On Trotskyism- Problems of theory and history

Kostas Mavrakis

SOCIALISM IN ONE COUNTRY

While formally declaring himself in agreement with Lenin about the law of uneven development, Trotsky never accepted all its implications, especially the following:

1. With wars breaking out among the imperialist countries for the division of the world, the revolution can triumph first in a relatively backward country (the weakest link) such as Russia, thanks to the alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry, and can hold out, notably on account of the violent contradictions between its enemies.

2. This revolution is not necessarily the immediate prelude to world revolution but the latter will continue as it began with new victories in particular countries (where capitalism is weak) for a long historical period. The uneven ripening of the conditions for a revolutionary explosion excludes its simultaneous occurrence in every country.

From as early as 1906, Trotsky reckoned that a revolution in Russia would lead to an intervention of the European powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary in particular. This war would inevitably lead to a revolution in these countries and step by step to the triumph of world socialism.(36) This mechanism is one of the aspects of the permanence of the revolution.

It was also necessary for the revolution to go immediately beyond the borders of Russia in another sense. For Trotsky, the revolution will be global or not at all. In fact, if it remained isolated in a predominantly agricultural country it would succumb very quickly to the blows of external intervention or internal counter-revolution.

Without the direct State support of the European proletariat the working class of Russia cannot remain in power and convert its temporary domination into a lasting socialistic dictatorship.

Left to its own resources, the working class of Russia will inevitably be crushed by the counter-revolution the moment the peasantry turns its back on it. It will have no alternative but to link the fate of its political rule, and, hence, the fate of the whole Russian revolution, with the fate of the socialist revolution in Europe.

Trotsky did not believe that it would be possible to maintain workers' power in Russia without external aid, especially because he was convinced that the logic of the proletariat's revolutionary action would lead it into conflict with the peasantry.

He returned to this question in 1917 in his pamphlet 'Program of Peace' (republished in 1924 in the collection 'The Year 1917'). He declared in it that 'a victorious revolution in Russia or England is inconceivable without revolution in Germany and vice versa'. To avoid any ambiguity he specified moreover that: 'It would be futile to expect . . . for instance, that revolutionary Russia could hold its own in face of a conservative Europe'.

In 1926 he again recalled the position he held in October 1917: 'it was clear to us that the victory of the proletarian revolution is impossible without the international world revolution'.

During the two years that followed the seizure of power, Lenin may have feared lest foreign intervention crush the young Soviet republic.(42) Later, his fears and doubts were allayed, whereas Zinoviev made a dogma of them five years after at the time of his dispute with Stalin over the possibility of building socialism in one country. As for Trotsky, he proved to be remarkably obstinate in error. In 1922 he no longer spoke of an impending 'inevitable' defeat of the proletarian power in the absence of a revolution in Europe, but he expressed the same idea in a more cautious form: 'The contradiction between a workers' government and an overwhelming majority of peasants in a backward country could be resolved only on an international scale, in the arena of a world proletarian revolution'.

In the same year, Trotsky wrote in the postscript to his pamphlet 'Program of Peace': 'A genuine advance of socialist economy in Russia will become possible only after the victory of the proletariat in the most important countries of Europe.'

History having decided, comment is unnecessary - more especially as Trotsky provided the best one in 1939 in his 'Transitional Program', in which we read: 'The nationalisation of the means of production, a necessary condition for socialist development, opened up the possibility of a rapid growth of the productive forces.'

While being very proud of his 'prognoses', Trotsky constantly altered his conception of the permanent revolution. 1905, 1917, 1922, 1929, 1939 - these dates mark not the stages of a deeper knowledge of the laws of revolution but the contortions of a 'theoretician' striving to make something stand up in a schema undermined, breached and ground to dust by inconsiderate opponents and merciless historical events.

When, at the beginning of 1925, the dispute over socialism in one country broke out between Zinoviev and Kamenev on the one hand and Bukharin on the other, Trotsky kept apart from it. He seems even not to have been aware of anything for a year. He himself said later that he was caught unawares by the formidable conflict dividing the majority and the minority at the 14th Congress in December 1925. He distrusted Zinoviev, who had been the most virulent of his opponents and whom he considered to be the leader of the right wing. He did not believe his differences with Stalin to be serious. However, Zinoviev's argument coincided with his own to a certain extent (except on the question of the alliance with the peasantry) and that is why Stalin had already refuted it in advance in the so-called 'literary' debate at the end of 1924.

