INTRODUCTION
The question, what is Trotskyism,
could be answered on several different levels, political, theoretical and
methodological. Logically it would be possible to begin a discourse on
Trotskyism by concentrating on the methodological level and proceed to the
theoretical foundations, and finally, ending with the political conclusions
associated with Trotskyism. In other words, this means we would discuss the
methodological approach of Trotsky, then proceed to discuss his theoretical
and political assumptions. On the other hand, we could discuss the political
and theoretical assumptions of Trotskyism, and finally trace their roots to
Trotsky’s methodology.
Since people encounter Trotskyism,
firstly as political and theoretical assumptions before any consideration of
methodology is sought, this, perhaps is the starting point we should adopt
in an examination of Trotskyism as a political trend. We shall begin at the
level of political appearance, move to semblance, i.e., semblance being the
transition from essence to appearance, which dialectically correspond to the
theoretical level. From this level of semblance we proceed back to
methodology, which, in philosophical terms, is essence. In other words,
appearance, semblance, and essence, or politics, theory and method, all
interrelated and interacting on each other.
In order to proceed on this basis all
non-essentials must be discarded as much as possible. Trotskyism can only be
understood in relation to Leninism, or what is now universally known as
‘Marxism-Leninism’ if we proceed in this manner, because what is intended is
not to furnish the reader with an historical account of the differences
between Marxism-Leninism and Trotskyism but rather to explain these
differences by concentrating on the more important issues, or contradictions
which emerged between the two trends of thought.
That there are sharp differences
between Marxism-Leninism and Trotskyism is something which participants in
the communist movement take for granted. On the side of Trotskyism there is
a persistent attempt to conceal these differences, or at least play them
down. This exercise in concealment is undertaken, no doubt, with the aim of
promoting the claim that Trotskyism is the continuation of Leninism, a view
which Trotsky himself encouraged, or, as one Trotskyite group puts it,
‘Trotskyism is the Marxism of today’.
We, for our part, are more interested
in the controversial claim that Trotskyism is the continuation of Leninism.
The first question is, of course, if Trotskyism is Leninism, why use the
term ‘Trotskyism’?
There is no point in taking recourse
to the old Trotskyite falsehood that it was Stalin, or Trotsky’s other
opponents who first coined the term ‘Trotskyism’ after the death of Lenin.
The impression which Trotsky and, indeed, Trotskyites like to give is that
the term ‘Trotskyism’ grew out of the post Lenin controversy between Stalin
and Trotsky. Further, Trotsky’s claim that Zinoviev was responsible for its
manufacture finds no factual historical support whatsoever, as is shown in
the preliminary remarks above.
It is on clear historical record that
the term ‘Trotskyism’ was used on several occasions by Lenin himself in the
pre-1917 revolutionary period. This period is where the differences between
Leninism and Trotskyism began. The aim of this contribution is to explain
that the differences between Leninism and Trotskyism are of a
methodological, theoretical and political character, and therefore any
attempt to view these differences on the political level alone will
certainly remain superficial.
Any examination of Trotsky from the
standpoint of scientific appraisal and not purely partisanship must look at
Trotskyism not only from a one-sided difference with Leninism. These
differences were strong enough to keep Trotsky outside of Bolshevism until
1917, but such an examination must explain how it was possible for Trotsky
to join Bolshevism in 1917. If we disregard the elements of opportunism
which no doubt was involved, or Trotsky’s fear of finding himself in
isolation, then we need to look at that aspect of Trotskyism which united
him with Bolshevism in 1917. In other words, how was Trotsky able to
integrate, to a certain extent, with Bolshevism and played a significant if
controversial role in Bolshevik proceedings. This document is not a
criticism of Trotsky for having differences with Lenin, but rather a
criticism of the superficial claim of Trotskyites that Trotskyism is the
continuation of Leninism.
To some communists this work may be
mistakenly regarded as superfluous. They KNOW Trotskyism is not Leninism.
But their knowledge does not prevent other politically inexperienced people
from being attracted to Trotskyism because of the revisionist,
right-deviation which has plagued the communist movement for such a long
time. These right-opportunist circles are a sort of recruiting agents for
Trotskyism. These people oppose Trotskyism not because they are Leninists
but because they are right opportunists. This is why a Marxist-Leninist
critique of Trotskyism is still of considerable importance.
On joining the Bolshevik party in
1917, the relationship Trotsky had with the party was never without
problems; indeed, the relationship was quite stormy. Lenin and Trotsky had
substantial differences, but Lenin had differences with all the leading
participants of the party. What gave notoriety to the contradictions between
Lenin and Trotsky was not only the qualities of these differences, but also
the later conflicts and disputes over a range of issues which emerged
between Stalin and Trotsky.
There will, of course, always be
differences between revolutionaries, so we do not assume here that Trotsky
was wrong to oppose Lenin, rather it was his positions, which were usually
to be found in error. It would also be true to say that in joining the
Bolshevik party, Trotsky toned down his opposition to Leninism. Later, with
Lenin removed by sickness and death, Trotsky’s full-blown opposition to
Bolshevism re-emerged. Trotskyism was born in opposition to Bolshevism and
soon returned to this state of conflict. What was different, of course, was
that this new stage of opposition to Bolshevism, was claimed by Trotsky, to
be directed at Stalin. This is not to argue that there were no differences
between Trotsky and Stalin unrelated to Lenin. The unity of such differences
must be sought at the level of methodology. In any event, Trotsky, for
obvious political reasons, could not openly oppose Leninism. In fact the
guise was adopted that he was defending Leninism against Stalin.
To return to a previous point
regarding the elements of identity which made it possible for Trotsky to
join the Bolshevik party. This was primarily about goals of a practical
nature. There was never any theoretical subsumption in Trotsky’s practical
and tactical unity with Bolshevism. Not theoretical considerations but
objective developments led the Bolsheviks, under Lenin’s guidance, to
proceed to the anti-capitalist stage of the revolution. For Trotsky, this
was the realisation of permanent revolution in practice, and on this basis
he entered the ranks of Bolshevism. 1917 was the closest Trotskyism came to
Leninism, at the most general level. Before and after this period, the
relationship was dominated by hostile conflict, which Trotsky managed to
contain in the period of Lenin, not without highly significant episodes of
conflicts. In fact, the period of Trotsky’s association with Bolshevism
contains the richest source of conflict, which makes Trotsky’s claim of
defending Leninism pointedly absurd.
These old conflicts between Leninism
and Trotskyism are still of relevance because they serve to undermine the
claim that Trotskyism is the continuation of Leninism in present day
conditions. And also because Trotskyism contains a method, thus those who
adopt the forms of Trotsky’s ideology, also absorb his method. Form and
content cannot be separated.
In all essentials Trotskyism remains
Trotskyism. From this standpoint we treat the tactical differences between
Lenin and Trotsky as of secondary importance even if they contained the germ
of more significant disagreements.
The question, what is Trotskyism,
could be simply answered by the reply that Trotskyism is a rival of
Leninism. Although this point would be obvious to those who have studied
these differences, for those whose role is the concealment of these
differences such a reply would be woefully inadequate. Opportunism often
assumes protective coloration. So Trotskyism, although fighting against
Leninism, does so under the banner of Leninism. The aim of this article is
to examine five areas of a theoretical political nature, which shows that
the claim that Trotsky led the continuation of Leninism, is in fact the line
of those who want to replace Leninism with Trotskyism, whether consciously
or unconsciously, as the ideological guide of the international communist
movement.
It is important to add here that we do
not have a conspiratorial theory about those who seek to replace
Marxism-Leninism with Trotskyism. Although it can be argued that Trotsky
aimed at this quite consciously, it would be simplistic if we assumed the
same about his followers. In fact we are forced to adopt the opposite
conclusions about them. Not only does petty-bourgeois eclecticism make it
easy for them to confuse Trotskyism with Leninism, but they also arrive at
this position because they subscribe to what they consider to be the
explanatory credibility of Trotsky.
The problem these people face,
therefore, is one of promoting Trotskyism without seen to be opposing
Leninism. This contradiction of theirs can be easily resolved if, in the
first place, their grasp of Leninism leaves much to be desired. For such
elements there is no contradiction between Leninism and Trotskyism, or,
perhaps, what contradiction there is, or was, can be safely relegated to the
by-gone pre-revolutionary period of the Russian revolutionary movement. This
certainly was Trotsky’s own attitude, so we should not be surprised if his
followers adopt the same stance.
The Bolsheviks, or what became known
as Marxism-Leninism, had opponents on the right and ‘left’ of the
revolutionary movement. The rival of Leninism on the right was the
Mensheviks, people like Martov and Plekhanov. As a rival of Leninism,
Trotsky was on the ‘left’, inspite of Trotsky’s occasional collaboration
with the Mensheviks against Bolshevism. It was the fact that his pseudo-left
position often served the interest of Menshevism, which Lenin subjected to
criticism in the pre-1917 period.
The view of Trotskyism as a
pseudo-left rival of Marxism-Leninism can be established, firstly, around
the question of the Russian revolution and the position Trotsky adopted
towards it. Here we turn to the question of Trotsky’s rendition of Marx’s
term: the revolution in permanence. Indeed, Trotsky’s theory of permanent
revolution is the intellectual starting point of what came to be called
‘Trotskyism’. This term, ‘Trotskyism’, was used, as we previously indicated,
by Lenin in pre-1917 times to mean something different. The term was used by
Lenin to signify opportunism. We are told by Lenin that, for instance,
‘…the "Trotskyites and conciliators"
like him are more pernicious than any liquidator; the convinced liquidators
state their views bluntly, and it is easy for the workers to detect where
they are wrong, whereas the Trotsky’s deceive the workers, cover
up the evil, and make it impossible to expose the evil and to remedy
it’. (V.I. Lenin: CW. Vol. 17; pp.242-44;
September, 1911)
The inner significance of the term
‘Trotskyism’ was clearly for Lenin one of opportunism. It was the
long-standing rivalry between Trotskyism and Leninism that gave rise to the
term in the first place. As we have seen the term ‘Trotskyism’, for Lenin,
was associated with not only covering up for the liquidators, but also with
‘revolutionary phrase-mongering’. It was not invented in the later Stalin
Trotsky dispute, a legend devised by Trotsky himself. Having got this
particular contentious issue out of the way, we can say that the logical
starting point for our analysis of Trotskyism is Trotsky’s theory of
permanent revolution, to which we will now turn.
TROTSKY’S PERMANENT REVOLUTION
Trotskyism, ideologically, begins with
his theory of ‘Permanent Revolution’. Trotsky, it must be said, never
wavered from this view. The question, what is permanent revolution?’ can be
answered quite simply in the following way. The theory of permanent
revolution argues that the working class should lead the Russian bourgeois
democratic revolution, and on the basis of possession of state power would
not stop at the democratic stage, that is to say the minimum programme, but
would continue the revolution to the socialist stage. This would awaken the
working class in the advanced capitalist countries to rise up against the
bourgeoisie. These workers would then come to the aid of the Russian working
class, extending support to backward Russia, thus making the revolution
permanent. This answered the central question of the Russian revolution,
that is, which class would lead it. On this question both Lenin and Trotsky
agreed that the working class would be the leader of the revolution.
Both Lenin’s and Trotsky’s views were
radically different from the Mensheviks. The Mensheviks argued that a
bourgeois revolution had to be led by the bourgeoisie and the role of the
working class was to support the efforts of the bourgeoisie in the
democratic revolution. In this scenario the workers must not be too radical
for fear of scaring off the bourgeois liberals. The Mensheviks argued for an
alliance between the bourgeoisie and the working class for accomplishing the
democratic revolution. They ignored the lessons of history, which showed
that the bourgeoisie would recoil from their own revolution and was never
interested in its radical completion.
For a radical solution to the
bourgeois revolution, which would not stop at half measures, Lenin argued
for an alliance between the working class and the peasantry. These two
classes were the most interested in the radical completion of the bourgeois
revolution. In sort, the Mensheviks stood for an alliance between the
bourgeoisie and the proletariat with the leadership in the hands of the
former, whereas the Bolsheviks stood for an alliance between the proletariat
and the peasantry. It is over the question of the peasantry that their
emerged a divergence between Leninism and Trotskyism. While it can be said,
without doubt, that Trotsky recognised the role of the peasantry, it can
also be argued that he underestimated its role. Trotskyites deny this,
claiming that such accusations are nothing but ‘Stalinist’ slanders against
Trotsky necessitated by factional considerations.
Marxist-Leninists, however, do not
claim that Trotsky failed to recognise the role of the peasantry in the
Russian revolution, but rather that he underestimated its role, i.e., did
not correctly grasp its significance To some extent, Trotskyites are able to
dispute this claim because in the light of experience Trotsky updated his
theory. This is why it is possible to find passages from Trotsky’s writings
suggesting an underestimating of the role of the peasantry, while other
passages seem to refute this. Taken as a whole, however, after careful
consideration, we have to agree with the view that, within Trotskyism there
was a tendency to underestimate the role of the peasantry in the Russian
revolution. To show that Trotskyism began with an incorrect tactical
understanding of the role of the peasantry we can turn to the preface
Trotsky wrote in 1922 to his book, The year 1905, where he argued
that the working class having come to power
‘…would be forced in the very early
stages of its rule to make deep in-roads not only into feudal property, but
into bourgeois property as well. In this it would come into hostile
collision not only
with all the bourgeois groupings that
supported the proletariat during the first stage of the revolutionary
struggle, but also with the broad masses of the peasantry who had been
instrumental in bringing it into power. The contradictions in the position
of a workers’ government in a backward country with an overwhelming majority
of peasants can be solved only on an international scale, in the arena of
the world proletarian revolution’. (In: Harpal
Brar: Trotskyism or Leninism? p.117)
It is clear that, if in ‘the very
early stages of its rule’ the proletariat proceeded with a policy that
brought it into ‘hostile collision’ with the ‘broad masses of the
peasantry’, communist leadership in the revolution, and working class
political power, would have been doomed from the start. So, who can argue
when Marxist-Leninists say Trotskyism began by not consciously grasping the
significance of the peasantry in the Russian revolution?
Furthermore, the Marxist-Leninist
argument that Trotskyism underestimated the role of the peasantry can be
clearly illustrated by another passage from Trotsky, where he argues that
‘The nature of our social-historical
relations, which lays the whole burden of the bourgeois revolution
upon the shoulders of the proletariat, will not only create tremendous
difficulties for the workers’ government but, in the first period of its
existence at any rate, will also give it invaluable advantages. This will
affect the relations between the proletariat and the peasantry’.
(L. Trotsky: Results and Prospects, 1906, in: The Permanent Revolution; New
Park Publications, July, 1962; p.203)
We need not point out that, it would
be a travesty of Marxism-Leninism, generally, to argue that Russia’s
historical development laid ‘…the whole burden f the bourgeois revolution
upon the shoulders of the proletariat…’ Even with an elementary
knowledge of Marxism-Leninism it is possible to expose this assertion as
completely opposed to Leninism. Leninism taught that the burden of the
bourgeois revolution in Russia rests on the proletariat and the peasantry.
