{"id":597,"date":"2019-09-05T15:32:36","date_gmt":"2019-09-05T13:32:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marxistworkersparty.org.za\/?page_id=597"},"modified":"2019-09-05T18:06:09","modified_gmt":"2019-09-05T16:06:09","slug":"chapter-four","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/?page_id=597","title":{"rendered":"Chapter Four"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

World Relations Since World War II <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Against the blindness\nof the Soviet bureaucracy, who even placed trust in a “peace” pact\nwith Hitler, Trotsky in the 1930s all along warned of the inevitability of war\nbetween Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. He believed that this war would\nsettle the fate not merely of the Soviet Union, but of human society.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The defeat of Fascism, he anticipated, would bring the\noverthrow of the bureaucracy by the working class in the Soviet Union, and\nre-ignite world socialist revolution. The victory of Fascism would bring\ndisaster. “Without a socialist revolution, in the next historical period\nat that, a catastrophe threatens the whole culture of mankind.” (The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks\nof the Fourth Internationa<\/em>l, 1938)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the Second World War (1939-1945) developed differently\nfrom what Trotsky anticipated. Its consequence was, in fact, the strengthening<\/strong> of Stalinism internationally.\nIn Eastern Europe and in China new proletarian Bonapartist regimes arose,\nmodelled on Stalin’s Russia. All this meant the stabilisation of Stalinist rule\nfor a whole period. In Western and Southern Europe there was, as Trotsky\nanticipated, a new revolutionary upsurge, but as a result of Stalinist mis-leadership\nit was defeated. A boom of world capitalism ensued, bringing a protracted\nperiod of stable bourgeois democracy in the most advanced capitalist countries.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

The war in Europe<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In June 1941 Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. Lulled by his\n“peace” pact with Hitler, Stalin was unprepared for this. Moreover,\nthe cream of the leadership of the Russian army had been wiped out in the\npurges. Nevertheless, though at the cost of 20 million dead, the fighting resilience\nof the Russian masses against Nazi savagery beat back Hitler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ‘Allied’ imperialist powers, though at war with Hitler,\nbanked on Germany and Russia bringing each other to their knees. This would\nhave enabled them — so they hoped — to redivide Eastern Europe into their own\nspheres of domination and reimpose capitalism on Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, the underlying strength of nationalised and planned\neconomy, and the determination of the Russian workers and peasants to defend it\nagainst Hitler, proved decisive. The Red Army was the overwhelming factor in\nthe defeat of Fascism in Europe. It forced Hitler on the retreat, occupied all\nEastern Europe east of the Elbe, and could have continued into Western Europe\nas well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The role of the Soviet Union in the war was an inspiration\nto the peoples of the whole of Nazi-occupied Europe, and led to a big growth of\nthe Communist Parties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Faced with this growth of Russian power and influence, the\nBritish and American imperialists had belatedly invaded Nazi-occupied Europe\nacross the English Channel. They also now found it expedient to come to terms\nwith Stalin. Scandalously, Stalin sat down at top-level meetings at Yalta and\nPotsdam in 1945-6 with the capitalist leaders Churchill and Roosevelt and\nreached secret agreements, effectively dividing the world into ‘spheres of\ninfluence’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stalin was accorded hegemony in Eastern Europe, including\n(eventually) the Eastern zone of a divided Germany. In these areas the collapse\nof Nazism and its collaborators under the advance of the Red Army meant the\nflight of the old ruling class. Stalin set about establishing “Popular\nFront” governments in these countries on the model of Spain in the 1930s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But conditions were different. Effective power was in the\nhands of the Red Army, not the old bourgeois state machine. The social basis of\ncapitalism had been shattered. In country after country economic collapse could\nonly be prevented by the nationalisation of the major means of production and\nthe establishment of planned economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The states which arose in Eastern Europe thus be-came formed\nin the image of Stalinist Russia. They were workers’ states<\/strong> in their forms of property. But it was not — as in\nOctober 1917 — the working class which won these conquests through its own\nconscious revolution. The transformation was carried out under the guns of the\nRed Army, which ensured that these new workers’ states were deformed from the\noutset: proletarian Bonapartist<\/strong> regimes,\npresided over by a bureaucratic caste, obedient to the Kremlin, and totally\nexcluding any form of control by the working class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All these regimes have been falsely described as “socialist”\nby the bureaucracies which ruled them, and ‘Communist’ Parties around the\nworld, including the SACP. This ‘certificate of health’ is not unrelated to the\nlavish funds provided by these corrupt state machines to the Communist Parties\nin capitalist countries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

China<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In China after the Second World War a proletarian\nBonapartist regime also emerged, but by a different route.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The defeat of the Chinese revolution in 1927-28 and the\nbrutal dictatorship of Chiang Kai Shek solved nothing for the Chinese ruling\nclass. Japanese, American, British and French imperialism took advantage of the\nsituation to extend their sway. The Stalinised Chinese Communist Party abandoned\nthe working class. Its leaders, notably Mao Tse Tung, took to the countryside\nto organise peasant guerilla war against the regime. Chiang, rather than\nfighting Japanese invasion, directed his armies against the peasant Red armies,\nin a losing battle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1936\/7, with Chiang nearing defeat, the Chinese CP\nleaders offered him a “united front” against Japanese imperialism —\nin reality a “Popular Front”, in which the CP diluted their program\nof land reform and other social demands in the interests of “unity with\nthe national bourgeoisie”, as personified in the murderer Chiang!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through this, however, the Red Army developed into the main\nforce fighting Japanese imperialism. The mass of the peasants were driven to\nthe side of the Red Army by the barbarism of the invading Japanese fascist\nforces. The Kuomintang’s armies played a passive role. With its soldiers\ndeserting to the Red Army, Chiang’s KMT was increasingly weakened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1945 Japan was defeated in the Pacific War by US\nimperialism. But the American troops, having defeated fascism, would have\nmutinied against attempts by their generals to intervene in China to prop up\nChiang’s decrepit regime against Mao’s popularly-supported Red Army. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 1949, directing itself against the collapsing armies of\nthe Kuomintang, Mao’s Red Army was in a position to march into the cities and\ntake power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1930s Trotsky had believed that the Chinese guerilla\nleaders, despite their “Communist” label, if they were victorious,\nwould nevertheless prop up capitalism and establish a bourgeois Bonapartist\nregime. Their social base, he pointed out, was not the working class, but the\npeasantry, which did not have a socialist conscious-ness. There had been many\nparallels in the previous two thousand years of Chinese history when the\nleaders of victorious peasant armies had fused with the then ruling classes in\nthe towns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trotsky’s perspective was not borne out — because of the\nchanged relation of forces on a world scale by the time Mao took power. Not\nonly was imperialism unable to intervene in China. Also Stalinism and its model\nof “socialism” were a strengthened pole of attraction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Capitalism in China was in decay. The Chinese capitalist\nclass mostly fled with the defeated Chiang and his armies to the island of\nTaiwan. As in Eastern Europe, the economy was threatened with collapse. In\npower, Mao had no option but the reorganisation of the economy on the basis of\nnationalisation and planning. As in Eastern Europe, a proletarian Bonapartist\nregime arose, modelling itself on Stalin’s Russia — a bureaucratic\ndictator-ship, with no element whatsoever of workers’ democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The overthrow of capitalism in the most populous country on\nearth was a historic event second only to the Russian revolution. But, though\nMao called himself a “Communist”, this victory was not achieved on\nthe basis of a conscious<\/strong> movement of\nthe working class. Mao’s pro-gram, up to the conquest of power — and even\nwhile capitalism was being dismantled — was in words<\/strong> still the program of “democratic revolution” in\nalliance with “the progressive national bourgeoisie” — democratic\nrevolution separated from and preceding “socialist revolution”!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, albeit in a distorted way, the overthrow of capitalism\nin China confirmed the theory of permanent revolution. The bourgeois-democratic\ntasks of agrarian revolution and uniting the nation could not he carried\nthrough on a capitalist basis. Matters were too desperate for society to\n“wait” for conscious workers’ revolution. With the absence of\nMarxism, it was a peasant army, led in fact by middle-class intellectuals, who\n“substituted” themselves for the working class, and established a\ndeformed, Bonapartist, workers’ state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the basis of nationalised and planned production, the\nChinese economy has leaped forward, vastly improving the conditions of the mass\nof the people. But the bureaucracy in China, like every Stalinist bureaucracy,\nis terrified of the working class and workers’ democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Again this was revealed last year when, on June 4, they\nturned the guns of their troops to massacre unarmed youth and students on\nTiananmen Square, demonstrating for democracy, who went to their deaths singing\nthe “Internationale”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Western Europe<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cynical deal struck between the imperialist powers and\nStalin after the Second World War assigned Western and Southern Europe to\nimperialism. As in the 1930s, Stalin duly played his full part in ensuring that\nin these areas capitalism remained intact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Greece, Italy, France, etc. armed resistance movements\nhad developed against Nazi occupation. Nazism was defeated and driven out of\nthese countries by the combined weight of the armies of the “Allies”,\nand mass resistance, with differing measures of each in different cases. The\ndefeat of Nazi occupation in these countries sparked mass revolutionary upsurges,\nof workers and peasants with arms in hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stalin, to appease his capitalist “allies”, had\ndissolved the Comintern in 1943. Now he instructed the leaders of the Communist\nParties in these countries of Western and Southern Europe, in essence, to\nphysically and politically disarm the working-class movement and restrain it\nfrom a struggle for power. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One victory for democratic workers’ rule in Europe at that\ntime could have sparked Europe-wide and world-wide social revolution, as had\nbeen possible after the First World War also. It would have meant the downfall\nof the Soviet bureaucracy at the hands of the working class. But — though the\nparticular history of events varied from country to country — it was the\ncriminal role of Stalinism which ensured the survival of capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The political defeat for the working class in Western Europe\nprepared the way for the economic revival of capitalism, at least in the most\nadvanced capitalist countries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

The post-war capitalist boom<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The United States emerged from the war as the overwhelmingly\nstrongest capitalist power. It had a 50% share of world capitalist production,\na 70% share of world trade, and held 75% of the world’s monetary gold in the\nvaults of its central bank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It used this economic power to compel the other capitalist\npowers to dismantle the protective barriers which had risen up between\n“blocs” in the 1920s and 1930s, and to re-establish “free\ntrade” around the world. It used its dominance to establish the dollar as\na stable currency for world trade, exchanging at a fixed price for gold. It\npoured massive amounts of aid into West Germany, Japan and elsewhere, to revive\ntheir economies, create markets for US goods and buttress these countries\nagainst ‘going communist’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These measures served the imperialist ambitions of US\ncapitalism. But, simultaneously, they led to a massive expansion of world trade\nand a new world division of labour, which revived the world capitalist economy\nfor a whole period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The multi-national monopolies which grew hugely in this\nperiod represented a partial overcoming of the limits of private property and\nnation-based economy. The use of the dollar as the “universal\ncurrency”, and the enormous expansion of credit — “fictitious\ncapital” — to “prime the pump” of national economies and\n“even out” the cycles of upturn and downturn inherent to capitalism\nwere artificial measures<\/strong> serving the\nsame purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The forces of production and the productivity of labour in\nthe advanced capitalist countries developed enormously — carrying even\nsections of the “Third World” forward. But this was at the price of\nstoring up huge problems for the future of capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inherent in the system of private ownership of the means of\nproduction is the anarchic competition of the market-place. Inherent in\ncapitalist exploitation is the ex-traction of unpaid labour from the working\nclass, and the resulting tendency to produce more goods than can be absorbed by\nthe buying power at the disposal of the toilers. Capitalism develops by finding\nmeans to overcome these contradictions, but it cannot eliminate them. Sooner or\nlater they burst out again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However the post-war boom ushered in a long period of\nrelative stability between the classes in the advanced capitalist countries.