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Antonio
Gramsci, as much as Trotsky, was an heir of the thought
of the Comintern before its Stalinist degeneration. This
was the greatest revolutionary working-class organization
ever, at a time when Marxism was having its heyday. Whereas
present-day Trotskyism represents some kind of feeble continuity
with that revolutionary movement of the pre-World World
II period, Gramsci's thought endured a more disgraceful
fate. In the postwar years, the Italian CP led by Palmiro
Togliatti -and Euro-Communism later on- seized upon it in
order to articulate a strategy that involved brazen support
for the bourgeois regime (a theoretical operation that Stalinism
could have never done with Trotsky's legacy). Since then,
Gramsci has become the subject of a scholar readership in
the academic milieu, resorted to by all kinds of self-seekers
and governmental officials. In this article, we dwell on
what we believe are the shortcomings in Gramsci's views,
but we are nevertheless aware that as much as Stalinism
does not represent in the least a continuity with Bolshevism,
but its counter-revolutionary degeneration, so current followers
of Gramsci cannot claim to be his legitimate heirs. In fact,
many of them have become 'organic intellectuals' for the
bourgeoisie or else are advisors of the union bureaucracy.
We are in no way the first ones to try and draw a critical
parallel between Trotsky´s thought and Gramsci's.
Perry Anderson, from the standpoint of academic Marxism,
opened up a debate around the ambiguities enshrined in Gramsci's
key concept of hegemony. That was a pioneer work, in which
Trotsky's views are dealt with, but the Trotskyists, alas,
failed to build on it . The main thrust of our approach
is two confront both theoretical systems taken as a whole,
contrasting their particular concepts in the process, i.e.,
the concept of capitalist equilibrium and the theory of
permanent revolution in Trotsky´s case; the relationship
between Gramsci's war of maneuver-war of position, and also
the uses of his notion of passive revolution. The latter,
we believe, has been rather underestimated by revolutionary
Marxists. The first result of contrasting both theoretical
perspectives is the emergence of new concepts, while others
gain in dialectical richness, allowing a better understanding
of the complex world scenario that took shape in the aftermath
of World War II -the period of the so-called 'Yalta Order'.
This saw consolidation of the hegemony of US imperialism
on the world, and the abhorrent grip of Stalinism over most
of the world working class movement in the wake of the defeat
of Nazi-fascism. We are trying to elucidate new theoretical
weapons that should enable us to a deeper understanding
of 'how the ruling class ruled' in the past, and also look
into the basis that nourished a new mass reformism in the
aftermath of the World War II. We do so to try and work
out, from a militant standpoint, those mechanisms hampering
revolution, and thus fight against reformism. Above all,
contrasting the views of Trotsky and Gramsci -both set against
the period of heightened class struggle that elapsed between
the two world wars- should enable us to chart the relationships
between the three cataclysmic events of our imperialist
epoch, i.e., capitalist crises, wars and revolutions -especially
their future dynamics.
The
period between the two wars
No matter
how unstable or solid the US position in the world today
might look, the hegemony of US imperialism appears to us
as some sort of 'natural phenomenon'. But this was not the
case at the beginning of the twentieth century, nor did
the conquest of its preponderant role come about as a 'natural'
evolution. Far from it, it was settled in an interregnum
that proved Lenin's dictum (the period ushered in by the
World War I is an 'epoch of crises, war and revolution')
was right through and through. Right from the beginning
of that phase, revolutionary Marxism was confronted with
a big challenge, i.e. trace a fundamental shift in world
politics -the advent of US imperialism's hegemony in place
of Britain's old rule. How did that change come about? What
were the reasons at work behind it?
A Marxist economist, Isaac Joshua, summed up the period
between the two world wars and the Great Depression along
these lines: 'The bankruptcy of the gold standard showed
the sterling crisis was a milestone in the depression of
the '30s. A sterling crisis that has appeared to us as a
crisis of hegemony, or for the sake of precision, a crisis
of 'between two': Britain can no longer play its old role,
whereas the US is not able to take over yet. The US prevents
Britain from continuing with 'business as usual'; the US,
in turn, was being blocked by Britain in its attempt to
gain the upper hand. Once again, the First World War played
its part in all this: it accelerated a development which
would have unfolded nonetheless, turning what were then
gaps in the building into massive cracks. It put the question
on top of the agenda, but it failed to work it out properly.
History opened up a period of latency, and the boat was
left without command, drifting afloat at the mercy of the
winds. '
Joshua also remarks: 'In 1918 (…) the strong contenders
were not strong enough yet, whereas the weak players were
not weak enough, either. In its international dimension,
the great crisis is clearly one of 'between two', between
a First World War that contented itself to put the big issues
on the order of the day, and a Second World War that worked
them out' in the direction of American hegemony.
Such was the nature of the period in which both Trotsky
and Gramsci's revolutionary activity took place -a period
that will thus provide the setting for the parallel between
their views.
Let us say, firstly, that the first common ground we find
between Leon Trotsky and Antonio Gramsci is that both highlighted
the new role of the US as a major world player superseding
a declining Britain. They both grappled with this issue
using the same approach: the law of productivity of labor.
Speaking on the superiority of American capitalism, Trotsky
stated that 'The law of productivity of labor is of fundamental
importance for the relationships between America and Europe,
and to ascertain the future position of the US in the world.
That superior application of the law of productivity of
labor by the Yankees has come to be known as chain, standardized
or mass production. They seem to have found the point of
leverage sought by Archimedes to turn the world upside-down'.
Gramsci reflected along the same lines. 'What is the fulcrum
for the new world that is coming into life?' And he replies
that the answer lies in 'The world of production, labor'.
That is why he focused on studying Fordism, to which he
described as the industrial policy pursued by the most dynamic
quarters of the American bourgeoisie in order to 'reach
an organization of a programmed economy' in which 'the new
methods of labor are inextricably linked to a peculiar way
of living, of thinking and of feeling life.' All these heralded
a new culture: 'Americanism' . 'Both Americanism and Fordism
-claims Gramsci- flow from an inherent drive to achieve
the organization of a planned economy (…) the transition
from the old economic individualism to a planned economy'.
And he goes on to say that the US 'shrewdly combined the
force (smashing the labor unionism on a territorial basis
[trade unions]) with persuasion (high wages, substantial
social benefits, a very clever ideological and political
propaganda) in order to rationalize both the production
and labor; it therefore was able to make the whole life
of the country revolve around production itself. The hegemony
flows from the factory itself and is exerted through a few
professional intermediaries coming from the political and
ideological spheres.'
Besides this common awareness of America's superiority relying
on the productivity of labor, they start from a similar
definition of the aftermath of World War I. Both brand it
as an 'unstable equilibrium' or else a 'relative stabilization'
of capitalism. This concept appears in the report delivered
by Trotsky to the III Congress of the Comintern in 1921.
Such view, later on adopted by the Comintern, was common
to both revolutionaries.
Its definition reads as follows: 'Capitalist equilibrium
is a complex phenomenon; the capitalist regime brings about
such equilibrium, then breaks it up, only to restore it
and undo it again, enhancing, in the process, the foundations
of its domination. In the economic sphere, the slumps and
upsurges of activity are disruptions and restorations of
equilibrium itself. In the sphere of class relationships,
a break-up of equilibrium results in strikes, lock-outs,
in revolutionary fights. In the sphere of the relationships
between the states, the disruption of equilibrium leads
to war as a rule; or it might also lead to a concealed tariff
war, economic warfare or a blockade. Capitalism, therefore,
relies on an unstable equilibrium that comes apart every
now and then, only to be restored later on. At the same
time, such equilibrium is highly endurable: the best proof
bearing testimony to this is the continued existence of
the capitalist world.'
Far from any kind of economic determinism, Trotsky holds
that 'the analysis of the economic conditions and tendencies
and the political state of affairs worldwide as a whole
should be the starting point, considering it as a totality
with its own relationships and contradictions, i.e., with
a mutual dependence opposing its components between themselves.'
Trotsky's thought stood accused of sharing the same economically
deterministic view than the II International . However,
the originality of his approach lies in the fact that he
incorporates the role of subjective factors as decisive
elements shaping the evolution of the capitalist economy.
Let us cast all the doubts aside: 'If we are asked, "What
guarantee is there that capitalism will not restore its
equilibrium through cyclical upswings?" then we would
answer: 'There are none and there cannot be any'. If we
do away with the revolutionary nature of the working class
and its struggle, and dismiss the work of the Communist
Party within the unions…and take into account only
the objective mechanisms of capitalism, we might then say:
"Naturally, should a working class intervention fail,
should its struggle, its resistance, its self-defense and
its offensives all fail, capitalism will succeed in restoring
its own equilibrium, not the old one but a new kind of equilibrium.'
