Contents
* Preface (2006)
* The transition and Marxism (1967)
* The 1930s and the 1940s (1967)
* The transition in reality (1965)
Preface
The following three essays of “Before the theses” represented my consciousness of the problems of the world revolution and the Fourth International, just before the international development of Vietnam antiwar movement, the explosion of French May 1968 and the 1968-70 explosive mass radicalization of Japanese students and young-workers.
When I entered university in 1956, I became a typical Stalinist communist. Through the student movement at the time, I joined the Communist Party in 1958, and I was recruited to the old Japan Revolutionary Communist League of pro-FI group and expelled from the Communist Party in 1959. When comrades of my generation were recruited to the positions of the Fourth International, we were immediately confronted with the Paboist-Cannonist/IS-IC debates. [1] The old JRCL supported the basic positions of Cannon and Peng politically, But the Cannon-Peng positions were not satisfactory at all for me, and I was rather attracted by Pablo in the framework of the Fourth International in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In the early 1960s, I had begun to be obsessed mostly by the problems of the Stalinist degeneration of the Russian revolution and its global and universal effects in the 1930s and 1940s, on the one hand, and the very specific problems of the third Chinese revolution under the Maosit CP, on the other.
As for the “Dynamics of the World Revolution Today” of the 1963 reunification world congress, its draft text was translated into Japanese, and its final text was published in Japanese after the world congress. But the 1963 reunification world-theses were not satisfactory at all, too, for me.
In this context, what I could do in the mid-1960s was to try and formulate some problems which I felt were most fundamental. The articles of “Before the theses” represented the way in which I accepted the Marxism, and my consciousness on the gap between the theories and the realities.
Several sentences which seem to be not necessarily appropriate have been deleted from the original Japanese text in this English translation.
(July 2006)
[1] A split occured in 1952-1953 in the Fourth International between on one hand the socalled “Pabloists” (from the name of the Greek Pablo) and on the other hand the “Cannonists” (from the name of J.P. Cannon of the US SWP). Peng Shutse represented the wing of the Chinese Trotskyst movement allied with the US SWP. A reunification of the FI occured in 1963. [ed.]
The transition and Marxism (1967)
1)
When we ponder the state of the revolution — the international socialist revolution — today, that is, when we ponder the perspective of a new International and its national revolutionary organizations, what we must analyse and clarify are not only the dominant organism and institutions of capitalism, the dynamic structure of the contradictions inherent to the existing workers states, nor only the spontaneous potential and tendencies among the oppressed classes under capitalism and in the workers states. These problems have already been taken up and dealt with in traditional Marxist concepts as the analysis of the objective situation and as the problems of strategy and tactics in relation to the given class struggle and its orientation. Moreover, Marxism has its theory of the party and party organization.
The analysis of the objective situation, the strategy and tactics for the class struggle and the theory of the party — these are the three major problems of the international socialist revolution, which the tradition of Marxist thought has tackled. However, there is a great question mark over the effectiveness of Marxism and the achievements which it has accumulated in all three areas. Stalinism constitutes an extraordinary reaction in all theoretical fields of Marxism, and has deformed Marxism tremendously.
When we discuss the contemporary international socialist revolution, and its International and national revolutionary organizations, it is absolutely necessary to carry out a specific historical, structural reflection and analysis on the question of the party. The consciously revolutionary consciousness stems from the real and concrete spontaneous consciousness of the class which, it is assumed, can potentially demand and carry out the international socialist revolution. The historical and structural situation of this conscious consciousness, materially based upon the spontaneity of the class, must be taken up in itself as a relatively autonomous object for our specific reflection and analysis. This is our historical/structural reflection and analysis on the objective situation of the positive and active revolutionary consciousness, that is, on the objective situation of the party and International.
The objective contradictions and deepening crises of the whole bourgeois material existence in the capitalist world and the workers states produce various tendencies to resist and revolt, as well as actions by the oppressed classes. These occur spontaneously as the direct results of the objective contradictions and deepening crises of the whole bourgeois material existence. However the latter do not necessarily or automatically produce a conscious consciousness endowed with the specific character and tendency that would enable it to effectively compete with and overthrow the concrete bourgeois material existence.
The history of this century has shown this glaringly. Only when such a specific and effective revolutionary consciousness is growing as a material force, can the International and party become a real possibility. When such an objective situation of the conscious consciousness is lacking, a call for the International and party remains metaphysical and unreal.
However, the question of whether something which is metaphysical and unreal at a specific period in history is altogether meaningless, cannot be answered easily. In this regard, I. Deutcher is rather descriptive or a posteriori on the foundation of the Fourth International in his political biography of Trotsky. I. Deutcher has not given a deeper grasp of the problems of the Fourth International and their meaning.
2)
Trotsky’s theories are classics of contemporary Marxism, as those of Lenin and Rosa. The premise and central assertion of their theories was the proposition that, through the political and economic crisis of world capitalism from the 1910s to the 1940s, the center of world capitalism would be overthrown, and the metropolitan proletariat of the world, especially the Western European proletariat, would establish its rule over politics, economy, society and culture.