Given Trotsky's argument that 'the safety (of the proletarian state) rests solely on the victory of the proletariat in the advanced countries', Stalin concluded that, according to his opponent, 'there is but one prospect left for our revolution: to vegetate in its own contradictions and rot away while waiting for the world revolution'.

He opposed to 'this permanent hopelessness' Lenin's ideas on the construction of socialism in one country. Lenin said, among other things:

Socialism is no longer a matter of the distant future or an abstract picture . . . difficult as this task may be, new as it is . . . and numerous as the difficulties may be that it entails, we shall - not in a day but in a few years - all of us together fulfil it whatever the cost, so that NEP Russia will become Socialist Russia.

Lenin also said:

Indeed the power of the State over all the large-scale means of production, political power in the hands of the proletariat, the alliance of the proletariat with many millions of the small and very small peasants, the assured proletarian leadership of the peasantry etc - is this not all that is necessary to build a complete socialist society . . . out of co-operatives, out of co-operatives alone, which we formerly ridiculed as huckstering and which from a certain aspect we have the right to treat as such now, under NEP? Is this not all that is necessary to build a complete socialist society? It is still not the building of socialist society but it is all that is necessary and sufficient for it.

In the same article, we read the sentence: 'With most of the population organised in co-operatives, socialism . . . will achieve its aims automatically.'

Trotsky did his utmost to interpret this text in a sense favourable to his theses. According to him, when Lenin said 'We have all that is necessary and sufficient for the construction of socialism', he was referring to the first political fruits. It would also be necessary to solve the problem of the culture that the Russian people lacked. Culture presupposes a 'certain material base'. Therefore, (according to Trotsky's Lenin), we need the victorious European proletariat to come to our aid with its superior technology.

This is an absolutely unwarranted deflection of Lenin's arguments. In fact, in his article, Lenin was far from denying that the Russian people could raise the level of their culture and technology by their own efforts, otherwise he would have written 'all that is necessary but not sufficient'.

Trotsky was very careful not to enter into a polemic on this question during Lenin's lifetime. When such a polemic did break out in 1925 between Zinoviev on the one hand and Stalin and Bukharin on the other, Stalin was easily able to prove that his view rigorously conformed to Lenin's ideas. In 'On Co-operation', Lenin defined what he meant by socialism: 'Given social ownership of the means of production, given the class victory of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie, the system of civilised co-operators is the system of socialism.'

It seems that by 'building a complete socialist society' Stalin understood fundamentally the same thing, i.e. 'victory over the capitalist elements in our economy', in the strict sense (linked to the private ownership of the means of production). As often as not Zinoviev did not attribute any other meaning to the 'final' victory of socialism and neither did Trotsky to the 'completion of the construction of socialism' which they denied was possible in one country. Taking up Lenin's formula again, Stalin argued against them that it was possible to construct 'the complete socialist society' in the USSR. He denied, however, that this victory could be 'final', that is, guaranteed against external intervention as long as the proletariat had not taken power 'in at least a number of countries'.

In 'Leninism', Zinoviev exercises his sleight of hand on quotations from Lenin. He does not distinguish between the final victory of socialism in so far as it implies the abolition of classes, the abolition of the state and the transition to communism on the one hand, and socialism as 'the transition from a small, isolated, individual, market economy to a big collective economy', as Lenin said, on the other. The Bolshevik leader did not believe that the former was possible without the world victory of the revolution but he held that it was possible to construct socialism in one country in the second sense, since for him Russia possessed 'all that is necessary to build a complete socialist society', which he defined as 'Soviets plus electrification throughout the country', or 'the system of civilised co-operators'.

According to Ernest Mandel, 'all Trotsky stated . . . was the fact that a fully-fledged socialist society, i.e. a society without classes, commodities, money and state, could never be accomplished within the boundaries of a single state'.(49) We have seen that until 1918 Trotsky denied 'that a revolutionary Russia . . . could hold its own in the face of a conservative Europe'; that, later, he did not believe that the socialisation of the means of production or the advance of a socialist economy were possible in one country. It was only after 1929 that historical experience forced him occasionally to come close to the position which Mandel attributes to him. Even then, it is quite simply false to say that this is 'all Trotsky stated'. Let me provide even more proof. If we place ourselves in the framework of this controversy (1925-6) we can conclude:

1. that Stalin's position largely conformed to Lenin's views;

2. that it was confirmed in practice when the kulaks and the nepmen were liquidated as classes after 1928 and that consequently enormous progress was made on the economic and cultural levels;

3. that Stalin went further than Lenin and erred in arguing that the victory of the proletariat in several countries was enough to enable one to speak of a final victory of socialism.

