The juggling with obsolete quotations is practised in general by the whole school of epigones entirely upon a specific plane, which nowhere intersects the real historical process. But when the opponents of "Trotskyism" have to occupy themselves with the analysis of the real develop- ment of the October revolution, and occupy themselves with it seriously and consistently which happens to many of them from time to time then they inevitably arrive at formulations in the spirit of the theory which they reject. We find the crassest proof of this in the works of A. Yak- ovlev, which are devoted to the history of the October re- volution. The class relationships of old Russia are formu- lated by this author, today a prop of the ruling faction 12 and undoubtedly more educated than the other Stalinists, and particularly than Stalin himself, as follows: "...We see a twofold limitedness of the peasants' uprising (March to October 1917). Raising itself to the level of a peasant war, the uprising did not overcome its limitedness, did not burst asunder the confines of its im- mediate task: to destroy the neighboring landowner; did not transform itself into an organized revolutionary move- ment; did not surmount the character of an elementary re- bellion that distinguishes the peasant movement.
"The peasant uprising taken by itself an elementary act, limited in its aim to the extermination of the neighbouring landowner could not triumph, could not destroy the state power hostile to the peasantry, which supported the landowner. That is why the agrarian movement was capable of winning only because it was led by the corresponding city class...This is the reason why the fate of the agrarian revolution, in the final analysis, was decided not in the tens of thousands of villages, but in the hundreds of cities. Only the working class, which was dealing the bourgeoisie a mortal blow m the centers of the country, could turn the peasant up- rising into victory; only the victory of the working class in the city could tear the peasant movement out of the confines of an elemental clash of a few tens of millions of peasants with a few tens of thousands of landowners; only the victory of the working class, finally, could lay the foundation stone of a new type of peasant organization, which united the poor and middle peasantry not with the bourgeoisie but with the working class. The problem of the victory of the peasant uprising was a problem of the victory of the working class in the city.
"When the workers dealt the government of the bourgeoisie a decisive blow in October, by the same token they simultaneously solved the problem of the victory of the peasant uprising."
And further on: "...that is just why it happened that, by virtue of the historically given conditions in 1917, bourgeois Russia came forward in alliance with the landowners. Even the most Left factions of the bourgeoisie, like the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionists, did not go beyond the conclusion of an agreement favorable to the landowners. Therein lies the most important difference between the conditions of the Russian revolution and the French revolution which took place more than a hundred years ago...The peasant revolution could not triumph as a bourgeois revolution in 1917 (now then! L.T.) Two roads were open to it. Either defeat under the blows of the united forces of the bourgeoisie and the landowners or victory, as a movement that marches together with the proletarian revolution and assists it to triumph. By taking over the mission of the PERMANENT REVOLUTION bourgeoisie in the great French revolution, by taking over the task of leading the agrarian democratic revo- lution, the working class of Russia obtained the possibi- lity of a victorious proletarian revolution." (The Pea- sant Movement in 1917, State Publishing House, 1927, pages x-xi, xi-xii.)
