11.06.2008
Wrong side of the barricades
Torab Saleth continues his argument from last week explaining how dogmatic adherence to Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution has led latter-day Trotskyists into the camp of counterrevolution
With hindsight, it is clear there was only one revolution in Russia, only one which actually carried out any historical tasks: the October Socialist Revolution, which simultaneously abolished feudalism and expropriated the bourgeoisie.
One set of tasks were more or less completed within the first few months, but the rest - those related to the revolutionary transition to a socialist society - although eventually defeated by world capitalism, did indeed open up an era of “permanent revolution”: not in the sense of the transition “from the democratic revolution to the socialist”, but in the sense of the two other aspects of Trotsky’s theory - the revolutionary process of transition to socialism itself and the need for its extension internationally.1
Furthermore, the uneven and combined development of capitalism means by definition that the two sets of tasks facing backward countries must in fact themselves be historically ‘combined’. In other words, you cannot separate them out into two historical sets and then claim, like all the stagists, that the first set must be completely resolved before history is ready for the second. In the ‘epoch of imperialism’, the solution of postponed democratic tasks increasingly requires inroads into capitalist property relations. Kautsky was the first to point this out, when, for example, in 1906 he stressed to the Russian social democrats that under modern conditions even a purely agrarian revolution in Russia requires first the nationalisation of the banks.
This combination of tasks belonging to two different epochs is even more prevalent today. Indeed, when it is the growth of capitalism itself which is strengthening or reproducing backwardness and forcing into, or maintaining whole sections of society under, pre-capitalist forms of existence, how can one achieve democratic tasks without going beyond capitalism? Just for a start, to carry out any real historical demands, whatever their nature, you first have to overthrow a bourgeois state.
Secondly, the revolution, in Trotsky’s words “having begun” as a bourgeois revolution, is not guaranteed to remain bourgeois until the establishment of the dictatorship of proletariat.2 If the transition lies in the act of destroying the “barrier between the minimum and maximum programme”, how can the proletariat achieve state power without destroying this barrier in the first place? What happens here to the proletariat’s own class struggle? How can the proletariat remain within the bourgeois framework of a revolution, but achieve state power? By confining its own class struggle against capitalism to democratic or minimum demands? Obviously not.
Surely, if in the course of struggles the leadership of the movement for democratic demands passes to the proletariat, the “transition” to a socialist revolution has already commenced. But this second interpretation of the concept of transition is even closer to the concept of combined revolution than a permanent one. Even in a straightforward socialist revolution in an advanced capitalist country the revolutionary crisis may open up around some democratic issues. This in no way makes that a democratic revolution.
Trotsky himself in later years leans further towards this interpretation: “In order for the Soviet state to come into existence, it was consequently necessary for two factors of a different historical nature to collaborate: the peasant war - that is to say, a movement which is characteristic of the dawn of bourgeois development - and the proletarian insurrection or uprising, which announces the decline of the bourgeois movement. There we have the combined character of the Russian Revolution.
“Once let the ‘bear’ - the peasant - stand up on his hind feet, he becomes terrible in his wrath. But he is unable to give conscious expression to his indignation. He needs a leader. For the first time in the history of the world, the insurrectionary peasants found a faithful leader in the person of the proletariat.
“Four million workers in industry and transport leading a hundred million peasants. That was the natural and inevitable reciprocal relations between proletariat and peasantry in the revolution.”3
But how can this description of the Russian Revolution be called a transition from democratic to socialist revolution? Here there are two distinct revolutionary movements - around two sets of demands, belonging to two different historical stages - alongside each other, which combine under the leadership of the working class. This is, of course, the closest description of what actually happened.
