. Nor in
1923 when the KPD wasted time debating joining a ‘grand coalition’ with
the SPD and the bourgeoisie (to expose the ‘popular front’ to the SPD
workers!) while a showdown on the streets was rapidly building between
revolutionary workers and the fascist shock troops. The defeat of the
revolution in Germany in 1923 can be attributed in the last analysis to
the ‘subjective’ weakness of the KPD, but was mainly due to the
‘objective’ role of the SPD in popular front regimes with the
reactionary bourgeoisie, to ‘deceive’ and ‘divert’ the workers, and
ultimately tie their hands before the rise of fascism that would end in
the historic defeat of the international proletariat with Hitler’s
seizure of power in 1933.
Since 1850 the Marxist strategy of ‘making the revolution permanent’
was marked by both revolutionary advances and counter-revolutionary
retreats. The historic victory of the Three Russian Revolutions
culminating in the October Revolution now met with a historic defeat in
the German October. As a consequence of the isolation of the Soviet
Union, the Stalinists deepened the counter-revolution in Russia, as well
as in China, Germany and Spain. Nonetheless, despite the Stalinists
counter-revolutionary role in alliance with imperialism, the existence
of workers property in the Soviet Union as the most advanced victory of
the Permanent Revolution dictated that the
unconditional defence of the Soviet Union was to become the central platform of the Left Opposition and the Transitional Program.
Permanent Revolution vs Counter-revolution in China, Germany and Spain
The next major development in the Permanent Revolution was the
widening international confrontation between it and the
counter-revolution. It was first put to the test in China 1925-27. Here
the Stalinists recast the line of the Mensheviks in 1917 as the bloc of
four classes; workers, peasants, intellectuals, and the ‘democratic’
national bourgeoisie against the landlords and imperialists. This time
the Communists were trapped in the popular front and wiped out by the
‘democratic’ bourgeois General Chiang Kai Shek who was also made an
honorary member of the Comintern by Stalin –another instance of the
popular front acting as jailer of workers awaiting the executioner.
Germany: From disguised to open popular front
Germany was another defeat for the international working class. As we
saw, the failure of revolution in Germany in 1923 did not resolve the
crisis for the ruling class. The Weimar Republic went from the
‘disguised popular front’ of the SPD and the army in 1919 to an open
popular front in 1923 and then a succession of Bonapartist presidents
with the power to directly suppress the workers until its final fall to
Hitler in 1933. The SPD could no longer string out its popular front
with Bonapartism to pacify the working class and prevent the rise of
fascism. The depression that began in 1929 proved it could not fulfil
this task, but it still continued to suck up to the Bonapartist regime.
The Stalinized KPD took an ultra left line and sabotaged a united front
between the KPD and SPD against fascism. Even worse, it backed the
fascists in the “red referendum”. In August, 1931, Trotsky sounded the
alarm:
“Were this theory to entrench itself in the German
Communist Party, determining its course for the next few months, it
would signify a betrayal on the part of the Comintern of no lesser
historical proportions than the betrayal of the Social Democracy on
August 4, 1914, and at that, with much more frightful consequences. It
is the duty of the Left Opposition to give the alarm: the leadership of
the Comintern is driving the German proletariat toward an enormous
catastrophe, the essence of which is panicky capitulation before
fascism!”(Germany, Key to the International Situation, Section 31)
Trotsky sees that the victory of fascism in Germany will be a defeat
for many of the accumulated historic victories of Permanent Revolution.
It will lead to war with the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany representing
the imperialist world. “The crushing of the German proletariat by the
fascists would already comprise at least half of the collapse of the
Soviet republic.” The Left Opposition (Bolshevik Leninists) held up the
banner of Permanent Revolution and campaigned to save the world
revolution in Germany. While the Stalinists said Social Democracy must
be defeated before fascism can be defeated, Trotsky points out that this
cannot be done in time when the fascists are at the point of taking
power. It is necessary to oppose social democracy politically but demand
a military united front with them against fascism. For those who think
that social democracy is no different from fascism, Trotsky points out
that:
“In the course of many decades, the workers have built up
within the bourgeois democracy, by utilizing it, by fighting against
it, their own strongholds and bases of proletarian democracy:
the trade unions, the political parties, the educational and sport
clubs, the cooperatives, etc. The proletariat cannot attain
power within the formal limits of bourgeois democracy, but can do so
only by taking the road of revolution: this has been proved both by
theory and experience. And these bulwarks of workers’ democracy within the bourgeois state are absolutely essential for taking the revolutionary road.
The work of the Second International consisted in creating just such
bulwarks during the epoch when it was still fulfilling its progressive
historic labor.” (Trotsky What Next? ‘Democracy and Fascism’, The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany’ p. 158-9, Pathfinder edition.)
These historic “bulwarks” of ‘workers democracy’ within capitalism
are the victories of the Permanent Revolution and “essential for taking
the revolutionary road”. They are “strongholds” and “bases” of the
united front.
[iii]
Trotsky insists that the formation of soviets are on the agenda,
“…since the soviets, in themselves, represent the highest form of the
united front in the revolutionary epoch, therefore their inception must
be preceded by the policy of the united front in the preparatory
period.” Trotsky summed up the Bolshevik-Leninist position: “Only on the
basis of the united front, only through the mass organizations, can the
KPD conquer the leading position within the future soviets and lead the
proletariat to the conquest of power.”
