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Core Argument¶
Lenin’s aphorism that the epoch is one of wars and revolutions, supplemented by Trotsky’s addition of counter-revolutions, is taken as the historical backdrop for a sharp polemic against schematic thinking within the Fourth International. The chapter argues that the last three decades have been marked by terrific convulsions, kaleidoscopic changes, and manipulations by finance capital, making it imperative for Marxists to conduct scrupulous, concrete analysis rather than rely on ready-made abstractions. Trotsky is invoked directly: he warned that in periods of acute social conflict and rapid political shifts, generalisations are rapidly used up and require concretisation, precision, and partial rectification. The truth is always concrete.
The core polemic is directed against Pierre Frank, who is accused of living on the “revenue from a few ready-made abstractions” by equating all regimes in Western Europe to Bonapartism. Frank is said to argue that Bonapartist regimes have existed in France since 1934, and that only Bonapartist or fascist regimes are possible until the proletariat takes power. The chapter condemns this as a complacent reduction of theory to formless abstractions, which conceals errors and turns them into a system. Frank is charged with indiscriminately mixing terms like ‘bourgeois democracy’ and ‘Bonapartism’, speaking interchangeably of “Bonapartism”, “elements of Bonapartism”, and contrasting democratic liberties with a regime “one can correctly define as democratic”, yet never defining what he means by a genuine democratic regime. The chapter denies Frank’s claim that there is “literally no place” for democratic regimes in Europe today.
The historical and theoretical context is the Stalinist ‘third period’ line, which identified all regimes as fascist, a barren conception that Trotsky had already criticised. The chapter insists that each stage must be examined concretely by the vanguard, and that transitional and intermediate situations arise which upset customary patterns. The argument is a defence of dialectical method against mechanical generalisation, and a call for theoretical vigilance within the Fourth International’s cadres.