Development of Trotsky's theory of revolution, 1898–1907

DON KARL ROWNEY

Development of Trotsky's Theory of Revolution, 1898-1907

As a major figure in the Russian revolutionary movement, Leon Trotsky often dealt with the rhetoric of dialectical and historical materialism. On the other hand. Trotsky's career as an active political leader involved him in protracted and tortuous efforts to justify political practice in the light of generally accepted theory. The question that arises is whether Trotsky's interpretations of theory were generated, in a purely opportunistic fashion, to deal with problems ad hoc and as they arose, or whether theory was. in fact. a guide to the analysis and solution of political problems that Trotsky was forced to solve. The Russian Marxist approach to the problem of the role of theory and the unity of theory and practice is not always polarized between a voluntarism that effectively denies such a unity except situationally. and a determinism that presumes it to be sine qua non.1 Theory ought to face in two directions: it is both the measure-predictor of practice (i.e.• the standard against which the desirability, efficiency, and justice of practical activity can be gauged) and the changing reflection of practice. Thus, theory may be spoken of as a model existing, 1. Arthur P. Mendel, .. Current Soviet Theory of History: New Trends or Old? .. The American Historical Review, Vol. 72. No . I (February 1966), pp. 65-67. cites several examples of th is among historians anxious. perhaps, to find a compromise between the extremes. STUDI ES IN COMPARATI VE C OMMUNI SM

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in a dialectical sense, in various .. moments ." In spite of a propensity to view the theory-practice relationship strictly and inflexibly! even Lenin recognized the ambiguity of the relationship. .. The path," he wrote, .. from living observation to abstract thought and from the latter to practice, that is the dialectical path of the recognition of truth." 3 Theories and principles, in this sense, are not universal conclusions or even norms to which behavior must conform; they are the product of an on-going dialogue with the world of action , the phenomena external to the subject.' Thus , theory is a way of knowing the world; yet it is a way that is constantly becoming truer as a result of a reflexive interaction between the knower and the world. The relation between theory and practice sketched above has been formally expressed in various ways by theoreticians during the last sixty years. It is an entirely different matter, however, to ask whether such a view was accepted in practice by politicians who might have preferred either a more deterministic, normative guide to action or who might have preferred to dispense with theory entirely except in the most solipsistic sense. Thus the question which this study examines is whether Trotsky's changing statements on revolutionary strategy, the future of the revolution, the odds for its success-his revolutionary theory, in short-were mere political rhetoric or whether there is evidence in Trotsky's statements of genuine theory in dialogue with events. Trotsky has been described as a flawed, inadequate, or inconsistent theoretician." To be sure, his writings and speeches from 1898 to 1906 reflect small direct interest in Marx and Marxist philosophy. He was much more preoccupied with issues closely related to his time and place: party organization, revolutionary leadership of the pro2. Z. A. Jordan, "The Dialectical Materialism of Lenin," Slavic Review, Vol. 25, No .2 (June 1966), pp, 259-286. Criticizing him as a philosopher rather than as the politician he was, Jordan finds Lenin quite a rigid materialist and determinist. 3. Quoted in J. M. Bochenski, Soviet Russian Dialectical Materialism (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1963), p. 96, from V. I. Lenin, Filosojskie tetradi (Leningrad, 1933), p, 166. 4. Gustav A. Wetter formulated this notion in highly abstract yet accurate terms: "The cleavage between Idea and reality must not merely be overcome (as with Hegel) in philosophical cognition, it must also be transcended in concrete, perceptible practice." Dialectical Materialism (New York: Praeger, 1958), pp. 257-258. 5. Claude Lefort, Elements d'une critique de la bureaucratie (Geneva: Droz, 1971), pp. 22-28. Lefort focuses especiall y on Trotsky's lack of conceptual consistency during the stru ggle for power in the 1920s.

