Lars T Lih, Lenin and Permanent Revolution

In a very long article in The Weekly Worker, covering a range of subjects, all relating to Leninism, and its development into a cult, Lars T Lih, talks about Lenin's April Theses, seen by Trotskyists and Stalinists alike, as Lenin having gone over to Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution. I find Lih's argument, in relation to this, not only unconvincing, but strange.

He writes, of Trotsky's account,

“This story has all the earmarks of a good heroic narrative. First, it is an exciting story, full of colourful, corroborative detail and dramatic episodes. Just like Stalin’s hero narrative published a few months earlier in spring 1924, Trotsky’s story gives us a Lenin as a theoretical innovator and a rebel against established dogma - even though, in this case, the established dogma was his own earlier doctrine! A new anti-Lenin figure is introduced: Lev Kamenev. Despite the fact that Kamenev was one of Lenin’s top lieutenants for over a decade, he now becomes an icon for the bad, ‘semi-Menshevik’ sort of Bolshevik.”

Firstly, is what Lenin argued in The April Theses, and in the associated “Letters On Tactics”, a rebellion against his own earlier “dogma”, i.e. the concept of a two stage revolution, symbolised by first a Democratic Dictatorship of The Proletariat and Peasantry (bourgeois-democracy), followed, some time later, after a period of capitalist development, by a proletarian revolution, symbolised by The Dictatorship of the Proletariat (Workers'/soviet democracy)? No, clearly, it is not, for reasons that both Lenin, himself, and Trotsky described.

For Lenin, the formulation of The Democratic Dictatorship of The Proletariat and Peasantry, was seen to be algebraic, reflecting the fact that, in Russia, the working-class was a small minority, and the peasantry was the largest section of society. The algebraic nature of this formulation was set out by Lenin as signifying that only history itself would determine just how the balance of forces within it would play out, in the course of events. As Lenin notes, even in 1905, he wrote, in Two Tactics of Social-Democracy,

“Like everything else in the world, the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry has a past and a future. Its past is autocracy, serfdom, monarchy, and privilege....Its future is the struggle against private property, the struggle of the wage-worker against the employer, the struggle for socialism....”

(Letters On Tactics)

Moreover, Lih talks of Trotsky introducing a new “anti-Lenin” character, into this narrative, suggesting that no such theoretical antagonism between the two existed, in reality. A reading of Letters on Tactics, shows precisely such an antagonism between Lenin and the “Old Bolsheviks”, of whom Lenin picks out Kamenev as their representative.

In fact, even before the publication of The April Theses, this antagonism between the two had flared up, with Lenin sending increasingly angry missives back to Russia, about the positions taken by Kamenev, Zinoviev and Stalin, in relation to their support for the Provisional Government, on the basis of The Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry.

"On March 6 he telegraphed through Stockholm to Petrograd: “Our tactic; absolute lack of confidence; no support to the new government; suspect Kerensky especially; arming of proletariat the sole guarantee; immediate elections to the Petrograd Duma; no rapprochement with other parties. In this directive, only the suggestion about elections to the Duma instead of the Soviet, had an episodic character and soon dropped out of sight...

On the 17th of March, through friends in Stockholm, he wrote a letter filled with alarm. “Our party would disgrace itself forever, kill itself politically, if it took part in such deceit ... I would choose an immediate split with no matter whom in our party rather than surrender to social patriotism ...” After this apparently impersonal threat – having definite people in mind however – Lenin adjures:

“Kamenev must understand that a world historic responsibility rests upon him.”

Kamenev is named here because it is a question of political principle. If Lenin had had a practical militant problem in mind, he would have been more likely to mention Stalin. But in just those hours Lenin was striving to communicate the intensity of his will to Petrograd across smoking Europe, Kamenev with the co-operation of Stalin was turning sharply toward social patriotism."

(Trotsky - History of The Russian Revolution, Chapter 15)

In other words, it was neither Lenin nor Trotsky “innovating”, here, but applying, in practice, their existing theory. It was Kamenev, Zinoviev and Stalin who were failing to apply that theory, in practice, on the basis of the real material conditions, and who, instead, were applying simply a dogma, a mantra, without analysing the nature of the material conditions they faced.

Lih, says,

“The story as told by Lenin himself a few years later is very different: “On April 7, I published my theses, in which I called for caution and patience.” He goes on to tell his 1921 audience that in April 1917, a “left tendency demanded the immediate overthrow of the government”, but that he “proceeded from the assumption that the masses had to be won over. [The government] cannot be overthrown just now [in April 1917], for it holds the vlast due to support from the worker soviets; to date, the government enjoys the confidence of the workers.””

