Results and Prospects
IX. Europe and Revolution
Section summary
Quoting his 1905 preface to Lassalle, Trotsky argues that capitalism has made the world one organism tied to the old bulwarks of reaction, so a revolution in Russia will spread west: through Poland, through a European war, or through the shock of a Russian state bankruptcy to France. Class tension is rising in Germany, France and England, and the Russian example is breaking the conservatism of the Western socialist parties. Left alone, the Russian workers would be crushed once the peasantry turned away; their only course is to join their fate to the European revolution.
“More than half a century has passed since 1848. Half a century of unceasing conquests by capitalism throughout the world. Half a century of ‘organic’ mutual adaptation between the forces of bourgeois reaction and the forces of feudal reaction. Half a century in which the bourgeoisie has laid bare its furious thirst for domination and its readiness to fight furiously for it!
“Just as a visionary mechanic in pursuit of perpetual motion comes up against ever new obstacles and piles mechanism upon mechanism to overcome them, so the bourgeoisie has altered and rebuilt the apparatus of its rule, avoiding ‘extra-legal’ collisions with the force hostile to it. But just as the self-taught mechanic in the end comes up against the last insuperable obstacle, the law of the conservation of energy, so the bourgeoisie must come up against the last inexorable barrier: the class antagonism, which inevitably resolves itself in a collision.
“By imposing on all countries its mode of economy and of intercourse, capitalism has turned the whole world into a single economic and political organism. Just as modern credit, binding thousands of enterprises together by invisible ties and giving capital an astonishing mobility, prevents many small private crashes but at the same time gives an unprecedented sweep to general economic crises, so the whole economic and political work of capitalism, with its world trade, its system of monstrous state debts and its political groupings of countries, which has drawn all the forces of reaction into one world-wide joint-stock company, has not only counteracted all partial political crises but has also prepared the basis for a social crisis of unheard-of dimensions. Driving all morbid processes inward, getting round all difficulties, putting off all the deep questions of internal and international policy, glossing over all contradictions, the bourgeoisie has postponed the dénouement, and has thereby prepared a radical, world-wide liquidation of its rule. It has clung greedily to every reactionary force, without inquiring into its origin. The Pope and the Sultan were not the least of its friends. It did not bind itself with ties of ‘friendship’ to the Emperor of China only because he represents no force: it was more profitable for the bourgeoisie to plunder his dominions than to keep him in the post of world gendarme, paying his expenses out of its own coffers. Thus the world bourgeoisie has made the stability of its state system deeply dependent on the stability of the pre-bourgeois bulwarks of reaction.
“This from the very beginning gives the unfolding events an international character and opens up the greatest of prospects: the political emancipation led by the working class of Russia raises its leader to a height unprecedented in history, puts colossal forces and means into its hands and makes it the initiator of the world-wide liquidation of capitalism, for which history has created all the objective premises.” (See my preface to F. Lassalle’s Speech before the Jury, Molot edition.)
If the Russian proletariat, having temporarily obtained power, does not carry the revolution on to the soil of Europe on its own initiative, it will be compelled to do so by the European feudal-bourgeois reaction.
It would of course be idle now to try to determine in advance the roads by which the Russian revolution will spread to old capitalist Europe: these roads may prove quite unexpected. More to illustrate the idea than by way of prediction, we shall dwell on Poland, as the connecting link between the revolutionary East and the revolutionary West.
The triumph of the revolution in Russia inevitably means the victory of the revolution in Poland. It is not hard to imagine that a revolutionary regime in the ten Polish provinces seized by Russia will inevitably bring Galicia and Posen to their feet. The governments of the Hohenzollerns and the Habsburgs will answer this by concentrating military forces on the Polish frontier, in order then to cross it and crush the enemy at its centre, Warsaw. Clearly the Russian revolution cannot leave its western vanguard in the hands of the Prussian-Austrian soldiery. War with the governments of Wilhelm II and Franz Joseph will become, under such conditions, a law of self-preservation for the revolutionary government of Russia. What position will the German and Austrian proletariat take up? Clearly it will not be able to remain a calm observer of a counter-revolutionary crusade by its national armies. A war of feudal-bourgeois Germany against revolutionary Russia inevitably means a proletarian revolution in Germany. To anyone who finds this assertion too categorical we would suggest that he imagine some other historical event more capable of pushing the German workers and the German reaction on to the road of an open trial of strength.
When our October ministry unexpectedly declared Poland under martial law, very plausible rumours spread that this had been done on direct orders from Berlin. On the eve of the dispersal of the Duma the government newspaper reported, in the form of a threat, on negotiations between the governments of Berlin and Vienna concerning armed intervention in the internal affairs of Russia for the purpose of suppressing the troubles. No ministerial denials could afterwards efface the shattering impression of this report. It was clear that in the palaces of the three neighbouring countries a bloody counter-revolutionary reckoning was being prepared. And how could it be otherwise? Can the neighbouring semi-feudal monarchies look on passively while the flames of revolution lick at the borders of their dominions?
