Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 14:51:51 +0000 (GMT)
From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Scott=20Hamilton?= <s_h_hamilton-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: AUT: Re: Scott: state power or no? (final post on permanent revolution)


 

Hi Tahir,

I sent a reply to you offlist because I was worried
about putting this debate centre stage on this list
and creating overload. I'll reply to you on the list,
since you've asked me a question on the list, but it
would be good to have any ongoing debate offlist, in
the interests of avoiding overload. 

You wrote: 

> You imply that an anti-imperialist bloc with
> bourgeois parties is > desirable. My question: is
the aim of this > 'strategy' the capturing of
> state power in some country, with the bourgeois
> party in charge? (I > don't see how you can be
implying anything else) 

This question really brings home to me the difficulty
I have had communicating the concept of permanent
revolution and the military bloc on this list. For
months I've been arguing against the strategy you
attribute to me, and suggesting in its place the
strategy of permanent revolution. I clearly have
failed to get my line across, and this is why I've
taken the time to try to express myself more
systematically, and after this post intend to leave
off for a while stirring up more dust on this subject.

You and I agree that a socialist revolution has to
mean the state being destroyed and workers' power
being established through organs of direct democracy
which can establish a planned economy in the place of
the market. 

The problem we are discussing is not the desirability
of this goal, but how to get to this goal in the
semi-colonial world. Marx, of course, tended to think
that socialist revolution would happen in the
economically advanced countries (though there are
signs he was moving away from this idea near the end
of his life, particularly in his attitude to Russia). 

It has generally been the semi-colonies, though, which
have supplied the world with revolutions over the past
hundred years. In the semi-colonial world (ie the
countries dominated by imperialism, which exports
capital to them and imports the profits derived from
the exploitation of cheap labour and resources),
capitalism is not able to provide a material base for
the bourgeois democratic rights which we have been
able to achieve through struggle in most of the
imperialist countries. 

Because of domination by foreign companies, not enough
money is available for semi-colonial governments to
tax and spend on social services. Even if a government
comes into power with workers' backing and under
pressure from workers tries to enact left-wing
reforms, it quickly creates a crisis. If it wants to
get enough money to pay for its reforms, it has to
challenge the foreign companies that have a
stranglehold over the economy. These companies don’t
want to see their profit rates threatened, and they
are backed by the governments of the imperialist
countries in which they are based. They resist
attempts to increase tax rates or to nationalise their
assets by getting imperialist governments to
destabilise the regimes that threaten their profits.

The story is no different when left-wing reforming
governments increase democratic rights by, for
instance, making it easier for free trade unions to
operate. Workers tend to use their new liberties to
organise strike action to win higher wages and better
conditions from their employers, who are usually
directly or indirectly multinational companies. Since
higher wages and better conditions cut into profits,
the companies and their imperialist backers start to
destabilise the government which gave workers greater
freedoms, in the hope that these freedoms can be
rolled back.
 
Time and time again, left-wing reforming governments
have run into the brick wall of the domination of poor
semi-colonies by imperialist money. In Guatemala in
1954, in Chile in 1973, and in Fiji in 1987 reforming
governments have been ousted when the companies they
have alienated have turned to the imperialist powers
for support. And, of course, imperialism is not averse
to launching armed intervention or even political
(re)colonisation in an effort to preserve its profit
levels. 

The absence of democratic rights in most semi-colonies
breeds national liberation struggles - cross-class
struggles to get rid of imperialist domination. Almost
every semi-colony, from South Africa to South Korea,
has hosted these struggles over the past hundred and
fifty years. National liberation struggles cut across
classes, because the struggle for bourgeois democratic
rights is the struggle of other classes and strata
beyond the working class - the petty bourgeoisie,
farmers, and a section of the national bourgeoisie are
all denied democratic rights in the typical
semi-colony (consider, as an extreme example,
Palestine, where practically everybody is currently
denied such basic democratic rights as the right to
freedom of movement). 

