Permanent Revolution: Still The Best Choice?

As I understand it, the theory of the Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry has four components:

1. The revolution in underdeveloped countries will be an anti-Feudal revolution which could go in any number of directions, from the establishment of a parliamentary body with suffrage based on property rights, to radical forms of democracy. The interests of the proletariat are bound up with achieving the best possible ground from which to accomplish the socialist revolution, from which it follows that we should fight to move the revolution in the direction of the best outcome, the most radically democratic regime possible, with various social legislation such as the eight hour day instituted.

2. The force which is holding the revolution back from going as far as it possibly can in underdeveloped nations is the bourgeoisie itself. It is the bourgeoisie which will prevent us from pushing the revolution to the most radical democratic conclusions possible. The bourgeoisie may be able to overthrow Tsarism, but it will want to stop before things go too far, and so socialists must then work to go beyond the bourgeoisie and bring the revolution to the conclusion most favourable to fighting the modern class struggle.

3. The force which will allow the socialist proletariat to move beyond the immediate bourgeois revolution towards radical-democracy is the peasantry, and not just the poor peasantry, but the peasantry as a whole. The socialist proletariat will therefore have to fight the bourgeoisie to gain political support from the peasantry.

4. The whole process will requires an armed uprising which will install a temporary provisional government, "the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry." When the revolutionary provisional government has accomplished it's task of the formation of a radical bourgeois republic, the socialists will then become a party of the opposition, but able to wage the modern class struggle on the most favourable basis possible.

There was a very interesting talk by Lars T. Lih about the April Theses and the change in Lenin's views in 1917, which can be read online here. Lih basically argues that Lenin's original line was the correct one, and that Kamenev was correct to reassert it against Lenin's newfound emphasis on the poor peasantry against the wealthy peasants.

As for Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution, I do think it has serious problems. Originally Trotsky argues that the peasantry cannot form an independent political party, this lack of political revolutionary tendencies is what will force the peasantry to ally with either the bourgeoisie or the proletariat. But the peasants did form an independent political party in the form of the Social-Revolutionaries. In fact, Trotsky's basis for rejecting the Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry is that it would presupposed a coalition between the RSDLP and a party of peasants, but that is exactly what happened in October when the Council of People's Commisars was formed with delegates from the Bolshevik and Left-Social Revolutionary parties.

On the other hand, the Bolsheviks clearly had socialism in sight in 1917, and not a radical bourgeois republic. I think it may be more correct to say that 1917 was more a compromise between the positions of Lenin and Trotsky than a total vindication of Trotsky.

With reference to your discussion about the peasantry, I suppose it depends how you define it. To me the English word 'peasantry' signifies a class of landowners and excludes, for example the rural proletariat. It is a word without a direct Turkish equivilant, with the term which is generally used being a direct translation of the term 'villager'.

That is how I understand it anyway. Even if it is not exactly right that is how it is generally used by Marxists. Of course there are huge differences within the peasantry, but it is a class defined by its relationship to the means of production.

Devrim

Students of Trotskyism and of peasantry might find it relevant to search on the web via  posadiste, then click on welcome, then on  new, which should then show   Manifesto of the First of May 2010, and also the Posadist statement - 'We support the historical project to build the Fifth International for socialism in the 21st century'. 

Please note that I am not a member of Posadists nor of any political organisation, and am merely pointing towards a field of political endeavour which has been active in South America and elsewhere for many years.

I may reply to what's been posted a little more comprehensively in a bit, just a few thoughts.

I don't think the difference between the DDotPaP and Trotsky's Permanent Revolution are about wether or not socialism can be established. The difference is, as Lih notes in the article I posted, on their attitude towards the 'axiom of the class ally'. This axiom says that you cannot set up a government without majority political support, and therefore the possibilities of the revolution are determined by how far the peasantry is willing to take it. Lenin accepts this, and in 1905 uses it to argue that the Russian revolution will set up a radical bourgeois republic. Trotsky rejects it, and argues that it will be necessary for the working-class to exercise a dictatorship of it's own interests against the peasantry. In 1917 Lenin read Karl Kautsky's 'Prospects of the Russian Revolution', in which Kautsky says that the social differentiation between rich and poor peasants means that we cannot predict how the peasantry will act, and there is a possibility that they could support 'steps towards socialism'. On this basis, Lenin thought that a transition (Although not an immediate one) towards socialism could be effected in Russia with the support of the poor peasantry. He is still working within his earlier framework of setting up a government with majority political support, but now he thinks that the opinion of Russia's peasantry will swing differently to his earlier predictions.

I don't think the DDotPaP has much to do with Mao's new democracy. For Lenin, the DDotPaP is a temporary provisional government, from which the party of the socialist proletariat will eventually step aside and allow for the further development of capitalism, while for Mao, new democracy was a permanent government which would transition into socialism. For Lenin there was no question of remaining in a government which would be essentially a bourgeois government, and would end up putting down strikes and such.