The Russian revolution, still far from victory, has already, through Poland, had its repercussions in Galicia.
“Who could have foreseen a year ago,” exclaimed Daszyński in May of this year at the Lwów congress of Polish Social-Democracy, “what is now happening in Galicia: this magnificent peasant movement, which has astonished all Austria! Zbaraż elects a Social-Democrat as vice-marshal of the district council. Peasants edit a socialist-revolutionary newspaper for peasants and call it The Red Flag; peasant meetings of thirty thousand gather; processions with red flags and revolutionary songs make their way through the Galician villages, until now so quiet, so apathetic… What will happen when the call for the nationalisation of the land reaches these impoverished peasants from Russia!”
More than two years ago, in his polemic with the Polish socialist Luśnia, Kautsky argued that one could no longer see Russia as a ball and chain on the legs of Poland, and that Poland should now be regarded as the eastern detachment of revolutionary Europe, driven like a wedge into the steppes of Muscovite barbarism. With the development and victory of the Russian revolution, “the Polish question,” in Kautsky’s words, “will again become acute, but not in the sense Luśnia thinks; its thorns will be directed not against Russia but against Austria and Germany, and in so far as Poland serves the cause of the revolution, it will have to defend the revolution not against Russia but carry it from Russia into Austria and Germany.” This prediction now turns out to be much nearer to fulfilment than Kautsky himself could have thought.
But revolutionary Poland is by no means the only possible starting-point of a European revolution. We have said above that for a number of decades the bourgeoisie has systematically avoided solving any at all complex and acute questions, not only of internal but of foreign policy. Though they put colossal masses of men under arms, the bourgeois governments lack the resolution to cut the tangled knots of international politics with the sword. Only a government that feels behind it the support of a nation touched in its vital interests can send hundreds of thousands of men into the fire; or a government that has lost all ground under its feet and is gripped by the courage of despair. Under the present conditions of political culture and military technique, of universal suffrage and universal military service, only a profound confidence or a mad gambler’s recklessness can push two nations against each other. In the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 we see on one side Bismarck, fighting for Prussianisation, that is, all the same, for the national unification of Germany, an elementary need felt by every German; on the other side the government of Napoleon III, insolent, impotent, despised by the people, ready for any adventure that might promise it another twelve months of life. The roles were distributed in the same way in the Russo-Japanese war: on one side the government of the Mikado, fighting for the power of Japanese capital over East Asia, and not yet faced by a strong revolutionary proletariat; on the other an autocratic government that had outlived itself and sought to redeem its internal defeats by victories abroad.
In the old capitalist countries there are no such “national” needs, that is, needs of bourgeois society as a whole, of which the ruling bourgeoisie could be the bearer. The governments of England, France, Germany or Austria are no longer capable of waging national wars. The vital needs of the masses of the people, the interests of oppressed nationalities, or the barbarous internal policy of a neighbouring country are not capable of pushing any bourgeois government on to the road of a war that would in that case have a liberating and therefore national character. On the other hand, the interests of capitalist rapacity, which so often make now one government, now another, try on its spurs and sharpen its sword before the eyes of the whole world, are quite incapable of calling forth a sympathetic response in the masses of the people. Thus the bourgeoisie either cannot or will not call forth and wage a national war. What anti-national wars lead to under present conditions has been shown lately by two experiences: one in the south of Africa, the other in the east of Asia. The crushing defeat of imperialist conservatism in England is due in no small measure to the lesson of the Anglo-Boer war; another consequence of imperialist policy, much more important and threatening for the English bourgeoisie, is the political self-determination of the English proletariat, which, once begun, will go forward with seven-league strides. As for the consequences of the Russo-Japanese war for the St Petersburg government, there is no need to recall them. But even without these two latest experiences, the European governments, ever since the proletariat has stood on its feet, have been more and more afraid of putting it before the dilemma: war or revolution. It is precisely fear of a rising of the proletariat that makes the bourgeois parties, while voting monstrous sums for military expenditure, demonstrate solemnly in favour of peace, dream of international courts of arbitration and even of the organisation of a United States of Europe: pitiful declamation, which cannot, of course, remove either the antagonism of states or armed collisions.
The armed peace that set in in Europe after the Franco-Prussian war rested on a system of European equilibrium that presupposed not only the inviolability of Turkey, the partition of Poland and the preservation of Austria, that ethnographical harlequin’s cloak, but also the existence of Russian despotism in the role of the armed-to-the-teeth gendarme of European reaction. The Russo-Japanese war dealt a cruel blow to this artificially preserved system, in which the autocracy held the foremost place. Russia found herself struck out for an indefinite time from the so-called concert of the powers. The equilibrium was upset. On the other hand, the successes of Japan inflamed the predatory instincts of the capitalist bourgeoisie, and especially of the stock exchange, which plays a colossal part in modern politics. The possibility of a war on European territory has grown enormously. Conflicts are ripening here and there, and if up to now they have been settled by diplomatic means, nothing guarantees tomorrow. But a European war inevitably means a European revolution.
