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'It
is a well known fact that, in November 1917, as soon as
Lenin and the majority of the party had switched to Trotsky's
conception, and sought to remove, not only the political
administration, but also the industrial government, Zinoviev
and Kamenev stuck to the party's traditional stance; they
wanted a revolutionary coalition government with the Mensheviks
and SRites, and that was the reason why they walked out
of the Central Committee, issuing statements and articles
in non-Bolshevik newspapers, and they stopped short of breaking
away altogether'. If we should take this statement by Gramsci
-or other similar ones - on the debate opened up in the
Soviet Union around 1924, we might jump to the conclusion
that his views were in tune with the postulates of the Theory
of Permanent Revolution. But the truth is that he retreated
from that view concerning the developments on the Russian
arena, and he went on the record on a number of occasions
voicing dissent with Trotsky's view.
'The political concept of the so-called 'permanent revolution',
which came to life before 1848 as a scientific reflection
of the Jacobin experience of 1789 up to the Thermidor, belongs
to a historical period in which the big mass parties and
trade unions did not exist yet; the society was, as it were,
in a state of bigger fluidity in many respects. The countryside
was more backward and a handful of cities had a virtual
monopoly over politics and the life of the state; in some
cases a single city would prevail (Paris in the case of
France); a relatively rudimentary state apparatus existed,
and a bigger autonomy of civil society with regards to the
activity of the state was in place; a specific system of
military forces and armed services nationwide; the national
economies enjoyed more autonomy vis-à-vis the economic
links with the world market, etc. In the period that followed
1870, with Europe's colonial expansion, things were turned
over. The organizational relationships of the state, both
locally and abroad, became more complex and solid, and the
1848 formula of 'permanent revolution' is developed and
overcome in political science by the formula of a 'civil
hegemony'. (...) This issue arouse in all the modern countries,
but not in those backward countries and the colonies, where
forms long disappeared and superseded elsewhere still prevail.'
Gramsci
is commenting here on the first versions of the theory of
permanent revolution, which arouse in a specifically Russian
and European context, not its definite formulation of 1929.
Gramsci had been in jail for three years already then, and
we assume that he never got acquainted with it. The theory
of permanent revolution, as it was codified after the Chinese
revolution, laid a special emphasis in 'those backward countries
and the colonies, where forms long disappeared and superseded
elsewhere still prevail.'
At any rate, if Gramsci's critique could be restricted to
the nature of the European revolution itself, we can say
that Trotsky clearly developed his views along the same
lines, openly declaring that the nature of the epoch had
changed since Marx's times. '...all the liberation movements
of modern history, starting, for instance, with Holland's
struggle for its independence, took on a national and democratic
character. The awakening of those oppressed and carved-up
nations, their fight for internal unification and to finish
off foreign yoke, would have been impossible without a fight
for political freedom. The French nation was consolidated
amid the stormy unfolding of the democratic revolution in
the late eighteenth century. The Italian and German nations
were founded in the nineteenth century in the wake of a
whole series of wars and revolutions. The powerful growth
of the American nation, which fought for its freedom already
in the insurrection of the eighteenth century, was eventually
guaranteed by the victory of the North over the South in
the Civil War. Neither Mussolini nor Hitler invented nationhood.
Patriotism, in the modern sense of the word -o more precisely,
in a bourgeois sense- is a product of the nineteenth century.
(...) Hitler did not fight as a rank and file soldier in
1914-18 to unify the German nation, but in the name of a
supra-national program, an imperialist one, which was codified
in the notorious formula 'Organize Europe!' unified under
the rule of German militarism. (...) It is true that war,
like all the great commotions shaking history, brought to
light a number of problems and also furthered national revolutions
in those backward quarters of Europe, tsarist Russia and
the Austro-Hungarian Empire among them. But these were only
the delayed echoes of an epoch long gone'.
In the new epoch, the problematic relationship of the anti-colonial
revolution and imperialism is anything but a trifle. The
theory of permanent revolution, as a theory of socialist
revolution worldwide, established a link between the colonies
and the imperialist heartlands, which Gramsci tended to
gloss over. Still worse, in a clear reversal of the legacy
of the Comintern, which draw a sharp line between the oppressed
and oppressive nations, Gramsci introduced a rather blurry
division between 'the East and the West', which downplays
those categories that Lenin had insisted upon so emphatically.
