By Patrick Bond
[The following is the introduction to ``Transcending two economies – renewed debates in South African political economy'', a special issue of Africanus, Journal of Development Studies (Vol. 37 No. 2 2007, ISSN 0304-615x). It is republished with permission.The full issue is available for free download at http://www.nu.ac.za/ccs/files/africanus_1.pdf ]

By John Nebauer

Review of Trotsky's Theory of Permanent Revolution: A Leninist critique, by Doug Lorimer, Resistance Books, Sydney, 1998, A$6.95.

John Nebauer is a member of the Democratic Socialist Party of Australia.

By Farooq Sulehria

Farooq Sulehria is a member of the Executive Committee of the Labour Party Pakistan and of the Editorial Board of Links.

By Reihana Mohideen

Reihana Mohideen was, at the time of writing, a member of the Executive Council of the SPP and of the Links Editorial Board.

By Doug Lorimer

• Transformation of the democratic revolution into a socialist revolution
• Bolshevik policy and Two Tactics
• What is the socialist revolution?
• 'Logical contradiction' and Lenin's conception
• The democratic dictatorship: bourgeois republic or special form of proletarian dictatorship?
• The Commune state and the democratic dictatorship
• Phil Hearse's 'DSP theory'

Phil Hearse's polemic against my pamphlet proceeds from a fundamentally false assumption, i.e., that it "attempts [to give] a general strategic view" of revolution in "the semi-colonial and dependent semi-industrialised countries". He alleges that my pamphlet presents Lenin's policy of carrying out the proletarian revolution in semi-feudal Russia in two stages (a bourgeois democratic and then a socialist stage) "as a general schema for the 'Third World' today". Nowhere in the pamphlet do I make such a

By Phil Hearse

• The central strategic problem: class alliances in the dominated countries
• The Mexican example
• End of the semi-feudal aristocracy
• National and democratic tasks in the era of neo-liberal globalisation
• The DSP on Indonesia
• The debate inside the RSDLP
• Lorimer's concessions to permanent revolution
• Lenin: from 'bourgeois republic' to 'Commune state'
• Lessons of Spain
• Two-stage theory
• Weaknesses of the permanent revolution theory
• Underestimating the role of the proletariat, underestimating the role of the party

In the fight for socialist renewal, international collaboration cannot be on the basis of total agreement on theory, strategy or tactics. All or some of the members of organisations the Democratic Socialist Party

By Phil Hearse

• The DSP's position on revolutions in the dominated countries
• The socialist revolution, Russia and Spain
• Russia: how the revolution opened the way for capitalism and bourgeois rule (according to Lorimer)
• Spain
• Conclusion: agreement and differences between the DSP and permanent revolution

"The International of Crime and Treason [i.e., the counter-revolutionary coordination of imperialism—PH] has in fact been organised. On the other hand, the indigenous bourgeoisies have lost all their capacity to oppose imperialism—if they ever had it—and they have become the last card in the pack. There are no other alternatives: either a socialist revolution or a make-believe revolution."—Ernesto Che Guevara, Message to the Tricontinental 1967 (emphasis added).

By John Percy

CONTENTS

International Potemkin villages

Wrong conception

Actual Marxist practice

The Comintern

Trotskyist tradition

Real internationalism

Globalisation

United parties

Notes

Embarrassing details of an extensive scam being operated against left-wing organisations surfaced in the Ukraine in mid-2003. At least twelve, possibly up to twenty, small left groups, mainly in England and the United States, were conned by an enterprising group of Ukrainian politicos pretending to be supporters of each of these parties or their "internationals" setting up their Ukrainian "sections".

By Celia Hart

Celia Hart is the daughter of two veterans of the Cuban revolution: Haydée Santamaría, who participated in the July 26,1953, assault on the Moncada Barracks, and Armando Hart, the former minister of culture. Reprinted from Tricontinental Magazine.

 

CONTENTS

Why Trotsky?

The Cuban Revolution, paradigm of a socialist revolution

Internationalism in the development of the Cuban revolution

Social justice: the other cornerstone of the Cuban nation

Final notes

 

"Homeland is humanity."—José Martí

by Doug Lorimer

Doug Lorimer is a member of the National Executive of the Democratic Socialist Perspective in Australia. This is a talk presented to the DSP's January 2005 Marxism Summer School.

Contents

Soviets of workers' deputies

January 1905 protest

Bolsheviks and Mensheviks

Anti-feudal revolution

Marxism versus Narodnism

Marxism and the peasantry

Monopoly capitalism

Russo-Japanese War

Lessons drawn by Lenin

Footnotes