{"id":593,"date":"2019-09-05T14:33:12","date_gmt":"2019-09-05T12:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marxistworkersparty.org.za\/?page_id=593"},"modified":"2019-09-05T15:32:55","modified_gmt":"2019-09-05T13:32:55","slug":"chapter-three","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/?page_id=593","title":{"rendered":"Chapter Three"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Nature of the Soviet Regime<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Neither Marx, Engels nor Lenin ever imagined that a state with the\ngrotesque totalitarian character of Stalin’s dictatorship would arise in the\ncourse of the world transition from capitalism to socialism. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marxism has always rejected the\nidea put forward by capitalists and every brand of reformism: that the state\nhas become a necessary condition of human existence. The state, explained Marx\nand Engels, arose with the development of society into classes. Taking power,\nthe task of the working class was to dissolve class society. With this, the\nstate also would wither away and disappear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As they put it in the Communist Manifesto<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

as the working class “sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.<\/p>

In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The establishment of the first\nworker’s state through the 1917 Russian Revolution was the highest achievement\nof human history. Yet, under the rule of the bureaucracy, this state\ndegenerated into a form of rule barely distinguishable from Hitler’s Fascism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Trotsky wrote in 1936:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However you may interpret the nature of the present Soviet state, one thing is indubitable: at the end of its second decade of existence, it has not only not died away, but not begun to ‘die away’. Worse than that, it has grown into a hitherto unheard of apparatus of compulsion. The bureaucracy not only has not disappeared, yielding its place to the masses, but has turned into an uncontrolled force dominating the masses. The army not only has not been replaced by an armed people, but has given birth to a privileged officers’ caste, crowned with marshals, while the people, ‘the armed bearers of the dictatorship,’ are now forbidden in the Soviet Union to carry even non-explosive weapons.<\/p>

With the utmost stretch of fancy it would be difficult to imagine a contrast more striking than that which exists between the schema of the workers’ state according to Marx, Engels and Lenin, and the actual state now headed by Stalin. While continuing to publish the works of Lenin (to be sure, with excerpts and distortions by the censor), the present leaders of the Soviet Union and their ideological representatives do not even raise the question of the causes of such a crying divergence between program and reality.<\/p>The Revolution Betrayed<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Trotsky made an enduring\ncontribution to Marxism by explaining how and why this “crying\ndivergence” had taken place, the nature of this regime, and how its contradictions\ncould be overcome. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Marxism on the workers’ state<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The state, Engels had explained,\nis a “power, arisen out of society but placing itself above it, and\nalienating itself more and more from it… This public power exists in every\nstate: it consists not merely of armed\nmen but also of material adjuncts, prisons and institutions of coercion of all\nkinds.<\/strong>” (Origins of the Family, Private\nProperty and the State<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an inherently repressive\ninstitution, the state – Engels also explained – was “at best an evil\ninherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy,\nwhose worst sides the victorious proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot\navoid having to lop off at once as much as possible until such time as a\ngeneration reared in new, free social conditions is able to throw the entire\nlumber of the state on the scrap heap.” (Introduction to Marx’s Class Struggles in France<\/em>. Our\nemphasis.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, against\nanarchism, Marx and Engels insisted that the proletariat, on coming to power,\ncould not simply abolish<\/strong> the state.\nThe proletariat needed<\/strong> its own\nstate, to use against all the forces of capitalist counter-revolution. There\nwas no point trying to hide, or prettify, this reality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Engels, for example, once wrote\nto the German Marxist Bebel criticising the idea of a “free people’s\nstate”, then current in some sections of the German workers’ movement.\nThis concept was, he wrote, “pure nonsense”: “so long as the\nproletariat still uses the state, it does not use it in the interests of freedom,\nbut to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak\nof freedom the state as such ceases to exist.” (18-28\/3\/1878, Selected Works<\/em>, II, 42)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The classical works of Marxism\nreferred to the “dictatorship<\/strong>\nof the proletariat.” By this, they intended not to hide the fact that so\nlong as a state existed, it would be an instrument of repression. But, in\ncontrast to all previous states which served the interests of an exploiting\nminority, the proletarian state would exercise its repression in a democratic way<\/strong>. The proletarian state\nwould for the first time<\/strong> represent\nthe interests of the majority<\/strong> in\nsociety: the toilers and the producers of wealth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Capitalist democracy” –\nwrote Lenin in his marvellous resummation of the Marxist theory of the state State and Revolution<\/em> – “is\ninevitably narrow and stealthily pushes aside the poor, and is therefore\nhypocritical and false through and through.” This remains the case, even\nin the most democratic of bourgeois societies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From capitalist democracy, Lenin\ncontinued,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

forward development does not proceed simply, directly and smoothly, towards ‘greater and greater democracy’, as the liberal professors and petty-bourgeois opportunists would have us believe. No, forward development, i.e., development towards communism, proceeds through the dictatorship of the proletariat, and cannot do otherwise, for the resistance<\/strong> of the capitalist exploiters cannot be broken<\/strong> by anyone else or in any other way.<\/p>