[iv]
Hitler staged the Reichstag fire in February, 1933, on the pretext of
a communist revolution to then make his coup d’état. The SPD cowered
before Hitler while the KDP was isolated and impotent. Trotsky called
the defeat the worst defeat of the proletariat in history, as the Nazis
set about smashing working class “strongholds” and “bases”. By July,
1933, Trotsky was forced to conclude that the Comintern had betrayed the
German and world’s workers and that the Left Opposition could no longer
reform the Comintern or the Soviet state. A political revolution would
be necessary to overthrow the Stalinist bureaucracy and restore workers
democracy to power in the Soviet Union. The Left Opposition now had the
task of building a new revolutionary international to overcome the
historic defeat of the Permanent Revolution, to restore the “bulwarks of
workers democracy”, in particular the defence of workers property in
the Soviet Union. A fundamental principle of its
Transitional Program would be the ‘unconditional defence of the Soviet Union.’
“Only the creation of the Marxist International,
completely independent of the Stalinist bureaucracy and counterposed
politically to it, can save the USSR from collapse by binding its
destiny with the destiny of the world proletarian revolution.” (‘It is
Necessary to Build Communist Parties and an International Anew.’ The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany, p. 425, ‘The USSR and the Comintern’)
Spain: Stalinism as the ‘shadow’ of the popular front
Spain was like a laboratory of the Permanent Revolution vs the
Permanent Counter-revolution. Stalinism again blocked with the
bourgeoisie in the popular front government where it was the ‘shadow’ of
the bourgeoisie, since most bourgeois had gone over to the fascists.
Stalin took on the role of keeping the popular front respectable to
demonstrate to the imperialists they did not need fascism to manage
capitalism. To demonstrate the moderation of the Republic, Stalin
executed the leaders of the centrist POUM and the anarchists, who,
despite being part of the popular front could not guarantee the support
of their ranks. Spain was a major defeat for the Permanent Revolution as
the weak bourgeoisie collaborated with its ‘shadow’ Stalinism as a
‘left-fascist’ regime inside the republic to smash the revolution in
advance of the fascists!
We agree with Trotsky’s application of Permanent Revolution in Spain. Trotsky in
Lessons of Spain: Last Warning
spells out the program of Permanent Revolution and the failure of the
POUM and the anarchists to implement it. It meant fighting fascism
independently of the Republican army, at the same time calling for the
ranks in the Republican, Stalinist and anarchist unions and militias to
break from the popular front. That is our position, whereas the RCIT in
numerous examples (Yeltsin, Kosovo, Thailand, Egypt) calls for armed
independence of workers, but does not call for the break from the
bourgeois popular fronts, or popular front parties, to establish that
independence,
as a pre-condition of the defeat of fascism.
Trotsky on the other hand states clearly that only the proletarian revolution can defeat fascism:
“The Spanish revolution once again
demonstrates that it is impossible to defend democracy against the
methods of fascist reaction. And conversely, it is impossible to conduct
a genuine struggle against fascism otherwise than through the methods
of the proletarian revolution. Stalin
waged war against “Trotskyism” (proletarian revolution) destroying
democracy by the Bonapartist measures of the GPU. This refutes once
again and once and for all the old Menshevik theory, adopted by the
Comintern, in accordance with which the democratic and socialist
revolutions are transformed into two independent historic chapters,
separated from each other in point of time. The work of the Moscow
executioners confirms in its own way the correctness of the theory of
permanent revolution.” (Lessons of Spain: Last Warning ‘Stalin confirms in his own way the correctness of the theory of permanent revolution’) [Our emphasis]
This is the basis of our criticisms of the RCIT, which defends
bourgeois popular front regimes or parties on the basis that they are a
‘lesser evil’ to fascism (or military Juntas or dictatorships). In fact,
Trotsky says, no doubt drawing on the lessons of ‘October’ in both
Russia 1917 and Germany 1923, that the Popular Front coming to victory
in Spain would be “nothing but a different form of military dictatorship
on the backs of the workers and peasants.
“Even a complete military victory of the
so-called republican army over General Franco, however, would not
signify the triumph of “democracy.” The workers and peasants have twice
placed bourgeois republicans and their left agents in power: in April
1931 and in February 1936. Both times the heroes of the Popular Front
surrendered the victory of the people to the most reactionary and the
most serious representatives of the bourgeoisie. A third
victory, gained by the generals of the Popular Front, would signify
their inevitable agreement with the fascist bourgeoisie on the backs of
the workers and peasants. Such a regime will be nothing but a different
form of military dictatorship, perhaps without a monarchy and without
the open domination of the Catholic Church.” (ibid ‘The Denouement’) [Our emphasis]
In the epoch of imperialism, the popular front is the jailer for the
fascist executioner. The proletariat has to break out of jail to stop
the execution!
The Second Imperialist War: revolution and counter-revolution.
The Second Imperialist War was a continuation of the First. Like the
First, it had revolutionary and counter-revolutionary aspects. The
defeats of the workers in Germany before the Stalinist bloc with Hitler,
and the Stalinist popular fronts in France and Spain, proved that
Stalinism, in the absence of workers property, was the ‘fascism’ of the
left. The flag of Permanent Revolution was held high by the 4
th
International founded in 1938, just months before the final defeat of
the Spanish Revolution. The imperialists, who failed to stop Permanent
Revolution advancing in Russia at the end of the First Imperialist War,
embarked on the Second, with the immediate aim of destroying Germany and
its allies and preventing it from expanding its sphere of influence.
But the real enemy remained the Soviet Union and the threat of
‘communism’ in the West. This was an acknowledgement by all the
imperialist bourgeoisies,
that their mortal enemy was the survival of workers property.