Gramsci,
on his part, hammers out the concept of 'organic crisis',
which he applies to the nation-state in the main. However,
such concept has some similarities with Trotsky's 'disruption
of capitalist equilibrium', which he resorts to for dealing
with the analysis of the international scenario.
Gramsci,
when trying to appraise the balance of forces, points out
that, 'Another question is to determine whether the economic
crises directly cause those deep-going crisis of historical
magnitude. (...) The economic crises can be considered not
to provoke, by themselves, fundamental developments; they
just might bring in a fertile soil for new ways of thinking,
of posing and working out those issues related to the further
evolution of state life. (...) At any rate, a disruption
in the balance of forces does not occur due to immediate
causes, such as the impoverishment of the social group with
an interest to break up the equilibrium, and does so indeed;
quite otherwise, this disruption occurs in the arena of
conflicts standing right above the economic field and are
related to a class 'prestige' (future economic interest),
to an intensified wish for independence, autonomy and power
altogether.'9
Starting
from this theoretical ground -which we can brand as economic
anticatastrophism- common to both Trotsky and Gramsci in
the 1920s10, let us examine now the perspectives they envisaged
for the international situation in the period ahead.
A
'passive revolution'
In a
survey of Gramsci's thought, we come across the following
statement: 'It is important to bear in mind Gramsci's remark
that the contemporary historical period, that which followed
World War I, can be studied and appraised starting from
the concept of 'passive revolution'. In the wake of the
cataclysm created by the imperialist war, and the deep-going
crisis that followed, which was brought to a close with
the defeat of the proletarian revolution in the Western
world, a whole epoch seemed to be drawing to a close. In
fact, the bourgeoisie had managed to hold the reins of the
situation and to neutralize the revolutionary forces, in
spite of the fierce resistance put up by them. That is why
the period of a 'relative stabilization' of capitalism seemed
to be more than a mere short-lived parentheses.11
As a matter of fact, Gramsci was at the time wondering 'whether
Americanism might grow into a whole historical epoch, i.e.,
whether it might bring about a piecemeal development in
line with (...) those 'passive revolutions' of the last
century (...) or quite otherwise, whether French-styled
uprisings like Russia's will burst out.'12 He opposed that
likely development to those 'revolutions from above' that
Marx and Engels had already described in the past.
Gramsci's concept of a 'passive revolution'13 stemmed from
three different sources. The idea of a shift within the
ruling classes through a 'revolution from above' as a result
of a mass movement can be traced back to Marx himself, as
much as we can pinpoint Trotsky's 'permanent revolution'
in Marx's own works -although none of them come to mean
exactly the same in the imperialist epoch and in the nineteenth
century. Marx and Engels stated that in the wake of Louis
Bonaparte's coup in France in 1851, 'The period of revolutions
from below had come to an end, at least for the time being;
this was followed by a period of revolutions from above'.
The restoration of the Empire in France at the behest of
Bonaparte, and 'his follower, Bismarck' who 'staged a coup
d'état and started his own revolution from above
in 1866' in Prussia, bore testimony to that.14
Proceeding along the same lines, Gramsci was to conclude
that, as much as the period of bourgeois revolutions stretching
from the 1789 Great French Revolution to 1848 was followed
by a period of 'revolutions from above', the 1917 Bolshevik
revolution -the 'France' of the time- might be followed
by a phase of passive revolutions. This appraisal by Gramsci
of the relationship between the upswing of revolution and
the backlash unleashed by counter-revolution, along with
the changes operated in the modern democratic states of
the Western world is at the root of a notorious dictum.
He held that 'the 1848 formula of 'permanent revolution'
is developed and overcome in the realm of political science
by that of a 'civil hegemony'15, due to the fact that 'the
organizational relationships of the state, both at home
and abroad, have become more complex and solid'. In the
same way, both Fordism and Americanism, with the transformations
within the state that they brought in, will then mean an
attempt at developing the productive forces relying on the
relative stabilization achieved by capitalism in the 1920s.
This will be done by means of halting the revolutionary
tide sweeping the world, especially Europe, in the aftermath
of the October Revolution -that is why Gramsci calls the
passive revolution a 'revolution-restoration' as well.
Secondly, Gramsci drew the concept from Italian history
itself. 'The concept of passive revolution in the sense
that Vicenzo Cuoco branded the first period of the Risorgimento'.16
Gramsci stretched the concept, to make it encompass the
whole period of national unification starting in 1848-49
and culminating in 1871 with the annexation of Rome as the
capital city of Italy. The unification of Italy as a bourgeois
nation was achieved within the limits dictated by the alliance
between the Northern bourgeoisie with the landowners in
the South, which prevented the distribution of land -or
concessions- among the peasantry, in stark contrast with
the deep-going agrarian reform carried out by the French
revolution. Thus, the party of the so-called Moderates accomplished
a historically progressive task, such as the unification
of Italy, in a reactionary manner, whereas the Piedmont
army and its state were the forces standing behind it. This
brought about a 'diplomatization of the revolution', in
stark opposition to the French model. The bourgeoisie had
resorted to 'transformism', a ruse designed to assimilate,
co-opt and transform the more radical-minded leaders of
the people active in the Action Party, by subordinating
them to the program of the Moderate wing. In this way, they
were prevented from playing an active, Jacobin role, and
caved in to the right wing of the movement. A 'passive revolution',
negotiated from above -such was the perspective Gramsci
was warning against now, in the epoch of proletarian revolution,
one that might turn out to be a bourgeois brake on the socialist
revolution.17
Finally, Gramsci resorts to this concept in the face of
a burning political necessity: articulate a response vis-à-vis
the rise of Fascism. Gramsci totally disagrees with the
evaluation made by the PCI as to Mussolini's chances of
succeeding. Trotsky will state in this regard: 'According
to reports delivered by the Italian comrades, the Communist
Party, apart from Gramsci, did not envisage in the least
the likelihood of Fascism taking power'.18
Although he was more far-sighted in the analysis of this
development -the big scale mobilization of the middle classes
against the proletariat- Gramsci shared Bordiga's ultra-leftist
view in the first years. It was only in 1924 that he agreed
to the workers' united front tactic advocated by Trotsky
and the Comintern to fight back Fascism in Italy.19 Some
years later, he will reject -like Trotsky- the orientation
of the Stalin-led Comintern that came to be known as the
'third period', i.e., the outright rejection of any kind
of cooperation or united front with the Socialist Party
and the reformist labor organizations, considered then to
be a strand of 'social-Fascism.'
Hence, his emphasis on the concept of 'passive revolution',
in order to appraise what was going on along different lines
and deliver an according response, more in line with the
needs of the mass movement. The unheard-of phenomenon of
Italian Fascism did not boil down to a violent suppression
of labor, but it also tried to gain a new consensus from
the Italian masses. Even after the 1929 crash, a strand
of Fascism takes issue with liberal economics, and develops
the hypothesis of a 'rationalization-reorganization' of
the forces of production, an Italian version of 'Americanism'
via 'corporativism' that sets up a kind of 'union between
the government of the masses and the management of production'.
Gramsci regards it as an attempt at overcoming the 'organic
crisis' weighing down on the state.
Having said all this, we are led to conclude that a passive
revolution in the imperialist epoch would result in a 'transformation
of the economic structure along reformist lines, going from
an individualistic to a planned economy (managed economy),
and the coming to life of a 'in-between economy' halfway
from the purely individualistic type and a wholesome planned
economy' -the latter meaning socialist planning. The bourgeoisie
accomplished this 'in-between' economy by means of state
leverage, i.e. 'corporativism', which allowed capitalism
to move towards more modern political and cultural forms,
skipping or else telescoping the catastrophic phase.
So, two possible ways for a capitalist recovery arise: 'Americanism',
in the style of Roosevelt's new deal, on one hand, and Fascism,
on the other. Gramsci, by abstracting the civil war methods
used by Fascism against labor, its organization and its
vanguard, finds a common ground as to the aims pursued by
both. These are not only to 'disperse the antagonistic forces',
i.e. the proletariat, and separate it from the peasantry,
but also rejuvenate capitalism on a new basis. So both Americanism
and Fascism are, in Gramsci's view, attempts at 'modernizing'
capitalism 'from above', and both are accounted for by the
concept of passive revolution, which is above all a socio-economical
category, but one that encompasses thorough-going transformations
in the sphere of the state.
