- 27 May 2003 02:18
#12653
-=[The following is a Trotsky-ite written expose on their attitude toward the phenomenon of 'socialism in one country'. "Enjoy".]=-
Socialism in One Country
BY T. Grant and A. Woods
The title of the chapter "The debate on Socialism in one Country" warns the reader in advance what approach Monty Johnstone will take to this question. He commences with a grave warning:
"The great historical controversy on the possibility of building socialism in Russia is still today befogged on both sides by decades-old distortion and misrepresentation. Thus, on the one hand Trotskyists present Stalin as having from 1924, when he first formulated his theory, counterposed Socialism in One Country to the spread of revolution to other countries On the other side Soviet histories skill present Trotsky's opposition to Stalin's theory as opposition to Socialist Industrialisation in the Soviet Union and in favour of an export of revolution by force of arms. Both versions are equally false." (Cogito, page 74)
Having set up and effortlessly disposed of two straw men, Monty Johnstone can take up his customary cosy position "midway between two extremes". (Such a comfortable "objectivity" is supposed to be the essence of the Marxist method!) Monty Johnstone now continues his lecture:
"Stalin's argument was that the spread of revolution to the West was obviously the most desirable thing, but with the delay in this Russia had no alternative but to set itself the aim of building Socialism in the belief that she had all that was necessary to complete this." (ibid)
Adding a few appropriate quotes from Stalin, Johnstone then triumphantly concludes:
"The course of revolutions in the world, which today see a growing Socialist camp challenging the old imperialist one, has in no small measure confirmed Stalin's broad perspective." (ibid)
How did Stalin come to work out his "broad perspective" which history so triumphantly vindicated? In February 1924, in his Foundations of Leninism, Stalin summed up Lenin's views on the building of socialism in these words:
"The overthrow of the power of the bourgeoisie and the establishment of a proletarian government in one country does not yet guarantee the complete victory of socialism. The main task of socialism - the organisation of socialist production - remains ahead. Can this task be accomplished, can the final victory of socialism in one country be attained, without the joint efforts of the proletariat of several advanced countries? No, this is impossible. To overthrow the bourgeoisie the efforts of one country are sufficient - the history of our revolution bears this out. For the final victory of Socialism, for the organisation of socialist production, the efforts of one country, particularly of such a peasant country as Russia, are insufficient. For this the efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries are necessary.
"Such, on the whole, are the characteristic features of the Leninist theory of the proletarian revolution."
That these were precisely the "characteristic features of the Leninist theory of proletarian revolution" was nowhere in dispute up to the first part of 1924. They had been repeated time and time again in hundreds of speeches, articles and documents by Lenin since 1905. We have already quoted sufficient examples; they can be multiplied at will. Yet before the end of 1924, Stalin's book had been revised, and the exact opposite put in its place. By November 1926, Stalin could assert without even blushing:
"The party always took as its starting point the idea that the victory of socialism in that country, and that task can be accomplished with the forces of a single country."
Lost in admiration for Stalin's "broad perspectives" which history has "on the whole" confirmed, Monty Johnstone can see only perversity and "underestimation of the internal forces of Russian socialism" in Trotsky's opposition to the "theory" of socialism in one country. This "dogmatic shibboleth" of Trotsky's, Monty Johnstone explains:
"Sprang from his theory of 'permanent revolution' that we have discussed above. [!] It was in fact basically an expression of his disbelief in the ability of the Soviet Union even to survive as a workers' state if the revolution did not spread to more advanced countries." (Cogito, page 26)
Trotsky in 1906 had written that "without the direct state support of the European proletariat the working class of Russia cannot convert its temporary domination into a lasting socialist dictatorship. Of this there cannot be any doubt…Left to its own resources the working class of Russia will inevitably be crushed by the counter-revolution the moment the peasantry turns its back on it."
Did this prognosis flow from the theory of permanent revolution alone? Lenin, who, as we have shown, did not at that time have the same position as Trotsky, wrote in 1905:
"The proletariat is already struggling to preserve the democratic conquests for the sake of the socialist revolution. This struggle would be almost hopeless for the Russian proletariat alone, and its defeat would be inevitable…if the European socialist proletariat did not come to the help of the Russian proletariat…At that stage the liberal bourgeoisie and the well-to-do (plus a part of the middle peasantry) will organise a counter revolution. The Russian proletariat plus the European proletariat will organise the revolution. In these circumstances the Russian proletariat may win a second victory. The cause is then not lost. The second victory will be the socialist revolution in Europe. The European workers will show us 'how it is done'."
Lenin's position which did not at all "spring from the theory of permanent revolution" is quite clear. But let us cite one other authority which can shed further light on this question. At a conference held in May 1905, the following position was approved:
"Only in one event would social-democracy on its own initiative direct its exertions towards acquiring power and holding it for as long as possible - namely in the event of revolution spreading to the advanced countries of Western Europe, where conditions for the realisation of socialism have already reached a certain ripeness. In this event the restricted historical limits of the Russian revolution can be considerably widened, and the possibility will occur of advancing on the path of socialist transformation."
The conference mentioned was that of the Russian Mensheviks, the tendency that stood furthest of all from the theory of permanent revolution!
Thus the reader can see, irrespective of differences on other questions, every single one of the tendencies of Russian Marxism agreed on one thing: the impossibility of effecting a socialist transformation in Russia without a socialist revolution in the West. On this question, Lenin was more emphatic than Trotsky. Whereas Trotsky in 1905 foresaw the prospect of the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia before the workers' revolution in the West, Lenin based his perspective on the socialist revolution in Russia following the revolution in Western Europe.
Monty Johnstone wants to have it all ways. First he spends one half of his work "proving" Lenin's implacable hostility to the theory of permanent revolution, then he spends the other half "proving" that the position which all the tendencies of Russian Marxism accepted without question "sprang from the theory of permanent revolution"! In reality, the attitude of Trotsky, the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks towards the impossibility of building socialism in Russia alone (no-one even dared to raise the question until 1924) flowed, not from the theory of the permanent revolution alone, but from the fundamental ideas of Marxism itself.
