The dialectical character of the strategy of the revolutionary proletariat

The dialectical character of the strategy of the revolutionary proletariat

We are living in an era in which many of the lessons learned in the past by revolutionary leaders have been almost erased, in which the movements that claim to be part of the proletarian communist revolution have themselves deliberately "forgotten" the meaning of revolutionary politics. Revolutionary strategy is part of this deliberate and systematic erasure, as we have just seen in the latest social movements around the world.

The dialectical strategy in the current movements of the pre-revolutionary period is to start from aspirations for demands (sometimes apparently reformist) to give them a transitional content (transition from capitalism to socialism) by constituting the embryos of the future soviets which take the lead of the struggles in order to become aware that they will have to take the lead of the whole of society, It is to affirm that the goal of the current struggles is the power of the assemblies and committees of the movement which overthrows the dictatorship of the billionaires and its false parliamentary democracy, it is to break with the trade union bureaucracies while addressing the rank and file of the trade unions and trying to organize them with us, to denounce the forces of repression while trying to address the rank and file of the police and organize it with us, It is also to transform national struggles into international struggles. It is to allow workers and all rebellious social classes to become imbued with the revolutionary program that decades of reformism have erased, distorted, betrayed.

The dialectic of a movement like the Yellow Vests is to be both legal and illegal, protest-oriented and revolutionary, economic and political, addressing peasants, small business owners, small fishermen, small artisans, self-employed people, and the impoverished middle classes, while having a proletarian class character, both national and international, women and men, working and unemployed, young and old, not diametrically opposing what must be composed, united, and mutually reinforced, even if they are opposites. Such a revolutionary political dialectic opposes both the opportunist far left and the sectarian ultra-left currents, both the false far left and the communist left, the ultra-defenders of the party and the ultra-defenders of spontaneity. But it also addresses their militant base while criticizing it.

The dialectical character of the proletariat’s strategy results directly from the dialectic of the class struggle. But what does the term dialectic mean, and what would a strategy that rejects dialectics be ? It would mean diametrically opposing revolutionary and counterrevolutionary situations, even though they oppose each other but are composed of and transformed into one another. It would mean isolating them from one another and ignoring the fact that one can use one against the other, but also to arouse, develop, make conscious, and make others grow. The capitalist counterrevolution uses this, and the proletariat needs a revolutionary strategy to achieve this dialectical reversal. Yes ! Changing counterrevolution into revolution is not magic, but revolutionary politics, and we call it strategy. These are neither maneuvers, nor swindles, nor petty calculations without foundation, nor justifications for supporting other social forces than the proletariat, nor for developing other perspectives than the socialist and communist one of the proletarian revolution.

The dialectical character of the class struggle is inseparable from social revolutions in which it is not a question of a replacement of the personnel in power but of a radical change in the type of State, the replacement of one dominant class by another. The brutal, discontinuous character of this social change is the product of the dialectical rupture.

The class struggle between the proletariat and the capitalist class has always had a dialectical character. Let us recall that dialectics presupposes the dynamic unity of opposites leading to leaps in historical progression, to ruptures and leaps, to qualitative changes. Reformism and opportunism can only deny dialectics, despise it, or pretend to do without it. Revolutionaries make it the cornerstone of their politics. In contrast to tactics, they call this politics strategy, and it takes place before and above tactics. Strategy is based on analyses of the very foundations of the historical situation.

The first step in this strategy stems not only from the current experience of the proletariat but also from an element external to it : historical and theoretical study, and even philosophy. This is one of the points of Lenin’s "What is to be done" most often deliberately forgotten by the pseudo-revolutionary extreme left.

https://www.marxists.org/francais/lenin/works/1902/02/19020200.htm

The strategy is based on the study of the foundations of the world situation, which does not begin with the fate of the proletariat but with the assessment of the state of the system of exploitation in its goals and perspectives for itself.