National liberation struggles are frequently very
heroic but, because of their cross-class nature, they
present those who believe in socialism and the
independence of the working class with considerable
difficulties. An additional difficulty which we must
consider is the national limitation of national
liberation struggles. As the example of the Soviet
Union has shown us, it is impossible to build
socialism even in one very large country. How much
more difficult it would be in Palestine, or even South
Africa! A semi-colony lacks the level of economic
development needed to support socialism long-term. 

In Russia early last century socialists were faced
with just the problems I have been describing. The
most common response to these problems was the view
that a semi-colony had to go through a stage of
economic development, had to become an advanced
capitalist country like Britain or the US, before it
could possibly have a socialist revolution. There had
to be a 'two stage' revolution. In the first stage a
supposedly 1789-style revolution would get rid of
feudalism and the domination of foreign capital,
establish bourgeois democracy, and allow for the full
development of the capitalist economy. When this
process was completed, then an enlarged working class
strengthened by democratic rights could take over an
advanced economy in a socialist revolution. Up until
1916-17 the vast majority of Russian revolutionaries,
including Lenin, held to this prescription for
revolution. 

A small minority of Russians and a larger number of
Europeans put forward a slightly different strategy
based on the same basic assumptions(1). They argued
the 'ultra-left' line that bourgeois democratic rights
were not worth having, and that the working class in
Russia should not seek to help anyone else make a
bourgeois democratic revolution. Since the Russian
working class was tiny, and it was difficult to see
how it could make revolution on its own, the
ultra-leftists tended to look for a revolution in
advanced part of Europe, which had already been right
through the capitalist stage, as a precondition for
revolution in Russia. 

A third perspective was developed by Trotsky, based on
his theory of combined and uneven development(2).
Criticising overly linear models of economic
development like the one Lenin had put forward in his
'The Development of Capitalism in Russia'(3), Trotsky
argued that Russia had a complex economy combining
advanced and backward features. Russia's borders
contained vast oceans of feudalism, but also the
largest factory in the world. Russia had a backward,
philistine national bourgeoisie, but an incredibly
sophisticated intelligentsia. 

The situation in Russia was so complex because
capitalism had not developed there in some a-b-c
manner, as it had to some extent in (say) Britain.
Development in Russia had been combined and uneven
because capitalism had been brought to the country
from the outside. Russia's economy and the world
economy interpenetrated because of imperialism. Russia
was dependent on the West, but the West was ultimately
dependent on semi-colonies like Russia too, for cheap
labour and resources and markets that could keep
profit levels high enough to counter the tendency for
the rate of profit to fall and the danger of
overproduction. Russia and other semi-colonies helped
keep the West afloat economically, and pay for reforms
that (to put it crudely) bought off some of the
revolutionary ambitions of the Western working class.

Trotsky reasoned that the interpenetrating nature of
the global economy established by imperialism made it
possible for socialist revolution to occur even in
countries with a small working class, many vestiges of
feudalism, and a lack of bourgeois democratic rights.
Crucially, though, Trotsky argued that revolutions
which began in the semi-colonies could not remain
isolated - they had to end in the West. We can
understand Trotsky's argument with reference to the
image of a chain - the world economy was a chain which
imprisoned workers in all countries, but whose links
were weaker in some places than others. If the chain
was broken anywhere, it was broken everywhere.
Revolution in the semi-colonies meant economic crisis
in the advanced economies. 

Armed with his belief in the possibility of socialist
revolution in even very backward semi-colonies,
Trotsky approached the question of national liberation
and the struggle for bourgeois democratic rights in a
very different manner from the vast majority of
Russian revolutionaries. He did not merely argue that
there was no need for a two-stage revolution beginning
with a bourgeois revolution establishing national
capitalism. He argued that the 'stage' of development
that such a revolution was supposed to usher in was in
fact impossible to achieve in the era of imperialism,
when economies interpenetrated and imperialist
economies dominated semi-colonial and colonial
economies. A government could try to introduce
national capitalism and democratic reforms, but it
would be unable to achieve these ends. At best, it
would meet the sort of fate we associate today with
the name of Allende. 

As long as capitalism existed, Trotsky insisted, the
assymetrical relationship between imperialist and
semi-colonial economies would remain. Because the
underdevelopment of the semi-colonial world underwrote
the lack of democratic rights there, it followed that
the abolition of capitalism was required to win
democratic rights. 