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letariat, competition with Socialist Revolutionaries, economic development of poor, agrarian societies, or survival of a proletarian government in an overwhelmingly peasant society. On the other hand, this period of early development seems to have left Trotsky with a theoretical framework that made it possible for him to avoid dogmatism and yet give conceptual meaning to his political actions. As he suggested in his autobiography, My Life, he came to believe that the dynamic relationship between theory and action, the dialectic, was historically verified and that history itself was a dynamic, goaloriented process." This framework gave him not only the rhetoric but also the logic necessary for responding intellectually to practical demands of political survival. Thus, Trotsky's theory was less that of an articulate Marxist philosopher than that of a strategist of social revolution. This paper argues that it was a genuine theory because it was consistent and articulate and because, in spite of its applicability to specific political problems in Russia, it was of interest elsewhereespecially in other agrarian, underdeveloped societies. At the same time, Trotsky's theory was dialectic in the sense that it consciously took account of the dynamic relationship of thought, idea, and subject, on the one hand, and engagement, action, praxis, the world, on the other. It seems evident from Trotsky's writings that he readily perceived the ambiguity and conflict inherent in theoretically verified conclusions and norms and the daily needs of political life. Rather than undermine a pristine Marxism that Trotsky never owned, these conflicts continually reinforced a dialectical view of the world, allowing for yet further theoretical and practical alterations. The extent to which Trotsky's theoretical constructs and daily tactics were functions of one another may be illustrated by his responses to several broad classes of problems. There is a coherent and consistent progression or development of the theory of revolution in Russia in Trotsky's treatment of these problems, if we judge consistency in a dialectical way. I will summarize this development briefly here and then deal with each stage a little more elaborately. In the earliest part of his career Trotsky rejected the classical Marxist notion of the stages of revolution in Russia. The Russian bourgeoisie, he argued, was historically far too weak to create a revolutionary situation. Next, about 1903-1905, he developed his notion of the role of the Russian proletariat as the creative source of the Russian revolution. In doing this he sought to limit the role of political parties and to emphasize the role of organizations, which 6. Leon Trotsky, My Life. An Attempt at an Autobiography (New York: Scribner's, 1930), pp. 119-122.

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he saw as closer to the proletarian power. This approach is underscored by his political behavior in the same period-his rejection of the Leninist (Bolshevik) party and his work in the Revolution of 1905 with the St. Petersburg Soviet. Next, in 1906, he reformulated his ideas about proletarian power and creativity in the light of the 1905 experience. The problem was not whether the workers could seize power at that stage of the Russian revolution: they had already demonstrated in 1905 that they could do this. The problem was whether, having seized power, they could hold it. Although 1906 is best known as the period during which Trotsky formulated the idea of " permanent revolution," it is important more because it was then that he confronted the problem of maintaining the proletarian revolution in a hostile social environment. His answer to this problem, not surprisingly, was the state. The last period in Trotsky's development goes beyond the scope of this paper. Trotsky in power after 1917 created the instruments-or proposed the creation of instruments-of state power necessary to realize the positions he formulated earlier. These instruments included the Red Army, the single economic plan, and the reorganization of labor. Thus, in about eight years Trotsky developed a theory of revolution which focused, as his early reading had taught him to do, on the historical realities such as the weakness of the Russian bourgeoisie and the potential strength, in a revolutionary situation, of the proletariat. The theory underwent successive stages of modification-stages which are linked to Trotsky's own political experiences. Each time he encountered a major new departure in his career, or a major political problem (such as his first Siberian exile, his work with Iskra, the 1903 Bolshevik-Menshevik split, or the Revolution of 1905), there is an attempt to respond, to formulate-and then reformulate-a theory of revolutionary change for Russia, a largely preindustrial society. Trotsky's interpretation of these problems is partly the product of his personal view of Marxism -or, to borrow a phrase from an early source of ideas for Trotsky, "critical communism." In addition, however, his interpretations reflected the needs of the moment-particularly the all-important need of social democratic politicians to survive and to extend their power. The immediate needs of the Social Democrats, moreover, were more complex than might first appear to be the case, for, in their tum, they continually ran afoul of Russia's overwhelmingly agrarian traditions. Throughout Trotsky's political career there are examples of his viewing Russian society as underdeveloped or as slowly developing. To be sure, his vision continually underwent clarification as he

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attempted to express his ideas in different forms and in the context of changing political challenges. But what is interesting to note is that his theoretical approach to the problems of Russia's backwardness tends to be guided by the patterns that he encountered in his early readings and continued to develop until about 1907.

