On July 9, 2015, Alex Steiner gave a talk at the Locomotiva Cooperative Cafe in Athens, Greece. The event was a huge success attracting a packed audience of about 50 people. The talk was sponsored by the Workers Revolutionary Party of Greece (EEK) and was chaired by Savas Michael-Matsas. A lively discussion followed the presentation. Below is a lightly edited version of the talk.
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| Part of the audience attending the talk |
The Dialectics of Revolutionary
Strategy and Tactics
The topic of my talk is the
Dialectics of Revolutionary Strategy and Tactics. With Greece being in a pre-revolutionary
situation now, the subject could not be more relevant. Now when I speak about
the dialectics of revolutionary strategy and tactics I want to first of all
consider dialectics. I am not assuming
that everyone knows what Marxists mean when they use the term ‘dialectics’. So let me give a brief introduction as to what
I mean.
The term as you know derives
from the ancient Greek word διαλεκτική. It was first used in philosophy by Plato, who
employed it to describe the Socratic method.
The Socratic method consisted of asking a question and then considering
the possible responses. The first
response, which always represents the opinion of the average individual, is then considered further. And once one digs deeper into the proposition
it is revealed that it is internally contradictory. Therefore it cannot be true. [1]
Thus, a new and improved proposition replaces the original one as a candidate
for the truth. Initially, the new proposition does not suffer the defects of
the one it replaced. But after deeper consideration, we discover that it harbors
a new contradiction. This process continues until a proposition is arrived at
that cannot be refuted. Thus the ancient dialectic of Socrates and Plato was a dialectic
of arguments that arrived at the truth through negation. If we jump to modern dialectics, we arrive at
Hegel. And Hegel’s great insight was to
see that dialectic is not only a method of argumentation but is also the very logic
of the real world. The ceaseless motion
that we see in the arguments of the ancient dialectic is a reflection of the
ceaseless motion of reality itself.
The first philosopher to have
explicitly defined reality as consisting of ceaseless motion and change was the
pre-Socratic Heraclitus, and this is
how Hegel understood him. He was the
first to articulate what we call today
the Philosophy of Becoming. In the history of philosophy the person who
first articulated the opposite teaching, that reality consists of that which is
Eternal and Unchanging, is Parmenides.
He said that only that which is Unchanging is real and our experience of
motion and change is just an illusion. This
is the Philosophy of Being. If Heraclitus is in some way the father of
modern dialectics, then Parmenides must be considered the father of its
opposite. Let’s call the anti-thesis to
dialectics formalism. What I want to say is that that a dialectical
understanding of reality requires not only Heraclitus but also his opposite,
Parmenides. Or to put it another way,
any account of change and motion must incorporate that which remains the same
over time. You need to incorporate Being
into Becoming. What happens if you have Becoming without
Being? You get Chaos. That is when you get irrationalism and
postmodernism. On the other hand Being
without Becoming leads to a world of Eternal Unchanging reality. This is the world of the Platonic Forms, Of
Christianity and other doctrines that deny or belittle the ceaseless motion of
the world. It is also the world of the
sectarian – a point I will discuss later.
Let us look a little more at how it is necessary
to bring together Becoming and Being to see what I mean.
One of Heraclitus’s most famous
epigrams is this: ‘You cannot step into the same river twice’. If we break down that statement we see
something very interesting: First, why can’t you step into the same river
twice? Clearly because every time you do
so the current of water splashing around you is different. Therefore it is not the same. But in order to differentiate the water we
step into today from the water we stepped into yesterday, we say that it was in
the same river. What does it mean when
we say “The same river?” Here we begin to see that there is a necessary
interconnection in our thinking between that which we see as changing and that
which we see as remaining the same. You
cannot think of a river whose currents are always changing without first
positing it as one river. In dialectical
theory as developed by Hegel this is called the Identity of Identity and Difference. Mostly, if we are not
reflecting on things but just relying on common sense, we think that there are
things that are changing and things that remain the same. The current in the river changes, but the
river remains the same. It does not occur to us that you have to bring the two
thoughts together in the same thought. You cannot have the changing current
without the river. It means that the
categories of common sense, those concepts with which we try to understand the
world around us, while they serve us well for the most part, may not be
adequate when we interrogate them at a deeper level.
