be calculated in advance: it is determined by the course of development and the struggle. 'As against this funda- mental question, determined by the international relation of forces which have the last and decisive word, the differ- ence in degree of development of Russia in 1905 and in 1917, however important it is in itself, is a factor of secondary order.
But Radek does not content himself with the ambigu- ous reference to this difference of degree. After he has referred to the fact that Lenin saw the connection of the inner problems of the revolution with its world problems (Indeed!), Radek adds: PERMANENT REVOLUTION "Lenin did not sharpen the conception of this connec- tion between the maintenance of tfye socialist dictatorship in Russia and the aid of the western European proletariat through the excessively accentuated formulation of Trotsky, namely, that it must be a state aid, that is, the aid of the already victorious western European proletariat." (My emphasis. L. T.)
Frankly, I did not trust my eyes when I read these lines. To what end did Radek require this worthless weapon from the arsenal of the epigones? This is really nothing more than a stale reproduction of the Stalinist banalities, which we always used to make such thorough game of. Outside of everything else, the quotation shows that Radek has a very bad notion of the fundamental landmarks of the Leninist path. Lenin, unlike Stalin, never contrasted the pressure of the European proletariat upon the bourgeois power to the capture of power by the proletariat; on the contrary, he formulated the question of revolutionary aid from without much more sharply than I. In the epoch of the first revolution, he repeated tirelessly that we would not retain the democracy (even the democracy!) without the socialist revolution in Europe. In 1917-1918 and the years that followed, Lenin did not consider and estimate the fate of our 'revolution in general in any way other than in connection with the socialist revolution that had begun in Europe. He asserted openly, for example: "Without the victory of the revolution in Germany, we are doomed." He said this in 1918, that is, not with the "economic degree of development" of 1905, and he did not mean future de- cades, but the shortest periods, which were to be measured by a few years if not by months.
Lenin declared dozens of times: if we have held out, "then only because a special combination of circumstances has protected us from international imperialism for a brief moment (for a brief moment! L. T.)". And further: "International imperialism...can in no way and under no circumstances come to terms with a Soviet republic FROM MARXISM TO PACIFISM existing by its side...A conflict becomes inevitable." And the conclusion? Is it anything like the pacifist hope in the "pressure" of the proletariat or in the "neutraliza- tion" of the bourgeoisie? No, the conclusion reads: "Here lies the greatest difficulty of the Russian revolu- tion...the need of bringing about the international revolution." (Volume XV, page 126.) When was this said and written? Not in 1905, when Nicholas II negotiated with Wilhelm II on the suppression of the revolution, and when I advanced my "accentuated" formula, but in 1918, 1919 and later.
The following is what Lenin said in retrospect at the Third Congress of the Comintern: "It was clear to us that the victory of the proletarian revolution (in Russia. L. T.) is impossible without the support of the international revolution, the world revolu- tion. Even before the revolution, and also after it, we believed: the revolution will begin immediately, or at least very soon, in the other capitalistically advanced countries, otherwise we are lost. And although we were aware of this, we did everything to maintain the Soviet system un- der all circumstances and at any price, for we knew that we are working not only for ourselves but also for the inter- national revolution. We knew it, and repeatedly expressed this conviction of ours before the October revolution as well as immediately afterward and during the conclusion of the Brest-Litovsk peace. And generally speaking this was right. In reality, the movement did not go in such a straight line as we had expected." (Minutes of the Third Congress of the Comintern, page 35^. Russian edition.)
Since 1921, the movement began to proceed in a line that was not so straight as we had expected in 1917-1919 (and not only in 1905). But it nevertheless did develop along the line of the irreconcilable antagonism between the workers' state and the bourgeois world. One of the two must perish 1 To preserve the workers' state from the deadly dangers, not only military but also economic, can PERMANENT REVOLUTION be done only by the victorious development of the prole- tarian revolution in the West. The attempt to discover two positions in this question, Lenin's and mine, is the height of theoretical slovenliness. 'At least read over Lenin, do not calumniate him, do not feed us with stale Stalinist pap!