In his book 'The Permanent Revolution' (1928-31), Trotsky once again beat a retreat. He set up his line of defence on positions which Zinoviev had earlier prepared for him. He was content from then on to deny the possibility of a final construction of socialism in one country. Events decided against him very rapidly, for it was clear (given the context) that his 'final socialism' was identical to Lenin's 'complete socialism'; that is to say, with the measure of socialism realised under Stalin. Let us look, therefore, at what Trotsky wrote at the time when the First Five-Year Plan was already being carried out:

To aim at building a nationally isolated socialist society means, in spite of all passing successes, to pull the productive forces backward even as compared with capitalism. To attempt, regardless of the geographical, cultural and historical conditions of the country's development which constitutes a part of the world unity, to realise . . . all the branches of economy within a national framework, means to pursue a reactionary utopia. If the heralds and supporters of this theory nevertheless participate in the international revolutionary struggle (with what success is a different question) it is because, as hopeless eclectics, they mechanically combine abstract internationalism with reactionary utopian national socialism.

Let the reader judge for himself: did the Five-Year Plans pull the productive forces backward even as compared with capitalism? Did the geographical, historical and cultural conditions prevent the realisation of all the branches of the economy within a national framework? The Trotskyists have never told us what they think about this example of their mentor's 'prognoses'. The most interesting thing about the passage that we have just quoted is that it offers us a striking example of the complete about-turns in which Trotsky, the rigid critic of Stalinist zigzags, was adept. In this passage he declares that internally the Soviet leaders were reactionary utopians but that internationally they participated in the revolutionary struggle. Some years later he was to argue the opposite: that as a degenerated workers' state, the Soviet Union presents a two-fold character: it is progressive internally as it maintains socialist relations of production and develops the productive forces; it is reactionary internationally as it systematically betrays all revolutionary struggles.

In 'The Permanent Revolution', Trotsky formulated another 'prognosis' which is extremely embarrassing for his disciples, who continue to denounce the evils of socialism in one country: 'The theory of the kulak growing into socialism and the theory of the 'neutralisation' of the world bourgeoisie are . . . inseparable from the theory of socialism in one country. They stand or fall together.'

We consider contemporary Trotskyists to be more qualified than ourselves to comment on this text, which we shall leave to them to think about.

However, it is necessary to emphasise a curious argument of Trotsky's in this new dispute. After 'Pravda' had written that 'the final victory of socialism, guaranteed against the intervention of the capitalist camp effectively (demanded) the triumph of the proletarian revolution in several advanced countries', he claimed to prove that this was absurd, for if it were possible to build socialism in the USSR its final victory in that country and even in the world would 'ipso facto' be achieved because The example of a backward country, which in the course of several Five-Year Plans was able to construct a mighty socialist society with its own forces, would mean a death blow to world capitalism, and would reduce to a minimum, if not to zero, the costs of the world proletarian revolution.

Here the reader will recognise the Khrushchevite argument. When the USSR has caught up with the USA in 'per capita' production of consumption goods, the peoples of the world will choose socialism and vote accordingly. The only difference is that Khrushchev thought this overtaking possible given the Soviet Union's faster rate of growth, whereas Trotsky thought it impossible. For both the link between the cause (economic success of the USSR) and the effect (more or less peaceful world revolution) is identical. This coincidence reflects a common theoretical basis. Neither of them realised that the development of contradictions in those partial totalities, in concrete social formations, is fundamentally explained by the action of internal causes and not by external influences.

In fact, Trotskyism is characterised particularly by the tendency to attribute an undue significance to the unity of the world market which is supposed to constitute the objective basis for proletarian internationalism. One of the obstacles to the building of socialism in one country is supposed to be the pressure of cheap commodities produced in the advanced capitalist countries; capitalism's ability to subordinate all the other modes of production, even the socialist mode of production, if its technical basis is insufficiently developed at the start. 'But, in elaborating the theoretical prognosis of the October Revolution, I did not at all believe that, by conquering state power, the Russian proletariat would exclude the former Tsarist empire from the orbit of the world economy'.

This, however, is what happened. The USSR lived in semi-autarchy for several decades. The impetuous industrial development of the USSR during the 1930s, at the very time of the great crisis, shows that the economy of a country under the dictatorship of the proletariat in which the means of production and foreign trade are nationalised, is no longer subject to the repercussions of the cyclical fluctuations of the world market nor any longer ruled by the economic law of capitalism (profit maximisation), but develops according to its own fundamental law.