What are the fundamental elements of Yakovlev 's arguments? The incapacity of the peasantry to play an independent political role; the resultant inevitability of the hegemony of the city class; the inadequacy of the Russian bourgeoisie for the role of leader in the agrarian revolution; the resultant inevitably of the leading r61e o the proletariat; its seizure of power as leader of the agrarian revolution; finally, the dictatorship of the pro- letariat which supports itself upon the peasant war and opens up an epoch of socialist revolutions. This destroys to the roots the metaphysical posing of the question concerning the "bourgeois" or the "socialist" character of the revolution. The kernel of the matter lay in the fact that the agrarian question, which constituted the basis of the bourgeois revolution, could not be solved under the rule of the bourgeoisie. The dictatorship of the pro- letariat appeared on the scene not after the completion of the agrarian democratic revolution but as the neces- sary prerequisite for its accomplishment. In a word, in this retrospective schema of Yakovlev, we have all the fundamental elements of the theory of the permanent revolution as formulated by me in 1905. With me, it was a question of a historical prognosis; Yakovlev, relying upon the preliminary studies of a whole staff of young research workers, draws conclusions from the lessons of the three revolutions twenty-two years after the first revolution and ten years after the October revolution. And then? Yakovlev repeats almost literally my formulation What is Yakovlev's attitude, however, to the theory of the permanent revolution? Such as befits a Stalinist DICTATORSHIP" official who wants to retain his post and even to climb to a higher one. But how does Yakovlev, in this case, reconcile his analysis of the driving forces of the October revolution with the struggle against "Trotskyism"? Very simply: he does not give a thought to such a reconcilia- tion. Like many liberal czarist officials, who acknowledg- ed Darwin's theory, but at the same time appeared punctually at communion, Yakovlev too pays for the right to express Marxian ideas from time to time with the price of participating in the ritual of baiting the perma- nent revolution. Such examples could be instanced by the dozen.
There still remains to add that Yakovlev did not execute the above-quoted work on the history of the October revolution on his own initiative, but on the basis of a decision of the Central Committee, which at the same time charged me with the editing of Yakovlev's work 1 ". At that time, Lenin's recovery was still expected, and it never occurred to any of the epigones to kindle an. artificial dispute around the theory of the permanent revolution. At any rate, as the former, or more correctly, as the contemplated editor of the official history of the October revolution, I can establish with complete satisfac- tion that the author, in all the disputed questions, cons- ciously or unconsciously employed the literal formulations of my persecuted and heretical work on the theory of the permanent revolution (Results and Perspectives).
The rounded-out evaluation of the historical fate of the Bolshevik slogan which Lenin himself gave, shows with certainty that the difference of the two lines, the "perma- nent 5 ' and Lenin's had an incidental and subordinated significance; what united them, however, was the principle. And this principle of both lines, which were completely fused by the October, is in irreconcilable antagonism not only to the February-March line of Stalin and the April- October line of Kamenev, Rykov and Zinoviev, not only to the whole China policy of Stalin, Bucharin and PERMANENT REVOLUTION Martinov, but also to the present "Chinese" line of Radek.
And when Radek, who changed his judgment of values so radically between 1925 and the second half of 1928, seeks to convict me of not understanding "the complexity of Marxism and Leninism", then I can reply: The funda- mental train of thought which I developed twenty-five years ago in Results and Perspectives, I consider confirm- ed by events as completely correct, and precisely because of that in agreement with the strategical line of Bolshevism.
Especially do I fail to see the slightest cause to with- draw anything from what I said in 1922 on the permanent revolution in the foreword to my book 1905, which the whole party read and studied in innumerable editions and reprints while Lenin was alive, and which "disturbed" Kamenev only in the autumn of 1924 and Radek, for the first time, in the autumn of 1928.
"Right in the period between January 9 and the October 1905 strike (it says in the foreword) the author formed those opinions on the character of the revolutionary development of Russia which later received the name 'theory of the permanent revolution'. This somewhat un- usual name expressed the idea that the Russian revolution, standing before directly bourgeois aims, could in no case remain standing there. The revolution will not be able to solve its immediate bourgeois tasks except by putting the proletariat in power...
"This view, even if after a lapse of twelve years, was confirmed as completely correct. The Russian revolution could not terminate with the bourgeois democratic regime. It had to transfer power to the working class. // the working class was still too weak for the capture of power in 1905, it had to mature and grow strong not in the bourgeois democratic republic but in the illegality of the 'Third of June czarism 14 ' " (L. Trotsky, 1905, foreword, page 45.)
