Trotsky: Democracy

The Bolshevik Communists rejected the Social Democracy of Kautsky on the one hand and the anarchism of Proudhon on the other hand. The Proudhonists wished to bring about the economic organisation of the workers through their own means; without, that is, the intervention of the state. The Social Democrats, on the other hand, by and large wished to bring about a revolution while remaining within the existing framework of the parliamentary democracies of western Europe. Trotsky, on behalf of the Bolsheviks, rejected these approaches and, as a good Marxist should, attempted to do so from a scientific basis. Since the Marxist view of history is that it may be studied and understood from a purely scientific basis, with all that entails for good and bad practice, data collection and analysis and so forth, then it is necessary to demonstrate that political ideologies and arguments from a properly scientific approach. How, then, does Trotsky go about constructing his argument?

First, in defining terms (which he does not do formally in the article – see below – on which this piece is based), he considers ‘democracy’ to be that form of western European parliamentary democracy which was in place in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. There are many other forms of democracy which might have been considered but Trotsky was a man of action and pressed, always, for time in the ideological warfare of post-revolution Russia and so he took up arms against the ‘democracy’ that was used to confront Communism. He then points out that this democracy has failed to make any progress towards realizing a workers’ state, irrespective of the numerous wars and conflagrations of the times. Indeed, democracy has retarded the progress of the revolution because the way in which bourgeois politics is organised is such that “… in reality, the peasantry, socially and culturally backward and politically helpless, has in all countries always provided support for the most reactionary, filibustering and mercenary parties which, in the long run, always supported capital against labour.” This process may of course be seen in the USA today.

The reason why democracy necessarily acts in this way, from a scientific basis, is because it is controlled by bourgeois interests who use it to create and then recreate systems that will ensure their own economic supremacy and prevent change from taking place: “Born of the struggle of the Third Estate against the powers of feudalism, the democratic state very soon becomes the weapon of defence against the class antagonisms generated within bourgeois society.” Victory for the bourgeoisie against the feudal class meant that bourgeois hands began to control the levers of power by which democracy works: limiting what may be debated; restricting the rights of individuals; making fetishes of institutions which maintain the status quo: the monarchy, the Constitution, religion and so forth.

For further details, see Slavoj Zizek Presentes Trostky: Terrorism and Communism (London and New York: Verso Books, 2007), pp.31-48.