The Theory of Permanent Revolution: A Critique

Loizos Michael

Trotskyism Study Group CPGB

INDEPENDENT AND LEADING ROLE
We have noted that the central thesis of Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution was the proposition that the proletariat would seize power in .the bourgeois revolution, and then go directly to the introduction of its maximum, socialist programme. This thesis was buttressed by two propositions which require examination. These propositions were derived from two specific concepts — that of independent role and that of leading role. The peasantry, according to Trotsky, was incapable of either these functions. The notion of leading role enabled Trotsky to dismiss the idea that the peasants could play a hegemonic role in the bourgeois-democratic revolution. This, however, was a superfluous argument, since no Russian Social-Democrat ever assumed otherwise. The importance of the concept “leading role” — for Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution — is that it was the key concept which enabled him to characterize the class nature of state power, by an identification of the class which performed the hegemonic role in the revolution: The proletariat would lead the victorious revolution against Tsarism, therefore a worker’s state would be established. This was the same reasoning employed by Martynov in his Two Dictatorships to warn against Social- Democracy playing the kind of hegemonic role supported by Lenin — because a workers’ state, compelled to implement its maximum programme, could not hope to survive, unless the revolution spread to the West, and it was precisely the same reasoning used by Parvus in his preface to Trotsky’s Before the 9th of January, and which Lenin severely criticized. [81]

The notion of “Independent role” is less easy to assess in Trotsky’s analytical framework, because it was always associated with the notion of “leading role”. One of the crucial propositions advanced by Lenin in the formulation of an agrarian programme for Russian Social- Democracy, was the idea that the emancipation of the peasants from semi-feudal exploitation had to be the act of the peasants themselves. In the agrarian programme adopted by the R.S.D.L.P. in 1903, [82] in the agrarian resolution adopted by the Bolsheviks at their congress in 1905, [83] and in the agrarian programme presented by Lenin to the Unity Congress in 1906, [84] one of the crucial demands was for the establishment of revolutionary peasant committees as'the organizational form of the peasant movement. At the Unity congress, he defended his demand for the formation of peasant committees by saying:

My draft proposes the formation of peasant committees as the direct levers of the revolutionary peasant movement, and as the most desirable form of that movement… peasant committees mean calling upon the peasants to set to work immediately and directly to settle accounts with the government officials and the landlords in the most drastic manner. Peasant committees mean calling upon the people who are being oppressed by the survivals of serfdom and the police regime to eradicate these survivals “in a plebeian manner”... [85]

This was premised on the belief that the peasants were quite capable of coming out as a mass democratic force against their class enemy, the semi-feudal landowners. This was not an inevitable or logically derived necessity, but only a possibility arising from: “The class antagonism between the mass of the democratic rural population and the semi- feudal landlords....” [86] In a polemic against the Menshevik Y. Larin, Lenin made the point that:
The outcome of our revolution will actually depend most of all on the steadfastness in struggle of the millions of peasants. Our big bourgeoisie is far more afraid of revolution than of reaction. The proletariat by itself, is not strong enough to win. The urban poor do not represent any independent interests, they are not an independent force compared with the proletariat and peasantry. The rural population has the decisive role not in the sense of leading the struggle (this is out of the question), but in the sense of being able to ensure victory. [87]

This meant, according to Lenin, that:
...the victorious outcome of the bourgeois revolution in Russia is possible, only in the form of a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. [88]

The “peasants”, then, had independent class interests (the elimination of the remnants of feudal social relations), and were quite capable of carrying out a class struggle for the realization of these interests; furthermore, they were capable of forming mass democratic organisations (peasant committees, political parties) in the course of their mass struggles. None of these things' were inevitable — they were only possibilities in the practice of the class struggle. The struggles of the peasants, however, could only be decisive if they were exercised in alliance with, and under the influence of, the proletariat. The proletariat would exercise its “leading” role by striving to draw the peasant masses onto the path of the democratic revolution against the landlords and the Tsarist state. It seems to me that Trotsky’s use of the notions of “leading” and “Independent” role obscured the real problems of developing a strategy of winning the peasants to the side of the proletariat in the democratic revolution, particularly in his reduction of the problem to one of whether or not the peasants could form “independent” political parties.
CLASSES AND THE STATE
We have seen that Trotsky deduced the class character of state power in a victorious democratic revolution from an identification of the class subject which “leads” the revolution. This rested on the following thesis:
The whole problem consists in this: who will determine the content of the government's policy, who will form within it a solid majority? [89]