T want to quote one more of the sharpest polemical "DEMOCRATIC DICTATORSHIP"' judgments which I passed over the slogan of the "demo- cratic dictatorship". In 1909, I wrote in the Polish organ of Rosa Luxemburg: "If the Mensheviks, proceeding from the abstraction that 'our revolution is bourgeois 5, arrive at the idea of adapting the whole tactic of the proletariat to the conduct of the liberal bourgeoisie, inclusive of their capture of state power, the Bolsheviks, proceeding from the same naked abstraction: 'democratic, not socialist dictatorship', arrive at the idea of the bourgeois democratic self-limita- tion of the proletariat in whose hands lies the state power. The difference between them in this question is certainly quite important: while the anti-revolutionary sides of Men- shevism are already expressed in full force today, the anti- revolutionary features of Bolshevism threaten to be a great danger only in the event of the revolutionary victory."
To this passage in the article, which is reprinted in the Russian edition of my book 1905, I made the following annotation: "As is known, this did not take place, for Bolshevism, under the leadership of Lenin (though not without inter- nal struggle), accomplished its ideological re-armament in this most important question in the spring of 1917, that is, before the seizure of power."
These two quotations have been subjected since 1924 to an onslaught of criticism. Now, after a delay of fotir years, Radek has also joined in with this criticism. Yet, if one reflects conscientiously upon the quoted lines, it must be admitted that they contained an important pro- gnosis and a no less important warning. The fact does remain that at the moment of the February revolution the whole so called "old guard" of the Bolsheviks stood on the ground of the stark contrasting of the democratic and so- cialist dictatorships. Out of Lenin's "algebraic" for- mula (allowing of many "arithmetical" interpretations), his closest disciples made a purely metaphysical construe- PERMANENT REVOLUTION tion and directed it against the real development of the revolution. At the most important historical turning point, the leadership of the Bolsheviks in Russia adopted a reactionary position, and had Lenin not arrived so op- portunely, they would have been in a position to strangle the October revolution in the name of the struggle against Trotskyism, as they later strangled the Chinese revolution,. With a pious air Radek describes the false position of the whole leading party stratum as a sort of "accident". But that has little value as a Marxian explanation of the vulgar democratic position of Kamenev, Zinoviev, Stalin, Molotov, Rykov, Kalinin, Nogin, Miliutin, Krestinsky,. Frunze, Yaroslavsky, Ordjonikidze, Preobrazhensky, Smilga, and a dozen other "old Bolsheviks". Would it not be more correct to acknowledge that the old algebraic Bolshevik formula contained certain dangers within it: political development might have, as always used to hap- pen with revolutionary formulae not carried out to the end, filled it with a content hostile to the proletarian revolution. It is self-understood that if Lenin had lived in Russia and had observed the development of the party, day in and day out, especially during the war, he would have given the necessary correctives and interpretations in time. Luckily for the revolution, he arrived soon enough, even though after a delay, to undertake the neces- sary ideological re-armament. The class instinct of the proletariat and the revolutionary pressure of the lower party strata, prepared by the preceding work of Bolshe- vism, made it possible for Lenin, in struggle with the leading heads and against them, to switch the policy of the party on to a new track in the shortest period of time. Does it follow from this that today also we accept for China, India and the other countries Lenin's formula of 1905 in its algebraic inarticulateness, and that we must leave it to the Chinese and Indian Stalins and Rykovs (Tang Pin Shan, Roy and others) to fill the formula with a petty bourgeois national democratic content in order "DEMOCRATIC DICTATORSHIP" thereupon to wait for the timely appearance of a Lenin who will undertake the necessary correctives of April 4? Is such a corrective perhaps assured for China and India? Or is it not more correct to make the formula right now as concrete as historical experience, in China as well as in Russia, has taught us?