Trotsky's approach to the links between the advanced democracies
of the Western world and the backward forms of the East
reads as follows: 'While wiping out democracy in the old
capitalist metropolises, imperialism prevents at the same
time the growth of democracy in the backward countries.
The fact that in the new epoch, not a single one of the
colonies and semi-colonies accomplished a democratic revolution,
above all in the realm of an agrarian revolution in the
countryside, should be completely attributed to imperialism,
which has become the main hindrance for both political and
economic progress. Siphoning off the natural riches of the
backward countries, and deliberately thwarting its industrial
development along independent lines, the monopolistic tycoons
and their governments give their financial, political and
military support to the most reactionary and parasitic semi-feudal
sections of the native exploiters. The agrarian barbarism
artificially maintained nowadays is one of the most afflicting
plagues of the contemporary world economy. The struggle
of the colonial peoples for their liberation, skipping all
in-between phases, has been transformed into a necessary
fight against imperialism altogether. In this way, that
struggle gets in tune with that of the proletariat in the
metropolis. The colonial uprisings and wars shatter, in
turn, the foundations of the capitalist world move than
ever before, preventing at the same time its unlikely regeneration.'
Having
said that, we should also bear in mind that even the early
version of the theory of permanent revolution was never
a mere continuation of Marx's '1848 formula'. Why is it
that Gramsci makes a caricature out of Trotsky's theory?
The permanent dynamics of the revolution in Marx is predicated
upon an independent intervention of the proletariat, organized
in its own party, one that should lead to raise permanent
demands transcending petty bourgeois radical democracy -the
proletariat should under no circumstance confine itself
to a bourgeois program, not even so in the phase of democratic
bourgeois revolutions of the nineteenth century. Trotsky
would have agreed wholeheartedly with Gramsci's statement
that 'Indeed, it is in 1870-71 at the abortive Commune alone
that all the vestiges from 1789 die out. This means that
the new class fighting for power inflicts a defeat to all
the representatives of the old society who refuse to consider
it as a relic of the past, and also to all those recently
formed groups who consider the new structure nurtured by
1789 as something that has been overcome already. Besides,
1870-71 is a turn-about in the sense that all the principles
presiding over the tactics and strategy inherited from 1789
are no longer efficacious -which were developed in an ideological
fashion around 1848 and that came to be encompassed in the
formula of 'permanent revolution'.
Contrariwise, Trotsky's theory, which was codified in the
context of the imperialist epoch, starts from a matter-of-fact
assumption that the productive forces in the early twentieth
century had reached their maturity worldwide. These, in
turn, were unevenly combined with Russia's old relationship
of ownership, its ancient political forms and those still
existent in all the backward countries. Hence, his theory
did not anticipate a re-run of the same mechanic of the
old bourgeois democratic revolutions in the style of those
of 1848. It would be the proletariat now, not the liberal
bourgeoisie, which had become reactionary through and through,
the one poised to play a leading role and to abolish the
relics from the feudal past. And by force of this very fact,
given the new class dynamics in relation to Marx's time,
they would go beyond the limits of bourgeois right, ushering
in the phase of socialism. Such strategic perspective, outlined
by Trotsky already in 1905, materialized in the Russian
Revolution in 1917 -as Gramsci duly acknowledged in the
letter quoted above. And it was Trotsky the only one to
anticipate this for 'a backward Russia', precisely because
unlike most of the Marxists of his day, who reasoned still
'according to Marx', the Russian revolutionary dialectically
superseded the old formula -contrary to what Gramsci claims.
As far as the Italian revolution in the wake of Fascism's
rise to power is concerned, Trotsky does not narrow his
view to the alternative 'either socialism or Fascism'. He
did not preclude the emergence of transitional periods.