And the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e. the organisation of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of suppressing the oppressors, cannot result merely in an expansion of democracy. Simultaneously<\/strong> with an immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time<\/strong> becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the money bags, the dictatorship of the proletariat imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists. We must suppress them in order to free humanity from wage slavery, their resistance must be crushed by force; it is clear that there is no freedom and no democracy where there is suppression and where there is violence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The proletariat, Lenin\nemphasised, needed: “a centralised organisation of force, and organisation\nof violence, both to crush the resistance of the exploiters and to lead<\/strong> the enormous mass of the\npopulation – the peasants, the petty bourgeoisie, and semi-proletarians – in\nthe work of organising a socialist economy.” (Ibid<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In all previous states, the\nexploiting class had maintained its rule, in one form or another, through a standing army and a bureaucracy<\/strong> – a\nspecialised machinery of repression. But the proletariat could construct its\nstate on a different basis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even to suppress the exploiters, –\nas Lenin put it -“since the majority of the people itself<\/strong> suppresses its oppressors, a ‘special force’ for suppression\nis no longer necessary!<\/strong> In this\nsense, the state begins to wither away<\/strong>.\nInstead of the special institutions of a privileged minority (privileged\nofficialdom, the chiefs of the standing army), the majority itself can exercise\nthese functions, and the more the functions of state power are performed by the\npeople as a whole, the less need there is for the existence of this\npower.” (Ibid<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following Marx and Engels, Lenin\nshowed how the working class in the Paris Commune – even though that experience\nwas short-lived and imperfect – had pointed the way to this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Paris Commune had replaced a\nstanding army by the people-in-arms. It had created a state of employees and\nworkers, taking measures against their rising “above society” as\nprivileged and unaccountable bureaucrats, namely: “(1) not only election\nbut recall at any time; (2) payment no higher than the wages of a worker; (3)\nimmediate transition to a regime in which all will fulfil the functions of\ncontrol and supervision so that all may for a time become ‘bureaucrats’, and\ntherefore nobody can become a bureaucrat.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Capitalist culture [- Lenin added- ] has created large-scale production, factories, railways, the postal service, telephones, etc., and on this basis the great majority of the functions of the old \u2018state power\u2019 have become so simplified and can be reduced to such exceedingly simple operations of registration, filing and checking that they can easily be performed for ordinary ‘workmen’s wages’, and that these functions can (and must) be stripped of every shadow of privilege, of every semblance of ‘official grandeur.’ <\/p>Ibid<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

With computerisation and automation, how much more possible is all this\ntoday!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abolishing the bureaucracy at once, everywhere and completely, is out of the question”, Lenin continued. “It is a utopia. But to smash the old bureaucratic machine at once and begin immediately to create a new one that will make possible the gradual abolition of all bureaucracy – this is not a utopia, it is the experience of the Commune…<\/p>

We, the workers, shall organise large-scale production on the basis of what capitalism has already created, relying on our own experience as workers, establishing strict, iron discipline backed up by the state power of the armed workers. We shall reduce the role of state officials to that of simply carrying out our instructions as responsible, revocable, modestly paid ‘foremen and accountants’ (of course, with the aid of technicians of all sorts, types and degrees).<\/p>

Such a beginning, on the basis of large-scale production, will of itself lead to the gradual ‘withering away’ of all bureaucracy, to the gradual creation of an order – an order without inverted commas, an order bearing no similarity to wage-slavery – an order under which the functions of control and accounting, becoming more and more simple, will be performed by each in turn, will then become a habit and will finally die out as the special functions of a special section of the population.<\/p>Ibid<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Marx and Engels had anticipated\nthat the working class would establish its own state first in the most industrialised\ncountries – where its education and culture was also most developed. Lenin\nwrote State and Revolution<\/em> with the\nexpectation that workers’ revolution would spread, in a measurably short space\nof time, from Russia to the more advanced countries of the West – or be\ndefeated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In power, the Bolsheviks sought\nto build a workers’ state on the lines outlined by Lenin. “Comrades,\nworking people”, wrote Lenin in a decree “To the population”\nissued within days of the October insurrection:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remember that now you yourselves are at the helm of the state. No one will help you if you yourselves do not unite and take into your hands all affairs of the state. Your Soviets are from now on the organs of state authority, legislative bodies with full powers. <\/p>

Rally round your Soviets. Strengthen them. Get on with the job yourselves; begin right at the bottom, do not wait for anyone. Establish the strictest revolutionary law and order, mercilessly suppress any attempts to create anarchy by drunkards, hooligans, counter-revolutionary officer cadets, Kornilovites and their like.<\/p>

Ensure the strictest control over production and accounting of products. Arrest and hand over to the revolutionary courts all who dare to injure the people’s cause…the great cause of peace, the cause of transferring the land to the peasants, of ensuring workers’ control over the production and distribution of products.<\/p>Pravda<\/em>, 6\/11\/1917<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

But the fact that socialist\nrevolution not only began in backward Russia but remained isolated there\ncreated entirely new circumstances for the development of the workers’ state. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

“Bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Lenin, before his death,\nbegan to combat the bureaucratic distortions developing in the Soviet state, he\nstarted his analysis again from the ideas of Marx and Engels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marx had emphasised the obvious\npoint that the working class, on taking power, began building “a communist\nsociety, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just\nas it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect,\neconomically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birth-marks of\nthe old society from whose womb it comes.” (Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme<\/em>) Lenin re-emphasised this reality\nin State and Revolution<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marx (Lenin pointed out) had\ndistinguished two phases of society in its development towards communism: a\n‘lower’ and a ‘higher’ phase. In the first phase, the working class would still\nbe struggling to emancipate itself from all it had inherited from the old\nsociety. Only with the “higher stage of communism” would all this be\novercome:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour has vanished; after labour has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his [or her] ability, to each according to his [or her] needs!<\/p>Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