Despite the existence of Stalinism as the ‘fascism’ on the left, the
unconditional defence of workers property was the main principle of the
Permanent Revolution and of the Transitional Program of the 4
th
International. The Bolshevik stand against imperialist war was an
integral part of the strategy of Permanent Revolution, which meant that
where an imperialist power was supplying the Soviet Union in the fight
against fascism workers did not campaign to blockade or sabotage the aid
to the Soviet Union,
while refusing to renounce the necessity to turn imperialist war into civil war at home.
The Trotskyists split between those for whom the Stalinists’
political character as ‘fascists’ made them no different to the Nazis,
and those who defended workers property in the Soviet Union
unconditionally despite the Stalinists. Among the latter there were
those who wavered towards the Stalinist/imperialist line that the Nazis
were the main enemy. So there emerged pro-Stalinist and anti-Stalinist
currents within Trotskyism. This left Trotsky almost alone in adhering
to the Bolshevik Leninist program that had been forged out of Marx’s
strategy into the
weapon of the Permanent Revolution in Russia. With Trotsky’s assassination the 4
th
International suffered a decline and fall within the space of ten years
that left the world’s workers without a revolutionary communist
international.
The Soviet Union bore the brunt of the war in Europe with 20 million
dead. It was workers’ property that forged the Red Army and the
resistance, not the Stalinist caste, which had purged the best generals
before the war. Fascism rose up to suppress the revolutionary potential
of the Permanent Revolution in the First Imperialist War because the
popular front and Bonapartist regimes proved insufficient. Yet it was
the Permanent Revolution in its degenerated Stalinist form that defeated
fascism. In the process of defeating the German army, the Soviet Union
created the satellite states in Eastern Europe, which prompted the US to
form NATO and embark on the Cold War to isolate the Soviet sphere and
force it into submission. As part of this global struggle, China and
then Indo-China fought national revolutions that became Permanent
Revolutions with the expropriation of the bourgeoisie and the creation
of Degenerate Workers States. We will deal with the
counter-revolutionary aspect of the post-war settlement before
discussing the revolutionary extension of Permanent Revolution in China
and Indochina.
German “bourgeois democracy” in 1945
The RCIT claims that bourgeois democracy existed, however imperfect, in post-1945 [West] Germany:
“However, it would be pure nonsense to claim that after
World War II Germany was still without a bourgeois democracy
(irrespective of all the democratic deficiencies which, in general, are
characteristic of bourgeois democracy as a form of capitalist
dictatorship). Again, in the LCC’s mindset, this post-1945 bourgeois
democracy in Germany is an irresolvable mystery. Based on their
misunderstanding of Trotsky, they would have to deny that bourgeois
democracy exists in imperialist Germany, since otherwise Trotsky’s
theory of permanent revolution is false!” (RCIT, ibid)
The RCIT knows that bourgeois democracy is a form of capitalist
dictatorship. And there is no doubt that bourgeois democracy was
restored in the 1945 post-war settlement. The point however, is that it
could only be restored on the basis of an historic defeat of the German
working class as a result of two imperialist wars, the Great Depression
and finally the partition of Germany. Such bourgeois democracy is a
bulwark of the counter-revolution. The defence of such bourgeois
democratic forms is out of the question. Communists did not participate
in elections (post 1989) on the basis of the post-war German Democratic
Republic (GDR) constitution, except to use them as a forum for
revolutionary propaganda to smash all workers illusions in bourgeois
democracy by means of permanent revolution. The same applied to
elections in the German Federal Republic (GFR.)
Moreover, there is nothing ‘exceptional’ about the restoration of
bourgeois democracy. The RCIT want to explain every instance of the
survival of bourgeois democracy as the result of “exceptional
circumstances”:
“In reality, of course, Trotsky’s theory of permanent
revolution, understood dialectically, is in harmony with the
contradictory historical process of class struggle; it is only the LCC’s
distorted caricature of this theory which rams its head against the
wall. Exceptional historical circumstances – first and foremost
the counter-revolutionary defeat of the working class by fascism, the
abortion of the revolutionary crisis in Europe and a number of Asian
countries by the Stalinist parties, the agreement between imperialism
and the Stalinist bureaucracy to establish a reactionary new world
order, and finally the post-war boom in 1950s and 1960s – facilitated
the creation of conditions in which imperialism could solve, in a
distorted manner, one or another of the unresolved democratic tasks.”
(RCIT, ibid) [Our emphasis]
The RCIT forgets that, as part of the “counter-revolutionary defeat
of the working class etc…which facilitated the creation of conditions in
which imperialism could solve, in a distorted manner, one or other of
the unresolved democratic tasks”, these counter-revolutions were all
made possible by bourgeois democracy, in particular by the popular
fronts in one or other form, where Social Democracy collaborated with
the bourgeois military and/or fascism to effect these
counter-revolutions.
These are not “exceptional circumstances”
but a series of historic defeats that follow from the victories of the
permanent counter-revolution over the permanent revolution that
necessarily reflect the balance of class forces between the
revolutionary proletariat and the reactionary bourgeoisie. If “counter-revolutionary defeats” are exceptional, the RCIT may as well claim that capitalism itself is “exceptional.”
We will now show how the RCIT’s “democracy” in post-war Western
Germany was part of the permanent ‘counter-revolution’, and that the
‘new imperialists’ in the post WW2 period were part of that
counter-revolutionary settlement. We saw that in 1918 the defeat of the
revolution was at the hands of a ‘disguised coalition of Social
Democracy and the bourgeoisie.’ The objective content of ‘bourgeois
democracy’ was bourgeois reaction. The imperialists’ collaboration with
Social Democracy prevented the Permanent Revolution from becoming a
European and even global revolution. When the “pseudo-democratic forms”
of counter-revolution in the bourgeois republic failed to stem the tide
of revolution, this forced the bourgeoisie to appoint the former wartime
Army Chief of Staff, Hindenburg, as Bonapartist president in an attempt
to ‘balance’ the classes. This failed when Hindenburg finally made
Hitler Chancellor, and Hitler then appointed himself dictator.