Early Development: "Critical Communism" During 1899, while awaiting trial in Odessa prison, Trotsky read what was available to him in the prison library, as well as literature smuggled in, with the goal either of studying historical materialism, Marxism and its antecedents, or else of learning to criticize other literature from the materialist position. His information was garnered from many sources: the right-wing" Orthodox Review," pamphlets and books on the phenomenon of freemasonry, and anthropological and sociological works. These latter studies included Charles Darwin and the Italian social philosopher Antonio Labriola.' Of Labriola's works he wrote: Although thirty years have gone by since I read his essays, the general trend of his argument is still firmly intrenched in my memory, together with his continuous refrain, "ideas do not drop from the sky." After Labriola, all the Russian proponents of the multiplicity of factors, Lavrov, Mikhailovsky, Kareyev, and others, seemed utterly ineffectual to me.... 8

The sense of Labriola's essays could not have been wholly new to Trotsky even at this early date. He had already read Julius Lippert, for example, who did not explicitly espouse a monistic view of human development, but who, as a pioneering cultural anthropologist, was interested in showing how human culture had 7. Ibid. and Max Eastman, Leon Trotsky, Portrait of a Youth (London, 1920), pp. 128-129. 8. Trotsky, My Life, p. 119. He did not give the names of the essays. It seems certain, however, that one of them was "Historical Materialism," published first in Italian, an essay in which the remark, "ideas do not drop from heaven," is frequently used. This essay was published together with Labriola's" In Memory of the Communist Manifesto" in 1898 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Marx's speech. The two were published together in a French edition-to which Trotsky refers--within a relatively short time. Trotsky also referred to material taken from these essays in his Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky (Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 1961), p. 133.

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evolved spontaneously from the most primitive levels.9 Nicholas Chernyshevsky, whom Trotsky also studied, had attempted to place sociology, politics, and aesthetics on an exclusively materialist foundation and thus came quite close to a thoroughly monistic view of history and sociology." When Trotsky approached Labriola's verbose but lively work, then, he probably knew what he had in his hands and what he was looking for. The fact that after thirty years he should remember Labriola's remark, " ideas do not drop from the sky," is not surprising. This formulation was part of the rhetoric of Labriola's theory-practice dialectic: ideas, theory, are not produced in a vacuum, but as a consequence of engagement with the real, material world. This said, however, a problem immediately arises. If ideas are a product of the material world, what scope is left within this material, self-determining world for the human being as he is known to the philosopher or artist rather than to the physical scientist-i.e., for an individual capable of acting freely and creatively? The political implications of this dilemma are obviously manifold. Having sealed themselves up in a self-creating universe where politics is simply one more phenomenon of evolution, Marxists have ever after tried to find the means of regaining control of it and thus of regaining freedom. Part of Labriola's solution was the attainment of what was called a "scientific" level of knowledge.'! Such a knowledge led, in its own turn, to the creation of a sophisticated theory of revolutionary politics, a " critical communism." As Labriola wrote : It is not merely a question of discovering and determining the

social groundwork, and then of making men appear upon it like so many marionettes, whose threads are held and moved, no longer by Providence but by economic categories. These categories have themselves developed and are developing, like aU the rest-because men change as to the capacity and the art of 9. It was Julius Lippert who wrot e: In the embryonic social organization of primitive times, there was as yet no true human sovereignty, but a broad perspective is opened up in the realization that such might develop in some way and unite with the disciplinary power created by cult ideas. Lippert's The Evolution 0/ Culture (New York: Macmillan, 1931), p, 129; also pp, 603 ff', 10. Nicholas G. Chernyshevsky, "The Aesthetic Relation of Art to Reality: A Dissertation," in Selected Philosophical Essays (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1953). 11. For Labriola's explanation of this term, see "In Memory of the Communist Manifesto," in Essays on the Materialist Conception 0/ History , trans. by Charles H. Kerr (Chicago: Kerr, 1908), p. 55.