Unlike Trotskyism, nowhere did Marxism-Leninism teach that the ‘whole
burden’ of the Russian revolution rest on the shoulders of the proletariat
alone.
If it were necessary to give more
evidence that Trotskyism began by ‘underestimating’ the role of the
peasantry in the Russian revolution, another quote from Trotsky would be
sufficient, at least for the unbiased mind. In Result and Prospects,
Trotsky argues, regarding the defeat in the Russo-Japanese war of 1905, that
‘The attempts of the Russia of 3rd
June to solve the internal revolutionary problems by the path of imperialism
has resulted in an obvious fiasco. This does not mean that the responsible
or semi-responsible parties of the 3rd June regime will take the
path of revolution, but it does mean that the revolutionary problem laid
bare by the military catastrophe, which will drive the ruling class still
further along the path of imperialism, doubles the importance of the only
revolutionary class in the country’.
(L. Trotsky: op. Cit., p252)
This passage illustrates, absolutely
clearly, by omission, that Trotskyism began by underestimating the role of
the peasantry in the Russian revolution. When Trotsky writes here of the
ONLY REVOLUTIONARY CLASS IN THE COUNTRY, he is speaking of the proletariat,
while completely ignoring the peasantry. What more evidence is needed to
demonstrate that contained within Trotskyism, particularly early Trotskyism,
there is an underestimating of the role of the peasantry, alien to Leninism?
Unlike Trotskyism, nowhere did Marxism-Leninism teach that the proletariat
was the ‘only revolutionary class’ in the Russian revolution.
If to imply that the working class in
the Russian revolution was the ‘only’ revolutionary class, is not
underestimating the role of the peasantry, then what is? This one passage,
alone, demolishes any attempt to oppose Marxism-Leninism and argue, in
support of Trotskyism, that Trotsky never underestimated the peasantry, and
that therefore such accusations are the invention of ‘Stalinists’. The view
that the working class, or proletariat, was the ‘only revolutionary class in
the country’ is the very opposite of Bolshevism, that is of
Marxism-Leninism.
Another really astonishing remark by
Trotsky shows, absolutely clearly, the complete absence of a Leninist
understanding of the significance of the peasantry as an ally of the
proletariat. Trotsky openly claimed, in print, that
‘In order to understand the subsequent
conflict between Stalinism and Trotskyism, it is necessary to emphasise
that, in consonance with all Marxist tradition, Lenin never regarded the
peasant as a socialist ally of the proletariat; on the contrary, it was the
overwhelming preponderance of the peasantry which had led Lenin to conclude
that the socialist revolution was impossible in Russia’.
( L. Trotsky: What Is The Permanent Revolution-Three concepts of The
Russian Revolution; Published by Spartacist, 1970; pages un-numbered)
But it is ABC Leninism, and for anyone
who has made even a cursory study of Lenin’s writings, that the alliance of
the proletariat and the peasantry was an absolute condition for the
democratic revolution, whereas an alliance with the middle and poor
peasantry, was a precondition for upholding the socialist dictatorship of
the proletariat. For Trotsky to say, shamelessly, that Lenin never regarded
the peasantry as a socialist ally of the proletariat, would not only make
Lenin turn in his grave, but Marx and Engels as well. This is a blatant
repudiation of Leninism and its replacement with Trotskyism. If Trotsky made
such utterances in ignorance it would only further undermine the already
impossible claim, by theoretically illiterate people, that Trotsky
and his past and contemporary followers represent the continuation of
Leninism. These people are on such a low theoretical level that they are
unable to discern the differences between Leninism and Trotskyism.
Now the question is, did Lenin ever
accuse Trotsky of underestimating the peasantry, or was this a later slander
by Stalin and those who supported him? We think it is best to let Trotsky
reply to this vexed question.
‘On the occasions when Lenin accused
me of "underestimating" the peasantry, he did not have in mind my failure to
recognise the socialist tendencies of the peasantry but rather my failure to
realise sufficiently, from Lenin’s point of view, the bourgeois democratic
independence of the peasantry, its capacity to create its own power and
through it impede the establishment of the socialist dictatorship of the
proletariat’, (L. Trotsky: ibid.)
We have to say this passage is
hogwash, possessing merit only in the frank admission that Lenin accused
Trotsky of UNDERESTIMATING THE PEASANTRY. Trotsky having confessed that
Lenin did in fact level the charge of underestimating the role of the
peasantry, returns quickly to the Trotskyite legend that the accusation
about underestimating the role of the peasantry began after Lenin,
suggesting that
‘The revaluation of the question
commenced only during the years of the thermidorian reaction, the beginning
of which coincided by and large with Lenin’s illness and death’
(L. Trotsky: ibid.)
On the contrary, it was after the
death of Lenin that Trotsky made his failed bid to replace Leninism with
Trotskyism in the Soviet Communist Party and the international communist
movement. The revaluation that Trotsky is referring to is a vital question
for Leninism, namely the role of the peasantry under the socialist
dictatorship of the proletariat. For Trotsky, after Lenin’s death
‘…the union of Russian workers and
peasants was declared to be in itself sufficient guaranty against the
dangers of restoration and a firm pledge that socialism would be achieved
within the borders of the Soviet Union. Having substituted the theory of
socialism in one country for the theory of international revolution, Stalin
began to call the Marxist evaluation of the peasantry "Trotskyism", and
moreover not only with reference to the present but retroactively to the
entire past’ (L. Trotsky: ibid.)
Trotsky did say that Marxism ‘never
ascribed an absolute and immutable character to its estimation of the
peasantry as a non-socialist class’, but he failed to present the question
in a concrete way and draw the necessary conclusions. Since Marxism, in the
words of Trotsky, never ascribed an absolute and immutable character to
its estimation of the peasantry as a non-socialist class, this is a
further exposure of Trotskyism. A close textual reading of Lenin reveals
that it is impossible to argue that there was a ‘revaluation’ of the
question of the peasantry’s role under socialism. Enshrined in Trotskyism is
its central legend that Stalin substituted the theory of socialism in one
country for the theory of world revolution. This bipolar notion of the
existence of two theories, i.e., the theory of socialism in one country, and
the theory of world revolution is purely an invention by Trotskyism, in fact
its most important legend, which we will deal with later. For now we will
consider Lenin’s views on the peasantry and socialism.
For Lenin, as long as the socialist
state has power over all large-scale means of production, combined with the
alliance with the millions of small peasants, together with the leadership
of the proletariat, and on the basis of the co-operatives
‘Is this not all that is necessary for
building a complete socialist society? This is not yet the building of
socialist society, but it is all that is necessary and sufficient for this
building’ ( V.I. Lenin: CW. Vol. 27; p.392)
Without further ado, we can say, with
some embarrassment for having to remind those who are confined to the
ideological parameters Trotskyism, that Marxism-Leninism was not revaluated,
as Trotsky carelessly suggests, but rather maintained that, the key
condition for upholding the socialist dictatorship in the Soviet Union was
the alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry, the middle and small
peasantry. This forms the most important teaching of Marxism-Leninism
concerned with the Russian revolution’s strategic line.
In fact Trotsky reveals his
anti-Leninism most clearly on the peasant question, which he always tend to
present abstractly, in the following remark
‘…whatever the situation on that score
today, after twenty-odd years of the new regime, the fact remains that prior
to the October revolution, and least of all
Lenin, had regarded the peasantry as a factor of socialist development’.
(L. Trotsky: ibid.)
Trotsky made out that for Stalin the
alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry was all that was
necessary to save the Soviet Union from capitalist restoration and
therefore the extension of the world revolution was not necessary, but there
is nothing in Stalin’s writings to support this line of argumentation. The
reality was that Bolshevism fought Menshevism on the right and Trotskyism
and other pseudo-left tendencies on the ultra-left over the question of the
role of the peasantry in the Russian revolution.
Trotsky’s permanent revolution theory
was one of ‘pseudo-leftism’. It was referred to by Lenin as ‘absurdly left’.
This theory would have been consigned to the waste paper bin, but something
happened which saved it, so to speak, and gave it new life. This something
was the 1914-1918 imperialist war.
In simple terms we can say that the
imperialist war of 1914-18 worked, to some extent, in favour of Trotsky’s
theory. Without this war Trotsky’s theory would have been forgotten. The
significance of the imperialist war was that it made it possible for the
Bolsheviks to progress from the democratic revolution against the Tsarist
regime to the socialist revolution. This gave the impression, to some
people, that Lenin had gone over to Trotsky’s views. Indeed, this was the
essential argument of people like Zinoviev and Kamenev, who initially
opposed Lenin’s ‘April Thesis’, which outlined the struggle to lead the
democratic revolution into the socialist revolution. Even Trotsky in his
autobiography could claim, in regard to Lenin, that
‘…the course of events, by
substituting arithmetic for algebra had revealed the essential identity of
our views’. (L. Trotsky: My Life; Pelican,
p.345)
The working class had, in deed, led
the bourgeois democratic revolution and then transformed it into the
proletarian revolution. Lenin had already held to this possibility.
‘Our programme is not an old one but a
new—the minimum programme of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party. We
have a new slogan: the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the
proletariat and the peasantry. If we live to see the real victory of the
democratic revolution we shall also have new methods of action in keeping
with the nature and aims of the working-class party that is striving for a
complete socialist revolution’. (V.I. Lenin:
Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution; Progress
Publishers, Moscow, pp.54-56)
And again, in Two Tactics,
Lenin argues that
‘We all contrapose bourgeois
revolution with socialist revolution; we all insist on the absolute
necessity of strictly distinguishing between them; however, can it be denied
that in the course of history individual, particular elements of two
revolutions become interwoven? Has the period of democratic revolutions in
Europe not been familiar with a number of socialist movements and attempts
to establish socialism? And will not the future socialist revolution in
Europe still have to complete a great deal left undone in the field of
democratism’. (V.I. Lenin: Op. Cit; pp.82-3)
Further Lenin argued that
‘The revolutionary-democratic
dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry is unquestionably only a
transient, temporary socialist aim, but to ignore this aim in the period of
the democratic revolution would be downright reactionary’.
(V.I. Lenin: op. Cit.; p.83)
For Lenin, the bourgeois democratic
revolution would establish the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat
and the peasantry. This itself is a far cry from the view of Trotsky
outlined above, suggesting that the proletariat was the ‘only revolutionary
class’, not to mention his view that the proletariat was to bear ‘all the
burden’ of the revolution. In Lenin’s view the dictatorship of the
proletariat and the peasantry would carry out the minimum programme, the
demands of the bourgeois revolution. But from the text above, we see also
that not only is the bourgeois stage of the revolution separate from the
socialist stage, but they are also interconnected.
In other words the minimum programme,
the bourgeois revolution, and the maximum programme, i.e., socialism, was
for Lenin not two unrelated processes. Lenin argued that the revolutionary
dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry has a past and future. Its
past is the struggle against feudalism, its future the struggle against
capitalism, this would lead to the end of the single will of the peasantry
as a whole with the proletariat which existed in the democratic stage.
‘The time will come when the struggle
against the Russian autocracy will end, and the period of democratic
revolution will have passed in Russia; it will then be ridiculous even to
speak of "singleness of will" of the proletariat and the peasantry, about a
democratic dictatorship, etc. When that time comes we shall deal directly
with the question of the socialist dictatorship of the proletariat and speak
of it in grater detail’. (V.I. Lenin: op.
Cit.; p.84)
In other words the democratic
dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry would grow into the
socialist dictatorship of the proletariat. With certain modifications, this,
in outline, is precisely what happened in the Russian revolution. The
revolution first led to the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and
the peasantry and was subsequently turned into the socialist dictatorship of
the proletariat. Theory, which Lenin recognised was always open to
modification by concrete developments, did not predict the concrete form of
the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry,
Nor could it be known beforehand that
the opportunists would dominate the first stage of the revolution through
the Soviets of workers and peasants’ and work with the provisional
government against the democratic revolution. But this Eight months of
preparation, from February to October, gave the masses the experience to
throw out the opportunists, support a new government of socialist
dictatorship, and complete the democratic revolution. How was this all made
possible, and how did it differ from Trotsky’s prognosis?
Trotsky, in permanent revolution,
had argued that, having come to power, the working class would carry out the
minimum programme and then proceed to socialism, that is to say the maximum
programme. But the reality is that this development was only made possible
by the intervention of the imperialist war of 1914-18. Without this war, the
conditions that made it possible to transform the democratic revolution into
the socialist revolution in such a short space of time would not have
existed.
Two factors would have worked against
Trotsky’s permanent revolution prediction in the absence of the conditions
created by the First Imperialist War. (1) The peasantry as a whole would not
have supported the immediate transition to socialism. This means that the
balance of class forces would have favoured the Mensheviks and the
bourgeoisie. (2) Intervention by world imperialism to support the
counterrevolution would have certainly been more successful, had an attempt
been made to turn the democratic revolution into socialist revolution in the
absence of the peculiar conditions of wartime.
The war of 1914-18 made it possible
for Trotsky’s supporters to conceal the pseudo-left nature of his version of
permanent revolution. In other words, to have attempted, or advocated
Trotsky’s permanent revolution theory in the absence of the conditions
created by the war would have led to the certain defeat of the working
class. That is the point, which the Trotskyites ignore.
The Bolsheviks could transform the
bourgeois into the proletarian revolution, in such a short space of time,
not because they had come over to the abstract thesis of Trotsky’s Permanent
Revolution, but because conditions made such a transformation possible. The
revolution had confirmed Lenin’s position of the democratic dictatorship of
the proletariat and the peasantry, but as Lenin remarked in his ‘April
Thesis’, this was done in a more original form, and furthermore under
wartime conditions.
Lenin and the Bolsheviks did not
promote, at the level of abstract theory, the possibility of an immediate
proletarian, socialist revolution in Russian conditions. In fact he ruled
out such a development in conformity with Marxism. The Russian democratic
revolution was to be bourgeois in nature, leading to a republic. The
question of the transformation of this democratic revolution into a
socialist one would be determined by external and internal factors, the
latter among which was the degree of consciousness and organisation of the
working class. The intervention of the imperialist war of 1914-18 changed
Lenin’s calculations. What the war achieved was to speed up the
revolutionary process, thus reducing the distance between the democratic and
the socialist stage of the revolution, making it possible to transform the
first into the second.
In other words, Lenin argued for the
transition to the socialist stage, not because Trotsky’s theory was correct,
but because wartime conditions speeded up the revolutionary process and
created favourable conditions for the second stage to begin. In the absence
of the speeded up revolutionary process and favourable conditions, the
transformation into the socialist stage only on the grounds that the working
class possessed power would have been leftist adventurism. Here we see a
clear demarcation between Leninism and Trotskyism. Whereas the premise of
Lenin is the concrete situation created by the imperialist war, for Trotsky
the premise is the abstraction of ‘permanent revolution’. The methodological
polarity between them is the essence of the cognitive divergence between
Leninism and Trotskyism.
