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         A lecture by David North

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Equality, the Rights of Man and the Birth of Socialism  By David North

A Lecture By David North

The following was delivered as the opening lecture to the International Summer School on Marxism and the Fundamental Problems of the 20th Century, organised by the International Committee of the Fourth International and the Socialist Equality Party of Australia. The school was held in Sydney from January 3-10, 1998.

David North is the national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party in the US. He has lectured extensively in Europe, Asia, the US and the former Soviet Union on the history and principles of Marxism and the program and perspective of the Fourth International.

He is the author of several authoritative works on the Fourth International and the Russian Revolution, including The Heritage We Defend, Perestroika versus Socialism, Trotskyism versus Stalinism and In Defense of the Russian Revolution. Other recent lectures by David North include: Anti-Semitism, Fascism and the Holocaust: A critical review of Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners; Equality, the Rights of Man and the Birth of Socialism; and Socialism, Historical Truth and the Crisis of Political Thought in the United States.

Dedication

A year and a half ago, I was privileged to attend the lectures given by Professor Vadim Rogovin in Australia. At the conclusion of the second lecture in Melbourne, I had a very interesting discussion with a great friend and supporter of the movement on the role of Leon Trotsky. In the course of that discussion a number of ideas occurred to me which I discussed with her. She said she hoped that one day I would have a chance to elaborate these ideas in a lecture of my own. I said that I looked forward to that opportunity.

Unfortunately, that friend, Judy Tenenbaum, the mother of Linda Tenenbaum who is chairing this International Summer School, died early last year. It was, for all of us who knew her, a great loss. I would therefore like to dedicate this lecture to her memory. It is, from my standpoint, a responsibility and a debt that I very gladly repay to someone who always welcomed me with great warmth when I came to Australia and had a chance to visit her.

David North

Almost 100 years ago, in 1899, Franz Mehring, the great Marxist theoretician of the German Social Democracy, wrote that while the 19th century had been one of hope, the 20th would be that of revolutionary fulfillment. Mehring acknowledged that the march of historical progress might proceed along paths more complex than expected, and that there existed no prophet who could predict the future with absolute certainty. "But," he proclaimed, "with a joyous courage and proud self-confidence the class-conscious proletariat crosses over the threshold of the 20th century."

Mehring’s words expressed the widespread optimism that was felt throughout the socialist movement on the eve of the 20th century. He spoke for a movement that believed passionately in the historical mission of socialism. Hardly more than 50 years had passed since Marx and Engels had written the Communist Manifesto. Only 40 years before, Marx had lived in London as an impoverished and isolated revolutionary exile. And just 20 years before, Bismarck had illegalized most socialist activity in Germany. But as the 19th century drew to a close, the Social Democratic Party had survived the anti-Socialist laws to become the largest political party in the country. Moreover, beyond the borders of Germany, socialism had become a mighty international movement, among whose followers were to be found innumerable men and women of extraordinary courage, vision and, not infrequently, real genius.

The optimism to which the socialists gave a particularly revolutionary expression was felt broadly throughout society, including among the bourgeoisie and cultured layers of the middle class. In his memoirs written after the outbreak of World War II, the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig recalled, as one might a dear departed friend, the confidence which prevailed at the turn of the century:

"In its liberal idealism the 19th century had been truly convinced that it was on the straight and unmistakable path to the best of all possible worlds. One looked with contempt upon earlier epochs — with their wars, famines and revolts — as a time when people were immature and insufficiently enlightened … this belief in an uninterrupted, unstoppable ‘progress’ had for this Age the power of a religion; one believed in ‘progress’ more than one did in the Bible, and this gospel seemed to be utterly substantiated by the daily wonders produced by science and technology." [1] 

Very little of this faith has survived the traumas of the 20th century, which at times has seemed to be the graveyard of all man’s hopes. In the terrible light of all that has occurred — the two world wars, the innumerable regional bloodbaths, failed revolutions, and the Holocaust — the optimism of the last years of the 19th century has come to be seen as an expression of a naïve faith in human reason and an unjustified belief in progress.

There is little sense, as we approach the new millenium, that the future will see radical improvements in the human condition. At most, there is an uneasy and fragile hope that in the 21st century man will be spared the horrors of the last one. It is a sad fact that this century’s imminent demise arouses, more than anything else, a sense of relief, as if a particularly rough and unpleasant journey is finally coming to an end.

It is not hard to imagine the themes that will predominate in the fin-de-siècle retrospectives which will soon bombard us: the twentieth century as the century of unimaginable horrors, of mass murder and of totalitarian bestiality. It is undeniable that these descriptions are, to a certain degree, appropriate. But they can, through misuse and overuse, assume the character of platitudes. Indeed, in the hands of the media these phrases are transformed into sound bytes that serve to deaden consciousness, rather than enlighten it. Judging from what has already appeared on the subject, one can predict that the violence and tragedies of the 20th century will be invoked to demonstrate the destructive role of all "ideology" — especially Marxism — and thereby substantiate the futility of any revolutionary critique of the existing social order.

Taken as a whole, this century has witnessed the most gigantic upheavals in world history. In fact, what we call "world history" assumed a truly modern and concrete character in the form of the revolutionary struggles of the 20th century. Never before had the masses been active on such a dramatic scale, and with such a high degree of consciousness. Conversely, never had force and violence been employed with such ruthlessness to suppress revolutionary mass movements. In this regard, permit me to observe that the moralists of the bourgeois media generally fail to note that the worst crimes were those committed directly (as in Germany and Spain) or indirectly (as in the Soviet Union) in defense of the world capitalist system.

There has been no shortage of tragedy in the 20th century. But the tragedies are themselves an expression of the immensity of the historical tasks undertaken. For the first time, humanity placed on its agenda, as a practical task, the abolition of class society. In other words, man sought to bring the pre-history of the human race to an end. The Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917 represented, notwithstanding the subsequent fate of the Soviet Union, an ineradicable milestone in man’s historical progress. However unfashionable such "deterministic" conceptions may be at the present time, we believe that the most powerful tendencies of the law-governed development of man as a social being found a necessary, if only anticipatory, expression in the October Revolution. A renewed effort to complete what was begun in 1917 is, in the most profound sense of the word, inevitable.

Therefore, the paramount political and intellectual task of our time must be a study of October 1917 — the first proletarian socialist revolution — and its aftermath, not only in Soviet Russia, but throughout the world. This, in its totality, represents the most essential element within the corpus of strategic historical experiences from which Marxists must extract the theoretical and practical lessons that will guide the working class in the 21st century.

In the final analysis, any serious discussion of the prospects for socialism — and, therefore, of the future of mankind — must involve an examination of the October Revolution. This Revolution can be supported or opposed, but it cannot be ignored. The answers one gives to the problems of the present day are inseparably linked to one’s assessment of the October Revolution, its aftermath, fate, and legacy.

If the October Revolution was doomed to failure; if the Bolshevik seizure of power was, virtually from the start, a fatal enterprise; if Stalinism was the unavoidable outcome of Bolshevism; if the crimes of the Stalinist era flowed from the very concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat"; and if the final breakdown of the Soviet Union testifies to the bankruptcy of socialist economics, then Marxism, it must be confessed, has suffered a devastating political, intellectual and moral shipwreck. This is, at the present time, the dominant view among university academicians.

If, on the other hand, the October Revolution realistically contained within it other possibilities; if Stalinism was not the outcome of Bolshevism, but its antithesis; and if the rise of Stalinism was, in fact, opposed by Marxists, then the historical situation of revolutionary socialism is very different.

The International Committee of the Fourth International upholds the second position, and this necessarily brings us into conflict not only with the outright and unabashed defenders of reaction, but also with the mood of skepticism, demoralization and political renunciation that is commonly found among so many who, at least until recently, considered themselves socialists.

Professor Hobsbawm and the Russian Revolution

Especially among those who were influenced by Stalinism, the collapse of the Soviet Union — an event they had utterly failed to foresee — has radically changed their attitude toward the October Revolution and its place in history. Reaction, as Leon Trotsky once noted, not only conquers, it also convinces. Many long-time friends of the Soviet Union, or, perhaps more precisely, of the Soviet bureaucracy, who professed great admiration for Lenin and the "Great October Revolution" — and thought of themselves as very progressive people for doing so — now look upon the October Revolution as a disaster that should not have happened. The seizure of power was a terrible mistake. Thus, they believe, if there is any lesson to be drawn from October 1917 and its aftermath, it is that the entire revolutionary socialist project, as envisaged by Marx and implemented by Lenin, has been tragically and irrevocably refuted.

This is the perspective that emerges from a new book by the British historian, Eric Hobsbawm, who was for many years a member of the Communist Party. Entitled On History, it consists of various essays and lectures he has written over the last quarter century. While the writings cover a wide range of topics, the dominant theme of this volume is the historical significance of the October Revolution.

As I will have many harsh things to say about Professor Hobsbawm’s book, allow me to preface my remarks by stating quite clearly that in the course of his long professional career as a historian he has written many valuable scholarly works. The volumes he devoted to the French Revolution and the development of capitalism in the 19th century were thoughtful and sensitive studies. A more recent book, a critical analysis of the role of nationalism and the nation state, offered many worthwhile and timely insights.

However, the subject of the Russian Revolution is dangerous territory for Professor Hobsbawm, for in this field his scholarship is compromised by his politics. Hobsbawm once confessed that as a member of the CPGB he had avoided writing about the Russian Revolution and the 20th century, because the political line of his party would have prevented him from being entirely truthful. Why he chose to remain a member of a party that would have compelled him to tell lies is a question to which he has never given a convincing answer. At any rate, it would have been best for him, and no loss to the writing of history, had he continued to limit himself to events before 1900.

The most important document in Hobsbawm’s book is a lecture that he delivered fairly recently, in December 1996, entitled "Can We Write the History of the Russian Revolution?"

In opening the lecture, Professor Hobsbawm makes a valid and important point: "[T]he most burning debates about twentieth-century Russian history have not been about what happened, but about what might have happened." [2]  Discussion of the Soviet Union, he notes, thus raises the problem of "counterfactual" history — that is, in considering a particular historical situation, to what extent is it possible to make valid comments and judgments about what did not happen, or about what might have happened. Hobsbawm is certainly correct when he observes that discussion of Soviet history raises innumerable counterfactual questions. Of all the counterfactual questions that might be asked about it, the most important is whether the Russian Revolution could have followed a substantially different path from that which led to the Stalinist dictatorship.

Though writing as one who is sympathetic to the Revolution, who maintains that the policies of Lenin and the Bolshevik Party proceeded from what they perceived to be the hard realities of the existing political situation in 1917, and that they rose to power on a powerful, even irresistible wave of popular support, Hobsbawm ultimately concludes that there is no basis for arguing that the Revolution could have turned out substantially different than it actually did.

It is important to examine carefully the method by which he arrives at this conclusion. In contrast to right-wing academic charlatans like Pipes and Malia, for whom the October Revolution is merely a sinister conspiracy imposed upon the Russian people by ruthless socialist ideologues, Hobsbawm certainly recognizes the immense objective forces that were at work in the Revolution. However, his treatment of objective forces is of an extremely one-sided character; that is, he fails to offer any substantial assessment of the role of the subjective factor — of parties, policies, political leaders, mass consciousness, etc. — in the historical process. Hobsbawm, as a serious historian, does know that the subjective factor exists and exerts an influence on the outcome of events. But what he has to say about the relation between the objective and subjective factors is confused, inconsistent, inexact and vague. He acknowledges, in writing about Lenin and Stalin, that "Without the input of these two men, the history of the Russian Revolution would certainly have been very different." [3]  Yet he fails to say anything very definite about what in that history would have been different.

Hobsbawm would not deny that Lenin played an important role in the Russian Revolution. But he is very reluctant to consider counterfactuals — alternatives — in a historical scenario where Lenin is not included. Had Lenin not made it back to Russia from Switzerland in 1917, there is not much more one can say, writes Hobsbawm, other than that things might have, or might not have, turned out very differently. "And you can’t get any further, except into fiction." [4]

In another passage in his lecture, referring to the historical role of Stalin, Hobsbawm states that one "can argue quite plausibly that there was room for more or less harshness in the project of rapid industrialization by Soviet state planning, but if the USSR was committed to such a project then, however great the genuine commitment of millions to it, it was going to require a good deal of coercion, even if the USSR had been led by someone less utterly ruthless and cruel than Stalin." [5] 

In both passages, the underlying conception is that in the presence of immense objective forces, the subjective element cannot assume any decisive significance.