We can see, then, that in opposition to the two-stage
strategy for revolution, Trotsky argued for a
permanent or uninterrupted revolution which combined
the democratic and socialist stages(4). Now, that
sounds all very well and fine on paper, but how could
it play out in practice? Only the working class could
achieve socialist revolution, and national liberation
struggles for democratic rights were multi-class
affairs, so how could socialism and national
liberation be combined? Weren't they like water and
oil? Trotsky tried to formulate an answer to this
dilemma by developing the concept of the military
bloc, which he contrasted with the concept of the
political bloc he associated with the two stage
strategy. 

The political bloc would see the working class helping
to bring about a bourgeois democratic revolution in a
political alliance with elements of the bourgeoisie,
ie under the leadership of elements of the
bourgeoisie, then entering into a 'national
capitalist' government as a junior partner. After the
February 1917 revolution most of the Bolsheviks,
including of course Stalin, and most of the Mensheviks
wanted to play this role, by sitting in Kerensky's
provisional government. A more recent example of the
strategy in action is of course South Africa, where
the union bureaucrats of the Stalinist-dominated
Communist Party betray their huge working class base
by sitting in a government dominated by the black
national bourgeoisie that led (in the political sense)
the national liberation struggle against apartheid.

How did Trotsky's military bloc differ from the
political bloc favoured by advocates of the two stage
revolution? Trotsky insisted that the forces of the
working class must be independent of the forces of
other classes - that they should not form joint
political and military organisations, and should not
go into any sort of government together. In order to
defeat imperialism and carry forward the struggle for
democratic rights, workers might have temporarily to
aim their guns in the same direction as the national
bourgeoisie. But, as soon as imperialist invasion,
intervention, or occupation was defeated, the working
class had to turn its fire on the bourgeois
anti-imperialists, by setting up and defending
Soviets.

Lenin came to agree with Trotsky's 'all or nothing'
approach in 1916 or early 1917. After returning to
Russia in 1917 he published the April Theses, which
demanded that the Bolsheviks condemn the Kerensky
government and go all the way to a socialist
revolution based on the Soviets. Lenin came to
Trotsky's perspective partly through his famous
rereading of Hegel during 1915 and 1916, a rereading
that convinced him of the importance of dialectics to
Marxism, and of the folly of the Second
International's overly mechanical, overly linear
models of change - models that excluded the
possibility of sudden change and the
interconnectedness of disparate and seemingly opposite
phenomena (phenomena like, say, the British and
Russian economies Trotsky linked). 

There exists today a tendency on the 'libertarian
left' to rehabilitate Lenin on the basis of a
particular interpretation of the 'turn' he took during
1915 and 1916. Lenin is portrayed by this trend as a
sort of inspired voluntarist, who rejected the
discredited mechanical Marxism of the Second
International and asserted the power of the human will
to change history. Zizek is perhaps the best known
representative of this view of Lenin, a view which one
or two people on this list seem to sympathise with. I
can understand the appeal of the 'new Lenin', and the
Philosophical Notebooks Lenin produced while rereading
Hegel and other dialecticians are certainly
fascinating. In my view, though, Lenin's 'turn' only
makes sense, and only came to anything, because of the
essential correctness of Trotsky's theory of combined
and uneven development. In a sense, Trotsky's theory
is the 'objective' side of Lenin's 'subjective' or
voluntarist 'turn'.  

The Bolsheviks were faced with a test of the strategy
of permanent revolution soon after they had been won
over to it by the April Theses. Kornilov, a Tsarist
general backed by the imperialist powers, attempted to
overthrow the bourgeois government of Kerensky. The
Bolsheviks came to Kerensky's aid, despite the fact
that Kerensky had been persecuting them. Organising
themselves independently of Kerensky's government, the
Bolsheviks helped to defeat the coup and, as a result
of the role they played, experienced a considerable
increase in their membership and prestige. 