There is of course a lot more to
thinking dialectically than just understanding that Identity is the Identity of
Identity and Difference. For instance, there
is the relationship of the parts to the whole. In ordinary common sense we
think that we can understand a part irrespective of the whole and that the
whole is just an accumulation of parts.
In Dialectical thinking we understand that there is a relationship to
the whole inherent in every part. For
instance let us take the Nation as an example. It is a whole, though to be sure
it is part of a larger whole, the world economy, since there is hardly such a
thing today as a Nation that is not dependent on relations with other
Nations. Therefore you cannot understand
the Nation without seeing it as a part of a larger whole.
Likewise you want to examine the
parts within the Nation itself. Within
the nation are classes who are related to each other through their role in the
process of production. You have that
class within the Nation that is exploited and you have another class that are
the exploiters. This relationship is
characteristic of class society as such. Within the specific form of class
society known as capitalism the mechanism of exploitation consists in the
extraction of surplus value by the capitalist at the point when the worker
sells his labor power for its value. It is in a formal, contractual sense an
equal exchange, but at the same time it is a form of enslavement. In today’s global economy the capitalists are
tied by a thousand threads to other nations, in many cases the capitalists are
in fact multinational corporations that have no allegiance to any nation. Furthermore, while each national economy is
dependent on other nations this dependency is as much a matter of cooperation
as it is a rivalry. And rivalries can sometimes turn into conflicts and
wars. So this whole of the Nation
conceals lots of internal contradictions, all of which are covered over in the
myth of National Unity. And we cannot make sense of this myth without examining
the concept of the Nation dialectically and working out the real underlying
relationships of wholes to parts.
There is also the notion in
dialectical thinking of leaps in development. Change does not consist simply of
the accumulation of greater and greater quantities of something, but we
understand that at a certain point quantity is transformed into quality. For instance, in order to finance projects
corporations and even nations borrow money.
They go into debt on the assumption that the projects they are financing
will boost their income so that they can pay off their loans. This is a normal way of doing business. But
what if the debt does not boost their income but instead servicing the debt
becomes a drain on the national economy? There many reasons why this can happen
– an economic crisis that depresses earnings, corruption on the part of the
lender or borrower, etc. Whatever the reason, you are no longer able to pay the interest on
the loan through normal means. So you
take out more loans, this time to service the debt itself that you have
accumulated. And this process can go on
for a while, until the burden of paying interest on the debt reaches the point
where it is no longer sustainable. At
that point the institutions get into the picture and they insist that the
condition of further loans is to make structural changes so that less of the
national budget is going to service the needs of the population and more is
going to service the payment of interest on the debt. That is called austerity. And with the introduction of austerity debt
is transformed from a means for financing new projects into a form of
slavery. In this way the gradual
accumulation of debt transforms the very nature of the debt itself. Quantity is transformed into quality.
There are of course many other examples.
As I said, the modern
understanding of dialectics as the way of thinking that corresponds with
reality was first developed in a comprehensive form by Hegel, though as I
pointed out, he had his precursors in Ancient Greek philosophy. Now let me say something about the Marxist
dialectic. Without examining the nuances of the transition from Hegel to Marx, I will just say that
even if you consider Hegel an idealist and Marx a materialist, the dialectic of
Marx is the dialectic of Hegel though perhaps stripped of the mystical form in
which Hegel sometimes presented it. Many
of the points I have been discussing are nicely summarized by Trotsky in the
short handout I recommended, The ABC of Materialist Dialectics.[2] And if I had to summarize all this in one
sentence, I would say that dialectics is the thinking we need to employ if we
are to understand the world of ceaseless motion and change. Our ordinary common sense thinking is not
sufficient when we are faced with any but the most simple of phenomenon in the
real world. That is the end of my brief
introduction to dialectics.
