Interview with Marxist scholar visiting U.S

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Michel Lowy is a well-known European Marxist who will be speaking in several cities in the United States over the next few weeks (see calendar). He was born in Brazil and currently resides in France. He is best known in the United States for three works: The Marxism of Che Guevara (Monthly Review Press, 1973), The Politics of Uneven and Combined Development (New Left Books, 1981), and George Lukacs: From Romanticism to Bolshevism (New Left Books, 1981). This interview was obtained over the phone by Socialist Action in anticipation of his U.S. tour.

Socialist Action: What is your assessment of the current situation in Central America?

Michel Lowy: The present revolutionary process unfolding in Central America is of world significance; it is the most advanced trench of the international class struggle. It is not a confrontation between blocs (East and West), but the struggle of the workers, peasants and poor people of Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala to get rid of poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, disease, infant mortality, economic and social inequality, and U.S. imperialist domination. It is a struggle for self-determination, and national and social emancipation.

The developments in Nicaragua since the victory of the Sandinistas in July 1979 have followed the logic of permanent revolution: destruction of the repressive apparatus of the bourgeois (Somozista) state; arming of the people through the militias; organization and mobilization of the masses (Comites de Defensa Sandinista); expropriation of the Somozistas; and growing inroads on capitalist property; anti-imperialist measures and deepening radicalization towards socialist aims.

At the same time the FSLN has given a rare example of tolerance and humanity: not even the Somozista henchmen were executed after the triumph of the revolution. Today the anti-revolutionary bourgeoisie is allowed to publish its press, La Prensa, and to legally organize its political parties which are united in the so-called "Democratic Coordination" . What is more important, leftist groups critical of the FSLN, like the two (pro-Soviet) Communist factions, the PSN and the PCN-as well as the exmaoist MAP-have been legally recognized by the revolutionary government.

The struggle in El Salvador, even more than in Nicaragua before 1979, has the character of a class war between the workers and poor peasants (organized around the FDR/FMLN), and the bourgeois oligarchy represented by the military regime and its imperialist protectors. The same applies to Guatemala, where the Revolutionary Unity (URNG) is supported by a growing mass of the exploited and oppressed indian populations in its fight against the dictatorship established by the U.S.-backed invasion of 1954. In these two countries, the dynamics and social aims of the popular insurgency-as well as those of its organized Marxist vanguard—point toward a (permanent) revolution combining democratic, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist tasks.

The policy of the Reagan administration during the last few years has been to try to crush the Sandinista revolution through the armed counterrevolutionary groups based in Honduras-mainly composed of ex-Somozista henchmen. It also continues to prop up the military regime in El Salvador by providing millions of dollars, tons of modern weapons and hundreds of advisers. Yet this policy is proving a fiasco. The danger of a direct intervention of U.S. troops is therefore imminent, particularly since the invasion of Grenada. The cold-war crusaders of the U.S. government are ready to launch a Latin American edition of the Vietnam war. Everything depends now on an urgent and massive mobilization of the public opinion in the whole world, but particularly in the U.S., in order to stop Reagan's war plans against the people of Nicaragua and El Salvador.

Socialist Action: What is the importance of the new Workers Party in Brazil? Could it become an example for other countries?

Michel Lowy: The Brazilian Workers Party-Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT)-is the most important breakthrough in the history of the labor movement in that country. Brazilian politics have always been dominated by the rivalries of different bourgeois forces. The traditional (Stalinist) left has supported one or another bourgeois faction for the past 40 years. Even today, the various Stalinist parties (pro-Soviet or pro-Albania) are inside the PMDB (Partido do Movimento Democratico Brasileiro), the moderate bourgeois-liberal opposition party.

The Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) was formed in 1979 by a group of "new trade unionists" who emerged during the struggles of the 70s, of whom the best known is Antonio Inacion da Silva, "Lula" , ex-president of the metalworkers union of Sao Bernardo do Campo (a large industrial area near Sao Paulo). This group discovered, through its own experience in the great strikes of 1978-79, that the workers need an independent political organization, and it took the initiative to constitute it. They were soon joined by peasant unionists, leftist intellectuals, students, Marxist groups, and Christian Socialists. In a certain sense, the formation of the PT was the result of a historical convergence between significant sections of the labor movement and the Marxist intelligentsia, two social forces which until now had followed different if not opposed roads.

The Brazilian Workers Party does not resemble any one of the traditional popular or labor parties of Latin-America: It is neither populist (like Peronism or Vargas "Laborism"), nor Stalinist, nor Social-Democratic. It is a mass party— 300,000 members and 1.6 million voters—whose aim is to put an end to the military regime, establish a workers government and build Socialism. It is truly a party of a new kind, which has few equivalents in the history of the international labor movement (the nearest example would probably be the first Independent Labor Party in England at the end of the 19th century).

