Permanent revolution - THEORIES OF TRANSITION - LOIZOS MICHAIL
Trotskyism Study Group CPGB
In the Menshevik
conception of the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the tactics
and strategies derived from the classic bourgeois revolutions of Western
Europe were transposed to the Russian context. A general
theory -of transition was presupposed and applied
to a concrete case. This conceptual framework was unable to pose the possibility of two concrete
forms of the bourgeois
revolution in the Russian social formation. The effects
of this mode of reasoning were
apparent in Plekhanov’s article The Question of the Seizure of Power, which appeared
in Iskra No. 96, [109] and in which he defended the tactics developed by the Mensheviks, by their correspondence to the tactics
formulated by Marx
for the German revolution in 1850, [110] and the advice
given by Engels to the Italian
Socialists in 1894. [111]
...this arch-revolutionary “Address”
proposes precisely those tactics
which are now recommended by the Russian comrades of Iskra…. [112]
In Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution,
the process
of transition — a continuous process from bourgeois
to socialist tasks — is deduced
from the character
of the class agents present in the Russian
social formation. The revolution is “permanent” because the proletariat is constituted as the subject of the process of transition through all
the “phases” of struggle. A general theory of transition from “bourgeois” to socialist revolution is produced,
having at its centre,
the notion of the proletariat consciously acting on an external reality to express
the essence
of its class interests
— the maximum programme of Social-
Democracy. All the concrete questions
of the terms of
transition, the tasks at each stage,
and the question of allies at each specific
moment disappear.
In Lenin’s conceptual framework,
there is no general theory of
transition derived from constituting a particular class as the subject of the revolutionary process. All processes
of transition are concrete
and specific. The forms of transition from feudalism to capitalism cannot be deduced by designating the revolution bourgeois; neither can the forms of transition from bourgeois
to socialist revolution be deduced
from the fact that the proletariat acts as the “leading” class in the revolutionary process.
Forms of transition are determined by the
outcome of determinate class struggle which take place on a social
and political terrain constituted by the forms and results
of previous class struggles.
From what has been said above, I
hope to have shown two things:
Firstly, the “distance” between Lenin and
Trotsky in their theory, and the nature of their theoretical differences. Secondly,
the fact that Trotsky and the Mensheviks largely occupied
the same theoretical “space”, and that their political
differences, at any rate as far as'they related to questions pertaining to the theory
of Permanent Revolution, arose from their different estimations of the revolutionary capacity of the bourgeoisie, which led them to assign
to a different class subject the role of “leading” force in
the revolutionary process.
FEBRUARY-OCTOBER 1917
One of the persistent elements of Trotskyist mythology
is the claim that Lenin, in 1917-18, implicitly, if not explicitly,
came over to Trotsky’s theory of Permanent
Revolution.
In 1917... Lenin changed his mind. In all essentials the thesis of the Permanent Revolution ... was adopted by his party. [114]
This assumption is not made on the basis of an analysis of the theoretical and political
positions of Lenin and Trotsky in 1905-07 or in 1917-18, but on a political
observation: In 1905, Trotsky
advocated the seizure
of power by the working
class in the bourgeois-democratic revolution, whereas Lenin did not; In 1917-18, Lenin advocated a seizure of power by the working
class, and the Bolsheviks led a successful insurrection in the main urban centres
of Russia; therefore, the reasoning
goes, Lenin abandoned
his old theory of revolution by stages, which was the
“political counterpoint” of an economic determinist view of
history, and
adopted Trotsky’s perspective of Permanent Revolution. [115] Mavrakis, quite correctly, characterises this mode of reasoning
in the following way:
Trotsky rewrites history. He isolates two moments:
1905 and 1917; he disregards the period that separates
them ... and this is what the history of Bolshevism becomes. According to him, in 1905, Lenin formulated “a hypothesis”: revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. This hypothesis depended on an
“unknown”: the political
role of the peasantry. October 1917 reduced the unknown
and Lenin’s hypothesis (which envisaged the possibility of a peasant party with a majority
in the revolutionary government) was invalidated since it was the dictatorship of the proletariat alone which triumphed! [116]
This mode of analysis — the isolation and comparison of two separate and distinct
historical junctures
— is the product of a theoretical framework which conceived of a general theory of transition in which the motive
force is a class subject consciously active in all stages
of the revolutionary process. As the process
of revolutionary transformation is deduced
from the active presence of
a class subject (the class
which assumes the “leading role”), and not in terms
of the forms and outcomes
of determinate class struggles
at each specific
stage of transformation, then the
concrete peculiarities which allow
an identification of the “breaks”
in the historical process
cannot be analysed.
The Bolshevik slogan of 1905 is placed alongside, and judged by, the slogan of 1917; the verification of the correctness of the 1905 analysis, then, is not its adequacy
with respect to the situation of 1905 (which reflection from the standpoint of 1917 sheds greater light), but what is assumed
to have taken place in 1917. The concrete conditions which gave rise to the formulations of 1905 “disappear”, and need not be differentiated
from the specific features giving rise to the perspectives of 1917. Forgotten in this mode of analysis,
is that the concrete historical experiences which
enabled Lenin to specify
the stages of transition to the seizure of power by the working
class in 1917 (the imperialist war, the democratic revolution of February
1917, the Soviets
of worker’s and soldier’s
delegates etc.) did not exist in 1905, when, in the absence of any knowledge as to the form in which democratic liberties would be established, and the legacy of the old semi-feudal system abolished, he was unable to establish the conditions in which the proletariat would have to conduct
its struggle for power.
In 1905, Lenin made the point that:
Concrete political aims must be set in concrete circumstances. All things are relative,
all things flow and all things
change.... There is no such thing as abstract truth. Truth is always
concrete. [117]
And again, in 1917:
Marxism requires of us a strictly
exact and objectively verifiable analysis
of the relation of classes and of the concrete
features peculiar to each historical situation. [118]
The first observation that we need to
make, is that from within Lenin’s conceptual framework, it is inadmissible to compare
the political slogans
of one historical moment
with the slogans of another,
without recognising that tactics
and slogans are concretely derived from the specific features of each moment. The “concrete truth” of 1905 cannot be compared with the “concrete truth”
of 1917 without realising
that it is “concrete circumstances”
which give them their validity,
unless of course,
one proceeds from the abstract truth concerning the “leading” role of the proletariat in the revolution,
or from the “truth” that the revolution
is bourgeois, therefore... What is important is riot the fact that tactics
and slogans have changed, but that these changes,
if
they are “correct”,
are a “scientific reflection” of
the transformations in the concrete situation, without denying, for one moment,
that the experience of later class struggles
enable one to assess in a more comprehensive manner the adequacies and inadequacies of the slogans and tactics of preceding
class struggles.
In the juncture
inaugurated by the fall of Tsarism,
Lenin emphasised the need to study
“...the specific
features of the new and living
T:eality.” [119] Something new has turned up, said
Lenin, something
we had never expected. Unless we can
grasp what is uniquely
new about the present situation, we cannot hope to develop
a correct strategy for the
working class. The “unique” features introduced by the democratic revolution of February 1917 were characterised by Lenin as “Dual Power”, which he defined as the interlocking of two forms of class dictatorship. [120]
One of the reasons
why advocates of the theory
of Permanent Revolution claim that
Lenin discarded
the formulations and positions he had adopted in 1905, in favour of Trotsky’s strategy
of Permanent
Revolution, is the fact that he dropped
the slogan of the democratic- dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry in 1917. Lenin,
however, nowhere rejected the correctness of the
formulations he had adopted for the situation of the first Russian revolution. On the contrary,
he maintained that on the whole, they had proved
to be correct,
but that their concrete realization had turned out differently. [121]
The revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry has already become a reality [in a certain
form and to a certain extent)
in the Russian revolution, for this “formula” envisages only a relation of classes,
and not a concrete political
institution implementing this relation, this
cooperation. “The Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies” —
there you have the “revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry” already accomplished in
reality. [122]
Remember
that Trotsky identified the sole difference between himself
and Lenin in 1905 as relating to
the question of the “party-political
and state organisation” of the democratic- dictatorship
[123] Well,
it seems that from Lenin’s point of view there
could not have been a difference here, because
his formula only envisaged a “relation
of classes” in the democratic revolution,
and not a “political institution implementing” that relationship.
“The Soviet”, said Lenin
in 1917, “is the implementation of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the soldiers;
among the latter the majority are peasants.
It is therefore
a dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.” [124] The uniqueness of the situation introduced by the February
revolution, in which things had “turned out differently”, was in the “... extremely original, novel and unprecedented interlacing...” of the “...rule of the bourgeoisie (the government of Lvov and Cruchkov)
and a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, which is voluntarily ceding power to the bourgeoisie ...” [125] It was because of the unexpected way in which the analysis
of 1905 had been verified,
and its formulas
realized, that required
them to be amended and supplemented. [126] They were not longer adequate
to comprehend the concrete
situation that had arisen from the way in which the transformation in class relations embodied in their formulation, had been realised. The old Bolshevik slogan of the democratic- dictatorship had to be “discarded”, not because of its incorrectness, but because it had
already entered the realm of social reality in the form of the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’
Deputies, and ' because it was no longer
adequate to comprehend a situation
in which the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, in the form of the provisional revolutionary government, existed alongside, and with the support
of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.