Marx and Engels explained that the most fundamental factor of capitalist development was the ever-increasing concentration of the means of production, which outstrips the narrow confines of capitalism; on the one hand the private ownership of the means of production, on the other, the national boundaries were transformed from progressive features, encouraging economic growth, to reactionary fetters on the productive forces. Today, those processes, already worked out theoretically in the Communist Manifesto, have become the dominant factor of modern life. On the other hand, capitalism has united the entire globe into a single, interconnected. interdependent whole. The bankruptcy of "national capitalism" is strikingly revealed by the situation where one US company, General Motors, has at its disposal capital in excess of the state budget of Belgium, where the capitalist classes of Western Europe have been forced to cling together in a Common Market, in a desperate effort to survive. Thus, even the bourgeoisie, however inadequately, tries to overcome the limitations of the national market.
Two catastrophic World Wars should have hammered into the thickest skulls the inescapable fact of the conflict between the existence of outmoded national states and the development of the productive forces of the planet, which demands the fullest and freest use of the resources of all countries. The development of gigantic, international corporations, which straddle the Continents, present the workers of different countries with a common enemy. Now, more than ever, does the internationalism of the Communist Manifesto hold good as the only way forward for mankind and the only programme for a genuinely socialist movement. Socialist internationalism is not based on utopianism or sentimentality but upon the development of capitalist production on a world scale.
Monty Johnstone tries to portray the struggle of the Left Opposition against the Stalinist platform of "Socialism in One Country" as a scholastic debate, of no practical importance. To add a note of solemn authority to this assertion, Johnstone has recourse to a classical piece of Deutscherism: the "debate" on "Socialism in One Country" was like a "dispute about whether it would be possible to cover with a roof a building in which both sides were in favour of starting work, being already in agreement on its shape and the materials to be used."
It would be hard, even among the heap of theoretical crudities and half-truths which Deutscher provides in abundance, to find a more ignorant characterisation. The differences between the Left Opposition and the Stalinist bureaucracy were not at all about the need to develop the economy of the Soviet Union on socialist lines. In fact, insofar as that question was raised, it was the Opposition that fought for a programme of planning and industrialisation, and the advocates of "Socialism in One Country" who rejected it, up until 1929, preferring to lean for support on the kulaks and "Nepmen". It was the Opposition which was implacable in its support for the internationalist perspectives of Bolshevism, which also stood firmly in favour of socialist construction in Russia. And this was no accident.
The conflicts which arose in Russia at this time, bore not the slightest resemblance to academic "debates", but were concerned with the vital issues affecting the life and welfare of the Russian working class, the future of the Russian and international revolution. We have already outlined the processes which were taking place in Russia at the time. We have shown that the idea of "Socialism in Russia alone" expressed the mood of reaction and cynicism of that social stratum which had done well out of the revolution, and which now wished to apply the brakes to the process set in motion in October, to re-establish "equilibrium". The struggle of the Left Opposition against this "theory" was part and parcel of the struggle of Bolshevism-Leninism for survival in the teeth of petty-bourgeois and bureaucratic reaction against October.
The Stalinist bureaucracy had its roots in the economic and cultural backwardness which the revolution inherited from Tsarism. It drew nourishment from every defeat of the international proletariat, whose victory alone could provide the Soviet state with the resources to overcome the chronic problems of backwardness and carry through the complete transformation of society on socialist lines. The bureaucracy leaned upon the most backward, anti-socialist elements within Russia (the rich peasants and NEP speculators) to strike blows against the proletariat and its vanguard - the Left Opposition. On the other hand, lacking any faith in the abilities of the workers of the West to carry out a revolution, it acted as a brake on the development of the young, immature parties of the Communist International.
The spirit of revolutionary optimism with which the writings of Lenin and Trotsky are saturated was a reflection of their implicit faith in the ability of the working class to change society. The creation of the Third (Communist) International, after the seizure of power in Russia, was the supreme expression of the Bolshevik conception of the revolution, not as a national phenomenon, valid within the borders of the former Tsarist Empire alone, but as an international event. From the very outset, Lenin and the Bolsheviks saw October as the start of the world revolution. Without that perspective, the socialist revolution in Russia would have been an adventure, as the Mensheviks accused it of being. In November 1918, Lenin answered. these critics thus:
"The facts of history have proved to those Russian patriots who will hear of nothing but the immediate interests of their country conceived in the old style, that the transformation of our Russian revolution into a socialist revolution, was not an adventure but a necessity since there was no other choice; Anglo-French and American imperialism. will inevitably strangle the independence and freedom of Russia unless the world-wide socialist revolution, world-wide Bolshevism, triumphs."
Trotsky in the opinion of Monty Johnstone "over-estimated" the prospects for international socialist revolution and "under-estimated" the possibilities of building socialism in Russia alone. The wisdom of the Deutschers and the Johnstones, essentially the same as the "realism" of reformist politicians, consists in a slavish worship of the established fact: "Lenin and Trotsky predicted a world revolution. That did not happen. Lenin and Trotsky said that without a world revolution, Socialism could not be built in Russia. But that is what happened. Ergo, Bolshevism is a mere fanciful utopia, and Stalinism is justified." Such is the "philosophy" of Deutscherism, shorn of its stylistic niceties. Monty Johnstone adds nothing to the profundities of his mentor, but merely deletes Lenin's name from the syllogism.
The wisdom of the seminar-room stops short of the fundamental question: why was there "no revolution" in Europe? More correctly: why did the series of revolutionary movements in Europe in 1918-1923 not result in the seizure of power by the working class? From Monty Johnstone and Deutscher, we get the "facts": the revolution failed. But precisely for a Marxist the matter cannot end there. If we are interested, not in striking erudite poses, but in actually changing society, we must understand the lessons of history, especially the lessons of great revolutionary movements. That was always the method of Bolshevism, the method of Lenin and Trotsky; for he who fails to learn from past mistakes, is surely doomed to repeat them.
The Revolutionary movement which swept through Europe in 1918-20 was defeated by the treachery of the Social-Democratic leadership. Those same traitors who had sold out in 1914, who were directly responsible for the slaughter of millions of workers in uniform in the war, now recoiled in holy horror from the prospect of "bloody civil war". In one country after another: in Germany, Austria, Britain, France, Italy, the masses moved in a revolutionary direction, only to be headed off by the cowardice and ineptitude of their "leaders". Thus, in 1918 in Germany, where a revolution had placed power peacefully in the hands of the workers, the Social Democratic leadership "voluntarily surrendered" it to the bourgeoisie. Their rottenness alone prevented the German workers from realising the fruits of their victory, and coming to the assistance of the beleaguered Soviet Republic.
