The Stalinists argued that it was only legitimate to raise the demand for soviets at the point of the proletarian revolution, at the point of the armed insurrection, but then it is too late, and becomes an artificial construct, rather than having grown naturally out of the tempo of the class struggle itself. In Russia, the soviets were established months before the October Revolution, but, nor can they be simply called for, and willed into being out of thin air. What is more, if the workers are to be armed, and organised, as more than just a rabble, it requires democratic organisation.
The Second Amendment to the US Constitution, does not speak about individuals being armed ad hoc, but “as part of a well regulated militia”.
“Under these conditions the arming of the workers and peasants is a laborious and difficult task. To declare that the time for the soviets has not yet arrived and at the same time to launch the slogan for arming the workers and peasants, is to sow confusion. Only the soviets, at a further development of the revolution, can become the organs capable of really conducting the arming of the workers and of directing these armed masses.” (p 44)
Again, it can be asked, where in the programme for Ukraine, of the USC, and others, when they talk about armed workers, is this demand for workers' soviets, ready to defend workers, also, against Zelensky and the oligarchs? Indeed, we could ask where they have put forward any independent programme, other than that of supporting the Zelensky government and its NATO backers, in the same way that social patriots supported capitalist states in WWI and II, and that Stalin supported and armed the bourgeois forces of the KMT in 1925-7?
The policy of the Stalinists, in China, was disastrous, but, Trotsky says, it did not mean that the ebb in the revolutionary wave was permanent. Indeed, the fact of the 1949 Revolution showed that to be the case, though the nature of that revolution, to be discussed later, can't be divorced from the consequences of the earlier mistakes and betrayals. In the age of imperialism, it is the case that periods of long wave stagnation, in developed economies, can, simultaneously, be periods of greater capital accumulation, in newly industrialising economies.
The reason for that is that, to respond to a crisis of overproduction of capital, relative to the social working-day/labour-supply, capital engages in a technological revolution, to raise productivity, by replacing labour with fixed capital. Its this process, producing the same or greater level of output, but with less labour and capital, that results in slower growth of gross output, but a faster rise in net output/surplus product/value. However, another means of dealing with the relative shortage of labour/overproduction of capital, instead of introducing, new, more expensive technology is to look for new sources of labour supply. That is like the process set out by Marx in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 9, of this long-wave cycle, in which new areas of land must be brought into cultivation.
Not every country with large amounts of available labour is suitable, just as not every large area of cultivable land is suitable. The latter requires that its accessible for development, fertile, close to existing markets and so on. The former also requires adequate infrastructure for firms to operate efficiently, but also requires labour that is educated to a minimum level and disciplined. So, in such periods, capital can be deployed in areas where such resources are available, meaning where some level of development has already taken place, and where domestic markets are a reasonable size, and capable of more rapid expansion. In the period of stagnation for developed economies, from the 1920's into the mid 1930's, therefore, a relative outperformance of some newly industrialising economies, like China, was possible, and, along with it, goes a continued increase in the social weight of the working-class.
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