Now if what I have said so far
about dialectics has any validity, that it is necessary to understand complex
phenomenon of motion and change, then it should be clear why dialectics should
be important for revolutionaries. For
what characterizes revolutions and the events leading up to them are precisely
the rapid changes that take place in the political sphere and in the psychology
of the masses. No one expressed this
better than Trotsky in his History of the Russian Revolution where he writes,
“In a society that is seized by
revolution classes are in conflict. It is perfectly clear, however, that the
changes introduced between the beginning and the end of a revolution in the
economic bases of the society and its social substratum of classes, are not
sufficient to explain the course of the revolution itself, which can overthrow
in a short interval age-old institutions, create new ones, and again overthrow
them. The dynamic of revolutionary
events is directly determined by swift, intense and passionate
changes in the psychology of classes which have already formed themselves
before the revolution.”[my emphasis AS]
In the same passage Trotsky also
points to the contradictory source of this “swift, intense and passionate
changes in the psychology of classes”;
“The swift changes of mass views and
moods in an epoch of revolution thus derive, not from the flexibility and
mobility of man’s mind, but just the opposite, from its deep conservatism. The
chronic lag of ideas and relations behind new objective conditions, right up to
the moment when the latter crash over people in the form of a catastrophe, is
what creates in a period of revolution that leaping movement of ideas and
passions which seems to the police mind a mere result of the activities of
‘demagogues.’” [3]
I think from these remarks we can
see what a complex problem it is to find your way clearly in a revolutionary or
pre-revolutionary situation. The tempo
of events is accelerated and the weight of every decision enormously magnified.
The responsibility for carrying out a correct strategic orientation and
implementing it through a series of tactical steps grows enormously. And there are of course no guarantees that
you will not make mistakes, even for a dialectical thinker. But what marks a revolutionary leader trained
in dialectical thinking is his or her ability to quickly learn from a mistaken
evaluation of events and reorient ones direction.
Let us examine this more
concretely with some examples of how the greatest revolutionaries of the last
century, Lenin and Trotsky were able to orient the practical work of the
revolutionary movement because they had mastered the art of dialectical
thinking, and, together with a careful study of the historical forces involved,
made the right decisions at the right time.
Now it is well know that both Lenin and Trotsky devoted a considerable
amount of time to the strictly theoretical part of the issue. Lenin for instance, during the world
shattering events of the start of World War I and the betrayal of Social
Democracy, took time out from his practical activities to spend time at the
library in Zurich, where he was then living in exile, to make a careful study
of Hegel’s Science of Logic. Many years later, the
notes he wrote in his notebook while he was studying the Logic were published
in what was later called his Philosophical Notebooks.
And although they are not as well
known as Lenin’s Philosophical Notebooks, Trotsky also took time out during a
critical period of his life, at the time when he was in exile and trying to
build the Left Opposition against the murderous Stalinist bureaucracy, to also
make a study of Hegel’s logic and other material so as to deepen his understanding
of dialectics. In Trotsky’s
Philosophical Notebooks you can find a number of gems where he relates
dialectics to revolutionary politics. And
later on during his last struggle before his death, when he was fighting
against the challenge to the program of the Fourth International by a faction
inside the American Socialist Workers
Party led by James Burnham and Max Shachtman,
Trotsky began his refutation of the perspectives of the opposition with a
lesson in dialectics. This is the
section called the ABC of dialectics that I recommended as preparation for this
talk.
I would now like to turn to some
examples of Lenin’s and Trotsky’s use of dialectics in a revolutionary
situation. However finding examples is not so easy. You can certainly pour through the collected
works of Lenin and Trotsky and look for examples where they had an explicit
discussion of dialectics in one context or another. For instance, Lenin said, during the debate
on trade union policy in the Soviet Union, that Bukharin had never really
understood dialectics, that he substituted eclecticism for dialectics. It’s an
intriguing passage and was used by the Stalinists to discredit Bukharin, but it
is only the skeleton of an idea.
It is
possible to pour through the collected works
and find a few quotes like this and that is what most of the authors
have done who have written on the subject of Lenin and Trotsky’s use of
dialectics. But their explicit remarks
on dialectics in their political writing are few and far between and often are
too brief to tell us very much. I think
a better approach is to find examples in their writings of their use of
dialectical thinking in analyzing a situation.
That can tell us a lot more about how they used dialectics to prepare
for and lead the Russian Revolution.
However no one has, as far as I am aware, tried to compile a handbook of
such examples, with an explanation of each one.