On top of the change in socio-economic conditions and the
social customs entailed by Americanism, there also emerged
a new type of state to nurture them: 'The state is of a
liberal kind, not in the sense of the old customs liberalism
or that meaning practical political freedom, but in a deeper
sense, that of free initiative; an economic liberalism that
grows into a regime of industrial concentration and monopoly
altogether, as a civil society and due to its own historical
development.' This new kind of state manages the economy
'endowed with key functions within the capitalist system
as an enterprise (state-run holding) that concentrates the
savings in its hands, putting them at the service of industry
and the private sector, and also acting as a medium and
long term investor.'
At the same time, this state establishes a new kind of relationship
with the oppressed classes: 'Most of the depositors want
to break all the bounds tying them to the private capitalist
system as a whole, but they do not mistrust the state: they
want to take part in the economic activity, but through
the state, which guarantees them a low but secure revenue.'
Hence, 'it follows that the state, in theory at least, seems
to rely upon 'ordinary people' and the intellectuals, whereas
it structure remains a plutocracy through and through.'
In this respect, J.C. Portantiero holds that Americanism
is, for Gramsci, the most assertive stake to stave off the
tendency of the rate of profit to fall within imperialist
capitalism, by means of new production techniques that yield
an increased relative surplus value: 'It is an expression
of the crisis itself, its 'overcoming' in terms of the growth
of a system that has always experienced a 'crisis-ridden'
development, amid 'factors that balanced and neutralized
one another'. Of course, 'Americanism' in itself has changed
little 'the nature of the fundamental social groups', but
it remains a capitalist backlash standing at the highest
level of the insurmountable contradictions flowing from
the structure, which 'the ruling classes try and work out
and overcome within given limits'…'20 And all this
much is true, but there is more to it than that. The Americanism,
for Gramsci -a socio-economic category- is inextricably
linked to the political category of passive revolution,
in terms of a revolution-restoration, a reformist shift
within capitalism itself -and this is what the reformists
or else Gramsci's bachelors gloss over all the time. The
political thrust of his view is at odds with that of those
who now build upon his insights, while longing for the 'welfare
state' -by and large dismantled by the neoliberal onslaught
in the '90s. In fact, they stand for a program of passive
revolution -in the style of the old Italian 'Moderates'-
aimed at restoring the latter. In stark contrast to his
epigones of today, Gramsci himself warned about such attempts
at rejuvenation within the state apparatus and the state-managed
economic agenda, which he understood to be a medium to long-term
reactionary backlash aimed at laying the basis for 'a new
conformism'. It was a devise designed to hamper the hegemony
of the proletariat, block a communist revolution and weather
the organic crisis ridding the bourgeoisie -all issues a
Marxist leadership should be able to grapple with and fight
against.
Americanism
and the war
Let
us now take a look at Trotsky's views.
In 1926, when faced with the same issue of America's emergence,
he held that: 'In the article drafted by comrade Feldman,
the considerations on the path of development of the United
States have taken on a rather algorithmic shape. He reached
the conclusion that the development of America was reliant,
at best, on a blind alley, and that its present-day rise
amounts to nothing when compared to that of past decades.
If this should be true, we are not allowed to build a perspective
leading to a peaceful world development. The rise of the
United States to the top, insofar as it proceeds smoothly,
will lead Europe to a blind alley from the economic standpoint,
and Europe will either decline as the Roman Empire did,
or else will go through a revolutionary revival. But right
now, we cannot talk about a European decline. If the development
of the United States should be halted, the powerful forces
at work within it will seek a way out through war. That
will be its only chance of overcoming the shortcomings flowing
from the circumstances underpinning its economic development.
Such shortcomings move along like the vortex of a hurricane.
Such vortex, full of a colossal force and delayed, might
wreak havoc within the country.'
'Let us examine now the position of the proletariat. With
regards to Britain, nothing is left of the old aristocratic
position of the British proletariat. Our fraternal deal
with the British unions [the Anglo-Russian Committee] relies
on the economic decline of Britain. Now, it is the working
class in the United States the one that has conquered a
privileged position. A delay in the economic development
of the United States would provoke a huge shift in the balance
of forces at home, thus spurting into life a revolutionary
movement that would emerge with that typical American speed.
In this way, the two likely scenarios in the United States
lead us to envisage massive cataclysms in the decades ahead,
rather than peaceful developments. Quite recently, an American
edition of The Economist carried an article stating that,
as the experience of the latest war showed, the United States
needs an all-out war. The American imperialists have made
their choice, but that is not one of a peaceful development.'21
We should note that those definitions were devised before
the 1929 crash in the US that brought about a turning point
in the world arena. Even before it, Trotsky was able to
envisage the deep tendencies and the inter-imperialist contradictions
at work that should nourish new revolutionary developments,
on one hand, and war, on the other. Some years later, in
the aftermath of the Wall Street crash, he furnishes -taking
issue with the program adopted by the Comintern- a dialectical
train of thought as the American crisis was unfolding in
September 1930: 'Molotov meant to say, 'Trotsky extolled
the prowess of America and look now, the United States is
going through a deep slump. But shall we conclude that the
capitalist prowess is devoid of crisis? Did Britain, in
the climax of worldwide rule, not know of crises? Can we
think of a crisis-free development of capitalism at all?
This is what we have said in this regard in the drat program
of the Comintern:
'We shall not dwell here in pondering the key issue of the
duration of the American crisis and its likely scope. It
is a conjuncture problem, not a programmatic one. It goes
without a saying that we hold no doubts with regards to
the inevitability of a crisis, neither do we rule out that,
given the world scope of American capitalism, the next crisis
could be extremely deep and sharp. But there is absolutely
nothing leading us to believe that that should hamper or
weaken the hegemony of American in any possible way. Such
conclusion would nourish gross strategic blunders. It is
just contrariwise. In a period of crisis, the United States
will exert its hegemony to the full in the most brazen and
brutal manner, even more so than in the period of its climax.
The United States will try and overcome its problems and
woes at the expense of Europe in the main.'22
From
now onwards, we can notice a shift in Trotsky's insights
in the 1930s with respect to those of the 1920s. This change
was due to the 1929 crash, which disrupted the 'unstable
equilibrium' of capitalism, as the Comintern had put it,
and ushered in a new period. A new 'catastrophic phase'
was in the making, and new revolutionary opportunities would
arise in its trail. This will indeed happen with the opening
salvos of the Spanish revolution in 1931, and also the revolution
in France unleashed with the factory occupations of 1936.
Both revolutions, Trotsky would point out later, offered
the chance of 'stopping the imperialist war through revolutions
from below'. But these ended up in defeat, not because of
any sort of inescapable fate, but rather as a result of
the CPs' policy of 'Popular Fronts'. In 1935, the VII Congress
of the Stalin-led Comintern adopted that tactic, which turned
the CPs in willing aides of a moribund capitalism.
Now then, even in the period of a catastrophic crisis, Trotsky
did not fail to appraise the potential of American capitalism,
only to emphasize that such superiority would not prevail
over Europe along peaceful lines. In 1933, he held that,
in spite of an American superiority reliant on the law of
labor productivity, and his technical superiority incarnated
in Fordism, '…the old planet Earth is reluctant to
be turned over. Everyone is protecting from the rest by
building a wall of goods and weapons. Europe does not purchase
goods, does not pay its debts and arms itself besides. A
greedy Japan has seized a whole country just with five squalid
divisions. The most advanced technique in the world, suddenly,
seems helpless before the obstacles flowing from an utterly
inferior technique. The law of the productivity of labor
seems to be going down. But it just seems to doing so. The
basic law running though the whole history of mankind is
inevitably poised to take revenge on those secondary and
accidental phenomena. Sooner or later, American capitalism
will open its way all throughout our planet. What methods
will it resort to? All of them. A high rate of productivity
denotes a high rate of destructive forces. Am I preaching
war? I am not preaching anything. I am just trying to analyze
the laws presiding over the dynamics of the economy.'23
Trotsky understands better than Gramsci the drift of this
epoch of crisis, wars and revolutions: Americanism would
only prevail at the expense of Europe, plunging the world
in a new war in the process. Even when we take into account
Gramsci's contributions to Marxist political science vis-à-vis
the question of the modern state, we see that Trotsky grappled
best with one the main characteristics of those 'advanced'
states in the imperialist epoch. As Lenin had remarked,
not only were they an organ of force and repression at home
(to which Gramsci added those aspects of consensus), but
a tool of war abroad as well -a state 'for looting'.24 That
was his structural analysis, a continuation of the Comintern's,
although that tendency underwent two different phases -that
of the unstable equilibrium in the 1920s and its disruption
in the 1930s.