However, the Western European proletariat could not overcome a Thermidorean reaction, the development of bureaucratic substitutionism of the Russian proletarian revolution. The Western European proletariat was not able to carry out its autonomous struggle against the European bourgeoisie, to resist the reaction of the Russian revolution, to oppress the reaction and to remain independent from the reactionary process. It turns out that the progressive, socialist consciousness of the Western European proletariat conducted the struggle against the European bourgeoisie under the leadership and control of the substitutionist bureaucracy which represented the reaction of the Russian revolution. The Western European proletariat leftwing was not able to organize the progressive, socialist spontaneous consciousness of the worker masses directly on an European scale, independently from the bureaucratic leadership and control of Stalinism. Consequently, the spontaneous consciousness of the proletariat for a socialist revolution, which was seen very strongly in the Spanish civil war, was strangled by the reaction of Russian revolution, being unable to find politically independent leftwing forces that were materially reliable forces outside Spain.
As a result of the weakness of the working-class masses’ experiences in their autonomous struggle against the European bourgeoisie, the conditions and possibilities for the development of new leftwing forces deteriorated, and the proletarian resistance, revolt and struggle against Fascism and Nazism was basically conducted under the Stalinist bureaucratic, substitutionist leadership. Thus, the Western European proletarian struggle was conducted basically under the bureaucratic leadership and control of the Stalinists during the 1940s.
The influence of Trotskyism, which had been seen in the 1920s and 1930s, necessarily decreased very much. By contrast, Soviet Stalinism, which had been discredited among the Western European proletariat through the Moscow trials, the German-Soviet non-aggression pact and others, regained its influence through the Soviet struggle against Nazi Germany. The whole situation was hopeless. Here began the epoch of the post-war illusionary consciousness from the middle of the 1940s.
All in all, in spite of the fact that world capitalism had been thrown into a prolonged political, economic and social crisis and had faced several extremely grave moments in Western Europe from the latter half of the 1910 to the beginning of the 1950s, the Western European proletarian leftwing was unable to get its revolutionary victory during the entire 40-years period. The proletarian leftwing could not develop as a mass political force, independent from the Stalinist reaction of the Russian revolution, during the decisive period that lasted from the latter half of the 1920s through the 1930s. if there had been such a development, the proletarian leftwing would have played a tremendous role in the war situation and post-war situation of the 1940s; a genuine revolution, organizationally independent from Stalinist Moscow, was going on in Yugoslavia, and there were partisan struggles in Greece and Italy, and the resistance struggle in France ---- developing socialist programs spontaneously.
What was essentially important was not this or that betrayal policy of Stalinism. Stalinism was a reaction of the Russian revolution, and its policies should not be grasped in terms of whether they were right or wrong. Its policies were materialistically rational for Stalinism. What was essential was the fact that the Western European proletarian leftwing could not develop an European-wide, autonomous, mass political force, based on the broad, progressive and socialist consciousness of the worker masses, independently form reaction of the Russian revolution. Of course, the fact that the Western European proletarian leftwing did not escape the reaction of the Russian revolution does not necessarily mean that Marxism was not valid historically.
3)
The fact that the Western European proletariat could not overthrow capitalism and establish a workers’ Europe during entire 40-years crisis of bourgeois Europe from latter half of the 1910s through the 1940s; that is, that the Western European proletariat had not been able to remain independent from the Stalinist reaction of the Russian revolution, to overcome the Stalinist reaction ---- this fact poses some fundamental problems to the Marxism.
One of the problems is: why couldn’t the Western European proletariat remain independent fro the reaction of the Russian revolution? It is, of course, out of question for the European proletariat to have been able to be totally free from the Thermidor of the Russian revolution. Nevertheless, why did the reaction of the Russian revolution overwhelm the Western European proletarian leftwing, rather than the opposite?
Analysis of this problem poses various difficulties. In order to clarify the historical reasons why the Western European proletarian leftwing could not resist the Thermidorean reaction of the Russian revolution, it is necessary, first of all, to investigate the formation of bourgeois Europe, the formation of the imperialist Europe in the latter half of the 19th century and the early 20th century.
The economic problem is how the contemporary world was formed/shaped as the result of the fact that the European proletariat was no able to be victorious through the 40 years of crisis; how the contemporary world was affected by this fact.
The historical fact that the European proletariat did not successfully resist the reaction of the Russian revolution during the 40 years of crisis, has a deep impact on the contemporary world. It would not be an exaggeration to state that the contemporary world has been structure on the basis of that historical result.
Of course, it does not mean that that historical fact and the result represent all the elements of the contemporary world. At least, since the latter half of the 1950s, capitalism has regained a new validity in the metropolitan center of the USA and Western Europe. After the 40 years of crisis, another rise of new productive forces has been realized through capitalist relations of production. This new rise and development of productive forces has posed new problems to the contemporary marxism.
4)
There are various types of “Marxism” today.
One of them denies the Thermidorean reaction of the Russian revolution. It is self-explanatory in regard the Stalinist “Marxists” before the 20th congress of the Soviet Communist Party. Our concern here is with the Moscow wing of various communist parties, or the Italian “Marxism” of “Structural Reformism”.
