David North, The Russian revolution and the unfinished twentieth century
The Russian revolution and the unfinished twentieth century, by David North, Oak Park MI, Mehring Books, 2014, xxvii 386 pp. US$24.95 (pbk) ISBN 978 1 89363840 2The aim of David North's book is twofold: unmasking established academia's falsification of twentieth century history, and, having re established historical truth, enabling the workers' movement to learn from history's lessons. The book is premised on the claim that the twentieth century is "unfinished" that is, that the current economic, social, and political situation is essentially similar to that 100 years earlier. Approached objectively, North argues, twentieth century history informs social analysis and emancipatory politics; obfuscated, it disorients the public and thereby reinforces class domination.The author, a publicist and leader of the Trotskyite movement in the United States, makes no attempt to hide his frame of reference. Unfortunately, those expecting a rigorous and nuanced account in the best traditions of Marxist scholarship will be disappointed. The book does not engage with primary source material, nor does it advance new theoretical arguments. Rather, it is a synthesis of previous scholarship, woven together into what one may label a Trotskyite account of the twentieth century.The book itself is a collection of 15 lectures, online articles, and book reviews written over the last two decades; while their subject matter is diverse, there are some common themes. First, North defends the Russian revolution as "a necessary, if only anticipatory, expression" of "the law governed development of man" an emancipatory victory which will inevitably be repeated and expanded (65 6) Specifically, North rejects the claims that the Bolsheviks' support base was confined to the radical intelligentsia (rather, support was strong among the small but compact working class) that Bolsheviks imposed their own program on the unwilling masses (rather, they raised workers' class consciousness through suasion) and that the revolution was an accidental product of Russia's military disaster (rather, both war and revolution were consequences of the contradictions of imperialist capitalism).Second, invoking Lev Trotskii's concept of degenerated workers' state, North argues the Stalinist regime, which coalesced in the 1920s and 1930s, was neither inevitable nor Marxist. The implication is that the USSR's subsequent collapse does not invalidate Marxism. Rather, North contends that a Trotskyite alternative to Stalinism was both programmatically feasible (Trotskii stood for intra party democracy and international revolution, and opposed collectivization) and historically possible (Iosif Stalin's triumph was contingent on the failure of revolutions abroad, and the rise of a bureaucratic state domestically).Third, North establishes the viability of Trotskyism by demonstrating its predictive and analytical power in accounting for twentieth century developments. Trotskyite analysis, it is argued, accurately predicted the onset of two world wars (a consequence of failing nationstates struggling to maintain economic hegemony) the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the growing contradictions of the capitalist global economy. Moreover, North makes the counterfactual claim that Trotskyite victory would have precluded the Holocaust, the Second World War, and the crimes of Stalinism.Finally, the book seeks to vindicate the revolutionary credentials of Marxism against revisionists seeking to make it compatible with reformism. This is achieved through an exegesis of Marxist texts, and historical excursions illustrating the failure of compromise the betrayal of the proletariat in nineteenth and early twentieth century bourgeois revolutions, and the continual treason of trade unions from the socialist cause. Implicitly, North's narrative suggests that the Trotskyite radical revolutionary program is the only truly Marxist one.