Yossi Schwartz ISL (RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine), 23.07.2024
Hamas and Fatah concluded three days of intra-Palestinian reconciliation talks in Beijing. Senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk announced the agreement. He said, “Today, we signed an agreement for national unity, and we say that the path to completing this journey is national unity. We are committed to national unity, and we call for it.”[i]
This is very bad for the liberation struggle, as the PA is a rotten body serving the interest of the Zionist state. This is precisely why we do not give political support to Hamas. That imperialist China will push for such unity is not surprising because as an imperialist state, it wants to block the Arab revolution.
As part of the RCIT, the ISL is resolute in its commitment to the theory and strategy of the Permanent Revolution. This strategy asserts that only the working class can bring about the bourgeois-democratic revolution (Palestine free from the river to the sea). Once in power, the working class will initiate the tasks of a socialist society, and the pace of these tasks will be determined by the global revolution.
As Trotsky wrote:
“I did not deny the bourgeois character of the revolution that stood on the order of the day, and I did not mix up democracy and socialism. But I endeavored to show that in our country, the class dialectics of the bourgeois revolution would bring the proletariat to power and that without its dictatorship, not even democratic tasks could be solved.”[ii]
In the same article, The Permanent Revolution (1905-06) I wrote:
“‘The proletariat grows and becomes stronger with the growth of capitalism. In this sense, the development of capitalism is also the development of the proletariat toward dictatorship. But the day and the hour when power will pass into the hands of the working class depends directly not upon the level attained by the productive forces but upon the relations in the class struggle, upon the international situation, and finally, upon several subjective factors: the traditions, the initiative, readiness to fight of the workers.”[iii]
In the last chapter of the booklet The Permanent Revolution, Trotsky summed his theory and strategy:
1. The theory of the permanent revolution now demands the greatest attention from every Marxist, for the course of the class and ideological struggle has fully and finally raised this question from the realm of reminiscences over old differences of opinion among Russian Marxists and converted it into a question of the character, the inner connexons, and methods of the international revolution in general.
2. With regard to countries with a belated bourgeois development, especially colonial and semi-colonial countries, the theory of the permanent revolution signifies that the complete and genuine solution to their tasks of achieving democracy and national emancipation is conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat as the leader of the subjugated nation, above all of its peasant masses.
3. Not only the agrarian but also the national question assigns to the peasantry – the overwhelming majority of the population in backward countries – an exceptional place in the democratic revolution. Without an alliance of the proletariat with the peasantry, the tasks of the democratic revolution cannot be solved nor even seriously posed. However the alliance of these two classes can be realized in no other way than through an irreconcilable struggle against the influence of the national-liberal bourgeoisie.
4. No matter what the first episodic stages of the revolution may be in the individual countries, the realization of the revolutionary alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry is conceivable only under the political leadership of the proletariat vanguard, organized in the Communist Party. This in turn, means that the victory of the democratic revolution is conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat, which bases itself upon the alliance with the peasantry and solves, first of all, the tasks of the democratic revolution.
5. Assessed historically, the old slogan of Bolshevism – ’the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’ – expressed precisely the above-characterized relationship of the proletariat, the peasantry, and the liberal bourgeoisie. This has been confirmed by the experience of October. However, Lenin’s old formula did not settle in advance the problem of what the reciprocal relations would be between the proletariat and the peasantry within the revolutionary bloc. In other words, the formula deliberately retained a certain algebraic quality, which had to make way for more precise arithmetical quantities in the process of historical experience. However, the latter showed, and under circumstances that exclude any kind of misinterpretation, that no matter how significant the revolutionary role of the peasantry may be, it nevertheless cannot be an independent role and even less a leading one. The peasant follows either the worker or the bourgeois. This means that the ‘democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’ is only conceivable as a dictatorship of the proletariat that leads the peasant masses behind it.
6. A democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, as a regime that is distinguished from the dictatorship of the proletariat by its class content, might be realized only in a case where an independent revolutionary party could be constituted, expressing the interests of the peasants and in general of petty-bourgeois democracy – a party capable of conquering power with this or that degree of aid from the proletariat, and of determining its revolutionary program. As all modern history attests – especially the Russian experience of the last twenty-five years – an insurmountable obstacle on the road to the creation of a peasants’ party is the petty-bourgeois ie’s lack of economic and political independence and its deep internal differentiation. Because of this the upper sections of the petty-bourgeoisie (of the peasantry) go along with the big bourgeoisie in all decisive cases, especially in war and in revolution; the lower sections go along with the proletariat; the intermediate section being thus compelled to choose between the two extreme poles. Between Kerenskyism and the Bolshevik power, between the Kuomintang and the dictatorship of the proletariat, there is not and cannot be any intermediate stage, that is, no democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants.
7. The Comintern’s endeavor to foist upon the Eastern countries the slogan of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, finally and long ago exhausted by history, can have only a reactionary effect. Insofar as this slogan is counterposed to the slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat, it contributes politically to the dissolution of the proletariat in the petty-bourgeois masses and thus creates the most favorable conditions for the hegemony of the national bourgeoisie and consequently for the collapse of the democratic revolution. The introduction of the slogan into the program of the Comintern is a direct betrayal of Marxism and of the October tradition of Bolshevism.