The common proposition of their “Marxism” is the argument about “errors of the Stalinist regime”. They do not recognize the Thermidorean reaction of the Russian revolution; that is, they reject an autonomous position and orientation squarely opposed to the reaction of the Russian revolution.
Consequently, as is clear in the thread running from Popular-Frontism to Structural Reformism, the essence of this type of “Marxism” is a straight revisionism, diametrically opposed to the classic Marxism of Rosa, Lenin and Trotsky. This type of “Marxism” looks for the cause of the failure of the European proletarian leftwing, in a weak and limited elaboration of the Popular-Frontist/Structural Reformist theory. This is a kind of theory in defence of Stalinism.
This kind of “Marxism” is straight revisionism, and revisionism has been always an ideology of reformism and the labor bureaucracy in the bourgeois states and the workers states.
There are also other kinds of “Marxists”.
There are those “Marxists” who, confronted with the Thermidorean reaction of the Russian revolution, deny any elements of a proletarian socialist revolution in the Soviet Union, and characterize the Soviet Union as state capitalism or some similar concept. In this case, the reaction of the Russian revolution itself has broken up their Marxism. Subjectively revolting and resisting against the Thermidorean reaction of the Russian revolution, they have objectively capitulated to the reaction itself theoretically. They are “broken-up Marxists”.
There is another kind of “Marxists” who conclude that there was something erroneous in the theories of Lenin and Trotsky, in regard to the failure of the Trotsky/Left-Opposition struggle. Those “Marxists” just do not see the problem of why there was no development of an autonomous, mass leftwing current in the European proletarian movement in opposition to the reaction of the Russian revolution, through the 40 years of crisis. It is also a denial of Marxism to try to find the causes of the proletarian failure during those 40 years, in the theories of Lenin and Trotsky.
There is a common feature among the Italian “Marxists” and various “new left Marxists”. That is, they don’t see the central problem in the historical fact that the Thermidorean reaction of the Russian revolution overwhelmed the European proletarian leftwing from the latter half of the 1920s to the early 1950s, and seek salvation instead in their new modifications of Marxist theories. In this manner, they can neither see nor understand classic Marxism as it was; they destroy Marxism itself.
Similarly, there is a current of so-called “Rosa-Luxemburgists” on the question of the relation between spontaneous consciousness and goal-conscious consciousness, or the relation between spontaneity and the party/organization. This relates to the fact that the failure of the European proletariat during the 40-years crisis was materialized through the 3rd International and its parties/organizations. Where the prestige and direct control of the 3rd International was weak or non-existent, progressive spontaneities of the working masses sometimes developed their tendency toward a socialist revolution, in their struggles, while the parties as the organizational incarnation of the goal-conscious consciousness generally played the restraining and obstructing role. Basing themselves on this historical fact, those “Luxemburgists” are opposed to the Marxist of the goal-conscious consciousness and the party.
It is true that Marxism has not fully elaborated the theory on the relation between spontaneous consciousness and the goal-conscious consciousness. However, it is wrong to draw a conclusion that would deny the role of the organization of goal—conscious consciousness and of the party, from the experiences of the 40-years crisis. Without forming a party, a revolution is impossible. The problem of the relation between the spontaneous consciousness and the goal-conscious consciousness must be analysed in relation to the concrete situation and possibilities in a given historical context.
All those types of “Marxists” just cannot grasp the classic Marxism correctly as a method to analyse and clarify the contemporary world. Only with the proposition that the Thermidorean reaction of the Russian revolution had overwhelmed the consciousness of the European proletarian leftwing through the 40 years of crisis, it is possible to grasp the classic Marxism as it was and to learn from it.
(February 1967)
The 1930s and the 1940s (1967)
1) Concept of the Communist International
A mass International, directly based upon the socialist and progressive consciousness of an international leftwing of the working class, independent and autonomous from imperialism, the colonial national bourgeoisie and the national bureaucracies as specific social castes of the transitional workers states; it is independent, autonomous and revolutionary in relation to the whole bourgeois material existence.
2) Character of the 1930s
In the 1930s, the 3rd International was thrown into its final political collapse as a Communist International, and the imperative necessity of a new Communist International was posed objectively.
However, the period itself had, in fact, revealed that the historical transition from capitalism to socialism was characterized by a first phase of a “medieval” type. That is, the Russian revolution as the first proletarian revolution, was forced to undergo the reactionary, extreme development of the bureaucracy’s autocratic substitutionism, due to its extreme social, economic and cultural backwardness of its domestic basis, and due to the international isolation imposed, on the one hand, by the continuing existence of the European capitalism and, on the other hand, by the fact that the goal-conscious consciousness of the Western European proletarian leftwing was overwhelmed by the reaction of the Russian revolution and was not able to develop an automous political current to fight for international European socialism. The consciousness of the transition from capitalism to socialism was identified with Stalinism.
The extreme reaction on the side of capitalism was represented by German fascism.
The actual world-historical transition from capitalism to socialism betrayed the basic forecast of the epoch made by Rosa, Lenin and Trotsky in the early imperialist period, and their perception of the transition. The actual transition had unfolded in as a “medieval” guise, from the view-point of the classic-Marxist forecast made at the end of the early imperialist period. The actual historical transition betrayed the most essential, fundamental elements of the classic-Marxist forecast. The actual transition had begun as an “medieval”, “dark”, and “reactionary” transition, and was accompanied by a corresponding consciousness of the transition.