So we have to do it ourselves. I have tried to find a few that I want to
discuss.
The first example is from Lenin. He
was writing in 1908, in a period after the defeat of the 1905 revolution. One
of the things that revolutionaries were trying to figure out then is if the
working class was ready for a new offensive after the defeat or were we still
in a period of retreat. Lenin writes,
“Some say that offensive economic struggles by the workers are as
impossible as before, and consequently a revolutionary upswing is impossible in
the near future. Others say that the impossibility of economic struggle impels
a turn to a political struggle, and therefore a revolutionary upswing is
inevitable in the near future.
We think
that both arguments have at their foundation the same error, which consists in
simplifying a complex issue. Undoubtedly the detailed study of the industrial
crisis is of the greatest importance. But it is also beyond doubt that no data
about the crisis, even if they were ideally accurate, can in reality decide the
question of whether a rise of the revolutionary tide is at hand or not: because
such a rise depends on a thousand additional factors which it is impossible to
measure beforehand. It is indubitable that without the general groundwork of an
agrarian crisis in the country, and depression in industry, profound political
crises are impossible. But if the general groundwork exists, that does not
permit us to conclude whether the depression will for a time retard the mass
struggle of the workers in general, or whether at a certain stage of
events the same depression will not push new masses and fresh
forces into the political struggle. To
answer such a question there is only one way: to keep a careful finger on the
pulse of the country’s whole political life, and especially the state of the
movement and of the mood of the mass of the proletariat.” [my emphasis AS] [4]
What Lenin is doing here is
trying to determine the strategic orientation of the revolutionary movement.
And to do that it is necessary to first determine if we are dealing with a
rising tide of the class struggle or a period of retreat and defensive actions. In other words we try to determine the
direction of the class struggle. But we also need to determine the tempo. Are developments likely to move very quickly
or are we dealing with a period of gradual change or maybe even relative
stagnation? We also want as far as
possible to anticipate the forms in which the next phase of the class struggle
is likely to take. And we need to keep
an eye out for the moment when changes in degree can suddenly lead to a
qualitative leap. Are we going into a
period where Soviets are on the agenda or are we preparing for a period in
which the best we can do is fight against repressive legislation or prepare for
strikes against the employers attempts to cut wages?
To arrive at the correct
conclusion to any of these questions it is necessary to think
dialectically. For instance, how do we
determine if we see a workers action such as a strike, that it signifies a
rising tide of the class struggle or a retreat from previous gains? If you just look at this one event separate
from anything else there is no way to tell. And for the non-dialectical
thinker, for the empiricist, that is all there is. It’s just a strike and
nothing more and has no other significance. It is like looking at a half moon one evening
and trying to determine if it is in its waxing or the waning cycle. There is no way to tell just from looking at
it at that moment. You have to have followed its development over time. In
other words you cannot understand the significance of this part without seeing
its relation to the whole.
Now the question Lenin is dealing
with is of course far more complicated than whether the half moon is heading to
a new moon or a full moon. To answer
the latter question we only have to know what the moon looked like yesterday as
compared to this evening. But the
direction of the class struggle is determined as Lenin says, by “a thousand additional factors which it is
impossible to measure beforehand.” We
understand as historical materialists that economic relations provide us with the
basic ground for the class struggle. But
we also know that arising on those foundations are political relations which
within certain limits are relatively autonomous and have their laws of motion. Finally, we know that arising out of the
political relations in society are the consciousness of the masses – what Lenin
called “the mood of the masses”. Now
when we speak of the relationship of wholes to parts it is important to keep in
mind what the context is – that is which whole we are investigating. For what we see in nature society and thought
is not simply one whole, but a whole that may encompass another whole within it
each of them having their own logic of motion and change.
Thus the largest whole in class
society is always the economic foundation.
But the political relations that arise out of the economic foundation
can be considered a whole in its own right with its own dynamic. This
subordinate whole is not entirely disconnected of course from the larger whole
of which it is itself a part, but neither is it directly determined by it,
though as we Marxists say, it is determined by it “in the last analysis”. And finally the mood of the masses that
arises on the basis of the political relations can be considered yet another
whole with its own dynamic, what has sometimes been called mass
psychology. Now in a normal situation,
the economic foundations determine the political relations and these in turn
determine mass psychology. But what distinguishes a revolutionary situation
from the “normal” state of things is that the determination can go in the other
direction. That is to say the psychology
of the masses can have a decisive impact on the political relations and these
in turn can overturn the economic foundations of society. Lenin meant something like this when he
called politics “concentrated economics.”
