Modern Bourgeois Democratic Transformations
The Theory of Permanent Revolution does not say that a bourgeois-democratic revolution cannot occur, today, without the workers assuming the lead and moving beyond it to a proletarian revolution. It sets out why, given particular material conditions, the workers can and will come to power in backward countries before more advanced countries. The basic material conditions required are that the national bourgeoisie is small and weak, the peasantry/petty-bourgeoisie is large, but is amorphous, the proletariat is large, organised and class conscious. A revolution in which the proletariat and peasantry take a leading role, but in which the proletariat does not assume power, may result in the defeat of the revolution, but it may also result in Bonapartism, based upon the social weight of the peasantry and petty-bourgeoisie. Such Bonapartist regimes can have numerous forms. The superficial appearance of such political regimes does not tell us anything about the class nature of the state itself, which is determined objectively by the dominant form of property within the given society.
The Iranian revolution of 1979, shows one such form. Here, the workers played a lead role, but the political leadership of the workers was weak, whilst the mullahs were able to form a powerful coherent and disciplined force able to seize the day on the back of the mobilisation of the peasant and petty-bourgeois masses. The Bonapartist regimes in Egypt, Syria, Libya, Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East show another. Across Africa, in the aftermath of anti-colonial revolutions, military junta form a common type of Bonapartist regime. Yet, what all these regimes have in common, despite resting upon a large, peasant and petty-bourgeois social base, is that they are forced to have to develop capitalist productive relations, as its upon that that the future of the state depends.
Such Bonapartist regimes, in so developing the productive forces, also create the material conditions under which a transition to bourgeois-democracy itself becomes possible. The experience of Egypt after 2011 is an illustration of these processes. Morsi, like the mullahs in Iran, was a reflection of the still significant role played by the peasantry and petty-bourgeoisie, whilst the working-class and professional middle-class itself had still not developed sufficient class consciousness and strength to take the leading role.
Imperialism welcomed the idea of a bourgeois-democratic Egypt, quite in opposition to the ideas that underlay Lenin's theory of Imperialism, and Trotsky's Permanent Revolution, at the start of the 20th century, which thought that imperialism would carve the world into colonies held in slavery. For imperialism, as for industrial capitalism, the basis of profits is not colonial slavery, or unequal exchange, but the extraction of relative surplus value, increased via the use of large amounts of fixed capital. As in the advanced economies, the best political regime for such exploitation is that of the bourgeois democratic republic. But, Morsi did not represent any such development, which is why imperialism withdrew its support, and stood back as Sisi took hold of the reins once more, on behalf of the bourgeoisie, and promotion of the interests of large scale industrial capital.
But, across the globe, other examples can be seen of where former backward economies have gone through a process of industrialisation, usually with the assistance of large amounts of foreign direct investment by large multinational companies, in which the weakness and small size of the domestic bourgeoisie is buttressed by the support of the imperialist bourgeoisie, and also by the development of a large, social-democratic middle-class, which acts as a conduit to a growing working-class. The rapid increase in the living standards of such working classes, facilitates their incorporation into the social-democratic state, in much the same way that Engels described in relation to the British working-class in the second half of the 19th century.
The belated bourgeois-democratic revolutions of the later 19th century, and early 20th century were conducted against one or both of an old landed ruling class, or a colonial overlord. In the late 20th century those old ruling classes ceased to be the main obstacle to the establishment of the bourgeois-democratic state. Imperialism itself destroyed colonialism, whilst the landlord class increasingly became absorbed into the capitalist ruling class. The main obstacle became the persistence of large, reactionary, petty-bourgeois masses, committed to holding back further capitalist development, and often giving their support to mediaevalist political forces.
Increasingly, the interests of the proletariat lie in an alliance not with this backward peasantry and petty-bourgeoisie, but with the social-democratic middle-class, which represents the interests of large-scale socialised capital, and its further development. The persistence of Stalinist parties, and of the concept of subordinating the proletariat to the peasantry and petty-bourgeoisie, and other backward layers of society acts as a block on this further development of society.
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