Fake Socialism

Left-wing is a term which comes from the old French legislature, referring to that section of the membership sitting on the left side of the chamber (as viewed from the president’s chair) holding progressive liberal opinions.

Someone claimed that the lesson of history is that people never learn the lesson of history. Obviously this is untrue (otherwise there could never have been any progress, social or technical) but such a cynical view could be justified if it was based on the antics of the Left, because they never learn.

The Left, despite referring to themselves as “socialists” have no confidence in the workers to win through. They tell us, socialism will come eventually someday – presumably, when we are all dead and gone. By this, they mean the job falls not to them but to others sometime in the future. There is no logic to this whatsoever. For the world is ready now and painfully waiting – how is socialism to ever come in the future when we are never to explain it to people here now, for it takes a while? What will happen that might cause this future embrace of socialism, we are never told.

We in the Socialist Party reject the conventional method of political analysis that seeks to understand politics in terms of ‘left’ or ‘right’. The left and right are different only to the extent that they provide a different political and organisational apparatus for administering the same capitalist system. This includes those on the left who aim for socialism some time in the distant future but in the meantime demand some form of transitional capitalism. For this reason the Socialist Party cannot be usefully identified as either ‘left-wing’ or ‘right-wing’. Many political groups, somewhat disenchanted with orthodox reformist practice, fancy themselves as "the Left" . We do not. Typically the Left share the following ideas:
1. State ownership is socialism, or a step on the way to socialism.
2. Russia set out on the way to socialism.
3. Socialism will arrive by violent insurrection.
4. Workers cannot attain socialist consciousness by their own efforts, only a trade union consciousness.
5. Workers must vote for the Labour Party.
6. Workers must be led by an elite - a ‘vanguard’.
7. Workers must be offered bait to follow this vanguard in the form of ‘transitional demands’, a selective programme of reforms.

These beliefs interlock and support each other. If, for example, workers are so feeble-minded that they cannot understand socialist arguments then they need to be led. Socialism will therefore come about without mass understanding, by a disciplined minority seizing power. Widespread socialist education is not only unnecessary, it is pointless. If the best workers can do is reach a trade union consciousness and vote Labour, then this is what they must be urged to do. Since workers must have some incentive to follow the vanguard, 'transitional demands’ in the form of reformist promises are necessary, and since these tactics were successful in carrying to power the Russian Bolsheviks, it is assumed that Russia must have set out on the road to socialism. The basic dogma on which all this is founded is that the mass of the workers cannot understand socialism. When it is suggested that the majority of the working class must attain a clear desire for the abolition of the wages system, and the introduction of a world-wide moneyless community, the Left reply that this is “too abstract”, or “too academic”. Indeed, theythemselves do not strive for such a socialist system. None of the Left groups advocate the immediate establishment of a world without wages, with production democratically geared to meeting people's needs. Some of them say, when pushed, that they look forward to such a world “ultimately”, but since this “ultimate” aim has no effect on their actions it can only be interpreted as an empty platitude. Far from specifying socialism as their aim, they are reticent and muddled about even the capitalist reforms they will introduce if they get power. The Marxist revisionist Bernstein dictum's “The movement is everything, the goal nothing” sums up the Left. The 'Left' may claim that it enjoys the best of both worlds, both supporting reforms and advocating revolution. But in fact its revolutionary posturing.

The Left put forward a whole raft of reformist demands that on paper might seem to be appealing. The only problem is that there is no plan to actually achieve these demands - for the reason they are pretend demands. Trotsky himself called these kind of demands "transitional demands" - the idea being to look at everybody else's demands and make bigger demands so they sound great. Occasionally they might achieve a demand which will make them seem sincere, however the idea isn't to achieve these demands - it is to not achieve them! This is the Troskyists' grand master plan to make workers dissatisfied, so the latter will become revolutionary and flock behind their political leadership. In other words the workers are to be the infantry led by the Trotskyist generals. The Left have real aims quite different to the reform programme they peddle. In this, they are being as dishonest as any other politician, from the left or right. The ultimate result of this is disillusionment with the possibility of radical change.

Reformist political parties in opposition always claim how much better everything would be if only they were in power. Everything would be better: the NHS, the environment, the economy, industrial efficiency and productivity. On top of all this there would be savings of many millions, even billions, of pounds, giving us all more spending power as well as big savings for businesses.And how is all this to be achieved? By two old leftist illusions; taxing the rich and nationalisation disguised as public or social ownership. If all their proposed reforms were adopted – nationalisation, the multitude of changes in the tax system, defence budget cuts, etc., we’d still be living in a money-driven, buying and selling economy, still working for wages and salaries, still insecure, being hired and fired, in short, in capitalism. The demand for reforms will often only succeed if it can be reconciled with the profit-making needs of the system. In other words, the reform will often be turned to the benefit of the capitalist class at the expense of any working class gain. The aim of the left-wing has always been to establish state capitalism, the profit system planned centrally by a miracle-performing state. The source of the wealth would still be the surplus value wrung from the working class. Lacking an honest revolutionary stance for a new society, the Left becomes caught in a pointless and frustrating circular battle with an economic system that is based on exploitation. As long as the accumulation of capital takes precedence, either in the hands of the individual capitalist or state institutions, the primary concern of exploitation of labour and making profit will take precedence over the concerns of human need.

The ideology of national capitalism, reflecting the interests of small-scale capitalists, is still strong and finds support both from the “right-wing ” and the “left-wing” who beat the same nationalist drum. The Left in effect argue that workers should support national as opposed to transnational capitalism (Cuba or Venezuela,for example). Socialists, on the other hand, don’t take sides in this conflict between different sections of the capitalist class. The Left downplays the idea of directly challenging the system and organising an alternative political economy and is working instead on the terrain of capitalism.

The Left like to act as though they are Moses, and lay down the commandments in stone for ignorant followers to obey. Left Wing propaganda offering leadership adds to the impression that the worker is an inferior being who is incapable of thinking, organising and acting and imbues further the master-and-servant mentality of the worker. As already stated all Left organisations start from the premise that workers are too stupid to understand or want socialism by their own volition. Therefore, revolutionary ideas have to be introduced from outside the working class by all-knowing "professional revolutionaries" who will lead workers to the promised land.

When someone comes across the Socialist Party for the first time, a common reaction is to consider us as just another left-wing political organisation. The Left use similar terminology to us, talking of socialism, class struggle, exploitation, etc, and invoking Karl Marx. But digging a little deeper will show that our political position is very different from that of the Left. The Socialist Party is not on The Left. There is so much manipulation, dishonesty, and downright erroneous thinking connected with the Left that we would not wish to be associated with them in any way. We are not and never have been connected with Lenin, Trotsky or Stalin. We are not related in any way to The Socialist Worker's Party, or The Socialist Labour Party . We've never had any connection with the Communist Party, or any of it's offshoots. We have always been opponents of nationalisation and the idea that capitalism can be reformed away. Unlike the Left, we did not feel that the working class should have to experience yet another Labour government to realise that it would be anti-working class. We are a party that consciously does not have leaders and our members are all members of the working class. There's nothing wrong with contesting elections, but if socialists are going to do this it should be done on a sound basis: getting elected on a straight socialist programme but not about trying to get elected through non-socialist votes on a programme of attractive-sounding reforms to capitalism. It should be clear that the Socialist Party is quite unlike the Left , and that we are definitely and for good reason not part of the Left. We in the Socialist Party are very much a different breed from all those others who like to use the term “socialist”.

We have often been told that the real problem is the lack of unity of the working-class movement. Some say to revolutionaries “Don't split the Left. We are all working for the same goal, so why don't you join us? We can get strength through unity.” What we are not told is what basis there can be for unity. It is not the wish of the SPGB to be separate for the sake of being so. Are socialists supposed to unite with those who want to reform and administer capitalism? Or do we unite with those who claim socialism can be established by a well meaning leadership without a class-conscious working class? Do we unite with those who see socialism as a system based on state control and state ownership of industry: and lastly, do we unite with those who refuse to recognise the parliamentary road to socialism? Revolutionaries must reject this appeal if they are to remain revolutionaries. If there is no common ground upon which agreement can be reached then there can be no unity. Our analysis of the Left is not based upon some narrow sectarianism—it's based upon principle. We do not, nor have we ever, supported capitalist parties, especially those that dress up in revolutionary garb in order to hoodwink the workers. The Left is an expression of all the political mistakes made by the working class last century—from the Labour Party to the Soviet Union. We do not doubt that well-meaning individuals get caught up in such chicanery for no other reason than a desire to see a better world. However, sentiment can never be a substitute. However, a socialist organisation will get nowhere without a firm grasp of democracy, sound Marxist principle, a disdain to conceal its socialist objective, and a membership in full possession of the facts about current society and the revolutionary alternative. Unlike the Left we openly advocate common ownership and democratic control.

trotsky

When the split in the Russian Social-Democratic Party took place at a conference in London in 1903, Trotsky took an individual stand. It is not true that he was a Menshevik, for, although he, like the Mensheviks, opposed Lenin's plan for an organisation of revolutionary conspirators to be controlled by a dictatorship in the centre, his fundamental views differed from both factions. Trotsky himself made it clear that he did not consider the controversy important enough to warrant a split, and continued to work with both groups in an attempt to re-establish unity. whereas both factions were agreed that the coming Russian Revolution would be essentially capitalist and that Russia would consequently have to pass through an era of capitalist democracy, Trotsky was alone in proclaiming that the overthrow of Czardom could be accomplished by the Russian movement alone, which could maintain itself in power and so cut out completely the period of capitalist transition. This point of view he elaborated into a theory called "Permanent Revolution".Trotsky took up a position, arguing that if the working class were to come to power in the course of the coming bourgeois revolution in Russia it was unreasonable to expect them to hand over power to the bourgeoisie; they would, and should according to Trotsky, take steps to transform society in a socialist direction. The basic points of this theory rest on the assumption that power could be held by socialists in Russia long enough to enable the workers of the more advanced Western countries, helped, of course, by their Russian comrades, to introduce Socialism. Then the material backwardness of Russia could be overcome through the united efforts of a Socialist Europe. It was adopted by Lenin himself in April 1917 when he returned to Russia from exile in Switzerland. As a result Trotsky himself then rallied to the Bolsheviks.

