World Crisis, Ed. Harris and Palmer. Essays in Revolutionary Socialism, Hutchinson 1971, £2.25.
State Capitalist theory has historically found its origins in, and made its appeals to, two quite distinct currents: the liberal outrage at the barbarities of Stalin's Russia and a more thorough-going syndicalist current. What is peculiar about the International Socialists is the co-existence of these two trends in the same organisation. In the cold war '50s and early '60s, it was the liberals who were given their head and who, by and large, through their theoretically impressive journal, presented the public face which proved so attractive to the radicalising petty bourgeois who joined the organisation in small, but significant, numbers during the latter half of the 60s. In this volume we can appreciate the attraction which these essentially home-grown theories had on a whole generation of students when the only real competition for the Trotskyist label came from the incantations of the Socialist Labour League. For these essays are extremely well written and in as much as they challenge all the basic theoretical method and propositions of Marx and Lenin one is forced to re-examine and defend the very core of marxist method and theory. The epitome and best expression of the style of I.S. is the opening essay by Sedgwick(1) which is quite brilliant in conception and execution; whilst the challenge is at its most adept with Harman.(2)
In the day to day practice of the I.S. group, however, it has always been the syndicalist wing which decided the politics, but for a whole period the divorce between theory and practice was concealed by the relative political quiessence of the working class. It is the change in this latter aspect of the political situation quite as much as the theoretical challenge from the IVth International in Britain, which has demanded the clear drawing of ideological lines which is immediately obvious and significant about this book. It remains to be seen whether this effects the hitherto happy coexistence in the same organisation of people with radically differing views. For, the mistaken premises which had led to I.S.'s syndicalist and in practice reformist conclusions, have now eaten away at, and destroyed, most of the Leninist (and Trotskyist) tradition which I.S. claim as their basis and inspiration.
Capitalism and State Capitalism
It is in relation to the Russian state that I.S.'s determining and characteristic revision in marxist theory is made. The syndicalism of the I.S. emerges precisely in the revision of the concept of capitalism to include the sort of economy found in the Soviet Union. It is this which makes the debate as to the nature of the Russian state, not one which is more properly left to theologians, but one which hits right at the very centre of theory and day to day practice. In effect, the theoretical acrobats involved reduce marxism from an enquiry which pretends to illuminate the 'laws of motion' of particular modes of production, to a more or less empirical defining of 'factors.' It is this methodological revision of marxism that suffuses the thinking of all the contributors to this volume. For the essence of marxist methodology (dialectical materialism), is the refusal to generalise according to a series of empirically conceived 'factors' or 'features,' but a recognition that all concepts and theoretical constructs are mere abstractions from a complex whole which, as Marx put it: '... can have no other form of existence except as an abstract one-sided relation of an already given concrete and living aggregate. [illegible] The point is that there are any number of elements which could be isolated depending on the purposes of the enquiry and the stage of development of the phenomenon under study.(5) Consequently, marxists do not begin from the more or less arbitrarily chosen elements as the sum total of our understanding of a particular phenomenon, but come to an understanding of its underlying dynamic, i.e. identify the relation between all the different aspects, which gives the key to the development of the whole.(6) This is what marxist science amounts to.(7)
This point is illustrated by the various attempts to explain the workings of capitalism as submitted by Harman and Kidron.(8) Thus Harman isolated two 'factors' whilst Kidron manages four (perhaps, five). I don't intend to go into all the economics of the case as Mandel has already replied in detail to both versions presented here(9) (Kidron's offering indeed is a word for word transcription of that which Mandel has already criticised.) What I would like to do is to make one or two points to make more specific my remarks made about method above.
For Harman, capitalism is defined by the fact that: '... each individual act of labour is related to each other, not by conscious planning, but by an unplanned and anarchic comparison of the products of that labour ...(and) ... that there is a separation of the workers from the means of production.'(10) But each individual act of labour can only be related to each other in the way described given the social nature of all labour and the peculiar social relationship which exists between different individual commodity owners. This is the validating condition of the separation of the workers from the means of production i.e. that the worker owns his own labour power as a 'commodity and what is a different expression for the same thing, the capitalist owns capital. Thus Marx points out that capital '... expresses a distinct social relationship belonging to a particular form of society.'(11) This social relationship is expressed through the exchange (commodity) relationship. Thus Harman's two factors turn out to be but two abstractions from this relationship - a relationship which has many facets (as Kidron points out(12), It is thus quite absurd for Harman to claim that: '... in principle there is no reason why other mechanisms which relate independent acts of production in an unplanned manner should not play the same role'(13), because it is precisely the 'mechanism' which gives us the particular 'laws of motion' in question; any other 'mechanism' indicates a different mode of production. But of course it is vital to adduce a different but functionally equivalent 'mechanism' in order to prove the capitalist nature of Russia, for even the I.S. don't try to prove that the market relationship exists in Russia. But the plausibility of 'arms competition' as a candidate for such a role(14) derives only from a way of thinking which adduces 'factors' which can be indifferently added or subtracted.
