On The 97th Anniversary Year Of The Founding Of The Communist International (1919)-From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky-"The Third International After Lenin"
After the struggle inside the Russian Communist Party in the mid-1920s around internal party democracy, mainly in the end against Joseph Stalin's top-down appropriation of the party and state apparatuses squeezing out what was left of soviet democracy, the economics of the transition period from capitalism, the so-called theory of socialism in one country, and the fate of the international socialist revolution after many set-backs the Leon Trotsky-led internal Left Opposition (and later the International Left Opposition and still later in the early 1930s after the defeat of the German working class without a gun fired by Hitler and his henchmen various organizations which led to a new, the Fourth International for those who want to know the genesis) concentrated on Communist International policies. Rightly so since the fate of the Soviet Union and ultimately the establishment of an international social order depended on extending the Russian revolution to Europe and elsewhere as projected by Lenin, Trotsky and most of the early leaders of the Soviet party basing themselves on Karl Marx's projections (and which has been very dramatically confirmed in the negative in hindsight given the eventual demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s).
At that time in the Communist International after the German revolution had stillborn in 1923 and after several other revolutionary opportunities in Europe had not panned out for many reasons but centrally for lack of an authoritative party to lead whatever action was necessary to seize, and keep, power from the capitalist state chief among them was the contour and fate of the Second Chinese Revolution of 1925-27, the possibility of success in an even more backward capitalist-agrarian country. The dispute centered on the role of the fledgling Communist Party (and that has been a central question in pro-working class revolutionary upheavals since that time almost one hundred years ago now), its relationship to other possibly revolutionary forces, especially the peasantry and to the weak imperialist-dependent native capitalist class which usually had run out of the energy that had sparked earlier bourgeois revolutions.
While Leon Trotsky was not around to write about the successful third revolution of 1949 he did write many polemics on that second revolution and how, in the end, it like in Russian would have to follow the path that he outlined in his Theory Of Permanent Revolution in order to be successful. To be successful both as an engine to socialist transformation AND as a model for socialist democracy. The event, although successful in militarily defeating the enemy with a huge peasant Red Army, never developed those soviet-type forms that would have eased the transition to socialism. Moreover for a number of historic reasons having to do with the defeat of the second revolution the Chinese working-class never was a central political factor in that victory. With whatever remnants remain of the pro-socialist economic structures in China, and those state owned assets are still considerable the gain of the revolution are today hanging by a threat. One day we may have to say that there has been a full-blown capitalist restoration like in the Soviet Union and East Europe but this is not the day. This material is still very helpful in sorting things out, and still very readable.
Link below to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archives for an online copy of the document mentioned in the headline.
Markin comment:
After the struggle inside the Russian Communist Party in the mid-1920s around internal party democracy, mainly in the end against Joseph Stalin's top-down appropriation of the party and state apparatuses squeezing out what was left of soviet democracy, the economics of the transition period from capitalism, the so-called theory of socialism in one country, and the fate of the international socialist revolution after many set-backs the Leon Trotsky-led internal Left Opposition (and later the International Left Opposition and still later in the early 1930s after the defeat of the German working class without a gun fired by Hitler and his henchmen various organizations which led to a new, the Fourth International for those who want to know the genesis) concentrated on Communist International policies. Rightly so since the fate of the Soviet Union and ultimately the establishment of an international social order depended on extending the Russian revolution to Europe and elsewhere as projected by Lenin, Trotsky and most of the early leaders of the Soviet party basing themselves on Karl Marx's projections (and which has been very dramatically confirmed in the negative in hindsight given the eventual demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s).
At that time in the Communist International after the German revolution had stillborn in 1923 and after several other revolutionary opportunities in Europe had not panned out for many reasons but centrally for lack of an authoritative party to lead whatever action was necessary to seize, and keep, power from the capitalist state chief among them was the contour and fate of the Second Chinese Revolution of 1925-27, the possibility of success in an even more backward capitalist-agrarian country. The dispute centered on the role of the fledgling Communist Party (and that has been a central question in pro-working class revolutionary upheavals since that time almost one hundred years ago now), its relationship to other possibly revolutionary forces, especially the peasantry and to the weak imperialist-dependent native capitalist class which usually had run out of the energy that had sparked earlier bourgeois revolutions.
While Leon Trotsky was not around to write about the successful third revolution of 1949 he did write many polemics on that second revolution and how, in the end, it like in Russian would have to follow the path that he outlined in his Theory Of Permanent Revolution in order to be successful. To be successful both as an engine to socialist transformation AND as a model for socialist democracy. The event, although successful in militarily defeating the enemy with a huge peasant Red Army, never developed those soviet-type forms that would have eased the transition to socialism. Moreover for a number of historic reasons having to do with the defeat of the second revolution the Chinese working-class never was a central political factor in that victory. With whatever remnants remain of the pro-socialist economic structures in China, and those state owned assets are still considerable the gain of the revolution are today hanging by a threat. One day we may have to say that there has been a full-blown capitalist restoration like in the Soviet Union and East Europe but this is not the day. This material is still very helpful in sorting things out, and still very readable.
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