When hopes for a socialist revolution in the West had been frustrated, Trotsky blamed this on bad and treacherous leadership. The debates between Trotskyists and Stalinists always revolved around such questions of leadership – if only the leaders had acted in such-and-such a way, things would have turned out better. Tactics, said Trotsky, should have been framed so as to win workers over from their Social Democratic leaders, under the command of the Communist Party: “We must understand how to tear the workers away from their leaders”. Trotskyists continue to attach themselves to larger movements in the hope of providing alternative leaderships and of being at the heart of the struggle.

Trotsky defended Russian state-capitalism on the grounds that the Russian economic system, i.e., state control, was essentially working-class, and apparently required only a change in its political administration to perfect it for working-class needs.This error is bound up with Trotsky's confusion between State-capitalism and Socialism, evidence of which can be found in his writings. Trotsky fell from power because his theory of Permanent Revolution and his consequent insistence on continued revolutionary agitation abroad would have cut off all technical aid from the Western world, and so made any attempt at industrial development more difficult in Russia. In exile Trotsky played the role of "loyal opposition" to the Stalin regime in Russia. He was very critical of the various political aspects of this regime but to his dying day he defended the view that the Russian revolution had established a "Workers State" in Russia and that this represented a gain for the working class both of Russia and of the whole world. Russia under Stalin was a Workers State, not a perfect one, certainly, but a Workers State nevertheless. Trotsky was only able to sustain his point of view by making the completely un-Marxist assumption that capitalist distribution relations (the privileges of the Stalinist bureaucracy) could exist on the basis of socialist production relations. Marx concluded that the mode of distribution was entirely determined by the mode of production. Thus the existence of privileged distribution relations in Russia should itself have been sufficient proof that Russia was not socialist. Trotsky rejected the view that Russia was state capitalist on the of grounds of the absence of a private capitalist class, of private shareholders and bondholders who could inherit and bequeath their property.

The working-class movement has vacillated between four different roads:
1 ) The armed conquest of power by a small determined group which would hold on to power until the majority were converted – Blanquism
2 ) The seizure of the means of production and distribution by some form of industrial action – Syndicalism
3 ) The accomplishment of ever more sweeping reforms until capitalism had been reformed out of existence and society had “glided” into socialism – Reformism
4 ) The conquest of power by a majority of class-conscious workers antagonistic to reform policies, spurning leadership, using democratic methods, and imbued with the single aim of abolishing the capitalist ownership of the means of production and distribution in order to replace it by common ownership – Socialism.

In the history of the working class movement a variety of different parties have been formed; some following one or other of the above roads
Trying to change capitalism, or "reformism" is the one that has been taken by most people who have wanted to improve society. We do not deny that certain reforms won by the working class have helped to improve our general living and working conditions. Indeed, we see little wrong with people campaigning for reforms that bring essential improvements and enhance the quality of their lives, and some reforms do indeed make a difference to the lives of millions and can be viewed as "successful". There are examples of this in such fields as education, housing, child employment, work conditions and social security. Socialists have to acknowledge that the "welfare" state, the NHS and so on, made living standards for some sections of the working class better than they had been under rampant capitalism and its early ideology of laissez faire, although these ends should never be confused with socialism.

However, in this regard we also recognise that such "successes" have in reality done little more than to keep workers and their families in efficient working order and, while it has taken the edge of the problem, it has rarely managed to remove the problem completely. Socialists do not oppose reformism because it is against improvements in workers' lives lest they dampen their revolutionary ardour; nor, because it thinks that decadent capitalism simply cannot deliver on any reforms; but because our continued existence as propertyless wage slaves undermines whatever attempts we make to control and better our lives through reforms. Our objection to reformism is that by ignoring the essence of class, it throws blood, sweat and tears into battles that will be undermined by the workings of the wages system. All that effort, skill, energy, all those tools could be turned against class society, to create a society of common interest where we can make changes for our common mutual benefit. So long as class exists, any gains will be partial and fleeting, subject to the ongoing struggle.What we are opposed to is the whole culture of reformism, the idea that capitalism can be tamed and made palatable with the right reforms.

We oppose those organisations that promise to deliver a programme of reforms on behalf of the working class, often in order to gain a position of power. Such groups on the Left , often have real aims quite different to the reform programme they peddle. Many of the Left are going to put before the working class only what they think will be understood by the workers - proposals to improve and reform the present capitalist system- and , of course they are going to try to assume the leadership of such struggles as a way of achieving support for their vanguard party. These Left parties may try to initiate such struggles themselves and they will try to muscle in on any struggles of this sort that groups of workers have started off themselves.But it's all very cynical because they know that reformism ultimately leads nowhere (as they readily admit in their theoretical journals meant for circulation amongst their members, though not in the populist, agitational journals). The purpose in telling workers to engage in such struggles is to teach them a lesson, the hard way which is the only way some on the Left think they can learn i.e. by experiencing failure. The expectation is that when, these reformist struggles fail the workers will then turn against capitalism, under the Party Leadership.It is the old argument, advanced by Trotsky in his founding manifesto for the "Fourth International" in 1938 , that socialist consciousness will develop out of the struggle for reforms within capitalism: when workers realise that they can’t get the reforms they have been campaigning for they will, Trotsky pontificated, turn to the "cadres" of the Fourth International for leadership.In fact the working class never never happens so all that's achieved is to encourage reformist illusions amongst workers .The ultimate result of this is disillusionment with the possibility of radical change.

It can be summed up in the following:
1 ) The working class has a reformist consciousness.
2 ) It is the duty of the Revolutionary Party to be where the masses are.
3 ) Therefore, to be with the mass of the working class, we must advocate reforms.
Further:
4 ) The working class is only reformist minded.
5 ) Winning reformist battles will give the working class confidence.
6 ) So that, therefore, they will go on to have a socialist revolution.
Thus:
7 ) The working class will learn from its struggles, and will eventually come to realise that assuming power is the only way to meet its ends.
8 ) That the working class will realise, through the failure of reforms to meet its needs, the futility of reformism and capitalism, and will overthrow it.
9 ) That the working class will come to trust the Party that leads them to victory, and come a social crisis they will follow it to revolution.

It all relies upon a notion of the inherently revolutionary nature of the working class and that through the class struggle this inherently revolutionary character will show itself. Although , it hasn't.
Its also flawed because it shows no reason why, due to the failure of reform, the workers should turn to socialism. Why, since it was people calling themselves socialists who advocated that reform, don't they turn against it, or even to fascism? Under the model of revolution presented by the Trotskyists the only way the working class could come to socialist consciousness is through a revolution is made by the minority with themselves as its leaders.This, then, explains their dubious point about needing to "be" where the mass of the working class is. It is the reason why a supposedly revolutionary party should change its mind to be with the masses, rather than trying to get the masses to change their minds and be with it. They do not want workers to change their minds, merely to become followers. Their efforts are not geared towards changing minds, or raising revolutionary class consciousness.

What of the Labour Party ? They did seek to reform capitalism in the hope that perhaps a sudden change will take place and capitalism will prove to be a fair and fulfilling society for all its members. Now , as the natural conclusion to reformism has completely overrun them, they are a simple party of capitalist maintenance, with objectives of some form of new society being not just shunted into the background but completely out of existence. They are now more dedicated than ever to running with optimal efficiency the very system that creates poverty, misery, homelessness and war. Keeping the system and trying to make it work against its logic is not a viable option. Such reformism has been tried over the years and has failed. Those who set out to change society through winning political power and reforms have had to accept what was always inevitable, that reformism is a graveyard for such hopes. For anyone wishing to bring about a new and better world, reformism requires a pact with the devil. Where the forming of a government means being sucked into running the system. This is what has happened to the Labour Party.

Over decades, millions of workers have invested their hopes in so-called ‘practical’, ‘possibilist’ organisations like the Labour Party, hoping against hope that they would be able to neuter the market economy when, in reality, the market economy has successfully neutered them. they turned out to be the real ‘impossibilists’ – demanding an unattainable humanised capitalism – is one of the greatest tragedies of the last century, made all the greater because it was so predictable.They held idea that capitalism could be reformed into something kindly and user-friendly. It couldn't and it can't.