As Trotsky summarised the same\nidea of a lower stage of communism:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Capitalism prepared the conditions and forces for a social revolution: technique, science and the proletariat. The communist structure cannot, however, immediately replace the bourgeois society. The material and cultural inheritance from the past is wholly inadequate for that. In its first steps the workers’ state cannot yet permit everyone to work “according to his abilities” – that is, as much as he can and wishes to – nor can it reward everyone “according to his needs” regardless of the work he does. In order to increase the productive forces, it is necessary to resort to the customary norms of wage payment – that is, to the distribution of life’s goods in proportion to the quantity and quality of individual labour.<\/p>The Revolution Betrayed<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Trotsky, in this passage, perhaps\ncondenses the argument too much. The labour of the working class creates the\nvalue of what is produced. But the product<\/strong>\nis the private property of the capitalists, because they own the means of\nproduction. The capitalists pay in wages to the workers only a part of the\nvalue of what is produced. The rest is unpaid (surplus) labour by workers which\ngoes to form the profit made by the capitalists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the “lower stage of\ncommunism” the means of production have been taken out of the private\nownership of the capitalists, and are owned by the workers’ state, under the\ndemocratic control and management of the working class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On this basis, capitalist\nparasitism is abolished. Under capitalism, large layers of society earn money\nfor doing no productive labour – those Lenin called the\n“coupon-clippers”, the buyers and sellers of stocks and shares, the\ngamblers in currencies, etc. Under workers’ democratic rule the first principle\nwould be to provide productive work for all, and that “he who does not\nwork, neither shall he eat” (unless, of course, pensionable, sick, disabled,\netc.).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the lower stage of communism,\nthere would still be a division between surplus labour and what is paid in\nwages. Out of the total wealth produced, a certain proportion would be deducted\nfor re-investment and other social expenditure – though in contrast to the situation\nunder capitalism, the distribution of this surplus would be democratically\ndetermined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The remainder would form the\namount out of which wages would be paid. Under capitalism, different layers and\nindividuals among the working class receive different payments, around criteria\nof skill, experience, educational qualifications, etc. – though, at root, the\nlevel of wages is determined by the class struggle and by the degree of\ndevelopment of the capitalist society. Under the lower stage of communism, in\ncontrast, it would be possible to pay every worker in accordance with the amount of labour that he or she had performed.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as Marx, and, following him,\nLenin, pointed out, even this would not establish equality or take full account\nof the criterion of need<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, everyone, having performed as much social labour as another” – explained Lenin – “receives an equal share of the social product (after the above-mentioned deductions) But people are not alike; one is strong, another is weak; one is married, another is not; one has more children, another has less, and so on… The first stage of communism therefore, cannot as yet provide justice and equality: differences, and unjust differences, in wealth will still persist.<\/p>State and Revolution<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Capitalism has been abolished in\nrespect of the laws governing the ownership of production. But capitalism has\nnot yet been abolished in respect of the laws governing the distribution of\nproducts. These principles, in Marx’s words, still ‘conformed to bourgeois<\/strong> law.’ The inequalities of\nbourgeois law in this respect continued to prevail, Lenin explained, “so\nlong as products are divided \u2018according to the amount of labour performed\u2019.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The socialist principle, ‘An\nequal amount of products for an equal amount of labour’, has been realised.\n“But this is not yet communism, and it does not yet abolish \u2018bourgeois\nlaw\u2019, which gives unequal individuals, in return for unequal (really unequal)\namounts of labour, equal amounts of products.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It followed, concluded Lenin,\nthat, paradoxically, the bourgeois state<\/strong>\nstill existed – or, at least, that the dictatorship of the proletariat had to\noperate in part, as a bourgeois state: “Of course, bourgeois law in regard\nto the distribution of consumer<\/strong>\ngoods inevitably presupposes the existence of the bourgeois state<\/strong>, for law is nothing without an apparatus capable of\nenforcing<\/strong> the observance of the\nrules of law. It follows that under communism [more strictly, under the ‘first\nstage of communism’ – Eds] there remains for a time not only bourgeois law, but\neven the bourgeois state, without the bourgeoisie!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus even if the working class had taken power first in the most advanced\ncapitalist countries<\/strong>, the proletarian state would, at the beginning and in\ncertain respects, still have had the characteristics of a “bourgeois\nstate, without the bourgeoisie.” This would become transformed, above all,\nthrough the development of the forces of production, eliminating scarcity and\nwant, and creating the ability to provide for the needs of all – combined with\nthe training of all in the practices of administering society to promote the\nwithering away of the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, the forces of production\nworld-wide are enormously more developed than was the case when Marx, Engels,\nor Lenin were writing. With socialist revolution in the advanced capitalist\ncountries – or with the restoration of workers’ democracy in the advanced\nStalinist states – the possibilities for developing production, shortening the\nlength of the working day, etc., are immeasurably greater. With that, so is the\npossibility of moving rapidly through the “lower stage” of communism\nto its “higher stage”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Trotsky on the Soviet state<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the first workers’ revolution\ntook place first not in an advanced country but in Russia, backward and undeveloped.\nBy that token, the “bourgeois” characteristics of the proletarian\nstate were the more pronounced at the outset. More than that, Russia was a\nsociety stamped not merely with the legacy of capitalism, but centuries of\npre-capitalist backwardness, ruled over by a despotic imperial state machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Lenin analysed and explained\nthe bureaucratic distortions in the Soviet state, he did so in terms of these\n“bourgeois” and pre-bourgeois characteristics of the state. The\nnecessary functions of the state in regulating distribution on an unequal basis\ncould be tilted by the officials of the state in their own favour, in their own\ninterest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trotsky took these arguments\nfurther. Lenin’s statement regarding “a bourgeois state without the\nbourgeoisie” was, as he pointed out, a “highly significant conclusion,\ncompletely ignored by the present official theoreticians [i.e. the\nStalinists].”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Insofar as a state which assumes the task of socialist transformation is compelled to defend inequality – that is, the material privileges of a minority – by methods of compulsion, insofar does it also remain a ‘bourgeois’ state, even though without the bourgeoisie. These words contain neither praise nor blame; they merely name things with their real names.<\/p>

