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Brazil became a federal republic in 1889 after a small group ousted emperor Pedro the II. Lots were left disenfranchised ice and Sao Paulo were the most wealthy and important states. The states in the northern interior were weakened after slavery was abolished. poor infrastructure and schooling left them isolated and most uneducated. The first real challenge for the coffee with milk politics began with the army. There was a civil war in Rio. "When the market crashed in 1929 the government was left with a huge reserve that they could not sell" this eventually lead to the formation of the liberal party. Because the leaders lost the election they claimed fraud and tried to forcibly take over. That lead to a revolution on the 3rd of oct. In the end they surrounded the presidential palace and forced Wasington Lewis to resign. Then they put Vargas in power and he ruled until 1945

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1930 Brazilian Revolution | 3 Minute History

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No real republic yet formed in Brazil. The leaders were strengthening their position as members of the provisional government.

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2

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RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec. 4. -- The immediate future here is assured, but what will happen in the course of a year cannot be safely predicted. That there is danger ahead, which may prove to be very serious, a prudent, reflecting man who knows the people can clearly foresee. Possibly it may be avoided, but the probabilities are most decidedly the other way. View Full Article in Timesmachine "

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SIMPLY MILITARY RULE; NO REAL REPUBLIC YET FORMED IN BRAZIL. THE LEADERS OF THE REVOLUTION STRENGTHENING THEIR POSITION AS MEMBERS OF THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT. (Published 1890)

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2 See the article in its original context from January 2, 1890, Page 1 Buy Reprints TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. Full text is unavailable for this digitized archive article. Subscribers may view the full text of this article in its original form through TimesMachine.

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"The history of Colombia includes the settlements of indigenous people like : Quimbaya Civilization, the Muisca Confederation, and Tairona Chiefdoms." The Spanish arrived in Colombia in 1499 and they made many attempts to settle along the north coast but didn't until 1525. The Spanish established many colonies after that until Napoleon invaded Spain. When Napoleon invaded Spain the Spanish in south America realized they wanted to be independent and free. They became independent with the new name Gran Colombia in 1819. Gran Columbia was bigger than today's Columbia. The federation of Gran Columbia was "dissolved" in 1830. The name of the republic was changed to "United States of Columbia" in 1963 and it changed again to "Republic of Columbia" in 1886. in 1903 panama separated from Columbia. Internal conflicts grew after the drug cartels were created. Today Columbia has more stability that they have ever had and is very diverse in ethnicity and linguistics.

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The Armed Forces of Colombia began as the "rural armed detachment of the Communist Party of Colombia". Violence broke out in 1948 and Communist Party militants took up arms to protect themselves and the people. Peasants organized a guerrilla retreat and a self-sufficient community.

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Just like rings in a tree trunk mark off its yearly growth, so would successive appearance of Colombia's guerrilla groups over the past half-century indicate shifts or ruptures in the worldwide left. Every shakeup in the revolutionary movement internationally has had the effect of spawning a new armed group in Colombia that has taken root in the country's fertile political soil, made so by permanent injustice. This article will explain their various origins.

ELN (ARMY OF NATIONAL LIBERATION)

The ELN was a direct outgrowth of the Cuban revolution. Student radicals decided that it was possible to replicate the success of the July 26th Movement in Colombia. Its initial impetus came from the MOEC (Workers, Students' and Peasants Movement), formed by student leader Antonio Larrota who died in 1961 while trying to establish a "foco" in the northern territory called Cauca. By 1964 MOEC had imploded due to a combination of military reversals and factional infighting.

At that point Fabio Vsquez and a small group of student activists from the ex-MOEC launched the ELN after receiving military training in Cuba.

The ELN made its debut on January 7, 1965 when 27 men and one woman armed with hunting rifles took control of the small town of Simacota for two hours and made revolutionary speeches. In a recent review one of the ELN leaders looked back at the group's early activities with self-reproach:

"A great problem of our practice at the time was the absolutism of the armed struggle...we married it and didn't let it go. Whatever we believed didn't accord with that line, we cast it aside; that's why we thought that the union movement and trade union struggles were a deviation."

To place these remarks in context, let us recall that immediately after the success of the Cuban revolution, a schematic model was put forward by Regis Debray in "Revolution in the Revolution." This slender book argued in favor of "foquismo," a basically militarist approach to revolutionary politics in which columns of guerrilla fighters ("focos") would be established in the countryside with very little advance political preparation. Bold actions by the guerrilla would serve to raise the fighting spirit of the masses. Foquismo type groups sprang up all across Latin America and if they stuck to Debray's rigid formula, they soon perished--including Che's own foco in Bolivia.