Meanwhile, in Gramsci's view, the likelihood of a whole
cycle of passive revolutions was predicated upon 'the cessation
of the fundamental organic struggle and the overcoming of
the catastrophic phase'25, within the limits imposed by
the imperialist epoch. It is true that Gramsci pointed out
that the 'passive revolutions' were a 'revolution-restoration,
in which the second moment alone prevails'. And he also
added, 'the restorations, whatever the name attached to
them, the ones of today above all [Gramsci's own emphasis]
are universally repressive'. But the key aspect of a passive
revolution is that it pursues 'the reduction of the dialectics
to a mere evolutionary, reformist process'.
Trotsky, instead, approaches the period from the standpoint
that capitalism leads to renewed catastrophes. 'The life
of monopoly capitalism in our times is a chain of crises.
Every single crisis brings about a catastrophe. The need
to escape from such token catastrophes by means of tariff
walls, inflation, the rise of government expenditure, the
hike of debt levels; all these lay the basis for further
crises, deeper and more widespread. The struggle to access
more markets, raw materials and colonies makes a military
catastrophe inevitable. And these in turn nourish revolutionary
catastrophes. It is indeed hard to agree to Mr. Sombart's
statement that present-day capitalism becomes every day
more and more 'tranquil, reasonable and peaceful'. It would
be more correct to say that it is losing the last vestiges
of reason. At any rate, there is no doubt that the 'theory
of collapse' has triumphed over the theory of a peaceful
development.'26
Of course, Trotsky's concept of a 'catastrophic phase' does
not apply to the economic sphere alone. His 'theory of collapse'
is understood not just in terms of a merely economic cataclysm,
but also rather as a linking of catastrophes in the economic,
military and revolutionary realms -i.e. the articulation
of a crisis, the policies of the states (hegemony) and the
class struggle. These very three factors that -according
to Trotsky- had accounted for the previous 'unstable equilibrium',
were now breaking it down. Once again, we see the same criteria
at work, both in the 1920s and the 1930s, although the nature
of the situation has radically changed.
What about Gramsci? In the words of one his followers: 'In
conclusion, two elements emerge very clearly: a) By the
end of the century that Eric Hobsbawn branded 'the age of
extremes', we must emphasize the importance of the fact
that Gramsci stayed away from the radicalization and the
simplification cutting across the intellectual dualities
of the 1930s (and beyond) along the lines of the pairs Communism-Fascism
or Fascism-antifascism; b) he anticipated a picture of the
future of capitalism that was to unfold in the post World
War II period with the new American hegemony. He failed
to foresee the tragic ethos of Nazism, the Second World
War, Auschwitz or the aberration of Stalinism; quite paradoxically,
from inside the walls of the Turi prison he sees those 'structural'
features of our century without blinding himself, as so
many other commentators.'27
In that
convulsive interregnum of the crisis of world hegemony,
Gramsci did not reach the stature of Trotsky's strategic
prognoses, who clearly anticipated that the way out for
the crisis of hegemony would come hand in hand with a new
world war, and also the outcome of the class struggle unleashed
by that war as a 'midwife of revolution'. He developed,
basing himself on such strategic prognosis, both the program
and an embryonic international organization. He built upon
a comprehensive theory, as well as the lessons drawn from
the main tests of the class struggle, contrasting them with
the international policy of the Stalin-led Comintern. Building
upon those lessons, such as the experience of the Anglo-Russian
Committee; the fate of the Chinese revolution; the turning
point of the capitulation of the German CP before Hitler;
the program and the tactics for the Spanish Revolution;
the reckless denunciation of those who betrayed it and the
strict demarcation from the capitulators; its rejection
of the 'Popular Front' policy and the characterization of
the Stalinist phenomenon and the degeneration of the USSR;
he will proceed to build the International Left Opposition,
and later on he will found the Fourth International. His
bet was that the latter would play a leading role in the
future developments.
Understanding
the aftermath of WWII
Now
then, we believe that if we take out the out-of-time gradualist
views as to a rejuvenation of capitalism enshrined in Gramsci's
thought, the concept of 'passive revolution' proves to be
very fruitful to deal with the aftermath of World War II.
We brand them 'out-of-time gradualist views' because it
was the war alone that paved the way for the United States
to impose its hegemony over the world and spread Fordism
to Europe all along the way. It came to prevail after massive
destruction of productive forces in Europe; after the main
contenders of the United States -Germany and Japan- were
defeated and out of the game; and after a contradictory
outcome of the class struggle in the wake of the mass upsurge
that followed the war. Ultimately, Gramsci failed to see
that, starting from his own definitions, the United States
would only impose its hegemony over the world after a tour
de force that should then usher in a new 'consensus'. We
should, however, bear in mind that American imperialism
resorted to an invaluable aid to get away with this: Stalinism.
The latter hindered the upswing sweeping through Europe,
laying the foundations for the stabilization of the main
capitalist countries.28
Only when this worldwide catastrophic phase was left behind,
with the advent of the agreements at Yalta and Potsdam between
the victorious imperialism and a rejuvenated Soviet bureaucracy,
only then is when the concept of passive revolution comes
in to chart best the evolution of the new world scenario.
We believe that at least two key elements of that passive
revolution hold out. First the advent of a 'Keynesian' economics
in the capitalist countries, i.e., the new deal transformed
now in raison d'état, whose essential features vis-à-vis
the masses and the state relationships with the economy
were foreseen by Gramsci. Second, the controversial 1943-48
revolutions in Eastern Europe engineered by the Red Army
in those occupied territories such as Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia
and even half of Germany, which could also be branded proletarian
passive revolutions.29
Gramsci highlighted that at the time of the Risorgimento,
'the barricades in the style of Paris 1848 were nowhere
to be seen in Italy' because they were replaced by the draft
to the standing army of Piedmont. Likewise, that was the
role played by Stalinism in the era of proletarian revolution,
i.e., stifle the emergence of 1917-styled soviets and replace
them with the advance of the Red Army in the East. Stalin's
own role in the Yalta-Potsdam accords, which codified the
control of Eastern Europe by the USSR, can be also explained
in terms of the 'diplomatization of the revolution' -in
line with Gramsci's account of the Italian national unification.
Likewise, the use by Stalinism of most of the old pre-war
bourgeois state personnel in the newly created deformed
workers states partially partakes a 'restoration'. The capitalist
relationships of production were changed there into planned
economies, but this progressive task went hand in hand with
a reactionary hampering of the soviets as organs for the
self-government of the masses. The new role of the Communist
Parties and the unions led by the Stalinists and Social
democrats amounted to a big scale 'transformism', in which
they used all their ascendancy to rebuild Europe along capitalist
lines. Last but not least, the features of the 'welfare
state' foreseen by Gramsci as a new type of capitalist state
prevailed, and became the norm in the imperialist heartlands
-and even in some semi-colonies.
We believe that in its general features, the new and contradictory
post-war developments can be understood as part and parcel
of a great passive revolution, which should be regarded
also as a response to the mass and working class upsurge,
handing over 'reformist concessions to neutralize the subjugated
classes' in that most exceptional period ranging from 1943
to 1949.
A third attempt at a passive revolution was to engineer
a 'de-colonization' from above, devised by the imperialists
to hold down the anti-colonial revolution. They changed
the status of their old colonies, recognizing them as 'modern'
semi-colonial nations, but that move proved fruitless. It
was precisely there, in the periphery of the capitalist
world where the revolution erupted with all its force, in
a true outburst of the oppressed peoples living in the colonies
and the semi-colonies. And it is to the credit of the Fourth
International and its prognoses the fact that they urged
the proletariat and the masses in the semi-colonial countries
not to wait for the revolution in the imperialist metropolises,
but start their own revolution right away. In this way,
they might be able to achieve the dictatorship of the proletariat
before their metropolitan counterparts. This development
also proved the theory of permanent revolution was right
to emphasize the key role that the backward countries were
poised to play in the process.
Despite
of the fact that major concessions were handed over to the
working class in the advanced countries, the upsurge of
the colonial revolution in the postwar (and the inability
to steer a passive revolution to stop them) confirmed that
the epoch was an imperialist one, just as Trotsky had emphasized.
'The imperialist classes were in a position to hand over
some concessions to the colonial peoples and their own workers
when capitalism was on the upswing, and the exploiters felt
they could firmly rely on a steady rise of the profits.