Political degeneration and counter revolution
It is not enough simply to identify this wrong methodological approach, for what is interesting also is the particular aspects which I.S. emphasise. Precisely because the I.S. have no understanding of the commodity relationships what is important for them about capitalism is the loss (or lack) of control by the workers over their own products and activity. Thus, what was decisive about the October Revolution was not the break with the world market, not the possibilities which this provided for shaping the Russian economy according to priorities which could be rationally decided and planned for, but the control which the workers could directly exercise over the means of production. Consequently, with the dispersal and destruction of the Russian working class through war and civil war, it became: '... the old guard and not the self active working class that safeguarded the traditions of the revolution and assured their transformation into socialist pale. the defeat for the old guard was a defeat for the revolution itself.'(15)
What is interesting about this confusion of the political degeneration of the Soviet workers' state with a counter revolution is the running together of two different sorts of relationships: production relations and authority relations. This confusion operates on the quite naive belief that a transitional society, (or socialism for that matter) is subject merely to the whim of the controllers and does not operate according to law. As Preobrazhensky puts it: 'Is the activity of human beings here (in a planned society) subject to necessity, does regularity prevail? Of course. To suppose otherwise would signify repudiating the entire theory of dialectical materialism and substituting for it a conception of the world based on a relapse into the philosophy of free will - if not individual free will, then collective free will ... Law 'asserts itself' under a planned economy in a different way from under [illegible] commodity economy. But there is regularity, conformity to law.(16) Production relations are not intersubjective relations, but social relations produced outside of the will of individuals. Thus Marx, talking about capitalism, points out that: '... the production and valorisation process seems to result in the reproduction and fresh production of the relationship between capital and labour itself, the relationship between capitalist and worker. This social relationship, or production relationship, appears in fact to be a still more important result of the process than its material results. The worker; in fact, produces himself within the process, as labour power and as the capital that opposes him, just as, on the other side, the capitalist produces himself as capital, as well as the living labour power that opposes him. (17)(my emphasis - B.G.) Obviously, then, this relationship is not one that can be destroyed bit by bit, it can't be encroached upon nor transformed without the transformation of the whole of society. However, the authority relationship in a factory can be encroached upon; decisions as to the relative share of consumption and investment can be modified without smashing the system as such. It is for this reason that it is important to distinguish the fight for workers' control from workers' self-management.(18) The difference between the two being the difference between production under the law of values and production after the destroying of the law of value by the destruction of the social relations of commodity production. Of course, the two sorts of relation are not unconnected, the modification of one being (usually) the pre-requisite for the transformation of the other. However, it is a big mistake to confuse the two.
