Markin comment on this series:
No question today, 2011 today, Marxists in this wicked old world are as scarce as hen’s teeth. Leninists and Trotskyists even fewer. And to be sure there are so many open social and political wounds in the world from the struggle against imperialism in places like Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan, just to name the obvious America imperial adventures that come quickly off the tip of the tongue, to the struggles in America just for working people to keep heads above water in the riptide of rightist reaction on the questions of unemployment, unionism, social services, racial inequality and the like that it is almost hard to know where to start. Nevertheless, however dismal the situation may seem, the need for political clarity, for polemic between leftist tendencies, is as pressing today as it was going back to Marx’s time. Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto, after all, is nothing but a long polemic against all the various misguided notions of socialist reconstruction of society of their day. And Marxists were as scarce as hen’s teeth then, as well.
When I first came under the influence of Marx in the early 1970s, as I started my search for some kind of strategy for systemic social change after floundering around with liberalism, left-liberalism, and soft social-democracy, one of the things that impressed me while reading the classics was the hard polemical edge to the writings. That same thing impressed me with Lenin and Trotsky (although as the “prince of the pamphleteers” I found that Trotsky was the more fluent writer of the two). That edge, and the fact that they all spent more time, much more time, polemicizing against other leftists than with bourgeois democrats in order to clarify the tasks confronting revolutionaries. And, frankly, I miss that give and take that is noticeably absent from today’s leftist scene. Or is dismissed as so much ill-will, malice, or sectarian hair-splitting when what we need to do is “make nice” with each other. There actually is a time to make nice, in a way, it is called the united front in order for the many to fight on specific issues. Unless there is a basic for a revolutionary regroupment which, frankly, I do not see on the horizon then this is proper vehicle, and will achieve all our immediate aims in the process.
So call me sentimental but I am rather happy to post these entries that represent the old time (1973, now old time) polemics between the Spartacist brand of Trotskyism and the now defunct Guardian trend of Maoism that the now far less radical Carl Davidson was then defending. Many of the issues, political tendencies, and organizations mentioned may have passed from the political scene but the broader questions of revolutionary strategy, from the implications of Trotsky’ s theory of permanent revolution to the various guises of the popular front still haunt the leftist night. Argue on.
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Carl Davidson's "Left in Form, Right in Essence"
Trotskyism: A new debate over old issues
The U.S. left in the last months of 1972 saw the revival in a sharp form of a debate that has been an undercurrent throughout its history.
The issue was Trotskyism and the focus was its ideological and practical role within the revolutionary movement. The immediate occasion of the debate was the political, military and diplomatic offensive of the Vietnamese people. The struggle culminated in their pressing of the nine-point peace treaty on the Nixon administration, demanding the signing of the agreement, the cessation of bombing and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam.
The Vietnamese liberation fighters issued a call to all progressive forces in the world to bring to the forefront and rally behind the demand that Nixon “Sign the Treaty Now!” After initially indicating agreement, the U.S. balked, stalled for several weeks and then unleashed the terroristic Christmas bombing of North Vietnam.
Nixon’s genocidal deeds failed to intimidate the Vietnamese. What is more the worldwide fury provoked by bombings and given direction by the political strategy of the Vietnamese leadership utterly isolated the Nixon administration and its Saigon henchmen before world opinion.
The demand to sign the treaty was the cutting edge of the struggle. On one side stood the Vietnamese people, the Indochinese united front, the national liberation movements, the socialist countries, the revisionist countries, the working class and democratic movements in the capitalist countries, a number of capitalist governments “allied” with the U.S. and even a section of the U.S. bourgeoisie itself.
On the other side stood the Nixon administration and the Saigon puppets.
But Nixon had one additional ally to set against this dramatic example of the international united front against U.S. imperialism – almost the entire Trotskyist movement.
The Trotskyists, too, were opposed to demanding that Nixon sign the treaty, urged that the agreement be scrapped and claimed that it would violate the “right of self-determination” of South Vietnam. They organized opposition to the demand within the U.S. antiwar movement, carried article after article in their press indicating that the treaty was a “sellout” and “betrayal” of Vietnam’s national rights and threatened to organize separate protests if the demand was made the principal slogan of the planned mass mobilizations in January.
The Trotskyists believe that their position flows from a “revolutionary” analysis of the world situation and proceed to embellish their conclusions with “left” phraseology. What they actually demonstrate in practice, however, is the validity of the traditional Marxist-Leninist appraisal of the Trotskyist movement: that they are “left” only in form, but are thoroughly rightist in actuality.