This line of argument, in a lecture devoted to the consideration of historical alternatives for the Russian Revolution, becomes an outright apology for Stalinism. Hobsbawm argues as follows: The Bolshevik Party seized power in 1917 in the hope that a revolution in Germany, which Lenin believed to be imminent, would come to the rescue of Soviet Russia. This was a disastrous political miscalculation. Whatever Lenin’s beliefs to the contrary, there were no serious prospects for a German revolution at the end of the World War. As for the claim that the German working class was betrayed by the Social-Democratic leaders in 1918, Hobsbawm dismisses that as a myth. "A German October revolution, or anything like it, was not seriously on and therefore didn’t have to be betrayed." [6]

I do not wish to debate Hobsbawm’s assessment of the prospects for a German Revolution, except to say that I believe he is very wrong. His mistake flows from the same fatalistic conception of the relation between the objective and subjective factors that I referred to above. He ignores the impact of subjective politics on the course of events. I will come back to this issue, but I wish first to cite that passage which sums up Hobsbawm’s argument and which shows how his one-sided approach turns into an apology for Stalinism. As there was no chance for a German version of October 1917, "The Russian Revolution was destined to build socialism in one backward and soon utterly ruined country…" [7]  Thus, the Bolsheviks had seized political power in 1917 "with an obviously unrealistic program of socialist revolution." [8]  Here, by the way, Hobsbawm appears to contradict himself by acknowledging the immense and decisive role of the subjective factor — that is, he assigns immense and devastating historical consequences to Lenin’s mistake. At any rate, Lenin, however sincere his beliefs and honorable his intentions, gambled and failed. Socialism in one country was the result. "History must start from what happened," declares Hobsbawm. "The rest is speculation." [9]

This is a rather simplistic conception, for "what happened" — if taken as nothing more than what was reported in the newspapers of the day — is certainly only a small part of the historical process. After all, history must concern itself not simply with "what happened," but also — and this is far more important — why one or another thing happened or did not happen, and what might have happened. The moment one considers an event — i.e., "what happened" — one finds oneself compelled to consider process and context. Yes, in 1924 the Soviet Union adopted the policy of "socialism in one country." That "happened." But the opposition to "socialism in one country" also "happened." The conflict between the Stalinist bureaucracy and the Left Opposition, about which Hobsbawm says not one word, "happened." Inasmuch as he deliberately excludes, or dismisses as unimportant, the forces of opposition which sought to impart to the policies of the Soviet Union a different direction, his definition of "what happened" consists of nothing more than a one-sided, one-dimensional, pragmatic and vulgar simplification of a very complex historical reality. For Hobsbawm, starting from "what happened" simply means starting, and ending, with "who won."

But even the most conscientious narrator of historical events can only deal with a small portion of "what happened." The study and writing of history always involves a significant degree of selection and specialization. This selection and specialization, however, should at least be true to the historical process. It should draw together the main threads from which the historical process was woven. After all, "what happened" may be just as well defined in terms of the policy options that were rejected as by those that were implemented. Hobsbawm proceeds, however, as if the policies advanced by Trotsky ceased to be of real historical interest once they were rejected by the Communist Party and he was expelled and exiled.

If one delves beneath the academician’s elegant prose, one is left with a rather "meat and potatoes" approach to history. "Stalin won," Hobsbawm is telling us, "and there is really no point considering what might have happened if he hadn’t." To go beyond "what happened" — that is, to examine the historical process in the full range of its concrete possibilities — is mere speculation, i.e., a departure from historical reality and a flight toward insupportable judgments and self-satisfying illusions.

This commonsense approach is based on the type of one-dimensional vulgarization of the historical process considered above. But if we include in "what happened" the contradictory and conflicting elements in the historical process, the gulf between "what happened" and "what did not happen" is not quite the speculative abyss suggested by Hobsbawm. After all, a fuller and more complete study of the historical process would convert at least a portion of "what did not happen" into "what might have happened."

To consider "what might have happened" on the basis of a study of the alternatives available to those making decisions is not merely empty speculation. If we exclude "what might have happened" from a consideration of history, then there would really be no reason to study history at all. History should, after all, teach us something.

During the first half of the 20th century the international bourgeoisie experienced not a few major catastrophes. It made a careful study of these experiences and learned something from them. John Maynard Keynes was a bitter critic of the peace treaties that followed the First World War. Chastened by the disasters which flowed from Versailles, the bourgeoisie made the conceptions of Keynes the basis of its post-World War II policies.

Of course, there is a limit beyond which the consideration of historical alternatives — i.e., "the road not taken" — becomes unacceptably speculative. Also, from a methodological standpoint, the consideration of alternatives may underestimate, or even ignore, other objective factors that may have significantly reduced the possibility of historical evolution assuming a form substantially different from what actually occurred. Marxists, certainly, have made valid criticisms of precisely such illegitimate speculative approaches to the study of history.

The role of consciousness in the making of history

However, this is not the sort of cautionary and valid objection that Hobsbawm is making. Rather, in his consideration of the history of the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union, he adopts an ultra-deterministic, super-objectivist and fatalistic approach: there were no plausible alternatives to "what happened." This is justified on the basis of a simplistic identification of the processes of social revolution with those of nature.

"But at this stage we must leave speculation aside and return to the actual situation of a Russia in revolution. Great mass revolutions erupting from below — and Russia in 1917 was probably the most awesome example of such a revolution in history — are in some sense ‘natural phenomena.’ They are like earthquakes and giant floods, especially when, as in Russia, the superstructure of state and national institutions has virtually disintegrated. They are to a large extent uncontrollable." [p. 249]

There is one profound difference between earthquakes and floods, on the one hand, and revolutions, on the other. In neither the movement of tectonic plates nor rivers is thought involved. The earth does not decide to rumble nor does a river weigh the consequences of overflowing its banks. In social revolutions, however, consciousness is an immense factor. At one or another level, revolution involves the action of thinking human beings. From the revolutionary who has devoted his entire life to its preparation, to the simple worker who has decided that the conditions of life have become so intolerable that he must fight the existing order, social revolution is a conscious act. However powerful the "purely" objective, i.e., economic, technological, etc., forces that underlie the social eruption — and in society there are no phenomena that are "purely objective," in the sense that every objective process proceeds through the activity of human subjects — a revolutionary situation must signify that the objective impulses have gained access to the human mind and have been translated into fairly complex forms of political thought. Thus, the comparison of social revolutions to various destructive natural phenomena, while valid in a certain limited sense, is among the most misused of metaphors. Unless the essential distinction between the acts of nature and the acts of man is indicated, the metaphor serves only to mystify, distort and falsify the historical process.

Ignoring this essential distinction, Hobsbawm issues the following extraordinary injunction:

"We must stop thinking of the Russian Revolution in terms of the Bolsheviks’ or anyone else’s aims and intentions, their long-term strategy, and other Marxists’ critiques of their practices."

If one were to accept Hobsbawm’s instructions, it would be simply impossible to provide a coherent narrative of, let alone understand, the Russian Revolution. They betray his inability to understand precisely that which comprises the most significant feature of historical development in the twentieth century: the unprecedented and extraordinary role of consciousness in the making of history. The emergence of mass socialist parties expressed a new historical phenomenon that only became possible through the interaction of two interrelated processes — the rise of the working class and the development of Marxism.

Even by the late 19th century, the program of social revolution was inscribed on the banner of political parties. Armed intellectually by Marx and Engels with an insight into the objective laws of social development, the leaders of the new socialist parties set out to prepare the working class for the anti-capitalist revolution in which it was destined to play the leading and decisive role.

Having acquired a scientifically-grounded insight into the laws of social development — and thus being able to interpret contemporaneously, to a degree hitherto impossible, the significance and implications of political events as they unfolded — the analyses, perspectives, strategies and programs of political organizations assumed an altogether unprecedented role in the historical process. History ceased to simply "happen." It was anticipated, prepared for and, to an extent hitherto impossible, consciously directed. The generation of Marxists that entered into political activity in the closing years of the 19th century or the first years of the 20th expected revolution as the consequence of socio-economic contradictions that had been identified and analyzed. They conceived of their own, or their opponents’, political work in terms of its ultimate consequences for the revolution. Only in this context is it possible to understand why such overriding importance was attached in Marxist polemics to uncovering the class interests served by different policies and identifying the "class nature" of political tendencies.

The very development of the Russian Revolution itself revealed the profound and far-reaching objective significance of the aims, intentions, strategies and critiques of all the political parties and tendencies that were, in one way or another, active in Russia in the years before 1917. What the principal political actors did between April and October 1917, where they lined up in the decisive battles, was prefigured in the great theoretical and political struggles that took place during the previous two decades.

It sounds superficially plausible to describe the Revolution as an uncontrollable catastrophe that rendered the plans of mice and men irrelevant. But if consciousness counts for so little, if the element of theoretical foresight is insignificant amidst the chaos of a revolutionary epoch, then how should one evaluate the work of Lenin and Trotsky, both prior to, during and especially after 1917?

In the aftermath of the 1905 Revolution, the various factions of Russian Social Democracy sought to define the tasks of the working class in light of the experiences of that immense eruption. The answers they gave were to determine not only their own role in subsequent events, but also the future course of the Russian Revolution. Hobsbawm insists that "What Lenin aimed at — and in the last analysis Lenin got his way in the Party — was irrelevant."

But this claim is belied by the simple fact that without the reorientation of the Bolshevik Party in the spring of 1917 on the basis of Lenin’s April Theses — that is, the adoption of the strategic line previously formulated by Leon Trotsky — there would have been no seizure of power by the Bolsheviks. Revolutions are, indeed, mighty events; but policy and program — the products of consciousness — play within them an immense and even, under certain conditions, decisive role.

Hobsbawm seeks to minimize, to the very point of denying, the role of consciousness in the revolutionary process. Lenin, he writes, "could have no strategy or perspective beyond choosing, day by day, between the decisions needed for immediate survival and the ones that risked immediate disaster. Who could afford to consider the possible long-term consequences for the revolution of decisions which had to be taken now or else there would be an end to the revolution and no further consequences to consider?"

This portrayal of Lenin as a simple realpolitiker, reacting pragmatically and intuitively to events as they arose, hardly makes sense even within the terms presented by Hobsbawm. The defense of the revolution was, in itself, a strategic conception; and its successful realization depended upon a conscious insight into the class structure and dynamics of Russian society. Lenin and Trotsky were, quite obviously, very busy men during the period of Revolution and Civil War. But they did not stop thinking. A study of their writings — above all, Trotsky’s great manifestos and speeches prepared for the congresses of the Communist International — still provoke astonishment at the depth and breadth of their strategic vision. Of all the political forces operating in the maelstrom of Revolution and Civil War, only the Bolsheviks were able to formulate a strategic line which, despite extraordinary difficulties, provided a unifying banner for tens of millions of people in a vast and culturally disparate country. As E.H. Carr has aptly noted, the success of the Bolsheviks in the Civil War depended to no small extent upon the fact that Lenin’s genius was of a profoundly creative, rather than negatively destructive, character.

Hobsbawm’s belittling of the significance of the elements of political consciousness makes it all but impossible to understand how the Bolsheviks came to power and why they triumphed in the Civil War. If political parties are merely at the mercy of history’s volcanic eruptions, it follows that the victory of the Bolsheviks was due either to their luck or their opponents’ misfortunes — depending on your point of view.

When applied to the post-revolutionary period, Hobsbawm’s position, as I have already noted, serves essentially as an apology for Stalinism. Buffeted by uncontrollable historical forces to which it could respond only with desperate improvisations, the fate of Bolshevism was sealed by 1921. As Hobsbawm writes, "By this time its future course was more or less prescribed." [10]  In another essay which appears in the same volume, Hobsbawm expresses this view even more emphatically: "Unfortunately I can think of no realistic forecast which ought to have envisaged the long-term future of the USSR as very different from what it has actually become." [11] 

Thus, while the course of Soviet history might have developed along lines less cruel, the outcome of the historical process was basically decided by 1921. Stalin simply played out, though with excessive violence, the hand he had been dealt by the preceding course of development.

Hobsbawm, then, leaves us with a "left" variation of the standard reactionary thesis: that there could not have been an alternative to Stalinism. He, of course, does not agree that Stalinist totalitarianism was the inevitable product of Marxism itself. Rather, he argues that Stalinism arose inevitably and inexorably out of the objective conditions that confronted the Soviet Union after 1917. To speak of an alternative to what actually happened is to engage in mere speculation. Objective conditions did not permit an alternative. The policies of the regime might have been somewhat less cruel, but this would have only been a difference of degree, not of kind.

What are our differences with this assessment? After all, the Trotskyists have always insisted that the Stalinist degeneration of the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet state was, in the final analysis, the product of unfavorable objective conditions — principally, the historic backwardness of Russia, the economic devastation produced by seven uninterrupted years of World War, Revolution and Civil War, and, finally, the protracted isolation of the Soviet state that resulted from the defeats suffered by the European, and especially the German, working class after World War I.

