The Errors of Trotsky and the Trotskyites

[Comrade Nadezhda]

It has been continuously misrepresented that the views of Leon Trotsky were the views shared by the Bolsheviks. Actually, it was quite the opposite. Many of the same mistakes made by Trotskyite groups today reflect these errors.

The primary error I am refering to is the idea that the peasantry can lead any revolutionary role before being integrated with the proletariat (post-revolution). The same errors are made by Trotskyite organization time after time by refering to the pettybourgeoisie and lumpenproletariat as being "working-class" in nature. This misinterpretation can be found all the way back to 1905. Actually, Trotsky carried a major leadership role within the menshevik faction. Need proof, read below:

If you need evidence (because you have not thoroughly read through Lenin's collected works previously) enjoy these links:

Aim of the Proletarian Struggle In Our Revolution [ALL] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1909/aim/index.htm)

Aim of Proletarian Struggle In Our Revolution: III (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1909/aim/iii.htm#v15pp73-370)


As for Trotsky, whom Comrade Martov has involved in the controversy of third parties which he has organised— a controversy involving everybody except the dissentient— we positively cannot go into a full examination of his views here. A separate article of considerable length would be needed for this. By just touching upon Trotsky’s mistaken views, and quoting scraps of them, Comrade Martov only sows confusion in the mind of the reader; for scraps of quotations do not explain but confuse matters. Trotsky’s major mistake is that he ignores the bourgeois character of the revolution and has no clear conception of the transition from this revolution to the socialist revolution. This major mistake leads to those mistakes on side issues which Comrade Martov repeats when he quotes a couple of them with sympathy and approval. Not to leave matters in the confused state to which Comrade Martov has reduced them by his ex position, we shall at least expose the fallacy of those arguments of Trotsky which have won the approval of Comrade Martov. A coalition of the proletariat and the peasantry “presupposes either that the peasantry will come under the sway of one of the existing bourgeois parties, or that it will form a powerful independent party”. This is obviously untrue both from the standpoint of general theory and from that of the experience of the Russian revolution. A “coalition” of classes does not at all presuppose either the existence of any particular powerful party, or parties in general. This is only confusing classes with parties. A “coalition” of the specified classes does not in the least imply either that one of the existing bourgeois parties will establish its sway over the peasantry or that the peasants should form a powerful independent party! Theoretically this is clear be cause, first, the peasants do not lend themselves very well to party organisation; and because, secondly, the formation of peasant parties is an extremely difficult and lengthy process in a bourgeois revolution, so that a “powerful independent” party may emerge only towards the end of the revolution. The experience of the Russian revolution shows that “coalitions” of the proletariat arid the peasantry were formed scores and hundreds of times, in the most diverse forms, without any “powerful independent party” of the peasantry. Such a coalition was formed when there was “joint action”, between, say, a Soviet of Workers’ Deputies and a Soviet of Soldiers’ Deputies, or a Railwaymen’s Strike Committee, or Peasants’ Deputies, etc. All these organisations were mainly non-party; nevertheless, every joint action between them undoubtedly represented a “coalition” of classes. In the course of this a peasant party took shape as an idea, in germ, coming into being in the form of the Peasant Union of 1905,[2] or the Trudovik group of 1906—and as such a party grew, developed and constituted itself, the coalition of classes assumed different forms, from the vague and unofficial to definite and official political agreements. After the dissolution of the First Duma, for example, the following three calls for insurrection were issued: (1) “To the Army and Navy”, (2) “To all the Russian Peasants”, (3) “To the Whole People”. The first was signed by the Social-Democratic group in the Duma and the Committee of the Trudovik group. Was this “joint action” evidence of a coalition of two classes? Of course it was. To deny it means to engage in pettifoggery, or to transform the broad scientific concept of a “coalition of classes” into a narrow, juridical concept, almost that—I would say—of a notary. Further, can it be denied that this joint call for insurrection, signed by the Duma deputies of the working class and peasantry, was accompanied by joint actions of representatives of both classes in the form of partial local insurrections? Can it be denied that a joint call for a general insurrection and joint participation in local and partial insurrections necessarily implies the joint formation of a provisional revolutionary government? To deny it would mean to engage in pettifoggery, to reduce the concept of “government” to something completely and formally constituted, to forget that the complete and formally constituted develop from the incomplete and unconstituted.
^ Lenin noting the difference between socialist (proletarian) revolution and bourgeois revolution, which clarifies the argument that the working class excludes the peasantry, lumpenproletariat, pettybourgeoisie,.

There are certain conditions which affect the peasantry's revolutionary role, which cannot be ignored- this is ultimately what Lenin is arguing. The peasantry cannot have a revolutionary role until it is integrated with the working class because it shares in bourgeois idealism (and is heavily influenced by bourgeois morals, religion, nationalism, etc.). These factors prevent the peasantry from rising up on its own.

Lenin also mentions that bourgeois revolution will not take the place of socialist revolution, and neither will bourgeois parties. It is, therefore, STILL NECESSARY to abolish the existent state and its ruling class.

Furthermore, note the emphasis Lenin puts on proletarian revolution and a revolutionary party, i.e. the peasants can't form their own party (and the confusion set forth by Trotsky and the Mensheviks regarding this "detail".


Trotsky’s second statement quoted by Comrade Martov is wrong too. It is not true that “the whole question is, who will determine the government’s policy, who will constitute a homogeneous majority in it”, and so forth. And it is particularly untrue when Comrade Martov uses it as an argument against the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. Trotsky himself, in the course of his argument, concedes that “representatives of the democratic population will take part” in the “workers’ government”, i.. e., concedes that there will be a government consisting of representatives of the proletariat and the peasantry. On what terms the proletariat will take part in the government of the revolution is quite another question, and it is quite likely that on this question the Bolsheviks will disagree not only with Trotsky, but also with the Polish Social-Democrats. The question of the dictatorship of the revolutionary classes, however, cannot be reduced to a question of the “majority” in any particular revolutionary government, or of the terms on which the participation of the Social-Democrats in such a government is admissible.
^ What Lenin means here is-- "majority rule" is not compatible with revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat -- and to make assumption on the basis of "majority rule" is wrong. It cannot be ensured that the peasantry will hold a secure revolutionary role, as they are easily swayed by bourgeois propaganda. Until they are integrated with the working class, the mere assumption cannot be made that they will unite with the workers.

I'll say more on this below when Lenin gets into further detail on this matter.


Lastly, the most fallacious of Trotsky’s opinions that Comrade Martov quotes and considers to be “just” is the third, viz.: “even if they [the peasantry] do this [“support the regime of working-class democracy”] with no more political understanding than they usually support a bourgeois regime.” The proletariat cannot count on the ignorance and prejudices of the peasantry as the powers that be under a bourgeois regime count and depend on them, nor can it assume that in time of revolution the peasantry will remain in their usual state of political ignorance and passivity. The history of the Russian revolution shows that the very first wave of the upsurge at the end of 1905, at once stimulated the peasantry to form a political organisation (the All-Russian Peasant Union) which was undoubtedly the embryo of a distinct peasant party. Both in the First and Second Dumas—in spite of the fact that the counter-revolution had wiped out the first contingents of advanced peasants—the peasantry, now for the first time acting on a nation wide scale in the Russian general elections, immediately laid the foundations of the Trudovik group, which was undoubtedly the embryo of a distinct peasant party. In these embryos and rudiments there was much that was unstable, vague and vacillating: that is beyond doubt. But if political groups like this could spring up at the beginning of the revolution, there cannot be the slightest doubt that a revolution carried to such a “conclusion”, or rather, to such a high stage of development as a revolutionary dictatorship, will produce a more definitely constituted and stronger revolutionary peasant party. To think otherwise would be like supposing that some vital organs of an adult can retain the size, shape and development of infancy.
^ Lenin listed the conditions which make it impossible for the peasantry to carry a revolutionary role without first being integrated with the proletariat, which is fundamentally where the conflict arises today between Trotskyite associations and Marxist-Leninist theory. The distinction, which was not set forth by Trotsky, is also neglected by Trotskyite groups. What you end up with is the assumption that "because the peasantry are exploited like the workers---> they have the same revolutionary potential".

This assumption cannot be made, not only because it is naive, but due to the level of bourgeois morals, idealism, belief inflicted upon the given class. The peasantry cannot be revolutionary on its own just as the pettybourgeoisie is not.

The peasantry cannot have exclusive privilege over the working class because then it would not be "dictatorship of the proletariat", and this is where you start playing with words, like fishing for a-b-c-d-e-f-g and so on out of a dish of alphabet soup.

A "people's state" is NOT a "worker's state". There IS a distinction.

The term "people" can refer to workers, peasants, bourgeoisie, pettybourgeoisie, kings, queens, police, lumpenproletarians, whatever. It's as vague as saying "human" or some BS like that. Socialist (proletarian) revolution implies that post-revolution no class has exclusive privilege over the working class.

The peasantry cannot attain revolutionary potential without integration with the working-class because they do not see the relation between the conditions causing their exploitation and the conditions causing the exploitation of the working-class. They moreso see the need for their own "independent organization" which is NOT compatible with the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. Therefore, it cannot be said that this class-consciousness among the peasantry can be depended on by workers.


In any case, Comrade Martov’s conclusion that the conference agreed with Trotsky, of all people, on the question of the relations between the proletariat and the peasantry in the struggle for power is an amazing contradiction of the facts, is an attempt to read into a word a meaning that was never discussed, not mentioned and not even thought of at the conference.

Allowing one to conclusion that Leon Trotsky did not have a fully-developed understanding for the argument he was proposing beforehand. Martov's confusion reflects the errors of Leon Trotsky and his theoretical deficiencies pertaining to marxism.

These same theoretical deficiencies exist in modern-day Trotskyites, who make the error in argument that because the pettybourgeoisie, lumpenproletariat, security apparatus (police, security guards, military) are employed and "exploited" the way that the working class is -------> they are "part of" the working-class. However, in truth, these classes function on behalf of the bourgeoisie for the exploitation of the proletariat, which alienates them from the proletariat, moreso than the bourgeois ruling class.

The bourgeoisie LOVES the lumpenproletariat because it functions in its favor. The bourgeoisie can employ the police force and use the lumpenproletariat as an excuse to "fight crime" while leaving the drug and arms lords on the streets and arresting the working-class for petty crimes like not wearing a seat-beat while driving or not paying their license plate registration fee on time.

The bourgeoisie also LOVES the pettybourgeoisie because they serve as a middleman. They exploit the proletariat FOR the bourgeoisie, because of course the bourgeoisie isn't going to do much more than sit on their lazy asses. However, the pettybourgeoisie doesn't feel the "exploitation" too much. They can avoid living like the proles by working for the bourgeois oppressors, so their loyality to the bourgeoisie is neverending.

The military/police does the same thing, just in a different way. Instead of serving the direct economic benefit of the bourgeoisie (like the bankers, landlords, etc) the police/military serve to prevent uprising and throw the proletariat in jail. While the police are paid wages, they are not "workers", because they would much rather continue working for the bourgeoisie than leave their job- they get too many desirable benefits. The bourgeoisie takes advantage of this, but generally it makes both police and bourgeoisie happy. Therefore, police are counterrevolutionary because they will always serve the interest of their employer: the bourgeoisie (as serving in the ruling class's favor guarantee's them everything which the working class cannot depend on.

The Trotskyites refute this to their deathbed, despite how many iceaxes are thrown at them, but thats fine, they're better off dead than living. Their ideas will rot in their graves and remain laughed at by the true working-class.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The primary error I am refering to is the idea that the peasantry can lead any revolutionary role before being integrated with the proletariat (post-revolution). The same errors are made by Trotskyite organization time after time by refering to the pettybourgeoisie and lumpenproletariat as being "working-class" in nature.

CN, I think you've got incorrect perceptions of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution (which is revisionist, as you pointed out). In it, peasants are treated as second-class citizens even during the social-democratic revolution, being merely leaned upon and not allied with. Trotsky actually expressed personal contempt for peasants during the civil war, not wanting to recruit from them. As a result, the Russian proletariat was devastated, allowing your revisionist hero - the real founder of "Marxism-Leninism" - and his revisionist thugs to take power.



Furthermore, you failed to quote the one work that truly debunks "permanent revolution": The Trade Unions, The Present Situation, and Trotsky's Mistakes.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/revisionist-trotskyism-revolutionary-t70170/index.html


[Trotsky] seems to say that in a workers’ state it is not the business of the trade unions to stand up for the material and spiritual interests of the working class. That is a mistake. Comrade Trotsky speaks of a "workers’ state". May I say that this is an abstraction. It was natural for us to write about a workers’ state in 1917; but it is now a patent error to say: "Since this is a workers’ state without any bourgeoisie, against whom then is the working class to be protected, and for what purpose?" The whole point is that it is not quite a workers’ state. That is where Comrade Trotsky makes one of his main mistakes. We have got down from general principles to practical discussion and decrees, and here we are being dragged back and prevented from tackling the business at hand. This will not do. For one thing, ours is not actually a workers’ state but a workers’ and peasants’ state. And a lot depends on that.



The most important criticism that must be hurled at modern Trotskyism, however, is the one directed at the economistic "transitional program" (as noted in the link above), giving revolutionary coating to reformist and faux-reformist demands.


The Trotskyites refute this to their deathbed, despite how many iceaxes are thrown at them, but thats fine, they're better off dead than living. Their ideas will rot in their graves and remain laughed at by the true working-class.

As much as I consider Trotskyism and its more fervent adherents to be revisionist, you didn't have to stoop down to THEIR level of sectarianism. :glare:

[Tower of Bebel]

There is nothing funny about the ice pick :rolleyes:; it adds nothing to your arguements. What it does however is showing everyone how sectarian your remarks are :glare:. Thank you very much.


The bourgeoisie LOVES the lumpenproletariat because it functions in its favor. The bourgeoisie can employ the police force and use the lumpenproletariat as an excuse to "fight crime" while leaving the drug and arms lords on the streets and arresting the working-class for petty crimes like not wearing a seat-beat while driving or not paying their license plate registration fee on time.

In your arguement they're a passive element in society, which is the opposite of the petit-bourgeoisie and state aparatus. They are used by the ruling class. But do we need to leave the whole of the lumpenproletariat behind just because they're (ab)used by the bourgeoisie?

[BobKKKindle$]

This assumption cannot be made, not only because it is naive, but due to the level of bourgeois morals, idealism, belief inflicted upon the given class. The peasantry cannot be revolutionary on its own just as the pettybourgeoisie is not.

Trotsky never argued that the peasantry is capable of leading an independent revolutionary role - rather, the Trotskyist position is that the revolution can only be led by the proletariat, but in countries which suffer from a lack of industrial development, where the proletariat is numerically weak in comparison to other classes, and is concentrated in urban centers, it is necessary for the proletariat to create an alliance with the peasantry. However, the proletariat must adopt the leading role in the process of revolution, it is not possible for the peasantry to be given a role equal to that of the proletariat. Trotsky makes this clear in his conclusion to "The Permanent Revolution"


With regard to countries with a belated bourgeois development, especially the colonial and semi-colonial countries, the theory of the permanent revolution signifies that the complete and genuine solution of their tasks of achieving democracy and national emancipation is conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat as the leader of the subjugated nation, above all of its peasant masses.

"Leader" in this quote refers to the proletariat. If you are going to criticize the position of an ideological current, you should make sure you know what that position is, instead of simply making assertions and attempting to refute what you think the position is, without first doing proper research.

Attributing an independent role to the peasantry is a position more commonly expressed by Maoists, as China was, even in comparison to the historic conditions present in Russia, a rural country. In this letter (Peasant War In China and the Proletariat - September 22, 1932 (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1932/09/china.htm)) on the Chinese revolution, Trotsky explains the ways in which the peasantry differs from the proletariat in its worldview, and how this renders the peasantry incapable of leading a socialist revolution:


The worker approaches questions from the socialist standpoint; the peasant’s viewpoint is petty bourgeois. The worker strives to socialize the property that is taken away from the exploiters; the peasant seeks to divide it up. The worker desires to put palaces and parks to common use; the peasant, insofar as he cannot divide them, inclines to burning the palaces and cutting down the parks. The worker strives to solve problems on a national scale and in accordance with a plan; the peasant, on the other hand, approaches all problems on a local scale and takes a hostile attitude to centralized planning, etc.

It is understood that a peasant also is capable of raising himself to the socialist viewpoint. Under a proletarian regime more and more masses of peasants become re-educated in the socialist spirit. But this requires time, years, even decades. It should be borne in mind that in the initial stages of revolution, contradictions between proletarian socialism and peasant individualism often take on an extremely acute character

This shows that your refutation of Trotsky's position is flawed, because you do not understand what the Trotskyist position is, and so you have falsely attributed ideas to Trotsky, which he never expressed.


These same theoretical deficiencies exist in modern-day Trotskyites, who make the error in argument that because the pettybourgeoisie, lumpenproletariat, security apparatus (police, security guards, military) are employed and "exploited" the way that the working class is

Do you have any evidence to show that supporting these groups is a position that is held by all Trotskyists? In the UK, when the prison guards decided to take strike action in violation of agreements which had been made with the government (Prison officers’ unofficial strike rattles government (http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=12919)) some Trotskyist organizations chose to support the strike, but others adopted a neutral position, or criticized the organizations which had chosen to offer support ("Socialists" embrace cops and prison guards (http://www.spartacist.org/english/wh/201/Socialistsembracecops.html)) the fact that there was such a range of responses shows that there is no consensus on the issue of whether it is legitimate to support strikes by workers who exercise state oppression, and so supporting such strikes cannot be a Trotskyist position.