We can find various reflections of this “medieval-type”, “deformed” transition in all kinds of the historical facts and all varieties of actual consciousness.
We must reveal and clarify all the important phenomena of the “medieval-type” transition from capitalism to socialism; this task is extremely important to liberate our consciousness from the deformation of the actual transition. It will also enable us to project the revolutionary, classic-Marxist consciousness of the early imperialist period in our contemporary consciousness most correctly.
3) Trotsky’s Hypotheses before the 1940s
Trotsky’s forecast at the end of the 1930s can be summarized as follows:
(a) Bourgeois Western Europe would face a new, open and major crisis during the second world war or after the war.
(b) The Western European working class would experience a gigantic rise of struggles through the crisis, and this coming rise would be deeply socialist.
(c) It was an imperative necessity to "build a leadership in the form of a new Communist International, to ensure a victorious march toward the Socialist European revolution.
(d) Politically advanced layers of the Western European working class would come to the consciousness of the necessity of a new Communist International.
(e) Those advanced layers of the proletariat would rally under the program of the International Left Opposition and Fourth International which had fought most
consistently in defence of the revolutionary, classic Marxism of the early imperialist period. For Trotsky, the International left Opposition and Fourth International was absolutely not a sect or “private property” of some political group. He considered it as an historically objective, and “official” organization of the international working class.
4) The Actual 1940s in Western Europe
During and after the second world war, all through the 1940s, the struggles and movements of the Western European working class unfolded under the dominant
influences of the Stalinism and the Social Democracy, as a result of which bourgeois Western Europe was not overthrown.
Not all of Trotsky’s forecast/hypotheses about the 1940s were borne out in facts. Hypotheses (b) and (c) were proved by the repeated failure of
the Western European socialist revolution.
The first European imperialist war was dealt a first blow by the rebellion of the Russian workers, peasants and soldiers and the October revolution; and was terminated finally by the rebellions of Austrian and German workers. At the end of the second European imperialist war, the situation of the working-class political struggles was far more favorable. Although they were under the direct control of the despotic Stalinist bureaucracy, the “Red Armies”of the “Socialist fatherland”, the Soviet Union, controlled the vast Eastern European countries and East Germany militarily, and workers military forces had conducted struggles against Nazi Germany in the Western European heartland of Italy and France. Bourgeois Germany, the center of continental Europe, was defeated militarily, and there were armed forces of the working class in Italy and "France. Were not the Italian and French working-class forces stronger politically and organizationally than the German working class immediately after the first imperialist war? In Yugoslavia, the Communist Party under the Tito leadership led and organized the military struggle against the fascist forces, liberated the country and established an anti-capitalist revolutionary power. In Greece, too, there were partisan struggles of the workers and peasants under the Communist Party.
Will the Western European proletarian movement ever be able to get a more favorable situation? The situation of continental Western Europe from the mid-1940s to the end of the decade might be the most favorable for the proletarian movement in its whole history.
However, the dominant and leading political forces of the Italian and French workers movements were the Stalinist parties. These Stalinist parties proved to be a deep political reaction against the proletarian revolution. Thus, Trotsky’s hypotheses (b) and (c) were proved by the failure of proletarian revolution.
The Yugoslav Communist party under Tito’s group criticized as political opportunism the political orientation of its “brother” CPs in Italy and France, and forced into a political confrontation with the Stalinist center in Moscow. On the relation between Moscow and the Yugoslav revolution in 1943-44, Milovan Djilas wrote as follows; “Reality of the revolution in Yugoslavia; that is, there was the resistance against the occupation armies, and simultaneously a revolution was going on in the country ---- Moscow has never been able to understand this fact fully.”
It seems that the Yugoslav CP was oriented, at least objectively, toward a new Communist International during the 1940s. The CP under Tito’s group marched on the course of an autonomous revolution, evolving away from the Stalinist reaction of the Russian revolution. If an autonomous revolutionary proletarian current had been developing as a substantial force in Western Europe during the 1940s, the Yugoslav revolution might have naturally allied with such a proletarian current.
However, the Stalinist leadership was definitely dominant in Italy and France, and Trotsky’s hypotheses (d) was not realized. Consequently, in spite of the gravest crisis of bourgeois Western Europe, the imperialist bourgeoisies were not overthrown by the proletariat.
The question here is: Trotsky’s hypotheses (d) — “Politically advanced layers of the Western European working class would come to their consciousness on the necessity of a new Communist International” — was presented with the correct proposition that the forces of history were stronger than the bureaucracy, but why was Trotsky’s hypotheses (d) not realized in the actual history? And, consequently, how has the contemporary world been shaped and structured afterward?
In this whole context, the specific role of the bourgeois North America is quite important, of course.
5) The Actual 1940s Outside Western Europe
Outside Western Europe, in Asia and Eastern Europe, the actual advances of the transition took place in forms which were totally different from the forecast of the classic-Marxist forerunners.
