Socialist Action /October 2000
What Makes Scientific Socialism Scientific?
By NAT WEINSTEIN
Following is the text of a speech given by Nat
Weinstein at the Explorations in the History of American Trotskyism conference
in New York City, Sept. 31, 2000. Weinstein was originally asked to speak
on the contributions of Tom and Karolyn Kerry, leaders of the Socialist
Workers Party in that party's best years, who both died at the beginning
of the 1980s. As the author explains below, his assigned topic was later
changed.
First, I want to thank the Tamiment Library and
Comrade Paul LeBlanc for having invited me to participate in this conference.
Second, I want to explain why, as much as I respect
Tom and Karolyn Kerry, I am not going to talk about them. It's for the simple
reason that since this is a conference on the history of American Trotskyism,
I know that Tom and Karolyn would much rather that I spend my time here
outlining the fundamental principles of revolutionary Marxism as developed
by Leon Trotsky.
And third, that explains why I asked Paul to change
the subject of my talk to "What Makes Scientific Socialism Scientific."
So as not to keep you in suspense, I will tell
you what some of you may already know but may no longer still believe: What
makes scientific socialism scientific is Marx's and Engels' discovery that
the working class had been fashioned by the blind working of history to
lead the human race toward the revolutionary reconstitution of society.
And that this reconstitution could only be constructed on the foundations
of a world socialist society.
Now, it's because a great majority of those in
the world who call themselves "socialists" have all but completely
abandoned this and other of the fundamental truths of revolutionary Marxism
that I am going to focus on what scientific socialism is. This approach
will also help those who may have come here mainly to find out what Trotskyism
is all about.
In the first place, the loss of confidence in the
Marxist thesis of the revolutionary character of the working class was in
no way the result of what many apologists for capitalism and its labor and
socialist lieutenants claim to have been the failure of socialism or of
the working class, or both.
Rather, it was a direct consequence of the counter-revolutionary
blows dealt to the world working class and its socialist destiny primarily
by the Social Democracy, the Stalinists, and other reformists in the fateful
years of the 1930s and '40s, especially, and since.
The betrayal by these reformists of the many objectively
revolutionary opportunities in that period gave world imperialism the opportunity
to extricate itself from the deepest economic, social, and political crisis
in the history of capitalism.
Those betrayals gave world capitalist imperialism
time to find a temporary solution through the introduction of Keynesian
economics-a scheme based on gradually freeing the world monetary system
from the dictatorship of gold. It resulted in the granting of an over half-century-long
extension of world capitalism's lease on life.*
These factors-reformist betrayal and the unprecedented
extension of economic and political equilibrium in the strongholds of world
imperialism for more than half a century-explain why belief in the fundamental
thesis of revolutionary Marxism, which goes by the name of Trotskyism today,
is at its lowest point since the publication of "The Communist Manifesto"
in 1848.
And that central thesis, I repeat, is that the
working class, and only the working class, has the capacity to lead the
entire human race out of capitalist barbarism.
The Communist Manifesto
The "Communist Manifesto" by Marx and
Engels outlined the first thorough, coherent, and succinct description of
capitalist globalization. The following two sentences from the "Manifesto"
could have been written yesterday: "The need of a constantly expanding
market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of
the globe. [Causing] it to nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish
connections everywhere...."
In other words, the destructive consequences of
capitalist globalization were described in 1847-48 by the founders of scientific
socialism-not as a fantastic prophecy, but as a factual description of a
work in progress.
The following is another short quote from the first
page of the "Communist Manifesto," titled "Bourgeois and
Proletarians." It puts forward the deadly choice now threatening the
very existence of the human race-that is, either "Socialism or Barbarism."
The history of all hitherto existing society is
the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord
and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed,
stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted,
now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in the
revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin
of the contending classes. [Emphasis added.]
But scientific socialism is not dogma. Like all
scientific disciplines, it must stand up to the test of experience in a
universe in which the only thing permanent is change.
