Permanent Revolution tory, by informing themselves of their own class interests, by tak- ing up their independent political position as soon as possible, by not allowing themselves to be misled by the hypocritical phrases of the democratic petty bourgeoisie into doubting for one minute the necessity of an independently organised party of the pro- letariat. Their battle-cry must be: The Permanent Revolution." [Marx and Engels: Address of the Central Committee to the Commuist League (March 1850) in The Revolutions of 1848' (Penguin) p330.] MARX's insistence upon the need for political independence of the work- fighting while class even ing alongside other classes for the over- throw of feudal, dictatorial or im- perialist rule is the very kernel of the 'theory" - or rather strategy - of Permanent Revolution, as defended today only by the Trotskyist movement. The very term "permanent" (mean- ing unbroken, uninterruped) revolu- tion" has caused certain confusion: the concept has been poorly explain- ed, and too little employed as a guide to action by the Trotskyist movement in the period since the war. This arti-" cle is designed to spell out a few of • the issues involved, and to underline the importance of permanent revolu- tion to any serious revolutionary strategy today. If we look at three of the central flashpoints of the international class struggle El Salvador; South Africa; the Philippines — we can see that the question of democracy - na- tional liberation and unification; the destruction of the power of the dic- tatorial ruling minority the question of the land and the peasantry; the establishment of rights for the labour
"[The German workers] must contribute most to their final vic-
By HARRY SLOAN movement and a democratic constituent assembly — is central in each case. The same is true of countless other situations in the underdeveloped countries.
In bygone days, of course, the "democratic revolution" was carried through by the capitalist class OI sections of it - in alliances with the peasantry. the urban petty bourgeoisie and even section of workers, under the cross-class appeal for "Liberty, Fraternity, Equality
In the great bourgeois revolutions which overturned the monarchies of England (1640) and France (1789) the bourgeoisie emerged on the stage as a disruptive, revolutionary democratic force.
Even today in South Africa, in the Philippines and (to a much lesser extent) in El Salvador, there are sections of capitalists who proclaim themselves for democratic change: is it still possible therefore to carry through the democratic revolution required to oust these regimes and satisfy the demands of the struggle independence Socialist Viewpoint No. 9 December 1985 p16
Karl Marx without the overthrow of capitalism? Can the democratic revolution be achieved arm in arm with the capitalists - even with capitalists in the leadership of the movement?
The reply to that question divides today's workers" movement between the reformists (comprising a wide range of nationalist and liberal forces, social democrats and Stalinists) who answer "yes"; and the revolutionary Marxist movement which, learning the lessons of history since the mid 19th century, answers firmly "no"
The reformist position of course is not simply that it is possible to achieve real democracy and to satisfy the demands of the oppressed in alliance with the "democratic" bourgeoisie, but that it is desirable to do so — and impossible to do any more.
The reformists do not wish to go any further than a political realignment within the framework of capitalist ("mixed") economy. They are more than ready to drop or to tailor the demands of the struggle to fit in with the vested interests of the "democratic" bourgeoisie.
The revolutionaries point to the experiences which show time and again that the bourgeois "democrats" are
more frightened of the working class than they are committed to achieving even their own demands. Even where the bourgeoisie or petty bourgeois leaders achieve power (or find it thrust upon them) they are more ready to attack the working class than the old regime, and swiftly assemble a new state machinery which defends capitalism against the workers. ing taken power as "democrats" these leaderships refuse to carry through the democratic programme. The examples are legion - every one of the African and Arab states liberated from imperialist rule has witnessed such a development - similarly India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka: "democratic" bourgeoisie democracy only to
carry unhindered exploitation of the working class - and is incapable of delivering a completed democratic revolution.
This first became plain long ago in the wave of democratic revolutions which shook Europe in 1848, and perhaps most clearly of all in the German revolution, where the question of national unification, smashing the power of feudal landowners and the monarchy was raised to centre stage.
Sooner than unite with the peasantry in the overthrow of the old aristocracy, the German bougeoisie held back - fearful that if it were to become the new ruling class it would only have to face the rising power of what was still a comparatively small and divided working class. It was this which caused Marx and Engels to conclude that only the victory of the working class could bring democratic revolution to a conclusion in Germany - and hence to put forward the battle cry of "Permanent Revolution"
Since that point the size economic power of the working class even in the more backward countries has developed out of all proportion to the situation in Germany in 1848. The timidity of the bourgeois "democrats" has grown accordingly.