The relationship between the FARC and the ELN were strained from the beginning. While Cuba never developed the kind of systematic critique of Stalinism that the Trotskyist movement did, there was an implied criticism through its collaborative relations with armed groups to the left of the CP's, such as the ELN. The added complication in Colombia's case was that the FARC was a guerrilla group itself and upon first blush seemed indistinguishable from other so-called Castroite guerrilla groups.

The ELN made overtures to the FARC in 1966 at the time of its founding. The ELN, based in the north, invited collaboration with the southern-based FARC: "All efforts that make toward collaboration, knowledge, co-ordination and unity with other guerrilla forces, however recently formed, are playing a great part in the development of the struggle for national liberation."

The CP replied: "Comrade Marulanda has been informed by our party of your activities, which have not pleased the party. The party, the general staff of the FARC, and Comandante Marulanda Vlez himself, consider that such relations as you suggest will not be possible unless you accept the policy of the Communist Party."

And what was the policy of the Communist Party around that time? Fabio Vsquez, founder of the ELN, explains:

"...the Cuban Revolution coincided in our country with the fall of Rojas Pinilla's [National Front] dictatorship, and a return to traditional representative democracy with Liberal and Conservative politicians. This brought about conflict between those who supported stepping up the electoral struggle and forming electoral movements, and those who advocated the insurrectional war. After the fall of Rojas Pinilla, the only movement with revolutionary ideas was the Communist party. But at the same time they proposed forming broad political fronts with so-called progressive sectors within the Liberal party, for example, the Liberal Revolutionary Movement (MRL) which was headed by Dr. Alfonso Lpez Michelsen. Meanwhile those who followed the pattern of the Cuban Revolution looked for armed solutions. They had a decisive clash with the directives, tactics and strategy of the Communist party and the MRL, which at that time was the most representative left-wing movement in Colombia. This was when the Workers-Peasants-Students Movement (MOEC) appeared, headed by Antonio Larrota, a student leader, who proposed armed struggle. From the beginning the MOEC had major difficulties and clashes with the official leadership of the Communist party, which was concentrating its efforts on helping to form the MRL in order to take part in the elections which were beginning to take place after the fall of the dictatorship."

In 1968 the FARC defined its task as building the Patriotic Liberation Front, which is Stalinist jargon for a multiclass government, and stated that its policy was "guided by the policy of the [Communist] party, expressed in the decisions of the Tenth Congress and meetings of its Central Committee." Faced with such hard-line CP orthodoxy, the ELN had no alternative but to proceed alone.

The most famous leader of the ELN was Camilo Torres, a Catholic priest who died in combat and who was one of the most extraordinary figures in Latin American revolutionary politics in recent decades. He was chaplain of the National University in Bogot and one of the founders of the sociology department. Later he became dean of the School of Public Administration, where he gave lectures on the need for agrarian reform. In 1965 he issued an anti-capitalist "Platform for a Movement of Popular Unity," which set off a major controversy in Colombia and led to his firing from the university. When the church gave the unemployed Torres a job, he soon lost it after advocating expropriation of church property through socialist revolution.

When Torres joined the ELN, it was with the understanding that he might facilitate an urban wing of the movement under the auspices of a group he had initiated called the People's United Front. All through 1965 he traveled around the country drumming up support for his group, frequently appearing with ELN bodyguards. At a certain point, Torres became frustrated with the failure of urban-based leftists to align themselves or even support his movement. He was attacked by Maoists, for example, for not being radical enough--a huge surprise. Exhausted and disillusioned, Torres put on a guerrilla uniform and went to the countryside. He was killed in action on February 16, 1966. This tragedy cut off possibilities for the ELN developing deeper urban ties. Torres's frustration with the pace of the People's United Front was symptomatic of the kind of mood that prevailed in the 1960s. Looking back with 20-20 hindsight, it is clear that he would have proven much more useful in Bogot than in a futile firefight in the hills. His loss, like Che's, was a product of a deeply impatient time, when the imperative to "Create two, three, many Vietnams" was irresistible, no matter how poorly considered the strategy put forward in pursuit of that goal.

EPL (ARMY OF POPULAR LIBERATION)

The EPL was formed as the armed wing of the Maoist CP-ML in December, 1965. It was directed to carry out "prolonged popular war" on the model of the Chinese Liberation Army or the NLF. It came close to annihilation during numerous confrontations with the army. It was also subject to numerous splits as characterizes sectarian groups of this nature. It spawned the Marxist-Leninist League, the Marxist-Leninist Tendency and the urban group, Pedro Len Arboleda (PLA).

In the early 1980s, the group shifted away from the Maoist perspective and began to orient to the unions and popular organizations. When a dialog opened up with the government, the EPL and the M-19 proved willing to forego the armed struggle and take part in "normal" electoral activities.