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vanquishing, subduing, transforming and utilizing natural conditions; . . . and therefore as individuals depending in various degrees upon one another.t-

Historical materialism in its most sophisticated form is thus not merely abstraction and analysis, nor even merely science, but also an art. 13 Insisting that socialism continues to be the most profound form of historic necessity, Labriola nevertheless defined what he called "critical communism" as the "theory of the proletarian revolution." "Critical communism dates," he said, "from the moment when the proletarian movement is not merely a result of social conditions, but when it has already strength enough to understand that the conditions can be changed and to discern what means can modify them and in what direction." 14 Taken together in its most refined dialectical form, scientific socialism amounts to the "discovery of the self-criticism which is in the things themselves." "The real criticism of society is society itself," he wrote, "which by the antithetic conditions of the contrasts upon which it rests, engenders from itself, within itself, the contradiction and finally triumphs over this by its passage into a new form." 15 It is impossible to show that Trotsky depended in substantial part on Labriola for his ideas of the dialectic. Each man was no doubt familiar with many of the same writers who, in their tum, might be cited as sources. At the same time it seems evident that Trotsky was to some extent indebted to Labriola as a young student is indebted to a teacher who has suggested various methods of observation and patterns of interpretation. Indeed, it may well be that this indebtedness extended to a corollary developed by Labriola, as he shifted between the poles of determinism and voluntarism. The thought that leadership of the revolution, however much a part of historically necessary social phenomena, might transform dictatorship of the revolutionary proletariat into dictatorship over the proletariat occurred to Labriola as, later, it would keep recurring to Trotsky. For Labriola the point was made moot by the fact that the proletariat "already knows ... that the conquest of political power cannot and should not be made by others in its name." 16 12. Labriola, 13. Ibid. 14. Labriola, 15. Labriola, 16. Labriola,

"Historical Materialism," in Essays, pp. 228-229. "In Memory," pp. 24--27. "Historical Materialism," p. 169 . "In Memory," p. 59.

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Problems of Orthodoxy; The Russian Bourgeoisie and Capitalism The next stage in the development of Trotsky's theory of revolution emerges in his earliest writings, published during his first Siberian exile. Like other Russian Social Democrats, he was concerned with what could be called the rhythm of revolution and the identification of the pattern of Russia's revolutionary development. Marxian orthodoxy required the development of social, economic, and political roles for capitalism and the bourgeoisie. But in Russ ia such development seemed to be occurring very slowly, if at all. Lenin dealt with this by arguing, in effect, that appearances were deceiving." Trotsky, in a group of articles he wrote for the Vostochnoe obozrenie (Eastern Observer) 18 while in Siberian exile, was more the historical realist. One of the articles of this group was titled "The Declaration of Rights and the Velvet Book." 1 9 The comparison suggested by two documents-one a relic of the revolutionary strength of the French bourgeoisie, the other a symbol of lingering feudal authority in backward Russia-was of particular significance in a society where each of these traditions continued to exist and to intermingle with the other. The fact of intermingling middle class and aristocratic traditions was a phenomenon that Labriola had emphasized and that Trotsky himself had recognized before."? This view of historical-as distinct from theoretical-societies at times enabled Trotsky to transcend a simpler, more artificially categorized economic framework of the kind that underlay Lenin's The Development of Capitalism in Russia. As it seemed to Trotsky, the Russian bourgeoisie, in its sickly, disreputable existence, had developed under conditions quite different from those found in Western Europe. In the West, he thought, the bourgeoisie had prospered until they were powerful enough as a class and as an economic force to mold the social and political patterns that gradually came to reflect their economic way of life. In Russia, on the other hand, the bourgeoisie was a semiliterate, timorous minority, insensate to issues of a social nature. The major consequence of this 17. This is the burden of Lenin's The Development of Capitalism in Russia: The Process of Formation of a Home Market for Large-Scale Industry, written between 1896 and 1898 and first published in 1899 (St. Petersburg, Leifert). 18. Published in Irkutsk. His first articles appeared in 1900; cr. Trotsky, Sochineniia (Moscow, 1925-1927), Vol. 20, Kul'tura starogo mira. 19. "Deklaratsiia pray i barkhatnaia kniga." 20. This was reflected in an essay-no longer extant-written while he was in Odessa prison and described in his autobiography.