The methodological and ideological
difference between Marxism-Leninism and Trotskyism is clear when we compare
Lenin’s ‘April Theses’ of 1917 with Trotsky’s updated Permanent Revolution
theory of 1928. The background and basis of the policy outlined in the April
Theses is the imperialist war of 1914-18. This war is at centre stage of the
theses, and is presented as the main contributory factor determining the
progress of the bourgeois democratic revolution into the socialist stage.
But the situation is quite different when we examine Trotsky’s updated 1928
presentation of his theory. Trotsky completely fails to see the link
between the imperialist war and the possibility it opened up for leading the
revolution on to socialism. It is a remarkable fact that in his 1928
work on permanent revolution Trotsky nowhere mentions the imperialist war in
connection with the change of Bolshevik tactics, aimed at overthrowing the
bourgeoisie and capitalism. To separate the Russian socialist revolution
from the imperialist war is a mistake not even made by second rate bourgeois
historians.
In fact, it is Trotsky’s 1928 work,
which reveals the real contradiction in approach between Lenin and Trotsky.
The following will illustrate this. Even eleven years after the revolution
in opposition to Leninism Trotsky could write
‘…never in history has there been a
regime of the "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry’.
(L. Trotsky: The Permanent Revolution; New Park Publications, London, 1962;
p.4)
Trotsky’s repudiation of Lenin here is
probably the most open in all his post Lenin writings. But Marxism-Leninism
teaches the very opposite. The Lenin of the ‘April Theses’ came to the very
opposite conclusion to Trotskyism. In 1917 Lenin wrote and argued the
position that
‘ "The Soviet of Workers’ and
Soldiers’ Deputies"—there you have the "revolutionary-democratic
dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry" already accomplished in
reality’. (V. I. Lenin: April Theses; CW. Vol.
24; pp.42-54)
No other passage is necessary to
demonstrate the opposition between Leninism and Trotskyism on matters
relating to the Russian revolution. When Lenin says plus, Trotsky says
minus.
We can conclude this section by saying
that Lenin agreed with Trotsky and the Mensheviks about the bourgeois nature
of the Russian revolution. While differing from the Mensheviks about the
alliance of classes which would be necessary for a successful revolution,
and which of these classes should lead, he conceded that the revolution
would be capitalist, leading to a republic. For Lenin there was no ‘Chinese
wall’ between the first and second stage of the revolution, but its further
development would depend on internal and external factors. The first
imperialist war of 1914-18 speeded up the revolutionary process, creating
favourable conditions for the transition to socialism. This brought about a
change in Bolsheviks tactics. Trotsky, on the other hand underestimated the
role of the peasantry, suggesting that the proletariat was the ‘only’
revolutionary class and that, the ‘whole burden’ of the revolution was on
the shoulders of the workers, an argument which constituted a complete
repudiation of Leninism, at least in the early presentation of his theory.
Trotsky also denied, in opposition to Leninism, the existence of the
democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, saying it had
never existed in history. In addition to all this he failed to realise
that it was the conditions generated by the first imperialist war which made
the transition from the democratic to the socialist revolution possible in
such a short space of time, incorrectly implying that Lenin came over to his
theory.
And it is quite ridiculous for a
leading British Trotskyite, Alan Woods to argue that
‘The concrete realisation of the
"democratic dictatorship" which history had actually thrown up
was a capitalist government, waging an
imperialist war of annexation, incapable of solving, or even of seriously
posing, a single one of the fundamental tasks of the democratic revolution.
The algebraic formula of the "democratic dictatorship" had been filled by
history with a negative content’ (Alan
Woods and Ted Grant: Lenin and Trotsky, What they really stood for; p.75)
Although this was a reply to the
revisionist, Monty Johnson, who tried to argue, incorrectly, that the
provisional government was the realisation of the democratic dictatorship,
Woods and Grant themselves fail to understand and, indeed, confuse the
provisional government with the democratic dictatorship. The essence of the
latter was the alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry, as a
whole, in the democratic revolution, whereas the provisional government was
in fact the realisation of the Menshevik policy of an alliance between the
proletariat and the bourgeoisie. This alliance, which the Bolsheviks devoted
all their energy to exposing and breaking up, in essence is no different
from the present alliance between the Social Democracy and the bourgeoisie
in all the advanced capitalist countries. The contradiction between Leninism
and Trotskyism is further exposed when Woods and Grant argues that the
‘concrete’ realisation of the democratic dictatorship was a capitalist
government waging an imperialist war, etc. This compounds Trotsky’s mistake
outlined above when he argued that a democratic dictatorship of the
proletariat and peasantry has never existed anywhere.
Unlike Lenin, Trotsky deduced the
possibility for the transition of the bourgeois revolution into the
socialist revolution, not from all the relevant concrete conditions but from
the postulates of abstract theory, which saw the workers possession of the
requisite power as the only essential determination for this. This
pseudo-leftism, if it had been put into practice under different, unsuitable
circumstances, would have led to the tragic defeat of the revolution.
Trotsky’s ‘permanent revolution’ theory was a ‘left’ distortion of Marxism
in that it advocated a socialist revolution as an immediate exigency,
deduced from theoretical abstraction, possessing a high degree of cognitive
autonomy from all the interrelated processes leading to the seizure of power
by the working class. In this sense Trotsky’s theory is closer to intuitive
prediction unconcerned with the processes of concrete and political
development.
It is interesting in this respect that
even the anti-Communist bourgeois historian, Robert Service, makes the
following observation that
Except for the Great War, Lenin would
have remained an ‘émigré’ theorist scribbling in Swiss libraries; and even
if Nicholas 11 had been deposed in a peacetime transfer of power, the
inception of a communist regime order would hardly have been likely’.
(R. Service: A History of Twentieth Century Russia; p.26)
This is not a remarkable insight by
Service; it contains an element of truth mostly in regard to the socialist
stage of the revolution, but it does unintentionally expose the psuedo-left
nature of Trotsky’s permanent revolution theory and the potential tragedy,
which would have been visited upon the working class, and peasantry had the
situation been different.
TROTSKY AND SOCIALISM IN ONE COUNTRY
The Marxist, Communist struggle against the
exploitation of the working people by heartless capitalists had its first
resounding success in the October revolution of 1917, which opened a new
chapter in human history. But the retreat of the world revolution, or at
least, the European revolution meant that the Soviet revolutionaries would
have to continue with the process of building socialism in one country,
holding on while waiting for the return of the revolution. Although the
civil war had been won at great cost, and the supporters of exploitation
defeated, the revolution nevertheless, had to face a world of capitalist
encirclement in what was a backward semi-feudal, capitalist country.
This is of course the key element in understanding the
disputes between the leading personalities of the Russian revolution. After
the death of Lenin in 1924, the two leading contenders for the leadership of
the soviet communist movement emerged to be Stalin and Trotsky. While some
bourgeois historians of the cruder type see the struggle between these as
merely a personal struggle by power hungry people Marxist-Leninists base
their analysis on the policy difference between them. The main demarcation
came to be, on the one hand, those who believed that it was possible to
continue with the process of building socialism in one country and, on the
other hand, those who believed that it could not be done. The former lined
up behind Stalin, while the latter rallied to Trotsky.
While Trotsky wanted the international communist
movement to choose between socialism in one country, or world revolution,
for Stalin and his supporters this was a false, undialectical presentation
of the question. In other words the Marxist-Leninists who gave Stalin their
backing rejected, resolutely the ‘either’, ‘or’ thesis of Trotskyism. Stalin
fought against all attempts to split the international communist movement
along Trotskyite line of either socialism in one country or world
revolution. For Stalin, to split the communist movement along these
lines could only serve the interest of the world bourgeoisie. For the
Marxist-Leninists, building socialism in one country was in no way opposed
to the world revolutionary process, as the Trotskyites argued, but in fact,
the opposite was the case, the building of socialism in the Soviet Union
would serve the process of world revolution. Those who defended socialism in
one country were in fact serving the interest of world revolution and thus
the interest of the international working class.
The struggle against Stalin and those who defended the
possibility of building up socialism in one country was actually, that is,
objectively, the struggle against the interest of the world working class.
To oppose Stalin on this issue, more than anything else, served the
interests of imperialism.
The argument that socialism could be built in the
Soviet Union brought Stalin into direct conflict with Trotsky and his
followers, who put around, and continue to do so, the argument that Stalin
had broken from Leninism on this very question.
There can be little doubt that in ranging himself
against the building of socialism in the USSR, Trotsky’s role would now be
to use this issue to disrupt the unity of the international communist
movement. This would be the inevitable effect of asking communists to choose
between socialism in one country, or world revolution. In 1928, in his work
on ‘permanent revolution’, Trotsky puts this choice absolutely clearly.
‘Either permanent revolution or socialism in one
country—this alternative embraces at the same time the internal problems of
the Soviet Union, the prospects of revolution in the East, and finally, the
fate of the communist international as a whole’.
(L. Trotsky: The Permanent Revolution; New Park Publications; 1962; p.11)
In effect Trotsky said, choose between socialism in
one country or world revolution. This became the essence of Trotskyism after
the death of Lenin. On the other hand Stalin said, there is no need for such
a choice because socialism in one country and world revolution are not
opposed, they are complementary; one serves the other.
For Trotsky, permanent revolution or socialism in one
country was the two ‘alternatives’ facing the communist vanguard of the
international working class. Stalin considered that this was another
psuedo-leftist line being served up by Trotskyism, which had now inveigled
itself in the ranks of Bolshevism.
Although Lenin and the Bolsheviks had the perspective
of a European wide revolution, these hopes were turned to dust following the
treachery of Social democracy, before and after the First World War. The
defeat of the revolution in Germany during 1918-19 served to isolate the
Russian revolution. The 1923 uprising in parts of Germany reinforced this
isolation. Lenin had expected direct support from successful revolutions in
the more advanced capitalist countries. The Bolsheviks had to make do with
the indirect support of the workers opposing their own bourgeoisie’s
anti-Soviet manoeuvres. All the Bolsheviks could do now was to hold on and
wait for the revival of the international revolution.
This meant doing everything possible to defend the
Soviet Union from the machinations of imperialism. With the working class in
power in the Soviet Union, they could pursue a path, which led to surrender,
or another path could lead to building socialism in ‘one country’. Lenin
certainly, at least on a theoretical level did not reject this possibility,
as Trotskyites like to claim. We can find several textual supports for this
view. We must not confuse theory and perspectives as the Trotskyites usually
manage to do. For while in terms of perspectives the Bolsheviks clearly
based themselves on the early development of the world revolution, this
perspective was not realised. It was therefore necessary to go back to
theory and produce new perspectives in the light of new developments.
Basically the new perspectives arrived
at had a dualistic character. This was the defence of the possibility of
building socialism in one country combined with the support for the world
revolution. In other words the new perspective gave expression to Lenin’s
previous theoretical notion that socialism in one country was not opposed
to the world revolution. The relationship between the two was
complementary not antagonistic. It is interesting, in this respect, that
Lenin’s criticism of the ‘United States of Europe’ slogan, which was at the
time supported by Trotsky, gave credence to the policy arrived at by Stalin
and his supporters in their disputes with the Trotskyite opposition in the
party. Lenin had opposed the above slogan in 1915, firstly by comparing it
to another slogan relating to the ‘United States of the World’ on the
grounds that
‘A United States of the World (not of
Europe alone) is the state form of the union and freedom of nations which we
associate with socialism until the complete victory of communism brings
about the total disappearance of the state, including the democratic state.
As a separate slogan, however, the slogan of the United States of the World
would hardly be a correct one, first, because it merges with socialism;
second, because it may be wrongly interpreted to mean that the victory of
socialism in a single country is impossible, and it may also create
misconceptions as to the relations of such a country to the others’.
(V.I. Lenin: CW. Vol. 21; also in: Marx, Engels,
Marxism; Foreign Languages Press; pp. 334,339)
It is clear that Leninism not only
recognises the possibility, theoretically, of socialism in one country, but
also raises questions as to the relation of such a country to the others.
Trotskyism, on the other hand, is revealed as a falsification of Leninism on
the very question which Trotsky sought to split the world communist
movement, the false choice of socialism in one country or world
revolution. If more textual evidence is required to refute the
Trotskyites, in the very same 1915 article, Lenin continues with the
observation that
‘Uneven economic and political
development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of
socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country
taken singly. (V.I.Lenin; ibid.)
How was it possible for Leon Trotsky
to claim he was defending Leninism by opposing Stalin, who upheld, like
Lenin, the possibility of socialism in one country as part of the world
revolutionary process? This contradiction, i.e., Trotsky blatantly opposing
Lenin, but at the same time claiming to defend him, clearly reveals the
petty-bourgeois opportunism of Trotskyism, and also, by the way, reveals the
eclecticism associated with the petty-bourgeoisie. The opportunism of
Trotskyism consist in its not being prepared to fight Leninism openly, but
has to pretend that it is ‘defending’ Leninism, while wearing mask in the
struggle against Leninism. Trotsky, after the Bolsheviks assumed power,
became a concealed opponent of Leninism in the Communist Party.
In ‘The Military Programme of the
Proletarian Revolution’, written in 1916, on the very eve of the Russian
revolution, Lenin again remarks that
‘…the victory of socialism in one
country does not at one stroke eliminate all wars in general. One the
contrary, it presupposes wars’. (Marx, Engels,
Marxism, p.385)
Unlike the Trotsky and his followers,
it is absolutely clear that the foremost leader of the October 1917 Russian
revolution did not theoretically oppose socialism in one country to the
world revolutionary process. This, in fact is one of the most, if not the
most important demarcation between Marxism-Leninism and Trotskyism. The
Trotskyites constantly go on, like the bourgeois academics, about Stalin
falsifying the annals of the revolution when pictures of certain ex-leaders
are removed from public view. What is far more serious in our view is the
falsification of Lenin’s theoretical legacy by Trotskyism: the question of
socialism in one country and its relation to the world revolution is a
classical example of Trotskyite falsification.
We, for our part, do not think further
textual evidence is needed to prove the point we are making, but for the
sake of the reader we will continue with the above passage by Lenin where he
argues that
‘The development of capitalism
proceeds extremely unevenly in the various countries. It cannot be otherwise
under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism
cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will
achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will
remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois for some time’.