What was left of bourgeois democracy in Germany after the Second
Imperialist War? NATO drew the line between Permanent Revolution and
Permanent Counter Revolution. Germany was divided and the West stood for
imperialist counter-revolution against the Stalinist ‘degenerated
Permanent Revolution’ in the East. Germany was the most important plug
in the dyke to sustain, so the Marshall Plan was necessary. West Germany
had to be able to absorb the GDR and reunify on a capitalist basis and
sustain a front line status. Today the independence of Germany is
clearly displayed as it navigates and projects its power and leverage in
the EU, NATO and beyond. Germany of course, never ceased being
imperialist. Twice defeated, its bourgeoisie remained in power; its
labor aristocracy elevated under conditions of US military occupation.
A fundamental task of the bourgeois revolution is national
self-determination. Since 1871 the bourgeoisie have expressed national
self-determination as national aggrandisement at the expense of others’
national rights. The partition of Germany in 1945 was a
‘pseudo-democratic’ form of defence of the GDR from “communism.” The
task of the international proletariat was to fight for the subjective
program of Permanent Revolution, to expose the ‘disguised popular
fronts’ of bourgeois governments with Social Democracy, to reunite
Germany as a healthy workers’ state, overthrowing the Stalinist regime
in the East and the imperialist regime in the West. The “democracy” we
stood for in 1945 is straight out of the
Transitional Program. For the
unconditional
defence of East Germany occupied by the Red Army as an extension of the
Soviet Union by means of political revolution and world revolution, and
the revolutionary unification of Germany as a socialist republic in a
socialist united states of Europe.
Subcontracting Imperialism: South Korea and Israel
The RCIT makes a lot of the
apparent development
of the ‘Asian Tigers’, Taiwan and Republic of Korea (ROK) as capable of
emerging as ‘new imperialists’. In fact it cites the ROK as an example
of a new imperialist power to disprove our claim that no new imperialist
powers could have arisen from semi-colonial status since WW1. We agree
that these countries have developed large international corporations
that export capital. If that were the only basis on which to determine
imperialism, the RCIT might have a case. But other semi-colonies such as
Brazil and India also have considerable Outbound Foreign Direct
Investment (hereafter OFDI) and yet remain dominated by imperialism.
However, in the case of Taiwan and the ROK capitalist development is the
direct result of their national oppression as militarily divided and
occupied forward bases of US imperialism resulting from its war against
China and the DPRK.
Taiwan was formerly Formosa and part of China until Chiang Kai Shek
with his Kuomintang entourage defeated by the Revolution of 1949 then
retreated to Formosa and founded the bourgeois Republic of China as a
puppet of the US. Similarly, the ROK was split off from the North at the
38
th parallel by a ceasefire that still remains in
existence. South Korea like Taiwan is the result of an imperialist
partition of an existing nation in the ‘UN’ sponsored war against the
DRPK. These are puppet military outposts of US imperialism. The
militarisation of the ROK economy saw the USAID administration
overseeing the planning of the economy, in particular the export growth
strategy under the Park dictatorship in the 60s and 70s. The US still
retains command of both its forces and ROK forces in the event of war
arising from its intensifying rivalry with China.
Taiwan and the ROK are therefore not politically, militarily or
economically independent bourgeois nations, let alone imperialist
nations. Their economies are heavily subsidised by US as virtual
security colonies of the US. ROK for example pays the annual equivalent
of the cost of one destroyer towards maintaining the 28,500 US
occupation forces. Without this special status as US military bases
there could be no rapid growth of national capital. While the large
Taiwanese and ROK conglomerates are today global multinationals, they
could arise only with the aid of massive US economic and military
subsidies and control over state planning that made their development
possible.
Israel too fits this characterisation of a puppet regime. Israel is
not the answer to Jewish national democratic rights since it occupies
and oppresses Palestine. It is an armed Zionist state created by
Anglo-American imperialism as a gendarme in the Middle East. Since its
origins made it dependent on imperialism its finance capital is
intertwined with Anglo-American capital and has no separate national
existence. Israel’s OFDI as an indicator of imperialism must be offset
against decades of heavy military subsidies, military transfers to say
nothing of the black box budgets for ‘intelligence’ and military
integration with the US military. Israel could not have made a
transition from settler-colony to imperialist state for the reason that
it cannot escape its subordination to external finance capital. If we
subtracted Israel’s dependence on US foreign policy that treats it as a
special ‘gendarme’ of US imperialism, then Israel would no longer have
the security status that guarantees its high economic performance. In
other words we think Israel began as an armed Settler state with
Anglo-US finance capital backing, and remains so today.