Socialists understand well the urge to do something now, to make a change. That makes us all the more determined, however, to get the message across, to clear away the barrier of the wages system, so that we can begin to build a truly human society. Why waste time fighting for half measures? We would better spend our time, energies, and resources educating people to establish socialism rather than waste time in the false belief that our present system can be made to work in everyone's interest.We do not claim “capitalist reforms” stand in the way of achieving socialism. If we did we'd logically have to oppose them; which we don't. We encourage workers to fight back against employers and, although we don't propose or advocate reforms, we don't oppose them if they genuinely do improve workers' lives under capitalism. What we say is not that they are obstacles to socialism but merely that they are irrelevant to socialism and that a socialist party should not advocate reforms.

If you are convinced, however, that groups or parties promising reforms deserve your support, we would urge you to consider the following points.The campaign, whether directed at right-wing or left-wing governments, will often only succeed if it can be reconciled with the profit-making needs of the system. In other words, the reform will often be turned to the benefit of the capitalist class at the expense of any working class gain. Any reform can be reversed and eroded later if a government finds it necessary. Reforms rarely, if ever, actually solve the problem they were intended to solve.Socialists make a choice. We choose to use our time and limited funds to work to eliminate the cause of the problems. One can pick any single problem and find that improvements have taken place, usually only after a very long period of agitation. But rarely, if ever, has the problem actually disappeared, and usually other related problems have arisen to fill the vacuum of left by the "solution".

If the view remains that the struggle for reforms is worthwhile then imagine just how many palliatives and ameliorations will be offered and conceded by a besieged capitalist class in a desperate attempt to retain ownership rights if the working class were demanding the maximum programme of full and complete appropriation and nothing less . To stem the socialist tide the capitalist parties will sink their differences and draw closer together, much as religions do today in the face of the world avalanche of atheism. Reforms now derided as Utopian will be two a penny - in an attempt to fob
off the workers. Perhaps, for example, capitalism will provide a batch of free services, on the understanding that this is "the beginning" of a free society, but socialists will not be taken in.

If a pipe bursts and the water is flooding the house , one can start bailing the water out while it continues to flow in , or one can turn the water off, and then start bailing it out . It may take a while to find the tap, but unless the water is turned off, the water will continue to rise and bailing is rather pointless. Socialists are not immune to the human tragedies which occur daily, by the millions, and which generate thousands of social activist groups trying to stem the tide. Socialists suffer those tragedies as severely as anyone else, but work to encourage people to find the tap and turn it off.

The Myth of the Transitional Society

Critique has recently published the translation of an article by Ernest Mandel, in which he develops his now familiar theme that, in the course of social evolution, there intervenes – and must intervene – between capitalism and socialism a transitional "society" with its own social base, relations of production, etc.[i] This is a point of view worth discussing but, despite the Marxist terminology in which it is expressed, it is in fact not a view held by Marx himself. As the present article will try to demonstrate, Marx did indeed speak of a "political transition period" between capitalism and socialism but never of a "transitional society". What, then, did Marx mean when he spoke of this "transition period"? Contrary to what is generally supposed (largely as a result of decades of Stalinist and Trotskyist propaganda), for Marx this period was not that between the establishment of the common ownership of the means of production and the time when the principle "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" could be implemented. Rather it is the period during which the working class would be using state power to bring the means of production into common ownership.

In other words, the transition period is a political form between the capture of political power by the working class within capitalist society and the eventual establishment of socialism, a period during which the working class has replaced the capitalist class as the ruling class, i.e. as the controller of state power. The end of this transition period is the establishment of a classless society based on the common ownership and democratic control by the whole of society of the means of production, with the consequent disappearance of the coercive state, of the system of working for wages, of the production of goods for sale on a market with a view to profit, indeed, of buying and selling, money and the market altogether. That for Marx the "transition period" was the period after the capture of political power by the working class and before the actual establishment of the common ownership of the means of production is clear both from his early and his later writings. In 1852 he wrote to his friend Weydemeyer in America that one of the things he had proved was that "the dictatorship of the proletariat" (as he called the period of working class control of state power [ii]) "only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society"[iii](emphasis added).
Engels summarizes his own and Marx's view in 1873 as follows:

"The views of German scientific socialism on the necessity of political action by the proletariat and of its dictatorship as the transition to the abolition of classes and with them of the state. . ."[iv] (emphasis added).

The transition period, then, is the period up to the establishment of the common ownership of the means of production. Again, in 1875 in his private notes on the Gotha Programme adopted by the unity congress of the German Social Democrats Marx wrote:

"Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat."[v]

Marx, we can note here, used the words "socialist" and "communist" interchangeably to refer to future classless society (if anything, he preferred the word "communist", but we shall follow Engels' later usage and employ the word "socialism" to describe future classless society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production). The idea that "socialism" and "communism" were two successive phases of post-capitalist society is not to be found in Marx, but derives from Lenin. Thus, when Marx writes, in the above quote, of "communist society", he means precisely the same as when he wrote of "classless society" in 1852.

It is true that Marx realised that, had socialism been established in his day, it would not have proved possible to implement immediately, or even for some years, the principle "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs", i.e. free access for all to consumer goods and services according to individual need. In the early years of socialism, established at this time, there would inevitably have had to have been some restrictions on access to consumer goods and services, some form of, if you like, "rationing" (if this word's association with the war- time and post-war ration cards is forgotten, for although full free access according to need would not have been possible in 1875, the amount allocated for consumption could have been considerably higher than the workers were then getting under capitalism). Marx suggested as one such possible method so-called labour-time vouchers. It is important to realise that this was only a suggestion and, moreover, one open to serious objections. But Marx's point was that, for some period of time, some method of rationing consumption would be necessary. He referred to the period of socialism during which this would be so, as "the first phase of communist society", as compared with a "higher phase" in which free access to consumer goods and services could be implemented. Note that Marx is talking of different phases of the same society, society "based on the common ownership of the means of production"[vi], i.e. a classless, stateless society with no wages or monetary system (Marx made it clear that the "labour-time vouchers" were not money, "no more `money' than a ticket for the theatre" as he put it in Capital [vii]). No doubt one could speak of a transitions from the "first" to a "higher" phase of socialism, but the fact remains that Marx did not employ the concept of "transition period" in this sense. For him, as we have explained, it was the transition from capitalism to socialism and not from one phase of socialism to another.

How long did Marx expect this political transition period to last?
His opinion on this question changed over the period of his political life. In 1848, he clearly felt it would have to last quite some years. Thirty years later, he and Engels thought it could be considerably shorter, as a result of the tremendous development of modern industry in the intervening period.
The Communist Manifesto of 1848 speaks of the working class capturing political power and using "its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e. of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible" (emphasis added).

Marx and Engels go on to list various immediate measures which they and the other members of the Communist League felt the working class should take on coming to power, in order to make "despotic inroads on the rights of property".

They conclude:

"When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character".[viii] (emphasis added)

Clearly, in 1848, Marx and Engels expected the transition period to the establishment of common ownership and the consequent abolition of classes and the state to be fairly long. Engels, in his draft for the manifesto which was not used but was later published under the title Principles of Communism {and which is always a useful gloss on the Manifesto), stated this explicitly. Answering the question, "Will it be possible for private property to be abolished at one stroke?", he wrote:

"No, no more than existing forces of production can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society. In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity".[ix]

It was not until later, after the wave of revolutionary enthusiasm of 1848 had ebbed, that Marx and Engels worked out the full implications of this. They had been saying, in effect, that the establishment of socialism was not possible in 1848. Engels, in 1895, in an introduction to some articles Marx had written, in 1850, on French politics, openly stated this:

"History has proved us, and all who thought like us, wrong. It has made it clear that the state of economic development at that time was not, by a long way, ripe for the elimination of capitalist production."[x]

Engels was clearly correct on this point. Capitalism, as Fritz Sternberg has pointed out, was then dominant only in one country:

"When Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote `The Manifesto of the Communist Party', – that is to say, about the middle of the nineteenth century – capitalism was dominant only in England; the United States was still a colonial country, in which the agricultural population far outnumbered the industrial; in Europe, the beginnings of capitalism were confined to the west – in Germany, for instance, pre-capitalist forms of production were still dominant; Russia and Japan were still feudal states; and there were relatively few points on the Asiatic coastline which were in contact with those occidental countries in which capitalist development had begun.
To say that, at that time, perhaps 10 per cent of the world's population were engaged in capitalist production is probably an optimistic estimate."[xi]

If socialism wasn't possible in 1848, this raises the interesting question (clearly relevant for later attempts to establish "socialism" in a single, backward country):
What would the working class, or rather a determined group of Communists, have been able to do in the unlikely event of them having gained control of political power at that time? Surely, only to develop capitalism. In fact, the measures listed at the end of Section II ("Proletarians and Communists") of the Manifesto, and referred to above, could accurately be described as being of a state-capitalist nature. Many of them have since been implemented in openly capitalist countries (progressive income tax, state bank, nationalisation of railways, free education, prohibition of child labour, etc.), thus indicating that there was nothing inherently anti-capitalist about them. Neither Marx nor Engels went quite so far as to repudiate these measures, or to state that the Communists of 1848 were wrong to have imagined that they could even capture political power, let alone establish socialism at that time. But this is what Engels wrote in 1872 of these measures:

". . . no special stress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of Section II. That passage would, in many respects, be very differently worded today. . . this programme has in some details become antiquated."[xii]

Also, writing in 1850, Engels discussed the fate of Thomas Munzer, as the leader of a communistic party coming to power before conditions were ripe for establishment of a communistic society. This passage is worth quoting extensively:

"The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government at a time when society is not yet ripe for the domination of the class he represents and for the measures which that domination implies. What he can do depends not upon his will but upon the degree of antagonism between the various classes, and upon the level of development of the material means of existence, of the conditions of production and commerce upon which class contradictions always repose. What he ought to do, what his party demands of him, again depends not upon him or the stage of development of the class struggle and its conditions. He is bound to the doctrines and demands hitherto propounded which, again, do not proceed, from the class relations of the moment, or from the more or less accidental level of production and commerce, but from his more or less penetrating insight into the general result of the social and political movement. Thus, he necessarily finds himself in a unsolvable dilemma. What he can do contradicts all his previous actions and principles, and the immediate interests of his party and what he ought to do cannot be done. In a word, he is compelled to represent not his party or his class, but the class for whose domination the movement is then ripe. In the interest of the movement he is compelled to advance the interests of an alien class, and to feed his own class with talk and promises, and with the assertion that the interests of that alien class are their own interests. He who is put into this awkward position is irrevocably lost."[xiii]

Marx himself had written something similar in October 1847 (a few months before he and Engels wrote the Manifesto) :

"If the proletariat destroys the political rule of the bourgeoisie, that will only be a temporary victory, only an element in the service of the bourgeois revolution itself, as in 1794, so long as in the course of history, in its `movement', the material conditions are not yet created which make necessary the abolition of the bourgeois mode of production and thus the definitive overthrow of bourgeois political rule."[xiv] (Marx's emphasis)

Is it too much to say that, had Marx and Engels and the others in the Communist League come to control political power in 1848, that, not being able to establish socialism, they would have been "irrevocably lost", in that they would have had no alternative but to develop capitalism (even if in the form of a state capitalism)?

In any event, this situation never arose, nor was it even a remote possibility. In exile in London, Marx and Engels soon realised the futility of communists plotting to seize political power in the immediate future, and turned to concentrating on the long, hard task of preparing the working class to organise itself to capture political power. After 1848, modern industry made great advances. In 1847, Engels had written of the means of production not being available in sufficient quantity to permit the immediate, or even rapid, establishment of socialism. A quarter of a century later, in 1872, he was writing :

"...it is precisely this industrial revolution which has raised the productive power of human labour to such a high level that – for the first time in the history of mankind – the possibility exists, given a rational division of labour among all, of producing not only enough for the plentiful consumption of all members of society and for an abundant reserve fund, but also of leaving each individual sufficient leisure so that what is really worth preserving in historically inherited culture – science, art, forms of intercourse – may not only be preserved but converted from a monopoly of the ruling class into the common property of the whole of society, and may be further developed."[xv]

And six years later, in that part of Anti-Dühring later published as the immensely popular pamphlet Socialism, Utopian and Scientific :

"The possibility of securing for every member of society, by means of socialized production, an existence not only fully sufficient materially, and becoming day by day more full, but an existence guaranteeing to all the free development and exercise of their physical and mental faculties – this possibility is now for the first time here, but it is here." [xvi](Engels' emphasis)

In other words, it was Engels' opinion that by the 1870's, contrary to the situation in 1848, "the state of economic development was . . . ripe for the elimination of capitalist production". While he might not have answered the question, "Will it be possible for private property to be abolished at one stroke?" with a `yes', he would certainly have answered that it could be abolished (i.e. common ownership, and a classless society established) fairly rapidly. The principle is clear here: for Marx and Engels, the higher the level of development of the means of production, the shorter the political transition period needed to make them the common property of society as a whole.
Engels was exaggerating when he wrote in 1872 that the means of production could then have provided "enough for the plentiful consumption of all members of society and for an abundant reserve fund". Certainly, they could have provided enough to completely eliminate material poverty and to raise the consumption of all well above the level they had to endure under capitalism, but it would not really have been possible to implement the principle of "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs". Engels, or course, recognised this, and it was precisely Marx's point as well in his notes on the Gotha Programme about the inevitability of some limitations on free consumption in the "first phase" of socialism.

Having discussed the question of how long Marx and Engels expected the political transition period between capitalism and socialism to last, we can now ask, how long did they think the transition (as one might want to call it) between the "first" and "higher" phases of socialism itself would take. This is something they don't seem to have discussed, but it is clear that the same principle applies: the higher the level of development of the means of production, the shorter the period.
One thing is clear, though, that the development of the means of production during this period would be on the basis of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production, and the consequent abolition of the market, money, buying and selling, wages, profits, etc, The "first phase of communist society", like the higher phase, would be a non-market society in which production would be consciously planned to satisfy human needs. What would be produced would be useful things, for direct allocation to democratically-decided social uses (individual consumption, collective consumption, expansion of productive resources, reserves, etc.). What Marx called "commodity-production", the production of goods for sale on a market, would not exist; indeed could not exist without the society ceasing to be socialist.
Marx repeatedly made it clear that socialism, in both its phases, was a non-market, production-solely-and-directly-for-use society. The Communist Manifesto specifically speaks of "the Communistic abolition of buying and selling", and of the abolition not only of capital (wealth used to produce other wealth with a view to profit), but of wage labour, too.[xvii]
In Volume I of Capital Marx speaks of "directly associated labour, a form of production that is entirely inconsistent with the production of commodities ...", [xviii] and, in Volume II, of things being different "if production were collective and no longer possessed the form of commodity production. ..". Also, in Volume II, Marx, in comparing how socialism and capitalism would deal with a particular problem, twice states that there would be no money to complicate matters in socialism: "If we conceive society as being not capitalistic but communistic, there would be no money-capital at all in the first place. ..", and, "in the case of socialized production the money- capital is eliminated".[xix] In other words, in socialism the production and distribution of wealth is solely a question of organisation and planning.

It is precisely Mandel who is the most influential and able opponent of Marx (and the others who have agreed with him, notably Bordiga) on this point about the entirely non-market nature of the "first" phase of socialism. In his essay Economics of the Transition Period, Mandel notes that:

"Immediately following the victory of the October Revolution, and especially in the period of War Communism, the Communist theoreticians saw the construction of a socialist economy primarily in terms of an immediate and general disappearance of the market and monetary economy."

Significantly, he does not question why this should have been, since this would have led him to have to admit that, on this point, the Bolshevik thinkers were in the Marxist tradition.
Mandel goes on to state that in Russia it soon appeared that "maintaining money and market relations was best suited to maximising economic growth and to the best defense of the interests of the workers as consumers" and to conclude by formulating the following general law:

"The survival of market and monetary categories thus proves inevitable during the period of transition from capitalism to socialism."[xx]

(Actually, what the experience of Russia under so-called "War Communism" proved was that isolated Russia was ripe at that time only for some form of capitalism – with its "market and monetary categories" – and not for socialism). Mandel accepts socialism as a world-wide, classless, stateless, moneyless, wageless society (to define it somewhat negatively). As he wrote in The Inconsistencies of State Capitalism :

"Socialism means a classless society. It therefore presupposes not only the suppression of private property of the means of production, henceforth managed in a planned way by the associated producers themselves, but it also calls for a level of development of the productive forces which makes possible the withering away of commodity production, of money, and of the state."

and,

"The working class ... is not capable of building a socialist society in a single country, not even the USA (not to speak of Britain or Western Europe)."

All that can be established in the immediate future, says Mandel, is a third society neither capitalist nor socialist, which will have the aim of developing the means of production to the level where world socialism becomes possible as a society of abundance: a "transitional society" between capitalism and socialism, with its own social structure and economic laws different from those both of capitalism and of socialism. Mandel describes this so-called transitional society of his as follows:

"nationalisation of all the means of production under workers' control, democratically planned economy, but still with commodity production of consumer goods, with the survival of money, with foreign trade, and with a workers' army as long as the threat of strong bourgeois states subsists."[xxi]

This "transitional society", like capitalism but unlike socialism, can be established on a national scale. In fact, says Mandel, it should be the immediate aim of each national working class (thus rejecting the Marxist view that the working class of all countries should be aiming at a more or less simultaneous world socialist revolution).

If Marx had really subscribed to this view, that there was another system of society –lasting for a whole "epoch" – between capitalism and socialism, it is curious, to say the least, that he never mentioned it. Nowhere, in fact, does Marx speak of any "transitional society" in between capitalism and socialism, or, to use some of the phrases employed by Mandel, "the epoch of transition from capitalism to socialism", "a transitional-economy", "the society in transition
from capitalism to socialism". He certainly spoke of a "political transition period" and of "a period of revolutionary transformation" between capitalism and socialism but, as we have seen, this was merely the period during which the working class would use its control of state power to establish the common ownership of the means of production, a relatively short political transition period, which would be shorter the higher the development of the means of production was at the time the working class won control of political power, and certainly not lasting an "epoch".
Mandel tries to justify his position by identifying his "transitional society" with Marx's "first phase of communist society" (despite the fact that the phrase "first phase of communist society" obviously means what is says: the first phase of communist, not some other, different, society).