Strategy begins not by asking "what stage is the proletariat at ?" but "what stage is capitalism at." Certainly, capitalism can only be overthrown and replaced by socialism through conscious and organized action by the revolutionary proletariat. However, this is only possible if the system is at the end of its tether, completely historically outdated, incapable of functioning, and not merely "in crisis." The first question to ask is not "is the proletariat ready for revolution and socialism ?" but "is capitalism ripe for collapse."

The dialectic of strategy is fully deployed when it exposes how to use all the weaknesses of the system to transform the weaknesses of the proletariat into active forces, allowing to dissolve, break, fracture those of the capitalist enemy, to make it lose its state means, its allies, its weapons of combat.

A strategy is a coherent theoretical idea of ​​the path to be taken so that all the weaknesses of capitalism are transformed into the strengths of the proletariat and so that all the weaknesses of the proletariat are actively combated and repaired. Strategy is a military term because it corresponds to the following questions :

The opposing forces

Opponent’s weaknesses

The enemy’s weapons and the means to annihilate them

The adversary’s allies and the means of winning them over or weakening them

The opponent’s enemies and the means of using them

The enemy’s fears and ways to sharpen them

Etc, etc…

Overview of military strategy :

https://www.persee.fr/doc/polit_0032-342x_1962_num_27_5_2331

Strategy in the field of warfare of capitalist states is itself dialectical, as the American military strategy specialist Edward N. Luttwak reminds us, in his capitalist way, in "The Paradox of Strategy" :

"If the nature of strategy is what it is, it owes it to the inevitability of a hostile reaction to any action undertaken."

He explains the result : there is no linearity, the effects are not proportional to the causes and can even be the opposite of those desired, that is, unexpectedly favor the opponent. This is not the same linear logic as that commonly used in life. Common sense does not prevail in strategy. This results in paradoxes with brutal reversals of situations. The positive becomes negative and vice versa. Linear logic should not be used here.

“It is a dynamic interaction of opposites that leads from success to failure and from failure to success.”

It is clear that this is not just military terminology but a political philosophy with war aims.

For the proletariat, this means considering the struggle as a war between classes, a war in which politics (and first of all philosophy, theory) is transformed into weapons.

The first manifestation of the dialectical character of the class struggle (on the side of the proletariat as well as on the side of the capitalist class) is the presence, often manifested, of apparent paradoxes, in fact real internal contradictions of the situation, which the policy of one of the adversaries may or may not exploit, if he understands them and knows how to take advantage of them. Let us take some well-known historical examples.

First paradox. It was in the most backward capitalist country of the time, France in 1871, and not the most advanced England, that the first experiment in providing for workers took place. It was again in the most backward capitalist country of the time, Russia in 1917, that the second took place. It was again in countries where capitalism had barely appeared, China in 1925 and Spain in 1936, and not in the great capitalist countries of America, France or England, that the demonstrations of strength and dynamism of the soviets were the most impressive.

Other paradoxes of revolutionary situations are striking. It was not in the countries where the proletariat was most organized into unions and workers’ parties, England and Germany, that it led the greatest struggles.

It was at the moment when the proletariat was most desperate, disorganized, deceived, and mortally wounded, due to war, sacrifices, and defeat, compounded by misery, that the exploited displayed the most extraordinary capacities for revolutionary struggle, going as far as insurrection and overthrowing power. And also the most astonishing capacities for self-organization.

It was at the worst moments of counter-revolutionary offensive by the exploiters and their ruling classes that the exploited went on the revolutionary offensive, turning the tables at the crucial moment : Kerensky’s counter-revolution followed by the Kornilov putsch transformed into a soviet counter-offensive, blocking the fascist military coup, and then into the October Revolution of 1917, with the soviets taking all power. Again, at the moment when the workers seemed most disoriented, disorganized, demoralized, when their Bolshevik leaders were slandered, arrested, persecuted, and when their other leaders shamefully betrayed them.

Another dialectical paradox : it was the revolutionary war of the revolting Russian workers and peoples of the Russian Empire that not only transformed the imperialist war into an international struggle to overthrow all imperialisms, leading in particular to the Soviet revolution in Germany and, at the same time, forcing the imperialist powers to stop the war. The only true "war for peace" is not that of the bourgeois armies or of the pacifists but the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat. It is therefore not bourgeois pacifism that produces peace, any more than it is the struggle of bourgeois democracy that combats the march towards dictatorship, but the "dictatorship" of the proletariat which is dictatorial only against the exploiters and oppressors...

