The April Theses: Lenin's strategy for socialist revolution Only six months before the successful October insurrection,

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argued that only the working class could rule Russia in the interests of all the toilers, he was accused by the party "tops" adopting Trotsky's theory of "Permanent Revolution.' SOCIALIST ACTION NOVEMBER 1987 17 At the beginning of April 1917, the Bolshevik leaders in Petrograd were eagerly awaiting V.I. Lenin's historic return to Russia after the many painfully isolated years he had spent in exile. The February revolution, which overthrew the czar and instituted a bourgeois government, opened the door to freedom just enough for Lenin to slip legally back into the country.

In his absence other party leaders such as Joseph Stalin and Lev Kameney were forced to implement the Bolshevik program alone, but they were proud of their performance and confidently expected Lenin's praise.

Convinced that the laws of history sentenced Russia to undergo a fairly extended stage of capitalism, they had been offering implicit support to the new capitalist Provisional Government. They were open to initiatives to reunite with the Mensheviks, whose program essentially aimed at the establishment of a capitalist state. And they contented themselves with demanding that the new government withdraw from the war immediately.

Hence, to these leaders, it was like a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky when Lenin condemned their leading strategical ideas as something to be "consigned to the archive of 'Bolshevik' pre-revolutionary antiques" and outlined an entirely new direction in what has come to be known as his "April Theses."

Some simply responded with ridicule. But by the April Conference, Lenin had succeeded in winning a majority of the members of his party to this new strategy, and the Bolsheviks turned a historic corner.

To fully understand this new direction and its significance, however, we must return not only to the beginning of the 20th century, when the original Bolshevik strategic framework was established, but back to Marxist theory itself.

A theoretical problem A large theoretical problem confronted and contounded Marxists in Russia at the beginning of this century. While Russia had the largest capitalist factories in the world, the vast majority of the country lay bourgeoisie since, after all, it was their revolution. In other words, the working class must renounce its political independence.

Lenin's views

Lenin, who at this time was a mere youth compared to Plekhanov, argued, however, that his mentor's analysis was hopelessly flawed.

While agreeing with Plekhanov that only a bourgeois revolution was on the agenda, since this seemed an elementary point of Marxism, Lenin insisted that the bourgeoisie itself was incapable of executing it-that is, if the bourgeoisie took power it would be unable to remove the feudal candidates, continued Lenin, were the workers and peasants. Taken together they were the most oppressed and constituted the vast majority of the population and hence could overthrow the czar, establish a parliamentary democracy, confiscate the land from the feudal aristocracy, and allow capitalism at last to develop • freely in Russia.

As to whether the workers or peasants would play a leading role within this coalition, Lenin remained ambiguous until April 1917, when he drafted his famous "April Theses."

Prior to this time, Lenin had designated the proletariat and the peasants as a whole (including both rich and poor peasants) as labor in order to exist. These divisions similarly prohibit the congealing of a single class interest.

But Trotsky's theoretical clarification of the leading role of the working class contained explosive implications that shattered the capitalist framework that everyone was taking for granted.

It follows from the economic analysis of capitalism itself that whenever the working class becomes revolutionary, the bourgeoisie becomes counterrevolutionary. The bourgeoisie understands all too well that its interests stand in direct opposition to those of the workers.

Hence in order to complete the bourgeois revolution, the workers will be forced ironically to battle the bourgeoisie itself. And in order to undercut the bourgeois counterrevolution, the proletariat will necessarily be forced to begin an immediate transition to socialism—in other words, hack away at the economic power that underlies the political power of its reactionary opponent.

Hence, in the final analysis, the bourgeois revolution results, not as a separate stage, but as a by-product of an ongoing movement toward socialism.

If we analyze the conditions present in backward countries as Marxists, this scenario that Trotsky outlined is the only one that makes sense.

All backward countries are never purely feudalistic; they represent combined economies where feudalism and capitalism coexist. But they do not coexist in isolation, feudalism dominating the countryside, for example, while capitalism is reserved for the cities.

Capitalism's nature forces it to expand and fill every vacuum. Hence, like two vines growing together, capitalism and feudalism become intertwined so that it is impossible to remove the feudal relations without doing damage to the capitalist ones as well.

Since the economy itself is a combination of two formations, the corresponding political upheaval must similarly represent a combination of two revolutionary processes: the bourgeois and socialist revolutions must be waged simultaneously.

How far along the road to socialism a backward country can progress is, of course, dependent on many variables, including not only the resolution and determination of the working class leading the struggle but on the international context as well.

If the Russian Revolution had succeeded in sparking a socialist revolution in Germany, for example, it would have been a tremendous. aid to an isolated and beleaguered Soviet Union. And the Bolsheviks did everything they could to promote such a revolution.

"Theses" adopt Trotsky's view The "April Theses" in essence adopted Trotsky's strategy. Lenin smashed the idea of a prolonged capitalist stage, announcing the immediate commencement of the transition to socialism. The defense of the capitalist Provisional Government was denounced as a "betrayal of socialism," as were the proposals of reunification with the Mensheviks.