Marx, we have seen, did recognise the inevitability of some limitations on free consumption in the early stages of socialism (had it been established in the 1870's), and did mention "labour-time vouchers" as one possible method of doing this. Mandel claims that whether these labour-time vouchers or money is used in these circumstances, is just a matter of choice. Money, he argues, is better because it allows workers, as consumers, more freedom of choice than would labour-time vouchers, or some system of physical rationing. But, this is based on a complete misunderstanding of the Marxian theory of money. For Marx money was not a thing but a social relation, an economic category which existed on the basis of certain social relations between the producers, specifically, an exchange economy, reflecting the fact that production was not yet socialised but carried out by isolated individual producers – and later the fact that, despite socialized production, there was still private or sectional appropriation. He pointed out that "labour-time vouchers" were not money; they were simply pieces of paper entitling a person to draw so much from the stock of goods set aside for individual consumption. They did not circulate, nor did they reflect a relationship of private property. As Marx put it, in a passage in his notes on the Gotha Programme, – a passage incidentally quoted by Mandel in the Critique article – "within the co-operative society based on the common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products."[xxii]

We do not want to defend the "labour-time voucher" system. Even for Marx's day, it was inappropriate, suffering from numerous anomalies, only some of which Marx himself recognised. We would subscribe to the view that Marx's criticism of schemes to introduce "labour- money" under capitalism, applies to some extent also to the scheme for "labour-time vouchers" in the early stages of socialism.[xxiii] But it is clear that Marx did not regard the use of money (a commodity that has come to be universally exchangeable with all other commodities) as an alternative form of rationing in the "first phase of communist society". In fact, he would have regarded this as an absurd, contradictory proposal. We can imagine him lambasting Mandel in the same terms as he lambasted Proudhon for similar inanities!

Let us now return to the question of how long, after the establishment of socialism, some restrictions on free consumption would have to continue. Today, looking back, we can say that, had world socialism been established in the 1870's, it might have taken about a generation before full free access to consumer goods and services, according to individual needs, could have been implemented. This estimate is based on the fact that it was by around 1900 that the effects of the so-called second industrial revolution – the application to production of the electric motor and the internal combustion engine – were beginning to be felt. Marx and Engels, remember, were judging the possibilities of socialism on the basis only of the first industrial revolution (the application to production of the steam engine). Marx, who died in 1883, never saw either an electric motor or an internal combustion engine. But of course every advance in technology made his case for socialism even more relevant.
By about 1900, thanks to this second industrial revolution,capitalism became the predominant world system. By "predominant" we don't mean that capitalism existed all over the world, but merely that all the people of the world, even if they lived under pre-capitalist conditions, were decisively affected by the workings of world capitalism, 1900 marks, if you like, capitalism becoming a world system – a fact which some Marxist writers have described as its becoming "imperialist". 1914, with the outbreak of the first world war in the history of mankind, was a bloody confirmation of this. To quote Sternberg again:

"Capitalist development had taken several hundred years to arrive at a stage at which perhaps 10 per cent of the world's population produced along capitalist lines, but within the two-thirds of a century which followed – approximately from the middle of the nineteenth century up to the outbreak of the first world war – capitalism became the dominant form of production not merely in one country, England, but all over the world, until perhaps between 25 and 30 per cent of the world's population were producing along capitalist lines, whilst in Great Britain, the United States, Germany and Western Europe in general, capitalism held practically a monopoly of production. At the same time capitalist development had made considerable progress in Russia and Japan, although the remnants of feudalism still existed, whilst in the other Asiatic countries the pre-capitalist forms of production had been definitely undermined."[xxiv]

We can, in fact, place the end of capitalism's role in history – to create the material basis for a world socialist society of abundance – at this time. By 1900, capitalism had completely outlived its usefulness. From then on only the immediate establishment of world socialism has been "progressive". From then on, in fact, world socialism – given, of course, the development of a majority socialist movement amongst the working class in the industrialised parts of the world – could have been established "at one stroke" by a more or less world socialist revolution.

Since 1900, the working class has still, it is true, needed to organise itself to capture political power in all the various states of the world, and, in this sense, a "political transition period" during which the working class uses state power to establish the common ownership of the means of production, is still necessary. However, since this period would be so short as to be negligible, the concept of a transition period has become outdated.

Similarly, though in the first few years of socialism, as the mess left by capitalism is cleared up, some restrictions on full free consumption may still be necessary, world socialist society could now move rapidly (i.e. in well under a decade at the most) to implementing free access to consumer goods and services according to individual need as the principle of distribution. To sum up, the concept of a "transition period", lasting some years, between capitalism and socialism is today an obsolete 19th century concept, while the ideal of a "transitional society" between capitalism and socialism, as proposed by Mandel, was never to be found in Marx in the first place.
Adam Buick , Critique 5, 1975

[i] Ernest Mandel, `Ten Theses on the Social and Economic Laws Governing the Society Transitional between Capitalism and Socialism', Critique 3.
[ii] As is clearly shown by Hal Draper in his detailed study of the occasions Marx and Engels used this, and similar, phrases. See Draper's "Marx and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat", New
Politics, Vol. I, No.4, Summer 1962.
[iii] Marx to J. Weydemeyer, March 5,1852. Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. II, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1958.p.452
[iv] F. Engels, "The Housing Question", in Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. I; FLPH, Moscow, 1958, p.613.
[v] Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme. Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1971, p.26.
[vi] Ibid, p.16.
[vii] Karl Marx, Capital Vol I. I, FLPH, Moscow, 1961, p.94.
[viii] Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, FLPH, Moscow, 1954, pp.80-81.
[ix] F. Engels, Principles of Communism, Pluto Press, London, n.d., p.13. [x] F. Engels, "Introduction" to "The Class Struggles in France 1848 to 1850", Selected Works, Vol. I, p.125.
[xi] Fritz Sternberg, Capitalism and Socialism on Trial, Gollancz, London, 1951, p.19.
[xii] F. Engels. "Preface" to the German Edition of 1872 of Manifesto of the Communist Party, p.10.
[xiii] F. Engels, The Peasant War in Germany, Lawrence and Wishart, 1969, p.115.
[xiv] Karl Marx, "The Moralizing Critique and the Critical Moral", quoted in Karl Marx: Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy, Ed. T. B. Bottomore and Maximilien Rubel, Penguin Books, 1963, p.244.
[xv] F. Engels, "The Housing Question", in Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 1, pp.564-565.
[xvi] F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, FLPH, Moscow, 1959, pp. 389-390.
[xvii] Marx and Engels, The Manifesto of the Communist Party, pp.72-73.
[xviii] Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, p .94.
[xix] Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. II, FLPH, Moscow, 1957, p.451, p.315 and p.358.
[xx] Ernest Mandel, "Economics of the Transition Period", in Key Problems of the Transition Period, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1970, pp.38-40. Originally published in Fifty Years of World Revolution (1917-1967): An International Symposium, ed. by Ernest Mandel, Merit
Publishers, New York, 1968.
[xxi] The Inconsistencies of State Capitalism, International Marxist Group. London, 1969, pp.17-18.
[xxii] Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, quoted by Mandel in a footnote on p.13 of Critique 3.
[xxiii] See "La Période de Transition (deuxième partie)", Révolution lnternationale 8, Paris, March-April 1974. See also "Labour-Time Vouchers", Socialist Standard, London, May, 1971, and "Marx's Conception of Socialism", Socialist Standard, December. 1973.
[xxiv] Fritz Sternberg, op. cit., p. 19.

Notes for Talk on Trotsky and Trotskyism

1. "Permanent Revolution."

Trotsky acquired the phrase from Marx’s writings and very much like Lenin and his use of “dictatorship of the proletariat” from Marx , applied it in such a way that it was not originally intended to be used by Marx .

Marx first used the phrase in the following passage from The Holy Family , 1845 He wrote:

Napoleon represented the last battle of revolutionary terror against the bourgeois society which had been proclaimed by this same Revolution, and against its policy. Napoleon, of course, already discerned the essence of the modern state; he understood that it is based on the unhampered development of bourgeois society, on the free movement of private interest, etc. He decided to recognise and protect this basis. He was no terrorist with his head in the clouds. Yet at the same time he still regarded the state as an end in itself and civil life only as a treasurer and his subordinate which must have no will of its own. He perfected the Terror by substituting permanent war for permanent revolution. He fed the egoism of the French nation to complete satiety but demanded also the sacrifice of bourgeois business, enjoyments, wealth, etc., whenever this was required by the political aim of conquest. If he despotically suppressed the liberalism of bourgeois society — the political idealism of its daily practice — he showed no more consideration for its essential material interests, trade and industry, whenever they conflicted with his political interests. …. Paris exchange- brokers forced him by means of an artificially created famine to delay the opening of the Russian campaign by nearly two months and thus to launch it too late in the year.