Dangers of old formulas
As the ‘old Bolsheviks’ learned by experience, sticking to old formulas or debates when events themselves have clarified the issues can be very dangerous for a revolutionary movement. Therefore, even if we accept Trotsky’s (and Lenin’s) insistence that the Russian Revolution was bourgeois democratic in the beginning, in the end it was nothing but a proletarian revolution with combined tasks. In fact, one could even say their initial assumption was itself a mistake. In saying the Russian Revolution is democratic, both Lenin and Trotsky were simply standing on the social democratic orthodoxy of the time, which falsely believed that, if a country has not gone through a bourgeois democratic revolution, then that is exactly what is next on the historical agenda for that country.
But this is not even correct for the period before the epoch of imperialism. At least that is not how Marx’s method worked. True, a Marxist starting point is the objective historical tasks facing a society, but then this must be linked to the concrete question of how these tasks can actually be resolved, and then which class, making which kind of alliances, is capable of solving them and which class, with which kind of social base, is standing against this revolution. The eventual characterisation of the revolution must derive from this analysis. Thus, even for Russia, even with a pre-bourgeois state, it did not follow automatically that the revolution should be purely bourgeois democratic, at first or otherwise. What logic is there in declaring the Russian Revolution to be bourgeois and then proving that this is, however, impossible?
Today we must abandon some of the confused or composite notions which have been bandied about in the course of struggle to understand the Russian Revolution and insist at all times that the impending revolution in backward countries is nothing but a socialist revolution which must also resolve many still remaining democratic tasks. All other formulations currently offered, including Trotsky’s own formulations of the theory of permanent revolution, confuse this clear strategy and can become highly dangerous, especially in revolutionary situations. It is precisely in a revolutionary crisis that the wrong strategy will throw you onto the wrong side of the barricades. The Iranian revolution is the living proof of this claim. As a sort of litmus test, those who still insist on the theory of permanent revolution must first be challenged to explain in clear language what they mean if not the above strategy.
We have seen in the Iranian case how formulations emphasising a ‘growing over’ type of route invariably miss the main core of the above strategy and end up supporting a capitalist government. If the state is a bourgeois state, then obviously the fundamental question of the revolution is the destruction of that state and consequently the life or death question facing the ruling class is its protection. In this sense, any government of any shape or form, with whatever declared or secret intentions, which is in fact preserving the bourgeois state is utterly reactionary and must be overthrown. Put another way, in any revolutionary crisis in such countries you can bet your copy of Permanent revolution that the counterrevolutionary force is the one gathered around the common aim of safeguarding the bourgeois state. The bourgeoisie has shown it will even bring out the caveman to defend its rule.
The subterfuge of our epigones consists in hiding behind the concept of transition in Trotsky’s theory to paint a totally false picture of some capitalist governments in backward countries. In this way a Marxist perspective based on a concrete analysis of class struggle can be abandoned to the objective forces of history. Any post-revolutionary capitalist government in any backward country is then presented as objectively progressive or as a transient stage in the overall process of growing over to the socialist phase.
What they were really singing during the Iranian revolution was the usual opportunist tune - ‘Yes, we know the leadership of this revolution is the bourgeoisie. Yes, we know it is trying to preserve the bourgeois state. But if we just go with the flow and stick to being the most consistent defenders of the immediate tasks, then the objective logic of history will eventually expose the inadequacy of bourgeois leadership and deliver the revolution to the working class’.
With such romantic-opportunist spectacles blocking one’s view it is easy to understand how on the day of reckoning one can end up regarding the hijacking of a revolution by theocratic fascism in Iran as objectively progressive because despite itself it is carrying out the anti-imperialist tasks of that revolution. This is Stalinist sophistry pure and simple. But Stalinism is dead - long live the latter-day Trotskyists!
This should come as no surprise. If we apply a formula developed for a revolutionary crisis in a pre-capitalist society with a pre-bourgeois state to another country that, however similar in backwardness, is nevertheless a backward capitalist country, where the bourgeoisie is already in power, we will inevitably end up confusing a bourgeois counterrevolution for an ‘objectively progressive’ movement. The process of rebuilding and reconsolidating the bourgeois state by the counterrevolution is then viewed as an unfolding of the historical logic of permanent revolution - giving such a process “critical” or “material” support is the least we can do!