(V.I.Lenin: Op. Cit.; p385-86)
For Lenin, the unevenness of
development of commodity production, that is, capitalism, creates the
possibility for socialism in one country. This would in turn raise the
question of the relation of such a country to all the others. The main
contradiction between Leninism and Trotskyism, after 1924, came to be
between Stalin, who maintained that ‘socialism in one country’ served the
interest of the world revolutionary process, and consequently, the interest
of the working class, which had to be defended, and Trotskyism, which
argued, contrary to all the facts, that socialism in one country was
UN-Leninist, was impossible, and harmed the international revolution. Since
Lenin openly and clearly defended the possibility of socialism in one
country as part of the world revolutionary process, to say Stalin’s defence
of Lenin on this question was UN-Leninist and revisionist was the most
vilest example of Trotskyite deviousness and opportunism in the in the
communist movement. For it is clear that on this issue it was Trotsky who
was the revisionist, as far as Marxist-Leninist theory is concerned.
In this contradiction, Trotsky was
simply defending Trotskyism, which he had a right to do. Where he went wrong
was to pretend that his position was Leninist orthodoxy, while in reality,
it was simply vintage Trotskyism. Today’s Trotskyites pursue the same line,
which consist of promoting Trotskyism under the banner of Leninism. In this,
Trotskyism reveals itself as clearly left-opportunism of the most insidious
kind. What is remarkable is that for decades Trotskyites and
semi-Trotskyites have sought to gain the leadership of the vanguard of the
working class on the clearly spurious basis, in complete opposition to
Leninism on the issue of the relationship between socialism in one country
and the world revolutionary process. How was it possible to perpetrate such
blatant, noisy, revisionism of Marxism-Leninism, while at the same time
claiming to defend the heritage of Bolshevism supposedly from the ravages of
Stalin? How was it possible for Trotskyism to attract an intelligentsia and
use it against Marxism-Leninism in such vulgar manner? This was possible for
a number of reasons. The main reason, is of course, that, although
Trotskyism openly opposed Leninism in the pre-1917 days, after the success
of Leninism in the October revolution, particularly after, Lenin’s departure
from the political scene, Trotskyism now came to represent concealed
opposition to Leninism.
There was always pseudo-left elements
on the fringes of the communist movement so, it wasn’t too difficult for
Trotskyism to attract a following. Trotsky had based his argument on the
notion that it was impossible to build an economically self-sufficient
society in one country. But this is a misleading argument, because no one
had suggested that there was no contradiction between socialism in one
country and international capitalism. The contradiction is obvious. In
defending the possibility of socialism in one country Lenin had indirectly
referred to these contradictions with the remark that the slogan of the
United States of the World was wrong, not only because it made socialism in
one country seem impossible, but also
‘…it may also create misconceptions
as to the relations of such a country to the others’. (V.I. Lenin: op.
Cit.; p338)
The contradiction between socialism in
one country and international capitalism could be manipulated and turned
into a non-antagonistic contradiction on the economic plain to some extent.
This was certainly the policy of Lenin. The Soviet Union was able in some
measure to trade with capitalist nations, after withstanding economic
blockade, without compromising the goal of building socialism. No serious
revolutionary would argue that the building of socialism in one country was
detrimental to the world revolutionary process. They can, of course, argue
that it is impossible to do this, although desirable. At any rate this
question can never be posed abstractly. This must also lead to the question
of the nature of socialism, as understood by Lenin, particularly in the
Soviet context.
For Lenin,
‘State power over all large-scale
means of production, state power in the hands of the proletariat, the
alliance of this proletariat with the many millions of small and very small
peasants, the assured leadership of the peasantry by the proletariat, etc.-
is not this all that is necessary for building a complete socialist society
from the co-operatives, from the co-operatives alone, which were formerly
looked down upon as huckstering and which from a certain aspect we have the
right to look down upon as such now, under NEP? Is this not all that is
necessary for building a complete socialist society? This is not yet the
building of socialist society, but it is all that is necessary and
sufficient for this building’ (V.I. Lenin: CW.
Vol. 27; p.392)
Given the proletariat possessing state
power, and the other preconditions, Trotsky, himself, defined socialism in
terms of the co-operatives. In his 1928 work on permanent revolution he
remarked that
‘Socialism, that is co-operative
production on a large scale, is possible only when the development of the
productive forces has reached the stage at which large enterprises are more
productive than small ones’. ( L.Trotsky:
Permanent Revolution; New Park Publications; p.220)
But in his factional struggle against
Stalin, he argued that socialism, that is, co-operative organisation of
production, was not possible in one country. Trotskyism was only able to
arrive at this conception by not grasping correctly the difference between
the first stages of communist society with its later stages, and posing the
question in a purely abstract manner. Trotskyites fail to understand that
socialism is a transitional society between capitalism and the higher stage
of communist society. To argue abstractly that co-operative production and
working class political power is not possible in one country is pseudo-left
nonsense.
All communists must support the
Marxist-Leninist thesis that socialism in one country is not opposed to the
world revolutionary process but complimentary to it. As we have explained,
the major transformation of Trotskyism was that from open opposition to
Leninism it subsequently became concealed opposition to Leninism. After the
Bolsheviks came to power Trotskyism shakes the hand of Lenin’s with a knife
hidden under its cloak. Trotskyism remains as the Comintern resolutions
described it, a petty-bourgeois deviation from Marxism, fighting to
undermine Leninism. All the lies of the Trotskyites will never change the
fact, a fact which is recognised even by bourgeois scholars, that for Lenin,
socialism in one country was possible as part of the world revolutionary
process. In this, as on other questions, it is for the new generation of
communists to expose Trotskyism’s concealed opposition to Leninism in front
of the vanguard of the working class.
TROTSKY AND THE SOVIET BUREAUCRACY
On the question of bureaucracy in the
Soviet Union, Trotsky began his teaching by putting forward a false line of
argumentation. In the view of Trotsky, the Soviet Union went through a
process of bureaucratic degeneration under Stalin. Here it is necessary to
look at the concept of ‘degeneration’. The term suggests a decline. Such a
decline would be from a higher to a lower level of existence. To degenerate
means
‘having deteriorated to a lower
mental, or moral, or physical level..’ (Collins Gem English Dictionary;
New Edition; p. 141)
Alternatively, degeneration implies
‘…to decline, etc, to grow worse in
quality or standard…’ ( The Chambers
Dictionary; New Edition; p.426)
While another meaning of the term
signifies to
‘…decrease, deteriorated, relapse…’
( The Original Roget’s Thesaurus of English words and phrases; New Edition;
p.778)
So that to degenerate refers to a
process of decline from a previous condition of excellence. This would
certainly suggest that the Soviet State enjoyed a period of former
excellence, or near excellence before a period of degeneration set in. But
this account stands at odds with the known facts. For instance
‘The bureaucratic attitude, the
subordination of the individual to the requirements of officials’
convenience, routine, and obsessions, has been a constant theme in Russian
history and a constant trial to the ordinary people of Russia. In the Soviet
period this ‘bureaucratism’ persisted, despite sincere efforts to eliminate
it’. ( J.N. Westwood: Endurance and
Endeavour-Russian History, 1812-1986, Third Edition; pp. 48-9)
And concerning the economic aspect of
the evils of bureaucracy Lenin remarked that
‘ We see nothing of them on May 5,
1918. Six months after the October Revolution, with the old bureaucratic
apparatus smashed from top to bottom, we feel none of its evils’.
(V. I. Lenin: CW. Vol. 32; p.351, April 21, 1921)
But, of course the evil was still
there because the Eighth Congress of the RCP (b) on March 18-19, 1919,
adopted a new programme which frankly spoke of
‘…a partial revival of bureaucracy
within the Soviet Union’. (V.I. Lenin: ibid.)
Lenin praised this 1919 party
programme arguing that where the problem of bureaucracy is concerned the
important thing was
‘…not fearing to admit the evil, but
desiring to reveal, expose and pillory it and to stimulate thought, will,
energy and action to combat it’ (V. I. Lenin:
ibid.)
Also the Eight Congress of Soviets, in
1920 addressed the question of the
‘…evils of bureaucracy…’
( V.I. Lenin: ibid.)
And following the Eighth Congress of
Soviets, the Tenth Congress of the RCP (b), in March, 1921
‘Summed up the controversies closely
connected with the analysis of these evils, we find them ever more distinct
and sinister’. ( V.I. Lenin: ibid.)
It is clear that the argument that the
Soviet Union started a process of degeneration under Stalin is factually
inaccurate. What Lenin speaks of is the revival [degeneration] of
bureaucracy soon after the revolution. Lenin grappled with the question of
bureaucracy and tried to understand its economic roots. At one point Lenin
remarked that
‘The evils of bureaucracy are not in
the army, but in the institutions serving it’.
(V.I. Lenin: ibid.)
Other writers even refer to the
appearance of Soviet bureaucracy even before the Bolsheviks won over these
organisations. The reality was that the bureaucratic culture of old Russia
was carried over into the new period, confirming Marx’ view that the new
society carries the birth marks of the old, in every respect
‘What we have to deal with here is a
communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations,
but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is
thus in every respect, economically, morally and intellectually, still
stamped with the birth marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges’.
(Karl Marx: Critique of the Gotha Programme; Foreign Languages Press,
Beijing; 1972)
That the new society would carry the
birth marks of the old, overthrown society was therefore accepted by Marx
himself, the founder of modern, scientific socialism. This means that we
cannot impose, in simplistic fashion, an uncomplicated category of
‘degeneration’ to explain a complicated process relating to the interaction
between the old and the new, the struggle between which continues right up
until class society begins to fade away. On every level the struggle between
the old and the new takes place, in all its fundamental features at the
socialist stage of the transition to communist society. In fact, in every
respect, revolution can be described as a struggle between the old and the
new. The process of this struggle is dialectical. Thus Trotsky’s one-sided
notion of a bureaucratic degeneration excludes the struggle against it,
which, due to the bureaucratic tradition of the old Tsarist Russia, promised
to be a protracted and difficult process, particularly in view of the
backwardness which the revolution had inherited.
For Lenin, the problems associated
with Soviet bureaucracy were a result of the economic and cultural
backwardness of Tsarist Russia. The ‘return’ of bureaucracy was therefore
not surprising. Lenin noted even in 1919 how after the revolution
‘The Tsarist bureaucrats began to join
the Soviet institutions and practice their bureaucratic methods, they began
to assume the colouring of Communists and, to succeed better in their
careers, to procure membership cards of the Russian Communist party….’.
(V.I. Lenin: CW. Vol. 29; p.183)
As the former servants of the old
regime were re-employed by the Soviet State they provided a fertile ground
for the growth of bureaucracy, and Lenin remarked that
‘We can fight bureaucracy to the
bitter end…only when the whole population participates in the work of
government’. (V.I. Lenin: ibid.)
In Lenin’s view
‘The results of this low cultural
level is that the Soviets, which by virtue of their programme are organs of
government by the working people, are in fact organs of government for the
working people by the advanced section of the proletariat, but not the
working people as a whole…’ (V.I. Lenin:
ibid.)
Within the Soviet context, in the
short term, this was unavoidable, or certainly difficult to avoid. On the
other hand, the struggle to overcome the negative sides of bureaucracy was
viewed by Lenin as a long-term affair. As a result of his view regarding the
lengthy process of overcoming features of bureaucracy, Lenin came out
against promoting anti-bureaucratic platforms. By rejecting
anti-bureaucratic platforms Lenin was not undermining the fight against the
dysfunctional aspects of bureaucracy, but rather signalling that a solution
to the problem could not be found on a political level alone. Consequently
Lenin was not afraid to admit that
It will take decades to overcome the
evils of bureaucracy’. (V.I. Lenin: Report On
the Role and Task of the Trades Unions; CW. Vol.32; pp.56-7; January23,
1921)
For Lenin this was going to be a
‘…very difficult struggle…’
(V.I. Lenin: ibid.)
And, furthermore, Lenin argued, in
keeping with a long-term perspective when considering the fight against
bureaucracy, that
‘…anyone who says we can rid ourselves
of bureaucratic practices overnight by adopting anti-bureaucratic platforms
is nothing but a quack with a bent for fine
words’. (V.I. Lenin: ibid.)
Nevertheless, he argued that
‘Bureaucratic excesses must be
rectified right away’. (V. I. Lenin: ibid.)
The whole problem of bureaucracy,
which was gradually building up from the time of the revolution burst open
in the famous Trade Union dispute, when Lenin came out against Trotsky whose
supporters were in control of the Joint Trade Union of Rail and Water
Transport Workers, headed by Tsektran. Lenin remarked that
‘ There are excellent workers in
Tsektran, and we shall appoint them, and correct their bureaucratic
excesses’. (V.I. Lenin: CW. Vol.32; p.57)
Nevertheless
‘The first All-Russia Congress of
Transport Workers in March 1921 called by the Central Committee of the Party
expelled the Trotskyites from the Tsektran leadership and outlined new
method of work’ (See note 9, Lenin Collected
Works, Vol. 32; p. 530)
The famous Trade Union dispute began
in 1920-21, when Trotsky accused the trade unionists of cultivating a spirit
of hostility to Trotsky’s supporters, whom he was using to take over the
union. Having examined the issue more closely Lenin came to the conclusion
that such accusations were false, indeed, monstrous, and he retorted
‘Only someone in the lunatic fringe
can say a thing like that’. (V.I.
Lenin: op. cit. p.57
What the trade unionists were opposing
was the bureaucratic methods Trotsky and his supporters was introducing in
their midst. For Lenin, Trotsky’s position would
‘…lead to the downfall of Soviet
Power’. (V.I. Lenin: CW. Vol. 32; p.57)
Theoretically and politically, the
struggle against bureaucracy by the Leninist leadership of the party began
as a struggle against Trotsky, who, after the civil war, had called for the
militarisation of labour.
Trotskyites like to turn history on
its head and pretend that the Leninist struggle against bureaucracy began as
a struggle against Stalin, but it actually began in opposition to the
bureaucratic methods and excesses which had been introduced into Tsekran by
Trotsky’s appointees. With the departure of Lenin, Trotsky soon began to
pose as an anti-bureaucrat. In his struggle to gain the leadership, Trotsky
began to disregard Lenin’s view concerning anti-bureaucratic platforms,
which tended to reduce the question of combating bureaucracy to a simple,
one-sided, political matter.
The Bolsheviks had not expected to
find any short-term solution to the question of overcoming the negative
aspects of bureaucracy, nor, as we have seen, did Lenin entertain any
short-term remedy. He recounted that
‘Our Programme formulates the task of
combating the evils of bureaucracy as one of an extremely long duration’.
(V.I. Lenin: Tenth Congress of the RCP (b),
March 8-16th, 1921: CW. Vol. 32; p. 205)
Textually it is absolutely clear that
Lenin regard the struggle against Soviet bureaucracy as one of an ‘extremely
long duration’. And it is precisely here that begins the contradiction
between the Marxist-Leninist approach to the question of fighting
bureaucracy on the one hand, and on the other, the pseudo-left Trotskyite
approach. In other words, when it comes to the question of opposing
bureaucracy Trotsky was implicitly asking Communists to choose between his
approach, and Lenin’s approach.