When Lenin and Trotsky explained that, without the socialist revolution in the West, the Russian workers' state would inevitably be crushed by reaction or by an imperialist war, this was not, as Johnstone asserts, a manifestation of "defeatism", but one of extreme revolutionary realism. Marxism itself is a materialist (and therefore profoundly realistic) philosophy, impregnated through and through with a spirit of revolutionary optimism. It is incompatible with the sort of smug, "realistic" philistinism which is the heart and soul of all brands of reformism.
Lenin and Trotsky were always honest and realistic in their appraisal of the prospects of the revolution in Russia and internationally. They understood that the only real guarantee for the future of the Soviet Republic lay in the socialist revolution in the West. They did not lull the working class with sugary illusions about "peaceful co-existence" but mercilessly hammered home the fact that without a socialist transformation on a world scale, new imperialist world wars - a second, a third, a tenth world war - would be inevitable.
The optimism of Lenin and Trotsky on the prospects for the international socialist revolution was fully justified by the magnificent movements of the workers after the First World War. But neither Lenin, Trotsky, nor anyone else can guarantee the success of a revolutionary movement. That depends on a number of factors: the impasse of the capitalist system, the crisis of government, the movement of the working masses, and the disaffection of the middle layers of society. But one of the most decisive factors is the presence of a leadership of the working class worthy of the name. The absence of such a leadership in Western Europe led the workers' movement to one defeat after another, in the next period paving the way for the victory of fascist reaction and a new and more terrible World War. Twenty-seven million Russian dead and the destruction of the bulk of industry built up painfully by the heroic sacrifices of the Soviet porkers was a harsh confirmation of the realistic prognoses of Lenin and Trotsky.
It is not possible here to go in detail into the international policies of Stalinism. That will be dealt with in a future work. Suffice it to note that the policy of "Socialism in One Country" led to the gradual transformation of Soviet foreign policy from a revolutionary strategy, basing itself upon the working classes of all countries, and attempting, through the Third International, to build up viable Communist Parties as revolutionary leaderships in various countries, to one of manoeuvres and "deals" with bourgeois governments, trade union bureaucrats and colonial "democrats" of the type of Chiang Kai-Shek.
Cause and effect do not stand at eternally fixed antipodes but often change places, the one passing into the other. The rise of the Soviet bureaucracy had as its premise the isolation of the revolution in a backward country. The terrible defeats of the working class in Germany and Bulgaria in 1923, in Britain in 1926, and above all in China in 1927, which followed from the disastrous policies of the Stalin-Bukharin leadership in turn reinforced the position of the bureaucracy and the advocates of "Socialism in One Country", and doomed the Bolshevik-Leninist opposition to defeat. The expulsion of the Left Opposition in 1927 paved the way for a new and more reactionary turn in Russia in the period of Stalinist consolidation. The fate of the Revolution in Russia and internationally, far from being mechanically separated "stages", with the international revolution as a desirable, but not altogether necessary addition (the roof of a house, the fairy on the Christmas tree) were inextricably bound together and mutually conditioned by each other.
Trotsky and the Five Year Plans
Monty Johnstone, by a most peculiar piece of mental gymnastics, attributes to Trotsky a "defeatist" attitude in relation to socialist planning in the Soviet Union. Wherein lay Trotsky's alleged "defeatism"?
As we have seen, Trotsky and the Left Opposition had struggled for a whole period (1923-27) for the idea of the development of industry through the agency of Five Year Plans, in the teeth of opposition and ridicule from the Stalinists. Following the expulsion of the Left Opposition (1927), the Stalin faction opened up a struggle against the "Right deviation" of Bukharin and, in order to strike a blow against this group, took over, in a caricatured form, certain aspects of the programme of the Left Opposition.
While ignoring the sections referring to the need for workers' democracy, the Stalinists appropriated the idea of industrialisation and Five Year Plans. The danger of capitalist restoration, which the Left Opposition had warned against, and which the Stalinists repeatedly denied in the previous period, was now used by the Stalin faction as a stick to beat their erstwhile Bukharinite supporters.
In dealing with this manoeuvre of the Stalinists, Monty Johnstone writes:
"It is one of the myths of vulgar Trotskyism that the implementation by Stalin after 1928 of more far-reaching plans [?] than had been put forward by the Opposition in itself proves that the latter was correct. As Maurice Dobb writes: "It does not follow that what may have been practicable in 1928-9 was necessarily practicable at an earlier date when both industry and agriculture were weaker." However, I would accept the argument that, if the Party had heeded earlier the Opposition's warnings against the dangerous growth in the power of the Kulaks [rich peasants] in the countryside, the process of collectivisation in 1929-30 could have been less violent [!] As against this, though the Trotskyists' economic policies favouring the exploitation of the countryside by the town [!] through a system of price differentials which would keep up the price of industrial products at the expense of agricultural prices (see e.g. The New Economics by Preobrazhensky, the Opposition's chief economist) anticipated theoretically much of the approach to the peasantry that from 1929 Stalin was to apply in practice. [!]" (Cogito, page 25 footnote)
Of Stalin's "more far-reaching plans", we will say more later. But first, let us deal with the "Red Professor", Maurice Dobb. Is it true to say that it was easier to begin the policy of industrialisation and Five Year Plans in 1928- 9 than in the earlier period? Monty Johnstone answers this piece of nonsense himself when he refers to the Opposition's warnings against the Kulak danger.
As against the Stalin-Bukharin policy of concession to the Kulaks and speculators ("Nepmen") at the expense of the poor peasants and industrial workers, the Opposition advocated the taxing of the rich peasants, in order to provide the necessary investment for industrialisation; on the basis of industrialisation alone, the villages could be provided with the means of overcoming the age-old backwardness of Russian agriculture. Only on the basis of the mechanisation of agriculture could collectivisation by example be carried out. To describe this policy of hitting the Kulaks as "the town exploiting the countryside" is merely to repeat the slanders hurled at the Left Opposition by the Stalinists - before they went over to the maniacal policy of collectivisation by force!
When, after the expulsion of the Left Opposition, the Stalinists were forced to turn against the "Rights" - behind whom stood the gathering menace of Kulak reaction - the situation in the countryside was already desperate, while heavy industry, the necessary basis of socialist construction, had stagnated for a whole period. It is simply a lie to assert that the Stalinist opposition to industrialisation in the period 1923-7 was dictated by their intentions to build up industry and agriculture. On the contrary: their line was one of encouraging those elements in the Soviet economy which were to prove a terrible stumbling block to the development of production in the period of the first five-year plans.