In the 'Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR' (p. 333), Stalin emphasised that after the Second World War the socialist camp appeared, 'so that we now have two parallel world markets confronting one another'.

The monopoly of foreign trade retained by proletarian power does not allow capitalism to become an integral part of the production of a country which is building socialism, or thereby to eat away the nascent socialist relations of production by virtue of its temporary technical superiority.

Trotsky's internationalism was really only a refusal to acknowledge the discontinuities of the world sociological space: distinct social formations, national particularities, unevenness in the development of the objective and subjective conditions for revolution and, finally, the possibility of a relatively separate socialist market contemporaneous with the capitalist market.

However, on the practical level and only if we consider the immediate perspectives, he apparently agreed with Stalin that the construction of the economic basis of socialism in the USSR should not be subordinated to the vicissitudes of proletarian struggles in the advanced capitalist countries. Thus one might think he is picking an artificial quarrel with him, assuming him in the wrong from the start. In fact, it was nothing of the sort. As conceived by Trotsky, industrialisation was only a 'sort of emergency measure until the advent of international revolution saved the situation',(56) hence its vague and abstract character. This is all the more true since, as we have just seen, he considered 'a genuine advance of socialist economy in Russia' before 'the victory of the proletariat in the most important countries of Europe' to be impossible.

Trotsky and his disciples have presented the thesis of socialism in one country as an expression of a narrow outlook, indeed of a messianic nationalism (Trotsky made analogous complaints about the Bolshevik Party before 1917) and even as proceeding from a deliberate wish to betray the world revolution. A reading of Stalin does not corroborate this accusation. Just one quotation will suffice:

While it is true that the final victory of Socialism in the first country to emancipate itself is impossible without the combined efforts of the proletarians of several countries, it is equally true that the development of the world revolution will be the more rapid and thorough the more effective the assistance rendered by the first Socialist country to the workers and labouring masses of all other countries.

He follows this immediately by quoting a text from 'On the Slogan of a United States of Europe' in which Lenin advocated armed intervention by the first socialist state to aid the people against their oppressors! The revisionists and Trotskyists are in league to hide these aspects of Lenin's and Stalin's thought. The least one can say about them is that they call into question the usual idea of socialism in one country.

One would surmise that Stalin, who made so many mistakes in the construction of socialism in the USSR, is not free from all blame as leader of the International. Let us be more precise: he was not always capable of a correct combination of reinforcement of the socialist bastion and support for revolutionary peoples. We shall deal with this question later. Investigations and historical research are required to determine what were Stalin's mistakes in this domain. The answer to this type of question has no connection with an examination of the thesis of socialism in one country which, as we have sufficiently demonstrated, is compatible as such (on the theoretical level) with the boldest and most intransigent internationalism. Besides, it is noteworthy that Stalin, who was its promoter, 'later showed himself rather prudent and reserved in its accreditation', given that it was taken up by Bukharin who attached it to his idea of the construction of socialism 'at a snail's pace'. Stalin, on the contrary, soon came to emphasise the first term of the formula, 'socialism in one country', on the eve the attack on the kulaks and the First Five-Year Plan.

The thesis according to which it was possible 'to build a complete socialist society' by counting on the forces of the USSR alone was explicitly presented by Stalin as necessary with a view to encouraging the people to commit themselves to this construction. For him it therefore had a practical value.

The process of the restoration of capitalism in the USSR and the cultural revolution in China have led us to a more rigorous conception of the advance towards communism. We know that for Marx the latter comprises two stages: the lower is characterised by the principle, 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his work'. A certain inequality thus survives, along with the bourgeois right which is its corollary. In the 'higher phase' of communist society

after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly - only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

By that time the state will have withered away, social classes will have disappeared along with the three fundamental inequalities bequeathed by capitalism: the differences between manual and mental labour, town and country, and agriculture and industry. A profound transformation in outlook, customs and ideology will have eradicated egoism and individualism.

It is certain that the transition to the higher stage of socialism, communism, will only be able to take place on a world scale after the elimination of capitalist encirclement. This question (different from that debated in the 1920s) must be connected to the problematic of the class struggle after the suppression of private ownership of the means of production. Trotsky (like Stalin), hardly suspected it, and then only very confusedly.

