{"id":725,"date":"2019-09-18T11:08:43","date_gmt":"2019-09-18T09:08:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marxistworkersparty.org.za\/?page_id=725"},"modified":"2019-09-18T14:30:02","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T12:30:02","slug":"chapter-two","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/?page_id=725","title":{"rendered":"Chapter Two"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Russian\nRevolution and the Rise of Stalinism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Russian Revolution of October 1917\nstands out as the greatest event in history. The seizure of power by the\nworking class, the overthrow of capitalism, and the creation of the first workers’\nstate changed the entire international situation, and its repercussions\ncontinue to reverberate around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This victory did not arise by chance. On\nthe one hand it was the product of social conditions which prepared the way for\nsocial revolution; on the other hand it was the product of immense struggle,\npersistence and sacrifice on the part of the Russian working class, with a\nclear and conscious Marxist leadership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The victory of the Russian Revolution\nwas prepared by the whole process of development of the international\nworking-class movement. Under capitalism, the workers have always been forced\nto struggle constantly for their daily bread. In the course of this struggle,\nthey become organised, conscious of their strength, begin to understand the real\nnature of their enemy, and grope their way towards the task of changing\nsociety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ideas of Marxism belong naturally to\nthe workers’ movement. They are not imported into the workers’ movement from\noutside, as the brain-child of intellectuals, but represent the scientific\ngeneralisation of the international experience of the working class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marx and Engels, it is true, like most\nof the renowned teachers of Marxism in the past, came from social backgrounds\noutside the working class, from the petty-bourgeois or even the bourgeois\nintelligentsia. In the conditions of Europe in the nineteenth century this had\ngiven them the advantage of access to education and a profound knowledge of\nthen existing philosophical, historical and economic thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But they broke with their social\nbackgrounds completely, and placed their enormous talents totally at the\ndisposal of the workers’ movement. It was as active fighters and participants\nin the workers’ struggle that they drew the clear conclusions of scientific\nsocialism and formulated the ideas which today we understand as the\nfundamentals of Marxism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the beginning, the first Marxist\norganisation (the Communist League, 1847-1853) was a workers’ organisation.\nImmersed in the rising labour movement of the day, it fought to clear away the\ninfluences of old bourgeois, reactionary and utopian ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the International Workingmen’s\nAssociation (the First International) was formed in 1864, Marxism already\nenjoyed enormous authority among its members, and soon established\npre-eminence. The great historical significance of the First International is\nnot only that it raised the banner of Marxism at the head of the workers’\nmovement, but also that it asserted the organisational independence of the\nworking class from all bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Capitalism<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the mid-19th century, Europe was\nstill in the turmoil brought about by the rise of capitalism and the as yet\nuncompleted struggle to clear away the remnants of the feudal order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marx and Engels pointed out that, in the\nbourgeois revolutions that overthrew the aristocracy and absolute monarchy, the\nuprisings of the poor were used as a battering-ram. But invariably the\nbourgeoisie, once it had achieved political power through the struggle of the\nworking masses, turned to crush their movement\u2014often aided by sections of the\nreactionary classes which it had just defeated\u2014in order to maintain its\ndomination over society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The proletariat, still in its infancy as\na collective force, could serve as no more than a basis for the radical wing of\nthe bourgeois democrats\u2014as long as it lacked independent political organisation\nand leadership of its own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus in the revolutions of 1848-1850\nwhich swept across Europe, Marx and Engels campaigned tirelessly for the\nindependent programme of the workers’ movement, linking together the completion\nof the democratic tasks with the struggle to overthrow capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the German revolution of that time,\nas Marx explained, the bourgeoisie “saw itself threateningly confronted by\nthe proletariat, and all those sections of the urban population related to the\nproletariat in interest and ideas, at the very moment of its own threatening\nconfrontation with feudalism and absolutism”. Therefore the bourgeoisie\nsought compromise with t feudal landlords and the monarchy, to avert a revolution\nfrom below. It thus passed quickly into the camp of counter-revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still on the side of revolution were the\nradical democrats of the petty bourgeoisie. But Marx and Engels insisted that\non no account should the working class dissolve its own organisation or limit\nits demands to those of the petty-bourgeois democratic party. Their Address to the Communist League<\/em> in 1850\ndemonstrates the revolutionary method of Marxism and rings out across the\ndecades to our own time:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The relationship of the revolutionary workers’ party to the petty-bourgeois democrats is this: it cooperates with them against the party which they aim to overthrow; it opposes them wherever they wish to secure their own position. <\/p>

The democratic petty bourgeois, far from wanting to transform the whole of society in the interests of the revolutionary proletarians, only aspire to a change in social conditions which will make the existing society as tolerable and comfortable for themselves as possible… In order to achieve all this they require a democratic form of government, either constitutional or republican, which would give them and their peasant allies the majority….<\/p>

As far as the workers are concerned one thing, above all, is definite: they are to remain wage labourers as before. However, the democratic petty bourgeois want better wages and security for the workers, and hope to achieve this by an extension of state employment and by welfare measures; in short, they hope to bribe the workers with a more or less disguised form of alms and to break their revolutionary strength by temporarily rendering their situation tolerable….<\/p>

But these demands (the demands of the petty-bourgeois democracy) can in no way satisfy the party of the proletariat. While the democratic petty bourgeois want to bring the revolution to an end as quickly as possible, achieving at most the aims already mentioned, it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far\u2014not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world\u2014that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers. Our concern cannot be simply to modify private property, but to abolish it, not to hush up class antagonisms but to abolish classes, not to improve the existing society but to found a new one….<\/p>

At the moment, while the democratic petty bourgeois are everywhere oppressed, they preach to the proletariat general unity and reconciliation; they extend the hand of friendship, and seek to found a great opposition party which will embrace all shades of democratic opinion; that is, they seek to ensnare the workers in a party organisation in which general social-democratic phrases prevail, while their particular interests are kept hidden behind, and in which, for the sake of preserving the peace, the specific demands of the proletariat may not be presented. Such a unity would be to their advantage alone and to the complete disadvantage of the proletariat. The proletariat would lose all its hard-won independent positions and be reduced once more to a mere appendage of official bourgeois democracy. This unity must therefore be resisted in the most decisive manner.<\/p>

Instead of lowering themselves to the level of an applauding chorus, the workers, and above all the League, must work for the creation of an independent organisation of the workers’ party, both secret and open, alongside the official democrats, and the League must aim to make every one of its communes (branches) a centre and nucleus of workers’ associations in which the position and interests of the proletariat can be discussed free from bourgeois influence…. <\/p>

In the event of a struggle, against a common enemy a special alliance is unnecessary. As soon as such an enemy has to be fought directly, the interests of both parties will coincide for the moment and an association of momentary expedience will arise spontaneously in the future, as it has in the past.<\/p>