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was that, seeking to preserve a modicum of its economic independence, the bourgeoisie sought protection from a moribund Russian feudalism, generating a disreputable alliance. 21 Trotsky thus began to develop a view of Russia in the twentieth century that was different from the orthodox Marxist view and quite distinct from established West European patterns of development; he found the social and economic sources of these differences in a candid appraisal of the Russian past." Such an appraisal focused on the historical Russia rather than on the theoretical or mythical Russia that dominated the thinking of many Russian Marxists at the time. Instead of concluding that Russia was locked into a certain pattern of development, Trotsky was already suggesting that the objective, historical conditions for this development did not exist in Russia-in short, that no forward historical motion could be expected from the Russian bourgeoisie. Ultimately, as we see below, he concluded that the creative force of the revolution in Russia at this stage was not the bourgeoisie, nor even an elite revolutionary leadership such as the Bolsheviks, but the proletariat. The Party and the Proletariat, 1903-1905

In 1903 and 1904, during the course of the long and furious debate on the split of Russian Social Democrats into Menshevik and Bolshevik factions. Trotsky made what is often regarded as a major contribution to the literature of Russian Marxism. From this long, dense pamphlet, entitled "Our Political Tasks," it is evident that he no more wished to allow formal party ties to force an alteration of his theory of Russia's social development than he had been to let orthodoxy do this. The dominant theme of this work dealt with the issue of Lenin's abortive attempt to reshape Russian Social Democrats along the extremely centralized lines of his faction." What may be noted here is that, in Trotsky's view, the real evil that Lenin's doctrinaire approach had done was to prevent the Party's getting on with 21. Trotsky, Sochineniia, 20: 83-86. 22. Ibid., p. 80. 23. In the course of this critique, he made the famous assertion: In internal party politics [Lenin's] methods come, as we have already seen, to this, that the party organization .. substitutes" itself for the party [at large], the central committee substitutes itself for the party organization, and finally .. the dictator substitutes himself for the central committee ..." Nashi politicheskie zadachi (Geneva, 1904), pp. 54-55.

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its proper tasks, its "political tasks." Intellectual fencing and ideological wars, Trotsky wrote, were expected and even proper during the earlier years of the Party's history and especially during what he called "the Iskra period" (1900-1903). Now, however, the Party should be prepared to assume its full adult responsibilities, recognizing that the days of the underground political revolutionary were waning, and that the hour had come for expression of historical truth in action." Critical tasks of the moment should be the dual ones of educating the proletariat and learning from them rather than indulging in vicious and petty quarrels, as Lenin had done, over Party organization. Russian social democracy's political tasks, therefore, were the formulation of what, in the dialectic of theory and practice, Trotsky regarded as pertinent, realistic social democratic tactics and of intelligent participation in the thrust of history and its blind material forces." The Party, on the other hand, was turning in on itself with no concern for the outside world. In this, the Party and Lenin in particular could be thought of as philosophers, rationalists, generating theory without regard for the need to act. Thus, Trotsky wrote ironically: For better or worse (more, for worse) we are revolutionizing the mass, awakening in it protozoan instincts. But, so far as this business is concerned with the complicated task-to turn these " instincts" into the conscious strivings for political self-definition of the worker class-we are turning, in the broadest sense, to the tried and true method of "rationalization" (otdumyvanie) and" substitutionalism." 26

For Trotsky, not the Party but the proletariat, aggressive and selfarticulating, was the central feature of the revolution." Revealing in this context is a work written immediately preceding the Revolution of 1905 and published later under the title, "Before the Ninth of January." 28 This pamphlet was written to restate Trotsky's opposition to Lenin's demands for tight Party organization and aggressive, 24. Ibid., pp. 33-35. 25. Ibid., Introduction, PP. x-xi, 26. Ibid., p. 54. 27. So much so that Lenin condemned this general line of reasoning as .. semi-anarchistic" See J. L. H. Keep, The Rise of Social Democracy in Russia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), p. 197. 28. "Do deviatogo ianvaria," Sochineniia, 2: Part 1 (Nash a pervaia revoliutsiia), pp. 1-53. The title is obviously anachronistic. The pamphlet was written just before the outbreak of revolution, but it was not published until later in 1905.