With his customary magnanimity, Monty Johnstone concedes that if the Party had heeded the Opposition's warnings on the Kulak danger "the process of collectivisation in 1929-30 could have been less violent. And just how "violent" was this "process" of collectivisation, Comrade Johnstone? In 1930, the total harvest of grain amounted to 835 million hundredweight. In the next two years it fell to 200 million; this at a time when the level of grain production was only barely sufficient to feed the population. The result spelled famine for millions of workers and peasants. Sugar production in the same period dropped from 109 million poods to 48 million.
Even more terrible were the losses to livestock. The insane tempo of collectivisation, and the vicious methods used, provoked the peasantry to desperate resistance, which plunged the countryside into a new and bloody civil war. The enraged peasants slaughtered their horses and cattle as a protest. The number of horses fell from 34.9 million in 1929 to 15.6 million in 1934; i.e. a loss of 55%. The number of horned cattle fell from 30.7 million to 19.5 million: a loss of 40%. The number of pigs 55%, sheep 66%. Soviet agriculture to the present day has not recovered from the blow dealt by forced collectivisation. But the most gruesome statistic of all is the millions of peasants who perished in this period - from hunger, cold, disease, in running fights with the Red Army or in the slave-labour camps afterwards; the figure of ten million exterminated was not denied by Stalin; four million is the lowest estimate. Such is the little bit of "violence" to which Monty Johnstone coyly refers in his footnote.
Stalin's plan for collectivisation certainly went "much further" than the proposals laid down by the Opposition! Trotsky denounced it as an adventure, given the material backwardness of Russian agriculture. Stalin's "broad perspectives" spelled disaster to Russian agriculture. But how about industry? Did not the success of Stalin's plans which went "much further" than the perspectives of the Left Opposition, prove how "pessimistic" Trotsky was?
When, after the notorious Moscow Frame-up Trials, Trotsky appeared voluntarily before the Dewey Commission, which went through the charges levelled against him and the Opposition, he answered, among other things, a number of questions relating to the differences with the Stalinists on the question of industrialisation in 1923-9. We quote verbatim from the text of his evidence:
"Goldman: Mr. Trotsky, with reference to the industrialisation of the Soviet Union, what was your attitude prior to your expulsion from the Soviet Union?
"Trotsky: During the period from 1922 until 1929 I fought for the necessity of an accelerated industrialisation. I wrote in the beginning of 1925 a book in which I tried to prove that by planning and direction of industry it was possible to have a yearly coefficient of industrialisation up to twenty. I was denounced at the time as a fantastic man, a super-industrialiser. It was the official name for Trotskyites at that time: 'super-industrialisers'.
"Goldman: What was the name of the book that you wrote?
"Trotsky: Whither Russia, Toward Capitalism or Socialism?
"Goldman: In English, it was published, I am quite sure under the title Wither Russia, Toward Capitalism or Socialism?
"Trotsky: The march of events showed that I was too cautious in my appreciation of the possibility of planned economy - not too courageous. It was my fight between 1922 and 1925, and also the fight for the Five Year Plan. It begins with the year 1923, when the Left Opposition began to fight for the necessity of using the Five Year Plan.
"Goldman: And Stalin at that time called you a 'super-industrialist'?
"Trotsky: Yes.
"Goldman: He was opposed to the rapid industrialisation of the country.
"Trotsky: Permit me to say that in 1927, when I was Chairman of the Commission at Dnieprostroy for a hydro-electric station, a power station, I insisted in the session of the Central Committee on the necessity of building up this station. Stalin answered, and it is published: 'For us to build up the Dnieprostroy station is the same as for a peasant to buy a gramophone instead of a cow.'" (The Case of Leon Trotsky, page 245)
Such was the extent of Stalin's "broad perspectives" in 1927! At that time, the accusation levelled at the Opposition by the Stalinists was not that they were "pessimistic" but that were "super-industrialisers"! What about the assertion that the plans later implemented by Stalin went "much further" than those of Trotsky?
The years 1925-27 were occupied by the struggle of the Opposition against the economic cowardice of the Stalin-Bukharin leadership. The Stalinists in 1926 first suggested a "plan" which would begin with a coefficient of nine for the first year, eight for the second, gradually lowering to four - a declining rate of growth! Trotsky, whom the ruling clique branded as "super-industrialist", described this miserable excuse for a plan as the "sabotage of industry" (not, of course, in a literal sense). Later, the plan was revised to give a coefficient of nine for all five years. Trotsky fought for a coefficient of 18-20. He pointed out that the rate of growth, even under capitalism, had been six! The ruling clique paid no attention to the Opposition and went ahead with their pusillanimous plans. Instead of the miserable nine percent projected by the "broad perspectives" of Stalin-Bukharin, the results of the first year of the five year plan completely bore out the perspective of the Opposition and exposed the complete inadequacy of the coefficients advanced by Stalin and Co. As a result, the following year they plunged into the disastrous adventure of a "five year plan in four years". In vain did Trotsky warn against this crazy idea, which, threw everything completely off balance. By bureaucratic ukaze the leadership now decreed a coefficient of 30-35%! The wrecking of industry in this period, which was blamed upon the unfortunate victims of the "sabotage trials", was in reality the result of the adventurism of the Stalinists, whose pursuit of the chimera of "Socialism in One Country" and "Five Year Plan in Four Years" led to the seizing up of the economy and untold hardships for the Soviet working class.
In answer to all the misrepresentations and half-truths of Monty Johnstone concerning Trotsky's attitude to the Five Year Plans, let us see what Trotsky himself had to say to the Dewey Commission:
"Trotsky: My attitude toward the economic development of the Soviet Union can be characterised as follows: I defend the Soviet economy against the capitalist critics and the Social Democratic reformist critics, and I criticize the bureaucratic methods of the leadership. The deductions were very simple. They were based on the Soviet press itself. We have a certain freedom from the bureaucratic hypnosis. It was absolutely possible to see all of the dangers on the basis of the Soviet press itself.
"Goldman: Can you give us an idea, very generally, of the successes of the industrialisation in the Soviet Union?
"Trotsky: The successes are very important, and I affirmed it every time. They are due to the abolition of private property and to the possibilities inherent in planned economy. But, they are - I cannot say exactly - but I will say two or three times less than they could be under a regime of Soviet democracy.
"Goldman: So the advances are due, in spite of the bureaucratic control and methods?