Nor should we underestimate the impact of a full democratic programme: a weak bougeoisie every reason to fear the upheavals that might follow.
As part of their commitment to the German revolution of 1848, Marx and Engels developed a comprehensive programme of demands for the completion of the democratic revolution in Germany. A brief scope of these demands helps explain what so frightened the bourgeoisie. They included: • The whole of Germany shall be declared a single and indivisible republic • Every German over 21 to be able to vote and be elected • MPs to be paid • The whole population to be armed • All feudal dues, tributes, duties. tithes, etc., abolished
Hav- the wants out its and 203 lords, and all mines and pits to become state property, and collec- tively worked the private banks the state and and State • "Severely progressive" taxation unable to work • Universal and free education. programme: there is no proposal to nationalise industry. has revolutionary gramme the links sever bourgeoisie and the old order of aristocrats. which the bourgeoisie since 1848 has refused to make. This in turn has glance at the prevented the democratic revolution or stalled it German altogether. demands to the gramme in the light of subsequent development, democratic liberation of women. in El Salvador, South Africa and the Philippines for the most part prefers to cling on to the existing regime - for all its problems - rather than risk
The last "classical" bourgeois revolution, 1793: the French execute Louis XVI. • Estates of princes and feudal the •One state bank to replace all • All transport to be taken over by aristocracy, • Complete separation of Church •Job creation and care for those These demands are not a socialist They are a and also democratic pro- - sufficient completely to by between the It is precisely this kind of break working class. completion of the Today, we would add even more democratic pro- particularly demands relating to the Small wonder today's bourgeoisie Socialist Viewpoint No. 9 December 1985 p17
outcome of a thoroughgoing democratic revolution!
The fact is that while supporting some or all of those demands and thus finding themselves in a degree of conflict with the old regime, the democratic bourgeoisie is, like the
Ta propertied class, whose wealth and position derives from the exploitation of workers. It is this common bond of property which always proves stronger than any emotional attachment or moral commitment they may have to democracy.
The peasantry is also a propertied class (albeit on a much smaller scale)
tied to the ruling class therefore by economic links as well as
age-old customs and historic political backwardness. Their smallholdings of land give peasants a distinct position from that of the
Though the peasants, like workers, are exploited by the bourgeoisie and by the old aristocracy and the landowners — and can with the right tactics be won over to a revolution led by the workers — the need to understand their distinct class position was stressed by Marx and Engels, and reemphasised by Lenin and particularly by Trotsky in the context of the Russian situation prior to 1917.
The only consistently revolutionary class, the only propertyless class with no interests in preserving the old order, is the working class, the industrial proletariat. While it can and
must make common cause in the struggle for democracy and fight alongside other classes, and while it must make alliances with the poorest peasants and petty bourgeois, the central factor must remain its political and organisational independence.
Marx and Engels emphasised this as one of the most basic lessons of the 1848 revolutions.
"The workers' party must go into organisation, unity dependence, so that it is not ex-
loited and taken in tow by the
bourgeoisie as in 1848."
[ibid, p320]
For those who have observed the way in which the workers' movement has been cynically used as a tool by position-seeking bourgeois nationalist leaders - not least in African countries, and perhaps most classically in Iran with the emergence of Khomeini - the words and warnings of Marx and Engels in 1850 have a strangely modern sound to them.
Simply against those who feel revolutionaries should plunge uncritically into alliances and unified organisations with cross class forces in Central America, an analysis of the German situation leads Marx and Engels to draw out an apt warning:
The petty bourgeois democratic party in Germany is very powerful. It not only embraces the geat majority of the urban middle class, the small industrial merchants and master craftsmen: it also includes among its followers the peasants and rural proletariat in so far as the latter has not yet found support among the independent proletariat of the towns.
The relationship of the revolutionary workers' party to the petty bourgeois democrats is this: it cooperates with them against the party which they wish to overthrow: it opposes them wherever they wish to secure their own position."