\nThe strength of the working class in the West secured the survival of bourgeois\ndemocracy. Economic expansion permitted the capitalists to make concessions to\nthe working class, and led to unprecedented improvements in standards of life\nin the advanced capitalist countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, within the mass workers’ organisations, a\ncareerist bureaucracy arose, resting on the passivity of the working class, and\nbecoming integrated with bourgeois society and its state. The reformist leaders\nof Social Democratic Parties regarded proletarian revolution as a curiosity of\nthe past and came to declare that capitalism had “solved all its\nproblems”, and there was an indefinite future of improvements for the\nworking class. In one form or another, the leadership of the Communist Parties\nin the West put forward essentially the same position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even the post-war boom, however, did not guarantee complete\nstability for capitalism. In France in May 1968 a revolutionary movement of 10\nmillion workers erupted, in a general strike and with factory occupations. The\narmy and police were paralysed. Power was within the grasp of the working\nclass. The French President, de Gaulle, fled to an army base in Germany and\noffered government to the CP! But the CP leaders, at the head of the biggest\nunions instead called off the strike and the occupations, and ensured that\npower remained in the hands of the capitalists!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the United States, in opposition to its imperialist war\nagainst the people of Vietnam, there were uprisings of the ethnic minorities\nand of the youth, and mutinies in the armed forces, which could have put US\ncapitalism at risk save that the leaders of the powerful organised working\nclass were conscious agents of the bourgeoisie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Stalinism in the post-war period<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the post-war capitalist boom, the\n“socialist” Soviet Union and the other Stalinist states were still\nstriving to catch up with the levels of productivity of labour in the West. In\nthe late 1950s Kruschev, who became ruler in the Kremlin after Stalin’s death,\nboasted to US capital-ism that “we will bury you” by competition in\nproductivity. This could have been possible on the basis of the resources and\nskills existing in the Soviet Union, but\nwas prevented because of the constraints imposed by bureaucratic control over\nthe economy.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, the advantages of nationalisation and planned\neconomy produced, during the 1950s and 1960s at least, big advances in the\nstandards of living of the mass of the people in the Soviet Union and other\nStalinist states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1930s, Trotsky had explained the factors which held\nthe working class in the Soviet Union back from overthrowing the bureaucracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The vast majority of the Soviet workers”, he wrote, “are even now hostile to the bureaucracy. The peasant masses hate them with their healthy plebian hatred. If in contrast to the peas-ants the workers have almost never come out on the road of open struggle, thus condemning the protesting villages to confusion and impotence, this is not only because of the repressions. The workers fear lest, in throwing out the bureaucracy, they will open the way for a capitalist restoration.<\/strong><\/p>

The mutual relations between state and class are much more complicated than they are represented by the vulgar ‘democrats’. Without a planned economy the Soviet Union would be thrown back for decades. In that sense the bureaucracy continues to fulfill a necessary function. But it fulfills it in such a way as to prepare an explosion of the whole system which may completely sweep out the results of the revolution. The workers are realists. Without deceiving themselves with regard to the ruling caste — at least to its lower tiers which stand near to them — they see in it the watchman for the time being for a certain part of their own conquests. They will inevitably drive out the dishonest, impudent and unreliable watchman as soon as they see another possibility. For that it is necessary that in the West or the East another revolutionary dawn arises.<\/strong><\/p>The Revolution Betrayed<\/em>, pp. 285-6 Our emphasis.<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In fact, objectively, the possibility of restoring\ncapital-ism in Russia by military intervention was ended by the defeat of\nHitler’s invasion. In conventional military forces, the Soviet Union and the\nWarsaw Pact have had an overwhelming superiority since the Second World War. In\nmilitary<\/strong> terms, the nuclear arms\nrace has been self-defeating, since a nuclear war would result in the mutual\ndestruction of the capitalist and Stalinist world. Only mad Bonapartist\ndictators arising in the imperialist powers on the basis of a series of\ncrushing defeats of the working class could contemplate this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Soviet working class had suffered the destructive\ninvasion of imperialism after 1917, as well as the ruthless savagery of Hitler.\nEven though military intervention was no longer possible, the threat of it was\na powerful weapon used by the Soviet bureaucracy during the “Cold\nWar” to try to frighten the working class against rising up to over-throw\nit. In the same way imperialism used the “danger of Russian world\ndomination” to try to inoculate the working class in the West against\nsocialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, during the post-war capitalist boom, the\nworking class in the Stalinist states could see no new “revolutionary\ndawn” in the West. Despite all this, there were heroic revolutionary\nupsurges of the working class in Eastern Europe — above all in Hungary in\n1956, but also, in different forms, in East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia —\nas well as waves of illegal strikes in the Soviet Union itself. These were all\ncrushed by the police-military power at the disposal of the bureaucracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Proletarian Bonapartism in the “Third World”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weakened militarily and politically after the Second World\nWar, imperialism could not resist the tidal