Uneven and Combined Development - Explanation of The Concept

Explanation of The Concept

Different countries, Trotsky observed, developed and advanced to a large extent independently from each other, in ways which were quantitatively unequal (e.g. the local rate and scope of economic growth and population growth) and qualitatively different (e.g. nationally specific cultures and geographical features). In other words, countries had their own specific national history with national peculiarities.

But at the same time, all the different countries did not exist in complete isolation from each other; they were also interdependent parts of a world society, a larger totality, in which they all co-existed together, in which they shared many characteristics, and in which they influenced each other through processes of cultural diffusion, trade, political relations and various “spill-over effects” from one country to another.

This had, sociologically speaking, five main effects:

• a more backward, older or more primitive country would adopt parts of the culture of a more advanced, or more modern society, and a more advanced culture could also adopt or merge with parts of a more primitive culture – with good or bad effects.

• Cultural practices, institutions, traditions and ways of life belonging to both very old and very new epochs and phases of human history were all combined, juxtaposed and linked together in a rather unique way, within one country.

• In turn, this meant that one could not really say that different societies all developed simply through the same sort of linear sequence of necessary developmental stages, but rather that they could adopt/utilize the results of developments reached elsewhere, without going through all the previous evolutionary stages which led up to those results. Some countries could thus "skip", "telescope" or "compress" developmental stages which other countries took hundreds of years to go through, or, very rapidly carry through a modernization process that took other countries centuries to achieve.

• Different countries could both aid or advance the socio-economic progress of other countries through trade, subsidies and contributing resources, or block and brake other countries as competitors from making progress by preventing the use of capital, technology, trading routes, labour, land or other kinds of resources. In Trotsky's theory of imperialism, the domination of one country by another does not mean that the dominated country is prevented from development altogether, but rather that it develops mainly according to the requirements of the dominating country.

• The main tendencies and trends occurring at the level of world society as a whole, could be also found in each separate country, where they combined with unique local trends – but this was a locally specific “mix”, so that some world trends asserted themselves more strongly or faster, others weaker and slower in each specific country. Thus, a country could be very advanced in some areas of activity, but at the same time comparatively retarded in other areas. One effect was that the response to the same events of world significance could be quite different in different countries, because the local people attached different "weightings" to experiences and therefore drew different conclusions.

According to Trotsky, the unequal and combined development of different countries had an effect on the class structure of society.

• For example, the Russian empire in 1917 was largely a peasant society composed of many different nationalities and governed by an absolutist state headed by the Czar; popular democracy did not exist.

• A process of industrialization had begun in the main cities since Peter the Great (for example, the Putilov steel works established in Petrograd - where the February 1917 revolution began, with a strike - was the largest in the world at the time). But this urban industrialization process relied mainly on the investment of foreign capital from France, Britain and other countries, and was limited to some urban areas and regions.

• The Russian bourgeoisie which developed under the tutelage of the Czarist state lacked much power, and was politically weak. The bourgeoisie was unable to establish political democracy. At the same time, a militant industrial working class developed in the main cities, concentrated in large factories and plants.

• In this way, the archaic culture of primitive peasant production and a semi-feudal state combined with the culture of modern industrial society.

Trotsky believed that this would shape the unique character of the Russian revolution. Namely, the Russian bourgeoisie was politically too weak and too dependent on the Czarist state to challenge its autocratic rule, and therefore the revolution against Czarist rule would be spearheaded by the revolt of urban workers.

Thus, the political and modernizing tasks normally associated in Europe with the leadership of the rising bourgeoisie, such as fighting for popular democracy and civil rights against absolutism, land ownership reform, industrializing the country, and national self-determination for oppressed nationalities, would have to be carried out in the Russian empire under the leadership of working-class parties, in particular the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party which had been outlawed (although there were several other socialist, nationalist and liberal parties).

In the chaos towards the end of the First World War, in which Russian soldiers fought against the imperial German army, this political assessment proved largely correct. The provisional government established by the February revolution in 1917 collapsed and the October revolution, in which the Russian Marxists played a dominant role, destroyed Czarist state power completely. Thereafter, the Russian bourgeoisie was largely expropriated; most businesses then fell under state ownership.