I think all these thoughts are
encompassed in what Lenin is saying in this passage. I think it gives you a good idea of just how
challenging it can be to approach problems of revolutionary strategy and
tactics dialectically. And this a good place to contrast the dialectical
approach with the approach used by sectarians and opportunists. Let us examine the sectarian first.
And the first thing to note about
the sectarian approach is that it has the advantage over our approach of being
much simpler. The entire network of
complex relations between economics, politics and mass psychology are
completely irrelevant to the sectarian.
He does not really have to determine either the direction or tempo of
the class struggle because he already has his strategic orientation. And it is always the same one. Philosophically the sectarian is a Platonist
and for him there is one unchanging Truth which he never tires of
repeating. And just like a stopped clock,
the sectarian can sometimes be correct but only twice a day. For the rest of time there is a huge gap
between the expectations of the sectarian and the actual development of the
class struggle. And when the sectarian sees that the masses are not moving
along in the way he thinks they should, he becomes angry with them and
denounces them, saying they have been tricked by “fake leftists”. All questions as we said are enormously
simplified for the sectarian. As Trotsky wrote, the sectarian recognizes only
two colors, that of the revolutionary and that of the counter-revolutionary. There is nothing in between and there are no
contradictions in the way revolutionary consciousness can express itself. The breeding ground for a sectarian is when
the class struggle is in a quiet phase or the working class is in retreat. The sectarian thrives in those conditions,
when revolutionaries are isolated from the working class.
Conversely, when the working class is in a
period of ascendant struggle and when conditions are created for
revolutionaries to break out of their isolation, the sectarian goes into
crisis. The movement of the masses
passes by him and he is brushed aside like a flea. Worse, sometimes not only is
the sectarian made irrelevant, but he actually joins the camp of reaction. I think you saw this very clearly recently
with the role played by the sectarian politics of the Communist Party which
urged its members to cast an invalid ballot in the referendum. And if you have ever argued with a sectarian
you will probably know that you can never convince them that they are wrong
about anything. That is because in
general they are close minded and dogmatic and do not admit of anything in
their world outlook that would contradict their schemas. That is why the pronouncements of the
sectarians are always predictable, because they rely on formulas and not on the
living movement of classes in developing their approach. In general, allowing
for individual exceptions, sectarianism is a disease for which there is no
cure. Here we can quote Trotsky,
“Sectarianism is hostile to dialectics (not in words but in action) in
the sense that it turns its back upon the actual development of the working
class.”[5] [my emphasis AS]
The dogmatic approach of
sectarians highlights, by way of contrast, another aspect of dialectical
thinking - it is always open and tentative in its approximations to the reality
of the existing situation. There is nothing more anathema to dialectics than
the bastardized caricature of dialectics that was developed by Stalin and
Mao-Tse-Tung whereby dialectical sounding phrases were used to rationalize a
dogma and discourage an open mind. It is
not by accident that the Stalinist caricature of dialectical philosophy has
been labeled the philosophy of “Soviet scholasticism”, recalling the dogmatic
approach of the scholastic philosophers of the middle ages.
Now let us take a look at the
opportunist. The opportunist, unlike the
sectarian, comes into his own when the class struggle sharpens. This is because the opportunist always wants
to jump in and in get involved. And
whereas the sectarian is guided by a single unchanging Truth, the opportunist
is not guided by any concept of Truth.
The opportunist is not really interested in determining the ebbs and
flows of the class struggle, its tempo and its probable development because for
him the strategic goal is of no importance.
This was summed up by the phrase used to described the first
revisionist, Eduard Bernstein, about whom it was said that for him “The
movement is everything, the final goal nothing”. So for the opportunist also,
life is much easier than for the dialectician, though in a very different way
than for the sectarian. There is one
thing however that the opportunist is interested in that distinguishes him from the sectarian. The opportunist also, like the dialectician
wants to keep his finger on the pulse of the masses, but in his own way,
without all the baggage of determining the relationship of the mood of the masses to the entire complex of
determinations of which it is part. The opportunist however approaches the
masses not in order to bring them closer to the next stage of the class
struggle, but solely to adapt to the present movement.
