General Estimate of Classes in the Progress of Our Revolution.

We spoke above of the stages of our revolution. Now it is necessary to raise the same question, and in the same general form, but to examine it from the standpoint of the struggle of classes and class changes. The controversy among us, as is known to a considerable degree, centred around the question of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Alliance, the question of an alliance between the working class and the peasantry, and the question of the hegemony of the proletariat in this ‘alliance’. Now, in the eighth year of our revolution and our dictatorship, we clearly see the enormity of this problem, which for the first time was distinctly outlined by Comrade Lenin and which later became one of the corner-stones both of the theoretical and practical structure of Bolshevism.

Only at the present time has this question come up in all its enormous dimensions. For, essentially the discussion concerns not only the problem of unity between the peasants and workers here, in Russia, in the Soviet Republics, but it concerns the greatest and, in a sense, the decisive problem of the international revolution. Such a burning question of modern times as the question of the colonies, which is a question of the life and death of capitalism, is, from the point of view of world revolution, nothing more nor less than the question of the unity between the Western European and American industrial proletariat on the one hand, and the colonial peasantry on the other.

It is true that the colonial question, although to a considerable degree a question of attitude towards the peasantry, is not wholly confined to this. It has its definite peculiar features, and it would be wrong to place it under the mark of complete equality. At the same time, it is absolutely clear that, in its social basis, it is a peasant question. If we ask ourselves in what manner the working class at the present moment can undermine the bases of capitalist society, we may say that the working class, which supports colonial rebellion, is actually imposing its hegemony on the peasant colonial movement. When we ask ourselves what will happen in the sphere of world economy when the working class captures power, immediately the same question arises as to the attitude of the victorious proletariat towards the colonial peasantry. When we ask ourselves why European Social-Democracy absolutely fails to understand the significance of the peasant question, and paid so little attention to it, and failed to raise the problem which was so characteristic for us, we do not merely raise the point that our country was an agrarian country, and the other countries were industrial. The other countries too, had their ‘agrarian supplement’, only they were not in the home countries, but in the remote colonies.

The fact that European Social-Democracy paid inadequate attention to the peasant question is undoubtedly connected with the circumstances that it failed to present the question of the colonies from the revolutionary standpoint. The policy of the Social-Democrats was either directly hostile to the colonial movements (social imperialism) or adopted a reticent policy. When Comrade Trotsky absorbed in his ‘Europeanism’ repeatedly emphasises the Asiatic peasant character of the ideology of the ‘immature’ proletariat (this was precisely his estimation of the Bolsheviks) there was something in his ‘Europeanism’ that smacked of the contempt which the Social-Democrats bore towards the peasant and colonial question, although Comrade Trotsky personally devoted considerable attention to this question.

If Comrade Trotsky substitutes abstract schemes for concrete analysis, it must result in conceiving the proletarian revolution as a classical revolution, and regarding all ‘non-classical’ revolutions as being doomed beforehand. But a classical proletarian revolution in which the proletariat is the only class of the ‘people’ in other words, such an ideal revolution is possible only in a society where there is no peasantry.

Such an ‘ideal’ conception is totally out of harmony with reality. If we examine world economy we will find that the proletariat in the strict sense of the term represents a small minority of the population. If we have in mind the largest countries in the world, we must remember that these represent small sections of densely populated and proletarianised centres in enormous peasant colonies. The greatest part of France is in Africa, the greatest part of Britain is in Asia, etc. What will the British proletariat do after their victory if they do not receive the support and sympathy of the Indian and Egyptian peasants — if it does not lead them into the fight against capitalism, if it does not establish its hegemony, its leadership, over this enormous mass of humanity?

It is most amazing. Comrade Trotsky knows very well the enormous significance of the colonial question. But alas, this correct view of the colonies cannot possibly be reconciled with the estimation of the peasantry which Comrade Trotsky made in 1905, in his theory of permanent revolution, the correctness of which he stubbornly insists upon up to the present day. Comrade Trotsky reveals a complete lack of logic.

It is perfectly clear now what this problem means for the proletariat. Prior to the seizure of power the working class must obtain the support of the peasantry in the fight against the capitalists and landlords. After the seizure of power, the proletariat must secure for itself the support of a considerable section of the peasantry in the civil war, right up to the moment when the proletarian dictatorship has been consolidated. And after that? Can we really limit ourselves to regarding the peasantry merely as cannon-fodder in the fight against the capitalists and the large landlords? No! And once and for all, we must understand the logic of this No. After the victory, the proletariat at all costs must live side by side with the peasantry, for the peasantry represents the majority of the population and has great economic and social weight. Only the failure to understand world economic ties can lead one to ignore this aspect of the question. But sooner or later it will inevitably come up. Consequently, it must be realised that the proletariat has no choice. It is compelled to carry the peasantry with it in its work of constructing Socialism. The proletariat must learn to do this, for unless it does so, it will not be able to maintain its rule.