Is what has been stated to be understopd as though the slogan of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry was simply a "mistake"? Nowadays, as is known, all ideas and actions of man are divided into two categories: absolutely correct ones, that is, such as fit into the "general line", and absolutely false ones, that is, de- viations from this line. This naturally does not prevent what is absolutely correct today from being declared absolutely false to-morrow. But the real development of ideas also knew, before the emergence of the "general line", the method of successive approaches to the truth. Even a simple arithmetical division forces the experi- mental selection of figures, in which one begins either with the large ones or the small ones, in order to reject them at the revision. In shooting at an object, artillery calls the method of successive approximations, "Bracket". The method of approximation, in politics too, is entirely unavoidable. The whole question lies only in perceiving in time that a shot fallen short is a shot fallen short and in undertaking the necessary corrective without loss of time.
The greatest historical significance of Lenin's formula lay in the fact that, under the conditions of a new historical epoch, it exhausted one of the most important theoretical and political questions of the day, and that was the question of the attainable level of political independence of the various petty bourgeois groupings, above all, the peasantry. Thanks to its completeness, the Bolshevik experience of 1905-1917 firmly bolted the door against the "democratic dictatorship". With his own hand, Lenin wrote the inscription over this door: Neither entrance nor PERMANENT REVOLUTION exit. He formulated it in these words: The peasant goes either with the bourgeois or with the worker. The epi- gones, however, completely ignore this conclusion to which the old formula of Bolshevism led, and contrary to this conclusion they canonize a provisional hypothesis by inserting it into the program. For it is really in this, generally speaking, that the essence of epigonism lies.
CHAPTER SIX ON THE SKIPPING OF HISTORICAL STAGES RADEK DOES not merely repeat a few official critical writing exercises of recent years, but he over- simplifies them, in so far as that is possible. From his words, it follows that I made no distinction at all between the bourgeois and the socialist revolutions, between the East and the West, neither in 1905 nor today. Following: Stalin, Radek too enlightens me on the inadmissibility of skipping historical stages.
Well, then, the question must first of all be put: If in 1905 it was for me simply a matter of the "socialist revo- lution", then why did I then believe that it could begin in backward Russia sooner than in advanced Europe? Out of patriotism? In fine, out of national pride? And yet that is how it did happen. Does Radek grasp this: Could the democratic revolution have been realized by us as an independent stage, we would not have had today the dictatorship of the proletariat. If it came earlier than in the West, then it was precisely and only because history united the main content of the bourgeois revolution with the first stage of the proletarian revolution did not mix them up but united them organically.
To distinguish between the bourgeois and the proletarian revolution is political ABC. But after the ABC follow the syllables, the combination tof the letters. History accomplished just such a combination of the most import- PERMANENT REVOLUTION ant letters of the bourgeois alphabet with the first letters of the socialist alphabet. Radek, however, would like to drag us back from the first finished syllables to the alpha- bet. It is sad but true.
It is nonsense to say that stages can never be skipped. The living historical process makes lasting leaps over single "stages" which follow from the theoretical division of the process of evolution in its entirety, that is, in its maximum completeness, and at critical moments demands the same of revolutionary policy. It may be said that the first distinction between a revolutionist and a vulgar evolu- tionist lies in the capacity to recognize and exploit this moment, Marx's division of the evolution of industry into handi- craft, manufacture and factory is part of the A B C of political economy, or more precisely, of historico-economic theory. In Russia, however, the factory came by skipping over the epoch of manufacture and of urban handicrafts. These are already the syllables of history. A similar pro- cess took place in the country in class relationships and politics. The recent history of Russia cannot be compre- hended unless the Marxian schema of the three stages is known: handicraft, manufacture, factory. But if one knows only this, he still comprehends nothing. For the fact is that the history of Russia Stalin should not take it to heart skipped over many stages. The theoretical distinction of the stages, however, is necessary for Russia too, otherwise one can comprehend neither what this leap consisted of nor what the consequence of it was.
The matter can also be approached from another side (just as Lenin many times approached the dual power), and it can be said that Russia went through all three of Marx's stages. The first two, however, in an extremely concentrated form, in embryo, so to say. These "rudi- ments", stages of handicraft and manufacture indicated by points, as it were, suffice to confirm the genetic unity of the economic process. Here, however, the quantitative SKIPPING OF HISTORICAL STAGES contraction of the two stages is so great that it engendered entirely new qualitative characteristics in the whole social structure of the nation.. The most striking expression of this new "quality" in politics is the October revolution.
