10.09.1998
Behind the mask of Trotskyism
A reply to Ian Donovan of 'Revolution and Truth'. Part one: Lenin and the Russian Revolution
My friend Ian Donovan has a rather excessive opinion of his polemical powers and prowess. Merely because his article ‘Fundamentally flawed’ (Weekly Worker July 23 1998) got a rejoinder - from both this writer and comrade Dave Craig - he triumphantly announces that he “struck a raw nerve”. Presumably he imagines his criticism of the Revolutionary Democratic Communist Tendency platform was so damaging, so damning as to be totally devastating.
Sorry to disappoint you, comrade Donovan. Speaking for myself, the original article and the subsequent follow-up, ‘Economic struggle above democracy’ (Weekly Worker August 27), was a gift. Comrade Donovan’s economistic and non-Leninist views are held dear by a wide spectrum on the left which passes itself off as ‘Trotskyism’. Every paragraph contains its nuggets of conventional loose thinking and dogmatic faux pas. Therefore to polemicise with comrade Donovan is, one way or another, to polemicise not simply with one freelance revolutionary, but a school of thought. It is in this spirit that I reply.
Let us begin by disposing of a couple of issues with which comrade Donovan introduces his article. They speak eloquently about comrade Donovan, but are diversionary. The comrade seeks to portray me as a Stalinist who uses a criminally reinvented Leninism to denigrate the revealed truths of Leon Trotsky and his latter-day disciples.
First diversion: that “infamous Stalinist swearword ‘Trotskyite’”. Comrade Donovan is, you see, no Trotskyite. He is a Trotskyist. As the comrade explains at length, for him ist is a badge of honour. On the other hand ite has “overtones of Stalin’s Short course”, the use of which apparently reveals Jack Conrad’s “ingrained anti-Trotskyist prejudice”. More, it derives from my current “Stalinoid methodology”.
Frankly I feel no need whatsoever to rebuff the ‘Stalinist’ or ‘Stalinoid’ charges. Such nonsense can be dismissed with the contempt it deserves. However, before giving a brief answer to the use of the term ‘Trotskyite’, let me put my cards squarely on the table. I am critical of Trotsky on a whole range of significant questions. That should not be taken to mean that I do not admire him as a revolutionary and a Marxist theoretician. On both counts he must be numbered amongst the greats. Hence I do not write ‘Trotskyite’ as an insult. I deploy it in a somewhat neutral manner. For me it simply describes one who does, or claims to, follow, or defend, the key distinguishing ideas of Trotsky.
Nevertheless, as comrade Donovan should be aware, most ‘isms’, ‘ists’, or ‘ites’ placed after the name of this or that individual first see the light as terms of abuse (whether the original language is Russian, German or English). Certainly that goes for ‘Leninism’, ‘Trotskyism’ and ‘Stalinism’. Comrade Donovan has a problem here. He can insist for all he is worth that in its derogative usage the term ‘Trotskyite’ has its origins in Stalin’s History of the CPSU(B) Short course. Yet anyone with a passing knowledge of Lenin’s works will know that such a contention is baseless. Here are three examples (there are many more). In December 1910 Lenin was attacking Trotsky and his “circle of Trotskyites” for their opposition to rapprochement between the Bolsheviks and Plekhanov’s group (VI Lenin CW Vol 17, Moscow 1977, p19). In September 1911 Lenin declared “Trotsky and the ‘Trotskyites’” more “pernicious” than any “liquidator” (VI Lenin CW Vol 17, Moscow 1977, p243). In June 1914 the “Trotskyites” were condemned for being “merely a screen to cover up liquidationism” (VI Lenin CW Vol 20, Moscow 1977, p337).
Needless to say, interchangeably Lenin also brandished the term ‘Trotskyist’. Again he did so as an insult. However, what begins as rudery often becomes its opposite with the passage of time. At the end of the day, of course, it depends on the point of view and motives of both communicator and listener (reader). When some muddle-headed anarchist ‘insults’ me by damning my politics as ‘Leninist’, I take it as an unintended complement. Comrade Donovan can choose to be offended when called a Trotskyite if he so desires. On the other hand he can take it as praise. But I wish to convey neither message.