However, there is a critical difference between recognizing the objective material foundations of Stalinism and declaring that from those foundations there could only be one political outcome — the irreversible bureaucratic degeneration of the USSR and its ultimate collapse in 1991. One little thing is missing from this conception of Soviet history: the role of politics, of program, of the struggle of tendencies, of consciousness — the significance of the decisions made by individuals, motivated by a greater or lesser degree of political insight into the historical process, about what they intended to do. History is transformed into an entirely abstract and super-deterministic process: everything is determined by blind and uncontrollable forces. History swept the Bolsheviks into power; and then swept them, if not out of power, then at least into a blind alley.

Yes, Hobsbawm has already told us that "We must stop thinking of the Russian Revolution in terms of the Bolsheviks’ or anyone else’s aims and intentions, their long-term strategy, and other Marxists’ critiques of their practice." What this really means is that there is no reason to pay any attention whatsoever to the political struggles that raged within the Bolshevik Party during the 1920s. What Trotsky wrote about Stalinism, the criticisms he made of Soviet policy, the conflict between the long-term strategy he advanced and that of the Stalinist leadership is, as far as Hobsbawm is concerned, of very little importance. The fate of the USSR was already set in stone by 1921, and there was nothing that the Communist regime could do — regardless of who was in power — that would have made any fundamental difference. One suspects Hobsbawm believes that arguments to the contrary amount to little more than the pointless speculation of die-hard Trotskyists. It is therefore not surprising that his lecture makes absolutely no reference to the struggle of Trotsky and the Left Opposition against Stalinism. Indeed, in a 300-page book of essays and lectures whose central theme is the place of the October Revolution in the history of the 20th century, Trotsky’s name appears only once.

Hobsbawm does not, strictly speaking, hold Marxism responsible for Stalinism. But if, as he insists, the Stalinist dictatorship was the only plausible outcome of the October Revolution, it would be hard to make the case that the Bolshevik seizure of power served the interests of the working class and the cause of historical progress. One is left, when all is said and done, with the conclusion — at which Hobsbawm strongly hints — that October 1917 was a dreadful mistake and it would probably have been far better if Kamenev, the opponent of the insurrection, rather than Lenin, had prevailed in the deliberations of the Bolshevik Party.

Hobsbawm’s argument not only calls into question the political legitimacy of the October Revolution; the validity of the entire socialist project is placed under a very dark and menacing cloud. After all, it is hard to imagine that any social revolution would occur under conditions so perfect that its ultimate success was guaranteed. By its very nature, revolution - which is inconceivable without a massive dislocation and breakdown of the political and economic mechanisms of the existing order - implies a leap, at least to some considerable degree, into the unknown. The objective conditions will be fraught with danger. It would be foolhardy, if not criminally irresponsible, for a political organization to summon the working class to a revolutionary insurrection if it did not believe in the possibility of mastering those conditions, influencing their further development and subordinating them to the aims of its revolutionary program.

What reasonable basis is there, however, for such confidence if the lesson of October 1917 and its aftermath is that revolutionary parties are simply at the mercy of objective conditions; that they are merely hapless instruments of a historical process which compels them to carry out whatever orders they are given, no matter how terrible?

Thus, Hobsbawm’s super-deterministic position provides not only an apology for Stalin — "objective conditions made him do it" — but also vindicates the classical liberal bourgeois democratic argument against revolution as an instrument of social change.

But Hobsbawm’s position is without substance: it is based, first, on a false method, and, second, on a rather slipshod — I would like to avoid the word dishonest — treatment of facts. His fatalistic super-determinism has nothing in common with the method of historical materialism. Hobsbawm invokes objective conditions as if they were a set of marching orders, which leave parties and people no choice but to do as they are told. Such a conception is simplistic in the extreme.

Trotskyism versus Stalinism

The divisions which opened up in the Russian Communist Party after 1921 testify to the fact that the objective conditions generated a wide range of responses. How leaders of the party responded to the problems, and the tendencies that developed around these responses, reflected not only their different evaluations of the objective conditions, but also their relation to different and even mutually hostile social forces.

Stalin’s response to "objective conditions" tended more and more openly to reflect the social position and articulate the material interests of the growing state bureaucracy, whose personnel were recruited from the urban lower middle class.

The policies of Trotsky and the Left Opposition, on the other hand, articulated in a highly conscious form the interests of the industrial proletariat. To the extent that the economic and social dislocation produced by the Civil War seriously weakened this social force, which was the principal constituency for Marxist politics in the USSR, conditions for the development and implementation of socialist policies grew unfavorable.

These "unfavorable conditions" however, must not be considered as analogous to an uncontrollable meteorological phenomenon, but in concrete political terms - that is, as the expression of the struggle of antagonistic social forces. As the position of the industrial proletariat — decimated by the Civil War — weakened, the Marxist leaders of the working class encountered increasingly ruthless and violent opposition from those elements within the party and state bureaucracy who considered the policies advanced by the Left Opposition threatening to what they perceived to be their material interests.

This was the substance of the political struggle that raged within the Communist Party and Communist International throughout the 1920s.

At this point I will make a series of statements that Professor Hobsbawm would regard as impermissibly speculative and beyond the pale of proper historical analysis.

First, had the Left Opposition prevailed in the struggle within the Russian Communist Party, the cause of international socialism would have been immeasurably strengthened. At the very least, the counterrevolutionary catastrophes of the 1930s — above all, the victory of German fascism — would probably have been avoided.

Second, the entire character of Soviet economic and political life would have developed along incomparably more progressive lines. The argument that the downward spiral of the USSR toward the totalitarian bestiality of the 1930s was pre-determined by uncontrollable "objective conditions" simply does not hold water. The very fact that "objective conditions" became increasingly unfavorable for the development of the USSR along socialist lines was, above all else, the political consequence of the defeat of Trotsky and the Left Opposition.

Third, and this point is essentially a summation of the first two, the defeat of Trotsky and the Left Opposition set the stage for all the subsequent tragedies that were to befall the Soviet Union, the international working class and the socialist movement, and beneath whose shadow we still live today.

I wish to add a further point: No discussion on the fate of socialism in the 20th century deserves to be taken seriously unless it considers, with the necessary care, the consequences of Trotsky’s defeat. It is essential to consider, in other words, not only "what happened" under Stalin; but also "what well might have happened" had Trotsky prevailed.

Is this an impossibly speculative venture? One must acknowledge that it is reasonable to ask whether such an enterprise is intellectually legitimate. Certainly, there is a danger that in dealing with counterfactuals we may find ourselves engaged in unjustified speculation and outright wishful thinking. In imagining alternative paths of historical development, we must not go beyond the range of possibilities that were actually available at the time. Also, we must retain a firm sense — based on a thorough study and comprehension of the economic foundations, technological level and class structure of the given society — of the limits within which the subjective activity of man, itself the product and expression of specific historically-formed conditions, could influence and alter that objectively-given environment.

For example, a historian of the Tudor Age could — if he cared to — consider what might have happened had Catherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VIII, given birth to a male heir. What effect would that have had on the development of England? Certain educated guesses are possible, but we would be unable to proceed very far before finding ourselves in terrain that is clearly of a highly speculative character. It is probably true that Catherine, had she produced a boy, and had that boy survived childhood, would not have found herself being sued for divorce by her highly libidinous husband. It is therefore possible, but by no means certain, that the remaining years of Henry’s reign would not have been, at least in terms of his personal life, quite as colorful as they turned out to be.

However, could we go on from there to conclude that England, having avoided a royal marital crisis, would have remained a most Catholic country? That would certainly be quite a stretch. After all, the divorce crisis only brought to a head a political crisis that was deeply rooted in socio-economic processes that were sweeping across Europe. The really interesting and critical question that must be answered when studying the reign of Henry VIII is precisely why what began as a not particularly unusual crisis of dynastic succession turned into a struggle between church and state with profoundly revolutionary consequences. Against this backdrop, the motivations of individuals — who were largely unaware of the historical dimensions and consequences of their actions — do not appear to be all that decisive.

Even if we move forward several centuries, to the epoch of the French Revolution, historical personalities are still responding with only a limited consciousness of the weight of the objective historical forces bearing down on them. There is, of course, a great difference between the historical consciousness of a Robespierre and that of a Henry VIII or even an Oliver Cromwell. By the late 18th century the conscious awareness of social forces and interests was certainly more acute than it could have been a century or two earlier. But the force of historical necessity had not yet been translated into the appropriate forms of scientific thought — an achievement that only became possible with the development of modern capitalism and the emergence of the working class. Thus, in each of the stages of the French Revolution, notwithstanding the brilliance of its leading personalities, events were shaped by the overwhelming force of historical necessity.

This does not mean that things might not have worked out differently. One can imagine any number of "counterfactuals" that might have altered the course of events. But given the level of social development and the still limited range of man’s insight into the underlying laws of historical development, those changes in the course of events would not have been introduced by the political actors themselves with anything approaching a scientific understanding of the consequences of their actions.

In the France of 1794, there existed neither the objective means, nor, flowing from that, the corresponding level of scientific insight, to consciously influence — that is, to act with an understanding of the objective logic of socio-economic processes — the course of historical development. Undoubtedly, the members of the Committee of Public Safety acted consciously, and with a not altogether unsubtle sense of the social forces active in the Revolution. Robespierre, for example, was certainly aware that Danton had powerful supporters among sections of the bourgeoisie. He sensed the danger that might flow from a confrontation with the Indulgents. But Robespierre could not be aware, in a modern sense, of the historical implications of his actions. The objective preconditions for the development of historical materialism had not yet matured, and the real forces which motivated historical behavior were still perceived and interpreted in various mystified ideological forms (i.e., Reason, the Rights of Man, Virtue, Fraternity).

Thus, any discussion of alternative historical outcomes for the French Revolution tends to veer rapidly toward hypotheses of a highly speculative character. Inasmuch as the leading personages could not foresee the historical consequences of their own actions, we can hardly claim with any degree of certainty that the victory of one faction of the Jacobins rather than another would have fundamentally changed the subsequent course of history, let alone state precisely how it would have been altered.

With the advent of Marxism the relation of man to his own history underwent a profound transformation. Man acquired
the capacity to consciously interpret his thought and actions in objective socio-economic terms, and, thereby, to precisely
locate his own activity within a chain of objective historical causality.

This is why a consideration of alternative outcomes to the struggle inside the Russian Communist Party and the Communist International is not a hopelessly speculative enterprise. Here it is not the case, as it was in France 130 years earlier, of political factions groping in the dark, moved by socio-economic forces of which they were unaware, defining and justifying their actions in largely idealistic terms.

Rather, Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition entered into struggle with an extraordinarily far-reaching understanding of the historical implications of the issues confronting the Soviet Union and the international socialist movement. In both his analysis of the domestic and international contradictions of the USSR and the warnings he directed to the Stalinists, Trotsky left no doubt as to the ultimate consequences of the growing authority of the bureaucracy and the false policies of the Soviet leadership.

"Does bureaucratism bear within it a danger of degeneration, or doesn’t it?," Trotsky asked in December 1923. "Anyone who denied it would be blind."

This was written in the opening round of the struggle against the emerging Stalinist regime. Even at that early stage Trotsky had already raised the possibility that "the progressive degeneration" of the Communist Party could become one of "the political paths by which the victory of the counterrevolution might come about." [12]

However serious the danger, Trotsky argued that conscious political foresight based on a Marxist analysis provided the party with the possibility of overcoming the crisis:

"If we set forth these hypotheses bluntly, it is of course not because we consider them historically probable (on the contrary, their probability is at a minimum), but because only such a way of putting the question makes possible a more correct and all-sided historical orientation and, consequently, the possibility of all possible preventive measures. The superiority of us Marxists is in distinguishing and grasping new tendencies and new dangers even when they are still only in an embryonic stage." [13]

In considering whether the victory of the Left Opposition would have significantly altered the course of Soviet and world history, we propose to deal concretely with three issues that were of fundamental significance in determining the fate of the USSR: 1) Soviet and inner-party democracy, 2) economic policy and 3) international policy.

It is noteworthy that virtually none of those political and intellectual tendencies that insist, in one form or another, that the Soviet Union was doomed from the outset — whether on account of the "fatal flaws" of Marxism or the impossible objective conditions confronting Bolshevism — ever attempt a concrete analysis of the policies advanced by the Left Opposition. Trotsky remains to this day "The Great Unmentionable" in Soviet history. On the rare occasions he is referred to, it is usually to misrepresent and falsify his work.

Both the silence and the lies represent in their own ways a form of tribute to the historical significance of Trotsky’s struggle against Stalinism. All the claims that the demise of the USSR was inevitable, that the socialist revolution is by its very nature a utopian undertaking, that, therefore, the October Revolution led the Russian working class into a blind alley from which there could be no escape, that Marxism leads inevitably to totalitarianism, etc., are refuted by the historical record left by the Left Opposition. It clearly represented, in terms of the policies it advanced, a viable, theoretically acute and powerful political opposition to the Stalinist bureaucracy.

