Permanent revolution by Leon Trotsky

[Marxman]

I took the liberty in making this thread dedicated to the great comrade of communism Leon Trotksy - Lev Davidovich Bronstein's (his real name) theory of permanent revolution. I hope it answers many things about his real outlook. This was taken from a great site www.trotsky.net

What is the theory of the Permanent Revolution?

In the years before the Russian Revolution of 1917 there was quite a heated debate between the different tendencies of the Russian labour movement on what would be the character of the Russian revolution, and the relation between the classes in the revolution. Undoubtedly, the theory that brilliantly anticipated and explained what actually took place in 1917 was worked out by Trotsky.

The theory of the permanent revolution was first developed by Trotsky as early as 1904. The permanent revolution, while accepting that the objective tasks facing the Russian workers were those of the bourgeois democratic revolution, nevertheless explained how in a backward country in the epoch of imperialism, the "national bourgeoisie" was inseparably linked to the remains of feudalism on the one hand and to imperialist capital on the other and was therefore completely unable to carry through any of its historical tasks. The rottenness of the bourgeois liberals, and their counterrevolutionary role in the bourgeois-democratic revolution, was already observed by Marx and Engels. In his article The Bourgeoisie and the Counter-revolution (1848), Marx writes:

"The German bourgeoisie has developed so slothfully, cravenly and slowly that at the moment when it menacingly faced feudalism and absolutism it saw itself menacingly faced by the proletariat and all factions of the burgers whose interests and ideas were akin to those of the proletariat. And it saw inimically arrayed not only a class behind it but all Europe before it. The Prussian bourgeoisie was not, as the French of 1789 had been, the class which represented the whole of modern society vis-a-vis the representatives of the old society, the monarchy and the nobility. It had sunk to the level of a kind of social estate, as distinctly opposed to the crown as to the people, eager to be in the opposition to both, irresolute against each of its opponents , taken severally, because it always saw both of them before or behind it; inclined to betray the people and compromise with the crowned representative of the old society because it itself already belonged to the old society; ". (K. Marx, The Bourgeoisie and the Counter-revolution, in MESW, vol. 1, p. 140-1.)

The bourgeoisie, Marx explains, did not come to power as a result of its own revolutionary exertions, but as a result of the movement of the masses in which it played no role: "The Prussian bourgeoisie was hurled to the height of state power, however not in the manner it had desired, by a peaceful bargain with the crown but by a revolution". (K. Marx, The Bourgeoisie and the Counter-revolution, MESW, vol. 1, p. 138.)

Even in the epoch of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Europe, Marx and Engels mercilessly unmasked the cowardly, counterrevolutionary role of the bourgeoisie, and emphasised the need for the workers to maintain a policy of complete class independence, not only from the bourgeois liberals, but also from the vacillating petty bourgeois democrats:

"The proletarian, or really revolutionary party," wrote Engels, "succeeded only very gradually in withdrawing the mass of the working people from the influence of the democrats whose tail they formed in the beginning of the revolution. But in due time the indecision weakness and cowardice of the democratic leaders did the rest, and it may now be said to be one of the principal results of the last years' convulsions, that wherever the working class is concentrated in anything like considerable masses, they are entirely freed from that democratic influence which led them into an endless series of blunders and misfortunes during 1848 and 1849." (F. Engels, Revolution and Counter-revolution in Germany, MESW, vol. 1, p. 332.)

The situation is clearer still today. The national bourgeoisie in the colonial countries entered into the scene of history too late, when the world had already been divided up between a few imperialist powers. It was not able to play any progressive role and was born completely subordinated to its former colonial masters. The weak and degenerate bourgeoisie in Asia, Latin America and Africa is too dependent on foreign capital and imperialism, to carry society forward. It is tied with a thousand threads, not only to foreign capital, but with the class of landowners, with which it forms a reactionary bloc that represents a bulwark against progress. Whatever differences may exist between these elements are insignificant in comparison with the fear that unites them against the masses. Only the proletariat, allied with the poor peasants and urban poor, can solve the problems of society by taking power into its own hands, expropriating the imperialists and the bourgeoisie, and beginning the task of transforming society on socialist lines.

By setting itself at the head of the nation, leading the oppressed layers of society (urban and rural petty-bourgeoisie), the proletariat could take power and then carry through the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution (mainly the land reform and the unification and liberation of the country from foreign domination). However, once having come to power, the proletariat would not stop there but would start to implement socialist measures of expropriation of the capitalists. And as these tasks cannot be solved in one country alone, especially not in a backward country, this would be the beginning of the world revolution. Thus the revolution is "permanent" in two senses: because it starts with the bourgeois tasks and continues with the socialist ones, and because it starts in one country and continues at an international level.