Trotskyists have advanced an understanding of the conditions of the developing world, and how these conditions effect the potential for revolutionary change, which places full emphasis on the role of the proletariat. Trotsky realized that, in countries which have only recently emerged from feudalism, the bourgeoisie is too closely linked to foreign capital and so is not capable of carrying out the historic tasks which have traditionally been assigned to the bourgeoisie, tasks such as introducing liberal democracy, and land reform. Therefore, these tasks must fall to the proletariat which, once these bourgeois-democratic tasks have been completed, proceeds to make the revolution permanent by carrying out socialist tasks and spreading the revolution to other countries which are able to provide economic assistance, because the material under-development present in the developing world means that socialism cannot be constructed without external help, an objective reality which was also recognized by Lenin. This conception of revolutionary change realizes that the bourgeoisie is incapable of playing any progressive role, unlike the Maoist conception, promoting unity with a "national bourgeoisie" which is allegedly necessary for material development and can, according to those who promote this view, have a progressive role.

Therefore, contrary to what you suggest above, Trotskyists do not undermine the proletariat's role as the only class capable of constructing socialism.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Just out of curiosity, Bob, have you ever heard of Lenin's time-honored theory of the "revolutionary [social-]democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry"? The November revolution was not a socialist / social-proletocratic revolution, but a social-democratic revolution following the bourgeois-democratic March revolution.

That huge difference explains why the peasants must be equal allies in the social-democratic revolution (with full knowledge that a second social revolution, the social-proletocratic revolution, is still needed).

[BobKKKindle$]

The November revolution was not a socialist / social-proletocratic revolution, but a social-democratic revolution following the bourgeois-democratic March revolution.

How does a "social-democratic" revolution differ from a socialist revolution? If this revolution was not a socialist revolution, does it not then follow that a socialist revolution would later be required?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Yes, it would later be required, as Lenin said in his earlier writings (Two Tactics). The issues of liquidating (in the social sense, not the repressive sense) the peasantry as a class and abolishing wage slavery (thus allowing full compensation of labour, and also eliminating "state-capitalism made to benefit the whole people") separate the social-democratic (mere proletocratic) revolution from the social-proletocratic revolution.

Revolutionary social democracy or ordinary proletocracy could easily be non-bourgeois "state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people," but it isn't "socialism" (social proletocracy, hence why social-proletocrats oppose state-capitalist monopoly and prefer the "multi-economy" inspired loosely by that outlined in Left-Wing Childishness).

[BobKKKindle$]

The issues of liquidating (in the social sense, not the repressive sense) the peasantry as a class and abolishing wage slavery (thus allowing full compensation of labour) separate the social-democratic (mere proletocratic) revolution from the social-proletocratic revolution.

The peasantry disappears gradually, through the mechanization of agriculture and migration to urban centers, would you not agree? How then, can the disappearance of the peasantry be described as a "revolution" given that the process is gradual and there is a non-antagonistic class relation between the proletariat and the peasantry?

[Die Neue Zeit]

What? Why are you buying into "Comrade" Stalin's revisionist bogus of "non-antagonistic classes"?

Since you're talking about "the day after the social-proletocratic revolution," there is an aggravation of the class struggle, NOT the opposite. There will be anti-sovkhozization peasants ("small farmers") still clamoring for the obsolete land reform (http://www.revleft.com/vb/land-reform-obsolete-t74905/index.html) (Politics thread). Capitalism hasn't eliminated the small-farmer occupation (and even the social-democratic form is incapable of doing that).

All bourgeois and other non-proletarian elements will have to be liquidated one way or another. [Luckily, the proper lumpenproles - employed prostitutes and low-level gangsters - will assimilate voluntarily.]

[rouchambeau]

Ah, yes. Misconstruing the peasantry as revolutionary is the reason Trots are caught up in the project of selling newspapers, building parties, and splitting them back apart.

[/sarcasm]

[Hit The North]

Comrade Nads

You really are a sad piece of work aren't you? If you really want to see the true enemy of Bolshevism in the USSR look no further than your hero, Stalin. After all, it was he who supervised their extermination in the decades following the revolution.

One thing you do share with your hero is his paranoia and social chauvinism:


The bourgeoisie LOVES the lumpenproletariat because it functions in its favor. The bourgeoisie can employ the police force and use the lumpenproletariat as an excuse to "fight crime" while leaving the drug and arms lords on the streets and arresting the working-class for petty crimes like not wearing a seat-beat while driving or not paying their license plate registration fee on time.

What would be the benefit for the bourgeoisie to transform its workers into prisoners?

You're laughable.

[Comrade Nadezhda]

ahhahaha well you don't have to worrya bout that, you're bourgeois enough as it is. you don't even know what proletarian struggle IS (not life in the suburbs)

in my city the working class struggles to maintain its existence. the bourgeoisie AND lumpenproletariat makes this VERY difficult. if you don't want to hear what i have to say, than don't bother to attempt at refuting it at all.

you're all just liberal bourgeoisie anyway, at least i don't sit online all day in mommy's house eating premade vegan meals from whole foods.

the lumpenproletariat kills the proletariat. they have more arms than the police. saying that these fuckers are workers is like saying that an apple and an orange is the same fucking fruit, when they are clearly not. The lumpens steal property from everyone. They take everything away from the proletariat that the bourgeoisie hasn't yet taken. They are absorbed in black/white nationalism (and kill in favor of it). They are often arms and drugs lords and seek to oppress the proletariat through such means. They are out for their own interest and will always be until they are integrated with the working-class post-revolution. i don't care how much you want to whine about that "they are workers" They're not. they can't be depended on. They are JUST like the bourgeoisie (and the bourgeoisie works WITH the lumpens). The bourgeoisie does not directly exploit the lumpens, however they do business with them and create policies in their benefit in order to further exploit the proletariat. i.e. the police cut deals with lumpens while putting proles in jail or giving them fines for parking violations (which we cannot pay, esp. without exployment) they bourgeoisie know this. they find petty reasons to throw us in prison (for example writing bad checks when there are no jobs) i' mnot going to argue about this, but the fact is Trots are ignorant and bourgeois. and don't even try to say that suburban folk are working-class because thats jsut laughable :lol: i swear you guys are like 14 year olds who have no idea what conditions lie past the suburbs and the forest :lol:

[Illus]

Comrade Nads

You really are a sad piece of work aren't you? If you really want to see the true enemy of Bolshevism in the USSR look no further than your hero, Stalin. After all, it was he who supervised their extermination in the decades following the revolution.

One thing you do share with your hero is his paranoia and social chauvinism:



What would be the benefit for the bourgeoisie to transform its workers into prisoners?

You're laughable.
You are just peddling the same revisionist bourgeois myth about comrade Stalin.

[BobKKKindle$]

you're all just liberal bourgeoisie anyway, at least i don't sit online all day in mommy's house eating premade vegan meals from whole foods.

In the original post it was asserted that, according to Trotskyists, the peasantry is capable of leading a revolution - this has been shown to be false through quotations from Trotsky's works, in which he emphasizes that the proletariat is the only class capable of overthrowing capitalism and constructing a new economic system based on social ownership, the peasantry can only adopt a supporting role.

Trotsky also identified the lumpen-proletariat as a class which is susceptible to the influence of reactionary ideas and so may form part of the social base of fascist movements:


Through the fascist agency, capitalism sets in motion the masses of the crazed petty bourgeoisie and the bands of declassed and demoralized lumpenproletariat -- all the countless human beings whom finance capital itself has brought to desperation and frenzy.

What Next: Vital Question for the German Proletariat (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1944/1944-fas.htm), 1932

Therefore, once again, your assertion that Trotskyists support the lumpenproletariat as a class which is always revolutionary, or capable of leading a revolution is simply not true. You are arguing against a position which Trotsky never supported.


i swear you guys are like 14 year olds who have no idea what conditions lie past the suburbs and the forest

What is the purpose of this comment? If you are attempting to refute the theoretical position of an ideological current, making sectarian jabs simply undermines the credibility of your argument.

[Random Precision]

ahhahaha well you don't have to worrya bout that, you're bourgeois enough as it is. you don't even know what proletarian struggle IS (not life in the suburbs)

in my city the working class struggles to maintain its existence. the bourgeoisie AND lumpenproletariat makes this VERY difficult. if you don't want to hear what i have to say, than don't bother to attempt at refuting it at all.

you're all just liberal bourgeoisie anyway, at least i don't sit online all day in mommy's house eating premade vegan meals from whole foods.

the lumpenproletariat kills the proletariat. they have more arms than the police. saying that these fuckers are workers is like saying that an apple and an orange is the same fucking fruit, when they are clearly not. The lumpens steal property from everyone. They take everything away from the proletariat that the bourgeoisie hasn't yet taken. They are absorbed in black/white nationalism (and kill in favor of it). They are often arms and drugs lords and seek to oppress the proletariat through such means. They are out for their own interest and will always be until they are integrated with the working-class post-revolution. i don't care how much you want to whine about that "they are workers" They're not. they can't be depended on. They are JUST like the bourgeoisie (and the bourgeoisie works WITH the lumpens). The bourgeoisie does not directly exploit the lumpens, however they do business with them and create policies in their benefit in order to further exploit the proletariat. i.e. the police cut deals with lumpens while putting proles in jail or giving them fines for parking violations (which we cannot pay, esp. without exployment) they bourgeoisie know this. they find petty reasons to throw us in prison (for example writing bad checks when there are no jobs) i' mnot going to argue about this, but the fact is Trots are ignorant and bourgeois. and don't even try to say that suburban folk are working-class because thats jsut laughable :lol: i swear you guys are like 14 year olds who have no idea what conditions lie past the suburbs and the forest :lol:

Let this be a lesson to people who attempt to post when they're drunk, high or both: please don't.

[coda]

planet earth to Comrade Nadezhda:

<<because it shares in bourgeois idealism (and is heavily influenced by bourgeois morals, religion, nationalism, etc.). These factors prevent the peasantry from rising up on its own.>>

This is true of the vast majority of the working class too! If this was not true.. we would be much further along in revolutionary struggle then we are now.

By the way, you are extremely condescending and arrogant and have a very idealized view of the working class as well as obviously ignorant of the social conditions that create lumpenproles.

you should really try to put a muzzle on it, before your big mouth excretes more ridiculous assumptions and you end up looking like a bigger asshole than you already are.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I wonder if CN exhibits the same sectoral chauvinism that some other RevLefters here exhibit. Yes, lumpenproles aren't proles, but what about office workers?

[RedAnarchist]

You are just peddling the same revisionist bourgeois myth about comrade Stalin.

*yawns* How about something other than rhetoric?

[KC]

The most important criticism that must be hurled at modern Trotskyism, however, is the one directed at the economistic "transitional program" (as noted in the link above), giving revolutionary coating to reformist and faux-reformist demands.


No it doesn't. I suggest you actually read it before you come to such idiotic conclusions.


That huge difference explains why the peasants must be equal allies in the social-democratic revolution (with full knowledge that a second social revolution, the social-proletocratic revolution, is still needed).

Lenin ended up abandoning this idea of equal alliance and agreed with Trotsky that the proletariat must play a leading role. Why is that so hard for you to understand?


You are just peddling the same revisionist bourgeois myth about comrade Stalin.

Yes, because it is a complete myth that Stalin oversaw the purges, the gulags didn't really exist and there was no massive political oppression as a direct extension of the purges.:laugh:

[KC]

So in other words, you really have no argument to offer and are just in here to whine and moan about how incredibly revolutionary you are.

[Illus]

So in other words, you really have no argument to offer and are just in here to whine and moan about how incredibly revolutionary you are.
People like you are what we get when we relax party discipline, spoilt liberals who think Marx was born yesterday and they are a sum of all human knowledge, yet they have yet to realize their own ideas aren't original and their 'ideas' are nothing but the outgrowth of their propertied petite-bourgeois parents.

[Illus]

Naturally the cynicism of the self-flattering bourgeois liberals like you Zampanò will emerge to 'enlighten' us on the 'terror' of Stalin, and in effect to tell us that the peasants using self-defense against kulaks slaughtering their cattle and families was 'unjust', or white guards and czarists hording grain and selling it abroad, causing millions to starve, was 'innovative'.

We are immediately told of 'Stalin's Rule, yet in reality Stalin didn't rule anything, in modern contrast the Presidential executive system in the US gives more power to one person than the democratic-centralist party model in the USSR, which in contrast had millions of politically active members of soviet worker councils, the role of the central committee was overall guiding of industrial and socialization developments, and of coordination, linking Stalin with 'totalitarianism' is plain wrong because the efforts of Soviet development were for the most part ad-hoc actions by local workers. The seizure of power by the Soviet worker councils in the cities set about a series of events and violent struggles in the countryside. The kulaks[rural capitalists] fought violently against this rising of their peasants, and slaughtered thousands of peasants, killed communists etc. The peasants realized they didn't have to live in feudal conditions under serfdom to the kulak landlords. In revenge the kulaks refused to join the growing free collective farm movement, and they slaughtered over 30,000,000 cattle, burnt houses (both their own and those of the collectives), this directly caused the famine of 32, many died of exposure in the winter because the kulaks horded fuel, millions starved because the kulaks were speculating on higher grain prices in overseas capitalist markets, and sold millions of tonnes through illegal trade in the Ukraine.

The majority of those who died were the kulaks and their families themselves, either through starvation, exposure, or being killed in civil war actions by the peasants in revenge. These same Ukrainian kulaks (or the remnants of them) fought for the Nazi's when the Ukraine was occupied (in fact the kulaks started attacking the peasant army before the Germans even arrived). The Ukrainian right-wing kulaks then helped the Germans in exterminations of Slavs, communists, soviet pows, and mass deportations of Jews.

The difference is that the Russian revolution was a revolutionary great leap for over 200 million peasants who lived with no electricity, constantly on the brink of starvation by a regime which kept them in a pitiful existance, a cesspool for servility and incredulity, shame,crude antisemitism, ignorance, superstition and barbarity. Socialism pulled these downtrodden of the earth and gave them electricity, power over their labor and true liberation, it was a giant step forward for humanity. Stalin industrialized an entire country in 15 years, he gave the option to the world of development in one generation, instead of the 'developing world' today which will never develop but simply get worst. The only casualties of this were the result of the civil war caused by the far-right elements that resisted industrial socialization and killed to keep Russia as a bulwark of backward feudalism and poverty, if you want to blame the peasants for resisting fascism then do so. The Eastern Front was simply a continuation of the far-right campaign to destroy worker liberation in Russia, and to bring about a second dark age.

[KC]

Dude, just shut up.

[Illus]

Dude, just shut up.
If you aren't prepared to justify your insults against the name of Comrade Stalin, then don't make them.

[KC]

I'm not going to waste my time responding to someone who is clearly incapable of having a coherent debate and is more interested in flaming. You're a waste of my time.

[Hit The North]

You are just peddling the same revisionist bourgeois myth about comrade Stalin.

Really? How about the facts: that after the show trials of the 1930s all of the surviving members of the Lenin-era Politburo, except Stalin and Trotsky, were tried. By the end of the final trial Stalin had arrested and executed almost every important living Bolshevik from the Revolution.

These facts are not disputed by Stalin's own official accounts, the only subject up for argument is the question 'why?'.

Of course, you're free to believe that every single prominent Bolshevik (except for the perfect Stalin) mysteriously converted to fascism and were actively engaged in bringing down the workers state. People believe in all sorts of things. It doesn't necessarily make them true.

[Die Neue Zeit]

No it doesn't. I suggest you actually read it before you come to such idiotic conclusions.

Lenin ended up abandoning this idea of equal alliance and agreed with Trotsky that the proletariat must play a leading role. Why is that so hard for you to understand?

I have read both Trotsky's economistic work that stenches of revisionism AND Lenin's 1920 refutation of "permanent revolution" :p

You, on the other hand, have consistently ignored my strong suggestion to read The Trade Unions, The Present Situation, and Trotsky's Mistakes. Or are you so blinded by the reductionist notion that the revisionist Trotsky could, on the theoretical front, do no wrong? :glare:

[Led Zeppelin]

You, on the other hand, have consistently ignored my strong suggestion to read The Trade Unions, The Present Situation, and Trotsky's Mistakes. Or are you so blinded by the reductionist notion that the revisionist Trotsky could, on the theoretical front, do no wrong? :glare:

You haven't read anything by Trotsky, you draw your conclusions from second-hand sources.

If you had read anything by Trotsky himself you would have known this:



But during the following months the situation grew steadily worse. There was cause enough in actual conditions, but it is also very probable that certain engineers were making the transport situation fit into their diagrams. I spent the winter months of 1919-20 in the Urals directing the economic work. Lenin telegraphed me a proposal that I take charge of transport and try to lift it by emergency measures. I replied stating my acceptance.

From the Urals I brought with me a store of economic observations that could be summed up in one general conclusion: war communism must be abandoned. My practical work had satisfied me that the methods of war communism forced on us by the conditions of civil war were completely exhausted, and that to revive our economic life the element of personal interest must be introduced at all costs; in other words, we had to restore the home market in some degree. I submitted to the Central Committee the project of replacing the food levy by a grain-tax and of restoring the exchange of commodities.

“The present policy of equalized requisition according to the food scale, of mutual responsibility for deliveries, and of equalized distribution of manufactured products, tends to lower the Status of agriculture and to disperse the industrial proletariat, and threatens to bring about a complete breakdown in the economic life of the country.” In these words, I formulated my view in the statement submitted to the Central Committee in February, 1920.

