3. The Soviets and The Constituent Assembly
Trotsky's comments, in this section, are highly significant, in relation to the attempt of sections of the social-imperialist “left”, to turn him into an opportunist supporter of bourgeois-democracy, as against a revolutionary opponent of it. That attempt, used to justify their support for Zelensky's corrupt regime, and its NATO backers, leads them into, and flows from, the same Menshevik/Stalinist stages theory, against which Trotsky was fighting. It is also the basis of the petty-bourgeois nationalist privileging of bourgeois-democracy over international socialism that led to them being mere cheerleaders for the former, for the last 80 years, and de facto opponents of the latter. It is the essence of idiot anti-imperialism.
Trotsky begins by quoting Lenin.
“We hope that it is not necessary to raise here the general question of formal, that is, of bourgeois democracy. Our attitude towards it has nothing in common with the sterile anarchist negation. The slogan and the norms of democracy, from the formal point of view, are deduced in a different way for the various countries of a well-defined stage in the evolution of bourgeois society. The democratic slogans contain for a certain period not only illusions, not only deception, but also an animating historical force.
“So long as the struggle of the working class for full power is not on the order of the day, it is our duty to utilize every form of bourgeois democracy.” (Lenin, Report at the 2nd All-Russia Trade Union congress, Works, January 20, 1919, Vol.XX, Part 2, p.298.)” (p 186)
That Trotsky opens with this quote arises from the attempts of the Mensheviks/Stalinists to tie Trotsky's revolutionary position to the anarchists, in contrast to their own opportunism. Trotsky's position, as with that of Lenin, was not that of a supporter of bourgeois-democracy, but an opponent of it. However, both recognised that, not only the large mass of the peasantry/petty-bourgeoisie continued to hold illusions in that formal democracy, but so did the majority of workers. If that were not the case, then the proletarian revolution would, long before, have been a relatively easy matter. It's the same recognition that leads to the tactic of the United Front.
But, Trotsky's and Lenin's position is never that of opportunism in supporting bourgeois-democracy, as some kind of inevitable stage through which the working-class must pass. The whole method of permanent revolution, and of transitional demands, is one in which, having accepted a reality of support for that formal democracy, by a large section of the masses, the revolutionaries say, “okay, you do not, yet, agree with us about the sham nature of this formal democracy, but we will show it to you, in practice. Although we do not support it, we will support your attempts to bring it about or defend it against fascist attacks. However, we insist that, in your fight for that democracy, you fight for it to be consistent democracy. If you do that, you will see that it is a sham, and empty camouflage for the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Moreover, in fighting for that democracy, where it does not exist, or fighting against attacks on it by fascists, or other states, we will show you that, any successful fight will require use, not of the methods and institutions of that formal democracy, but those of direct, proletarian democracy, and workers' power.”
That is what Marx proposed, in his 1850 Address, and it is what the Bolsheviks attempted in 1905, and again in 1917. In China, the revolution had proceeded in a similar fashion, with the lower strata of the petty-bourgeoisie and peasantry engaging in agrarian revolts, and attacks on government troops and bureaucrats. But, as against Marx's 1850 advice, to separate the workers, and build centres of proletarian power and self-government, and its application in 1905 and 1917, in the creation of soviets, the Stalinists and Menshevists blocked any such development, as they sought to retain the support of the bourgeoisie, and to limit the revolution to the achievement of formal democracy.
The result was the defeat of the revolutionary movement, and victory of the KMT coup, which ushered in a period of Bonapartism and military rule. The same process has been witnessed, repeatedly, across the globe, in the post-war period. These Bonapartist/military regimes, though socially based on the middle classes, become the vehicle for modernisation and industrialisation – or else they inevitably collapse, by trying to swim against history. The actual forms of that depend on a series of other conditions. Some were dependent on the USSR, as with Cuba, Vietnam etc., and become deformed workers' states; others, like Egypt, Syria, and Iraq created state capitalist economies, whilst the regime of the Khmer Rouge, in Cambodia, rather than seeking modernisation and industrialisation, attempted to move backwards, and inevitably collapsed.
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