The theory of the permanent revolution was the most complete answer to the reformist and class collaborationist position of the right wing of the Russian workers' movement, the Mensheviks. The two stage theory was developed by the Mensheviks as their perspective for the Russian revolution. It basically states that, since the tasks of the revolution are those of the national democratic bourgeois revolution, the leadership of the revolution must be taken by the national democratic bourgeoisie. For his part, Lenin agreed with Trotsky that the Russian Liberals could not carry out the bourgeois-democratic revolution, and that this task could only be carried out by the proletariat in alliance with the poor peasantry. Following in the footsteps of Marx, who had described the bourgeois "democratic party" as "far more dangerous to the workers than the previous liberals", Lenin explained that the Russian bourgeoisie, far from being an ally of the workers, would inevitably side with the counter-revolution.

"The bourgeoisie in the mass" he wrote in 1905, "will inevitably turn towards the counter-revolution, and against the people as soon as its narrow, selfish interests are met, as soon as it 'recoils' from consistent democracy (and it is already recoiling from it!). (Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 9, p. 98.)

What class, in Lenin's view, could lead the bourgeois-democratic revolution? "There remains 'the people', that is, the proletariat and the peasantry. The proletariat alone can be relied on to march on to the end, for it goes far beyond the democratic revolution. That is why the proletariat fights in the forefront for a republic and contemptuously rejects stupid and unworthy advice to take into account the possibility of the bourgeoisie recoiling" (Ibid.)

In all of Lenin's speeches and writings, the counter-revolutionary role of the bourgeois-democratic Liberals is stressed time and time again. However, up until 1917, he did not believe that the Russian workers would come to power before the socialist revolution in the West&emdash;a perspective that only Trotsky defended before 1917, when it was fully adopted by Lenin in his April theses. The correctness of the permanent revolution was triumphantly demonstrated by the October Revolution itself. The Russian working class&emdash;as Trotsky had predicted in 1904&emdash;came to power before the workers of Western Europe. They carried out all the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, and immediately set about nationalising industry and passing over to the tasks of the socialist revolution. The bourgeoisie played an openly counterrevolutionary role, but was defeated by the workers in alliance with the poor peasants. The Bolsheviks then made a revolutionary appeal to the workers of the world to follow their example. Lenin knew very well that without the victory of the revolution in the advanced capitalist countries, especially Germany, the revolution could not survive isolated, especially in a backward country like Russia. What happened subsequently showed that this was absolutely correct. The setting up of the Third (Communist) International, the world party of socialist revolution, was the concrete manifestation of this perspective.

Had the Communist International remained firm on the positions of Lenin and Trotsky, the victory of the world revolution would have been ensured. Unfortunately, the Comintern's formative years coincided with the Stalinist counter-revolution in Russia, which had a disastrous effect on the Communist Parties of the entire world. The Stalinist bureaucracy, having acquired control in the Soviet Union developed a very conservative outlook. The theory that socialism can be built in one country&emdash;an abomination from the standpoint of Marx and Lenin&emdash;really reflected the mentality of the bureaucracy which had had enough of the storm and stress of revolution and sought to get on with the task of "building socialism in Russia". That is to say, they wanted to protect and expand their privileges and not "waste" the resources of the country in pursuing world revolution. On the other hand they feared that revolution in other countries could develop on healthy lines and pose a threat to their own domination in Russia, and therefore, at a certain stage, sought actively to prevent revolution elsewhere.

Instead of pursuing a revolutionary policy based on class independence, as Lenin had always advocated, they proposed an alliance of the Communist Parties with the "national progressive bourgeoisie" (and if there was not one easily at hand, they were quite prepared to invent it) to carry through the democratic revolution, and afterwards, later on, in the far distant future, when the country had developed a fully fledged capitalist economy, fight for socialism. This policy represented a complete break with Leninism and a return to the old discredited position of Menshevism&emdash;the theory of the "two stages".

In order to cover up for their own abandoning of the lessons that the Bolsheviks had drawn from the experience of the Russian revolution itself the Stalinists mounted a huge campaign of falsification of Trotsky's analysis and conclusions. They tried to separate Trotsky's position from that of Lenin, by going back to the polemics of the period prior to the revolution, when in fact the experience of the revolution had put all theories to the test and had proven the theory of the Permanent Revolution to be correct.


