How and why do revolutions happen in ‚undeveloped‘ countries?<\/p>\n
In December 1917, the Italian revolutionary Antonio Gramsci welcomed the revolution in Russia with an article called \u201cThe revolution against Capital\u201d.<\/p>\n
Like many other socialists across Europe, Gramsci thought socialist revolution was ruled out in a backward, semi-feudal country. In Russia there were only five million industrial workers out of a population of 150 million and more than 80 per cent of the population were peasants.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a revolution against Karl Marx\u2019s Capital\u201d, Gramsci declared. \u201cIn Russia Marx\u2019s Capital was more a book of the bourgeoisie than of the proletariat. It stood as a critical demonstration of how events should follow a pre-determined course; how in Russia a bourgeoisie had to develop, and a capitalist era had to open\u2026before the proletariat could even think in terms of its own revolt, its own class demands, its own revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n
What was Gramsci talking about? Why would a Marxist have ruled out socialist revolution in a country like Russia?<\/p>\n
George Plekhanov, the \u201cfather of Russian Marxism\u201d, had popularised the idea that Russia had to go through capitalist development before it reach socialism. The idea arose in the debate between socialists and \u201cpopulists\u201d in the 1880s.<\/p>\n
The populists argued that Russia\u2019s revolution could skip straight over from a peasant economy to communism because in some places peasant life was communal. Plekhanov argued that Russia would have to follow the road of western European development.<\/p>\n
With the development of capitalism the working class would grow and, Plekhanov thought, make common cause with the liberal bourgeoisie to establish democratic rights. Only then, after decades of capitalist development, would the working class enter into direct struggle with the bourgeoisie for a socialist revolution.<\/p>\n
At the time, most socialists agreed with this.<\/p>\n
Plekhanov could certainly point to a number of passages from Marx to justify his position. In a much quoted passage in the Preface to the Critique of Political Economy of 1959, Marx wrote:<\/p>\n
\u201cNo social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed.\u201d<\/p>\n
This economic argument \u2013 that in a \u201cbackward\u201d country there could be no question of the workers taking power, as the productive forces were not developed sufficiently for socialism \u2013 proved decisive within the Marxist movement.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, every socialist in the second half of the nineteenth century could see that the bourgeoisie was becoming afraid of its \u201cown\u201d revolution: of the struggle for land, democratic rights and national independence. In many cases the bourgeoisie, terrified of the revolutionary working class, turned to the military machine of the old order to crush the workers, abandoning their own struggle for a democratic republic.<\/p>\n
Marx summed up his view of the relationship between the workers\u2019 revolution and the unfinished bourgeois revolution in his Address to the Communist League in 1850:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile the democratic petty bourgeoisie want to bring the revolution to an end as quickly as possible\u2026it is in our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions.\u201d<\/p>\n
He went on to outline how the workers should do this:\u201cAlongside the new official government they must simultaneously establish their own revolutionary workers\u2019 governments, local executive committees, councils and clubs\u2026The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old style citizens\u2019 militia, directed against the workers, must be opposed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fifty years later, the Russian socialists were locked in debate about what this meant.<\/p>\n
By the eve of the 1905 revolution in Russia there were two strategies for the Russian revolution within the workers\u2019 movement. One was held by Plekhanov and the Mensheviks which saw the main task of the Russian Social Democrats as prodding and encouraging the liberal bourgeoisie into establishing a democratic republic, a regime that would develop a capitalist economy. This meant, above all, not \u201cdriving the bourgeoisie into the camp of reaction\u201d with talk of socialism and the arming of the workers. The other conception was developed by Lenin and the Bolsheviks.<\/p>\n
Instead of saying, \u201cwe have to wait for a bourgeois revolution, made in alliance with the liberal politicians\u201d, Lenin \u2013 the leader of the Bolshevik faction \u2013 argued: we can\u2019t wait for the liberals, we can\u2019t refrain from struggle for fear of frightening them. If revolution breaks out we fight for a provisional government of workers and peasant parties, and we make the revolution as democratic as possible \u2013 even if that means fighting against the so-called liberal bourgeoisie.<\/p>\n
Like Plekhanov, Lenin stuck to the idea that Russia could not jump over the bourgeois revolution. He wrote in 1905:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Marxists are thoroughly convinced of the bourgeois character of the Russian revolution\u2026We cannot jump out of the bourgeois-democratic framework of the Russian revolution but we can considerably broaden that framework, create within the bourgeois society more favourable conditions for the further struggle of the proletariat.\u201d<\/p>\n