If we have said that Stalin was correct to think that it was possible to construct socialism in one country, we cannot go along with him when, in his report to the 18th Congress (1939), he envisaged the transition to communism in one country. He even argued in it that the state would survive 'in the period of communism', 'if capitalist encirclement is not liquidated'. In 1946 Stalin reiterated this thesis according to which 'communism in one country is perfectly conceivable particularly in a country such as the Soviet Union'. On this point, Mao has expressed a diametrically opposite point of view: the transition to communism, he has said, will only be realisable after several generations when 'the division of labour which is at the basis of class division' (Engels) has been eliminated and when the state has consequently 'withered away' (Engels).

In 'Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR', Stalin set out three conditions which must be fulfilled to prepare the transition to communism:

1. continuous expansion of production with priority for the means of production;

2. replacement of commodity circulation by a system of product-exchange which will raise collective-farm property to the level of national property (collective farmers will no longer be able to sell their surpluses on the market but will 'receive products in much greater quantities from the State');

3. cultural advancement so that members of society 'are not tied all their lives, owing to the existing division of labour, to some one occupation'. For this, it is necessary, 'to shorten the working day . . . that housing conditions should be radically improved, and that real wages of workers . . . should be at least doubled'.

Under the dictatorship of the proletariat, the last two conditions in fact amount to the first one. In short, to move to communism it is enough to increase production!

As for the elimination of the three differences bequeathed by capitalism, Stalin interpreted Marx and Engels's doctrine somewhat freely. We read in his last work, for example:

The ground for antithesis between town and country, between industry and agriculture, has already been eliminated by our socialist system. This, of course, does not mean that the effect of the abolition of the antithesis between town and country will be that 'the great towns' will perish. (Engels, 'Anti-Dühring[']) Not only will the great towns not perish, but new great towns will appear.

Stalin quoted Engels in order to contradict him. In fact, here is what we read in 'Anti-Duhring': 'It is true that in the great towns civilisation has bequeathed us a heritage which it will take us some time and trouble to get rid of. But it must and will be got rid of.' (p. 352.)

In fact, Stalin denied that it was possible to make 'all' the differences between industry and agriculture, between manual and mental labour disappear because he did not think that the division of labour could be overcome. He declared: 'The essential distinction between mental and physical labour . . . the difference in their cultural and technical levels, will certainly disappear. But some distinction, even if inessential, will remain, if only because the conditions of labour of the managerial staffs and those of the workers are not identical'.

Even if the cultural and technical level of the workers is very high, can we consider the distinction maintained between management personnel and workers 'insignificant'?

With such ideas it was impossible for Stalin to prepare the conditions for the transition to the higher stage of communism as the Chinese are doing even now. However, Stalin tackled the problem with at least the minimum of seriousness, which is precisely not the case with the present leaders in the Soviet Union who, since the 22nd Congress (1961), under Khrushchev, boast of constructing full-scale communism there. It is well known that in 1957 Molotov, the last of the 'Stalinists', opposed the thesis of the final completion of socialism in the USSR which was proclaimed by Stalin as early as 1936 in his report on the Draft Constitution. Today the Chinese insist on the necessity for a people who want to construct socialism to rely above all on their own forces. This formula can be considered as an avatar of 'socialism in one country' which the Chinese only rarely mention. In a certain sense it fulfils the same function: 'on s'engage et puis on voit'.(64) Rely on oneself, not on others. It is true that the Chinese situate the complete realisation of socialism further away than Stalin did in 1926. 'In five or ten generations or even more', they have written. In fact, they know, as Lenin did, that the nationalisation of the means of production is not enough.

With the clarity and rigour that distinguishes him, Mao Tse-tung has recently defined the Marxist-Leninist position on this subject. He poses the problem correctly and thus puts paid to an old controversy:

We have won great victories. But the defeated class will still struggle. These people are still around and this class still exists. Therefore, we cannot speak of final victory. Not even for decades. We must not lose our vigilance. According to the Leninist viewpoint, the final victory of a socialist country not only requires the efforts of the proletariat and the broad masses of the people at home, but also involves the victory of the world revolution and the abolition of the system of exploitation of man by man over the whole globe, upon which all mankind will be emancipated.

Back in 1962, Mao had said: (66)

The next 50 to 100 years or so, beginning from now, will be a great era of radical change in the social system throughout the world, an earth-shaking era without equal in any previous historical period. Living in such an era, we must be prepared to engage in great struggles which will have many features different in form from those of the past.

At the end of his life the old fighter, who has just carried off his greatest victory, reveals to us the prospective thunder and lightning of future revolutionary storms. Once again he invites us to throw off our illusions and to prepare ourselves for the struggle. New vanguards will be forged in the flames of their struggle, new developments in Marxism-Leninism will spring from their practice. This call and this message are directed to the entire world. China is a fragment of the international revolutionary movement and at the same time its principal Red base. The Chinese consider that Stalin's thesis that it is possible to construct socialism in one country is an important contribution to the development of Marxism-Leninism. Is any other proof necessary to show that adherence to this thesis does not imply opposition to world revolutions?

