1. The Enforced Nature of This Work, and Its Aim¶
Core Argument¶
Chapter 1: The Enforced Nature of This Work, and Its Aim¶
This chapter establishes the grim necessity of engaging with a prolonged theoretical struggle that has been forced upon the author by the degeneration of the Communist movement. For six years, the party leadership under the Right-Centrist bloc has met every demand for theory with a single, freely distributed commodity: anti-Trotskyism. Stalin's first theoretical intervention came in 1924 with articles directed against the theory of permanent revolution, and since then, falsification has become systematic. A forthcoming German edition of Lenin's 1917 writings will prioritise letters containing harsh remarks about Trotsky based on false information from Kollontai, while deliberately suppressing Lenin's attacks on Bukharin. Valuable documents by Lenin remain concealed because they undermine the legend of 'Trotskyism'.
The struggle against this invented 'Trotskyism' is in reality a struggle against Marxism and the traditions of October, serving the new bureaucracy's need to discard what it finds cramping. The caricatured counterposition of permanent revolution to Lenin's line of 'alliance with the muzhik' arose in 1923 alongside social and party reaction, expressing the bureaucrat's and property-owner's antagonism to world revolution and the petty bourgeoisie's yearning for order. This cleared ground for the theory of socialism in one country, a variety of national socialism. Understanding these social roots is essential; without it, controversy remains barren.
The epigones have produced no serious work, only trash. Stalin's Problems of Leninism and Zinoviev's Leninism are products of ideological reaction. Radek's recent article is more dangerous than official literature because it is camouflaged opportunism. Radek has moved to the Opposition's Right Wing, adopting a false position on the Chinese Revolution and attempting to justify it by a distorted presentation of old differences with Lenin. He ignores evidence that Trotsky's political activity in 1905 formulated revolutionary tasks identically to Lenin, that Trotsky wrote the Bolsheviks' central appeals to the peasants, and that Lenin defended Trotsky's articles on permanent revolution in Novaya Zhizn. Lenin recognised Trotsky's solidarity with Bolshevism on the peasantry and liberal bourgeoisie at the 1907 London Congress. Radek uses only quotations Lenin directed against Trotsky but often intended for others, and avoids Lenin's declarations acknowledging Trotsky's solidarity on basic revolutionary questions. Lenin's main struggle was against Trotsky's conciliationism, not permanent revolution. Despite its defects, the theory of permanent revolution is far closer to Marxism and Lenin's line than the Stalinist, Bukharinist or Radek's present positions. The author is compelled to undertake a lengthy excursion into old quotations, but with the constant effort to find the threads connecting them to the burning questions of the present time.