The bourgeois norms of distribution, by hastening the growth of material power, [i.e. permitting the development of the forces of production] ought to serve socialist aims – but only in the last analysis. The state assumes directly and from the very beginning a dual character: socialistic, insofar as it defends social property in the means of production; bourgeois, insofar as the distribution of life’s goods is carried out with a capitalistic measure of value and all the consequences ensuing therefrom. Such a contradictory characterisation may horrify the dogmatists and scholastics; we can only offer them our condolences.<\/p>The Revolution Betrayed<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The evolution of the workers’\nstate was “determined by the changing relations between its bourgeois and\nsocialist tendencies”, continued Trotsky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under conditions where the forces\nof production were developed sufficiently, the socialist tendency in the state\ncould triumph, making it possible for the “final liquidation of the\ngendarme [policeman] – that is, the dissolving of the state into a\nself-governing society.” But in Russia the reverse had happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘A bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie’ proved inconsistent with genuine Soviet democracy. The dual function of the state could not but affect its structure. Experience revealed what theory was unable clearly to foresee. If for the defence of socialised property against bourgeois counterrevolution a ‘state of armed workers’ was fully adequate, it was a very different matter to regulate inequalities in the sphere of consumption.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The working class, anyway\nweakened in the civil war, had the least interest in grappling with these\nproblems of regulating inequality. The bureaucracy, on the other hand, relished\nit. As Trotsky put it: “Those deprived of property are not inclined to\ncreate and defend it. The majority cannot concern itself with the privileges of\nthe minority. For the defence of ‘bourgeois law’ the workers’ state was\ncompelled to create a ‘bourgeois’ type of instrument – that is, the same old\ngendarme, although in a new uniform.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hence, if the state in Russia was\nnot “dying away”, but was growing more and more despotic, if a\nbureaucracy was consolidating itself in power over the working class, this was\nnot simply for “some secondary reasons like the psychological relics of\nthe past, etc., but is the result of the\niron necessity to give birth to and support a privileged minority so long as it\nis impossible to guarantee genuine equality.<\/strong>” (ibid<\/em>, Our emphasis)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tendencies of bureaucratism”, continued Trotsky, “which strangles the workers’ movement in capitalist countries, would everywhere show themselves even after a proletarian revolution. But it is perfectly obvious that the poorer the society which issues from a revolution, the sterner and more naked would be the expression of this ‘law’, the more crude would be the forms assumed by bureaucratism, and the more dangerous would it become for socialist development. The Soviet state is prevented not only from dying away but even from freeing itself of the bureaucratic parasite, not by the ‘relics’ of former ruling classes, as declares the naked police doctrine of Stalin, for these relics are powerless in themselves. It is prevented by immeasurably mightier factors, such as material want, cultural backwardness and the resulting domination of ‘bourgeois law’ in what most immediately and sharply touches every human being, the business of ensuring his personal existence.<\/em><\/p>Ibid<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Russia entered upon the socialist\nrevolution, in Lenin’s words, as “the weakest link in the capitalist\nchain.” With the revolution remaining\nisolated<\/strong>, bureaucratisation of the state was unavoidable. In the Russian\nworkers’ state the “bourgeois tendencies” regarding distribution of\ngoods triumphed over the “socialist tendencies.” What had at the\nbeginning been mere “distortions” developed into a system<\/strong>. Quantitative change became\nqualitative change. The bureaucracy entrenched itself in state power as a force\nwith a material interest. “Bourgeois law” as regards distribution prevailed.\nBut the means of production remained\nstate property.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the first years of the\nworkers’ state, what Lenin, Trotsky, and the Bolsheviks feared – if the Russian\nrevolution remained isolated, was a restoration of capitalism. This possibility\nremained inherent in the reality of the conflict between the “bourgeois”\nand the “socialist” tendencies in the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the counter-revolution\ndeveloped in a different way. The bureaucracy usurped power from the working\nclass, but continued to rest on the same\nbasis of nationalised and planned economy.<\/strong> It carried through a political<\/strong> and not a social<\/strong> counter-revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This fact in itself showed the superiority of nationalised and planned\neconomy over capitalism. <\/strong>The bureaucracy defended this economy, on the one\nhand because it feared to provoke the Russian working class by moving towards\ncapitalism. As well as this, it did so because an expanding economy assured it\nof its own increasing privilege.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With nationalisation and\nplanning, though at huge cost, the Soviet economy developed rapidly, even under\nthe rule of the bureaucracy – at rates of 15%, 20% a year at their height,\nrates never achieved in the history of capitalism. In contrast, between World\nWar I and World War II at least, capitalism made no fundamental breakthroughs\nin developing the forces of production, but lurched from crisis to crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, as we shall see later, the\nconditions in which the Soviet bureaucracy exists today are different from at\nthat time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Soviet Union had not “achieved socialism”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stalin and the bureaucracy\nconcealed their counter-revolution by presenting their regime as in complete\ncontinuity with the regime of the October revolution. “From the\nproletarian character of the government, the bureaucracy deduces its birthright\nto infallibility: how can the bureaucracy of a workers’ state degenerate?”\nwrote Trotsky. “The state and the bureaucracy are thereby taken not as\nhistorical products but as eternal categories: how can the holy church and its\nGod-inspired priests sin?” (The\nStruggle against Fascism in Germany<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, the bureaucracy\ncould not escape tangling themselves in ideological contradictions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bolshevism described the Russian\nrevolution as a socialist revolution. The term “socialist republic”\nwas used by Lenin – as by Trotsky – to describe the Soviet Union in its early\nyears. But these were not intended to represent a self-contained and completed\nprocess. They were not intended to convey the idea that socialism could be achieved<\/strong> in the framework of one\ncountry. These concepts identified way-stations in the struggle for the world\nsocialist revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This applied to the question of\nthe Soviet state itself. The Bolshevik<\/strong>\nprogram of 1919 honestly declared: “The Soviet power openly recognises the\ninevitability of the class character of every state, so long as the division of\nsociety into classes, and therewith all state power, has not completely\ndisappeared.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In glaring contrast, the 1936\nconstitution of the Soviet Union of Stalin’s\nsecret police dictatorship<\/strong> (which for the first time ratified a one-party\nstate) proclaimed that “the principle of socialism has been\nrealised.” The 1935 Congress of the Comintern, in even more self-contradictory\nterms, declared that “the final and irrevocable triumph of socialism and\nthe all-sided reinforcement of the state of the proletarian dictatorship, is\nachieved in the Soviet Union.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the decrees and regulations\nissued against the working class under this constitution were the following:\nthe introduction of labour passports (20\/12\/1938); penalties for lateness in\ncoming to work, and abolition of social security benefits for workers ‘guilty’\nof such ‘offences’ (28\/ 12\/1938); denial of workers’ rights to move from job to\njob, and absenteeism of more than twenty minutes punishable by imprisonment\n(26\/6\/1940). Yet this constitution proclaimed the Soviet Union was a\n“socialist” society!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Trotsky pointed out,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If socialism has ‘finally and irrevocably triumphed’, not as a principle but as a living regime, then a renewed ‘reinforcement’ of the dictatorship is obvious nonsense. And, on the contrary, if the reinforcement of the dictatorship is evoked by the real demands of the regime, that means the triumph of socialism is still remote. Not only a Marxist, but any realistic thinker, ought to understand that the very necessity of ‘reinforcing’ the dictatorship – that is, governmental repression – testifies not to the triumph of a class-less harmony, but to the growth of new social antagonisms.<\/p>The Revolution Betrayed<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Classes have been finally\nliquidated, proclaimed the bureaucracy, but “elements of former classes\nstill remain”; there are petty speculators, corrupt elements, etc. But,\nresponded Trotsky, what serious counter-revolutionary threat could such\n“elements” and individuals pose to “socialism”…if\nsocialism had already been achieved? Lenin had said that a special<\/strong> machinery of repression was not required even to crush the resistance of the\nexploiting classes as a whole.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We have reached only\n‘socialism’, the ‘lower stage of communism’ “, proclaimed the bureaucracy:\nit is only with communism itself that the state will disappear. They appeared\nto be on better grounds here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, as Trotsky pointed out,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

