At the very moment that the question of bourgeois revolution is posed (or attacks on existing bourgeois-democracy, by fascism) the Marxist also poses the question of the proletarian revolution as well, and they begin to mobilise the working-class, independently from the bourgeoisie, precisely for that purpose, warning the workers of their inevitable betrayal by the bourgeoisie. Indeed, as The Theses On The National and Colonial Questions states, the communists only support bourgeois-democratic movements where the possibility of organising those revolutionary workers movements, even in embryo, exists. Our goal is not that of the bourgeois-liberal, of simply bringing about bourgeois-democracy, but of waging the struggle for International Socialism.
As Trotsky set out, in relation to China, one of the most obvious examples of that was over the question of soviets. The Stalinists argued that it was only acceptable to support the establishment of soviets after the bourgeois-democratic revolution had been completed. To raise it before then would scare off the bourgeoisie, and so threaten the alliance with the KMT. Such subordination of workers' interests to those of the bourgeoisie is seen in every Popular Front, and Popular Frontist organisations, on this same basis of not scaring off the bourgeois liberals, the radical vicars and so on.
But, it was the soviets that were the fundamental basis of organising the workers, drawing the peasants behind, not only to make the revolution permanent, but to guard the workers against the inevitable betrayal, and attack on them, by the bourgeoisie, as the Shanghai massacre illustrated negatively, but as the experience of October 1917 had shown positively. It was true that the communists could not arbitrarily demand the creation of soviets, or establish them as empty, artificial bodies, but could only facilitate their creation when the class struggle reached that level of development, which Russia, in 1905 and 1917, Germany in 1923, and China in 1926 (and in part Britain in 1926, and 1984) shows can arise fairly quickly. But, what all of these showed negatively, and 1917 showed positively, is that, when the moment arises, the communists cannot hold it back, simply on the basis of a requirement to support bourgeois-democracy. Indeed, at all times, the communists support bourgeois-democracy in the way a rope supports a hanged man, to use Lenin's phrase, applied to the Labour Party.
Proudhon's dialectic also proceeds from an idealised set of stages, rather than from the material world, but
“Now that he has to put this dialectics into practice, his reason is in default. M. Proudhon's dialectics runs counter to Hegel's dialectics, and now we have M. Proudhon reduced to saying that the order in which he gives the economic categories is no longer the order in which they engender one another. Economic evolutions are no longer the evolutions of reason itself.
What then does M. Proudhon give us? Real history, which is, according to M. Proudhon's understanding, the sequence in which the categories have manifested themselves in order of time? No! History as it takes place in the idea itself? Still less! That is, neither the profane history of categories, nor their sacred history! What history does he give us then? The history of his own contradictions. Let us see how they go, and how they drag M. Proudhon in their train.” (p 106-7)
This is also a perfect explanation of what happens with the Stalinists and other petty-bourgeois socialists, as reality conflicts with their ideas, necessitating a continual veering and tacking in their position, seen as the typical zig-zags of the centrist between reform and revolution, opportunism and ultra-leftism. In relation to Stalinism, its most devastating was its opportunism in the 1920's Popular Frontism that led to the victory of counter-revolution in Britain and China, zigging into the ultra-leftism of the Third Period that resulted in the victory of Nazism, in Germany, followed by the zag back to Popular Front opportunism that led to the victory of fascism in Spain, the derailing of the French workers mass movement, and, ultimately, to the social-imperialism that led to the slaughter of millions in WWII, the hegemony of US imperialism, and the liquidation of the proletarian revolution, for at least three generations after it.
Let us assume, Marx says, that Proudhon is right that real history is only the manifestation of the order in which ideas follow one another in time.
“Each principle has had its own century in which to manifest itself. The principle of authority, for example, had the 11th century, just as the principle of individualism had the 18th century. In logical sequence, it was the century that belonged to the principle, and not the principle which belonged to the century. When, consequently, in order to save principles as much as to save history, we ask ourselves why a particular principle was manifested in the 11th century or in the 18th century rather than in any other, we are necessarily forced to examine minutely what men were like in the 11th century, what they were like in the 18th, what were their respective needs, their productive forces, their mode of production, the raw materials of their production – in short, what were the relations between man and man which resulted from all these conditions of existence. To get to the bottom of all these questions – what is this but to draw up the real, profane history of men in every century and to present these men as both the authors and the actors of their own drama? But the moment you present men as the actors and authors of their own history, you arrive – by detour – at the real starting point, because you have abandoned those eternal principles of which you spoke at the outset.” (p 107)
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