But the decline does not come to a halt here. After Radek has invented the story that Lenin considered the "simple" (in essence, reformist, Purcellian) aid of the world proletariat sufficient, while Trotsky " exaggeratedly" de- manded the state, that is, revolutionary aid, Radek con- tinues: "Experience showed in this point too that Lenin remained right. The European proletariat was not yet able to capture power, but it was strong enough, during the intervention, to prevent the world bourgeoisie from throw- ing strong forces against us. By that it helped us to main- tain the Soviet power. Fear of the labour movement, next to the antagonisms in the capitalist world itself, was the main force that guaranteed the maintenance of peace during the eight years after the termination of the intervention."
This passage, while it does not sparkle with originality on the background of the writing exercises of the present- day literary officialdom, is nevertheless noteworthy for its combination of historical anachronism, political confusion and the grossest errors in principle.
From Radek 's words it would follow that Lenin in 1905 foretold in his brochure Two Tactics (this is the only work to which Radek refers) that the relationship of forces be- tween states and classes after 1917 would be such as to exclude for a long time the possibility of a great military intervention against us. In contrast to this, Trotsky in 1905 did not foresee the situation that would necessarily arise after the imperialist war, but only reckoned with the realities of that time, such as the mighty Hohenzollern army, the very strong Hapsburg military power, the almighty Paris Bourse, etc. This is a truly monstrous FROM MARXISM TO PACIFISM anachronism, which becomes evfen more complicated by its ridiculous inner contradictions. For according to Radek, my principal mistake consisted precisely of the fact that I did advance the perspective of the dictatorship of the pro- letariat "with the degree of development of 1905". Now the second "mistake" becomes plain: I did not consider the perspective of the dictatorship of the proletariat put forward by me on the eve of the 1905 revolution in the light of the international situation as it arose after 1917. When the usual arguments of Stalin look like this, we don't won- der about it, for we know well enough his "degree of de- velopment" in 1917 as well as in 1928. But how did Radek fall into such company?, Yet even this is not yet the worst. The worst lies in the fact that Radek has skipped over the boundary that separates Marxism from opportunism, the revolutionary from the pacifist position. It is a question of nothing less than the struggle against war, that is, of how and with what methods war can be averted or an end be put to it: by the pressure of the proletariat iwpon the bourgeoisie or by the civil war to overthrow the bourgeoisie? Radek has accidentally introduced the essential question of proletarian policy into this contested field.
Would Radek say that I "ignore" not only the peas- antry but also the pressure of the proletariat upon the bourgeoisie, and have taken into consideration the prole- tarian revolution exclusively? It is hardly to be assumed that he will defend such an absurdity, worthy of a Thai- mann, Semard or a Monmousseau. At the Third Congress of the Comintern, the ultra-Lefts of that time (Zinoviev, Thalheimer, Thalmann, Bela Kun, etc.) advocated the tac- tic of putschism in the West as the way to save the U.S.S.R. Together with Lenin, I explained to them as popularly as possible that it would be the besti aid on their part if they would planfully and systematically secure their positions, and prepare themselves for the capture of power, instead of improvising revolutionary adventures for us. At that PERMANENT REVOLUTION time, regrettably enough, Radek was not on the side of Lenin and Trotsky, but on the side of Zinoviev and Bucharin. But Radek surely recollects at any rate, the minutes of the Third Congress recollect it that the essence of the argumentation of Lenin and myself consisted pre- cisely of assailing the irrationally "accentuated for- mulation" of the ultra-Lefts. After we explained to them that the strengthening of the party and the growing pres- sure of the proletariat is a very serious factor in internal and international relations, we Marxists added that "pres- sure" is a function of; the revolutionary struggle for power and depends entirely upon the development of the latter. For this reason, Lenin delivered a speech at the end of the Third Congress, at an enlarged intimate conference of the delegates, which was directed against the tendencies of passivity and temporizing, and closed with approximately the following moral: No adventures, but, dear friends, just the same, hasten a little, for by "pressure" alone we cannot last long.