wave of struggle by the masses of\nthe colonised countries of Asia, Africa, etc. for national independence. But\nthe over-whelming majority of the peoples of the capitalist “Third\nWorld” gained no benefits from the post-war boom. Remaining on a\ncapitalist basis, these countries have experienced deepened and intensified\nexploitation by the imperialist powers and the multi-national monopolies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While some layers of the masses, in some countries,\nexperienced some improvements, the general pattern has been one of greater impoverishment\nand misery. The general pattern of government has been of vicious and corrupt\nBonapartist dictatorships, of exploitation by capital-ism combined with the\npredatory exactions of feudal landlords and pre-capitalist chiefs. Political\nindependence has not guaranteed the unity of these nations, but rather worsened\nethnic, tribal and religious conflicts, and the oppression of minorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marxism champions the democratic right of op-pressed nations\nto self-determination. At the same time, as Lenin put it, “The domination\nof finance capital and of capital in general is not to be abolished by any\nreforms in the sphere of political democracy; and self-determination [i.e.\npolitical independence] belongs wholly and exclusively to this sphere.”\n(“The Socialist Revolution and the\nRight of Nations to Self-Determination<\/em>, 1916).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The peoples of the “Third World” are victims of\nthe law of unevenness of human development, of the fact that capitalism,\nparticularly in the imperialist epoch, is incapable of developing the forces of\nproduction in an all-round way on a global scale. It is impossible<\/strong> for these countries to pass through the same pattern of\ndevelopment as that of the first-arising capitalist countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Trotsky explained (in the course of criticising the draft\nprogram of Stalin’s Comintern in 1928):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Capitalism finds various sections of mankind at\ndifferent stages of development, each with its profound internal contradictions.\nThe extreme diversity in the levels attained, and the extraordinary unevenness\nin the rate of development of the different sections of mankind during the\nvarious epochs, serve as the starting\npoint<\/strong> of capitalism. Capitalism gains mastery only gradually over the\ninherited unevenness, breaking and altering it, employing therein its own means\nand methods. In contrast to the economic systems which preceded it, capitalism\ninherently and constantly aims at economic expansion, at the penetration of new\nterritories, the surmounting of economic differences, the conversion of\nself-sufficient provincial and national economies into a system of financial\ninter-relationships. Thereby it brings about their rapprochement<\/strong> and equalizes the economic and cultural levels of the\nmost progressive and the most backward countries….<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“By drawing the countries economically closer to one\nanother and levelling out their stages of development, capitalism, how-ever,\noperates by methods of its own<\/strong>, that\nis to say, by anarchistic methods which constantly undermine its own work, set\none country against another, and one branch of industry against another,\ndeveloping some parts of world economy while hampering and throwing back the\ndevelopment of others. Only the correlation of these two fundamental tendencies\n— both of which arise from the nature of capitalism — explains to us the\nliving texture of the historical process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Imperialism, thanks to the universality,\npenetrability, and mobility and the break-neck speed of the formation of\nfinance capital as the driving force of imperialism, lends vigour to both these tendencies<\/strong>. Imperialism links up\nincomparably more rap-idly and more deeply the individual national and\ncontinental units into a single entity, bringing them into the closest and most\nvital dependence upon each other and rendering their economic methods, social\nforms, and levels of development more identical. At the same time, it attains\nthis ‘goal’ by such antagonistic methods, such tiger-leaps, and such raids upon\nbackward countries and areas that the unification and levelling of world\neconomy which it has effected, is upset by it even more violently and convulsively\nthan in the preceding epochs.” (The Third\nInternational After Lenin<\/em>, pp. 15-16)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Out of these dialectical realities comes the possibility for\nbackward countries also to take “leaps”. As Trotsky put it,\ngeneralising the theory of permanent revolution:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although compelled to follow after the advanced countries, a backward country does not take things in the same order. The privilege of historical backwardness — and such a privilege exists–permits, or rather compels, the adoption of whatever is ready in advance of any specified date, skipping a whole series of intermediate stages… The laws of history have nothing in common with a pedantic schematism. Unevenness, the most general law of the historic process, reveals itself more sharply and complexly in the destiny of the backward countries. Under the whip of external necessity their backward culture is compelled to make leaps. From the universal law of unevenness thus derives another law which, for the lack of a better name, we may call the law of combined development<\/strong> — by which we mean a drawing together of the different stages of the journey, a combining of separate steps, an amalgam of archaic with more contemporary forms. Without this law, to be taken of course in its whole material content, it is impossible to understand the history of Russia, and indeed of any country of the second, third or tenth cultural class.<\/p>History of the Russian Revolution<\/em>, pp. 26-28<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The 1917 Russian revolution, establishing proletarian rule\nin a backward country, represented such a “leap”. In a different way,\nand under the conditions we have de-scribed, so did the Chinese Revolution of\n1949, establishing a new proletarian Bonapartist regime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the Chinese revolution proletarian Bonapartist regimes\nhave sprung up elsewhere in the colonial world. This is the result of similar\nconditions: the bankruptcy of capitalism in the colonial world, the models of\nnationalised and planned economy existing in Russia and China albeit on a\nStalinist basis, and the weakness of the forces of Marxism on a world scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The intolerable material conditions of the masses has driven\nthese societies forward, unable to wait for conscious workers’ revolution in\nthe advanced capitalist countries, or political revolution in the East. In some\ncases this has been on the basis of successful peasant guerrilla wars similar\nto that in China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other cases it has resulted from coups by discontented\nsections of the officer caste, basing themselves on support among the masses.