But this dialectical reversal of history did not happen entirely spontaneously. For this, the workers needed the strategic dialectics of Lenin and Trotsky to transform counterrevolution into revolution, the negative into positive, the dominated into the dominant, the defeated into victors.

These two leaders were, like Marx and Engels, theoretically prepared for the historical dialectic of the class struggle and the war strategy of the proletariat in these exceptional conditions that are revolutionary situations, those where the balance of power can be reversed in a few hours and for a few days, those where a niche can open up for proletarian insurrection taking power from the possessing classes installed at the top of the State for decades.

Trotsky already had a complete grasp of the dialectical theory of strategy by 1905 and had developed it in writing in 1906. He called it the theory of permanent revolution. It was far from being recognized at the time, even by the most revolutionary activists of the time, often Bolsheviks, and even by Lenin.

This revolutionary strategy has made it possible, by blocking reformist, opportunist and nationalist organizations and denouncing them without cutting themselves off from the aspirations of the workers, without dividing the struggle, without isolating the most radical from other workers, to transform demands, actions and defensive organizations of the workers into offensive demands, actions and organizations by demonstrating that the only perspective for economic, political and social struggles is the power of the workers’ councils, the deep division between the proletarians and the petty bourgeoisie, the latter aiming first to become big and not to challenge private property and the functioning of capitalism, being transformed by this policy into an alliance against the big bourgeoisie, and, national, racial, inter-ethnic or interreligious oppression being transformed into a union against the oppressive State, finally, the barbaric war allowing the union of the proletarians and the base of the armed forces of the capitalist State, the workers’ soviets calling on the little soldiers to constitute themselves into soviets and to refuse to obey their hierarchy and uniting to oppose the repression of the revolution and then to overthrow capitalist power. The strategy of permanent revolution served to transform the peasants’ struggle for land into support for the power of the workers’ soviets, which nevertheless aimed at collective property, to transform the struggle over the national question into support for the international proletarian revolution. It thus enabled the oppressed peoples of Russia to find themselves en masse in the Red Army of the workers of the cities and the countryside, tipping the balance of power against the armies of the tsar, the armies of the social-democratic and nationalist parties, the imperialist armies and other bourgeois armies of neighboring countries.

Thus, the Russian proletariat, a very small minority class, took power with the support of the vast majority of the working people. Only the strategy of permanent revolution is capable of such feats !

All diametrical oppositions (democracy/dictatorship, proletarians/petty bourgeoisie, internationalism/nationalism, cities/countryside, democracy/dictatorship of the proletariat, communism/private property, Russians/oppressed nationalities, interreligious oppositions, etc.) were shaken up, even overturned by the dialectic of the revolution. The counter-revolutionary reaction thus served to arm… the revolution, transforming even the victims of the pogroms into one of the marching wings of the socialist revolution !

The so-called "realism" of the false extreme left, which diametrically (and not dialectically) opposes the offensive and defensive of workers, revolutionary and counter-revolutionary situations, the national aspirations of oppressed peoples and internationalism, defensive and offensive demands and struggles, reformist aspirations and revolutionary self-organizations, is shaken up, denounced and overturned.

Certainly, this fight, led by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky, must be waged again. We must reclaim the theory and fight against the new reformisms, opportunisms, and leftist and sectarian purisms. Stalinism discredited the Russian Revolution in the eyes of many workers. But no one can say that Stalinism is the product of the policy of permanent revolution, given the efforts made by Stalin and his henchmen to publicly combat its theory, making the supposedly national construction of socialism the diametric opposite of revolutionary strategy.

Yes, the permanent revolution is also the permanent denunciation of Stalinism and all its followers, as well as of reformism and the false leaders of the proletariat.
To conclude : permanent revolution is our permanent philosophy of the revolutionary strategy of the proletariat...