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[peaccenicked]

You might like this article from Radical chains.

Trotsky Reappraised
The Trotsky Reappraisal by Terry Brotherstone and Paul Dukes (eds.), Edinburgh University Press, 1992 - reviewed by David Gorman

radical chains



Leon Trotsky is undoubtedly one of the most controversial figures of twentieth century marxism. Opinion about him is divided firmly between pro- and anti-, and few seem capable of adopting a neutral attitude towards the man. There cannot be another marxist, other than Stalin, who has inspired so much devotion on the one side, and so much loathing on the other. Clearly, sympathy with Stalin tends to obstruct a positive attitude towards Trotsky and the fact of Trotsky's demonisation by stalinism has only added to, deepened and sustained his clear attraction for many opponents of stalinism. This in itself has induced a polarisation which has obstructed attempts at objective evaluation of his work. It is difficult to discuss the theory of permanent revolution, the law of combined and uneven development, and the analysis of fascism, independently of Stalin's attitude towards them. The mere fact that stalinism treated them as a dangerous heresy, has actually added to their appeal.

But serious discussion of Trotsky has been impeded also by a deep polarisation within the anti-stalinist left itself. Here the split between those pro- and those anti-Trotsky has been reproduced. For some, trotskyism has been the only real opposition to stalinism, while for others there is no real difference. On the one hand there are those who will tolerate no criticism of his views and on the other those who seem to regard him as anathema. If some anti-stalinists have been influenced at least in part by the rabid anti-trotskyism of the stalinists, other anti-stalinists have focused rather on Kronstadt, on the militarisation of labour, and on the destruction of the Makhnovist movement. It would seem that for some anti-stalinists, stalinism is bad but trotskyism is worse. Attacks on Trotsky by many anti-stalinists all too often resemble those by the stalinists themselves.

This circumstance does not encourage change. Rather it reinforces the view that trotskyism is the only principled opposition to stalinism. Significantly, the only serious critical work on Trotsky to have emerged in the last fifty years has come from within the trotskyist movement itself. In many cases, such as those of Victor Serge, Raya Dunayevskaya, and CLR James, criticism has been a prelude to a political and theoretical break with trotskyism but this does not alter the fact that serious criticism has come only from within. In fact the tendency towards iconisation within trotskyism was always uneven in its development and is now clearly breaking down. The real obstacle to dialogue today is the absurd sectarianism of the professional anti-trotskyist.

Trotskyism has persisted at least in part because stalinism has existed; it has defined itself very much by opposition to stalinism. The ongoing disintegration of stalinism will lead therefore, either to the regeneration of trotskyism, or to its collapse. There are clear signs of both: a new theoretical openness on the one hand, and blind retrenchment on the other. It is within this context that it is possible to evaluate the contents of The Trotsky Reappraisal, a collection of papers presented at one of three conferences held in 1990 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of Trotsky. The conference in question, 'Trotsky after fifty years', was held at Aberdeen University in July and August 1990. Anyone who wants to know more about the conference itself should read the review by Baruch Hirson in an earlier issue of this journal ('Fifty Years of the Assassin', Radical Chains 2).

Not all of the papers presented at the conference have been included in the book. Nevertheless, the published material addresses a wide range of questions and issues, covering philosophy, history, politics and political economy, and it does so from a variety of perspectives. As one of the editors, Terry Brotherstone, notes in his concluding essay: 'No reader could agree with everything in it. The collection is deliberately eclectic' (p.235). Also included is work by several scholars from Eastern Europe and the former USSR, who have been able to study Trotsky since the opening of the archives in the course of perestroika.

It is impossible to comment on everything. Instead I want to focus on a series of papers which discuss Trotsky's relation to bolshevism and to Lenin in particular, and the paper by Hillel Ticktin on Trotsky's political economy. Challenging the common view that Trotsky and Lenin agreed on virtually all things at least in the period after the revolution, these papers argue for a clear distinction between Trotsky and mainstream bolshevism. The aim is clearly to try to rescue Trotsky from association with bolshevism. I want to examine their arguments and briefly indicate some problems.

In 'Trotsky and the struggle for "Lenin's Heritage"', Michael Reiman traces Trotsky's changing relation to Lenin in the period after the revolution: from the trade union debate of 1920, through the 'Lenin-Zinoviev coup' at the 10th Party Congress, to the Lenin-Trotsky bloc of 1922. Reiman outlines and explores their arguments and disagreements but never in a sectarian manner. As he himself notes, criticism of Trotsky is necessary but it 'must not proceed from the assumption that in conflicts between Lenin and Trotsky all right and truth lay on one side and all evil and falsehood on the other' (p.50). In exploring these conflicts, and Trotsky's hesitations in his struggle against Stalin, Reiman emphasises Trotsky's late membership of the Bolshevik Party - he joined only after July 1917 - and his consequent marginalisation within it.

