Trotsky goes on to list the places where such parliaments had been established, including Egypt, India, Ireland and South America. Its not necessary to support bourgeois-democracy, or to cease explaining its sham nature, to still utilise it, the better to expose it. Its no different to not supporting bargaining within the system, as against explaining its sham nature and limitations, and need to abolish the wages system, whilst continuing to support workers who have not yet reached that revolutionary consciousness, and who do continue to strike and bargain within the system. Our goal is to utilise such periods to explain these things to the workers to gain their support, and, thereby, develop that revolutionary consciousness.
“What reason is there for asserting that after the crushing of the revolution which has just taken place, China will not pass through a parliamentary or pseudo-parliamentary phase, or that it will not go through a serious political struggle to gain this stage of evolution? Such an assertion has no foundation at all.” (p 194-5)
If the idea is put forward that workers should focus on struggling for higher wages, presenting such activity as class struggle, and, on this basis, place all of its activity on such behaviour, then, that represents economism and opportunism. It is a fallacy in representing such activity, and the claim that such struggle results in a change of workers' consciousness. The concept involves a spontaneous development of class consciousness, as proposed by Luxemburg, along with the potential to recruit individuals to centrist and syndicalist organisations, on the basis of building the party. It is even worse, when it amounts simply to social-democracy, and a restriction to merely trades union consciousness. Those involved, as much as they like, can claim to be pursuing a revolutionary agenda, but the reality is that they are not, no matter how much they emphasise “more militancy”.
It is not the extent of their demand for more militancy, and left-wing rhetoric that is revolutionary. To be revolutionary, it requires that a program, based on transforming the consciousness of workers, is put forward. Its not raising wages, but recognition of the need to abolish the wages system, the need to exercise control over capital, to establish soviets and so on.
In conditions where such a revolutionary situation arises, it is those ideas that revolutionaries must put all of their activity into developing, not simply strikes for higher wages, building a bigger demo, and so on. It is always the case that Marxists explain that rises in wages are a dead-end, just as it is to explain that bourgeois-democracy is a sham, but their emphasis on that, as against their patience in supporting workers, and their pursuit of those goals, is a function of the actual conditions that exist.
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