It goes without saying that in the bloody conflicts to come, as in all others, it will be the workers, with their courage, resolution and self-sacrifice, who will be chiefly responsible for achieving victory. As in the past, so in the coming struggle also, the petty bourgeoisie, to a man, will hesitate as long as possible and remain fearful, irresolute and inactive; but when victory is certain it will claim it for itself and will call upon the workers to behave in an orderly fashion, to return to work and to prevent so-called excesses, and it will exclude the proletariat from the fruits of victory.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Thus the founders of Marxism asserted\nthe independence of the proletariat, and the need to develop the workers’\nrevolutionary struggle to the full extent of its potential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exactly the same method guided Lenin and\nTrotsky in the Russian Revolution of 1917, as we shall see in a moment. The\ndefeat of the revolutions of 1848-1851, combined with an upsurge of the\ncapitalist economy, provided an opportunity for the capitalist class to\nconsolidate its position. But if new revolutionary explosions were thus\npostponed for a time, the mole of revolution was nevertheless burrowing away\nbeneath the surface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The growing strength of the working\nclass found expression in the spread of the workers’ organisations throughout\nEurope. This in turn was reflected in the establishment of the First\nInternational.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1871, against the background of war\nbetween Prussia and France, the Paris proletariat rose and took power.\nTragically, it was unable to hold on to that power, The Paris Commune was\ndrowned in blood by the forces of the French bourgeoisie\u2014supported by its\nerstwhile Prussian enemy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The crushing of its most advanced\nsection was a shattering blow for the working class internationally. A savage\nwave of reaction set in against the workers’ movement throughout Europe.\nPolitically, the way was cleared for a new cycle of expansion of capitalist production.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Reaction<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In turn, the organisations of the\nworkers were weakened by the pressures of reaction. Within the First International\nitself, this enabled middle-class radicals and pre-Marxist, utopian, and reformist\nideas to assert themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seeing no prospect of a new\nrevolutionary wave for some years, and in order to preserve the revolutionary\nheritage of the First International for the working-class movement in the\nfuture, Marx and Engels supported the dissolution of the International’s\nstructure in 1876.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus the political authority of the\nFirst International survived undimmed in the proletarian movement. Marxism had\nbeen established, beyond question, as the theory and method of the\nrevolutionary working-class vanguard internationally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the new period of capitalist\nexpansion which opened in the 1870s, continued (despite periodic slumps) for\nforty years. It marked the beginning of the epoch of imperialism, in which\nproduction and trade expanded beyond the nation-states of Europe, and the\nEuropean powers engaged in a new thrust of colonial conquest that drew tens of\nmillions of people in Africa and Asia into the capitalist maelstrom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through expanding production and\nimperialist plunder, the capitalists reinforced the pillars of their rule in\nEurope. The expansion of production brought with it the massive growth of the\nindustrial working class. This period saw for the first time the growth of\nstable trade unions, and political parties embracing masses of workers in their\nranks (which were then generally called social-democratic parties). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Second\nInternational<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1889 the workers’ parties of Europe\ncombined to form the Second International. So decisively had the authority of\nMarxism been established at this stage that, from the start, the leadership of\nthe Second International proclaimed the ideas of Marxism in most of its policy\nstatements. But there is a world of difference between subscribing to ideas and\nactually carrying them into practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A whole generation of working-class\nmilitants struggled within the Second International and attempted to build its\nnational sections into parties of the workers’ revolution. Yet processes were\nunder way that would transform virtually the entire leadership of the International,\nwithin the space of 25 years, into the bitter enemies of Marxism and the\nproletarian revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rise of imperialism and the vast\ngrowth of production in the major capitalist countries laid the basis for the\nreformist degeneration of the working-class leadership in these countries. As\nthe workers’ movement recovered from its wounds and once again built up its\nstrength, the ruling class could, for a time, afford to grant it concessions.\nThey could permit the development of a layer of skilled and relatively\nwell-paid workers, privileged above the mass of the working population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This ‘aristocracy of labour’ did not\nexperience acutely the need to struggle for social change. In time this layer\nprovided a basis of support for the reformist element crystallising within the\nleadership of the workers’ organisations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the parties of the Second\nInternational and the mass trade unions of Europe, a bureaucracy of officialdom\ncame into existence that built up a secure and privileged position for itself.\nOnce workers’ leaders were drawn into the bureaucracy, they tended to lose\ntouch with the daily conditions of the class. Because of the sustained upswing\nof capitalism, reformist leaders were able to ride out the pressures exerted\nfrom below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elevated above the rank and file, many\nof the leaders became corrupted by the insidious pressures of the ruling class.\nWithin the bureaucracy, independent class struggle gradually gave way to policies\nof compromise with capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, individuals from\noutside the working class began to seek careers in the workers’ movement.\nIntellectuals and educated middle-class elements moved easily into positions of\ninfluence as editors, chairmen and members of parliament. Their crime lay not\nin their class background, but in their failure to break decisively with this\nbackground\u2014in their importing of middle-class conservatism and elitism into the\nranks of the workers’ movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Resting on the most passive and\nconservative sections of the organised workers, appealing to the prejudices remaining\namong the most backward layers of the working class, the social-democratic\nbureaucracy developed increasingly as an obstacle to the struggle for\nsocialism. Its ideologists, spear-headed by Eduard Bernstein (at one time a\ntrusted comrade of Engels) seized on the illusions of the privileged\naristocracy of labour and transformed these into a theory of reformism<\/strong> in open opposition to the\nteachings of Marxism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They claimed that the workers’ demands\ncould be met through gradual concessions by the capitalist class; that the\nmatter of the workers’ exploitation could be resolved through peaceful\ncompromise between exploiters and exploited; that socialism could be implemented\ngradually, step by step, without the need to overthrow the capitalist class.\nThe strength of these illusions rested on the character of the period through\nwhich capitalism was passing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But again reality had its other side.\nThroughout this period the working class was accumulating enormous strength,\nand building powerful mass organisations, of the unskilled workers as well.\nParliamentary rights, press freedom, etc., were being won. Such was the\nchanging balance of class forces at the base of society, that the theoretical\npossibility opened up of the workers taking power and carrying through the\nexpropriation of the capitalists without the latter having the means to resist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But paradoxically, reformism\u2014which aims\nat compromise with the capitalists and their state\u2014itself guarantees a violent\nconflict. Because the reformists hold the workers’ movement back from the\ncomplete transformation of society and dismantling of the capitalist state when\nconditions allow, they open the way for a murderous armed resistance by the\ncapitalist class. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Bankruptcy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That, however, is not the only way in\nwhich reformism has proved fatal to the working class. In the case of the\nSecond International, the full bankruptcy of reformism was revealed with the\noutbreak of the imperialist First World War in August 1914.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a shameful betrayal of the workers’\ninternational struggle, the reformist leaders of the social-democratic parties\nin all capitalist countries threw themselves, as one man, behind the war effort\nof their ‘own’ imperialist bourgeoisie. Thus workers were urged into uniform,\nand drummed into action by their own leaders\u2014to massacre their fellow workers\nof other nations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the outset of the First World War,\nthe forces of genuine Marxism were reduced to insignificant numbers. As Lenin\nremarked in 1915, the conscious internationalists left from the Second\nInternational could be fitted into four stage-coaches!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reformism and nationalism in the\nworkers’ movement go hand in hand. Both are the consequence of shrinking from the\ntasks of the world socialist revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marxists are all in favour of reforms\u2014of\nevery single reform achievable in the day-to-day struggle of the working class.\nBut Marxists are resolutely opposed to reformism\u2014which substitutes illusions in\ncontinual gradual changes within the framework of capitalism for the need of\nthe workers’ movement to prepare itself for the revolutionary overthrow of the\ncapitalist class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The struggle against reformism is not\nonly against its mistaken ideas, but against the entire weight of capitalist\nsociety and the power of the capitalist state, pressing upon the workers’\nmovement. In practice it has been proved that only a disciplined cadre\u2014steeled\nin the ideas and method of Marxism, rooted among the organised workers and clear\nas to the nature of the tasks\u2014has the power to survive, to stand firm against\nthe pressures that confront it from all sides, and uphold without weakening the\nprogramme of the workers’ revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The struggle to defeat reformism and\ntake the workers’ movement forward thus developed, first and foremost, as the\nstruggle to build a Marxist cadre\u2014to arm the organised workers politically and\nprepare them to rally around themselves the mass of the workers in action.\nLenin made this struggle the principal content of his life’s work\u2014and this, his\ngreatest contribution to the international workers’ movement, will remain\nundimmed in history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The correctness of his approach was\nproved in practice in the course of the Russian Revolution when the working\nclass, led by the Bolshevik Party, took power and established the world’s first\nworkers’ state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

The Permanent Revolution in Russia<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

It had been the perspective of Marx and\nEngels that the working class would overthrow capitalism first in the countries\nwhere it was most developed, probably in Britain or France. Thus they expected\nthat, once started, the socialist revolution would quickly sweep the whole\nworld.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