Implicit in Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution, particularly in the notions of “leading” and “Independent” roles, is a view of the “representation” of classes and class interests at the level of the state, through the mechanism of political parties, rather than as “effects” of determinate political class struggles, in which parties, alongside other mass organisations, have a role to play. The peasants, we are told, are unable to create an independent political party, therefore, there can be no democratic alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry, and, consequently, the “...representative body of the nation, convened under the leadership of the proletariat ... will be nothing less than a democratic dress for the rule of the proletariat.” [90] In this theory, the class struggles of the peasants do not “appear” at the level of the state, because of the absence of a peasant party able to articulate the interests of the peasants.
Lenin, at the Bolshevik congress in 1905, made the point that:

The peasant committees are a flexible institution, suitable both under present conditions and under, let us say, a provisional revolutionary government, when they would become organs of the government. [91]

In Lenin’s analysis, the peasants would be represented at the level of the state precisely because their mass democratic organizations would constitute organs of that state, regardless of whether or not a powerful, independent peasant party was formed. Lenin believed that the proletariat had a strong ally in the peasantry, against feudal social and political relations; this ally had its own objective class interests for which it was prepared to engage in struggle, therefore those interests could not but be represented at the level of state which would arise from the destruction of Tsarism. The peasants had “real needs” which gave rise to their struggles; a successful revolution, in order to survive against the inevitable resistance of the old order, had to recognise these interests, and ensure that they were expressed in policies benefiting the mass of peasants. It was this which made a dictatorship of workers and peasants both possible and necessary in the Russian democratic revolution. The actual composition of the provisional government — the relation of parties in that government — could not be determined in advance merely by designating which classes were present and then deducing answers from their class characteristics — the struggles of those classes, the forms of their struggles and their outcomes, would determine the composition of the revolutionary government and the relation of parties.

From what we have said so far, we can see that there were two levels of analysis in Lenin’s conception of the bourgeois revolution — the first level referred to the alliance of classes necessary for a radical consummation of the bourgeois-democratic revolution; the slogan of the democratic-dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry referred to this level of analysis. The second level referred to the composition of the provisional revolutionary government and the relation of parties to each other. At this level of analysis, it was left open as to the precise composition of the government; a powerful peasant party might or might not be in a majority in that government. The important theoretical point is that the second level of analysis could not be deduced from the first. It was a concrete question, which only the practice of the revolution would resolve. According to Trotsky, a coalition of the proletariat and the peasantry — the first level of analysis in Lenin’s analytical framework...
...presupposes either that one of the existing bourgeois parties commands influence over the peasantry or that the peasantry will have created a powerful independent party of its own, but we have attempted to show that neither one nor the other is possible. [92]
We can see that there is an analytical difference between Lenin and Trotsky. In Trotsky’s analysis the question of class alliances is collapsed into a question of the relation of parties: As the peasantry cannot — in the Russian revolution — be represented by an independent party — then there can be no alliance as envisaged by Lenin. Lenin, distancing himself theoretically from Trotsky, maintained that:

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.... The experience of the Russian revolution shows that “coalition” of the proletariat and the peasantry were formed scores and hundreds of times, in the most diverse forms... [93]

Whereas in Lenin’s strategy there were two levels of analysis which could not be reduced to each other, in Trotsky there is a conflation of these two levels. We can therefore see that Trotsky’s slogan of the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat supported by the Peasantry” was derived from a fundamentally different theoretical mode of analysis to the one employed by Lenin. It was this collapsing of levels of analysis which led Trotsky to reduce the question of the character of state power in a victorious democratic revolution to the question of which class subject would form a homogeneous majority within the provisional government. And it was because Lenin was careful to demarcate between these two levels, that he could say against both Trotsky and Martov:
It is not true that “the whole question is, who will determine the government’s policy, who will constitute a homogeneous majority in it”.... The question of the dictatorship of the revolutionary classes ... cannot be reduced to a question of the “majority” in any particular revolutionary government, or the terms on which the participation of the Social-Democrats in such a government is admissible. [94]