In the Trades Union dispute Lenin had
opposed Trotsky’s reference to Tomsky and Lozovsky for being trade union
bureaucrats, and he commented
‘I shall later on say which side in
this controversy tends to be bureaucratic’.
(V.I. Lenin: CW, Vol. 32; p. 25)
On the trade union dispute, Trotsky
wanted the party to choose between two platforms, a position which Lenin
thought would be damaging to the party. Replying to Bukharin, he said
‘…it is strange to hear you say, like
Trotsky, that the party will have to choose between two trend’.
(V.I Lenin: CW. Vol. 32; p.26)
And for Lenin, Trotsky’s platform
pamphlet entitled, ‘The Role and Task of the Trade Unions’, contained
‘…mistakes bearing on the very essence
of the dictatorship of the proletariat’. (V.I.
Lenin: CW. Vol.36; p.22)
In fact Lenin accused Trotsky of
‘bureaucratic projecteering’.
(V.I. Lenin: CW. Vol. 32; p.30)
Suggesting also that Trotsky’s
position
‘…looks more like a "reactionary
movement" than "trades unionism" (V.I. Lenin:
op. cit. p.31)
The word fascism was not in vogue at
the time, but the content of Lenin’s rejoinder to Trotsky’s pamphlet clearly
indicate that Lenin’s use of the phrase ‘reactionary movement’ suggest that
this is what he was getting at, and he said of Trotsky’s thesis
‘…yours is not a Marxist approach to
the question. This quite apart from the fact that there are a number of
theoretical mistakes in the thesis. It is not a Marxist approach to the
evaluation of the "role and tasks of the trade unions", because such a broad
subject cannot be tackled without giving thought to the peculiar, political
aspects of the present situations’. (V.I.
Lenin: ibid.p.32)
The RCP(b) had set up a commission to
look into the trade union issue with a view to resolving the differences
between the disputants. Trotsky refused to serve on the commission and
brought on himself accusations of disruption from Lenin, who remarked
‘Trotsky
walks out, refuses to serve on the commission, and disrupts
its work’. (V.I Lenin: ibid.; p.35)
Lenin was not amused, and he saw in
Trotsky’s disruptive behaviour a dangerous precedent, remarking that
‘…this business of disrupting the work
of a commission is bureaucratic, un-soviet, un-socialist, incorrect
and harmful’. (V.I. Lenin: op. cit.; p.36)
And Lenin made clear that whatever
differences Trotsky had with other members of the commission was
‘…no reason to disrupt the work of a
commission’. (V.I. Lenin: ibid.; p.36)
In the trade unions dispute, Lenin
also chided Bukharin because
‘…he should have demanded and insisted
that Comrade Trotsky remained on the commission’. (V.I. Lenin:
ibid. p.36-7)
As we have already indicated,
Trotsky’s appointees were in control of Tsektran, which was the Central
Committee, that is the leadership of the Joint Trade Union of Rail and
Water Transport Workers. They brought into the union the military
approach of Trotsky. To some limited extent, this approach was necessary to
get the transport system on its feet again after the break down contributed
to by the civil war. And Lenin observed that
‘Heroism,
zeal, etc., are the positive side of military experience; red tape and
arrogance are the negative side of the experience of the worst
military type’. (V.L. Lenin: CW. Vol.32; p. 37)
But, as for Trotsky’s thesis, in
Lenin’s view
‘…whatever his intentions, do not play
up the best, but the worst in military
experience’. (V.I. Lenin: ibid. p.37)
For Lenin it was the negative side of
Trotsky’s military experience, which was on display. His own supporters in
the unions were putting this negative side into practice. Consequently Lenin
remarked that
‘ It must be borne in mind that a
political leader is responsible not only for his own policy but also for the
acts of those he leads’. (V.I. Lenin: ibid.
p.37)
In other words, the military style of
the Trotskyite Tsekran leadership had outlived itself and was leading to
bureaucratic excesses. In the Trade Union debate Lenin had spoken
approvingly of Rudzutak’s thesis: ‘The Task of The Trade Unions In
Production’, which Lenin had read to the Eight Congress of Soviets. Lenin
praised Rudzutak’s thesis when he remarked
‘There you have a platform, and it is
very much better than the one Comrade Trotsky wrote after a great deal of
thinking, and the one Comrade Bukharin wrote…without any thinking at all’.
(V.I. Lenin: CW. Vol.32; p.49)
For Lenin all would benefit from the
study of Rudzutak’s thesis
‘…and this also goes for Comrade
Trotsky and Comrade Bukharin’. (V.I. Lenin:
ibid.; p.40)
Trotsky had called for a
reorganisation of the unions, including the selection, or appointment of
functionaries, and in Lenin’s view this represented
‘…an example of the real bureaucratic
approach: Trotsky and Krestinsky selecting trade union "functionaries"’.
(V.I. Lenin: ibid.; p.41)
As far as the trade union issue was
concerned, Lenin remarked that
‘A study of our own practical
experience would be a great deal more useful than anything Comrade Trotsky
or Bukharin had written’. (V.I. Lenin: ibid.;
p.41)
In concluding the first phase of the
trade union debate and the analysis of Trotsky’s thesis on, ‘The Role and
Task of the Trades Unions’, Lenin repeated his argument that
‘Trotsky’s thesis are politically
harmful’. (V.I. Lenin: ibid.; p.42)
And as far as Lenin was concerned
regarding Trotsky’s ‘Role and Task of the Trade Unions
‘The sum and substance of his policy
is bureaucratic harassment of the trade unions. Our Party Congress will, I
am sure, condemn and reject it’. (V. I. Lenin:
ibid.; p.42)
For Lenin the biggest mistake which
the Central Committee made, and above all Lenin himself, was that Rudzutak’s
thesis was overlooked, when
.
‘That is the most important
document in the whole of the controversy’
(V.I. Lenin: ibid. p.44)
Trotsky had called for the "shake up"
of the trade unions, but Lenin, who supported Tomsky strongly, agreed that
‘…in view of Tsektran’s irregularities
and bureaucratic excesses it is the "shake up" that is the crux of the whole
controversy’. (V.I. Lenin: ibid.; p. 44)
In the course of the trade union
debate, the Trotskyite leadership of the Joint Trade Union of Rail and Water
Transport Workers, Tsekran was condemned for
‘ "…the degeneration of centralism and
militarised forms of work into bureaucratic practices, petty tyranny,
red-tape"..’ (V. I. Lenin: ibid.; p.45)
And Lenin exposed the fact that
Trotsky’s refusal to serve on the commission to sort out the trade union
dispute led
‘…to factionalism’.
(V.I. Lenin: ibid. p. 45)
It was this step, refusing to serve on
the Commission, which, in Lenin’s view, turned Trotsky’s minor mistakes in
submitting incorrect thesis on the role of the trades unions, into a major
one. For Lenin, Trotsky’s incorrect policy of
bureaucratic harassment of trades unions was now compounded and made worst
by his arrogant refusal to serve on the trade union commission.
During the trade union dispute Lenin
accused both Trotsky and Bukharin for inventing the "legend" that the best
part of Rudzutak’s thesis on ‘The Task of The Trade Unions In Production’
was drawn up by members of Tsekran, i.e.: Holtzman, Andreyev and Lyubinov.
But Rudzutak soon exploded this "legend". Lyubinov did not exist on the
trade union leadership, and in any case Holtzman had voted against the
thesis.
At the Eighth Congress of Soviets,
December 30, 1920, there was a dispute as to the origins of the thesis
attributed to Y.E. Rudzutak. It was confirmed that he was, indeed, the
author.
Lenin argued that it wasn’t the trade
unions that needed ‘shaken up’ but rather the CC of the RCP for having
overlooked Rudzutak’s thesis in the first place and thereby allowing
‘…an altogether
empty discussion to flare up’. (V.I. Lenin: ibid.; p.47)
In Lenin’s view nothing could cover up
the mistake of the Trotskyite controlled Tsektran, although the mistake was
not excessive, it was common
‘…consisting in some exaggeration
of bureaucracy’. (V.I. Lenin: op. cit.; p.47)
And in the trade union dispute Lenin
arrived at the conclusion that the Soviet State was
‘…a workers’ state with bureaucratic
distortions’. (V.I. Lenin: op. cit.; p.48)
For Lenin the bureaucratic distortion
of the workers’ state, combined with Trotsky’s attempts to undermine the
independence of the trade unions by carrying over his civil war method to
the period of peaceful construction endangered the Dictatorship of the
Proletariat.
The trade union commission, on which
Trotsky had refused to serve, finally issued its own platform. This was
titled: Draft Decisions of the Tenth Congress of the RCP on the Role and
Task of the Trade Unions. Nine members of the Central Committee signed
this: Zinoviev, Stalin, Tomsky, Rudzutak, Kalinin, Kamenev, Petrovsky,
Artyom and Lenin. Lozovsky also signed. When the platform appeared in Pravda
it included additional signatures: Schmidt, Tsiperovich and Milyutin.
Lenin called for all the rival
platforms to be signed by their respective authors or those responsible for
It. Lenin reminded the party that
‘This demand is met by the Ignatovites
and the Sapronovites but not by the "Trotskyites", the "Bukharinites" and
the "Shlyapnikovites", who refer to anonymous Comrades allegedly responsible
for their platforms’. (See footnote: op. cit.; p.49)
As for Lenin’s platform, its basis,
opposed to the Trotskyites, was
‘Do not defend but rectify the
bureaucratic excesses’. (V.I. Lenin: op. cit.;
p.52)
Lenin also repeated his argument that
‘The fight against
bureaucracy is a long and arduous one’. (V.I.Lenin: ibid.; p. 52)
The trade unions dispute of 1920-1921
was a three-corned struggle between Lenin’s grouping, the Trotsky, Bukharin
group and the syndicalist grouping. Lenin sought a middle course. For Lenin
it was not a question of repudiating all militarist and appointments method,
but rather fighting the bureaucratic excesses.
Lenin was disturbed that the danger of
the split in the party leadership caused by this issue was that the
imperialist powers would try to take advantage of these differences to mount
another invasion attempt. He warned that the split in the leadership would
encourage internal counterrevolutionary adventures.
Lenin, addressing the Second
All-Russia Congress of Miners, on January 25th, 1921, blamed
Trotsky for turning the trade union dispute into a factional struggle
‘…I put
the chief blame on Comrade Trotsky for all this fumbling haste and
precipitation’. (V.I. Lenin: op. cit.; p. 54)
And although Trotsky had accused
Lozovsky and Tomsky of bureaucratic practices, Lenin replied that
‘I would say the reverse was true’.
(V.I. Lenin: op. cit.; p.55)
In Lenin’s view, Trotsky’s approach to
the trade unions, summed up in his Shake up policy, if pursued
‘…will cause
a split and bring down the dictatorship of the proletariat’. (V.I
Lenin: op. cit.; p.56)
Lenin’s criticism of the Trotskyite
controlled Tsektran was for its failure to rectify its bureaucratic
excesses. This rectification was possible, although, for Lenin, as already
pointed out, it would take decades to overcome the evils of bureaucracy.
And Lenin argued that only someone in
‘the lunatic fringe’ could attack the trade unions in the way Trotsky had
done. The danger was that Trotsky, in damaging the relationship between the
party and the trades unions, if persisted in
‘…will lead to the downfall of the
Soviet power’. (V.I. Lenin: op. cit.; p.57)
There was no doubt in Lenin’s mind
about the consequences of Trotsky’s view, for
‘If the party falls out with the
trades unions, the faults lies with the party, and this spells certain doom
for the Soviet Power’. (V.I. Lenin: op. cit.;
p.58)
Trotsky had began by accusing trade
unionists of creating a spirit of hostility to Tsektran, but Lenin retorted
that
‘There is a spirit of hostility for us
among the trade union rank and file because of our mistakes, and the
bureaucratic practices up on top, including
myself, because it was I who appointed Glavpolitput’. (V.I.
Lenin: ibid.; p.58)
Glavpolitput was the chief political
department formed in 1919 to rehabilitate rail transport. It applied
military methods to get the railways moving again, but later leading to
bureaucratic excesses.
Trotsky, in the trade union dispute,
accused Lenin of exaggerating the dangers of bureaucracy, but Lenin retorted
that
‘…it was not Lenin who invented some
new path, as Trotsky says, but the Party, which said: "watch out: there’s a
new malaise"’. (V.I. Lenin: op. cit.; p.67)
So that it is absolutely clear that
the struggle against bureaucratic excesses, or the negative aspects of
bureaucracy in the Soviet Union actually started, contrary to Trotskyite
legend, as a struggle in opposition to Trotsky. The Ninth Congress of the
RCP in July 1920 again raised the issue of bureaucracy. And at the Central
Committee in August of the same year there was support for Zinoviev’s
letter: ‘Combat the Evils of Bureaucracy’. (V.I. Lenin: op. cit.;
p.67). The RCP Conference in September 1920 took the issue up, and there was
a long report on bureaucratic practice at the Eighth Congress of Soviets in
December 1920.
The 1919 Party Congress had previously
recognised the existence of the bureaucratic ‘malaise’, but at the same time
opposed the demagogic approach to fighting bureaucracy. In other words, the
view seems to have been that one could not simply put a stop to bureaucracy
by waving a magic wand. The struggle against it would take many years, such
was Lenin’s constant refrain, and whoever thought otherwise
‘…is playing demagogue and cheating,
because overcoming the evils of bureaucracy requires hundreds of measures,
wholesale literacy, culture and participation in the activity of the
Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection’. (V.I.
Lenin: op. cit.; p.68)
One of Lenin’s criticisms of Trotsky
was for
‘…the truly bureaucratic concentration
of attention on the "top"’. (V.I. Lenin: CW.
Vol. 32; p.72)
For Lenin, Trotsky’s attacks on the
trade union leaders was shot-through with factionalism. Trotsky accused many
of them of opposing coalescence between the unions and the State, balking at
new tasks and method, and also of cultivating in their midst a spirit of
corporate exclusiveness, thereby fostering the survival of craft unions.
Lenin rejected these attacks and
defended the trades unions, musing on what Trotsky would have said, and how
he would have said it, if Tomsky had published a platform accusing Trotsky
and "many" military workers of cultivating the spirit of bureaucracy,
fostering the survival of savagery, etc. In other words, Lenin suggests that
Tomsky could rightly accuse Trotsky of all these things, and ask how would
Trotsky have reacted.
Lenin criticised Trotsky for his
‘…out-and-out
bureaucratic approach’. (V.I Lenin: CW. Vol. 32 p.73)
This was because, rather than starting
from the actual level of development and living conditions of the masses,
Trotsky castigates Tomsky for creating or fostering a certain spirit in
their midst. In fact, Lenin argued that the real essence of the trade
union controversy which Trotsky and Bukharin
‘…have
been evading and camouflaging with such care’ ( V.I. Lenin: op. cit.;
p.73)
was not that the trade unions were
balking at new tasks and methods, and cultivating a spirit of hostility to
the new officials? The essence of the situation was that the organised
workers protests were legitimate, and they showed they were prepared
‘…to throw out the new officials who
refuse to rectify the useless and harmful excesses of bureaucracy.