if the country is really now on the road from socialism, that is, the lower stage of communism, to its higher stage, then there remains nothing for society to do but to throw off at last the strait-jacket of the state. In place of this – it is hard even to grasp this contrast with the mind! – the Soviet state has acquired a totalitarian-bureaucratic character.<\/p>

By the lowest stage of communism”, he explained, “Marx meant, at any rate, a society which from the very beginning stands higher in its economic development than the most advanced capitalism…. The present Soviet Union does not stand above the world level of economy, but is only trying to catch up to the capitalist countries.<\/p>Ibid<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The bureaucracy claimed that the\noverwhelming statisation of property proved that socialism had been achieved.\nTrotsky responded:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

it is exactly for the Marxist that this question is not exhausted by a consideration of forms of property regardless of the achieved productivity of labour….<\/p>

In order to become social, private property must as inevitably pass through the state stage as the caterpillar in order to become a butterfly must pass through the pupal stage. But the pupa is not a butterfly. Myriads of pupae perish without ever becoming butterflies. State property becomes the property of ‘the whole people’ only to the extent that social privilege and differentiation disappear, and therewith the necessity of the state. In other words: state property is converted into socialist property in proportion as it ceases to be state property.<\/p>Ibid<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The full socialisation of\nproperty, in other words, was impossible without workers’ democracy and world\nsocialist revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 1936 Stalinist constitution\nproclaimed: “In the Soviet Union, the principle of socialism is realised:\nFrom each according to his abilities, to\neach according to his work<\/strong>“. (Our emphasis) To this Trotsky retorted:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This inwardly contradictory, not to say nonsensical, formula has entered, believe it or not, from speeches and journalistic articles into the carefully deliberated text of the fundamental state law. It bears witness not only to a complete lowering of theoretical level in the lawgivers, but also to the lie with which, as a mirror of the ruling stratum, the new constitution is imbued.<\/p>

It is not difficult to guess the origin of the new ‘principle’ To characterise the communist society, Marx employed the famous formula: ‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.’ The two parts of this formula are inseparable. ‘From each according to his abilities’ in the communist, not the capitalist, sense, means: Work has now ceased to be an obligation, and has become an individual need; society has no further use for any compulsion. Only sick and abnormal persons will refuse to work. Working ‘according to their ability’ – that is, in accordance with their physical and psychic powers, without any violence to themselves – the members of the commune will, thanks to a high technique, sufficiently fill up the stores of society so that society can generously endow each and all ‘according to their needs’, without humiliating control.<\/p>

This two-sided but indivisible formula of communism thus assumes abundance, equality, an all-sided development of personality, and a high cultural discipline…<\/p>