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article8008
References

The revolutionary strategy of the proletariat according to Marx in 1850 :

https://www.marxists.org/francais/marx/works/1850/03/18500300.htm

Trotsky in 1906 sets out the strategy of October 1917 in "Balance Sheet and Perspectives" :

https://www.marxists.org/francais/trotsky/livres/bilanp/bpsomm.htm

"Lenin explained to those who were fond of ’concrete political problems’ that our policy is not of a conjunctural but of a principled character ; that tactics are subordinate to strategy ; that, for us, the fundamental meaning of every political campaign is to lead the workers from particular questions to general problems, that is, to bring them to an understanding of modern society and the character of its fundamental forces."

Leon Trotsky in "Defense of Marxism" in the paragraph "against pseudo political "realism""

https://www.marxists.org/francais/trotsky/livres/defmarx/dma6.htm

“The concept of revolutionary strategy was formed only in the post-war years, under the initial influence, no doubt, of military terminology. But it was not by chance that it asserted itself. Before the war, we spoke only of the tactics of the proletarian party, and this conception corresponded exactly to the parliamentary and trade union methods that predominated at that time and which did not go beyond the framework of current demands and tasks. Tactics are limited to a system of measures relating to a particular topical problem or to a separate area of ​​the class struggle. Revolutionary strategy covers a whole combined system of actions which, in their connection and succession, as well as in their development, must lead the proletariat to the conquest of power.
It is obvious that the fundamental principles of revolutionary strategy have been formulated since Marxism posed before revolutionary parties the problem of the conquest of power on the basis of the class struggle. But the First International only succeeded in formulating these principles on the theoretical plane and in partially controlling them, thanks to the experience of different countries. The epoch of the Second International gave rise to methods and conceptions such that, in their application, according to Bernstein’s famous expression, "the movement is everything, the final goal is nothing." In other words, the problem of strategy was reduced to nothing, it was drowned in the daily "movement" with its slogans pertaining to daily tactics. It was only the Third International that re-established the rights of the revolutionary strategy of communism and entirely subordinated the methods of tactics to it.

Leon Trotsky, 1928, The Communist International after Lenin

https://www.marxists.org/francais/trotsky/livres/ical/ical222.html

Trotsky in 1928 in "The Communist International after Lenin" explains how Stalinism completely breaks with the strategy of Leninism :

"If we do not understand in a broad, generalized, dialectical way that the present era is one of sudden reversals, we cannot truly educate the young parties, judiciously direct the strategy of the class struggle, validly combine its tactical procedures, nor above all change weapons abruptly, audaciously, resolutely, in each new situation. Now two or three days of sudden change sometimes decide the fate of the international revolution for years."