Diversion number two. According to comrade Donovan one of the “most insidious aspects of Stalinism was the manufacturing of a cult of Lenin, his elevation to virtual sainthood, the mummification of his body and all.” In the field of ideology this is not far off the mark. It needs to be emphasised, however, that in deifying Lenin ‘official communism’ drained his formulations and perspectives of their liberatory, complex and evolving revolutionary content (the same operation was performed on Marx and Engels). There remained only an outer husk. Words and concepts were thereby mutated into their opposites - ‘proletarian internationalism’ became a code for domination by the Soviet state, ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’ described dictatorship over the proletariat, ‘socialism’ was equated with nationalised property forms. In this cabalistic way carefully selected quotes plucked from Lenin have been used to justify everything, from Stalin’s theory of socialism in one country to Gorbachev’s perestroika.
But admit it, comrade Donovan, the ‘official communists’ are far from alone. Trotskyites have enthusiastically followed suit with Trotsky (and in their own way with Marx, Engels and Lenin too). Gerry Healy famously purchased Trotsky’s death mask to bolster his failing Workers Revolutionary Party. Peter Taaffe bizarrely tries to ‘prove’ that the revolutionary-reformist programme of the Socialist Party in England and Wales is a creative development of Trotsky’s transitional method. And as comrade Donovan knows from bitter personal experience, James Robinson legitimises the Spartacist League cult by claiming an unbroken historical continuity with the persona of Trotsky.
From Moscow’s Zubovsky Boulevard to London’s Hepscott Road, the scholastic method necessarily involves the continuous reworking of a mythologised ‘Marxism’. Opportunism thus overlays opportunism. Therefore what, in common sense, passes for ‘Marxism’ on much of the left today bears only a vague resemblance to the theory painstakingly developed by Marx and Engels. For any serious reading of Marx, Engels, Lenin, or for that matter Trotsky, it is necessary to clear away the reactionary accretions that have built up over the years. In other words, meticulous and in-depth study is needed before one can approach the truth of what they ‘really thought’. That, of course, does not mean these outstanding thinkers were automatically correct in their pronouncements. Everything and everyone must be questioned. To suggest otherwise would be foolish in the extreme. Suffice to say, that is exactly what comrade Donovan accuses Jack Conrad of doing. Apparently I quote “Lenin’s words as holy writ, about matters far removed from the questions at stake in this discussion” (incidentally in my article on economism I quote Lenin once and in brief - on economism). It does not matter. For Jack, “Lenin is a secular god whose words, irrespective of context, are the ultimate trump-card in discussions with ‘Trotskyites’”.
To illustrate my supposedly religious commitment to Lenin comrade Donovan reproduces the following paragraph from the article ‘Trotskyite economism or revolutionary democracy?’:
“Indeed, comrade Donovan seems convinced that the democracy in an ‘advanced bourgeois democracy that is today’s Britain’ resulted from what he calls the ‘bourgeois-democratic revolution’; ie, a historically necessary and predetermined stage between feudal and capitalist society. No doubt Lenin too took the bourgeois democratic revolution as axiomatic. But he never let a bad theory get in the way of a good revolution. His thought was rich and dialectical, his revolutionary will was unequalled. Fixed categories were an anathema. Hence the ‘bourgeois democratic’ revolution in Russia would in his programme be carried out against tsarism and the bourgeoisie by an alliance of the proletariat and peasantry” (Weekly Worker July 30).
Comrade Donovan is so intent on charging down, polemical club in hand, just about every sentence in the above passage that he fails to notice that in passing Jack Conrad criticises Lenin for having “a bad theory”. In other words Lenin was wrong. But mere facts cannot be allowed to get in the way of setting up Jack Conrad as a blind fanatic, can they, comrade Donovan? Anyway he, along with the whole school of economistic Trotskyism, holds to a far worse version of the theory of the bourgeois democratic revolution. But more of this at a later date.
Comrade Donovan dislikes my statement that Lenin’s revolutionary will was “unequalled”. Such “gushing phraseology is alien to genuine Leninism”. Besides, how was Lenin’s revolutionary will “greater” than comrade Donovan’s hero Trotsky? After all Lenin “had the opportunity to lead the revolution (and did it splendidly) in a period of revolutionary upswing.” In contrast Trotsky “struggled against the stream in the face of the greatest defeats in history, which Lenin did not live to see”.