But today, we cannot even dream of that. World imperialism
is in decline. The position of the imperialist nations becomes
more difficult every day, whereas the contradictions between
them get worse all the time. The monstrous arms race under
way devours an ever-increasing share of the national income.
The imperialists can no longer deliver any significant concession
to the toiling masses at home, nor can they give them to
the colonies. Quite on the contrary, they are forced to
resort to an ever-worsening exploitation. It is precisely
this that speaks of the agony of capitalism.'30
Although, as we said above, concessions were given to the
working class in the advanced countries as a byproduct of
their revolutionary action, which forced the elite to 'give
away something so as not to lose everything', the dictum
of the Fourth International was proved right all along the
way in those countries in the grip of imperialism. The massive
outburst of the masses in the semi-colonies confirmed the
validity of the strategic perspective charted by Trotsky.
Those movements will remain active beyond the exceptional
period of 1943-49, for all the duration of the Yalta Order,
a period during which they will remain the most revolutionary
factor of the class struggle worldwide. As we pointed out
above, the strengthening of the Stalinist apparatus worldwide
will prevent them from impinging upon the imperialist heartlands
and boosting a revolution there. The latter will even resort
to all the means available to congeal all the 'national
liberation' developments in the colonies, keeping them in
the realm of the bourgeois regime.
That was the case to an unforeseen development, one that
Trotsky's -let alone Gramsci's- prognoses failed to anticipate,
i.e., the most extraordinary political feature of the postwar
superstructure -the new role of Stalinism as a bulwark against
the revolution on a planetary scale.
Trotsky
betted that the world revolutionary developments unleashed
by the war -which took place widely in the period 1943-49-
would provoke, in turn, the overthrow of the Soviet bureaucracy,
paving the way for the revolutionary rejuvenation of the
USSR. But this perspective did not materialize. Far from
it, the outcome of the war was a new lease of life for the
bureaucratic caste, not only in the USSR but also in a new
system of deformed workers states that sprung up in Eastern
Europe. The working class and the masses managed to regain
forces after the massacres of the imperialist war, as much
as they had done after 1914-1918. Then, they went on to
stage a colossal upsurge, of major relevance since it swept
across key capitalist countries, such as Italy, France,
and Greece, at the time of the armed resistance against
Nazism. Stalinism nonetheless managed to weather that upsurge,
and earned itself a renewed prestige in the eyes of the
masses for having defeated the German Army at Stalingrad.
Besides, it was able to derail such developments, holding
back the working class and putting all its organizations
at the service of a capitalist rebuilding of Europe -along
the lines of 'Americanism'.
But,
regardless of the fact that Trotsky's political prognoses
were proved wrong, he stood well above Gramsci, since he
laid the basis for understanding Stalinism and the degeneration
of the Russian revolution altogether31, and also waged a
stubborn battle against it before the war, giving precious
guidelines on how to fight against it as well. He was the
only Marxist that raised a program for a new kind of revolution,
the 'political revolution', that should be carried through
in the degenerate workers' state. He also set forth a whole
system of specific transitional demands aimed at overthrowing
the parasitic caste in charge there, while preserving the
conquests of the nationalized economy, restoring the actual
power of the soviets and re-launching the transition to
socialism by endowing the workers state with a revolutionary
policy, both at home and abroad.
Secondly, although he was not in a position to predict the
increased class collaboration practiced by the Soviet bureaucracy
with imperialism on a world scale -as it was codified in
the Yalta Accords-, he nevertheless anticipated, in the
fight waged against the 'popular fronts' in the 1930s in
France and Spain, that Stalinism had become an 'additional
stumbling block' in the path leading the proletariat to
class independence. Gramsci, in turn, who used the term
'transformism' abundantly in his analysis of a bourgeois
revolution, failed to see the biggest process of transformism
ever in the realm of proletarian revolution, i.e., the advent
of the Soviet bureaucracy.
The
permanent revolution blocked
'The
economic prerequisite for proletarian revolution has by
and large reached its peak under capitalism. The productive
forces of mankind have stagnated… The objective conditions
for revolution have not only ripened, but they are starting
to rot. If there is no socialist revolution in the period
ahead of us, humanity is threatened with undergoing a catastrophe.
The time has come for the proletariat to come to the fore,
led by its revolutionary vanguard. The historical crisis
of mankind boils down to that of its revolutionary leadership.'32
This correct statement, in historical terms, that opens
the Transitional Program adopted by the Fourth International
in 1938, was partially disavowed in the wake of 1948, with
its notorious consequences. We believe that a whole series
of objective and subjective conditions resulted in a blockade
of the dynamics of permanent revolution. The task was then
to enhance the concept of 'crisis of revolutionary leadership'
-some Trotskyist currents have made a fetish out of it.
Posing the question in a concrete fashion, we can say that
the crisis of revolutionary leadership, especially the paths
to overcome it, were not exactly the same ones in the 1930s,
at a time when revolution and counter-revolution clashed
openly, than in the postwar period. The outcome of the war
and the ensuing upswing brought about new material conquests
for the proletariat that became institutionalized, ranging
from reformist concessions in the advanced capitalist countries
up to the creation of new states where capital had been
expropriated, although this resulted in a strengthening
of a counter-revolutionary leadership. This meant that the
followers of the Fourth International had to ponder this
issue in the light of 'the world of Yalta', and reinstate
a new strategic framework, and also adjust their program
accordingly.
a) The extent of the partial development of the productive
forces had to be pondered right away. In this field, Trotskyism
split in two tendencies, both of which were wrong. On one
side stood those who, like the International Committee sponsored
by Pierre Lambert (including the Argentina-based group led
by Nahuel Moreno and the Bolivian POR of Guillermo Lora33),
held on to a 'stagnation view'. 'The productive forces of
mankind have stagnated', they claimed, ruminating the words
of the Transitional Program over and over again. They thus
remained oblivious to the fact that the colossal destruction
of productive forces wreaked by the war, and the ensuing
capitalist rebuilding of Europe allowed for the implementation
of the most advanced American techniques, in a sudden and
concentrated fashion, and therefore created a quick demand
of consumer goods, all at one and the same time. This was
a token countertendency, a limited and temporary one, but
one that reversed what was a fact before the war. The continued
existence of the imperialist epoch, i.e., the phase of capitalist
decline, was in no way tantamount to the stagnation of the
productive forces, which underwent a partial development
during the period 1948-68. Those who opposed this 'stagnation
view' were the followers of Ernest Mandel's United Secretariat.
They held the view that that partial development during
the boom had brought to life a 'neocapitalism' or else a
'late capitalism', thus adopting an adapted version of the
bourgeois view on capitalist crises. These could be traced
in the so-called 'waves' or automatic cycles of growth and
slump, the class struggle being a totally subordinated factor
in them.
b) That partial development of the productive forces in
the advanced countries, along with the Keynesian 'welfare
state' that was instrumental in the bargaining between capital
and labor, laid the basis for a rebirth of reformism, this
time relying on a more widespread and enhanced layer of
the labor aristocracy in the imperialist countries. Back
in the 1930s, the European social democracy had been caught
in the crossfire of Fascism, which thwarted its parliamentary
game, on one hand, and the proletarian grassroots on the
other, which carried into its ranks the radicalized atmosphere
prevailing in various countries.34 The postwar period and
the regained capitalist stability found it at the head of
mass unions that profited from the new conquests handed
over by the 'welfare state'. Stalinism, in turn, would rely
on the widest mass support ever, thus tightening its grip
on the working class movement, not only in the capitalist
countries, but in the new deformed workers' states in Eastern
Europe as well. The capitalist boom enabled these to gain
some economic autarchy. On top of this, the nationalization
of the economy in a series of countries boosted, in itself,
the thrust towards the industrial development of hitherto
overwhelmingly peasant nations, raising the standard of
living of the masses significantly as well. As a whole,
a new working class movement is brought to life, with new
economic conquests, themselves the by-product of the outcome
of the war, which will lay the basis for a new mass reformism,
a 'renewed conformism' as Gramsci would have put it. Both
Stalinism and social democracy thus came out of the war
strengthened.
c) Stalinism became the 'official Marxism', thus opening
up an abysmal gap in the continuity of revolutionary Marxism.