Radek refers to the fact that the European proletariat was not in a position to assume power after the war, but that it prevented the bourgeoisie from beating us down. We, too, took the occasion more than once to speak of this; nevertheless, the European proletariat succeeded in preventing our demolition only because the pressure of the proletariat coincided with the heaviest objective conse- quences of the imperialist war and the world antagonisms accentuated by them. Which of these elements was of more decisive significance: the struggle within the imperi- alist camp, the economic collapse, or the pressure of the proletariat, is hard to say, but the question cannot be posed that way, either. That peaceful pressure alone is inade- quate was demonstrated too clearly by the imperialist war, which came in spite of all "pressure". And finally, and this is most important, if the pressure of the proletariat in the first critical years for the Soviet republic, proved to be effective enough, then it was only because it was not a FROM MARXISM TO PACIFISM question at that time for the workers of Europe of pressure, but tof the struggle for power, in which this struggle re- peatedly assumed the form of civil war.
In 1905, there was neither a war nor an economic collapse in Europe, and capitalism and militarism were distinguished by a raging blood-thirstiness. The "pressure* ' of the social democracy of that time did not have the power to prevent Wilhelm II or Franz Josef from marching into the kingdom of Poland with their troops, or, in general, to come to the aid of the Czar. But even in 1918, the pressure of the German proletariat did not prevent the Hohenzol- lerns from occupying the Baltic provinces and the Ukraine* and if they did not get as far as Moscow then it was only because their military forces were not adequate. Other- wise why did we conclude the Brest peace? How lightly the yesterdays are forgotten! Without confining himself to the hope in the " pressure" of the proletariat, Lenin re- peatedly asserted that without the German revolution we would certainly be destroyed. This was correct in essence,, although the intervals were shifted. We need no illusions: we have received an undated moratorium. We live, as before, under the conditions of a "breathing space".
A condition in which the proletariat has not yet seized power, but can prevent the bourgeoisie from utilizing its power for a war, is a condition of a shaky class equilibrium in its sharpest expression. It is just the kind of condition that cannot last long. The scales must dip towards one side or the other. Either the proletariat comes to power, or else the bourgeoisie, by a series of successive blows, weakens the revolutionary pressure in such a way that it once more gains freedom of action, above all in the ques- tion of war and peace..
Only a reformist can picture the pressure of the prole- tariat upon the bourgeois state as a permanently increas- ing factor and as a guarantee against intervention. It is precisely out of this conception that arose the theory of the construction of socialism in one country by means of PERMANENT REVOLUTION the neutralization of the world bourgeoisie (Stalin). Just as the owl takes flight at twilight, so also did the Stalin- ist theory of the neutralization of the bourgeoisie by the pressure of the proletariat arise only when the conditions whioh engendered this theory began to disappear.
While the falsely interpreted experience of the post- war period led to the deceptive hope we can manage to live without the revolution of the European proletariat, and substitute for it "support in general" the world situa- tion has in the meantime undergone abrupt changes. The defeats of the proletariat opened up roads for capitalist stabilization. The collapse of capitalism after the war was checked. New generations grew up who had not tasted the horrors of the imperialist slaughter. The result is that the bourgeoisie is now able to dispose more freely of its war machine than it was five or eight years ago.
The Leftward radicalization of the working masses will undoubtedly, in its further development, once more sharpen the pressure upon the bourgeois state. But this is a two-edged sword. It is precisely the growing danger from the side of the working class that can, at a later stage, drive the bourgeoisie to decisive steps in order to show that it is master at home, and to attempt to des- troy the great center of contagion, the Soviet republic. The struggle against war is decided not by pressure upon the government but by the revolutionary struggle for power. The "pacifist" effects of the proletarian class struggle, like its reformist effects, are only by-products of the revolutionary struggle for power, they have only a relative strength and can easily turn into the opposite, that is, they can drive the bourgeoisie on to the road of war. The bourgeoisie's fear of the labor movement, to which Radek refers so one-sidedly, is the most substantial hope of all social pacifists. But "fear" of the revolution alone decides nothing. The revolution decides. For this reason, Lenin said in 1905 that the only guarantee against the monarchist restoration, and, in 1918, against the res- FROM MARXISM TO PACIFISM toration of capitalism, is not the pressure of the proletariat but its revolutionary victory in Europe. This is the only correct way of posing the question. In spite of the lengthy character of this "breathing space", it still remains fully in force today. I too put the question in the very same way. I wrote in Results and Perspectives in 1906: "It is precisely the fear of the uprising of the proletariat that compels the bourgeois parties, which vote fabulous sums for war purposes, to demonstrate solemnly for peace, to dream of international peace institutions, even of the creation of the United States of Europe a pitiful decla- mation which, naturally, can prevent neither the antago- nism between the states nor armed conflicts." (Our Re- volution, Results and Perspectives, page 283.)