With sufficient time I am sure one could find some similarly “gushing” phrase from Trotsky himself testifying to Lenin’s outstanding leadership qualities. But that is hardly the point. Lenin and Trotsky were contemporaries. Abstract speculation about how Lenin might have compared with Trotsky if the former had lived to 1940 is worthless. We can put to use Trotsky’s own words in order to juxtapose the two in the actual course of Russian history which embraced periods of defeat and reaction and three revolutions - 1905, February and October 1917. In essence Trotsky took a centrist, “conciliationist” position from 1903 until May 1917, when he returned from the USA and placed himself “at the disposal of the Bolshevik Party”. Trotsky later maintained that until then his “revolutionary ideas or proposals amounted to nothing but ‘phrases’”. Lenin on the other hand carried out “the only truly revolutionary work”. That was, a contrite Trotsky argues, “work that helped the party take shape and grow stronger” (L Trotsky The challenge of the Left Opposition: 1923-25, New York 1980, pp265, 267). Was Trotsky right? Absolutely.
Why is comrade Donovan determined to belittle Lenin? Basically it stems from the comrade’s economistic approach to present-day politics. That means democratic questions are, for him, at best secondary, if not ghastly traps to be avoided. Crudely put, the role of revolutionaries in a country like ours is twofold. In the here and now support and give a Trotskyite coloration to bread and butter issues like the minimum wage and trade union rights. That is practical politics which, in spite of the much vaunted ‘transitional’ claims of the Trotskyites, remain firmly within the narrow horizon of the present constitutional monarchy state. Then in the indefinite future lies the socialist millennium. As there is no revolutionary situation in Britain, that has to be fought over in the realm of propaganda, where the ideologically defined sects engage in a primeval struggle for survival. The minimum or immediate demand for a federal republic advanced by the CPGB has no place in comrade Donovan’s world. The only republic he is willing to countenance is the socialist republic. Contradictorily the comrade says he too calls for the abolition of the monarchy and self-determination for Scotland and Wales (presumably these demands will have to wait till after the revolution before they can be realised).
Lenin is very inconvenient for this economistic schema. He stressed the necessity for working class hegemony in the struggle for democracy and a republic in Russia; something to be crowned by the revolutionary seizure of power by the workers at the head of the peasant masses (the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry). In contrast because he was anti-Lenin, a caricatured pre-1917 Trotsky serves comrade Donovan’s economism admirably. Lenin might have been right and Trotsky wrong about the importance of building the Party. But Trotsky was right and Lenin was wrong about the Russian Revolution. So says our comrade Donovan.
Comrade Donovan insists that in order to lead the October Revolution, Lenin had to
“abandon his theory of the ‘democratic dictatorship’, the aim of which was a provisional revolutionary government of workers and radical peasant parties that would inaugurate the unfettered development of capitalism in Russia. Lenin advocated a bourgeois-democratic revolution of a special type, in which the role of the revolutionary government of the Jacobin type (clearing the medieval barriers to capitalist development) would be played by the ‘democratic dictatorship’, while only after a whole stage of capitalist development would socialist revolution become materially possible.”
Comrade Donovan ridicules Lenin’s demand for the revolutionary democratic dictatorship - ie, rule of the proletariat and peasantry. However, his whole account is garbled. It is half true, half false. He tells us that Lenin had a “theory of stages” - by definition a cardinal sin for any self-respecting Trotskyite. First stage, there would be an anti-tsarist revolution. It could not be led by the bourgeoisie. That class was too cowardly and compromised with the autocracy. The proletariat would have to substitute and, in alliance with the peasant millions, see through the ‘bourgeois democratic revolution’. However, though carried out in a “novel way”, the revolution would merely bring socialism “nearer” by “laying the basis for capitalist development under ‘democratic’ conditions”. Only after that capitalist stage had been completed could the working class think about putting forward its own class agenda and preparing for the second, socialist, revolution. The ‘democratic dictatorship’ is therefore, announces comrade Donovan, “synonymous with ‘bourgeois freedom and bourgeois progress’” and thus “with a bourgeois-democratic republic”.