Now when we speak of
opportunists, it is important to distinguish between the different types of
opportunists. First there is the careerist and professional politician and those
groups on the left who lead a parasitical existence off the trade unions and their
bureaucratic apparatus. These are the
opportunists by virtue of their class position and psychology. But opportunism can also be expressed by
layers of the working class coming into struggle as a result of their political
immaturity and their theoretical confusion.
We must see opportunism therefore
not as a fixed category but in motion.
The opportunism of the careerists and bureaucrats is an opportunism that
always tries to hold back the movement of the masses when it attempts to break
through the status quo. The opportunism
that we find in the masses coming into struggle, while perhaps looking like the
same thing, is entirely different. It is
the opportunism of ideas that are struggling to break out of the straitjacket
of bourgeois ideology which they have inherited. It is possible to overcome this kind of
opportunism.
And then there is also the
opportunism that sometimes takes hold of revolutionaries who get caught up in
the events of the moment and forget to
assess them dialectically. If one
becomes conscious of this form of opportunism and pays attention to its
theoretical roots it is possible to overcome it. But if one does not pay attention to the
theoretical issues, then this kind of opportunism can become fixed and leave
one however unconsciously, vulnerable to the pressures exerted by bourgeois
ideology.
Now in a revolutionary situation,
opportunism is a far greater danger than sectarianism because it can take hold
very easily even for those whose intentions are anything but opportunist. This
was nicely summed up by Trotsky, who writing in 1940 said,
“Anyone acquainted with the history of the struggles of tendencies
within workers’ parties knows that desertions to the camp of opportunism and
even to the camp of bourgeois reaction began not infrequently with rejection of
the dialectic.”[6] [my emphasis AS]
There is no formula for avoiding
the twin evils of opportunism and sectarianism. The only antidote is training
to think dialectically. And there is no
formula for learning how to think dialectically. It is as much an art as a science and can
only be mastered through continuous practice.
And in this connection we have another wonderful quote from Trotsky,
“Dialectical training of the mind is as necessary to a revolutionary
fighter as finger exercises to a pianist.” [7] [my emphasis AS]
Let us take one more look at
something else in Lenin’s quote – that “it
is impossible to measure beforehand” the
form that the class struggle will take.
What exactly did he mean by this and how then do we measure these things?
We can find a clue if we examine
the course of the Russian Revolution when in a rapidly changing situation it
was not at all clear what the appropriate course of action should be to advance
the revolution. There were many
disagreements within the Bolshevik Party at every turn of the events in 1917
and Lenin was sometimes correct in his estimation and sometimes he was
not. But what distinguished him was his
flexibility, his ability to learn from his mistakes and even sometimes to
completely change his position on a critical question after gauging the
reaction of the masses to an action supported by the Bolsheviks. I don’t have the time to go into these events
except to mention them. It is discussed
in Trotsky’s masterful History of the Russian Revolution and a good supplement
to that classic work is the book by the non-Marxist historian Alexander
Rabinowich, The Bolsheviks Come to Power, which I would recommend.
I do want to conclude by
examining how this idea of ‘keeping a finger on the pulse of the masses’ works
out in Trotsky’s thinking, especially in his discussions with leaders of the
American Socialist Workers Party on the Transitional Program of the Fourth
International.
For in developing what are called transitional
demands we have an excellent example of what Lenin meant by keeping a finger on
the pulse of the masses. There are many
misconceptions about transitional demands and this is not the way the topic is
usually presented. For instance, there
is a common misconception that transitional demands are a kind of trick whereby
revolutionary socialists push for something that they know cannot be met but
sound very reasonable. In this way
supposedly the revolutionaries hope to foment discontent among workers. But
this is to completely misunderstand what transitional demands are about. I want to examine transitional demands as an
example, perhaps the most developed one, of how to think dialectically about
strategy and tactics Let’s start with a quote from Trotsky where he
discusses the political backwardness of the American working class,
“The American workers have the
advantage that in their great majority they were not politically organized, and
are only beginning now to be organized into trade unions. This gives to the revolutionary party the possibility
of mobilizing them under the blows of the crisis.