The basic mistake of the Sixth Congress consists of the fact that, in order to save the pacifist and national reformist perspectives of Stalin-Bucharin, it embarked upon revolutionary-technical recipes against the war danger in which it separates the struggle against war from the struggle for power.
The inspirers of the Sixth Congress, by their very nature frightened pacifists, terrified constructors of social- ism in one country, made the attempt to perpetuate the "neutralization" of the bourgeosie with the aid of the strengthened methods of "pressure". But since they were aware that their leadership up to now in a series of countries led to the defeat of the revolution, and threw the international vanguard of the proletariat far back, they endeavoured first of all to square their accounts with the "accentuated formulation" of Marxism, which ties up the problem of war into an inseparable knot with the problem of the revolution. They have made the struggle against the war an independent task. In order that the national parties shall not oversleep the decisive hour, they pro- claimed the war danger as permanent, unpostponable and immediate. Everything that happens in the world happens for the purpose of war. War is now no longer PERMANENT REVOLUTION a means of the bourgeois regime, but the bourgeois regime is a means of war. As a consequence, the struggle of the Communist International against war is converted into a system of ritualistic formulae, which are repeated automatically at every occasion and, losing their effective- ness, evaporate. Stalinist national socialism has the ten- dency to convert the Communist International into an auxiliary means of "pressure" upon the bourgeoisie. It is just this tendency, and not Marxism, that helps Radek with his superficial, draggle-tailed and thoughtless criticism. He has lost the compass and has landed in a strange stream that can bring him to far different shores.
ALMA-ATA, October CHAPTER NINE EPILOGUE THE PROPHECY or the -apprehension which is expressed in the concluding lines of the previous chapter was, as is known, confirmed a few months later. The criticism of the permanent revolution only served Radek as a jumping board to get away from the Opposition. Our whole brochure proves, we hope, that Radek's passage into the camp of Stalin did not come to us unexpectedly. But even renegacy has its gradations, its levels of debasement. In his declara- tion of repentance, Radek completely rehabilitates Stalin's policy in China. This means to sink down to the level of betrayal. There only remains for me to quote an extract from my reply to the penitent declaration of Radek, Pre- obrazhensky and Smilga, which is a license for all political cynicism: "As was seemly for all who set some store by themselves, the trio could not forbear from taking cover behind the per- manent revolution. The most tragic experience of the whole recent history of the defeats of opportunism the Chinese revolution the trio of capitulators seeks to do away with by the cheap oath that it has nothing in common with the theory of the permanent revolution.
"Radek and Smilga obstinately defended the sub- ordination of the Chinese Communist Party to tfce bourgeois Kuo Min Tang, not only up to the coup d'Etat of Chiang Kai-Shek but also afterwards. Preobrazhensky 11 PERMANENT REVOLUTION mumbled something incomprehensible, as he always does in political questions. A remarkable fact: all those in the ranks of the Opposition who defended the subordination of the Communist Party to the Kuo Min Tang turned out to be capitulators. This outright mark of shame does not burden a single Oppositionist who has remained true to his banner. Seventy-five years after the appearance of the Communist Manifesto, a quarter of a century after the founding of the party of the Bolsheviks, these ill-starred 'Marxists' con- sidered it possible to defend the remaining of the Communists in the cage of the Kuo Min Tang! In his answer to my charges, Radek already then, just as in his letter of repent- ance today, frightened us with.the ' isolation' of the proletariat from the peasantry in the event that the Com- munist party withdrew from the bourgeois Kuo Min Tang. Shortly before that, Radek called the Canton government a peasants' and workers' government and thereby helped Stalin to disguise the subordination of the proletariat to the bourgeoisie. With what are these shameful deeds, the consequences of this blindness, this stupidity, this betrayal of Marxism to be covered? With what? With the permanent revolution!