Actually the real theory of artificial stages in Russia was advocated by the Mensheviks. Their analysis flowed from crude historical analogies and was thus very superficial. The peasants were almost entirely absent. The main change needed to the above sketch of Lenin’s supposed “stages theory” is that the ‘bourgeois revolution’ would necessarily be finished by the bourgeoisie. The proletariat had to support the bourgeoisie in carrying out its predetermined historic mission. That bourgeois-proletarian alliance could involve independent militant action from below. However, in the event that a popular revolution proved successful in Russia, the proletariat puts the bourgeoisie in power. Obeying the ‘laws of history’ it then patiently waits in the wings, as a “party of extreme opposition”, until capitalism has been fully developed and the conditions matured for socialism (including the proletarianisation of the peasantry). For Mensheviks then, there would have to be two revolutions in Russia. One bourgeois with a corresponding bourgeois state. The other, coming a long time after, was socialist, with a corresponding socialist state. The two are separated by a definite historical stage and crucially by distinct and antagonistically opposed regimes.
Lenin explicitly rejected this mechanical schema. His theory was based on Marx’s permanent revolution and a thorough investigation into Russia’s political economy. As comrade Donovan rightly suggests, Lenin considered the Russian bourgeoisie counterrevolutionary. As a class it could not even begin the ‘bourgeois revolution’. The workers would have to take the initiative in overthrowing tsarism at the “head of the whole people, and particularly the peasantry”.
The main political slogans of the Bolsheviks were open-ended: “abolish the monarchy” and “for the democratic republic”. If their popular uprising proved successful - and remained under proletarian hegemony - the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry would not meekly stand aside for the bourgeoisie. Yes, capitalism would be “strengthened”: ie, allowed to develop. But not, as comrade Donovan says, in an “unfettered” manner. There would be strict limitations. Not only a 10-hour day, trade union rights and complete political liberty but an “armed proletariat” in possession of state power. The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry would wage a “relentless struggle against all counterrevolutionary attempts”, not least from the bourgeoisie.
Such a hybrid regime could not survive in isolation. It would, and must, act to “rouse” the European socialist revolution. The proletariat of advanced Europe would in turn help Russia move to socialism (which requires definite material conditions in terms of the development of the productive forces). Inevitably there would be a differentiation between the proletariat and the richer peasantry. But not necessarily a specifically socialist revolution: ie, the violent overthrow of the state in Russia.
Put another way, there would not be a democratic or bourgeois stage and then a socialist stage at the level of regime. Democratic and socialist tasks are distinct and premised on different material, social and political conditions. But particular elements overlap and interlock. The revolution could, given the right internal and external conditions, proceed uninterruptedly from democratic to socialist tasks through the proletariat fighting not only from below but from above - ie from a salient of state power. The revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat thereby peacefully grows over into the dictatorship of the proletariat assuming internal proletarian hegemony and external proletarian aid from a socialist Europe. Here is Lenin’s theory elaborated in his pamphlet Two tactics of social democracy in the democratic revolution (see VI Lenin CW Vol 9, Moscow 1977, pp15-130). It is readily available, easily checked and not too difficult to grasp. So why does comrade Donovan mischievously paint Lenin in the pale colours of Menshevism?
What of Trotsky? Comrade Donovan supplies us with an extensive quote from Trotsky’s Results and prospects published in 1906. Trotsky outlines his application of the theory of permanent revolution to Russia. Like Lenin he dismissed any revolutionary potential of the bourgeoisie. The working class had to form a revolutionary government “as the leading force”. They would do so in “alliance with the peasantry”. But given the circumstances of Russia, the fact of proletarian state power would destroy the “borderline between the minimum and maximum programme; that is to say, it places collectivism on the order of the day”. One should not interpret such a formulation to mean Trotsky imagined a backward and isolated Russia as ripe for socialism. No communist then believed any such thing. Trotsky, to his credit, remained hostile to “national socialism”, albeit contradictorily, till his assassination in 1940 (L Trotsky The permanent revolution New York 1978, p159). On the contrary Trotsky understood that the revolution would have to be permanent, or uninterrupted, if the working class in Russia was not to be “crushed”. European revolution was vital. Suffice to say, the differences with Lenin’s theory are those of nuance.