Soviet and inner-party democracy

Let us now proceed to the three issues that I have singled out. First of all, the question of Soviet and inner-party democracy: It is an historical fact, proven by the 1923 document that I have already cited, that Trotsky recognized at a very early stage of the struggle — even before the term Stalinism had entered into political usage — that the growth of bureaucratism and the demise of inner-party democracy posed a potentially mortal threat to Bolshevism and the survival of the Soviet regime. In countless documents, Trotsky and the Left Opposition insisted that the intelligent and correct formulation of Soviet policy, not to mention the political education of a Marxist cadre and the broadest layers of the working class, was inconceivable without a democratic regime within the Bolshevik Party.

"It is in contradictions and differences of opinion that the working out of the party’s public opinion inevitably takes place," Trotsky wrote in 1923. "To localize this process only within the apparatus, which is then charged to furnish the party with the fruits of its labors in the forms of slogans, orders, etc., is to sterilize the party ideologically and politically … the leading party bodies must heed the voices of the broad party masses and must not consider every criticism a manifestation of factionalism and thereby cause conscientious and disciplined party members to withdraw into closed circles and fall into factionalism…" [14]

Trotsky rejected the self-serving claims of the apparatus that opposition to the decisions of the ruling bodies of the party
was invariably the expression of the interests of hostile class forces:

"It frequently happens that the party is able to resolve one and the same problem by different means, and differences arise as to which of these means is the better, the more expeditious, the more economical. These differences may, depending on the question, embrace considerable sections of the party, but that does not necessarily mean that you have there two class tendencies.

"There is no doubt that we shall have not one but dozens of disagreements in the future, for our path is difficult and the political tasks as well as the economic questions of socialist organization will unfailingly engender differences of opinion and temporary groupings of opinion. The political verification of all the nuances of opinion by Marxist analysis will always be one of the most efficacious preventive measures for our party. But it is this concrete Marxist verification that must be resorted to, and not the stereotyped phrases which are the defense mechanism of bureaucratism." [15]

The nature of the party regime impacted directly on the tasks of socialist construction. By its very nature, as Trotsky explained on innumerable occasions, efficient economic planning requires the interested and democratic participation of the masses in the decision-making process. It is incompatible with bureaucratic fiat. Thus, even as Trotsky offered a farsighted evaluation of the contradictions of the Soviet economy and concrete proposals for their amelioration, he stressed that both the formulation and implementation of a correct economic policy depended upon a democratic party regime.

The importance of inner-party democracy was not simply one of abstract principle, nor was its practical significance limited to its direct impact on the field of economic policy. What was ultimately at stake in the struggle waged by Trotsky in defense of Soviet democracy was the fate of the entire heritage of socialist culture and revolutionary thought as it had developed in the international workers’ movement over
the previous century. The bureaucracy dealt with Marxism as it did with Lenin’s corpse: it was mummified and made the object of ritualistic and semi-mystical incantations. After 1927 Marxism, for all intents and purposes, ceased to play any role whatsoever in the formulation of Soviet policy. The defeat of the Opposition sounded the death knell for the development of critical thought in virtually every sphere of intellectual and cultural activity.

The Left Opposition's Economic Policy

I must at this point turn to the second issue — the economic policy of the Left Opposition. This is a vast subject that is not reducible to a few quotations. I will, however, offer several citations that at least indicate the profound difference between the Opposition’s approach to problems of Soviet economic development and that of the Stalinist bureaucracy.

The conflict between the Opposition and the Stalinists over economic policy centered on the most fundamental question of historical perspective: Was it possible for the Soviet Union to build socialism on the basis of its own national resources, or was the socialist development of the USSR dependent, in the final analysis, upon the victory of the proletarian revolution in the advanced capitalist countries of Western Europe and North America? Until 1924 the unquestioned premise of Soviet policy — indeed, that which underlay the entire revolutionary project undertaken by the Bolsheviks in October 1917 — was that the seizure of power in Russia was only "the first shot" of the world socialist revolution. A nationally self-contained socialist state, especially one based on a country as economically and culturally backward as Russia, could not be viable. Stalin’s introduction, in the autumn of 1924, of the "theory" of "socialism in one country" — which was not really a "theory" at all, but rather a crudely pragmatic response to the defeat of the German revolution during the previous year and the temporary decline of the revolutionary movement in Western Europe — ran counter to the internationalist orientation propounded by the Bolsheviks under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky.

Professor Hobsbawm would not deny that the policy of "socialism in one country" was a major departure from the original vision of the October Revolution. However, he implies that this vision was not all too realistic inasmuch as the Russian Revolution was unavoidably "destined" to build, or at least attempt to build, socialism in one country. If pressed to defend this position, I suspect that Hobsbawm would be obliged to argue that while, in a general abstract sense, theoretical doctrine stood on the side of Trotsky, practical reality was firmly on Stalin’s side. Trotsky’s conception of world revolution made for compelling reading, but had little to offer in the actual context of the political and economic situation confronting the USSR in the mid-1920s. Thus, to claim that Trotskyist policies presented a real alternative to those adopted by Stalin is to indulge one’s own revolutionary illusions.

Of course, I cannot be sure that Hobsbawm would argue in precisely this way. I am, to some degree, engaged in a bit of "speculation." But even if this is not quite the view of Hobsbawm, I have heard it expressed many times by bourgeois historians, not to mention out-and-out apologists for Stalinism.

The basic problem with this argument is that it proceeds from a deeply biased and stereotyped conception of Trotsky’s views and the nature of his differences with Stalin. It is much easier to dismiss Trotsky’s perspective if it is reduced to an impatient and romantic desire to storm the barricades of world capitalism, in contrast to Stalin’s more astute and sober preoccupation with the development of the Soviet Union, based on a realistic appraisal of the national resources at its disposal.

Of course, we cannot compel those who write on Soviet history to actually read what Trotsky wrote. However, those who study his articles and books with the seriousness they require — and Trotsky was, in my opinion, among the very greatest political thinkers and writers of the twentieth century — will discover that it was especially in his analyses of the contradictions and problems of Soviet economic development that Trotsky’s revolutionary internationalism found its most brilliant and subtle expression.

There is nothing in Trotsky’s writings that would support the claim that he believed Soviet economic policy should consist simply of waiting for the working class in Western Europe or the United States to seize power. In fact, the main premise of his treatment of Soviet economic problems was that the USSR had to work out policies that would enable it to survive and develop in a more or less protracted transitional era - that is, a period whose duration could not be predicted — during which the Soviet Union would exist within an international economic environment dominated by the capitalist system.

Notwithstanding its program of "socialism in one country," the Stalinist bureaucracy through the 1920s still maintained, however inconsistently, the commitment of the USSR to international revolution. Trotsky’s chief criticism of this program, considered from the standpoint of economic development, was not that it categorically denied the importance, at least in the long run, of world revolution for the fate of the Soviet Union. Rather, he stressed that the nationalist orientation that underlay "socialism in one country" led to autarchic policies that dangerously underestimated the impact - direct and indirect - of world economy on the Soviet Union.

It may seem paradoxical that Trotsky, the great protagonist of world revolution, placed greater emphasis than any other Soviet leader of his time on the overriding importance of close economic links between the USSR and the world capitalist market. Soviet economic development, he insisted, required both access to the resources of the world market and the intelligent utilization of the international division of labor. The development of economic planning required at minimum a knowledge of competitive advantage and efficiencies at the international level. It served no rational economic purpose for the USSR to make a virtue of frittering away its own limited resources in a vain effort to duplicate on Soviet soil what it could obtain at far less cost on the world capitalist market.

"Resting our hope on an isolated development of socialism and upon a rate of economic development independent of world economy distorts the whole outlook," Trotsky wrote in 1927. "It puts our planning leadership off the track, and offers no guiding threads for a correct regulation of our relations with world economy. We have no way of deciding what to manufacture ourselves and what to bring in from outside. A definite renunciation of the theory of an isolated socialist economy will mean, in the course of a few years, an incomparably more rational use of our resources, a swifter industrialization, and better planned and more powerful growth of our own machine construction. It will mean a swifter increase in the number of employed workers and a real lowering of prices — in a word, a genuine strengthening of the Soviet Union in the capitalist environment." [16]

It is helpful to keep in mind that Trotsky belonged to a generation of Russian Marxists who had utilized the opportunity provided by revolutionary exile to carefully observe and study the workings of the capitalist system in the advanced countries. They were familiar not only with the oft-described "horrors" of capitalism, but also with its positive achievements. The countless hours they had spent studying Das Kapital were enriched by many years of observing capital in action. Upon their return to Russia — and this applies especially to those who were among Trotsky’s closest associates during the years of exile — they brought with them a keen understanding of the complexities of modern economic organization. If political struggles had not invested the issue with such profoundly tragic implications, they would have dismissed as simply laughable the idea that Russia could somehow leap into socialism merely by nationalizing its own paltry means of production. Far from overtaking and surpassing capitalism on the basis of national autarchy, Trotsky argued that a vital precondition for the development of the Soviet economy along socialist lines was its assimilation of the basic techniques of capitalist management, organization, accounting and production.

In this very brief overview of the contrast between the economic policies of Trotsky and those of Stalin, it is necessary to touch on the question of collectivization. As is well known, Soviet agriculture never fully recovered from the traumatic consequences of Stalin’s reckless and brutal collectivization of agriculture between 1929 and 1932. Clearly, a more rational approach to the problems of Soviet agriculture would have spared the USSR incalculable losses and endless agony. It is precisely in this area that the question of an alternative policy assumes immense practical significance, and that is why right-wing historians generally proceed as if none existed. Indeed, the claim is often made that collectivization arose out of Stalin’s adoption, in the late 1920s, of the Left Opposition’s program of rapid industrialization. In actual fact, Trotsky opposed and denounced the frenzied collectivization campaign launched by the Stalinists. Despite the pseudo-socialist demagogy that accompanied it, Trotsky warned that the policy, implemented with reckless disregard of the real productive capabilities of both industry and the countryside, proceeded from the same nationalistic and anti-Marxist conceptions of "socialism in one country" that underlay the previous failed economic programs of the Stalinist bureaucracy.

In a critique of Stalinist collectivization written in 1930, Trotsky acknowledged that he had previously advocated a more rapid tempo of industrialization, and the use of heavier taxation of wealthier sections of the peasantry (the kulaks) to provide resources for the development of heavy industry.

"…But we never regarded the resources for industrialization as inexhaustible," Trotsky wrote. "We never thought that its tempo could be regulated by the administrative whip alone. We have always advanced, as a basic condition for industrialization, the necessity for systematic improvement in the conditions of the working class. We have always considered collectivization dependent upon industrialization. We saw the socialist reconstruction of peasant economy only as a prospect of many years. We never closed our eyes to the inevitability of internal conflicts during the socialist reconstruction of a single nation. To remove contradictions in rural life is possible only by removing contradictions between the city and countryside. This can be realized only through the world revolution. We never demanded, therefore, the liquidation of classes within the scope of the five-year plan of Stalin and Krzhyzhanovsky … The question of the tempo of industrialization is not a matter of bureaucratic fancy, but of the life and culture of the masses.

"Therefore the plan for building socialism cannot be issued as an a priori bureaucratic command. It must be worked out and corrected in the same way that the construction of socialism itself can only be realized, i.e., through broad soviet democracy." [17]

Trotsky then reiterated the essential basis of his critique of Stalinist collectivization:

"Again and again we decisively rejected the task of building a national socialist society ‘in the shortest possible time.’ Collectivization and industrialization we bind by an unbreakable tie to the world revolution. The problems of our economy are decided in the final analysis on the international arena." [18]

In attempting to conceptualize how the victory of the Left Opposition might have altered the history of the Soviet Union, we do not claim that it is possible to provide an exact picture of how it might have evolved. It is no more possible to present a detailed hypothetical reconstruction of the past than it is to predict the future. The implementation of different policies after 1924 would have introduced into the historical equation a vast quantity of new political, social and economic variables which, in the complexity of their mutual interaction, may have altered the course of events in a manner entirely unanticipated by those who are engaged in a retrospective evaluation of alternatives. But due consideration to the principle of historical "uncertainty" does not mean that it is impossible to say anything convincing or intelligent about historical alternatives. There are very solid factual and theoretical grounds for concluding that the victory of the Left Opposition would have made highly probable a more rational, productive and humane evolution of the Soviet economy. Hobsbawm seeks to make light of this possibility by stating that industrialization was going to require "a good deal of coercion." The only question was how much. But that, as the history of the USSR amply proves, is not a small question. The dialectical relation between quantity and quality should not be forgotten. There is a profound difference between high rates of taxation on the wealthiest strata of the peasantry and the physical "liquidation of the kulaks as a class." Had the economic policy of the Opposition achieved nothing more than the avoidance of the horrors of Stalinist collectivization — and it is virtually inconceivable that it would have occurred had the Left Opposition triumphed — the USSR would have been spared a catastrophe, and all that flowed from it.