But, as he points out in his letter to the Italian Left
Opposition, they should elucidate the nature of the transition
itself. His theory is precisely a theory of the transition
to proletarian revolution. However, from the perspective
of the permanent revolution, '...does it mean that Italy
cannot become once again, for some time, a parliamentarian
state or a 'democratic republic'? I believe -and I think
we agree completely on this- that such perspective should
not be ruled out. But it will not come about as the result
of a bourgeois revolution; quite otherwise, it will be the
abortion of an insufficiently ripe and premature proletarian
revolution. Should a profound revolutionary crisis burst
out and mass struggles ensue in the course of which the
proletarian vanguard fails to seize power, the bourgeoisie
will be likely to restore its rule on a 'democratic' basis.'
A second clarification following from this is that Gramsci
holds a perspective that partakes a permanent view of the
developments on Italian soil at least. The main thrust of
his approach to a revolutionary strategy for Italy, with
all its peculiar structural features, and beyond the Fascist
regime itself, goes in the direction of a scrutiny of the
history of the nation. Such appraisal tries to fathom out
the tasks the bourgeoisie had left undone, or had else worked
out as it saw fit, in an incomplete and exclusive manner,
especially those concerning the issue of the backward south
and the peasant question -hence the description of the Risorgimento
as a 'passive revolution'. He thus proceeds along the lines
of a permanent view, as it was codified by Trotsky's theory,
i.e., the bourgeois democratic tasks the bourgeoisie failed
to accomplish in its heyday will only be completed by the
proletariat dragging the peasant masses behind it, once
the former has entered in its phase of decay and reaction.
As we can clearly see in Gramsci's own concern, such issue
was not only a question cutting across the colonial countries,
but it also encompassed those countries of a backward bourgeois
development. Therefore, Trotsky's theory comprises that
of Gramsci.
However, the contrary is not true -Gramsci' theory does
not encompass Trotsky's. Gramsci reckoned with one of the
permanent features of the revolution in his insights on
Italy, i.e., the fact that a democratic revolution grew
into a socialist revolution by means of a class alliance
of the proletariat leading the peasantry. However, that
is not enough to claim solidarity with the permanent revolution.
And this is the case because the theory of permanent revolution
is a theory of socialist revolution worldwide, especially
in its mature formulation of 1929, thus being the only theoretical
outlook challenging the pseudo-theory of 'socialism in one
country' in a coherent manner. As Trotsky said in this regard:
'The program of the Communist International drafted by Bukharin,
is eclectic to the bone. Such program represents a helpless
attempt at conciliating the theory of socialism in one country
with Marxist internationalism, which in turn, is inseparable
from the permanent nature of international revolution (...).'
Gramsci, for its part, stood by the program of the Comintern
when such outlook prevailed. We are not saying that Gramsci
stood for the right-wing orientation put forward by the
Stalin-Bukharin bloc for the USSR in 1924-28 -which was
codified in slogans such as the 'peasants should get richer',
or else 'the peaceful assimilation of the kulak into socialism',
etc. What we do claim is that his stance was predominantly
reliant on the perspective of the Italian national revolution,
and one of centrist conciliation with the Comintern's policies.
In this sense, he addressed a letter to Palmiro Togliatti
in which he criticized Amadeo Bordiga because he had rallied
with the 'international minority' siding with the Left Opposition,
at a time when, according to Gramsci, he should have stood
by 'the national majority' within the Italian party. And
he expressed this, not out of a conviction that a victorious
proletarian revolution in Italy could have changed the political
map of Europe, and thus the balance of forces within the
Comintern. Far from that, Gramsci falls prey of a fatalistic
view by giving a decisive weight to the partial retreat
of the revolutionary forces, transforming what was an 'unstable
equilibrium' of capitalism in the 1930s into something deeper
than that, a delay in 'the disposition of the subjective
forces'. This, in turn, underpins his methodological criterion
that led him to analyze the period along the lines of the
likely survival of capitalism, without any need for war,
thus overcoming the 'catastrophic phase' and ushering in
a period of 'passive revolutions'.
In stark contrast with this, Trotsky, relying on a political
prognosis envisaging a new catastrophic phase, was getting
ready to fight to change the policies of the Comintern,
not only to build a 'minority' -although that was the outcome
of the struggle. Gramsci, under pressure of the years spent
in prison and isolation, seems to reason starting from the
need to preserve the victory achieved in the Soviet Union
out of his fear that the alliance between the working class
and the peasantry, and the unity of the Russian party itself,
might go down there. He thus gave in to the theory and the
politics of 'socialism in one country'. Did he do it out
of considering the preservation of this new 'position' conquered
by the international proletariat was top priority -regardless
of Stalinism- as long as no new positions were conquered?