PERMANENT REVOLUTION OR UNINTERRUPTED REVOLUTION BY STAGES?

At a lecture and debate on the crisis of the international communist movement bringing together Pierre Cot, Lelio Basso, Isaac Deutscher and Jacques Vergès, Vergès's reply to a listener who asked him about the 'permanent revolution' in China had the merit of infuriating Pierre Frank(67) who hurled himself towards the platform, his face purple, his eyes popping and foam on his lips. After him, Deutscher calmly explained that he had examined the Chinese and Trotskyist ideas of the permanent revolution very closely, that he had resorted to the strongest 'theoretical lenses', without, however, discovering the slightest difference between them.

We do not believe that lenses of great 'separating power' are necessary to see the opposition between certain aspects of these two theories unless one is suffering from a very advanced intellectual myopia. I have shown above that Lenin did not 'tacitly' become Trotskyist in 1917. I shall now go into the differences between the Chinese uninterrupted revolution and Trotsky's permanent revolution.

Comparing these two concepts, we shall show that they are distinguishable and even opposed to one another. That is why we designate them by different terms, dismissing philological quibbles as irrelevant to the question that the Chinese language possesses only a single expression for both concepts,(69) or that in Russia a single word is translated sometimes by 'stages' and sometimes by 'phases'. (Trotskyists like speaking about 'phases' but not 'stages'.)

For my part, I shall conform to the elementary logical principles stated by Pascal when he said 'I never quarrel about a name as long as I am told what meaning is given it'.

In their translation into foreign languages the Chinese are always careful to use the expression 'uninterrupted revolution' (by stages) to avoid any confusion with Trotsky's ideas.

1. Trotsky wrote:

It is nonsense to say that stages in general cannot be skipped. The living historical process always makes leaps over isolated 'stages' which derive from the theoretical breakdown into its component parts of the process of development in its entirety . . .

The third Chinese revolution . . . will not have a 'democratic' period . . . It will be forced . . . to abolish (from the start) bourgeois ownership in the towns and countryside.

In contrast, Mao argues that the revolution is at once uninterrupted and that it passes through determined stages. These stages can neither be leapt over, nor can the tasks of a stage be embarked upon before those of the preceding one have been accomplished:(72)

Taken as a whole, the Chinese revolutionary movement led by the Communist Party embraces two stages, i.e. the democratic and the socialist revolutions . . . The second process can only be carried through after the first has been completed. The democratic revolution is the necessary preparation for the socialist revolution, and the socialist revolution is the inevitable sequel to the democratic revolution.

Mao emphasises that it is necessary to understand both 'the difference and the connection' between these two stages. The Trotskyists saw the connection but not the difference, while the opportunists of the Chinese Right (Ch'en Tu-hsiu) saw the difference but not the connection.

Under the leadership of the Communist Party the Chinese people carried out the tasks of the democratic stage in a consistent and radical manner, thus ensuring the uninterrupted transition (the interpenetration, as Lenin said) of the revolution to the socialist stage.

2. The displacements of the principal contradiction are the objective basis for the distinction between the stages. A different system of class alliances corresponds to each one of them. During the democratic revolution the party of the proletariat, supported by the fundamental masses of workers and peasants and regrouping under its leadership all the forces which can be united, especially the petty bourgeoisie and a part of the national bourgeoisie, carries to completion the struggle against imperialism, bureaucratic and comprador capital and feudalism. This stage goes beyond the liberation of China (1949) to the completion of agrarian reform (1952), when the principal contradiction becomes that between the working class and the bourgeoisie. The revolution has entered its socialist stage, during which the proletariat is principally in alliance with the poor peasants and the lower stratum of the middle peasants.

For Trotsky, the principal contradiction remains the same during the whole period of the transition from capitalism to socialism: the capital/labour contradiction.

It follows that, for him, the bourgeoisie confronting the workers always and everywhere constitutes one reactionary mass. This being true for the entire world it is also therefore true for China.