When the ‘students following the imam’s line’ took the US embassy personnel hostage, even bourgeois liberal politicians in Iran could see that the clerics were simply trying to consolidate their own position within this ‘post-revolutionary’ regime at the expense of the more liberal wing - but our Trotskyist generals were in fact calling on the masses to abandon their own real anti-imperialist struggles and come outside the US embassy to passively watch this charade.
The second danger in maintaining this outdated schema relates to the question of revolutionary class alliances prior to or after the conquest of power. The expectance of a transition encourages the most opportunistic class alliances. If the class character of the state has already become bourgeois, then it follows by definition that it has a social base within the bourgeoisie and is therefore also actively supported by at least the upper layers of the petty bourgeoisie.
This is certainly not the case when the state is essentially pre-bourgeois in character and composition - say, like the tsarist state in Russia. However limited their aspirations or however conservative their actions, you can nevertheless expect to see in such situations the entire petty bourgeoisie or even whole sections of the big bourgeoisie in the camp of the opposition.
But in any of the backward capitalist countries today, in the event of a revolutionary crisis which could threaten bourgeois class rule, you must expect to find in the camp of counterrevolution not only the entire bourgeoisie, but also the upper layers of the petty bourgeoisie. This is precisely what happened in the Iranian revolution. The entire resources of the bourgeoisie, both nationally and internationally, were mobilised to hijack the revolution and eventually transfer power to Khomeini’s clerics to safeguard the bourgeois state. The shock troops of this counterrevolution were made up by the petty bourgeoisie, yet our modern-day Trotskyist interpretations of the theory of permanent revolution leaves the door open for alliances with the whole of the petty bourgeoisie.
Finally, there is also a third danger even deadlier than the others. It seems that today defenders of this theory develop an amazing blind spot for counterrevolutionary forces in backward societies, which again, as we have seen in Iran, can be even more fatal than calling a capitalist government ‘objectively progressive’ or trying to unite with the reactionary petty bourgeoisie in the name of the ‘democratic phase’ of the revolution.
In many backward countries, especially in those with the oldest social institutions - say, in north Africa and Asia - the transformation from above of the class character of the state has also meant the decimation of the power of substantial sections of the old ruling elites (usually a combination of landowners and merchants). These layers can easily turn into a bitter opposition that pits itself against the new state. Given their social roots, especially within the numerically strong petty bourgeoisie, they tend to have a relatively long life expectancy and, given the right conditions, can grow into a powerful and even the leading force within a revolutionary crisis. This scenario has already been witnessed in Iran.4
As the process of integration into the world capitalist economy is so concretely different for each nation, it is difficult to generalise this phenomenon, but surely it is a new issue to consider in any evaluation of a revolutionary strategy. Instead of such an analysis, our epigones have followed their own opportunist nose all the way into the camp of the darkest counterrevolution seen in recent history. Even today, wherever such forces raise their heads, even if no-one takes them seriously in their own countries, they can rely on the support of ‘permanent revolutionists’ everywhere, who take them to their heart as part of ‘the people’ because they invariably discover we are in the beginnings of the transition from a democratic to a socialist revolution.
Of course, no formula on its own will stop opportunists from being opportunists, but why make life so easy for them? It is time we abandoned all such notions of a bourgeois revolution in backward countries. Even in its permanent revolution version, where it is just a starting point for a process of growing over into a socialist revolution, such a notion can in practice lead even their honest practitioners to tail bourgeois counterrevolutions.
Notes
1. L Trotsky The permanent revolution and results and prospects New York 1976, p131.
2. Ibid p31.
3. L Trotsky In defence of October (1932): www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1932/11/oct.htm
4. See T Saleth, ‘Class nature of the Iranian regime’ Critique December 2007.
