6. The Proletarian Regime¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter advances the core argument that a proletarian government, once in power, cannot confine itself to a democratic minimum programme but is compelled by the logic of class struggle to move toward collectivism. Trotsky begins by describing the initial moment of proletarian victory: the workers’ party enters government as the recognised national leader against absolutism, riding a wave of popular enthusiasm. Its first measures—purging the army and administration of counter-revolutionaries, democratising state institutions—will enjoy broad support, even from the peasantry and petty bourgeoisie. However, this unity is inherently fragile. As the workers’ government begins to implement class-based policies—protecting the agricultural proletariat, taxing the rich, shortening the working day—the peasantry will split along class lines. The rural poor may support the proletariat, but the village rich will actively oppose it. The political passivity and “primitiveness” of the peasantry, its lack of developed class consciousness, will narrow the social base of the regime. The intellectuals and urban petty bourgeoisie will also waver.
The chapter’s central theoretical contribution is its demolition of the distinction between maximum and minimum programmes under conditions of proletarian power. During the period of bourgeois rule, this division has principled meaning: the minimum programme contains demands compatible with capitalism. But once the proletariat holds power, that distinction collapses. Trotsky illustrates this with concrete examples. The introduction of an eight-hour day, a minimum demand, will provoke capitalist resistance in the form of lockouts. A bourgeois government would retreat or suppress the workers. A proletarian government, however, cannot do so without betraying its class base. Its only way out is expropriation of the closed factories and the organisation of production on a socialised basis. Similarly, maintaining the unemployed and strikers—an unavoidable obligation for a workers’ government—will drive capital to lockouts, forcing the state toward expropriation. In agriculture, the expropriation of large estates cannot be followed by their break-up into smallholdings; the only viable path is co-operative or state-organised production. Thus, the very fact of proletarian power places “collectivism on the order of the day.”
Trotsky polemicises sharply against two positions. The first is the notion that Social Democrats could enter a revolutionary government, implement a radical democratic programme, and then peacefully hand power back to bourgeois parties, retreating into parliamentary opposition. This he dismisses as “revolutionary-philistine utopianism.” The second target is the “progressive” press and radical democrats who, while not openly opposing revolution, argue that the idea of a workers’ government in Russia is fantastic and that the prerequisites for socialist revolution in Europe are absent. Trotsky mocks their appeal to “historical possibility” and “political realism,” accusing them of using Marxism as a cover for timidity. He insists that the question is not one of setting dates but of understanding the real historical prospects: the proletariat, once in power, will fight to the end, and collectivism will be both the inevitable outcome of its position and the means of its survival.