GUPTA RAHMAN & GUPTA CALCUTTA First Indian Edition March 7947 Price Rs. 5/8 Published by Atawar Rahman Lower Circular Road, Calcutta * And Printed by Bhupal C. Dutt at the Art Press, 20, British Indian Street, Calcutta Jacket by Satyajit Roy Bound by Basanti Binding Works PERMANENT REVOLUTION PREFACE: AMERICAN EDITION As THIS book goes to press in the English language, the whole thinking part of the international working class, and in a sense, the whole of " civilized" humanity, listens with particularly keen interest to the reverberations of the economic turn taking place on the part of the former czarist empire. The greatest attention in this connection is aroused by the problem of collectivizing the peasant hold- ings. And no wonder: in this sphere the break with the past assumes a particularly clear-cut character. But a correct evaluation of collectivization is unthinkable without a general conception of the socialist revolution. And here on an even higher plane, we are again convinced that everything in the field of Marxian theory is bound up with practical activity. The most remote, and it would seem, "abstract" disagreements, if they are thought out to the end, will sooner or later be expressed in practise, and the latter allows not a single theoretical mistake to be made with impunity.
The collectivization of peasant holdings is, it is under- stood, the most necessary and fundamental part of the socialist transformation of society. The volume and tempo of collectivization, however, are not only determined by the government's will but, in the final analysis, by the economic factors: by the height of the country's economic level, the relationship between industry and agriculture PERMANENT REVOLUTION and consequently by the technical resources of agriculture itself.
Industrialization is the motive force of the whole newer culture and, by that, the only conceivable basis of socialism. In the conditions of the Soviet Union, indus- trialization means first of all the strengthening of the base of the proletariat as a ruling class. Simultaneously, it creates the material and technical premises for the collec- tivization of agriculture. The tempos of both these pro- cesses are interdependent. The proletariat is interested in the highest tempos for these processes, in so far as the new society that is to be created is thus best protected from external danger, and at the same time creates a source for systematically improving the material level of the toiling masses.
However, the tempo that can be accomplished is limited by the whole material and cultural position of the country, by the mutual relationship between the city and village and by the most urgent needs of the masses, who can sacri- fice their today for the sake of tomorrow only up to a certain point. The best and most advantageous tempos are those which not only produce the most rapid develop- ment of industry and collectivization at the given moment, but secure the necessary resistance -of the social regime, that is, first of all the strengthening of the alliance of the workers and peasants, which alone prepares the possibility of further successes.
From this point of view, the general historical criterion by which the party and state leadership directs the development of industry as planned economy assumes decisive significance. Here two principal variants are possible: (a) the course described above towards the economic entrenchment of the proletarian dictatorship in one country until further victories of the international proletariat revolution (the viewpoint of the Left Opposi- tion); (b) the course towards the construction of an isolated national socialist society and at that "in the shortest PREFACE, historical time" (the present official viewpoint).
These are two distinct, and in the final analysis, directly opposed theoretical conceptions of socialism. Out of these flow basically different strategy and tactics.
In the limits of this foreword we cannot consider anew the question of the cofcstruction of socialism in one country, Other of our works are devoted to this, particularly The Criticism of the Draft Program of the Comintern. Here we limit ourselves to the fundamental elements of the question. Let us recall, first of all, that the theory of socialism in one country was first formulated by Stalin in the fall of 1924, in complete contradiction not only to all the traditions of Marxism and the school of Lenin, but even to what Stalin wrote in the spring of the same year. From the standpoint of principle, the departure from Marxism by the Stalinist 'schobl' in the question of socialist construction is no less significant than, for example, the break of the German social democracy with Marxism in the question of war and patriotism, in the fall of 1914, that is, exactly ten years before the Stalinist turn. This comparison has no accidental character. Stalin's 'mistake', as well as the 'mistake' of the German social democracy, is national socialism.
Marxism proceeds from world economy, not as a sum of national parts, but as a mighty, independent reality, which is created by the international division of labour and the world market, and, in the present epoch, predominates over the national markets. The productive forces of capitalist society have long ago grown beyond the national frontier. The imperialist war was an expression of this fact. In the productive-technical respect, socialist society must represent a higher stage compared to capitalism. To aim at the construction of a nationally isolated socialist society means, in spite of all temporary successes, to pull the productive forces backward ^even as compared to capitalism. To attempt, regardless of the geographic, cultural and histori- cal conditions of the country's development, which con- 8 PERMANENT REVOLUTION stitutes a part of the world whole, to realize a fenced-in proportionality of all the branches of economy within national limits, means /to pursue a reactionary Utopia. If the heralds and supporters of this theory nevertheless participate in the international revolutionary struggle (with what success is a different question) it is because as hopeless eclectics, they mechanically combine abstract interna- tionalism with reactionary Utopian national socialism. The consummate expression of this eclecticism is the program of the Comintern adopted by the Sixth Congress.
