In every case, this Bonapartist/military regime is highly inefficient, draining surplus value/product that should be used for capital accumulation. The bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie are continually thrown against it.
“Before these collisions develop to the point of becoming an open revolutionary struggle, they will pass, from all the available facts, through a “constitutional” stage. The conflicts between the bourgeoisie and its own military cliques will inevitably draw in the upper layer of the petty-bourgeois masses, through the medium of a “third party” or by other means. From the standpoint of economics and of culture, the former are extraordinarily feeble. Their political strength lies in their numbers. Therefore, the slogans of formal democracy win over, or are capable of winning over, not only the petty-bourgeois masses but also the broad working masses, precisely because they reveal to them the possibility, which is essentially illusory, of opposing their will to that of the generals, the country squires and the capitalists. The proletarian vanguard educates the masses by using this experience, and leads them forward.” (p 187)
This illustrates the illusion of bourgeois-democracy, and why the peasantry and petty-bourgeoisie is benefited by it, as against the workers, particularly in these still essentially agrarian economies. In them, the peasantry constitutes the largest mass, and the petty-bourgeoisie of small producers is often larger than the industrial working-class. The working-class grows rapidly, and sees the illusion of its numbers, in the same light as that of these middle-classes. But, as Trotsky points out, elsewhere, that is an illusion of the comparative social power of different strata.
The bourgeoisie is tiny, but controls the state, and its own interests coincide with the peasants and petty-bourgeoisie, as against the workers. The middle classes are large in size, which is significant in terms of votes, but are economically and socially feeble. Even, today, for example, the petty-bourgeoisie in Britain comprises about 15 million small business people, self-employed etc., or a third of the electorate, which is the electoral and membership base of the Tory Party, and Brexit. But, they are economically and socially impotent.
“the main strength of the fascists is their strength in numbers. Yes, they have received many votes. But in the social struggle, votes are not decisive. The main army of fascism still consists of the petty bourgeoisie and the new middle class: the small artisans and shopkeepers of the cities, the petty officials, the employees, the technical personnel, the intelligentsia, the impoverished peasantry. On the scales of election statistics, a thousand fascist votes weigh as much as a thousand Communist votes. But on the scales of the revolutionary struggle, a thousand workers in one big factory represent a force a hundred times greater than a thousand petty officials, clerks, their wives, and their mothers-in-law. The great bulk of the fascists consists of human dust.”
The experience of Russia, Trotsky says, shows that, during this process, the proletariat, organised in soviets, can draw behind it large sections of the peasantry. So, note, here, that nothing Trotsky says, involves support for bourgeois-democracy, which is illusory, and detrimental to workers interests, as against being beneficial to the interests of its class enemies, and that the means of fighting for it, in so far as it has to, is that of the proletarian revolution, of soviets and workers self-government, based on proletarian, not bourgeois democracy. The soviets are not posited as an alternative to that formal democracy, but developed as part of the struggle for it, and so, from the start, offer the prospect of simply by-passing it, or quickly supplanting it.
“The experience of Russia shows that during the progress of the revolution, the proletariat organized in soviets can, by a correct policy, directed towards the conquest of power, draw behind it the peasantry, fling it against the front of formal democracy embodied in the Constituent Assembly, and switch it on the rails of soviet democracy. In any case, these results were not attained by simply opposing the soviets to the Constituent Assembly, but by drawing the masses towards the soviets while maintaining the slogans of formal democracy up to the very moment of the conquest of power and even after it.” (p 187-8)
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