The idea that October 1917 set up a Revolutionary Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry also seems more in line with the thinking of the ICC on the state, whereas the idea that it was a purely workers' government seems to be more in line with Trot thinking. The idea that a "workers' state" was set up seems more conducive to the idea that the USSR was a "degenerated workers' state", whereas the idea that DDotPaP was set up seems more conducive to the view that it was some form of "state-capitalism", initially under a "workers' and peasants' state", but with a good deal of "bueracratic distortions" which eventually won out, if I may be permitted to quote Lenin ad nauseum.

I only skimmed through the ICC article, but it seems to ignore the fact that in October 1915, when Lenin was still for the "revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry", he was already calling for all power to the Soviets:

"Soviets of Workers’ Deputies and similar institutions must be regarded as organs of insurrection, of revolutionary rule. It is only in connection with the development of a mass political strike and with an insurrection, and in the measure of the latter’s preparedness, development and success that such institutions can be of lasting value." (Several Theses)

Another point worth quoting from the above mentioned work:

"The task confronting the proletariat of Russia is the consummation of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia in order to kindle the socialist revolution in Europe."

There are a lot of these ideas, going back to the time of Marx and Engels, that a Russian revolution would spark off socialist revolution in Western Europe. The idea also existed that would result in a kind of feedback process which would speed up the transition to socialism in Russia. So the ideas about the interlinked nature of countries under capitalism were present in the DDotPaP.

Good post Alf. On the subject of permanent revolution and Trotsky's belief in the proletariat carrying out the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, I think this is probably Trotsky's key weak point. He seems to put forward the view later on that the democratic revolution in backward countries will inevitably lead to the socialist revolution, which takes the emphasis way from proletarian class autonomy and back onto the alliance with the 'progressive' bourgeoisie. Many modern Trot groups support politics which probably would've been anathema to Trotsky on this basis, that the democratic revolution 'inevitably' leads forward to the socialist revolution. On this point, Lenin definitely still has something to contribute to our understanding of the tasks of the proletariat in backwards countries, as Trotsky's view on this point is essentially a form of economism.

However, I don't think there was much of a move by Lenin toward recognising the correctness of Trotsky on the core arguments. As I noted above, Lenin's support of socialism in Russia was based on the adaptation of his original theory to the new conditions present in Russia - the process of social differentiation of the peasantry into a class of wealthy landowners and a class of rural proletarians. On the key difference between Lenin and Trotsky - the importance of political support from the peasantry - Lenin never went back. The other points about international revolution and such were not really unique to Trotsky I don't think. Again, a good deal of Marxists going back to Marx and Engels themselves thought that a hypothetical Russian revolution would advance the process of revolution in Western Europe, Lenin himself makes the argument in his October 1915 theses.

I also don't think the rejection of the idea that a simple bourgeois revolution could occur in backwards countries has much to do with the idea of decadence. You yourself note the example of the revolution of 1848.In point of fact, I don't think a simple bourgeois revolution has ever really occured in history.

Issac Deustcher discusses this at length in his biography of Trotsky

Devrim

In his video talk on the subject, Lih went into more detail on the Parvus-Trotsky thing. He claims that the idea of a workers' provisional government becoming permanent and possibly engaging in civil war with the Russian peasantry was exclusive to Trotsky and rejected by Parvus. On this crucial point, Parvus was closer to Lenin than Trotsky, so it may be more accurate to talk about a Parvus-Lenin theory than a Parvus-Trotsky theory.

Also, I did have a moderate sized post earlier that went into moderation and seems to have failed to appear.

Also:

A peasant originally was someone tied to the land through a Feudal relationship of one sort or another. The term has been somewhat expanded to include a variety of landlord-renter relationships that have existed through-out the third world. Often this includes systems of debt-slavery, where peasant barrow money on future crops and pay it back. In Latin America, the common claim is that semi-feudal property relations were imported during the Spanish conquests. Whether that's true or not, it seems like there's little basis to think semi-feudal relations prevail in that large an area

The peasant differs from proletarian is the sense that the Feudal or latifundal landlord is explicitly parasitical. The peasant grows his crops and pays a tarrif in one fashion or another. He has more or less possession of the land - the means of production but is penniless/in-debt. The tendency is for the peasants as a group to split into small capitalist farms and rural wage laborers as capitalist relations become dominant. Small capitalist farmers would more or less "petit bourgeois" and would employ rural farmers to various degrees.

If we're making a materialist analysis of a society, it makes sense to only talk of "peasants" as an authentically different stratum of the dispossessed surviving from pre-capitalist times. We should keep in mind the many differences between sections of the working class but this is a different analysis.