Of course, there are various ways of leading the peasantry in accordance with the given circumstances. One must be able to see the transition points and all the stages in order to lead correctly. During the discussion on the question of the trade unions, Lenin wrote:

The whole of the dictatorship of the proletariat is a transition period, but the present time is, as it were, a heap of new transition periods. The demobilisation of the army, the end of the war and the possibility of a more prolonged peaceful respite than we have had hitherto, a more permanent transition from the military front. From these facts alone the relation of the proletariat to the peasantry has changed.

The same thing, but to an even greater degree, applies to a number of most important stages of the revolutionary process.

Comrade Trotsky, in his theory of permanent revolution, completely failed to understand:

1. The very problem of the peasantry. 2. The methods by which the proletariat could lead the peasantry. 3. The various stages in the relations between the working class and the peasantry in the course of our revolution.

Comrade Trotsky himself presents the question of the peasantry in great relief in the preface to his book 1905. Formulating the theory of permanent revolution (in 1922) and emphasising the correctness of this theory, Comrade Trotsky wrote:

In order to secure its victory, the proletarian vanguard, in the first period of its rule, will have to make deep inroads not only into feudal, but into bourgeois property. In this it will come into conflict not only with all the sections of the bourgeoisie... but also with the broad masses of the peasantry, with whose cooperation it came into power. This contradiction in the position of a workers’ government in a backward country, with an overwhelmingly peasant population, can be solved only on an international scale, in the arena of the world proletarian revolution. Compelled by historic necessity to break down the limitations of the bourgeois-democratic framework of the Russian revolution, the victorious proletariat will be compelled also to break down its national state limitations, that is, it will consciously strive to convert the Russian revolution into a prologue of the world revolution.

The latter part of this quotation is correct. But that is not the point. The point is that according to Comrade Trotsky, the proletariat must inevitably come into irreconcilable conflicts with the broad masses of the peasantry, that in a country with a petty bourgeois majority, the proletariat will not be able to handle this problem and that as a result of this inevitable conflict the proletarian domination must collapse unless it can obtain state aid from outside.

The first thing one observes (at the moment after considerable experience has been accumulated of the international movement), is that Comrade Trotsky’s ‘solution’ is not a solution at all, just as his ‘permanent revolution’ in fact is not permanent revolution at all. For, if the conflict between the proletariat and the peasantry is inevitable and unavoidable, etc, therefore, it is inevitable and unavoidable even in the case of the victory of the proletariat all over the world. The peasantry represents an enormous majority of the population of our planet. If the proletariat has not the means by which to lead this peasantry, then, either the international revolution is also doomed, or it must be postponed (as Kunow says) until we have a proletarian majority throughout the world. We can hardly believe that we will have to break down the ‘terrestrial frontiers’ and expect aid from the purely proletarian celestial forces, and ‘state aid’ at that.

Thus, if we develop the problem and present it in its full scope, it will be easily seen that Comrade Trotsky merely evades the problem, but does not solve it.

Comrade Trotsky’s error lies in the fact that he considers the conflict between the proletariat and the peasantry as inevitable, whereas it is merely possible, and this is by no means the same thing. It will be inevitable if the proletarian regime proves to be less advantageous to the peasantry than was the bourgeois regime, and if the peasantry throws off the leadership of the proletariat. But it is not at all inevitable and will not happen if the Party of the victorious proletariat will make the corner-stone of its policy solicitude for the maintenance and strengthening of the workers and peasant alliance. The consideration of how this is to be done correctly is beyond the limits of this work.