Israel and the ROK: Comparing FDI and OFDI Stock with Total US Aid
|
FDI Stock |
OFDI Stock |
Total US Aid |
| Israel |
74 |
74 |
120* |
| ROK |
156 |
202 |
78** |
Sources: OECD FDI in figures April 2014 in US$ billions
* Total US foreign aid to Israel 1949-2014 in US$ billions (includes loans)
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/U.S._Assistance_to_Israel1.html
** Total US Economic and Military Aid, 1948-2012. (Includes US loans
but excludes estimates of the economic impact of the US military
occupation.)
https://eads.usaid.gov/gbk/data/country_report.cfm
The national independence of the ROK and Israel (say nothing of the
democracy) would be laughable if the truth of the material cost to the
masses weren’t so brutal and sustained. Military and economic
subservience may have diminished to some extent but even Israel knows
which direction its nuclear bombs are obliged to point and under whose
watchful eye they are allowed their “independence”. The ROK also knows
damn well that without US imperialism in their corner they are just days
away from singing praises to the “Great Leader”. As part of the
post-war imperialist settlement with the Stalinists, the primary task in
West Germany, ROK and Israel was to elevate and sustain a labor
aristocracy committed to the anti-communist task. In the ROK and Israel a
semi-colonial bourgeoisie with a counter-revolutionary backbone was
selected or elevated itself among the candidates. In all three some
social gains were needed to advertise the ‘free market’ to those just
across the borders in the DWSs and were reeled out (as least to the
chosen ones) and held aloft as propagandist’s examples of how democratic
imperialism is benevolent with those who owe their very existence to
its sustained military prowess. These states are sustained as military
bulwarks based on concessions to a client bourgeoisie and a labor
aristocracy (a seat at the imperialist table for the 2nd International,
i.e. GFR and Israel) as long as they are committed to their
counter-revolutionary role.
China and Indo-China
It was the Permanent Revolution surviving in workers property in the
Soviet Union that was internationalised in China and Indo-China as
revolutions that overthrew the bourgeoisie and completed the bourgeois
revolution in the East. However, as largely peasant revolutions led by
Stalinist bureaucracies trained under Stalin in Moscow, the proletariat
was never in power. There was never a Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
Like the Eastern European states, although not as direct extensions of
the Soviet Union, China and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam were
‘degenerate’ at birth. Nevertheless, these states were post-capitalist
and represented an advance in the Permanent Revolution as a distorted
form of ‘workers democracy’ in the bureaucratised workers councils and
peasant communes.
Conversely, the imperialist determination to surround, divide and
isolate these Degenerate Workers States (DWSs) in the name of ‘bourgeois
democracy’ could not but be a reactionary attack on ‘workers
democracy.’ China and Indo-China expropriated the bourgeoisie but could
not deepen their Permanent Revolution to advance workers democracy and
build socialism because of their isolation from the international
working class. That means, as always, that the limits of the permanent
revolution are set by the balance of international class forces between
revolution and counter-revolution.
This brings us to the last significant retreat in the Permanent
Revolution, the world-historic defeat of workers property in the DWSs
from 1989 to 1991. While capitalist property was restored and with it a
new bourgeoisie, this counter-revolution was
incomplete as it failed to destroy the legacy of the unfinished Permanent Revolution. That legacy was the
economic independence of Russia and China in the lifetime of the DWSs that
advanced the forces of production beyond that possible in a capitalist semi-colony. That
means that the legacy of the workers states was not wiped out by the
restoration of capitalism and imperialism was not able therefore to
reduce the former workers states to the status of semi-colonies. As a
result, the Cold War ended not as an outright victory for US imperialism
and its allies because they were not able to break up and plunder the
former workers states and destroy their capacity to accumulate capital
in their own right.
Only then can we properly understand why the
rise of Russia and China as imperialist states was possible, and that
capitalist semi-colonies cannot complete their bourgeois revolution
without the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. As we have seen above,
Taiwan, South Korea and Israel are not independent imperialist states,
but proxies of Anglo-US imperialism.
1989-91: the ‘democratic counter-revolution’
1917 marked the most historic advance in Permanent Revolution.
Despite all setbacks, from Germany 1917-23 and 1933 and the defeats of
depression and war, revolution expanded as workers property in the
post-war DWSs. So long as workers property remained, the major gain of
1917 was undefeated. Trotsky made unconditional defence of the Soviet
Union the fundamental plank of the 1938 program. But the 4
th
International failed to survive as a healthy international. And the
Stalinist bureaucracy could not sustain growth, as the failure of
planned production not under the democratic control of the workers
inevitably led to economic stagnation. Both Stalinism and
pseudo-Trotskyism succumbed to restoration via the democratic road. By
the late ‘80s a bourgeois restorationist faction of the bureaucracy was
introducing market reforms and bourgeois democratic reforms. Another
faction based on the military command recognised the need to restore
capitalism but opted for the slow ‘Chinese’ road. Now unconditional
defence of the Soviet Union and workers property required the political
overthrow of both wings of the bureaucracy.
Trotsky in the ‘30’s had foreseen the possibility of capitalist
restoration taking the form of a ‘democratic counter-revolution’; that
the main factor in the defeat of workers resistance to capitalist
restoration would be their acceptance of the illusions of bourgeois
democracy.
“Trotsky did not and could not foresee the actual way in
which the bureaucratized workers’ states were destroyed fifty years
later. Trotsky predicted correctly that if restoration would take place
in his time (1930’s), it could succeed primarily with the brutality of
fascism and civil war. But, brilliantly, he did not exclude in his
writings the possibility that capitalism would be restored principally
by the instruments of bourgeois” democracy”. At that time (the 1930’s),
the Soviet masses were willing to give their life for socialism.