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individual political leadership. Among other things, however, Trotsky tried to give explicit examples of the way in which he believed the workers might seize the revolutionary initiative and dispense with the party. As an illustration, he wrote a vivid description of the way he thought a revolution might begin. Allowing his imagination free rein, he wrote of the development of a general strike. The surging mass of workers would sweep from factory to factory, swelling as it went, until it finally crashed down upon old Russia with irresistible force." It is evident that a spontaneous explosion of this kind did not preclude the influence of a party of intellectuals, such as the Bolsheviks or Mensheviks, at some level. The implication was clear, nevertheless: the workers might take leadership away from a party that was too inflexible to respond to rapidly changing political needs." Trotsky's experiences in the actual Revolution of 1905 did not shake these convictions, but reinforced them. Thus, attempting to distinguish the leadership role of the St. Petersburg Soviet from that of the Party, he wrote: The Social Democratic organization, narrowly limited to a secret group of several hundred in the underground and ideologically united with a few thousand workers in St. Petersburg, had the capacity to give slogans .... [But] to bind a crowd of hundreds of thousands with a living organizational bond was not within its strength because of the singular fact that it had always accomplished the major portion of its work in hiding from the masses, in conspiratorial laboratories."!

What then was the role of the Marxist intellectual or the Marxist political leader in this real revolutionary situation? It was to work with organizations which he thought were close to the proletariat, responsive to proletarian demands, and which still afforded the opportunity of influencing the proletariat. In 1905, so far as Trotsky was concerned, this organization was the St. Petersburg Soviet ... not only because it is the greatest workers' organization that Russia has seen to date, not only because the Petersburg Soviet 29. Ibid., pp. 50-51. 30. The weakness of labor support of the social democratic movement is evident. See, for example, Allan K. Wildman, "Lenin's Battle with the Kustarnichestvo," Slavic Review, Vol. 33, No. 3 (September 1964), pp. 479-503, and Richard Pipes, Social Democracy and the St. Petersburg Labor Movement, 1885-1897 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963). 31. "Rol' soveta v pervoi revoliutsii. Kak voznik sovet rabochikh deputatov," Sochineniia, 2: Part 2, p, 179. Trotsky's emphasis.

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served as a model for Moscow, Odessa, and a raft of other towns-but above all because this pure class, proletarian organization appeared as an organization of the revolution, as such. The Soviet was the center of all events ... ."2

It may be, of course, that Trotsky was defending here his own role

in the St. Petersburg Soviet. That this was his only objective, however, is most unlikely in view of the subsequent development of his ideas concerning success of the proletarian revolution. Economic Backwardness in Dialectical Perspective: 1905-1907 It has already been asserted that Trotsky's experience during the entire revolution reinforced his assumptions concerning the dialectical articulation of revolutionary theory and practice. The workers as well as their revolutionary leaders-himself among them-were learning, were acquiring the necessary training in 1905 to make theory and abstract goals" a practical task for our own day." 33 "In Russian life," he wrote, "the revolution of 1905 was the dress rehearsal for the revolution of 1917." 34 While he did not mention Labriola by name in his writings at this time, it is evident that the notion of theory engaged in a dialectical process, continually modifying and being modified by social fact, was still central to Trotsky's perception of Russia and the future of the revolution. The Revolution of 1905 was instructive for Trotsky just as he regarded it as instructive for the proletariat and for the party polio tician. But his conclusions concerning the significance of the revolution must be read in the light of two specific, political problems. The first was that, according to the preconceptions of many Russian Social Democrats, the revolution should have been dominated by the middle classes and their political parties; theoretically, it should not have involved overt acts or influential political decisions on the part of the proletariat. At the same time, it was a fact that when the proletariat-the urban workers, the unions, and the working-class parties ----'had found the opportunity of assuming a leading role in the revolution, that class had ultimately failed to gain any substantial revolutionary victories. All this raised not only theoretical problems but serious practical issues for politicians now forced to breathe a new spirit into the demoralized proletariat. For Trotsky, the theoreti32 Ibid See also "Istoricheskoe znachenie so veta rabochikh deputatov," Sochineniia, 2: Part 2, pp. 185ff. 33. Trotsky, My Life, p. 167. 34. Ibid., p. 186.