In this passage, Marx says that Napoleon prevented the 'bourgeois revolution' in France from becoming fulfilled: that is, he prevented bourgeois political forces from achieving a total expression of their interests. According to Marx, he did this by suppressing the 'liberalism of bourgeois society'; and he did it because he saw 'the state as an end in itself', a value which supported his 'political aim of conquest'. Thus, he substituted 'permanent war for permanent revolution'. The final two sentences, however, show that the bourgeoisie did not give up hope, but continued to pursue their interests. This tells us that, for Marx, 'permanent revolution' involves a revolutionary class (in this case, the bourgeoisie) continuing to push for, and achieve, its interests despite the political dominance of actors with opposing interests.

The March 1850 Address
Marx's most famous use of the phrase 'permanent revolution' is his March 1850 Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League. He enjoins the proletariat in Germany, faced with the prospect that 'the petty-bourgeois democrats will for the moment acquire a predominant influence' - i.e. temporary political power -

to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far - not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world - that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers

In the remainder of the text, Marx outlines the content of his proposal that the proletariat 'make the revolution permanent'. In essence, it consists of the working class maintaining a militant and independent approach to politics both before, during and after the 'struggle' which will bring the 'petty-bourgeois democrats' to power .

What permanent revolution in this sense means is that the proletariat should organise autonomously

Marx is concerned that throughout the process of this impending political change, the petty-bourgeoisie will seek to ensnare the workers in a party organization in which general social-democratic phrases prevail while their particular interests are kept hidden behind, and in which, for the sake of preserving the peace, the specific demands of the proletariat may not be presented. Such a unity would be to their advantage alone and to the complete disadvantage of the proletariat. The proletariat would lose all its hard-won independent position and be reduced once more to a mere appendage of official bourgeois democracy
Marx outlines how the proletariat should respond to this threat. First, he says that 'above all the [Communist] League, must work for the creation of an independent organization of the workers' party, both secret and open, and alongside the official democrats, and the League must aim to make every one of its communes a centre and nucleus of workers' associations in which the position and interests of the proletariat can be discussed free from bourgeois influence'. That is, 'it is essential above all for them to be independently organized and centralized in clubs'. Marx does say that 'an association of momentary expedience' is permissible if, and only if, 'an enemy has to be fought directly' - though this is not an excuse for a long term alliance, since emergency alliances will arise satisfactorily when needed.

In an article two years earlier, Marx had referred to 'a programme of permanent revolution, of progressive taxes and death duties, and of organisation of labour' This confirms the impression that Marx's theory of 'permanent revolution' is not about revolution per se, rather more about the attitude that a revolutionary class should adopt in the period of their political subjection, including the programme of political demands they should propose. This aspect is raised in the Address. As well as overtures for organisational alliance with the petty bourgeoisie, Marx is concerned about attempts to 'bribe the workers with a more or less disguised form of alms and to break their revolutionary strength by temporarily rendering their situation tolerable' Therefore, the workers' party must use their autonomous organisation to push a political programme which threatens the bourgeois status quo, along the following lines:

1. They can force the democrats to make inroads into as many areas of the existing social order as possible, so as to disturb its regular functioning and so that the petty-bourgeois democrats compromise themselves; furthermore, the workers can force the concentration of as many productive forces as possible - means of transport, factories, railways, etc. - in the hands of the state.
2. They must drive the proposals of the democrats to their logical extreme (the democrats will in any case act in a reformist and not a revolutionary manner) and transform these proposals into direct attacks on private property. If, for instance, the petty bourgeoisie propose the purchase of the railways and factories, the workers must demand that these railways and factories simply be confiscated by the state without compensation as the property of reactionaries. [...] The demands of the workers will thus have to be adjusted according to the measures and concessions of the democrats.

In this passage, we can see that Marx believes the proletariat should refuse to moderate its demands to the petty-bourgeois consensus, and advocate extensive nationalisation. Furthermore, the demand of the workers should always seek to push the bourgeois further than they are prepared to go.
To put the Address in context Marx concludes his Address by summarising the themes elucidated above:

Although the German workers cannot come to power and achieve the realization of their class interests without passing through a protracted revolutionary development, this time they can at least be certain that the first act of the approaching revolutionary drama will coincide with the direct victory of their own class in France and will thereby be accelerated. But they themselves must contribute most to their final victory, by informing themselves of their own class interests, by taking up their independent political position as soon as possible, by not allowing themselves to be misled by the hypocritical phrases of the democratic petty bourgeoisie into doubting for one minute the necessity of an independently organized party of the proletariat. Their battle-cry must be: The Permanent Revolution.

It is worthwhile to have some idea of how Marx saw the context in which he advocated 'permanent revolution'.
It seems that he believed that 'the first act of the approaching revolutionary drama [in Germany] will coincide with the direct victory of their own class in France and will thereby be accelerated'. That is, the petty-bourgeois are expected to come to power in Germany at the same time as the 'direct victory' of the proletariat in France. Furthermore, Marx seems to believe of the former (and hence, of both) that it is 'imminent' (c.f. the third paragraph of the Address ). Marx clearly believes, therefore, that Europe is entering a time, and is at a level of development of the 'productive forces' in which the proletariat have the social revolution within their reach. If Marx is understood to be consistent about his emphasis on historical circumstance, it is unclear how the relevance of his theory of permanent revolution should be evaluated in times in which the social revolution is not expected to be imminent. Indeed, after 1850 there is no record of Marx or Engels ever using the term .
Summary, Marx's theory
Marx advocated 'permanent revolution' as the proletarian strategy of maintaining organisational independence along class lines, and a consistently militant series of political demands and tactics. It will be noted that at no stage does Marx make the central claim with which Trotsky's conception (see below) of 'permanent revolution' is concerned - i.e. that it is possible for a country to pass directly from the dominance of the semi-feudal aristocrats, who held political power in Russia in the early part of the 19th Century, to the dominance of the working class, without an interceding period of dominance by the bourgeois. On the contrary, Marx's statements in his March 1850 Address explicitly contradict such a view, assuming a 'period of petty-bourgeois predominance over the classes which have been overthrown and over the proletariat' .

Marx does claim, as does Trotsky, that socialism is impossible in one country, but they also say that 'in all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity' (Engels' The Principles of Communism, Sections 17 and 19 ).

The Communist Manifesto alludes to Marx's view that the dominance of the bourgeoisie is a necessary prelude to that of the proletariat: 'the bourgeoisie therefore produces ... its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable' .

In this sense, Trotsky's version of the theory represents both a different development and a contradiction of the expressed opinions of Marx

Trotsky’s theory

The basic points of this theory rest on the assumption that power could be held by Socialists in Russia long enough to enable the workers of the more advanced Western countries, helped, of course, by their Russian comrades, to introduce Socialism. Then the material backwardness of Russia could be overcome through the united efforts of a Socialist Europe.
None of the Bolsheviks, including Lenin, accepted this view until after the seizure of power in October, 1917. Trotsky in fact only joined the Bolsheviks in August of that year.

Trotsky accepted the Bolshevik view that the only revolutionary class in Russia were the working class. But he argued that if, in the course of the bourgeois revolution, the workers were to get power they would not stop at introducing democracy but would begin to make inroads into capitalism. The revolution would begin as a bourgeois one and finish up socialist. This was what Trotsky meant by “permanent revolution” (a phrase borrowed from Marx as we have seen above ). Trotsky did not think that Socialism could be established in Russia alone. The success of the socialist revolution in Russia would depend, he said, on that of the socialist revolution in Europe. Trotsky's conception of Permanent Revolution is based on his understanding, drawing on the work of fellow Russian Alexander Parvus, that in 'backward' countries the tasks of the Bourgeois Democratic Revolution could not be achieved by the bourgeoisie itself. This conception was first developed in the essays later collected in his book 1905 and in his essay Results and Prospects

Trotsky's theory was developed as an alternative to the accepted Social Democratic theory that undeveloped countries must pass through two distinct revolutions. First the Bourgeois Democratic Revolution, which socialists would assist, and at a later stage, the Socialist Revolution with an evolutionary period of capitalist development separating those stages. This is often referred to as the Theory of Stages, the 2-Stage Theory or as Stageism.
Lenin and the Bolsheviks initially held to a version of the Stagist theory, since they were still connected to the Social Democrats at the time. Lenin's earlier theory shared Trotsky's premise that the bourgeoisie would not complete a bourgeois revolution. Lenin thought that a 'Democratic Dictatorship' of the workers and peasants could complete the tasks of the bourgeoisie. Lenin was arguing by 1917 not only that the Russian bourgeoisie would not be able to carry through the tasks of the Bourgeois Democratic Revolution and therefore the proletariat had to take state power, but also that it should take economic power through the Soviets. This position was put forward to the Bolsheviks on his return to Russia, in his April Theses. .
Trotsky later generalised his Theory of Permanent Revolution, which had only been applied in the case of Russia previously, and argued that the proletariat needed to take power in a process of uninterrupted and Permanent Revolution in order to carry out the tasks of the Bourgeois Democratic revolution.

His position was put forward in his essay entitled The Permanent Revolution . Not only did Trotsky generalise his theory of Permanent Revolution in this essay but he also grounded it in the idea of combined and uneven development. This argument goes, again in contrast to the conceptions inherent within Stagist theory, that capitalist nations, indeed all class-based societies, develop unevenly and that some parts will develop more swiftly than others.