Related to this is the question of Trotsky's political individuality and independence. Unlike most of the Bolshevik leaders, Trotsky was not a pupil of Lenin but an independent theorist, the author of the theory of permanent revolution, who had clashed with Lenin on many issues before 1917. When he joined the Bolshevik Party, it was not because he had adopted 'bolshevism', but rather, because Lenin and a few other Bolshevik leaders had adopted a position close to his own on the nature of the revolution. The acceptance of a perspective similar to that of permanent revolution was not universal within the Bolshevik camp even after 1917 - Zinoviev, Kamenev and Stalin had always rejected it and even opposed the seizure of power in 1917 - and Trotsky remained marginalised. Summing up his argument, Reiman says '...the fundamental charge that history must direct against him [Trotsky] is that, in October 1917, it was Trotsky who to a great extent ensured that victory in the revolution belonged to a party that was not his party and which he did not control. Apart from the initial period of the revolution and the Civil War, the only role open to him was as a critic of this party' (p.51).

The same theme appears also in Udo Gerhmann's piece on 'Trotsky and the Russian Social Democratic controversy over comparative revolutionary history'. This article covers much of the ground covered elsewhere by Michael Lowy in The Politics of Combined and Uneven Development (Verso, 1980). Gehrmann's account, however, shows greater scholarship. Its knowledge of the positions of Russian Social Democracy on the question of the Russian Revolution is wider - Gehrmann discusses not only the positions of Lenin, Trotsky and Plekhanov, but also the views of Axelrod, Lunacharsky, Martov, Martinov, and Tseretelli. In addition Gehrmann's account addresses in greater depth the role of the French revolution of 1789 in the ideology of the Russian marxists. The main criticism must be that it accepts the terms of debate as laid down by its subjects thus failing to challenge the notion of the 'bourgeois-democratic revolution', for instance. Is there such a beast? Where does the idea come from? The usual source cited is the Communist Manifesto but while Marx and Engels distinguish the tasks of the bourgeois revolution from those of the proletarian revolution, no mention is made of there being a 'bourgeois democratic revolution'. Nevertheless, in this Gehrmann's failure is no greater than that of anyone else who has written on the subject while his contribution to our knowledge of the period is more valuable.

A third article to examine the question of Trotsky's relation to Lenin is Richard Day's 'The political theory of Leon Trotsky'. Here Day attempts to link Trotsky's understanding of the role of consciousness in history to his political critique of stalinism and the Five Year Plans. Day situates Trotsky's understanding of consciousness within the dialectical tradition of Hegel and Marx and carefully distances it from Engels, who, he argues, 'helped to create confusion for an entire generation of Marxists' (p.121). Whereas Engels saw consciousness as a 'reflection' of the material world, Day claims that Trotsky, like Marx, stressed the 'active relation of consciousness to the external world' (Trotsky, quoted by Day, p.121). Trotsky's differences with Engels, moreover, 'distinguished him clearly from the mainstream of Bolshevik thought' (p.122). To demonstrate this point Day briefly examines Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Bukharin's Historical Materialism, and Stalin's Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR. All of these texts, he argues, had their philosophical roots in Engels and all of them worked with a reflection theory of consciousness. Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks, he argues, constituted a break with this tradition and brought Lenin's understanding of the role of consciousness closer to that of Trotsky.

By outlining the philosophical differences between Trotsky and the Bolsheviks, Day seems to reinforce the argument put forward by Reiman. But Day fails to show precisely how Trotsky's philosophical understanding of consciousness informed his politics. He argues that the reflection theory of consciousness held by the Bolsheviks underpinned a view of planning that denied a conscious role for the working class, whereas Trotsky's emphasis on the active role of consciousness led him to argue for the central role of working class activity. Yet many statements can be found where Trotsky identifies consciousness with the party or even the state. Thus in The Third International after Lenin (1928) he argued that in a period in which the objective prerequisites for socialism had matured, 'the key to the whole historical process passes into the hands of the subjective factor, that is, the party' (The Third International Since Lenin, p 84). Statements like this sit uneasily with Day's claim. A large proportion of Trotsky's work betrays an acceptance of a reflection theory of consciousness that Day believes he rejected. There is here a clear parallel with Lenin. Through his reading of Hegel's Science of Logic in 1915 Lenin seems to have discovered a more dialectical view of consciousness; this is clear to anyone who has read his Conspectus of Hegel's 'Science of Logic'. In his more political works of 1916 and 1917, i.e. Imperialism and The State and Revolution, however, the same mechanical view that informed his earlier works still pervades.

