Leon
Trotsky: The Evolution of the SFIO
July
10, 1934
[Writings
of Leon Trotsky, Vol 7, 1934-1935, New York 1971, p. 46-50]
The
crisis of the democratic state of the bourgeoisie necessarily also
signifies a crisis of the Social Democratic party. This
interdependence must be pondered and thoroughly analyzed. The passage
of the bourgeoisie from the parliamentary to the Bonapartist regime
does not yet finally exclude the Social Democracy from the legal
combination of forces upon which the government of capital reposes.
As is known, Schleicher,
in
his time, sought the support of the trade unions. Through the medium
of his Marquet, Doumergue naturally negotiates with Jouhaux and Co.
Langeron, white baton in hand, indicates the road to both fascists
and Socialists. To the extent that the Socialist Party is aware of
the dependence of the Bonapartist equilibrium upon its own existence,
it too still relies, so far as its leadership goes, upon this
equilibrium; it pronounces itself against revolutionary fighting
methods; it stigmatizes Marxism with the sobriquet of "Blanquism";
it preaches the almost Tolstoyan doctrine of "Resist not evil
with violence." Only, this policy is just as unstable as the
Bonapartist regime itself, with whose aid the bourgeoisie seeks to
ward off more radical solutions.
The
essence of the democratic state consists, as is known, in that
everybody has the right to say and to write what he will, but that in
all important questions the final word rests with the big property
owners. This result is attained by means of a complex system of
partial concessions ("reforms"), illusions, corruption,
deceit and intimidation. When the economic possibility of partial
concessions ("reforms") has been exhausted, the Social
Democracy ceases to be the "main political support of the
bourgeoisie." This means capital can then no longer rest upon a
domesticated "public opinion"; it requires a (Bonapartist)
state apparatus independent of the masses.
Paralleling
this shift in the state system, important shifts take place within
the Social Democracy. With the decline of the epoch of reformism
(especially during the postwar decade), the internal regime of the
Social Democracy is a reproduction of the regime of bourgeois
democracy: every party member can say and think what he will, but the
decisions are made by the summits of the apparatus closely bound up
with the state. To the extent that the bourgeoisie loses the
possibility of ruling with the support of the public opinion of the
exploited, the Social Democratic leaders lose the possibility of
directing the public opinion of their own party. But the reformist
leaders, unlike the leaders of the bourgeoisie, have no coercive
apparatus at their disposal. To the extent, therefore, that
parliamentary democracy is exhausted, the internal democracy of the
Socialist Party, contrariwise, becomes more and more of a reality.
The
crisis of the democratic state and the crisis of the Social
Democratic party develop in parallel, but opposite, directions.
Whereas the state marches towards fascism across the Bonapartist
stage, the Socialist Party approaches a life-and-death struggle with
fascism across a "loyal," quasi-parliamentary opposition to
the Bonapartist state. An understanding of this dialectic of the
reciprocal relations between bourgeois state and Social Democracy is
an indisputable prerequisite for the correct revolutionary policy;
this is just the question on which the Stalinists broke their necks.
In
the Bonapartist stage through which France is at present passing, the
leaders of the Social Democratic party are endeavoring with all their
might to remain within the limits of (Bonapartist! ) legality. They
do not give up the hope that an improvement of the economic
conjuncture and other favorable circumstances will lead to the
restoration of the parliamentary state. Just the same, the experience
of Italy, Germany and Austria compels them to count upon the other,
less alluring perspective against which they would like to insure
themselves. They are afraid of detaching themselves from the masses
who demand a fight against fascism and await guidance. Thus the
Socialist apparatus gets caught in the vise of a violent
contradiction. On the one hand, it proceeds in its struggle against
the radicalization of the masses to the downright preaching of
Tolstoyanism: "Violence only begets violence; against brass
knuckles and revolvers we must counterpose … wisdom and prudence."
On the other hand, it talks about dictatorship of the proletariat,
general strike, etc., and betakes itself to the road of the
united-front policy. In the apparatus itself, a stratification takes
place at the same time. The "left-wingers” acquire an
ever-greater popularity. The official leaders are compelled to rest
their right arm on Doumergue ("legality” at all costs!) and
the left on Marceau Pivert, Just, etc. But the objective situation is
not likely to preserve such an equilibrium. Let us repeat: the
present condition of the Socialist Party is still more unstable than
the preventive-Bonapartist state regime.
There
can be no more devastating mistake in politics than to operate with
ready-made conceptions that relate to yesterday and to yesterday's
relationship of forces. When, for example, the leadership of the
Socialist Party reduces its task to the demand for parliamentary
elections, it is transferring politics from the realm of reality to
the realm of shadows. "Parliament," "government,"
"elections" today no longer have any of the content they
possessed before the capitulation of the parliamentary regime on
February 6. Elections by themselves cannot produce a shift in the
center of gravity of power; for this is required a leftward shift of
the masses, capable of completely abrogating and effacing the results
of the rightward shift of February 6.
