By RONALDO TADEU DE SOUZA*
Lenin and Trotsky and the concepts of unstable equilibrium and united front
“Ideas have a bearing on the balance of political action and the outcome of historical change. The more radical and uncompromising the body of ideas, the more far-reaching will be their effect once released in conditions of turbulence [social and political working people dissatisfied with the existing order]; ideas that fail to shock the world will not be able to shake it.” (Perry Anderson, Ideas and political action in historical change).
Since debate-Bobbio In the 1970s, there was a widespread understanding in certain intellectual, political and, above all, academic circles that Marxism in general does not have a political science and/or political theory. Responding to the communists of the time, the Italian political writer stated that: “in general, there persists […] an underdevelopment of Marxist studies in the fields […] of political science, [political theory] and legal [philosophy].” In his terms, a Marxist political science and/or political theory is “substantially flawed” because it lacks analytical models of how to administer power; precisely the organizational centers of the modern State (bureaucracy, parliament, army).
One way to dispel this profound error is to investigate historical moments in which Marxism achieved great theoretical and intellectual development; when it had to elaborate and reflect on the subjective and objective conditions of practical political action with a view to revolution and the seizure of state power. The Third International between 1919 and 1924 can be considered as one of these moments.
Formed in the context of the expansive wave of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Third International had two fundamental objectives: first, to provide the international workers' movement with a device that would allow, through theoretical understanding, organization, strategy and tactics, the conquest of political power; second, to distinguish itself, politically, from the Second International, the reformists.
In his opening speech at the first congress, held on March 2, 1919, Lenin said, “I ask all those present to honor the memory of the best representatives of the Third International, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, by standing up.” At the time, less than two months had passed since Liebknecht and Rosa had been assassinated by the right-wing extremists, with the connivance of the social-democratic government, in the circumstances of the German Council Revolution of 1918. To achieve these two objectives, the main Marxist theorists, intellectuals and politicians of the period developed a political theory (or, if you prefer, a political science) that would make it possible to understand, on the one hand, the intricate dynamics of the relations between the State, the economy and the class struggle, and, on the other hand, (and based on the first objective), which strategy and tactics would best enable the workers to revolutionize the world with their socialist insurrection.
The formative core of political theory in this circumstance was composed of the concepts of unstable equilibrium and the united front. Lenin and Trotsky were the main articulators of these notions. Perry Anderson would say that Lenin and Trotsky were the main architects of the construction of the concept of unstable equilibrium and the classical theorization of the united front at the Third Congress of the Communist International in 1920. (It is important to mention here that Perry Anderson argues that Antonio Gramsci identified his war of position with the strategy-tactics of the united front.)
Thus, in short, the meaning of the notion of unstable equilibrium is the constant process of rupture and reconstruction of the structures and superstructures of the capitalist regime of domination; while the meaning of the united front can be understood as the strategic-tactical approach to winning over the majority of the working masses and the poor through common demands and practical actions that unify the demands of the majority of the subalterns. In interpretative terms, unstable equilibrium has three moments. What are they? How do they combine? And what is their dynamic result?
If unstable equilibrium is defined, precisely, as the constant process (especially in the imperialist stage) of rupture and reconstruction of the structures and superstructures of the capitalist domination regime (which is what we saw with the crisis of the financial system in 2008 and the rearticulation of the class power of the bourgeoisie oscillating between social-liberalism and the intransigent right with fascist tendencies), it only becomes unstable equilibrium as such if it goes through three moments.
They are: the first, corresponds to the economic situation and the relationship between the bourgeois States; the second, concerns the party conflict (the dispute between the radical, socialist and communist parties and the social-democratic and social liberal parties); and the third, is the moment or not in which the subjective potentialities of the workers are revealed.
Strictly speaking, the first moment, that of the moment concerning the situation of the economy and the relationship between bourgeois states, occurs when the economy presents booms and crises, that is, when, parallel to the curve of development or decline of capitalism, there are peaks of improvement and violent outbreaks of crisis. In booms, there are situations of growth in trade, expansion of investments and concessions to workers; in crises, there are closures of industries, mergers of large corporations, financialization, reduction of profits (in the contemporary formulation of Robert Brenner, the inability of the capitalist system to obtain satisfactory rates of profitability, is what generally characterizes what we call neoliberalism with variations in the accumulation regime from time to time, since the 1980s), attacks and offensives against the gains that workers achieved at the time of the tree.