We have noted that Trotsky and the Menshevik theoreticians fundamentally shared the same theoretical and analytical framework, one that was criticised by Lenin; they derived the same logical conclusions, from the problematic of the “leading role of a class subject”; they both advocated Social-Democratic participation in a provisional revolutionary government solely on the basis of the dominance of Social- Democracy in that government; the Mensheviks opposed such a participation in the Russian democratic revolution, whereas Trotsky and Parvus supported it. For both Trotsky and the Mensheviks, this participation (as the dominant political force) constituted the conquest of political power by the proletariat through its political representative. The tactical difference (which of course had strategic implications), arose from the fact that whereas in the Menshevik strategy, it was the bourgeoisie which was constituted as the subject of the revolutionary process, [95] in Trotsky’s strategy, through the notions of “independent” and “leading” role, it was the proletariat which was constituted as the subject of the revolutionary process. If the Mensheviks could be convinced, as Trotsky was, of the inability of the “bourgeoisie” to play a “leading” role in the bourgeois-democratic revolution, then the logic of their theoretical assumptions and mode of reasoning would compel them to accept Trotsky’s prognosis of the Russian revolution. This is precisely what happened with substantial sections of the Menshevik faction at the height of the revolutionary .storms in 1905, and this included such influential theoreticians of Menshevism as Martynov, Dan and Chereveanin (though not Martov, Aksel’rod or Plekhanov). According to Israel Getzler:
Many Mensheviks began to lose faith in a bourgeois revolution. They dismissed the bourgeoisie either as treacherous and counterrevolutionary or as virtually non-existent ... [96]
Theodore Dan, himself admitted that “Trotskyite themes” began to echo

...more and more loudly in the utterances and articles of eminent members of the Iskra editorial board (first and foremost Martynov and the author of these lines) with the manifest approval of substantial segments of Mensheviks... [97]
That it was possible to reconcile, what on the surface appears as radically opposed theoretical and political conceptions as those of Trotsky and the Mensheviks, is easily understood if we recognise that the decisive difference between them was not theoretical, but a very specific tactical-political difference — they gave a different answer to the question: which class will act as the “leader” of the revolutionary process? They gave different answers, initially, because they had a different estimation of the revolutionary capacity of the bourgeoisie in the Russian democratic revolution. When this difference of political estimation was resolved, then substantial sections of the Mensheviks made the transition to the strategy of the “Permanent Revolution”.

Martynov, in his Two Dictatorships, had argued that if Social- Democracy prepared, timed and conducted a successful armed uprising of the people, it would have political power in its hands which it could not retain and consolidate without attempting to put its maximum programme into effect. [98] This was precisely the same mode of reasoning used by Trotsky to characterise the Permanent nature of the revolution.
Immediately ... that power is transferred into the hands of a revolutionary government with a socialist majority, the division of our programme into maximum and minimum loses all significance ... A proletarian government under no circumstances can confine itself within such limits. [99]

The very fact of the proletariat’s representatives entering the government, not as powerless hostages, but as the leading force, destroys the border-line between maximum and minimum programme; that is to say, it places collectivism on the order of the day. [100]

The process of transition to socialism is deduced by Trotsky from the fact that the working class holds state power, which is deduced from the fact that the proletariat leads the successful bourgeois-democratic revolution. The transformation of the bourgeois revolution into the socialist revolution — the elimination of the distinction between the minimum and the maximum programme, is the logical effect of the leading role of a class subject — the proletariat — in the revolutionary process.
SELF-ABNEGA TION?
In a polemical article against the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, [101] Trotsky argued that the consummation of the revolution against Tsarism required the transfer of power to a “revolutionary public force”. [102] Lenin had characterized this force as the “Revolutionary- Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the Peasantry”. Trotsky’s critique of this formulation is very interesting. Lenin, he said:
...draws a distinction of principle between the Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat and the democratic (that is, bourgeois-democratic) dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. He believes that this logical, purely formal operation can act as a perfect protection against the contradiction between the low level of productive forces and the hegemony of the working classes. [103]
In Trotsky’s mode of reasoning, there exists a fundamental contradiction that between the low level of development of the productive forces and the leading role of the proletariat in the revolution. From within this problematic he ascribes to Lenin a solution to this contradiction
between the “proletariat’s class interests and objective conditions”, which consists of the “proletariat imposing a political limitation upon itself’. [104] Trotsky maintained that Lenin “solved” the problems arising from the specified contradiction by the proletariat’s “self- abnegation”, by a “class asceticism” — the proletariat consciously decides not to go beyond the democratic stage.

