Is Trotsky's Theory Date!

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THEOR

The cuban revolution: calls for serious analysis, not logic-chopping Lowy's book, failing to sky's analysis, offers not but a great deal of logicgrasp the strategic concep- 'the politics of combined chopping. tions that underlie Trot-. and uneven development, Trotsky an unwavering proletarian orientation.

Clive Bradley reviews The Politics of Combined and Uneven Development', by Michel Lowy.

Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution has always been regarded as one of the central political and ideological breaks between Trotskyism and Stalinism. Yet the development of revolutionary movements in the post-war period would appear to contradict some of its central claims.

In certain parts of the world, national bourgeoisies have carried out some of the tasks of the bourgeois revolution, at least partially for the post-colonial state has substituted for the bourgeoisie to this end). And none of the postwar social transformations were carried out by working class movements along the lines of the October Revolution. .

Does this invalidate Trotsky's theory?

Evasion

This book, by a leading academic of the • United Secretariat of the Fourth International (in Britain, the IMG), is an important attempt to confront this problem — or more specifically, to defend, with qualifications, the value of Trotsky's theory for today's 'Third World' '. Unfortunately, Michael Lowry reiterates all the confusions and half-truths characteristic of his tendency for the last thirty years. His book is thus a masterpiece in evasion.

Lowy's approach is to define the problems themselves in such a way as to effectively eliminate them at the outset. In place of Marxist analysis we are given a scholastic exercise in formal logic.

Hence, for Lowy, one of the central questions to be answered is whether these revolutions (Yugoslavia, China, Vietnam, Cuba) occurred 'under the leadership of the proletarit... and more precisely, under the direction of a proletarian (communist) party' (p.107). It is clear from this presentation of the issue what the answer will be, at least in three of the four cases.

The logical identifications that he makes are simple: 'communist' party = proletarian party = proletariat. Peasant armies can be called 'workers' parties' by virtue of CP leadership.

Of course, Lowy stipulates that these were bureaucratised workers' parties. But his logic leads him to make some extraordinary claims:

''The parties were the political and programmatic expression of the proletariat, by virtue of their adherence to the historic interests of the working class (abolition of capitalism, etc) ... the parties' ideologies were proletarian and the membership and periphery were systematically educated to accept the values and world view of the international working class movement.

(pp.214-5, emph. in original)

For a Trotskyist to concede that Stalinist parties were politically, programmatically and ideologically proletarian calls into question the entire purpose of the existence of a Trotskyist movement. For the sake of sliding round theoretical problems, Lowy quite happily throws overboard any kind of understanding of Stalinism whatsoever. Self-defence rapidly becomes ideological suicide.

Yet an understanding of Stalinism as an international force should be a key to a fuller understanding of these revolutions.

Having so disastrously 'defended' the conception of permanent revolution, Lowy stumbles from one ignorant assertion to another. Central to the weakness of his whole argument is his misunder19.

standing of the precise value of that aspect of Trotsky's theory that is nominally at the centre of Lowy's analysis - the concept of combined and uneven development.

Imperialism

Though there is no systematic exposition of a theory of combined and uneven development in Trotsky's work, this simple idea was able to give enormous depth to his analysis of Tsarist Russia. What Lowy's book lacks is precisely what is most needed: a full development of Trotsky's remarks into a coherent and detailed theory, and a serious study of contemporary imperialism.

For Lowy there is no incompatibility between the notion of combined and uneven development and post-war theories of dependency. Presumably basing , himself on Ernest Mandel's eclectic analysis 'underdevelopment' Lowy insists on the use of terms such as 'dependent' and 'peripheral' capitalism - terms which in fact have a precise meaning for particular conceptions of world capitalism that have little, if any, common ground with Trotskyism.

Dependency theory focuses on the problem of 'national development' , is the product of Latin American intellectuals disillusioned with both bourgeois development theory and Stalinism, and is influenced by nationalist politics. It cannot be 'borrowed' by the Trotskyist movement but needs to be ruthlessly criticised.

In place of the petty-bourgeois nationalism of such theories, Trotsky's analysis provides a focus on the international movement of capital on the one hand, and on the precise nature of the social contradictions of capital (i.e. on the revolutionary potential of the working class) on the other.

Dependency

But Lowy fudges the issues, as if unaware that there is any problem. Consequently, his excellent critique of Bill Warren's Pioneer ok, "Capitalism, Pioneer capitalism focuses only on Warren's 'Kautskyism' and ignores Warren: S valuable (if annarinall attaal, unuriginal! allack UIl dependency theory. Lowy's book is most disappointing in the particular area in which it could have had most to say.

A number of different tendencies are evident within post-war 'Trotskyism' regarding its attitude to the theory of permanent revolution.,Some haver effectively ditched it. Others have interpreted it not as a guide to action, but as a sort of historically inevitable law, or process. Lowy falls into the latter category, not so much because of what he says, but of what he doesn't say.

The central value of Trotsky's theory is the unwavering proletarian orientation it provides -not because the working class is the only class that can carry out certain tasks at particular times, but because its framework, that of the international social relations of capital, enables us to understand the nature of particular developments. Central to it, therefore, is the strategic orientation of an international revolutionary It is not a question of ticking off 'proofs' that the historical process has gone: according to plan, but of building an international movement with a unified strategy for working class power.

NTG DE

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POLVO SAMGRE OROZC DRICANO RIO

FIDEL CLIVE BRADLEY Aly

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