“The permanent revolution, in the sense that Marx attributed to this conception, means a revolution that does not want to compromise with any form of class domination, that does not stop at the democratic stage but passes on to socialist measures and to the war against external reaction, a revolution whose every stage is contained in germ in the preceding stage, a revolution that ends only with the total liquidation of class society.
To dispel the confusion created around the theory of the permanent revolution, it is necessary to distinguish three categories of ideas that unite and merge in this theory.
It includes, first of all, the problem of the transition from the democratic revolution to the socialist revolution. And this is basically its historical origin.
The idea of ​​permanent revolution was put forward by the great communists of the mid-19th century, Marx and his followers, to counter bourgeois ideology, which, as we know, claims that after the establishment of a "rational" or democratic state, all questions can be resolved by the peaceful path of evolution and reform. Marx considered the bourgeois revolution of 1848 only as the immediate prologue to the proletarian revolution ; Marx was "mistaken." But his error was an error of fact, not an error of methodology. The revolution of 1848 did not turn into a socialist revolution. But that is why it did not lead to the triumph of democracy. As for the German revolution of 1918, it was not at all the democratic completion of a bourgeois revolution : it was a proletarian revolution decapitated by social democracy ; more precisely : it is a bourgeois counter-revolution which, after its victory over the proletariat, was obliged to maintain fallacious appearances of democracy.
According to the scheme of historical evolution elaborated by vulgar "Marxism," every society arrives, sooner or later, at giving itself a democratic regime ; then the proletariat organizes itself and undergoes its socialist education in this favorable atmosphere. However, as regards the transition to socialism, avowed reformists envisaged it in terms of reforms that would give democracy a socialist content (Jaurès) ; formal revolutionaries recognized the inevitability of revolutionary violence at the moment of the transition to socialism (Guesde). But both considered democracy and socialism, among all peoples and in all countries, as two stages not only distinct, but even very distant from each other in social evolution. This idea was also predominant among the Russian Marxists who, in 1905, belonged rather to the left wing of the Second International. Plekhanov, that brilliant founder of Russian Marxism, considered the idea of ​​the possibility of a proletarian dictatorship in contemporary Russia to be insane. This point of view was shared not only by the Mensheviks, but also by the overwhelming majority of Bolshevik leaders, especially by the current leaders of the party. They were then resolute revolutionary democrats, but the problems of the socialist revolution seemed to them, both in 1905 and on the eve of 1917, a confused prelude to a still distant future.
The theory of permanent revolution, reborn in 1905, declared war on this order of ideas and these attitudes. It demonstrated that in our time the fulfillment of the democratic tasks set for themselves by backward bourgeois countries leads them directly to the dictatorship of the proletariat, and that the latter places socialist tasks on the agenda. This was the whole fundamental idea of ​​the theory. While traditional opinion held that the path to the dictatorship of the proletariat lay through a long period of democracy, the theory of permanent revolution proclaimed that, for backward countries, the path to democracy lay through the dictatorship of the proletariat. Therefore, democracy was regarded not as an end in itself that would last for decades, but as the immediate prologue to the socialist revolution, to which it was indissoluble. In this way, the revolutionary development from the democratic revolution to the socialist transformation of society was made permanent.
In its second aspect, the theory of permanent revolution characterizes the socialist revolution itself. During a period of indefinite duration, all social relations are transformed in the course of a continual internal struggle. Society is constantly changing its skin. Each phase of reconstruction flows directly from the preceding one. The events that take place necessarily retain a political character, because they take the form of clashes between the different groupings of the changing society. Outbursts of civil war and external wars alternate with periods of "peaceful" reforms. The upheavals in the economy, technology, science, the family, morals, and customs form, as they take place, such complex combinations and reciprocal relations that society cannot arrive at a state of equilibrium. This reveals the permanent character of the socialist revolution itself.
In its third aspect, the theory of permanent revolution envisages the international character of the socialist revolution, which results from the present state of the economy and the social structure of humanity. Internationalism is not an abstract principle : it constitutes only the political and theoretical reflection of the world character of the economy, of the world development of the productive forces and of the world impetus of the class struggle. The socialist revolution begins on the national terrain, but it cannot remain there. The proletarian revolution can be maintained within the national framework only in the form of a provisional regime, even if this lasts for a fairly long time, as the example of the Soviet Union demonstrates. In the case of an isolated proletarian dictatorship, internal and external contradictions inevitably increase, along with the successes. If the proletarian state continued to remain isolated, it would ultimately succumb, a victim of these contradictions. Its salvation lies solely in the victory of the proletariat of the advanced countries. From this point of view, the national revolution is not an end in itself ; It represents only one link in the international chain. The international revolution, despite its temporary setbacks and ebbs, represents a permanent process.
The campaign of the Stalinist epigones is waged, without always achieving the same degree of clarity, against the three aspects of the theory of permanent revolution. This is quite natural, for these are three indissolubly linked parts forming a single whole. The epigones, by a mechanical process, separate the democratic dictatorship from the socialist dictatorship, just as they separate the national socialist revolution from the international revolution. For them, the conquest of power within the national framework represents, in essence, not the initial, but the final act of the revolution : then begins the period of reforms which lead to the national socialist society.
In 1905, they did not even admit the possibility of the Russian proletariat conquering power before the proletariat of Western Europe. In 1917 they preached the democratic revolution in Russia, as an end in itself, and rejected the idea of ​​the dictatorship of the proletariat. In 1925-1927, in China, they turned towards a national revolution under the leadership of the bourgeoisie. They then launched, for China, the slogan of the democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants, which they opposed to the dictatorship of the proletariat. They proclaimed that it was entirely possible to build in the Soviet Union an isolated, self-sufficient socialist society. The world revolution, ceasing to be an indispensable condition for the triumph of socialism, became for them only a favorable circumstance. The epigones arrived at this profound break with Marxism in the course of their permanent struggle against the theory of permanent revolution.
This struggle, which began with the artificial resurrection of certain historical memories and the falsification of the distant past, led to a complete revision of the ideas of the leading group of the revolution. We have already explained many times that this revision of values ​​was brought about by the social necessities of the Soviet bureaucracy : becoming more and more conservative, it aspired to a stable national order ; it considered that the accomplished revolution, having secured it a privileged position, was sufficient for the peaceful construction of socialism, and it demanded the consecration of this thesis. We will not return to this question here, but we will limit ourselves to emphasizing that the Bureaucracy is perfectly aware of the connection that exists between its material and ideological positions and the theory of national socialism. This is becoming very clear today, although, or perhaps because, the Stalinist apparatus, beset by contradictions it had not foreseen, is turning more and more to the left and dealing significant blows to its former inspirers, who belonged to the Right. As is well known, the hostility of the bureaucrats toward the Marxist Opposition, from which they have nevertheless hastily borrowed its slogans and arguments, does not weaken. When Oppositionists, wishing to lend their support to the policy of industrialization, raise the question of their reinstatement in the party, they are asked, first of all, to renounce the theory of permanent revolution and to recognize, even indirectly, the theory of socialism in one country. In this, the Stalinist bureaucracy betrays the purely tactical character of its turn to the left, while leaving intact the strategic bases of its national reformism. The importance of this fact is obvious ; In politics, as in war, tactics are ultimately subordinate to strategy. The question that concerns us has long since gone beyond the framework of the struggle against "Trotskyism." Expanding more and more, it now embraces literally all the problems of revolutionary ideology. Permanent revolution or Socialism in one country, this alternative embraces the internal problems of the Soviet Union, the prospects of revolutions in the East and, finally, the fate of the entire Communist International.