Instead of frankly acknowledging that bourgeois norms of labour and distribution still prevail in the Soviet Union, the authors of the constitution have cut this integral communist principle in two halves, postponed the second half to an indefinite future, declared the first half already realised, mechanically hitched on to it the capitalist norm of piecework payment, named the whole thing ‘principle of socialism’, and upon this falsification erected the structure of their constitution!<\/p>The Revolution Betrayed<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The bureaucracy was not a class<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In explaining the nature of the\nSoviet regime Trotsky had also to address the arguments of some\n“socialist” intellectuals who asked (as Trotsky paraphrased their arguments):\n“Is it really possible to identify the dictatorship of an apparatus, which\nhas led to the dictatorship of a single person, with the dictatorship of the\nproletariat as a class? Isn’t it clear that the dictatorship of the proletariat\nis excluded by dictatorship over the proletariat.” (“The Class Nature of the Soviet State<\/em>“,\n1933)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of these concluded, from\nthis, that capitalism must have been restored in the Soviet Union. Some said\nthe Soviet bureaucracy represented a new type of ruling “class”\nunforeseen by classical Marxism. Some said the regime was “state capitalist.”\nTrotsky answered, and rejected, all these arguments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, Marxism explained that the\nstate was a class dictatorship, defending the property of that class. But\n“the dictatorship of a class does not mean by a long shot that its entire\nmass always participates in the management of the state” – as was evident\nfrom examining the history of previous ruling classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was true that the rule of the\nproletariat differed from that of exploiting ruling classes in that its mission\nwas to achieve classless society. To do so, it needed to draw ever wider masses\nof the people into the task of running society. “This argument is\nundebatable”, wrote Trotsky, “but in the given<\/strong> case it merely means that the present Soviet dictatorship is\na sick<\/strong> dictatorship. The frightful\ndifficulties of socialist construction in an isolated and backward country\ncoupled with the false policies of the leadership – which in the last analysis\nalso reflects the pressure of backwardness and isolation – have led to the\nresult that the bureaucracy has expropriated the proletariat politically in\norder to guard its social conquests with its\nown<\/strong> methods.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The anatomy of society is determined\nby its economic relations”, he insisted. “So long as the forms of\nproperty that have been created by the October revolution are not overthrown, the\nproletariat remains the ruling class.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To the argument that the bureaucracy\nhad become a new<\/strong> type of ruling\nclass, Trotsky replied:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A class is defined not by its participation in the distribution of national income alone, but by its independent role in the general structure of economy and by its independent roots in the economic foundation of society. Each class (the feudal nobility, the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie, the capitalist bourgeoisie, and the proletariat) works out its own special forms of property.<\/p>

The bureaucracy lacks all these social traits. It has no independent position in the process of production and distribution. It has no independent property roots. Its functions relate basically to the political technique<\/strong> of class rule.<\/p>

The existence of a bureaucracy, in all its variety of forms and differences in specific weight, characterises every class regime. Its power is of a reflected character. The bureaucracy is indissolubly bound up with a ruling economic class, feeding itself upon the social roots of the latter, maintaining itself and falling together with it…<\/p>

… the privileges of the bureaucracy by themselves do not change the bases of the Soviet society, because the bureaucracy derives its privileges not from any special property relations, peculiar to it as a ‘class’, but from those property relations which have been created by the October revolution, and which are fundamentally adequate for the dictatorship of the proletariat.<\/p>

To put it plainly, insofar as the bureaucracy robs the people (and this is done in various ways by every bureaucracy), we have to deal not with class exploitation<\/strong>, in the scientific sense of the word, but with social parasitism<\/strong>, although on a very large scale.<\/p>Ibid<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Bonapartism<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Soviet Union then, remained a\n‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, a workers’ state, because of the nature of property relations<\/strong>. The bureaucracy was\nnot a new ruling class, but like a parasitic tumour (cancer): “it could\ngrow to tremendous size and even strangle the living organism, but a tumour can\nnever become an independent organism.” (ibid<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bureaucracy used the state\nmachine parasitically to consume a vast share of the wealth produced by the\nworking class on the basis of proletarian property relations: nationalisation\nand planning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drawing on the legacy of Marxism,\nTrotsky characterised the rule of the bureaucracy as a form of Bonapartism<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marx and Engels had analysed the\nphenomenon of Bonapartism in the rise of capitalist society: in particular, the\nrule of Napoleon Bonaparte (1799-1815) and Louis Napoleon (1851-1870) in\nFrance. They had explained the Bonapartist character of Bismarck’s rule in\nGermany (1860-1890).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trotsky had also used the concept\nof Bonapartism to analyse transitional bourgeois governments which arose in the\nstruggle between workers’ revolution and the counter-revolution – in Russia in\n1917, and in countries in Western Europe in the 1930s. On the basis of the\ndifferent property relations (proletarian rather than bourgeois) he applied the\nsame concept to the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The state, in general, is an\ninstrument of class rule. Bonapartism is a form of rule by the dictatorship of\na person, or a clique, exercised through the armed forces and bureaucracy of\nthe state machine, in which the state apparently arises above<\/strong> the main contending classes, balancing between them, though in\nthe last instance defending the existing property relations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“If you stick two forks into\na cork symmetrically, it will, under very great oscillations from side to side,\nkeep its balance even on a pin-point: that is the mechanical model of the\nBonapartist super-arbiter”, was how Trotsky once put it. (History of the Russian Revolution<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The possibility of such\nBonapartist government is inherent in the nature of the state. As Engels\nexplained, the state originated in conditions where society had: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