We cannot say for sure, but this leads us to the programmatic
stance taken by each of these two revolutionaries.
The
position, the maneuver and the transitional program
Gramsci's
point of departure is the following: 'the 1848 formula of
permanent revolution is developed and overcome in the realm
of political science by the formula of 'civil hegemony'.
And building upon this insight, he claims that, 'In the
art of politics there occurs the same transformation than
in the realm of military art; the war of maneuver is transformed
into a war of position, and it could it be said that a state
will result victorious in a war insofar as it gets ready
for that in times of peace very carefully. The solid structure
of modern democracy, both considered as state organizations
and as a network of associations of civil society, is for
the art of politics what the ´trenches' and the fortresses
of the frontline are for a war of positions. They turn the
element of movement, which used to be 'everything' in classical
warfare, into a merely 'auxiliary' element.
The question with this statement is that all the ambiguities
enshrined within this 'position-oriented' view of Gramsci,
have been seized upon by reformism, be it of a Stalinist
or Socialdemocratic strand, and turned into a brazen justification
for a Kautskian-styled strategy of a 'war of attrition',
taking over the 'trenches' in utter disregard for any movements
of maneuver. The main thrust of this politics is to gain
spaces within the interstices of the bourgeois regime with
no insurrection or assault on the strongholds of power,
which is a monstrous caricature of the legacy of the Italian
communist.
In a similar way, there have been attempts at making a caricature
out of Trotsky, and is still done today in relation to Trotskyism
(or at least the strands within it that still raise the
need for a revolution), regarding them as advocates of a
permanently ongoing offensive.
The truth is that, neither the discussion on the peace treaty
between the recently-born Soviet Union and Germany -whatever
the objections put by Lenin against the Brest-Litovsk negotiations-,
nor the Second Congress of the Comintern where he, along
with Lenin proclaimed themselves as the 'right-wing' against
the ultraleftism of the German section, saw Trotsky adopt
a voluntaristic approach predicated along the lines of a
permanent offensive. Let us take a look at other important
examples.
In his writings on Latin America, he displays a clever use
of both the 'trenches' and the 'positions' when he proposes
the defense of the oil nationalizations in Mexico decreed
by the bourgeois nationalistic government of Lázaro
Cárdenas. From that position conquered, he poses
the need to reach new ones, such as the workers' management
of the latter. On that occasion, he even gives the example
of what the revolutionaries would do if they won the control
of a local county hall. Of course, his line is a far cry
from that of those former Trotskyists, now 'transformed'
inside the Brazilian PT, controlling municipalities such
as Porto Alegre and states like Rio Grande do Sul. He suggests
they could be used as an operational platform to show the
irrevocable need of achieving the dictatorship of the proletariat
across the nation. Trotsky was not alien to the idea that
'the war will be won insofar as we get ready for that in
times of peace very carefully'. With a view to that, he
defined the Latin American governments of the 1930s as the
outcome of a contradictory balance of forces between a young
proletariat standing on one side, and foreign capital on
the other, as the fundamental classes of the conflict. The
feeble native bourgeoisie presided over the contenders through
an 'unstable balance' (one of a relative peace); a political
phenomenon he branded sui generis Bonapartism.
He also displayed, in the field of war itself, during the
Russian Civil War in which he was the main politico-military
leader, the ability to combine position and maneuver. On
the other hand, during the Spanish Civil War, he opposed
the Republican leadership's gradualist agenda, holding that
new land should be expropriated and handed over to the peasants.
Likewise, he advocated the nationalization of the factories
and their management under workers' control, all socio-economic
positions that should uphold the military advance of the
Republican army on the territory -the maneuver. In turn,
those new positions ('milestones of socialism') should not
be left in wait for the victory of the civil war, as the
Stalinists, the Socialdemocrats and the Anarchists held
all alike.