“The food resources,” the statement continued, “are threatened with exhaustion, a contingency that no amount of improvement m the methods of requisition can prevent. These tendencies toward economic decline can be counteracted as follows: (1) The requisition of surpluses should give way to payment on a percentage basis (a sort of progressive income tax in kind), the scale of payment being fixed in such a way as to make an increase of the ploughed area, or a more thorough cultivation, still yield some profit; (2) a closer correspondence should be established between the industrial products supplied to the peasants and the quantities of grain they deliver; this applies not only to rural districts (volosts) and villages, but to the individual peasant households, as well.”

These proposals are very guarded. But the basic propositions of the New Economic Policy adopted a year later did not at first go any farther. Early in 1920, Lenin came out firmly against my proposal. It was rejected in the Central Committee by a vote of eleven to four. The subsequent course of events proved the decision of the Committee to be a mistake. I did not carry it to the party congress, which was conducted throughout under the slogan of war communism. For the entire year following, the economic life of the country struggled along in a blind alley. My quarrel with Lenin grew out of this blind alley. When the change to the market system was rejected, I demanded that the “war” methods be applied properly and with system, so that real economic improvements could be obtained. In the system of war communism in which all the resources are, at least in principle, nationalized and distributed by government order, I saw no independent role for trades-unions. If industry rests on the state’s insuring the supply of all the necessary products to the workers, the trades-unions must be included in the system of the state’s administration of industry and distribution of products. This was the real substance of the question of making the trades-unions part of the state organizations, a measure which flowed inexorably from the system of war communism, and it was in this sense that I defended it.
Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/mylife/ch38.htm)

So Trotsky's proposals - which was later accepted in the form of the NEP - were rejected at first, which forced him to take the position on the trade-unions within the context of War Communism. His position is entirely logical, if you have a distribution system controlled by the state, with commodity circulation and production also controlled by the state, it only makes sense to also make sure that the trade-unions are under state-control. If you wanted War Communism to be more effective, this should have been done.

It was not done and the system of War Communism proved itself to be disastrous for the economy (a conclusion which Trotsky had already come to), so they abandoned it, and accepted Trotsky's earlier proposal.

Now stop taking cues from Stalinist or idiotic sources like Ben Seattle.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ I do know the main topic of Lenin's polemic. However, I was referring to an incidental remark made there where he debunked "permanent revolution" for good. Since you ignored my original response to CN, I shall repost this one more time, with one word added for contextual consistency:


While betraying this lack of thoughtfulness, Comrade Trotsky falls into error himself. He seems to say that in a workers’ state it is not the business of the trade unions to stand up for the material and spiritual interests of the working class. That is a mistake. Comrade Trotsky speaks of a “workers’ state”. May I say that this is an abstraction. It was natural for us to write about a workers’ state in 1917; but it is now a patent error to say: “Since this is a workers’ state without any bourgeoisie, against whom then is the working class to be protected, and for what purpose?” The whole point is that it is not quite a workers’ state. That is where Comrade Trotsky makes one of his main mistakes. We have got down from general principles to practical discussion and decrees, and here we are being dragged back and prevented from tackling the business at hand. This will not do. For one thing, ours is not actually a workers’ state but a workers’ and peasants’ state. And a lot depends on that. (Bukharin : “What kind of state? A workers’ and peasants’ state?”) Comrade Bukharin back there may well shout “What kind of state? A workers’ and peasants’ state?” I shall not stop to answer him. Anyone who has a mind to should recall the recent Congress of Soviets,[3] and that will be answer enough.

But that is not all. Our Party Programme—a document which the author of the ABC of Communism knows very well—shows that ours is a workers’ [and peasants’] state with a bureacratic twist to it.

Or this:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1923/jan/23.htm


I propose that the Congress should elect 75 to 100 new members to the Central Control Commission. They should be workers and peasants, and should go through the same Party screening as ordinary members of the Central Committee, because they are to enjoy the same rights as the members of the Central Committee.

...

I am sure that the reduction of the staff to the number I have indicated will greatly enhance the efficiency of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection personnel and the quality of all its work, enabling the People's Commissar and the members of the collegium to concentrate their efforts entirely on organising work and on systematically and steadily improving its efficiency, which is so absolutely essential for our workers' and peasants' government, and for our Soviet system.

...

Of course, in our Soviet Republic, the social order is based on the collaboration of two classes: the workers and peasants, in which the "Nepmen", i.e., the bourgeoisie, are now permitted to participate on certain terms. If serious class disagreements arise between these classes, a split will be inevitable. But the grounds for such a split are not inevitable in our social system, and it is the principal tasks of our Central Committee and Central Control Commission, as well as of our party as a whole, to watch very closely over such circumstances as may cause a split, and to forestall them, for in the final analysis the fate of our Republic will depend on whether the peasant masses will stand by the working class, loyal to their alliance, or whether they will permit the "Nepmen", i.e., the new bourgeoisie, to drive a wedge between them and the working class, to split them off from the working class. The more clearly we see this alternative, the more clearly all our workers and peasants understand it, the greater are the chances that we shall avoid a split which would be fatal for the Soviet Republic.

The more well-meaning Marxists realize Trotsky's revisionist folly of "permanent revolution," the better. :)

[Led Zeppelin]

^^^ I do know the main topic of Lenin's polemic. However, I was referring to an incidental remark made there where he debunked "permanent revolution" for good. Since you ignored my original response to CN, I shall repost this one more time, with one word added for contextual consistency:



The more well-meaning Marxists realize Trotsky's revisionist folly of "permanent revolution," the better. :)

Revisionist, revisionist, folly folly, you keep repeating the same old Stalinist phrases.

You do realize that your "argument" (can it be even called that? All you do is quote Lenin and that's it) is taken over exactly from Radek, who in the service of Stalin wrote (or rather, re-wrote) the History of the party, right?

This once again proves that you have never read Trotsky, or you would have known this:



From these two books Radek would have learned, in the first place, that in my political activity the permanent revolution in no case signified for me a jumping-over of the democratic stage of the revolution or any of its specific steps. He would have convinced himself that, though I lived in Russia illegally throughout 1905 without any connection with the emigrants, I formulated the tasks of the successive stages of the revolution in exactly the same manner as Lenin; he would have learned that the fundamental appeals to the peasants that were issued by the central press of the Bolsheviks in 1905 were written by me; that the Novaya Zhizn (New Life), edited by Lenin, in an editorial note resolutely defended my article on the permanent revolution which appeared in Nachalo (The Beginning); that Lenin’s Novaya Zhizn, and on occasion Lenin personally, supported and defended invariably those political decisions of the Soviets of Deputies which were written by me and on which I acted as reporter nine times out of ten; that, after the December defeat, I wrote while in prison a pamphlet on tactics in which I pointed out that the combination of the proletarian offensive with the agrarian revolution of the peasants was the central strategical problem; that Lenin had this pamphlet published by the Bolshevik publishing house Novaya Volna (New Wave) and informed me through Knunyants of his hearty approval; that Lenin spoke at the London Congress in 1907 of my ‘solidarity’ with Bolshevism in my views on the peasantry and the liberal bourgeoisie. None of this exists for Radek; evidently he did not have this ‘at hand’ either.

Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/pr01.htm)

Replace "Radek" with "Jacob Richter" and it seems like he's adressing the same person.

Or this:


Needless to say, on the question of the political adoption by our party of the “Social Revolutionary” agrarian program, there was not a shadow of disagreement between Lenin and me. The same goes for the decree on land.

Regardless of whether our peasant policy has been right or wrong on some specific point, it never provoked any diflerences of opinion among us. It is with my active participation that our policy was oriented toward the middle peasant. The experience and conclusions of the military work contributed to no small degree to the real ization of this policy.

Besides, how was it possible to underestimate the role and the importance of the peasantry in the formation of a revolutionary army recruited from among the peasants and organized with the aid of the advanced workers?

It suffices to examine our military political literature to see how permeated it was with the thought that the civil war is politically the struggle of the proletariat with the counterrevolution for influence over the peasantry and that the victory cannot be assured save by the establishment of rational relationships between the workers and the peasants, in an individual regiment, in the district of military operations, and in the state as a whole.

Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1923/newcourse/ch06.htm)

That was a reply to you saying that Trotsky "hated peasants and didn't want to recruit them". Another lie you took over from the Stalinists.

And once again, the same as before on the trade-union issue, which you ripped out of historical context and tried to use against Trotsky, only to withdraw it when I exposed your ignorance regarding the matter:



The discussion on the trade unions grew out of the economic blind alley we had gotten into, thanks to the requisitioning of food products and to the regime of omnipotent “Centrals.” Could the “merging” of the trade unions into the economic organs have remedied the situation? Obviously not. But neither could any other measure remedy the situation so long as the economic regime of “war communism” continued to exist.

These episodic discussions were wiped out before the decision to resort to the market, a decision of capital importance which did not engender any difference of opinion. The new resolution devoted to the tasks of the trade unions on the basis of the NEP were worked out by Lenin between the Tenth and Eleventh Congresses and were, again, adopted unanimously.

I could adduce a good dozen other facts, politically less important, but all of which would refute just as flatly the fable of my so called “underestimation” of the role of the peasantry. But is it after all really necessary and possible to refute an assertion so completely undemonstrable and based so exclusively upon bad faith, or in the best case, upon a defective memory?
Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1923/newcourse/ch06.htm)

I think in the case of Jacob Richter it is based exclusively on not knowing what he's talking about.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Read my edited post above. I added one more work, How to Reorganise Rabkrin, to debunk "permanent revolution."


Revisionist, revisionist, folly folly, you keep repeating the same old Stalinist phrases.

As if the word "revisionist" was popularized by hardline "Marxist-Leninists" (revisionists all the same, too) after his death. Ever heard of, in Lenin's words, the "ultra-revisionist wing of Bernstein" - and of Vollmar, whom the "Marxist-Leninists" love to cite? :rolleyes:

[Led Zeppelin]

^^^ Read my edited post above. I added one more work, How to Reorganise Rabkrin, to debunk "permanent revolution."

Are you being serious or is this a joke to you?

Stop wasting my time if you're not going to seriously argue this, because I have better things to do with my time.

PERMANENT REVOLUTION DOESN'T MEAN THAT THERE IS NO WORKERS STATE ALLIED WITH OR LEANING ON THE PEASANTRY.

For fucks sake: "In the event of a decisive victory of the revolution, power will pass into the hands of that class which plays a leading role in the struggle – in other words, into the hands of the proletariat. Let us say at once that this by no means precludes revolutionary representatives of non-proletarian social groups entering the government. They can and should be in the government: a sound policy will compel the proletariat to call to power the influential leaders of the urban petty-bourgeoisie, of the intellectuals and of the peasantry. The whole problem consists in this: who will determine the content of the government’s policy, who will form within it a solid majority?" Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/rp05.htm)

Now, I just quoted you pieces proving that Trotsky never disagreed with Lenin on the role of the peasantry, you are refuted, so stop repeating the same nonsense and admit you have never read Trotsky and based your conclusions on second-hand sources.

The truly hilarious thing about this whole thing is though that this issue is entirely limited to history. The proletariat is the majority class in most, if not all, nations. Yet you are still beating the drum about this "underestimation of the peasantry" crap as if it still matters in the context of today's world.

Your "refutation" of Trotskyism and describing it as being "revisionist" is a joke.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Um, didn't I say in other threads that, in today's world, the "small farmers" are quite reactionary? :glare:

Is land reform obsolete? (http://www.revleft.com/vb/land-reform-obsolete-t74905/index.html)

[Hence my immediate sovkhozization stance for post-revolutionary agriculture. No, not immediate "collectivization" (kolkhozization). Of course, feel free to call my view on this "bureaucratic." Then again, the Trotsky-ITE Severian called my revolutionary-Marxist views a "narrower version of Stalinism." :rolleyes: ]



Now, back to historical questions:


The truly hilarious thing about this whole thing is though that this issue is entirely limited to history.

You are correct: Lenin was right and Trotsky was flat-out wrong.

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/63/091.html
http://links.org.au/node/172

[Led Zeppelin]

You are correct: Lenin was right and Trotsky was flat-out wrong.

That is impossible, since they had the same position on the matter, as I just proved.

You basically repeated what you had read from second-hand sources, I disproved you, and you are still clinging to the crap you read, because you have too big of an ego to admit you were wrong.

So now that I have educated you on the matter, you have no excuse to keep repeating the same lies. If you however continue to do so, you will be regarded a student of the Stalin School of Falsification, and will probably go down the same road as Nadezhda (whose Stalinist degeneration I had predicted).

It's your choice, either accept the truth or continue to lie.

Either way, we serious Marxists will continue to ignore your incredibly weak and comical "refutations of Trotskyism", which are in essence attempts to re-write history and slander true Marxism, under the guise of "attacking Trotskyism".

Also, stop linking us to second-hand sources, we're not going to buy that crap like you have. We prefer to actually read the truth from first-hand sources instead of digging up articles by irrelevant hacks and taking their word (i.e., lies) as truth.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Actually, I was a Stalinist, and prior to that I was a Cliffite Trot. Stalinists, as you know, do NOT criticize Lenin's erroneous conception of "socialism" as being worker-controlled "state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be [bourgeois] monopoly." :p

But by all means, ignore the two links at the end of my post above.

[Led Zeppelin]

But by all means, ignore the two links at the end of my post above.

Yes, I will ignore it, because I just quoted you Trotsky proving that he had the same position on the peasantry as Lenin, in his book called Results and Prospects.

I will do so again: ""In the event of a decisive victory of the revolution, power will pass into the hands of that class which plays a leading role in the struggle – in other words, into the hands of the proletariat. Let us say at once that this by no means precludes revolutionary representatives of non-proletarian social groups entering the government. They can and should be in the government: a sound policy will compel the proletariat to call to power the influential leaders of the urban petty-bourgeoisie, of the intellectuals and of the peasantry. The whole problem consists in this: who will determine the content of the government’s policy, who will form within it a solid majority?" Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/rp05.htm)

That is from the chapter called The Proletariat in Power and the Peasantry.

Did you somehow miss that chapter when you read the book?

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ And where did the adoption of Trotsky's stuff in Results and Prospects lead Bela Kun to?

The Hungarian Lesson (http://links.org.au/node/172)


Lorimer explores the consequences of a revolutionary government "immediately putting `collectivism on the order of the day' in a country with a peasant majority" in his examination of the Hungarian revolution in 1919.

Led by Bela Kun, the Hungarian Communists took power in March 1919 and, proclaiming a soviet republic, implemented policies similar to those outlined by Trotsky in Results and Prospects. While decreeing the confiscation of the large semi-feudal estates, the Budapest government refused to allow the peasantry to divide them up. Converting the estates into state farms, the Communists were forced to appoint old landlords and their managers to direct the new state farms due to a lack of experienced farm managers. This alienated the peasantry—60 per cent of the population—from the revolutionary government.

At the same time, industry and commerce were instantly nationalised, even though the working class sorely lacked managerial expertise. This led to a sharp fall in production and a rapid rise in unemployment.

The Hungarian soviet republic, having alienated the peasantry and demoralised and confused the working class, was overthrown by Czech, Romanian and Serbian mercenaries 19 weeks after it was proclaimed.

There is a great deal more in Lorimer's book, including the debates that flared within the Communist Party between 1917 and 1928 on Bolshevik policy and the revolutionary process. Lorimer also charts Trotsky's return to his pre-1917 positions as revolution flared in China in 1926-27, and Trotsky's later identification of Bolshevik policy prior to 1917 with Menshevism.

The debate over permanent revolution is not just a matter of history. Both Lenin and Trotsky tried to apply the lessons of October to revolutions in the colonial and semi-colonial world. While Lorimer deals with this aspect of the subject only in relation to Trotsky's writings on the second Chinese revolution, he vindicates Lenin's perspective of completing the anti-imperialist, national-democratic revolution through the revolutionary seizure of state power by an alliance of the workers and the peasants, then proceeding to achieve the socialist revolution with the expropriation of capitalist property by the working class in alliance with the poor peasantry and other semi-proletarian sections of the population.

Today, in countries like Indonesia and the Philippines, the debates among the Russian Marxists in the years between 1905 and 1917 have a new pertinence. The subject of this book deals with living, breathing class struggle, making it a must read for all those who participate in the struggle against capitalism.

Again, its leaning on versus allying with (on equal "collaboration" terms, per Lenin).

Permanent revolution and substitutionism (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1134273&postcount=2)



My only critique of Lorimer is that he hastily calls the second Bolshevik revolution of 1918 (yes, the year that Lenin went on a Kautsky-bashing spree) "socialist." It was still social-democratic (in another form), since the proletariat did not form the majority of the population (otherwise we'd have a social-proletocratic revolution).

[Led Zeppelin]

^^^ And where did the adoption of Trotsky's stuff in Results and Prospects lead Bela Kun to?

So without having read Results and Prospects you believe that Bela Kun implemented it, because some article says so?

As I said, you draw your conclusions from second-hand sources.


Again, its leaning on versus allying with (on equal "collaboration" terms, per Lenin).

Actually, you don't even understand Lenin. He never considered the peasantry to be socialist allies of the proletariat, he considered them to be temporary allies, on which the proletariat leaned to keep its position as leader of the revolutionary movement:



“We support the peasant movement,” wrote Lenin in September 1905, “to the extent that it is a revolutionary democratic movement. We are preparing (right now, and immediately) for a struggle with it to the extent that it will come forward as a reactionary, anti-proletarian movement.” The entire gist of Marxism lies in this two-fold task. Lenin saw the socialist ally in the Western proletariat and partly in the semi-proletarian elements in the Russian village but never in the peasantry as such. “From the beginning we support to the very end, by means of all measures, up to confiscation,” he repeated with the insistence peculiar to him, “the peasant in general against the landlord, and later (and not even later but at the very same time) we support the proletariat against the peasant in general.”