M-19 (APRIL 19TH MOVEMENT)

The M-19 was born in 1972. It seems to be very close in conception to the FSLN, in particular the "Terzerista" [Third way] faction led by Daniel Ortega. Like the "Terzeristas," the M-19 believed that bold armed initiatives, combined with a broad alliance policy intended to exploit divisions within the ruling class, would isolate the government and lead to a general insurrection. The M-19, like the FARC, sought to redeem the electoral process from corruption and return it to the status of an instrument of the popular will. The April 19th was a reference to the election day in 1970, when a left party was cheated out of a victory. The implication of the M-19 approach was that armed struggle was necessary to return the country to normal parliamentary rule, a vain hope in light of Colombia's history. Some of the founding cadres of the M-19 indeed came from the FARC and undoubtedly sought merely to provide a turbo-charged version of the CP's Patriotic Liberation Front.

The M-19's first public action was to steal the sword of Simn Bolivar to draw attention to the loss of the country's revolutionary heritage. This was the greatest achievment of the M-19, to combine revolutionary struggle with a country's indigenous revolutionary traditions. In doing so, they were in keeping with the July 26th Movement's embrace of Jose Mart in Cuba, and similar use of national revolutionary symbols such as Farabundo Mart in El Salvador and Sandino in Nicaragua during the 1980s.

THE 1985 PEACE TALKS

By 1985, Colombia had entered a deep political crisis. The causes were the same as they had always been. Rapid economic development was not matched by a representative democracy. The lack of democracy ensured that the vast majority of the population was not offered social services such as clean water, education and health care. When they protested in the streets, they were attacked by right-wing paramilitaries. The guerrillas had a complicated relationship to the mass movement. While providing armed defense, they also gave the government an excuse to "empty the ocean" in order to kill the fish. Colombia was the site of rural pacification programs not that different from those that had been implemented in Vietnam and with the same dubious results. The internal immigrants who had fled government and private repression were far greater percentage-wise than the number of Kosovars who had fled from NATO bombing.

President Virgilio Barco embarked on peace talks with the guerrilla movement, so as to return a modicum of peace to the country. The cost of repression was proving too high and the carrot might work better than the stick in keeping the masses under control. The M-19 and the EPL agreed to the government's proposals, while the FARC and the ELN held back.

The M-19 had high expectations for re-entry into the normal political process. A 1985 survey found that if it ran a candidate for president, it would receive 36.7 percent of the vote. So when a truce was signed with the government, they went on the offensive and held rallies in slum districts of the big cities. And as soon as they did, the army, the police and the paramilitaries began to victimize the poor people who attended them.

Unlike the CP/FARC, which also looked forward to electoral openings but knew from bitter experience how treacherous the ruling class could be, the impetuous M-19 cadres took very little precautions. When their leaders in Cali were murdered by security forces, the M-19 called off their truce and launched one of the most disastrous actions in recent Colombian revolutionary history. While superficially bearing a resemblance to the sort of actions that had propelled the FSLN into the limelight, this action would serve to destroy the M-19 and demoralize the mass movement.

In November of 1985, the M-19 stormed the Palace of Justice in Bogot and during a 28-hour pitched battle with the army and police, 128 people were killed. Twelve politicians were killed in the fighting, as were 41 militants of the M-19. Leftwing journalist Ana Carrigan has written a sympathetic but rueful account of the disastrous action. Her description of the M-19 militants evokes the Sandinista image:

"John Agudelo Rios, the conservative lawyer who led the peace negotiations with the M-19 for President Betancur in 1984 and '85, says that none of the leaders he got to know ever did grow up. Agudelo Rios also says that no two of the M-19 leaders ever shared any common political ideology. There were right-wingers and Marxists, anarchists and a few lonely social democrats, and they could never agree on a program. They still can't. 'I hate programs,' says Antonio Navarro Wolf. 'There is nothing more deadly than programs. Those sacred texts that people hang around their necks like the doctrinaire dogmas of the Catholic Church.'

"Neither the long march through the political institutions nor years of guerrilla warfare in the distant mountains was ever the M19 style. From the moment they burst upon the scene in 1974 with the theft of one of the nation's most prized possessions, the sword of Simon Bolivar, through the high-jacking of several tons of weapons from the army's crack, XIIIth Brigade Bogot's headquarters over New Year's Eve in 1979, to the seizure of the Dominican Embassy while the entire Bogot's diplomatic corps were celebrating the Day of Dominican Independence in 1980, their specialty was always the 'golpe revolucionario publicitario,' designed to effect the maximum destabilization of the system. They were children of the media age, long on imagination and daring, short on discipline, and they believed their own high-flown rhetoric."

