“To speak of a soviet government without speaking of the dictatorship of the proletariat means to deceive the workers and to help the bourgeoisie deceive the peasants. But to speak of the dictatorship of the proletariat without speaking of the leading role of the Communist Party means once more to convert the dictatorship of the proletariat into a trap for the proletariat.” (p 297-8)
Again, this shows how far the “Left” has degenerated, compared to the Stalinists and even Mensheviks, of the 1920's. Today's “Left” does not even cloak its social-patriotism and social-imperialism in the concept of a defence of “revolutionary democracy”, as the Mensheviks did, in arguing a defence of Kerensky's Russia. The Ukrainian social patriots, as well as the social imperialists of the USC et al, simply act as cheerleaders, even for Zelensky's corrupt, crony-capitalist regime, whilst the pro-Putin social-imperialists simply act as verbal cannon fodder for the opposing camp of Russia and China, just as, in the past, the petty-bourgeois “Left” has acted as cheerleaders for the Viet Cong, Algerian NLF, Khomeini, PIRA and so on.
As they abase themselves as Sherpas for one reactionary bourgeois or petty-bourgeois nationalist movement after another, all concern for the interests of the global working-class and international socialist revolution is abandoned. One group of those moralists backed Gaddafi, in the name of his “anti-imperialism”, whilst, in 2011, we had the equally, if not more, grotesque image of people who still call themselves Trotskyists backing medievalist jihadists, backed by the feudal Gulf Monarchies and NATO imperialism, to overthrow Gaddafi, in the name of “democracy”, with the inevitable catastrophic consequences for Libyan workers.
These sects carry uneducated discussions on the meaning of The Dictatorship of The Proletariat, in their papers, and make ridiculous demands for the establishment of a Workers Government, when, in fact, the only party, currently, that could form a “Workers Government”, as an alternative to the Tories, is Starmer's reactionary, nationalist Blue Labour! Otherwise, as with the Stalinist administrative calls for soviets, in China, in 1927, we are to believe that the calls, in themselves, bring forth such changes, by some miraculous, spontaneous process. It, again, completely confuses labels and forms with class content.
“The Chinese Communist Party, however, is now extremely weak. The number of its worker-members is limited to a few thousand. There are about fifty thousand workers in the Red trade unions. Under these conditions, to speak of the dictatorship of the proletariat as an immediate task is obviously unthinkable.” (p 298)
Yet, as Trotsky describes, these numbers, even in conditions of counter-revolution, are superior to those we have today, which shows just how disastrous has been the role of Stalinism, and of the petty-bourgeois “Left”, in the intervening period, as it has become increasingly separated from the working-class, and turned itself into a series of competing student debating societies that plays at being revolutionaries, whilst, in reality, being mere cheerleaders for one liberal cause after another. Trotsky noted that one of the main factors in the continued support for the revolution, by the Chinese workers and peasants, was the effects on their own consciousness of the Russian Revolution, despite the subsequent betrayals of Stalinism.
Today, in conditions in which the further development of capitalism/imperialism, and of the global working-class, should have been the material basis for an even greater international revolutionary movement, the opposite is the case, because, rather than learning the lessons of the betrayals by Stalinism, the petty-bourgeois “left” has compounded them, as it collapsed into moralism and bourgeois-nationalism, voluntarily subordinating itself, and becoming mere cheerleaders of one bourgeois cause after another, as a perfect example of its stageism, and Popular Frontism, rather than basing itself on the concept of permanent revolution, and the workers' united front.
It doesn't even seem to understand the basis upon which Marxists supported the bourgeois-national revolutions of the 19th century (permanent revolution), and instead turns it into some kind of moral quest, in its own right. The basis for Marxists supporting the bourgeois-national revolution, in the 19th century, was that it was part and parcel of the need to create the conditions in which capitalism itself could develop most freely, and rapidly.
Why did Marxists want that? Because, as Marx set out, it is that, which is the precondition for the development of a large, concentrated and class conscious proletariat, as well as of the productive forces required for Socialism. In other words, the destination was C, but to get there required passing through B, but the aim was to make that passage as rapidly as possible, and where possible, go straight to C, skipping over B entirely. That was the meaning of Engels Letter to Danielson, for example. The petty-bourgeois "Left" is still treating the world as though the conditions of the 19th century, and its battles were determinant, rather than those of even 20th century imperialism, of a global ruling class and proletariat, in which the searching after bourgeois national solutions has become absolutely reactionary.
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