Opposing the “sign the treaty” demand and counterposing it to the demand for immediate withdrawal is not simply an aberration of otherwise legitimate Trotskyist views on revolutionary questions. On the contrary, this disruptive line flows inevitably from the fundamental views of Trotskyist theory, their strategic approach to revolution and the characteristic features of their movement.
What has only begun to become clearer to the emerging revolutionary forces in the U.S. is exactly what the views of the Trotskyists are, what their role in history has been, and what role they play in current revolutionary practice.
The most recent position taken by the Trotskyists in relation to Vietnam, in this sense, has one positive aspect: it has served to open the eyes of many activists to the dangers of this particular brand of “left” opportunism and the necessity to struggle against its influence in the mass movement.
Trotskyism: then and now
The purpose of this pamphlet, then, will be to contribute to that struggle. It will try to assess the historical role of Trotsky and Trotskyism. the main outlines of its theory and its interrelation with practice and the key features of the contemporary Trotskyist movement, including the unity and differences among the various groupings within its ranks.
The history of the Trotskyist movement is bound up with the political career of Leon Trotsky himself. Trotsky’s public role as a spokesman for the October Revolution in Russia and his position as the first head of the Red army during the period of the Civil War has been and still is a source of prestige for his followers.
What is less well known is the erratic movement of Trotsky and his supporters throughout the course of the Russian revolution, his origins as a Menshevik, his initial hostility to Lenin and the Bolshevik party, and his struggles with Lenin after the seizure of power.
The development of the Trotskyist movement, however, both during Trotsky’s lifetime and after his death, has been shaped by events often beyond and in opposition to the subjective intentions of its founders.
Trotskyism originated, for instance, as a tendency within the working-class movement, alternately reflecting in its ranks the outlook of the radical petty bourgeoisie and the labor aristocracy. Today, whatever base it once had in the working class has evaporated and it is primarily a movement of the middle class youth in the advanced capitalist countries.
While the general trend of Trotskyism s development has been one of decline, the course has not been even. Periodically, in conjunction with both objective and subjective developments in the class struggle, it experiences a revival, as it has today in many of the advanced capitalist countries.
Aspects of the revival
The contemporary revival of the Trotskyist movement has two key aspects. The objective factor is related to the moribund character of imperialism, which sets itself against not only the class interests of the proletariat, but also increasingly drives into the democratic struggles the masses of the petty bourgeoisie and other radicalized middle strata.
This radicalization of the petty bourgeoisie in opposition to the policies of monopoly capital and in response to the struggles of the proletariat and the oppressed nationalities was one of the key features of the emergence of the ‘new left’ in the 1960s.
It has had a fundamentally progressive, anti-imperialist character while, at the same time, these forces have demonstrated a vacillation typical of their class base and an inability to go on their own, beyond the limits of reformism. Agim Popa, writing in the September-October, 1972 issue of Albania Today, drew the connection between Trotskyism’s revival and the middle class radicalization:
Precisely these vacillations, this petty bourgeois instability, inclinations to go from one extreme to another, from anarchism and unbridled adventurism to extreme right opportunism and defeatism, constitute the favorable ground on which Trotskyism flourishes and speculates for its own counterrevolutionary aims.
There is also a subjective factor contributing to Trotskyism’s periodic revivals. Because of its self-constructed character as a “permanent opposition” within the revolutionary movement, its fortunes are often tied to the relative strength of right opportunism or even to opportunist errors or policies temporarily pursued by revolutionary forces.
The primary and most recent example of this was the 20th Congress of the Communist party of the Soviet Union. Under the smokescreen of attacking “Stalin’s crimes,” party chairman Nikita Khrushchev abandoned the Leninist theory of the proletarian dictatorship and projected the “three peacefuls” as the essence of revolutionary strategy: peaceful competition, peaceful coexistence and peaceful transition.
These events of the late 1950s signaled a qualitative change both in the Soviet Union and in the ongoing struggle within the international proletarian movement between Marxism- Leninism and revisionism. For the first time in history, revisionists held state power and the fact that “de-Stalinization” had been the mechanism through which it had achieved its aim gave the Trotskyist movement an entirely new lease on life. As Popa put it:
After the 20th and especially after the 22nd Congress of the CPSU, where the renegade launched the savage campaign of anti-Stalinism, Trotskyism, which had been dealt heavy blows and had lost all influence on the masses, raised its head, resumed its undermining activity on a broad scale, and extended its poisonous roots to many areas and countries of the world. Like mushrooms after a shower, Trotskyist groups and organizations started to crop up in large numbers in Europe, America and in other areas.