From the estimation of the peasantry given above, follows the general methods of influencing it, which, by the by, Comrade Trotsky formulated in the period of reaction. This is what Comrade Lenin wrote on this matter:

Finally, the least correct of all is the third of the opinions of Comrade Trotsky quoted by Comrade Martov which appears to Comrade Martov to be reasonable: ‘Even if it [the peasantry] will do this ['associate itself with the labour democratic regime'] with no more consciousness than it usually associates itself with the bourgeois regime the proletariat can neither calculate on the ignorance and prejudices of the peasantry, as did the lords of the bourgeois regime, nor presume that the customary ignorance and passivity of the peasantry will be maintained in the period of the revolution. (’the Aim of the Struggle of the Proletariat in Our Revolution’, Collected Works, Volume 11, part 1, p 229)

And in the epoch of proletarian dictatorship when it was necessary to pass from words to deeds, when the situation was particularly difficult, Lenin wrote:

The greater the extent and scope of historic events, the greater the number of people that take part in them and the more profound the change we desire to bring about, the more necessary is it to rouse interest in these events, to rouse a conscientious attitude towards them and to convince millions and tens of millions of the people of the necessity for them. (From a speech delivered at the Council of Peoples’ Commissaries on 22 December 1920, Collected Works, Volume 12, p 413)

Does this not express an altogether different attitude towards the peasantry? And does not this attitude follow logically from the general estimation of the peasantry as an essential ally in the struggle of the proletariat? But, in order to be able to ‘convince’ the peasantry, we must be able to ‘hook them’ by the proper link, and here more than ever is revealed the incapacity of Trotskyism to approach this question properly.

In 1905, Trotsky evaded the agrarian revolution and failed to understand that this was the outstanding feature of the epoch. The Mensheviks also failed to understand this, and Lenin quite rightly pointed out that they in ‘fighting the Narodniki were simply blind to the historically real and progressive content of the principles of the Narodniki as the theory of the petty bourgeois struggle of democratic capitalism against liberal-landlord capitalism’, and Lenin described this ‘idea’ as ‘monstrous’, ‘idiotic’ and ‘treacherous’ ('Prussian and American Paths of Development: A Letter to Skvortzov’, Proletarian Revolution, May 1924, p 178).

Comrade Trotsky even now asserts that his estimation of the driving forces of the revolution was correct, and that in it there was no ‘leaping across the peasantry’, and that he had no intention of ‘underestimating’ the peasantry, Trotsky is very angry with his critics on this account. He writes:

A favourite argument that became fashionable in some circles [!] recently, is to point to — indirectly on most occasions — my ‘underestimation’ of the role of the peasantry. In vain, however, would you seek an analysis of this question... There was no attempt to ‘leap across’ the peasantry in my writings at that time. (The New Course, pp 50-51, italics ours — NB)

This is how Comrade Lenin estimated the position of Comrade Trotsky in 1915 during the period of the war:

Comrade Trotsky’s curious theory takes from the Bolsheviks the call for a resolute revolutionary proletarian fight for the conquest of political power, and from the Mensheviks the ‘denial’ of the role of the peasantry... As a matter of fact, Trotsky is assisting the liberal-labour politicians of Russia, who, by ‘denial’ of the role of the peasantry, mean to refuse to rouse the peasantry to revolution. (’two Lines of Development of the Revolution’, Collected Works, Volume 13, pp 213-14)

Comrade Lenin then gives a brief but brilliant description of the stages of the revolution and the content of these stages and our tasks. He wrote:

And this [that is, rousing the peasantry] is the most important question of the moment. The proletariat is fighting and will bravely continue to fight for the conquest of power, for a republic for the confiscation of the land. That is to say, for winning over the peasantry, to utilise its revolutionary force, to secure the participation of the ‘non-proletarian masses of the people’ in the emancipation of bourgeois Russia from military-feudal ‘imperialism’ (Czarism). The proletariat will immediately [NB, italics ours] take advantage of the emancipation of bourgeois Russia from Czarism, and of the agrarian power of the landlords, not for the purpose of aiding the working peasants in their struggle against the rural workers, but for the purpose of completing the Socialist revolution in alliance with the proletariat of Europe.

Thus, in spite of Comrade Trotsky, Comrade Lenin considered that Trotsky’s theory did underestimate the role of the peasantry, and however much Comrade Trotsky would like to evade the admission of this fundamental and cardinal error, he cannot evade it. One cannot play at hide and seek. One must clearly, precisely and definitely say who is right. For, it is perfectly clear that before us are two different theories. According to one theory, the peasantry is an ally. According to the other, he is an inevitable foe. According to one theory, it is possible for us to conduct a successful fight for the hegemony over the peasantry; according to the other theory, this must fail. According to one theory, a sharp conflict with the peasantry is inevitable; according to the other, this conflict may be avoided if our policy is cleverly conducted.

Is it not clear that this ‘permanent’ question of a ‘permanent’ theory is the ‘permanent’ contradiction between Trotskyism and Leninism?