What will the speed be? Nobody
can foresee. We can see only the direction.
Nobody denies that the direction is a correct one. Then we have the
question, how to present the program to the workers? It is naturally very
important. We must combine politics with
mass psychology and pedagogy, build the bridge to their minds. Only experience
can show us how to advance in this or that part of the country. For some time
we must try to concentrate the attention of workers on one slogan: sliding
scale of wages and hours.
The empiricism of the American
workers has given political parties great success with one or two slogans –
singe tax, bimetallism, they spread like wildfire in the masses. When they see one panacea fail, then they
wait for a new one. Now we can present one which is honest, part of our entire
program, not demagogic, but which corresponds totally to the situation. Officially we now have thirteen million,
maybe fourteen million unemployed – in reality about sixteen to twenty million-
and the youth are totally abandoned in misery. Mr. Roosevelt insists on public
works. But we insist that this, together with mines, railroads, etc., absorb
all the people. And that every person should have the possibility of living in
a decent manner, not lower than now and we ask Mr. Roosevelt and his brain
trust propose such a program of public works that everyone capable of working
can work at decent wages. This is possible with a sliding scale of wages and hours…We
must begin a concentrated campaign of agitation so that everybody knows that
this is the program of the socialist workers party.”[8]
Let me emphasize in this long
quote the words,
“We must combine politics with mass psychology and pedagogy, build the
bridge to their minds. Only experience can show us how to advance in this or
that part of the country.”
Here you
have stated succinctly the relationship of wholes to parts that I outlined
earlier. And note the emphasis on mass
psychology. Psychology is the final link
in the chain that goes from the economic foundation to the political
crisis. And transitional demands are
developed primarily to address this final link in the chain. That does not mean
that we forget about the rest of our program. For instance, on the political
front the fight to convene a farmers and workers government as a step toward
the dictatorship of the proletariat, or on the economic front to take measures
to transition from an economy based on the law of value to an economy based on
social needs. But the crux of the
matter, where the revolutionary party can make its impact at a decisive moment,
is precisely on the level of mass psychology, in affecting the consciousness of
the masses.
Now transitional demands are a tactic and the
series of tactics forms the chain through which we try to implement our
strategic goals. And in thinking about
strategy and tactics we tend to think that a strategy is primary and tactics
are secondary. This is true as far as it
goes. If your strategic direction is misconceived, no amount of clever tactics
will advance you any closer to your goals.
But it is also true that for the most part the revolutionary movement
can only affect the situation through tactical steps and these tactical steps
can at times play a decisive role in either advancing or retarding the march
toward a strategic goal. This is why
Trotsky emphasizes the importance of coming up with simple slogans that both
fulfill the objective requirements of the situation and have a chance of ‘clicking’
in the consciousness of the masses. In our time it is something like uploading
a video to Youtube that goes viral, only in our case the message spreads like
wildfire not because of its sensationalist appeal, but because it touches a
nerve in the historical consciousness of the working class and speaks to their
objective requirements today. The
classic example of this was the slogan adopted by the Bolsheviks in the October
Revolution – “Land, Peace and Bread!” What could be simpler?
Let us look at one other example
from Trotsky’s discussions on the Transitional Program. During the time when Trotsky was discussing
the Transitional Program with the American comrades, there was an initiative
proposed in the U.S. called the Ludlow amendment. It was intended as a
referendum opposing war. And just like
you saw in the run up to the referendum on July 5, there were various sectarian
groups who opposed the Ludlow Amendment because it did not go far enough, it
maintained certain illusions in pacifism, it was tied to a bourgeois
government, etc, etc. Trotsky’s attitude
was of course that revolutionaries should support the measure while at the same
time pointing out its limitations. Only by going through the experience with
the masses would it be possible to have a dialogue with them whereby they could become receptive to our
critique and get beyond their illusions in pacifism. Here is how he put it,
“We must advance with the masses, and not onIy repeat our formulas but
speak in a manner that our slogans become understandable to the masses.” [my emphasis AS]
Trotsky continued,
“The referendum is not our program, but it's a clear step forward; the
masses show that they wish to control their Washington representatives. We say:
It's a progressive step that you wish to control your representatives. But you
have illusions and we will criticize them. At the same time we will help you
realize your program. The sponsors of the program will betray you…”[9]
[my emphasis AS]
Here we have a good example what
Lenin meant in keeping a finger on the pulse of the masses. Our program must be flexible if we are to
speak to the masses in a language they understand while we go through their
experiences with them. The opportunist
will also go through the experience with the masses, but in his case it is to
gloss over the contradictions buried within that program. The revolutionary leader will on the other
hand go through that experience with the masses in order to reveal those
contradictions. For instance, last
Sunday’s referendum did not address the question of what happens when you say NO.