From the point of view of the bourgeois states and the relationship between them, this becomes more tense and more contradictory. At the same time, they have to be more cohesive in order to undertake domination against the working class, they have to compete with their main competitors in the world market space, as well as consolidate their power and international legitimacy. This creates constant reconfigurations in the main structures of the bourgeois state – expressed by political and social theories such as those written by Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, Joseph Schumpeter, Gaetano Mosca and Vilfredo Pareto.
The State of exception conceptualized by the critical leftist thinker Giorgio Agamben in recent decades can be approached from the perspective of unstable equilibrium, at the moment of violent reconfiguration of the bourgeois State and politics: here, the law is transfigured in the face of possible civil wars, into the force of law.
The second moment of unstable equilibrium is of fundamental importance. It is established in the dispute between radical (revolutionary) parties and social-democratic and social-liberal parties. On the one hand, there is a pendulum here that oscillates between a greater influence of communists when workers are more unified in boom times and seek greater material gain, and when in times of crisis and are attacked by capital, needing to react to maintain the previously conquered positions, they establish more defensive positions.
On the other hand, the influence of social democracy and social liberalism increases, as the boom can forge a consciousness more adapted to the concessions of capital – which is what Theodor Adorno faced in the German scenario of the 1960s –, as well as adapting to the political-social configurations existing in scenarios of capital reforms, and seeking to defend what they obtained (social rights, better working conditions, salary increases, etc.) in the previous situation.
Specifically, with regard to social democracy, understood conceptually, politically and historically, it as such is one of the internal components of the reconstruction of the bourgeois equilibrium, as it acts as an element of containment of the rise of the revolutionary movement, giving the bourgeois class the possibility of recovering and temporarily recomposing the economic and political regime. The drama of the German Revolution, the Spartacist councils of 1918, is categorically and fundamentally part of the circle of protection of the bourgeois State and regime exercised by the social democrats (Ebert, Noske, Scheidemann; and later Kautsky) – at the height of the insurrection the SPD “used the Freikorps to [crush] and liquidate Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht” (Perry Anderson).
Two observations: (i) In the article “The Third International and its Place in History,” Lenin made it clear that the task of the new international was to combat and replace the Second International, in other words, to replace the perspective of bourgeois parliamentary democracy with the self-organized strategy of the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. (ii) Trotsky in the article The Main Lesion of the Third Congress claimed that social democracy was a shield of the bourgeoisie against the workers' revolution.
The third moment of unstable equilibrium is centered on the subjective potential or not of the workers' movement. We can say that in the political-psychological question, unstable equilibrium brings the repercussions for the revolutionary subject of the other two moments established above. Paradoxically, the subjective potential of the workers is the most important of the three moments. In other words, how will the working class act? Will it launch a revolutionary offensive to complete the rupture of relative stability or will it retreat and allow its recomposition by the forces of the order of capital? In effect; it is suggested that according to the elaborations of Lenin and Trotsky there will be, within the very scope of the structuring of unstable equilibrium, constant oscillations with periods of revolutionary offensives and periods of reflux of the movement after battles in which the conquest of power is not achieved.
The meaning of this triple configuration of the concept of unstable equilibrium (once again, ruptures and reconstructions of the structures and superstructures of the capitalist regime) undertaken by the political theory of the Third International was that only through an understanding of the set of power relations between classes could a precise strategy and tactic be developed for the revolution and conquest of the State. In other words, even though the economy was decisive as an immanent totality of existence, as Lenin and Trotsky (and other theorists of the period) constantly recalled in their texts, it was in the correlation of political forces that the fate of the revolution would be decided or not. Hence the theory-strategy or theory-tactics of the united front.
The theory of the united front was precisely the practical-conceptual proposition developed at the congresses of the Third International; more precisely from the 3rd Congress in 1920. As Perry Anderson argues, already mentioned above, it was Lenin and Trotsky, who criticized the direct and sectarian offensive of some communist groups, who were the theoretical authors of the classic document on the united front. Thus, the strategy-tactic of unified articulation would allow the working class to break the unstable balance in its favor.
To the extent that this was shaped, as we have seen, by ruptures and reconstructions (booms and crises; contradictory relations between imperialist states, semi-colonies and colonies; dispute between communists and social democrats and oscillations in the subjective potential of workers), it was clear that the proletarian masses would advance and ebb, making it necessary to set as a task the conquest of the majority of the subalterns by the communist parties through contingent and immediate material demands and demands, sometimes politically transitory, for those who live off their labor force.
In other words: the united front is the moment, the instant, in which radical-revolutionary parties in conjunction with the working class undertake political-practical actions that seek to fulfill the most objective desires (today subjective desires are of considerable importance, as a result of the transformations of the capitalist economy and the forms of existence that it triggers) concerning the living conditions of all the exploited and oppressed.