To expose completely one of the main theoretical mistakes, lying at the base of the national socialist con- ception, we can do nothing better than to quote the recently published speech of Stalin, devoted to the internal questions of (American Communism. 1 "It would be wrong," says Stalin against one of the American factions, "not to take into consideration the specific peculiarities of American capitalism. The Communist party must consider them in its work. But it would be still more wrong to base the activity of the Communist party on these specific features, for the foundation of the activity of every Communist party, the American included, on which it must base itself, are the general features of capitalism, which are essentially the same for all countries, but not the specific features of one country. It is precisely on this that the internationalism of the Communist parties rests. The specific features are merely supplementary to the general features." (Bolshevik, These lines leave nothing to be desired in the way of clarity. Under the guise of an economic motivation for internationalism, Stalin in reality presents a motivation for national socialism. It is false that world economy is simply a sum of similar national parts. It is false that the specific features are "merely supplementary to the general features", like warts on the face. In reality, the national peculiarities are a unique combination of the basic features of the world process. This originality can be of decisive significance for PREFACE revolutionary strategy for a number of years. It is sufficient to recall the fact that the proletariat of a backward country has come to power many years before the proletariat of the advanced countries. This historic lesson alone shows that in spite of Stalin, it is absolutely wrong to base the activity of the Communist parties on some "general features", that is, on an abstract type of national capitalism. It is radic- ally wrong to contend that this is what the "internationalism of the Communist parties rests upon". In reality, it rests on the inconsistency of a national state, which has long ago outlived itself and acts as a brake on the development of the productive forces. National capitalism cannot be conceived of, let alone reconstructed, except as a part of world economy.
The economic peculiarities of different countries are in no way of a subordinate character: It is enough to compare England and India, the United States and Brazil. But the specific features of national economy, no matter how great, enter as component parts, and in increasing measure into the higher reality, which is called world economy, and on which alone, in the final analysis, the internationalism of the Communist parties rests.
Stalin's characterization of the national peculiarities as a simple "supplement" to the general type, is in crying and yet not accidental contradiction to Stalin's understanding (that is, his lack of understanding) of the law of the uneven development of capitalism. This law, as is known, is pro- claimed by Stalin as the most fundamental, most important and universal. With the help of the law of uneven development, which he has converted into an abstraction, Stalin attempts to solve all the riddles of existence. But it is astounding: He does not notice that national peculiarity is the most general product of unevenness of historical development, its final result, so to say. It is only necessary to understand this unevenness correctly, to consider it to its full extent, and also to extend it to the pre-capitalist past. A faster or slower development of productive forces; PERMANENT REVOLUTION the expanded, or on the contrary, the contracted character of whole historical epochs for example, of the middle ages, the guild system, enlightened absolutism, parlia- mentarism; the uneven development of the different branches of economy, different classes, different social institutions, different fields of culture all these lie at the base of these national "peculiarities". Originality of a national social type is the crystallization of the unevenness of its formation. The October revolution is the grandest manifestation of the unevenness of the historic process. The theory of the permanent revolution, which gave the prognosis of the October overthrow, supported itself, by that alone, on the law of uneven historical development, not in its abstract form, but in the material crystallization of the social and political peculiarity of Russia.
Stalin resorted to the law of uneven development not in order to foresee in time the seizure of power by the proletariat of a backward country, but in order, after the fact, in 1924, to foist upon the already victorious proletariat the task of constructing a national socialist society. But it is precisely here that the law of uneven development has nothing to do with the matter, for it does not replace nor does it abolish the laws of world economy; on the contrary, it is subordinated to them.
By making a fetish of the law of uneven development, Stalin proclaims it a sufficient basis for national socialism, not as a type, common to all countries, but exceptional, Messianic, purely Russian. To construct an independent socialist society is possible, according to Stalin, only in Russia. By this alone he raises the national peculiarities of Russia not only above the "general features" of every capitalist nation, but also above world economy as a whole. This is just where the fatal flaw begins in the whole Stalin conception. The peculiarity of the 17. S. S. R. is so im- mense that it makes possible the construction of its own socialism within its limits, regardless of what happens with the rest of humanity. As for other countries to which the 6 PREFACE 6 PREFACE Messianic seal has not been affixed, their peculiarities are only "supplementary" to the general features, only a wart on the face. "It would be wrong", Stalin teaches, "to base the activities of the Communist parties on these specific features." This moral holds good for the American Communist Party, the British, South African and Serbian, but...not for the Russian, whose activity is based not on the "general features" but precisely on the "peculiarities". From this flows the thoroughly discordant strategy of the Comintern: while the U. S. S. R. "liquidates the classes" and builds national socialism, the proletariat of all the other countries, completely independent of actual national conditions, is obligated to uniform action according to the calendar (August 1, March 6, etc.). Messianic nationalism is complemented by bureaucratically abstract interna- tionalism. This discordance runs through the whole program of the Comintern, and deprives it of any principled significance.