The M-19 and the EPL have disappeared from the Colombian political landscape. Those militants who were not killed have been largely absorbed into electoral politics. This leaves the FARC and the ELN as the sole armed opponents of the regime. In my next post, I will focus on the problem of guerrilla ties to the cocaine trade. Since the United States is using this as a pretext for an imperialist intervention, it is vitally important that anti-imperialist activists have a clear understanding of the issues, even if we don't all agree on whether connections to the cocaine industry itself constitutes a prima facie basis for condemning the guerrilla.

REFERENCES:

Berquist-Pearada-Snchez, "Violence in Colombia"
Ana Carrigan, "The Palace of Justice"
Richard Gott, "Guerrilla Movements in Latin America"
Jenny Pearce, "Inside the Labyrinth"

Louis Proyect

FARC (REVOLUTIONARY ARMED FORCES OF COLOMBIA)

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia began as the rural armed detachment of the Communist Party of Colombia.

When "La Violencia" broke out in 1948, Communist Party militants in the countryside took up arms to protect themselves and the masses. Jenny Pearce writes, "In El Davis, peasants organised a guerrilla enclave and a self-sufficient community under the political leadership of the Communist Party, which, till it had a population of 5,000 attracted people fleeing from other areas." Even as the CP formed armed bands, it continued to retain its ties to the Liberal Party and agreements were made with Liberal guerrillas to carry out joint actions. This did not stop the Liberals from betraying the CP as indicated by the willingness of the Liberal guerrilla chiefs to begin collaborating with the army in 1953.

In the first infusion of US aid against "subversion," $160 million was earmarked for counter-insurgency and "economic development" between 1961 and 1967. It was during this period that the anarchic, semi-bandit armed groups that had first emerged during 1948 began to take on more and more of a conscious anti-imperialist political character, especially those under CP leadership.

The US assistance bore fruit. Between 1963 and 1964, most of the openly bandit-like armed groups were defeated. Then the army turned its attention to the areas in which the CP formed a parallel state power based on peasant support. The CP, true to form, declared that it was ready to become re-integrated into the two-party system. A 1958 statement signed by Marulanda ("Sureshot") declared its intention to work within the system:

"As patriots, who have struggled during the years prior to 10 May 1957 against the despotic dictatorships which sowed ruin in the countryside and towns, we are not interested in the armed struggle and we are willing to collaborate in any way we can, with the task of pacification which the present government of Doctor Alberto Lleras Camargo is prepared to implement."

Camargo was the recently elected president of the National Front, a bloc between the two major bourgeois parties in Colombia. They signed a pact which guaranteed that they would alternate in power during a period of sixteen years. Imagine an agreement between Clinton and George Bush Jr. on this basis. Then imagine the CPUSA endorsing it. While this Bloc marked the end of armed hostilities between the two political wings of the ruling class, it at the same time marked the beginning of a new round of military attacks on the peasants and workers.

That the Communist Party of Colombia could refer positively to "pacification" points to the heavy hand of Stalin-era class-collaboration. While CP militants fought bravely for reforms in the countryside and in the trade union arena, the party was hampered by this ideological confusion about the tasks of the revolutionary movement. In their eyes, until Colombia had become a modern bourgeois-democratic republic, socialism would not be on the agenda. However, as the Cuban revolution would reveal the very next year, it was only through socialist revolution that the basic tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution could be achieved, including land reform which was and is the burning issue in Colombia.

Even though the CP had showed its willingness to placate the ruling class, the ruling class would be satisfied with nothing less than the physical elimination of the party. With US advisers, the Colombian army would unleash one of its most infamous operations in 1964. 16,000 troops encircled Marquetalia, a valley where fewer than 100 peasant sympathizers of the CP were toiling, while the airforce dropped bombs. Almost all the peasants escaped and joined up with others from around the country who had been living in CP "liberated zones" to form mobile guerrilla groups. At a conference in 1966, they officially launched the FARC. "La Violencia" was officially over, but a new war along more sharply delineated class lines was now beginning.

(The FARC and CP split sometime in the 80's over

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Just like rings in a tree trunk mark off its yearly growth, so would successive appearance of Colombia's guerrilla groups over the past half-century indicate shifts or ruptures in the worldwide left. Every shakeup in the revolutionary movement internationally has had the effect of spawning a new armed group in Colombia that has taken root in the country's fertile political soil, made so by permanent injustice.

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There was a lack of food. The pacifists and socialists became more vocal after Bolshevik seized power in Russia. At that time generals Ludendorff and Hindenburg basically ran Germany and marginalized the reichstag and the kaiser. By September 1918 they realized they are going to lose so to stop a socialist takeover they "planned a revolution from above" and general Ludendorff planed to put the blame of Germany's defeat onto reichstag. This would later become known as the stab in the back myth. The war continued so Ludendorff resigned and they planned a huge assault without authorization. The war ended on November the 11th. On the 15th trade union leaders agreed to undermine the councils and stop unorganized strikes in exchange for some reforms. This ended the agreement of nationalizing Germany's industry. Ebert removed the communists from berlin by withholding their pay and attacking their base in the city palace. Ebert's army was beaten back on Christmas eve but the navy division didn't take the city and instead demanded to be payed. This assault split the government and encouraged the Spartacus to launch a rebellion. The government called the free court to crush the uprising. Because the Spartacus were defeated Ebert won the presidential elections in February to become head of the Weimar republic. Kurt Eisner was assassinated by a man from an anti-Semitic group that included many Nazi leaders. Created a soviet republic. Eugene Levine took control of the soviet. An army of over 30,00 solders retook Munich.

