Permanent Revolution - FORMS OF REVOLUTION - Loizos Michael
We have said that
the question of a “seizure of power” was not raised by Lenin in the first Russian revolution.
The central strategic question identified
by
Lenin was not that of a
“seizure of
power” in general, and it was
not the alternative, “bourgeois” revolution or socialist
revolution; rather, it was: which of the two possible forms of bourgeois revolution in Russia would create the most favourable social, economic
and political terrain for the working
class to conduct
its struggle for socialism? We have further
said that the fact that Lenin, in contrast
to the Mensheviks and Trotsky,
raised the question
in this way, was determined by the specificity of his Marxism.
Lenin advanced the thesis that:
Bourgeoisies differ. Bourgeois revolutions provide a vast variety of combinations of different groups, sections,
and elements both of the bourgeoisie itself and of the working
class. [48]
From this general proposition, and on the basis of his concrete
analysis of class forces in the Russian social formation, he went on to conclude that:
Modern Russia has two bourgeoisies. One is the very narrow
stratum of ripe and over-ripe capitalists who, in the person of the Octobrists and cadets,
are actually concerned
with sharing the present political power ... the other bourgeoisie is the very wide stratum
of petty and in part medium proprietors, who have not yet
matured but are energetically striving to do so. [49]
At stake in the Russian democratic revolution was the question
of whether the proletariat would succeed
in leading that “wide stratum” of the petty bourgeoisie against the tsarist state, the feudal landowners whose class interests it represented, and against the “narrow
stratum” of the bourgeoisie seeking to come to terms with the existing social order. This conception of the revolutionary process in Russia differed
fundamentally from that developed by both Trotsky and the Mensheviks. This strategic
difference was rooted in a fundamentally different interpretation of Marxist
theory from the one employed
by the Mensheviks on the one hand, and Trotsky
on the other.
We can ascertain the character
of this difference by looking
at Lenin’s conceptualization of the Marxist
category “Bourgeois
Revolution”. According to Lenin:
A liberation movement that is bourgeois
in social and economic content is not such because of its motive forces. The motive
force may be, not the bourgeoisie, but the proletariat and the peasantry. [50]
For Lenin, the Marxist category
of “bourgeois revolution” was not defined by the class agents active in the process
of revolutionary transformation, but by the character of the transformations themselves (“social and economic content”). His
theoretical interpretation of this Marxist category produced
the thesis that a “bourgeois” revolution may not, necessarily, be led by the “bourgeoisie”, or lead to its political
dominance in the state. A corollary thesis, rejected by both Martynov and Trotsky, was that a revolution led, in the active sense, by the proletariat, may not necessarily be a socialist
revolution, or lead to
its “conquest of power”, but
a particular form of the bourgeois revolution in which the proletariat is allied to, acts jointly
with, or relies
on, particular strata
of the bourgeoisie (the peasantry for instance).
For Lenin, general concepts, like “bourgeois revolution”, were means
of, or guides to, concrete analysis, and he totally
rejected any mode of reasoning
which attempted to derive answers to concrete
problems by means of “deductions” from principles or concepts.
To
“deduce” an answer to the concrete problems of the Russian bourgeois revolution of the first decade
of the twentieth century from the “general
concept” of bourgeois revolution in the narrowest sense of the terms is to debase Marxism...[51]
Lenin’s
theoretical “mode of
reasoning”, enabled him to distinguish between the abstract concept of “bourgeois revolution”, and the specific
forms of concrete bourgeois revolutions. This was possible because his concept of bourgeois
revolution made a distinction between the content
of a revolution in terms of specific
transformations of social
relations, and the motive forces of particular revolutionary processes
— the specific class agents interested and active in certain kinds of class practices and social
transformations. This enabled
Lenin to pose the questions: What specific
social transformations are at stake in the Russian
democratic revolution? What are the possible paths
of development in the transitional period? What social
and political forces have an interest in the possible outcomes of that process
of transformation? What means of struggle
do they have at their disposal?
What are the possible
forms of outcome as a result of the development of the class struggle? His analysis, produced the conclusions that:
1.
The liberal
bourgeoisie was not interested in a radical revolution to eliminate
the remnants
of feudal relations
in the Russian social formation, particularly the tsarist autocracy, but was more interested in sharing
political power with the landowners. The effects of a “revolution” corresponding to the
interests of the liberal bourgeoisie would be:
(a) the gradual transformation of the tsarist state into a bourgeois monarchy;
(b) restricted political liberties
for the working class;
(c) agrarian
“reform” designed to create a stable social base for tsarism in the countryside without radically undermining the class interests
of the large landowners, at the expense of the mass of peasants.
2.
Only the
proletariat and the peasantry
were interested in a “radical”
bourgeois-democratic revolution and the establishment of a republic. The effects
of this would have been:
(a) far-reaching freedoms for the working class to organise for the struggle
for socialism:
(b) the elimination of all the remnants of feudalism; the rapid development of a peasant-
capitalist economy
on nationalised land and the consequent rapid differentiation of the peasantry into a rural proletariat and a rural bourgeoisie.
In the Menshevik “mode of reasoning”, there was a
conflation of the elements which, in Lenin’s view, constituted the category
of “bourgeois revolution” — a conflation which led them to an identification of the content of the revolution with the motive force. The effects of this conflation was to constitute the bourgeoisie as the subject of the democratic revolution — the class which “expressed” the essence of a bourgeois revolution. Lenin
characterised this mode of reasoning as one which endeavoured...
...to look for answers to concrete
questions in the simple
logical development of the general truth about the basic
character of our revolution. [52]
It was the fact that the
Mensheviks identified the
content of the revolution with the “motive force” (the class which leads and its political representatives) that led them to ascribe to
Lenin the notion of a “Seizure of Power” by Social-Democracy, and which enabled Martynov
to discern in Lenin’s analysis the idea of "...
the coincidence of the immediate
Russian revolution with the Socialist revolution”. [53]
Next ; TROTSKY AND MENSHEVISM
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