What is most unbearable in this discussion is the "theorizing" of Stalin, with the two trinkets which con- stitute his whole theoretical baggage: "the law of un- even development" and the "non-skipping of stages". Stalin does not understand to this day that the skipping of stages, (or remaining too long at one stage) is just what the uneven development consists of. 'Against the theory of the permanent revolution, Stalin, with inimitable seriousness, sets up...the law of uneven development. Yet, the prognosis that historically backward Russia could arrive at the proletarian revolution sooner than advanced England, rests entirely upon the law of uneven develop- ment. Only, for this prognosis, one had to understand the historic unevenness in its whole dynamic concreteness, and not simply be a permanent repeater of a quotation from Lenin in 1915, which is turned upside down and interpreted in the manner of an illiterate.
The dialectic of the historical "stages" is relatively easy to understand in periods of revolutionary ascent. Reactionary periods, on the contrary, naturally and necessarily become epochs of the cheapest evolutionism. The Staliniad, this gross ideological vulgarity", the worthy daughter of the party reaction, has created a cult of the movement of stages, as a cover for its mechanical repeti- tion and collection of fragments. This reactionary ideology has now been seized upon by Radek, too.
One stage or another of the historical process can prove to be inevitable under certain conditions, although theoretically it does not appear inevitable. And con- versely: theoretically "inevitable" stages can be com- pressed into nothing by the dynamics of development, especially during revolutions, which have not been called the locomotives of history for nothing.
PERMANENT REVOLUTION That is how the proletariat, with us, "skipped" the stage of democratic parliamentarism, by only granting the Constituent Assembly a life of hours, and even that only in the backyard of history. But the counter-revolutionary stage in China can in no way be skipped over, just as with us the period of the four Dumas could not be skipped over. The present counter-revolutionary stage in China, however, was historically in no sense "unavoidable". It is the direct result of the catastrophic policy of Stalin- Bucharin, who will pass into history as the organizers of defeats. 'And the fruits of opportunism have become an objective factor, which can check the revolutionary process for a long time.
Every attempt to skip over real, that is, objectively conditioned stages in the development of the masses, signifies political adventurism. So long as the majority of the working masses have confidence in the social democrats, or let us say, the Kuo Min Tang or the trade unionists, we cannot pose the task of the immediate overthrow of the bourgeois power. The masses must be prepared for that. The preparation can prove to be a very long "stage". But only a chvostist 15 can believe that "together with the masses" we must sit, first in the Right and then in the Left Kuo Min Tang, or maintain a bloc with the strike- breaker Purcell, until "the mass is disillusioned with its leaders" whom we, in the meantime, supported by our friendship and invested with authority.
Radek will hardly have forgotten that many "dialec- ticians" characterized the demand for withdrawal from the Kuo Min Tang and the break with the Anglo-Russian Committee as nothing but a skipping over of stages, and besides that, as a separation from the peasantry (in China) and from the working masses (in England). Radek ought to remember this all the better since he himself belonged to the "dialecticians" of this sorry type. At the moment, he is only deepening and generalizing his opportunist, errors.
SKIPPING OF HISTORICAL STAGES In April 1919, Lenin wrote in a programmatic article* The Third International and Its Place in History: "We will hardly go wrong when we say that it was precisely the contradiction between the backwardness of Russia and its 'leap 9 over bourgeois democracy to the highest form of democratism to proletarian or Soviet democracy, that precisely this contradiction was one of the reasons...which in the West made especially difficult or retarded the understanding of the role of the Soviets." (Lenin. Volume XVI, page 183.)
