generals. strike since August L: against the accused. signs of torture. of this. service! les Апі Canis throughout Peru in spite of a huge government tional Independence Day in Peru - the biggest this year's televised speech in the CONFIEP out afterwards beaming approval, and the far open to members to decide whether to go along The two-day stoppage was a success and right wing campaign and despite govern- ment Grancial inducements to those who hroke Each year the President gives a sort of 'statc of the union' speech on July 28, which is Na- There were great expectations this ycar, be- cause last year President garcia dropped a political bombshell with his decree nationalis- ing the banks. a micasure which shook the whole The most important capitalists broke with the government and the far right revitalised it- self under the leadership of the famous writer Mario Vargas Llosa. These sectors managed to developsuch a campaign against the decree that the government was forced' to back down: the substance of the nationalisation has been total- ly gutted and the major consequence has only So this ycar both the capitalists and the far right organised an intense campaign in the weeks running up to the keynote address, warn- ing the government against any "nasty! The country's business leaders listened to (equivalent of CBI offices. They all streamed The main point of the speech had been to offer more legislation against "subversion". Not only would taking part in terrorist acts be punished. but also being a member of a "subversive" organisation. The police practice of planting urms in the homes of accused per- Garcia: privatisation and repression heen the resurgence of the far right. right also applauded. national holiday. with the strike. CoUnIry: tem. Their pro-government Icaderships lett it The social crisis has intensified in Peru by the end of the year. There has been a two-day general strike against the President Garcia has spoken about the need for tougher repressive measures, and the lawyer defending the second-in-command of the Sendero Luminoso ("Shining Path") guerrillas Initially the Garcia government did have some success in holding down inflation which had heen spiralling out of control in the last months of the provious Belaunde government. Workers), the main trade union confederation. and the ANP (the People's National Assemb- ly). The latter brings together in a coordinating body the main peasant organisation the CCP (Peasani Conferderation of Peru): SUTEP (the united teachers "trade union): CITE (public sec- tor workers); FEB (the bank workers): FEP (students); the street vendors" association (this is an ever-growing sector in a country where unemployed people receive no state benefits): the poor barrin or neighbourhood assocutions (also increasing in number); and negeleted regions of the country suffering from Peru's Other forces could not avoid falling in with the strike, such as the CTP (the trade union con- tederation linked to APRA, the populist party now in government) and the private owner bus in recent weeks. Inflation will hit 400% But it could not maintain this control, and now drivers who are part of the public transport sys SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 9 October 1988 That heroic strike kicked out a govern- July 19-20 by many trade union federations. ment which had wanted to stay at the helm for another ten years. It led to the constituent So there was a conscious reference to this its record is as bad as any. with intlation With this fall in living standards it is not surprising that the general strike. called on was a succoss. July 19 is a spocial date in the calendar of the Peruvian people because it was on July 19 1977 that massive illegal strikes put an end to the Bermuder mintary dictatorship and opened the present period assembly, free clections, the end of special military powers and curfew laws, and the inspiring memory in the date chosen for this. year's general strike. It was called by the CGTP (Confedcration of Peruvian A Report from Peru by retum of political exiles like myself. HUGO BLANCO of relative democracy. has heen assassinated. rocketting upwards. super-centralism. government.