Whatever their shortcomings, the articles by Reiman, Gehrmann and Day do hold out the promise of a more critical understanding of Trotsky's relation to bolshevism. At the very least, they succeed in detaching the question of Trotsky's relation to Lenin from the question of the truth of his views. The two had become linked in the 1920s when Stalin managed to make agreement with Lenin the litmus test of truth and, in order to survive, Trotsky himself had tried to show that he had never had any serious differences with Lenin.

But perhaps the most important article in the book is Hillel Ticktin's 'Trotsky's political economy of capitalism'. This too touches briefly on differences between Trotsky, Lenin, Bukharin and others, but its main function is to explore various aspects of Trotsky's political economy: the notion of 'the curve of capitalist development', the theory of capitalist decline, Trotsky's conception of the relation of crisis and revolution, his understanding of categories such as 'imperialism', 'fascism' and the 'transitional epoch'. Ticktin has a deep knowledge of Trotsky's writings and the picture that emerges is initially very persuasive. This is particularly true of his account of Trotsky's understanding of capitalist decline. For Ticktin: 'Trotsky's crucial perspective is one of a declining capitalism which was desperately seeking its way out of its old age. At certain periods it was able to find temporary alleviation through imperialism, fascism, war and stalinism/cold war, but the palliatives become ever more useless over time' (p.222).

His account of the category of the transitional epoch has much to recommend it too. In Ticktin's view: 'Trotsky never produced a political economy of the transitional epoch, but it may be pieced together. In the first place, it is a period when capitalism has been overthrown in a part of the world, without the introduction of socialism itself. In the second place, capitalism continues to decline. In the third place, the subjective aspect plays a crucial role as the leaders of both social democracy and stalinism are seen as saving capitalism in this period' (p.225). Subjectivity is crucial to Trotsky's perspective. Ticktin argues that 'Trotsky is the only Marxist theorist to put the subjective into political economy. He stands in stark contrast to theorists like Paul Mattick and Henryk Grossman who in their own ways tend to objectivise economic laws. Capitalism, for them, will come to a natural end ... What Trotsky did was to add a new dimension to political economy by arguing that the movement of capital has to be seen as part of the class struggle and not just as an unconscious movement of rates of profit' (p.218).

Ticktin's interpretation is compelling but it is also open to criticism. Trotsky's political economy is ambiguous but in Ticktin's account these ambiguities are not explored. In his writings of the twenties and thirties Trotsky tended to elide the concept of decline with that of collapse thus producing a political economy which fostered a catastrophist view of the immediate situation. In his discussion of the transitional epoch, moreover, Trotsky tended to separate the subjective from the objective and then, as we have already seen, to identify the 'subjective factor' with the party rather than with the working class. This separation, which found its fullest formulation in the notion of 'the crisis of revolutionary leadership', tended to reinforce the catastrophism inherent in the theory of decline. Trotsky, moreover, identified decline with the chronic disruption of capitalist 'equilibrium', itself an ambiguous and confusing notion, and with the decomposition and collapse of the productive forces. His view was one of the objective development of capital to the point where the contradiction between the productive forces and social relations of capitalism led to collapse and forced the working class to struggle. However, within this objective movement of capital the working class played only a subordinate role. This was the basis for the role of the party as directing organ. The result was a theory of transition that looks more like a description of defeat.

This book contains a wide diversity of material which explores different aspects of Trotsky's contribution from a variety of political perspectives and this review has merely scratched the surface. It is to be hoped, however, that the issues raised in the articles mentioned above will find their way into the trotskyist movement and the wider anti-stalinist movement.

[Marxman]

I rather suggest "Lenin and Trotsky:what they really stood for" by Alan Woods and Ted Grant.

[peaccenicked]

Woods and Grant tend to reiterate the Lenin Trotsky double identity role at least they did in 1986. Recently I heard Grant was trying to do a hatchet job on Lenin.
But it was always the case belittle Lenin bolster Trotsky.
I find them childish. Are they still in the Labour Party?