"Trotsky: They are due to the possibilities inherent in the socialisation of the productive forces." (The Case of Leon Trotsky, page 249)
In pursuit of additional proof of Trotsky's "pessimism", Johnstone quotes from The Third International After Lenin:
"To the extent that productivity of labour and the productivity of a social system as a whole are measured in the market by the correlation of prices, it is not so much military intervention as the intervention of cheaper capitalist commodities that constitutes perhaps the greatest immediate menace to the Soviet economy."
These lines were written in 1928, at a time when capitalist market forces were re-asserting themselves in the Soviet economy under the NEP. when the Kulaks (rich peasants) were following the advice of Bukharin: "Get rich!" and when the danger of an actual capitalist restoration, which the Left Opposition warned against, was very real. Commenting on Trotsky's words without explaining the context Johnstone writes:
"The monopoly of foreign trade, which Stalin and the Party majority correctly stressed was the means of the Soviet Union shielding itself from such economic subversion, became for Trotsky 'evidence of the severity and the dangerous character of our dependence.'" (Cogito, page 267)
Monty Johnstone's memory is conveniently short. For this same "Stalin and the Party Majority" (i.e. Bukharin) not five years before had stood for the abolition of the state monopoly of foreign trade, and actually passed a resolution in the Central Committee on October 12, 1922 - abrogating the monopoly. The Collected Edition of Lenin's works in Russian contains a whole series of letters by Lenin in which he appeals to Trotsky to form a bloc with him for the struggle to maintain the monopoly of foreign trade. Thus, on December 13, 1922, Lenin wrote to Trotsky:
"In any event, I would beg you to take upon yourself at the forthcoming Plenum, the defence of our common point of view on the unconditional necessity of the preservation and strengthening of the monopoly of foreign trade." (Lenin, Collected Works, Russian edition vol. 54, page 324)
What did Trotsky mean by his statement that "cheap foreign commodities" posed a threat to the Soviet power? In 1917, the proletarian revolution had taken place, not as Marx and Engels had visualised, in an advanced capitalist country, but in a backward, semi-feudal peasant economy. This happened, not because "all the conditions necessary for building socialism" were present in Russia, but because of the absolute inability of the Russian bourgeoisie to solve a single one of the historic tasks before it, on the basis of the capitalist system. Russia was propelled towards the proletarian revolution, not because it was the most advanced, but precisely because it was the most backward of European powers. As Lenin expressed it, capitalism broke at its weakest link.
The victory of the Russian working class in the October Revolution was the prerequisite for beginning the transformation of Russian society. The historic tasks of the bourgeois revolution in Russia could only be carried out under the dictatorship of the proletariat. That is the essential meaning of Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution, worked out in 1905. The nationalisation of industry, the state plan, the monopoly of foreign trade were the means whereby the Russian working class pulled Russia out of the slough of age-old backwardness. The historic successes of the five year plans in the Soviet Union are, in themselves, a sufficient justification of the October Revolution. As Trotsky wrote in The Revolution Betrayed:
"Socialism has demonstrated its right to victory, not on the pages of Capital, but in an industrial area comprising one-sixth of the earth's surface - not in the language of dialectics, but in the language of steel, cement and electricity."
However, the question of the historical fate of the USSR cannot be exhausted by reeling off an inventory of the success of the five year plans. Lenin, early on, posed the vital question in the striking phrase: "Who shall prevail?" The Soviet Union is not a desert island, but part of a world economic and political system, where the fate of no one country can be isolated from that of the whole. The Soviet Union, despite its enormous industrial successes, still has to measure its strength against that of the imperialist powers of the West.
The capitalist system, while already showing all the symptoms of senile decay on a world scale, started with immeasurable advantages over the Soviet Union. From the outset, the Bolsheviks had to struggle against the prevailing low level of culture of the masses, the lack of a skilled labour force, in a word, of the low productivity of labour. This factor, and not the volume of production in absolute terms, is the real measure of economic success and social advancement. In this decisive field, after 50 years of Soviet power, the Soviet Union still lags far behind the USA.
Official Soviet statistics indicate that the per capita industrial production of the USSR is only 50-60% that of the USA. With a larger working class, with twice the number of technicians and engineers, the actual industrial output of Russia is only 65% that of the USA. The indices of production of heavy industry are the most dramatic. Steel production in the USSR has risen from 4.3 million tons in 1928 to 107 million tons in 1968 - only 18 million tons less than in America (not including 24 million tons imported by the USA). But on the one hand, per capita production of steel in the USA is higher than in the USSR. On the other hand, the harmonious development of human life and culture are not reflected economically by the volume of steel production alone, but more accurately by the development of consumer and high quality technical goods for the mass of the people. In this field, which affects the living standards of the workers, the USSR still lags behind the capitalist countries.
The hordes of speculators, spivs and black-marketeers in Moscow, who make a living by pestering foreign tourists for Western goods and currency, which they sell at a handsome profit to Soviet workers are a clear indication that the threat from "cheap foreign commodities" even today has not disappeared. The draconian sentences (up to and including the death penalty) introduced to combat this speculation has no effect in stamping out a social scourge which has its roots, not in "survivals of capitalism" or the perversity of human nature, but by the objective relations between the Soviet Union and the World Economy. which no haughty bureaucratic "theories" can abolish.
As Marx explained in The German Ideology: "Where want is generalised 'all the old crap will revive.'" The perennial shortages, high price and low quality of consumer goods (not merely cars and technical goods, but also clothes and foodstuffs) are a basic fact of life for the Soviet working class. That is not to say that luxury goods do not exist. The privileged strata of bureaucrats, factory managers, army officers, etc, possess in abundance the things which a Soviet worker would not dream of: expensive suits, sleek cars, luxury apartments, villas in the countryside, etc. While working-class families in Moscow and other Soviet cities live in conditions of chronic overcrowding, many members of the upper strata own more than one country house (dacha) in addition to their city apartments. The luxurious style of living of the bureaucracy is a constant affront to the masses of the Soviet people. Thus, after the Second World War, when the Soviet workers and peasants were suffering under conditions of dreadful hardship, the visiting Field-Marshal Montgomery received from the hands of his Soviet "brother" officers the gift of a Soviet Marshal's fur coat complete with medals, diamonds, etc, costing £5,000!
Under Lenin and Trotsky, the rule of "Partmaximum" meant that a Party member could not receive more than an ordinary worker, even if his skills entitled him to a higher wage. One of the conditions for the inception of a workers' state as laid down by Lenin in The State and Revolution was the rule that no official was to receive a higher wage than a skilled worker. An early decree of the Revolution fixed a wage differential between workers and specialists of not more than four times, and this Lenin frankly described as a "capitalist differential", to be reduced systematically. This law applied until 1931 when it was formally abolished by Stalin.