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cal adjustments were less drastic than for many other Russian Social Democrats. He was accustomed to thinking of Russian problems as unique by comparison with those of the West, and his fundamental notion of the articulation of theory with practice allowed for constant dialectical change. In this context, he articulated corollaries to his theory of the historical development of the revolution. A statement of both is to be found in a well-known essay entitled" The Balance and the Prospects," prepared for the book" Our Revolution." 35 For one thing, he suggested that in a future revolution the contradiction of a workers' government ruling a peasant society might be resolved by an extension of the revolution over a long period of time and from backward Russia to advanced societies of Western Europe. This, of course, is the essence of "permanent revolution," an idea similar to one suggested by other Social Democrats, for various reasons, at about the same time." In addition, Trotsky explicitly discussed the political implications, for a proletarian revolution, of Russia's technological, sociological, and economic backwardness." Granting that the primitive technology of an economically backward country should normally be accompanied by a small, backward proletariat, he dismissed the possibility of a coalition with middle class parties: "Social democracy can never assume power under a double obligation..." 38 To ensure that he had made his point adequately, he went on to point out that the" self-limiting" workers would be, in fact, the contradiction in terms which others had already begun to support: it would be a democratically based (i.e., middle class) dictatorship of the proletariat. It is, therefore, absurd ... to speak of a purely democratic dictatorship. The working class can never secure the democratic character of its dictatorship [i.e., secure social and economic equality] without overstepping the limits of its democratic [i.e., limited] prograrn.?"

35. Nasha revoliutsiia (81. Petersburg, 1906). The full title of Trotsky's essay was Itogi i perspektivy: dvizhushchie sily revoliutsii. It was published separately in Moscow, 1919. Translations here are by Moissaye J. Olgin and are from an English edition which appeared in New York in 1918. 36. Among them was Lenin. Keep, Rise of Social Democracy, p. 198. 37. The two dimensions-cross-cultural and temporal-are, in Trotsky's theory, closely related. In this connection, see the intriguing remarks of Maurice Merleau-Ponty in Les aventures de la dialectique (paris: Gallimard, 1955) about "this idea of a world unfulfilled without praxis, a praxis which makes up a part of the definition of the world" (pp. 118-119); see also pp. 16-17. 39. Ibid., p. 28. 38. "Balance and the Prospects," p. 27.

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In addition, he had asserted on numerous occasions in the past that expectations of a worker-peasant coalition were, in this sense, largely pipe dreams." Instead, he wrote of "control over" the peasantry. Thus, even though a minority, the workers had to act alone. In " The Balance and the Prospects" Trotsky tried to formulate his solution tv this dilemma: There is no doubt that the number of proletariat, the degree of its concentration, its cultural level, and its political importance depend upon the degree of industrial development in each country. This dependence, however, is not a direct one.... The industry of the United States is far more advanced than the industry of Russia, while the political role of the Russian workingmen, their influence on the political life of their country, the possibilities of their influence on world politics in the near future are incomparably greater than those of the American proletariat. 41

Evidence of the Russian proletariat's superiority was manifested in the vitality of the soviets, for example." Thus, it followed that the Russian proletariat might emerge victorious in a future revolution. It is, therefore, not excluded that in a backward country with a lesser degree of capitalistic development the proletariat should sooner reach political supremacy than in a highly developed capitalist state.v'

The problem still remained, however, as to the ability of the workers' government-the dictatorship of the proletariat as opposed to the "democracy" of the liberals-to hold power over a long period of time. In spite of a proletarian victory, the country would remain at a low level of industrial development with technically advanced patterns of social organization concentrated in a few large urban areas. The remainder of the country would still be a predominantly traditional society. How could the revolutionary government successfully substitute for the lack of an economic, a technological and, thus, a social basis for political reforms? Trotsky reiterated his despair of voluntary cooperation with the peasants, writing instead of how" con40. See, for example, "Gospodin Petr Strove v politike," Sochineniia, 2: Part 1, pp. 333fT., and "Chemu uchat sotsialistov-revoliutsionistov," Sochineniia, 2: Part 1, pp. 22Sf!. 41. .. Balance and the Prospects," pp. 27-28. 42. Ibid., pp. 10-11. 43. Ibid., p. 13.