“The peasantry will conquer in the bourgeois-democratic revolution,” he wrote in March 1906, “and with this it will completely exhaust its revolutionary spirit as the peasantry. The proletariat will conquer in the bourgeois-democratic revolution and with this it will only unfold in a real way its genuine socialist revolutionary spirit.” “The movement of the peasantry,” he repeated in May of the same year, “is the movement of a different class. This is a struggle not against the foundations of capitalism but for purging all the remnants of feudalism.” This viewpoint can be followed in Lenin from one article to the next, year by year, volume by volume. The language and examples vary, the basic thought remains the same. It could not have been otherwise. Had Lenin seen a socialist ally in the peasantry he would not have had the slightest ground for insisting upon the bourgeois character of the revolution and for limiting “the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry” to purely democratic tasks. In those cases where Lenin accused the author of this book of “underestimating” the peasantry he had in mind not at all my non-recognition of the socialist tendencies of the peasantry but, on the contrary, my inadequate – from Lenin’s viewpoint – recognition of the bourgeois-democratic independence of the peasantry, its ability to create its own power and thereby prevent the establishment of the socialist dictatorship of the proletariat.

The reevaluation of values on this question was opened up only in the years of Thermidorian reaction the beginning of which coincided approximately with the illness and death of Lenin. Thenceforth the alliance of Russian workers and peasants was proclaimed to be, in and of itself, a sufficient guarantee against the dangers of restoration and an immutable pledge of the realization of socialism within the boundaries of the Soviet Union. Replacing the theory of international revolution by the theory of socialism in one country Stalin began to designate the Marxist evaluation of the peasantry not otherwise than as “Trotskyism” and, moreover, not only in relation to the present but to the entire past.
Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/russia.htm)

When you extend the role of the peasantry and replace it for the role of the proletariat, that is, believe that the peasantry is a socialist ally of the proletariat, you end up supporting Bukharin's rightist nonsense about the Kulaks being the only hope for socialism and telling the peasants to "get rich".

That line leads to Deng Xiaping style reformation of capitalism.

Or you accept the theory of socialism in one country, because you believe the alliance between the peasantry and proletariat is sufficient to "build socialism".

To reduce Lenin's position to that is ridiculous.

As for "alliance between" versus "leaning upon":


Not only the agrarian, but also the national question assigns to the peasantry – the overwhelming majority of the population in backward countries – an exceptional place in the democratic revolution. Without an alliance of the proletariat with the peasantry the tasks of the democratic revolution cannot be solved, nor even seriously posed. But the alliance of these two classes can be realized in no other way than through an irreconcilable struggle against the influence of the national-liberal bourgeoisie.
Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/pr10.htm)

[Die Neue Zeit]

Actually, you don't even understand Lenin. He never considered the peasantry to be socialist allies of the proletariat, he considered them to be temporary allies, on which the proletariat leaned to keep its position as leader of the revolutionary movement

That's what I said above regarding reactionary "small farmers." :glare:


Um, didn't I say in other threads that, in today's world, the "small farmers" are quite reactionary? :glare:

Is land reform obsolete? (http://www.revleft.com/vb/land-reform-obsolete-t74905/index.html)

[Hence my immediate sovkhozization stance for post-revolutionary agriculture. No, not immediate "collectivization" (kolkhozization). Of course, feel free to call my view on this "bureaucratic." Then again, the Trotsky-ITE Severian called my revolutionary-Marxist views a "narrower version of Stalinism." :rolleyes: ]

However, the October Revolution wasn't exactly a "socialist" (read: social-proletocratic) revolution. It was less than such, but greater than a "bourgeois-democratic" revolution.

Because of bourgeois ineptitude, pre-socialist revolutions need to involve peasants as equal allies.

Read Chapter 10 of Lenin's Two Tactics:


The absence of unity on questions of Socialism and in the struggle for Socialism does not preclude singleness of will on questions of democracy and in the struggle for a republic. To forget this would be tantamount to forgetting the logical and historical difference between a democratic and a socialist revolution. To forget this would be tantamount to forgetting the character of the democratic revolution as a revolution of the whole people: if it is “of the whole people” it means that there is “singleness of will” precisely in so far as this revolution satisfies the common needs and requirements of the whole people. Beyond the bounds of democracy there can be no question of the proletariat and the peasant bourgeoisie having a single will. Class struggle between them is inevitable; but it is in a democratic republic that this struggle will be the most thoroughgoing and widespread struggle of the people for Socialism. Like everything else in the world, the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry has a past and a future. Its past is autocracy, serfdom, monarchy and privilege. In the struggle against this past, in the struggle against counterrevolution, a “single will” of the proletariat and the peasantry is possible, for here there is unity of interests.

Its future is the struggle against private property the struggle of the wage worker against the employer the struggle for Socialism. Here singleness of will is impossible. Here our path lies not from autocracy to a republic but from a petty-bourgeois democratic republic to Socialism.

...

The time will come when the struggle against the Russian autocracy will end and the period of democratic revolution will be over in Russia; then it will be ridiculous to talk about “singleness of will” of the proletariat and the peasantry, about a democratic dictatorship, etc. When that time comes we shall attend directly to the question of the socialist dictatorship of the proletariat and deal with it at greater length. But at present the party of the advanced class cannot but strive most energetically for a decisive victory of the democratic revolution over tsarism. And a decisive victory means nothing else than the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.




Not only the agrarian, but also the national question assigns to the peasantry – the overwhelming majority of the population in backward countries – an exceptional place in the democratic revolution. Without an alliance of the proletariat with the peasantry the tasks of the democratic revolution cannot be solved, nor even seriously posed. But the alliance of these two classes can be realized in no other way than through an irreconcilable struggle against the influence of the national-liberal bourgeoisie.

His interpretation of "alliance" was one wherein the proletariat alone LED the DEMOCRATIC revolution, with the peasantry being LEANED UPON.

[Led Zeppelin]

Because of bourgeois ineptitude, pre-socialist revolutions need to involve peasants as equal allies.

Good, now read the quote I just added to my post, from The Permanent Revolution.



Not only the agrarian, but also the national question assigns to the peasantry – the overwhelming majority of the population in backward countries – an exceptional place in the democratic revolution. Without an alliance of the proletariat with the peasantry the tasks of the democratic revolution cannot be solved, nor even seriously posed. But the alliance of these two classes can be realized in no other way than through an irreconcilable struggle against the influence of the national-liberal bourgeoisie.
Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/pr10.htm)

So he said the same thing in the book which you claimed to have read.

Isn't that strange?

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

you are still beating the drum about this "underestimation of the peasantry" crap as if it still matters in the context of today's world.


As a side, comrade, it still does in some corners of earth. Afghanistan and Nepal come to mind, for example.

[Led Zeppelin]

As a side, comrade, it still does in some corners of earth. Afghanistan and Nepal come to mind, for example.

True, but I added this exception before I said that: "The proletariat is the majority class in most, if not all, nations."

I knew there were probably a few exceptions. :p

It seems as though Afghanistan is not on that list though:

agriculture: 38%
industry: 24%
services: 38%

Link (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/af.html#Econ)

[Die Neue Zeit]

Good, now read the quote I just added to my post, from The Permanent Revolution.


Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/pr10.htm)

So he said the same thing in the book which you claimed to have read.

Isn't that strange?

Trotsky: The Perspective of permanent revolution may be summarized in the following way: the complete victory of the democratic revolution in Russia is conceivable only in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, leaning on the peasantry. The dictatorship of the proletariat, which would inevitably place on the order of the day not only democratic but socialistic tasks as well, would at the same time give a powerful impetus to the international socialist revolution. Only the victory of the proletariat in the West could protect Russia from bourgeois resoration and assure it the possibility of rounding out the establishment of socialism.

Contrast that with Lenin's stuff about an equal alliance between the two classes, with neither class merely "leaning" on the other. :glare:

[Led Zeppelin]

Trotsky: The Perspective of permanent revolution may be summarized in the following way: the complete victory of the democratic revolution in Russia is conceivable only in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, leaning on the peasantry. The dictatorship of the proletariat, which would inevitably place on the order of the day not only democratic but socialistic tasks as well, would at the same time give a powerful impetus to the international socialist revolution. Only the victory of the proletariat in the West could protect Russia from bourgeois resoration and assure it the possibility of rounding out the establishment of socialism.

By complete victory of the democratic revolution is meant...the complete victory of the democratic revolution, which culminates into socialism.


Contrast that with Lenin's stuff about an equal alliance between the two classes, with neither class merely "leaning" on the other. :glare:

Show one quote of Lenin saying that there must be an equal alliance, and that the peasantry plays a role as a socialist ally of the proletariat.

You can't because there is none.

[Die Neue Zeit]

By complete victory of the democratic revolution is meant...the complete victory of the democratic revolution, which culminates into socialism.

Oh, boy, so now you're saying that the complete victory of the bourgeois-democratic revolution culminates into socialism? :rolleyes:

[Lenin understood that two very time-separated social revolutions were necessary.]


Show one quote of Lenin saying that there must be an equal alliance, and that the peasantry plays a role as a socialist ally of the proletariat.

You can't because there is none.

I never said that the proles had peasants as socialist allies (although coordinators come to mind in terms of a much more valid theory of "permanent revolution" in our day and age, completing the tasks of the "managerial revolution" (http://www.revleft.com/vb/trots-and-others-t72296/index.html)).

[Led Zeppelin]

Oh, boy, so now you're saying that the complete victory of the bourgeois-democratic revolution culminates into socialism?

Stop rolling your eyes.

Trotsky was talking about democratic revolution, if you read that quote without pre-conceived conclusions you would have noticed that the word "bourgeois" was lacking from it.


I never said that the proles had peasants as socialist allies

You said they had them as equal allies, or at least that Lenin said so, so prove it.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I said equal allies for the democratic revolution:


pre-socialist revolutions need to involve peasants as equal allies


The Perspective of permanent revolution may be summarized in the following way: the complete victory of the democratic revolution in Russia is conceivable only in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, leaning on the peasantry.

Wrong! The complete victory of the bourgeois-democratic revolution was conceivable only in form of the RDDOTPP, with both classes as equal allies. The bourgeois-democratic social revolution is separate from the socialist social revolution.

[Hit The North]

The bourgeois-democratic social revolution is separate from the socialist social revolution.

If Lenin believed that then why, after the civil war, didn't he urge the move towards the building of bourgeois-democratic institutions and argue that the Bolsheviks should take up their position as the socialist opposition within that framework?

[Die Neue Zeit]

If Lenin believed that then why, after the civil war, didn't he urge the move towards the building of bourgeois-democratic institutions and argue that the Bolsheviks should take up their position as the socialist opposition within that framework?

Because both he and Trotsky shared the erroneous conception of "socialism" as being worker-controlled "state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be [bourgeois] monopoly" (http://www.revleft.com/vb/lenins-error-re-t74487/index.html) (link).

In fact, this criticism of mine, to alert you, is the Chapter 5 section immediately following the "Plain Proletocracy" section, and starts with that famous quote from Wilhelm Liebknecht on "state socialism."

[Led Zeppelin]

Wrong! The complete victory of the bourgeois-democratic revolution was conceivable only in form of the RDDOTPP, with both classes as equal allies. The bourgeois-democratic social revolution is separate from the socialist social revolution.

First of all I have no idea what RDDOTPP means and I don't want to know either. I don't like people making up their own acronyms.

Secondly, there was never an "equal alliance" between the peasantry and proletariat, this would pre-suppose an "equal balance of forces" within the Bolshevik party and centers of support itself.

The Bolshevik party was the party of the proletariat, there is no doubt about that. There is also no doubt about the fact that the bourgeois-democratic revolution (the revolution of February, not October) was lead by the peasantry and proletariat as more or less "equals". This is because the proletariat and poor peasantry were, in terms of consciousness, on a more or less equal level.

From February to October the peasantry lagged behind the proletariat, the Bolsheviks became the representative of the latter, and had to form an alliance between the two to take - and more important to keep - state-power.

This was more or less an equal alliance, because both the wishes of the peasantry and the proletariat were to be fulfilled by the new government, which was an alliance between the Left-SR's and Bolsheviks. This changed soon after when the Left-SR's blended into the Bolshevik party entirely and the focus of the Bolshevik party was on the proletariat. The temporary "somewhat equal alliance" (which was obviously not equal in certain terms, given the lagging behind of the peasantry in the previous period) within the framework of the bourgeois-democratic revolution of February continued for a short period after the October revolution, up until the decrees on land were fulfilled and the civil war was won. The struggle against some sections of the peasantry was ongoing from this period onward, with the Kulaks leading it one side, and the proletariat on the other.

The NEP was the outcome of this struggle. To say that there was an equal alliance when the proletariat was forced to make a concession to the peasantry - only after the previous proletarian socialist policy of distribution proved to be failure due to objective material conditions - is to be ignorant of history.

The problem of the "alliance" was one which existed throughout the 20's and even 30's, long after Lenin had passed away. The character of the revolution was one in which the proletariat was the leader, with the poor peasantry as the reluctant follower. It was essential that the alliance existed, not just for the completion of the bourgeois-democratic tasks of the revolution, but also for the early socialistic tasks, which blended into each other given the character of the state, i.e., a proletarian state allied with, or based on, the peasantry.

In this respect the proletariat was always in struggle with the peasantry. There can be no talk of an "equal alliance" when one class in power has, by its very existence, opposite goals to that of another. This is why Trotsky talked of the proletarian dictatorship being based on the peasantry, or leaning on the peasantry, while also saying that there was an alliance. Nowhere did he say there was equal alliance, however, and nowhere did Lenin say that either.

Here Trotsky's quote is understood: "Without an alliance of the proletariat with the peasantry the tasks of the democratic revolution cannot be solved, nor even seriously posed."

That quote you conveniently ignored, instead taking another quote by him which seemingly says the opposite.

Let's examine that quote. You took it from the main page of The Permanent Revolution (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/index.htm), the quote doesn't even appear in the book itself, the one I posted above, however, does.

The quote you posted was taken (and translated poorly) from another work by Trotsky, called The Character of the Russian Revolution (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/russia.htm), and it states:


The perspective of the permanent revolution may be summed up in these words: The complete victory of the democratic revolution in Russia is inconceivable otherwise than in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat basing itself on the peasantry. The dictatorship of the proletariat, which will inescapably place on the order of the day not only democratic but also socialist tasks, will at the same time provide a mighty impulse to the international socialist revolution. Only, the victory of the proletariat in the West will shield Russia from bourgeois restoration and secure for her the possibility of bringing the socialist construction to its conclusion.

Instead of "leaning on", it says there "basing itself on". Petty semantics of course, but herein lies the crux of Jacob's "argument".

Too bad that he didn't realize the context of that quote, which he has now turned into the main point of his argument.

Here is what Trotsky writes right after that:


These terse formulations reveal with equal clarity both the homogeneity of the last two conceptions in their irreconcilable contradiction with the liberal-Menshevist perspective as well as their extremely essential difference from one another on the question of the social character and the tasks of the “dictatorship” which was to grow out of the revolution. The frequently repeated objection of the present Moscow theoreticians to the effect that the program of the dictatorship of the proletariat was “premature” in 1905 is entirely lacking in content. In the empirical sense the program of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry proved to be equally “premature.” The unfavorable relation of forces in the epoch of the first revolution rendered impossible not the dictatorship of the proletariat as such but, in general, the victory of the revolution itself. Meanwhile all the revolutionary tendencies proceeded from the hopes for a complete victory; without such a hope an unfettered revolutionary struggle would be impossible.

Here Trotsky is saying that the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry was deemed "premature" when the line of the "Moscow Theoreticians" (Stalinists) was taken to its logical conclusion.

The bourgeois-democratic revolution is obviously separate from the socialist revolution, the problem is that Jacob doesn't understand that February was the bourgeois-democratic revolution, not October, which was socialist in nature. The task of completing the bourgeois-democratic revolution, which the bourgeoisie is unable to fulfill, is then taken over by the proletariat in alliance with, based on, or leaning on, the peasantry, after and during which the socialist tasks of the revolution are also fulfilled, to the degree which the bourgeois-democratic tasks are completed, or even skipped (like in the case of capitalist private property relations).

Jacob said that Trotky was revisionist because of his views on the trade-unions.

I proved him wrong. (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1149233&postcount=29)

Jacob said that Trotsky never called on a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry.

I proved him wrong. (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1149255&postcount=31)

Jacob said that Trotsky hated the peasantry and didn't want to have them in the Red Army.

I proved him wrong. (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1149255&postcount=31)

Jacob said that Trotsky underestimated the role of the peasantry in the socialist revolution.

I proved him wrong. (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1149272&postcount=37)

Jacob said that Trotsky underestimated the role of the peasantry in the democratic revolution.

I proved him wrong. (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1149287&postcount=39)

Now Jacob is saying that Trotsky over-estimated the role of the peasantry in the bourgeois-democratic revolution.

And I just proved him wrong, again.

You keep flinging accusations at Trotsky without realizing that the previous accusation you made contradicts your current accusation against him.

Dogmatically clinging to certain gurus causes this.

[Die Neue Zeit]

First of all I have no idea what RDDOTPP means and I don't want to know either. I don't like people making up their own acronyms.

That's an abbreviation for Lenin's revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. :rolleyes:

Here's a Trot blog for ya:

http://johnmolyneux.blogspot.com/2007/03/permanent-revolution-then-and-now.html

That you still keep reducing the argument between the "Lenin-Trotsky" position and the Menshevik position adopted later on by Stalin is quite sad. :(

I have repeatedly pointed out the third position: that of Lenin. If you want to keep on saying that "Lenin was a Trotskyist" since 1905, then so be it. I'll end this circular argument (which you, not I, are perpetuating) right here and now.




