Die Neue Zeit
30th January 2011, 02:43
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004118
Many on the left see Lenin as undergoing a conversion to Trotskyism in 1917. Lars T Lih takes on this myth and reveals a Lenin, who while converging with Trotsky in certain respects, still has a different strategy. There is also the possible influence Kautsky exerted on Lenin [...]
The part on which Trotsky was by himself - and very often you hear about the Trotsky-Parvus theory, but Parvus denounced this, and Lenin and Parvus were closer on this original question - was his idea that the provisional revolutionary government would be long-lasting, would be a regular government. That is the step he took that the others were unwilling to take. That is why he criticised the Bolsheviks; he considered that they were utopian to think that the provisional revolutionary government would stay provisional.
The question then arises, how did he deal with the ‘axiom of the class ally’, and get around what seemed to everyone else an impassable barrier? He could have done it by saying that the peasants will support socialism, but that is exactly what he didn’t say. The Socialist Revolutionaries (who, by the way, in July 1905 had argued for a “permanent revolution” going into socialism - before Trotsky had ever used the term), coming from the populist tradition, thought that the peasants were ready for socialism’. But Trotsky did not go that route. As a matter of fact, while Trotsky and Lenin may have disagreed about the democratic revolution (and even there I think it was only a matter of emphasis), they certainly did not disagree about whether the peasants were ready for socialism.
My feeling is that Trotsky kept to the letter but violated the spirit of the axiom of the class ally. He thought that in the first part of the democratic revolution the peasants would support you and in the second part, when you go on to socialism, they would not support you. Therefore, unless you have an international revolution, there will be (and this is his own phrase) ‘a civil war with the peasantry’. He agrees that you can’t have socialist government without majority support. But, in a rather peculiar way, he says you can’t have socialism because there will be a civil war with the peasantry. He says we will be discredited if we do not make the provisional government long-lasting.
But to me a civil war with the peasantry seems fairly discrediting, and the idea that a socialist government should end in civil war with the peasantry was blasphemy among Russian social democrats.
Just a confirmation of what Stalin the earlier Russian Social-Democrat and Old Bolshevik (not the revisionist he eventually became) recounted about Trotsky and the peasantry:
Trotskyism is the theory of "permanent" (uninterrupted) revolution. But what is permanent revolution in its Trotskyist interpretation? It is revolution that fails to take the poor peasantry into account as a [politically] revolutionary force. Trotsky's "permanent" revolution is, as Lenin said, "skipping" the peasant movement, "playing at the seizure of power." Why is it dangerous? Because such a revolution, if an attempt had been made to bring it about, would inevitably have ended in failure, for it would have divorced from the Russian proletariat its ally, the poor peasantry. This explains the struggle that Leninism has been waging against Trotskyism ever since 1905.
Many on the left see Lenin as undergoing a conversion to Trotskyism in 1917. Lars T Lih takes on this myth and reveals a Lenin, who while converging with Trotsky in certain respects, still has a different strategy. There is also the possible influence Kautsky exerted on Lenin [...]
The part on which Trotsky was by himself - and very often you hear about the Trotsky-Parvus theory, but Parvus denounced this, and Lenin and Parvus were closer on this original question - was his idea that the provisional revolutionary government would be long-lasting, would be a regular government. That is the step he took that the others were unwilling to take. That is why he criticised the Bolsheviks; he considered that they were utopian to think that the provisional revolutionary government would stay provisional.
The question then arises, how did he deal with the ‘axiom of the class ally’, and get around what seemed to everyone else an impassable barrier? He could have done it by saying that the peasants will support socialism, but that is exactly what he didn’t say. The Socialist Revolutionaries (who, by the way, in July 1905 had argued for a “permanent revolution” going into socialism - before Trotsky had ever used the term), coming from the populist tradition, thought that the peasants were ready for socialism’. But Trotsky did not go that route. As a matter of fact, while Trotsky and Lenin may have disagreed about the democratic revolution (and even there I think it was only a matter of emphasis), they certainly did not disagree about whether the peasants were ready for socialism.
My feeling is that Trotsky kept to the letter but violated the spirit of the axiom of the class ally. He thought that in the first part of the democratic revolution the peasants would support you and in the second part, when you go on to socialism, they would not support you. Therefore, unless you have an international revolution, there will be (and this is his own phrase) ‘a civil war with the peasantry’. He agrees that you can’t have socialist government without majority support. But, in a rather peculiar way, he says you can’t have socialism because there will be a civil war with the peasantry. He says we will be discredited if we do not make the provisional government long-lasting.
But to me a civil war with the peasantry seems fairly discrediting, and the idea that a socialist government should end in civil war with the peasantry was blasphemy among Russian social democrats.
Just a confirmation of what Stalin the earlier Russian Social-Democrat and Old Bolshevik (not the revisionist he eventually became) recounted about Trotsky and the peasantry:
Trotskyism is the theory of "permanent" (uninterrupted) revolution. But what is permanent revolution in its Trotskyist interpretation? It is revolution that fails to take the poor peasantry into account as a [politically] revolutionary force. Trotsky's "permanent" revolution is, as Lenin said, "skipping" the peasant movement, "playing at the seizure of power." Why is it dangerous? Because such a revolution, if an attempt had been made to bring it about, would inevitably have ended in failure, for it would have divorced from the Russian proletariat its ally, the poor peasantry. This explains the struggle that Leninism has been waging against Trotskyism ever since 1905.