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Democratic permanent revolution |
The following article was published in Weekly Worker 660 February 2007as part of a debate on what direction should the Campaign for a Marxist Party take. The question of permanent revolution must be one of the central issues for the new Campaign for a Marxist Party. The few revolutionary communists who have joined the campaign are not in a position to launch a new world party. However we can and should begin campaigning for the eventual formation of an “international revolutionary democratic communist tendency”. The first step is to begin work around theoretical and programmatic issues. We should seek to involve communists from as many countries as we can in this process. We need an open debate about the theory of revolution and the programme, not only amongst ourselves, but with communists internationally. Those members of the Campaign in Britain should resist the idea of launching a mass British-UK Marxist party. This is wrong in theory and not on the cards in practice. There must be no adapting to national-communism or pandering to left-sectarian illusions about launching an independent British Marxist party. Communists in Britain, as part of building an international tendency, should work inside the political movement for a new mass workers party. It means intervening in the movement which involves sections of trade unionists, Respect, Campaign for a New Workers Party, the Labour Representation Committee, the Socialist Alliance and the SSP and Solidarity. Communist should agitate for a new mass party but againstLabourism. We should not counterpoise the slogan of a Marxist Party to this movement. We should intervene by raising the need for a democratic programme to unite the working class. We should raise the slogan for a republican socialist party in opposition to economism and Labourism. In so far as the movement is able to form itself into one united party, we should aim to organise a revolutionary democratic communist platform directly linked to the politics and programme of the international tendency. This points us towards building internationally and towards political agitation in our own working class movement. Communists in say Australia or France can be part of our campaign with a similar international perspective but adapted to the current state of their own movements. Programme Let us begin with the first task of theory and programme. The Socialist Alliance agreed a programme in 2001. It was then effectively divided into two parts – minimum and maximum. The minimum section proposed thirteen priorities. These included for example stop privatisation - renationalise the railways, tax the rich and big business to rebuild the welfare state, for the right to work - 35 hour week now, defend asylum seekers, end discrimination, oppose racism, sexism and homophobia. All these things are standard fare for the left in Britain, and formed the basis of the SA’s election campaign. The maximum part was a model for British socialist society. What needs to be remembered is that this programme was a common programme not a revolutionary Marxist programme. The aim was to find a minimum programme that the left could unite around so we could oppose the right wing pro-capitalist policies of New Labour. When looked at in the cold light of day the minimum part does not amount to much more than to the politics of the Labour left (welfare state or social monarchy) before the defeat of the miners. The point of this is that there can be a reformist minimum-maximum programme as well as revolutionary versions. A revolutionary Marxist programme does not begin from the programmatic method adopted by the Socialist Alliance. One of the distinguishing features of a revolutionary programme is that it is founded on the science of revolution. Without a theory of revolution there can be no revolutionary programme. This becomes absolutely clear when we begin discussing whether to adopt the framework of minimum, transitional or maximum programmes or some alternative. No sooner had this debate started in Weekly Worker than we began arguing about the Russia revolution and the significance of the Lenin’s 1917 April theses. Revolutionary Marxism begins from the Russia revolution not British social democracy. The lesson I draw from the Russian revolution is that we need a strategy of permanent revolution, although not Trotsky’s version. We therefore need a new theory of permanent revolution. The RDG published an alternative version in Republican Worker (No 6 summer 1988) and in Republican Marxist (No 5 May June 1990). This can be summarized by the slogans for democratic revolution, workers power (i.e. the dictatorship of the proletariat) international socialist revolution and world communism. Mike comments Mike McNair says (WW648 9 November 2006) that I only give the “barest outline of the RDG’s “new theory of permanent revolution”: not enough to justify an extended reply”. Of course he is right. Nevertheless he perceives from my limited comments that this theory is “one step forward from orthodox Trotskyism, but two steps back”. Mike recognises this as an advance because it recognises that “(a) the bourgeoisie is not a particularly democratic class and the absence of ‘parliamentary democracy’ in any state does not imply an ‘incomplete bourgeois