Trotsky’s “solution” to this contradiction, in contrast, is not any “self- limitation” by the working-class, but rather, is determined by the logic of the situation, in which the proletariat finds itself as the hegemonic class holding state power, and which forces it to go directly into the implementation of socialist measures, regardless of objective conditions (the level of economic development, the hostility of the property owning peasants.) The contradiction between the low level of the productive forces and the leading (“hegemonic”) role of the proletariat is displaced into a political contradiction between the proletariat in power, which is seeking to socialize the means of production, and the peasantry. The solution to this contradiction lies in the international character of the world revolutionary process. Lenin, said Trotsky “... transfers the objective contradiction into the proletariat’s consciousness and resolves it by means of a class asceticism...” [105] whereas, in fact, the correct place to transfer this contradiction was the international arena, where, in the words of the Menshevik resolution “On the Seizure of Power and Participation in a Provisional Government”, adopted in 1905, “... conditions for the realization of socialism have already attained a certain degree of maturity”. [106]

As is apparent, however, Lenin did not have a strategy of the proletariat in possession of state power imposing a bourgeois-democratic limitation upon itself. Rather, he believed that:
Objectively, the historical course of events has now posed before the Russian proletariat precisely the task of carrying through the democratic bourgeois revolution {the whole content of which ...we sum up in the word Republic)', this task confronts the people as a whole, viz., the entire mass of the petty bourgeoisie and the peasantry; Without such a revolution the more or less extensive development of an independent class organisation for the socialist revolution is unthinkable. [107]

The form taken by the bourgeois revolution — landlord-bourgeois or peasant-bourgeois revolution — would determine the nature, of the terrain upon which the working class would conduct its struggle for socialism. The concrete forms of transition to the socialist revolution, the length of time between the bourgeois revolution and the socialist revolution, and therefore the length of time in which capitalism would have to expand and develop, could not be posed in the abstract. In the period of the first Russian revolution, all that could be concretely posed was the question of the form of the bourgeois revolution[ 108] which would be determined in the practice of the class struggle. As it was impossible to pre-determine this form, then one could not specify the forms of the process of transition to the socialist revolution. All that Lenin could say was that once the proletariat had advanced as far as it could alongside the petty bourgeoisie against the semi-feudal social system, then it would immediately begin, according to the measure of its strength, to strive for the socialist revolution.

THEORIES OF TRANSITION
In the Menshevik conception of the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the tactics and strategies derived from the classic bourgeois revolutions of Western Europe were transposed to the Russian context. A general theory -of transition was presupposed and applied to a concrete case. This conceptual framework was unable to pose the possibility of two concrete forms of the bourgeois revolution in the Russian social formation. The effects of this mode of reasoning were
apparent in Plekhanov’s article The Question of the Seizure of Power, which appeared in Iskra No. 96, [109] and in which he defended the tactics developed by the Mensheviks, by their correspondence to the tactics formulated by Marx for the German revolution in 1850, [110] and the advice given by Engels to the Italian Socialists in 1894. [111]
...this arch-revolutionary “Address” proposes precisely those tactics which are now recommended by the Russian comrades of Iskra…. [112]
Marx, said Lenin "... speaks only of the concrete situation; Plekhanov draws a general conclusion without at all considering the question in its concreteness.” [113]

In Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution, the process of transition — a continuous process from bourgeois to socialist tasks — is deduced from the character of the class agents present in the Russian social formation. The revolution is “permanent” because the proletariat is constituted as the subject of the process of transition through all the “phases” of struggle. A general theory of transition from “bourgeois” to socialist revolution is produced, having at its centre, the notion of the proletariat consciously acting on an external reality to express the essence of its class interests — the maximum programme of Social- Democracy. All the concrete questions of the terms of transition, the tasks at each stage, and the question of allies at each specific moment disappear.