History, however, followed a more\ncontradictory course. It was in a backward\ncountry<\/strong> that the proletariat first took power. Russia was ruled by an\nabsolute monarchy; a semi-feudal landowning class still held enormous power;\ncapitalism was only partially developed; and the peasantry formed the mass of\nthe population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in Russia the working class, with\nthe support of the peasant masses, was not only able to smash the old feudal-bureaucratic\nstate and clear away the feudal residue, but to expropriate the bourgeoisie<\/strong> and set in motion the development of\nthe productive forces within a framework of state ownership and planning<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How could this feat be accomplished? How\ncould Russia take so enormous a step towards socialism without passing first\nthrough the entire development of capitalism? How could the role of the bourgeoisie\nin taking Russia forward have already been exhausted when pre-capitalist\nrelations still permeated the society?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The answer lies in the uneven and\ncombined development of capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Capitalism had become an international\nsystem; but its spread around the world had not taken place evenly, nor did it\nrepeat in every country the same gradual process of accumulation that it had\nfollowed in its historical cradles of Britain, Belgium or France. Instead,\ncapital was exported in fully-fledged and concentrated forms to relatively\nundeveloped countries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Monopoly\ncapitalism<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Russia in 1908, for example, a far\nlarger proportion of workers were concentrated in factories employing over 1,000\nworkers than was the case even in the United States. Imperialism imposed the\nmost advanced relations of monopoly capitalism on countries and colonies where\nthe majority of the people still laboured under pre-capitalist relations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On an ever extending front, the\ncapitalist class internationally stood in confrontation with the growing forces\nof the working class. But the relationship of class forces in the colonies and\nthe semi-colonies of imperialism inevitably developed in a different way than\nit had done in the older capitalist countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the less developed countries the\nemergent bourgeoisie led from the start a narrow and precarious existence.\nFighting to carve out a national state and a market for itself against the\nconfines of the old pre-capitalist order, it was squeezed on the one hand by\nthe overwhelming power of its more developed capitalist rivals, and on the\nother by the struggles of the awakening proletariat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the start in these countries the\nproletariat played a role out of all proportion to its size. Dispossessed\npeasants streamed to the towns in search of work. The large factories\ntransplanted from the advanced countries of capitalism immediately drew\ntogether these fresh contingents of the proletariat as a concentrated and\ncohesive force. Young and volatile, these workers were able to gain strength\nand confidence also from the struggles of the most developed sections of the\nworking class movement in other countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The classical revolutions against\nfeudalism and absolutism were ‘bourgeois revolutions’ in the sense that their\nessential task was to clear away the pre-capitalist barriers to the development\nof a free-market system. These revolutions had served to carry the bourgeoisie\nto power on the tide of a mass movement under the banner of liberty and\ndemocracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, as even the great French Revolution\nof 1789 showed, the bourgeoisie was always fearful of the revolutionary masses\nand hastened to oppose the ‘excesses’ of the popular movement. Thus in France,\nit was the radical petty-bourgeois who carried through the overthrow of\nfeudalism, on the basis of the peasants and the urban poor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was the experience of all bourgeois\nrevolutions that the bourgeoisie tended to become counter-revolutionary to the\ndegree that the masses threatened to carry the democratic slogans to their\npractical conclusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the German revolution of 1848, as we\nhave seen, the bourgeoisie’s fear of the proletariat pushed it into the camp of\nreaction without delay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this and subsequent revolutions,\ntherefore, the proletariat stood forward as the consistent ally and champion of\nthe peasant masses, whom the bourgeoisie found it increasingly necessary to\ndesert in favour of political compromises with the feudal landlords. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Feeble<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The transition to imperialism, carrying\nwithin it the seeds of the socialist revolution on a world scale, finally\nremoved the possibility for new sections of the world bourgeoisie to lead a\nrevolution, or to champion the democratic aspirations of the masses. The\nhostility of the bourgeoisie to the democratic revolution would increasingly be\nthe hallmark of the epoch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The remorseless expansionist drive of capitalism,\nextending the world market to the furthest reaches of the earth, stimulated the\nemergence of a bourgeoisie in country after country. But these new contingents\nof capitalism have been feeble in the extreme. They have been tied hand and\nfoot to the imperialist monopolies. Politically, they have depended on\nmaintaining many of the existing pre-capitalist forms of rule, often of the\nmost reactionary kind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The counter-revolutionary character of\nthe bourgeoisie in this epoch, its hopeless inability in particular to take\nsociety forward in the under-developed countries, has had the result that the\nstruggle of the masses for land, for democratic rights, for national liberation\nand self-determination, has continually come in conflict with capitalist rule\nitself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The process of the Russian Revolution\nfrom 1905 to 1917 clearly demonstrated this fact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Already in the (defeated) revolution of\n1905 the working class showed itself to be the most consistently revolutionary\nclass in the struggle against Tsarism and for democratic rights. Through its\nown independent organs of struggle\u2014the soviets, or councils of delegates\nelected from the factories and workers’ districts\u2014the Russian working class\nprovided the focus and driving force in the struggle of the masses in general.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In practice, the revolutionary workers\nled the mass movement against the reactionary alliance of the capitalist class\nwith the landowners. This placed the programme of the working class\u2014the\nprogramme of social revolution\u2014on the order of the day as the only concrete\nalternative to the rule of landlordism and capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the time of its formation in 1898,\nthe Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party had based itself on the need for the\norganisational independence of the working class. Under the pressures of the\ndeveloping revolutionary situation, however, conflicting political tendencies\nbegan to emerge within it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were those among the leaders who\ncapitulated to radical bourgeois opinion. This tendency\u2014the Mensheviks\u2014took as\ntheir guiding idea the fact that the tasks of the Russian revolution were\nbourgeois-democratic in character. These tasks were the overthrow of the\nTsarist autocracy, the distribution of land to the peasants and the ending of\nnational oppression. Such a democratic struggle, argued the Mensheviks, must be\nled by the liberal bourgeoisie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The under-development of Russia, in\ntheir view, made it inevitable that the country would have to undergo a whole\nperiod of capitalist rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lenin and the Bolshevik tendency,\ntogether with Trotsky, agreed that the revolutionary tasks were democratic in\ncharacter. But they differed fundamentally\nwith the Mensheviks as to the political conclusions which followed from this.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They emphatically rejected the\nmechanical, ‘stages’ conception of Menshevism. The liberal bourgeoisie, they\npointed out, was incapable of playing a revolutionary role against Tsarism and\nwould prove itself the enemy of the revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fundamental social task of the\nrevolution was to expropriate the landlords’ land, and distribute it to the\npeasantry. But the bankers and capitalists were tied socially and economically\nto the landowners by a thousand threads. This made the bourgeoisie incapable of\nsupporting\u2014let alone leading\u2014a peasant struggle to seize the land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only through the revolutionary seizure\nof power by the oppressed and exploited masses in society, could the democratic\ntasks be carried out in Russia. This required the combined forces of the\nworking class and the poor peasants to break down the resistance of the\nmonarchy, the aristocracy and the capitalist class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lenin and Trotsky stood implacably for\nthe independent organisation of the working class, and explained that only the\nworkers’ organisations could lead the peasant masses to a revolutionary\nvictory. But prior to 1917, a difference existed between Lenin and Trotsky on\nthe relationship between the working class and the peasantry that would\nmaterialise in the course of the revolution. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Leadership<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lenin doubted whether the workers’ party\nwould be able, in a revolutionary government, to maintain its leadership over\nthe overwhelmingly greater peasant masses. Preferring to leave the question\nopen, he therefore advanced the deliberately vague formula of “the\ndemocratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry” in his\nperspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trotsky, on the other hand, foresaw as\nearly as 1904-5 that the proletariat would have to establish its own rule <\/strong>in Russia in order for the revolution to be\ncarried through. Only in this way could a revolutionary alliance of the workers\nand peasant masses be maintained against the bourgeoisie. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trotsky therefore advanced the bold idea\nthat the working class would have to take state power, and establish the\ndictatorship of the proletariat supported by the poor peasants, as the only means\nby which the democratic<\/strong> tasks of the\nRussian revolution could be carried out. Once\nin power, the workers’ government would then be compelled also to proceed to\nsocialist tasks.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Convinced by the course of the struggle\nitself, Lenin came to the same conclusion by March 1917. He argued furiously\nagainst those who wanted to apply the formula of “the democratic\ndictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry”. (In fact, he was soon\nto point out, the bankrupt regime of Kerensky represented the nearest that\nRussia could come to the “democratic dictatorship”\u2014and that regime,\nfar from being democratic, was merely preparing the way for bourgeois and aristocratic\ncounter-revolution.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact it was the idea of the permanent revolution<\/strong>\u2014the understanding\nthat the democratic and socialist revolutions were telescoped together and required\nthe seizure of power by the working class\u2014which enabled the Bolshevik party,\nunder the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky, to guide the Russian Revolution to\nvictory in October 1917.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the uprising of February 1917 the\nworking class, drawing the mass of the people behind it, had over-thrown the\nTsar. As in 1905 the workers formed soviets as the expression of their\nindependent power. The old state machine lay in ruins. Had the whole working\nclass been under Marxist leadership, it could have taken power\nimmediately\u2014there would have been no reason for delay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the Bolsheviks did not, at that\nstage, have majority support in the working class, still less among the\npeasants. In the soviets in February, it was the reformists\u2014the Mensheviks and\nthe party known as the Social Revolutionaries\u2014who were in control. The reformists,\nfar from struggling to complete the revolution, struggled only to halt it. They\nused their majority in the soviets to prop up the remnants of the old state\nmachine and to hand over power to the ‘liberal’ bourgeoisie. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Confused<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Confused by the tempo of events, and\nbefore Lenin’s arrival from exile, even some leaders of the Bolshevik party\n(including Stalin) leaned towards the Menshevik policy of attempting to ‘stabilise’\nthe democratic revolution on a capitalist basis\u2014a disastrous course which, if\npursued, could only have allowed imperialism and reaction to recover and drown\nthe revolution in blood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, thanks to the fierce opposition of\nLenin\u2014who returned to Russia in April 1917\u2014these dangerous ideas were defeated.\nUnder Lenin’s leadership, the Bolsheviks broke completely with the ‘democratic’\nbourgeoisie. Instead they directed their efforts to winning the mass of the\nworking class, and through them the peasantry, to a programme for the overthrow\nof landlordism and capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through brilliant and flexible tactics\nin the revolutionary crisis, the Bolsheviks succeeded in drawing the active\nmasses behind them. Thus, in October they were able to depose the crumbling\nKerensky regime through an almost bloodless insurrection and placed power in the\nhands of the workers’ councils. The majority of the peasants soon rallied\nbehind the workers’ government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such was the revolutionary ferment in the\narmed forces that contingents of soldiers and sailors participated in the\ninsurrection while the overwhelming majority gave it their support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under\nthe leadership of a Marxist cadre, the working class had for the first time in\nhistory established its own state on lasting foundations and created conditions\nfor the mass of the people to take control of their own destiny.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Russian Revolution was not a\n‘two-stage’ revolution. The regime which was propped up by the reformist\nleadership between February and October was not a \u2018bourgeois-democratic\u2019\nregime. Undoubtedly it was bourgeois; but it showed itself totally incapable of\ncarrying through a single fundamental democratic reform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