(V.I. Lenin: ibid. p.73)
For Lenin it wasn’t so much that
someone had refused to understand the new task and methods, rather it was a
case of someone
‘…making a clumsy attempt to cover his
defence of certain useless and harmful excess of bureaucracy with a lot of
talk about new task and methods’. (V.I. Lenin:
ibid.; pp.73-4)
In short, the essence of the dispute
was that Trotsky and co. was defending bureaucracy against the organised
workers, and for Lenin it was
‘…the essence of the dispute that the
reader should bear in mind’. (V.I. Lenin:
ibid.; p.74)
Trotsky had spoken about "shaking up"
the trade unions at the November 26th, 1920, meeting of the Fifth
All-Russia Conference Of Trade Unions. This, in turn, had brought Trotsky
and his supporters into conflict with the trade union leadership. Because
Trotsky was a member of the Central Committee of the RCP(b), a high profile
member at that, this dispute between the Trotskyites and the trade union
leadership had the potential to develop into a serious conflict between the
party and the working class.
Lenin suggested that this conflict, or
contained within this conflict, was the downfall of Soviet, i.e., workers’
power. And Trotsky, by demanding that a choice be made between his platform
and the platform of the other side, Rudzutak’s, had turned the dispute into
a factional one with dangerous consequences.
In fact Lenin argued that even if
Trotsky’s thesis was correct, could it be denied that
‘…his very approach would be damaging
to himself, the party, the trades union movement, the training of millions
of trade union members and the Republic’.
(V.I. Lenin: ibid.; p.74)
Bukharin had tried to reconcile the
differences in the party leadership over the trade union issue by forming a
"buffer" group, but to no avail because as Lenin indicated, Trotsky’s
approach to the trade unions was fundamentally wrong. In fact, instead of
playing the role of a "buffer" Bukharin found himself siding with the
Trotskyites in this dispute. Bukharin had formed his buffer group to
prevent, or at least, contain the split in the communist leadership;
however, such was the development of the struggle that he sided with one
side against the other.
When the split in the Communist
leadership over the trade union issue began to grow, a split which
threatened a rupture between the Russian Communist Party and the organised
working class, Trotsky began to deny that the "shake up" policy could be
attributed to himself.
Lenin insisted that Trotsky’s
pamphlet, i.e., ‘The Role and Task of the Trade Unions’ was
‘…shot through with the spirit of the
"shake-up-from-above policy’. (V.I. Lenin: op.
cit.; p.76)
For Lenin, the mass's indignation with
bureaucratic excesses was legitimate. And it could not be denied that it was
Trotsky and his followers in Tsektran, the Central Committee of the ‘Joint
Trade Union of Rail and Water Transport Workers’, which epitomised
bureaucratic excesses. Therefore, for Lenin, a more meaningful question to
ask was whether
‘…the "hostility" of the masses
is legitimate in view of certain useless and harmful excesses of
bureaucracy, for example, in Tsektran’. (V.I.
Lenin: ibid.; p. 76)
And Lenin confirmed a statement made
by Zinoviev that
‘…it was Comrade Trotsky’s immoderate
adherents who had brought about a split’.
(V.I. Lenin: ibid.; p.76)
For Lenin
‘…the danger of a split in the trade
union movement was not imaginary but real’.
(V.I. Lenin: op. cit.; p.80)
On one side of the dispute, Lenin
argued was
‘…a demand that certain unwanted and
harmful excesses of bureaucracy, and the appointments system should not be
justified or defended, but corrected’. (V.I.
Lenin: ibid. p.80)
On the other side was Trotsky’s policy
of
‘…bureaucratic harassment of the
trades unions’. (V. I. Lenin: op. cit.; p. 42)
In the dispute in the Soviet Communist
movement about the role of the trade unions under socialism, there was,
fundamentally, two side: a group led by Trotsky which defended bureaucracy,
and a grouping around Lenin, which supported Rudzutak’s thesis, and who
sought to limit the excesses of bureaucracy and the militarist methods
carried over from the civil war period. In addition, allying itself with the
latter, the Fifth All-Russia Conference of Trade Unions, November 2-6, 1920,
adopted Rudzutak’s thesis.
‘That is all there is to it’.
(V.I. Lenin: ibid.; p.80)
Lenin, however, did not think it would
be possible to dispense with bureaucrats in the short term, pointing out
that
‘We shall not be able to make do
without good bureaucrats for many years to come’.
(V.I. Lenin: op. cit.; p.82)
So that for Lenin the immediate
problem was not ‘bureaucrats’ as such, but rather ‘bureaucratic excesses’,
and worst, the striving to defend such excesses in relation to the trade
union movement. Because their service could not be dispensed with in the
short term, it was necessary, in Lenin’s view to make a distinction between
good bureaucrats and bad ones. But the politically wrong approach to the
unions, Lenin argued, would lead to the collapse of the dictatorship of the
proletariat.
Lenin was not totally opposed to the
‘shake up’ policy as such, but opposed to it being undertaken in a
bureaucratic manner. Trotsky had failed to take into account that the trade
unions were not redundant now that a socialist state had been achieved;
rather one of their essential roles was now to be
‘…combating bureaucratic distortions
of the Soviet apparatus, safeguarding the working people’s material and
spiritual interests in ways and means inaccessible to this apparatus, etc.
(V.I. Lenin: op. cit.; p.100)
Lenin continually placed emphasis on
the duration of these tasks, indicating that
‘This is a struggle they will
unfortunately have to face for many more years to come’.
(V.I. Lenin: ibid.; p.100)
For Lenin it was necessary to wind up
the trade union dispute as soon as possible. He regarded it as an
unfortunate distraction from the real work of production, and another point
he made was that the counterrevolution sought shelter behind the
Trotsky-Burkharin opposition, that is, hiding behind the opposition they
would seek to attack the party.
But there was also a positive side to
the dispute because for Lenin the whole experience of the trade union debate
had ‘tempered’ the party in the struggle against factionalism. This was
important because relapses into factionalism were
‘bound to occur over the next few
years, but with an easier cure now well in sight’.
(V.I. Lenin: op. cit., p. 105)
They did occur with Trotsky as one of
the Chief Ringleaders. Not only this, but in the meantime during the debate
regarding the role of trade unions
‘…the Party responded to the
discussions and has rejected Comrade Trotsky’s wrong line by an overwhelming
majority’. (V.I. Lenin: op. cit. p.107)
Although Lenin points out that there
may have been some vacillations at ‘the top’ and ‘in the
provinces’, in certain committees and
offices, nevertheless
‘…the masses of the party workers….
came out solidly against the wrong line’.
(V.I. Lenin: ibid. p. 107)
And, the party, he argued with some
satisfaction,
‘has corrected Comrade Trotsky’s
mistake promptly and with determination’.
(V.I. Lenin: ibid.; 107)
The debate in the Russian Communist
Party over the issue of the role of the trades unions raised the important
issue of whether the trade unions were simply to be auxiliaries of the
Soviet state, supporting, as an appendage, the promotion of production. This
was, in fact, what Trotsky’s view amounted to. The alternative view held by
Lenin was that unions should be schools of communism, and also a
transmission mechanism between the party and the masses of working people.
The result of the trade union dispute
was that it placed the question of bureaucracy firmly on the party’s agenda,
consequently Lenin remarked that
‘…the whole Party and the whole
workers’ and peasants’ Republic had recognised that the question of the
bureaucracy and the ways of combating its evils was high on the agenda’.
(V.I. Lenin: op. cit. ; p. 103)
And Lenin called for redoubling the
attention of the party to the problem of struggling against bureaucratic
practices, remarking that
‘…we shall take special care to
rectify any unwarranted and harmful excess of bureaucracy, no matter who
points them out’. (V.I. Lenin: ibid.; p.103)
The origins of the struggle against
bureaucracy in the Soviet Union can be traced, in part, back to the dispute
over the role of the trade unions under the dictatorship of the proletariat.
It was a struggle, which found Lenin and Trotsky on opposite sides of the
fence. Lenin began his struggle against bureaucracy directed against the
Trotskyite controlled Tsektran, the Central Committee of the Joint Union of
Rail and Water Transport Workers, which pursued a policy of ‘bureaucratic
harassment’ of the trades union, under the guidance of Trotsky.
As we have indicated several times,
Lenin did not expect that the problems raised by bureaucracy would go away
in the short term. He emphasised the ‘long term’ nature of the struggle
against the evils of bureaucracy, making clear that
‘Our Programme formulates the task of
combating the evils of bureaucracy as one of extremely long duration’.
(V.I. Lenin: Tenth Party Congress, March 8-16th, 1921; op. cit.;
p. 205)
So that it is clear that
‘bureaucracy’, was the Achilles heels of the Russian, Soviet revolution; it
was, however, not a small problem, but potentially fatal. Indeed, as J. N.
Westwood observed
‘The survival into Soviet times of an
all-powerful and coercive bureaucracy repeatedly undermined the achievements
of 1917’. (J.N. West wood: The Short Oxford
History Of The Modern World: Endurance and Endeavour-Russian History,
1812-1986; Third Edition; p. 452)
The tradition of the Russian,
imperial, Tsarist State before the revolution was one of endemic
bureaucracy, in the negative sense of this term, a fact that made it a
constant theme satirised in Russian literature. This tradition persisted
into the Soviet period, and, as we have seen, was soon placed high on
Bolshevism’s agenda. Although the initial struggle against bureaucracy was
mainly directed against Trotsky and his supporters in Tsektran, when Trotsky
found himself again in opposition after the death of Lenin in 1924, he
decided on a U-turn. But when Trotsky had enjoyed the reins of power he had
nothing to say about bureaucracy, in fact he was regarded as one of its main
promoters, a fact that had served to isolate him from other party leaders
and much of the rank-and-file, who remembered his argument for the
‘militarisation’ of labour.
From defending bureaucracy, Trotsky
now cast himself in the role of its most acerbic critic. This, no doubt, can
be partly attributed to his desire to draw to his side all those who saw in
bureaucracy a danger to the revolution. Trotsky’s aim was to use these
elements in the struggle against Stalin. However, what subsequently emerged
was a polarisation into two conflicting approaches to the question of
combating bureaucracy. As was the case in previous matters of contention the
choice came to be either: Leninism or Trotskyism.
It is important to remember that the
Marxist-Leninist approach to the question of combating bureaucracy should
not be reduced simply to Lenin’s personal approach or views on the matter.
The approach, which Lenin defended, was enshrined in the party programme.
This essence of this view was that it would take many years to overcome the
evils of bureaucracy, and given Russia’s previous bureaucratic tradition and
the cultural retardation castigated by Lenin, such assumption were
understandable.
Trotsky, however, from being part of
the problem, as the trade union dispute revealed, now offered himself as
part of the solution; from the defence of bureaucracy, he now became, or
posed, as a staunch anti-bureaucrat, in the course of which he rejected
Leninism on the question of combating bureaucracy.
The result was the adoption of a
pseudo-left, anti-Leninist platform, calling for ‘political’ revolution to
overthrow what he dubbed the ‘Stalinist bureaucracy’.
In his critique of bureaucracy Trotsky
proceeded to confuse two separate, although related issues. These were,
firstly, the existence of privilege in the Soviet Union and the question of
bureaucracy. In other words the question of the existence of a privileged
stratum is related to, but not identical with the question of bureaucracy.
One of the aspects of bureaucracy may be the conferment of privilege on
certain individuals, although bureaucracy is possible without privilege.
Furthermore what constitute privilege may change overtime. For instance,
working in an office can be considered privileged, compared to performing
manual work in a factory or mine.
And that there was relative privilege
in the Soviet Union for leading bureaucrats, or office-holders was openly
referred to by Lenin, who in an article of February 7th, 1921,
referred to
‘…the Soviet bureaucrats, the pampered
"grandees" of the Soviet Republic…’
(V.I. Lenin: CW. Vol. 32; p.132)
This was long before Trotsky had
anything to say about privileged Soviet bureaucrats. Here the word
"pampered" is synonymous with privilege, so that no one can doubt that some
bureaucrats, in leading positions had access to privileges even when Lenin
was alive. In his article on the Integrated Economic Plan Lenin took time
off to refer to
‘…the highbrow bureaucratic disdain
for the vital work that has been done and that needs to be continued’.
(V.I. Lenin: op. cit.; p.137)
Needless to say the term, ‘highbrow’
although not synonymous with privilege, certainly implies it. And in the
same article Lenin referred to
‘The ignorance of the grandees,
and the intellectual conceit of the communist literati’. (V.I. Lenin:
op. cit.; p. 138)
Lenin chides the literati and the
Grandees who boast of their communism. So, unlike Lenin, Trotsky seemed only
to have recognised the evils of bureaucracy when he began to lose power.
Having now recognised the evil of bureaucracy, he sought remedial action in
political revolution, an approach expressing more his factional ambition to
regain power than a serious struggle to combat the evils of bureaucracy. His
approach was pseudo-leftist in nature and constituted a clear rejection of
Leninism on the issue. In other words, due to ambition and factional
considerations, Trotsky rejected the view that
the struggle against the evils of bureaucracy was to be based on a long-term
perspective.
In the circumstances, there can be
little doubt that Trotsky’s proposal for political revolution would have led
to counterrevolution. Long before Trotsky’s campaign for political
revolution, such a slogan was pre-empted at the Thirteenth Conference of the
RCP(b) held in January 1924. Part of a resolution adopted at this Conference
stated that
‘With Comrade Trotsky at its head, the
opposition has put forward a slogan calling for the break-up of the Party
apparatus and sought to shift the centre of struggle against bureaucracy in
the state apparatus to the "bureaucracy" in the party apparatus’.
(Institute of Marxism-Leninism: The struggle of Lenin and the CPSU Against
Trotskyism: p.239)
Trotsky arrived at his ‘political revolution’ slogan
for two basic reasons, one of which we have already mentioned, which was the
factional element, i.e., only through political revolution would he able to
regain the power he had lost. The second reason provided the theoretical
grounding for the first. In essence this was the presupposition that the
contradiction between the working class and the bureaucracy was antagonistic
in nature, and therefore the bureaucracy could only be defeated by
revolution. In view of the contradiction between Leninism and Trotskyism on
previous important issues, it is not surprising that there would develop a
contradiction between Leninism and Trotskyism on the issue of combating
bureaucracy. Thus Trotsky developed a notion, which precluded a peaceful
resolution of a contradiction which, in essence was of a non-antagonistic
character.