But for Lenin there was no question of believing that the cowardly Russian bourgeoisie would take on the Tsar and consummate their own revolution. Lenin recognised that the proletariat would have to look for other allies to break the power of the autocracy and its army. For Lenin this meant a fighting alliance with the peasantry.<\/p>\n
Lenin correctly recognised the agrarian question as \u201cthe crux of the Russian revolution\u201d. The demand for the nationalisation of the land, a bourgeois measure, which would allow the development of capitalist agriculture on the American model, with peasants leasing their lands from the state, had the potential to destroy the landed aristocracy and the monarchy that headed it. Lenin knew the bourgeoisie would have no truck with such a measure because of their links to the landed gentry and their fear of the revolutionary masses.<\/p>\n
So, in contrast to the Mensheviks\u2019 perspective of an alliance with the bourgeoisie, Lenin counterposed an alliance with the peasantry. This could take the form, Lenin believed, of the \u201cdemocratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants\u201d.<\/p>\n
The new regime would establish a democratic republic, bring about a radical redistribution of land, end despotism and oppression in village and factory, improve the conditions of the workers and carry the revolution to Germany and the rest of Europe. On this basis \u2013 crucially with economic aid from a socialist Germany \u2013 the revolution could rapidly move on to a socialist stage in Russia.<\/p>\n
Trotsky, in the cauldron of the 1905 revolution itself, advanced a third alternative to the two strategies of the principal factions of Russian Social Democracy. He argued that the Russian revolution would start as a proletarian revolution, with a workers\u2019 government carrying out not only bourgeois democratic tasks but \u201csocialistic tasks\u201d as well. It was Trotsky\u2019s strategy that, in the end proved right.<\/p>\n
Trotsky confronted the weakest point of Lenin\u2019s strategy: how could two different classes share power together? The peasantry as a class was not intrinsically socialist, as Lenin knew well. \u201cWe support the peasant movement,\u201d wrote Lenin in 1905 \u201cin so far as it is revolutionary democratic. We are preparing to fight against it in so far as it asserts itself as a reactionary anti-proletarian movement. The whole essence of Marxism is in that two fold task.\u201d<\/p>\n
In so far as the dictatorship remained on the ground of democracy, Trotsky argued, it implied that the workers would be obliged to postpone socialist measures \u2013 for example the modernisation of agriculture into big farms and co-operatives. As he described it later in Three Concepts of the Russian Revolution, Lenin\u2019s strategy could have led to a \u201cdictatorship of the peasantry\u201d with the workers participating.<\/p>\n
But as Trotsky pointed out, the peasantry, especially in Russia, was incapable of assuming the reins of power. Only the working class had the coherence and the class interest to do that. This was the lesson of the struggles of 1905, with their massive general strikes and their workers\u2019 councils: these embryonic workers\u2019 governments came into existence before any liberal democratic government. Indeed their appearance was one of the reasons the liberals stopped fighting the Tsar.<\/p>\n
Trotsky did not underestimate the importance of the peasantry in the revolution, nor did he disagree with Lenin\u2019s programme for winning the peasants to the side of the workers. But for Trotsky the dictatorship had to be one of \u201cthe proletariat leaning on the peasantry\u201d, a workers\u2019 government committed to carrying out both democratic and socialist tasks in the context of turning the Russian revolution into a European one.<\/p>\n
Trotsky was to develop this third perspective for the Russian revolution in jail after the defeat of the 1905 revolution, writing the pamphlet Result and Prospects. He called the strategy \u201cPermanent Revolution\u201d. It was not until April 1917 when the living revolution exploded the contradictions within the \u201cdemocratic dictatorship\u201d slogan that Lenin finally abandoned his old concept of the Russian revolution.<\/p>\n
In his characteristically forthright way Lenin took to task the Bolsheviks who still clung to the old slogan. \u201cWhoever speaks now of a \u2018revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry\u2019 only, is behind the times, has consequently in effect gone over to the side of the petty bourgeoisie and is against the proletarian class struggle. He deserves to be consigned to the archive of \u2018Bolshevik\u2019 pre-revolutionary antiques.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How and why do revolutions happen in ‚undeveloped‘ countries? In December 1917, the Italian revolutionary Antonio Gramsci welcomed the revolution in Russia with an article called \u201cThe revolution against Capital\u201d. Like many other socialists across Europe, Gramsci thought socialist revolution was ruled out in a backward, semi-feudal country. In Russia there were only five million […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7724,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[104],"class_list":["post-4234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7724"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4234\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}