\nCuba, Syria, Burma, Vietnam, Cambodia, Mozambique, Angola, Ethiopia, are among\nthe countries where distorted revolutions of this kind have taken place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Stalinist Dialego, we have seen, who claims to accept a <\/strong>theory of permanent revolution, in\nreality rejects permanent revolution in favour of Menshevik-Stalinist ideas of\n“objectively necessary stages” in revolution in any country:\n“But — and this is the decisive point — democratic revolution comes first<\/strong>“, he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But even these distorted “Third World” revolutions\nwhere capitalism has been overthrown without a conscious movement of the\nworking class disprove his ideas. Where was the “democratic stage” in\nthese revolutions? They overthrew bourgeois dictatorships, and replaced them\nwith bureaucratic dictatorships organising a nationalised and planned economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In many cases these revolutions were opposed<\/strong> or held back by the Moscow bureaucracy and those loyal to\nit. In China after the Second World War Stalin tried vainly to encourage Mao\nTse Tung to form a coalition government on a capitalist basis with Chiang Kai\nShek. In Cuba, the guerilla leader Castro was at first denounced by the Cuban\nCommunist Party as an adventurer. In most cases, those who have led these\nrevolutions either broke<\/strong> with\northodox Communist Parties, or had never been part of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The support of the Russian bureaucracy for the over-throw of\ncapitalism in these revolutions has taken place only after the accomplished\nfact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The example of Nicaragua, where the Sandinista government\nhas recently been voted out of office, shows the dangers in trying to\nartificially construct a “democratic stage” where none exists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sandinistas — who also broke with the\n“official” Communist Party — waged a successful guerrilla war\nagainst the Somoza dictatorship to take power. On the basis of the new state machine,\nthey could have nationalised the main means of production (which were largely\nin the hands of the Somoza family). Instead, on the advice of the Russian and the Cuban bureaucracies<\/strong>, and in a\nvain attempt to appease US imperialism, they held back and left the bulk of the\neconomy in capitalist hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This did not appease US imperialism. Instead, trapped by the\nconstraints of capitalism, with sabotage by the bosses, with war raging against\nthe counter-revolutionary “Contras”, the economic crisis reached\ndevastating proportions. Inflation mounted to reach 33 600% in 1988 — and was\nreduced only by an austerity package which slashed living standards further.\nThe patience of the masses became exhausted. If this was all the Sandinistas\ncould offer, then why not replace them by an openly capitalist government which\nmight secure aid from US imperialism: this was the reasoning of sections of the\nmasses in the recent election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The counter-revolution in Nicaragua is still weak. All is\nnot yet lost. But it is taking place\nbecause of the failure of the Sandinistas to carry revolution to its\nconclusion, but rather halting it in a so-called “democratic” stage.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With nationalisation and planning, and with aid from more\ndeveloped Stalinist countries, proletarian Bonapartist regimes in the\n“Third World” were once able (but to varying degrees) to develop the\neconomy and advance the living standards of the masses — though on the basis\nof ruthless dictatorship over the mass of the people. But, generally arising in\nthe smaller and least developed countries, with a nationally narrow-minded\nbureaucratic leadership, their ability to develop the forces of production has\nbeen desperately constrained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over all these countries towers the crushing weight of a\nworld market dominated by the capitalist monopolies, which dooms them also to\npoverty without world workers’ revolution and the achievement of international\nsocialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, with the crisis of Stalinism in its heartlands, these\ncountries are losing a political and economic anchor which has sustained them\nto greater or lesser extent. The Russian bureaucracy is even threatening to\ndrastically cut back the aid to Cuba which has been the crucial lifeline in\nsustaining this small off-shore island against the might of US imperialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the peoples of all these countries, democracy and a real\nuplift in living standards depends on the progress of the political revolution\nin the East and the social revolution in the West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the “Third World”, where revolutionary movements\nhave erupted in conditions that have not led to proletarian Bonapartist\nregimes, the Menshevik, “Popular Front” theories of Stalinist\nleaderships have resulted in crushing\ndefeats<\/strong> for the masses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Chile the overthrow of the Allende regime by the dictator\nPinochet in 1973 resulted in the murder of up to 70,000 activists. In Indonesia\nin the 1960s a counter-revolution against the Sukarno regime led to murder of\nat least 300, 000, and possibly up to a million, Communist and non-Communist\nworkers and peasants. In these and other countries the masses have paid as\ndearly for Stalinist policies as the workers of Germany, China and Spain in the\n1920s and 1930s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, again and again, explaining these defeats, the\n“Communist” Party leaders return to the reactionary ideas of\nMenshevism. “The proletariat did not hide its aims enough”, they say,\nthat is why other classes “re-coiled” from the “democratic\nrevolution.” The truth is the opposite. It is policies which hold back the working class from leading a struggle\nto take power and establish its own democratic rule which have caused these\ndefeats.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For “Communist” Party leaders around the world, no\ncountry is ever “ripe” for socialist revolution. In the back-ward\ncountries, they cling to the fiction of “stages”. In the advanced\ncapitalist countries they argue, like the reformists, that socialism can be\nachieved by “gradual” means.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The real fact is…any excuse to hide from the working class\nthe need for it to take power in society — because this would mean the end of\nthe privileged rule of the bureaucracies in the Stalinist states also. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Limits of the capitalist upturn<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The economic recession in 1974-5 and 1979-81 in all the\nadvanced capitalist countries, soaring inflation in the period in between, the\nstock exchange crash in October 1987, are all signs that the post-war\ncapitalist boom has been reaching its limits. Since 1981 however, paradoxically,\nthe capitalist world has enjoyed a longer period of uninterrupted economic\nupturn — now eight years — than was even the case in 1950-74.