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In 1918 to 1919 Germany experienced a socialist influenced revolution that would bring a democratic government. A new parliament based at Weimar took over. Weimar ultimately failed and the question of whether the failure began in the revolution was never decided.

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A History of the German Revolution of 1918-19

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Although increasingly described as ‘not a revolution’ the German Revolution of 1918-19 turned Germany from an imperial Kaiserreich into a republic.

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the Italian revolution was also known as the Italian unification because its main purpose was to unify the states on the Italian peninsula. To unify they had to defeat the big powers that controlled Italy. The revolution lead to a unified Italy that was stronger that ever. before the revolution the Italian peninsula was divided into states and the country Italy didn't exist. When Napoleon was defeated in France Austria conquered Lombardi and Venetia and Naples (The capital of the kingdom of two Sicilies) was in a dispute with the Bourbon Dynasty in France. France then lost power. All the different states had different cutlers, government, and rulers so unification was hard. Italy is now a tourist attraction and one of the most popular countries in the world. The revolution took place early to mid 19th century. The two main people involved in the war were count Camilo de Kerlor and Giuseppe Garibaldi. A letter was sent to Pope pious the ninth asking for unification. He responded that it would already happen because it was in god's plan. Italy was then unified and they now have many scientific advancements and it is a very well liked tourist attraction.

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The revolution was a struggle against fascism and worker's power in 1930. The captains of the “Anti-Fascist Concentration” are back in Italy and they are even more miserable than what people could have imagined thirteen years ago.

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Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists' Internet Archive

The New International, January 1944

Leon Trotsky

Timely Observations for Discussion Today

(May 1930)

From The New International, Vol. X No. 1, January 1944, p. 14-17.
A more complete version in a slightly different translation can be found here.
Originally published in Bulletin of the Russian Opposition, September-October 1930.
First published in English in The Militant, Vol. VII No. 32, 7 August 1943, p. 3.
Translated by John G. Wright [Joseph Vanzler].
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O'Callaghan for ETOL.

Introduction

It would be hard to find a more timely and important contribution to the discussion of the problems of the Marxian vanguard in the revolutionary struggle against fascism and for workers' power than Trotsky's comments in 1930 on the coming revolution in Italy.

The relevance and perspicacity of Trotsky's contribution are underlined by two things: the applicability of the views he expresses about a revolution which occurred only thirteen years after he wrote about it, thirteen years of the most tumultuous and complicated events in modern history; and their applicability in face of the recent events in Italy, which could not possibly have been foreseen in their concreteness by anyone, especially not thirteen years ago.

Now that the captains of the "Anti-Fascist Concentration" are actually back in Italy, they are proving to be even more miserable Punchinellos than could have been foreseen thirteen years ago. The Stalinists, the Social-Democrats, the Sforzas and the Croces do not even reach to the hips of a Kerensky. Kerensky held power of a sort in a great state; his facsimiles in Italy hardly have the power of speech. Kerensky declaimed and shouted and strutted; the Italian Social-Democrats look inquiringly to Amgot, Sforza whines and Croce moans unintelligibly. Under Kerensky, the Czar was under arrest and a democratic republic was proclaimed - more or less; the "six anti-fascist parties" earnestly implore the Allied commanders to do them the great favor of lifting the crown from the anointed head of the King, with the minimum of pain to all concerned, and of granting them a democratic regime, plus a few democratic liberties when and as it suits the military requirements of their patrons.

Meanwhile, the popular revolution which began in Italy has not succeeded in developing to the point of the seizure of power by the working class. Apart from the difficulties which the military situation in Italy presents to the revolution, this frustration is due primarily to the absence of a well-organized revolutionary vanguard party capable of leading the workers to a socialist victory.

This is another way of saying that after almost a generation of fascist rule in Italy, the working class, with all the remarkable powers of recuperation it has once more disclosed, is still deeply affected by all sorts of democratic illusions, is greatly confused and disoriented. Neither Sforza, the Social-Democrats, nor the Stalinists, who are allowed to operate after a fashion in Southern Italy, are expending any efforts to dispel these illusions and introduce clarity. That is not their rôle. The masses will have to learn from events. Fortunately, there will be no lack of events, events that will be very instructive as to the real rôle of Anglo-American imperialism and of the "anti-fascists" of all stripes who cling to its caissons.