NEW CONDITIONS
This unique situation
was the product
of a number of factors that Lenin had not expected
in
1905-07 and which had arisen as a result of
the way in which the class struggle
developed up to February 1917. These factors were:
1
The bourgeoisie, under the pressure of the revolutionary people and because of the inability of the Tsarist
government to conduct the way efficiently, and with
the support of the Anglo- French alliance, had been able to act in a revolutionary way, and break with the Tsarist autocracy.
2
Lenin had expected
that a peasant
uprising against the landlords, would create the situation
in which a mass, democratic peasant movement
could develop against
the Tsarist political system. In his 1905-07
analysis, two elements of bourgeois-democratic social
transformation
— the seizure of land and the conquest
of political liberties
— had been inextricably linked together. In fact however,
it was the miseries of the Imperialist war which created
the conditions in which a decisive
section of the peasants
— the peasants in uniform
— developed as a mass, democratic force in alliance with the urban workers,
before the movement
to seize the land had properly developed.
3
Lenin had expected
the proletariat to exercise an ideological influence over its ally, the peasantry; again,
however, partly because of the efforts
of the imperialist way, the proletariat had succumbed to the overwhelming influence
of petty-bourgeois ideology, so that the soviets, representing the class dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, voluntarily ceded power to the bourgeois provisional government which refused to end Russian participation in the imperialist way and which was extremely reluctant to sanction
any radical transformation in agrarian
relations.
Neither
Trotsky, nor his present-day supporters, have ever produced a serious theoretical examination of Lenin’s writings
in 1917-18 in order to justify the
claim that from the April Theses onwards, Lenin operated according
to the strategy of Permanent
Revolution. Trotsky,
in his Permanent Revolution, claimed that Lenin, only “occasionally” referred the realization of the democrat-dictatorship in the form of Dual Power.
[127] According to Trotsky, however
The
Bolshevik slogan was realized
in fact — not as a morphological trait but as a very great historical reality. Only, it was realized not before, but after October.
[128]
The evidence that is cited
as proof of this contention and the correctness of the theory
of Permanent Revolution, is that when the Bolsheviks seized political power in October
1917 in the main urban centres,
the struggles of the peasants
against the semi-feudal landlords had still not yet fully developed; this enables
advocates of the theory
of Permanent Revolution to present October 1917 as the consummation of the bourgeois-democratic revolution by the dictatorship of the proletariat, as predicted
by Trotsky in 1906.
This mode of verification of the correctness of the theory of Permanent Revolution, conveniently overlooks a very specific concrete reality
— the transformation in political class relations inaugurated by the February 1917 democratic revolution, which established the political freedoms required
by the working
class to wage its struggle
for political power and the socialist revolution. It conveniently forgets Lenin’s
dictum that:
The passing
of state power from one class to another is the first, the principal, the basic sign of a revolution ...[129]
It forgets that Lenin characterised February 1917 as a:
...revolution of the proletariat, the peasantry
and the bourgeoisie in alliance
with Anglo-French
finance capital against Tsarism.
[130] It forgets that:
Before the February-March revolution of 1917, state power in Russia
was in the hands of one class,
namely, the feudal nobility...
After the revolution, the power is in the hands of a different class, a new class, namely, the bourgeoisie...[131]
And that therefore:
To this extent,
the bourgeois, or the bourgeois-democratic, revolution in Russia is completed. [132]
According to
Trotsky, “Lenin spoke extremely conditionally of the ‘realization’ of the democratic dictatorship”, in order to, “argue against those who
expected a second, improved edition
of the independent democratic dictatorship. Lenin’s words only meant
that there is not and , will not be any democratic dictatorship outside of the miserable miscarriage of the dual power....” [133]
If, however, we read Lenin’s
Letters on Tactics,
we get a different
picture. Contrary to Trotsky’s
statement that Lenin believed that
there could be no “democratic dictatorship
outside
of the miserable miscarriage of the dual
power”, Lenin himself declared that such an independent democratic dictatorship was “quite possible.” [134]
Possibly the peasantry
may seize all the land and all the power. [135]
Lenin’s criticism of the “old” Bolsheviks
did not rest on a denial of this possibility,
but on the fact that they wanted to base party policy on the fact that the peasants might,
in the future, break from the bourgeoisie, and seize the landlords land, at a moment in time when the peasants were under the influence of the bourgeoisie. The “old” Bolsheviks failed to understand the character
of the “current moment”, they failed to understand that Dual Power,
representing the interlocking of two
forms of class dictatorship in the democratic revolution, was
based on the fact that “... an agreement, of — to use a more exact, less legal, but more class-economic term — class collaboration exists between the bourgeoisie and the peasantry.”[136]
The “old” Bolsheviks wanted to base party policy on the possibility that an independent democratic-dictatorship might develop at a time when the Soviets, representing that dictatorship, had not yet broken
from the bourgeoisie. It was equally
possible, depending
on the way the class struggle developed, that the peasants
would not break away from the influence
of the bourgeoisie. According
to Lenin:
When this fact ceases to be
a fact, [137] when the peasantry separates
from the bourgeoisie, seizes the land and power despite the bourgeoisie, that will be a new stage in the bourgeois- democratic revolution.... [138]
The error of
the “old” Bolsheviks was that
they constituted the seizure of land by the peasants as the “essence” of a “pure” democratic-dictatorship, whereas for Lenin in 1905-07,
the peasant movement
to seize the landlords land had constituted the crucial
condition from which the peasants
could develop as an ally of the working
class in the struggle
to achieve democratic freedom
by the smashing
of the Tsarist autocracy. In February 1917, the effects of the Imperialist war provided
an alternative condition of existence
for the development of a mass, democratic peasant movement; this of course, did not rule out the possibility that the development of movement
to seize the land could take the bourgeois-democratic revolution to a “new stage”.