Illusions in bourgeois democracy were barely in existence. But to
succeed in its restorationist project, bourgeois democracy needs to get
active support from some sectors of the broad masses – this was out of
the question in the 1930’s. It was clear that the masses would not have
tolerated bourgeois democracy and they were willing to actively resist
restoration… The betrayal of the working class by social democracy and
Stalinism in Western Europe brought about one the quietest decades of
the class struggle (the 1980’s). This combined with the total
capitulation of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the East, convinced
imperialism and is agents to proceed with the creation of bourgeois
parliaments and elections as the safest way to take state power. Thus
the creation of such bourgeois bodies was a central step in the
restorationist process.” (Introcor, Special Issue, LO Fete, 1993)
In the Spring of 1990 the first major test of unconditional defence
of the DWSs was the re-unification of Germany. The LRCI demands were
correct; unconditional defence of the GDR, political revolution in the
East and socialist revolution in the West, and reunification of Germany
as a socialist republic in a socialist united states of Europe. To win,
workers must build workers’ councils and workers’ militia and convoke a
“…congress of workers’ councils as the organ of state power of a German
Workers’ Republic!” There was no mention of bourgeois parliaments or
political parties to contest elections except to fight them with the
institutions of ‘workers democracy’:
“If however, the bureaucracy is obliged to call
parliamentary elections then we call for workers to call prior mass
meetings to select their candidates and to hear the candidates of all
parties. The workers should demand annual elections and deputies who are
recallable by their constituents. They should demand of all candidates a
pledge to defend statified and planned property. By these means the
fraud of bourgeois parliamentarism can be exposed, its dangers minimised
and the principles of the system of workers’ councils fought for.” (‘The Political Revolution in East Germany’, Trotskyist International, 4, Spring, 1990)
Of course the outcome was decided by the betrayals of the Stalinists
to imperialism and the pseudo-Trotskyists incapable of unconditional
defence of the DWS. Despite the LRCI’s correct line, there was no
revolutionary party with influence on the masses able to offer a
revolutionary alternative to the ‘democratic counter-revolution.’ In
October, 1990, the new East German section of the LRCI condemned the
cynical use of bourgeois democracy by the imperialists and the
Stalinists to fool the workers:
“The speed of the reunification and the brutal form of the Anschluss
of the GDR, which contradicted the democratic pretences of the Federal
Republic’s own constitution, has forced the helpless and confused left
to the sidelines of events…[the PDS] proposed alternative to Kohl’s
unification of the two states – a referendum on the draft constitution
drawn up by the Round Table – was trapped completely within the logic of
bourgeois parliamentarism.” (‘Germany, united fatherland…’ Trotskyist International, 5, autumn, 1990, not online)
Why then, after such a spirited fight for workers democracy against
bourgeois democracy in the German reunification, did the LRCI abandon
the central plank in the Transitional Program in Russia a year later to
align itself with a bourgeois restorationist faction of the bureaucracy
lead by Boris Yeltsin?
To explain this we develop the argument
that we first put forward as the Proletarian Faction in the LRCI in 1995
to explain why instead of fighting the democratic counter-revolution,
the LRCI joined it.
For all Dave Hughes’ knowledge of the Soviet Union, the break from
Cliffism to orthodox Trotskyism in the mid-1980s proved incomplete.
The Degenerated Revolution, which resulted from Hughes’ analysis of the workers states contained a basic flaw hidden in its method.
The
Soviet Union was conceived as an isolated DWS in which the main
contradiction was between the Stalinist bureaucracy and workers’
(statified) property. For Trotsky the main contradiction was between workers property and global capitalism.
The bureaucracy was a secondary or mediating contradiction and thus
could be removed by a political revolution. This contradiction was
represented in the separation of a ‘bourgeois state form’ and ‘statified
property’.
The flaw in method emerged when the crisis of the workers states in
E. Europe blew up in the late ‘80s. This disoriented the LRCI as the
road to restoration proved not to be ‘civil war’ but “peaceful counter
revolution.” The LRCI faced up to this fact with the German
Anschluss,
but lost its way in the Soviet Union when it confused bourgeois
democracy and workers democracy. The LRCI began to talk of “democracy”
in the abstract when describing the mobilisation of workers
organisations against the Stalinist bureaucracy, suppressing the fact
that behind this “democracy” was the main enemy, imperialism.
The
IEC Resolution
on the world situation in July, 1990, (section on “The Death Agony of
Stalinism in the degenerated workers’ states”) refers to the “coming
revolutionary crisis” in the USSR:
“The USSR is moving rapidly towards a revolutionary
situation. This is shown by the mounting economic shortages, the
mushrooming of independent workers’ organisations and the results of the
Spring 1990 local elections which saw wholesale defeats for party
candidates…[t]he oppressed nationalities, the civil rights activists and
the working class have all taken action in defiance of [Gorbachevs]
decrees. The workers are fighting for their democratic rights,
for free trade unions, freedom of assembly, the right to strike, for
improvements in wages, for greater equality, and against bureaucratic
corruption. The foundation of an independent miners’ union and
of the Confederation of Labour representing millions of Soviet
proletarians, opens a whole new phase of the crisis.” [Our emphasis]
Already a year before the Yeltsin coup, we see that the LRCI
‘contradiction’ between Stalinism and statified property is manifest as
workers fighting for bourgeois rights against the Stalinists. This is
not the continuation of the permanent revolution by means of workers
democracy – that is, workers organs of struggle
independent from capital, but
bourgeois ‘free’ trade unions, right to strike, equality, etc., of
capitalist democracy; not workers democracy, but the ‘democratic
counter-revolution’
independent from the Stalinist bureaucracy – the
now familiar democratic imperialist program of the ‘colour
revolutions’. What we see here is the secondary contradiction displacing
the main contradiction in an historic showdown within the ‘bourgeois’
state apparatus between fascism (Stalinist dictatorship) and democracy
(workers control) disguised as the defence of workers property.
