Democratic Demands and the Fight for Working-Class Power

Quote of the issue

The democratic aspirations of the masses have been a powerful spark for struggle in Tunisia and Egypt. But to break the fetters of political despotism and economic and social backwardness, the working class must emerge as the leader of the oppressed masses. This is the only class with the social power and historic interest to overthrow the capitalist system, which is the only road to national and social liberation in the semicolonial world.

This understanding lies at the heart of Leon Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, which draws above all on the lessons of the victorious Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the defeated Chinese Revolution of 1925-27. A Marxist working-class party must be forged in opposition to all wings of the bourgeoisie, fighting to build organs of working-class power (soviets, or workers councils) and for the workers to seize state power from the capitalist exploiters. Crucial to cementing the revolutionary gains is the extension of socialist revolution to the centres of world imperialism.

We print below excerpts from “Backward Countries and the Program of Transitional Demands,” a section of the 1938 founding program of the Fourth International.

Colonial and semicolonial countries are backward countries by their very essence. But backward countries are part of a world dominated by imperialism. Their development, therefore, has a combined character: the most primitive economic forms are combined with the last word in capitalist technique and culture. In like manner are defined the political strivings of the proletariat of backward countries: the struggle for the most elementary achievements of national independence and bourgeois democracy is combined with the socialist struggle against world imperialism. Democratic slogans, transitional demands, and the problems of the socialist revolution are not divided into separate historical epochs in this struggle, but stem directly from one another. The Chinese proletariat had barely begun to organize trade unions before it had to provide for soviets. In this sense, the present program is completely applicable to colonial and semicolonial countries, at least to those where the proletariat has become capable of carrying on independent politics….

It is impossible merely to reject the democratic program; it is imperative that in the struggle the masses outgrow it. The slogan for a national (or constituent) assembly preserves its full force for such countries as China or India. This slogan must be indissolubly tied up with the problem of national liberation and agrarian reform. As a primary step, the workers must be armed with this democratic program. Only they will be able to summon and unite the farmers. On the basis of the revolutionary democratic program, it is necessary to oppose the workers to the “national” bourgeoisie.

Then, at a certain stage in the mobilization of the masses under the slogans of revolutionary democracy, soviets can and should arise. Their historical role in each given period, particularly their relation to the national assembly, will be determined by the political level of the proletariat, the bond between them and the peasantry, and the character of the proletarian party policies. Sooner or later, the soviets should overthrow bourgeois democracy. Only they are capable of bringing the democratic revolution to a conclusion and likewise opening an era of socialist revolution.

The relative weight of the individual democratic and transitional demands in the proletariat’s struggle, their mutual ties and their order of presentation, is determined by the peculiarities and specific conditions of each backward country and, to a considerable extent, by the degree of its backwardness. Nevertheless, the general trend of revolutionary development in all backward countries can be determined by the formula of the permanent revolution in the sense definitely imparted to it by the three revolutions in Russia (1905, February 1917, October 1917).

— Leon Trotsky, “The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International” (1938)