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this upturn, too, is now beginning to show its limits.\nUnlike 1950-1974, its main initial stimulus was not a wave of new investment in\nthe manufacture of productive capital goods — but massive arms spending by the\nReagan government in the United States, together with intensified super-exploitation\nof the “Third World”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The United States has lost its overwhelming post-war\ndominance in the world economy as the result of the regeneration of West\nGermany and Japan. But it remains the largest single capitalist economy, and\nthe main motor of world capitalism. Now, its ability to continue to stimulate\neconomic upturn is running into huge contradictions. The arms boom was funded\nby the US government spending each year far more than it earned in taxes. This\nbudget deficit was financed by borrowing from big banks around the world. As a\nresult the accumulated national debt of the United States is more than $1 trillion<\/strong>: $1,000 billion! It has\nincreased by as much in the last ten years as in the preceding two hundred\nyears since US independence!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The upturn has also resulted in the US consistently\nimporting far more from the rest of the world than it exports: on a chronic trade deficit<\/strong> which is matched by\nequivalent trade surpluses in its major rivals, West Germany and Japan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All this represents an unsustainable situation in the longer\nrun. Yet any serious attempt to eliminate the US budget or trade deficits would\ninvolve drastically shrinking the US market, or trying to protect it from the competition\nof its rivals, or both. Such measures would inevitably lead to severe economic\nrecession in the US, and internationally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The capitalist class internationally is terrified by these\nprospects, and has taken all manner of measures to head them off. Such measures\ncan postpone the problems, and temporarily alleviate their repercussions, but\ncannot eliminate them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the root of all this is the fact that the barriers of\nprivate ownership of the means of production and nation-state boundaries have\nonly been partially and artificially overcome. As these harriers inherent to\ncapitalism reassert themselves, they hold hack further development of the\nforces of production, and load the costs of this on the mass of working people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Investment in modern industry, the key to the development of\nthe forces of production is — in comparison with 1950-1974 — sluggish, and\nsporadic, rather than on an all-round basis. Monopoly industry, at best, uses\nonly 80% of the productive forces at its disposal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike between 1950 and 1974, the present upturn has\nresulted in increased class polarisation and conflict in the advanced\ncapitalist countries. There is gross parasitism and squandering of wealth at\nthe top, and growing pauperisation at the base of society. In all the advanced\ncapitalist countries there have been attacks on the state-sector health,\nwelfare and education services won by the working class after the Second World\nWar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Substantial sections of the middle and the working class in\nthe advanced capitalist countries have benefitted during the upturn. But the\nmiddle class now pays the price of “living on credit” in crippling\ninterest and mort-gage rates which the capitalist class is using against the\nrenewed threat of inflation. The working class has achieved wage rises at the\ncost of being pushed to the limits of stress by speed-ups and overtime.\nThroughout the “Third World”, with only isolated exceptions, there\nare conditions of increasing economic devastation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even without renewed world recession, conditions are building\nup for explosive movements of the working class in the advanced capitalist\ncountries. The recent general strike in Sweden, the struggle against the poll\ntax in Britain, are early signs of what is to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

The crisis of Stalinism<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In parallel with all this, the system of Stalinism in the\nSoviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe is now plunged into an unprecedented\ncrisis from which it can-not recover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trotsky long ago pointed out that corruption, wastage,\nincreasing differentiation, and mismanagement were endemic to the rule of the\nbureaucracy. He also explained that the bureaucracy could prove relatively\nsuccessful in introducing heavy industry and modern infrastructure to a\nbackward society, but that its rule would become an in-creasing obstacle to the\nextent that the economy became modernised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A modern nationalised and planned economy re-quires workers’\ndemocracy, he often explained, as the body needs oxygen. Requiring the\ninter-connected production and distribution of millions of different products,\nit cannot be efficiently organised by bureaucratic diktat from the top.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a bureaucratic basis, it becomes increasingly impossible\neven to work out the quantitative relationships that need to exist among all\nthese products: the numbers of items of each thing that must be produced to fit\ninto an efficient overall system, and the real labour-cost of different items.\nBut, he explained, it is above all in the quality of the goods that are\nproduced that a bureaucratically-controlled planned economy falls down:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The progressive role of the Soviet bureaucracy coincides with the period devoted to introducing into the Soviet Union the most important elements of capitalist technique”, Trotsky wrote in 1936. “The rough work of borrowing, imitating, transplanting and grafting, was accomplished on the bases laid down by the revolution. There was, thus far, no question of any new word in the sphere of technique, science or art. It is possible to build gigantic factories according to a ready-made Western pattern by bureaucratic command — although, to be sure, at triple the nor-mal cost. But the farther you go, the more the economy runs into the problem of quality, which slips out of the hands of the bureaucracy like a shadow. The Soviet products are as though branded with the grey label of indifference. Under a nationalised economy, quality<\/strong> demands a democracy of producers and consumers, freedom of criticism and initiative — conditions incompatible with a totalitarian regime of fear, lies and flattery.<\/p>

Behind the question of quality stands a more complicated and grandiose problem which may be comprised in the concept of independent, technical and cultural creation<\/strong>. The ancient philosopher said that strife is the father of all things. No new values can be created where a free conflict of ideas is impossible…<\/p>