[Turnoviseous]

Quote: from peaccenicked on 8:40 pm on Sep. 22, 2002
Woods and Grant tend to reiterate the Lenin Trotsky double identity role at least they did in 1986. Recently I heard Grant was trying to do a hatchet job on Lenin.
But it was always the case belittle Lenin bolster Trotsky.
I find them childish. Are they still in the Labour Party?

Well I don´t know from where you got the idea that they belittle Lenin and bolster Trotsky. They ussualy say that ´there is lack of genuine Leninist parties´, ´go back to genuine Leninism,..´

I think it is not the case of trying to bellitle Lenin an bolster Trotsky. I have read some of their books and I have seen that on some occasions they say ´on that Lenin was right´,.. later on somewhere say that ´Lenin was wrong here´ (example: Whe he said that workers get conscoiusness only through good party.), then that Trotsky was wrong somwhere (example: conciliationism) and right somewhere else...

I find their books very unbiassed. I think that their books offer a great scientific explanation of things...

[peaccenicked]

It is along time since I read/sold their material. I remember the book stalls 20 Trotsky pamphlets to 2 Lenin.
Grant sees an unbroken line in his head between Marx
Lenin Trotsky and himself. I think that displays a lot of self bias towards himself.
Trotsky advocated entryism to the parties of the Second international. Lenin did not live long enough to get that desparate and self negating.
Lenin defined the Labour Party as a bourgeois workers
party which systematically dupes the workers. Grant oft described the labour party as the mass party of the working class, thus ignoring the genuine leninist explanation. I was in his group for three years.
It was sectarian, workerist and cultish.
My advice, is avoid them.

[Turnoviseous]

Quote: from peaccenicked on 10:14 pm on Sep. 22, 2002
It is along time since I read/sold their material. I remember the book stalls 20 Trotsky pamphlets to 2 Lenin.
Grant sees an unbroken line in his head between Marx
Lenin Trotsky and himself. I think that displays a lot of self bias towards himself.
Trotsky advocated entryism to the parties of the Second international. Lenin did not live long enough to get that desparate and self negating.
Lenin defined the Labour Party as a bourgeois workers
party which systematically dupes the workers. Grant oft described the labour party as the mass party of the working class, thus ignoring the genuine leninist explanation. I was in his group for three years.
It was sectarian, workerist and cultish.
My advice, is avoid them.

Yes, Trotsky said that it is good to enter the parties of Second international, but then when the Stalinists got strenghtened after the war, he said that a new international must be built...

Well, you know, time changes. Being static is not good (I refer to the question of entrism). At one moment it is good to be in one party, at another moment it is not...

I think that it is pretty sectarian to say that every movement should have its own party when one is not considering other factors....

Although I think they should be in the Labour Party and out of it,.. if you know what I mean.

[peaccenicked]

The labour party is a rectionary movement. Highly centralised and politically dishonest through and through. While you are right about a Party without roots as such becoming sectarian. One can find that a million times more things can be done outside the anti democratic labour party. Joining a political police state
is the height of foolishness.
The problem of party will not go away and I think it is nowhere near being resolved. In the present time, which is reactionary in nature, I think it is best to sharpen ourselves theoretically somewhat independentally of Party and engage in mass work on the issues of peace and the environment. This is the most healthy way to develop. A party has to gain my trust. Not the other way around.

[Turnoviseous]

Peaccenicked, I actually don´t live in Britain to know how things stand in Labour Party itself. From what I have heard from a lot of people and what Ted Grant says in his book "History of British Trotskysm", I can see that Labour Party is reactionary.

If Labour Party really is somewhat of a mass party, then work there would make some sense, since people will move to the left in near future, because of crisis of capitalism.

Anyway, I don´t know a lot about the issue to say more on it.

[Marxman]

Alan Woods and Ted Grant biased? Relatively, everyone's biased, you know. But they are relatively small. Scientific marxism makes you almost completely unbiased and they've been into marxism more than anyone here as existed. I'd say they are genuine nowadays Marxists, which are really hard to find and especially the ones who write books and so many.

[Turnoviseous]

peaccenicked,

I contacted one of their people I know (not in person) and I got this reply:

"The question of the Labour Party is a bit complex and cannot be
explained in a few lines. I think it would be good if you can have a chat
with Gernot [This is one guy from Austrian organization] regarding our policy towards the traditional mass workers
organisations. Here are a few points:

It is clear that we want and need to build a revolutionary party and that
this party must have its own policies and ideas and organisation. However,
this is only part of the equation. Once you have a clear revolutionary
policy and methods then the most important question enters into play, how to
take these to the mass of workers?