Is Tahir right when he calls the Bolsheviks' action in
supporting Kerensky opportunist? 
I don't think so, because if Kornilov's coup had been
successful the Tsar would have returned and the
imperialist powers would have occupied Russia to crush
any attempts at revolution. It was necessary for the
Bolsheviks to bloc militarily with Kornilov against
imperialism to preserve the possibility of revolution.
About three months after blocing with Kerensky, the
Bolsheviks overthrew his government in the October
revolution. The strategy of permanent revolution was
validated. 

At this point I must make it clear that I do not
support many of the things the Bolsheviks did after
the 1917 revolution. I believe that there is a good
deal of merit in critiques of the Bolshevik government
which come from the left, and I've never budged from
the positions I hold on events like Kronstadt, the
militarisation of labour, the introduction of
Taylorism in factories, the ban on factions within the
party, the tendency for the party to substitute itself
for the state, and the sidelining of the Soviets by
the Bolshevik government. Trotsky himself admitted
that he helped to sow the seeds of Stalinism with some
of these policies, though he claimed to have no option
because of the isolation of the revolution and the
desperation of the situation. I have no doubt that he
is partly correct, but he must still bear the brunt of
much criticism. 

Having said all that, I believe that the overthrow of
the Kerensky government, the dissolution of the
Consituent Assembly, the partial empowerment of the
Soviets, the ending of the war, and the abolition of
the market were substantial achievements of the
Bolsheviks in 1917-18, and that these achievements
would have been impossible without the strategy of
permanent revolution. We only need to look at the sad
history of two stage 'revolutions', from Chile to
China to Zimbabwe, to see the continuing validity of
Trotsky's argument for the impossibility of winning
democratic rights in the semi-colonies without
socialism(4*).  

If you went back about 18 months on this list you
would find me advocating as a progressive alternative
to Israeli occupation an independent capitalist
Palestinian state. I thought that such a state could
provide conditions which would allow the Palestinian
workers to strengthen themselves and prepare for
revolution. To put it technically, I held a Stalinist
'two stage' position. I'm not ashamed of having held
this position, because the other alternative I knew
was the ultra-left line which held that national
liberation was bad news, and only socialist revolution
in a regional or global scale could help the
Palestinians. To me this seemed like a pipe dream when
the Palestinians were so desperately oppressed in the
here and now. Why, I wondered, should they have to
wait for workers in Europe or the US to get their act
together? Isn't there something to be done now?  Today
I notice that my old position is  held by a wide range
of individuals and groups across the anti-Leninist
left. I suspect that they see only the ultra-left
alternative, and this suspicion has been one
motivation for my polemicising in favour of permanent
revolution on this list.  

I was shifted from the two stage to the permanent
revolution strategy by a combination of
anti-imperialist activity and reading. Early last year
Sharon invaded the West Bank, and the AIC called  a
series of demonstrations outside the US Consulate in
Auckland. For a few days we got hundreds of people
turning up, most of them Palestinians or Iraqis.
(Mossad agents turned up too, but that's another
story.) 

The task of relating to the intifada had suddenly
become very urgent, and I had to consider my position.
How could I reconcile my desire to support the
national liberation struggle, whilst maintaining my
belief that socialism was the key to real liberation?
I got into some interesting conversations, and also
read a lot of the literature which the Trots and
Stalinists in the AIC were putting about. In the end,
the strategy of permanent revolution seemed to be the
best way to balance my desire to show solidarity with
my 'big picture' beliefs. I noticed, too, that it
rhymed with the attitude of the most militant and
secular Arabs I encountered. When I talked with these
people I soon realised they had no illusions about
Arafat and his government, yet felt that they had to
defend the PA against Israeli attacks. They knew they
couldn't get rid of Arafat under Israeli occupation. 

When I tried to investigate the intifada online, I
noticed that many of the grassroots fighters would
turn out to defend Arafat when his compound was
threatened with destruction by the Israelis, yet
refuse to take orders from him then or afterwards.
This pattern of action also clicked with my developing
understanding of the concept of the military bloc.

