Permanent Revolution, and Lenin's Letters On Tactics, therefore, set out that, in such conditions, a proletarian revolution can take place, establishing a workers' state, or Dictatorship of the Proletariat Leading The Peasantry, but that the economic base, the productive relations, would remain bourgeois, i.e. it would not be a socialist economy or socialist state. The revolution and creation of the workers' state, would simply be the first part of any such process. But, also, as Lenin set out in “Left-wing Childishness”, the economy, in Russia, was not even characterised by large-scale capital. Indeed, much of it remained at the level of peasant agriculture, with a plethora of small, independent commodity producers, and so on.
This meant that the social roots of the bourgeoisie still dominated, in Russia, only suppressed by the power of the workers' state, which had also had to acknowledge reality by the introduction of NEP. A continued growth of commodity production would mean a strengthening of the bourgeoisie, and, at some point, counter-revolution. In addition, even the developed, large-scale capital, in Russia, had to compete against even larger, more advanced capital, on the world market, meaning that, over time, it would lose out, in that competition. Only the international revolution could save it, and so the workers' state would have to act as the instrument of advancing that international revolution.
Even Stalin, in 1924, had accepted that.
“In April 1924, three months after the death of Lenin, Stalin wrote, his brochure of compilations called The Foundations of Leninism:
“For the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the efforts of one country are enough – to this the history of our own revolution testifies. For the final victory of socialism, for the organization of socialist production, the efforts of one country, especially a peasant country like ours, are not enough – for this we must have the efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries.”
These lines need no comment. The edition in which they were printed, however, has been withdrawn from circulation.”
But, in order to distinguish himself from Trotsky, and permanent revolution, he abandoned that position, and advocated building socialism in one country. The Stalinists bowdlerised Lenin, so as to argue, if its not possible to build socialism in once country, why then did Lenin argue for socialist revolution in Russia, and talk about proceeding to its construction. Trotsky, now, turns to these issues, and sets out the difference between the revolutionary (Bolshevik) position and the reformist (Menshevik) position. It is a difference based upon form and substance. Both may argue for the same thing, for example, a Constituent Assembly, but the means of its creation, and the purpose of doing so, is different.
The Mensheviks see the Constituent Assembly as a fundamental element of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, a staging post along the path of social development, providing head room for workers to organise and express themselves. It is a form for the workers to negotiate with capital, as an extension of the trades unions, over the terms of their continued exploitation, and, as such, never goes beyond that level of bourgeois trades union consciousness. For the Mensheviks/reformists/social-democrats, it is an end in itself. The means for its establishment, therefore, are not important, and so, for them, take the form of a cross-class appeal to support bourgeois-democracy.
For Lenin, the substance was entirely different. Indeed, a look at Marx's 1850 Address shows that it was for him too. For Marx, the workers supported the bourgeois in their demands for a Constituent Assembly, and so on, and yet, all the time, were encouraged to build their own organs of self-government, workers' democracy, workers' militia, and so on, in opposition to it. Its the same approach that Trotsky sets out in The Action Programme for France.
No comments:
Post a Comment