Jacob said that Trotsky was revisionist because of his views on the trade-unions.

I quoted that work only because Lenin said something there against permanent revolution. I don't care much about the trade-union debate (sufficed to say that Trotsky was wrong there, too).

[Led Zeppelin]

I have repeatedly pointed out the third position: that of Lenin. If you want to keep on saying that "Lenin was a Trotskyist" since 1905, then so be it. I'll end this circular argument (which you, not I, are perpetuating) right here and now.

It seems as though Lenin himself did not know of this "third position":


The movement of the peasantry is the movement of a different class. This is a struggle not against the foundations of capitalism but for purging all the remnants of feudalism.


We must help the peasant uprising in every way, up to and including confiscation of the land, but certainly not including all sorts of petty-bourgeois schemes. We support the peasant movement to the extent that it is revolutionary-democratic. We are making ready (doing so now, at once) to fight it when, and to the extent that, it becomes reactionary and anti-proletarian. The essence of Marxism lies in that double task, which only those who do not understand Marxism can vulgarise or compress into a single and simple task.

[...]

There will always be reactionary admixtures in the peasant movement, and we declare war on them in advance. Class antagonism between the rural proletariat and the peasant bourgeoisie is unavoidable, and we disclose it in advance, explain it, and prepare for the struggle on the basis of that antagonism.

[...]

One of the immediate causes of such a struggle may very likely be provided by the question: to whom shall the confiscated land be given, and how? We do not gloss over that question, nor do we promise equalitarian distribution, “socialisation”, etc. What we do say is that this is a question we shall fight out later on, fight again, on a new field and with other allies.
Social-Democracy’s Attitude Towards the Peasant Movement (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/sep/05e.htm)


The Social-Democrats have pointed out repeatedly that the peasant movement sets before them a twofold task. Unquestionably we must support this movement and spur it on, inasmuch as it is a revolutionary-democratic movement. At the same time we must unswervingly maintain our class proletarian point of view; we must organise the rural proletariat, like the urban proletariat and together with it, into an independent class party; we must explain to it that. its interests are antagonistic to those of the bourgeois peasantry; we must call upon it to fight for the socialist revolution, and point out to it that liberation from oppression and poverty lies, not in turning several sections of the peasantry into petty bourgeois, but only in replacing the entire bourgeois system by the socialist system.

[...]

There can be only one solution to this problem: with the peasant bourgeoisie against all manner of serfdom and against the serf-owning landlords; with the urban proletariat against the peasant bourgeoisie and every other bourgeoisie—such is the “line” of the rural proletariat. and of its ideologists, the Social-Democrats. In other words: to support the peasantry and urge it on even to the point of seizing any seigniorial “property”, no matter how “sacred”, insofar as this peasantry acts in a revolutionary-democratic manner; to be wary of the peasantry, to organise separately from it, to be ready to combat it, insofar as this peasantry acts in a reactionary or anti-proletarian manner. Or, to put it still differently: aid to the peasant when his struggle with the landlord contributes to the development and strengthening of the democratic forces; neutrality towards the peasant when his struggle with the landlord is merely a matter of squaring accounts between two factions of the landowning class, a matter to which the proletariat and the democrats are indifferent.
The Proletariat and the Peasantry (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/mar/23.htm)



Thus, we must combine the purely proletarian struggle with the general peasant struggle, but not confuse the two. We must support the general democratic and general peasant struggle, but not become submerged in this non-class struggle; we must never idealise it with false catchwords such as “socialisation”, or ever forget the necessity of organising both the urban and the rural proletariat in an entirely independent class party of Social-Democracy. While giving the utmost support to the most determined democratism, that party will not allow itself to be diverted from the revolutionary path by reactionary dreams and experiments in “equalisation” under the system of commodity production.

The peasants’ struggle against the landlords is now a revolutionary struggle; the confiscation of the landlords’ estates at the present stage of economic and political evolution is revolutionary in every respect, and we back this revolutionary-democratic measure. However, to call this measure “socialisation”, and to deceive oneself and the people concerning the possibility of “equality” in land tenure under the system of commodity production, is a reactionary petty-bourgeois utopia, which we leave to the socialist-reactionaries.
Petty-Bourgeois and Proletarian Socialism (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/oct/25.htm)

[Led Zeppelin]

Is anyone from the "Revolutionary Marxists" group besides Jacob (who has already been utterly refuted) going to reply?

You have joined a group which claims that Trotsky was not a revolutionary Marxist, and is opposed to him and his positions, and believes that they were somehow different from Lenin's.

I would like you to justify your beliefs.

[ManyAntsDefeatSpiders]

I've never met a peasant, nor am I sure there are any nearby, so I don't see arguments about it of prime importance. :unsure:

I also don't see how, even if Trotsky 'over-emphasised' the role of the peasants, which it appears Led Zeppelin has refuted, how this would be relevant at all today, or a rebuttal of Trotskyism?

It's rather a weak attempt in my opinion.

(And Led Zeppelin, its rather unusual to claim that the Revolutionary Marxist group all have the same ideas regarding Trotsky, any more than the idea that all Trotskyists have the same ideas regarding the Soviet Union).

[Led Zeppelin]

I've never met a peasant, nor am I sure there are any nearby, so I don't see arguments about it of prime importance. :unsure:

I also don't see how, even if Trotsky 'over-emphasised' the role of the peasants, which it appears Led Zeppelin has refuted, how this would be relevant at all today, or a rebuttal of Trotskyism?

It's rather a weak attempt in my opinion.

Haha, of course you are correct.

This is why I said the same thing in my earlier post:


The truly hilarious thing about this whole thing is though that this issue is entirely limited to history. The proletariat is the majority class in most, if not all, nations. Yet you are still beating the drum about this "underestimation of the peasantry" crap as if it still matters in the context of today's world.

Jacob's reply was telling:


You are correct: Lenin was right and Trotsky was flat-out wrong.

You can't argue with that can you? :lol:


(And Led Zeppelin, its rather unusual to claim that the Revolutionary Marxist group all have the same ideas regarding Trotsky, any more than the idea that all Trotskyists have the same ideas regarding the Soviet Union).

Well, the group was founded by Jacob with an obvious ideology and version of history in mind. He posted this in the thread preceding its creation, so the people who joined it were well aware of it.

The fact that the term "revolutionary Marxists" was hijacked by "Orthodox Leninists" (who aren't really "orthodox" because they disagree with Lenin (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1149323&postcount=50)) is rather sad, what's more sad though is that people join that group and actually agree with Jacob without critically reviewing the matter themselves.

I have been seeing posts like the one he made in this thread for a long time now, and I decided to ignore them, saying to myself: "Surely people aren't stupid enough to actually believe that without looking over the matter themselves?!"

It seems I was wrong, people do believe it (luckily only very few; one or two members), so it was time to reply to it before it got out of hand.

The Trotskyists group is as much, if not more, worthy of the name Revolutionary Marxism as the mish-mashed Orthodox Leninism of Jacob.

If there are other views within that group, I respect that. I did not know there were any others, to be honest.

If that is the case, my request for them to reply was directed only at the adherents of Jacob's line. :)

[Tower of Bebel]

Is anyone from the "Revolutionary Marxists" group besides Jacob (who has already been utterly refuted) going to reply?

You have joined a group which claims that Trotsky was not a revolutionary Marxist, and is opposed to him and his positions, and believes that they were somehow different from Lenin's.

I would like you to justify your beliefs.

I only have three small things to say (I think that from a theoretical and historical perspective everything is said what had to be said ;)).

One is that I 'congratulate' you with your most recent defence of the permanent revolution :). I learned a lot from the thread (since I'm still learning), but also from others who didn't always support Trotsky but at least tried to give constructive remarks or criticism.
After months of repetitive claims that the Permanent Revolution would be thit or that without any real proof I finally found a more indepth discussion that was worth it (especially because it's not dominated by the distinction between SIOC en PM). At least it gave me a better view of both Trotsky and Lenin (though the conflicting interpretations by you and JR are not settled yet), the Permanent Revolution and the task of the peasantry during both the democratic and socialist 'stage' of the revolution.

Second, The Revolutionary-marxist group isn't as homogenous as you might think. Some have joined because they were requested, some have joined because they really wanted to. And JR... well he is one of a kind (but who isn't?), and you wont find any member of the R-M group who's just like him; so your dispute with JR should not let you conclude that this group is silly (although I think some other groups are silly - or better: useless). I myself recently joined after some requests of JR. Not because I fully agree with his statements (I'm mostly confused :closedeyes:), but because I find every theoretical discussion worth the try (and JR asked me twice to join).

And third, since you brought up the fact that some mistakes were made because of bad translation or interpretation ('leaned upon' and 'based upon', and so on) I think that Trotsky and his writtings need a revaluation, just like Lars T. Lih (spelling?) and others did with Lenin ;).

[Die Neue Zeit]

Is anyone from the "Revolutionary Marxists" group besides Jacob (who has already been utterly refuted)

:rolleyes:

I made my case above with that Trot blog.


You have joined a group which claims that Trotsky was not a revolutionary Marxist, and is opposed to him and his positions, and believes that they were somehow different from Lenin's.

I would like you to justify your beliefs.

Yeah, because Random Precision, Citizen Zero et al are ex-Trots. :rolleyes:

In a Learning thread on unorthodox Maoists (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1109662&postcount=26), I said that, while Trotsky may have been a Marxist theorist and a revolutionary figure, he was NOT a revolutionary-Marxist theorist.

[KC]

In a Learning thread on unorthodox Maoists (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1109662&postcount=26), I said that, while Trotsky may have been a Marxist theorist and a revolutionary figure, he was NOT a revolutionary-Marxist theorist.

I still would like to hear your damning refutation of the Transitional Program or any justification for your ridiculous claims that Trotsky is a "revisionist".

[Led Zeppelin]

Second, The Revolutionary-marxist group isn't as homogenous as you might think. Some have joined because they were requested, some have joined because they really wanted to. And JR... well he is one of a kind (but who isn't?), and you wont find any member of the R-M group who's just like him; so your dispute with JR should not let you conclude that this group is silly (although I think some other groups are silly - or better: useless). I myself recently joined after some requests of JR. Not because I fully agree with his statements (I'm mostly confused :closedeyes:), but because I find every theoretical discussion worth the try (and JR asked me twice to join).

Ok, I just read that Citizen Zero and Random Precision are also members of it, both of whom obviously disagree with Jacob and consider "revolutionary Marxism" to be "Trotskyism", at least as it was espoused by Trotsky himself.

It's good that the group didn't become Jacob's playground and that there are more diverse views in it, I did not know that this was the case because most threads in the forum are made by Jacob and seem to be endorsing his views.


And third, since you brought up the fact that some mistakes were made because of bad translation or interpretation ('leaned upon' and 'based upon', and so on) I think that Trotsky and his writtings need a revaluation, just like Lars T. Lih (spelling?) and others did with Lenin ;).

Well, I think that in some cases this may be important, but not in this instance, at least not from Trotsky's side. The reason it was so important now is because Jacob turned it into the crucial part of his argument.

In reality, "leaned upon", "based on" and "alliance with" all are basically the same thing, when the historic context and theory is understood.

The peasantry was obviously never considered an "equal ally" of the proletariat as Jacob implies, and Lenin never said that such an equal alliance was even possible in a socialist revolution. If it were, it would have meant that socialist revolution itself was impossible, because inevitably the peasantry would turn away from the socialist demands of the proletariat and raise their own petty-bourgeois capitalistic demands, which is what Lenin was saying since 1905 (see the quotes I posted above).

This is why the proletariat was always in a leadership position in the movement, it was an "ally of", "based on" and "leaned on" the peasantry.

If there was such an "equal alliance" the Bolsheviks would have been a junior-partner in the government, since the peasantry was the majority class. If there was such an "equal alliance" the NEP would have been instated right after the October revolution, instead of being instated only after the failure of War Communism (a failure caused by objective material conditions) in 1921, as a temporary concession to the hostile peasantry. If there was an equal alliance, Bukharin's rightist clique would have dominated the party throughout the 20's and 30's, while in reality the Centrist "Triumvirate" dominated it. Even after Stalin's alliance with Bukharin which pushed the policy on the peasantry to the fore and caused more concessions to be granted (only in word, not in deed), there was still an irreconcilable struggle between the two classes. This culminated in the complete destruction of even the "unequal alliance" between the two classes, with the forced collectivization policy of the Centrists.

To say, knowing all this history, that there was an "equal alliance", is absurd. Furthermore, to say that an "equal alliance" was preferrable is even more absurd. Bukharin's clique, the representatives of the peasantry, would have reverted the country back to capitalism decades sooner than the Stalinist Center did.

It's important to note that Lenin fought against Bukharin's concept of the "equal alliance", by the way. And also, it is important to keep in mind that the alliance between the proletariat and peasantry was meant to be temporary. Lenin and Trotsky saw their main allies in the proletariat of other nations, who shared their socialist demands.


In a Learning thread on unorthodox Maoists (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1109662&postcount=26), I said that, while Trotsky may have been a Marxist theorist and a revolutionary figure, he was NOT a revolutionary-Marxist theorist.

So he may have been a Marxist and a revolutionary, but he was not a revolutionary Marxist.

This pretty much sums up your position.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Ok, I just read that Citizen Zero and Random Precision are also members of it, both of whom obviously disagree with Jacob and consider "revolutionary Marxism" to be "Trotskyism", at least as it was espoused by Trotsky himself.

It's good that the group didn't become Jacob's playground and that there are more diverse views in it, I did not know that this was the case because most threads in the forum are made by Jacob and seem to be endorsing his views.

Yes, because EVERY thread there is about my beef with Trotsky... :rolleyes:

Only ONE bloody thread there highlights my beef with Trotskyism. Even RP's double-post on substitutionism was greeted with a "crisis of theory" response (something which the more typical Trots won't understand, BTW ;) ).




The peasantry was obviously never considered an "equal ally" of the proletariat as Jacob implies, and Lenin never said that such an equal alliance was even possible in a socialist revolution.

Now YOU'RE the one who's twisting my words! :cursing:

Learn to differentiate between the DEMOCRATIC and SOCIALIST revolutions! Trotsky said that, for BOTH, peasants weren't equal allies. Lenin said, on the other hand, the peasants should be equal allies in the DEMOCRATIC revolution! Furthermore, Lenin was a "stage-ist," considering the two revolutions to be separate (ie, the full victory of the democratic revolution had to occur before any socialist revolution could begin). Geez!


So he may have been a Marxist and a revolutionary, but he was not a revolutionary Marxist.

A good Marxist theorist and political revolutionary doesn't necessarily have to be a revolutionary-Marxist theorist. He can have reductionist, revisionist, or sectarian holes in his contributions to Marxist theory. Case in point: the "Pauline" founder of "Marxism," Karl Kautsky (parliamentary reductionism).

[Led Zeppelin]

Learn to differentiate between the DEMOCRATIC and SOCIALIST revolutions! Trotsky said that, for BOTH, peasants weren't equal allies. Lenin said, on the other hand, the peasants should be equal allies in the DEMOCRATIC revolution! Furthermore, Lenin was a "stage-ist," considering the two revolutions to be separate (ie, the full victory of the democratic revolution had to occur before any socialist revolution could begin). Geez!

I already responded to this argument of yours:


The bourgeois-democratic revolution is obviously separate from the socialist revolution, the problem is that Jacob doesn't understand that February was the bourgeois-democratic revolution, not October, which was socialist in nature. The task of completing the bourgeois-democratic revolution, which the bourgeoisie is unable to fulfill, is then taken over by the proletariat in alliance with, based on, or leaning on, the peasantry, after and during which the socialist tasks of the revolution are also fulfilled, to the degree which the bourgeois-democratic tasks are completed, or even skipped (like in the case of capitalist private property relations).

Then again, you also said that Lenin was wrong about this issue, together with Trotsky (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1149323&postcount=50), so it would be a bit hard to find a difference of opinion on this between the two.

And just so you know, in the February revolution the Bolsheviks played a minimal part and the representatives of the proletariat were the Mensheviks and to a lesser extent the SR's and Cadets.

Of course after and during the February bourgeois-democratic revolution there was an "equal alliance" between the Mensheviks, SR's and Cadets, i.e., the representatives of the proletariat at that time and the representatives of the peasantry at that time. Their level of consciousness was pretty much equal, and so were their demands as a result of that.

This is all entirely irrelevant to the October socialist revolution, when the Bolsheviks became the representatives of the proletariat, and the proletariat ran ahead of the peasantry in terms of consciousness, rendering any alliance between the two "unequal".

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Sorry, but I don't view things that way. There were/are two extremes: the bourgeois-democratic and proletarian-socialist revolutions. The MARCH political revolution was bourgeois-democratic, but the NOVEMBER political revolution was social-democratic (ie, less than a proletarian-socialist revolution but more than a bourgeois-democratic revolution).


(like in the case of capitalist private property relations)

Did you know that the incoming Lenin government was QUITE HESITANT to abolish capitalist private property relations? Nationalizations of factories occurred because workers were DEMANDING it from the Bolsheviks afterwards (kinda like the Sidor situation). Then there's the issue of land, in which case VERY capitalistic private property relations were solidified with the land redistribution:

http://home.flash.net/~comvoice/14cStateCapitalism.html


For example, from the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 through early 1918, Lenin wasn't for an immediate nationalization of the entire urban economy, but advocated a gradual approach. There would be workers' control, but the capitalists would still own many enterprises. Why not simply nationalize all industry at once? Was it because the capitalists were too powerful and could block this? Not at all.

...