In the
IEC Resolution
on East Germany in July, 1990, we also find the LRCI leadership
redefining Trotsky’s ‘unconditional defence of the Soviet Union’ as a
conditional defence:
“Within the strategy of political revolution a vital
distinction had to be drawn between defence of the post-capitalist
property relations –obligatory for all Marxists – and
illegitimate defence of the bureaucratic state apparatus, which was the
principle enemy of the working class within the GDR; failure to make
this distinction lay at the heart of the impotence of the left wing
opponents of the state. It led the majority of those who
genuinely wanted to prevent the restoration of capitalism into
identifying mass mobilisations against the regime principally as attacks
upon the property relations. By the same token, it also led them to see
in the state apparatus a potential means of defending those property
relations.” [Our emphasis]
The LRCI’s origins in the Cliffite tendency come back to the surface. For Trotsky ‘unconditional defence’ meant
despite the bureaucracy, not against it. The
bureaucracy is not the ‘main enemy’. This is a caricature of
Trotskyism. As soon as you say the Stalinists are the main enemy you
make ‘democratic imperialism’ the “lesser evil” to the Stalinist
dictatorship. Then you begin to swim with the tide of workers who also
see the Stalinists as the main enemy and begin to adapt to bourgeois
democracy as the means of defeating the Stalinists. The failure of the
left to fight for workers democracy is the failure of revolutionary
leadership to stand firm on ‘unconditional defence’ as the main plank of
the permanent revolution. Having only recently broken from state
capitalism, the LRCI reverted to its flawed method, bending under the
pressure of democratic imperialism and the influence on the E. German
masses against the ‘main enemy’ Stalinism, subordinating ‘workers
democracy’ to ‘bourgeois democracy.’ The logical endpoint of this
Anschluss in the LRCI program was its capitulation to Yeltsin’s restorationist popular front in August, 1991.
The International Secretariat Resolution “
The USSR at the Crossroads” adopted in February, 1991, already made clear that Yeltsin is moving to rally the pro-market forces in the Soviet Union..:
“Although the radical marketisers are excluded from the
inner Bonapartist clique around Gorbachev, they still have positions of
mass influence. Yeltsin and company were able to mobilise mass
demonstrations in Moscow and other cities against the clampdown in
Lithuania. Middle ranking officers and senior commanders in the army
have expressed support for Yeltsin. He remains the most well known and
popular alternative figure to Gorbachev. Gorbachev’s plebiscite on
preserving the USSR and accepting the new Federation proposals will be a
major trial of strength. Yeltsin’s own referendum for a
popularly elected Russian and all-Union Federation is aimed at
mobilising mass support and giving himself a “democratic mandate” to
defy Gorbachev. Together with the Baltics, the western
borderland republics and the Caucasus, the Russian Federation still
presents a major obstacle to the conservatives.” [Our emphasis]
Nevertheless “Independent class forces will be obliged to defend…their democratic freedoms…alongside Yeltsin…”
“The final outcome will rest upon the attitude of the
masses in general and the soldiers in particular. The working class has
no interest in the triumph of either side in this debate between
bureaucrats. Its historic and immediate interests lie in the
preservation and extension of democratic freedoms and the nationalised
and planned property relations. Independent class forces will be
obliged to defend these liberties alongside Yeltsin and company, whilst
not for one minute supporting the Yeltsinites’ seizure of power. On the
other hand independent class forces are obliged to defend the statified
economy alongside the conservatives whilst not for one minute
abandoning the objective of overthrowing them.” (ibid. [our emphasis])
In the event of the conservatives’ coup 6 months later in
August, the LRCI stood alongside Yeltsin defending ‘bourgeois democracy’
while refusing to back the coup because it was directed at the
bourgeois democracy of the pro-market forces! The only position for
revolutionaries in that situation was to defend the Red House in a
workers’ united front to restore workers democracy by rebuilding the
soviets independently of both the bureaucracy and the restorationists to
defend workers property unconditionally. The RCIT continues to defend
the LRCI position of a ‘conditional’ defence of workers’ property, that
condition being that it will not bloc with Stalinists to defend workers’
property, while it will bloc with the bourgeois democrats aligned to
imperialism! The fact that the LRCI saw the demise of Stalinism
as a victory opening the road for workers to defend workers property
explains its characterisation of the period as a “revolutionary period,
counter-revolutionary phase.” For them, there was no world-historical
defeat so long as the ‘main enemy’ was defeated, and the proletariat
could live to fight for political revolution. For the LRCI and RCIT
today bourgeois democracy was and is the ‘lesser evil’ to Stalinist
‘fascism’ and not a betrayal of permanent revolution.
From Permanent Revolution to Bourgeois Democracy
We have undertaken to trace the Epoch of permanent revolution
beginning with Marx’s conception, including the three aspects isolated
by Trotsky in his analysis, documenting the balance of forces for and
against Permanent Revolution from 1871 through all the significant
advances and retreats up to the present, and projecting its final
victory in the future communism. We argued that from 1850 the task of
developing the forces of production became the task of the proletariat.
From that point the bourgeoisie became a reactionary class. In
particular, bourgeois democracy was a reactionary class ideology that
objectively formed a bulwark to revolutionary class consciousness and
permanent revolution as the strategy of the proletariat playing its
historic role as the revolutionary class capable of developing the
forces of production.
We argue that the RCIT does not see the bourgeoisie as a completely
reactionary class, and moreover does not see bourgeois democracy as a
barrier to permanent revolution. In fact it argues that by defending
bourgeois democracy the proletariat can “assist” the bourgeoisie to
develop the forces of production. For us, this is the basis of
Menshevism, where the proletariat plays an “auxiliary role” (in popular
fronts) in completing the bourgeois democratic revolution to prepare the
conditions for socialist revolution. Menshevism as a revisionist
‘evolutionary’ Marxism is a capitulation to social imperialism under
pressure from the imperialist bourgeoisie.