revolution’; (b) the motor force of the democratic movement of the late 18th and 19th century was the urban proto-proletariat and emerging proletariat, not the bourgeoisie; and (c) this expresses a class interest of the proletariat in democracy.” However no sooner have we gone forward than Mike thinks we’ve gone two steps back. He fears this theory of permanent revolution cannot deal with the specific nature of the Russian revolution. (e.g. the peasant question). Furthermore “it fails to grasp that Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution was grounded primarily not in Russian dynamics, but in international capitalist dynamics (‘combined and uneven development’)” Fortunately these two steps backward do not come from the theory itself. They arise from a misunderstanding because, as Mike complains, only the “barest outline” is visible. It is my intention in this article to explain the theory of permanent revolution more fully. I hope to show there are no steps backward and that the theory is indeed a “step forward” compared to rival theories. Democratic permanent revolution The first thing to recognise is that we are considering three theories of revolution. I will call these a) Stageism, b) Trotsky’s permanent revolution and c) “democratic (or revolutionary democratic) permanent revolution”. I will concentrate on explaining “democratic permanent revolution”. I intend to write a further article critical of a) and b) All Marxist theory’s of revolution are built around ideas of democratic revolution and socialist revolution. There are however important differences in how these two kinds of revolution are defined and the relationship between them. In general, theories of permanent revolution draw these two revolutions into one ongoing revolutionary process, beginning from today’s conditions and going on uninterruptedly until we arrive at world communism. In democratic permanent revolution, the relationship between democratic revolution and socialist revolution is understood in a dialectical way. Permanent revolution is the unity of opposites - the unity of democratic revolution and socialist revolution. There is a parallel here with how we understand the commodity as the dialectal unity of opposites - use value and value. Plug and socket I will use the analogy of a plug and a socket. The plug and socket form a unity of opposites. The current flows through them when they are united as one. The plug and socket exist as separate entities even though they only work together. If we want to understand how they work, we can pull them apart and examine them as separate and opposite components. It is necessary to draw a clear and sharp distinction between these opposite poles, whether use value and value or democratic revolution and socialist revolution. We identity these opposites not because we want to separate them, but because we want to properly understand how they combine together. Democratic revolution and socialist revolution are the plug and socket of permanent revolution. We study them as separate entities because we recognise they only work when plugged together as one. This is the opposite of the theory of stageism in which plug and socket are separated and kept apart in time and space Permanent revolution is not therefore about merging democratic revolution with socialist revolution into one ill defined and confused mush. It is not about the liquidation of the democratic revolution. It is not about jumping over or skipping the democratic revolution and replacing it with the socialist revolution. It is about the ‘uneven and combined’ unity of the opposites. Growing over or skipping stages Trotsky tells us that in 1916 “Radek was in agreement with “permanent revolution”; but his agreement was with Bukharin’s interpretation of it, according to which the bourgeois revolution in Russia has been completed ………and the proletariat must proceed to capture power under a purely socialist banner”(Trotsky The permanent revolution - results and prospects. Pathfinder New York p176). Thus in 1916 the left Bukharin had abolished the democratic revolution but only in his head! Trotsky rightly regarded the Bukharin-Radek position as ultra left. But in the 1920’s Stalin and his allies misrepresented Trotsky’s theory as Bukharinite, to portray his politics as adventuristic and ultra left. It was claimed that Trotsky had advocated skipping the democratic revolution or substituting the socialist revolution for it. Trotsky was at pains to deny this. He says “in 1924-25, Radek apparently still lived upon the ideological recollections of the Bukharinist position of 1916, which he continued to identify as mine” (Trotsky The permanent revolution - results and prospects. Pathfinder New York p176). Stalin was happy to use Radek to build the case that Trotsky skipped the democratic revolution and underestimated the peasantry. Radek makes an ambiguous statement that in permanent revolution, the democratic revolution (here called “bourgeois revolution”) “will pass directly over into the socialist revolution” Trotsky seizes on this. He takes the words “passing directly over” to explain “this is precisely the theory of growing over and not of skipping over; from this flows a realistic and not adventuristic tactics”.