Lenin says here directly that Russia made a "leap over bourgeois democracy". To be sure, Lenin, even if indirectly, supplemented this contention with all the necessary limitations: the dialectic does not consist of always repeating all the concrete conditions; writers take it for granted that the reader himself also has something in his head. The leap over bourgeois democracy remains in spite of that, and makes difficult, according to the correct observation of Lenin, the understanding of the role of the Soviets for all dogmaticians and schematicists not only in the West, but also in the East.
And in that foreword to the book 1905, which now suddenly gives Radek so many headaches, it says: "Already in 1905, the Petersburg workers called their Soviet a proletarian government. This designation passed into the everyday language of that time and completely coincided with the program of the struggle of the work- ing class for power. At the same time, however, we set up against czarism the elaborated program of political democracy (universal suffrage, republic, militia, etc.). We could act in no other way. Political democracy is a necessary stage in the development o/ ( the working masses with the highly important reservation that in one case this stage lasts for decades, while in the other, the revolu- tionary situation permits the masses to emancipate them- selves from the prejudices of political democracy even before its institutions have been converted into reality. " PERMANENT REVOLUTION (Trotsky. 1905, foreword, page 7.)
These words, which, by the by, are in complete accord with the ideas of Lenin quoted;by me, sufficiently ex- plain, it seems to me, the necessity of setting up against the dictatorship of the Kuo Min Tang the "elaborated program of political democracy". But it is precisely at this point that Badek attacks from the Left. In the epoch of the revolutionary ascent he resisted the withdrawal of the Chinese Communist Party from the Kuo Min Tang. In the epoch of the counter-revolutionary dictatorship, he resists the mobilization of the Chinese workers under the slogan of democracy. This amounts to wearing furs in summer and going naked in winter.
ISO CHAPTER SEVEN WHAT DOES THE SLOGAN OF THE DEMOCRATIC DICTATORSHIP MEAN TODAY FOR THE EAST?
STUMBLING into the Stalinist evolutionary philis- tine, but not revolutionary conception of the historical "stages", Radek too now endeavours to canonize the slogan of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry for the whole East. Out of the working hypothesis of Bolshevism, which Lenin adapted to the course of development of a definite country, which he changed, concretized and at a certain stage rejected, Radek makes a supra-historical schema. On this point he per- sistently repeats the following in his articles: "This theory, as well as the tactic flowing from it, is applicable to all countries with a young capitalist develop- ment, in which the bourgeoisie has not solved the problems which the preceding social-political formations have left behind as a heritage."
Just reflect upon this formula: is it not a solemn justification of Kamenev's position in 1917? Did the Russian bourgeoisie liquidate the problems of the demo- cratic revolution by the February revolution? No, they remained unsolved, including the most important of them, the agrarian problem. How could Lenin fail to compre- hend that the old formula was still "applicable 55? Why did he withdraw it?
' Radek answered us on this point before: because it had already "been realized 55. We have examined this PERMANENT REVOLUTION answer. It is completely untenable, doubly untenable in the mouth of Radek, who holds the view that the essence of the old Leninist formula does not at all lie in the forms of power but in the actual liquidation of serfdom by the collaboration of the proletariat and the peasantry. But this is precisely what the Kerenskiad did not produce. From this it follows that Radek's excursion into our past for the purpose of solving the most timely question of the day, the Chinese question, is altogether absurd. It is not what, Trotsky understood or failed to understand in 1905 that should have been investigated, but rather what Stalin, Molotov and especially Rykov and Kamenev did not grasp in February-March 1917 (what Radek's position was in those days, I do not know). For if one believes that the democratic dictatorship was "realized" to such an extent in the dual power as to require a change of the central slogan, then one must recognize that the "democratic dictatorship" in China was realized still more completely and more fundamentally through the regime of the Kuo Min Tang, that is, through the rule of Chiang Kai-Shek and Wang Chin Wei, with Tang Pin Shan as appendage. 16 It was all the more necessary, therefore, to change the slogan of China.
