LIONEL ABEL
81
gument for Stalin's leadership, which amounts to a choice, long after the
choice was important, of Stalin's actual as against Trotsky's possible
policies. Sartre claims that Stalin represented the
particularity
of the Oc–
tober Revolution, Trotsky the
universality
which the Bolsheviks hoped
would crown their efforts, their aim being nothing less than an interna–
tional revolt against capitalism. But even had the revolution spread over
the continent of Europe, while incontestibly "international" it would
not have been "universal" in scope.
Many
countries is not the same thing
as
all
countries, many places is not everywhere, and the general is some–
thing other than the universal.
An international revolution in
1917
would
have been a particular revolution to no less a degree than the one the Bolsheviks
led.
Sartre's error here lies in thinking the difference between a national
and an international revolution can instance the dialectical division of the
particular and the universal. This seems to me a variant of the error
Benedetto Croce long ago detected in Hegel's philosophy, when he
noted that Hegel had constructed a dialectic of distinctly
different
terms
which could hold only for terms that are
logically
opposed. And I must
add that this error of Hegel is not unlike that in the economic dialectic
of Marxism which sets up a
logical
opposition between wages and profits,
a view which Marxists have been unable to defend.
For Sartre, Stalin represented the nationalist - Sartre calls it
partic–
ularist
-
bias of a revolution which was intended to be international, but
was stranded in a backward country, and Trotsky the internationalist aims
of the Bolsheviks, which Sartre has called universalist. The two positions
were summed up in different theories, Stalin's being the theory that
socialism can be achieved in a single country, Trotsky's that the rev–
olution would have to spread to succeed, and which has become known
as the Theory of Permanent Revolution. Oddly enough, Sartre asserts
both that the October Revolution itself opted for Stalin's theory of so–
cialism in one country, and also that the theory was a monstrosity. He
also holds that the theory was false when it was formulated, and only af–
ter that became true. He holds, too, that Trotsky's contrary theory was
true when formulated and has since lost none of its truth. Then how
could the theory of socialism in one country have become the kind of
truth he, Sartre, may have disliked, but felt he had to abide?
Now in point of fact the theory of socialism in one country is not
only monstrous but false. And the Theory of Permanent Revolution is
also a monstrosity and also false, at least in part, as has been amply shown
by events. And note this: the character and meaning of the October
Revolution, and also the moral character of the Bolshevik leaders, Lenin
and Stalin - Trotsky's role was more complex than theirs in view of his