While the growth of industry and the bringing of agriculture into the sphere of state planning vastly complicates the tasks of leadership, bringing to the front the problem of quality<\/strong>, bureaucratism destroys the creative initiative and the feeling of responsibility without which there is not, and cannot be, qualitative progress. The ulcers of bureaucratism arc perhaps not so obvious in the big industries, but they are devouring, together with the co-operatives, the light and food-producing industries, the collective farms, the small industries — that is, all those branches of economy which stand nearest to the people.<\/p>The Revolution Betrayed<\/em>, pp. 275-6<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

So wrote Trotsky of the developing crisis of Stalinism as\nlong ago as 1936!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the basis of nationalised and planned economy the Soviet\nUnion today has a greater number of scientists, engineers, technicians, etc.\nper head than any country in the world. It is able to send expeditions into\nspace. It has the most highly-educated working class of any major country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, on the basis of bureaucratic rule, it has not been able\nto deploy<\/strong> all these resources even\nto catch up with the forces of production and labour-productivity of the most\nadvanced capitalist countries. It is not even able to guarantee supplies, let\nalone supplies of adequate quality, of the most basic goods in the shops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After more than seventy years of the nationalised and\nplanned economy, Andrei Orlov, deputy chairman of the State Commission for\nEconomic Reform, admits that out of 1,200 basic commodities that should be\navailable in big cities, only 56 can be bought on a regular basis. (British Independent on Sunday<\/em>, 27\/5\/1990) Where\nobtainable, sugar, soap and detergent are rationed almost every-where, and meat,\nsausages and butter are rationed in one in five cities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A British journalist accompanied two Moscow house-wives on a\nshopping expedition in May. They had 60 roubles available to spend. After\nvisiting thirteen shops, in three different shopping areas, taking three hours\nin all, they had only managed to spend 24,27 roubles, and could find no decent\nmeat, rice, cheese, eggs, or fruit. They faced shops unaccountably closed,\nqueues too long to wait in (for flour, for example!), or produce too rotten to\nbuy. “They had barely enough for one evening meal, let alone a\nweekend.” (Independent on Sunday<\/em>,\n27\/5\/1990)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is the real symptom of the crisis of Stalinism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite all the additional resources of production that\nbecame available with the establishment of proletarian Bonapartist regimes in\nEastern Europe, China, etc. –despite the formal integration of many of them\ninto COMECON — the Stalinist world moreover has been unable to overcome the essentially\nnational basis of bureaucratic rule, and develop these resources in terms of an\noverall plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To try to solve these problems — the bureaucratic regimes\nin Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union also, are now set on a course (though\nat different paces) to-wards the re-introduction of the market, stock exchanges,\nprivate banks, etc. and the dismantling of planning and nationalisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before our eyes, Trotsky’s analysis and perspectives are\nbeing borne out: that Stalinism is not socialism, that it is at most a transitional regime<\/strong> — and that, unless\nworkers’ democracy were re-established by overthrowing the bureaucracy, the\nbureaucracy would end up by restoring capitalism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In their short-sightedness, the bureaucracy has become\nintoxicated by the apparent success of capitalism in the advanced countries\nover the last eight years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But capitalism offers no way out for these regimes. The\nconsequences are already revealed in Poland –among the furthest along this\nroad — are massive price rises, and growing unemployment since the start of\nthis year. There are now goods in the shops, but only the privileged few can\nafford to buy them. The same results will follow to the extent that the\n“market” replaces the plan as governor of the economy in East\nGermany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the most part, the Western capitalist powers –despite\nrubbing their hands with glee at what they falsely regard as the “failure\nof socialism” — are not prepared to pump massive amounts of investment\ninto Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union. They are not confident there are\nopportunities for safely reaping profits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monetary union between West and East Germany, to be followed\nby political unification, means capitalism has effectively been restored in the\nEast. West German capitalism was driven so rapidly on this road because, once\nthe Berlin Wall was brought down, the alternative would have been mass exodus\nof the people of East Germany to the West. West German capitalism declares\nitself ready to pay the price of re-unification by pouring state and private\nfunds into the East. But this will not hold off the reality of unemployment,\nand attacks on living standards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Already, since monetary union on July 1, unemployment in\nEast Germany is reported to be increasing by 40,000 a week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Should capitalism be restored in the Soviet Union, moreover,\nit will not ease but increase the contradictions of world capitalism. The\nunderlying antagonism between capitalism and planned economy through the whole\nof the last period has been a key factor limiting<\/strong>\ninter-imperialist rivalry. A newly capitalist Soviet Union, in contrast, would\nnot only free the United States, Japan, and Germany to engage in fiercer\ncompetition, but would become an imperialist rival in its own right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In all the Stalinist countries, however, what Trotsky wrote\nin 1936 remains true: “on the road to capitalism the counter-revolution\nwill have to break the resistance of the workers.” (The Revolution Betrayed<\/em>, p.255) Outside East Germany and Poland,\nthe main factor that holds back the bureaucracies from a lemming-like rush to re-storing\ncapitalism is the fear of provoking the working class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fundamental reason why capitalist restoration in Eastern\nEurope or the Soviet Union cannot promise the prosperity of West Germany,\nSweden, Japan, the United States, etc. — is\nthat the productivity of labour in these Stalinist countries is only one half\nor one third the levels of the advanced capitalist countries. <\/strong>This is now\nrecognised even by some sections of their intelligentsia. In a keynote speech\nat a recent such gathering, Boris Kagarlitsky, an elected member of the\nofficial Moscow ‘Soviet’, “warned that Soviet capitalism would have more\nin common with Brazil or Colombia than with the models to be seen in Western Europe.”