In practice, this plan was cut short by the capitalists challenging the very existence of a socialist regime and beginning the Civil War. The result was that widespread nationalization was carried out rapidly; the workers had to learn as best they could in the resulting situation; and the Bolsheviks set up an extensive state sector as best they could. However, after the Civil War, Lenin again returned to the issue of finding ways to overcome petty-bourgeois disorganization in the situation where simply relying on government decrees would be unavailing.

The fact that Trotsky and successive Trotskyist theorists have turned this necessity of rapid nationalization (to abolish capitalist private property relations overnight, without thinking of the consequences) into a virtue is reductionist.

[Led Zeppelin]

^^^ Sorry, but I don't view things that way. There were/are two extremes: the bourgeois-democratic and proletarian-socialist revolutions. The MARCH political revolution was bourgeois-democratic, but the NOVEMBER political revolution was social-democratic (ie, less than a proletarian-socialist revolution but more than a bourgeois-democratic revolution).

Then you don't view it in the same way both Lenin and Trotsky viewed it, which is fine, just as long as you don't try to invent differences of opinion between them on this issue.


Did you know that the incoming Lenin government was QUITE HESITANT to abolish capitalist private property relations? Nationalizations of factories occurred because workers were DEMANDING it from the Bolsheviks afterwards (kinda like the Sidor situation). Then there's the issue of land, in which case VERY capitalistic private property relations were solidified with the land redistribution:

http://home.flash.net/~comvoice/14cStateCapitalism.html

If you could quote Lenin to that effect, instead of quoting an article which says so, I would look it over and reply.

The fact of the matter is though, whether it was "forced on Lenin by the workers" (which seems incredibly absurd to me) or not, they skipped over that stage in a revolution which according to you was bourgeois-democratic!

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ The very work upon which I base the pre-socialist transitional "multi-economy" (which was quoted in the article, BTW, so you should read it):

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/may/09.htm


We shall pass on to the misfortunes of our “Left” Communists in the sphere of home policy. It is difficult to read the following phrases in the theses on the present situation without smiling.

“. . . The systematic use of the remaining means of production is conceivable only if a most determined policy of socialisation is pursued” . . . “not to capitulate to the bourgeoisie and its petty-bourgeois intellectualist servitors, but to rout the bourgeoisie and to put down sabotage completely. . . .”

Dear “Left Communists”, how determined they are, but how little thinking they display. What do they mean by pursuing “a most determined policy of socialisation"?

One may or may not be determined on the question of nationalisation or confiscation, but the whole point is that even the greatest possible “determination” in the world is not enough to pass from nationalisation and confiscation to socialisation. The misfortune of our “Lefts” is that by their naïve, childish combination of the words “most determined policy of socialisation” they reveal their utter failure to understand the crux of the question, the crux of the “present” situation. The misfortune of our “Lefts” is that they have missed the very essence of the “present situation”, the transition from confiscation (the carrying out of which requires above all determination in a politician) to socialisation (the carrying out of which requires a different quality in the revolutionary).

Yesterday, the main task of the moment was, as determinedly as possible, to nationalise, confiscate, beat down and crush the bourgeoisie, and put down sabotage. Today, only a blind man could fail to see that we have nationalised, confiscated, beaten down and put down more than we have had time to count. The difference between socialisation and simple confiscation is that confiscation can be carried out by “determination” alone, without the ability to calculate and distribute properly, whereas socialisation cannot be brought about without this ability.

The historical service we have rendered is that yesterday we were determined (and we shall be tomorrow) in confiscating, in beating down the bourgeoisie, in putting down sabotage. To write about this today in “theses on the present situation” is to fix one’s eyes on the past and to fail to understand the transition to the future.

“. . . To put down sabotage completely. . . .” What a task they have found! Our saboteurs are quite sufficiently “put down”. What we lack is something quite different. We lack the proper calculation of which saboteurs to set to work and where to place them. We lack the organisation of our own forces that is needed for, say, one Bolshevik leader or controller to be able to supervise a hundred saboteurs who are now coming into our service. When that is how matters stand, to flaunt such phrases as “a most determined policy of socialisation”, “routing”, and “completely putting down” is just missing the mark. It is typical of the petty-bourgeois revolutionary not to notice that routing, putting down, etc., is not enough for socialism. It is sufficient for a small proprietor enraged against a big proprietor. But no proletarian revolutionary would ever fall into such error.

And the inspiration for my "multi-economy" remarks:


But what does the word “transition” mean? Does it not mean, as applied to an economy, that the present system contains elements, particles, fragments of both capitalism and socialism? Everyone will admit that it does. But not all who admit this take the trouble to consider what elements actually constitute the various socio-economic structures that exist in Russia at the present time. And this is the crux of the question.

Let us enumerate these elements:

1) patriarchal, i.e., to a considerable extent natural, peasant farming;

2) small commodity production (this includes the majority of those peasants who sell their grain);

3) private capitalism;

4) state capitalism;

5) socialism.

Russia is so vast and so varied that all these different types of socio-economic structures are intermingled. This is what constitutes the specific features of the situation.

The question arises: what elements predominate? Clearly in a small-peasant country, the petty-bourgeois element predominates and it must predominate, for the great majority of those working the land are small commodity producers. The shell of our state capitalism (grain monopoly, state controlled entrepreneurs and traders, bourgeois co-operators) is pierced now in one place, now in another by profiteers, the chief object of profiteering being grain.

It is in this field that the main struggle is being waged. Between what elements is this struggle being waged if we are to speak in terms of economic categories such as “state capitalism"? Between the fourth and the fifth in the order in which I have just enumerated them. Of course not. It is not state capitalism that is at war with socialism, but the petty bourgeoisie plus private capitalism fighting together against both state capitalism and socialism.



Hence my "multi-economy":

http://www.revleft.com/vb/multiple-modern-modes-t75252/index.html
http://www.revleft.com/vb/socialism-literaly-competing-t74556/index.html

1) "Market socialism," parecon and other "cooperatives in the market" replacing proprietorships, partnerships, and other small businesses, and so on;

2) Non-market proletocratic capitalism per the Trots (democratic central planning, but with compensation in wages);

3) Social-proletocratic economy (democratic central planning, with compensation in labour-time vouchers);

4) Gift economy (communism in limited areas).

[Led Zeppelin]

^^^ The very work upon which I base the pre-socialist transitional "multi-economy" (which was quoted in the article, BTW, so you should read it):

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/may/09.htm

I see now what you have trouble understanding. In a sense you are right, actually, but only on one thing, while disregarding the other.

I said this earlier on:


The temporary "somewhat equal alliance" (which was obviously not equal in certain terms, given the lagging behind of the peasantry in the previous period) within the framework of the bourgeois-democratic revolution of February continued for a short period after the October revolution, up until the decrees on land were fulfilled and the civil war was won. The struggle against some sections of the peasantry was ongoing from this period onward, with the Kulaks leading it one side, and the proletariat on the other.

In that sense the October revolution was indeed bourgeois, but why do we not characterize it as such? Because the proletariat was at the head of it! This is essential to keep in mind, for it was no longer necessary for the proletariat to lead another revolution to fulfill its own socialist tasks, it was already the leader of the October revolution.

The confusion is caused by the blending of the proletarian tasks with the tasks of the peasantry, or more specifically, by the fact that the proletariat had to complete tasks for the peasantry that under other circumstances was the task of the bourgeoisie.

Again, the important thing to keep in mind is that the proletariat was at the head of the revolution, and both Lenin and Trotsky knew that sooner or later they would have to fight the peasantry, after fulfilling the tasks for them.


Things have turned out just as we said they would. The course taken by the revolution has confirmed the correctness of our reasoning. First, with the “whole” of the peasantry against the monarchy, the landlords, the mediaeval regime (and to that extent, the revolution remains bourgeois, bourgeois-democratic). Then with the poorest peasants, with the semi-proletarians, with all the exploited, against capitalism, including the rural rich, the kulaks, the profiteers, and to that extent the revolution becomes a socialist one.

[...]

The proletariat will find itself compelled to carry the class struggle into the villages and in this manner destroy the community of interest which is undoubtedly to be found among all peasants, although within comparatively narrow limits. From the very first moment after its taking power, the proletariat will have to find support in the antagonisms between the village poor and the village rich, between the agricultural proletariat and the agricultural bourgeoisie.

And, more importantly, a summary of what I just said by Trotsky:



The proletariat took power together with the peasantry in October, says Lenin. By that alone, the revolution was a bourgeois revolution. Is that right? In a certain sense, yes. But this means that the true democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, that is, the one which actually destroyed the regime of autocracy and serfdom and snatched the land from the feudalists, was accomplished not before October but only after October; it was accomplished, to use Marx’s words, in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat supported by the peasant war – and then, a few months later, began growing into a socialist dictatorship. Is this really hard to understand? Can differences of opinion prevail on this point today?

According to Radek, the ‘permanent’ theory sins by mixing up the bourgeois stage with the socialist. In reality, however, the class dynamics so thoroughly ‘mixed up’, that is, combined these two stages, that our unfortunate metaphysician is no longer in a position even to find the threads.
Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/pr05.htm)

So, the February revolution was bourgeois-democratic, but it was unable to fulfill its task, so those tasks had to be taken over by the October socialist revolution, i.e., the proletariat had to fulfill bourgeois tasks.

The stages in October were basically combined, but the essential thing was that the proletariat was the leader of the revolution and of the movement, in that sense, the most crucial sense, it was a socialist revolution.

This combined nature of the bourgeois and socialist revolution, or rather, the proletariat having to fulfill the tasks of the bourgeoisie, can easily cause someone to lose track between the two, or confuse the two. You just cited land decrees which were capitalistic in nature, I can cite in response to that the policy of War Communism, which put all distribution of commodities in the hands of the state.

The constant struggle between the peasantry and proletariat entered into the equation of politics, economics, and theory. It was the constant struggle between the bourgeois element of the revolution and the socialist element.

I already explained how this carried on into the 30's, and the effects this struggle had.

The problem and confusion is caused when you try to take certain decrees or acts out of historic context, and use them to brand the entire movement as "bourgeois", or try to cut up the combined nature of the revolution into various stages.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I see now what you have trouble understanding. In a sense you are right, actually, but only on one thing, while disregarding the other.

In that sense the October revolution was indeed bourgeois, but why do we not characterize it as such? Because the proletariat was at the head of it! This is essential to keep in mind, for it was no longer necessary for the proletariat to lead another revolution to fulfill its own socialist tasks, it was already the leader of the October revolution.

LZ, I never said that the November revolution was bourgeois-democratic. That's ortho-Marxist reductionism (ComradeRed, I'm a Tiger, renegadoe, etc.)!


The confusion is caused by the blending of the proletarian tasks with the tasks of the peasantry, or more specifically, by the fact that the proletariat had to complete tasks for the peasantry that under other circumstances was the task of the bourgeoisie.

Like I said, you too are trapped in binary thinking. There are other types of post-feudal revolutions besides just bourgeois-democratic and socialist / social-proletocratic revolutions, most notably the social-democratic revolution. ;)

[The class ambiguity of that term (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1141725&postcount=3), and the withering away of "social-democratic" welfarism - per my "Communism's New Crisis" Politics thread (http://www.revleft.com/vb/communisms-new-crisis-t78964/index.html) - allows modern Marxists to reinterpret it. :) ]


both Lenin and Trotsky knew that sooner or later they would have to fight the peasantry, after fulfilling the tasks for them

On this we can agree. After all, I did quote the end of Chapter 10 of Lenin's Two Tactics, and I also made my "bureaucratic" case for immediate sovkhozization in the First World - "small farmers" be damned. :)


So, the February revolution was bourgeois-democratic, but it was unable to fulfill its task, so those tasks had to be taken over by the October socialist revolution, i.e., the proletariat had to fulfill bourgeois tasks.

Again, please refer to my non-binary thinking above. :)

[Led Zeppelin]

LZ, I never said that the November revolution was bourgeois-democratic. That's ortho-Marxist reductionism (ComradeRed, I'm a Tiger, renegadoe, etc.)!

You did actually:


The complete victory of the bourgeois-democratic revolution was conceivable only in form of the RDDOTPP, with both classes as equal allies. The bourgeois-democratic social revolution is separate from the socialist social revolution.
Link (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1149309&postcount=47)


Like I said, you too are trapped in binary thinking. There are other types of post-feudal revolutions besides just bourgeois-democratic and socialist / social-proletocratic revolutions, most notably the social-democratic revolution. ;)

Again, please refer to my non-binary thinking above. :)

You can either be "binary" or invent new terms to describe a revolution, despite the fact that it doesn't need one.

If it was a "social-democratic" revolution and it needed to become a "social-proletocratic revolution", it implies a change in the ruling class, which is impossible because the proletariat was already the ruling class.

Instead Permanent Revolution is a more adequate term to describe the process (not the revolution itself, which, as I said, already has terms which suffice), because the socialist element of the revolution, the proletariat as ruling class, could not "stop", it was permanent until socialism was reached as a historic stage, and this required socialist revolution in other nations.

[Die Neue Zeit]

If it was a "social-democratic" revolution and it needed to become a "social-proletocratic revolution", it implies a change in the ruling class, which is impossible because the proletariat was already the ruling class.

I'm still not sure about that, though. :( The social revolution-as-process associated with the "social-democratic" political revolution is quite different from the social revolution-as-process associated with the social-proletocratic political revolution.

Take, for example, Mao's "Stalinist" revolution. That was quite social-democratic (peasant revolution, in this case), in spite of his "New Democracy" nonsense involving the "national bourgeoisie" in post-revolution affairs. Unlike Stalin and Bukharin, he had the "good" sense not to involve the "national bourgeoisie" in the "people's war."

[Led Zeppelin]

I'm still not sure about that, though. :( The social revolution-as-process associated with the "social-democratic" political revolution is quite different from the social revolution-as-process associated with the social-proletocratic political revolution.

That is impossible, because as I said the proletariat is already the ruling class, and therefore a lot of socialist tasks are already fulfilled because of that.

It is pointless to make a distinction between the few tasks which weren't fulfilled (due to objective material conditions, not due to any "stages of revolution") or were later overturned (due to degeneration, again not due to any "stages of revolution") when in fact there was no breaking point between the two which could cause an irreconcilable conflict between classes, a prerequisite of revolution.


Take, for example, Mao's "Stalinist" revolution. That was quite social-democratic (peasant revolution, in this case), in spite of his "New Democracy" nonsense involving the "national bourgeoisie" in post-revolution affairs. Unlike Stalin and Bukharin, he had the "good" sense not to involve the "national bourgeoisie" in the "people's war."

The formation of deformed workers' states is based on the experience of the degenerated workers' state of the USSR. They modeled themselves after that, so the "revolution" you speak of was in a certain sense artificial. The socialist demands of the proletariat were kept in check at the exact same level they were kept in check in the USSR.

I don't see how this is relevant to inventing a new term to describe a socialist revolution, though, given the reasons I posted above.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The formation of deformed workers' states is based on the experience of the degenerated workers' state of the USSR. They modeled themselves after that, so the "revolution" you speak of was in a certain sense artificial. The socialist demands of the proletariat were kept in check at the exact same level they were kept in check in the USSR.

Wouldn't you rather have that "deformed" revolution leading to either capitalism or a second social revolution rather than, say, the purely bourgeois-democratic English revolutions? Again, for non-sectarian purposes I don't consider peasant and other petit-bourgeois social-democratic revolutions to be "artificial."

As far as I'm concerned, there is only really one "socialist" demand: full compensation of labour (abolition of wage slavery). Hence the difference between plain proletocracy (workers' control and such) and social proletocracy.

[Led Zeppelin]

Wouldn't you rather have that "deformed" revolution leading to capitalism rather than, say, the purely bourgeois-democratic English revolutions? Again, for non-sectarian purposes I don't consider peasant and other petit-bourgeois social-democratic revolutions to be "artificial."

Well, I didn't mean that they were artificial in that sense either, I meant that they were artificial in the tasks and aims which they fulfilled.

The revolution itself was the same as the October revolution, with the exception that the proletarian socialist element was weaker due to the leadership of the Stalinists over the proletariat. Imagine the October revolution lead by Stalinists, and you have the basic form of the revolutions which led to deformed workers' states.

And yes, I do prefer Stalinist "revolutions", because the nature of Stalinism is that the new society it creates does not necessarily revert to capitalism, it can also revert to true proletarian socialism.

With the destruction of the USSR, and also with the Menshevik two-stage theory which a lot of Stalinists uphold (leading to disasters in Indonesia, Iran, Spain, Germany etc.), I don't believe there will be a Stalinist "revolution" in the sense of China or Cuba.


As far as I'm concerned, there is only really one "socialist" demand: full compensation of labour (abolition of wage slavery). Hence the difference between plain proletocracy and social proletocracy.

Full compensation of labor is a Lasallean demand, not a socialist one:



In the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx goes into detail to disprove Lassalle's idea that under socialism the worker will receive the “undiminished” or "full product of his labor". Marx shows that from the whole of the social labor of society there must be deducted a reserve fund, a fund for the expansion of production, a fund for the replacement of the "wear and tear" of machinery, and so on. Then, from the means of consumption must be deducted a fund for administrative expenses, for schools, hospitals, old people's homes, and so on.

Instead of Lassalle's hazy, obscure, general phrase ("the full product of his labor to the worker"), Marx makes a sober estimate of exactly how socialist society will have to manage its affairs. Marx proceeds to make a concrete analysis of the conditions of life of a society in which there will be no capitalism, and says:

"What we have to deal with here [in analyzing the programme of the workers' party] is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it comes."

[...]

