27.05.1999

Marxism and democracy

Phil Sharpe replies to Jack Conrad and Dave Craig

Jack Conrad wants to claim Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky for revolutionary democracy, and locates this political tradition with the Marx and Engels of 1847-48 (Weekly Worker May 13).

Marx and Engels are said to be advocates of a bourgeois democratic republic in 1847-48, but what Conrad fails to mention is that the working class was in a tiny minority at this time, and Marx felt it was still possible to put pressure on the liberal bourgeoisie to strive for a republic to replace the rule of the monarchy. Marx and Engels had to go through the experience of the 1848 revolutions in order to comprehend that the liberal bourgeoisie ultimately preferred accommodation to the feudal monarchy rather than realise a bourgeois democratic republic.

This development of the reactionary character of the liberal bourgeoisie led Marx to advocate the permanent revolution, with an emphasis upon the proletariat leading the struggle for a bourgeois democratic republic. By 1871 Marx and Engels were prepared to openly support the Paris Commune as a potential dictatorship of the proletariat. Marx knew that the parties which dominated the Commune were petty bourgeois, but the social weight of the proletariat meant it could strive to realise the highest forms of democracy on the basis of bringing about proletarian revolution. Marx had finally connected the realisation of democracy to the onset of proletarian dictatorship, whereas Conrad prefers to link proletarian democracy to the attainment of a bourgeois democratic republic.

Conrad connects his approach to uncritical support for Lenin’s original theory of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. This approach advocates a dual power situation: the workers and peasants have political hegemony, but the bourgeoisie still has economic domination.

Trotsky posed some important questions for Lenin to answer. Would the proletariat be willing to accept capitalist control of industry when it had the political power to denationalise industry under workers’ control? The workers’ and peasants’ government was committed to giving land to the peasantry and carrying out other aspects of the bourgeois democratic revolution, so why could it not establish proletarian control of industry? To Trotsky, the development of soviets in 1905 showed the possibility for the economic and political hegemony of the proletariat (workers’ control of production).

In contrast Lenin ignored the potential of the soviets and emphasised only the role of a hypothetical provisional revolutionary government, and therefore he underestimated the independent class power of the proletariat to transform society, which was expressed through the development of the soviets. This minimising of the role of the soviets meant Lenin limited revolution to the bourgeois democratic - such as land reform, formation of a republic and shorter working day.

In the period 1916-1917 Lenin had a critical engagement with Bukharin about the state, and this dialogue led Lenin to support Bukharin’s conception of the smashing of the state. Lenin then developed the understanding that only the soviets could smash the modern bourgeois state, and the soviets would become the basis for a new type of state that would be based upon participatory democracy. Thus the proletariat had the potential to run society through the formation of soviets - this was a possibility even in semi-feudal Russia.

After the February 1917 revolution the soviets were dominated by the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, who to Lenin represented the counterrevolutionary realisation of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. Hence what was necessary was to combine the bourgeois democratic revolution and proletarian revolution through establishing revolutionary leadership of the soviets. This situation would not represent socialism, which required international revolution, but was instead the hegemony of the proletariat in alliance with the peasantry. The republic was fully established as the soviet state, and bourgeois democracy was linked to meeting the aspirations of the peasantry.

Consequently Lenin and Trotsky had a similar perspective in 1917, that was to realise the democratic republic and dictatorship of the proletariat in an uninterrupted manner. Lenin knew that it was possible for the workers to win the support of the peasants, because the Provisional government was refusing to implement the democratic demand of land to the peasants. But in a complex manner the government had the support of the traditional representatives of the workers and peasants (Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries). This meant the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry was realised in a counterrevolutionary context, and so this perspective needed to be replaced by the slogan of ‘All power to the soviets’. Lenin was for putting the old theoretical approach in the archives because Zinoviev and Kamenev were using the democratic dictatorship standpoint in order to emphasise bourgeois democracy and thereby reject the struggle for ‘All power to the soviets’.

Trotsky and Lenin are united by the standpoint that capitalism in Russia is no longer a potential and protracted bourgeois democratic stage of historical development. The stageist view of Lenin’s Two tactics is replaced by the perspective that the bourgeois Provisional government cannot develop Russia economically and politically, and so what is necessary is a second revolution that establishes the dictatorship of the proletariat (soviet power) and encourages international revolution.