8. The dictatorship of the proletariat, which has risen to power as the leader of the democratic revolution, is inevitably and very quickly confronted with tasks, the fulfillment of which is bound up with deep inroads into the rights of bourgeois property. The democratic revolution grows over directly into the socialist revolution and thereby becomes a permanent revolution.
9. The conquest of power by the proletariat does not complete the revolution but only opens it. Socialist construction is conceivable only on the foundation of the class struggle on a national and international scale. Under the conditions of an overwhelming predominance of capitalist relationships in the world, this struggle must inevitably lead to explosions, that is, internally to civil wars and externally to revolutionary wars. Therein lies the permanent character of the socialist revolution as such, regardless of whether it is a backward country that is involved, which only yesterday accomplished its democratic revolution, or an old capitalist country that already has behind it a long epoch of democracy and parliamentarian.
10. The completion of the socialist revolution within national limits is unthinkable. One of the basic reasons for the crisis in bourgeois society is that the productive forces created by it can no longer be reconciled with the framework of the national state. From this, imperialist wars followed, and the utopia of a bourgeois United States of Europe followed. The socialist revolution begins in the national arena, it unfolds in the international arena and is completed in the world arena. Thus, the socialist revolution becomes a permanent revolution in a newer and broader sense of the word; it attains completion only in the final victory of the new society on our planet.
11. The above-outlined sketch of the development of the world revolution eliminates the question of countries that are ‘mature’ or ‘immature’ for socialism in the spirit of that pedantic, lifeless classification given by the present program of the Comintern. Insofar as capitalism has created a world market, a world division of labor, and world productive forces, it has also prepared the world economy as a whole for socialist transformation.
Different countries will go through this process at various tempos. Under certain conditions, backward countries may arrive at the dictatorship of the proletariat sooner than advanced countries, but they will come later than the latter to socialism.
A backward colonial or semi-colonial country, the proletariat of which is insufficiently prepared to unite the peasantry and take power, cannot bring the democratic revolution to its conclusion. Conversely, in a country where the proletariat has power as a result of the democratic revolution, the subsequent fate of dictatorship and socialism depends, in the last analysis, not only upon the national productive forces but also upon the development of the international socialist revolution.
12. The theory of socialism in one country, which rose on the yeast of the reaction against October, is the only theory that consistently and to the very end, opposes the theory of the permanent revolution.
The attempt of the epigones, under the lash of our criticism, to confine the application of the theory of socialism in one country exclusively to Russia because of its specific characteristics (its vastness and its natural resources), does not improve matters but only makes them worse. The break with the internationalist position always and invariably leads to national messianism, that is, to attributing special superiorities and qualities to one’s own country, which allegedly permits it to play a role that other countries cannot attain.
The world division of labor, the dependence of Soviet industry upon foreign technology, the dependence of the productive forces of the advanced countries of Europe upon Asiatic raw materials, etc., etc., make the construction of an independent socialist society in any single country in the world impossible.
13. The theory of Stalin and Bukharin, running counter to the entire experience of the Russian revolution, not only sets up the democratic revolution mechanically in contrast to the socialist revolution, but also makes a breach between the national revolution and the international revolution.
This theory imposes upon revolutions in backward countries the task of establishing an unrealizable regime of democratic dictatorship, which it counterposes to the dictatorship of the proletariat. Thereby this theory introduces illusions and fictions into politics, paralyzes the struggle for power of the proletariat in the East, and hampers the victory of the colonial revolution.
The very seizure of power by the proletariat signifies, from the standpoint of the epigones’ theory, the completion of the revolution (’to the extent of nine-tenths’, according to Stalin’s formula) and the opening of the epoch of national reforms. The theory of the kulak growing into socialism and the theory of the ‘neutralization’ of the world bourgeoisie are consequently inseparable from the theory of socialism in one country. They stand or fall together.
According to the theory of national socialism, the Communist International is downgraded to an auxiliary weapon useful only for the struggle against military intervention. The present policy of the Comintern, its regime, and the selection of its leading personnel correspond entirely to the demotion of the Communist International to the role of an auxiliary unit not destined to solve independent tasks.
14. The Comintern program created by Bukharin is eclectic through and through. It makes the hopeless attempt to reconcile the theory of socialism in one country with Marxist internationalism, which is, however, inseparable from the permanent character of the world revolution. The struggle of the Communist Left Opposition for a correct policy and a healthy regime in the Communist International is inseparably bound up with the struggle for the Marxist program. The question of the program is, in turn, inseparable from the question of the two mutually exclusive theories: the theory of permanent revolution and the theory of socialism in one country. The problem of the permanent revolution has long ago outgrown the episodic differences of opinion between Lenin and Trotsky, which were utterly exhausted by history. The struggle is between the basic ideas of Marx and Lenin on the one side and the eclecticism of the centrists on the other”.[iv]
For Palestine, red and free from the river to the sea!
Endnotes:
[i] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/7/23/israel-war-on-gaza-live-scores-killed-in-new-israeli-blitz-on-khan-younis?update=3064481
[ii] Leon Trotsky The Permanent Revolution (1931)
[iii] Ibid
[iv] Ibid