Through the creation of different tendencies and various
internecine fights, continuity had been maintained, through
the first three Internationals and up to the Fourth International
-from Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto in 1848, right
up to the Manifesto against the War drafted by Trotsky in
1940. Although Trotsky had warned that Stalinism was already
'an additional stumbling block' for the proletariat, he
never could have imagined the extent it would reach in the
wake of the war. The Trotskyists should have pondered the
dangers this entailed. The own ranks of the Fourth International
had to be looked at from the perspective anticipated by
Trotsky before the war: should the proletariat fail to deliver
a revolutionary response (and it had indeed failed to do
so, or had only done it partially), the workers' parties,
even the most revolutionary ones amongst them, ran the risk
of degenerating. 'All those skeptical people of the superficial
type are delighted to point their fingers at the degeneration
of Bolshevik centralism into stifling bureaucratism. As
if the whole course of history was hinged upon the structure
of a given party! In fact, it is the fate of the party that
is hinged upon the course of the class struggle. At any
rate, the Bolshevik Party was the only one that displayed,
in action, the ability to accomplish a proletarian revolution.
It is precisely such a party what the international proletariat
badly needs right now. If the bourgeois regime survives
the war, all the revolutionary parties will degenerate.
If the proletarian revolution ends up victorious and seizes
power, all those conditions nourishing degeneration will
fade away.'35 Against this alternative prognosis, there
were many countries, China, the Eastern half of Germany,
etc, were the bourgeois regime went down after the war,
but it 'got away with it' in the main centers of capitalist-imperialist
power. This was a most paradoxical outcome that found Stalinism
at the head of a process of widespread 'transformism'. The
CPs became the agents of passive revolutions that enabled
them to hold on to power and safeguard the new status quo
reached with American imperialism. In those circumstances,
subjectively adverse ones indeed, the forces of the Fourth
International were, as a whole, cast aside and survived
as isolated propaganda groups.
d) The dynamics of the permanent revolution is blocked.
The mutual relationships between the metropolises, the semi-colonies
and the Soviet Union of the pre-war era, which were dealt
with in the Theory of Permanent Revolution¸ and also
The Transitional Program inherited from the times of Trotsky,
were a most valuable algebra of Marxism, but one that should
be made operational by giving it new concrete values in
order to guide the revolutionary action. Now, the 'weak
links in the chain' of the international state system shaped
by the Order of Yalta were to be found, by and large, in
the colonies and semi-colonies. Their former imperial masters,
such as France and Britain in Asia and Africa, had been
weakened in the face of the new American domination of the
world. Capitalism was thus reinforced in the advanced capitalist
countries, and revolution was displaced to the periphery
of semi-colonial countries.
In turn, the Moscow bureaucracy used its prestige and the
material resources of its new states, above all, with the
aim of derailing, congealing, blackmailing and corrupting
the mass uprisings in the colonies, co-opting the leaderships
of the 'national liberation' movements. Each time the colonial
masses achieved political independence as a nation, that
victory was not used as a platform to advance towards a
workers' state, but it was used as a brake on the revolution,
keeping it within the limits of bourgeois democracy. And
when a revolution went beyond this straightjacket, such
as Cuba, Stalinism would sooner or later use the conquest
of a new state where capital had been expropriated as a
pawn to wrestle a pact from imperialism. Far from spreading
the revolution to the international arena, it was frozen
within national boundaries.36
The revolutionary forces needed to make a reinstatement
and an update of the links between the metropolises and
the semi-colonies, incorporating the recently created deformed
workers' states to the characterization of the whole picture
of the world state system (hegemony). Such appraisal was
needed, to prevent the Trotskyist currents that played an
outstanding role in some revolutionary developments in the
semi-colonies, such as Algeria, Ceylon, Vietnam, Bolivia
or Argentina, did not fall into a 'third world orientation'.
This is what some sections of the Trotskyist International
did, whereas other sections adapted themselves to the conditions
imposed by the Socialdemocratic and Stalinist apparatuses,
or else both at the same time. The task was to link up the
political work in the semicolonial countries with that in
the advanced countries, building factions for a concrete
proletarian internationalism among the unions and the mass
parties in the imperialist heartlands.
e) A
new definition of a Marxist strategy should have emphasized
the program of political revolution for both the deformed
workers' states and the USSR, as a key lever to intervene
in the other 'weak links' of world hegemony. The 1953 strike
in Eastern Germany, the 1956 Hungarian revolution and the
1968 Czech uprising when the boom went down, all of them
bore testimony to this. The 'world order' broke down in
those workers' states that had originated in passive revolutions,
engineered from above after the occupation of the Red Army.
It was there that the first symptoms of discontent against
the Great Russian oppression emerged, which were later to
burst out in 1989-91 in a generalized fashion as 'national
conflicts'. That labyrinthine shape of the class struggle
that swept through the nationalities of the former USSR
and Yugoslavia, led by nationalist and anti-proletarian
leaderships. With regards to this, the majority of the strands
of Trotskyism abandoned the programmatic guidelines bequeathed
by Trotsky -the 1930s slogan for 'an Independent Soviet
Ukraine' aimed against the Great Russian oppression as well
as Hitler's imperialist ambitions-, after decades of having
considered that Stalinism had furnished a solution for 'national
question' in the workers' states.
Little or nothing did the 'really existing Trotskyism' to
grapple with the issues being examined here. We have branded
it 'the Trotskyism of Yalta' to characterize the degeneration
of the Fourth International in the postwar period. That
brand of Trotskyism consistently failed to re-elaborate
a new strategic perspective, and thus ended up capitulating
to the milieu of imperialism and the soviet bureaucracy.
In this article, we highlight some elements we had already
pinpointed in previous works, with a view to opening a discussion
that should result in more accurate definitions, analyzing
the convulsive last century, and also drawing lessons for
the future. We have taken on board Gramsci's concepts of
'passive revolution' and 'transformism' (although we have
appraised them in the light of Trotsky's insights vis-à-vis
World War II and Stalinism), and applied them to enhance
our postulates on the mechanisms used for blocking the revolution
in the postwar period. We believe that those who just ruminated
the old truism, 'the crisis of mankind boils down to the
crisis of revolutionary leadership' during the reign of
Yalta, so that no 'orthodox' Trotskyist would dare disagree,
were the very same 'orthodox' Trotskyists that regarded
the emergence of Marshal 'Tito', Fidel Castro or else guerrilla
and nationalist bourgeois movements as a very 'practical'
solution to that crisis. They alternatively called them
'revolutionary leaderships', or if need be, encouraged support
for them in terms of supporting 'the lesser evil'.
We are not going to scrutinize here the whole record of
capitulation of postwar Trotskyism.37 And we do not do so
because we consider that their wrongdoing were justified
in any way by the objective conditions. On the other hand,
we do not adhere to a subjectivist and voluntaristic view,
as it clearly follows from this work, one stating that the
fragmented and weakened forces of the Fourth International
after Trotsky would have been able to substantially change
the world map during the Order of Yalta. But we also reject
any sort of fatalistic view of the chances for revolutionary
Marxists, even in the darkest years, when both imperialism
and Stalinism reigned supreme. Let us take the 1952 Bolivian
revolution as an example. There, the POR led by Guillermo
Lora caved in to a bourgeois nationalist movement -the MNR,
by sowing illusions in its left wing, and this historical
chance for Trotskyism was squandered. Of course, there were
tight limits weighing upon a revolution in a small semi-colonial
country dominated by the aforementioned objective conditions.
But it would have been nevertheless a subjective boost for
the Fourth International, since the latter would have earned
a clear prestige in the eyes of vanguard workers around
the world. At that time, both Maoism and Titoism held a
tight grip on it, because they had led victorious revolutions,
and it was also the heyday for bourgeois or petty bourgeois
nationalism, which was heading the movement for 'national
liberation'.
When the first cracks appeared in the facade of the Order
of Yalta in 1968, the year that saw the onset of a world
upsurge and a capitalist crisis that drags up to the present,
most of the various tendencies claiming allegiance to the
Fourth International kept doing business as usual in the
shadow of non-revolutionary leaderships.
Perry Anderson pointed out: 'We have to say that in spite
of their political tact and their emphasis on the strategy
(...) the alternative tradition of revolutionary Marxism
(...) did not prove to be more fruitful than its historical
rivals. When I wrote 'Considerations on Western Marxism',
the Marxist line coming from Trotsky seemed quite willing,
after decades of a marginal existence, to reintroduce a
mass post-Stalinist left politics in the advanced capitalist
countries. Always much closer to the issues surrounding
a socialist practice, both politically and economically,
than the philosophical line of Western Marxism, the remarkable
theoretical heritage of the Trotskyist tradition gave it
an advantageous point of departure in the new conjuncture
marked by a popular upsurge and a world depression in the
early 1970s (...) History put this movement to a decisive
test in those years, but it failed. The downfall of Fascism
in Portugal nourished the most favorable conditions for
a socialist revolution in an European country ever since
the capitulation of the Winter Palace (...) The Fourth International
lost its way at the crossroads of the Portuguese revolution...'38
The 1974-75 Portuguese revolution was a 'classical' one,
combining anti-colonial uprisings in Angola and Mozambique
under the impact of the Vietnamese struggle, with a popular
and working class upsurge against the dictatorship of Salazar
at home, in a weak link of the chain of imperialist countries.