(Trotsky The permanent revolution - results and prospects. Pathfinder New York p220). The Bukharin-Radek theory is not a theory of permanent revolution. It has common lineage with the anarchist theory of instant revolution. Anarchism is about skipping the democratic revolution, skipping the dictatorship of the proletariat, and abolishing the state immediately. All this in the name of speed. Both RDG’s and Trotsky’s theory have in common the growing over of democratic revolution into the socialist revolution. We can no more skip or bypass democratic revolution than we can win a race we have refused to start, or grow into adults if we avoid the stage of being born. In the permanent revolution, democratic revolution is the lower form and socialist revolution the higher form. In the revolutionary process the lower form is transcended into the higher form. Centrality of the working class At the centre of democratic permanent revolution is the working class. Only the revolutionary struggle of the working class can ensure the growing over of the democratic revolution into the socialist revolution. Only and in so far as the working class comes to power in the democratic revolution, will the revolution be ongoing or permanent. The slogan “workers power” inserted between democratic revolution and international socialist revolution is there to emphasise the centrality of the working class as the lynch pin between the two revolutions. However it is not intended to suggest a separate stage between democratic and socialist revolution. On the contrary workers power arises within the democratic revolution. Deflected permanent revolution The democratic revolution will not automatically grow over into the socialist revolution. It depends on the working class coming to power. If this does not happen the permanent revolution will be aborted and some form of bourgeois rule established. Tony Cliff used the term “deflected permanent revolution” to describe this situation. In the Cuban case, Castro led the Cuban popular democratic revolution. The Cuban people overthrew the Batista dictatorship. However the working class never came to power in Cuba. Redefining democratic and socialist revolution So far I have treated the terms “democratic revolution” and “socialist revolution” as unproblematic. In fact the opposite is true. Marxists have been struggling under the huge burden of the theory of Stageism. So far Marxism has not been able to shake it off. In this theory the democratic revolution is defined as a bourgeois revolution. The socialist revolution is viewed as a national revolution which will bring socialism in one country The theory of democratic permanent revolution rejects the idea that the democratic revolution is bourgeois or the socialist revolution is national. We have to start by redefining what we mean, and by drawing as clear a line of demarcation between the two revolutions as we can. The first dividing line is between the national and international revolutions. Nation states are the locus of political power and class rule. On the other hand capitalism is an international economic system or mode of production. The second dividing line is between politics and economics, and hence the relationship between political power and economic wealth. Third we need to make a clear distinction between democracy and socialism in order to understand their relationship. It makes obvious sense to distinguish between the national political revolution and its opposite, the international economic revolution. A national political revolution is the transfer of political power from one class to another, in a particular state. The international economic revolution is the revolutionary transformation of the economy on an international or global scale. We can now redefine the democratic and socialist revolutions, welding them back onto the dialectical interplay between national politics and international economy. However these opposites must not be understood in absolute terms – as political revolution without economic change, or economic revolution without political change. Within each opposite appears its own opposite. A national political revolution will not leave property relations unchanged. Neither will an international economic revolution fail to create new political institutions. In re-examining the relationship between national, international, politics, economics, democracy and socialism we are seeking to dig up and destroy the roots of economism and hence reformism. International socialist revolution Capitalism is a global system. It is not a series of national economies. International capitalism is one economy, imperialism as Lenin called it. Communists want to replace world capitalism by world communism. The international socialist revolution is the beginning revolutionary process by which global capitalism is transformed into world communism. Socialism is here defined as international economic revolution. We might call this the socialisation of globalisation. It is about creating a higher, more advanced, form of globalisation. Imperialism cannot create a genuine global economy. Multi-national corporations and banks exploit modern technologies for super-exploitation, monopoly power, national privileges, wars of mass destruction and environmental degradation. It is no surprise that there is massive hostility to capitalist or primitive globalisation. But the communist answer is not some mythical national socialism. It is about transcending