Expressed in the slogan of ‘political revolution’, or
rather behind this slogan was Trotsky’s burning desire to recapture his
previous political power, and therefore, it can be argued, his conceptual
understanding and framework was subordinated to this goal. This in turn gave
sharp expression to the difference between Marxism-Leninism on the question
of combating bureaucracy. This difference expresses itself in the
development of two opposing anti-bureaucratic perspectives. The essence
of the difference is that while Marxism-Leninism has a long term approach to
combating bureaucracy, Trotskyism, on the other hand, harbours a
pseudo-left, short term perspective: i.e., political revolution.
And, as we have already indicated, this one-sided
approach reduces the struggle against bureaucracy to a political struggle,
without taking into consideration all the other interrelated factors. In
other words, in order to uphold his political revolution perspective, it was
necessary for Trotsky and his followers to present the contradiction between
the bureaucrats and the working class as purely antagonistic. But in
reality, the contradiction between the working class and the bureaucracy
under socialism can be resolved peacefully given social ownership of the
means of production, etc and a correct Marxist-Leninist leadership.
The direction of the struggle against bureaucracy in
the Soviet Union was determined by several factors. The most important of
these was the relation between the Marxist-Leninists and the revisionists in
the party and state apparatus. There were no doubt, opponents of
Marxism-Leninism and socialism in the state and party offices. These
elements were naturally interested in putting a break on the
anti-bureaucratic struggle insofar as it was directed against them.
Therefore, complicating the struggle against bureaucracy in the Soviet
Union, which, we must remind the reader, Lenin, and also the party programme
of 1919, which first addressed the issue, regarded as a long term process,
was the resistance of the enemies of socialism in the state and party
apparatus. Lenin had previously referred to the class struggle taking place
in the party and state offices. This was a struggle between the old
administrative civil servants of Tsarism and the new representatives of the
working class.
At the lower levels of the party and state apparatus,
or bureaucracies, support could be found for the communist,
Marxist-Leninist, aspirations. In other words, the struggle against
bureaucracy must be understood in terms of the open and concealed class
struggle going on in the state and party apparatus.
But the question must be asked, what do we mean by the
‘struggle against bureaucracy?’ We have already shown that there were two
different approaches to combating bureaucracy: the Leninist approach which
recognised that combating bureaucracy was a long term process, and the
Trotskyite short term approached which sought remedial action through
‘political revolution’.
Trotsky confused the struggle against ‘bureaucracy’
with the struggle against ‘privilege’ in the Soviet Union. These two aspects
are related, but they are not identical, as we have already said. If we
start with privilege we must look at the question of social differentiation
in the Soviet Union in relation to the proclaimed aim of communism. This aim
is a classless society with no exploitation, no privileges. But
Marxism-Leninism is not utopian. The first stage of the transition to
communism begins with socialism. This first stage carries the imprint of the
old, capitalist society. The role of socialism is to raise the productive
powers of society to the level that makes class and privilege redundant. The
struggle against bureaucracy, or more correctly the evils of bureaucracy in
the transition period must be viewed in relation to this basic task of
socialism. Socialist society is a contradictory phase where the old and
new struggle for survival. In the Soviet Union this struggle was very
pronounced due to the feudal-capitalist traditions which had to be overcome.
From 1929 onward, the Soviet Union was involved in a
process of rapid modernisation, not only to meet the requirements of
socialism, but also to meet the requirements of the threat of war,
instigated by the political servants of capitalism against the socialist
state. Preparing for war and building a socialist society at the same
time are two contradictory processes that the Soviet communist leadership
had to face. The pseudo-left wiseacres who base themselves
exclusively on an anti-Stalin perspective universally ignore this
contradiction. In the Soviet Union a choice had to be made, and priority
assigned to either the elimination of privilege in the shortest possible
time, or developing the defence potential of the Soviet Union. With the
imperialist threat the decision to give priority to defence was the correct
choice. This choice carried with it certain negative connotations. To
develop the Soviet Union, in the shortest possible time, certain privileges
had to be allocated to bourgeois specialists whose services were needed to
implement the programme of industrialisation. We would argue that in the
period of Lenin and Stalin this was certainly no defence of privilege in
principle, but rather a pragmatic recognition that it was unavoidable, to
some extent, if the Soviet Union had to develop rapidly. For the Communist
leadership, the contradiction in the whole process, within the context of
the Soviet Union, was that the utilisation of privilege, while being opposed
to socialism in the long term, in the short term could served the interest
of socialism, if it helped to undermine the conditions which led to
privileges in the first place. Needless to say, such a controversial policy,
a product of the objective situation in which the Soviet Union found itself
was not without grave dangers. The crystallisation of a privileged stratum
could derail the struggle for socialism if such a force became strong enough
to assert its interests in opposition to that of the working class. This was
certainly not the case in the Stalin period. The 16th Party
Congress in April 1929 supported Stalin’s policy of purging the governmental
bureaucracy. By 1930 the Rightist, Rykov, was removed as Prime Minister to
be replaced by Molotov.
This was the beginning of the end of the
Right-opposition.
In short, therefore, the Central authorities,
beginning with Lenin, allocated certain privilege to bourgeois specialists
and key workers to facilitate the rapid development of industry, making it
possible to defend the socialist state from the imperialist threat, while at
the same time laying the material foundations for socialism, which in the
longer term would serve to eradicate social inequalities in the sphere of
consumption. In the eyes of the leadership this policy was necessitated by
the backwardness bequeathed to socialism by the previous regime. But the
policy of using privilege to undermine the foundations of privilege carries
with it dangers. It leads to social differentiation, fertilise the ground
for the growth of revisionism on the one hand, and on the other, spawn
pseudo-left opposition which unconsciously opens the door to
counterrevolution.
The role of Marxist-Leninists in the concrete
situation of the Soviet Union would be to struggle against the abuse of
privilege on the one hand, holding in view the need for their complete
elimination as soon as possible and, on the other, promoting the struggle
against the negative features of bureaucracy. That is to say if privilege
were unavoidable, in the Soviet context, at the first stage of
socialism, the role of Communists would be to struggle against their abuse,
keeping them within certain limits, while promoting the development of the
material and ideological conditions which serve to undermine privilege and
bureaucratic abuses, leading to their complete elimination.
Lenin had explained that
‘…the first phase of communism cannot yet provide
justice and equality: differences, and unjust differences, in wealth will
remain, but the exploitation of man by man will have become impossible,
because it will have become impossible to seize the means of production, the
factories, machines, land etc., and make them private property’.
(V.I. Lenin: The State and Revolution; CW. Vol. 33; p.93)
It is clear that the first stage of communism, i.e.,
socialism, is the most dangerous for Working class political power.
Differences, and unjust differences at that, remain. In the Soviet context
this was particularly dangerous, due to the original economic and cultural
underdevelopment of the proletariat and the peasantry, which the mass
campaign for literacy in the Stalin period sought to remedy. Of course, the
whole question of certain privileges remaining at the first stage of
communism cannot be posed in a purely abstract sense. The question has to be
posed concretely. That is, the more ripe capitalism is to enter the first
stage of communism, the less may we talk of privileges, in the true sense of
the term, remaining at this stage. We are necessarily here speaking of
privilege in the social sense.
The term ‘privilege’ relating to
‘…advantage or favour that only some people have’.
( Collins Gem English Dictionary, New Edition; p. 430)
If inequality and unjust differences of wealth remain,
to a certain extent, at the first stage of communist society, which we refer
to as socialism, this is the result of the new society having just emerged
from the old capitalist society. Thus it must be constantly borne in mind
that such inequality is a product of capitalism, not communism. The advanced
development of the productive forces, the progress of socialism makes it
possible to achieve social equality. The same must be said about
bureaucracy, the struggle against which is a sine qua non for
communism.
The first thing to make clear is that in
Marxism-Leninism there is a distinction between revolutionary opposition to
bureaucracy and opportunist opposition; between a principled struggle
against it and a factional struggle. As Lenin remarked in 1903, following
the split with the Mensheviks
‘It is clear, I think, that the cries about this
celebrated bureaucracy are just a screen for dissatisfaction with the
personal composition of the central bodies, a fig leaf…You are a bureaucrat
because you were appointed by the congress not by my will, but against it;
you are a formalist because you rely on the formal decisions of the
congress, and not on my consent…’etc. (V.I.
Lenin: CW. Vol. 6; pp. 287, 310)
Any discussion about ‘bureaucracy’ must begin by using
some kind of definition of this term. For instance we could say that
bureaucracy is a form of administration, or
‘…a system of government or administration by
officials, responsible only to their departmental chiefs; any system of
administration in which matters are hindered by excessive adherence to minor
rules and procedures; officials as a group…’
(The Chambers Dictionary; New Edition; p.214)
Alternatively, briefly, bureaucracy is
‘…officialdom, red-tape…’
(Collin Roberts French Concise Dictionary; Third Edition; p.55)
The term ‘bureaucracy’ relates specifically to the
structure of administration and its modus operandi.
There is no need to go into a theoretical discourse
about the nature and structure of different types of bureaucracies; suffice
it to say that modern bureaucracies develop as an administrative response to
the need to manage the increasing social obligations of the state following
the process of industrialisation.
Bureaucracy is therefore concerned with forms of
administration based on following rules and regulations, that is,
established procedures.
There is not much in Trotsky’s
writings concerned with the struggle against bureaucracy as such. In other
words we find little, if anything at all, directed against the negative
aspect, or bureaucratic evils which Lenin castigated. Trotsky referred not
to the struggle against bureaucracy, but rather the struggle to overthrow
the ‘Stalinist bureaucracy’. In a narrow sense this could mean the political
appointees of Stalin, or in a wider sense, the whole top administrative
layer of Soviet society. For Trotsky the bureaucracy was a privileged,
leading, administrative layer, which, he argued, had usurped political power
from the working class. Trotsky saw the contradiction between the
bureaucracy and the working class as absolute, and irresolvable outside of a
political revolution that would remove Stalin and his supporters from power.
In Trotsky’s ideology Stalin was merely the servant of the bureaucracy,
doing its bidding. This falsified image was, of course, exploded in the
1930s, when the purges of the state bureaucracies began. The legend of
Trotskyism is that these purges were directed against genuine
revolutionaries. In fact their target was the fifth columnists in the Soviet
apparatus.
According to the ideology of
Trotskyism, the bureaucracy had taken political power from the working
class. This new development, Trotsky argued, was given expression in a new
political programme based on the doctrine of ‘socialism in one country’. We
have already dealt with this issue, and shown that for Lenin socialism in
one country was not opposed to world revolution. This is to say that
pursuing the former did not mean opposing the latter as is claimed in
Trotskyite ideology, which demands ‘either’ support for socialism in one
country, ‘or’ support for world revolution. Trotsky’s case against
Stalin was based on this non-dialectical either/or dichotomy which
did not do justice to reflecting the real revolutionary process.
Classes can only hold political power
and maintain their rule through their most conscious political
representatives. This general rule applies no less to the working class.
Indeed, it applies, with even more force, to the working class because of
the nature of its oppression under capitalism. This means that the working
class can only holds power and maintain its rule through its most
politically advanced section, its vanguard, a communist party.
Marxism-Leninism knows of no other way for the working class to hold on to
political power. Developments in the communist party are crucial to the
question of determining if the working class still possess political power
in the state. For the working class to possess political power in the state
it must possess political power in the party. This question is not
determined once and for all. Thus there is a constant struggle against any
manifestation of revisionism in the party. In the period of Stalin, the
revisionists had not managed to gain control of important decision making
organs such as the central committee, or the politburo, although, no doubt,
concealed revisionists existed on these bodies. Consequently, there had been
no usurpation of political power from the working class by Soviet
bureaucrats when Stalin and his supporters were leading the Soviet Communist
party. On the other hand, the Marxist-Leninists were in a numerical minority
the higher one went in the State and Party apparatus. Without understanding
this, very little can be understood about the struggles in the Soviet Union.
In one sense the conflict between
Stalin and Trotsky was historically inevitable. Trotsky had fought Lenin
right up until 1917, and had major factional differences with Lenin
thereafter. Trotsky’s call for ‘political revolution’ against ‘the Soviet
bureaucracy’ must be seen for what it really was. It was basically a
factional call to remove Stalin and his supporters from power, after
Trotsky’s essential anti-Leninism had been exposed and defeated in the
ideological struggle. To ascribe this defeat, as some bourgeois writers do,
to Stalin’s position as General Secretary in the party apparatus and his use
of patronage through his power of appointment, is a superficial view which
suggest that Stalin did not have to win his political arguments against
Trotsky at the highest ideological level in the party.
And as we have shown, even on the
question of bureaucracy Trotskyism is opposed to Marxism-Leninism in that it
replaces Leninism’s long term perspective to combat the evils of
bureaucracy with the short-term perspective of political revolution.
Political slogans are a very serious matter. They must not be viewed
abstractly in isolation from all the surrounding factors. Only in this way
can their objective meaning and purpose be understood, that is, whose class
interest they actually serve, for as Lenin remarked
‘Whoever weakens in the least the iron
discipline of the Party of the proletariat (especially during the time of
its dictatorship), actually aids the bourgeoisie against the proletariat’.
(V.I. Lenin: CW. Vol. 25; p.190)
TROTSKY’S TRANSITIONAL PROGRAMME
Trotsky wrote his Transitional
Programme in 1938. Known as, The Death Agony of Capitalism and The Task
of the Fourth International, it was to become the programmatic guide to
the various sections of the pro-Trotsky International. That Trotsky held
high hopes for this organisation was forcefully expressed in Trotsky’s
remark in the programme that
‘The advanced workers of all the world
are already firmly convinced that the overthrow of Mussolini, Hitler and
their agents and imitators will occur only under the leadership of the
Fourth International’. (Trotsky: The
Transitional Programme: The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Task of the
Fourth International; New Park Publications; p.47)
It can be argued that, not only was
this categorical statement an expression of Trotsky’s hope, but also a
poignant reminder of his detachment from reality, a consistent feature of
Trotskyism, which became more pronounced with his isolation.
In the Transitional Programme, Trotsky
had come to the conclusion that
‘The historical crisis of mankind is
reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership’.
(Trotsky: op. cit.; p.12)
Nevertheless, Trotsky remained
optimistic, observing that
‘…the laws of history are stronger
than the bureaucratic apparatus’. (Trotsky:
op. cit.; p.14)
So that although Trotsky saw a crisis
at the subjective level, that is at the level of leadership, he argued that
the material factors, or the laws of history would eventually predominate.
This is of course was true in the most general sense. For Trotsky, what the
situation required was to
‘…find the bridge between present
demands and the socialist programme of revolution’.
(Trotsky: op. cit.; p.14)
And for Trotsky
‘This bridge should include a system
of transitional demands, stemming from today’s conditions and from today’s
consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to
one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat’.