October<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The limited gains of the masses, after\nFebruary, were made only by taking matters into their own hands. The demands of\nthe peasantry and the oppressed nationalities, however, could only be secured after the working class had taken state\npower in October.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bolsheviks rallied workers and\npeasants behind the demand for ‘Peace, Bread, and Land’\u2014not in February, but for the October Revolution.<\/strong> A\ndemocratic slogan thus formed the rallying point of mass support for the dictatorship\nof the proletariat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus a crushing defeat was inflicted on\nworld capitalism, not in one of its most advanced centres, but at its weakest\nlink. The socialist revolution had begun. The task that now lay in the hands of\nthe working-class movement internationally was to carry it to completion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks,\napplying the method of Marxism, had always been unanimous that the socialist\nrevolution could only be carried to completion as an international<\/strong> revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Internationalism conditioned their\nentire outlook. They were convinced of the ripeness of the world<\/strong> for socialist revolution, and saw the seizure of power by the\nRussian workers as an enormous spur to the socialist revolution in\nindustrialised Europe, which would in turn come to their aid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Mensheviks, in contrast, not being\ngenuine internationalists, not applying the Marxist method, were overawed by\nthe backwardness of Russia when considered on its own. This led to their narrow\nconception of stages; it impelled them to a reformist position; when in power\nthey maintained Russia’s involvement in the imperialist war; ultimately they\nsided openly with counter-revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the understanding of the Bolsheviks,\nthe seizure of power by the working class in Russia formed part of the\nsocialist revolution internationally, but could not in itself create socialism<\/strong>. Lenin and Trotsky insisted\nlike Marx and Engels before them, that a socialist society could not be\nachieved in a single country\u2014let alone a country as backward as Russia at the\ntime of the First World War. But there was not a grain of fatalism or pessimism\nin their approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The workers’ state in Russia would\nobviously, of necessity, defend to the utmost every revolutionary gain. All\nattempts at capitalist counter-revolution would be fiercely resisted. The\ndevelopment of the economy through state ownership and a plan would proceed\nwith all the speed that circumstances allowed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But\nthe principal task of the first workers’ state was to promote the international\ndevelopment of the revolution as the only way of securing and extending the\ngains that had been made.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not only the achievement of socialism,\nbut all the remaining democratic tasks which the world bourgeoisie was no\nlonger capable of fulfilling, now rested in the workers’ hands. Henceforth, the\nstruggle of the peasants against landlords, of oppressed nationalities against\ntheir oppressors, the struggle against imperialism, was part and parcel of the\nstruggle of the working class internationally to take power and abolish the\nobsolete order of capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bolshevik Party, from the moment of\ntaking power, played a leading role in reorganising the international movement\nof the workers and the international struggle against capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Second International had collapsed\nas its chauvinist leaders had rallied to support the war effort of their\nopposing national bourgeoisies. The Russian workers’ state stood out as a\nbeacon for all genuine internationalists and revolutionaries world-wide. It\nriveted the attention of the toilers struggling against poverty, exploitation\nand war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Against this background, in Moscow in\n1919, the founding conference was held of a new working-class International:\nthe Third (Communist) International.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

The European Revolution Defeated<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The First World War accelerated rather\nthan solved the crisis of capitalism which had provoked it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Capitalism emerged from the war in a\nseverely weakened state. In the capitalist countries that had gone to war,\none-third of the national wealth had been destroyed\u2014in the case of Germany,\n60%. State debts had risen to 62% of total production. In 1920, only half of\nproductive capacity in these countries was in use. The consumption of coal was\nless than in 1913. Agricultural production was one-third lower than the average\nbefore the war. Throughout the capitalist world, the economic and political\norder lay in ruins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Out of the blood and fire of the war, a\ngreat upsurge in the class struggle once again took place. The imperialist\ncountries were racked by economic and social crises; and their rulers found\nthemselves faced by an armed, battle-hardened and embittered proletariat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nor were the newer capitalist countries,\nwhere there had been a temporary upsurge of industry and a strengthening of the\nworking class, immune from the general crisis of capitalism. In China, India,\nLatin America\u2014and in South Africa\u2014workers moved into militant action. The\nRussian Revolution itself was only the first great wave in an international\nrevolutionary tide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bolshevik Party, in leading the\nRussian workers to victory, had stamped itself as the vanguard force of the\ninternational workers’ movement. The Communist International (Comintern) was\nformed in the same tradition of working-class internationalism. The new International\nwas created as an instrument for extending the gains of the October Revolution\nby leading the workers to victory over capitalism throughout Europe, and from\nthere in the rest of the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Inspiration<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The formation of the Comintern acted as\na magnet to the most militant sections of workers in every capitalist country.\nThe Communist Party of South Africa, for example, was formed under its direct\ninspiration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under the pressure of the workers, the\nparties of the Second International split in country after country, with large\nnumbers of the rank and file\u2014in some cases the majority\u2014going over to the\nComintern. Even certain reformist leaders, pushed to the left by the pressure\nfrom below, were forced to seek affiliation to the new revolutionary\nInternational. In the course of just two or three years of revolutionary\ncrisis, the Communist International emerged as the most powerful revolutionary\nforce the world had ever seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The revolutionary storms out of which\nthe Comintern arose presented the working class with many opportunities to take\npower in the capitalist countries of Europe. Revolutions took place (although\nthey were eventually defeated) in Hungary and Germany in 1918-1920. Revolutionary\nor pre-revolutionary situations developed in Italy, France and Britain in\n1917-21, and there was a revolutionary situation again in Germany in 1923.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The failure of the parties of the\nCommunist International to take full advantage of these opportunities was to be\nof historic significance: it was the\nfirst link in the chain of events that has delayed the world socialist revolution\nfor several generations.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What were the reasons for this\nfailure\u2014why was the Comintern unable, under favourable objective conditions, to\ncarry out the purpose for which it was created?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A revolutionary leadership of the\nworking class does not spring into existence fully-fledged. It needs to be\ndeveloped\u2014to be steeled in the workers’ daily struggle; to be educated through\nexperience in the method, the ideas and the discipline of Marxism. The young\nparties of the Third International had not yet gone through this development.\nWorse still, they carried within them many of the dangerous weaknesses that the\nSecond International had bequeathed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only in the Bolshevik Party in Russia\nhad a relentless struggle been waged by a Marxist leadership against opportunism,\nconfusion and error, thus developing a cadre that was able to rise to its task.\nIn the remainder of the Second International, political clarity had become\ndimmed by reformist teachings and organisation had become flabby with inertia.\nWithin the parties of the new International, out of their enormously promising\npotential, a Marxist cadre had to be built afresh. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

History, however, did not allow\nsufficient time for this. Almost immediately, in country after country, the\nyoung forces of the Communist International were flung into life-and-death\nstruggles with the capitalist class. Tragically, they proved unable to seize\ncorrectly the opportunities presented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The workers’ magnificent movement,\nfrustrated by the lack of effective leadership, began to fragment and subside.\nThis permitted the first ominous advances of the counter-revolution\u2014in Hungary,\nwith the crushing of the Soviet Republic in 1919; in Italy, with the triumph of\nFascism under Mussolini in 1922. Elsewhere\u2014above all in Germany\u2014the mistakes of\nthe Communist leadership permitted the old reformist leaders to regain their\ninfluence over large sections of the class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, despite these setbacks for the\nworkers’ movement, capitalism could not recover from its sickness. The depths\nof the inter-war capitalist crisis still lay ahead. For the workers new\nopportunities would open up of rectifying past mistakes and carrying further\nthe socialist revolution. Far worse blows would have to be suffered before the\nworking class would be defeated for any length of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Degeneration\nof the Soviet Union<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The first setbacks of the workers’\nrevolution in Europe meant the prolonged isolation of the first workers’ state\nin a relatively backward country. With support from the advanced proletariat\nand the modern industrial economies of Europe and America cut off, the Soviet\nUnion was thrown back on its own meagre resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Russian working class had been exhausted\nby the rigours of the First World War and the years of civil war that followed.\nThe economy was devastated. Tens of thousands of the most politically conscious\nworkers had been among the first to sacrifice their lives in defence of the\nrevolution against intervention by 21 armies of imperialism. Skilled\ntechnicians and administrators who supported the revolution were few and far\nbetween; yet these skills were desperately needed to rebuild the shattered\nsociety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under these conditions, the Soviet state\nhad no alternative but to rely on the trained people who were present\u2014in\ngeneral, the same individuals who had previously served under Tsarism. With the\nworking class severely weakened, a new bureaucracy began to coalesce.\nExploiting the exhaustion of the workers and poor peasants, relying on the\nsupport of the middle and rich peasants, and abusing its monopoly of skills and\nadministrative know-how, the bureaucracy by degrees wrested control of the state\napparatus from the remaining cadre of the revolutionary workers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The degeneration of the Soviet state\nwent hand in hand with the bureaucratic take-over of the Communist Party (as\nthe Bolshevik Party had been renamed in 1919). Together with Trotsky, despite\nthe burdens of a fatal illness, Lenin fought the last great battle of his life\nagainst this counter-revolutionary encroachment. With growing arrogance,\nhowever, the bureaucracy continued to eliminate workers’ democracy from the\nstate and the party, steadily consolidating its powers and privilege.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even before Lenin’s death, Stalin began\nto emerge as the leader and personification of this dictatorship by a\nbureaucratic caste. The bureaucracy, while hailing the name of Lenin,\nsuppressed his political testament (which called for the dismissal of Stalin\nfrom the position of General Secretary) and trampled his teachings underfoot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trotsky explained the character of\nStalin’s regime in the Soviet Union by comparing its rise to power with the\npolitical counter-revolution carried out by Napoleon Bonaparte in the early\nyears of the bourgeois revolution in France. The power of feudalism had been\nsmashed in France by a mass revolutionary movement, which brought the\nbourgeoisie to power. But the bourgeoisie could not stabilise a democratic\nregime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The military dictatorship of Bonaparte\ntook over, drove the masses from the streets, crushed the democratic movement,\nand usurped political power from the bourgeoisie\u2014but nevertheless defended bourgeois property relations against feudal\nrestitution.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bonaparte’s regime was therefore a form\nof bourgeois state<\/strong>, despite the fact\nthat the bourgeoisie itself did not directly rule. That much was commonly acknowledged\nin Marxist theory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A workers’ revolution, Trotsky\nexplained, could be affected similarly by a political counter-revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The course of events had prevented the\nRussian working class from consolidating its democratic hold on power. The\ndirect rule of the proletariat had been replaced by the dictatorship of a\nbureaucracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This regime ruled by the sword, crushing\nworkers’ democracy but nevertheless maintaining in the last analysis the\nproperty relations of a workers’ state. To characterise this regime, Trotsky\nused the term proletarian bonapartism<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Bureaucracy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bureaucracy thus faced in two\ndirections. On the one hand, in the interests of its own power, it was compelled\nto defend state control of industry and the planned economy against all\nattempts at capitalist restoration. At the same time it defended its own\nprivileged existence, through absolute control of the state machine, against\nthe working class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bureaucracy was\u2014and remains to this\nday\u2014inherently opposed to democratic control by the masses over the state and\nsociety, and to any independent movement of the workers which might challenge\nits power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1924 the Stalinist bureaucracy\nabruptly produced its ‘theory’ that it was possible to construct ‘socialism’\nwithin a single country. This theory was\na total repudiation of the whole tradition and method of Marxism, and of\neverything the Bolshevik Party had stood for. <\/strong>In reality, it reflected the\nfact that the developing bureaucratic caste was in the process of carrying\nthrough a political counter-revolution\nagainst the working class.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Could ‘socialism’ be built in Russia\nalone as the bureaucracy claimed? The country had certainly undergone a\nsocialist revolution. Capitalism had been overthrown in Russia. But could the\ntransition to a socialist society\u2014i.e. socialism<\/strong>\u2014be\neffected under a bureaucratic regime?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marx and Engels had anticipated the\noverthrow of capitalism first in the industrialised countries; therefore they\nhad not expected any long interruption in the carrying through of the socialist\nrevolution world-wide. Nor, for the same reason, had they doubted that the\nover-throw of the bourgeoisie would result in workers’ states democratically organised and controlled by\nthe working class itself.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The workers’ revolution, in their\nperspective, would thus from the outset release, at the very centre of world\nproduction, the capacity for economic development and social progress on a much\nhigher level than had been attainable under capitalism. This would take place\nunder workers’ democracy. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the writings\nof Marx and Engels the ideas of the socialist revolution, a workers’ state, the\ndictatorship of the proletariat and socialism are often used inter-changeably,\nto refer to one and the same thing. The same may be found in many of the writings\nof Lenin and Trotsky, particularly in the earlier years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Socialism, nevertheless, has always\nborne a precise meaning in Marxism, as a careful study of the works of these\ngreat teachers will show. Socialism is itself a transitional form of society<\/strong> towards communism\u2014towards conditions\nof material abundance<\/strong> in which the\nclass division of society itself will have ceased, and in which all need for a\nrepressive machinery, or state, standing over society will have disappeared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Withering\naway<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elaborating Marx’s and Engels’ ideas,\nLenin explained in detail in State and\nRevolution<\/em> how the dictatorship of\nthe proletariat<\/strong>\u2014necessary at first to suppress the bourgeoisie and the\nbourgeois reaction\u2014would itself fall away with the dissolution of the classes\nand the withering away of the state.<\/strong>\nThis process of withering away\u2014an essential feature of socialism<\/strong>\u2014would in fact begin with the very seizure of power by the\nworking class. But that required\nworkers’ democracy as the political form of the workers’ state.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is enough to glance through the works\nof Lenin to realise how hopelessly confused and contradictory is the very\nnotion (popularised by Stalinism) of a ‘socialist\nstate’<\/strong>\u2014let alone the use of that term to describe the totalitarian\nmonstrosities which have arisen in the Soviet Union and elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rise of the bureaucracy in Russia\nafter the revolution represented a political counter-revolution against workers’ democracy<\/strong>\u2014but it\nremained on the foundations of state ownership and planning, the economic foundations\nof a workers’ state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus Russia remained a workers’ state\nand a society in transition\u2014but with its passage to socialism<\/strong> blocked by two formidable obstacles, each reinforcing the\nother. These were the delay in the revolution in the industrialised capitalist\ncountries, which alone could have opened the way of rapid progress to material\nabundance; and the rule of the Stalinist bureaucracy, whose overthrow by the\nworking class is essential before any withering away of the state can begin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