On the one hand, there were the Yugoslav, Chinese and Vietnamese popular national revolutions which unfolded as anti-capitalist social revolutions.
These revolutions put the key industrial centers under
the direct control of the revolutionary states and took the road of development of the national economy through economic planning. On the other hand, after the military victory of the Soviet union over Nazi Germany, the Eastern European countries, except Yugoslavia, were thrown into the anti-capitalist
political, economic and social revolutions under the direct control and leadership of the Soviet state. While the Yugoslav, Chinese and Vietnamese revolutions were essentially popular, the Eastern European revolutions were “state revolutions” or“state-bureaucratic revolutions”. North Korea basically belongs to the latter category.
While the proletarian revolution was defeated in Western Europe, the “promised center” of socialism, the extremely specific anti-capitalist revolutions, the actual advances of the transition, were realized in Asia and Eastern Europe, relatively independently, not absolutely independently. These were glaringly different from the forecast of the transition by the revolutionary classic-Marxists of the early imperialist period.
As for the popular colonial revolutions, first of all, these were carried out relatively independently from the Western European socialist revolution.
The other important question is the problems of the class structure of those popular colonial revolutions.
The Chinese national revolution, as well as the Vietnamese, had its popular basis among the most oppressed social layers of the old colonial countryside, and was led politically by a group of professional revolutionaries, most of whom came from petty-bourgeois intellectuals. The central organizational institution of the Chinese revolution, as well as the Vietnamese, was the popular revolutionary army based on the poor peasants. While the central, popular revolutionary institution of the 1917 Russian revolution was the Soviets of workers and peasants, the revolutionary popular institution of the Chinese and Vietnamese revolutions was the military combat organizations, the armies. Those who gave the political leaderships to the popular armies were the groups of professional revolutionaries, including the revolutionary military officers and soldiers. One might say that the third Chinese revolution was a Taiping revolution under the 20th century conditions.
In this regard, Trotsky wrote an article, “Peasant War in China”(1937).
While I am not well informed about the Yugoslav revolution, Milovan Djilas, in his “Conversation with Stalin”, states the following: “I emphasized a new revolutionary role of the peasants specifically. I considered the Yugoslav uprising as a combination of peasant rebellions and the communist vanguard basically.”
We have also had the similar experiences of the Cuban success and the Algerian
failure.
It seems that the objective weight of the urban working class was relatively bigger in the Yugoslav revolution, and that, after the national revolution, the position of the urban working class as a social class in support of the revolution was stronger in Yugoslavia than in the case of the Chinese revolution. The Cuban case seems to be closer to the Yugoslav revolution than to the Chinese revolution.
6) Revolutionary Classic Marxism: Cities and Countryside
The political class-structure of those popular national revolutions was very different from the revolutionary classic-Marxist hypotheses.
Trotsky’s theory of permanent-revolution, the most representative of which is his “Results and Prospects”, strongly asserts the proposition of a revolution led by the cities. This is also clear in his “Peasant War in China”. The proposition is that the historically, culturally, socially and politically most advanced cities are to take the lead of the revolution, and that, even though its numerical weight is small, only the proletariat among the urban social classes can play the most thorough and radical leadership role of a revolution in the period of imperialism. It asserts that, even though a numerically overwhelming majority and the most oppressed, the poor peasants in the countryside cannot take the lead of a revolution, due to their historical, social, economic and political backwardness. According to Trotsky, any colonial revolution would be successfully carried out only under the lead of the urban working class; the working class should ally with the most oppressed peasants in rebellion, and it should give the latter a national leadership, through organizing itself as an independent, national class.
This proposition of Trotsky was not specifically “Trotskyist”. It stood firmly on the traditional theoretical position of Marx and Engels.
Lenin’s earliest politico-theoretical activities were the severe theoretical struggle against the Narodnik ideology of petty-bourgeois rural socialism. He asserted the proposition of the urban working class very strongly. In his “Burning Tasks of the Russian Socialdemocrats”(1900), he strongly asserted that the Marxist revolutionaries could best respond to the peasants, whose interests were diametrically opposed to Russian absolutism, only through organizing and politically training the urban working class. In the “Two Tactics of the Russian Socialdemocrats”, written in the middle of the 1905 revolution, Lenin upheld the proposition that precisely the urban working class was the most politically and socially radical class in the Russian revolution, and Lenin stood as a defender of the most radical and extremist bourgeois revolution. The central motive was a struggle for the most popular bourgeois revolution; a struggle for a revolutionary provisional government. Lenin’s position represented a historical continuity with the 1850 circular-letter of the Communist-League’s Central Committee, drafted by Marx and Engels.
Part of Lenin’s major politico-theoretical activities leading up to the 1905 revolution was a struggle against the Social-Revolutionaries. Lenin emphasized the revolutionary character of the poor peasants under Russian absolutism, but, at the same time, he counterposed the leadership role of the working class to the petty-bourgeois character of their leadership. Lenin’s position was “absolutely from the cities”, and “definitely relying on the working class”, and the same Lenin was deeply convinced of the revolutionary character of the poor peasants under the Russian ancien regime.