split into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel. But in order that these antagonisms, these classes with conflicting economic interests might not consume themselves and society in fruitless struggle, it became necessary to have a power, seemingly standing above society<\/strong>, that would alleviate the conflict and keep it within the bounds of ‘order’; and this power, arisen out of society but placing itself above it, and alienating itself more and more from it, is the state.<\/p>Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Under “normal”\nconditions, the ruling class has all manner of means for exercising its control\nover the standing army, bureaucracy and institutions of coercion of all kinds\nwhich constitute the machinery of state. But, in conditions of social crisis,\nthe very fact that these institutions are special, self-organised bodies – on\nthe basis of a hierarchy of command and obedience – gives them an autonomy of manoeuvre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is particularly the case in\ncapitalism, where there is far greater separation than in any previous society\nbetween economic power (private ownership of the means of production) and\npolitical-military power (the state machine). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rule of Napoleon I in France\nwas the culmination of a political<\/strong>\ncounter-revolution against the popular masses who had been the driving force of\nthe French bourgeois revolution. As Trotsky summed it up:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The deepening but still very immature antagonism between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat kept the nation, shaken as it was to its foundations, in a state of extreme tension. A national \u2018judge\u2019 was in these conditions indispensable. Napoleon guaranteed to the big bourgeoisie the possibility to get rich, to the peasants their pieces of land, to the sons of peasants and the hoboes a chance for looting in the wars. The judge held a sword in his hand and himself also fulfilled the duties of bailiff [steward for the property-owners].<\/p>History of the Russian Revolution<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Napoleon I ruled by the sword. He\nbalanced between opposing classes in society. But he defended the new bourgeois\nproperty relations, and continued clearing away the remaining feudal obstacles.\nThis was classic Bonapartism, when capitalism was on the ascendancy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1851 Louis Napoleon (III) came\nto power in France in conditions where the working class had been developing\nfor half a century, where it had shown its own independent social power in\nattempting insurrection in 1848, but where it was not yet strong or conscious\nenough of its own tasks to seize power. The bourgeoisie, on the other hand, was\ndivided, terrified of the proletariat, and in crisis. Copying the first Napoleon\nunder these different conditions, Napoleon III took power, balanced between the\nbourgeoisie and the working class, and rested principally on the\n“intermediate” social layer of the peasantry. A relative industrial\nand commercial “boom” in France stretched out Louis Napoleon’s rule\nuntil he was overthrown in 1870.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the midst of the Russian\nrevolution of 1917 the Kerensky government claimed for itself unlimited dictatorial\npowers. With the Tsar overthrown, it was trying to rise as a Bonapartist force\nof “order” between the weakened landlords and capitalists and the\nrising revolutionary working class and peasant masses. But the social conditions\nwere different from those in which Bonapartism had arisen in the nineteenth\ncentury. Capitalism was no longer a rising force worldwide: it was ripe for\noverthrow, and it was blocking<\/strong> the\ndevelopment of Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kerensky and other aspirant\nBonapartists “were confronted by a great revolution which had not yet\nsolved its problems or exhausted its force”, wrote Trotsky. “There\nwas no equilibrium. The revolution was full-blooded. No wonder Bonapartism proved\nanaemic.” (ibid<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the crisis in Western Europe\nin the 1920s and 1930s, similarly “anaemic”, transitional,\nBonapartist regimes arose, trying to balance between the forces of revolution\nand those of counter-revolution. Thus in Germany the Bruening government [see Chapter\n2] was Bonapartist, balancing between the forces of Fascism, and those of the\nworking class (still mainly trapped under the leadership of Social-Democratic\nreformism). In contrast to Russia in 1917, this Bonapartist rule was displaced\nby open fascist counter-revolution – as the result of the disastrous policies\nof the Stalinised German Communist Party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bourgeois Bonapartist rule takes\nmany forms, involving different combinations of its component elements, under\ndiffering relations between the classes. Bonapartism in late capitalism differs\nfrom Bonapartism when capitalism was rising. But with the delay of the world\nsocialist revolution, Bonapartism in one form or another has become a widespread\nfeature of bourgeois governments, especially in the “Third World”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imperialism dominates the capitalist\ncountries of the “Third World”, for the most part condemning the mass\nof the people to poverty. Their weak “national” bourgeoisies are\nincapable of leading serious struggle against imperialism or landlordism,\nuniting the nation, or developing the economy. The working class is held back\nby reformist and Stalinist leadership and the weakness of Marxism. The\npolitical consequence is Bonapartist rule – military dictatorships,\n“one-party states”, weak semi-Bonapartist parliamentary regimes, and\nshifts from one to the other – balancing between the opposing classes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Proletarian Bonapartism<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was the same Bonapartist\nfeatures, of a government “rising above society”, ruling by the\nsword, balancing between the classes (nationally and internationally), but preserving\nthe existing property relations, which existed in the Soviet regime – and led\nTrotsky to characterise this peculiar form<\/strong>\nof the dictatorship of the proletariat as proletarian\nBonapartism<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The conditions of relative\nscarcity in Soviet society, he pointed out, perpetuated all manner of conflicts\nof interest – of “social contradictions”. These existed “between\nthe city and the village; between the proletariat and the peasantry;… between\nthe national republics and districts; between the different groups of\npeasantry; between the different layers of the working class; between the\ndifferent groups of consumers; and finally, between the Soviet state as a whole\nand its capitalist environment.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Raising itself above the\ntoiling masses, the bureaucracy regulates these contradictions” – that is\nto say, it kept them “under control” – by favouring now one interest\ngroup, now another, balancing between them. “It uses this function [of\nregulation]”, continued Trotsky, “in order to strengthen its own\ndomination. By its uncontrolled and self-willed rule, subject to no appeal, the\nbureaucracy accumulates new contradictions. Exploiting the latter, it creates\nthe regime of bureaucratic absolutism.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, he concluded: “The social<\/strong> domination of a class (its\ndictatorship) may find extremely diverse political<\/strong>\nforms… The experience of the Soviet Union is already adequate for the\nextension of this very same sociological law – with all the necessary changes<\/strong> – to the dictatorship of the\nproletariat as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“In the interim between the\nconquest of power and the dissolution of the workers’ state within the\nsocialist society, the forms and methods of proletarian rule may change\nsharply, depending upon the course of the class struggle, internally and\nexternally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The regime under Stalin was\nfundamentally different from the regime in the first years of the workers’\nstate, although the underlying property relations were the same. “The\nsubstitution of one regime by another did not occur at a single stroke, but\nthrough a series of measures, by means of a number of minor civil wars waged by\nthe bureaucracy against the proletarian vanguard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the last historical analysis, the Soviet democracy was blown up by the pressure of social contradictions. Exploiting the latter, the bureaucracy wrested the power from the hands of mass organisations. In this sense we may speak about the dictatorship of the bureaucracy and even about the personal dictatorship of Stalin. But this usurpation was made possible and can maintain itself only because the social content of the dictatorship of the bureaucracy is determined by those productive forces which were created by the proletarian revolution.<\/strong><\/p>