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ditions will impel the peasants to uphold the policies of a labor democracy." 44 Even so, Trotsky understood that while the workerrevolutionary might be acting in the long-run best interests of all, a majority of Russians might be unaware of this, and might, for a period of time, lend aid and comfort to the reaction. Although he seems to have recognized this as dangerous in the extreme, Trotsky did not regard it as necessarily disastrous for the revolutionary minority government. In order to save the day, the Russian proletariat would be called upon to use its remarkable resources to the full and by doing so it would ultimately receive aid from the proletariat in the economically advanced countries of Central and Western Europe. There was an additional resource, however, that could also be called upon-the state. In referring specifically to this means whereby proletarian authority might be sustained, Trotsky articulated a point of view which, apparently, came out of his 1905 experience and which now entered into his theory of revolution in Russia: The state is not an end in itself. It is, however, the greatest means for organizing, disorganizing, and reorganizing social relations. According to who is directing the machinery of the state, it can be an instrument of profound transformation, or a means of organized stagnation.s"

He then proceeded, intermingling references to the power of state and party as he went, to point out that, in this sense, political struggles are actually efforts to gain control over the machine of state and its organizational abilities. Thus, Trotsky recognized the magnitude of the political problem inherent in a minority's seizure of power. At the same time, he foresaw the potentially hard means available to the proletarian minority to maintain itself in power even in the event that it had no aid from abroad. Other students of Trotsky's career have correctly observed that he was in no meaningful sense a philosopher 46_i.e., someone interested in the systematic analysis of ideas for their own sake. My study of his early writings, supported by his own comments on his early political career, has nevertheless argued that Trotsky was both a theoretician and a dialectician. Trotsky's ideas about the appropriateness of Marxism for Russia, the roles of the bouregoisie, the proletariat, and the Party, and the role he assigns to the state all took 44. Ibid., p. 22. 45. Ibid, p, 12. See also pp. 47-48. 46. MerIeau-Ponty, Les aventures, pp. 101fr. See also Lefort, Elements d'une critique, pp. 22ff.

TROTSKY'S THEORY OF REVOLUTION

33

their characteristic form between 1898 and 1907. This development provided Trotsky not merely with a rhetoric useful for defending his political activities and attacking those of his enemies, but with a conception of proletarian revolution in an underdeveloped country that was coherent and consistent in its interpretation of events and served as a foundation for Trotsky's response to events. Although the true dialectician never ceases to grow and change in his subjective response to the world, still the basic features of Trotsky's theory of revolution had been laid down as early as 1906. In a word, he foresaw a proletarian revolution that would empower the state to serve as the means of " organizing and reorganizing" social relations in a society where backwardness of those relations would otherwise smother the revolution in its crib. It is on this theoretical foundation that Trotsky's political and economic policies and proposals of 1917 to 1923 were built. 47 The political uses he made of the Red Army, the labor battalions, his proposals for the reorganization of labor, and the single economic plan were all attempts to sustain the revolution with instruments of state power. Given the enigma of Trotsky's personal failure to hold power, it is not surprising that we should find his political behavior hard to understand.v In the end, he was a better theoretician than politician, a distinction that is of considerable help in understanding the career of this perpetually fascinating man. He expressed it best himself: I do not measure the historical process by the yardstick of one's own personal fate. On the contrary, I appraise my fate objectively and live it subjectively, only as it is inextricably bound up with the course of social development. 49

47. Richard B. Day, Leon Trotsky and the Politics of Economic Isolation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), Chaps. 2-3, pp, 17-65. 48. Lefort, Elements d'une critique, refers to the "contradiction of Trotsky" and ultimately concludes that Trotsky's failure was really the revolution's failure-or, at least, the Party's failure. "Trotsky's battle against the bureaucracy lacked foundation," he wrote, "because Trotsky was objectively a craftsman of that bureaucracy" (p. 26). Merleau-Ponty argued that the failure was more fundamental, lying at the roots of Marxism and the revolution as such. Cf. "La dialectique en action," pp. I 24ff. in Les A ventures. 49. Trotsky, My Life, pp. 581-582. c.c..-2