Taken from the wikipedia entry on Permanent Revolution

This theory is still the kernel of "Trotskyism," and from the S.P.G.B. standpoint that kernel is rotten with error.

Lenin himself had to admit that their hopes for a Socialist revolution in the West had been frustrated, but he and Trotsky blamed this on bad and treacherous leadership.
What the Bolsheviks did not grasp, then any more than their would-be imitators can do to-day, is the need for an understanding of Socialism by a majority of the .working-class. This understanding alone would make leadership, good or bad, impossible. We would also argue that ideas are social and that world wide interaction would reduce this uneven development
But Trotsky who himself failed to grasp all the implications of Socialism, continued to nourish these illusions to the end.

Fundamentally, Trotsky fell from power because his theory of Permanent Revolution and his consequent insistence on continued revolutionary agitation abroad would have cut off all technical aid from the Western world, and so made any attempt at industrial development more difficult in Russia.

As their dreams of a European revolution faded the Bolsheviks were forced to pursuea more realistic policy. Their aim became to get international recognition as thelegitimate government of Russia. In March 1921 an Anglo-Soviet trade agreementwas signed and in 1922 the Bolshevik government was invited to an internationalconference in Genoa. Later in the year the treaty of Rapallo with Germany wassigned. The Bolsheviks justified these moves as a means of gaining time by playingoff capitalist states against each other. But with the failure of the insurrection led bythe Comintern in Bulgaria and Germany in 1923, failure in China too , the Bolshevik government, now coming increasingly under the control of the Stalin group, began to abandon all hope of a world revolution and to concentrate on building up industrial strength at home.During the years that followed the Bolshevik government gradually gainedinternational recognition
From Socialist Standard :-Trotsky , the Prophet Debunked



2. Nature of Russia

His view that Russia under Stalin was a Workers State, not a perfect one, certainly, but a Workers State nevertheless, was set out in his book The Revolution Betrayed first published in 1936. This is the origin of the Trotskyist dogma that Russia is a "degenerate Workers State" in which a bureaucracy had usurped political power from the working class but without changing the social basis (nationalisation and planning).

This view is so absurd as to be hardly worth considering seriously: how could the adjective "workers" be applied to a regime where workers could be sent to a labour camp for turning up late for work and shot for going on strike? Trotsky was only able to sustain his point of view by making the completely un-marxist assumption that capitalist distribution relations (the privileges of the Stalinist bureaucracy) could exist on the basis of socialist production relations. Marx, by contrast, had concluded, from a study of past and present societies, that the mode of distribution was entirely determined by the mode of production. Thus the existence of privileged distribution relations in Russia should itself have been sufficient proof that Russia had nothing to do with socialism.

Trotsky rejected the view that Russia was state capitalist on the flimsiest of grounds: the absence of a private capitalist class, of private shareholders and bondholders who could inherit and bequeath their property. He failed to see that what made Russia capitalist was the existence there of wage-labour and capital accumulation not the nature and mode of recruitment of its ruling class.

As Engels explains “the state is an organisation of the possessing class for its protection against the non-possessing class.” from Origin of the family , private property and the state …

Trotsky's view that Russia under Stalin was still some sort of "Workers State" was so absurd that it soon aroused criticism within the ranks of the Trotskyist movement itself which, since 1938, had been organised as the Fourth International. Two alternative views emerged. One was that Russia was neither capitalist nor a Workers State but some new kind of exploiting class society - Bureaucratic collectivism . The other was that Russia was state capitalist. The most easily accessible example of the first view is James Burnham's The Managerial Revolution and of the second Tony Cliff's Russia: A Marxist Analysis. Both books are well worth reading, though in fact neither Burnham nor Cliff could claim to be the originators of the theories they put forward. The majority of Trotskyists, however, remain committed to the dogma that Russia is a "degenerate Workers State". Cliff popularised the state capitalist thesis within the British Trotskyist movement, first of all in a discussion paper within the main Trotskyist party in Britain at the time, the Revolutionary Communist Party, and then in his book Russia: A Marxist Analysis, . The reality is that Cliff`s description of the Soviet Union as state capitalist was not even "unique" within the Trotskyist movement itself let alone outside it. Furthermore, it is a matter of record that the theory of state capitalism when applied to the Soviet Union was not an invention of the Trotskyist movement at all

Trotsky entirely identified capitalism with private capitalism and so concluded that society would cease to be capitalist once the private capitalist class had been expropriated. This meant that, in contrast to Lenin who mistakenly saw state capitalism as a necessary step towards socialism, Trotsky committed the different mistake of seeing state capitalism as the negation of capitalism. For Trotsky, economic democracy was not an issue. It played no role in determining the socialist nature of a society. Rather state ownership did. Thus he did not question one-man management in the workplace nor the capitalist social relationships it generated.
For Trotsky, it was :-

"necessary for each state-owned factory, with its technical director and with its commercial director, to be subjected not only to control from the top -- by the state organs -- but also from below, by the market which will remain the regulator of the state economy for a long time to come."

In spite of the obvious fact that the workers did not control their labour or its product, Trotsky asserted that :-

"No class exploitation exists here, and consequently neither does capitalism exist."

Ultimately, it was not self-management that mattered, it was :-

"the growth of Soviet state industry which signifies the growth of socialism itself, a direct strengthening of the power of the proletariat"

[The First 5 Years of the Communist International,

Trotsky's "opposition" in no way presented any real alternative to Stalinism. Indeed, Stalinism simply took over and applied Trotsky's demands for increased industrialisation. At no time did Trotsky question the fundamental social relationships within Soviet society. He simply wished the ruling elite to apply different policies while allowing him and his followers more space and freedom within the party structures.

What system of society exists in Russia? Trotsky, in exile, argued that although Russia was not socialist, as Stalin claimed, it could not be described as capitalist either. He held that in 1917 the working class in Russia had seized power and had begun the transition from capitalism to Socialism. However, owing to backwardness and isolation, what he called a ‘bureaucratic caste’ managed to usurp power. According to Trotsky, Russia was thus between capitalism and Socialism; it could either go forward to Socialism, but only with the rest of the world, or return to capitalism. He kept this view till his murder in 1940. Some of his followers still argue this. Others say Russia can now only be described as State capitalism. The Socialist Party of Great Britain too argues that this is the best description. We do not, however,think that Russia set off for Socialism and ended up as State capitalism, that Russia did not, and could not, have established Socialism in 1917. Capitalism has always existed in post-revolutionary Russia and theworking class there has never had political power.-
Additional Reading See:-The nature of Russian state capitalism

3. Leadership and corrupt leaders

Trotskyist theory and practice is rather neatly summed up in the opening sentence of the manifesto the Fourth International adopted at its foundation in 1938. Called The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International, and drafted by Trotsky himself, it began with the absurd declaration: "The world political situation is chiefly characterised by historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat". This tendency to reduce everything to a question of the right leadership (Trotsky once wrote a pamphlet on the Paris Commune in which he explained its failure by the absence of a Bolshevik Party there) reminds us that Trotskyists are 102 per cent Leninists and believers in the vanguard party. They believe, in other words, that workers by their own efforts are incapable of emancipating themselves and so must be led by an enlightened minority of professional revolutionaries (generally bourgeois intellectuals like Lenin and Trotsky). Thus they fall under the general criticism of Leninism and indeed of all theories which proclaim that workers need leaders.

Tactics, said Trotsky, should have been framed so as to win workers over from their Social Democratic leaders, under the command of the Communist Party:-

“We must understand how to tear the workers away from their leaders”. According to Trotsky, the official Communist leaders would not follow his policies because they were constituted of “not a few cowardly careerists and fakers whose little posts, whose incomes, and more than that, whose hides, are dear to them” (Trotsky, 'For a Workers United Front Against Fascism', December 1931)

“Uneven consciousness” among workers necessitates the need for leaders, and for an organisation that can bring it together with non-socialist workers in the name of immediate given ends, be those organisations trade unions, or – as above – workers' councils. Thus, the Soviets beloved of Leninists, and trade unions too, become locations for 'united front' work. This admirably demonstrates that Julius Martov's accusation in his State and Socialist Revolution that Bolsheviks supported soviets in order to help seize power as a minority was acknowledged by the very leaders of the Russian coup d'état. -

See Socialist Standard Trotsky and Stalin

"The revolutionary dictatorship of a proletarian party is for me not a thing that one can freely accept or reject: It is an objective necessity imposed upon us by the social realities -- the class struggle, the heterogeneity of the revolutionary class, the necessity for a selected vanguard in order to assure the victory. The dictatorship of a party belongs to the barbarian prehistory as does the state itself, but we can not jump over this chapter, which can open (not at one stroke) genuine human history. . . The revolutionary party (vanguard) which renounces its own dictatorship surrenders the masses to the counter-revolution . . . Abstractly speaking, it would be very well if the party dictatorship could be replaced by the 'dictatorship' of the whole toiling people without any party, but this presupposes such a high level of political development among the masses that it can never be achieved under capitalist conditions. The reason for the revolution comes from the circumstance that capitalism does not permit the material and the moral development of the masses." [Trotsky, Writings 1936-37, pp. 513-4]

In relation to the soviets , in Terrorism and Communism. 1920 we discover Trotsky arguing that:-

"We have more than once been accused of having substituted for the dictatorships of the Soviets the dictatorship of the party. Yet it can be said with complete justice that the dictatorship of the Soviets became possible only by means of the dictatorship of the party. It is thanks to the . . . party . . . [that] the Soviets . . . [became] transformed from shapeless parliaments of labour into the apparatus of the supremacy of labour. In this 'substitution' of the power of the party for the power of the working class these is nothing accidental, and in reality there is no substitution at all. The Communists express the fundamental interests of the working class."

