Stalin/Bukharin, in their theses, and evaluation of the conditions, had concluded that the revolutionary situation was assured “for many years”, thus emptying the concept of permanent revolution of all meaning. But, if that was the case, then the potential for any “stabilisation” was also excluded. However, Trotsky points out, whilst the proletariat seeks to utilise a condition of crisis for its revolutionary ambitions, the bourgeoisie seeks to bring about stabilisation. Both are, then, premises for class struggle.
“We once wrote that stabilization is an “object” of the class struggle and not an arena established for it in advance.” (p 174)
Bukharin had sneered at this “Trotskyist” formula, only later to smuggle it into his own report to the ECCI. But, like all of the other “Trotskyist” positions that the Stalinists/Bukharinists subsequently adopted, it was done without understanding the actual content of the formula.
“Naturally, absolute stabilization is absolutely opposed to an absolute revolutionary situation. The conversion of these absolutes into each other is “absolutely impossible”. But if one descends from these ridiculous theoretical summits, it turns out that before the complete and final triumph of socialism, the relatively revolutionary situation will very likely be converted more than once into relative stabilization (and vice versa). All other conditions remaining equal, the danger of the conversion of a revolutionary situation into bourgeois stabilization is all the greater the less capable is the proletarian leadership of exploiting the situation.” (p 174-5)
Not only are the objective, material conditions necessary, and the conditions of the long-wave cycle, favourable to labour rather than capital, but, also, this subjective factor of adequate revolutionary leadership is required. In the post-war period, the material conditions, and the long-wave cycle was highly favourable to proletarian revolution, but the subjective factor of revolutionary leadership, most certainly was not.
The bourgeoisie, via imperialism, pressed down on Stalinism, most visibly in the form of the adoption of “peaceful coexistence”, by the USSR, and its active role in sabotaging proletarian revolutions, wherever they arose, spontaneously. It was channelled into the policies of the individual Stalinist parties, across the globe, which became merely national, social-democratic parties, often to the Right of the Left flank of the established social-democratic parties. But, that, in turn, was transmitted into those social-democratic parties, themselves. In turn, as the “Trotskyists” and New Left competed for influence, it was also transmitted into these organisations too, most clearly seen in their collapse into economism, syndicalism and workerism, in relation to domestic activity, and into petty-bourgeois nationalism/anti-imperialism, and popular frontism, in respect of their international activity. They became cheerleaders for these petty-bourgeois forces and ideas, and more so, when the period of stagnation set in, and the arena of industrial struggle was closed down.
“The leadership of the Chiang Kai-shek clique was superior to that of Chen Duxiu and of Tang Pingshan. But it is not this leadership that decided: foreign imperialism guided Chiang Kai-shek by threats, by promises, by its direct assistance. The Communist International directed Chen Duxiu. Two leaderships of world dimensions crossed swords here. That of the Communist International, through all the stages of the struggle, appeared as absolutely worthless, and it thus facilitated to the highest degree the task of the imperialist leadership. In such conditions, the transformation of the revolutionary situation into bourgeois stabilization is not only not “impossible”, but is absolutely inevitable. Even more: it is accomplished, and within certain limits it is completed.” (p 175)
The same can be seen today with the imperialist leadership's guidance of Zelensky and Netanyahu, but today, without any global proletarian forces to confront them, such is the debasement and degeneration of the international socialist movement. Indeed, as with the false leadership of that movement by Stalinism in the 1920's, and 30's, today, a large part of the false leadership of that movement has simply become apologists for, and cheerleaders of imperialism, i.e. has become social-imperialist.
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