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tionul bourgcoisic to free itself from im- The workers should at best play & supporting demands. But the question remained - who Some, like the Russian Mensheviks, arguod that if the revolution was to be a bourgeois one role until such time in the indefinite future when capitalism had expanded the tanks of the work- ung class and created conditions for the next in the revolution - the fight lor socialism, The Bolsheviks, and alongside them Trotsky, maintained that the inability of the ra- then naturally the bourgeoiste should Icad it. perialism and Carism made this impossible. should carry out these tasks and to what end? of controversy "stage" Britain, Holland and France. Trotsky recog- nised that even if the underdeveloped countries were ls have bourgeois revolutions it was im- possile for them to enter the market as oqual competitors. Their small, weak national capitalist classes were totally subordinate to the hankers, politicians and military forces of the impenalist powers. They could mercly struggle for a slightly larger slice of the cake, and this only through alliances with their peasant mas- The countries were developing capitalist economies, but the lasks of the bour- goois revolution still had to be carried out. ses and the tising working classes. 'backward" changes brought about by the rise of the heat of the Russian Revolution of The theory of Permanent Revolution is much more than just a theory. It is a bedrock of the marxist programme and strategy for revolution in most of the underdeveloped countries today. It began as Trotsky's attempt to develop beyond the carly writings of Mars and Engels, and come to terms with the imperialism. A few of the key ideas clashed with traditional orthodox marxism', and were only confirmed in
Second. he argued that the working class markets as coual competitors. But, as The capitalism that had been violently imposed onc. Limits on this fundamental condition for would have to play the leading roie in the SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 9 October 1988 gain by throwing off the chains of feudalism. But the question about who pose of such a (bourgeois) revolution was ment of capitalism. especially in the field of agriculture. They weren't sure which class - the workers or the pcasants - would play the leading role and have the Icit thoir governmental slogan deliberate- ward countries had access to world stated earlier, the advent of imporialism had closed the age of market capitalism on a world scale and made this impossible. The imperialist powers were locked in a struggle for cconomic territory which ended in the carnage of two on the rest of the world was to be a subordinate the bourgcois revolution. then, in the develop worker-peasant alliance and the revolutionary themselves with the peasantry to make Instead, the workers would have to ally this bourgenis revolution. In a country like Russia the peasants had the most to would lead this bourgeois revolution to brcak froc of imperialist domination and to herald the unrestrained develop- governmental majority. Therefore. they First, Trotsky recognised that unfet- tered capitalist development could only world wars. They would not allow a non-im- perialist country to assume an imporialist role. The Bolsheviks led by Lenin still ar gued right up to April 1917 that the pur- come about if the economically back Trotsky's novel idea was as follows. ing countries: had already been set. ly vague on this question. Leon Trotsky, Introduction to Permanent bourgeois stage into the socialist. "This was precisely the idea that To express the same idea Lenin designation of the revolution as revolution growing over into the uninterrupted one, a revolution passing over directly from the expression of the bourgeois was expressed by the very national market. with national sovercignty over owners, distributing land to the peasailry, and enahling the unfettered capitalist development way for capitalist development, it also creates Important openings for the working class to or- ganise itself to press its own independent Bourgeois revolution is a process of throw- ing off feudal restrictions which involves the key lasks of national liberation, democracy and agrarian reform. In practice this means wanified imperialist controlled industrics: a national as- sembly elected by universal sulTrage, allowing political pluralism with the right to form inie- pendent parties and trades unions, und the breaking up of the huge estates of the big land While the bourgoois revolution clears the later used the excellent 'permanent, that is an socialist." Revolution countries which had not undergone the type of capitalist development as had happened in vanced productive technology would be com- Early twentieth century Czarist Russia was a classic case. Huge factories and advanced in- dustry imposed by European finance capital (under whose control they remained) coexisted He then went on to assess what this "com- bined and uneven development meant for the As impenalism spread, it pulled country after country into the workd capitalist market- bourgeois revolutions that had swept away old feaudal regimes and opened the door to bined in a variety of new social fonnations. with a fcudal state apparatus and agriculture development as the advanced ones. sial, as Trotsky continued to develop it in the light of experiences of the Chinese revolutionary struggles of the 1920s and 1930s. Even today it remains a flashpoint of political conflict between trotskyism and stalinist currents in the living revolu- tionary struggles of Central America. Orthodox marxism held that all countries. would undergo the same pattern of Economically hackward" countrics. he argued, were not only uncqual, but developing in a combined way alongside more advanced economies. This meant hey could appropriate, or have imposed on them, advanced forms of lechnology termediate stages of development which the first capitalist countries had gone through. Backwardness and the most ad- The theory remained highly controver- Treesky'stheory was based on the law and economic production without the in of combined and uneven devclopment". Trotsky challenged this notion. prospects for revolution. Africa and Asia. Page 26