\n(Independent<\/em>, 25\/6\/1990)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To reimpose the discipline of capitalist production, to\ncrush discontent at job losses, price rises, the removal of state subsidies on\nrents and transport, etc., new capitalist regimes in Eastern Europe or the\nSoviet Union could not be democracies. It would be a question of replacing\nproletarian Bonapartism by… new bourgeois Bonapartist dictatorships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seven million working days were lost in the Soviet Union\nthrough strikes between January and September 1989. In the biggest movement\nsince 1917, 100 000 miners struck in Siberia and the Ukraine in July. The rate of strikes in 1990 is higher than\nin 1989.<\/strong> Independent democratic unions are being established by the miners\nand other sections of workers, with increasingly political demands. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Theoretically everything is the people’s\nproperty”, a Siberian metalworker told a British capitalist journalist in\nNovember 1989. “In fact, an uncontrolled apparatus decides everything. The\nonly answer is to make us real masters of the factories and the land.” (Independent<\/em>, 171 11\/1989)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That statement is a vindication of the ideas that Leon\nTrotsky struggled and gave his life for. It is the authentic voice of the\nworkers’ revolution which is beginning throughout the Stalinist world —\nbeginning along with the danger of capitalist counter-revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reclaiming its heritage — the traditions of Marx, Engels,\nLenin, Trotsky, and the October revolution — and cleansing that heritage from\nall the filth in which it has been smeared by Stalinism — the huge and\npowerful working class of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe can carry through\na political revolution to overthrow the bureaucracy, and link with\nfellow-workers around the world in carry through the world socialist\nrevolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Trotsky’s legacy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“No revolution has ever taken place in accordance with\nthe mystifying principles of Trotskyist logic”, asserts the Stalinist Dialego.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fact is that, since the victorious 1917 revolution in\nRussia, the ideas of Lenin and Trotsky, the ideas of Bolshevism, have never\nagain been tested at the head of a revolutionary movement. The Marxist\nopposition in the Soviet Union was drowned in blood by Stalinism. Despite all\nTrotsky’s efforts, the attempt to rebuild the forces of Marxism in the West was\novertaken by events. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stalinism emerged massively strengthened from the Second\nWorld War. Reformism, too, gained a new lease of life for a whole historical\nperiod on the basis of the post-war upswing of world capitalism. Adding to the\npernicious effects of reformism in the workers’ organisations, the ideas of the\nStalinist bureaucracy, resting on and criminally abusing the authority of the\nOctober Revolution, for a whole period had a grip on working people striving\nfor revolution — resulting in a series of catastrophic defeats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is true that there are numerous sects and sectlets around\nthe world who call themselves “Trotskyists”, but who peddle every\npolitical stupidity imaginable. For the most part intellectuals with no\ngrounding in the working class, they never absorbed the real method<\/strong> of Marx, Engels, Lenin and\nTrotsky. Most of their errors derive from the degeneration which took place in\nthe circles of Trotsky’s supporters after his death, when most of his followers\nwere thrown off course by unexpected world developments which the ‘Old Man’ had\nnot foreseen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Murdered in 1940, Trotsky did not anticipate the post-war\nadvance of proletarian Bonapartism in Eastern Europe, nor its establishment in\nChina. He did not fore-see the 1950-1974 world capitalist boom. Marx, Engels\nand Lenin before him had likewise been unable to fore-cast exactly the course\nor timing of events, and their de-tailed prognoses often had to be corrected\nlater. Marxism is not fortune-telling, but a scientific method for orienting\nthe cadre of the working class in the midst of changing conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unable to work out independently, as Trotsky would have\ndone, the correct course to follow, most of his followers after his death hared\nafter every ultra-left or opportunist fashion. Abandoning Marxism while continuing\nto wear its label, they have made themselves irrelevant to the outcome of the\nmass struggle. This, together with the mountain of lies heaped on Trotsky’s\nname by the slander-industry of Stalinism, accounts for the disrepute of\n“Trotskyism”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But today everything is stood on its head. So-called\n“socialism” — in reality Stalinism — is in the grip of irretrievable\ndecay and collapse. The false authority which Stalinist regimes and parties\nhave exerted internationally can never be fully revived. Temporarily triumphant\ncapitalism crows about the “death of Marxism” — but is itself\nsitting on a time-bomb of social contradictions and dis-content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reformists and Stalinists are capitulating whole-sale to\ncapitalist ideas, abandoning completely the struggle to overthrow it. But the\nworking class cannot and will not abandon this struggle. To find the way\nforward the genuine science of Marxism — the marvellous legacy of Marx,\nEngels, Lenin and Trotsky, freed of distortions \u2014 must be unearthed, studied,\nand applied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution — together with\nhis explanation of proletarian Bonapartism — are priceless elaborations of the\narmoury of Marxism. Applied and re-applied, they are invaluable for the working\nclass internationally in understanding why revolutions in the West and in the\ncolonial world have been defeated, or carried through only in distorted form —\nand in working out the tasks for the working class movement today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fortunately, in the difficult decades after Trotsky’s death,\nthe red thread of his method was carried forward, although at first by only a\ntiny handful of Marxists. His ideas have been extended, corrected where\nnecessary, and systematically applied to the changing world. Today, in the\ncompany of comrades such as the Militant tendency now leading the mass movement\nagainst the poll tax in Britain, and others in Spain, India, Nigeria, Chile,\nthe USA and 20 other countries — we are part of a rising force of genuine\nMarxism in the mass organisations around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Genuine Marxism is inseparable from Trotsky’s name.\nMoreover, Trotsky’s dedicated life of struggle for freedom and socialism, the\nfact that he never capitulated to capitalism or to Stalinism, his ultimate\nsacrifice in the workers’ cause — these make his legacy all the more price-less\nfor our movement today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fifty years after his assassination, we are proud to honour Trotsky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

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