During the programmatic debates inside the Russian Social Democratic Party immediately after the 1905 revolution, Rosa basically supported Lenin’s faction.
7) Revolutionary Classic Marxism and the New Colonial Revolutions
The revolutionary classic-Marxist proposition on the relation between the cities and the countryside, and the working class and the peasantry was proved valid through the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 and the failure of the Chinese revolution in the 1920s.
Harold Isaas’ “Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution” gives us a vivid picture of the newly born working-class struggles in the 1920s. The Chinese Communist Party, as a national section of the 3rd International, should have most strongly and consistently asserted its leadership hegemony over the whole Chinese revolution, definitely relying on the young and revolutionary working class, all through the 1920s; this was the programmatic orientation toward the world socialist revolution which revolutionary Marxism of the early imperialist period upheld.
However, in the actual Chinese revolution in the 1920s, the intelligentzia leadership of the Chinese Communist Party came under the control of the Russian bureaucratic substitutionism which represented the reaction of the Russian revolution. Due to the political regression of the Moscow leadership of the 3rd International, the programmatic orientation which the Chinese working class received was its political subordination to the national bourgeoisie. While the working class in its spontaneity had proved its potential to become a leading, hegemonic political class in the whole Chinese revolution, it could not get the programmatic orientation of revolutionary classic Marxism. The necessity was for the working class to organise itself as a national class through its own national rebellion, and to present itself as a definite leading class to the vast majority of the rural oppressed. H. Isaacs’ book tells us how the Chinese working class was betrayed in this regard.
The Chinese revolution in the 1920s, through its defeat, proved the historical validity of the revolutionary Marxism of the early imperialist period.
However, the revolution in the 1940s was very much different from the theoretical forecast of the same revolutionary classic Marxism. In reality, the colonial revolutions of the 1940s and 1930s unfolded and realized advances of the transition in extremely specific, unforeseen ways.
Thus, a new problem has emerged. The revolutionary Marxism of the early imperialist period has been proved valid in the reality of history. But, after the defeat of the previous revolution, the actual advance of the transition was realized in a way which was very different from the theoretical forecast. How is Marxism to explain this reality? Problems of the new, unforeseen advances of the transition at the colonial world are closely inter-related with those of the 40-years crisis in Europe.
(May 1967)
The transition in reality (1965)
I. Failure of the 3rd International
1) The Perspective of the 3rd International under Lenin and Trotsky was betrayed and not realized.
The original perspective of the 3rd International was the international extension of a permanent revolution to the West and to the East, with the Russian revolution as its first stronghold; a world
revolution in the imperialist age.
The perspective had not included the political degeneration of the Russian proletarian dictatorship, a processes which had already begun in 1921-22.
2) Lenin’s “Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism” analysed imperialism.
(a) The domestic and international formation of industrial monopolies, based on a new development of productive forces.
("b) The combination of industrial capital and bank capital, and establishment of the oligarchic domination of finance capital.
(c) Surplus capital, the export of capital, and the development of colonial policies by modern imperialism. Completion of the division of the rest of the world by the imperialist metropolitan powers.
(d) Uneven development of the productive forces among the imperialist metropolitan powers, and their necessary struggles for redivision of colonies. Inevitability of the imperialist war as a war among thieves.
(e) Inevitability of rebellions by the colonial peoples against the metropolitan imperialist powers.
(f) Bribing of the working class by the colonial surplus profits, and new internal divisions of the working class. Material basis of the Social Democracy, and formation of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois oppositions.
(g) Decaying nature of imperialism. Development of the socialization of production; the material precondition for socialism.
(h) Impossibility of “super-imperialism”; the inevitability of imperialist wars.
(i) Imperialism is the eve of socialism; socialism succeeds directly to imperialism.
3) The first world war exploded as the inevitable result of the development of world imperialism. Being essentially a European war, this imperialist war threw European imperialism into a deep crisis, as a result of which a new colonial crisis had developed.
The central motive of the foundation of the 3rd International was to answer the deep crisis of the Europe-centered, world imperialist-colonial system, with a world socialist revolution.
In Europe, the crisis was direct; the Russian revolution and the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship, the downfall of the Austrian empire and the Hungarian revolution, the defeat of German imperialism and its crisis, the Italian crisis, and so on. The 3rd International had mass parties in the Eastern European countries formerly under the Austrian empire, in Germany, Italy and France.
The 3rd International concentrated its activities toward the directly crisis-ridden Europe, and, at the same time, began its preparatory activities toward the potential of the Asian colonial revolutions, as another answer to the extreme difficulties of the Russian revolution and the crisis of the imperialist Europe. The 3rd International foresaw the deepening crisis of imperialist Europe and inevitable development of the colonial-world crisis, as the crisis of imperialism of the whole world.
Imperialist Europe was a death-and-life question for revolutionary Russia.
4) In 1917-21, from the end of the war through the immediate post-war years, no new proletarian dictatorships were established in Eastern European countries,
Germany or Italy. Red Hungary could not survive. The years of 1917-21 remained to be the era of the 2nd International.
Among the ranks of the 2nd International, it was only the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democrat Party which had set the organization of a revolution as its central task, based on the working class. Beginning with the 20th century, this party and its Bolshevik faction had fought for a Russian revolution and experienced various revolutionary struggles.