Was it then, as Anderson points out, the last great chance
that Trotskyism had to rejuvenate its strategic foundations?
Did history not furnish a second great chance in the 1980s,
in what was the last great 'rehearsal of political revolution',
namely Poland 1980? That development might have also boosted
the forces of the Fourth International as well, in anticipation
of the 1989-91 upswing in Eastern Europe, the USSR and China.
Whatever it was, the whole record of Trotskyism in previous
years -which only had weak links of continuity with the
foundational postulates of the Fourth International- led
it to squander the chances offered by the 1968-80 upsurge,
in which both Stalinism and social democracy last acted
as a major bulwark against proletarian revolution. The ensuing
capitalist backlash came with a high price attached to it:
the Reagan-Thatcher onslaught of the 1980s and 1990s, with
all its consequences -a massive loss of all kinds of conquests
for the working class worldwide, in which we should obviously
include the capitalist restoration in the degenerate and
deformed workers' states.
Some people regard those events as a 'historical defeat'
that put the working class in retreat indefinitely. We do
not agree with that view. We think the new international
perspective will offer new revolutionary opportunities.
Rosa Luxemburg once said that the fight of the proletariat
for its emancipation was a winding road full of defeats,
but one that would eventually lead to victory nonetheless.
During the years of the Yalta Order, such dictum appeared
to have been put upside-down: victorious revolutions and
new working class conquests that strengthened the position
of reformist leaderships that would lead them to defeat
later on -such as the defeat inflicted to the working class
worldwide by the neoliberal offensive, with the loss of
conquests that those leaderships claimed to defend.
We claim that the turn-about in the situation has fuelled
a most contradictory outcome.
The massive loss of conquests and the atomization of the
proletariat that the imperialist offensive in the 1990s
brought about in its trail is fuelling a crisis of labor
subjectivity, in which the latter has to start from a very
low level in order to win the unity of its ranks again.
But in this phase of decline of the US hegemony (that we
charted in this issue of Estrategia Internacional), the
demise of world Stalinism will offer new chances for overcoming
the crisis in favor of the mass movement. This is now potentially
free from the straitjacket that held them down for decades,
preventing the emergence and growth of soviet-type organs.
It is precisely in the appraisal of the strategic relevance
of such organs of mass direct democracy that Trotsky and
Gramsci agree to the utmost -this mutual agreement between
one another is even stronger than each of them separately
considered in relation with their respective 'followers'.
But if Trotsky's thought keeps weak threads of continuity
with the present, Gramsci's legacy has undergone a direr
fate. The break of today's epigones of Gramsci, genuine
Moderates of today, all of them promoters of passive revolutions,
with Gramsci the revolutionary thinker is clearly more abysmal
than that separating Trotsky and his epigones.
As a way of conclusion, we can say that, when it comes to
continuity with the 'rampant Marxism' of the revolutionary
Comintern, the superiority of Trotskyism, even with all
its degenerate strands, is the result of a historical achievement:
the foundation of the Fourth International in 1938. Its
re-foundation is a pending task that entails understanding
the lessons that we can draw from its degeneration. We wrote
this article as a contribution to that task, in this new
phase of the class struggle, trying to respond to the challenges
ahead. |
|
1
Cf. The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci, Perry Anderson. Another
comparative study is Roberto Mazzari's Trotsky and Gramsci,
from which we quote in this article.
2 Isaac Joshua, The 1929 Crash and the Emergence of the
US
3 'The Russian émigré said that since 1917,
he had frequently claimed that word capital would unfurl
'under the increasing hegemony of the US, first and foremost
the hegemony of the dollar over the British sterling pound',
held an article of March 1933 published in The New York
Times, based on an interview by Associated Press to Trotsky
in Prinkipo.
4 Leon Trotsky, Nationalism and the Economy, November 1933
5 Antonio Gramsci, Americanism and Fordism
6 Critique of the International Left Opposition to the Comintern
program, 1927
7 Such relatively economistic determinism can be clearly
observed in this excerpt taken from the Erfurt Program of
the II International led by Engels: 'the private property
of the means of production has changed…from a driving
force for progress, it has become a cause for social decline
and bankruptcy. Its demise is inevitable. The only question
left unanswered is: will the system of private ownership
of the means of production be allowed to plunge the entire
social system into an abyss? Or else, will society get rid
of this burden, and then, strong and free, it will take
back the path leading to progress, in line with the ways
prescribed by evolution? (…) The productive forces
that have been created within the capitalist society are
at odds with the property system underpinning them. The
strive to maintain such system makes any future social development
impossible, condemning the society to stagnation and decay
(…) The capitalist social system has gone a long way;
its demise is now just a matter of time. The irresistible
forces at work in the economy are inexorably bound to provoke
the collapse of capitalist production altogether. The ascent
of a new social order superseding the existing one is no
longer a desirable purpose; it has rather become inevitable
(…) As things stand today, the capitalist civilization
cannot go on like this any longer; we should either advance
towards socialism; or else fall back into barbarism (…)
The history of mankind is determined not by the ideas, but
by an economic development that advances untrammeled, abiding
certain underlying laws, not our wishes or whims (…)'
8 There is a clear continuity between Lenin and Trotsky
in the approach to analyze the balance of forces within
any given nation. He builds upon Lenin's views on the 'situations'.
As he points out in a methodological section in Wither France?,
they never appear to us as 'pure entities': 'All throughout
history we come across stable situations, completely non-revolutionary
ones. We also find notoriously revolutionary situations.
There are also counter-revolutionary situations (we should
never forget this!). But what we come across by and large
in our epoch of a decaying capitalism are intermediate situations,
transitional ones -between a non-revolutionary and a pre-revolutionary
situation, between a pre-revolutionary and a revolutionary
situation…or else a counter-revolutionary one. It is
precisely those transitional states the ones that are fundamentally
important from the standpoint of our political strategy.'
9 Notes on Machiavelli, on Politics and the Modern State
10 We will see below that Trotsky, after the 1929 crash,
used the same methodological criteria to connect the economic
crisis, the class struggle and inter-state contradictions,
to define that a new 'catastrophic phase' (in Gramsci's
words) was opening up in the 1930s, combining revolutionary
undertakings with the drift of the imperialist countries
towards WWII.
11 Cr Aguilera Prat, Gramsci and the National Way to Socialism
12 Antonio Gramsci, Notebooks from Prison
13 'The concept of "passive revolution" must be
deducted in a rigorous manner from the two fundamental principles
of political science [taken from Marx's Introduction to
the Critique of Political Economy] : a) no social formation
disappears insofar as the productive forces that have grown
within it still find a fertile soil for its further evolution;
b) a society only undertakes those tasks for whose solution
the necessary conditions have already aroused, etc. Obviously,
those principles have to unfold to the full up to its critical
point, and should be ridden from the slightest shred of
fatalism and mechanicism'. This quotation, taken from Gramsci's
Notes on Machiavelli, on Politics and on the Modern State
is very abstract and general. It might lead to misinterpretations,
such as the reformists' claim that the defeat of any given
revolution could be attributed to the 'objective conditions'
(they would even call it 'premature'), thus underplaying
the concrete actions of the leaderships of the working class
movement and the masses, and their results therein.
14 Engels' introduction to Karl Marx's The Class Struggle
in France.
15
On the concept of revolution in both Gramsci and Trotsky,
see next article
16 A. Gramsci, ibidem
17 As Aguilera de Prat correctly points out in this key
regard (and to dissipate in passing some prejudices), for
Gramsci, 'At any rate, it is all about having a dialectical
approach to that notion that should not be turned into a
program for political intervention [he refers to the program
of passive revolution] as it was the case with the Moderates
in the Risorgimento. It is only a methodological criterion
for interpretation.
18 In relation with the Italian CP in the face of Mussolini's
rise to power, Trotsky stated: 'The Italian Communist Party
came to life almost at the same time as Fascism. But the
very same revolutionary ebbing conditions that led Fascism
into power are the obstacles hindering the Communist Party.
