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1) The concept of the “workers’ and farmers’ government” has been used in different ways at various times:
a) Lenin and the Bolsheviks, after October 1917, used it interchangeably with the idea of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and the “workers’ state” when describing the Soviet power in Russia. All three concepts were intended to indicate a clearly prosocialist government with a decisive proletarian majority. No terminological distinctions were made between the period before and after definitive measures were taken to nationalize the economy. Other terms were also used, such as “the dictatorship of the proletariat and poor peasantry,” a “worker and peasant republic,” etc.
b) The Fourth Comintern Congress (in 1922) codified a different use of the “workers’ government” idea (later consistently referred to as the “workers’ and peasants’ government“). This was an extension of the tactic of the united front between the parties of the Comintern and reformist forces in the workers’ movement. In this type of workers’ and peasants’ government reformist forces would predominate, and the Bolshevik forces would be in a minority, if they were participants at all.
Although such a government would be incapable of leading the transition to socialist economic forms, it would provide a bridge to the actual dictatorship of the proletariat. The Fourth Congress considered it possible for such a workers’ and farmers’ government to actually come to power in exceptional circumstances, but the most likely course was still recognized to be the assumption of power by communist forces. Even if this type of petty-bourgeois workers’ and farmers’ government never actually came into existence, however, the concept was considered a useful propaganda tool to reach the broad masses who were still under the sway of reformist leaderships. Used in this way, the slogan itself had a transitional character.
c) In the Transitional Program (1938) Trotsky recognized this twofold character of the workers’ and farmers’ government idea. He used and explained it both in the sense that he and Lenin had after 1917 in Russia (as a popularization of the dictatorship of the proletariat), and in the sense of the Fourth Comintern Congress (a government dominated by petty-bourgeois parties which would be “merely a short episode on the road to the actual dictatorship of the proletariat“). The possibility of the second type of workers’ and farmers’ government actually coming to power he described as a “highly improbable variant”; and his main concern was in its use as a transitional slogan.
c) In the 1960s, Joseph Hansen used the concept of the workers’ and farmers’ government to analyze the development of the world revolution after World War II. He said that in Eastern Europe, China, and Cuba, Stalinist or other radical petty-bourgeois leaderships had taken governmental power; and due to specific exceptional circumstances had also proven capable of moving forward to the expropriation of the bourgeoisie. This he said was similar to the process conceived of by the Fourth Comintern Congress and by Trotsky in the Transitional Program, except that they had excluded the possibility that such governments would prove capable of actually taking this step of nationalizing the economy. Hansen also introduced a new meaning for the workers’ and farmers’ government concept—as a scientific descriptive term to indicate the period in a socialist revolution when the governmental and military power of the bourgeoisie has been overthrown, but decisive economic power remains in the hands of the old ruling class. This he distinguished from the “workers’ state,” which he defined as the period after the expropriation of the bourgeoisie.
2) Today we continue to use the idea of the workers’ and farmers’ govern ment in all three of these ways. To the extent that we foresee an actual government in power with this slogan it is a popularization of and a synonym for the dictatorship of the proletariat in the same sense that Lenin and the Bolsheviks used it after October 1917 in Russia. When we use this slogan in a transitional way in approaching workers who are not yet fully convinced of a revolutionary program, or when we call on mass reformist workers’ parties, in a country like France, for example, to take power and wield it in the interests of the toilers, we are using a united front-type approach like that of the Fourth Comintern Congress. When we describe the current Nicaraguan or Grenadian regimes as workers’ and farmers’ governments, we are designating the stage of development of the revolutionary process in those countries. These different uses must be kept distinct and made clear in any discussion of the workers’ and farmers’ government.
3) A program of economic and social change is an inherent part of any anticapitalist revolution. But although this program can be clarified, and steps toward its implementation taken through the dual power in the course of the political-military struggle against the old order, the victory of that struggle is a prerequisite for decisive economic and social measures. This is the unique characteristic of the socialist revolution, which means that there will inevitably be a period after the political and military power of the bourgeoisie has been overthrown but before economic power is decisively in the hands of the proletariat.
4) The tasks of the revolutionary government in this period — the period of the workers’ and farmers’ government — consist of dismantling whatever vestiges of bourgeois state power remain, and replacing them with proletarian forms; organizing the masses to implement workers’ control over production; and taking whatever socialist economic measures are necessary to keep the economic power of the bourgeoisie under control — leading to the decisive transfer of that economic power to the proletariat.
5) The time that may elapse between the military-political victory of the working class and its final assumption of economic power has been shown by real life to vary according to the objective reality. But even in the most favorable circumstances it can only be a relatively brief interlude, and can in no case be considered a separate historical “stage.” The length of this interlude will depend on many factors, including most importantly the strength of the domestic bourgeoisie and the ability and willingness of external counterrevolutionary forces to intervene. The stronger these dangers, the more quickly will the necessity be posed of the working class appropriating the decisive economic power or being overthrown.
6) Historical experience has also demonstrated that the period of the revolution which Hansen characterized as the workers’ and farmers’ government can be filled by either the Bolshevik-type (proletarian) workers’ and farmers’ government, or by the Fourth Comintern Congress-type (united front, petty-bourgeois). In general, agreeing on a characterization of a particular regime as a workers’ and farmers’ government in the sense used by Hansen only begins to enlighten us as to its character. There is a qualitative difference between Russia in 1917, on the one hand, and Algeria under Ben Bella, on the other, to pick the most extreme cases. Other specific developments fall on a continuum between these two extremes based on the subjective factor — the degree to which the leadership of the workers’ and farmers’ government adheres to a revolutionary Marxist, i.e., Bolshevik, program. The fact that workers’ and farmers’ governments have been led by petty-bourgeois forces in most of the post-World War II social transformations has resulted in major sacrifices and hardships for the masses.
7) In the post -World War II social transformations such as Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, etc., where one or another type of radical petty-bourgeois government came to power, this set the stage for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat by disarming and disenfranchising the old ruling classes. However, the new ruling parties actively disavowed socialist intentions (as they had before coming to power) and in the beginning took measures to consolidate a strategic coalition with the bourgeoisie which would be based on long-term guarantees of capitalist property relations. Therefore, we cannot speak of the dictatorship of the proletariat in these cases until a second qualitative turning point in the revolutionary process — the actual decision by these governments to expropriate the bourgeoisie and establish workers’ states.
8) However, in the case of the conquest of power by a genuine revolutionary Marxist party (as in Russia in 1917), with a clear path charted toward the creation of a workers’ state based on socialized property forms, then the establishment of the workers’ and farmers’ government in the sense we have been discussing marks the basic qualitative turning point in the transition from a capitalist state to a workers’ state (the decisive resolution of the violent conflict between the old and the new). It is at this point that the dictatorship of the proletariat begins, although many tasks and battles lie ahead before it is completely consolidated and firmly constructed. The point at which economic power passes decisively into the hands of the proletariat is still an important milestone for the revolution, but even if this is delayed for some time it can only be correctly understood as a continuation, deepening, extension, and decisive consolidation of the original qualitative change which occurred when the proletariat assumed governmental power.
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