[ibid p322)
The role of the petty bourgeois throughout history has been one of exploiting and then seeking to crush the power of the working class. We may look at Mugabe's sudden rise to power and the immediate suppression of strikes in Zimbabwe: we may look to the consolidation of power by petty bourgeois regimes in Angola, Mozambique or other examples going back to the Algerian Revolution. The general lesson for the working class is summed up by Marx and Engels:
"While the democratic petty bourgeois want to bring the revolution to an end as quickly as possible (...) it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less probertied classes have been driver rom their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of
T The German revolution of 1848. the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far - not only in one country but in all the leading contries of the world - that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers.
"Our concern cannot simply be to modify private property. but to abolish it, not to hush up class antagonisms but to abolish classes. not to improve the existing society but to found a real one."
[ibid p3223-4]
Here — over 70 years before Stalin's reactionary "theory" of building socialism in one country -Marx and Engels link the completion of the "permanent revolution" to the international struggle for socialism.
Such was the richness of the revolutionary experience they were examining that they were able to go in even greater detail into an exposure of the methods of entrapment employed by the "democratic petty bourgeois" - the equivalent of today's reformist wing of the workers movement - and the need to resist. It seema almost as if Marx and Engels have followed the lessons of the Popular Fronts of the 1930s or have been reading the latest proposals to "unity" the opposition forces in El Salvador:
"They [the petty bourgeois democrats] extend the hand of Socialist Viewpoint No. 9 December 1985 p18
friendship, and seek to found a great opposition party which will embrace all democratic opinion: that is they seek to ensnare workers in a party organisation in which general social-democratic phrases prevail. while their particular interests are kept hidden behind, and in which, for the sake of preserving the peace, the specific demands of the proletariat may not be presented. Such unity would be to their advantage alone and to the complete disadvantage of the proletariat. The proletariat would lose all its hard-won independent position and be reduced once more to a mere appendage of official bourgeois democracy."
(ibid p324]
Marx and Engels call instead for an independent organisation of workers' party "alongside the official democrats".
"During and alter the struggle the workers must at every opportunity put forward their own demands against those of the bourgeois democrats. They must demand guarantees for the workers CES soon CES the democratic bourgeoisie sets about taking over the government... They must check in every way the victory euphoria and enthusiasm for the new situation which follows every successful street battle, with a cool and cold-blooded analysis of the situation and with undisguised mistrust of
"I proceeded precisely from the bourgeois-democratic character of the revolution and arrived at the conclusion that the profundity of the agrarian crisis could raise the proletariat of backward Russia to power... This was precisely the idea I defended on the eve of the 1905 Revolution. This was precisely the idea that was expressed by the very designation of the revolution as a 'permanent, that is an uninterrupted one, a revolution passing over directly from the bourgeois stage into the socialist. To express the same idea Lenin later used the exellent expression of [Leon Trotsky. Introduction to Permanent Revolution (New Park) pl2, emphasis added].
the new government."
[ibid p324-5]
This same spirit of working class independence became part of the driving force of Lenin and the Bolsheviks - Indeed it was precisely over the necessity for this type for firm and disciplined leadership, and the rejection of any perspective of class collaboration the "democratic
Russia, that the Bosheviks split in 1903 from the Menshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.
