Lenin

By Murray Smith

The Second International

Split and unity, 1905-06

The party reconstituted in 1912

Public debates

The Bolshevik faction

Debates in the Bolshevik Party

Bolshevik debates in 1917 and after

Breaches of discipline

Levi and the KPD

The Comintern

By Doug Lorimer

• 1921 Comintern resolution
• Public debate
• Party discipline
• Ideological heterogeneity
• Lenin's struggle for a Marxist party
• Notes

The disintegration of the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union opened an important debate within the Marxist movement about how to evaluate the history of the socialist movement, and especially of the Bolshevik Party, the party that led the world's first successful socialist revolution. One of the central aims of Links has been to provide a forum for such debate.

It is obviously important to carry out this evaluation in a way that does not make the mistake of confusing Stalinism with the theory and practice of the Bolsheviks when Lenin was the foremost leader of that party. Moreover—as was only to be expected—there are different views of what constituted the theory and practice of Bolshevism. Some of these differences have revolved around the role of Grigory Zinoviev.

By Phil Hearse

• The DSP's position on revolutions in the dominated countries
• The socialist revolution, Russia and Spain
• Russia: how the revolution opened the way for capitalism and bourgeois rule (according to Lorimer)
• Spain
• Conclusion: agreement and differences between the DSP and permanent revolution

"The International of Crime and Treason [i.e., the counter-revolutionary coordination of imperialism—PH] has in fact been organised. On the other hand, the indigenous bourgeoisies have lost all their capacity to oppose imperialism—if they ever had it—and they have become the last card in the pack. There are no other alternatives: either a socialist revolution or a make-believe revolution."—Ernesto Che Guevara, Message to the Tricontinental 1967 (emphasis added).

"You must struggle for the socialist revolution, struggle to the end, until the complete victory of the proletariat. Long live the socialist revolution!"—V.I. Lenin, "Speech at the Finland Station" on arrival back in Russia, April 1917

• Once again on the purpose of my pamphlet
• 'Two Tactics' and the bourgeois revolution
• The 'democratic dictatorship' and the bourgeois republic
• Lenin's and Trotsky's 'conceptions' of the revolution and 1905
• The October Revolution and 'permanent revolution'
• Once again: what is the socialist revolution?
• National oppression, national-democratic revolution and socialism
• Conclusion: what's wrong with 'permanent revolution'?

• The central strategic problem: class alliances in the dominated countries
• The Mexican example
• End of the semi-feudal aristocracy
• National and democratic tasks in the era of neo-liberal globalisation
• The DSP on Indonesia
• The debate inside the RSDLP
• Lorimer's concessions to permanent revolution
• Lenin: from 'bourgeois republic' to 'Commune state'
• Lessons of Spain
• Two-stage theory
• Weaknesses of the permanent revolution theory
• Underestimating the role of the proletariat, underestimating the role of the party

In the fight for socialist renewal, international collaboration cannot be on the basis of total agreement on theory, strategy or tactics. All or some of the members of organisations the Democratic Socialist Party seeks collaboration with hold or tend towards the permanent revolution theory. These include the sections of the Fourth International, the Scottish Socialist Party, the Pakistani Labour Party, the NSSP in Sri Lanka, Solidarity

• Transformation of the democratic revolution into a socialist revolution
• Bolshevik policy and Two Tactics
• What is the socialist revolution?
• 'Logical contradiction' and Lenin's conception
• The democratic dictatorship: bourgeois republic or special form of proletarian dictatorship?
• The Commune state and the democratic dictatorship
• Phil Hearse's 'D

Norm Dixon is a member of the National Committee of the Australian Democratic Socialist Party and a journalist for Green Left Weekly.

By Malik Miah

Malik Miah is a member of the Editorial Board of Links and of the US socialist organisation Solidarity.

Introduction

On August 17, 1985 the National Committee of the Democratic Socialist Perpective (then named the Socialist Workers Party) voted to end the party’s affiliation to the Fourth International, the international organisation founded in 1938 by the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and his supporters around the world.

This decision, which was subsequently endorsed by the DSP’s 11th Congress, held in Canberra in January 1986, was the result of a process of rethinking within the DSP about many of the ideas it had shared in common with other parties adhering to the Trotskyist movement.