Because Marxists are concerned with proletarian, not bourgeois power, proletarian not bourgeois democratic revolution, Permanent Revolution explains, not only why the workers must remain independent of these other class forces, even as they ally with them for immediate practical activity, but why, if it does not do so, it will inevitably suffer the consequences when the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie split from it, as happened in 1848, and in 1927, in Shanghai and Wuhan. Moreover, as Trotsky describes, and Lenin also set out, in his Letters On Tactics, if the workers' party fails to take up and struggle for these demands of the workers, then, as with Kerensky, in 1917, the workers will simply abandon them.
By contrast, the adoption of the ideas of Permanent Revolution, in such conditions, does enable the use of demands in a transitional manner. In such a revolutionary situation, even distributional demands for higher wages, become transitional, because, as employers baulk at paying them, and close workplaces, so it leads to the need to occupy the workplace, to institute real workers' control of production, and so on. Its true that, in such conditions, the ruling-class will not sit idly by, relying on the institutions and procedures of formal democracy. It will prepare a counter-revolutionary assault, using its state, fascist paramilitaries, and often both.
But, that does not, at all, mean that, in a non-revolutionary situation, the ruling-class will not utilise, or even establish, bourgeois-democracy, because, as Lenin described, in State and Revolution, it is the most effective and efficient political regime via which it rules.
“If, during “decisive moments” of the revolution, bourgeois democracy is inevitably torpedoed (and that not only in the colonies), this in no wise signifies that it is impossible during inter-revolutionary periods.” (p 193-4)
In 1925-7, a revolutionary situation did exist in China, and so the principles of Permanent Revolution applied. But, it was the ECCI which failed to apply them. They obstructed the formation of workers and peasants soviets, because, in order to retain an illusory support from the bourgeoisie, represented by the KMT, they rejected the idea of the independence of the workers and peasants, and insisted it subordinate itself to, and liquidate itself inside, the KMT. In doing so, it facilitated the coup of Chiang Kai Shek, and, then, the betrayal of Wang Chin Wei. It let a revolutionary period slip, and a counter-revolutionary period to commence, just as it had done in Germany and Britain.
“Now, before a new “decisive moment”, a long period must be passed through, during which the old questions will have to be approached in a new manner.
To assert that in the colonies there can be no constitutional or parliamentary periods of evolution, is to renounce the utilization of methods of struggle which are essential to the highest degree, and is, above all, to make hard for oneself a correct political orientation, by driving the Party into a blind alley.” (p 194)
As Marxists, we do not support bourgeois-democracy, nor propagate the lie that the workers can achieve their class goals through it. We are not parliamentarists, and, time and again, as with Chile, in 1973, the truth of that assessment has been demonstrated. As Ralph Miliband described in “Parliamentary Socialism”, the sham of bourgeois-democracy puts up one barrier after another against workers being able to even elect a real Workers' Party into the position of majority government. Even the bourgeois workers parties, like the Labour Party, face obstruction of any measures in workers' interest that significantly challenge the ruling-class. Wilson's Labour government, was reformist and compliant, and yet faced the possibility of a coup organised by sections of the ruling-class. But, that does not mean the ruling-class will never utilise bourgeois-democracy, as against fascist or authoritarian political regimes, nor that, when it does, Marxists shun it.
“To say that for China, as, moreover, for all the other states of the world, there is no way out towards a free, in other words, a socialist development, by following the parliamentary path, is one thing, is right. But to claim that in the evolution of China, or of the colonies, there can be no constitutional period or stage, that is another thing, that is wrong.” (p 194)
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