The Chinese Communists have been able to distinguish between two groups in the bourgeoisie of their country. One consisted of bureaucratic capital (the four great families who controlled the state apparatus) and comprador capital which acted as an intermediary between the international monopolies and the Chinese market. This group was the instrument of imperialism and the ally of the landlords. The other comprised the middle or national bourgeoisie which displayed a revolutionary character on the one hand and a tendency towards compromise with the enemy on the other. Imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucratic capital were crushing and stifling the middle bourgeoisie. It had a vital interest in the elimination of semi-feudal relations in the countryside in order to enlarge the market, and in national independence to free it from imperialist dumping. It follows that at certain times and to a certain extent it was able to participate in the revolution. In other respects it was an exploiting class as it retained links with imperialism and feudalism and was economically and politically weak, so that there was a risk that it would go over to the side of counter-revolution, particularly after a period of successful popular struggle (for example 1927-31).

Even when it was an ally of the proletariat it remained hesitant and vacillating; hence the necessity to adopt towards it a policy of unity and struggle, that is, to criticise it in order to induce it to prove more steadfast in the anti-imperialist struggle. Given the fact that China was a backward country it was necessary to maintain on the economic level a united front with the national bourgeoisie after the victory of the revolution. In the people's democratic dictatorship then set up, this class constituted a part of the people.(74) The contradiction between it and the working class which it continued to exploit presented, in addition to an antagonistic component, a non-antagonistic component. This means that in the concrete conditions in China this contradiction could be solved peacefully by a policy of unity, criticism and education.

This is, in fact, what was done. The national bourgeoisie ceased to exist as a class in 1966, after a fairly long transitional period.

It is hardly necessary to point out that, for the Trotskyists, any alliance with a fraction of the bourgeoisie, whatever the concrete conditions, is an abominable betrayal of principles, as is the formula 'democratic dictatorship of the people'.

Trotsky had learned from Lenin that the stages of a revolution are distinguished by the nature of the socio-economic formations on its agenda, not by that of the political power. In Russia, the democratic stage lasted from February 1917 to July 1918. Trotsky himself acknowledged that the period from November 1917 to July 1918 was democratic.(76) The Trotskyists today have forgotten this. Ernest Mandel does not understand that the democratic stage in China might have lasted until 1952, although the power established in 1949 was in its essence a dictatorship of the proletariat, for the latter had first to complete the democratic transformation before going on to socialist measures.

3. According to Trotsky:

in a country where the proletariat has power in its hands as the result of the democratic revolution, the subsequent fate of the dictatorship and socialism depends in the last analysis not only and not so much upon the national productive process as upon the development of the international socialist revolution.

The reason for this is 'The world division of labour, the dependence of Soviet industry upon foreign technology, the dependence of the productive forces of the advanced countries of Europe upon Asiatic raw materials'.

As I have shown, Trotsky was convinced that the dictatorship of the proletariat in an economically backward country would quickly be crushed by foreign intervention and internal counter-revolution unless help came from the victorious proletariat in one or several advanced countries. For forty years history has daily contradicted this prognosis of Trotsky's which he presented, moreover, in the mode of 'That's how it is', with no explanation of either how or why.

The Chinese conceive the solidarity between their revolution and the world revolution quite differently:

(a) When they were still in the democratic and national liberation stage they were deeply conscious of the truth of the theory developed by Lenin and Stalin according to which, after the October revolution, 'the liberation movements of oppressed nations play an integral part in the world socialist revolution': because both have a common enemy, imperialism; because the leadership of the proletariat exercised through the Communist Party guarantees the transition to the socialist revolution after the complete victory of the democratic revolution; because the achievement of economic independence and 'a fortiori' the building of a socialist economy require relations of mutual assistance and solidarity with the socialist camp.

(b) The revolutionary struggles in the world undermine the rear of imperialism and are one of the factors that prevent it from attacking the socialist countries and contribute to its defeat when it ventures to do so. The Chinese communists have pointed out that the vast regions of Asia, Africa and Latin America dominated by imperialism are the nodal point at which the contradictions of the contemporary world converge, the storm centre where the revolutionary peoples have reaped numerous victories since 1945, where partisan armies are rooted in the masses and are becoming progressively stronger, and where, in the present circumstances, a people's war has the best chance of victory. They have recalled what Stalin said in 1925:(79)

The colonial countries constitute the principal rear of imperialism. The revolutionisation of this rear is bound to undermine imperialism not only in the sense that imperialism will be deprived of its rear, but also in the sense that the revolutionisation of the East is bound to give a powerful impulse to the intensification of the revolutionary crisis in the West. Lin Piao's theory of the encirclement of the cities of the world (imperialist countries) by the countryside of the world (dominated countries) means just this.