The "Revolution Betrayed"
On pages 32-33, Johnstone writes:
"Trotsky's dogmatic shibboleths of the impossibility of building socialism in one country led him even now to underestimate how deeply entrenched and resilient the socialist system was in Russia, despite the ravages wrought by Stalin's purges. Without the interference of a revolution in the West in the event of war, he claimed, 'the social base of the Soviet Union must be crushed, not only in the case of defeat, but also in the case of victory!'
"Out of touch with Soviet reality, he wrote that 'the Soviet bureaucracy has gone far towards preparing a bourgeois restoration,' and, 'must inevitably in future seek support for itself in property relations,' entailing 'its conversion into a new possessing class.'" (Cogito)
Did Trotsky really say this? Let us reproduce in full the passage from The Revolution Betrayed from which Johnstone has carved out his latest "balanced" mini-quotes. On pages 251-2 Trotsky writes:
"As a conscious political force the bureaucracy has betrayed the revolution. But a victorious revolution is fortunately not only a program and a banner, not only political institutions, but also a system of social relations. To betray it is not enough. You have to overthrow it. The October revolution has been betrayed by the ruling stratum, but not yet overthrown. It has a great power of resistance, coinciding with the established proletariat, the consciousness of its best elements, the impasse of world capitalism, and the inevitability of world revolution." (our emphasis)
In these words of Trotsky, which Johnstone has evidently "not noticed", there is not a trace of any under-estimation of the resilience of the basic social gains of the October Revolution, or of any fatalism about the victory of a bourgeois counter-revolution. But let us read on. We reproduce the next section of Trotsky's work ("The Question of the Character of the Soviet Union Not Yet Decided by History") in full, the better to illustrate how Monty Johnstone's "balance" method of quoting works out in practice. Continuing the above argument, Trotsky writes:
"In order better to understand the character of the present Soviet Union, let us make two different hypotheses about its future. Let us assume first that the Soviet bureaucracy is overthrown by a revolutionary party having all the attributes of the old Bolshevism, enriched moreover by the world experience of the recent period. Such a party would begin with the restoration of democracy in the trade unions and the Soviets. It would be able to, and would have to, restore freedom of Soviet parties. Together with the masses, and at their head, it would carry out a ruthless purgation of the state apparatus. It would abolish ranks and decorations, all kinds of privileges, and would limit inequality in the payment of labour to the life necessities of the economy and the state apparatus. It would give the youth free opportunity to think independently, learn, criticise and grow. It would introduce profound changes in the distribution of the national income in correspondence with the interests and will of the worker and peasant masses. But so far as concerns property relations, the new power would not have to resort to revolutionary measures. It would retain and further develop the experiment of planned economy. After the political revolution - that is, the deposing of the bureaucracy - the proletariat would have to introduce in the economy a series of very important reforms, but not another social revolution.
"If - to adopt a second hypothesis - a bourgeois party were to overthrow the ruling Soviet caste, it would find no small number of ready servants among the present bureaucrats, administrators, technicians, directors, party secretaries and privileged upper circles in general. A purgation of the state apparatus would, of course, be necessary in this case too. But a bourgeois restoration would probably have to clean out fewer people than a revolutionary party. The chief task of the new power would be to restore private property in the means of production. First of all, it would be necessary to create conditions for the development of strong farmers from the weak collective farms, and for converting the strong collectives into producers' cooperatives of the bourgeois type - into agricultural stock companies. In the sphere of industry, denationalisation would begin with the light industries and those producing food. The planning principle would be converted for the transitional period into a series of compromises between state power and individual "corporations" - potential proprietors, that is, among the Soviet captains of industry, the émigré former proprietors and foreign capitalists. Notwithstanding that, the Soviet bureaucracy has gone far toward preparing a bourgeois restoration the new regime would have to introduce in the matter of forms of property and methods of industry not a reform, but a social revolution.
"Let us assume - to take a third variant - that neither a revolutionary nor a counter-revolutionary parry seizes power. The bureaucracy continues at the head of the state. Even under these conditions social relations will not jell. We cannot count upon the bureaucracy peacefully and voluntarily renouncing itself on behalf of socialist equality. If at the present time, notwithstanding the too obvious inconveniences of such an operation, it has considered it possible to introduce ranks and decorations, it must inevitably in future stages seek supports for itself in property relations. One may argue that the big bureaucrat cares little what are the prevailing forms of property, provided only they guarantee him the necessary income. This argument ignores not only the instability of the bureaucrat's own rights, but also the question of his descendants. The new cult of the family has not fallen out of the clouds. Privileges have only half their worth, if they cannot be transmitted to one's children. But the right of testament is inseparable from the right of property. It is not enough to be the director of a trust; it is necessary to be a stockholder. The victory of the bureaucracy in this decisive sphere would mean its conversion into a new possessing class. On the other hand, the victory of the proletariat over the bureaucracy would insure a revival of the socialist revolution. The third variant consequently brings us back to the two first, with which, in the interests of clarity and simplicity, we set out." (The Revolution Betrayed, pages 252-254)
This is how Monty Johnstone applies his "Marxist" method. He presents as Trotsky's viewpoint a number of arguments, taken out of context and artificially strung together, which in the work from which they are taken appear as part of a hypothesis, (one of three!) and are conditioned by a whole series of reservations and explanations which are simply not included anywhere in Monty Johnstone's "objective" account of Trotsky's arguments.
"Trotsky predicted an inevitable restoration of capitalism in Russia." Such is the crux of Monty Johnstone's "balanced" arguments. But anyone who reads the above passage from The Revolution Betrayed can come to no such conclusion. On the contrary, Trotsky repeatedly emphasises that, whereas the political (anti-bureaucratic) revolution would be faced with relatively easy tasks, any attempt on the party of the bureaucracy to re-introduce capitalist property relationships would meet with stubborn resistance on the part of the Soviet workers and could only succeed as the result of a bloody struggle and civil war.