While the Mensheviks - ignoring the lessons of 1848 — clung to the notion that the liberal bougeoisie would play the leading role in the democratic revolution in Russia,
----- pull-quotes on this page ----- the bourgeois revolution growing over into the socialist." Socialist Viewpoint No. 9 December 1985 p19
would a hypothetical "democratic question: further estates raised a The expropriation of the large tion a proletarian answer would need To each of these queslock out their workers or disrupt the who attempted to capitalists strikers; and the need to expropriate unemployed; government support for the for support day; Other contentious issues would be opposed by sections of the peasantry. measures which would be strongly
proletariat agricultural would need to take steps to defend interests, class working and
Tan anti-war demonstration After Lenin's return to Russia in April -НАВЛАСТЬС. Р.С. КДСТ НАПИТОЛИСТОВІ КИНОТРОВЕ
theoretically representing both pea- government, same And on the level of immediate to be given. new regime. It would those the 8-hour the and Prospects, Pursuing the argument in his 1904 sant the lan-
Socialist Viewpoint No. 9 December 1985 p20
Othe demands, to the tional sense. hardly be a "democracy" in the tradi-
crimes against the people. did not those regiments most involved with the state machine, and disbanding key reactionaries from the army and to secure its survival by dismissing through Parliamentary procedures -and by no means "democratically" or
Russia would need to act swiftly antagonistic alliance of workers and peasants in Trotsky pointed out that a victorious liberal
Pamphlet Results Tsarist programme part of its own. downers and making the democratic
Prole, breaking boldly from working class assumed the leading could only be carried through if the the tasks demanded by the peasantry
bourgeois but which
proletariat. The completion even of bourgeoisie or follow the lead of the
would not either fall prey form a genuine party of its own which have the political independence to
Ffor all its size and weight, Trotsky argued that the peasantry,
when it came to the crunch. by the proletariat or by the peasantry dictatorial power would be exercised seat. It left open whether the actual forces simultaneously in the driving
placed two formula bourgeoisie, but the fact that Lenin's
Othe and aptocracy the oppressed against phasis upon the alliance of the most on the agrarian revolution or the emTrotsky criticised not Lenin's focus
some independent role. partry of its own which might play peasantry might even develop a mass ' (1905) rule out the possibility that the regime. Lenin did not at this stage
"democratic" a than rested on a more radical mass base -i
tionary workers's state, a regime which fell short of a revoluThis term left open the possibility of
letariat and peasantry" "democratic dictatorship of the pro-
establish would forces bined torious, Lenin argued that these comdriving force of revolution. If vicworkers and the poor peasants as the tral role of an alliance between the of massed peasantry raised the cenagrarian question in a backward land Lenin argued that the centrality of the
dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry decide to carve up those estates into small plots for landless peasants and agricultural workers? Or would it decide rather to retain them as larger units, and farm them collectively? The proletarian programme points to a collective, socialised economy, the traditional peasant demand is for individual land ownership.
Such question, Trotsky could prove decisive for the very survival of a revolutionary government: on each of them the only consistently revolutionary line came from the proletariat, not the peasantry.
The democratic programme, even the minimum workers, could only be achieved by a government under the control of the working class, the dictatorship of the proletariat. For this reason, argued, the ship" formula should be discarded.
The Marxist goal was to wage an independent struggle within the unfolding democratic revolution, and to create the conditions for the working class to play the leading role, cementing an alliance with the poorest sectors of the peasantry, so that the democratic *grow ovey, against Tsarism could uninterrupted way into the socialist revolution and the seizure of power by the workers.
Nor was it a question of Marxists artificially trying to fabricate a process of "growing over". In the emergence of the powerful Soviets councils) based on the workplaces, and reaching into the army, the Russian working class and sections of the peasantry showed that the struggle had by no means been
in the resolved "democratic" revolution, while the and bougeoisie hangers-on gave proof that democratic programme could only be carried through under the leader- ship of the working class. ing Joseph Stalin and other Bolsheviks" within Russia who had since February given support to the stressed, andt for a international class lind and decisively shifted Revolution. had been established by Marx and Engels sixty years previously: "Alongside revolutionary suspicion former ally. against mon victory for itself. To be (workers' key muskets. rifles. Socialist Viewpoint No. 9 December 1985 p21
February 1917 their reformist the workers letarian
In April 1917, stridently denounc-
"old the bourgeois "Provisional Government" and even to its contribution of the imperialist war, Lenin reaffirmed the
internationalism, the line of the Bolshevik Party toward the October
Again the watch-words tor this turn Government,
Othe new official governments (the workers) must simultaneously establish their own
workers' governments. either in the form of local executive committees and councils or through workers' clubs or committees... In a word, from the very moment of victory the workers
must be directed no longer against the defeated reactionary party but against their
Othe party which intends to exploit the com-
Table forcefully and hreateningly to oppose this party whose betrayal of the workers will begin with the very first hour of vicony the workers must be armed
organised. The whole proletariat must be armed at once with
cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the
old-style citizens' militia, directed against the workers. must be op- posed. Where the formation of this militia cannot be prevented. the organise must try to themselves independently as a pro- with elected leaders and with their own elected general stail: they must try to place themselves not under the orders of authority but of the state revolutionary local councils set up by the workers." the olu- Im- lual was therefore in lion ber Trotsky began rese am- the the in- eph aste thin rard een "old Bolsheviks" learned by some tion па- F the 1924 cia- his
Iranian masses toppled the Shah (and his statue): but still have not achieved democracy.