Moreover, human knowledge certainly does not begin
or end with Marx and Engels. These two giants, like all who came before
and after them, are links in the chain of human understanding of the world
and how it works, as well as of scientific socialism.
There have been many individuals who have contributed
significantly to the continuum of scientific socialism since the death of
its founders. However, time will only allow me to focus on the two outstanding
historic contributions to this continuity by Leon Trotsky.
Permanent Revolution
In 1906, Trotsky drew the lessons of the failed
Russian Revolution of 1905. He called his theory "Permanent Revolution"
after a phrase first introduced by Marx and Engels in an address to the
Communist league immediately after the defeat of the French and German revolutions
of 1848-49.
In this address, drawing the lessons of these defeats,
Marx and Engels coined the phrase, "the revolution in permanence."
It was based on their conclusion that the bourgeoisie had exhausted its
capacity for leading the democratic revolution against the remaining power
of the old feudal aristocracy. But only because they feared the workers
more!
The founders of scientific socialism also drew
the lesson that in the struggle for the democratic and socialist revolutions
the working class must maintain its strict independence from its treacherous
former allies against the feudal aristocracy-the capitalists and the sectors
of the middle class under the influence of the capitalists.
Trotsky saw the betrayal of the democratic revolution
against the Tsarist regime by the Russian bourgeoisie in 1905 as confirmation
of Marx's and Engels' conclusion that the bourgeoisie and their petty bourgeois
political representatives were no longer capable of leading the democratic
revolution. In fact, by 1848 they had become the most formidable obstacles
to that revolution.
Trotsky codified the Marxist thesis that, in the
epoch of imperialism, capitalism had long since made its peace with the
landed aristocracy and that-because the feudal form of landed property had
been largely assimilated by the capitalist class and incorporated into the
bourgeois form of property ownership-the main antagonism between landlords
and capitalists had been abolished.
Consequently, Trotsky concluded that only the working
class in alliance with the poor and landless peasants can lead the national
and democratic revolution against imperialism-but only in the course of
the workers' struggle to overthrow capitalism and "reconstitute society"
on the basis of socialist property forms.
In other words, the peasant demand for land could
only be satisfied by the armed power of the working class holding landlords
and capitalists in a stranglehold as the armed peasants expropriated and
divided the land among themselves.
It should also be noted, in passing, that after
the October 1917 Socialist Revolution, Trotsky applied the logic of Permanent
Revolution to the struggle against Stalinism's Great Russian nationalist,
bureaucratic dictatorship.
The Transitional Program
The other of Leon Trotsky's most important contributions,
the "Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution," also flowed
from Marx's concept of the revolution in permanence. The Transitional Program,
moreover, was not something he conjured out of thin air but was a codification
of the lessons of the Russian October Revolution, led primarily by Lenin
and Trotsky.
Thus, the Transitional Program, along with Permanent
Revolution, were the logically consistent extensions of the fundamental
principles of the "Communist Manifesto" of the mid-19th century
to the problems of socialist revolution in the 20th and 21st centuries.
The "Communist Manifesto," the Permanent
Revolution, and the Transitional Program are all rooted in the scientific
socialist conception of the objectively revolutionary character of the working
class.
Workers' power to change society
But what about the working class in the year 2000?
Has it been deprived of its power to change the world as it had done so
many times in the past? Has the trend toward an ever smaller number of workers
involved in the production of an ever larger mass of commodities in the
basic industries eroded its power to shut the economy down?
Has the working class lost its power to impose
its will on the capitalist class and ultimately, its power to overthrow
it? The answer to these questions is, as you would expect a Trotskyist to
say, no! This is why:
First, while the heavy battalions of working-class
power are still today centered in the basic production, transportation,
and communication industries-and while the proportion of workers employed
in these basic industries is smaller today than 50 or 100 years ago-still
the most technologically advanced productive forces in the world cannot
run by themselves when its work force says no!
Second, the total strength of the working class
today is greater than ever before in history since all those who work for
a living constitute a much larger majority of the population than ever before.