True in Results and prospects and in Lenin’s so-called replies there was a very unrewarding polemic between the two men. Factional interests produced more heat than light in both cases. Trotsky dismissed out of hand any suggestion of a “special form of the proletarian dictatorship in the bourgeois revolution”. He was intent on rubbishing and equating both the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. Lenin in his turn lambasted Trotsky for “underestimating” the importance of the peasantry by raising the slogan ‘No tsar, but a workers’ government’.
On the basis of such evidence Trotsky is no doubt right when he concludes that Lenin had “never read my basic work”. The above slogan was proclaimed not by Trotsky but his friend and collaborator, Parvus. “Never did Lenin anywhere analyse or quote,” says Trotsky, “even in passing, Results and prospects” (L Trotsky The permanent revolution New York 1978, p166). He goes on to cite the “solidarity” that existed between himself and the Bolsheviks during and immediately after the 1905 revolution. And for those who demonise the term ‘stage’ and belittle Lenin, Trotsky’s boast that he “formulated the tasks of the successive stages of the revolution in exactly the same manner as Lenin” should provide food for thought (ibid p168). The same can be said for Trotsky’s proud affirmation about how “Lenin’s formula” closely “approximated” to his own “formula of permanent revolution” (ibid p198). Comrade Donovan can carry on claiming that Trotsky’s theory was “far superior to Lenin’s ‘democratic dictatorship.’” But that only shows he has an agenda which owes very little to the actual revolution and nothing to the truth.
What of Lenin being forced to “abandon his theory of the ‘democratic dictatorship’” in order to lead the October Revolution, as artlessly claimed by comrade Donovan? Here is a myth in part created, hatched and fostered by Trotsky himself after Lenin’s death in 1924. No doubt he was desperate to counter the campaign against ‘Trotskyism’ launched by the triumvirate of Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev. By pretending that Lenin had undergone a Trotskyite conversion in April 1917 he could enhance his own standing and at the same time highlight the secondary or negative role played by his opponents during 1917; Kamenev and Zinoviev famously ‘scabbed’ against Lenin’s call for ‘All power to the soviets’ and a second revolution.
In February 1917 tsarism collapsed in the midst of a huge popular outburst. A provisional government was formed headed first by prince Lvov and, following his departure from the scene in July, by the Socialist Revolutionary Alexander Kerensky. The provisional government continued Russia’s involvement in the imperialist slaughter, refused peasant demands for land redistribution, protected the money-bags and constantly delayed the convening of a constituent assembly. In short the proletariat and peasantry had “placed power in the hands of the bourgeoisie”. Nevertheless Russia was the freest of the belligerent countries and alongside, and in parallel to, the provisional government stood the soviets - or councils of workers, soldiers and peasants. There was dual power.
What was Lenin’s programme during this “first stage of the revolution”? Did he junk his old theory? On return from exile in April 1917 he issued the call for the Party to amend “our out-of-date minimum programme” (VI Lenin CW Vol 24, Moscow 1977, p24). Obviously the demand to overthrow the tsar had become obsolete. The key now was to combat honest popular illusions in the provisional government and raise sights. The Bolsheviks were a small minority in the soviets. Their task was to become the majority by agitating for the confiscation of the landlords’ estates and the nationalisation and redistribution of land, the abolition of the police, the army and the bureaucracy, and the amalgamation of the banks into a single bank under workers’ control. This agitation would prepare the subjective conditions for the “second stage of the revolution” and the transfer of all power into “the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants.” The “only possible form of revolutionary government” was a “republic of soviets of workers’, agricultural labourers’ and peasants’ deputies” (VI Lenin CW Vol 24, Moscow 1977, p23). Lenin made no claims that the Party’s “immediate task” was to “introduce” socialism. Only that production and distribution had to be put under workers’ control to prevent the impending meltdown of the economy.