In Lenin's synthetic formulation – “we must without fail defend […] as the first act [of the Third Congress of the Communist International] the act [and action] of the practical method of attracting the majority of the working class […] we must win over the majority of the working class, [but also] the majority of the exploited and working rural population”; this must be the historical-political artifice of united front. It is worth insisting that the theory of the united front emerged in the debates of the Third International as a response to the theory of the offensive of a minority that would drag behind it the majority of the proletariat; this conception was elaborated and developed by the theorists of the Viennese magazine Communism, leading to the defeat of the March Action of 1921 – at that time, the working class did not follow the idealizers of the theory of the offensive (the conscious minority) in the face of an unfavorable correlation of forces at that precise and determined moment. Finally, it should be remembered that the theory of the united front is an action between organizations of the working class, undertaken to push the subaltern subjects themselves towards collective positions with revolutionary capacity. This involves two considerations: the united front is not in the interest of the institutions of liberal-parliamentary democracy or even of the parties involved in it; nor is it a popular front (or broad front in contemporary vocabulary, especially in Brazil) that brings together demands of the progressive bourgeoisie and the liberal-conservative middle class.
It is true that this brief essay is guided by a historical-conceptual reflection of a time long removed from the most urgent issues of the current class struggle. Evoking two formulations developed in the circumstances of the 1920s may seem excessively antiquarian. It is not a question of being erudite guardians of the moment of glory in the history of socialism, nor even of being exegetes of texts from the classical tradition of Marxism – although these intellectual exercises are of extreme importance.
However, the scope of the problems faced by the radical left as a whole is immeasurable. In the current situation, it is not just a matter of combating the intransigent right, with its eminently reactionary, anti-people and fascist tendencies; it is also the case that social liberalism (the distant vestige of social democratic ideology that is superimposed on multiculturalist policies and policies of identity, cultural recognition) – which is competing with the former to see who will best enshrine the new forms of the capital accumulation regime, with a view to reestablishing acceptable profit rates for the bourgeois class – is today presenting itself, with due political differences, as an adversary in the quest to rebuild the left.
Now, it will not be possible to create an authentic alternative for those below, the working people, if we do not spread throughout society: insurrectionary ideas, extreme transformative temperaments, Marxist culture, critical thinking, socialist theory and revolutionary hypotheses. Thus, the two concepts, that of unstable equilibrium and of the united front outlined by Lenin and Trotsky in the context of the Third International until 1924 and their implications, concepts that make up a historical-materialist political theory and/or political science, are suggestive in the current stage of the remaking of the contemporary (radical-revolutionary) left, especially in Brazil.[1]
*Ronaldo Tadeu de Souza is a professor of Political Science at UFSCar.
Note
[1] This fundamental and decisive debate in the political-intellectual history of the left in the 20th century can be read and studied in the following bibliographical references: Theodor Adorno – Resignation, German Philosophy Notebooks, v. 23, nº 1, 2018; Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception, ed. Boitempo, 2004; Perry Anderson – Antinomies and Gramsci. In: Perry Anderson – Selective Affinities, Boitempo, 2002, Ideas and Political Action in Historical Change, Left Bank Magazine, nº 1, 2003; Norberto Bobbio – Which Socialism? An Alternative Discussion, ed. Paz e Terra, 1983; Robert Brenner – New Boom or New Bubble?; the trajectory of the North American economy. In: Counterattacks – Selection of Texts from the New Left Review (Org. Emir Sader), ed. Boitempo, 2006; Milos Hájek – The Discussion on the United Front and the Aborted Revolution in Germany. In: Eric J. Hobsbawm – History of Marxism, v. 6, Paz e Terra, 1988; VI Lenin – I Congress of the Communist International (Opening Speech of the Congress on March 2). In: VL Lenin – Selected Works-Volume IX, ed. Moscow, 1977, Speech in Defense of the Tactics of the Communist International at the Third Congress of the Communist International [July 19, 1921]. In: V. L. Lenin – Party Work Among the Masses, ed. Human Sciences, 1979; The Third International and its Place in History-https://www.marxists.org/portugues/lenin/1919/04/15.htm; Leon Trotsky – The World Situation. In: Naturalness and Dynamics of Capitalism and Transition Economy, ed. CEIP, 1999, Flujos y Refluxes: The economic situation and the global labor movement. In: Naturalness and Dynamics of Capitalism and Transition Economy, ed. CEIP, 1999, The Main Lesson of the Third Congress-https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1924/ffyci-1/, On the United Front- https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1922/03/ufront.html.
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