International strategy

Let us now turn to a consideration of the consequences of the defeat of Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition on the fate of the international working class and the world socialist movement. This essential international dimension is not included in Hobsbawm’s consideration of the counterfactual alternatives. Holding the position that the ultimate breakdown of the USSR flowed inexorably from the objective conditions with which it was confronted in 1921, Hobsbawm makes no effort to examine how the international policies pursued by the Stalinist regime actually impacted upon the evolution of the Soviet Union. He goes so far as to suggest that there existed little relation between the international and the domestic: "The Russian Revolution really has two interwoven histories: its impact on Russia and its impact on the world. We must not confuse the two." [19]

Yet such a separation would make incomprehensible the phenomenon of Stalinism. The Stalinist regime arose on the basis of a Russian nationalist reaction against the proletarian socialist internationalism that was embodied in the Bolshevik government under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky. The program of socialism in one country provided a banner for all those elements within the bureaucracy who identified their own material interests with the development of the USSR as a powerful national state. The bureaucracy obtained its privileges through the mechanism of state ownership of the means of production. The more it became conscious of the national-state foundations of its privileges, the less willing was the bureaucracy to place these at risk in the interest of world revolution. The program of socialism in one country legitimized the subordination of the interests of the international socialist movement to the national interests of the Soviet state, as they were conceived by the bureaucracy.

It was precisely at the level of the international class struggle that the consequences of the defeat of the Left Opposition were the most tragic and long-lasting, and where, therefore, the question of whether the USSR might have developed along different lines is posed most seriously and profoundly. In his own analysis of the growth of the Stalinist regime, Trotsky always stressed that the political reaction within the USSR against the program and traditions of October was greatly strengthened by the defeats suffered by the international working class. The initial setback suffered by the Left Opposition in the late autumn of 1923 was definitely bound up with the defeat of the German Revolution, which dimmed hopes that European workers would in the near future come to the aid of the USSR. This was the climate that created a broader audience for the nationalist perspective of socialism in one country. The political disorientation produced by the nationalist line of the Soviet leaders inside the Communist International led, in turn, to more defeats for the working class outside the USSR. Each of these defeats intensified the isolation of Soviet Russia, further eroded the confidence of Soviet workers in the perspective of world revolution, and undermined the political position of the Marxist and internationalist opposition to the Stalinist regime.

Being by nature highly skeptical of the possibility of revolution, which they tend to view as a violation of the normal course of historical development, professional historians find it easiest to dismiss as unrealistic and utopian the international perspective that animated the October Revolution. We have already seen how Hobsbawm considers Lenin’s faith in the prospects for a German Revolution a fatal lapse in his political judgment. Though Hobsbawm says nothing at all about Trotsky’s struggle against the political line of socialism in one country, I am sure that if he were asked to comment, he would reply that Trotsky’s international perspective in the 1920s and 1930s was as unrealistic as Lenin’s had been in 1918. Hobsbawm would argue that to consider Trotsky’s international program as a viable alternative that, if followed, might have changed the course of Soviet history is just another exercise in counterfactual speculation that leads to a dead end.

How, then, can we demonstrate that the international policies of the Left Opposition, based on the theory of permanent revolution, would have greatly strengthened the Communist International and improved the international position of the Soviet Union? Of course, we cannot prove to a political and moral certainty that the victory of the Left Opposition would have guaranteed the success of revolutionary struggles outside the Soviet Union. We are perfectly prepared to admit that in the sphere of revolution, the outcome is decided not by logical proofs but by actual struggle. However, that does not mean that we cannot arrive at some plausible conclusions, based on historical evidence, about the probable consequences of an Opposition victory for the world revolutionary movement.

Let us consider, if only briefly, two critical episodes in the history of the international working class.

First, the catastrophic defeat of the Chinese Revolution in 1927: The cause of this defeat was the subordination of the Chinese Communist Party to the bourgeois Kuomintang, led by Chiang Kai-shek. The Chinese CP was instructed by Stalin to accept Chiang and the Kuomintang as the authoritative leadership of the democratic revolution. The political background of these instructions were the efforts of Stalin to establish closer relations between the Soviet Union and China via a political alliance with Chiang. Trotsky persistently warned that the subordination of the CP to the bourgeois Kuomintang, a violation of the most basic lessons of Bolshevik strategy in 1917, would have disastrous consequences for the working class. Chiang was not an ally in whom the Communist Party and workers could place the slightest confidence. As soon as an opportunity presented itself, Chiang, responding to the pressures of his imperialist and bourgeois patrons, would turn savagely against the CP and the revolutionary Shanghai workers. These warnings were ignored: even as the actions of Chiang grew more menacing, Stalin pressed the CCP to demonstrate its loyalty to the Kuomintang ever more ostentatiously. The CCP finally instructed revolutionary workers in Shanghai to disarm themselves before Chiang’s troops entered the city. As Trotsky’s condemnation of Stalin’s policies echoed through the Communist International, events in China moved to a disastrous denouement. Chiang’s troops entered Shanghai where, as Trotsky and the Left Opposition had warned, they proceeded to slaughter tens of thousands of Communist workers. The CCP was dealt a blow from which it never recovered.

It is not necessary to assert what is by the very nature of things unprovable: that the policies of the Left Opposition would have assured the victory of the Chinese Revolution in the 1920s — though I believe that such a victory would have been possible. But what can be said with a high degree of certainty is that the Chinese Communist Party would not have fallen victim to Chiang’s coup of April 1927, and the position of the working class would not have been so disastrously weakened. As events turned out under the leadership of Stalin, the historical consequences of the defeat in China were of such a magnitude as to be incalculable. Aside from its immediate impact on the USSR — it deepened the Soviet Union’s political isolation and, therefore, strengthened the bureaucratic regime — the 1927 defeat tragically altered the character of the revolutionary movement in China itself. With their position within the cities shattered by Chiang’s counter-revolutionary blow, the confused remnants of the CP retreated into the countryside and abandoned its historic orientation to the working class. Henceforth, the work of the CCP, under the leadership of Mao — who, by the way, had stood on the right-wing of the shattered party — was to be based upon the peasantry. Thus, the party which came to power in 1949 had few serious links to the working class and bore little resemblance to the movement as it had existed prior to the catastrophe of 1927. Even to this day, as the heirs of Mao encourage and supervise the exploitation of the Chinese masses by transnational corporations, we are living with the direct consequences of the disastrous policies pursued by
Stalin.

If the victory of the Left Opposition had done nothing more than avoid the catastrophe produced by Stalin’s policies in China, that in itself would have profoundly altered the course of world history to the benefit of the Soviet Union and the international revolutionary movement.

Let us now consider the second episode: the rise of fascism to power in Germany. Prior to the victory of Hitler in January 1933, the two mass workers parties in Germany — the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Communist Party (KPD) — commanded the political allegiance of 13 million voters. In the last German elections held prior to the appointment of Hitler as chancellor, the total vote of these two parties was greater than that received by the Nazis. The vote totals, however, do not fully express the relative strengths of the fascist and socialist movements. Even with its shock troops, Hitler’s movement — based on the ruined petty bourgeoisie and lumpenized strata — was an amorphous and unstable mass. The two socialist parties, on the other hand, were based on a working class which, by virtue of its relation to the key productive forces, represented a social and political force of immense potential power.

The one great advantage enjoyed by Hitler, however, was the political division of the workers’ movement. The leaders of both the Social Democratic and Communist Parties refused to undertake any joint action to defend the working class against the fascist threat. The attitude of the Social Democracy flowed from its cowardly subservience to the rotting bourgeois Weimar regime and its fear of the potentially revolutionary consequences of a unified offensive of Social Democratic and Communist workers against the fascists.

The central problem facing the Communist Party was to overcome this debilitating division of the working class by offering to form a United Front with the Social Democrats to beat back the fascist threat. Notwithstanding the political opposition of the SPD leaders, official, direct and persistent appeals by the KPD for a United Front would have made, at the very least, a profound impression upon Social Democratic workers and demonstrated that the Communists were not responsible for the divisions with the ranks of the German proletariat. Even if the shifting of mass Social Democratic opinion had failed to overcome the resistance of SPD and trade union leaders to a serious struggle against Hitler, a persistent campaign by the Communist Party would have raised its stature in the eyes of millions of Social Democratic workers and drawn substantial sections of them over to its side.

But such a campaign was never waged by the KPD. Instead, in keeping with the ultra-leftist "Third Period" line imposed by the Stalinists at the Sixth Congress of the Communist International, the KPD declared that Social Democracy was a variety of fascism — "social fascism" to be precise. All agreements with this "social fascism" were deemed impermissible.

As early as 1930, Trotsky — who was, by then, in exile on the island of Prinkipo off the Turkish coast — warned that fascism represented an immense threat to the German and international working class, and that the failure of the KPD to fight for a united front was clearing the way for Hitler to come to power.

On September 26, 1930, Trotsky wrote: "Fascism in Germany has become a real danger, as an acute expression of the helpless position of the bourgeois regime, and conservative role of Social Democracy in this regime, and the accumulated powerlessness of the Communist Party to abolish it. Whoever denies this is either blind or a braggart." [20] A successful defensive struggle against fascism, he wrote, "means a policy of closing ranks with the majority of the German working class and forming a united front with the Social Democratic and non-party workers against the fascist threat." [21]

On November 26, 1931 Trotsky wrote:

"It is the duty of the Left Opposition to give the alarm: the leadership of the Comintern is driving the German proletariat towards an enormous capitulation, the essence of which is a panicky capitulation before fascism.

"The coming to power of the National Socialists would mean first of all the extermination of the flower of the German proletariat, the destruction of its organizations, the eradication of its belief in itself and in its future. Considering the far greater maturity and acuteness of the social contradictions in Germany, the hellish work of Italian fascism would probably appear as a pale and almost humane experiment in comparison with the work of the German National Socialists." [22]

On January 27, 1932, replying to the pathetic claims of the Stalinist leaders that the victory of Hitler would merely pave the way for a Communist victory, Trotsky wrote:

"Fascism is not merely a system of reprisals, of brutal force and of police terror. Fascism is a particular governmental system based on the uprooting of all elements of proletarian democracy within bourgeois society. The task of fascism lies not only in destroying the Communist vanguard but in holding the entire class in a state of enforced disunity. To this end the physical annihilation of the most revolutionary section of workers does not suffice. It is also necessary to smash all independent and voluntary organizations, to demolish all the defensive bulwarks of the proletariat and to uproot whatever has been achieved during three-quarters of a century by the Social Democracy and the trade unions." [23]

I will cite just one more passage from the writings of Trotsky. In April 1932 Trotsky issued a statement warning that the victory of Hitler would make war between Germany and Soviet Russia inevitable. Choosing his words carefully, Trotsky explained how he would respond, were he in power, to a fascist victory in Germany:

"…Upon receiving the telegraphic communication of this event, I would sign an order for the mobilization of the reserves. When you have a mortal enemy before you, and when war flows with necessity from the logic of the objective situation, it would be unpardonable light-mindedness to give that enemy time to establish and fortify himself, conclude the necessary alliances, receive the necessary help, work out a plan of concentric military actions, not only from the West but from the East, and thus grow up to the dimensions of a colossal danger." [24]

Possessing as we do knowledge of what was to come — the victory of the Nazis, the subsequent perfidy of Stalin’s non-aggression pact with Hitler, the outbreak of World War II, Stalin’s cowardly dismantling of Soviet defenses as Hitler prepared the launching of Operation Barbarossa, the loss of 27 million Soviet soldiers and civilians in repelling the German invasion — one cannot read Trotsky’s words without a sense of tragic loss and waste. How much human misery and suffering might have been avoided, how different the course of the 20th century might have been, had the policies of Trotsky — of revolutionary Marxism — prevailed.

Our brief review of the defeats in China and Germany hardly qualifies even as a preliminary introduction to the subject of the counter-revolutionary role of Stalinism in the international workers’ movement and its impact on the evolution of the USSR. But we are already straining against the limits of what can reasonably be presented within the framework of one lecture. Yet there is one point that I must add for the sake of historical clarity. The defeat of the German working class marked a decisive turning point in the evolution of the Stalinist regime itself. Confronted with a serious threat from a powerful fascist regime for which his own policies were centrally responsible, Stalin moved to sever whatever tenuous connections still existed between the Soviet state and the goal of world socialist revolution. Henceforth, the defense of the USSR was to be based on the forging of political alliances with imperialist states — democratic or fascist, depending on the circumstances — at the expense of the interests of the international working class. The role of the Soviet Union in world affairs assumed a directly counter-revolutionary character, a transformation that found murderous expression in the betrayal of the Spanish Revolution, the massacre of Old Bolsheviks, the hunting down of revolutionary opponents of the Stalinist regime outside the borders of the USSR, and finally in the Stalin-Hitler Pact.