In Lenin’s conceptual framework, there is no general theory of transition derived from constituting a particular class as the subject of the revolutionary process. All processes of transition are concrete and specific. The forms of transition from feudalism to capitalism cannot be deduced by designating the revolution bourgeois; neither can the forms of transition from bourgeois to socialist revolution be deduced from the fact that the proletariat acts as the “leading” class in the revolutionary process. Forms of transition are determined by the outcome of determinate class struggle which take place on a social and political terrain constituted by the forms and results of previous class struggles.

From what has been said above, I hope to have shown two things:
Firstly, the “distance” between Lenin and Trotsky in their theory, and the nature of their theoretical differences. Secondly, the fact that Trotsky and the Mensheviks largely occupied the same theoretical “space”, and that their political differences, at any rate as far as'they related to questions pertaining to the theory of Permanent Revolution, arose from their different estimations of the revolutionary capacity of the bourgeoisie, which led them to assign to a different class subject the role of “leading” force in the revolutionary process.

FEBRUARY-OCTOBER 1917
One of the persistent elements of Trotskyist mythology is the claim that Lenin, in 1917-18, implicitly, if not explicitly, came over to Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution.

In 1917... Lenin changed his mind. In all essentials the thesis of the Permanent Revolution ... was adopted by his party. [114]
This assumption is not made on the basis of an analysis of the theoretical and political positions of Lenin and Trotsky in 1905-07 or in 1917-18, but on a political observation: In 1905, Trotsky advocated the seizure of power by the working class in the bourgeois-democratic revolution, whereas Lenin did not; In 1917-18, Lenin advocated a seizure of power by the working class, and the Bolsheviks led a successful insurrection in the main urban centres of Russia; therefore, the reasoning goes, Lenin abandoned his old theory of revolution by stages, which was the “political counterpoint” of an economic determinist view of history, and adopted Trotsky’s perspective of Permanent Revolution. [115] Mavrakis, quite correctly, characterises this mode of reasoning in the following way:

Trotsky rewrites history. He isolates two moments: 1905 and 1917; he disregards the period that separates them ... and this is what the history of Bolshevism becomes. According to him, in 1905, Lenin formulated “a hypothesis”: revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. This hypothesis depended on an “unknown”: the political role of the peasantry. October 1917 reduced the unknown and Lenin’s hypothesis (which envisaged the possibility of a peasant party with a majority in the revolutionary government) was invalidated since it was the dictatorship of the proletariat alone which triumphed! [116]

This mode of analysis — the isolation and comparison of two separate and distinct historical junctures — is the product of a theoretical framework which conceived of a general theory of transition in which the motive force is a class subject consciously active in all stages of the revolutionary process. As the process of revolutionary transformation is deduced from the active presence of a class subject (the class which assumes the “leading role”), and not in terms of the forms and outcomes of determinate class struggles at each specific stage of transformation, then the concrete peculiarities which allow an identification of the “breaks” in the historical process cannot be analysed. The Bolshevik slogan of 1905 is placed alongside, and judged by, the slogan of 1917; the verification of the correctness of the 1905 analysis, then, is not its adequacy with respect to the situation of 1905 (which reflection from the standpoint of 1917 sheds greater light), but what is assumed to have taken place in 1917. The concrete conditions which gave rise to the formulations of 1905 “disappear”, and need not be differentiated from the specific features giving rise to the perspectives of 1917. Forgotten in this mode of analysis, is that the concrete historical experiences which enabled Lenin to specify the stages of transition to the seizure of power by the working class in 1917 (the imperialist war, the democratic revolution of February 1917, the Soviets of worker’s and soldier’s delegates etc.) did not exist in 1905, when, in the absence of any knowledge as to the form in which democratic liberties would be established, and the legacy of the old semi-feudal system abolished, he was unable to establish the conditions in which the proletariat would have to conduct its struggle for power.
In 1905, Lenin made the point that:
Concrete political aims must be set in concrete circumstances. All things are relative, all things flow and all things change.... There is no such thing as abstract truth. Truth is always concrete. [117]