"As far back as February 1928, Radek, who was already looking for an occasion for his capitulation, adhered promply to the resolution of the February Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Comintern in 1928 on the Chinese question. This resolution brands the Trotskyists as liquidators because thy called defeats, defeats, and were not willing to consider the victorious Chinese counter-revolution as the highest level of the Chinese revolution. In this February resolution the course towards the armed uprising and the Soviets was proclaimed. For every person not devoid of political instinct, sharpened by revolutionary experience, this resolution constitutes a model of the most revolting and most irresponsible adventurism. Radek adhered to it. Preobrazhensky approached the matter no less ingeniously than Radek, only from a different angle. The Chinese EPILOGUE EPILOGUE revolution, he wrote, is already defeated, and defeated for a long time. A new revolution will not come so soon. Does it pay to squabble about China with the Centrists? On this theme, Preobrazhensky sent out lengthy epistles. When I read them in Alma-Ata, I experienced a feeling of shame. What did these people learn in Lenin's school, I asked myself over and over again. Preobrazhensky's premises were diametrically opposed in content to Radek's premises, yet the conclusions were the same: both of them were inspired by the great desire for Yaroslavsky to embrace them fraternally through the medium of Menzhinsky 17. Oh, of course, for the good of the revolution. These are in no sense careerists heaven forbid: they are simply helpless, ideologically desolated people.
"Against the adventurist resolution of the February Plenum of the E.C.C.I. (192S) I already then put forward the course towards the mobilization of the Chinese workers under the slogan of democracy, including also the Chinese Constituent Assembly. But here the hapless trio threw a somersault to the Left: that 'was cheap and obligated them to nothing. Democratic slogans? Never. "This is a gross mistake of Trotsky.' Chinese Soviets and not one per cent discount! It is hard to conceive of any thing more senseless than this by your leave position. The slogan 6 Soviets P in the epoch of the bourgeois reaction is a baby- rattle, a mockery of the Soviets. But even in the epoch of the revolution, that is, in the epoch of the direct building of the Soviets, we did not eliminate the slogans of demo- cracy. We did not eliminate them until the real Soviets, which had already conquered power, clashed before the eyes of the masses with the real institutions of the demo- cracy. This signifies in the language of Lenin, (and not of the philistine Stalin and his parrots): not to skip over the democratic stage in the development of the country.
" Outside of the democratic program constituent assem- bly; eight-hour day; confiscation of the land; national independence of China; right of self-determination for the PERMANENT REVOLUTION peoples living within it outside of this democratic pro* gram, the Communist Party of China is bound hand and foot and is compelled to surrender the field passively to the Chinese social democracy which, with the aid of Stalin, Radek and company, would be in a position to assume the place of the Communist party.
"Thus: although in the tow of the Opposition, Radek nevertheless overslept what was most impofrtant in the Chinese revolution, for he defended the subordination of the Communist party to the bourgeois Kuo Min Tang. Radek overslept the Chinese counter-revolution, by sup- porting the course upon the armed uprising after the Canton adventure. Radek today skips over the period of the counter-revolution and the struggle for democracy when, with a defensive gesture, he substitutes for the tasks of the transition period the abstract idea of Soviets beyond time and place. But for that Radek swears that he has nothing in common with the permanent revolution. That is gratifying. That is consoling..."The anti-Marxian theory of Stalin-Radek contains for China, India and all the countries of the East, the altered but not improved repetition of the Kuo Min Tang experi- ment.
"On the basis of all the experience ojf the Russian and Chinese revolutions, on the basis of the teachings of Marx and Lenin, tested in the light of these revolutions the Opposition contends: "that the new Chinese revolution can overthrow the existing regime and transfer the power to the masses of the people exclusively in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat; "that the 'democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and ther {peasantry*, in contrast to the dictatorship of the pro- letariat which leads the peasantry and realizes the program of democracy is a fiction, self-deception, or what is worse yet a Kerenskiad or a Kuo Min Tang adventure.