But, neither Trotsky nor Lenin were calling for the overthrow of the Provisional Government at that time. There is a vast difference between that, and their actual position, based on permanent revolution, of no support for the Provisional Government, and the building up of their forces within the soviets where, real power in society now rested. But, there is also a vast difference between that position, and that of Kamenev of supporting the Provisional Government, and its position of "revolutionary defencism".  Its only when that process has run its course, and the Bolsheviks have the support of the soviets in the main industrial centres, that both Lenin and Trotsky, call for the overthrow of the government, symbolised by the demand “All Power To The Soviets”. So, this is a clumsy and false dichotomy, introduced by Lih, who continues,

“According to the rearming narrative, the danger Lenin faced on his return was (allegedly) from conciliatory ‘semi-Mensheviks’, such as Kamenev and Stalin. According to Lenin himself in 1921, the danger he faced consisted of impatient leftists, who needed to be slowed down. And when we turn to the text of the theses, we find - surprise, surprise! - Lenin’s memory did not fail him. The need for “patient explanation” (Lenin’s mantra after his return to Russia) was the central novelty of the theses.”

So, Lenin's threat to split the party, not a split with ultralefts, but with “The Old Bolsheviks”, and other elements driving the Bolsheviks towards “social-patriotism”, is all just a myth, it appears, for Lih. Of course, Lenin – and Trotsky – argued against ultra-Leftists and Blanquists seeking a premature insurrection. That was precisely what their response to the July Days, was all about! Of course, Lenin – and Trotsky – argued the need to “patiently explain” in order that, the dialectical processes of the revolution, in a condition of dual power, as described by Trotsky in Permanent Revolution, and also set out by Lenin in The April Theses, and Letters On Tactics provided them with the conditions for such an overthrow, proceeding, not via the support for that government that Kamenev had argued for, but in Lenin's demand for it to become a Workers Government, symbolised by the demand, “Down With The Capitalist Ministers”, which, of course, Kerensky et al refused to accept.

Lih quotes some of the contents of Lenin's position in The Theses, but fails to quote those that rip his argument to shreds. For example, contrary to the impression given by Lih, Lenin writes, following up the sentiments expressed in his earlier messages from abroad,

“How can the petty bourgeoisie be “pushed” into power, if even now it can take the power, but does not want to?

This can be done only by separating the proletarian, the Communist, party, by waging a proletarian class struggle free from the timidity of those petty bourgeois. Only the consolidation of the proletarians who are free from the influence of the petty bourgeoisie in deed and not only in word can make the ground so hot under the feet of the petty bourgeoisie that it will be obliged under certain circumstances to take the power; it is even within the bounds of possibility that Guchkov and Milyukov—again under certain circumstances—will be for giving full and sole power to Chkheidze, Tsereteli, the S.R.s, and Steklov, since, after all, these are “defencists”.

Lih does not seem to understand the meaning of permanent revolution, as set out by Marx, and later Trotsky, and described by Lenin in the Theses and Letters on Tactics. He seems to understand it, in the corrupted form presented by Bukharin, to justify the Stalinist tactics and failure in 1927, in relation to the Chinese Revolution. In other words, he views it in formalistic rather than dialectical terms. He sees these as two distinct and separated revolutions, as events, rather than as part of a single, continuous, simultaneous and intermingled process.

The point about permanent revolution, as set out by Marx in his 1850 Address, and as set out by Trotsky and Lenin, is not only that the tasks of the bourgeois national revolution are undertaken by the proletariat, in conjunction with the peasantry/petty-bourgeoisie, but that they are undertaken by proletarian means, not by bourgeois-democratic means. In other words, even the Constituent Assembly comes into being only on the basis of the actions of the soviets, whose role continues even after such an assembly is constituted.

In 1850, Marx could not formulate that precisely, because it is only after the Paris Commune that the outlines of such means become apparent. Yet, he was still able to write,

“Alongside the new official governments they must simultaneously establish their own revolutionary workers’ governments, either in the form of local executive committees and councils or through workers’ clubs or committees, so that the bourgeois-democratic governments not only immediately lost the support of the workers but find themselves from the very beginning supervised and threatened by authorities behind which stand the whole mass of the workers. In a word, from the very moment of victory the workers’ suspicion must be directed no longer against the defeated reactionary party but against their former ally, against the party which intends to exploit the common victory for itself.”

The whole point about 1905 and 1917, which confirmed permanent revolution, was that the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, were carried out by proletarian means, by the establishment of workers and peasants soviets, but as Marx, Lenin and Trotsky recognised, in the very process of doing so, the conflicting class interests of the proletariat with those of both the bourgeoisie, and the petty-bourgeoisie/peasantry would become apparent. It is this context in which the process of patiently explaining occurs, and through which the Bolsheviks win over the majority in the soviets that, in April, they lacked, and which was required to move to the insurrection.