ABC<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stalin’s idea of ‘socialism in one\ncountry’ denied the very ABC of Marxism, but its logic for the bureaucracy is\nnot difficult to understand. ‘Building socialism’ and supporting the\nbureaucracy were proclaimed to be one and the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bureaucracy depends entirely on the nation-state<\/strong> to safeguard its position.\nInevitably, this has meant the\nrepudiation of working-class internationalism.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In practice the Moscow bureaucracy\nincreasingly abandoned the struggle to carry the revolution beyond the borders\nof the Soviet Union itself\u2014thus turning its back on the immense progress that\nwould have opened up for humanity as a whole through the spread of the\nsocialist revolution to the industrialised West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A bonapartist regime, having no firm\nsocial roots of its own, is compelled to balance between the opposing class\nforces. The bureaucracy has thus had an inherent tendency to zig-zag, switching\nfrom one policy to its opposite without any rational basis other than the\nprotection of its own power, and demanding unquestioning obedience to each\nbewildering twist and turn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Russian bureaucracy, as it lifted\nitself above society as a privileged upper layer, leaned at one moment on the\nrich peasants (or kulaks) to support it against the poor peasants and workers,\nand the next upon the workers to defend it against a capitalist recovery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To secure the workers\u2019 state against\ncapitalist restoration and protect the gains of the revolution, Trotsky and the\nBolshevik Left Opposition advanced in 1923 the first proposal for a\ncomprehensive economic plan. Despite the limitations of development in\nconditions of isolation, this would at least make possible the development of\nindustry under state ownership and provide the manufactured goods which would\nhelp to win the support of the peasantry for the vital collectivisation of\nagriculture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This policy was rejected outright by\nStalin’s regime. “Socialism at a snail’s pace” became its motto in\nthis period. Stalin coined the stupid joke that to try and build the\nhydro-electric dam on the Dnieper River was like telling a poor peasant to buy\na gramophone instead of a cow. Here was summed up the contemptuous attitude of\nthe bureaucrat, not merely to the workers, but to the peasant masses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Incapable of mobilising the energies of\nthe masses and raising their consciousness for the tasks of reconstruction, the\nbureaucracy preferred at first to rely on the rich peasants. Agriculture would\nbe developed on the basis of private profit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Lenin had earlier seen as a\nshort-term expedient under desperate circumstances at the end of the civil war,\nwas turned by the bureaucracy into a strategy for the long term. “Enrich\nyourselves!” was Bukharin’s call to the kulaks. The idea was, through\nincreasing the exploitation of the poor peasants, to extract the surplus necessary\nfor industrial development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But by 1927 the kulaks had so enriched\nthemselves, and consolidated their grip on agriculture that they tried to hold\nthe regime to ransom. The workers’ state, bureaucratically deformed and divided\ninternally, faced a challenge to its very existence. The pressure of the\nkulaks, raising the spectre of the restoration of capitalism, threatened also\nthe basis of the bureaucracy’s own privilege and power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Therefore, in a complete about-turn,\nStalin swung over to a policy of all-out industrialisation, forced<\/strong> collectivisation, and the liquidation<\/strong> of the kulaks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Left Opposition’s earlier proposals\nfor a five-year plan were now adopted, but in the form of a monstrous\ncaricature, which imposed terrible hardship on the working masses. The forced\ncollectivisation of agriculture inflicted a toll on the peasantry, through\nfamine, deportation and slaughter, of an estimated 20 million dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Parasite<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was the ‘socialism’ of the usurper\nbureaucracy. The state, withdrawn from workers’ control, had become a horrible\nparasite on the back of society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite\nthis, however, when contrasted with the inability of decaying capitalism to\ndevelop the productive forces, the role of the Stalinist bureaucracy as\nmanagers of the planned economy was, and remained for a considerable period,\nhistorically progressive.<\/strong> Even under the deformities of a dictatorship,\ngreat material gains were made in comparison with the stagnation of capitalism,\nespecially in an under-developed country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although at probably three times the\ncost of the capitalist economies, backward Russia became transformed under the\nrule of Stalinism into an industrialised country, eventually rivalling the\nmajor capitalist powers in production and surpassing them in military might.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the period from 1928 to 1938, the\nannual output of electricity in the USSR rose from 5 to 40 milliard Kwhs; steel\nfrom 4,3 to 18,1 million tons; machine tools from 2,000 to 55,300; and motor\nvehicles and tractors from a mere 2,100 to 260,000. The output of basic consumer\ngoods also rose steeply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These achievements demonstrated over and\nover again the superiority of a planned economy. In a backward country, where\nit was still largely a question of developing an economic infrastructure and\nlaying the basis for industry, the economy could be managed and controlled by a\nbureaucratic elite\u2014with inevitable waste, inefficiency and corruption\u2014and yet\nstill show spectacular progress. It took several more decades before the\nRussian economy, massively extended and sophisticated on the basis of modern\nindustry, began to seize up in the stranglehold of the bureaucracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Degeneration\nof the Comintern<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The rise of the bureaucracy to power in\nRussia was not accomplished without great political struggles and,\nincreasingly, the imposition of a police dictatorship. Of the gains that had\nbeen made by the revolutionary workers through the October Revolution, nothing\nremained by the end of the 1920s but state ownership and economic planning. The\nvery name “Soviet Union” had become no more than a token of the brief\nperiod following the October Revolution when soviets (workers’ councils) held\npower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The struggle of the bureaucracy against\nthe Marxists\u2014grouped as the Left Opposition within the Communist Party\u2014became\nincreasingly vicious. The bureaucracy, fearing above all else the resurgence of\nthe workers, became increasingly tyrannical in its repression of all\nopposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dictatorship of Stalin was\nconsolidated over a period of ten years of one-sided civil war by the\nbureaucracy against the working class and peasants. Not only were the trade\nunions and the Party transformed into mere tools of the bureaucracy; thousands\nof worker-militants were murdered by the regime in \u2018purges\u2019, and countless\nthousands more were sent to a lingering death in Stalin’s slave-labour camps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consistent Bolsheviks were slaughtered\nin their thousands. Trotsky, the leading spokesman of Bolshevism after Lenin’s\ndeath and leader of the Left Opposition, was first exiled to Siberia, then\ndeported from the Soviet Union, and finally murdered in Mexico in 1940 by an agent\nof Stalin’s secret police.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those in the Communist Party who adhered\nto the position of Marxism and Bolshevism fought every step of the way against\nthe degeneration of the Soviet regime. But, with the isolation of the\nrevolution in a backward country, with the workers’ movement weakened and\nunable to check the bureaucracy, the balance of forces turned more and more\nagainst them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The degeneration of the regime in the\nSoviet Union was accompanied by the degeneration of the Communist\nInternational. With the growing influence of Stalin and his henchmen, the early\nweaknesses and errors of the Communist party leaderships were not\nsystematically analysed in the International, and thus remained uncorrected.\nMore and more the policies of the Comintern were shaped, not by the\nrequirements of the international class struggle, but by the interests of the\nRussian bureaucracy\u2014which were held to represent \u2018socialism\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Errors became compounded and mistaken\npolicies entrenched. In Britain, the Comintern fostered an un-critical alliance\nbetween the Russian trade unions and reformist leaders of the British trade\nunion movement\u2014and maintained it even after the British trade union leaders had\ncynically betrayed the General Strike of 1926 and the miners’ strike that\ncontinued. In consequence the vanguard of the working class in Britain was\nseverely disoriented, and the infant British Communist Party lost an historical\nopportunity to develop as a mass force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In China, even more disastrous policies\nwere followed. Between 1925 and 1927 the working class of China launched a\nseries of strikes and uprisings against the semi-colonial regime and its\nimperialist overlords. This stimulated a massive movement among the peasantry\nfor the seizure of land from the landlords.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The membership of the trade unions\ndoubled and doubled again in three years, embracing nearly three million\nworkers by 1927. The peasant leagues in the southern provinces organised ten\nmillion peasants. The Chinese Communist Party grew from a tiny group to a force\nof 60,000. The Chinese working class was demonstrating its tremendous capacity\nto lead the struggle of the masses for power in society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The people of the Soviet Union,\ncompletely encircled by imperialism, had everything to gain from a revolutionary\nvictory in China. Not only would it have changed the balance of forces\ninternationally, it would have given the Russian working class a powerful boost\nin the struggle to restore workers’ democracy and regenerate the workers’ state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the Russian bureaucracy feared the\nindependent movement of the working class and held its revolutionary potential\nin contempt. Instead they had gross illusions in the capacity of the Chinese\nbourgeoisie to struggle against imperialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In consequence a fatal policy of\nclass-collaboration was followed in regard to China. At the insistence of\nStalin and the Comintern leadership, the Chinese Communist Party leadership\ncapitulated to the bourgeois leadership of the Kuomintang nationalist movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Kuomintang (KMT) claimed to\nrepresent the interests of the Chinese people in the struggle against the\nlandlords, imperialism and its local agents. In fact, the bourgeois leadership\nof the KMT was tied by a thousand threads to the landlord class and the imperialists.\nEven less than in Russia in 1917 was the so-called \u2018progressive\u2019 bourgeoisie\ncapable of carrying through a bourgeois-democratic revolution\u2014these tasks\nnecessitated a struggle against<\/strong> the\nbourgeoisie. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Held\nback<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet Stalin and the Comintern leadership\nheld back the Chinese CP from taking the lead in the struggle against\nlandlordism and imperialism, and fighting for a socialist revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a caricature even of Menshevism, the\nKMT was welcomed into the Comintern as a sympathising section. Thus covered\nwith the mantle of world communism, the KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek could\nprepare for his role of executioner of the revolutionary workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Comintern leadership instructed the\nChinese Communists to sacrifice their own programme in favour of the bourgeois\nprogramme of the KMT, to enrol in it as individual members, to dissolve their\nindependent press\u2014and even hand over a list of their members to the KMT\nleadership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The result was the crushing defeat of\nthe Chinese revolution of the 1920s. The liquidationist policy of the CP\nleadership left the working class politically disarmed in the class\nconfrontations that emerged inevitably out of the revolutionary crisis in\nsociety. In 1927 the flower of the Chinese proletariat was slaughtered at the\nhands of their supposed ‘progressive’ ally, the Chinese bourgeoisie headed by\nChiang Kai-shek.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the meantime, in Russia, the\nStalinist regime was becoming alarmed at the growing power of the wealthy\npeasants. Simultaneously, on the international front, the regime had experienced\ndisastrous failures of its policy of class-collaboration and tame compromises\nwith the social-democratic leaders in the West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Veered<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having burned their fingers on one\nmistake, the Comintern leadership abruptly swung over in 1928 to the opposite mistake.\nFrom short-sighted opportunism, they veered blindly to ultra-left sectarianism.\nThis produced the most terrible defeat that the working-class movement had suffered\nin its entire history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The German bourgeoisie, reeling under\nthe blows of the world economic collapse of 1929-1932, had unleashed the Nazi\nmovement, led by Hitler, in a desperate effort to crush the workers’ movement.\nThe social-democratic leadership, to which a majority of German workers looked\nat that stage, proved too degenerate and timid to lead a struggle against\nHitler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus the Communist Party had the task of\nmobilising a united struggle of the workers’ parties against the fascist\nmenace, and carrying through the overthrow of capitalism. Instead, the CP\nleadership, at the dictate of the Comintern officials, ordered their followers\ninto action … against the\nsocial-democratic workers!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reason given for this was that there\nwas \u2018no difference\u2019 between social-democrats and fascists; that all those\noutside the Communist Party were ‘objectively’ fascists; that the\n‘social-fascists’ (social-democrats) were already in power; that the\n‘social-fascists’ needed to be destroyed before the ‘Hitler-fascists’ could be\ndealt with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thaelmann, the German CP leader, made\nclear the official Comintern attitude in a speech in September 1932 (at the\nsame time showing, incidentally, that he completely misunderstood the strategy\nof united rank-and-file struggle against the fascists called for by Trotsky and\nthe Left Opposition):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn his pamphlet on the question, How will National Socialism be Defeated?<\/em>,\nTrotsky gives always one reply: \u2018The German CP must make a bloc with the Social\nDemocracy…\u2019. In framing this bloc, Trotsky sees the only way for completely\nsaving the German working class against fascism. EITHER THE CP WILL MAKE A BLOC\nWITH THE SOCIAL DEMOCRACY OR THE GERMAN WORKING CLASS IS LOST FOR 10 TO 20\nYEARS.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is the theory of a completely\nruined fascist and counter-revolutionary. This theory is the worst theory, the\nmost dangerous theory and the most criminal that Trotsky has constructed in the\nlast years of his counter-revolutionary propaganda.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through\nthis incredible sectarian madness, Hitler was permitted to come to power\nwithout a shot being fired against him by the strongest Communist Party in\nEurope.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The defeat of the German working class\nin 1933 led to the destruction of the\nworkers’ organisations<\/strong> and strengthened the hand of reaction throughout\nEurope, thus opening the way to the Second World War. For the working class\ninternationally, it was a catastrophic blow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, incredibly, the Comintern\nleadership refused to admit that any defeat had been suffered; consequently, it\nrefused to re-examine and correct its position. Instead, it proclaimed that the\nfascist victory in Germany would be followed immediately and effortlessly by\nthe victory of the workers!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Left Opposition in the Soviet Union\nand the Communist movement internationally fought against these wrong policies\nwith all the means at its disposal. At every stage it worked out and put\nforward the revolutionary Marxist alternative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But through repression of debate,\nexpulsions, the replacement of leaders, and assassinations of opposition\nelements, the Communist Parties had become transformed into tools of the Moscow\nbureaucracy. The task of defending the Soviet Union by carrying forward the\nsocialist revolution on a world scale had been replaced by the narrow diplomatic\nfunction of serving the interests of the bureaucracy. In the Soviet Union itself,\nnothing remained by the 1930s of the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and its\nleadership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