These events sharply affected the initial character of the U.S. new left, which saw itself in opposition to the “old left” of the 1930s and, as a result, was isolated from the lessons of the proletarian socialist movement. While it was subjectively opposed to the reformist policies of the revisionists, it also found itself hamstrung in combating the influence of Trotskyism within its ranks.
Despite this temporary revival of Trotskyism, however, Trotskyism’s internal contradictions soon began to rise to the fore and are now again leading to a crisis within its own movement. These internal contradictions are part and parcel of Trotskyist theory itself and will inevitably contribute to its defeat in the course of the class struggle.
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Carl Davidson -Left in Form, Right in Essence
Two lines on “permanent revolution”
The cornerstone of the Trotskyist political line is its particular version of the theory of the “permanent revolution.”
What are its essential features? What separates it from the ideas of the permanent revolution put forward by Marx and Lenin and, in the final analysis, what turns it into a counterrevolutionary theory and practice?
The origin of the Marxist theory of the permanent revolution stems from the following question: How do proletarian revolutionaries conceive their strategic tasks in the countries where the bourgeois democratic revolution against feudalism has yet to be carried through to the end?
The same question was posed by the anarchists in a different way: Why should the workers become involved in the battles of the bourgeoisie, i.e., against the old, feudal order? In his work, Two Tactics, Lenin answered as follows: “The working class is, therefore, most certainly interested in the broadest, freest and most rapid development of capitalism. The removal of all remnants of the old order ... is of absolute advantage to the working class ...”
The more complete, determined and consistent the bourgeois revolution, the more assured will the proletariat’s struggle be against the bourgeoisie and for socialism ... In a certain sense a bourgeois revolution is more advantageous to the proletariat than to the bourgeoisie ... It is to the advantage of the bourgeoisie to rely on certain remnants of the past, as against the proletariat, for instance, on the monarchy, the standing army, etc.
Social-Democrats (communists) often express this idea somewhat differently by stating that the bourgeoisie betrays its own self, that the bourgeoisie betrays the cause of liberty, that the bourgeoisie is incapable of being consistently democratic.
The problem posed, then, is how does the proletariat carry through the democratic revolution in such a way that it grows over into a socialist revolution.
While the democratic bourgeoisie wish to terminate the revolution as quickly as possible, said Marx in his Address to the Communist League, “our interests and our tasks consist in making the revolution permanent until all the more or less property-owning classes have been removed from power, until the proletariat has conquered state power, until the union of proletarians not only in one country, but in all the leading countries of the world, has developed to such an extent that competition between proletarians of those countries has ceased and at least the decisive productive forces are concentrated in the hands of proletarians. What we are concerned with is not a change in private property, not softening class contradictions, but abolishing classes, not improving existing society, but founding a new society.”
Thus the revolution is “permanent” in two ways. First, in looking toward the future, its course is one of uninterrupted class struggle until classes themselves are abolished. Second, looking back historically once classes are abolished, the revolution is permanent in the sense that there is no longer class struggle and the seizure of power and domination of one class by another.
This is a general statement of the theory of the permanent revolution that is upheld by Marxist-Leninists. Where the dividing line between proletarian revolutionaries and Trotskyists emerges, however, is in the particularity of the question, when it is applied in practice in the actual course of revolutionary struggle.
One divides into two
How did the forces represented by both Lenin and Trotsky see the course of the “uninterrupted” revolution in the concrete conditions in Russia? How were they able to ally temporarily and what respective lessons were drawn that led to “one dividing into two,” through the emergence of two lines on the strategy for revolution throughout the world?
Three positions were debated among Russian revolutionaries on how the struggle would develop. All started from the premise that the first task was the bourgeois revolution but then broke down into Menshevik, Trotskyist and Bolshevik camps.
The Menshevik view was rightist. They believed that since it was a bourgeois revolution, it would be led by the liberal bourgeoisie and supported by the working class. Its aim would be the creation of a democratic republic headed by the capitalists as its first stage, which would last for as long as 200 years before being surpassed by its second stage, or proletarian socialist revolution.