In contrast the bourgeois government is counterrevolutionary and cannot realise the bourgeois democratic programme of peace, land, bread and freedom, so the only way to realise bourgeois democracy is through establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat. Bourgeois democracy is expressed through the dictatorship of the proletariat, and is not represented by the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. The dictatorship of the proletariat as the commune state has participatory democracy to realise bourgeois democracy, such as through the Constituent Assembly and giving land to the peasants.

Dave Craig contends that in 1918 Germany a bourgeois republic was established through the revolutionary activity of the proletariat. This view does not establish the class dynamic of the situation. The onset of the Weimar republic was also a counterrevolution, in that the bourgeoisie acted to oppose and repress the revolutionary mass activity of the proletariat, and they isolated the revolutionary party of Luxemburg. This situation shows that bourgeois democratic gains can only be maintained and developed through establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat. The onset of dual power between the bourgeoisie and proletariat can only last for a short time before establishing the class rule of the working class or bourgeoisie.

Conrad seems reluctant to evaluate the democratic credentials of the Bolsheviks in power, but it is an appraisal of the Soviet government that will enable us to establish whether it is possible to realise bourgeois democracy through the actions of proletarian dictatorship. To establish credibility for this type of analysis we need to give a voice to the most eminent Marxist critics of the Soviet government.

The first critic is Kautsky, the most prestigious of the orthodox Marxist opposition to the Bolshevik revolution. Kautsky maintained that the October Revolution was premature. Russia needed to go through protracted capitalist development and develop bourgeois democracy before proletarian revolution was feasible.

Lenin showed that Kautsky’s approach was an accommodation to imperialist bourgeois democracy, and this opportunism did nothing to contribute to the task of international revolution, which was the strategic perspective of the Bolsheviks. The world revolution would overcome the problem of low development of the productive forces, and in the meantime the proletariat and peasant alliance would act to thwart the processes of bureaucratic degeneration.

Secondly, in the immediate aftermath of the October Revolution Zinoviev and Kamenev tried to construct a coalition government of Bolsheviks, Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries. They asked Lenin and Trotsky not to enter this proposed government in order to maintain unity. The main aim of this government would be to carry out bourgeois democratic reforms. Lenin and Trotsky defined this proposed government as an opportunist alliance that would not carry out bourgeois democratic revolution, but would instead accommodate to the forces of bourgeois counterrevolution, and so they did not agree to the proposals for coalition government. Instead a genuine workers’ and peasants government was formed on the basis of soviet power - a coalition of the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries.

Thirdly, Rosa Luxemburg developed her revolutionary criticism of the Bolsheviks on the question of democracy. She contended that the Bolshevik revolution had to develop participatory democracy if state coercion was to be kept to a minimum. The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly was a mistake: the assembly was a reactionary agency of internal bourgeois and petty bourgeois class interests, but it also expressed peasant concerns and aspirations. The suppression of the Constituent Assembly could become a precedent for banning other organisations, such as the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. To realise bourgeois democracy requires the widest plural democracy, both soviet and parliamentary democracy. The alternative is authoritarianism.

To Lenin, Trotsky and Bukharin, the Constituent Assembly was counterrevolutionary, and would rally support to the organisation of counterrevolution against the soviets. The soviets do not want to ban other parties, but their role in the civil war meant the soviets had no alternative than to ban the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries.

Lenin’s view was understandable, given the difficult political circumstances in which they had to make decisions. Nevertheless Luxemburg’s approach was proved correct. The suppression of the Constituent Assembly facilitated the banning of political parties, and the soviets ended up with one-party rule. The period of bourgeois democracy lasted from October 1917 to the period of the revolt against the Brest-Litovsk treaty by the Left Socialist Revolutionaries in 1918. The coalition between the workers and peasants was effectively over, and the isolation of the Bolsheviks meant that they maintained the revolution against the other parties that were increasingly counterrevolutionary.