Strategy for socialist revolution
This failure to adequately analyse the complex of social production relationships, in particular the nature of the commodity relation, leads I.S. to identify the central relationship in society as being that between the bosses and workers as exhibited in the authority relations of the factory. As we have seen, this derives directly from their 'state capitalism', and it is to their credit that they are consistent, but this implies that so long as I.S. remains true to this position, their revolutionary practice in Britain (not to say elsewhere) will remain fundamentally incorrect. In particular, they will continue in their syndicalist deviation. What is meant by this can be seen from Cliff's contribution to the volume. The whole focus of his essay entitled 'Class struggle in Britain' is on the factory situation. The now familiar analysis of the changing locus of reformism from overt political struggle to the factory floor is reiterated,(19) and the existence and vital necessity of revolutionaries to link up with the shop stewards' movement is pointed out. But what is interesting in the present context is in his identification of the weaknesses of this movement (and consequently what sort of link-up he recommends). Essentially these weaknesses amount to the fragmentation and apathy, the latter being defined as: '... the idea that individual and sectional problems can be solved by individual and sectional efforts.(29). Fortunately, according to Cliff, these weaknesses are becoming easier to solve, partly through the introduction of Measured Day Work which is cutting down the fragmentation and also by the importation of politics on to the factory floor by the state. But what sort of political response by the working class is demanded is nowhere even hinted at, except for the incantation that: '... workers need a total, a general, class strategy to confront the employers' offensive, to move from defence to attack.(21) This organisation is needed so that workers who are alienated from their traditional organisations, but still under reformist ideology can come to revolutionary ideas. But: 'Reformism can never be defeated by programmes. It can only be defeated by deeds. The education of the masses can never be separated from independent political revolutionary struggle. Only action discloses to the workers the Baynitude of the struggle, widens their horizens and clarifies their minds.'(22)
Of course, everyone is in favour of the independent self activity of the masses, but whether a particular action widens horizons and clarifies minds is not unconnected with whether immediate goals are agreed and understood whether the enemy is correctly identified at any particular time, what the limits of a particular struggle are which in turn depends on the understanding of the specific conjuncture and so on. All things in fact which are normally associated with the revolutionary party and leadership. If this is not necessary, what is the role of a revolutionary party?
The Party
'The relevance of the party', Hallas informs us,(23) 'is, firstly, that it can give the real vanguard, the more advanced and conscious minority of workers and not the sects or self proclaimed leaders, the confidence and cohesion necessary to carry the mass with them.' It is in the attribution of this lowly role to the party, where the non-marxist methodology comes home to roost - deriving directly from the confusion about social relations. For it is very clear that the fight for workers' control, i.e. over questions relating to the conditions of sale of the commodity of labour power, is, in some sense, a spontaneous movement of the class. So, obviously, the question of the necessity of revolutionary politics being introduced into the struggle becomes superfluous: 'That hoary red-herring, the question of whether socialist consciousness arises 'spontaneously' amongst workers, or is imposed by intellectuals from the outside, has absolutely no relevance to modern conditions ... It is rather ridiculous to argue whether one should bring ideas from 'outside' to workers who own television sets.(24) Given this, then, the whole question of a Leninist party is undermined and: 'Lenin's position of 1903 is not so much right or wrong as irrelevant.(25) This sort of 'thinking' doesn't, of course, need any sort of comment. However it does exhibit, albeit in a crude form, bourgeois distortions of the Leninist notion which unfortunately are very prevalent being summed up, for instance, in the following argument by Hallas: '... given the unevenness of consciousness and the industrial and geographical divisions of the working class, a Party, indeed a centralised party, is essential to give to various actions of different groups that cohesion and coordination without which their effect will be limited to local and sectional gains. (26) This is in fact an administrative conception of the party; leadership is viewed as the coordination of struggle, which is the other side of the coin to that view of leadership which sees this role as that of ordering people about. Now, of course, struggles do indeed demand coordination, but this is a secondary question. The basis of the Leninist view of the party and therefore democratic centralism, is the understanding of the need to politically centralise the struggles and experiences of the class. But it is the case that this is impossible without scientific understanding of society, which in its turn is impossible without but is not directly produced by the political centralisation of the experiences of the class. There is, that is to say this dialectical link between theory and practice. The Leninist Party is then the vehicle for precisely that unity which Marx talked about. Consequently this position flows from (and is therefore essential to) the very basic tenets of marxism. In as much as all experiences, all understandings are partial - all abstractions from a concrete whole - the only way to come to an adequate understanding of what is going on 'in reality' (or 'in the class struggle') is the centralisation of these one sided experiences, both in 'geographical' and in an 'historical' sense. Because, although all theorising appears to be the result of certain observations of reality, (or the 'facts'), in fact, theory is the starting point of these observations and therefore of all understandings. Marx put it in the following way: 'The concrete is concrete because it is a combination of many determinations i.e., a unity of diverse elements. In our thought, it therefore appears as a process of synthesis, as a result, and not as a starting point although it is the real starting point and therefore also the starting point of observation and [illegible].' It is this which is the essential point and leads to the other secondary aspects, like the need for an aware, disciplined cadre, the need for the formulation of transitional demands and programmes, and so on; as well as the more obvious organisational questions.(28)
The whole question of internationalism flows from precisely analogous reasons, and it is a banalisation of the concept and, to put it kindly, a misunderstanding of the tremendous emphasis which Marx, Lenin and Trotsky put on this question, for Hallas to characterise it as the mere: '... recognition of the long run common interests of workers everywhere and of the priority of this interest over all sectional and national considerations. (29) Little wonder that I.S. fails to understand the character and consequences of
Imperialism
Marx once said somewhere that those ignorant of history are destined to repeat its mistakes and in as much as I.S. revise Lenin's ideas on the question of imperialism, they resurrect much of what Kautsky had to say and which Lenin criticised in the very same works that I.S. set out to bring up to date. Seldom are I.S.'s ideas at their crudest and the political consequences the most disastrous as on this question. They are reduced to denying the very existence of imperialism as understood by Marxists(30) and to raise to the level of a 'world historic class', the petty bourgeoisie(31) whom Marx condemned to obscurity.