Introduction to Trotsky’s "The Permanent Revolution" (1929)

https://www.marxists.org/francais/trotsky/livres/revperm/rp01.html

A School of Revolutionary Strategy (Trotsky in 1921)

https://www.marxists.org/francais/trotsky/oeuvres/1921/08/lt19210819b.htm#4

The strategic line of the proletarian revolution in Russia, set out by the Trotkyists in 1932

https://www.marxists.org/francais/4int/urss/1932/00/opposition.htm

Strategic thinking in Marxism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_w50_aIcJo

Permanent revolution, strategy of the proletariat

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?rubrique79

Stalin against Trotsky’s Permanent Revolution

https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k4800541c.texteImage

Those who want to revolutionize society must reason dialectically.

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5643

Read more

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article6088
The outlook of some far-left groups has nothing to do with the above. The reader will appreciate...

The revolutionary strategy for the NPA

https://lanticapitaliste.org/actualite/strategie/pour-une-strategie-revolutionnaire-au-21e-siecle

The strategy for the Permanent Revolution group

https://www.revolutionpermanente.fr/Quel-parti-pour-quelle-strategie

Strategy at Lutte Ouvrière ? None ! Search for "strategy" in the LO search engine :

https://www.lutte-ouvriere.org/portail/search.html?publication=all&ann%C3%A9e=all&sort=score&q=strat%C3%A9gie

For the POI : it’s also nothing !

https://partiouvrierindependant-poi.fr/?s=strat%C3%A9gie

For the Spark Fraction of the NPA it is also nothingness !

https://www.convergencesrevolutionnaires.org/spip.php?page=recherche&recherche=strat%C3%A9gie

For the Maoists…

https://materialisme-dialectique.com/

For WSWS

https://www.wsws.org/fr/articles/2019/01/04/pers-j04.html