If we take England and India as the opposite poles of capitalist types, we must state that the internationalism of the British and Indian proletariat does not at all rest on the similarity of conditions, tasks and methods, but on their inseparable interdependence. The successes of the liberation movement in India presuppose a revolutionary movement in England, and the other way around. Neither in India, nor in England is it possible to construct an independent socialist society. Both of them will have to enter as parts into a higher entity. In this and only in this rests the unshakable foundation of Marxian inter- nationalism.
Only recently, on March 8, 1930, Pravda expounded Stalin's unhappy theory anew, in the sense that "socialism, as a social-economic formation", that is, as a definite form of productive relations, can be absolutely realized "on the national scale of the U. S. S. R.". "The complete victory of socialism in the sense of a guarantee against the inter- vention of capitalist encirclement", is quite another PERMANENT REVOLUTION matter such a complete victory of socialism "actually demands the triumph of the proletarian revolution in several advanced countries". What abysmal decline of theoretical thought was required for such sorry scholasticism to be expounded in a learned guise on the pages of the central organ of Lenin's party! If we should assume for a minute the possibility of realizing socialism as a finished social system in the isolated framework of the U. S. S. R., then what would be the "complete victory" what intervention could even be talked of then? The socialist order of society presupposes high levels of technique, culture and solidarity of the population. Since the U. S. S. R., at the moment of complete construction of socialism, will have, it must be assumed, a population of from 200,000,000 to 250,000,000, then we ask: What intervention could be talked of then? What capitalist country, or coalition of countries would dare think of intervention under these circumstances? The only conceivable intervention could be on the part of the U. S. S. R. But would it be needed? Hardly. The example of a backward country, which, in the course of several "five year plans" constructed a mighty socialist society with its own forces would mean a death blow to world capitalism, and would reduce to a minimum, if not to zero, the costs of*the world proletarian revolution. This is why the whole Stalinist conception actually leads to the liquidation of the Communist International. And really, what could its historical significance be, if the fate of socialism is to be decided in the last resort...by the Gosplan (State Planning Commission) of the U. S. S. R.? In such a case, the task of the Comintern, along with the illustrious "Friends of the Soviet Union", would be to protect the construction of socialism from intervention, that is, in essence, to* play the r&le of a frontier guard.
The article already mentioned above attempts to streng- then the correctness of the Stalinist conception with the very newest economic arguments: "...precisely now," Pravda says, "when productive relations on a socialist PREFACE basis take deeder root not only in industry but also in agri- culture, through the growth of the Soviet farms, through the gigantic rise in quantity and quality of the collective farms movement and the liquidation of the kulak as a class pn the basis of complete collectivization, it shows more clearly the sorry bankruptcy of Trotskv^Zinoviev defeatism, which has meant in essence 4 the Menshevik denial of the legitimacy of the October revolution' Stalin.' 5 (Pravda, These lines are really remarkable, and not merely for their glib tone which covers the complete confusion of thought. Together with Stalin, the author of the Pravda article accuses the "Trotskyist" conception of "denying the legitimacy of the October revolution". But it was precisely on the basis of this conception, that is, of theory of the permanent revolution, that the writer of these lines foretold the inevitability of the October revolution, thirteen years before it took place. And Stalin? Even after the February revolution, that is, from seven to eight months prior to the October overthrow, he came forward as a vulgar revolutionary democrat. It was necessary for Lenin to arrive in Petrograd (April 8, 1917) with his merciless struggle and ridicule of the conceited "old Bolsheviks" for Stalin carefully and unostentatiously to glide over from the democratic to the socialist position. This inner "regrowth" of Stalin, which by the way was never com- pleted, took place, at any rate, not earlier than twelve years after the "legitimacy" of the seizure of power by the working class of Russia, before the beginning of the proletarian revolution in the West had been indicated.
