Democracy or Bonapartism in Europe¶
Core Argument¶
In his polemical reply to Pierre Frank, Ted Grant mounts a rigorous defence of the Marxist dialectic against what he sees as its abandonment in favour of formalistic abstraction. Frank’s article, ‘Democracy or Bonapartism in Europe?’, had argued that all Western European regimes were essentially Bonapartist, with no other political form possible until proletarian revolution. Grant counters that this approach reduces concrete class relations and the interplay of objective and subjective forces to a lifeless schema. While the economic basis for bourgeois democracy may indeed be outmoded, this does not automatically produce Bonapartism; rather, it generates unstable democratic regimes prone to crisis.
Grant defends the British RCP’s characterisation of post-war Western European governments as ‘counter-revolution in a democratic form’. He draws on Trotsky’s analysis of Weimar Germany and his 1930 letter on Italy, which predicted that a bourgeois-democratic republic could follow fascism if the proletarian revolution were betrayed. After the Second World War, the bourgeoisie, lacking a stable military-police base and facing a mass upsurge, relied on social-democratic and Stalinist agencies to stem revolution. This counter-revolution took a democratic form, not a Bonapartist one, though it could later shift towards Bonapartism or fascism as class forces developed.
Grant insists that classic Bonapartism arose during capitalism’s youth, with the state assuming relative independence from classes while serving big capital. In capitalism’s decline, Bonapartism is senile and weak, unable to resolve crises, and the bourgeoisie may surrender power to fascism. Bourgeois democracy is defined by the existence of independent workers’ organisations with rights to strike, vote, and organise; fascism entails their complete destruction. Bonapartism is characterised by the state’s independence, concentrated personal power, and naked military-police rule. Since liberation, Western Europe has moved towards bourgeois democracy, not dictatorship, with the bourgeoisie leaning on Christian democratic parties, not fascist reaction.
Grant sharply criticises Frank for conflating Pétain, de Gaulle, the Popular Front, and Gouin as equally Bonapartist—a method he likens to the German Communists who labelled every regime fascist before Hitler’s rise. A would-be Bonaparte like de Gaulle is not the same as a real Bonaparte in power; de Gaulle was forced to withdraw when the relation of forces did not favour him. Bonapartism is a transitional regime—towards fascism, democracy, or proletarian revolution—not a fixed state. Grant distinguishes between elements of Bonapartism and a fully Bonapartist regime, citing Trotsky’s treatment of Kerensky: Trotsky referred to ‘elements of Bonapartism’ in the Kerensky regime, not Bonapartism itself, because the Bolsheviks prevented its realisation. The Marxist method requires examining each government’s specific features and evolution, not lumping all regimes together. Frank’s analogy with carbides is turned against him: a chemist who stops at a general classification cannot distinguish between substances with different practical uses.