The PT is in solidarity with every revolutionary struggle in the world, but it refused to follow the discipline of any "Guide State" or so-called "really existing socialism" (USSR, China or Albania) Militia women of revolutionary Nicaragua.

as the old Stalinist left has always done. This is why it supports both the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua (or the armed struggle in El Salvador) and the fight of Solidarnose in Poland for the democratic rights of the working class.

A few months ago a national conference of trade unions decided to createfor the first time in the history of the country-a mass national federation of labor: the Central Unica dos Trabalhadores (CUT). This was a decisive step forward in the centralization of the workers and peasants struggle against the military regime. The PT unionists were the main driving force in the foundation of the CUT, which represents 12 million workers.

Revolutionary Marxists, organized around the newspaper, Em Tempo, are active inside the PT. They have a significant influence and are loyal and dedicated militants of the party. Their aim is not "entrism" but to help transform the PT into a mass revolutionary party.

Although the formation of the Workers Party in Brazil results from some specific circumstances related to the industrialization of the country and the crisis of its military dictatorship, it may become an example for other countries in Latin America and the Third World, where the workers have been traditionally deprived of any independent political expression, or where a small divided left is unable to link itself to the broad masses of workers and peasants. And why not for the USA as well?

Socialist Action: What is the political relevance of your book, The Politics of Uneven and Combined Development?

Michel Lowy: The aims of this book are simple: a) to give a careful account of how the theory of permanent revolution emerged in Marx and Engels' writings, and then was developed by Trotsky into one of the major instruments of critical theory and action in our century; and b) to find out if this theory is able to CALENDAR LOWY TOUR Jan. 25: Pittsburgh, Pa. Allegheny Community College. Call 381-9729 for more information.

Jan. 26: Ames, lowa. State University of lowa. 8:00 p.m.

Jan. 27: Chicago, IL. Crosscurrents Hall, 3206 N. Wilton. 8:00 p.m. Sponsored by Chicago Socialist Action.

Jan. 31: Ann Arbor, Ml. University of Michigan, Rackham Amphitheater. 4:00 p.m. Sponsored by Latin American Solidarity Committee.

Feb. 2: Princeton, NJ. Princeton University, Corwin Hall. 4:30 p.m.

Feb. 4: New York, NY. Graduate Faculty, New School for Social Research. 1:00 p.m. Sponsored by N.Y. Socialist Action.

explain the revolutionary developments in the Third World since World War II.

Since this theory has been largely neglected by bourgeois-oriented scholarship and excommunicated as heresy by Stalinist ideology during the last 50 years, it was more than time to try to reestablish its real content and its relevance for contemporary social movements. An important contribution to this task has been offered already by Ernest Mandel in the interviews published in his book Revolutionary Marxism Today (NLB, London, 1979).

My book tries to show that the theory of permanent revolution was largely able to predict, explain and illuminate the "red thread" which runs through the 20th century. What occurred in Russia in 1917 and later in Yugoslavia, China, Vietnam, and Cuba corresponded closely to Trotsky's central thesis: the possibility of an uninterrupted and combined (bourgeois-democratic and socialist) revolution in a "backward", dependent or colonial country.

I also try to clarify the controversial question of the differences between Lenin and Trotsky before 1917. The disagreement between them was not so much on the driving forces of the future revolution in Russia or on the social nature of the future revolutionary power— both agreed it would be the common expression of the workers and peasants, although with different views on the specific weight of each class. The key problem was that of the historical program (or task) of such a provisional revolutionary government. For Lenin it would be: "to clear the ground for a wide and rapid, European and not Asiatic, development of Capitalism... " (Lenin, Two Tactics, 1905, Collected works, Moscow, 1962, p.49). For Trotsky, "the very logic of its position" would compel such a revolutionary power "to pass over to collectivistic measures" • (Trotsky, Results and Prospects, London, 1962, p. 232-4).

This is why, in 1905, Trotsky proposed the Paris Commune of 187l as a model for the Russian Revolution, while Lenin insisted that the Paris Commune failed because it was "unable to distinguish between the elements of democratic revolution and socialist revolution" and should not, therefore, serve as an example for the Russian provisional revolutionary government. In the April Theses of 1917, however, Lenin showed that the Commune of 1871 is the nearest political paradigm for the Soviet Republic that he calls the workers, peasants and soldiers to establish in Russia.

In conclusion, I believe that the main strategic ideas of the theory of permanent revolution have successfully passed the test of reality. As such they are a precious tool in the struggle for socialism and democracy.

PT sialist Action January 1984