But, in elaborating the theoretical prognosis of the October revolution, we did not at all believe that, by con- quering state power, the Russian proletariat would exclude the former czarist empire from the sphere of world economy. We Marxists know the role and significance of state power. It is not at all a passive reflection of economic processes, as the social democratic servants of the bourgeois state 9 PERMANENT REVOLUTION fatalistically describe it. Power can have a gigantic significance, reactionary, as well as progressive, depending upon which class holds it in his hands. But the state power is nevertheless a weapon of superstructural order. The passing of power from the hands of czarism and the bourgeoisie into the hands of the proletariat, abolishes neither the processes, nor the laws of world economy. It is true that for a certain time after the October revolution, the economic ties between the Soviet Union and the world market were weakened. But it would be a monstrous mistake to generalize a phenomenon which was merely a short stage in the dialectical process. The international division of labor and the supra-national character of modern productive forces, not only retain, but will increase twofold and tenfold their significance for the Soviet Union, depend- ing upon the degree of its economic ascent.
Every backward country that has become a part of capitalism has gone through various stages of decreasing or increasing dependence upon the other capitalist countries, but in general the tendency of capitalist development leads towards a colossal growth of world ties, which is expressed in the growth of foreign trade, including, of course, capital export as well. The dependence of England upon India naturally bears a qualitatively different character than the dependence of India upon England. But this difference is basically determined by the difference in the degree of development of their productive forces and not at all by the degree of their economic self-sufficiency. India is a colony, England a metropolis. But if England were sub- jected today to an economic blockade, it would perish sooner than India. This, by the way, is one of the most convincing illustrations of the reality of world economy.
Capitalist development not in the abstract formulae of the second volume of Capital, which retain all their significance as a stage in analysis, but in historic reality took place and could only take place by the systematic expansion of its base. In the process of its development, 10 PREFACE and consequently in the struggle with its internal contra- dictions, every national capitalism turns in ever increasing measure to the reserves of the "external market", that is, of world economy. The uncontrollable expansion growing out of the permanent internal crisis of capitalism, constitutes its progressive force until it becomes fatal.
The October revolution inherited from old Russia, besides the internal contradictions of capitalism, no less profound contradictions between capitalism as a whole and the pre-capitalist forms of production. These contradictions had and still have, a material character, that is, they are contained in the material relations between the city and country in definite proportions or disproportions of various branches of industry and national economy in general, etc. Some of the roots of these contradictions lie directly in the geographic and demographic conditions of the country, that is, they are nurtured by the surplus or the shortage of one or the other natural resource, and the historically created distribution of the masses of the people, etc. The strength of Soviet economy lies in the nationalization of the means of production and in their planned direction. The weakness of Soviet economy, on the other hand, besides the back- wardness inherited from the past, lies in its present post- revolutionary isolation, that is, in its inability to gain access to the resources of world economy, not only on a socialist but even on a capitalist basis, that is, in the form of normal international credits, and "financing" in general, which plays such a decisive r&le for backward countries. However, the contradictions of its capitalist and pre- capitalist past not only do not disappear of themselves, but on the contrary, rise out of the twilight of the years of decline and destruction, revive and are accentuated simultaneously with the growth of Soviet economy, and in order to be overcome or even mitigated, demand at every step contact with the resources of the world market.
To understand what is happening now in the vast territory which the October revolution awakened to new 11 PERMANENT REVOLUTION life, we must always clearly picture to ourselves that to the old contradictions recently revived by the economic successes, there has been added a new and enormous con- tradiction between the concentrated character of Soviet industry, which opens up the possibility of an unprecedented tempo of development, and the isolation of Soviet economy, which excludes the possibility of a normal utilization of the reserves of world economy. The new contradiction, bearing down upon the old ones, leads to the fact that alongside of the exceptional successes, painful difficulties arise. The latter find their most immediate and strongest expression, felt daily by every worker and peasant, in the fact that the conditions of the toiling masses do not keep step with the general rise of economy, but even grow worse at present as a result of the food difficulties. The sharp crises of Soviet economy are a reminder that the productive forces created by capitalism are not adapted to a national framework and can be socialistically coordinated and harmonized only on an international scale. In other words, the crises of Soviet economy are not merely the maladies of growth, a sort of infantile sickness, but something im- measurably more significant precisely that severe. check of the world market, the very one "to which," in Lenin's words, "we are subordinated, with which we are bound up, and from which we cannot escape" (at the Eleventh Con- gress of the party, March 27, 1922).
