The AWL/USC continue, by saying.
“Socialists should support the defence and preservation of Ukrainian independence and self-rule just as we supported the defence of even bourgeois democracy against Franco’s fascism.”
But, Trotsky's position was not to support the defence of bourgeois-democracy in Spain against Franco, and to do so implies a Stalinist/Menshevist stages theory, as opposed to the theory of permanent revolution first set out by Marx and Engels, and later developed by Trotsky, and by Lenin in his April Theses and Letters on Tactics. This again indicates the AWL/USC's inability to see things in any other than binary and syllogistic terms, or, put another way, in terms of my enemy's enemy is my friend. Just because I oppose fascism, and currently fascism is opposing bourgeois-democracy, leading me to oppose its attacks, that does not at all require me to be supporting bourgeois-democracy. I can oppose the attempts of free market liberals to roll-back capitalist monopolies, for example, but that does not make me a supporter of such monopolies, as against being a proponent of Socialism, and workers control over those monopolies.
"It is not by devoting oneself to empirical conjectures as to the possibility of realizing some transitional demand or not, that the question relating to it is settled. It is its social and historical character that decides: is it progressive from the point of view of the subsequent development of society? Does it correspond to the historical interests of the proletariat? Does it strengthen the consciousness of the latter? Does it bring it closer to its dictatorship? Thus for example, the demand for the prohibition of trusts is petty-bourgeois and reactionary and, as the experiences of America have shown, it is completely utopian. Under certain conditions, on the contrary, it is entirely progressive and correct to demand workers’ control over the trusts, even though it is more than doubtful that this will ever be realized within the framework of the bourgeois state. The fact that this demand is not satisfied so long as the bourgeoisie rules must push the workers to the revolutionary overthrow of the latter. Thus, the impossibility of realizing a slogan from the political point of view can be no less fruitful than the relative possibility of putting it into practice."
A further example is Trotsky's position in fighting fascism in France, in The Action Programme.
“Our slogan is not the disarming of the fascist gangs of finance capital by finance capital’s own police. We refuse to spread the criminal illusion that a capitalist government can actually proceed to the disarming of the capitalist bands. The exploited must defend themselves against the capitalists.
Arming of the proletariat, arming of the poor peasants!
People’s Antifascist Militia!
The exploiters, who are but a tiny minority, will recoil before the unleashing of civil war; the fascist and reactionary bands will lose their audacity only if the workers are armed and lead the masses.”
Nothing in that implies support for bourgeois-democracy. On the contrary, it contains a sharp attack on bourgeois-democracy, and counterposing to it, immediately, and not at some future point, workers-democracy, and workers self-government! In other words, fascist attacks on bourgeois-democracy were to be opposed, only on the basis of weakening the fascists, and the means of resisting it were not at all the methods or institutions of bourgeois-democracy, or in any way ceding credence to that democracy, but by the methods of proletarian struggle, and organs of workers power raised in opposition to it! That is a million miles away from the AWL/USC's uncritical support for Zelensky's regime.
The AWL/USC's position is the other side of the coin to that of the ultra-lefts, criticised by Lenin in Left-Wing Communism. Lenin explained to the ultra-Lefts that just because we recognise that bourgeois-democracy has had its day, and is a fraud, that does not mean that the majority of workers realise that, and so long as that is the case, we have to recognise that reality, and work with it. It means using bourgeois-democracy in such a way as to expose it for what it is, and, thereby, draw the workers from it to a revolutionary class consciousness. But, its impossible to do that, whilst “supporting” bourgeois-democracy, rather than mercilessly attacking and exposing it in front of the workers!
The position of the AWL/USC is, by contrast, that of the opportunists. They use the examples of Lenin and Trotsky working inside bourgeois-democracy, and demanding it be applied consistently, so as to expose it for what it is, with “support” for it! It is the same position that the Stalinists adopted in the Chinese Revolution and Spanish Civil War, i.e. the Menshevist “stages theory”. As Trotsky, sets out in his writings on the Chinese Revolution – See “The Chinese Question After The Sixth Congress” - so long as the workers retain illusions in bourgeois-democracy, it is necessary to utilise it, in order to expose it, and break the workers from it, but that can only be done by opposing it by revolutionary means, up to and including the building of workers defence squads, militia, and soviets, depending upon the tempo of developments.
At no time do we follow the opportunists who counterpose bourgeois-democracy and parliamentarism to revolutionary activity, which we seek to develop at all times, as the basis of our solutions. But, as Lenin and Trotsky set out, the material conditions themselves, along with the degree of class consciousness of the workers dictate what revolutionary activity is possible. As Trotsky describes in the work above, the Stalinist idea that it was only legitimate to demand soviets, after a period of bourgeois democracy, and when the workers were already in revolt, and an insurrection guaranteed, was wrong. It is necessary to have built soviets much sooner than that in order to develop the revolutionary situation, and prepare the conditions for the success of the insurrection. However, to simply raise the demand for soviets as an alternative to a constituent assembly/parliament, irrespective of conditions is sterile sectarianism, and ultra-leftism. Trotsky sets out the different conditions in Germany in 1923, to illustrate the point.
The AWL/USC, bowdlerise Trotsky's position in relation to the Spanish Revolution, tuning him into an opportunist supporter of bourgeois-democracy, rather than a revolutionary opponent of it. As he put it, in The Transitional Programme, in setting out the difference between this Workers Government that he called for in Spain, as against the Popular Front Republican government,
“The experience of Russia demonstrated, and the experience of Spain and France once again confirms, that even under very favourable conditions the parties of petty bourgeois democracy (SRs, Social Democrats, Stalinists, Anarchists) are incapable of creating a government of workers and peasants, that is, a government independent of the bourgeoisie.”
And, in Ukraine the AWL/USC are not even arguing the need to smash the existing capitalist state, but entirely subordinating that task to the task of defending that very state, as part of its war against Russia! In other words, rather than the proletarian strategy of revolutionary defeatism, proposed by Lenin and Trotsky, they advocate the strategy of bourgeois-defencism of the social-patriots prior to WWI and II.
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