Lih also fails to distinguish between a proletarian revolution, and a commitment to immediately introduce Socialism. That is the same conflation that Stalin introduced later, in justification of his theory of Socialism In One Country. If Lenin did not believe that socialism could be constructed in Russia, Stalin argued, then why did he argue for the socialist revolution, rather than limiting himself to simply the bourgeois-democratic revolution? But, as Trotsky notes in his Appendix to The Revolution Betrayed, even Stalin, initially, recognised the distinction.

“In April 1924, three months after the death of Lenin, Stalin wrote, his brochure of compilations called The Foundations of Leninism:

“For the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the efforts of one country are enough – to this the history of our own revolution testifies. For the final victory of socialism, for the organization of socialist production, the efforts of one country, especially a peasant country like ours, are not enough – for this we must have the efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries.”

(The Revolution Betrayed)

A proletarian revolution, and creation of a workers' state are a necessary condition for the development of Socialism, but not a sufficient condition. Neither Lenin nor Trotsky, could argue in 1917, for an immediate introduction of socialism, but that is not at all the same thing as arguing for a proletarian revolution. The proletarian revolution, was, in fact, the precondition for the Bolsheviks commencing those tasks which, indeed, lay the basis for a future transition to Socialism, such as utilisation of the state to promote large-scale socialised capital (state-capitalism) at the expense of small-scale capital, and petty commodity production, the introduction of a monopoly of foreign trade, and so on.

Lih says,

“In account after account of 1917, you will read that Lenin’s theses called for ‘bourgeois-democratic revolution’ to be replaced by ‘socialist revolution’ - and yet, despite ubiquitous quote marks, neither these words nor any equivalent expression appears in Lenin’s text.”

Yet, I have already shown that Lenin does say that, i.e.

“Like everything else in the world, the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry has a past and a future. Its past is autocracy, serfdom, monarchy, and privilege....Its future is the struggle against private property, the struggle of the wage-worker against the employer, the struggle for socialism....”

(Letters On Tactics)

What does Lih think Lenin means, here, if not the dialectical transformation of the bourgeois revolution into the proletarian revolution? In other words, the revolution starts out as fulfilling the tasks of the bourgeois national revolution, and that is undertaken by revolutionary proletarian means, via the soviets, in conjunction with the peasants/petty-bourgeoisie, but inevitably – as a result of the antagonistic class interests involved – increasingly is forced to also address the tasks of the proletarian revolution, the tasks, not of establishing bourgeois productive and social relations, but socialist relations.

On the basis of Lih's argument, we must either believe that there was no ideological difference between Lenin and Kamenev, because Lenin, actually never adopted the theory of permanent revolution, and its consequences, and so, continued to pursue the stageist conception of bourgeois revolution, to be followed only much later, by proletarian revolution, or else, vice versa, that Lenin, like Trotsky did argue on the basis of permanent revolution, and Kamenev et al, did not disagree.

I have briefly shown that the first is not true. Lenin threatened to split the party if it did not drop its support for the Provisional Government, and that struggle was directed at Kamenev, who was the ideological figurehead of that group of “Old Bolsheviks”. What Lih does not mention, is that, in fact, as a result of that ideological struggle, a large number of those Old Bolsheviks, themselves split, and went over to the Mensheviks.

As Trotsky notes, at least Kamenev and Zioviev had the principle, and honesty, to continue their polemic against Lenin, whereas Stalin simply avoided the confrontation, by sliding into the background during the struggle. Nor does he mention that a part of Lenin's victory was secured by, the influx of new, younger workers into the party, mobilised precisely because of Lenin's stance of refusal of support for the Provisional Government, its war drive, and austerity, on the backs of those workers (reminiscent today, already, of the actions of Starmer and Blue Labour), as against Lenin's espousal of the demands for Land, Peace, and Bread.

So, we are left with the second option that Kamenev et al did accept that adoption of Permanent Revolution. But, for the same reasons outlined above, its clear that is not true either. If they agreed, why did they support the Provisional Government, why did Lenin write the April Theses, and threaten to split the party? 

That they had to accept that they had lost that argument, over the coming weeks, is not at all the same as saying there was no argument, no disagreement. And, in fact, although they submitted to party discipline, they never did change their own view on the question, which was seen in their resumption of that Old Bolshevik, two-stage mantra, when it came to the Chinese Revolution, as detailed by Trotsky. They went back to the position they held of support for the Popular Front Provisional Government, and consequent subordination to the bourgeoisie, and limiting of the revolution to purely a bourgeois revolution, as seen in their insistence on the Chinese Communist Party joining and subordinating itself to the KMT, the party of the Chinese bourgeoisie. They continued that disastrous position even after that bourgeoisie/KMT had slaughtered tens of thousands of worker-communists, in April 1927. As Trotsky, says, its precisely this difference that distinguishes the Chinese Revolution of 1925-27, with that of Russia in 1917.