But
a mistake of exactly the same kind is made by those comrades who, in
appraising the Socialist Party, themselves operate with the
ready-made formulas of yesterday: "reformism," "Second
International," "political support of the bourgeoisie."
Are these definitions correct? Yes and no. More no than yes. The old
definition of the Social Democracy corresponds still less to the
facts than the definition of the present state as a "parliamentary
democratic republic." It would be false to contend that there is
"nothing" left of parliamentarism in France. Under certain
conditions, even a temporary relapse into parliamentarism is possible
(just as a man in death agony usually still retains a glimmer of
consciousness). However, the general evolution as a whole is already
proceeding away
from
parliamentarism.
Were we to give a definition of the present French state that more
closely approximates reality, we should have to say: "a
preventive-Bonapartist regime, garbed in the desolated form of the
parliamentary state and veering between the not-yet-strong-enough
camp of the fascist regime and the insufficiently conscious camp of
the proletarian state." Only such a dialectical
definition
can offer the basis for a correct policy.
But
the same laws of dialectical thinking hold also for the Socialist
Party, which, as has already been said, shares the fate of the
democratic state, only in the reverse direction. To which should be
added that, to a substantial degree, thanks to the experience of
Germany and Austria, the evolution of the Socialist Party even
outstrips the evolution of the state to a certain extent; thus the
split with the Neos preceded the coup d'état of February 6 by
several months. Naturally it would be a crude mistake to assert that
"nothing” has remained of reformism and patriotism in the
party since this split. But it is no less a mistake to talk about it
as about the Social
Democracy
in the old sense of the word. The impossibility of employing
henceforward a simple, customary, fixed definition is precisely the
flawless expression of the fact that what we have here is a centrist
party, which, by virtue of a long protracted evolution of the
country, still unites extreme polar contradictions. One must be a
hopeless scholastic not to discern what is going on in reality under
the label "Second International." Only a dialectical
definition of the Socialist Party, that is, primarily, the concrete
evaluation of its internal dynamics, can permit the
Bolshevik-Leninists to outline the correct perspective and to adopt
an active, and not a waiting, position.
Without
the revolutionary impulsion of the masses, which could shift the
political center of gravity sharply to the left — or better yet,
before
such an impulsion — the state power must identify itself more
openly and brutally with the military and police apparatus, fascism
must become stronger and more insolent. Parallel to this, the
antagonisms within the Socialist Party must come to the fore, that
is, the incompatibility of the Tolstoyan preaching of "Resist
not evil with violence" with the revolutionary tasks dictated by
the class foe. Simultaneous with the Bonapartization of the state and
the approach of the fascist danger, the party majority must
inevitably become radicalized; the internal differentiation, which is
far from being completed, must enter a new phase.
The
Bolshevik-Leninists are duty bound to say all this openly. They have
always rejected the theory of "social fascism" and hooligan
methods in polemic, in which theoretical impotence unites with lie
and calumny. They have no cause to stand themselves on their heads
and to call black white. We advocated the united front at a time when
it was rejected both by the Socialists and the Stalinists. That is
just why we remain, even today, with a critical, realistic attitude
towards the abstraction of "unity." In the history of the
labor movement, demarcation is often the premise of unity. In order
to take the first step towards the united front, the Socialist Party
was compelled first to split away from the Neos. This ought not to be
forgotten for an instant. The Socialist Party can take a leading part
in a genuine mass and fighting united front only in the event that it
sets out its tasks clearly and purges its ranks of the right wing and
masked opponents of revolutionary struggle. It is not a question here
of any abstract "principle," but of an iron necessity
resulting from the logic of the struggle. The problem is not one that
can be solved by any diplomatic turn of the phrase, as is believed by
Zyromsky, who endeavors to find the formula that will reconcile
social patriotism with internationalism. The march of the class
struggle, in its present stage, will pitilessly explode and tear down
all tergiversation, deception and dissimulation. The workers in
general and the Socialists in particular need the truth, the naked
truth and nothing but the truth.
The
Bolshevik-Leninists correctly formulated what is and what is to be.
But they have not been able — it must be openly avowed — to
fulfill the task that they set themselves a year ago: more
deeply to penetrate the ranks of the Socialist workers, not
in order to "lecture" down to them from above as learned
specialists in strategy, but in order to learn together with the
advanced workers, shoulder to shoulder, on the basis of actual mass
experience, which will inevitably lead the French proletariat on the
road of revolutionary struggle.
In
order the better to illuminate the tasks lying before us on this
field, one must, however, dwell upon the evolution of the so-called
Communist Party.