The masses will learn most speedily, and most effectively, if the Marxists in Italy organize their forces well, and understand how to teach the masses by whose side they fight. That there are revolutionary Marxists in Italy, who can and will re-unite on a national scale, even if they are now isolated, not overly numerous and scattered, is, in our opinion, a certainty. That they unite and adopt a fighting Bolshevik program, is the urgent task in Italy.

It is impossible to consider this task without frankly expressing the same apprehensions that really underlie Trotsky's comments in 1930. They were made in reply to a number of queries addressed to him by a group of Italian Communist-Oppositionists. Trotsky could not be - and he was not - unaware of the strong influence still exerted among the Italian Marxists by the doctrines and prejudices of the early left wing in the Italian communist movement, commonly referred to as the Bordiguists, after their leader, Araadeo Bordiga. His observations about the Italian revolution were obviously aimed not merely and perhaps not even so much against the Stalinists, the Social-Democrats and the bourgeois liberals, as against the doctrinary ultra-leftism of the Bordiguists which could only result in isolating the Marxists from the main stream of the coming revolution, and reducing them to ineffectualness.

Trotsky's admonitions against the juiceless and brittle leftism which does not understand the significance of democratic slogans in connection with the struggle for workers' power, especially in the period of struggle against political despotism, were flawlessly valid in 1930. Today, in light of the way events are actually unfolding, it can be said that his admonitions are not merely valid, but that to ignore them would be a first-class disaster for the revolutionary vanguard and, correspondingly, for the revolution itself.

Nobody could ask for a clearer confirmation of the wisdom of Trotsky's views than is offered by the situation in Italy today. The advocates of a revolutionary workers' government need a political instrument with which to expose the hollowness of bourgeois democracy, and particularly of the bourgeois and petty bourgeois democrats, with which to shift the masses from the tutelage of the enemies of socialist power - ranging from Amgot, through Sforza and the Social-Democrats, to the Stalinists - to the conscious struggle for socialist power. There are no better instruments than the "transitional slogans," the democratic demands which, as Trotsky put it, "always open up the road for the proletarian dictatorship," the dictatorship that "cannot be imposed upon the popular masses."

If some still living leftists look down upon "democratic demands" because "we are in a revolutionary situation," it is because the experiences of at least thirty years have left them blissfully unaffected. The fact that Sforza, the Social-Democrats and the Stalinists (and their similars in other countries of Europe) also mumble something about free speech, free press, free assembly, elections, etc., is important only in that they find themselves compelled to reflect the aspirations of the masses who were so long without any semblance of these rights. The fact is that they only mumble about these democratic rights. They "caution" the masses to subordinate the struggle for them to the interests of private property, or the interests of imperialism, or the interests of the imperialist war. Or they tell the masses that the way to gain these rights is by lying quietly in bed until some gracious personage or personages condescend to grant them to the people.

These are only added reasons why the revolutionists should become the most ardent and uncompromising champions of these demands, investing them, as Trotsky writes, "with the most audacious and resolute meaning." It was precisely by acting in this way that the Russian Bolsheviks demonstrated to the masses that the only way of achieving their simple and legitimate democratic aspirations was to break from the democratic poseurs, the promisers and the compromisers, and take power into their own hands.

In this connection, we call attention to the resolution of the Workers Party on the situation in Europe, with special reference to the revolutionary struggle for national liberation, which was printed in the February 1943 issue of The New International. In it will be found an exposition of the Marxian policy in Europe today which is inspired by the same approach to the problem of the socialist revolution that marks Trotsky's contribution of thirteen years ago.

Trotsky's article was first published in the September-October 1930 issue of The Bulletin of the Russian Opposition. It was translated by John G. Wright and published in The Militant of August 7, 1943, from which it is reproduced here in full. - The Editor

* * *

You deny the possibility of a bourgeois revolution in Italy, and in this you are absolutely correct. History hasn't the capacity for turning back a considerable number of pages, each denoting a decade. The Central Committee of the Italian Communist Party used to try to skate around this question by declaring that the revolution would be neither bourgeois nor proletarian but a "people's revolution." This is a mere repetition of the answer given at the beginning of our century by the Russian Populists [Narodniki] to the question of what will be the nature of the revolution against czarism. This is the same answer that the Comintern has given and continues to give with respect to China and India. It is a pseudo-revolutionary rehashing of the social-democratic theory of Otto Bauer and others, a theory proclaiming that the state can rise above the classes, i.e., be neither bourgeois nor proletarian. This theory is fatal for the proletariat and for the revolution. In China it turned the proletariat into cannon fodder for the bourgeois counter-revolution.