"theory" of socialism in one country,
and looking ready-made, easy
allies internationally, among
the Chinese nationalist
Chiang Kai Shek was prominent.
Echoing all of the
from the past — the discredited no-.
tion of the leading role
bougeoisie in national liberation
Stalin recognised Chiang's bourgeois
party, the Kuomintang, leading party of the revolution.
He compelled the Chinese Communist Party to enter and submit to the discipline of the Kuomintang, instructed Communists to help down peasant struggles, and forbade the establishment of soviets.
In April 1927, Chiang repaid Stalin's trust by staging counter-revolutionary coup Shanghai and executing thousands of Communists. There followed a succession of further disasters.
Small wonder Stalin found sky's insistence upon revolution and resolute defence of independent working class organisation and policy to be a major challenge: small wonder bureaucratic machinery Kremlin expended such energy slandering Trotsky's line — the line of Lenin and Marx - and instilling in the degenerated "Communist International" the discredited formulae of the Mensheviks.
Small wonder today that the Communist parties and CP-influenced groupings which have descended from Stalins's Comintern fiercely opposed today to the concept and strategy of permanent revolution as they are committed to politics of class collaboration and reform. They
of democratic whom leader of nerstone "progressive"* worst formulae capitalist alliances." of the EI struggles in the Africa, and the Philippines, as Chinese the certainly (in South layers of peasants bourgeois. a brutal the carrying and democratic revolution go beyond anything that can be accomplished Trot- by or under the leadership of the "democratic" capitalists. permanent We are workers, committing themselves to the struggle, should maintain thei- independent the of the own demands and programme. Fighting alongside "democrats" use revolutionary means against the existing regime, workers must maintain their own revolutionary organisations. democratic the specifically gramme of a workers' organisation. they must remain committed to the are as socialist struggle and Engels Insisted) not stop short tied classes have been driven from Socialist Viewpoint No. 9 December 1985 p22
adamantly insist upon the separation and socialist letariat revolutions, because that is the cor- power. their search for sections of the class and "broad popular When we argue today that there is only a working class solution to the Salvador, South we are not arguing for any less emphasis on democratic tasks to be ac- complished in the revolution. We are not arguing against an alliance between the working class Africa specifically the black working class) and the poorest and petty We are stressing that even the minimal demands of the proletariat through of the insisting that the organisations, their the various who are prepared to 1848 to 1850. Incorporating the (Penguin). demands. alongside socialist Park) Trotsky, and (as Marx (New Park). "until all the more or less proper-
Learning stone trel the pro-
conquered state
From this slandpoint, permanent
revolution is not so much a "theory" as a strategic conception, an orientation within the struggle on an interna. tional level. It is not a jargon term to be confusingly used by academics, but a "battle cry" for the workers. Not therefore is it a disposable notion within the vocabulary of Trotskyism and class politics: those who wilfully discard permanent revolution embrace the reformist line of class collaboration — all too often its Stalinist
"The permanent revolution, in the sense which Marx attached to this concept, means a revolution which makes no compromise with any single form of class rule, which does not stop at the stage, which goes over to socialist measures and to war against reaction from without: that is, a revolution whose ever successive stage is rooted in the preceding one. which can end only in the complete liquidation of class society."
[Trotsky: Introduction to The Permanent Revolution (New Park) p6]. Further Reading: Marx, The Class struggles in France Marx, The Revolutions of 1848 Lenin, The April Theses. Trotsky, Lessons of October (New
The Permanent Revolution Baku, Congress of the Peoples of the East (New Park).
Nicaraguan leaders
By HARRY SLOAN THE greasy grins, backslapping and handshakes between Gorbachev and Reagan in Geneva stand in some contrast to the increasing US efforts destabilise and overthrow the Nicaraguan government.
Washington has consistently and without proof denounced Nicaragua's Sandinista leaders as "Marxists" "agents of Moscow" - and funnelled tens of millions of dollars to finance the terrorist activities of the "contra" forces who carry out their murders under the cynical banner