In Germany, the crisis had begun incipiently in 1908-10(cf. R. Luxemburg, “Crisis of the German Social Democracy”). However, the parties of the 2nd International had adapted to reformist practices, except the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democrat Party and Rosa’s faction in Poland. In this context, having suddenly split from the parties of the 2nd International, the Western European parties of the 3rd International relied on the Russian Bolshevik party for their political leadership.
In this regard, the tradition of Rosa’s faction in Poland should be noted; it had its own original revolutionary tradition dating back to the pre-war period. The Polish Communist party was disbanded by Stalin. This seems to indicate that the revolutionary tradition of this party born in the pre-war period, did not allow complete control of the party by Stalin. Oppositionists against the Stalinists continued to be a majority of the party. This fact may have been relevant to the original position of the Polish Left-Oppositionists in relation to Trotsky and the foundation of the 4th International.
The Western European revolutionary leftwing, which split from the 2nd International and joined the 3rd International, was not able to mature politically, to a degree effectively corresponding to the actual evolution of the situation after the world war. One could say that the bankruptcy of the 2nd International had been handed down to the 3rd International. The majority apparatuses of the European Communist Parties could not have been autonomous from the Russian revolution.
5) At the 3rd congress of the Comintern, going so far as to call themselves as a “rightwing”, Lenin and Trotsky fought for the political maturation of the Western European sections of the International. However, before the maturation could proceed, the political degeneration of the Russian revolution had set in. The Western European Communist Parties were drawn into the political degeneration, and could not free themselves from the Stalinist degeneration.
The 2nd International died, and the 3rd International was a failure. The 3rd International had never been established as a successful Communist International. It can be said to be a part of the bankruptcy of the 2nd International. The era of the 2nd International and its generations had only produced a degenerated workers state, the deformed transitional state of the
Soviet Union.
6) When the second Chinese revolution began to develop fast under the Kwomingtang-Communist bloc, the Russian revolution had begun its political degeneration, and the gigantic potential of the Chinese revolution was led to disaster by the 3rd International, the historical legacy of the 2nd International.
II. Questions and a fictitious supposition
7) Now there are some questions.
(a) Was it correct for revolutionary Russia to have concentrated its international activities on crisis-ridden Europe, immediately after the world war?
Should it have concentrated its major attacks on the lower tier of the imperialist-colonial pyramid? With this orientation, it would have been unable to struggle against the political degeneration of the Russian revolution, and the 3rd International would not have been deprived of its historical capability to draw the Chinese revolution into the disaster.
(b) Why couldn’t the Western European Communist Parties, the origin of which were the leftwing splits from the 2nd international, resist and struggle against Stalinism?
The Polish party could not achieve a revolutionary victory. But this party continued to be opposed to Stalinism, and forced the latter to disband it bureaucratically.
Even the giant Trotsky could not possibly counterpoise himself to history itself; he had to act in history. Then, why had not the Western European proletarian movement produce a current of spontaneous consciousness for Trotskyism? Without this type of natural process in history, it is impossible to build a conscious Trotskyist faction.
Why were Trotsky and the 4th International not able to find a basis in the molecular process of consciousness inside the working class?
(c) Why was the second Chinese revolution subjugated to Stalin’s Moscow? How was the latter able to gain the historical capability to draw the gigantic Chinese revolution towards disaster?
The 3rd International’s Chinese revolution, the second revolution, turned out to be a total failure.
(d) And, finally, were Lenin and Trotsky wrong, having accomplished the great undertaking of the Russian revolution only half way?
8) Here I set a fictitious supposition.
If Columbus had not discovered the American continents; that is, if there were no Americas which happened to become the reserve areas for capitalism and imperialism? This is a fictitious supposition.
The American continents are the modern continents, the continents of capitalism. If there had not been the American continents, capitalism would not have survived as it has.
The gigantic financier of the first world war was North America, and the USA became the biggest imperialism through this European war. Was it not the USA that rescued bourgeois Germany and Western Europe in the 1920s?
North America — here, it seems, is one of the keys which may explain the world today.
9) So far, there are three problems for me.
(a) The 2nd International and its bankruptcy; problems of the national reformism created by imperialism.
Was the economic situation after the first world war not the sort that is the objective condition for proletarian revolution (leaving aside the situation after the second world war?
(b) The specific relation between the national bureaucracy of the Soviet Union and the international class struggles, a problem which has to be studied.
(c) In combination with the above mentioned conditions, the USA has played a very specific and important role in relation to the actual fate of the world revolution.
III. Upside-down world transition
10) The world movement of the 4th International was not realized as Trotsky had envisaged; the 4th International was also confined to the historical framework of the 2nd International’s bankruptcy.
The perspectives of a world revolution, upheld by the generation of the 2nd International, especially the revolutionary leftwing represented by Rosa,
Lenin and Trotsky, were betrayed and did not materialized. These three figures represented the generation of the early imperialist period and the first wave of world revolution. Trotsky fought to uphold their perspectives until the end, in opposition to the reaction of world history. One could say that Trotsky continued to refuse to recognize this reaction in his practice.