The means of production are no longer the private property of individuals. The means of production belong to the whole of society. Every member of society, performing a certain part of the socially-necessary work, receives a certificate from society to the effect that he has done a certain amount of work. And with this certificate he receives from the public store of consumer goods a corresponding quantity of products. After a deduction is made of the amount of labor which goes to the public fund, every worker, therefore, receives from society as much as he has given to it.
“Equality” apparently reigns supreme.

But when Lassalle, having in view such a social order (usually called socialism, but termed by Marx the first phase of communism), says that this is "equitable distribution", that this is "the equal right of all to an equal product of labor", Lassalle is mistaken and Marx exposes the mistake.

"Hence, the equal right," says Marx, in this case still certainly conforms to "bourgeois law", which,like all law, implies inequality. All law is an application of an equal measure to different people who in fact are not alike, are not equal to one another. That is why the "equal right" is violation of equality and an injustice. In fact, everyone, having performed as much social labor as another, receives an equal share of the social product (after the above-mentioned deductions).

But people are not alike: one is strong, another is weak; one is married, another is not; one has more children, another has less, and so on. And the conclusion Marx draws is:

"... With an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal share in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, the right instead of being equal would have to be unequal."

The first phase of communism, therefore, cannot yet provide justice and equality; differences, and unjust differences, in wealth will still persist, but the exploitation of man by man will have become impossible because it will be impossible to seize the means of production--the factories, machines, land, etc.--and make them private property. In smashing Lassalle's petty-bourgeois, vague phrases about “equality” and “justice” in general, Marx shows the course of development of communist society, which is compelled to abolish at first only the “injustice” of the means of production seized by individuals, and which is unable at once to eliminate the other injustice, which consists in the distribution of consumer goods "according to the amount of labor performed" (and not according to needs).

That "certificate" which Lenin speaks of could as well be a wage.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ I wasn't referring to "full compensation" in the Lasallean sense. I am well aware of the "deductions":


Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

The point is that there should be disincentives for accumulation (http://www.geocities.com/antagonism1/bordbuik.html) (link). Unfortunately, money doesn't provide such disincentives.




In the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx goes into detail to disprove Lassalle's idea that under socialism the worker will receive the “undiminished” or "full product of his labor". Marx shows that from the whole of the social labor of society there must be deducted a reserve fund, a fund for the expansion of production, a fund for the replacement of the "wear and tear" of machinery, and so on. Then, from the means of consumption must be deducted a fund for administrative expenses, for schools, hospitals, old people's homes, and so on.

The problem with what Lenin is saying here is that he is under the assumption that those working in schools, hospitals, seniors' homes, etc. aren't engaging in productive labour. By "common funds," I am referring to infrastructure maintenance and other capital assets... the objects themselves, as well as people who cannot work.

[Led Zeppelin]

There is nothing wrong with accumulation as long as the money is earned fairly.

Workers should be allowed to choose whatever they want to buy with their money, and since scarcity has not yet been eliminated in a socialist society, and "bourgeois law" still reigns in the relations of distribution, there will be goods that require more labor before they can be attained.

The most efficient way of resolving this contradiction within a scarcity society is to use the tool the bourgeois invented to resolve it...money.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ I think it's fair enough to say that the two of us have digressed far enough on the interpretation of "socialist demands":

Is currency necessary? (http://www.revleft.com/vb/currency-necessary-t78743/index.html)


I just thought I would raise what Marx said in the Critique of the Gotha Progamme. Substituting money, with a gift-certificate equivalent to a worker's wage, is not the abolishment of currency at all; it is merely replacing it with a more restrictive form of exchanging commodities.

...

So, I think the concept of a wage itself needs to be attacked, as well as the market, and have something which measures, for example, how many hours the worker laboured. That would not differentiate between the type of labour or its profitability.

BTW, you should have read that "accumulation" link pointing to one Adam Buick's commentary on Bordiga's Dialogue with Stalin. The more restrictive nature is due to disincentives on accumulation. :(

[Led Zeppelin]

Yes, we have.

Anyway, I believe I have sufficiently defended Trotsky and the theory of Permanent Revolution, which is what the original topic was about.

[Die Neue Zeit]

This is essential to keep in mind, for it was no longer necessary for the proletariat to lead another revolution to fulfill its own socialist tasks, it was already the leader of the October revolution.

I'll add one more rebuttal: consider the American Civil War. A second social revolution of sorts initiated by the industrial bourgeoisie was needed in order to abolish chattel slavery in the US... almost a full century after independence (although I'm fuzzy about the bourgeois-democratic revolutionary process occurring in the US during the 1700s, because I'm sure that the War of Independence was just one event in that process)!

[Led Zeppelin]

I'll add one more rebuttal: consider the American Civil War. A second social revolution of sorts initiated by the industrial bourgeoisie was needed in order to abolish chattel slavery in the US... almost a full century after independence (although I'm fuzzy about the bourgeois-democratic revolutionary process occurring in the US during the 1700s, because I'm sure that the War of Independence was just one event in that process)!

That wasn't the replacement of one ruling class by another.

The industrial bourgeoisie didn't replace itself as the ruling class of the North, it merely extended its rule to the South.

[Hit The North]

I'll add one more rebuttal: consider the American Civil War. A second social revolution of sorts initiated by the industrial bourgeoisie was needed in order to abolish chattel slavery in the US... almost a full century after independence (although I'm fuzzy about the bourgeois-democratic revolutionary process occurring in the US during the 1700s, because I'm sure that the War of Independence was just one event in that process)!

But this was due to splits in the ruling class due to patterns of uneven development within the States. Remember, the War of Independence was led almost exclusively by slave owners. A century later, industrialization had made slavery into a fetter on further progressive development.

No ones arguing that revolutions are unitary events but sequences of events. The first bourgeois revolution in England in the 1640s was not properly resolved until the end of that century - however it took a different form and content to the sequence of events in France or America.

If a social revolution is defined as one class against other classes, then the American Civil War was not a social revolution.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Sorry for bumping this thread up, but I have read more of Trotsky (and I still disagree). I recall LZ's word game with me above regarding "leaning" vs. "basing":


Let's examine that quote. You took it from the main page of The Permanent Revolution (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/index.htm), the quote doesn't even appear in the book itself, the one I posted above, however, does.

The quote you posted was taken (and translated poorly) from another work by Trotsky, called The Character of the Russian Revolution (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/russia.htm), and it states:



Instead of "leaning on", it says there "basing itself on". Petty semantics of course, but herein lies the crux of Jacob's "argument".

Too bad that he didn't realize the context of that quote, which he has now turned into the main point of his argument.

Actually, "leaning" also appears here:

Three Concepts of the Russian Revolution (http://www.internationalist.org/three.html)

[Your link says 1940, while mine says 1939.]


Lenin's conception represented a tremendous step forward, proceeding, as it did, from the agrarian revolution rather than from constitutional reforms as the central task of the revolution, and indicating the only realistic combination of social forces that could fulfill that task. The weak point of Lenin's concept was its inherently contradictory notion, "the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry." Lenin himself emphasized the basic limitations of that "dictatorship" when he openly called it bourgeois. He was thus implying that, for the sake of maintaining unity with the peasantry, the proletariat would be obliged to forego posing the socialist task (directly) during the impending revolution. But that would have meant the repudiation by the proletariat of its own dictatorship. The dictatorship was consequently, in essence, of the peasantry, although with the workers participating.

The only problem that I see with Lenin's formulation is that an anti-bourgeois peasant revolution is NOT a "bourgeois" revolution. It is a social-democratic revolution, and because of the ambiguity of the term "social-democratic," in this specific case it means "PETIT-bourgeois."


Lenin's perspective may be briefly expressed in the following words: the backward Russian bourgeoisie is incapable of completing its own revolution! The complete victory of the revolution, through the intermediacy of the "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry," would purge the land of medievalism, invest the development of Russian capitalism with American tempo, strengthen the proletariat in city and village and make really possible the struggle for socialism. On the other hand, the victory of the Russian revolution would give tremendous impetus to the socialist revolution in the West while the latter would not only protect Russia from the dangers of restoration but would also enable the Russian proletariat to come to the conquest of power in a comparatively brief historical period.

The perspective of permanent revolution may be summarized in the following way: the complete victory of the democratic revolution in Russia is conceivable only in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, leaning on the peasantry. The dictatorship of the proletariat, which would inevitably place on the order of the day not only democratic but socialistic tasks as well, would at the same time give a powerful impetus to the international socialist revolution. Only the victory of the proletariat in the West could protect Russia from bourgeois restoration and assure it the possibility of rounding out the establishment of socialism.

That compact formula discloses with equal distinctness the similarity of the latter two concepts in their irreconcilable differentiation from the liberal Menshevik perspective as well as their extremely essential distinction from each other on the question of the social character and the tasks of the "dictatorship" which must grow out of the revolution.

May I also note that the RDDOTPP would have been equal if, for some reason, the number of proles equalled the number of peasants? In this particular hypothetical case (which no longer exists, so it's relegated to the history books), the RDDOTPP especially prevails over PR.

[Led Zeppelin]

I can't reply to you because I honestly don't know what you're talking about.

Permanent Revolution means not stopping at the bourgeois-phase of the revolution, but continuing to the socialist phase while the bourgeois tasks are fulfilled by the proletariat, it is a combination of both the bourgeois and socialist revolution. Logically the proletariat has to lean on, base itself on, and have as its ally the peasantry, which was still the majority class.

This is not an oddity in history, there have been cases where the bourgeois fulfilled the tasks of feudalism and a combined development took place, under the leadership of the bourgeoisie which fulfilled feudalist tasks (this even happened in Russia itself).

Obviously the question of the peasantry is totally irrelevant in most nations today, so Permanent Revolution means nothing but continuing from the bourgeois phase of the revolution to the socialist phase, with the proletariat at the head of the movement. If you think that this formulation no longer applies today, you need to read up on your history. Every revolution has its bourgeois phase, with its bourgeois demands, and most "communists" (mostly of the Stalinist type) stop at that for whatever reason (anti-imperialism, fetishism of formal democracy etc.), that is the liberal Menshevik definition of revolution, the cutting up of the revolution into "phases" and "stages" which need to come before each other in sequence.

A parody of Marxism which you still cling to.

You believe that the proletarian and bourgeois phase of the revolution must be separate, for no real reason other than theoretical masturbation with Lenin quotes (which are selected carefully by you, ignoring his other quotes which greatly outnumber the ones you cite which support your "theory"), and therefore present your own theory with a new term you invented in place of Permanent Revolution, a new term which practically everyone who is serious is going to ignore precisely because it's based on nothing.

This is why Permanent Revolution is still important today, this is why Permanent Revolution is part of the Marxist theory of revolution.

I know this thread didn't go well for you, we totally refuted everything you stood for, everything your theory was supposed to "correct" about Trotsky, so now you have to go over reading Trotsky, rereading Lenin etc. and then come back here each time after you've licked your wounds to give it another shot, and each time you shoot, you only get a bombardment as a reply.

I really suggest you stop doing that, because the hole you've digged is only getting deeper with each try.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I can't reply to you because I honestly don't know what you're talking about.

I just quoted Trotsky above. He, rather succinctly, distinguished his theory from Lenin's and also from the Mensheviks'. That you keep saying that Lenin and Trotsky were in complete agreement betrays a lack of knowledge on your part. :confused:


Obviously the question of the peasantry is totally irrelevant in most nations today, so Permanent Revolution means nothing but continuing from the bourgeois phase of the revolution to the socialist phase, with the proletariat at the head of the movement.

I prefer not to use the term "permanent revolution," since it is too associated with Trotsky's stuff and not the original stuff by Marx, or even the early Social-Democrats.

In today's world, there is a severe "democratic deficit" within "bourgeois democracy" itself that worries status-quo academics (my USL article (http://www.revleft.com/vb/united-social-labour-t75056/index.html) mentions the "imperial presidency" and the "prime minister's office").

Although this link is either a social-fascist link or a centrist/neo-Kautskyist one, I suggest you read it:

http://www.arbark.se/pdf_wrd/berger_int.pdf



I'm thinking about using the term "combined social revolution" (social-democratic political revolution against the "democratic deficit," Burnham's "managerial revolution" in state-capitalist economic relations, and both the proletocratic and social-proletocratic revolutions in other economic relations).


A parody of Marxism which you still cling to.

So did Lenin in the typical Trotskyist view, as even Trotsky noted above.

[Comrade Rage]

What would be the benefit for the bourgeoisie to transform its workers into prisoners?CZ, do you deny the existence of the prison-industrial complex? There are several prisons that are privately run for the sole purpose of profit. This is how it works:

The prisons are built, almost always too many are built in a given area.
The police start enforcing bullshit laws, like the 'buckle-up' laws that Nadezhda cited.
The victims of this scam are tossed into the prisons/jails and are stripped of their rights and victimized by the C.O.'s and other inmates.
20% of America winds up in jail. 1 in 5 people.


This is hardly news to working-class Americans. The Simpsons even did an episode about it.

[Led Zeppelin]

I just quoted Trotsky above. He, rather succinctly, distinguished his theory from Lenin's. That you keep saying that Lenin and Trotsky were in complete agreement betrays a lack of knowledge on your part.

That you keep ignoring Lenin's other quotes which totally contradict the Lenin which you have created in your head betrays a lack of knowledge on your part.

I have quoted Lenin extensively in total contradiction to your view of Lenin, you know, the Lenin who wanted the proletariat to be an "equal ally of the peasantry", a Lenin which you have created out of quotes taken out of their historical context (quotes which you have failed to present), something which you have a nasty habit of doing. I will post the quotes again, so that you can ignore them again, but also so that other people can read them and see you for the fraud that you are:


The movement of the peasantry is the movement of a different class. This is a struggle not against the foundations of capitalism but for purging all the remnants of feudalism.


We must help the peasant uprising in every way, up to and including confiscation of the land, but certainly not including all sorts of petty-bourgeois schemes. We support the peasant movement to the extent that it is revolutionary-democratic. We are making ready (doing so now, at once) to fight it when, and to the extent that, it becomes reactionary and anti-proletarian. The essence of Marxism lies in that double task, which only those who do not understand Marxism can vulgarise or compress into a single and simple task.

[...]

There will always be reactionary admixtures in the peasant movement, and we declare war on them in advance. Class antagonism between the rural proletariat and the peasant bourgeoisie is unavoidable, and we disclose it in advance, explain it, and prepare for the struggle on the basis of that antagonism.

[...]

One of the immediate causes of such a struggle may very likely be provided by the question: to whom shall the confiscated land be given, and how? We do not gloss over that question, nor do we promise equalitarian distribution, “socialisation”, etc. What we do say is that this is a question we shall fight out later on, fight again, on a new field and with other allies.
Social-Democracy’s Attitude Towards the Peasant Movement (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/sep/05e.htm)


The Social-Democrats have pointed out repeatedly that the peasant movement sets before them a twofold task. Unquestionably we must support this movement and spur it on, inasmuch as it is a revolutionary-democratic movement. At the same time we must unswervingly maintain our class proletarian point of view; we must organise the rural proletariat, like the urban proletariat and together with it, into an independent class party; we must explain to it that. its interests are antagonistic to those of the bourgeois peasantry; we must call upon it to fight for the socialist revolution, and point out to it that liberation from oppression and poverty lies, not in turning several sections of the peasantry into petty bourgeois, but only in replacing the entire bourgeois system by the socialist system.

[...]

There can be only one solution to this problem: with the peasant bourgeoisie against all manner of serfdom and against the serf-owning landlords; with the urban proletariat against the peasant bourgeoisie and every other bourgeoisie—such is the “line” of the rural proletariat. and of its ideologists, the Social-Democrats. In other words: to support the peasantry and urge it on even to the point of seizing any seigniorial “property”, no matter how “sacred”, insofar as this peasantry acts in a revolutionary-democratic manner; to be wary of the peasantry, to organise separately from it, to be ready to combat it, insofar as this peasantry acts in a reactionary or anti-proletarian manner. Or, to put it still differently: aid to the peasant when his struggle with the landlord contributes to the development and strengthening of the democratic forces; neutrality towards the peasant when his struggle with the landlord is merely a matter of squaring accounts between two factions of the landowning class, a matter to which the proletariat and the democrats are indifferent.
The Proletariat and the Peasantry (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/mar/23.htm)



Thus, we must combine the purely proletarian struggle with the general peasant struggle, but not confuse the two. We must support the general democratic and general peasant struggle, but not become submerged in this non-class struggle; we must never idealise it with false catchwords such as “socialisation”, or ever forget the necessity of organising both the urban and the rural proletariat in an entirely independent class party of Social-Democracy. While giving the utmost support to the most determined democratism, that party will not allow itself to be diverted from the revolutionary path by reactionary dreams and experiments in “equalisation” under the system of commodity production.

The peasants’ struggle against the landlords is now a revolutionary struggle; the confiscation of the landlords’ estates at the present stage of economic and political evolution is revolutionary in every respect, and we back this revolutionary-democratic measure. However, to call this measure “socialisation”, and to deceive oneself and the people concerning the possibility of “equality” in land tenure under the system of commodity production, is a reactionary petty-bourgeois utopia, which we leave to the socialist-reactionaries.
Petty-Bourgeois and Proletarian Socialism (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/oct/25.htm)


So in Lenin's words, you believe in a "reactionary petty-bourgeois utopia", and are therefore a "socialist-reactionary".

Does that feel nice, mister "Orthodox Leninist"? :lol:


So did Lenin in the typical Trotskyist view, as even Trotsky noted above.

What quote of Trotsky are you reading? The one in your head?

Trotsky only reaffirmed Lenin's position in that quote you posted, and I quote;


Lenin's perspective may be briefly expressed in the following words: the backward Russian bourgeoisie is incapable of completing its own revolution! The complete victory of the revolution, through the intermediacy of the "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry," would purge the land of medievalism, invest the development of Russian capitalism with American tempo, strengthen the proletariat in city and village and make really possible the struggle for socialism.