Since 1963 the Chinese have said:

We believe that, with the . . . struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in Western Europe and North America, the momentous day of battle will arrive in these homes of capitalism and heartlands of imperialism. When that day comes, Western Europe and North America will undoubtedly become the centre of world political struggles, of world contradictions.

The signs heralding this great future struggle became clear in 1967-8. The revolt of the youth and the revolutionary awakening of the broad masses in the imperialist metropolises themselves are new, universal phenomena which mark the entry of the world into a new historical era. The Chinese immediately saw the significance of these great struggles and gave them enthusiastic support.

This turning-point in history must be connected with the war in Vietnam which has discredited reactionary ideologies (the Free World, American democracy, etc.) in the eyes of youth. For its part the cultural revolution showed youth the way forward. The formula in which Mao Tse-tung summed up the numerous principles of Marxism-Leninism, 'It is right to rebel', has become the motto of revolutionary youth throughout the world.

Trotsky's internationalism was based on the unity of the world market from which he deduced the necessary supremacy of the advanced capitalist countries. If he acknowledged that the imperialist chain could be broken at its weakest link, this could only happen, under pain of defeat, as an immediate prelude to the revolution in the more developed countries. His theory was therefore that of the strongest link.(81) On this basis he formulated a pious wish; he hoped that the revolution would triumph very quickly in these countries, otherwise all would be lost.

The Chinese do not think that all is lost if the revolution is late in coming. They know, in the meantime, that history does not ask for our preferences and that it generally progresses by its bad side. Their internationalism is based on the structuring of the system of international relations by the political class struggle on a global scale. They show that there are four fundamental contradictions, all equally important, which form a system (each one is present in the other three). These contradictions oppose:

(a) the oppressed nations to imperialism and social-imperialism;

(b) the proletariat to the bourgeoisie in the capitalist and revisionist countries;

(c) the imperialists to each other and to social-imperialism;

(d) the socialist countries to the imperialist and social-imperialist countries.

At the moment, the first is the most explosive.

As for Trotsky, he granted an exorbitant privilege to the proletariats in the advanced countries in his idea of the world revolution. He understood neither the laws of revolution in the colonial and semi-colonial countries, nor did he concede that for a long time they could be in the vanguard of the struggle.

The Chinese communists know that it is the peoples of the advanced capitalist countries who will deliver the final blow to imperialism. They also know that the final victory of socialism and the transition to communism will only be carried out on a world scale but they cannot accept formulations such as this one: 'The maintenance of the proletarian revolution within a national framework can only be a provisional state of affairs . . . The way out for it lies only in the victory of the proletariat of the advanced countries'.

They would even be tempted to invert the formula: the security of the proletariat in the advanced countries depends on the victory of the peoples dominated by imperialism. This inversion had already been executed by Marx. He wrote to Engels on 10 December 1869:

I long believed that it would be possible to overthrow the Irish regime through English working-class ascendancy . . . more thorough study has now convinced me of the exact opposite. The English working class will never accomplish anything before it has got rid of Ireland. The lever must be applied in Ireland.(84)

4. According to Mao Tse-tung, contradictions are the motor of history.

He has written:

The law of the unity of opposites is the fundamental law of the inverse. This law operates universally, whether in the natural world, or in human society, or in man's thinking. Between the opposites in a contradiction there is at once unity and struggle, and it is this that impels things to move and change.

As Lenin had already pointed out in a note criticising Bukharin, contradiction and antagonism must not be confused. The former will exist in communist society. According to Mao, the development of these contradictions and their resolution will give rise to sudden qualitative changes, that is, to revolutions. The revolutionary process will continue indefinitely. There will be no end to history. Trotsky was totally unaware of this aspect of the theory of the uninterrupted revolution which is derived from the dialectical nature of the real.

In the debate cited at the beginning of this section, Vergès had no time to express himself as clearly as this, for the chairman allowed him only one sentence to reply to Frank and Deutscher. His reply was: 'Marxist-Leninists are not the "Monsieur Jourdains" of Trotskyism.'

In fact, as Trotskyism has no hold on the real as a result of its original sin - the fact that it is cut off from the masses - its supporters console themselves by explaining others' victories by an unconscious application of the only revolutionary doctrine: their own. They do not bring about the revolution but are very fond of distributing praise and blame. When they approve of Marxist-Leninists it is because they supposedly practise Trotskyism without knowing it. How else can they account for the logical scandal presented by their opponents' revolutionary successes except by attributing them to the occult influence of their own ideas? 'Since these mysteries are beyond us, let us pretend to shape them,' they say, imitating Figaro.