Every great revolution in history is a people's revolution in the sense that the entire people enters into the channel of the revolution. The great French Revolution and the October Revolution were people's revolutions in the full sense of the term. But the former was bourgeois inasmuch as it established private property, whereas the latter was proletarian inasmuch as it abolished private property.

Only hopelessly belated petty bourgeois revolutionists are still capable of envisaging nowadays the perspective of neither bourgeois nor proletarian revolutions but a "people's" (i.e., petty bourgeois) one. But in the imperialist epoch the petty bourgeoisie is utterly incapable not only of leading the revolution but of playing an independent rôle in it.
[With regard to the "transitional" period in Italy after the downfall of fascism, a question closely linked with the foregoing, Trotsky wrote:]
Two Diametrically Opposed Conceptions

First of all it is necessary to pose clearly the question - a transitional period from what to what? A transitional period between a bourgeois (or "people's") revolution and the proletarian revolution - that is one thing. A transitional period between the fascist dictatorship and the proletarian dictatorship - that is something else again. In accordance with the first conception, on the order of the day is a bourgeois revolution and one must fix the place of the proletariat in it, and only after this will there open up the transitional period to the proletarian revolution. According to the other conception, at issue is a series of battles, social shocks, changing situations, and partial turns which comprise the stage of the proletarian revolution. There might be several such stages. But between them there cannot and will not be either a bourgeois revolution or the mysterious hybrid of a "people's" revolution.

Does this mean that Italy might not again turn tor a certain time into a parliamentary state or become a "democratic republic"? I consider - apparently in complete agreement with you - that such a perspective is not excluded. But it can manifest itself, not as the product of a bourgeois revolution, but as the abortion of the proletarian revolution, which had not fully matured and which had not been brought to its conclusion. In the event of a profound revolutionary crisis and mass battles, in the course of which, however, the proletarian vanguard proves as yet incapable of coming to power, the bourgeoisie might restore its rule on "democratic" foundations.

A Phase of the Counter-Revolution

Is it permissible to say, for instance, that the existing German [Weimar] Republic is the conquest of a bourgeois revolution? Such a characteriation would be absurd. What took place in Germany in 1918-19 was a proletarian revolution which for lack of leadership was deceived, betrayed and crushed. The bourgeois counter-revolution, however, was forced to adapt itself to the situation created by the crushing of the proletarian revolution and to assume the forms of a parliamentary "democratic" republic.

Is something similar (within certain limits, of course) excluded for Italy? No, it is not. The enthronement of fascism came as a result of the 1920 proletarian revolution which was not carried to its conclusion. The fascists can be overthrown only by a new proletarian revolution. Should this again not be carried to its conclusion (owing to the weakness of the Communist Party, the maneuvers and betrayals of the Social-Democrats, the Free Masons, the Catholics), then the "transitional" state which the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie would be compelled to create after the foundering of the fascist form of its rule could not be anything else but a parliamentary and democratic state.

What in reality is the political aim of the Anti-Fascist Concentration? Foreseeing the collapse of the fascist state, as a consequence of the rising of the proletariat and, generally, the oppressed popular masses, the Concentration is making preparations to check this movement, to paralyze and rob it by passing off the victory of refurbished counter-revolution as the victory of the democratic bourgeois revolution.

If one does not constantly keep in mind this dialectic of living social forces, then it is possible to become hopelessly confused and lose one's way. As I see it, there are no disagreements on this score among us.

Marxist Attitude to Democratic Slogans

Does this mean that we communists reject in advance any and all democratic slogans and, generally, all transitional and preparatory slogans, and limit ourselves slosely to the slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat? This would be hopeless sectarian doctrinairism. We do not at all think that the proletarian dictatorship is separated from the fascist regime by a single revolutionary leap. We do not at all deny a transitional period with its transitional demands, including democratic demands. With the aid of these transitional slogans, which always open up the road for the proletarian dictatorship, the communist vanguard must conquer the entire working class to its side, while the working class as a whole must rally around it all the oppressed masses of the nation.

I do not exclude even the slogan of a Constituent Assembly which under certain conditions can be imposed by the course of the struggle, or, more correctly, by the process of the revolutionary awakening of the oppressed masses. On the broad historical scale, i.e., from a perspective of a whole number of years, the fate of Italy is undoubtedly concentrated in the alternative: fascism or communism! But to assert that this alternative has already today become the conscious attainment of the oppressed classes in the nation is obviously to indulge in wishful thinking and to consider as solved the colossal task which still fully confronts the weak Communist Party.