You then, as the falsifier of quotes that you are, use this part of Trotsky's quote to use against him:


The perspective of permanent revolution may be summarized in the following way: the complete victory of the democratic revolution in Russia is conceivable only in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, leaning on the peasantry.

The average person, the person who has read and knows Lenin, the person who knows what Lenin's position was on the peasantry (see the quotes I posted above), does not care about Trotsky using the phrase "leaning on the peasantry", even though he also uses the phrase "basing itself on" or "in alliance with", as Lenin did.

No, to the average person they are all the same thing.

But to you, to the "Orthodox Leninist" who tries to bring down Trotsky to his own level of knowledge (better to say; ignorance) regarding Lenin, that is proof of a clear difference of opinion between Lenin and Trotsky!

Your "argument" is based on the use of a phrase, "leaning on" instead of "in alliance with" or "based on", all of this while you have still not come up with a quote by Lenin saying that there should be an equal alliance between the proletariat and peasantry post-revolution, after the October Revolution, and even if you did it would be irrelevant because there are a lot more quotes by Lenin saying otherwise (again, see the ones I posted above), and that is not a surprise because that was actually Lenin's position on the matter.

But no, it's not just that, even more absurd is the fact that you then go on to say that the issue of the peasantry no longer applies today, thereby completely rendering your own previous "argument" pointless.

It's over, you're done for, you're not the "great scholar of Lenin", you got your information from second-hand sources who proved to be wrong, you took quotes out of their historic context, you don't know more about Lenin's position than Trotsky did, the "best Bolshevik" according to Lenin himself.

Now for the love of a non-existing God give up already.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I don't know why you still can't figure out Trotsky's own "criticism" of Lenin - and I will quote from "Three Concepts" once more:


The weak point of Lenin's concept was its inherently contradictory notion, "the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry." Lenin himself emphasized the basic limitations of that "dictatorship" when he openly called it bourgeois. He was thus implying that, for the sake of maintaining unity with the peasantry, the proletariat would be obliged to forego posing the socialist task (directly) during the impending revolution. But that would have meant the repudiation by the proletariat of its own dictatorship. The dictatorship was consequently, in essence, of the peasantry, although with the workers participating.

In other words:

Mensheviks: bourgeois revolution
Lenin: primarily peasant petit-bourgeois revolution (but no "national bourgeoisie" hocus-pocus)

Trotsky: proletarian revolution, complete repudiation of "stageism"



By Trotsky's own account, Lenin was a stageist. The socialist revolution itself would come later, after the peasant-democratic revolution. Heck, when the Bolsheviks took power, land redistribution (entirely from the platform of the SRs) and not sovkhozization (the ideal situation, as per Lenin's agreement with Kautsky's The Agrarian Question) was implemented!

[Led Zeppelin]

I don't know why you still can't figure out Trotsky's own "criticism" of Lenin - and I will quote from "Three Concepts" once more:

In other words:

Mensheviks: bourgeois revolution
Lenin: primarily peasant petit-bourgeois revolution (but no "national bourgeoisie" hocus-pocus)

Trotsky: proletarian revolution, complete repudiation of "stageism"

Why do you read quotes and then make things out of them that have nothing to do with the quote?

I believe it's because you ignore the parts of the quote which doesn't suit you, while only paying attention to the parts of the quote which does suit you.

You bold parts of that quote where Trotsky is critcizing Lenin's concept, great, thank you for that, but let's be honest please. You got that quote from an idiotic article you found on some pathetic "Orthodox Leninist" site didn't you?

Yes, you did.

Your buddies are falsifiers of history and quotes, in the exact same article Trotsky goes on to say:


The differences of opinion dealt with the general perspective of the revolution and the strategy arising from that. The perspective of Menshevism was false to the core: it pointed out the wrong road to the proletariat. The perspective of Bolshevism was not complete : it correctly pointed out the general direction of the struggle, but characterized its stages incorrectly. The insufficiency in the perspective of Bolshevism did not become apparent in 1905 only because the revolution itself did not undergo further development. But then at the beginning of 1917 Lenin was obliged to alter his perspective, in direct conflict with the old cadres of his party.
Link (http://www.internationalist.org/three.html)

So yes, you were right, Trotsky was criticizing Lenin's concept, THE CONCEPT WHICH LENIN CHANGED AT THE BEGINNING OF 1917!

Trotsky was referring to Lenin's earlier position when he was talking about its weak point, he was giving a historical summary of the development of the theory of revolution in that part of the article. You dishonestly took that out of context to prove that Trotsky admitted Lenin had a different position on the matter when you were unable to find anything by Lenin saying it.


By Trotsky's own account, Lenin was a stageist.

You lied, there is no question about it.

Admit you took that quote out of context, admit that you did not read that whole article, and admit you were wrong.


The socialist revolution itself would come later, after the peasant-democratic revolution. Heck, when the Bolsheviks took power, land redistribution (entirely from the platform of the SRs) and not sovkhozization (the ideal situation, as per Lenin's agreement with Kautsky on the Agrarian Question) was implemented!

Again you are repeating nonsense having nothing to do with the position of Lenin or Trotsky, unless of course you believe that Lenin could never change his mind about anything and when he said something once it was to remain so forever.

You are indeed an Orthodox Leninist, so orthodox that use one Lenin against the other, the other being the Lenin post-1917 and the one you use being the Lenin pre-1917.

I don't blame you personally though, you probably got all that garbage from those sites you frequent, I suggest you stop doing that.

[Die Neue Zeit]

You bold parts of that quote where Trotsky is critcizing Lenin's concept, great, thank you for that, but let's be honest please. You got that quote from an idiotic article you found on some pathetic "Orthodox Leninist" site didn't you?

http://www.internationalist.org/
http://www.internationalist.org/three.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_for_the_Fourth_International

Since when did the League for the Fourth International cease being Trotskyist? :confused:


So yes, you were right, Trotsky was criticizing Lenin's concept, THE CONCEPT WHICH LENIN CHANGED AT THE BEGINNING OF 1917!

[...]

You are indeed an Orthodox Leninist, so orthodox that use one Lenin against the other, the other being the Lenin post-1917 and the one you use being the Lenin pre-1917.

Well, at least you have FINALLY realized that the RDDOTPP is a distinct concept from PR.

My overall point is that Lenin REVERTED to his old "stageist" position (which is my stance, also) in 1920, in the form of smychka (http://www.answers.com/topic/smychka) - hence my quote from The Trade Unions, The Present Situation, and Trotsky's Mistakes (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/dec/30.htm)!

I'll add just two words to clarify the context:


That is where Comrade Trotsky makes one of his main mistakes. We have got down from general principles to practical discussion and decrees, and here we are being dragged back and prevented from tackling the business at hand. This will not do. For one thing, ours is not actually a workers’ state but a workers’ and peasants’ state. And a lot depends on that. (Bukharin : “What kind of state? A workers’ and peasants’ state?”) Comrade Bukharin back there may well shout “What kind of state? A workers’ and peasants’ state?” I shall not stop to answer him. Anyone who has a mind to should recall the recent Congress of Soviets, and that will be answer enough.

But that is not all. Our Party Programme—a document which the author of the ABC of Communism knows very well—shows that ours is a workers’ [and peasants'] state with a bureaucratic twist to it.

How Should We Reorganize Rabkrin? (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1923/jan/23.htm)


I propose that the Congress should elect 75 to 100 new members to the Central Control Commission. They should be workers and peasants, and should go through the same Party screening as ordinary members of the Central Committee, because they are to enjoy the same rights as the members of the Central Committee.

...

I am sure that the reduction of the staff to the number I have indicated will greatly enhance the efficiency of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection personnel and the quality of all its work, enabling the People's Commissar and the members of the collegium to concentrate their efforts entirely on organising work and on systematically and steadily improving its efficiency, which is so absolutely essential for our workers' and peasants' government, and for our Soviet system.

...

Of course, in our Soviet Republic, the social order is based on the collaboration of two classes: the workers and peasants, in which the "Nepmen", i.e., the bourgeoisie, are now permitted to participate on certain terms. If serious class disagreements arise between these classes, a split will be inevitable. But the grounds for such a split are not inevitable in our social system, and it is the principal tasks of our Central Committee and Central Control Commission, as well as of our party as a whole, to watch very closely over such circumstances as may cause a split, and to forestall them, for in the final analysis the fate of our Republic will depend on whether the peasant masses will stand by the working class, loyal to their alliance, or whether they will permit the "Nepmen", i.e., the new bourgeoisie, to drive a wedge between them and the working class, to split them off from the working class. The more clearly we see this alternative, the more clearly all our workers and peasants understand it, the greater are the chances that we shall avoid a split which would be fatal for the Soviet Republic.

I rest my orthodox-Leninist case for RDDOTPP/smychka and against PR.

[Led Zeppelin]

http://www.internationalist.org/
http://www.internationalist.org/three.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_for_the_Fourth_International

Since when did the League for the Fourth International cease being Trotskyist? :confused:

A long time ago, for your information.


Well, at least you realize that the RDDOTPP is a distinct concept from PR.

My overall point is that Lenin REVERTED to his old "stageist" position (which is my stance, also) in 1920, in the form of smychka[/i] (http://www.answers.com/topic/smychkaThe Trade Unions, The Present Situation, and Trotsky's Mistakes (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/dec/30.htm)!

I'll add one word to clarify the context:

How Should We Reorganize Rabkrin? (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1923/jan/23.htm)

I rest my case.

What the hell are you talking about? Why are you going back to a position which was already totally refuted a few pages ago? Do you just want to humiliated yet again?

You brought forth the same crap back then, and I refuted it by saying:


Are you being serious or is this a joke to you?

Stop wasting my time if you're not going to seriously argue this, because I have better things to do with my time.

PERMANENT REVOLUTION DOESN'T MEAN THAT THERE IS NO WORKERS STATE ALLIED WITH OR LEANING ON THE PEASANTRY.

For fucks sake: "In the event of a decisive victory of the revolution, power will pass into the hands of that class which plays a leading role in the struggle – in other words, into the hands of the proletariat. Let us say at once that this by no means precludes revolutionary representatives of non-proletarian social groups entering the government. They can and should be in the government: a sound policy will compel the proletariat to call to power the influential leaders of the urban petty-bourgeoisie, of the intellectuals and of the peasantry. The whole problem consists in this: who will determine the content of the government’s policy, who will form within it a solid majority?" Link (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/rp05.htm)

Now, I just quoted you pieces proving that Trotsky never disagreed with Lenin on the role of the peasantry, you are refuted, so stop repeating the same nonsense and admit you have never read Trotsky and based your conclusions on second-hand sources

You then went on to say that Lenin was talking about an equal alliance between the peasantry and proletariat, to which I replied:


Show one quote of Lenin saying that there must be an equal alliance, and that the peasantry plays a role as a socialist ally of the proletariat.

You can't because there is none.

That line of argument went on until you said that LENIN AND TROTSKY BOTH WERE WRONG:


Because both he and Trotsky shared the erroneous conception of "socialism" as being worker-controlled "state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be [bourgeois] monopoly" (http://www.revleft.com/vb/lenins-error-re-t74487/index.html) (link).

In fact, this criticism of mine, to alert you, is the Chapter 5 section immediately following the "Plain Proletocracy" section, and starts with that famous quote from Wilhelm Liebknecht on "state socialism."
Link (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1149323&postcount=49)

You are really starting to piss me off Jacob, and I'm starting to lose the last bit of respect I had for you.

I had the same discussion with you a week or so ago, you came back after licking your wounds, and you repeat the same crap again, citing the same sources again, as if a week going by makes you any more right.

Do you have a memory-span of a week or something?

Why are you repeating the same argument which was already refuted and which ended in you saying that Lenin himself was wrong on the matter?

Are you a masochist? Do you enjoy being humiliated?

[Die Neue Zeit]

You are really starting to piss me off Jacob, and I'm starting to lose the last bit of respect I had for you.

^^^ Like I said, I rest my case, now that you've finally understood what I've said. :) That it took you this long to understand puzzled me BIG TIME. :confused:

Off-topic:


A long time ago, for your information.

Are you being serious here, or is this another snipe at non-CWI Trotskyists (I'm an "outsider," so please understand when I describe them as "Trotskyists")?

[Led Zeppelin]

^^^ Like I said, I rest my case, now that you've finally understood what I've said. That it took you this long to understand puzzled me BIG TIME.

No, it was already established that you disagree with Lenin's concept of socialism about 3 pages ago.

And it was also established that you ignored the real position of Lenin on the peasantry in the quotes I posted (which you haven't replied to): Link (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1149333&postcount=52)

So I understood your position long ago, and I have no problems with it as long as you don't claim that you're upholding Lenin's position on the matter which was shared by Trotsky.


Are you being serious here, or is this another snipe at non-CWI Trotskyists?

Do you know anything about the history of the League of the Fourth International?

Because if you did I doubt you would be asking that question.

[Die Neue Zeit]

No, it was already established that you disagree with Lenin's concept of socialism about 3 pages ago.

What does "socialism" have to do with the democratic revolution that was the core of this discussion? :confused:

My remarks on personal disagreement with Lenin were an off-topic aside (which had NOTHING to do with either RDDOTPP or PR).

Now, please enlighten me on the League for the Fourth International. How many "Trotskyist" internationals are "really Trotskyist"?


CZ, do you deny the existence of the prison-industrial complex? There are several prisons that are privately run for the sole purpose of profit. This is how it works:

The prisons are built, almost always too many are built in a given area.
The police start enforcing bullshit laws, like the 'buckle-up' laws that Nadezhda cited.
The victims of this scam are tossed into the prisons/jails and are stripped of their rights and victimized by the C.O.'s and other inmates.
20% of America winds up in jail. 1 in 5 people.


This is hardly news to working-class Americans. The Simpsons even did an episode about it.

The problem with your assertion (although I am in general agreement with you on the "prison-industrial complex") is that more prisoners = less workers without criminal records. Private prisons can only profit from the government (taxpayers' $$$) or from prisoners' "corrective labour."

[Led Zeppelin]

What does "socialism" have to do with the democratic revolution that was the core of this discussion? :confused:

My remarks on personal disagreement with Lenin were an aside.

You ignored the Lenin quotes which didn't fit in with your position, i.e., where he said the proletariat would have to lead the peasantry, that is, be in alliance with it, or lean/base itself on it, while not being in an equal alliance with it.


Now, please enlighten me on the League for the Fourth International. How many "Trotskyist" internationals are "really Trotskyist"?

I am not a sectarian. It is not my intention to attack other Trotksyists, whatever tradition they come from.

However, it is a fact that they have positions which directly contradict Trotsky's, and are not revolutionary.

But they also have a lot of positions which are revolutionary, which is why I will not attack them for their wrong positions, but instead try to persuade them to not have those wrong positions.

If I believed they were correct I would have joined them, I don't believe they are, but I'm not like other Trotskyists to brand them as "reactionary" and then give up on them altogether. That is futile sectarianism which does nothing but divide us.

In that regard I am a conciliator.

As for which tendency I believe is Marxist, I would have to say the CWI (not specific positions of certain national chapters, but the positions of the International itself).

[Die Neue Zeit]

New Era of Revolutions by Lars Lih



The most fundamental feature of Lenin’s outlook after 1914 is his sense of the new revolutionary era that opened with the outbreak of the European war. This was a radically new era that imposed new tasks on what was heretofore “revolutionary Social Democracy.” Both the underlying concept of a revolutionary era and the basic features of the current revolutionary are Kautsky-Lenin-Shared-Ideas (KLSIs). We don’t have to guess at this—Lenin tells us so.

As Lenin also says, not only Kautsky but many prewar Marxists were saying similar things. Lenin particularly stresses the complete orthodoxy of the Basel Manifesto. But let us restrict ourselves for the moment to Kautsky’s Road to Power (1909). The key theme of this book is the coming “new era of revolutions.” Kautsky gives a four-part definition of a revolutionary situation from which Lenin’s own later definition is clearly derived. He also insists that the long era of peace in which the Second International grew up is coming to an end—another fundamental point for Lenin.

Among the key features of this new era of revolutions as set out by Kautsky are:
- A European war is likely, despite the efforts of the proletariat to stop it, and such a war will lead to socialist revolution.
- Finance capitalism is preparing the ground for socialism, with the result that Western Europe is now ripe for socialist revolution and proletarian class rule.
- It is not unlikely that the vacillating petty-bourgeois masses will suddenly swing around and accept proletarian leadership.
- Nationalist revolution is a central feature of the world-wide crisis of the bourgeois order.

Also among the ideas current among prewar Marxists about the coming revolutionary crisis was the special role of Russia in setting off international revolution (see the Basel Manifesto, 1912). More generally, any war-induced revolution would not stay confined to a single country but “must be transferred to other states” (Kautsky’s words from 1911 as cited in Lenin’s Imperialism Notebooks.

Contemplating the shared Kautsky-Lenin characterization of “the revolution of our time” leads to the following thought. It is true that in a certain bottom-line sense, Lenin came to accept a central implication of Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution: the Russian workers could and should take over state power with a socialist agenda. But Lenin came to this conclusion through Kautsky territory, not Trotsky territory—that is, not through any engagement with Trotsky’s specific argument of 1905-6 (of which there is no trace in Lenin’s post-1914 writings), but through extending just a little further the logic of the new era of revolutions, as set out above.

[Led Zeppelin]

Stop reviving old threads by posting off-topic nonsense Jacob, I already asked you to stop doing this in the other thread (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1230608&postcount=100).

Thread closed.