The Period of Popular Fronts<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The degeneration of the Comintern was\nrevealed over and over again in the years leading up to the Second World War.\nThe catastrophic depression of the capitalist economy in 1929-1932 had thrown\nthe whole world into turmoil and opened up deep social crisis throughout most\nof Western Europe. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The CP leaders proved quite incapable of\ntaking advantage of even the most favourable conditions for the overthrow of\ncapitalism. Instead they were responsible for fresh defeats of the workers’\nmovement internationally and of the socialist revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These defeats were no longer merely the\nresult of inexperience, short-sightedness or error. During the 1930s they came to represent the conscious policy of Stalin\nand the bureaucracy. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Hitler’s victory, the Russian\nbureaucracy woke up to the need to protect itself against fascism. It did not\nattempt, however, to destroy the fascist monster by mobilising an international\nmovement of the workers for revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The consequence of victory would have\nbeen to rally the Russian workers and put an end to the privileged existence of\nthe bureaucracy itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, at the Comintern conference of\n1935, the bureaucracy announced a sharp turn to the right. Its policy now became aimed at establishing alliances with the ‘Allied’\nimperialist powers ranged against German imperialism.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In order to cement agreement with this\nsection of the bourgeoisie, Stalin and his followers at the head of the\nCommunist parties internationally showed themselves quite prepared to sacrifice\nthe workers’ struggle for socialism. Throughout the world they now proclaimed\nthe tactic of the ‘popular front’. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Alliances<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By this was meant forming alliances\nbetween the workers’ parties and the so-called ‘progressive’ capitalist parties\n(the liberals) for the purpose of defending democracy. According to the theory\nof the \u2018popular front\u2019, the working class must give up the revolutionary\nstruggle for power; must agree not to tamper with bourgeois property or attempt\nto overthrow capitalism\u2014in return for the support of the liberal bourgeois\nagainst fascism and military dictatorship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This approach flies in, the face of\neverything Marxism teaches. One has only to compare it with Marx’s and Engels’ above-quoted\nadvice to the German workers in 1850 to see the contrast plainly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Popular frontism\u2019 likewise shows a\ncomplete disregard of the material basis of the struggle for democracy. The\nthreat to democracy in the capitalist world springs from the incapacity of the\nsystem to consistently raise or maintain living standards for the mass of the\npeople; the necessity for the bourgeoisie under conditions of capitalist crisis\nto attack the position of the working class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Faced by a powerful challenge of the workers’\nmovement at such times, capitalism can only grant very temporary reforms. The\ncapitalists\u2014including the liberals\u2014are obliged to take them back at the first\nopportunity. Right-wing, military-police and fascist dictatorships have\nhistorically served the bourgeoisie as the instruments of this attack on the\nworking people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The foundation for reaction is the\ncapitalist state machinery\u2014the ‘armed bodies of men’ as Engels put it\u2014which\nmaintain the rule of the bourgeoisie. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because of their class interests, the\nliberal bourgeoisie can never agree to act decisively against the forces of\nreaction. Above all they cannot undermine their own state power. Coalition\ngovernments with the liberals, no matter how ‘progressive’ in words, have\nrepeatedly demonstrated their feebleness, vacillation and paralysis in the face\nof reactionary threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, as Trotsky explained, the\nliberal bourgeoisie will only make agreements with the workers’ parties when\nthey cannot hold on to power in any other way. They depend in an acute crisis\non the leaders of the workers’ movement<\/strong>\nto hold the masses back from revolution. In this way the ‘popular front’ becomes\na strike-breaking conspiracy against the movement of the working class<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Under the cover of the ‘popular front\u2019 the\nbourgeoisie prepares to bare the fangs of open reaction as soon as conditions\nallow. In the course of the 1930s, against the background of severe economic\nand social crisis, the ‘popular front’ policies of the Communist Parties,\ntogether with the social-democratic reformists, resulted in a succession of\nvictories for reaction and the capitalist class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Spain, between 1931 and 1936, the\nworkers and peasants rose massively against capitalist rule and moved into a\nseries of magnificent struggles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1931 the rule of the king was swept\naway. In February 1936 the Popular Front of the Socialist and Communist parties\nwith the ‘progressive’ bourgeois republicans, promising sweeping reforms, was\nvoted into power by the workers and peasants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Immediately the masses surged forward to\ncarry the programme of the Front into practice. Factories were occupied; land\nwas seized by the peasants. The feeble bourgeois Republic was brought within a\nhair’s breadth of collapse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