And to demonstrate this remained his view he again writes in 1937

"Those who propose the abstraction of Soviets to the party dictatorship should understand that only thanks to the party dictatorship were the Soviets able to lift themselves out of the mud of reformism and attain the state form of the proletariat." [Trotsky, "Bolshevism and Stalinism"

More at Anarchist faq Macnally and Socialism from Below

See Anarchist faq Left opposition and Trotsky

4. Trotsky the Stalinist

Without entering the debate of Trotsky’s role in the destruction of the Kronstadt Commune or the Ukrainian anarchist Makhnovists guerrilla movement , which were expressions of non - Bolshevik resistance , how did Trotsky respond to internal dissent within the Bolshevik Party before he himself became to be the Opposition within the Bolshevik Party . Trotsky in fact actively denounced other oppositionists.


His reaction to the state repression of Miasnikov's Workers' Group as Deutscher notes in The Prophet Unarmed
Trotsky "did not protest when their adherents were thrown into prison . . . Nor was he inclined to countenance industrial unrest . . . Nor was he at all eager to support the demand for Soviet democracy in the extreme form in which the Workers' Opposition and its splinter groups [like the Workers' Group] had raised it."
Dzerzhinsky was given the task of breaking the opposition groups by the central committee. He found that even party members of unquestioned loyalty regarded them as comrades and refused to testify against them. He then turned to the Politburo and asked it to declare it was the duty of any party member to denounce to the GPU people inside the party engaged aggressive action against the official leaders.
Trotsky "did not tell the Politburo plainly that it should reject Dzerzhinsky's demand. He evaded the question."

Trotskyist Tony Cliff presents a similar picture of Trotsky's lack of concern for opposition groups and his utter failure to support working class self-activity or calls for real democracy. He notes that in July and August 1923 Moscow and Petrograd

"were shaken by industrial unrest . . . Unofficial strikes broke out in many places . . . In November 1923, rumours of a general strike circulated throughout Moscow, and the movement seems at the point of turning into a political revolt. Not since the Kronstadt rising of 1921 had there been so much tension in the working class and so much alarm in the ruling circles."

The ruling elite, including Trotsky, acted to maintain their position and the secret police turned on any political group which could influence the movement. The strike wave gave a new lease of life to the Mensheviks and so "the GPU carried out a massive round up of Mensheviks, and as many as one thousand were arrested in Moscow alone."

When it was the turn of the Workers Group and Workers Truth, Trotsky:-

"did not condemn their persecution" and he "did not support their incitement of workers to industrial unrest." Moreover, "Nor was Trotsky ready to support the demand for workers' democracy in the extreme form to which the Workers Group and Workers Truth raised it." [Trotsky, vol. 3, ]

Trotsky did not call for workers' democracy in any meaningful form.

Indeed, his "New Course Resolution" even went so far as to say that "it is obvious that there can be no toleration of the formation of groupings whose ideological content is directed against the party as a whole and against the dictatorship of the proletariat. as for instance the Workers' Truth and Workers' Group."

Thus we come to the strange fact that it was Lenin and Trotsky themselves who knowingly destroyed the groups which represent what modern day Trotskyists assert is the "real" essence of Leninism.

Furthermore, modern day Trotskyists generally ignore these opposition groups when they discuss alternatives to Stalinism or the bureaucratisation under Lenin and Trotsky .

This seems a strange fate to befall tendencies which, if we take Leninists at their word, expressed what their tradition stands for. The "Workers' Opposition" did have some constructive suggests to make as regards combating the economic bureaucratisation which existed under Lenin. Yet almost all modern Trotskyists (like their mentors Lenin and Trotsky) dismiss them as "syndicalist" and utopian.

See Anarchist faq What does these Oppositions tell us about Leninism

5. Reformism

One important point of the Fourth International was the concept of "transitional demands" , i.e. advocating reforms known not to work, in order to draw workers into “Communist” ranks through their inevitable disappointment . The manifesto contained a whole list of reform demands which was called "the transitional programme".

Trotsky urges that transitional demands should include the call for the expropriation of various groups of capitalists- sometimes translated in modern terms into the nationalisation of various sectors [ Demands for the nationalisation of the 200 big companies and banks by the Militant Tendency during the 70s and 80s ] - under the control and management of the workers. Transitional demands should include opposition to imperialist war. Such demands intend to challenge the capitalist class's right to rule. By fighting for these "transitional" demands, in the opinion of the Trotskyists, the workers will come to realize that capitalism cannot meet their needs, and they will then embrace the full program of the Fourth International.

This reform programme was said to be different from those of openly reformist parties like Labour in Britain and the Social Democratic parties on the Continent in that Trotskyists claimed to be under no illusion that the reforms demanded could be achieved within the framework of capitalism. They were posed as bait by the vanguard party to get workers to struggle for them, on the theory that the workers would learn in the course of the struggle that these demands could not be achieved within capitalism and so would come to struggle (under the leadership of the vanguard party) to abolish capitalism .

Actually, most Trotskyists are not as cynical as they pretend to be here: in discussion with them you gain the clear impression that they share the illusion that the reforms they advocate can be achieved under capitalism (as, indeed, some of them could be). In other words, they are often the victims of their own "tactics". Trotskyism, the movement he gave rise to, is a blend of Leninism and Reformism, committed on paper to replacing private capitalism with state capitalism through a violent insurrection led by a vanguard party, but in practice working to achieve state capitalism through reforms to be enacted by Labour governments. As a tiny minority, they get to work with organisations which can more easily attract members, and can thus be part of campaigns and struggles that reach out well beyond the tiny numbers of political activists in any given situation .The salient fact remains, though, that despite providing all this assistance, the “revolutionaries” are incapable of taking these campaigns and trade unions further than the bulk of the membership are willing to tolerate .

Thus - Failure of Entryism , first into the ILP during the 30s and post war , into the Labour Party attempted by Militant and by the I.S [SWP]. through “rank and file committees “ in the 70s and now Stop the War Movement and Respect or SSP /Solidarity

6. Personal attributes

From the 1940 obituary in the Socialist Standard we have this to say

Trotsky's personal qualities are of minor interests to Socialists. As a political pamphleteer he was outstanding and he was also a first-class orator.

But unless the world-proletariat can harness such gifts to serve the struggle for Socialism, they will be wasted and even harmful to workers' interests , although, and as in the case of Leon Trotsky, there is no doubt that his whole life was sincerely dedicated to their cause.
His talent for military organisation and strategy helped to save the Bolsheviks from being defeated by the armies of the Czarist generals and the half-hearted intervention of the Allies.
This was often asserted by Lenin and, at the time, admitted by Stalin.

But Trotsky did not achieve this military success without ruthless discipline, a ruthlessness which showed itself again in his suppression of the revolt of the sailors at Kronstadt.
When charged by Kautsky with using methods of terrorism, Trotsky replied with a defence justifying the means by the end, as if the two could ever be separated.

Socialism, the pinnacle of human development, can never be achieved by methods that are themselves reactionary and anti-human; it is more than the irony of his logic that Trotsky himself should have met his end in such a violent manner.

Live by the sword , die by the sword - or in Trotsky’s case an ice pick .

Trotskyism, the movement he gave rise to, is a blend of Leninism and Reformism, committed on paper to replacing private capitalism with state capitalism through a violent insurrection led by a vanguard party, but in practice working to achieve state capitalism .

In the words of the Trotskyist Harry Ratner - "So were Kautsky and the Mensheviks right to oppose the October Revolution from the start, as an attempt prematurely to go beyond the 'bourgeois' stage of the Russian revolution? Were they right to declare a socialist working-class revolution in a backward Russia premature and doomed to failure because the conditions for socialism were not ripe-both as regards the economic base and the social and cultural level of the working class? On the face of it, subsequent history would seem to justify them…All one can say is that the 'workers' state' that was born in October 1917 was premature and infected from infancy. Unfortunately, as it degenerated, it infected the working-class movement internationally, and proved an obstacle on the road to socialism. My old comrade, the late Alex Acheson, who joined the movement in the 1930s and remained a committed Trotskyist till his death last year, once told me: 'It might have been better if the October Revolution had never occurred'".- New Interventions



See SWP/Trot history and politics
Where is the SWP Coming From
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/education/SWPpaper.html
Anyone ready for the Vanguard
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/etheory/Early90's/html/93Vanguard(SWP).html
Obituary of Tony Cliff
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/may00/cliff.html
Obituary of Ted Grant
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/sep06/page12.html

The Myth of the Permanent Arms Economy
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/aug03/kidron2.html
Respect , the unity coalition
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/apr04/respect.html
Who are the Socialist Alliance
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/apr01/alliance.html