Hobsbawm is not merely blind to all this. His writing suggests that he has failed to subject to any critical review the political conceptions that allowed him to remain a member of the British Communist Party for many decades: "The terrible paradox of the Soviet era," Hobsbawm tells us with a straight face, "is that the Stalin experienced by the Soviet peoples and the Stalin seen as a liberating force outside were the same. And he was the liberator for the ones at least in part because he was the tyrant for the others." [25]

What Hobsbawm really should have written is that "the Stalin experienced by the Soviet people and the Stalin as he was deceitfully portrayed by the British Communist Party were not quite the same thing". Instead, unfortunately, Hobsbawm compromises himself as a historian by engaging in shabby pro-Stalinist apologetics, and thereby exposing what has been the tragic paradox of his own intellectual life.

The aim of Stalin's terror

In our review of the essential differences between the Stalinist regime and the Left Opposition in the three areas of party regime, economic policy, and international strategy, we have attempted to demonstrate that the victory of Trotskyism — that is, of genuine Marxism — would have in all probability profoundly altered the course of Soviet history and that of the international socialist movement. We expect that this contention will be dismissed by those who interpret the history of the Soviet Union within the framework of a sort of absolute determinism of historical defeat. For these incorrigible sceptics and pessimists, who believe that the cause of socialism has been doomed from the start, policies, programs and all other forms of subjective activity count for nothing in history.

As we have already explained, it is impossible to state with certainty that Trotsky’s victory would have guaranteed the survival of the USSR and the victory of socialism. But such a claim is hardly necessary to endow our consideration of historical alternatives with political and intellectual legitimacy. It is only necessary for us to establish that a real potential did exist for a course of historical development other than that which occurred; and that at certain critical points in its history the Soviet Union arrived, so to speak, at a fork in the road where the implementation of different, i.e., Marxist, policies would have made possible a far more favorable outcome of events.

We now anticipate another question, which is both serious and appropriate: Even if one were to grant that the positions of Trotsky and the Left Opposition represented, from the standpoint of theory, a genuine Marxist alternative to those of the Stalinist regime, did this Opposition ever represent a truly significant political force within the Soviet Union? After all, the consideration of alternatives, if it is not to be a fruitless speculative exercise, should limit itself to what was possible within the framework of the existing objective conditions.

In answering this important question, I would like to cite a valuable work entitled The Birth of Stalinism by the German historian Michal Reiman.

"The importance of the left opposition is often underestimated in the literature … [M]any authors doubt that the opposition had any substantial influence on the mass of party members and even less on broader sections of the population. One can hardly agree with such views: they seem paradoxical indeed in light of the mountain of ammunition expended on the opposition by the party leadership in those years — the multitude of official declarations, reports, pamphlets, and books, not to mention the mass political campaigns that penetrated even the remotest parts of the USSR.

"In the spring of 1926 the united opposition, based on a cadre of old and experienced party leaders, conquered some fairly significant positions. It consolidated its influence in Leningrad, the Ukraine, Transcaucasia, and the Urals region; in the universities; in some of the central government offices; in a number of factories of Moscow and the central industrial region; and among a section of the command staff of the army and navy, which had passed through the difficult years of the civil war under Trotsky’s leadership. Repression by the party leadership prevented the opposition from growing, but its influence was still much greater than indicated by the various votes taken in the party cells." [26]

Trotsky and the other principal leaders of the Left Opposition were expelled from the Russian Communist Party at a plenum of the central committee held in July and August 1927. This failed to silence the Opposition. "Even after the plenum," writes Reiman, "the party organizations continued to be flooded — especially in the large urban centers and the two capitals — with opposition literature and leaflets. Reports of heightened opposition activity came one after another from various cities and from entire provinces — Leningrad, the Ukraine, Transcaucasia, Siberia, the Urals, and, of course, Moscow, where the greater number of opposition political leaders were working. There was a steadily growing number of illegal and semi-legal meetings attended by industrial workers and young people. The influence of the opposition in a number of large party units became quite substantial. It hampered the former free functioning of the Stalinist party apparatus. The army was also strongly affected by opposition activity. Reports on a significant rise in the authority of the opposition came from the Leningrad military district and the garrison in Leningrad, from Kronstadt, and from troop units in the Ukraine and Byelorussia.

"The main problem was not the increase in opposition activity, however, but the overall balance of power within the party. Quite a large number of famous political leaders were on the opposition side. The weakened authority of the party leadership, especially of Stalin and Bukharin, was insufficient to turn the setbacks and failures of party policy into gains." [27]

How, then, did the Stalin faction overcome the challenge represented by the Left Opposition? Reiman explains: "The leadership could not cope with the situation without bringing the GPU into the fight." [28]

The subsequent history of the USSR and the international socialist movement is the record of the bloody consequences of the violence employed by the Stalinist bureaucracy to consolidate its power and privileges. It is impossible to conclude a discussion of historical alternatives without a consideration of the impact and costs of the Stalinist repression. Hobsbawm, as we have seen, skirts over this issue. Industrialization, he has told us, "was going to require a good deal of coercion, even if the USSR had been led by someone less utterly cruel than Stalin." Hobsbawm simply ignores the social basis and political purpose of the violence organized by the bureaucracy. Stalinist violence was not a matter of revolutionary excesses but of counterrevolutionary terror.

If Hobsbawm does not care to deal with this matter, it is because an honest treatment of the historical meaning and consequences of the purges, for the Soviet Union and the international socialist movement, cannot possibly be reconciled with his exercise in historical apologetics. There was an alternative to the Stalinist variant of Soviet development, and the Stalinist terror was the means by which it was annihilated. What was destroyed in the cellars of the Lyubianka and countless other execution chambers throughout the Soviet Union were hundreds of thousands of revolutionary socialists who had contributed to the victory of the October Revolution. Their influence upon the working class and Soviet society had not been limited to the propagation of specific political ideas, however important these ideas were. Stalin’s victims were, in their collective activity, the representatives of an extraordinary socialist culture that imparted to the revolutionary movement of the Russian working class a world historical significance.

In Trotsky, this culture found its highest expression. As Victor Serge explained so brilliantly, "For a man like Trotsky to arise, it was necessary that thousands and thousands of individuals should establish the type over a long historical period. It was a broad social phenomenon, not the sudden flashing of a comet … The formation of this great social type — the highest reach of modern man, I think — ceased after 1917, and most of its surviving representatives were massacred at Stalin’s orders in 1936-37. As I write these lines, as names and faces crowd in on me, it occurs to me that this kind of man had to be extirpated, his whole tradition and generation, before the level of our time could be sufficiently lowered. Men like Trotsky suggest much too uncomfortably the human possibilities of the future to be allowed to survive in a time of sloth and reaction." [29]

The lessons of the 20th century

Why have we devoted the last two hours to a consideration of the possibility of alternatives in the historical outcome of the October Revolution? Certainly, the past cannot be changed and we must live with its consequences. But how we understand the past — and the process through which those consequences were formed — is the essential foundation of our comprehension of the present historical situation and the potential within it. Our assessment of the possibilities for socialism in the future is inextricably bound up with our interpretation of the causes of the defeats it suffered in the course of this century.

What lessons do we draw from the 20th century? If all that has happened since the outbreak of World War I has merely been the expression of uncontrollable and incomprehensible forces, then there is little more one can do than hope or pray — depending on your preference and desperation — for better luck in the future.

But to those who have studied and assimilated the experiences of this century, the present historical situation and the prospects for the future appear entirely different. The events of this century acquire a broad historical context and meaning. No other period in history has been so rich in revolutionary and counter-revolutionary experience. The clash of conflicting social forces attained an unprecedented level of intensity. The working class, having achieved its first great revolutionary breakthrough in 1917, proved unable to withstand the terrific force of the counterrevolution that followed. However, through the work of Trotsky, the Left Opposition and the Fourth International, the nature of that counterrevolution and the causes of the defeats were subjected to analysis and comprehended. And it is upon these theoretical and political foundations that the Fourth International prepares consciously, and with unrepentant revolutionary optimism, for the future.

Equality, the Rights of Man and the Birth of Socialism

By David North
24 October 1996

The following is a lecture given by David North, national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor on 24 October 1996.

We are now approaching the conclusion of a presidential election which, even by the standards of contemporary American politics, is exceptional for its intellectual and moral bankruptcy. It is an election without issues, without ideas, without programs and without purpose.

The presidential campaign seems to have degenerated into a leap year ritual, an event that automatically follows, for no reason in particular, the summer Olympic games.

The main beneficiaries of the election process, aside from the winning candidates, are the pollsters, the advertising agencies that design the attack ads, the network conglomerates that broadcast them, and, of course, the corporations that have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to finance the candidates of the Democratic and Republican parties. The electoral process provides no forum for the discussion and examination of serious political and social questions.

If elections have assumed a ritualistic character, it is because they have been stripped of any democratic content. In a country of nearly 300 million people, the political alternatives are defined by no more than two parties, between which there exist no political differences that are even worth commenting upon.

In justifying its exclusion of Perot, not to mention all other "third parties"--including the SEP--from the two televised debates, the official commission stated that it decided to include only viable candidates-- defining "viable" as candidates who have a plausible chance of winning the elections.

No effort was made to justify this on the basis of democratic principles. So worm-eaten is American democracy that candidate debates are organized as if there were no difference between them and sporting events. The only real distinction is that the qualifying rules for a sports contest are more objective than those governing electoral debates.

The decision to determine eligibility on the basis of a candidate's chances of winning makes a farce of the democratic pretensions of the electoral process. First of all, the chances of the different candidates are determined before they have had a chance to present their ideas to the electorate.

Or to put it somewhat differently, whether they are to be given this opportunity depends upon whether they are deemed to be potential winners. It does not take a great deal of political insight to understand how little this has to do with real democracy.

Elections are not only about "winning." One of their most important functions is, supposedly, to provide a public forum for the discussion of important issues. When Jerry White, the presidential candidate of the SEP, made this point during a PBS debate on the treatment of third-party candidates by the media, the representative of the Detroit News was dumb-founded. This idea had never occurred to him before.

The principle that governs the American electoral process is that of exclusion, not inclusion. The question which must be asked is why this is the case. It is not simply a matter of excluding individuals, but of limiting as much as possible the range of ideas that can be placed before the public.

Thus we have an election in which media coverage is confined to two parties; in which official discussion is confined to two highly controlled debates, each with one and the same moderator.

If one takes the time to reflect on the situation, its absurdity becomes almost immediately apparent. To understand the cause of this absurd situation requires, however, that the electoral process be examined within the framework of the social composition and social contradictions of American society.

The most important feature of contemporary social life in the United States is the accelerating pace and magnitude of economic polarization. The degree of social stratification is greater than at any time in the last half century. During the past quarter century, there has been an unprecedented reverse redistribution of wealth, from the working class into the bank accounts of those who control vast sums of capital.

There are innumerable studies which document and quantify this on-going social process. For example, the richest two percent of the American people control more wealth than the poorest 40 percent. The richest 10 percent control more wealth than the remaining 90 percent.

In the two debates that were officially sanctioned, there was not a single question that raised, even obliquely, the issue of social and economic polarization in the United States. There were hardly any references, in either debate, to any of the broader social conditions which manifest the brutal significance of the deepening social inequality.

The new ideologists of inequality

The absence of a discussion of social inequality in the United States by the two political parties is hardly an oversight. Although the subject of inequality is largely ignored by the bourgeois candidates, it is the subject of a great deal of discussion in other circles. Indeed, one of the most significant "intellectual" trends of recent years--if that is the right way to describe this process--has been the attempt to develop a hard-nosed justification for inequality.

The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray achieved notoriety because of its unabashed racism. Notwithstanding their own lame denials, the authors certainly did write a racist tract. But, as a matter of fact, the racist arguments are introduced in support of a broader, utterly reactionary defense of social inequality.

The essential thesis of Herrnstein and Murray is that social inequality is the natural and legitimate expression and product of genetically-determined mental capacities. The rich are rich because they have superior genes. The socializing and intermarriage of the rich is preserving a gene pool that tends to guarantee wealth and success for their offspring.

The book concludes with a ferocious diatribe against the ideal of social equality and a general denunciation of basic democratic values. Its authors call for the revival of ancient values, in which there is no place for concepts such as the equality of man. They hold up as their model ancient civilizations in which "society was to be ruled by the virtuous and wise few" and in which "the everyday business of the community fell to the less worthy multitude, with the menial chores left to the slaves."

That is not all: "The egalitarian ideal of contemporary political theory," declare Herrnstein and Murray, "underestimates the importance of differences that separate human beings. It fails to come to grips with human variation. It overestimates the ability of political interventions to shape human character and capacities."