"Between the regime of Kerensky and Chiang Kai-Shek EPILOGUE on the one hand and thel dictatorship of the proletariat on the other, there is no revolutionary transitional regime and there can be none; whoever contends anything else is shamefully deceiving the workers of the East and is pre- paring new catastrophes.
"The Opposition says to the workers of the East: through inner-party machinations, desolated capitulators are helping Stalin to sow the seeds of Centrism, to blind your eyes, to stop up your ears, to befuddle your heads. On the one hand, you are weakened in face of the naked bourgeois dictatorship by being forbidden to unfold the struggle for democracy; on the other hand, perspectives are painted for you of some kind of a non-proletarian dictatorship that will deliver you, and thereby new transformations of the Kuo Min Tang are supported, that is, new suppressions of the workers' and peasants 5 revolution.
"Such preachers are betrayers. Learn to distrust them, workers of the East, learn to despise them, learn to drive them out of your ranks!..."
CHAPTER TEN WHAT IS THE PERMANENT REVOLUTION?
Fundamental Theses I HOPE THAT the reader will not object if, to end up this book, I attempt, without fear of repetition, to formulate briefly the most fundamental conclusions.
(i) The theory of the permanent revolution now demands the greatest attention of every Marxist, for the course of the ideological and class struggle has finally and conclusively raised this question from the realm of reminiscences over the old differences of opinion among Russian Marxists and converted it into a question of the character, the inner coherence and the methods of the international revolution in general.
(ii) With regard to the countries with a belated bourgeois development, especially the colonial and semi-colonial countries, the theory of the permanent revolution signifies that the complete and genuine solution of their tasks, democratic 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.
(iii) Not only the agarian, but also the national question, assigns to the peasantry, the overwhelming majority of the population of the backward countries, an important place in the democratic revolution. Without an alliance of the proletariat w^th the peasantry, the tasks of the democratic revolution cannot be solved, nor even seriously posed. But the alliance of these two classes can be realized in no other FUNDAMENTAL THE'SES FUNDAMENTAL THE'SES way than through an intransigeant struggle against the influence of the national liberal bourgeoisie.
(iv) No matter how the first episodic stages of the revolu- tion may be in the individual countries, the realization of the revolutionary alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry is conceivable only under the political direction of the proletarian vanguard, organized in the Communist party. This in turn means that the victory of the demo- cratic revolution is conceivable only through the dictator- ship of the proletariat which bases itself upon the alliance with the peasantry and first solves the problems of the democratic revolution.
(v) The old slogan of Bolshevism "the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry" expresses precisely the above characterized relationship of the prole- tariat, the peasantry and the liberal bourgeoisie. This has been confirmed by the experience of October. But the old formula of Lenin does not settle in advance the problem of what the mutual relations between the proletariat and the peasantry inside of the revolutionary bloc will be. In other words, the formula has unknown algebraic quantities which have to make way for precise arithmetical quantities in the process of historical experience. The latter showed, and under circumstances that exclude etery other interpre- tation, that no matter how great the revolutionary r61e of the peasantry may be, it can nevertheless not be an inde- pendent 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 pro- letariat that leads the peasant masses behind it.
(vi) A democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, as a regime that is distinguished dictatorship of the proletariat by its class cc be realized only in case an independent revol could be constituted which expresses themtefp&s of the" peasants and in general of PERMANENT REVOLUTION party that is capable of conquering power with this or that aid of the proletariat and of determining its revolutionary program. As modern history teaches especially the his- tory of Russia in the last twenty-five years an insurmount- able obstacle on the road to the creation of a peasants' party is the economic and political dependence of the petty bourgeoisie and its deep internal differentiation, thanks to which the upper sections of the petty bourgeoisie (the peasantry) go with the big bourgeoisie in all decisive cases, especially in war and in revolution, and the lower sections with the proletariat, while the intermediate section has the choice between the two extreme poles. Between the Kerenskiad and the Bolshevik power, between the Kuo Min Tang and the dictatorship of the proletariat there cannot and does not lie any intermediate stage, that is, no democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants.