become decisive are 'swift, intense and passionate changes in the psychology of classes which have already been formed before the revolution '. [70]' Revolutions are accomplished through people, although they be nameless. Materialism does not ignore the feeling, thinking, acting man, but explains him '. [71]
Parties are an integral part of the revolutionary process:
'They constitute not an independent, but nevertheless a very important element in the process.
Without the guiding organisation, the energy of the masses would dissipate like steam not enclosed in a piston box. But nevertheless, what moves things is not the piston or the box, but the steam. '[72]
But parties always involve a subjective element in the way that economic forces and the formation of classes do not. Parties have to be organised around certain ideological postulates, and that requires the effort, activity and argument of individuals.
In Russia in 1917 the contradictions in material reality could not be resolved without the working class seizing power. But the working class could not become conscious of that need without a minority in the class separating itself off from the ideas of the majority. There needed to be 'the break of the proletarian vanguard with the petty bourgeois bloc'. [73] Many workers began to move, under the pressure of events, to make this break. But they were held back at first from consummating the break because of their own confused ideas: 'They did not know how to refuse the premise about the bourgeois character of the revolution and the danger of the isolation of the proletariat '. [74]' The dictatorship of the proletariat was to be inferred from the whole situation, but it had still to be established. It could not be established without a party '. [75]
The fact that the human material existed to build a party before 1917 was a result of objective historical developments. But these developments had to find expression in the activity and ideas of individuals. And once the revolution started, the activity of the party was not a blind reflection of reality. True, 'The party could fulfil its mission only by understanding it', [76] but that depended on the ability of different individuals to articulate ideas about the objective situation and to win party members to them.
This was where, for Trotsky, one individual, Lenin, did play an unparalleled role. He was 'needed' for the party to understand events and act effectively. 'Until his arrival, not one of the Bolshevik leaders dared to make a diagnosis of the revolution. '
He was not a 'demiurge of the revolutionary process ', acting on it as an arbitrary element from outside. 'He merely entered into the chain of objective historical forces. But he was a great link in that chain. 'Without Lenin many workers were beginning to grope towards a knowledge of what needed to be done. But their groping needed to be generalised, to become part of a new total view of the revolution. 'Lenin did not impose a plan on the masses: he helped the masses to recognise and realise their own plan '. [77]
The arguments would have taken place without him. But there is no guarantee they would have been resolved in a way which would have enabled the party to act decisively:
'Inner struggle in the Bolshevik Party was absolutely unavoidable. Lenin's arrival merely hastened the process. His personal influence shortened the crisis.
Is it possible, however, to say confidently that the party without him would have found its road? We would by no means make bold to say that. The factor of time is decisive here, and it is difficult in retrospect to tell time historically.
Dialectical materialism at any rate has nothing in common with fatalism. Without Lenin the crisis, which the opportunist leadership was inevitably bound to produce, would have assumed an extraordinarily sharp and protracted character. The conditions of war and revolution, however, would not allow the party a long period for fulfilling its mission. Thus it is by no means excluded that a disoriented and split party may have let slip the revolutionary opportunity for many years. '[78]
The individual plays a role in history, but only insofar as the individual is part of the process by which a party enables the class to become conscious of itself.
An individual personality is a product of objective history (experience of the class relations of the society in which he or she grows up, previous attempts at rebellion, the prevailing culture, and so on). But if he or she plays a role in the way a section of the class becomes conscious of itself and organises itself as a party, he or she feeds back into the historical process, becoming 'a link in the historical chain'.
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