For Lenin, imperialism is simply '... the monopoly stage of capitalism'(32) which is also its highest stage. Now this view of Lenin's was counterposed to other interpretations, and, in particular, the Kautskyist - and this on two counts. First, precisely because it is the highest stage of capitalism, it is impossible for imperialism to be destroyed without the simultaneous destruction of capitalism itself. To this view Kautsky opposed the notion that imperialism was simply a policy of monopoly capitalism. Lenin was opposed to this precisely because it separated the politics of the case from the economics - at the same time indicating its reformist consequences.(33) Now, I.S. having a view of capitalism which is non-dialectical (in the sense explained above), have a view of imperialism, not as its highest stage or state, but as a 'leak' for surplus capital. Thus, Kidron has it that: 'For thirty years preceeding the first world war, investment in colonial and semi-colonial territories constituted the most important leak from the system. (34) But to characterise this drive for the export of capital as the key 'factor' is to invite precisely that separation of the political from the economic for which Lenin castigated Kautsky, as soon as the export of capital becomes secondary to the needs of monopoly capital. And Kidron does indeed make the separation: 'As a political system, as an ideology and as a system of attitudes capitalism continued to exist long after its base had narrowed.(35) It was, however, Hobson (and, following him, Rosa Luxembourg)(36) who took the view which I.S. ascribe to Lenin. As Lenin understood the question, however, the drive for the export of capital was but an expression of the attempt of [illegible] capital to dominate all markets - both nationally and internationally.(37) And it is on this point that Lenin had his second major disagreement with Kautsky. The latter wished to limit the scope of imperialism to the dominations of the backward agrarian countries by the advanced industrial countries. In opposition to this Lenin replied: The characteristic of imperialism is that it tries to annex not only agrarian territories but even the most highly industrialised regions. (38) For these reasons then, Harris is dead wrong when he takes Lenin to be saying that: '... the two limitations on the system which simultaneously drove it outwards internationally and threatened it with disaster, were the search for raw materials and 'outlets' for surplus capital.'(39) This should not, however, be taken as endorsing the view that isolating and safeguarding sources of raw materials is no longer of any importance; that the advanced capitalist countries are now somehow self sufficient - as Harris would have it.(49) Nor can it be allowed to pass unchallenged that the export of capital is insignificant to the operation of imperialism.(41) The belief that it is stemming from the non-recognition of the international nature of imperialism (and of its uneven and combined development such that it is now the U.S.A. which is dominant)(42) and the acceptance of the view already criticised that imperialism only refers to the relations between advanced and backward countries.
Permanent Revolution
Lenin's thesis of imperialism, then, was the recognition of the internationalisation of capitalism which made 'the actuality of revolution' a basis from which revolutionaries in every country, or better, on a world scale, must proceed. It was Trotsky's great merit to spell out the concomitant of this in his theory of permanent revolution—a position not adopted by Lenin until his April Theses of 1917. What was grasped here was, first of all, that there must either be continuing dependence of the undeveloped countries on the imperialist countries, or the inevitable socialist nature of any break out of this dependence through a process of permanent revolution. But, secondly, this 'process of permanent revolution' also referred to the international effects of a revolution in any particular country. Not, of course, the guarantee of international revolution everywhere, but the insistence on the essential links with all other countries. That is, not only the uneven development of the revolutionary process, but also its combined development. In a nutshell, then, to bring us back to the essential theme of this review, a revolution in a single country is only an aspect of a process. In this case, of course, a national perspective is not only theoretically disastrous, but also politically so. But this is the perspective of International Socialism.
