[Marxism] Permanent Revolution and Transitional Problems

["Terrence McGovern" <mcgoverntj@xxxxxxxxx>]

[Note: this is not a Trotskyist contribution per se, I merely use the
idea of permanent revolution to represent the idea of world revolution
and in this case ignore the issue between "Stalinism" and
"Trotskyism".]

This is how I see it, most simply:

a devastating Third World War > a Council Socialist Republic in the USA

Starting from that ambiguity of ambiguities, I would like to
investigate an issue which takes this as
a necessary premise: namely, the issue of the third world if the first
world is engulfed in successful revolution. Do we imagine this issue
as it will appear before the democratic councils and/or their
appointed organs through the lens of a type of "Permanent Revolution,"
a drive for dictatorship of the proletariat or proletarian democracy
everywhere at all times, or do we subscribe perhaps to a soft
"stagism," in some form? How many can say without pains that Somalia
will be able to host Council Socialism by the middle of this century
say, after say, a global imperialist war. Moving up the chain, what
about the middle east? Since the fall of the Ottoman Empire it has
been a battleground. I see two options that could be drafted into
policies by the future proletariat. One, to painstakingly supervise a
shaky dictatorship of the proletariat or to restore the ways of old.
By this I mean the restoration of the caliphate, the restoration of
Arabia, perhaps united with Persia. In any case, the goal must be to
change Africa and the Middle East into two super-countries and this
will be infinitely easier under traditional leadership, rather than
democracy. The imams/mullahs and their social equivalents in Africa
are able to preside over these societies until revolution occurs
naturally and little threat will be posed by the super-states of
Arabia or Africa with western bourgeois influence removed. For those
of you who may, like myself, as Trotskyists, see China and Cuba as
"deformed worker's states," there is an even greater impetus to avoid
repeating the Soviet Union's installations of friendly governments in
the third world after a revolution here. Even these, however, were in
better condition then the Middle East or Africa, whose condition will
be much worst than now in fifty years (for sure I think). Stability
first and Revolution later, by which time it is natural and can be
assisted by the west, or some sort of revolution first and stability
much later.

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