aboul on its own a classiess: vanced precisely because of deed, to survive, any revolu- tion must march forwand But it is highly unlikely, to say the as the United States - has society. After all the im The conquest of proletarian their relation to and domina- must be seen as the start of a enough resources to bring cken onc as highly developed power in any single country Icast, that any single country - peralist countrics are so ad tion of the world market. LA PAZE TENDEN A SECS •МПС K U were based on the view that the coming of capitalism had domination of the town over peasantry was incapuhle of pursuing an independent political course, unless to dominated social life were a thing of the past. The working Trotsky's conclusions brought with if the final take human development backwards. Socicties in which events on the land class would have to take the leadership of the worker- countryside. the
revolution in that country. The absence of a favourahle inter- national climate canor be used progress in many areas - rais- peasantry (iF one exists), taking measures to devcloped country faced with the might of im- provide a crucial breathing space for such a revolution. But in the end the only guarantee of survival is an extension of the revolution. The theory of Permanent Revolution is clcarly based on analysis of the objective as an excuse for delaying The Nicaraguan revolution cloarly shows the monopoly on foreign trade and seizing control | Ing the living standards of the working class and combat racial and sexual oppression, and so on. tremendous problems faced by a small under- porialism. International solidarity can help forces that shape revolutionary struggles: to other countries: sense which Marx attached to this "The permanent revolution, in the Posed in this way the answer is obvious. But such measures are nothing less than the start of gools revolution successfully in this context means carrying out a socialist revolution and There: was another important dimension to the socialist revolution. Carrying out the bour- Marching against the contras - Managua 1987 of the financial institutions? Lenin that only such a government would perialism be aftected, but also the national ly if their land holdings were broken up and dis- genuinely carry through the bourgeois revolt- The very act of implementing the tasksof the bourgeois revolution would fatally undenmine the bourgeoisie itselt. Not only would am- bourgeoisic would be threatened too, especial- revolution with all its power. (To this day. whole of the Third World that heads a tributed to the peasants, The hourgeoisie would then be forced to resist its own there is not a bourgcois regime in the tion, he took a crucial step turther. peasant alliance because ofits decisive social and political weight, regardless of 1ts size But after agreeing with compared to the peasantry.
but there is no guarantee that any given All of this points to one fundamental purties. Many different alhances with all temptation Tor a working class revolu- revolution will evolve naturally along the path of Permanent Revolution Within any given struggle there will be other political currents with very different gles led scriously astray, as has happened conclusion above all others for revolu- honary sirategy in backward" countries: the necessitv for the complete political in- dependence of the working chess and its sorts of forces will he possible and neces- sary for the revolution to succeed - hut the airs, policies and methods. If tbeir in fuence predominates. revolutionary: op: portunities can be missed. or mass strug. so ofien since World War Two. preceding one, and which can end which makes no compromise with war against reaction from without; only in the complete liquidation of over to socialist measures and to successive stage is rooted in the that is, a revolution whose every democratic stage, which goes any single form of class rule, concept, means a revolution which does not stop at the class society." bourgenes revolution - етостису, n- If the working class were to pursuc its class inverests it would have to embark on country where all three major tasks of the the course of socialist revolution by hreaking the cconomic power of the bour- geoisie. The completion of the tasks of the bourgenis revolution would therefore instead the revolution, ke be successfol. permanent' in the sense of permancot session, and culminating in a revolution- aty worker government. the dictatorship take place simultancously with the begin had to he an unhroken, anterrupied one. would he no gap between fixed stages? socialist revolution. timal liberation and land reform heen genuinely carried out.) nEthe proletariai
programme based upon the theory of Per- lostead, the tight must be to build a manent Revolution. In every such movement Richard Rozanski pendent identity into a national, anti-im- perialist mass movement must be fionary party to subsume itself or its inde- political leadership which will combatthe cross-class Alliances and "stages" theories proposed by stalinist and reformist currents, and struggle Tor a strategy and a lactical there is an ongoing struggle to decide whether the leadership will be bourgeois or proletarian. It is on the outcome of this struggle that the fu- Page 27 ture success of the revolution depends. resisted. Leon Trotsky, Introduction to Permanent thus reinforcing the need for revolutionaries to the successtul socialist, permanent rovolution revolutions are not constrained within national boundaries, The class struggle, he argued, can have far-reoching effects right across the world; organise on an international scale and fight to mobilise solidarity with struggles in countries Individual couniries can make important steps along the road to a classless society - in- He insisted that revolutions and counter Revolution which Trotsky identified. other than their own. measures heneficial to the working class which arc achievable under capitalism - an cight hour When the workers responded with sirikes, o- cupations and even expropriations, whatshould a revolutionary workers und pcasants" govern- ment do? Should it remain faithful to "marxist orthodoxy on the need for capitalism first. port such working class action and make in- propriating the factorics, Imposing a state working day, wage rises, frocdom to organise. socialism later? Or should it promote and sup- roads into bourgeois coonomic power ex- SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 9 October 1988 Trotsky also therefore rejected the inn- plied notion in the Bolshevik strategy that govemment woukt either have 10 give up The bourgeoisic would oppose even those al sonic point the new revolutsonary Els power or repress the working class
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