capitalist globalisation to a higher level - economic globalisation by the working class for the working class. This can only mean abolishing the world wide law of value and replacing it with production for social need At the centre of modern capitalism is the multi-national corporation. Workers will have to takeover and collectively manage multi-national corporations, capturing the commanding heights of the global economy. The working class cannot do this by action confined to one of a few countries - grabbing a factory in this or that country. To transform the multi-national corporation into an instrument of working class productive power requires workers in a variety of countries to act collectively and take over the whole organisation. An international economic revolution would remove all trade barriers and borders between people. It would replace national currencies with international time accounting, measuring activity in hours and minutes not dollars and euros. It would abolish patents, copyrights and so-called intellectual property rights. It would write off all international debts by which the bankers have enslaved poor countries. It would implement an international plan for climate change and the world’s environment. This is a far cry from national “socialism”, or national state capitalism, with bureaucratic national planning, import controls, monopoly of foreign trade and Berlin Wall style immigration controls. A national siege economy has nothing in common with an international socialist economic revolution, even though any national revolution may have to adopt such measures when surrounded by imperialism. There is no national socialism or socialism in one country. Capitalism cannot be abolished in one country. To mix up the defence of a national revolution and identify it as “war communism” is to drag the economy and the working class back to the dark ages. It leads not to the socialist utopia but to the killing fields that Cambodian workers and peasants suffered under the regime of Pol Pot, or Mao’s China. The purpose here is not to attempt to write such a programme but simply to sketch a few points to indicate the international and revolutionary nature of the socialist programme. What follows from this is the necessity for an international socialist programme and an international party. The socialist answer is not a national solution. It is fundamentally an international answer. Workers in every country must be won to an international programme which points to the central fact that workers of the world must unite around a common global plan because as Marx says we have nothing to lose but our chains. The national democratic revolution Under capitalism the struggle for democracy expresses the political side of the class struggle. Just as workers struggle for more control in the workplace and organise themselves in trade unions, so workers have to struggle for more democracy and control over the state. The Chartist movement and the women’s suffrage movement are expressions of that struggle. The democratic revolution is a national-popular revolution “from below” in which the people are mobilised to change the state. There are many examples – not only the classic revolutions in England, America and France, but all modern examples in the 20 th century. Since the bourgeoisie hold power across the globe they are a counter-revolutionary class as Marx identified back in 1848. Today the non-ruling classes or ‘people’ are comprised of the working class and the petty bourgeoisie. The relative weight of these two classes varies from country to country as does the composition of the petty bourgeoisie. Both the working class and the petty bourgeoisie are effectively excluded from political power and naturally seek ways to change this. Even where the people seem satisfied with their political rights, they can never be secure. The ruling class will take back democratic rights whenever they need to and feel strong enough to get away with it. The struggle for democracy is part of the class struggle which is never ending. under capitalism. Our theory makes clear that no democratic revolution can end the class struggle. Democratic reform is distinguished from democratic revolution because of the involvement of the masses and the overthrow of the existing constitution which in recent parlance has been called “regime change”. Constitutions can of course be overthrown by war and fascism not just democratic revolution. But democratic revolution opens up politics for the various classes to contend for political power until a new constitutional settlement is achieved. Democratic revolutions are the locomotives of democracy. They are capable of achieving in weeks or months what it would take decades or centuries to gain by the process of democratic reform. Consider the House of Lords. It would be swept away in a democratic revolution in a matter of days. But by normal reformism the whole thing could take decades. We are going forward and then backwards and ending up stuck in the mud. It is taking years to come up with some half-baked scheme. After more years this will be found wanting and so another round of “reform” will be needed. One compromise follows another. All the time the people are excluded whilst the privileged classes decide what suites them best. The spirit of democratic revolution is captured so beautifully