And by the same token, the capitalists have been reduced to an even tinier
minority of the world's 6 billion souls than ever before.
Third, the raw economic power of the working class
is multiplied by an order of magnitude when workers consciously act as a
class, in the interests of the class as a whole.
Fourth, this power is further enhanced when the
entire world working class operates according to the principle of proletarian
internationalism. This refers to the principle of elementary class solidarity
that an injury to the workers in any country is an injury to all workers
everywhere.
Fifth, its power is further magnified when the
workers follow the Marxist dictum that "labor with a white skin cannot
emancipate itself so long as labor with a black skin is branded." That
elementary working-class principle applies with full force to the super-exploited
and oppressed millions of women, Blacks, Latinos, and other super-exploited
or demonized sectors of capitalist society.
And sixth, all previous class-based social systems
have been based on one or another form of private ownership of the means
of production. But the workers have been molded by the socialized system
of capitalist productive relations into a class that can only own the means
of production collectively. Thus, the proletariat has been fashioned by
the unconscious logic of the capitalist mode of production to be the grave-digger
of private ownership of the means of production and its owning class.
However, it is quite obvious that what workers
and all other human beings are objectively capable of is one thing but knowing
how to do it and organizing to do it is another. Therefore, those who want
to change the course of the human race from its current trajectory toward
capitalist barbarism confront a subjective problem-not an objective one.
Trotsky expressed this idea most clearly in the
Transitional Program's opening sentence:
"The world political situation as a whole
is chiefly characterized by a historical crisis of the leadership of the
proletariat."
Trotsky went on in this historic document to explain
in detail that the objective economic prerequisite for the proletarian revolution
has already in general achieved the highest point of fruition. It is only
the subjective problem of leadership that has yet to be solved.
The world party of socialist revolution
As many of those present at this conference may
know, the Transitional Program summarizes the historic theoretical and programmatic
foundation of the Fourth International (FI). At the time of its founding,
in 1938, Trotsky projected the construction of the FI as the mass party
of the world socialist revolution, on the basis of the dialectical methodology
of the Transitional Program.
Unfortunately, the events described above have
adversely affected the human material standing at the head of our world
movement. The Transitional Program has been abandoned by those who are currently
in charge of the Fourth International.
They have also discarded a document that, although
containing several serious errors, was presented as a reaffirmation of many
of the basic elements of the Communist Manifesto and the Transitional Program.
The document, written by a long-time leader of
the FI, the late Ernest Mandel, is entitled "Socialism or Barbarism
on the Eve of the 21st Century: the Programmatic Manifesto of the Fourth
International." It was adopted by the 13th World Congress of the Fourth
International, held in Italy in 1991.
The 15th World Congress of the Fourth International
is scheduled to take place next year. My party, Socialist Action, remains
committed to its founding principles, laid down by Marx, Engels, Lenin,
and Trotsky. We are also committed to the historic goal of building the
Fourth International into a mass party of world socialist revolution.
This means viewing the main task of revolutionary
Marxists today as the building of Leninist combat parties in every country
of the world and orienting them to strive for leadership of all the social,
economic, and political movements of the world working class and its natural
allies.
I will end with a short quote from the concluding
sentences in the Transitional Program:
"The present crisis in human culture is the
crisis in the proletarian leadership. The advanced workers, united in the
struggle of the proletariat and of all the oppressed of the world for liberation.
They offer a spotless banner.
"Workers-men and women-of all countries, place
yourselves under the banner of the Fourth International. It is the banner
of your approaching victory!"
* It must be noted, however, that separating
the world monetary system from gold, which functions as if it were the material
embodiment of Adam Smith's "invisible hand" (Smith's metaphor
for the self-regulating capitalist economy) made possible and inevitable
a massive expansion of public and private debt. And as Keynes himself conceded,
the debt ultimately grows to unrepayable proportions and the entire mountain
of credit must collapse under its own weight. But, Keynes consoled his living
counterparts, "by that time we'll all be dead!"
Socialist Action /October 2000 |