The masses thought they were saying NO
to austerity, but the Tsipras government took the referendum to mean that
they were saying NO only to the most
recent terms offered by the institutions.
They therefore took the NO
vote to mean YES to further
austerity which they hoped – in vain as it turns out –
that the new austerity program would not be quite as onerous as the current one. When you bury contradiction a NO becomes a YES.
But this is not something that
the masses can learn just through propaganda. It is necessary to go through the
experience with them. Without that dialectical link to the activity and
thinking of the masses it is not possible to win them over to our program.
Now let us think about how we can
distill these lessons into developing transitional demands in Greece today.
What kind of slogans should we raise in the context of post Referendum Greece
today? I cannot say as I do not have the
experience and the knowledge of the Greek working class and its history. Maybe you can put forward a simple slogan
like “Austerity is Slavery”? Or maybe something
like the slogan “30 hours work for 40 hours pay”, which was a slogan that the
Socialist Workers Party campaigned with in America in the 1930’s when the U.S.
was going through the great Depression and we saw levels of unemployment and
misery that are close to what we are seeing in Greece today. But you also have
to take into account that the political understanding of the Greek working
class today after the resounding victory of the NO vote in Sunday’s referendum,
is much higher than that which existed in the U.S. in the 1930s. And you need to take into account the
relationship of the party to the working class. Is the immediate task of the
party to mobilize large sections of the working class directly through an
appeal of the party, or is it to win over masses of workers and youth who have
not been convinced yet that the conciliatory road taken repeatedly by Syriza’s
leadership is a disastrous policy? Or does the party stand somewhere in between these extremes, that is, maybe it can
mobilize workers to some degree on its own but still needs to win over the
great bulk of workers and youth to its program?
This is something that
revolutionaries in Greece and their international allies need to work out. But
the important thing I want to emphasize
is not this or that particular slogan, but the dialectical thinking that needs
to go into developing the appropriate policies and programs insofar as we keep
our finger on the pulse of the masses.
[1] A good example is the discussion in Plato’s
dialogue, Euthyphro. There the question posed by Socrates is “What
is piety?” Euthyphro answers that “Piety is that which is beloved by the gods.” But there are many gods and some of them hate
the same thing that others love.
Therefore the same thing can be both pious and impious. But this is
self-contradictory. Therefore, there must be something wrong with the
proposition that “Piety is that which is beloved by the gods.”
[2] L.
Trotsky, The ABC of the Materialist Dialectic, In Defense of Marxism, https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/12/abc.htm
[3]
History of the Russian Revolution, L. Trotsky, Preface, https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/ch00.htm
[4] The
Assessment of the Present Situation,
Lenin Collected
Works, Progress Publishers, 1973, Moscow, Volume 15,
pages 267-280 https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/nov/01.htm
[5] L. Trotsky, Sectarianism, Centrism and the
Fourth International, http://forum.permanent-revolution.org/2009/05/sectarianism-centrism-and-fourth.html
[6] L. Trotsky, An Open Letter to Comrade
Burnham, https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/idom/dm/14-burnham.htm
[7] L. Trotsky, The ABC of the Materialist
Dialectic”, In Defense of Marxism, https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/12/abc.htm
[8] The Transitional Program of Socialist
Revolution, L Trotsky, with Introductory Essays by Joseph Hansen and George
Novack. Pathfinder Press, 1973. P. 192-193.
[9] Ibid. p. 116-117.