by Lenin in Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution (Lenin Selected Works 1 p 453 Moscow). He says “it is advantageous to the working class for the necessary changes in the direction of bourgeois democracy take place by way of revolution and not by way of reform, because the way of reform is one of delay, procrastination, the painfully slow decomposition of the putrid parts of the national organism. It is the proletariat and the peasantry that suffer first of all and most of all from that putrefaction. The revolutionary path is one of rapid amputation, which is the least painful to the proletariat, the path of least compliance with and consideration for the monarchy and abominable, vile and rotten and noxious institutions that go with it.” Working class and democratic revolution What attitude should the working class take to the democratic revolution? The term national democratic revolution is a “classless” term. It leaves open the question of which class or classes will take power. All we know is that since the bourgeoisie is already in power it is not their “bourgeois revolution”. This does not mean we are speaking of a “classless” revolution. On the contrary it is necessary to consider this revolution from a class point of view. The working class is the only truly democratic class. It is the only class in capitalist society that requires democracy as a means of self determination. Democratic organisation is the way the working class becomes a class-for-itself rather than a class simply existing in-itself. Trade unions are schools of democracy and workplace organisations are the democratic bases of the class. The democratic revolution has a special role in this respect. It is the process by which the working class is transformed into the revolutionary class. Marx identified the working class as the revolutionary class. Yet for the most part the working class seems reformist or even conservative. Even the most political section does not necessarily embrace revolutionary Marxist politics. How can we square this apparent contradiction? The answer is that the revolution reveals the revolutionary class. The democratic revolution is the process of heightened class struggle in which the working class appears on the historical stage and forms itself into the revolutionary class. The democratic revolution plays a vital role. In leading the democratic revolution to victory the working class transforms the revolution and transforms itself in the process. In this respect we can distinguish between the two revolutions. There is only one class that can make a genuine socialist revolution – namely the working class. However in the democratic revolution the working class does not stand alone, it may be joined by the petty bourgeoisie and the peasantry. Therefore a necessary component of the theory of democratic permanent revolution is the recognition that the working class has to the vanguard fighter for democracy and leader of the democratic revolution. This requires the working class to organise its own revolutionary party and take power. Without the party, the working class will make mistakes and suffer many defeats in this transformation. It will quite likely suffer the kind of fatal setback the Paris working class suffered in June 1848. Marxism has an absolutely critical role as the vanguard of the class in turning revolutionary spontaneity into revolutionary consciousness and programme. It follows therefore that for victory in the democratic revolution the working class must have its own independent aims, its own democratic programme and its own political party organisation. The working class must aim and succeed in winning political power. In this way the working class becomes the vanguard of the democratic revolution. Democratic revolutions in peasant countries The working class theory of democratic revolution is a flexible or elastic theory. It can be applied to countries in which the working class is the majority or to countries where the working class is a minority. This theory must be applied by Marxists to the concrete situations and historical circumstances as they exist. Democratic revolution in a peasant country like China in the 1920’s would differ from such a revolution in China today where the working class has expanded massively. It seems to me that the “revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry” is an adaptation of the democratic revolution for so-called backward countries. Lenin was absolutely correct that the working class could take power in the cities with the peasantry, not against the peasantry. Unless the Bolsheviks could keep the support of the peasantry neither the democratic revolution, nor working class democracy, could survive. Lenin’s formula expresses that truth. He also was clear that they were doomed without the German and European working class. I do not see that the “dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry” was overthrown in practice either by the 1917 April thesis or even the 1917 October uprising. It is arguable that it was broken when the Left Socialist Revolutionaries left the government over the treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918. Class nature of democratic and socialist revolutions How can we distinguish between democratic revolution and socialist revolution? In socialist revolution the working