At about this time, a ferocious debate about permanent
revolution erupted on antiwaranticapnz, an e list I
had helped to set up after S 11 and was supposed to be
moderating(5). When I climbed down off the fence and
very tentatively took the side of the Trots, a number
of people who had seen me as an 'independent' felt
betrayed. But I felt that there was a continuity
between my previous positions and my advocacy of
permanent revolution. I had liked the way the
ultra-left strategy emphasised working class
independence and the limitations of nationalism, and I
had liked the way that the two stage strategy had
acknowledged the urgency of the struggle of the
Palestinians and the heroism of many of those striving
for national liberation. I saw, and still see the
theory of permanent revolution as fusing the best
elements of these two approaches. I think the best
Marxist theories have this quality of synthesis. The
debate on antiwaranticapnz was of very low quality,
thanks to the supporters of the two stage approach,
who wasted no chance to attack the advocates of
permanent revolution personally. One tactic, which
Fydd unfortunately imported to this list when he
commented on Dave's paper on Argentina last year, was
to insinuate that the advocates of the military bloc
were a little off their rockers, and thought they were
actually an auxillary military force fighting with the
Palestinians.   

By late last year, when a debate broke out on this
list over Palestine, my belief in the correctness of
the strategy of permanent revolution had been shored
up by further reading - including, crucially, a
reading of analyses of the situation in Palestine
produced by the Argentinean group Workers Democracy in
the midst of the Argentinean revolution. WD argued
that there was a revolutionary situation in Palestine,
and that the Western left, including most Trotskyists,
were selling the Palestinians short by suggesting they
should settle for some kind of capitalist state. 

During the debate here on autopsy, a spectrum of views
was put forward. Some people argued for the ultra-left
approach, while others thought a capitalist Palestine
would be a step forward, while still others thought
that the demand for a Palestinian state was
reactionary and the Palestinians should fight for
equal rights as citizens of Israel or an EU-style
Middle East superstate. All in all, the debate showed
that, on this issue as on virtually every issue, there
is no 'autopsy' line, let alone anti-Leninist line. It
was rather frustrating to be regularly described,
during the debate on Palestine, as a 'statist' or 'red
fascist' or 'Stalinist', when I was one of few people
putting forward (or rather echoing) a strategy for the
abolition of the state and capitalism in the
short-term in Palestine. 

I hope that with these comments I've answered Tahir's
question fully, and some misunderstandings about the
theory of permanent revolution may be laid to rest. 


(1) See, for instance, Otto Ruhle's 'Moscow and Us'
http://www.geocities.com/~johngray/rulmosc.htm

(2) I must emphasise, at this point, that the views I
am giving to Trotsky are not views which automatically
adhere to the 'Trotskyist' movement. Only a minority
of so-called 'left' or 'orthodox' Trotskyists hold to
the theory of permanent revolution, or the other key
theories produced by Trotsky. Well-known Trotskyist
groups like the International Socialist Tendency, the
United Secretariat of the Fourth International and the
Socialist Workers party of the USA all adopt a 'two
stage' rather than 'permanent' strategy for revolution
in the semi-colonies. I have no desire to defend for a
moment the politics of groups like these. Labels, I
suppose, are dangerous things.  

(3)Online at
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/cw/volume03.htm

(4)The text of 'The Permanent Revolution' is online at

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1931-tpv/index.htm

(4*)Some might to point to South Africa as an
exception to this rule. Ten years ago the same
argument was made about Zimbabawe, and I believe that
South Africa will follow a path similar to Zimbabwe's.
It's true that certain democratic rights have been won
in South Africa, but these wins have come only at the
expense of the increased exploitation of workers. And
repression has followed when the democratic rights are
exercised beyond a very token level. The test of South
Africa will come when the honeymoon with the ANC wears
off, and workers try to use their new-found rights to
challenge the government head-on. There signs, of
course, that such a process is already beginning.  

 
(5)The archives of this e list can be viewed at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/antiwar_anticap_nz/

(6)Attempts to cast me into the wilderness as an
unregenerate Leninist
really tend to disguise the fact that the political
current(s) this list is intended to represent are in a
deep crisis, and incapable of formulating a consistent
line on any important subject. This is true, of
course, for other currents too, including, especially,
Trotskyism, if Trotskyism can still be considered even
a loosely unified current. All of the left is
grappling with events since S 11, and the apparent
transition from a counterrevolutionary to
revolutionary era. 





===="Revolution is not like cricket, not even one day cricket"

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