And again, in 1917:
Marxism requires of us a strictly exact and objectively verifiable analysis of the relation of classes and of the concrete features peculiar to each historical situation. [118]

The first observation that we need to make, is that from within Lenin’s conceptual framework, it is inadmissible to compare the political slogans of one historical moment with the slogans of another, without recognising that tactics and slogans are concretely derived from the specific features of each moment. The “concrete truth” of 1905 cannot be compared with the “concrete truth” of 1917 without realising that it is “concrete circumstances” which give them their validity, unless of course, one proceeds from the abstract truth concerning the “leading” role of the proletariat in the revolution, or from the “truth” that the revolution is bourgeois, therefore... What is important is riot the fact that tactics and slogans have changed, but that these changes, if
they are “correct”, are a “scientific reflection” of the transformations in the concrete situation, without denying, for one moment, that the experience of later class struggles enable one to assess in a more comprehensive manner the adequacies and inadequacies of the slogans and tactics of preceding class struggles.

In the juncture inaugurated by the fall of Tsarism, Lenin emphasised the need to study “...the specific features of the new and living T:eality.” [119] Something new has turned up, said Lenin, something we had never expected. Unless we can grasp what is uniquely new about the present situation, we cannot hope to develop a correct strategy for the working class. The “unique” features introduced by the democratic revolution of February 1917 were characterised by Lenin as “Dual Power”, which he defined as the interlocking of two forms of class dictatorship. [120]

One of the reasons why advocates of the theory of Permanent Revolution claim that Lenin discarded the formulations and positions he had adopted in 1905, in favour of Trotsky’s strategy of Permanent Revolution, is the fact that he dropped the slogan of the democratic- dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry in 1917. Lenin, however, nowhere rejected the correctness of the formulations he had adopted for the situation of the first Russian revolution. On the contrary, he maintained that on the whole, they had proved to be correct, but that their concrete realization had turned out differently. [121]

The revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry has already become a reality [in a certain form and to a certain extent) in the Russian revolution, for this “formula” envisages only a relation of classes, and not a concrete political institution implementing this relation, this cooperation. “The Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies” — there you have the “revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry” already accomplished in reality. [122]

Remember that Trotsky identified the sole difference between himself and Lenin in 1905 as relating to the question of the “party-political and state organisation” of the democratic- dictatorship [123] Well, it seems that from Lenin’s point of view there could not have been a difference here, because his formula only envisaged a “relation of classes” in the democratic revolution, and not a “political institution implementing” that relationship. “The Soviet”, said Lenin in 1917, “is the implementation of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the soldiers; among the latter the majority are peasants. It is therefore a dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.” [124] The uniqueness of the situation introduced by the February revolution, in which things had “turned out differently”, was in the “... extremely original, novel and unprecedented interlacing...” of the “...rule of the bourgeoisie (the government of Lvov and Cruchkov) and a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, which is voluntarily ceding power to the bourgeoisie ...” [125] It was because of the unexpected way in which the analysis of 1905 had been verified, and its formulas realized, that required them to be amended and supplemented. [126] They were not longer adequate to comprehend the concrete situation that had arisen from the way in which the transformation in class relations embodied in their formulation, had been realised. The old Bolshevik slogan of the democratic- dictatorship had to be “discarded”, not because of its incorrectness, but because it had already entered the realm of social reality in the form of the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, and ' because it was no longer adequate to comprehend a situation in which the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, in the form of the provisional revolutionary government, existed alongside, and with the support of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.

NEW CONDITIONS
This unique situation was the product of a number of factors that Lenin had not expected in
1905-07 and which had arisen as a result of the way in which the class struggle developed up to February 1917. These factors were:
1 The bourgeoisie, under the pressure of the revolutionary people and because of the inability of the Tsarist government to conduct the way efficiently, and with the support of the Anglo- French alliance, had been able to act in a revolutionary way, and break with the Tsarist autocracy.