Do these ‘stageist’ programmatic formulations and the perspective of a workers’ and peasants’ republic indicate an abandonment or a development of Lenin’s theory in light of new and unexpected circumstances? I make no excuse for turning to Lenin himself for an answer. In the article, ‘The dual power’, he writes the following:
“The highly remarkable feature of our revolution is that it has brought about a dual power. This fact must be grasped first and foremost: unless it is understood, we cannot advance. We must know how to supplement and amend old ‘formulas’, for example, those of Bolshevism, for while they have been found to be correct on the whole, their concrete realisation has turned out to be different. Nobody previously thought, or could have thought, of a dual power” (VI Lenin CW Vol 24, Moscow 1977, p38).
Lenin faced stiff opposition from amongst the ‘old Bolsheviks’. Their confused and semi-Menshevik position brought about by the unique situation was summed up by Kamenev in Pravda:
“As for comrade Lenin’s general scheme it appears unacceptable, inasmuch as it proceeds from the assumption that the bourgeois democratic revolution is completed, and builds on the immediate transformation of this revolution into a socialist revolution.”
His criticism was wrong on two accounts. Firstly, though state power had been transferred, the regime this produced did not meet the immediate programmatic aims of the Bolsheviks. Things were very complex. The old Romanov order had been politically overthrown. To that extent, argued Lenin, the programme had been fulfilled. But the ‘revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants’ in the form of the soviets had voluntarily ceded power to the bourgeoisie. Life for the moment was in that sense closer to the complete minimum programme of the Mensheviks. To bring it up to that of the Bolsheviks required carrying through the agrarian revolution - the landlords still held their estates - and splitting the peasants from the bourgeoisie. “That”, asserted Lenin, “has not even started” (VI Lenin CW Vol 24, Moscow 1977, p44).
Repetition of the slogan ‘democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’ in general had become a mere abstraction. Events had “clothed it with flesh and bone, concretised it and thereby modified it” (VI Lenin CW Vol 24, Moscow 1977, p45). The soviets were palpably real. The Bolsheviks, or those whom Lenin was now calling the communists, had to deal with the actual situation where, instead of coming to power, this ‘revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’ existed side by side with, and subordinate to, a weak government of the bourgeoisie. Lenin energetically fought for the Party to reorientate, to struggle for influence in the soviets. Once the Bolsheviks had a majority, the minimum programme could genuinely be completed, as October was to prove.
The dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry had become entangled with the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The Russian Revolution had gone further than the classical bourgeois revolutions of England 1645 or France 1789 but in Lenin’s words “has not yet reached a ‘pure’ dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry” (VI Lenin CW Vol 24, Moscow 1977, p61). There can be dual power, but not a dual power state. One of the dictatorships had to die. Either the revolution was completed under the hegemony of the proletariat, or popular power would be killed by counterrevolution. It was one or the other.
Secondly, there was Kamenev’s mistaken, ‘old Bolshevik’ fear of voluntarism, of going straight to socialism. Lenin swore that there was no such intention. “I might be incurring this danger,” explained Lenin, “if I said: ‘No tsar, but a workers’ government’. But I did not say that, I said something else” - ie, that power must pass to the workers’ and peasants’ soviets (VI Lenin CW Vol 24, Moscow 1977, p48). The peasant movement could not be “skipped”. The idea of playing at the seizure of power by a workers’ government would not be Marxism but Blanqism. Power had to be exercised by the majority.
Far from rejecting his old formulation of the ‘democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’ Lenin quoted his 1905 Two tactics pamphlet to back up his concrete application of it in 1917. Like everything else, such a slogan had a “past and a future”. Its past is “autocracy, serfdom, monarchy and privilege ... Its future is the struggle against private property, the struggle of the wage worker against the employer, the struggle for socialism” (VI Lenin CW Vol 24, Moscow 1977, p52). Kamenev and the ‘old Bolsheviks’ could only see the past. That is why they sought unity with the Mensheviks. But in 1917 the future had begun, above all around the attitude towards ‘defencism’ and preventing the economic collapse caused by the imperialist war. Russia and its people could only be saved by the soviets of workers and peasants. That was not socialism. But it would bring socialism nearer.
Jack Conrad