Is then the "heritage of the preceding social-political formations" liquidated in China? No, it is not yet liquidated. But was it liquidated by us on April 4, 1917, when Lenin declared war upon the whole upper stratum oi the "old Bolsheviks"? Radek contradicts himself hope- lessly, blunders and reels from side to side. Let us remark in this connection that it is not entirely accidental that he uses so complicated and circumlocutory an expressior as "heritage of the formations", varied at different passages and obviously avoids the clearer term: "remnants o feudalism, or of serfdom". Why? Because Radek onh yesterday denied these remnants most decisively am thereby tore away any basis for the slogan of the demo cratic dictatorship. In his report in the Communis MEANING OF DEMOCRATIC DICTATORSHIP Academy, Radek said: "The resources of the Chinese revolution are no less deep than were the resources of our revolution in 1905. One can assert with certainty that the alliance of the working class with the peasantry will be stronger there than it was with us in 1905, for the simple reason that it will not be directed against two classes 9 but only against one, the bourgeoisie."
Yes, "for the simple reason". Now, when the pro- letariat, together with the peasantry, directs itself against one class, the bourgeoisie not against the remnants of feudalism, but against the bourgeoisie what if you please is such a revolution called? Perhaps a democratic revolution? Just notice that Radek said this not in 1905, and not even in 1909, but in March 1927. How is this to be understood? Very simply. In March 1927, Radek also deviated from the right road, only in another direction. In its theses on the Chinese question, the Opposition inserted a most important correction to Radek's onesided- ness of, that time. But in the words just quoted there was nevertheless a kernel of truth: there is almost no class of landowners in China, the landowners are much more intimately bound up with the capitalists than in czarist Russia, the specific weight of the agrarian question in China is therefore much lighter than in czarist Russia; but for that, the question of national liberation occupies a large place. Accordingly, the capacity of the Chinese peasantry for independent revolutionary political struggle for the democratic renovation of the country can in no case be greater than was the Russian peasantry's. This found its expression, among other things, in the fact that neither before 1925 nor during the three years of the revolution in China, did a people's party arise which inscribed the agrarian revolution upon its banner. All this taken together demonstrates that for China, which has already left behind it the experience of 1925-1927, the formula of the democratic dictatorship presents a much PERMANENT REVOLUTION more dangerous reactionary snare than in Russia after the February revolution.
Still another excursion by Radek in an even further distant past, turns just as mercilessly against him. In this case, it is concerned with the slogan of the permanent revolution which Marx raised in 1850: "With Marx," writes Radek, "there was no slogan of a democratic dictatorship, while with Lenin, from 1905 to 1917, it was the political axis, and formed a component part of his conception of the revolution in all (?!) countries of a beginning (?) capitalist development."
Basing himself upon a few lines from Lenin, Radek explains this difference of positions by the fact that the central task of the German revolution was national unification, while with us it was the agrarian question. If this contrast is not mechanized, and due regard is had for proportion, then it is correct up to a certain point. But then what is to happen with China? The specific weight of the national problem in China, a semi-colonial country, is immeasurably greater in comparison with the agrarian problem than it was even in Germany in 1848- 1850; for in China it is simultaneously a question of unification as well as of liberation. Marx formulated his perspectives of the permanent revolution when, in Germany, all the thrones still stood firm, the Junkers held the land, and the leaders of the bourgeoisie were tolerated only in the antechamber of the government. In China, there has been no monarchy since 1911, there is no independent landowning class, the national bourgeois Kuo Min Tang is in power, the relationships of serfdom are, so to speak, chemically fused with bourgeois exploitation. The con- trast of the positions of Marx and Lenin undertaken by Radek thereby speaks entirely against the slogan of the democratic dictatorship in China.
But Radek does not even take up the position of Marx seriously, only ill passing, episodically, confining himself to the -circular of 1850, where Marx still considered the MEANING OF DEMOCRATIC DICTATORSHIP