On the other hand, his idea of a 'political revolution'
is a novel combination of the defense of the position conquered
so far by the international proletariat, i.e. nationalized
property in the USSR, with the perspective of a 'revolutionary
overthrowing of the Thermidorian bureaucracy'. In this way,
a new 'trench' would be conquered to further the combat
for socialist revolution worldwide. Trotsky always stood
apart from those who adopted and anti-defensist position
with regards to the USSR: 'those who are not able to defend
the positions conquered, will be unable to conquer new ones.'
On the eve of World War II, when its outbreak cannot be
checked by 'revolutions from below' (after the defeats in
France and Spain), Trotsky hammered its most audacious idea
ever -the 'proletarian military policy'. This provided a
guideline for intervening in the war, the most reactionary
bourgeois 'institution' of all, but one that at the end
of the day could be seized upon by revolutionaries as much
as the parliament. The 'proletarian military policy' dictated
that while revolutionaries should fight to enlighten the
international proletariat as to the imperialist nature of
the war, they would in turn implement specific tactics for
the American worker who was anxious to fight against Hitler,
and also for the Polish or French worker who was ready to
seize arms against the national oppression of the Nazis
in their occupied countries. The war, in Trotsky's view,
was a cataclysmic event that 'put the objective and the
subjective factors in tune'; he thus codified a policy that
encompassed the so-called three 'moments' of the 'balance
of forces' pointed out by Gramsci. The 'moment of the split'
of the proletariat vis-à-vis their 'own' bourgeoisie,
with a policy aimed at separating the 'worker in arms' from
the routine draft into the imperialist armies. The 'political
moment', in which the war and the 'national' aims do not
entail an abating of the class struggle, thus bringing forth
a new 'October' like the Russian one in the wake of the
1914-1418 conflict. The 'military moment' in which he poses
a policy that builds upon that of Lenin for World War I,
i.e. 'transform the imperialist war in a civil war' -taking
on board also the new features, such as the defense of the
Soviet Union or else the combat against national oppression
in all the occupied countries.
Gramsci' 'moments' have often been regarded as separate
phases, as a static structure (Gramsci's own formulations
contribute to this), whereas Trotsky combines the different
phases, tempos, the moments and the dynamic definitions
as well. He follows Lenin, who in his definition of phases
and situations, incorporates the tempo in the realm of revolutionary
politics. The logic of the combination of the uneven features
presides over the theory of permanent revolution, and also
the method underpinning the transitional program.
That program was submitted for discussion in America, with
all the complexities enshrined in the situation back then,
in the conditions of Americanism and the new deal. Its logic
opened new inroads, such as the audacious demand-exposé
put to the Roosevelt administration around a genuine scheme
of public works aimed at finishing off mass unemployment.
Perry Anderson states that, whereas Trotsky knew better
the political regimes on European soil, and developed precise
tactics accordingly -the radical democratic demand of a
Constituent Assembly in France and Spain, for example-,
it would be left to Gramsci to formulate the most distressing
questions on how to overcome the most stable bourgeois democracies
from the left. This would take on a new significance vis-à-vis
the newly stabilized democracies in postwar Europe, whereas
it was not a burning question in the pre-war period, when
all the democratic regimes succumbed before Fascism and
Bonapartism, or else extreme regimes such as the Popular
Front were in place. But the Transitional Program contains
demands such as the workers' control of production, which
can be used as a lever by the proletariat to conquest new
positions challenging private property altogether and laying
the basis for sharper struggles -never mind that workers
power is not a feasible perspective in the short term.
From the discussions with the American SWP prior to its
adoption, this picture emerges with regards to the Transitional
Program: the reformists considered it to be a 'maximum'
program (they think in terms of positions alone), whereas
the ultraleftist regarded it as a 'minimum' program (they
think in terms of maneuver alone). As a matter of fact,
the Transitional Program and its method, contains minimum
demands, as long as the keep 'their vital force' (as long
as they are old positions worth defending), and it puts
forward the conquest of new positions (sliding wage scale
and working hours, workers' control over industry, up to
soviets) that should be instrumental in the 'war of movement',
i.e., the seizure of power by the proletariat. In achieving
this, the proletariat is conquering, in turn, a new position,
and a new trench on the national field for the socialist
revolution worldwide.
Therefore, the Transitional Program, regarded from this
standpoint, is a bridge, the passage from the position to
the maneuver.
The
class and the party
Finally,
we would like to outline some issues to be developed in
further works: the complex links between spontaneity and
consciousness, between a genuinely revolutionary movement
and the party, between the Marxist intelligentsia and the
working class vanguard.
There are clearly two periods in Gramsci's evolution, in
which he ponders the relationship between the working class
actions and the revolutionary party. The first one is the
period of the publication of the Ordine Nuovo. Under sway
of the 'Red biennium' in Italy in 1919-21 and the factory
occupations in Turin, he regards the factory councils as
'the concrete form of a political development of new type
that cannot be assimilated back through political maneuvers
or political shifts engineered by the bourgeois state, due
to the fact that they spring up from production itself.'
This appraisal, which underestimates the conscious action
of a revolutionary party, will be given the lie in Italy
as well as Germany, where reformism proposed to go for a
'combined state' encompassing both a parliamentarian republic
and the workers' councils. This showed that, without a centralized
revolutionary Marxist leadership, there is a fertile soil
for all kinds of 'political maneuvers and partial shifts
engineered by the state' aimed at undoing the self-organization
drive of the masses.
Since the year 1926, at the Lyon Congress, Gramsci will
adopt, in contrast with the 'Ordine Nuovo' period, an orientation
clearly steered to party building. By and large, his shift
meant a non-dialectical turn that will overrun many of his
previous insights on the role of the workers' councils.
His thesis of the time are notoriously influenced by the
Zinovievite orientation of extolling the Communist Party
'cells' as the foundations for the organization of the working
class. However, Gramsci's view on the party will take on
a new twist in his writings from prison, along different
lines from those 'substitutionist' views nourished by Stalinism
that might have influenced him back then.
To the sole effect that we can sketch a schema of general
notions and place Gramsci within them, we might say that
there are three types of party, considering this issue from
the standpoint of the relationship of Marxism with the revolutionary
movement of the working class. First, there is the Kautskian
party, that of Socialdemocratic reformism, which extols
the moment of the tactic -i.e. the 'movement is everything'.
Second, there is the Leninist party, which targets and separates
the allies from the adversaries in line with strategic views
-in 1917, Lenin said Trotsky had been the best Bolshevik
once he had given up on unifying the party with the Mensheviks.
Gramsci, in turn, in line with his insights on the role
played by the ideologies in the rule of the modern state,
will dwell on those aspects concerning the struggle on the
'third front' of party intervention, i.e. the ideological
struggle -as Engels had already pointed out, the other two
being the economic and political struggle. But in his notion
of the party as a 'collective intellectual' one can see
a hypertrophy of the ideological struggle, in which the
role of the party as an educator of the mass movement of
the working class is clearly over-rated. The predominant
position of the intellectuals within a party would be instrumental
in creating a new 'common sense' within the heart of the
working class movement -Marxism. Paradoxically, Gramsci,
who made significant contributions to political science
by pointing to the 'working class consciousness' flowing
from the workers' councils, later on switched to a view
placing the cultural and ideological struggle above politics.
Besides this, he glossed over the active intertwining between
the party and the soviets, in which 'the educator needs
to be educated'. The Italian CP in the postwar will seize
upon this slip, distorting it along completely reformist
lines, to promote the culture and the ideological debates
with the reformists, while they became a mainstay propping
bourgeois democracy at the same time.
Trotsky will be the continuation of Bolshevism's coming
of age. In the wake of the experience of the first workers'
soviets back in 1905, the latter will correct the thesis
of Lenin's What is to be done?, which held that class consciousness
could only be infused to the working class movement from
'the outside'. As to the question revolving around the soviets
and the party, he claimed, relying on the experience of
the Russian revolution: 'It would be a gross blunder to
put an equal sign between the strength of the Bolshevik
party and that flowing from the soviets themselves: the
latter represented an infinitely more powerful force, but
lacking the party, they would become completely helpless.'
From then on, Trotsky will become a firm advocate of the
Leninist party of combat. |
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1
Another statement agreeing to Trotsky's theory can be seen
in this letter written on February 9, 1924 addressed to
Togliatti: 'In the polemic that took place in Russia recently,
it is clear to see that Trotsky and the opposition, given
the protracted leave of Lenin from the leadership of the
party, are seriously concerned with a comeback of the old
mentality, which would be deleterious for the revolution.
In demanding an enhanced intervention of the working class
quarters in the life of the party and a cut in the powers
of the bureaucracy, they are ultimately striving to uphold
the socialist and working class nature of the revolution,
impeding the piecemeal advent of that democratic dictatorship,
a wrapping for an inchoate capitalism, that was the program
raised by Zinoviev and others back in 1917. This seems to
me to be situation of the Russian party, which is much more
complicated and substantial than Urbani would be ready to
admit; the only new element here is that Bukharin went over
to the group of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Stalin.'
2 Gramsci, Letters from Prison.
3 Leon Trotsky, Nationalism and the Economy, November 1933.
4 Leon Trotsky, Marxism and Our Epoch.
5 Gramsci, Notes on Machiavelli, on Politics and the Modern
State.
6 'With regards to the 'anti-fascist revolution', the Italian
question is inextricably linked to the fundamental problems
cutting across world communism, i.e. the so-called theory
of permanent revolution. From what we considered before,
we are confronted now with the question revolving around
the 'transitional' period in Italy. In the first place,
we have to state clearly: a transition from what to what?
A period of transition from a bourgeois (or else popular)
revolution to a proletarian revolution is one thing. A period
of transition of the Fascist dictatorship to the proletarian
dictatorship, is a different kettle of fish. If we adopt
the first outlook, we are confronted with the issue of bourgeois
revolution, and we are only left with appraising the role
of the proletariat in it. The question of the transitional
period to the proletarian revolution will be posed later
on. If we adopt the second outlook, we are then confronted
with the question of a whole series of battles, upheavals,
changing situations, abrupt changes, which as a whole make
up the different phases of the proletarian revolution. There
can be many phases. But under no circumstance are we confronted
with a bourgeois revolution, or else that mysterious hybrid,
a 'popular' revolution....' Leon Trotsky, 'Questions of
the Italian Revolution', Writings 1930.
7 'With regards to those countries of a backward bourgeois
development, particularly the colonies and semicolonies,
the permanent revolution means that a complete and thoroughgoing
achievement of their democratic purposes and their national
emancipation can only be accomplished by means of the dictatorship
of the proletariat, when the latter seizes power at the
head of all the oppressed layers in society, the peasant
masses first and foremost.' 'The agrarian question (...)
puts the peasants, which make up the overwhelming majority
of the population in the backward countries, in an exceptional
position (...) Without the alliance of the proletariat with
the peasants, the aims of the democratic revolution cannot
be achieved, let alone be posed seriously'. Leon Trotsky,
Thesis 3, Theory of Permanent Revolution.
8 'The theory of Stalin-Bukharin not only opposes in a mechanical
fashion, in spite of the whole experience of the Russian
revolutions, the socialist and the proletarian revolutions,
but it also separates the national revolution from the international
revolution. Those revolutions in the backward countries
are assigned the only purpose of bringing forth a utopian
regime of a democratic dictatorship, as opposed to the dictatorship
of the proletariat. In doing so, they sow illusions and
nourish fairy tales in the realm of politics, paralyzing
the struggle of the proletariat for power in the East and
holding back the victory of colonial revolutions elsewhere.
From the standpoint of the theory raised by the epigones,
the fact that the proletariat should seize power entails
the victory of revolution (in a 90 per cent, according to
Stalin's notorious dictum) and the onset of an epoch of
national reforms. The theory of the evolution of the 'kulak'
to socialism and that of the 'neutralization' of the world
bourgeoisie are, for this reason, inseparable from the theory
of socialism in one country...' Leon Trotsky, ibidem
9 Thesis 14, ibidem
10 Cf Roberto Massari, Trotsky and Gramsci
11 Gramsci, Letters from Prison
12 This was the case with the Italian communist Amadeo Bordiga
13 Notes on Machiavelli, on Politics and the Modern State.
14 History of the Russian Revolution |