The whole history of the Marxist movement shows that Marxists always
intervene and are active in the organisation where the workers are. Marx
says in the Communist Manifesto that the communists do not form a party
apart and separate from the workers but are just the most advanced and far
sighted section of the class. In fact when Marx organised the International
Workingmen's Association he did not do so on the basis of only the Marxists,
but on the basis of all the organised workers at that time (including
anarchists, blanquists, trade unionists, etc) and then set out to convince
the existing workers movement of the correctness of his policies.

Same goes for the Communist International. This did not originate in small
groups of people outside the organsitions of the class (political and trade
union), but as mass splits from the existing social democratic parties on
the basis of the impact of the Russian Revolution and the betrayal of the
Social Democracy during World War 1. In the cases of France, Russia and
Czecoslovaquia for instace it was the whole of the SD party which became the
Communist Party.

In other places like in Britain, the communists were a small minority in the
movement. Lenin adviced the early British Communists to join the Labour
Party (which had hundreds of thousands of members and millions in the
affiliated trade unions). The reason for this was so that Communist ideas
would penetrate the mass of organised workers. (you can read more about this
in Lenin's Left Wing Communism and infantile disorder). This is when Lenin
said that the LP was a bourgeois workers party. By this he meant that it had
a pro-bourgeois leadership but a mass workers base. We agree completely with
that analysis and with Lenin's organisational conclusion that Marxist must
penetrate this organisation.

Later on during the 1930s there was a process of mass radicalisation within
the SD organisations. Trotsky adviced the small forces of trotskyism to
enter these organisations so to ferrilise this process of radicalisation
with the ideas of genuine Marxism.

So we can see that every time there is a mass movement of radicalisation of
the workers, this, inevitably has an impact in their organisations (despite
the fact that most of the time these organisations have a very right wing
leadership, like Tony Blair now).

This is the reason why Marxists must face towards the mass organisations and
work within those if conditions allow.

Right now there is not much going in on inside the LP in Britain. The
members are largely passive (though most of them are against Blair). But at
certain stage there will be a ferment of discussion within the party and the
Marxists must be prepared to intervene there. Otherwise we would be hopeless
sectarians.

Right now this is not yet the case so we concentrate most of our work in the
trade unions (where there is plenty of debate and things are moving
leftward) and amongst the youth.

In the 1980s there was great ferment within the LP and our tendency at that
time (Militant) built a massive base of support, including we had three
Marxists elected to Parliament on LP lists but defending a Marxist
programme. This shows what can be done when the conditions are right.

As for us putting more emphasis on Trotsky than Lenin this is just rubish
and not worth answering.

More reading on this question (do not have the time to look up the links but
should be easy to find):

- Programme of the International (Ted Grant) in www.tedgrant.org
- Letter to the Russian Marxists (Ted Grant) in www.marxist.com
- Left Wing Communism (Lenin)
- Trotsky's writings on Entryism (many different articles in
www.marxists.org)"

[peaccenicked]

Well comrade I used to say a lot of these things myself.
As to the Trotsky Lenin thing. I will let it go but as far as I can remember and as far as I have read Trotsky was always the one to be empasised.


''It is clear that we want and need to build a revolutionary party and that
this party must have its own policies and ideas and organisation''
NO that is not clear.
This contradicts this completely.
''The whole history of the Marxist movement shows that Marxists always intervene and are active in the organisation where the workers are. Marx
says in the Communist Manifesto that the communists do not form a party
apart and separate from the workers but are just the most advanced and far sighted section of the class''
Do you form a separate party or not? Yes and no. Huh.
I dont want to hear phoney dialectics.

This bit about where the ''workers are'' is highly dubious,
when it comes to mass fascist parties should we join them in countries where the left is weak.
It is clearly nonsensical to argue nilly willy in this way.
The labour party is not the labour movement, it has become an anti labour movement dropping any pretence of socialist aspirations. God. Lord George Robertson became Nato general secretary.
Where are the workers? Hardly in new labour which has lost many and gained many carreerists.
The labour movement is too amorphous to give it singularity. It has always been. What the labour party tends to do is to sectarianly discount anything outside itself.