Far from predicting the imminent capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union, The Revolution Betrayed explains that the bureaucracy is obliged to defend the State property relations upon which it rests and from which it derives all its power and privileges. In opposition to those who described the bureaucracy as a ruling class and the Soviet Union as "state capitalist", Trotsky explained that:
"The Soviet bureaucracy has expropriated the proletariat politically in order by methods of its own to defend the social conquests. But the very fact of its appropriation of political power in a country where the principal means of production are in the hands of the state, creates a new and hitherto unknown relation between the bureaucracy and the riches of the nation. The means of production belong to the state. But the state, so as to speak "belongs" to the bureaucracy. If these as yet wholly new relations should solidify, become the norm and be legalised, whether with or without resistance from the workers, they would, in the long run, lead to a complete liquidation of the social conquests of the proletarian revolution. But to speak of that now is at least premature. The proletariat has not yet said the last word. The bureaucracy has not yet created social supports for its dominion in the form of special types of property. It is compelled to defend state property as the source of its power and its income. In this aspect of its activity it still remains a weapon of proletarian dictatorship." (The Revolution Betrayed, page 249, our emphasis)
In the face of this, how is it possible for Monty Johnstone to argue that Trotsky claimed that a capitalist restoration was taking place in the Soviet Union? Either he has not bothered to read the book which he purports to analyse, or else he has not understood what he has read. There is a further possibility, but we shall not bother to draw the readers' attention to that. It is sufficient to remark that if members of the Young Communist League wish to understand what Trotsky wrote concerning Russia, they should consult the works of Trotsky himself, and not rely upon the impartiality of their "theoreticians".
"But Trotsky predicted the defeat of the Soviet Union and the victory of capitalist counter-revolution after the war!" chips in Monty Johnstone (Cogito, page 33)
On page 227 of The Revolution Betrayed, Trotsky writes:
"Can we, however, expect that the Soviet Union will come out of the coming war without defeat? To this frankly posed question, we will answer as frankly: If the war should remain only a war, the defeat of the Soviet Union would be inevitable. In a technical, economic, and military sense, imperialism is incomparably more strong. If it is not paralysed by revolution in the West, imperialism will sweep away the regime which issued from the October Revolution." (our emphasis)
Trotsky then proceeds to give a sober analysis of the international class balances, concluding with the following lines:
"The danger of war and a defeat of the Soviet Union is a reality, but the revolution is also a reality. If the revolution does not prevent war, then war will help the revolution. Second births are commonly easier than the first. In the new war, it will not be necessary to wait a whole two years and a half for the first insurrection. Once it is begun, moreover, the revolution will not this time stop half way. The fate of the Soviet Union will be decided in the long run not on the maps of the general staffs, but on the map of the class struggle. Only the European proletariat, implacably opposing its bourgeoisie and in the same camp with them the "friends" of peace, can protect the Soviet Union from destruction, or from an 'Allied' state in the back. Even a military defeat of the Soviet Union would be only a short episode, in case of a victory of the proletariat in other countries. And on the other hand, no military victory can save the inheritance of the October revolution, if imperialism holds out in the rest of the world." (The Revolution Betrayed, pages 231-2)
What was the situation which the Soviet Union faced at the end of World War Two? In 1945, Russia had suffered the catastrophic loss of twenty-seven million dead. Her production of steel stood at eight million tons, as compared with 120 million produced by America and 25 million by Britain. Moreover, the armed forces of the Anglo-American imperialist powers remained intact - the war in Europe had resolved itself largely into a Homeric struggle between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. The atom bomb was in the hands of the US imperialism, but not yet of Russia.
All the calculations of Anglo-American imperialism had been based upon the advent of such a situation. Their policy was to weaken both German imperialism and the Soviet Union, and to keep their hands free to strangle the Soviet Union should it succeed in defeating Hitler. Why did this plan miscarry? What force stayed the hand of British and American imperialism in 1945? The Red Army, as Trotsky explained in The Revolution Betrayed, was a powerful factor for the defence of the gains of October; but faced with such an overwhelmingly adverse balance of forces, even the heroism of the Red Army would have been of no avail.
The Soviet Union was saved only by the revolutionary mood of the "Allied" troops and the revolutionary movement in Europe at that time. Any attempt, after the defeat of Hitler, to launch an attack upon the Soviet Union would have provoked mutinies in every army of British and American imperialism. Trotsky had foreseen this, and was shown by events to have been absolutely correct.
The tragedy of the Second World War, for which the workers of the Soviet Union paid a terrible price, was the result of the criminal policies pursued by Stalin and the bureaucracy in the period before the war itself. It was not only that Stalin's manoeuvres on the international plane demoralised the workers of Germany and Spain and led to the victory of Fascism in those countries. The purge trials led to the complete disruption of the Soviet armed forces, and the economy, the undermining of the powers of defence of the USSR, which encouraged the Nazis to attack and resulted in a series of terrible defeats in the early days of the war when millions of Soviet troops surrendered to the Nazis without a fight. It was not a question of military inferiority (the fire-power of the Red Army was superior to that of the Reichswehr) but simply of the decimation of the Red Army leadership by the purges and the myopic arrogance of Stalin and the bureaucracy, who, while hysterically denouncing the "pessimism" of Trotsky, left the Soviet Union in a state of total unpreparedness to the Fascist attack.
A Regime of Proletarian Bonapartism
Monty Johnstone has little enough to say about the causes of Stalinism. Here and there, he drops the odd phrase about "violations of Socialist legality". But, in spite of all the bombastic phrases about the "Marxist method of critical and self-critical analysis", there is not an atom of analysis throughout the entire work. Monty Johnstone picks holes in this or that phrase of Trotsky, torn out of context and artificially juxtaposed to other passages from different works. Thus, on the one hand, he berates Trotsky as the "arch-bureaucrat" obsessed with central planning; on the other he attributes to Trotsky a "defeatist" attitude to socialist planning!
What was the basis of Lenin's opposition to the Stalinist bureaucracy? Lenin feared that this stratum might choke the revolution and prepare the way for a capitalist restoration. That did not happen, as Monty Johnstone is eager to point out in relation to Trotsky, who also, initially, foresaw the possibility of a restoration. But, as Lenin explained, history knows all sorts of social transformations; not merely social revolutions and counter-revolutions, but also political revolutions and political counter-revolutions.
To the reader of Monty Johnstone's article, it would seem inexplicable that, for a whole historical period, "socialism" could express itself through the dictatorship of one man! In reality, the history of bourgeois revolutions furnishes many examples of similar processes. The English bourgeois revolution manifested itself in the Protectorate of Cromwell. The Great French Revolution passed through many phases, and eventually succumbed to the political counter-revolution of Napoleon. The reaction in France represented, not the restoration of feudalism, but a Bonapartist, counter-revolutionary regime which nevertheless rested on the basis of the new property relations established by the Revolution.
It would, of course, be monstrous to suppose that such a dictatorship was compatible with socialism, in any sense of the word as understood by Marx, Engels, Lenin or Trotsky. But what existed in Russia was not "socialism", but the dictatorship of the proletariat; moreover, the dictatorship was taking place under certain peculiar historical conditions; isolated, in a backward country, subject to the enormous pressures of alien class forces. To imagine that, under these conditions, the dictatorship of the proletariat could not undergo a series of internal transformations, but must always remain in a state of pristine purity is to imagine that it is possible to abstract revolution from the processes taking place in society - the exact opposite to Marxism. The proletariat is not a "sacred cow" that is somehow immune from the pressures of class society.
Lenin, in trying to rid the Soviet apparatus of the menace of bureaucracy, was never under any illusion that the problem could be solved without the help of the international socialist revolution. And in this he was quite correct. The failure of the revolutions in the West did not lead to capitalist counter-revolution, as Lenin and Trotsky had thought possible. But those social processes which were generated by the isolation of the revolution in Russia gave rise to a transformation of the workers' state into the totalitarian, Bonapartist monster that was the state under Stalin, and which continued, with some of the ugliest warts removed, under Brezhnev and Kosygin. The state lifted itself above the masses, usurping the ruling functions of the class, crushing the last vestiges of workers' democracy, and sealing its victory by the physical extermination of the entire "Old Bolshevik" leadership.
When one reads the works of Lenin, the most striking thing is the complete absence of the kind of haughty, bragging language of the Stalinists. Lenin was always honest, realistic and truthful in what he wrote about the Soviet state. What they had, at that time, was not "socialism", not "communism", but a workers' state and Lenin was not afraid to add "with bureaucratic distortions". The difference was that at that time the Soviet state was moving in the direction of socialism. Inequalities existed, but the conscious effort was in the direction of equality, of reducing the power and privileges of officials, of involving the workers in the running of their lives, and the administration of state and industry. And what of today? The only thing which distinguishes the Soviet Union as a workers' state at all is the nationalised economy and the plan; these are the only gains of the October Revolution that survive. These things by themselves constitute a tremendous step forward, but they even cannot guarantee a successful transition to socialism.
Far from the progress made by the planned economy leading to greater equality and freedom for the working people, the most outrageous corruption and privilege is growing among the upper strata, unhampered by the check of workers' democracy.
The "reforms" from the top, just as under the Tsars, are dictated by fear of revolution from below. They do not touch the basis of the privilege and power of the bureaucracy. And even these crumbs are given hesitantly one minute, only to be taken back the next.
Will the Bureaucracy "wither away"?
"What he [Trotsky] failed to understand…was that it is possible to have for a certain prolonged period, the uneasy and antagonistic coexistence of a Socialist economy and undemocratic, un-Socialist superstructure. Sooner or later the development of the former will tend to [?] push society (albeit tortuously, unevenly, and not at all 'automatically') towards reforming the superstructure [?] and bringing it more into keeping [?] with its economic base and the desires of its progressively more developed and educated working class and intelligentsia." (Cogito, page 30)
The rise to power of the Stalinist bureaucracy was rooted in the backwardness of Russian society, but it would be a crude mistake, characteristic of the liberal "gradualist" mentality, to assume that the bureaucracy will simply "wither away" as the economy advances. That would have been true in the case of a relatively healthy workers' state with secondary bureaucratic distortions, such as Russia was in the time of Lenin and Trotsky. But the point that Monty Johnstone seeks to gloss over is the fact that now the Soviet bureaucracy constitutes a special privileged caste, a new aristocracy, which for decades has grown accustomed to lording it over the rest of society. It has a complete monopoly of political power, of the state apparatus, the mass media, the police and the armed forces. Over decades it has shown itself, and is still showing itself, to be capable of the utmost ruthlessness and barbarity in suppressing even the mildest opposition.
The Marxist theory of the state explains how the superstructure of the state arises out of the contradictions between classes in society. But having been established, the state always tends to acquire a certain independence and a movement of its own. It was in this sense that Marx and Lenin spoke of the state power as "standing 'above' society and increasingly alienating itself from it." The measures taken by the Bolsheviks after the Revolution were designed to prevent the development of such tendencies in the Soviet state apparatus, by subjecting it to the closest checks, supervision, and control by the working class. But once the Stalinist bureaucracy had succeeded (as Johnstone is forced to admit) in raising itself above the rest of society as a special, privileged caste, then the problem of combating bureaucracy took on an entirely different aspect. The vested interests of the bureaucracy, its complete alienation from the working class in whose name it purports to rule, means that a new revolutionary struggle will be necessary - a political revolution - to throw off the yoke of bureaucratic police-rule.
Why is it that the bureaucracy clings so tenaciously to power? Is it some peculiar trait in their mental make-up? Is it a question of "personality"? Not at all. Like all other ruling classes, castes and groups in history, the Soviet bureaucracy uses the state power to defend its privileged position in society. There are no more signs of it wanting to "wither away" than of the capitalist class in the West obligingly handing over its power and loot to the working class.
Monty Johnstone criticises Trotsky for his "carping and ill-conceived" criticism of the Stalin Constitution of 1936, which abolished the Soviet system of elections and replaced it with a Constitution which (on paper) resembled that of a bourgeois democracy, "the weakness of which lay not in its extremely democratic provisions, but in their irrelevance to the real situation in the Soviet Union at that time when Stalin could and did trample them underfoot." (Cogito, page 32)
Monty Johnstone condemns his arguments out of his own mouth. What sort of a "Constitution" is it which cannot be implemented? And how was it possible for one man to "trample it underfoot"? Was it just Stalin's whim? Or the strength of his "personality"? We have said before, and we repeat: for an idea to obtain mass support and become a force in human affairs, it must express the interests of a class or group. The "theory" of the "personality cult" does not explain anything about Stalin's Russia. One must ask the question: who benefited from the measures taken by Stalin? Which group in society gained from the suppression of workers' democracy, from the muzzling of the trade unions, from the abolition of the maximum legal wage, from the re-introduction of epaulettes, saluting and batmen in the army? The interests reflected in the anti-working class policies of Stalinism were those of the very bureaucracy against which Lenin had fought - the millions of officials in the state, the Party, the army, the collective farms, the unions.
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Last edited by Comrade Ogilvy on 27 May 2003 02:23, edited 1 time in total.