Should the revolutionary crisis unfold, say, in the course of the next few months - under the influence of the economic crisis on the one hand, and under the impact of the revolutionary impulse from Spain on the other - then vast masses of toilers, not only peasants but also workers, would undoubtedly advance, alongside of economic demands, democratic slogans (freedom of assembly, of the press, coalitions, unions, democratic representation in Parliament, municipalities, etc.). Does it mean that a communist party must reject these demands? On the contrary. It must invest them with the most audacious and resolute meaning. The revolutionary dictatorship cannot be imposed upon the popular masses. It can be realized in life only by conducting the struggle - the entire struggle for all the transitional demands, tasks and needs of the masses - at the head of these masses.

Bolshevik Policy in 1917

Let me recall that Bolshevism by no means came to power under the abstract slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat. We fought for the Constituent Assembly much more resolutely and boldly than all the other parties. We said to the peasants: "You demand equal distribution of land? Our agrarian program goes much further. But no one except us will assist you peasants in realizing the equal use of the land. For this you must support the workers." In regard to the war we said to the popular masses: "Our communist task is the war against all oppressors. But you are not ready to go so far. You are striving to break out of the imperialist war. No one but us Bolsheviks will help you achieve this task."

I do not touch here at all upon the question of what should be the central slogans of the transitional period in Italy, right now in the year 1930. In order to outline the proper slogans, and to effect correct and timely changes, it is necessary to be far better acquainted with Italy's internal life and to be far closer to her toiling masses than is possible for me. Here, in addition to the correct method, it is also necessary to be able to listen to the masses. I want here simply to indicate the general place of transitional demands in the struggle of communism against fascism and, in general, against bourgeois society. While advancing one or another set of democratic slogans, we must irreconcilably fight against all forms of democratic charlatanism. Such low-grade charlatanism is represented by the slogan of the Italian Social-Democracy: "The Democratic Republic of the Toilers." The toilers' republic can be only the class state of the proletariat. The "Democratic Republic" is only a masked rule of the bourgeoisie. The combination of the two is a naive petty bourgeois illusion of the Social-Democratic rank and file (workers, peasants) and deliberate treachery on the part of the Social-Democratic leaders (all these Turatis, Modiglianis, and their ilk). Let me once again remark in passing that I was and remain opposed to the formula of a "National Assembly on the basis of worker-peasant committees" precisely because this formula approaches the Social-Democratic slogan of the "Democratic Toilers' Republic" and, consequently, can render extremely difficult for us the struggle against the Social-Democrats.

The Threat of Social-Democratic Betrayal

The assertion of the official leadership [of the Comintern] to the effect that the Social-Democracy no longer exists politically in Italy is a consoling theory for optimistic functionaries who see ready-made conquests where it is still a question only of great tasks. Fascism did not liquidate the Social-Democracy but on the contrary has conserved it. In the eyes of the masses the Social-Democrats do not bear the direct responsibility for the regime whose victims they are to a certain extent. This gains them new sympathies or strengthens the old ones. At a certain moment the Social-Democracy will coin political currency from the blood of Matteotti just as proficiently as Rome coins Christ's blood. It is not at all excluded that in the initial period of the revolutionary crisis the leadership can turn out to be concentrated chiefly in the hands of the social-democracy. If large masses are drawn immediately into the crisis, and if the communist leadership conducts a correct policy, then the Social-Democracy can be reduced to a cipher within a brief period of time. But this is a task and not a conquest already attained. One cannot leap over this task: one must solve it.

Let me recall in passing that Zinoviev, and later the Manuilskys and Kuusinens, have already announced on two or three occasions that the German Social-Democracy no longer exists in essence. In 1925, in a statement to the French party, written by the flighty Lozovsky, the Comintern announced that the French Socialist Party had completely departed from the scene. Against this lightmindedness the Left Opposition protested resolutely each time. Only boobies or traitors will seek to instill in the proletarian vanguard of Italy the idea that Italian Social-Democracy can no longer play a r61e analogous to that played by the German Social-Democracy in relation to the German revolution of 1918.

It may be objected that inasmuch as the Social-Democracy has already deceived and betrayed the Italian proletariat [in 1920], it will not succeed in repeating its treachery. Illusions! Self-deception! In the course of its entire history the proletariat has been deceived many times, first by liberalism and then by Social-Democracy.

Apart from everything else, it is impermissible to forget that since 1920 a decade has passed; and since the victory of fascism - eight years. Ten and twelve-year-old boys and girls, who witnessed the fascist activities of 1920-22, comprise today the new generation of workers and peasants who will struggle most selflessly against the fascists, but who lack, however, political experience. Communists will come in contact with the masses themselves only in the course of the revolution itself, and in the best case they will require a number of months in order to expose and abolish the Social-Democracy, which, I repeat, was not liquidated by fascism, but, on the contrary, conserved.

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Main NI Index | Main Newspaper Index Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists' Internet Archive The New International, January 1944 Timely Observations for Discussion Today From The New International, Vol. X No. 1, January 1944, p. 14-17. A more complete version in a slightly different translation can be found here.