Robert Bork's Slouching Towards Gomorrah is especially significant because it demonstrates the degree to which the defense of social inequality requires the explicit repudiation of the democratic foundations of the United States. This is a man who sat on the US Court of Appeals, was nominated by Reagan to the US Supreme Court in 1987 and came within two votes of being confirmed. The most important section of his book is chapter four, from which I wish to quote the first two paragraphs:

"Despite its rhetorical vagueness or because of it, the Declaration of Independence profoundly moved Americans at the time and still does. The proposition that all men are created equal said what the colonists already believed, and so, as Gordon Wood put it, equality became 'the single most powerful and radical force in all of American history.' That is true and, though it verges on heresy to say so, it is also profoundly unfortunate.

"The deep, emotional, indeed religious, appeal of equality is not, of course, a peculiarly American phenomenon; the ideal informs all of the West. Besides being a matter for regret, the appeal of equality, outside the context of political and legal rights, is puzzling. Neither of those thoughts is new; in fact, they are trite. Writer after writer has demonstrated the pernicious effects of our passion for equality and the lack of any intellectual foundation for that passion. If there is anything new in this book, it is the demonstration of the ill-effects of the passion in a variety of contemporary social and cultural fields."

Having decried the baleful influence of the Declaration of Independence and asserted, in the manner of a judge issuing a bench warrant, that the demand for social equality is without any intellectual substance, Bork gives us an astounding demonstration of his own mental virtuosity. There are simply no grounds, he proclaims, for condemning great wealth. Such condemnations are based on nothing but "envy," for, as Bork assures us, "It is impossible to see any objective harm done to the less wealthy by another's greater wealth."

"Nor," he continues, "is it clear why luxury should be morally repugnant. If luxury is inconsistent with the democratic ideals that have shaped our political culture, that only means that some of our democratic 'ideals' are the product of envy.... Envy certainly has shaped and continues to shape our political culture. That is probably why it is front-page news in the New York Times that the United States displays greater inequality in wealth than other industrialized nations. The unstated assumption that makes this worthy of the front page is that there is something morally wrong, even shameful, in having greater wealth inequalities than other societies.

"Nor does the contention stand up that the workings of democracy are impeded if there is too great a disparity in the wealth of citizens. There are many avenues to political power, and wealth is not the most significant."

To comment on these lines would be to diminish their comic effect. Bork, no doubt, would be included by Herrnstein and Murray in a list of their "cognitive elite." But he is hardly a good advertisement for the theory of The Bell Curve.

There are striking similarities between The Bell Curve and Slouching Towards Gomorrah. While the first purports to be a work of objective science and the second of serious political and cultural analysis, both are, in essence, ideologically-driven justifications for the growth of inequality. Moreover, embracing inequality as a positive social principle, both books openly call for the repudiation of the entire intellectual tradition--dating back to the Enlightenment--that provided for the past 200 years the theoretical and scientific foundation for the world-historic struggle of oppressed humanity for social emancipation and equality.

Bork puts the case most bluntly. Using the term "liberalism" as an all- purpose swear word--connoting virtually any form of social policy that places even the slightest restraint upon the exercise of property rights, the extraction of profits and the accumulation of personal wealth--he sees it as the expression of a dangerous egalitarian tendency "that has been growing in the West for at least two and a half centuries, and probably longer."

As far as Bork is concerned, the curse of egalitarianism has haunted the United States ever since Jefferson's Declaration was accepted as the new nation's founding statement of principles. Its "ringing phrases are hardly useful, indeed may be pernicious, if taken, as they commonly are, as a guide to action, governmental or private. The words press eventually towards extremes of liberty and the pursuit of happiness that court personal license and social disorder." The problem with Jefferson, Bork writes, was that he "was a man of the Enlightenment, and the Declaration of Independence is an Enlightenment document."

The origins of the Enlightenment

There is nothing particularly original in Bork's indictment of the Enlightenment. He is merely rehashing accusations that countless other reactionaries have hurled over the last 200 years against the progressive and revolutionary thinkers of the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, his diatribe--which is itself only an ideological reflection of the general social outlook of today's ruling class--provides us with a welcome opportunity to look back into history, and, in doing so, obtain a better understanding not only of the past, but also the present.

The Enlightenment proper refers to a period of several decades in the eighteenth century, approximately from the 1710s to the 1780s. But historical periods do not always lend themselves to such simple chronological classification. The Enlightenment, conceived of as the expression of a profound broadening of man's intellectual horizons, must certainly be seen as the extension and outcome of the extraordinary advances in science that had, over the previous two centuries, fundamentally altered man's conception of the universe, the place of the planet Earth in the universe, and the place and role of human beings on that planet.

Until the early seventeenth century, even educated people still generally accepted that the ultimate answers to all the mysteries of the universe and the problems of life were to be found in the Old Testament. But its unchallengeable authority had been slowly eroding, especially since the publication of Copernicus's De Revolutionibus in the year of his death in 1543, which dealt the death blow to the Ptolemaic conception of the universe and provided the essential point of departure for the future conquests of Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), Johann Kepler (1571-1630) and, of course, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642). Intellectually, if not yet socially, the liberation of man from the fetters of Medieval superstition and the political structures that rested upon it, was well under way.

The discoveries in astronomy profoundly changed the general intellectual environment. Above all, there was a new sense of the power of thought and what it could achieve if allowed to operate without the artificial restraints of untested and unverifiable dogmas.

Religion began to encounter the type of disrespect it deserved, and the gradual decline of its authority introduced a new optimism. All human misery, the Bible had taught for centuries, was the inescapable product of the Fall of Man. But the invigorating skepticism encouraged by science in the absolute validity of the Book of Genesis led thinking people to wonder whether it was not possible for man to change the conditions of his existence and enjoy a better world.

The prestige of thought was raised to new heights by the extraordinary achievements of Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) who, while by no means seeking to undermine the authority of God, certainly demonstrated that the Almighty could not have accomplished his aims without the aid of extraordinarily complex mathematics.

Moreover, the phenomena of Nature were not inscrutable, but operated in accordance with laws that were accessible to the human mind. The key to an understanding of the universe was to be found not in the Book of Genesis, but in the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. The impact of Newton's work on intellectual life was captured in the ironic epigram of Alexander Pope: "Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night, / God said 'Let Newton be!' and all was light."

The achievements of thought led, quite inevitably, to growing interest in the nature of the cognitive process. Locke's (1632-1704) Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which repudiated the concept of innate ideas and established the objective source of thought in sensations derived from the external world, played a role in philosophy almost as revolutionary as Newton's Principia in physics.

If there were no "innate" ideas, there could not be "innate" evil. Man's thinking, and, therefore, his moral character, was, in the final analysis, a reflexive product of the material environment which acted upon him. Contained within this conception of human cognition was a profoundly subversive idea: the nature of man could be changed and improved upon by changing and improving the environment within which he lived.

How, then, was this improvement to be realized? The answer given was: Through the invincible force of human reason, which, in accordance with the new methodology of science, would seek to understand the world on the basis of a painstaking analysis of reality. This colossal faith in the power of reason to discover truth is the unifying intellectual principle of the Enlightenment. As Ernst Cassirer, the brilliant German biographer of Kant, explained:

"The whole eighteenth century understands reason in this sense; not as a sound body of knowledge, principles, and truths, but as a kind of energy, a force which is fully comprehensible only in its agency and effects. What reason is, and what it can do, can never be known by its results but only by its function. And its most important function consists in its power to bind and to dissolve. It dissolves everything merely factual, all simple data of experience, and everything believed on the evidence of revelation, tradition and authority; and it does not rest content until it has analyzed all these things into their simplest component parts and into their last elements of belief and opinion."

The "motto" of the Enlightenment, as Kant (1724-1804) wrote, was "Sapere aude," "Dare to know!" Fascinated with the power of thought, the great figures of the Enlightenment generally believed that reason was capable of resolving the problems that had troubled mankind for ages and of improving the human condition. Among the great tasks of reason, according to the thinkers of the Enlightenment, was to secure for man his inalienable rights-- which had been already identified by Locke as the right to life, liberty and property.

It is not difficult to discover much that appears to be naive in the miraculous powers that were assigned to reason by the great thinkers of the Enlightenment. Among the ranks of modern-day professordom there is no shortage of tenured or tenure-track cynics who, weary beyond their intelligence, if not years, find much that is downright laughable in the optimism of the Enlightenment. After all, lucrative grants are awarded to those who justify and defend what exists.

The greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment, however, were, in the general direction of their thought and uncompromising honesty, revolutionists. Ruthless in their criticism of the world as it was, they sought to reveal the means by which the inalienable rights of man could be secured and the moral level of society elevated.

The themes of virtue and justice resonate throughout this period, especially in the writings of Montesquieu (1689-1755). For example, in one fantastic tale, Montesquieu relates the fate of an imaginary people known as the Troglodytes. Despising justice, their activities are guided by the motto, "I will live happy," and the outcome of the unrestrained individual selfishness that prevails within their society is its catastrophic downfall.

It is necessary at this point to examine, if only briefly, the nature of the society within which the Enlightenment developed. England, where the Cromwellian revolution had destroyed royal absolutism in the mid-seventeenth century, was already surpassing Holland as the country that was most developed along capitalist lines. But in France, the center of the Enlightenment, economic development stagnated beneath the weight of an archaic feudal structure, based on the Capetian dynasty, that was sanctified by the Catholic Church. This structure consisted of a complex and age-old network of social relations of privilege and dependency, lordship and vassalage, based on birth and blood line.

Inequality was the natural and unquestioned social premise of the entire feudal system. The place of every man and woman on the earth, from the exalted monarchs to the lowliest serfs, was to be accepted as the expression of a divine plan.

In the final analysis, profound changes in the economic foundation of society undermined the old political structures. By the eighteenth century the vast growth of capitalist enterprise in France was reflected in the growing political self-consciousness of the bourgeoisie. Within this historical context, the Enlightenment critique of French society expressed the growing dissatisfaction of the emerging bourgeoisie with the political supremacy of the unproductive and parasitic nobility.

Yet it would be simplistic and superficial to see in the work of the Enlightenment nothing more than the narrow expression of the class interests of the bourgeoisie in its struggle against a decaying feudal order. The advanced thinkers who prepared the bourgeois revolutions of the eighteenth century spoke and wrote in the name of all of suffering humanity, and in doing so evoked universal themes of human solidarity and emancipation that reached beyond the more limited and prosaic aims of the capitalist class.

The critique of property

This universalism finds extraordinary expression in the writings of Rousseau (1714-1778). In contrast to the other great figures of the Enlightenment, Rousseau does not participate in the glorification of reason. He bitterly calls into question the value of science and art, arguing that they are themselves instruments of man's corruption, debasement and oppression.

It is by no means necessary to accept this element of Rousseau's argument to acknowledge the genius of the underlying insight: that society as it has developed and exists is profoundly inhuman, antagonistic to the natural instincts of man, and the source of his misery and suffering.

The profoundly revolutionary implications of this insight found striking expression in his brilliant Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality Among Men, published in 1755. Property, he explained, was not a natural attribute of human existence. In his natural state, man did not have property. It is the product of the growth of civilization which, once having come into existence, destroys man's humanity and enslaves him.

"The first man," writes Rousseau, "who, having fenced off a plot of land, thought of saying, 'This is mine,' and found people simple enough to believe him was the real founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders, how many miseries and horrors might the human race have been spared by the one who, upon pulling up the stakes or filling in the ditch, had shouted to his fellow men, 'Beware of listening to this impostor; you are lost, if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and that the earth belongs to no one.'"

As there was once no property, so was there once no inequality. Like property out of which it develops, inequality is a product of civilization. The poor are oppressed by the power of property. Those who possess property are morally and intellectually disfigured by the struggle to obtain, keep and augment it.

The emergence of property and the destruction of equality led inexorably to "the most frightful disorder." Having acquired wealth, the rich "thought of nothing but subjugating and enslaving their neighbors, like those hungry wolves which, having once tasted human flesh, reject all other food, and no longer want anything but men to devour."

In his later Discourse on Political Economy, Rousseau offered a portrait of social inequality that speaks as powerfully to an audience on the eve of the twenty-first century as it did to readers in the mid-eighteenth century.

"Are not all the advantages of society for the powerful and rich?" he asked. "Are not all lucrative positions filled by them alone? Are not all privileges and exemptions reserved for them? And is not public authority completely in their favor? When a man of high standing robs his creditors or cheats in other ways, is he not always certain of impunity? Are not the beatings he administers and the acts of violence he commits, even the murders and assassinations he is guilty of, hushed up and no longer even mentioned after months? If this same man is robbed, the entire police force is immediately on the move, and woe to the innocent persons he suspects.... How different is the picture of the poor man! The more humanity owes him, the more society refuses him. All doors are closed to him, even when he has the right to open them; and if sometimes he obtains justice, it is with greater difficulty than another would have in obtaining a pardon.