The root of this revision is the RCIT conception of bourgeois democracy.
We trace this to an incomplete split of the MRCI/LRCI from the state
capitalist Cliffite SWP (Britain) in 1975. Trotsky explained that state
capitalism was rooted in petty bourgeois Stalinophobia, which rejected
dialectics and revived the split between state and society of bourgeois
ideology. In the crisis of 1991 the LRCI reverted to its roots and
blocked with the bourgeois restorationists against the Stalinist
bureaucracy. The RCIT has never repudiated this betrayal by the LRCI and
this is shown in its current defence of bourgeois democracy,
reinforcing illusions in popular fronts and popular front parties.
We have seen that bourgeois democracy was only conceded by the
bourgeoisie when forced by fear of socialist revolution to contain the
revolution with “pseudo-democratic forms” that combined parliament
backed by the bourgeois army. Bourgeois democracy traps the proletariat
in the fetishised ideology of exchange relations, masking unequal
production relations reproduced daily in the workplace and reinforced by
the labour bureaucracy and Social Democracy inside or outside the
popular fronts with the bourgeoisie and its “shadow” the Stalinists.
Therefore, from the Paris Commune onward, to escape its exploitation,
the proletariat has always sought to destroy the objectively
counter-revolutionary bourgeois democracy by opposing to it a subjective
workers democracy, implicitly and explicitly challenging the social
relations that underpin the former with the strikes and occupations,
councils, communes and armed insurrections of the latter.
However, this revolutionary subjectivity cannot transcend the
reactionary objectivity of bourgeois democracy unless it becomes
class-conscious. It has to break from fetishised bourgeois ideology that
limits consciousness to the “class-in-itself” of labour subordinated to
capital, to “class for-itself” as represented by the revolutionary
party. Only the active intervention of the revolutionary party can
transcend the bourgeois democratic and immediate demands of the old
minimum program by means of the transitional method of the Transitional
Program. That is why the strategy of Permanent Revolution is the method
of the Transitional Program.
LCC, 13 June, 2015
[i] K. Marx,
Early Writings, Introduction by L. Colletti. Pelican edition; Marx,
Capital Volume 1, Chap 1 ‘Commodities’, Section on
Fetishism of Commodities.
[ii] see
Civil War in France, ‘
France capitulates and the Government of Thiers’.
[iii]
“No common platform with the Social Democracy, or with the leaders of
the German trade unions, no common publications, banners, placards!
March separately, but strike together! Agree only how to strike, whom to
strike, and when to strike! Such an agreement can be concluded even
with the devil himself, with his grandmother, and even with Noske and
Grezesinsky. On one condition, not to bind one’s hands.” (Trotsky,
The Workers United Front against Fascism, ‘We Must Force the Social Democracy into a Bloc Against the Fascists’).
Trotsky refers to the Bolshevik policy towards Kerensky in 1917 where
the Bolsheviks formed a military bloc with Kerensky against Kornilov,
simultaneously exposing and splitting Social Revolutionary and Menshevik
workers from its bourgeois leadership.
Does this make Kerensky
the “lesser evil”? No, the “democrat” Kerensky is no less a
counter-revolutionary than the “reactionary” Kornilov but a military
bloc can unite the workers against Kornilov and prove this fact to those
who have illusions in the popular front government. In the
event Kornilov was defeated, Kerensky was exposed as conspiring with
Kornilov to smash the revolution, and shortly after the Bolsheviks won a
majority in the Soviets to stage the insurrection.
[iv]
“Verbal genuflections before the soviets are equally as fashionable in
the “left” circles as the misconception of their historical function.
Most often the soviets are defined as the organs of struggle for power,
as the organs of insurrection, and finally, as the organs of
dictatorship. Formally these definitions are correct. But they do not at
all exhaust the historical function of the soviets. First of all they
do not explain why, in the struggle for power, precisely the soviets are
necessary. The answer to this question is: just as the trade union is
the rudimentary form of the united front in the economic struggle, so
the soviet is the highest form of the united front under the conditions
in which the proletariat enters the epoch of fighting for power. The
soviet in itself possesses no miraculous powers. It is the class
representation of the proletariat, with all of the latter’s strong and
weak points. But precisely and only because of this does the soviet
afford to the workers of divers political trends the organizational
opportunity to unite their efforts in the revolutionary struggle for
power. In the present pre-revolutionary environment it is the duty of
the most advanced German workers to understand most clearly the
historical function of the soviets as the organs of the united front…The
Social Democracy and the Communist Party divide in Germany the
influence over the working class. The Social Democratic leadership does
its best to repel the workers from itself. The leadership of the
Communist Party strives with all its might to counteract the influx of
the workers. As a consequence we get the formation of a third party and a
comparatively slow change in the correlation of forces in favor of the
Communists. But even if Communist Party policies were entirely correct,
the workers’ need for a revolutionary unification of the class would
have grown incomparably faster than the preponderance of the Communist
Party within the class. The need of creating soviets would thus remain
in its full scope. The creation of the soviets presupposes that the
different parties and organizations within the working class, beginning
with the factories, become agreed, both as regards the very necessity
for the soviets and as regards the time and methods of their formation.
Which means: since the soviets, in themselves, represent the highest
form of the united front in the revolutionary epoch, therefore their
inception must be preceded by the policy of the united front in the
preparatory period.” (
What Next: vital questions for the German Proletariat. Section 8 ‘Through the United Front to the Soviets as the Highest Organs of the United Front’)
Posts