What we are treated to, then, is an analysis of developments in various countries which treats of them as isolated and independent entities. In this way it is easy to say that the series of 'factors' that produced revolution in country A (Russia) was not the same as the group of factors in country B (China), but that country B had certain similarities with the 'independence' struggle in country C (India). In this way the rather well-documented argumentation which Harris produces to prove the qualitative similarities of the Chinese and Indian 'independence' struggles(44) stems from the trivial tautology that China isn't Russia. (Or, to be fairer, that the political conjuncture which produced the Russian revolution was different from the conjuncture which produced the Chinese 'struggle for independence') In effect, he gives up all attempts to understand the dynamic of these particular struggles and in his concern to compare superficial similarities, he makes several gross political errors. Briefly, he confuses what people say with what they do,(43) and he makes a political characterisation equivalent to an identification of class origin.(46) But most important of all he de facto rejects the thesis of permanent revolution most especially in his insistence that it is the petit bourgeoisie which is capable of accomplishing what the bourgeoisie and workers both fail to achieve in the undeveloped countries: the (essentially bourgeois) tasks of national independence (which includes the shaping of the economy of these countries in the interests of the indigenous class—in Harris's case petit-bourgeoisie) and the solution of the land question. It is thus quite monstrous of Harris to claim that it is he who is faithful to Trotsky and that: 'Trotsky in his thesis of permanent revolution outlined many of the points made here.'(47)
In sum, I.S.'s (deformed) national perspective prevents them from coming to an understanding of the interdependence of the various sectors of world revolution. They are unable to offer therefore any perspective to the anti-imperialist struggles anywhere in the world, as they are unable to allow the possibility of a transitional society (even deformed or degenerated) in the absence, even in the short term, of international revolution(48). Moreover they are unable to understand much of what is going on in Britain precisely because we are profoundly affected by the anti-imperialist (and, need I say it, anti-capitalist) struggles exhibited in the Cuban and Vietnamese revolutions. A process which brought to them a large proportion of their members and which Struggle of the latter is still today affecting the class struggle in Britain—something which I.S. cannot understand.
Brian Grogan
NOTES
1 P. Sedgwick, A Prologue: A Day in the Life of the 'Fifties,
2 C. Harman, The Eastern Bloc.
3 See, for instance, G. Plekhanov, THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY, and, for Marx, his "Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy", which forms the "General Introduction" to D. McLellan, MARX'S GRUNDRISSE, (Macmillan 1971).
4 McLellan, ibid, p.35
5 McLellan, ibid, pp.37 and passim.
6 I do not wish to go into here the specific nature of this abstraction and relation, but simply to emphasise the differences with empiricism.
7 Marx, CAPITAL VOL: 1, Afterword; also, E. Preobrazhenski, THE NEW ECONOMICS, Ch. 1. This book is in fact essential reading for anyone who seriously wishes to come to grips with the problems posed by the State Cap. theories.
8 Kidron, Capitalism—the Latest Stage.
9 Mandel, INCONSISTENCIES OF STATE CAPITALISM, IMG Publications, 1970; Mandel, MYSTIFICATIONS OF STATE CAPITALISM, International No. 2, reprinted IMG Publications 1971.
10 Harman, op cit, pp.182-3.
11 McLellan, op cit, p.77.
12 Kidron, op cit, 206-7.
13 Harman, ibid, pp. 183-4.
14 Harman, ibid, p.185: "Since 1929 the Russian economy has been subordinated to needs arising out of its interaction with the capitalist West. This has not in the main taken the form of direct market competition. But there has been a mediating mechanism between the Russian economy and the economy and the economies of the capitalist West that has played a similar role to that of direct market competition: competition through arms production." #
15 Harman, ibid, 172.
16 E. Preobrazhenski, op cit, p.50. It is significant in this context that Harris identifies the essence of socialism as "the struggle for freedom".
17 McLellan, op cit, p.105.
18 R. Davies, Theories of Workers Control, INTERNATIONAL, Vol. 1, no. 2, reprinted IMG Pub.s, 1971.
19 Cliff argues the incorrect proposition that the essence of Lenin's break with maximum/minimum demand dichotomy consisted in Lenin's insistence that: "... reforms are the by-product of revolutionary struggles" (op cit, p.225). Lenin may of course have said this but it is essentially IRRELEVANT to his major point about the necessity for transitional demands to break through the dichotomy.