The actual history of the world revolution unfolded in a different way, having betrayed the perspectives of Rosa, Lenin and Trotsky. The first wave of the world revolution, which had begun to develop through the first world war and its aftermath, ended as a failure, leaving the Soviet Union as a degenerated workers state. This wave of world revolution was not able to overcome the wall of bureaucracy.
ll) The failure of the first world-revolutionary wave and its results became the historical reality. The first wave’s failure itself had decided the actual course of the world revolution. The world revolution unfolded in a standing-on-the-head, upside-down way, from the point of view of the perspectives upheld by Rosa, Lenin and Trotsky.
12) The great Asian revolution, which might have been opened by a successful second Chinese revolution, remained closed in fact.
If China had entered the path toward an independent modern nation through a victory of the second Chinese revolution, the ambition of old Japanese imperialism toward China and Southeast Asia would have been short-lived, or even impossible. Imperialist Japan would have been forced to accumulate the crisis domestically, and it would have exploded internally in the 1930s. The workers and landless/sharecropper peasants movement remained a minority movement in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and the movement was smashed in the middle of the 1930s. This defeat was closely related to the Japanese imperialist adventure toward China and Southeast Asia in the 1930s and late 1940s. Japanese imperialism was able to “export” its internal crisis to weak East Asia chauvinistically, and achieve the illusionary image of a “strong Japan”.
A victory of the second Chinese revolution would have influenced the Indian situation in the 1930s. A victorious Chinese revolution would not have allowed the whole oppressed masses of India to follow the “non-violence” and legalism of the bourgeois nationalist leadership, represented by Gandhi and Nehru; India would have been thrown into a great civil war in the 1930s.
Gigantic revolutions in China and India would have removed the whole basis for the “Great East Asia Co-prosperity Zone”, the ambition of old Japanese imperialism. Is it possible to imagine that Japanese imperialism would not have been thrown into an internal explosion, confronted with a revolutionary Asia? It is also clear what an Indian revolution would have meant to British imperialism.
The 3rd International failed in Asia.
13) The Western European revolution of the 3rd International was defeated by German fascism and Franco’s counter-revolution in Spain, and Nazi German imperialism subjugated French imperialism. As a result, the inherent crisis of fascist Italy did not explode, and the second world war broke out.
Consequently, British imperialism was protected from the Western European revolution. It was also spared great Indian rebellions due to the defeat of the second Chinese revolution.
Revolutionary Russia entered rapid and forceful industrialization, but it was under the dark, despotic regime of the state-bureaucracy.
The international extension of the Russian revolution toward the Middle East was also stopped.
14) The world economic crisis broke out in 1929 and the capitalist economic crisis continued all through the 1930s. The economic crisis also hit the Soviet Union.
The crisis of US imperialist economy continued all through the 1930s, and the Roosevelt New Deal did not solve the economic crisis.
On the basis of the economic crisis, the vast majority of the working class entered the militant trade union movement. "Violent strike-struggles were fought, frequently with street-wars. Even now, the US working class is not free from the memory of the 1930s great depression.
In spite of the prolonged economic crisis and the militant trade-union movement, the US proletariat did not mature to wage independent political struggles and to vie for state power in the 1930s. The proletariat could not break the limitation of its trade-unionism.
Here we cannot but see definite results of the failures of the 3rd International in Europe and Asia.
First of all, the failure of the European revolution made it impossible to present an alternative perspective of socialism to the US proletariat. If European United States of the proletarian dictatorship had existed on the other side of Atlantic Ocean, the political consciousness of the US proletariat might been powerfully drawn toward the perspective of socialist North America.
Secondly, without the failures of the world revolution in Europe and Asia, the second world war would have been impossible as it was in the 1940s. The wars in Europe and Asia rescued the crisis-ridden US economy. Without this world war, the economic crisis would have continued in the 1940s, and the US proletariat would have been forced to go forward to its socialist revolution or face a fascist North America.
Through the second world war, US imperialism entered a new phase of gigantic expansion, which prevented the political maturation of the proletariat.
With victorious advances of the world revolution in Europe and Asia, the Latin American nationalist movement of the 1930s would have developed as workers and peasants rebellions against the imperialist domination.
15) The failures of the 3rd International, that is, the bankruptcy of the 2nd International, had spilled over the whole world. Thereby, the failures of the 3rd International can not have be simply a “betrayal” of the “pre-envisaged”
course of history. The failures of the 3rd International totally “twisted” the whole course of the actual world revolution, and this has become the reality of contemporary world history.
The results of the Stalinist betrayals have changed the global structure and conditions for the actual possibility of the world revolution. It is now very different from the conditions on which the revolutionary classic-Marxists had based their thinking on the problems of the international proletarian revolution. At the same time, this meant that a transformation from the early imperialist period to the late imperialist period had begun to proceed.
Rosa, Lenin and Trotsky were the revolutionary Marxists of the 3rd International, and the 3rd International itself had failed. It is not that they were wrong. They were absolutely correct in history.
Today, we must try to grasp the actual world-transition in our consciousness and to elaborate our perspectives in this contemporary world.
(June1965)