If we turn to Lenin’s
analysis of the “abrupt and original” turn experienced by the Russian
revolution at the end of August
1917, and with the defeat of an attempt
at counter revolution, when he re-introduced
the pre-July slogan of “All Power to the Soviets” in its original meaning of the peaceful development of the revolution, we can see that, despite the Trotskyite claim that Lenin, in April 1917, came over to the strategy of Permanent
Revolution, despite Trotsky’s claims of the impossibility of peasant
and petty bourgeois parties developing independently, despite his claim that Lenin believed that “there is not and will
not be any democratic dictatorship outside
of ... dual power”, Lenin,
at the beginning of
September 1917, was prepared to support a “government of S-Rs and Mensheviks responsible
to the Soviets”,[139] and what
is more:
The Bolsheviks, without
making any claim to participate in the government
... would refrain from demanding
the immediate transfer
of power to the proletariat and the poor peasants
and from employing revolutionary methods of fighting
for this demand.
[140]
In the very specific moment
of September 1917, with the defeat
of the Kornilov revolt, the very real possibility existed of winning
the petty- bourgeois parties away from their alliance with the bourgeoisie, thereby
guaranteeing the peaceful
development of the revolution. One month before the Bolshevik
seizure of power,
Lenin envisaged the possibility of an independant democratic- dictatorship (“All power to the soviets”), in which governmental
power would be held by a bloc of petty-bourgeois parties.
The significance of this is that Lenin allowed
for certain possibilities
— depending on the way the class struggle developed — which were inadmissable on the basis of Trotsky’s
theory of Permanent Revolution. The fact that the revolutionary forces failed to break this alliance in September
1917 in no way means that the possibility did not concretely exist at specific
moments of the class struggle. It was the outcome of determinate class struggles in concrete situations which led to the non-realization of a form of the democratic-dictatorship astride
of Dual Power, and which created
the possibility of an armed seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in the main urban centres. To assert
otherwise would be to have a teleological view of history,
in which the inevitable necessity of the present
is read back into the struggles
of the past.
We have referred to the fact that Trotsky
believed that the bourgeois- democratic revolution was consummated by the proletarian revolution of October
1917. Support for their point of view can be obtained
by isolating particular statements made by Lenin after the October seizure of power, For instance,
The nationalization of the land that has been effected
in Russia by the proletarian dictatorship has best ensured the carrying
of the bourgeois-democratic revolution to its conclusion ...[141]
The victorious Bolshevik revolution meant the end of vacillation, meant the complete destruction of the monarchy and of the landlord system
(which had not been destroyed before the October revolution). We carried the bourgeois
revolution to its conclusion. The peasants supported us as a whole.
[142]
It was the Bolsheviks... who, thanks only to the victory
of the proletarian revolution, helped the peasants
to carry the bourgeois democratic revolution really to its conclusion. [143]
The Trotskyist argument obscures a number of factors. Firstly, its presentation reproduces the error made by the “old”
Bolsheviks, that of conceiving of a “pure”
democratic-dictatorship whose “essence” is the seizure
of land by the peasants. As the seizure
of land took place after the October
revolution, then the dictatorship of the proletariat is presented
as the consummation of the “pure” bourgeois revolution, or as Trotsky put it, the Bolshevik
slogan of the democratic-
dictatorship was realized “not before, but after October.” [144] The error of this conception is its abstract
presentation of the Marxist category of “bourgeois revolution”.
Next; PURE REVOLUTION
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