Already during the Russo-Japanese war the Socialist Party of France declared that, if the French government intervened on behalf of the autocracy, it would call on the proletariat to take the most resolute measures, up to and including insurrection. In March 1906, when the Franco-German conflict over Morocco was coming to a head, the International Socialist Bureau resolved, in case of a danger of war, “to establish for the whole international socialist party and the whole organised working class the method of action best suited to preventing and stopping the war”. Of course this is only a resolution. To test its real significance, a war is needed. The bourgeoisie has every reason to avoid this experiment. But, unfortunately for it, the logic of international relations is stronger than the logic of the diplomats.
The state bankruptcy of Russia, whether it is brought about by the protracted mismanagement of the bureaucracy or declared by a revolutionary government that will not wish to answer for the sins of the old regime, the state bankruptcy of Russia will have the effect of a terrible shock in France. The Radicals, in whose hands the political destinies of France now lie, have taken upon themselves, together with power, all the functions of guarding the established order, including care for the interests of capital. There are therefore serious grounds for supposing that the financial crash caused by Russia’s bankruptcy will turn directly, in France, into an acute political crisis that will end only with the passing of power into the hands of the proletariat. One way or another, through revolutionary Poland, as a result of a European war, or as a consequence of the state bankruptcy of Russia, the revolution will spread to the territory of old capitalist Europe.
But even without the external pressure of such events as war or bankruptcy, a revolution may break out in the near future in one of the European countries as a result of the extreme sharpening of the class struggle. We shall not build conjectures here as to which of the European countries will be the first to take the road of revolution; but there is no doubt that in recent years class contradictions in all countries have reached a high degree of tension.
In Germany the colossal growth of Social-Democracy within the framework of a semi-absolutist constitution is leading the proletariat with iron necessity to an open collision with the feudal-bourgeois monarchy. The question of resisting a coup d’état by means of a general strike has become, over the last year, the central question of the political life of the German proletariat. In France the passing of power to the Radicals decisively frees the hands of the proletariat, which have long been tied by co-operation with the bourgeois parties in the struggle against nationalism and clericalism: the socialist proletariat, rich in the undying traditions of four revolutions, and the conservative bourgeoisie under the party mask of radicalism stand face to face. In England, where for a whole century the two bourgeois parties have swung regularly to and fro on the see-saw of parliamentarism, a process of political separation of the proletariat has begun, quite recently, under the influence of a whole series of causes. If in Germany this process took four decades, the English working class, with its mighty trade unions and its rich experience of economic struggle, may catch up with the army of continental socialism in a few leaps.
The influence of the Russian revolution on the European proletariat is enormous. Besides destroying the absolutism of St Petersburg, the main force of European reaction, it also creates the necessary revolutionary premises in the consciousness and the mood of the European working class.
The task of the socialist party has been, and is, to revolutionise the consciousness of the working class, just as the development of capitalism has revolutionised social relations. But the work of agitation and organisation in the ranks of the proletariat has its own internal inertia. The European socialist parties, and first of all the mightiest of them, the German party, have developed their own conservatism, which is the stronger the larger the masses socialism embraces and the higher the organisation and discipline of these masses. In consequence Social-Democracy, as the organisation that embodies the political experience of the proletariat, may at a certain moment become a direct obstacle in the way of an open collision between the workers and bourgeois reaction. In other words, the propagandist-socialist conservatism of the proletarian party may at a certain moment hold back the direct struggle of the proletariat for power. The enormous influence of the Russian revolution shows itself in its killing party routine, destroying conservatism and putting on the order of the day the question of an open trial of strength between the proletariat and capitalist reaction. The struggle for universal suffrage in Austria, Saxony and Prussia has grown sharper under the direct influence of the October strike in Russia. The revolution in the East infects the Western proletariat with revolutionary idealism and arouses in it the wish to speak to its enemy “in Russian”.
The Russian proletariat, finding itself in power, even if only as a result of a temporary conjuncture of our bourgeois revolution, will meet with the organised hostility of world reaction and with a readiness for organised support on the part of the world proletariat. Left to its own resources, the working class of Russia will inevitably be crushed by the counter-revolution at the moment when the peasantry turns its back on it. It will have no alternative but to link the fate of its political rule, and therefore the fate of the whole Russian revolution, with the fate of the socialist revolution in Europe. It will throw into the scales of the class struggle of the whole capitalist world the colossal political power of state that the temporary conjuncture of the Russian bourgeois revolution will give it. With state power in its hands, with the counter-revolution at its back and European reaction before it, it will send out to its brothers throughout the world the old rallying cry, which will this time be the cry for the last assault: Workers of all countries, unite!