20 Cliff, ibid, p.244.
21 Ibid, p.240
22 Ibid, p.247
23 Hallas, The Way Forward, p.262.
24. Hallas, ibid, 263.
25 Ibid, p.257-8.
26 Ibid, p.266.
27 McLellan, op cit, p.34.
28 In a companion volume to the book under review, recently published by Pluto Press (I.S.), PARTY AND CLASS, there is therein reprinted an article by Harman on "Party and Class" which is incomparably better than Hallas's article in the present book (also reprinted in this volume), but, even so, the methodology at work is essentially similar when the party is placed on one side and the class on the other. Links are then searched for, which Harman identifies in the following way: "The real basis for his [Lenin's] argument is that the level of consciousness in the working class is never uniform" (p.56). But this uneven level of consciousness is only one aspect of the problem, not THE raison d'etre.
29 Hallas, op cit, p.261.
30 Kidron, ibid, p.209-210.
31 Harris, ibid, p.154f et seq.
32 Lenin, SELECTED WORKS, One Volume, 1970, p.232.
33 Ibid, p.236.
34 Kidron, op cit, p.209.
35 Ibid, p.210 n.
36 D. Horowitz, IMPERIALISM AND REVOLUTION, Allen Lane, 1970, p.49.
37 Hamza Alawi, "Imperialism, old and new", SOCIALIST REGISTER, 1964, p.116.
38 Lenin, op cit, p.235.
39 Harris, op cit, p.121.
40 Ibid, p.134-6; Magdoff, THE AGE OF IMPERIALISM, MR Press, 1969 shows this view to be quite untenable,
41 British foreign investment was still 24.5% in 1960 whilst for the U.S. this accounted for 59.1% (Magdoff, ibid, p.56). In the case of the U.S. there was a dramatic increase over the 20 years up to 1966 increasing from $7.2 billions to $54.6 billions (J. D. Philips, CORPORATIONS AND THE COLD WAR, MR, 1969, p.188).
42 It is this development of imperialism and the consequent transference of the leadership role to the U.S. which also accounts for the changing FORM of imperialist domination. (On this see G. S. Jones, The Specificity of U.S. Imperialism, NLR60).
43 Magdoff, MONTHLY REVIEW, Vol. 22, Nos. 5 & 6.. This again is not to deny the changing nature of the investment in undeveloped countries (Mandel, INTERNATIONAL, Vol. 1, no. 5, "Imperialism and National Bourgeoisie in Latin America"), nor the larger volume which is invested in the metropolitan imperialist countries themselves (Mandel, "The Laws of Uneven Development", NLR59).
44 Harris, op cit, p.154-6.
45 Ibid, p.154f.
46 Ibid, p.155f.
47 Ibid, p.156.
48 This position again inevitably stems from their understanding of the Russian Revolution. According to Harman there were only two alternatives facing the Soviet economy in the '20s. Either a variant of capitalism, i.e. "... follow the logic of capitalism and accumulate in order to further accumulate or face subjection to international capitalism" (Harman, p.181); or, that which he identifies with Trotsky: "... subordinating internal developments in Russia to spreading the revolution abroad." (Harman, p.181). This latter characterisation ascribes a purely voluntarist role to Trotsky's alternative, which was other, far more subtle and far more complex than Harman allows for. Indeed the characterisation that Harman gives corresponds fairly closely to the Stalinist distortion of Trotsky's thesis of Permanent revolution. This is obviously no place to go into a full analysis (but see E. Mandel articles on Trotsky's Marxism in NLR48 and 56). Very briefly, what Trotsky recommended was the industrial development of Russia which would not try to "attain the abstract maximum tempo, but the optimum tempo ... which, above all, systematically improves the living standards of the proletariat and strengthens the alliance with the non-exploiting masses of the countryside" (PERMANENT REVOLUTION, Merit, p.156). This would remain in force for a whole Period whilst the proletariat, whose hand was being strengthened through the guidance of the Communist International (which does not mean recommending revolution everywhere at any time, but relies on an appraisal of all the conditions). This sort of policy would have gone a long way to preventing the degeneration of the Russian Revolution and given the Revolutions in the advanced capitalist countries, when they came, much greater chance of success. This was the policy of Russia in the '20s and would be a model of any policy for any successful revolution in the undeveloped world today.