This view was reactionary on two counts. First, it proposed a subordinate alliance with a class bound to betray even its own democratic aims. Second, it favored this alliance with the liberals as opposed to an alliance with the peasantry, which the Mensheviks tended to view as a conservative force and the base of reaction.
Trotsky’s view, which Lenin designated “absurdly left,” was summed up by its formulator in his essay, The Three Conceptions of the Russian Revolution, in the following way:
The complete victory of the democratic revolution in Russia is inconceivable otherwise than in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat basing itself on the peasantry. The dictatorship of the proletariat, which will inescapably place on the order of the day not only democratic but also socialist tasks, will at the same time provide a mighty impulse to the international socialist revolution. Only the victory of the proletariat in the West will shield Russia from bourgeois restoration and secure for her the possibility of bringing the socialist construction to its conclusion.
Lenin’s view was opposed to both of these. Against the Mensheviks he stated the following:
The proletariat must carry through, to the very end, the democratic revolution by attaching to itself the mass of the peasantry in order to crush by force the resistance of the autocracy and to paralyze the instability of the bourgeoisie.
In order to thus “paralyze” and keep the bourgeoisie from fully consolidating its power, Lenin said, the revolutionary masses would have to establish a “revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry.”
“But of course,” he added, “this will be, not a socialist but a democratic dictatorship. It will not be able to touch upon the foundations of capitalism (without a whole series of stages of revolutionary development).”
In opposition to Trotsky, then, Lenin insisted that the revolution would develop in stages, of which this was the first. At the same time this was only to be a transitional state of affairs, which would immediately and uninterruptedly grow over to the second stage, the dictatorship of the proletariat, wherein:
The proletariat must accomplish the socialist revolution by attaching to itself the mass of the semiproletarian elements of the population (the poor peasants) in order to crush by force the resistance of the bourgeoisie and to paralyze the instability of the petty bourgeoisie.
The relationship between the two stages, Lenin said, was that “the first grows into the second. The second, in passing, solves the problems of the first. The second consolidates the work of the first. Struggle, and nothing but struggle, decides how far the second succeeds in outgrowing the first.” In another work he added, “to attempt to raise an artificial Chinese wall between the first and second revolutions, to separate them by anything else than the degree of preparedness of the proletariat and the degree of unity with the poor peasants, is to seriously distort Marxism. to vulgarize it, to substitute liberalism in its stead.”
Trotsky opposed the concept of the “democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry” and considered it “unrealizable” in practice. “In this polemic,” Trotsky writes in his work The Permanent Revolution, “I accused Lenin of overestimating the independent role of the peasantry. Lenin accused me of underestimating the revolutionary role of the peasantry.”
Trotsky claims to uphold the alliance between the workers and peasants, at least insofar as democratic tasks are being carried out. When socialist tasks are on the agenda, however, his position shifts drastically:
... Precisely in order to secure its victory, the proletarian vanguard would be forced in the very early stages of its rule to make deep inroads not only into feudal property but into capitalist property as well. In this the proletariat will come into hostile collision, not only with the bourgeois groupings which supported the proletariat in the first stages of revolutionary struggle, but also with the broad masses of peasants who were instrumental in bringing it to power.’
Elsewhere, Trotsky is even more blunt: “Left to its own forces, the working class of Russia will inevitably be crushed by the counter-revolution the moment the peasantry will turn away from it.”
Special form of alliance
Lenin’s view is directly opposite: “The dictatorship of the proletariat is a special form of class alliance between the proletariat, the vanguard of the toilers, and the numerous nonproletarian strata of the toilers (the petty bourgeoisie, the small craftsman, the peasantry, the intelligentsia, etc.) or the majority of these.”
Thus Trotsky’s talk about the “independent role” of the peasantry is a smokescreen and Lenin was absolutely correct in arguing that Trotsky underestimated its revolutionary role. At the same time, the other side of the coin of this “underestimation” is the denial of the ability of the workers to lead the masses of the peasants in socialist construction, since they are bound to come into “hostile collision” with them.
Trotsky’s views on the course of the Russian revolution, like those of the Mensheviks, were refuted by history. The revolution was both uninterrupted and developed in stages. The revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants came into being during the first stage, during the period of the dual power and in the special form of the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. These Soviets, of course, as their “degree of preparedness” of the workers and “degree of unity” with the poor peasants increased, grew over into the proletarian dictatorship through the October Revolution. What this meant for Trotsky’s “permanent revolution” becomes clear when it is considered with the concept of “socialism in one country.”
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