Now the thing here I object to most is the misrepresentation of history which is very much a part of the technique of a cult.
While it is true that Lenin sought Communist involvement withe the Labour party. He said that we should support the labour party ''like a rope supports a hanged man''. The historical context is pre labour governments at all. Grant has been in bed with the party Labour guilty of massive crimes against the workers at home and internationally. The comes a point when a communist must be proud of his/her identity and sever even tacit support for these crimes. This involves making principled decisions. The only thing that really matters for a communist is the valid respect and trust of the working class. That is a hole that many leftists have got themselves out of over recent years.
Communists did not break from the second international,
just to bury themselves in the muffling climate of an increasingly bureaucratic Labour party.
I mentioned before that Lenin described the labour party as a bourgeois workers party that exists to systematically dupe the working class, Grants continual juxtaposition to ''mass party'' reinforces this deception.
It seems to me that Grant and the full timers around them have become a bureaucratic clique living on the subscriptions of their supporters. I dont trust them at all.
There are glaring lessons to be learned and they refuse to budge. It maybe that they are too brain dead to change their habits. There is certainly nothing new in what they are saying.


(Edited by peaccenicked at 3:16 am on Sep. 24, 2002)

[Turnoviseous]

I think that what they want to say is that a revolutionary party without workers is not a revolutionary party at all.

I think that they think that it is not good to have a separate party when forces of revolution are on the retreat and that during that time it is needed to get the best elements out of the workers that are in reformist parties.

But then when workers would be moving to the left and started to look further to the left than just left reformism, then it would be good to form a separate party...

Well, that is how I understand it.

Ted Grant put it in this way: "The entire history of the international workers' movement in the twentieth century has furnished us with a wealth of material to show the way in which the working class and its organisations develop. From the study of the workers' movement over several decades, I drew the following inescapable conclusion: that when the mass of the workers enter the arena of struggle to change society, they inevitably gravitate, in the first instance, to the traditional mass organisations. The reason for this phenomenon is not difficult to see. The mass of the workers--and even the greater part of the advanced elements of the class--do not learn from books, but only from experience, and particularly the experience of great events. Consequently, every generation of workers must re-learn through painful experience the lessons of the past. Where a strong and educated Marxist tendency is present, the process by which the class reaches the correct conclusions can be considerably shortened."

About the thing that full timers are living on subscriptions from their supporters I can´t say a lot, since I don´t know how things are there in Britain. All I can say is that they seem to me very hardworking, but that it is only how they seem to me.

[peaccenicked]

Always avoiding the key criticisms, is a good sectarian technique. So much so I am not getting into this supid wrangle with people who would cosy up to Lord george
robertson just to be with the ''workers'' . How stupid is that? You have not even answered my point about deception. I am sick of unthinking party hacks. You should be ashamed of yourself.

[Turnoviseous]

peaccenicked,

I was not trying to avoid the key criticism.

I just can´t imagine why do you even think I was avoiding key criticism. Labour party is reformist bourgeois workers´ party and I said before that the party is reactionary in nature.

I don´t know, but I think that also a bourgeois party can be a mass party of workers. In that case, and if that is the case, I think they should be there and attack the reactionary leadership of the party with arguments to win workers to their side.

As I said I am not in the Britain to actually know how things stand, if Labour party is a mass party, what is the consciousness of the masses,..

If they are only holding a candle for the workers then I don´t agree with them. But I think that is not the case, although I can not know it for sure since I am not in Britain to see how things really stand.

comrade peaccenicked, I did not want to avoid your criticism, I hope you see that.

[peaccenicked]

okay. I will settle for that. I have been up to my teeth in British/Scottish and Irish politics and I am a bit of a casuality of the sectarian wrangling on the left.
My experience tells me that our top gurus are assholes who look after their political status in their sects and places of safety rather than admit to errors and when they do admit to mistakes it is for opportunist reasons.
I have not maintained my communist beliefs to be sucked into their dogmatic world outlooks,which merely because that in the real world they alienate advanced workers, represent nothing more than second and third layers of bureaucracy that thinking questioning militant
workers have to face.
If revolution depended on these 'revolutionaries' ,
it would never happen. What particulary annoys me is the deception of their own sectarian egos ......they all
see themselves as the only way forward...if the left does not grow out of this deeply reactionary bullshit we are fucked.........This message can never be said too strongly.

[Marxman]

Every state nowadays has corrupted top people. It's impossible for a parliament to have decent folk over there. If it does, they're usually pro-reformists. My country's politicians are all the same pro-American ass lickers. It vexes me to see ex-stalinists running the capitalist state.

[peaccenicked]

Bravo. Marxman. I am with you 100 %.(on that)

[Marxman]

Yeah, and it still vexes me!

Yesterday they were stalinists, today they are cappies. Yesterday they swung the red flag, now they burn it. Bastards. And it double vexes me because Mazdak supports people like that and he claims Stalin was the man of the people. For cryin' out loud!