The Workers' Government - Summary

 The Workers' Government

Summary

• The demand for a Workers' Government, or Workers' and Peasants' Government is a transitional demand, raised during a period of dual power, i.e. when the social dictatorship of the bourgeoisie has broken down, and is challenged by the social dictatorship of the workers and peasants, in the form of soviets/workers' and peasants' councils.

• The social dictatorship of any class can be accompanied by political regimes of many different kinds. The political regime is not the same as the class nature of the state, which is a reflection of the stable rule, the social dictatorship, of any given class. The material basis of that rule is that the specific form of property upon which that class rests has become dominant, and forms the basis for the future prosperity and existence of the state itself. The Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie existed alongside the political regime of the feudal aristocracy, of Tsarism in Russia, the Mikado in Japan, the restoration monarchies of Charles II in Britain, and Louis Philippe in France, as well as the Bonapartist regimes of Cromwell, Napoleon, Bismark, Hitler and Mussolini. The political regime of the bourgeois-democratic republic is, merely, the most rational, most mature, and favourable regime for the social dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

• The Workers' and Peasants' Government was seen as the political regime of the transitional period of the Social Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry, in those countries where bourgeois-democratic revolutions overthrew the political regime of feudalism, but where the social weight of the working-class in relation to that of the peasantry was not sufficient to establish the outright Dictatorship of the Proletariat. The experience of the 1917 Russian Revolution, demonstrated that such a regime, as with the condition of dual power is not sustainable. The analysis and recognition of this is seen in Trotsky's Theory of Permanent Revolution, and in Lenin's April Theses, and is summed up in the demand for “All Power To The Workers' and Peasants' Soviets”.

• The Workers' Government, or alternatively Workers' and Peasants' Government, or Workers' and Farmers' Government is a transitional political regime, reflecting the stage of dual power, prior to the establishment of a government of the soviets.

• Revolutionaries seek to win control of the soviets, and, thereby, the state power that flows from them. They refuse to participate in a Workers and Peasants Government, unless they are the overwhelming majority within it. The demand for a Workers' Government, is, however, one that the revolutionaries raise, aimed at the reformist and centrist parties, demanding they seize political power from the bourgeoisie. In Russia, in 1917, it is symbolised in the demand, aimed at the Provisional Government, “Down With The Capitalist Ministers”.

• As with the United Front, the demand for a Workers' Government is a demand aimed at exposing the bourgeois nature of the reformist and centrist parties, their inability to break with the parties of bourgeois-liberalism, and to defend the interests of the workers. It is a demand aimed at creating conditions for winning the majority of the workers and peasants to the revolutionaries, and, thereby, of bringing about the government of the soviets.

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