From this, however, there in no way follows the denial of the historical "legitimacy" of the October revolution, a conclusion which smells of shameful philistinism. The seizure of power by the international proletariat cannot be a single, simultaneous act. The political superstructure and a revolution is part of "superstructure" has its own dialectic, which peremptorily interrupts the process of world economy, but does not abolish its deep-seated laws. The October revolution is "legitimate" as the first stage in the world revolution, which inevitably extends over decades. The interval between the first and the second stage has 12 PREFACE turned out to be considerably longer than we had expected. Nevertheless, it remains an interval, without being con- verted into an epoch of the self-sufficient construction of a national socialist society.
Out of the two conceptions of the revolution have come two principal lines on economic questions. The first rapid economic successes, which were completely unexpected by him, inspired Stalin in the fall of 1924 with the theory of socialism in one country as the culmination of a practical perspective for an isolated national economy. It was precisely in this period that Bucharin advanced his famous formula that in fencing ourselves off from world economy by the monopoly of foreign trade, we would be in a position to build up socialism "even at a snail's pace". This was the common formula of the bloc of the Centrists (Stalin) with the Rights (Bucharin). Already at that time, Stalin tirelessly propounded the idea that the tempo of our industrialization is our "own affair", having no relation to world economy. Such a national self-contentment, how- ever, could not last long, for it reflected the first, very brief stage of economic revival, which inevitably revived our dependence upon the world market. The first shocks of intra-state dependence, unexpected by the national socialists, created an alarm, which in the next stage turned into panic. To gain economic "independence" speedily with the aid of the fastest possible tempos of industrializa- tion and collectivization! this is the transformation that has taken place in the economic policy of national socialism in the past two years. Crawling was replaced all along the Ijine by adventurism. The theoretical base under both is the same: a national socialist conception.
The basic difficulties, as was shown above, result from the objective situation, primarily from the isolation of the Soviet Union. We shall not stop here to consider to what degree this objective situation is itself a result of the subjective mistakes of the leadership (the false policy in Germany in 1928, in Bulgaria and Esthonia in 1924, in 18 PERMANENT REVOLUTION England and Poland in 1926, in China in 1925-1927; the present false strategy of the "third period", etc., etc.)- But the sharpest convulsions in the U. S. S. R. are created by the fact that the present leadership tries to make a virtue out of a necessity, and out of the political isolation of the wokers' state, constructs a program of an economi- cally isolated socialist society. From this has resulted the attempt at complete socialist collectivization of peasant holdings on the basis of the pre-capitalist inventory a most dangerous adventure which threatens to undermine the very possibility of collaboration between the proletariat and the peasantry.
And it is remarkable: just at the moment when this began to appear in all its sharpness, Bucharin, yesterday's theoretician of the "snail's pace" composed a pathetic hymn to the present "mad gallop" of industrialization and collectivization. It is to be feared that this hymn will soon be declared the greatest heresy. For there are al- ready new melodies in the air. Under the influence of the resistance of economic reality, Stalin has been compelled to beat a retreat. Now the danger is that the adventur- ous offensive dictated by the panic of yesterday will turn into a panic-stricken retreat. Such an alternation of stages results inevitably from the nature of national socialism.
A realistic program of an isolated workers' state cannot set itself the aim of achieving "independence" from world economy, much less of constructing a national socialist society in the "shortest time". The task is not to accom- plish the abstract maximum, but the most favourable tempo under the circumstances, that is, those that flow from internal and world economic conditions, strengthen the positions of the proletariat, pre- pare the national elements of the future international socialist society, and at the same time, and above all, systematically improve the living level of the proletariat, strengthening its union with the non-exploiting masses of 14 PREFACE 14 PREFACE the village. This perspective remains in force for the whole preparatory period, that is, until the victorious revolution in the advanced countries liberates the Soviet Union out of its present isolated position.
Some of the thoughts expressed here are developed in greater detail in other works of the author, particularly in the Draft Program of the Comintern: A Criticism of Funda- mentals. The considerations brought out above are suffi- cient, let us hope, to reveal the whole significance of the struggle of principles that was carried on in recent years, and is carried on now in the form of contrasting two theories: socialism in one country and the permanent re- volution* Only this timely significance of the question justifies the fact that we present here to foreign readers a book which is largely devoted to a critical re-establish- ment of the pre-revolutionary prognoses and theoretical disputes among the Russian Marxists. We could, of course, have selected a different form of expounding the questions that interest us. But this form was never creat- ed by the author, and was not selected by him of his own accord. It was imposed upon him partly by opponents and partly by the very course of political development. Even the truths of mathematics, the most abstract of the sciences, can best of all be learned in connection with the history of their discovery. This applies even more to the more concrete, that is, to the historically conditioned truths of Marxist policy. The history of the origin and development of the prognoses of the revolution in the con- ditions of pre-revolutionary Russia will, we think, bring the reader much closer and far more concretely to the-