2 Lenin had expected that a peasant uprising against the landlords, would create the situation in which a mass, democratic peasant movement could develop against the Tsarist political system. In his 1905-07 analysis, two elements of bourgeois-democratic social transformation — the seizure of land and the conquest of political liberties — had been inextricably linked together. In fact however, it was the miseries of the Imperialist war which created the conditions in which a decisive section of the peasants — the peasants in uniform — developed as a mass, democratic force in alliance with the urban workers, before the movement to seize the land had properly developed.

3 Lenin had expected the proletariat to exercise an ideological influence over its ally, the peasantry; again, however, partly because of the efforts of the imperialist way, the proletariat had succumbed to the overwhelming influence of petty-bourgeois ideology, so that the soviets, representing the class dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, voluntarily ceded power to the bourgeois provisional government which refused to end Russian participation in the imperialist way and which was extremely reluctant to sanction any radical transformation in agrarian relations.

Neither Trotsky, nor his present-day supporters, have ever produced a serious theoretical examination of Lenin’s writings in 1917-18 in order to justify the claim that from the April Theses onwards, Lenin operated according to the strategy of Permanent Revolution. Trotsky, in his Permanent Revolution, claimed that Lenin, only “occasionally” referred the realization of the democrat-dictatorship in the form of Dual Power. [127] According to Trotsky, however

The Bolshevik slogan was realized in fact — not as a morphological trait but as a very great historical reality. Only, it was realized not before, but after October. [128]

The evidence that is cited as proof of this contention and the correctness of the theory of Permanent Revolution, is that when the Bolsheviks seized political power in October 1917 in the main urban centres, the struggles of the peasants against the semi-feudal landlords had still not yet fully developed; this enables advocates of the theory of Permanent Revolution to present October 1917 as the consummation of the bourgeois-democratic revolution by the dictatorship of the proletariat, as predicted by Trotsky in 1906.

This mode of verification of the correctness of the theory of Permanent Revolution, conveniently overlooks a very specific concrete reality — the transformation in political class relations inaugurated by the February 1917 democratic revolution, which established the political freedoms required by the working class to wage its struggle for political power and the socialist revolution. It conveniently forgets Lenin’s dictum that:
The passing of state power from one class to another is the first, the principal, the basic sign of a revolution ...[129]
It forgets that Lenin characterised February 1917 as a:

...revolution of the proletariat, the peasantry and the bourgeoisie in alliance with Anglo-French
finance capital against Tsarism. [130] It forgets that:

Before the February-March revolution of 1917, state power in Russia was in the hands of one class, namely, the feudal nobility...
After the revolution, the power is in the hands of a different class, a new class, namely, the bourgeoisie...[131]

And that therefore:
To this extent, the bourgeois, or the bourgeois-democratic, revolution in Russia is completed. [132]
According to Trotsky, “Lenin spoke extremely conditionally of the ‘realization’ of the democratic dictatorship”, in order to, “argue against those who expected a second, improved edition of the independent democratic dictatorship. Lenin’s words only meant that there is not and , will not be any democratic dictatorship outside of the miserable miscarriage of the dual power....” [133]

If, however, we read Lenin’s Letters on Tactics, we get a different picture. Contrary to Trotsky’s statement that Lenin believed that there could be no “democratic dictatorship outside of the miserable miscarriage of the dual power”, Lenin himself declared that such an independent democratic dictatorship was “quite possible.” [134]
Possibly the peasantry may seize all the land and all the power. [135]

Lenin’s criticism of the “old” Bolsheviks did not rest on a denial of this possibility, but on the fact that they wanted to base party policy on the fact that the peasants might, in the future, break from the bourgeoisie, and seize the landlords land, at a moment in time when the peasants were under the influence of the bourgeoisie. The “old” Bolsheviks failed to understand the character of the “current moment”, they failed to understand that Dual Power, representing the interlocking of two forms of class dictatorship in the democratic revolution, was based on the fact that “... an agreement, of — to use a more exact, less legal, but more class-economic term — class collaboration exists between the bourgeoisie and the peasantry.”[136] The “old” Bolsheviks wanted to base party policy on the possibility that an independent democratic-dictatorship might develop at a time when the Soviets, representing that dictatorship, had not yet broken from the bourgeoisie. It was equally possible, depending on the way the class struggle developed, that the peasants would not break away from the influence of the bourgeoisie. According to Lenin:
When this fact ceases to be a fact, [137] when the peasantry separates from the bourgeoisie, seizes the land and power despite the bourgeoisie, that will be a new stage in the bourgeois- democratic revolution.... [138]

