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ABSTRACT
Uneven and Combined Development uniquely incorporated societal multiplicity into Marxist theory. So why did its first application end in Stalinist dictatorship? This paper seeks an answer by turning the idea back on itself, applying it first to Trotsky’s doctrine of ‘permanent revolution’ and then to Marx’s original idea of revolution. Trotsky hoped that Russia’s ‘revolution of backwardness’ would be rescued by ‘advanced’ revolutions in the West, modelled on the French revolution. But what if – as this paper argues – that event too was ultimately a ‘revolution of backwardness’? Two implications follow. First, Trotsky’s ‘permanentist’ strategy was logically flawed: if all modern revolutions have been internationally-generated catch-up revolutions, then the idea of Bolshevism being rescued by ‘advanced revolutions’ elsewhere fails. But second, the consequences of multiplicity reach even deeper than Trotsky realized: they underlie and explain the original political formation, and troubled history, of revolutionary Marxism itself.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 For helpful discussions during the writing of this paper, I am especially grateful to Chris Boyle, Luke Cooper, Beate Jahn, Zdenek Kavan, Milja Kurki and Kamran Matin. I benefited greatly too from presenting it at an EWIS workshop in June 2018 and a meeting of the Sussex Working Group on Uneven and Combined Development in December 2018. Finally, I thank two anonymous reviewers for extremely stimulating feedback that helped me fine-tune the argument in its final stages.
2 In Marxist thought, the ‘bourgeois revolution’ refers to the social and political upheaval by which the pre-capitalist ruling elite is replaced by a constitutional state, and capitalist relations of production (wage labour and private property in the means of production) are enshrined in law. It sets the stage for the thorough-going capitalist transformation of society, which in turn gives rise to basic contradictions leading to the ‘proletarian revolution’ that later replaces capitalism with socialism.
3 Trotsky argued that due to poor leadership of the Western labour movements, the natural moment for revolution there had passed unutilized. Instead they had become co-opted through institutionalized wage-bargaining, welfare payments, social imperialism and political democratization. Once pacified in this way, only an external shock could stir them from their torpor.
4 In other words: the struggle against the pre-capitalist state in Prussia was belatedly repeating a movement that had already been accomplished elsewhere (in France and England).
5 The first reference to a seventeenth century ‘English revolution’ occurs as late as 1826 in the work of Francois Guizot (Armitage, Citation2017, p. 156).
6 So called because it restored the prerogatives of Parliament, following James II’s failed attempt to roll back the anti-absolutist victory in the English Civil War – see Close and Bridge (Citation1985, p. 5), and Burke (Citation1968, p. 111).
7 Some Marxist writers have agreed. See, for example, Poulantzas (Citation1973, p. 173) and Comninel (Citation1987, p. 2).
8 For an analysis of Trotsky’s own highly inconsistent pronouncements on the French revolution, see Bergman (Citation1987).
9 Skocpol and Stone do not of course use Trotsky’s theory. By contrast, Anievas and Nişancioğlu do invoke U&CD directly. However, they use it mostly to coral the international causes of the revolution, referring the reader to Soboul’s orthodox Marxist narrative for understanding the sequence of regimes between 1789 and 1815. Perhaps for this reason, they do not extend their use of U&CD into an interrogation of the idea of revolution itself as attempted in the current paper.
10 More specifically, ‘Aufklarer of all nations revered English government, society and opinion as the pure crystal of the Enlightenment’ (Porter & Teich, Citation1981, p. 26; see also Munck, Citation2000, p. 6).
11 Palmer too traces the dynamic (and failure) of ‘Enlightened Despotism’ across Europe to the missing ‘social basis of a developed middle class’ (Palmer Citation1959, p. 375).
12 In Poulantzas’ account, ‘early’ and ‘late’ refer to different features from those identified above. What he shares with the present argument, however, is the idea of a temporal hybridity (produced by combined development) as central to the causes and progress of the revolution.
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Justin Rosenberg
Justin Rosenberg teaches International Relations at the University of Sussex. His publications include The empire of civil society (1994), The follies of globalization theory (2000), ‘International Relations in the Prison of Political Science’ (2016) and numerous articles on Uneven and Combined Development.