"Another less important consideration is that the losses of poor men are much less easy to offset that those of the rich, and that the difficulty of acquiring wealth always increases in proportion to need. Nothing is created from nothing; that is true in business as in physics; money is the seed of money, and the first ten francs are sometimes more difficult to earn than the second million. But there is still more. Everything that the poor man spends is forever lost to him, and remains in or returns to the hands of the rich...."

The American Revolution

The influence of the Enlightenment was felt not only throughout Europe, but within the colonies of North America. The generation that was to lead the revolution was steeped in the writings of Montesquieu, Diderot (1713-1784), Beccaria and, particularly in the case of Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

There has been endless debate on the ideological influences that shaped the political and philosophical outlooks of those who led the revolutionary movement for independence. Generally, those who have sought to downplay the radical character of the independence movement have placed the main emphasis on the English influence, interpreting the Declaration of Independence as essentially a restatement of Locke's theory of natural rights.

There is no doubt that the writings of Locke exerted an immense influence on the generation of 1776. But nearly a century had passed since Locke had written his Second Treatise on Civil Government. And inasmuch as the conceptual products of the human mind are not static, but change under the influence of the objective reality which they reflect and strive to reproduce in abstract form, the formulation of the theory of natural rights in the Declaration of Independence differed fundamentally, in one highly significant aspect, from that of Locke's Second Treatise. The three natural rights recognized by Locke were that of life, liberty and property, or estate.

But in the Declaration of Independence, the "inherent and inalienable rights" identified by Jefferson are "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Why did Jefferson depart from the Lockeian formulation and substitute for property "the pursuit of happiness?" It will not do to claim that the difference was of no significance. Jefferson and his associates were too steeped in the political thought of their age to choose their words carelessly, particularly on such a crucial matter.

I would hardly suggest that Jefferson was a proto-socialist who opposed the institution of private property. To appreciate the greatness of Jefferson, it is hardly necessary to make him out to be what he was not. To measure the leaders of that time by the degree to which they espoused an as yet nonexistent socialist ideology, for which there was no real material foundation, would be to impose upon them standards of an ahistorical character.

However, without seeking to interpret the Declaration of Independence as the portent of the socialist revolution of the future, it can still be said that by Jefferson's time the development of the world market and the rapid expansion of capitalist forms of production and commerce produced new social tensions of which the most politically conscious men of the age were not unaware. Certainly, the writings of Rousseau expressed in a highly artistic form at least an intuitive awareness of these tensions. It had already, by the late eighteenth century, become an issue for legitimate political debate whether life, liberty and property constituted an internally compatible triad.

It is undeniable that Jefferson was painfully aware that there existed conditions in which the right of property was in direct contradiction to that of life and liberty. He was, after all, a Virginian and a slave-owner. However, it is of historical and political significance that in a preliminary draft of the Declaration of Independence Jefferson included as one of the indictments against George III his perpetuation of the slave trade:

"He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, this opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain, determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce."

For reasons not hard to fathom, this passage was deemed unacceptable by many of Jefferson's colleagues at the Continental Congress and was not included in the final draft. It was one of many compromises on the fatal subject of American slavery. How Jefferson's acceptance of these compromises should affect our evaluation of his historical role is a legitimate subject for debate, though, I must admit, that I am not among those who would be inclined to dismiss him as a mere hypocrite and disregard the world-historical significance of the Declaration which he authored.

In the context of this discussion, Jefferson's redefinition of the concept of natural rights, substituting "the pursuit of happiness" for property, endowed the document with an enduring, world historical significance. In using this formulation to justify the rebellion of American colonists against the Mother Country, Jefferson provided the inspiration for a more revolutionary, universal and humane concept of what truly constituted the "Rights of Man."

For Locke, the natural rights of life and liberty were crystallized in the ownership of property. In Jefferson, that relationship is not stated. Rather, life and liberty find meaning in "the pursuit of happiness," whatever that might be.

The French Revolution

The victory of the American colonists over Britain sounded the tocsin for a new era of revolutionary struggles that were to sweep across Europe. The eruption of the French Revolution in 1789 marked the beginning of a new epoch in world history. Prior to 1789 there was nothing in history that could compare in scale, grandeur, pathos and tragedy with the events that were set into motion by the convocation of the Etats-General in May 1789 and the storming of the Bastille two months later.

In the course of the next five years, the revolution not only transformed France, but established the basic political, social and ideological foundations of what became known as the modern world and which, notwithstanding the fatuous claims of the post-modernists, persists to this day.

The French Revolution was not "caused" by the Enlightenment, as reactionaries and police-minded devotees of the conspiracy theory of history have so often claimed. The roots of the revolution lay deep within the social and economic development of French and European society. But the Enlightenment certainly prepared men to accept the necessity of the revolution and to articulate its vision.

The Enlightenment had taught man to think in terms of changing for the better the conditions of human life; to conceive of society not as the work of God, but as the product of man; to conceive of injustice and inequality not as, in the case of the former, the necessary consequence of the Fall of Man, nor as, in the case of the latter, the earthly manifestation of a divinely inspired order. Both, rather, were seen as proofs that existing institutions were faulty, having lacked in their design the activity of reason. The revolution was the means by which the affairs of man would be reshaped in accordance with the dictates of reason.

But in the matchless irony of history, the revolution that had been hailed at its outset as heralding the triumph of reason proceeded along lines that even its most conscious participants had not foreseen. As it developed and gathered momentum, the revolution seemed to have a force of its own, summoning up leaders at one time only to cast them off and destroy them at another. Leaders and factions raced to keep up with events which moved at a speed never before known in history.

If nothing else, the revolution meant the violent, elemental and uncontrollable intervention of the popular masses into political life. Again and again, the basic course of events was suddenly altered by the insurrectionary movement of the Parisian sans-coulottes, who drove the revolution along an ever more radical course.

The French Revolution was incomparably more radical than the American. But this is not to be explained by references to the more prudent and constitutionally-minded Puritan temper of the American colonists. Under different circumstances, more than a century earlier, the Puritans in England, under the leadership of Cromwell, had demonstrated that they were fully prepared to apply an ax to the neck of a king. The differences between the revolution that had occurred in the New World and that which swept across France was rooted in objective conditions.

First of all, there existed no feudal heritage in North America. However formidable the British government may have appeared to the American colonists, the resistance it offered to the rebellion hardly equaled that of the ancien regime and its allies throughout Europe. For Britain, the issue posed by the American demand for independence was, in the final analysis, a matter of policy. For the ancien regime, the demands and aims of the revolution raised questions of life and death. Hence, the implacability of its resistance.

This resistance, in turn, called for ever more radical measures by the revolutionary forces. By 1793 the French Revolution confronted not only the resistance of the aristocracy and its allies within France, of which the Vendee uprising was the most extreme expression. It was also at war with Britain and virtually all of aristocratic Europe. Such a situation did not encourage moderation.

Fighting for its own survival, the bourgeoisie could not hope to defeat the forces of the ancien regime without issuing the broadest appeal to all the oppressed of France and, indeed, Europe and even the world. The Declaration of the Rights of Man, issued in the first period of the revolution, had proclaimed the inviolability of property. But the unrestricted exercise of this right collided with the elementary social interests of broad sections of the urban masses, without whose support the French bourgeoisie could not possibly defeat the ancien regime.

It was not enough to recognize, in theoretical and purely legal terms, the "equality of rights." For the broad masses, the word "equality" meant far more than the abstract acknowledgment that all men had, in some technical sense, equal standing in a court of law. It meant, rather, that all people had the right to enjoy a good life, and to partake of the just distribution of the wealth produced by society as a whole. The comfort and security that only a small number of people enjoyed, on the basis of their personal wealth, as a privilege, should be available to all as a right.

In North America the colonial bourgeoisie had led and organized the struggle against Britain without serious internal opposition within the ranks of the revolutionary movement. In France, however, the essentially bourgeois aims that had been articulated in the opening stages of the Revolution were increasingly challenged by demands of a broader and more radical social character. Even as it shattered the foundations of feudalism, the omnipotence of bourgeois property rights was called into question by the social demands advanced by the urban masses. Jacques Roux, a radical Jacobin, declared before the Convention on June 25, 1793, "Equality is but a vain phantom when the rich, through their monopolies, exercise the right of life and death on their fellow men."

Robespierre's government, though committed to the defense of bourgeois property, was compelled to make significant concessions to the popular masses. Price controls were established September 1793. A law broadening the availability of public education was promulgated in December 1793. And in May 1794 the revolutionary government introduced a law of national charity that contained the initial elements of a popular system of social security. These measures of popular egalitarianism repelled ever larger sections of the French bourgeoisie, which came to view the aspirations of the masses with even greater fear than they did the counter-revolutionary threat posed by the mortally wounded remnants of the old feudal aristocracy.

In the course of the French Revolution the concepts of the Rights of Man and equality acquired a broader and far more radical significance than they had before 1789. The Rights of Man and the Rights of Property could no longer be seen as one and the same. The division that now appeared between the two terms was not the work of theoretical speculation, but of the historical struggle of real social forces. This found concrete expression in an event that represented both a tragic finale to the French bourgeois revolution of the eighteenth century and a heroic anticipation of the socialist revolutionary struggles of the working class in the nineteenth century, the "Conspiracy of Equals" led by Gracchus Babeuf (1760-1797) in the year 1795.

The program of Babeuf was a brilliant, though premature, anticipation of the basic socialist strivings of the working class of the future. Before his execution in 1797, Babeuf asked that his friends preserve all notes and documents pertaining to his conspiracy. "When people come to dream again of the means of procuring for humanity the happiness that we proposed, you will be able to search through these notes and present to all the disciples of Equality--what the corrupt men of today call my dreams."

I have referred to Babeuf as a "premature anticipation" of the future socialist movement. It was premature in the sense that the social forces upon which the realization of a communistic program depended existed at that point only in embryonic form. It was only during the first decades of the nineteenth century that the rapid development of industry created the conditions for the emergence of a mass proletariat in Western Europe.

Indeed, by the time of the publication of Buonarroti's historical account of Babeuf's Conspiracy of Equals in 1828 there existed a more substantial working class, whose advanced representatives adopted this volume as one of the first great works of the emerging socialist movement. Another 20 years were to pass before the publication of the work that laid the political foundations of modern socialism, the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels.

The significance of this heritage

Upon reviewing these extraordinary chapters in the history of human action and thought, one is both inspired and ashamed--Inspired by the grandeur, universality and timelessness of the ideas and sentiments that animated the great liberating struggles of the eighteenth century, ideals that contributed to the founding of this country; and ashamed by the intellectual poverty and selfish insignificance of what passes for political life nowadays.

We have at our disposal material resources of which our revolutionary ancestors could hardly even dream. Were it not for the social and political obstacles that stand in the way of its realization, the eradication of poverty, not just in the United States, but throughout the world, would be merely a technical problem which the existing level of science and industry is fully capable of solving.

And yet, nowadays, we are offered justifications and rationalizations for the existence of poverty and even squalor that would have embarrassed and offended thinking people 200 years ago. In our present society, people are conditioned to walk down a city street and take no notice of the ubiquitous scenes of human distress and social misery.

But 200 years ago old Tom Paine wrote: "The present state of civilization is as odious as it is unjust. It is absolutely the opposite of what it should be, and it is necessary that a revolution should be made in it. The contrast of affluence and wretchedness continually meeting and offending the eye is like dead and living bodies chained together."

No one could imagine hearing such words spoken by any of the candidates of the "major" parties. They are capable of nothing but hypocritical platitudes which lay bare the chasm that separates the social interests defended by these instruments of capitalist rule from those of the broad masses of people. Capitalist society is as much the ancient regime of the late twentieth century as feudal society was the ancient regime of the late eighteenth.

Two hundred and twenty years ago Jefferson declared that the equality of man was a self-evident truth--that is, it was not a debatable point. But today, the defenders of our ancient regime declare that the equality of man is not only a debatable point; they assert it is a fallacy, and that we should embrace as the essential principle of social life the inequality of man. A social order that requires the services of such defenders deserves to perish.

Of what importance is the work of the Enlightenment and the revolutions it prepared to our own generation? Of course, as Marxists schooled in the materialist conception of history, we understand very well the limitations, ambiguities and contradictions of the thinkers and revolutionaries of the eighteenth century. No doubt, a pedant could compile quotations in which these limitations would be easy to pinpoint. But it is necessary to recognize and honor that which is enduring in their ideas and their actions.

The revolutionary spirit of the Enlightenment animates the principles and struggles of the Socialist Equality Party. Only our party fights to secure for the working class its inalienable rights in the only way that those rights can be secured, through the revolutionary struggle to put an end to capitalism and establish an international socialist society.

These articles were reproduced from the World Socialist Web Site:

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