The error of the “old” Bolsheviks was that they constituted the seizure of land by the peasants as the “essence” of a “pure” democratic-dictatorship, whereas for Lenin in 1905-07, the peasant movement to seize the landlords land had constituted the crucial condition from which the peasants could develop as an ally of the working class in the struggle to achieve democratic freedom by the smashing of the Tsarist autocracy. In February 1917, the effects of the Imperialist war provided an alternative condition of existence for the development of a mass, democratic peasant movement; this of course, did not rule out the possibility that the development of movement to seize the land could take the bourgeois-democratic revolution to a “new stage”.

If we turn to Lenin’s analysis of the “abrupt and original” turn experienced by the Russian revolution at the end of August 1917, and with the defeat of an attempt at counter revolution, when he re-introduced the pre-July slogan of “All Power to the Soviets” in its original meaning of the peaceful development of the revolution, we can see that, despite the Trotskyite claim that Lenin, in April 1917, came over to the strategy of Permanent Revolution, despite Trotsky’s claims of the impossibility of peasant and petty bourgeois parties developing independently, despite his claim that Lenin believed that “there is not and will not be any democratic dictatorship outside of ... dual power”, Lenin, at the beginning of September 1917, was prepared to support a “government of S-Rs and Mensheviks responsible to the Soviets”,[139] and what is more:
The Bolsheviks, without making any claim to participate in the government ... would refrain from demanding the immediate transfer of power to the proletariat and the poor peasants and from employing revolutionary methods of fighting for this demand. [140]

In the very specific moment of September 1917, with the defeat of the Kornilov revolt, the very real possibility existed of winning the petty- bourgeois parties away from their alliance with the bourgeoisie, thereby guaranteeing the peaceful development of the revolution. One month before the Bolshevik seizure of power, Lenin envisaged the possibility of an independant democratic- dictatorship (“All power to the soviets”), in which governmental power would be held by a bloc of petty-bourgeois parties. The significance of this is that Lenin allowed for certain possibilities — depending on the way the class struggle developed — which were inadmissable on the basis of Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution. The fact that the revolutionary forces failed to break this alliance in September 1917 in no way means that the possibility did not concretely exist at specific moments of the class struggle. It was the outcome of determinate class struggles in concrete situations which led to the non-realization of a form of the democratic-dictatorship astride of Dual Power, and which created the possibility of an armed seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in the main urban centres. To assert otherwise would be to have a teleological view of history, in which the inevitable necessity of the present is read back into the struggles of the past.

We have referred to the fact that Trotsky believed that the bourgeois- democratic revolution was consummated by the proletarian revolution of October 1917. Support for their point of view can be obtained by isolating particular statements made by Lenin after the October seizure of power, For instance,

The nationalization of the land that has been effected in Russia by the proletarian dictatorship has best ensured the carrying of the bourgeois-democratic revolution to its conclusion ...[141]
The victorious Bolshevik revolution meant the end of vacillation, meant the complete destruction of the monarchy and of the landlord system (which had not been destroyed before the October revolution). We carried the bourgeois revolution to its conclusion. The peasants supported us as a whole. [142]

It was the Bolsheviks... who, thanks only to the victory of the proletarian revolution, helped the peasants to carry the bourgeois democratic revolution really to its conclusion. [143]

The Trotskyist argument obscures a number of factors. Firstly, its presentation reproduces the error made by the “old” Bolsheviks, that of conceiving of a “pure” democratic-dictatorship whose “essence” is the seizure of land by the peasants. As the seizure of land took place after the October revolution, then the dictatorship of the proletariat is presented as the consummation of the “pure” bourgeois revolution, or as Trotsky put it, the Bolshevik slogan of the democratic-

dictatorship was realized “not before, but after October.” [144] The error of this conception is its abstract presentation of the Marxist category of “bourgeois revolution”.