However, instead of trying to tackle this situation of isolation politically by allowing the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries to exist officially, these parties remained banned, and pluralist democracy was essentially over. So too the period of bourgeois democracy. This situation was not just the fault of the Bolsheviks: the opportunism and counterrevolutionary character of the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries created the prospect of being banned, but the Bolsheviks acted in an elitist manner and refused to compromise with the other parties. For example, Martov’s left Mensheviks could have been won to a coalition government arrangement between 1917-18.

Primarily the dissolving of the Constituent Assembly, and the gradual demise of dynamic democracy in the soviets, showed the Bolsheviks no longer trusted the masses to make up their own minds, and instead the Bolsheviks become increasingly a substitute for the masses in governmental terms. The Bolsheviks had become a guardian of the workers and peasants: they acted on behalf of the workers and peasants, but were no longer accountable to them.

The introduction of war communism deepened the reaction against bourgeois democracy. This was because the cooperation of the peasantry for the development of the soviet system was repudiated, and instead coercion was introduced as the basis of relations between the workers and peasants. It is questionable whether any more grain was located for the hungry cities, because the peasants no longer cooperated with the grain collections.

By 1921 Lenin and Trotsky realised that the break-up of the proletarian and peasant alliance threatened to lead to the overthrow of the Soviet regime, which led Lenin to introduce the New Economic Policy. This represented the reintroduction of bourgeois democracy, or the restoration of egalitarian economic relations between the workers and peasants. There was also an attempt to overcome bureaucratic rule within the Soviet state apparatus, and increased support was expressed for international revolution. However, a ban was introduced on party factions that undermined the potential to redevelop pluralist democracy in soviet and parliamentary terms.

The Bolsheviks had reacted to the difficult conditions of civil war by suppressing bourgeois democracy and this was represented by an ideological retreat to elitist and utopian socialism. The idealist illusion was generated that it would be possible to internally build the productive forces for socialism using the methods of war communism. In 1921 this elitist socialism was renounced by the introduction of the NEP that started to restore bourgeois democratic revolutionary relations between the workers and peasants.

What of national-self determination? Did this amount to the successful application of the bourgeois democratic programme by the Bolsheviks? The attempt by the Soviet government to give self-determination to the Ukraine and other nations led to the hegemony of the counterrevolutionary bourgeoisie. This indicated, as Luxemburg was aware, that national self-determination is not a bourgeois democratic demand, but is linked to the dictatorship of the proletariat as proletarian self-determination.

This became apparent to the Bolsheviks during the civil war, when Luxemburg’s stance was bureaucratically applied in the military terms of war communism. This meant that national aspirations became suppressed by bureaucratic centralisation, and the desire for national independence of the Soviet republics developed in the 1930s.

Trotsky argued that Stalinist Great Russian chauvinism had led to the aspiration for separation from the Soviet Union by republics such as the Ukraine. He called for the establishment of an independent Soviet Ukrainian republic, which expressed progressive proletarian self-determination. This unity of the national with social class interests could be the basis for new proletarian revolution within the Stalinist Soviet Union, with voluntary proletarian unity of the various Soviet republics replacing Stalinist centralisation. National self-determination is actually a proletarian democratic demand that is part of the class struggle to link the dictatorship of the proletariat to the highest possible forms of democracy.

In Russia the necessity of bourgeois democratic revolution is primarily about establishing and consolidating the proletariat and peasant alliance. This is why in the oppressed nations with a peasant population bourgeois democratic revolution is combined with proletarian revolution. In the major imperialist nations where there is no longer a peasantry the bourgeois democratic revolution has become either obsolete or a secondary question.

In contrast Dave Craig and Jack Conrad still emphasise the bourgeois democratic revolution in Britain because they equate it with abolition of the monarchy. But the monarchy is not primarily a survival of feudalism (even if it has a feudal ideology) and is instead integral to the modern bourgeois state. The abolition of the monarchy is part of smashing the state and replacing it with the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The call by Conrad and Craig to abolish the monarchy and establish a bourgeois republic is to equate the proletarian revolution with an already completed bourgeois revolution. This approach does not establish the class content of bourgeois democracy, which is that of peasant class aspirations for land reform and democratic accountability within society. These aspirations complement, but are not identical to, the proletarian class struggle to realise soviet power.