It was in considering the role of the proletariat in the bourgeois revolution that Trotsky introduced the concept that most startled his readers. He began by reminding them of the most basic of Marxist views on the state and revolution. The state is only a machine in the hands of the dominating social force, driven by the class interests of that social force; its “motor and transmitting mechanisms” such as the church, courts, press and schools rest on its police, its prisons and its armed forces. Revolution is an open struggle for state power between social forces and “Every political party worthy of the name strives to capture political power and thus place the State at the service of the class whose interests it expresses”[36]. Trotsky drew the obvious conclusion that the RDSLP, being the party of the proletariat, should naturally strive for political domination by the working class.
Trotsky then develops the core of the ToPR, and the lessons of the St Petersburg Soviet resonate through:
“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 towards 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 relations in the class struggle, upon the international situation, and, finally, upon a number of subjective factors: the traditions, the initiative and the readiness to fight of the workers. …
It is possible for the workers to come to power in an economically backward country sooner than in an advanced country. … To imagine that the dictatorship of the proletariat is in some way automatically dependent on the technical development and resources of a country is a prejudice of ‘economic’ materialism simplified to absurdity. This point of view has nothing in common with Marxism”[37].
Trotsky argued that the political importance and strength of the industrial proletariat was not linearly related to a country’s industrial development, that numerous social and political factors of a national and international character had to be considered, and these could sometimes completely alter the normal political expression of economic relations[38]. In Trotsky’s view, the Russian Revolution would create conditions in which power could pass into the hands of the workers. Given that the workers would provide the core of the revolutionary fighters, the major force in the armed insurrection, it would not be possible for the revolution against the Tsar to be victorious without actual power – power on the ground – passing into the hands of the armed workers. But, if this happened, real power would be in the hands of the proletariat before the bourgeois liberal politicians could assume the government – whether or not in the form of a Constituent Assembly – and begin to govern the country.
As support for his views, Trotsky drew on Kautsky’s authority quoting from his book, American and Russian Workers, in which Kautsky pointed out that there was no direct relation between the political power of the proletariat relative to the bourgeoisie and the level of capitalist development. Kautsky compared the specific social weights of the Russian and American working classes, concluding that the militant proletariat had nowhere acquired such importance as in Russia, and that this importance would undoubtedly increase, because Russian workers had only just begun to take part in the modern class struggle[39].
Seeking to answer in advance some of the expected criticisms from those Russian Marxists such as Plekhanov, Trotsky particularly recommended the following extract from Kautsky:
“‘It is indeed most extraordinary that the Russian proletariat should be showing us our future, in so far as this is expressed not in the extent of the development of capital, but in the protest of the working class. The fact that this Russia is the most backward of the large states of the capitalist world would appear to contradict the materialist conception of history, according to which economic development is the basis of political development; but really this only contradicts the materialist conception of history as it is depicted by our opponents and critics, who regard it not as a method of investigation but merely as a ready-made stereotype’”[40].
Trotsky then gave a final quotation from Kautsky in support of his argument;
“‘struggle for the interests of all Russia has fallen to the lot of the only now-existing strong class in the country – the industrial proletariat. For this reason the industrial proletariat has tremendous political importance, and for this reason the struggle for the emancipation of Russia from the incubus of absolutism which is stifling it has become converted into a single combat between absolutism and the industrial proletariat, a single combat in which the peasants may render considerable support but cannot play a leading role’”[41].
Later, Trotsky published his own annotated translation of Kautsky’s The Driving Forces of the Russian Revolution as support for the ToPR, claiming that the line of thinking of the two articles was “precisely the same”[42]. It is here that Trotsky asserted, with Kautsky’s apparent support, that the political domination of the proletariat would inevitably lead to civil war and the ultimate defeat of the proletariat, if the revolution remained within a national framework. Trotsky’s conclusion was the proletariat in power should use all the resources at its disposal to turn a Russian revolution into the first episode of the European revolution. Trotsky gave a somewhat novel twist to what Kautsky had written. It would be more exact to say that Kautsky, as Lenin, believed that the Social Democrats, as the victorious party of the revolution, could go no further in the implementation of their programme than the interests of the peasantry permitted. The peasants could not be expected to become socialists, so to introduce socialist measures in the economy would conflict with interests of the majority of the population, a conflict that could be resolved successfully only with the assistance of the European working class[43].
Whether or not the revolution was bourgeois-democratic, the experience of the St Petersburg Soviet showed that expecting the political domination of the proletariat to be only a passing episode ignored the reality that once the proletariat had taken power, it would not give it up unless it was torn from its hands by armed force. On taking power, the proletariat would, by the very logic of its position, move towards the introduction of state intervention into industry, would itself take the first steps towards collectivisation and the socialist transformation of society. Defining the Russian Revolution, generally, as a bourgeois revolution, neither defined nor answered the specific political and strategic problems which the actual revolution would throw up.
Trotsky asked the rhetorical question as to whether revolutionary SDs should consciously work towards a proletarian government or regard it as an event to avoid[44]. He answered: “In the revolution whose beginning history will identify with the year 1905, the proletariat stepped forward for the first time under its own banner in the name of its own objectives”[45].
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Trotsky, L.D., Ibid, p194
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Trotsky, L.D., Ibid, p194-195
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Trotsky, L.D., Ibid, p197
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Trotsky, L.D., Ibid, p197
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Trotsky, L.D., Ibid, p198
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Trotsky, L.D., Ibid, p198
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Trotsky, L.D., Kautsky on the Russian Revolution, Journal of Trotsky Studies No 2 1994, p200-223
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Lowy, M., The Politics of Combined and Uneven Development, Verso, London, 1981, p37
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Trotsky, L.D., Results and Prospects, New Park Publications, London, 1962, p200
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Trotsky, L.D., 1905, Vintage Books, New York, 1972, p55