In this sense we may say with complete justification that the dictatorship of the proletariat found its distorted but indubitable expression in the dictatorship of the bureaucracy.<\/p>“The Workers’ State, Thermidor, and Bonapartism<\/em>“, 1935. Emphasis in original<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

But this regime had its own\nunique features. Trotsky added to his characterisation of the bureaucracy in\nThe Revolution Betrayed. He emphasised that the bureaucracy had achieved a\ngreater degree of independence from the class which it dominated than in any previous\nform of Bonapartist rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“In bourgeois society, the\nbureaucracy represents the interests of a possessing and educated class, [i.e.\nthe capitalist class] which has at its disposal innumerable means of everyday\ncontrol over its administration of affairs. The Soviet bureaucracy has risen\nabove a class [i.e. the working class] which is hardly emerging from\ndestitution and darkness, and has no tradition of dominion or command.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fascism was one extreme variant\nof Bonapartist dictatorship, based on the middle class, ‘distancing’ itself\nfrom the capitalists, and crushing and atomising the working class. Nevertheless\n“the fascists, when they find themselves in power, are united with the big\nbourgeoisie by bonds of common interest, friendship, marriage, etc..” But\nthe Soviet bureaucracy took on “bourgeois customs without having beside it\na national bourgeoisie.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“In this sense we cannot\ndeny it is something more than a bureaucracy”, Trotsky pointed out.\n“It is in the full sense of the word the sole privileged and commanding\nstratum in the Soviet society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a further, no less\nimportant, difference from previous forms of Bonapartism, rooted in the fact\nthat the principal means of production were now in the hands of the state.\nThis, Trotsky explained, created “a new and hitherto unknown relation\nbetween the bureaucracy and the riches of the nation. The means of production\nbelong to the state. But the state, so to speak, ‘belongs’ to the\nbureaucracy.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In both these respects, the\nbureaucracy in the Soviet Union had become more powerful as against the class\nwhose property relations it defended, than in any system of bourgeois\nBonapartism or fascism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Trotsky, the Soviet Union was\na regime in transition<\/strong> from\ncapitalism to socialism or, more precisely, “a preparatory<\/strong> regime transitional<\/strong>\nfrom capitalism to socialism.” (The\nRevolution Betrayed<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was only preparatory because\nthe productive forces – despite their rapid growth – were still far behind\nthose of the most advanced capitalist countries and “far from adequate to\ngive the state property a socialist character.” Backwardness, and scarcity,\ncreated “a tendency towards primitive accumulation” – towards\n“grabbing what you can” – which disrupted the development of planned\neconomy. The bourgeois norms still necessarily present in regard to\ndistribution promoted the development of new inequalities, above all, the rise\nof the bureaucracy. Economic growth, while it provided benefits for the mass of\nworkers and peasants, also promoted the growth of the privileged bureaucratic\nlayers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bureaucracy, furthermore, had\n“converted itself into an uncontrolled caste alien to socialism” –\nalthough “the social revolution, betrayed by the ruling party, still\nexists in property relations and in the consciousness of the toiling\nmasses”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The “further development of\nthe accumulating contradictions”, Trotsky concluded, “can as well\nlead to socialism as back to capitalism. However, “on the road to\ncapitalism the counter-revolution would have to break the resistance of the workers”\nwhile “on the road to socialism the workers would have to overthrow the bureaucracy.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the last analysis, the\nquestion of which direction would be taken by the Soviet Union would be decided\n“by a struggle of living social forces, both on the national and the world\narena.” (The Revolution Betrayed<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since that time, because of\nnationalised and planned production, the Soviet Union has risen to become an\neconomic giant – though, under the rule of the bureaucracy, at tremendous and\nunnecessary cost of human lives. For reasons explained in the next chapter, the\nStalinist system – proletarian Bonapartism – has spread from the Soviet Union\nitself to other countries of the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, in all these countries, in\none form or another, the essential contradictions identified by Trotsky exist,\nand in intensified form. The economic stagnation, even decline, and the acute\nsocial crisis now unfolding in the Soviet Union is the starkest expression of\nthis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Proletarian Bonapartism, like\nbourgeois Bonapartism, is a regime of crisis. In the case of the Stalinist\nregimes, the crisis – for both internal and international reasons – has been\nprotracted. But now the system of Stalinism is headed for collapse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The alternatives again posed are the restoration of capitalism – or a political revolution by the working class, overthrowing the bureaucracy, restoring workers’ democracy, and opening the road again to world socialist revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continue to Chapter Four<\/a><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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