In February 1917, Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev argued that the overthrow of the Tsar meant that the Bolsheviks should support the Provisional Government, as it carried through the bourgeois-democratic revolution, as it was necessary for Russia to pass through this bourgeois-democratic stage, before it could move on to the socialist revolution, at some future undetermined time. This is the Menshevist/Stalinist stages theory. They argued that the Provisional Government represented a non-class, or supra-class, “revolutionary democracy”.
However, Trotsky basing himself on Marx and Engels' analysis of the 1848 revolutions, and from the experience of the 1905 Russian Revolution, had set out the theory of Permanent Revolution. It said that, where the bourgeois-democratic revolution is belated, as in Russia, and as is the case with colonial revolutions, because history had moved on, from the times of the earlier bourgeois revolutions, of the 18th and 19th centuries, it was possible for the working-class to take the lead in them, and this would make it impossible to restrict it to just a bourgeois revolution. The workers would be forced to make the revolution permanent, in the way Marx had described, or else the revolution would fail, leading to a reactionary counter-revolution.
What had changed was precisely that, since the 18th and 19th century, capitalism had developed rapidly, and created sizeable proletariats, and the socialist ideas developed in Western Europe, in the 19th century, were also, now, taken up anxiously by these workers in Russia, China and so on, who also had created their own workers' parties. The homogeneous nature of these classes, their concentration in cities, and urban areas, their size, and their economic and social power, derived from their role in production, made it inevitable that, in any such social upheaval, they would be mobilised and play a dominant role.
That they might carry through the revolution to a proletarian revolution was not synonymous with creating a socialist state, because, in many cases, the material conditions did not yet exist for it. Such was the case in Russia. But, this simply gave the concept of permanent revolution a wider meaning. Globally, the material conditions did exist for Socialism, and, having conquered power, in one state, the workers, there, would seek to use it to support workers elsewhere, whose own revolution was required to support that in Russia. A backward country, like Russia, even if it established a workers' state, could not create Socialism without socialist revolutions in the developed economies so that they would assist it. Permanent Revolution then meant that any revolution could not be contained within national bounds, but would have to be used to facilitate global revolution, even at the cost of sacrificing itself.
After the February revolution, Lenin also arrived at the same conclusion. It led Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev, and other “old Bolsheviks” to say that Lenin had become a Trotskyist. In fact, the conclusion flowed from Lenin's earlier analysis and formulations, but now developed on the basis of the concrete historical events that had unfolded before their eyes. On the one hand, there was the Provisional Government that was a Popular Front comprising bourgeois parties and ministers, as well as those representing peasants, such as the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. On the other hand, the workers and peasants, along with the soldiers and sailors, had created their own independent organs and centres of power, the soviets, or workers councils. These latter, Lenin argued, already represented The Dictatorship of the Proletariat Leading the Peasantry, that they had seen as constituting the revolution. It was no longer something to be accomplished at some future date, but was staring them in the face as an accomplished fact.
In reality, it stood in opposition to the Provisional Government, in a condition of dual power. The Provisional Government was a bourgeois government and sought to defend the interests of capital against labour, but, as Lenin described, real power in society, in the streets, resided with the soviets.
“For it must not be forgotten that actually, in Petrograd, the power is in the hands of the workers and soldiers; the new government is not using and cannot use violence against them, because there is no police, no army standing apart from the people, no officialdom standing all-powerful above the people. This is a fact, the kind of fact that is characteristic of a state of the Paris Commune type.”
A clash between these two powers was then inevitable. Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev, having failed to move on, in these new conditions, had argued support for the Provisional Government, a government, which, in turn, was, now, arguing, as social-chauvinists in France, Germany and Britain had done, the need to defend the fatherland. Lenin still outside Russia, threatened to split the party if that position was adopted, and, once back in Russia, he began an all out attack on it, summarised in his April Theses and Letters On Tactics.
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