General Franco and his fascist movement\nemerged as the ultimate defender of Spanish capitalism against the workers’\nrevolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In response, workers armed themselves and\nformed their own militias. Over much of Spain the armed workers were in control\nof society. All that was necessary, in fact, was to deal the final blow to the\nremaining organs of the bourgeois state and to consolidate in their place\ndemocratic institutions of workers’ power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet the leadership of the Spanish\nCommunist Party, together with the social-democratic reformists, held back the\nworkers from power and propped up the tottering bourgeois regime. The Popular\nFront government took on the task of reconstructing the capitalist state!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Workers who opposed these reactionary\npolicies\u2014identical to the policies of the Mensheviks in Russia\u2014were disarmed,\ndisorganised and even gunned down by Stalin’s secret police sent to Spain for\nthe purpose. The workers’ militias were forcibly disbanded and power was\nreturned to the capitalist class. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Dictatorship<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This horrifying betrayal of the\nrevolution split and demoralised the workers’ movement, and left the peasantry\nin confusion. It opened the way for the victory of Franco in the Civil War and\nthe coming to power of his vicious dictatorship\u2014which lasted almost 40 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Inevitably, this defeat meant the immediate\nslaughter of organised workers, trade unionists and political activists in\ntheir thousands\u2014including those who had\nloyally followed the instructions of the CP leadership.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In France too, between 1934 and 1936,\nthe workers surged forward in waves of struggle against the crisis-ridden\ncapitalist order. Here, too, the CP leaders formed a Popular Front with the\n‘progressive’ bourgeoisie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In May 1936 the coalition of the\nCommunist Party, Socialist Party and bourgeois Radicals gained an electoral\nmajority. The workers saw the coming to power of the Popular Front as a signal\nto move out onto the streets, occupy the factories, and begin to carry the\nPopular Front programme into action. Even the armed forces began to be infected\nby the revolutionary mood of the masses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Again, however, the CP leadership\u2014no\nless than the reformists\u2014recoiled in horror from the social revolution which\nthe upsurge of the workers had placed on the agenda. Instead they called for an end to the strikes.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Political relationships within the mass\nof society change with extreme rapidity in a revolutionary situation, as Lenin\nalways emphasised. Yet the CP leadership refused to acknowledge the\nrevolutionary opportunity now presented. Instead their standpoint was what Marx\nhad denounced as “parliamentary cretinism”. Proclaiming the sanctity\nof their compromise with the bourgeoisie, and of the parliamentary arithemetic\nalready outstripped by events, the CP leaders held the masses back from\nrevolution. Thus they prepared the defeat of the Popular Front and another\nvictory for reaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

War<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Defeat after defeat for the working\nclass in Europe did not solve capitalism’s crisis. Fascism itself was only the\nmost rabid symptom of the sickness of the system., Now frenzied competition\namong the imperialist powers\u2014sharpened by the expansionist drive of Nazi\nGermany\u2014plunged mankind once again towards war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1939, Stalin signalled the depths to\nwhich the Russian bureaucracy had descended\u2014equalling that of the reformists in\n1914\u2014by signing a pact of mutual peace with\nHitler.<\/strong> This Pact cleared the way for the German invasion of Poland, which\nprecipitated the Second World War, and was maintained until Hitler invaded\nRussia in 1941.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In arguing against the false slogan of\n‘socialism in one country’, Trotsky had explained the dire consequences it\nwould have for the Soviet workers’ state. As early as 1925, he had also\npredicted its effects on the parties of the Comintern. Those that accepted this\nfalse, anti-Marxist perspective, he warned, would inevitably degenerate into\nnationalist reformist parties, each tailing behind its ‘own’ bourgeoisie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time of the Second World War,\nthis warning had been amply confirmed. Shortly before the war, for example, the\nFrench Communist Party had called for a \u2018United National Front’ embracing not\nonly the ‘good’, \u2018national’ capitalists but\nalso the ‘good’, ‘national’ French fascists<\/strong>\u2014against the dangers of German<\/strong> fascism!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every Communist Party in the world\nsuffered degeneration along similar lines. All these parties had remained ‘Communist’\nin name only. They no longer had anything genuinely in common with the\nrevolutionary party of Lenin. All that bound them together was dependence on\nthe power of the Russian bureaucracy, expressed in adherence to the cult of\nStalin and the uncritical obedience of their leaders to the instructions\nissuing from the Kremlin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, on the eve of the Second World\nWar\u2014as in1914\u2014the working class was left without a revolutionary leadership\ninternationally. The consequences of the Stalinist betrayal fell most acutely\non the Russian working class itself. The policies of class collaboration\u2014which,\nit was claimed, would ‘defend the Soviet Union’\u2014led instead to the invasion of\nthe Soviet Union by the most vicious forces of capitalist reaction, inflicting\nuntold havoc on the gains of the October Revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through the defeats of two decades, the\nvanguard of the working class internationally had been decimated and\ndemoralised. Millions of organised workers had been driven to lose hope of\nachieving socialism in their lifetime and resigned themselves bitterly to\ncapitalist rule. Only the shock of still greater events could once again lift\nthe mass of the working class onto the road of fresh revolutionary struggles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The forces of Marxism world-wide were\nonce again reduced to tiny handfuls. They had struggled within the Communist\nParties to win back the Communist workers to the programme of social\nrevolution; but their forces had been too small to prevent catastrophe. After\n1933 no alternative remained but to rebuild the workers’ Marxist cadre\nindependently of the Comintern. Its forces would have to be drawn from the\nlayers of fresh young workers who, under the impact of the world crisis, were\nobliged to turn to the mass organisations of their class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the crisis of capitalism unresolved\nand the working class paralysed by its lack of revolutionary leadership,\nrenewed imperialist war became inevitable. Trotsky, who had long foreseen the\ncoming conflagration, predicted that the war would end in a massive new upsurge\nof the international working class. The choice that faced humanity, he warned,\nwas that between socialism and barbarism. The future would depend on resolving\nthe crisis of leadership in the working class through the construction of a new\nmass revolutionary International. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