The Party did not realize the proportions of the Fascist
danger; it got held in revolutionary illusions; it was recklessly
hostile to the united front tactic; in a word, it was infected
by all the infantile disorders. Small wonder: it was only
two years old. For it, Fascism represented just a 'capitalist
reaction'. The Italian Communist Party failed to notice
the real physiognomy of Fascism, derived from the mobilization
of the petty bourgeoisie against the proletariat. According
to the reports I received from our Italian comrades, The
Italian Communist Party, with the sole exception of Gramsci,
did not admit in the least that Fascism might seize power.
Besides, we should not forget that the Italian Fascism was,
at that time, a new phenomenon, which was barely coming
to life. To fathom out its specific features would have
been no easy task, not even for an experienced party.'
19
Roberto Massari, in his work Trotsky and Gramsci, reminds
us that: 'On November 22, 1922, Lenin dictated Trotsky the
following message (on the phone): 'As far as Bordiga is
concerned, Y enthusiastically support the proposal (Trotsky's)
of sending a letter drafted by our Central Committee to
the Italian delegates, and recommend persistently the tactic
you are recommending. Contrariwise, his actions will be
extremely harmful, in the future, for the Italian communists'
(...) 'The tactic indicated by Trotsky and by most Comintern
leaders to the Italian delegation in November 1922, was
to set up a united front with the rest of the working class
organizations, starting with the reformist ones, that bore
the main responsibility for the rise of Mussolini to power.
They also had illusions in reaching a status quo between
Fascism and the legal labor organizations, a conciliation
between big business and the minimum program of demands
of the working class. The Bordiga-led delegation, which
wrongly put an equal sign between bourgeois democracy and
Fascism in terms of dictatorships, met with the reply of
the International in 1922. It refrained from dealing with
the details of the situation, but it intervened heavily
on organizational matters, a concern that showed an instinctive
cry of alarm had echoed in the walls of the Fourth Congress.
The recommendation by Lenin and Trotsky already reproduced
also shows that the two main Bolshevik leaders were afraid
of far more harmful consequences if the orientation of the
Italian leadership was not changed in due time -although
the main and contingent reason for their concern was that
of the fusion between the young party and the Maximalist
PSI (...) 'As everybody knows, Trotsky's proposal was carried
on. Two days after Lenin's telephone message, the Italian
delegation received a letter drafted by the Central Committee
of the Russian Communist Party, signed by Lenin, Trotsky,
Zinoviev, Radek and Bukharin, imposing matter-of-fact the
fusion with the PSI. Bordiga accepted such imposition, but
he maintained his position.'
20
Juan Carlos Portantiero, Uses of Gramsci. The emphasis in
the quotation is verbatim from Gramsci
21 Leon Trotsky. On the Question of the Tendencies in the
Development of the World Economy, January 1926.
22 Leon Trotsky, The Third International after Lenin
23 Leon Trotsky, Nationalism and the Economy, November 1933
24 Lenin, The State and the Revolution
25 Notebooks from Prison (QC III)
26 Leon Trotsky, Marxism and our Epoch, February 1939
27 Mario Teló, 'Gramsci and the Future of the Western
World', in Gramscian Studies Today
28 'The 'normal' exertion of hegemony 'is characterized
by a combination of force and consensus, to a variable degree,
without force prevailing over consensus'. But in some given
situations, where the use of force was too risky, 'the corruption-fraud
comes in between force and consensus, i.e., the weakening
and paralyzing of the antagonist or antagonists' (Gramsci,
Notebooks from Prison) On this question, in a recent editorial
appeared in New Left Review, Perry Anderson confirms what
we have been writing on this key factor to understand the
widespread influence of American hegemony in the post-war
period. '.,.the consensus enhanced in this way was of a
special kind. The elites in Russia and in China -were they
begun earlier- were certainly susceptible to the magnetism
irradiated by America's cultural and material success, in
which they saw patterns to imitate. In this respect, the
internalization by the subjugated powers of those selected
values and attributes of the supreme state, which Gramsci
would have considered essential to any international hegemony,
began to break new grounds. But the objective nature of
those regimes was still a far cry from the American prototype
for such subjective disposition, so as to become a trustworthy
partner for every act of complacency in the Security Council.
For this, a third weapon had to come into play, one that
Gramsci considered to be in-between force and consensus,
but closer to the latter, i.e., corruption.' New Left Review
N° 17, September-October 2002.
29 Of course, we do not include the Chinese or the Yugoslavian
revolutions in this category of proletarian passive revolutions.
Both were led by guerrilla armies and local Stalinist parties
at odds with Moscow, which also stifled the emergence of
soviets of workers and peasants, and congealed the revolution
within national boundaries, hence they gave birth to deformed
workers' states. Nevertheless, the masses and its vanguard
elements played an active role, joining the 'party-armies'
of Tito and Mao. For a deeper reflection on this topic,
see Estrategia Internacional N° 3, February 1993, on
what we called an 'exceptional period' between the years
1943-49. In those years, we believe, the marginal hypothesis
contained in the Transitional Program came to prevail due
to an extraordinary situation. It stated that, in theory,
the likelihood existed that the reformist parties 'in some
given circumstances -a crash, war, mass revolutionary pressure
(...) go farther than they wish down the road of breaking
away with the bourgeoisie.'
30 This quotation is included in the Manifesto entitled
'India before the Imperialist War', July 1939. In it, there
are also the following statements, common to many public
statements issued by the Fourth International at the time:
'...the war might mean, both in India and also the rest
of the colonies, not a reinforced enslavement but total
freedom; the premises for achieving it is a correct revolutionary
policy. The Indian people must part ways, right from now,
with British Imperialism. The oppressors and the oppressed
stand in different sides of the trenches. No collaboration
with the enslavers at all! Contrariwise, we have to use
the enormous difficulties that the outbreak of the war will
create to deal a heavy blow to the ruling classes. That
is how the oppressed classes and peoples should act in all
the countries, without regardless of whether their imperialist
masters conceal their faces behind democratic or Fascist
masks'.
31
Apart from dozens of essays and articles, we should include
here works like The Betrayed Revolution and In Defense of
Marxism.
32
The Transitional Program of the Fourth International, 1938
33 Jorge Altamira, leader of the Argentine Partido Obrero,
belongs to this strand of thought. Although they never built
any international organization, he used to have links with
Lambert and Lora, and clings to a catastrophist pseudo-economic
theory, which has resulted in very interesting insights
indeed
34 Such combination of elements in the 1930s led the French
Socialdemocracy further to the left, beyond what its reformist
leaders wished, being momentarily thrown into disarray.
Trotsky then suggested to the small revolutionary nuclei
to enter the Socialist Party, a tactic that came to be known
as 'the French turn'. The purpose was to recruit its more
radicalized members from the inside, and address, from within
that mass party, to the Communist workers inside the Stalinized
CPs.
35 This postulate is developed by Trotsky in the 'Manifesto
of the Fourth International on the Imperialist War and the
World Proletarian Revolution', May 1940.
36
The Trotskyist leader, Nahuel Moreno, the founder of the
current we come from, tried to deal with this contradictory
situation by asserting that 'reality has become even more
Trotskyist than Trotsky himself'. He meant to say that the
permanent dynamics of the revolution was manifest in the
fact that even Stalinist parties, or guerrilla movements,
had been forced to seize power and expropriate the bourgeoisie
in a whole number of countries due to the pressure of objective
factors themselves. The revolution had thus become 'objectively
socialist'. We already took issue with this statement in
Estrategia Internacional N°3. In it, we said that Moreno
extended the exceptional period of 1943-49 to the whole
postwar period, transforming it into a norm. In this way,
not only did he distort the fundamentals of the theory of
permanent revolution, but worse still, reality itself as
well. This new view broke the links between the tasks to
be accomplished by the revolution, on one hand, and the
subjects -the class and the party- that should carry them
to their conclusion. These are just aspects of the theory
of permanent revolution, which cannot be considered in isolation
from one another. If that was not the case, what good was
the International Left Opposition's rejection of Stalin's
forceful drive to a collective agriculture? The 'socialist
task' of abolishing ownership in the countryside cannot
be taken in isolation from the methods of the proletarian
revolution; neither can they be regarded as separate from
the class that should accomplish such task. Trotsky replied
to those kinds of arguments in his time: 'it is not only
'what' that matters, it also counts the 'how' and 'who'
does it: whether it is the bureaucracy or the soviets.'
This must have been the reasoning of postwar Trotskyists.
37 Let us point out that the current led by Nahuel Moreno
in Argentina, from which we come from, went from outright
dissolution within the Peronist movement back in the 1950s
to extol the Cuban leadership around Fidel Castro in the
1960s
38 Perry Anderson, In the Tracks of Historical Materialism |