(Trotsky: op. cit.; pp. 14-15)
Trotsky chided classical Social
Democracy because it had separated reform from revolution, while elevating
the former into an absolute, thus, essentially, becoming reformists. For
these reformists, he argued that
‘Between the minimum and the maximum
programme no bridge existed’. (Trotsky: op.
cit.; p.15)
Social Democracy had betrayed
revolution and Trotsky implies in the Transitional Programme that this was
due to the separation between the minimum and the maximum parts of the
Marxist programme. Trotsky thus sought a remedy, a bridge to connect the two
parts of the programme, in essence to replace the old programme with a new
one. This was to be the ‘Transitional Programme’.
But by replacing the minimum-maximum
programme with the Transitional Programme, Trotsky had ignored his own
advice that
‘A revolutionary programme should base
itself on the dialectics of the class struggle’.
(Trotsky: op. cit.; pp. 46-47)
Far from dialectics, Trotsky’s
Transitional Programme is an eclectic combination of minimum and maximum
demands, with the latter type of demands predominating.
While we must view the Transitional
Programme within the context of 1938 and the problem Trotsky imagined he was
addressing, the essence of the Transitional Programme is that Trotsky
presents mostly maximum demands disguised as ‘transitional’ demands. For
Trotsky transitional demands are neither minimum nor maximum demands. In
order to discuss Trotsky’s Transitional Programme we can ignore Trotsky’s
ideological outlook. Everyone knows that Trotsky was opposed to Stalin. With
this out of the way, the most important question that can be asked about
‘transitional’ demands is: what are they? Close examination reveals that the
Transitional Programme consists mainly of maximum demands repackaged as
transitional demands.
It is remarkable that Trotsky, who
participated in the Russian revolution and played a leading role, failed to
grasp that, between the minimum and the maximum programme, or rather,
between the minimum and maximum parts of the programme, that is to say,
between reform and revolution, there can be no ‘bridge’, but rather a
qualitative, dialectical leap, the transformation of a quantitative state
into a qualitative state.
Trotsky seems to confuse the idea of a
transitional epoch from capitalism to communism with the question of the
programme. In other words, if the epoch was transitional then the demands
must be transitional as well. Thus, in reality, Trotsky’s Fourth
International was based mainly on a system of maximum demands, which he
labelled as transitional in character. The result is that Trotsky’s
followers, since the foundation of their Fourth International in 1938, have
basically been agitating for the implementation of revolution demands,
mostly in non-revolutionary situations.
By fighting for mostly revolutionary
demands in mostly non-revolutionary situations, Trotskyism maintained its
essence as a pseudo-left, sectarian current in workers movement. It is not
the actual demands themselves that are in conflict with the revolutionary
needs of the working class, looked at from an abstract level. What is at
issue is the presentation of maximum demands as transitional demands in such
a way as to ignore the leap from reform to revolution.
The role of Trotskyism has been to
confuse anti-capitalist workers and intellectuals about the nature of
political demands. Trotsky’s reference to the Social Democracy not having
any need for a bridge of transitional demands does nothing to clarify the
relation between reform and revolution. The Marxist criticism of Social
Democracy is not about their avoidance of a bridge of transitional demands,
but rather for betraying the maximum programme of revolution.
For Marxist-Leninists a distinction
must be made between minimum demands and maximum demands. This relates to a
non-revolutionary situation and a revolutionary situation. This does not
mean, of course, that Marxist-Leninists refuse to make propaganda around
maximum demands in a non-revolutionary situation. While they propagate
maximum demands in non-revolutionary situations, this does not represent
calls to action directed at the masses, but rather such propaganda are aimed
at the more advance sections of the class for educational purposes.
Marxist-Leninists present the full programme of revolution to the working
class, and in the first place, the revolutionary vanguard. They realise that
revolutionary, maximum demands will not mobilise the masses in a
non-revolutionary situation.
To hope to mobilise the masses with
maximum demands, whether disguised as ‘transitional demands’ or not, is the
folly of sectarian groups. When Trotsky rebukes sectarianism in the
Transitional Programme, this is irony at its most superb. He seems to be
making jest at himself and his stillborn Fourth International, because,
where sectarianism is concerned, Trotsky warns that
‘At their base lies a refusal to
struggle for partial and transitional demands i.e., for the elementary
interests and needs of the working masses, as they are today’.
(Trotsky: op. cit.; p.55)
Notwithstanding, Trotsky failed to see
that his personal contribution to promoting sectarianism was the replacement
of minimum-maximum demands with transitional demands, demands that were
neither minimum nor maximum and therefore impractical in relation to the
real class struggle. The Trotsky of the Transitional Programme is therefore
true to form, the essential Trotsky, in practice a non-dialectician, a
feature which brought him repeatedly into conflict with Lenin.
The term ‘transitional demands’ is one
which Trotsky seems to have first used at the Fourth Congress of the
Communist International. (See Theses, Resolutions & Manifestos of the
Fourth Congress of the C.I.; P.330)
Trotsky’s concept of a transitional
programme was a logical development from this early usage. However, the real
nature of the Marxist programme, that is to say its purpose, is to guide the
action of the masses in non-revolutionary and revolutionary times, in times
of reform and in times of revolution.
The demands which are emphasised, and
around which the party strives to mobilise the widest number of people
depends on whether we are faced with a non-revolutionary or a
non-revolutionary situation.
The Marxist programme, therefore,
relates to the defensive and offensive stages of the class
struggle, and is made up of minimum and maximum demands. The former
representing the tactical, the latter, the strategical aspect of the
struggle. Of course, today, we do not speak of a minimum and maximum
programme, but rather demands. Unlike Trotsky we do not replace this with a
transitional programme, rather we base ourselves on a flexible programme
which defends the immediate interests of the working people: minimum or
partial demands. On the other hand, the party constantly reminds the masses
that the only solution to their situation is the demands leading to
socialism: maximum demands. In other words the Marxist programme is made up
of a unity between the minimum, partial, relative demands of the masses and
the absolute, maximum demands for socialism. The change from relative to
absolute demands, their coming into active play depends on the concrete
process of the class struggle. The programme, therefore, relates to the
deferent stages of the class struggle: from the ‘defensive’ struggle to
defend the immediate interests of the working class up to the immediate
struggle for power.
LENIN ON TROTSKY’S METHODOLOGY
It was during the famous trade union
dispute that arose in 1920 that Lenin approached the question of Trotsky’s
methodology, although his previous categorisation of Trotsky’s rendition of
‘Permanent Revolution’ as absurdly ‘left’ certainly suggests a critical view
of Trotsky’s method, i.e., psuedo-leftism.
In Trotsky’s methodology, or,
reasoning, we constantly see the primacy of the abstract over the concrete,
theory over practice. Unlike Marxism-Leninism, there is a separation between
the abstract and the concrete in Trotskyism. In his April Thesis of
1917, Lenin approvingly recites Goethe’s dictum: theory my friend is
grey, but green is the eternal tree of life.
In Trotsky’s version of ‘permanent
revolution’ we see an abstract transition from the democratic revolution to
the socialist stage of the revolution. Put in another way, the transition
from the minimum to the maximum programme is purely abstract, independent of
any concrete determining factors. And Trotsky, when writing on the permanent
revolution in 1928, gives a truly remarkable testimony to the essence of his
methodology, in that nowhere is there ever mentioned the connection
between the world shattering imperialist war of 1914-18 and the Russian
socialist revolution. This unbreakable connection, ignored by Trotsky,
is the starting point of Lenin’s truly remarkable April Thesis. In
the thesis Lenin argues that
‘In our attitude to the war, which
under the new government of Lvov and Co. unquestionably remains on Russia’s
part a predatory imperialist owing to the capitalist nature of that
government, not the slightest concession to
"revolutionary defencism" is permissible’. (V.I. Lenin: CW. Vol. 24; pp.
19-26)
And the concrete connection between
the war and the eventual transition to socialism is outlined in Lenin’s
remark that
‘It is impossible to slip out of the
imperialist war and achieve a democratic, non-coercive peace without
overthrowing the power of capital and transferring state power to another
class, the proletariat’. (V.I. Lenin: CW. Vol.
24; pp. 55-91; St. Petersburg, May 28th, 1917)
This connection is also referred to in
Stalin’s Foundation of Leninism. Thus Stalin reminded the reader that
‘Practically, there was no way of
getting out of the war except by overthrowing
the bourgeoisie’. (J.V. Stalin: Foundation of Leninism; Foreign
Languages Press Peking, 1973; p. 62)
In 1917, Lenin could write that
‘The revolutionary-democratic
dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry had already been realised,
but in a highly original manner, and with a number of extremely important
modifications’. (V.I. Lenin: op. cit.; pp.
42-54)
Whereas Trotsky, disagreeing with
Leninism as usual, came to the opposite conclusion. Writing in 1928 he
asserted that
‘…never in history has there been a
regime of the ‘democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’.
(Trotsky: The Permanent Revolution –with Results and Prospects- New Park
Publications; p.4)
Lenin comes to one conclusion, while
Trotsky asserts the opposite. Here, the concrete and the abstract, or
Leninism and Trotskyism, are sharply demarcated. It is the struggle between
these opposites, which constitute the content of the struggle between
Leninism and Trotskyism. In other words, the struggle between Leninism and
Trotskyism, in its different forms and at different periods, is in essence
the struggle between the ‘concrete’ and the ‘abstract’ forms of reasoning.
In other words, Lenin’s thinking possessed more content, rendering it more
concrete, closer to life. Trotsky’s thinking on the other hand lacks
content. The result is a less concrete approximation to the object.
Trotskyism, therefore, is an
embodiment of the results of abstract reasoning, that is, a form of logic,
which does not descend into the concrete totality. Unlike Leninism,
Trotskyism remains trapped at the level of the general. In the trade union
dispute Lenin remarked of Trotsky’s platform that it was an
‘…highbrow, abstract, "empty" and
theoretically incorrect general theses which ignore all that
is practical and business-like’. (V.I. Lenin:
CW. Vol. 32; p.85)
This is simultaneously not only a
criticism of Trotsky’s position but even more so of his methodology.
This criticism is reinforced by an earlier remark by Lenin in connection
with the same dispute when he argues that
‘All his theses are based on "general
principles", an approach which is in itself fundamentally wrong’.
(V. I. Lenin: op. cit.; p. 22)
It was Trotsky’s inability to descend
into the concrete, combined with the absolutisation of the general, which
constituted the essence of his methodology. This methodological
one-sidedness also informed, with the utmost clarity, his concept of
‘transitional’ demands, which Trotsky introduces to replace the
minimum-maximum demands of the Marxist revolutionary programme. For
Marxists-Leninists, between reform and revolution or between minimum and
maximum demands there is a leap from one to the other. The Transitional
Programme ignores this leap. The bourgeoisie can always make concession to
any minimum, partial, demand, as a temporary manoeuvre to demobilise the
struggles of the working class, but no concessions can be made to maximum
demands, which pose directly the question of who rules; who is to be master
in the house. Trotsky’s Transitional Programme is not based on an
understanding of the dialectical leap, and ends up giving the impression of
revolution in slow motion from capitalism to the dictatorship of the
proletariat. On the other hand, maximum demands are labelled ‘transitional’.
Trotsky replaces the revolutionary leap with the concept of transition. In
actual fact the transitional programme depicts an abstract process, divorced
from any real understanding of the concrete revolutionary process.
Pseudo-left elements who continue to base themselves on this programme in a
non-revolutionary situation have tended to remain isolated from the working
class.
CONCLUSION
Trotskyism began as an inability to
understand the contradiction between the revolutionary and the opportunists
elements in the workers movement and sought to reconcile them. The
theoretical origins of Trotskyism are the version of permanent revolution
presented by Trotsky. It postulated the progress of the impending democratic
revolution in Russia into the socialist revolution, that is to say, the
minimum programme into the maximum programme independently of internal and
external factors. This postulation, which was at variance with
Marxism-Leninism, not only because of the programmatic ‘underestimation of
the peasantry’, which in this critique we have demonstrated clearly was the
case with irrefutable textual evidence, but also, at the more fundamental
level of methodology, which is to say the progress from democratic to
socialist revolution would not have been possible, or at any rate highly
unlikely outside of the peculiar circumstances generated by the first
imperialist war of 1914-18.
In this respect Lenin’s
characterisation of Trotsky’s theory as ‘absurdly left’, taken in connection
with his underestimation of the peasantry was quite correct and
understandable.
Likewise in Trotsky’s opposition to
the building of socialism in one country, which by the way, Trotsky did not
see fit to oppose when Lenin was alive, although the latter wrote about
proceeding to build socialism in Russia on several occasions, there was a
mechanical separation of the socialism in one country to world revolution.
In other words for Trotsky the contradiction between building socialism in
one country and world capitalism, in the concrete context of the Soviet
Union was absolute. Therefore Trotsky sought to split the international
communist movement by forcing a choice between ‘socialism in one country’
and ‘world revolution’, failing to see that the two were complementary not
contradictory. This splitting activity motivated by a lack of dialectical
understanding, ill will and factional consideration served the cause of
imperialism.
Furthermore, the contradiction between
Leninism and Trotskyism also expressed itself in Trotsky’s rejection of
Lenin’s and admonition that the struggle against bureaucracy could not be
reduced to simply a political platform, rather it should be based on a
long-term perspective. Again out of psuedo-leftism and factional
consideration Trotsky opted for a short-term perspective in the struggle
against bureaucracy in direct opposition to Marxism-Leninism. We have shown
that the theoretical origins of the struggle against bureaucracy begin in
fact, as a struggle against Trotskyism in the trade union dispute, 1920-21,
a fact that is hidden by Trotskyism.
We have shown how Trotsky introduces
the concept of ‘transitional demands’ to replace the concept of minimum and
maximum demands, thus confusing the advance workers about the revolutionary
process, and the difference between non-revolutionary and revolutionary
situations; replacing the concept of the revolutionary ‘leap’ with that of
‘transition’; the struggle to defend the immediate interests of the working
class with the direct struggle for power. Or, in other word, confusing the
relationship between the ‘defensive’ and the ‘offensive’ stage of the class
struggle.
Finally, we have shown that the
content of Trotsky’s methodology, which in fact is also the basis for the
long running contradiction between Leninism and Trotskyism, is that in
Trotskyism we see the primacy of the ‘abstract’ over the ‘concrete’
in Trotsky’s thinking, a tendency to restrict, or confine reasoning to the
level of the general, while ignoring the richness of the concrete. Without a
doubt, on these premises, we can say that Trotskyism more than justifies the
Marxist-Leninist claim that it is a pseudo-left ideology in competition with
Leninism in the workers’ movement. To the question, What is Trotskyism, the
simplest reply is: pseudo-leftism. A more lengthy reply is: Trotskyism was
open opposition to Leninism, now become concealed opposition to Leninism.
Trotskyism is a petty-bourgeois deviation in Marxism. It is the triumph of
abstract thinking over concrete thinking.