The Second World War and its Consequences<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The Second World War was the result of\nthe rotten-ripeness of world capitalism for the socialist revolution. The\ndefeat and delay of that revolution made the war inevitable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The anarchy of capitalism, given free\nrein by the failure of the workers’ leadership, culminated in a barbaric orgy\nof destruction. The mass Murder of six million Jews in Europe, and the\nincineration of 150,000 people by two American atomic bombs dropped on Japanese\ncities, were among the gruesome consequences. The Soviet Union, invaded by Nazi\nGermany in June 1941, suffered for the Stalinist betrayal of the socialist\nrevolution in Europe with at least 20 million dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The course and outcome of the Second\nWorld War proved the decisive influence on the ensuing epoch. The war unfolded,\nin Europe, essentially as a struggle to the death between Nazi Germany and\nStalinist Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ‘Allied’ imperialist powers, on the\nwhole, had banked on Germany and Russia bringing each other to their knees.\nThis would have enabled them\u2014so they hoped\u2014to redivide Eastern Europe into\ntheir own spheres of domination and reimpose capitalism on Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Hitler’s invasion of Russia had an\nentirely different outcome, and produced a disaster for imperialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stalin himself had been totally\nunprepared for the invasion and did not believe that the Red Army (its leadership\ndecimated in his purges of the 1930s) was capable of defeating Hitler’s\nmilitary might. But the Russian workers and peasants were made of sterner\nstuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They were confronted with an invader of\nunprecedented ferocity, who inflicted barbarous policies of racial slavery. The\nmasses, having no wish to exchange the dictatorship of Stalin for the savagery\nof Hitler, fought fiercely to defend the material gains of the October\nrevolution. The Red Army rallied and became the decisive force in the defeat of\nGerman fascism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Invasion<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 1944 the Allied imperialists were\nconfronted with the sweeping advance of the Red Army across Eastern Europe\ntowards Berlin. It was in a desperate attempt to contain this advance\u2014which\notherwise could have reached the English Channel\u2014that the USA and Britain\nlaunched their own invasion of Europe from the West, finally meeting the Red\nArmy on the Elbe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the master of all Eastern Europe,\nincluding half of Germany, Russia had now to be reckoned with as a world power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By a cruel irony of history, the victory\nover Fascism, paid for with the blood and heroism of millions of workers and\npeasants, served to strengthen enormously the Stalinist dictatorship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Hitler’s invasion of Russia, the\nKremlin bureaucracy had swung back to its policy of seeking collaboration with\nthe Allied imperialists\u2014and persisted in it even after the defeat of Hitler. At\nthe end of the war the British and American imperialists, faced with Russian\npower, found it expedient to come to terms with Stalin. At top-level meetings\nat Yalta and Potsdam, Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill reached secret agreements\ndividing the world into ‘spheres of influence’ between the great powers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Eastern Europe the collapse of Nazism\nand its collaborators under the advance of the Red Army had meant the flight of\nthe old ruling class. In these countries the Russian bureaucracy was conceded\nhegemony by the imperialist powers. The nominal \u2018coalition\u2019 governments formed\nthere by Stalin resembled Popular Fronts. But effective state power was in the\nhands of the Red Army and not of the bourgeoisie. In all the tries of Eastern\nEurope the social basis of capitalism had been shattered completely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In country after country economic\ncollapse could only be prevented by the nationalisation of the major means of\nproduction and the establishment of a planned economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consequently, states were constructed in\nthe image of Moscow\u2014not workers’ democracies in the manner of Lenin’s Moscow,\nbut totalitarian states modelled on Stalin’s Moscow of 1945.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through the guns of the Red Army, the\nRussian regime ensured that the new workers’ states were deformed from the\noutset, presided over by a bureaucratic caste, obedient to the Kremlin, and\ntotally excluding any form of control by the working class itself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Stalinism<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Western Europe the peculiar course of\nthe war had the effect of strengthening the hold of Stalinism on the workers’\nmovement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bourgeoisie in the countries invaded\nby Nazi Germany had collaborated with the occupation forces, and even relied on\nthe guns of the German army for maintaining ‘law and order’. Now with the\ndefeat of Fascism, the ground was cut from under their feet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a result of military service and\nwartime resistance against Nazi occupation, workers in many countries were\narmed. In the wake of the war, strikes, factory occupations and armed workers’\nmilitias created the possibility of proletarian rule in Italy, Greece and\nFrance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The stage was once again set for social\nrevolution. A victory for workers’ democracy in just one of these important\ncountries of Europe would have sparked fires across the face of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in every case the position and\nprestige of the degenerated Communist Parties had been enormously enhanced in\nthe course of the war. Expectations of a revolutionary lead by the CP’s had\nbeen aroused both by their role in the underground resistance against Fascism\nand, above all, by the titanic war effort of the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These hopes, however, were cruelly\ndisappointed. The Russian bureaucracy, faced with the need to maintain control\nover the Russian working class, had nothing to gain and everything to lose from\npromoting the workers’ revolution internationally. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stalin\nagreed with Roosevelt and Churchill that Western Europe should remain in the\nhands of imperialism.<\/strong> This agreement, entirely in the spirit of\npresent-day ‘detente’, ensured the delay of the socialist revolution in the West\nfor a whole generation more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Greece, the armed resistance movement\nof the workers and peasants, led by the Communist Party, had the capacity to\ntake state power in 1944-5. Instead, following Stalin’s orders, the CP\ncapitulated to imperialism, seeking to form a ‘broad patriotic’ government, and\nleaving the state machine in the hands of pro-fascist elements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

British imperialism took advantage of\nthis situation to launch a bloody assault on the workers’ and peasants’\nmovement. In this they correctly counted on Stalin washing his hands of the\nfate of the Greek revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the civil war which followed (1946-8)\nStalin gave no military support to the masses fighting British (and later US)\nimperialism. Over a million Greek workers and peasants lost their lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also in France, Italy and elsewhere,\nStalinism needed to disarm the workers and head off their movement in order to\nhand back power to the capitalist class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In France, the Communist leader Thorez\narrived back from Moscow with instructions to the workers to halt their strike\nmovement, to surrender their arms and support a coalition government of the\nCommunist Party with capitalist parties. Also at this time Thorez told a leader\nof the Vietnamese resistance that he “ardently hoped to see the French\nflag flying over every territory in the French Union” and that he\n“had not the slightest intention of being held responsible for a sell-out\nof France’s positions in Indochina.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Italy the defeat of Fascism in\n1943-1944 meant the virtual collapse of capitalist power and the beginning of\nthe largest popular insurrection in Italy’s history. The workers and peasants\n(organised in their hundreds of thousands into the armed forces of the CP-led\nanti-Fascist Partisans) exercised effective control in many areas of the\ncountry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Had this insurrectionary movement been\ntaken to its conclusion, with the establishment of a revolutionary workers’\ngovernment in Italy, the effect on the world working-class movement would have\nbeen explosive. Ordinary soldiers of the occupying Allied armies (workers in\nuniform) would have carried the flames of revolution back to every corner of\nAmerica, Britain\u2014and South Africa as well. But this was not to be. In Italy,\ntoo, the CP leadership\u2014on the instructions of Moscow\u2014supported the disarming of\nthe workers and peasants, and handed back power to the capitalist class in the\nform of a coalition government of bourgeois, social-democratic and Communist\nministers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Surrender<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, misled yet again by the leaders of\nthe Communist parties as well as the leaders of the social-democracy (the\nlatter had remained unswerving throughout in their support for capitalism) the\nworkers were compelled to surrender to the capitalist class the power they had\ngained. Nor were the CP leaders rewarded as they had hoped for their collaboration\nwith the bourgeoisie. Once they had served their purpose of bringing the\nworking class back under capitalist control, they were thrown contemptuously\nout of the governments in Italy and France.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nothing was left of the Third\nInternational which, under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky, had stood out\nas a lighthouse to the peoples of the world, showing the way to the transformation\nof society. Its revolutionary traditions were now preserved only by tiny\nforces, compelled to swim against the stream for a whole historical period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The official end of the International\nhad come in 1943, when Stalin dissolved the Comintern\u2014by decree and without\ndebate\u2014on the eve of the revolutionary upsurge at the end of the war. This\ncynical act was intended as a sign to Stalin’s imperialist ‘allies’, Roosevelt\nand Churchill, that the Russian bureaucracy had finally abandoned all thought\nof revolution in the West. It was tamely endorsed by all the national CPs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the heartland of imperialism, the\nUnited States of America, the Communist Party actually dissolved itself <\/strong>in 1944, at Moscow’s urging. For as Browder, its\nGeneral Secretary, explained: “Capitalism and Communism have begun to\nmarch together towards the peaceful society of tomorrow”!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He claimed that the objective of\n“continued national unity” after the war required laying aside the\nidea of class struggle and cooperating with all sections of the\npopulation\u2014including the monopoly capitalists\u2014for the benefit of the nation as\na whole! In such a post-war world of class harmony and peaceful relations between\ncapitalist and ‘socialist’ nations, he declared, there would be no need for the\nCommunist Party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other CPs, including South Africa’s,\na similar course of action was seriously debated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These were the political conditions\nwhich set the scene for the post-war development of capitalism. The rule of the\ncapitalist class in the West had been saved by the combined efforts of the\nsocial-democratic and Communist Party leaderships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus secured, the capitalist class could turn its attention to the economic reconstruction of Europe and with it, a new cycle of capitalist expansion throughout the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

The Russian Revolution and the Rise of Stalinism The Russian Revolution of October 1917 stands out as the greatest event in history. The seizure of […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":709,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-725","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"acf":[],"_hostinger_reach_plugin_has_subscription_block":false,"_hostinger_reach_plugin_is_elementor":false,"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=725"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":733,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/725\/revisions\/733"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}