class stands alone. There is no other class that can carry out the socialist revolution and bring communism. The petty bourgeoisie cannot achieve socialism. It is down to the international self-activity and international organisation of the working class alone. Socialism and international working class power are indissolubly linked. This is not to deny that the petty bourgeoisie may not take power in the name of socialism and the working class. History has provided many examples of state bureaucrats, military dictators, party leaders and bureaucrats, and assorted petty reformists who have taken political power in the name of the working class and “socialism”. It is necessary that the working class have a clear understanding of the class nature of socialism so as not to be misled up the petty bourgeois blind ally. Russia, China, Eastern Europe, Vietnam, Cuba and Venezuela today provide examples of this type of petty bourgeois and bourgeois “socialism”. However in the democratic revolution the working class does not stand alone. It is not the only class with an interest in the outcome. The danger for the working class is that without its own theory of democratic revolution, without its own party, the working class will tend to follow the leadership of other classes. The working class will be the tail of the revolution. It will do the street fighting and direct action. But the petty bourgeois parties will take the power. This is a fatal road that plays into the hands of counter-revolution. Ripe for revolution The sharp distinction between the national and international revolution in no sense overturns the theory of combined and uneven development. The international socialist revolution remains grounded in what Mike calls intern ationalcapitalist dynamics (‘combined and uneven development’).Both Trotsky’ theory alongside Lenin’s theory of imperialism lays emphasis on one global capitalist economy and world market. The world is ripe for an international socialist revolution. This was on the cards from 1917-1919. So-called underdeveloped economies were part of and bound to the world system. In these “backward” countries the most advanced forms of capitalist production could be found, today for example through multi-national corporations. If this were not the case then the democratic revolution would not have the possibility of providing the launch pad for the international socialist revolution. The democratic revolution would hit a brick wall, incapable of triggering and becoming an ongoing revolution. However there is another side to this. Just because the world is ripe for socialist revolution does not mean every country stands on the brink of democratic revolution. This is the “weak link” argument. Combined and uneven development in Russia came up against a relatively backward or conservative social formation. The yawning gap between the development of advanced capitalism on one hand and Tsarist political system meant that Russia was ripe for democratic revolution in a world ready for international socialist revolution. The question posed for us is not whether the world is even more ready for a socialist revolution. It obviously is. It is whether the UK is ripe for democratic revolution. This is something that is outside the scope of this article but means concrete study of the combined and uneven development of capitalism in the UK as it impacts on the social formation which the RDG programme calls the “social monarchy”. Programmatic conclusions Democratic permanent revolution is a universal theory. It can be applied in general to all countries. The democratic revolution grows over into the international socialist revolution. The theory applies to so-called advanced and backward countries, in a sense doing away with this distinction. It is universal but sufficiently flexible to enable us to take account of the different historical conditions, social formations and class compositions. The logical programmatic conclusion is that we need two programmes or two sections of one programme – a democratic programme and an international socialist programme. At this stage I think we would be better focused on this than a wrangle over whether to use the terms minimum, transitional and maximum. I intend to address the theory of stageism and Trotsky’s permanent revolution on another occasion. The democratic programme and international socialist programme can be explained in totality. It is not the case that it should be explained in a stagiest way, we don’t tell the working class about the democratic programme and then when that is achieved we pull out the socialist programme and say what about this? We have to explain our programme in totality so that the communist plan is laid out in full. However the class struggle itself will impose upon us certain pressing priorities. Those immediate questions will push agitation around the democratic programme to the fore. A democratic republic is not more important than world communism. Far from it. But we may be forced to deal with it next week or next year. My final point in answer to Mike is that this theory incorporates all the positive insights from Trotsky’s theory without some of the crap. It offers us one step forward and no steps back. On my arithmetic that is an advance from where we are! Dave Craig 15 February 2007 |
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