Chapter 11 – The Bureaucratized Workers’ States and the Tasks of the Transitional Epoch

After years of fierce civil war and foreign invasion, during which the proletarian vanguard was physically destroyed to a large extent, proletarian democracy, the necessary regime for the transition to socialism, could not take hold in Soviet Russia. This was also influenced by the inexperience and errors of the Bolsheviks. Despite this, democracy still persisted in the party’s internal debates, in the soviets and in the factories in the early 1920s. In subsequent years, the dictatorship of the proletariat was increasingly bureaucratized, that is, power was concentrated in the hands of state officials, a layer also composed of many elements without political commitment to socialism. The control of companies and the management of the planned economy were increasingly removed from the workers’ grassroots organizations by all-powerful apparatchiks, and not just as a temporary or emergency measure. Debates within the Bolshevik Party were closed and the bureaucracy became uncontrollable.

Many historical leaders of the Bolshevik Party declared war on this process, starting with Lenin himself. Each in their own time and with different degrees of error, were defeated by the political force of the state bureaucrats, a group or social stratum with their own interests, whose power was consolidated in Stalin’s autocracy in the 1930s. With the Moscow Trials, the Soviet Union’s bureaucracy eliminated the remaining political cadres of the Bolshevik Party that had carried out the 1917 revolution, thus consolidating their regime. This outcome was not only the result of an internal struggle, but was also caused by the context of international defeats and the isolation of the revolution, which led to a swelling of the state apparatus and to a weakening of revolutionary disposition among the workers. As a result, the USSR became what Trotsky called a degenerated workers’ state, with a Bonapartist regime of bureaucratic dictatorship (Stalinism).

World War II was the turning point for the Soviet bureaucratized workers’ state. Despite the beheading of the leadership of the Red Army on the eve of the conflict in a wave of executions and arrests by the Stalinist circle, the USSR emerged victorious due to the heroic struggle of millions of combatants and workers. This destroyed the Nazi beast and restored hope for humanity in the twilight of the 20th century, avoiding a colossal catastrophe. The breathing space obtained with this victory, which reduced the isolation of the USSR, allowed the Soviet workers’ state to survive for another 45 years.

The military victory of the Soviet workers’ state led to the occupation of territories in Asia and Europe, although not all were later claimed in the agreements with the triumphant imperialist powers of the US and the UK. In North Vietnam, North Korea and Eastern Europe, the colonial apparatus and the former Nazi-collaborating bourgeois states were effectively destroyed by the Red Army, paving the way for power to come under its protection and influence. In face of enormous pressure from the workers and oppressed masses on the one hand, and the hostility of the native bourgeoisies in collusion with the imperialist powers on the other, this new power proceeded to expropriate the capitalist class. New workers’ states were built “from above”, with the ruling bureaucracy exercising a prominent role from the beginning, eliminating and preventing at all costs the construction of mass democratic organizations of the working class. This bureaucracy used repressive methods to assure its rule, but it also enjoyed enormous popularity following the defeat of Nazism.

Almost at the same time as the USSR’s military expansion into Eastern Europe took place, indigenous revolutions won in Yugoslavia and Albania, which were freed from the Nazi yoke by militias of local resistance headed by the Communist Parties. Having destroyed the bourgeois state apparatus and with the bulk of the economy already previously nationalized by the Nazi occupation, the native bourgeoisies were extremely fragile. Despite initial attempts to include bourgeois representatives in the new regimes, the Communist Parties quickly took the path of establishing deformed workers’ states (bureaucratized since their formation) as a way of securing their power against counterrevolutionary threats, and working class threats to the bureaucracies. They did so in a context of massive proletarian and peasant mobilization for better living conditions and with great expectations in a socialist transformation.

Socialist revolutions also triumphed shortly afterwards in formerly imperialist-dominated nations. The most impressive revolution was undoubtedly the Chinese revolution, in which the Communist Party of China faced the decrepit regime of the nationalist Kuomintang party after the defeat of Japanese occupation and the withdrawal of Allied troops. Even with very little Soviet support, the troops of the People’s Liberation Army led by the CPC destroyed the Kuomintang regime in 1949, relying heavily on the uprisings of rural workers, as well as poor peasants uprooted from their land, and other elements of the country’s rural labor force. Subsequently, urban workers also played a role, with insurrections and factory occupations, leading to an empirical break with the leadership around Mao Zedong with and their project of building a bourgeois-democratic regime, the “New Democracy”. This ultimately forced them onto the path of effective elimination of capitalism in the most populous nation on the planet.

In 1959, an uprising with similar characteristics triumphed in Cuba, destroying the dictatorial bourgeois regime of Fulgencio Batista. This time, the revolution was led by a movement of petty-bourgeois and democratic-radical origin, the M-26 of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. After almost two years of polarization within the movement, with significant pressure from workers, and after a failed attempt of an American imperialist invasion supported by the native bourgeoisie in the Bay of Pigs, the wing inclined to the expropriation of the capitalist class and an alignment with the USSR triumphed.

The counter-pressure to imperialism embodied by the Soviet state gave petty-bourgeois political tendencies in both China and Cuba an alternative to the “democratic” capitalist route. The proletarian movement was not yet sufficiently organized or prepared to fulfill this task of polarizing the oppressed masses around itself, and the workers’ movement did not have Marxist leadership. But even with wobbly leadership, which at various times was inclined to class collaboration, and which did not have an internationalist perspective of transition to socialism, class struggle can, in exceptional cases, lead to the destruction of the bourgeois state and the creation of a different type of power. Later, in the 1970s, there was an expansion of the deformed workers’ state from North Vietnam to the south of the country, reunifying it, and a revolutionary process in Laos, similar to those described above.

The absence of Marxist proletarian parties in these revolutionary events is no reason to ignore their importance and achievements. However, the workers’ movement must not count on exceptional circumstances or that similar events can be repeated without a revolutionary party. Unlike the revisionists in the Trotskyist movement at the time, we do not see in these processes supposed “new strategic paths” for socialist revolution. In the vast majority of cases, class-collaborationist, reformist or centrist leaders at the head of the workers’ movement drown them into frustration, betrayal or demoralization, leading to defeat and into one or another variant of the capitalist regime.

In the cases where revolutions did in fact triumph the elements of bureaucratic deformation make them far from models. In the countries where workers’ states were established, it was still crucial to build Marxist parties, so that they could represent the interests of workers against the ruling bureaucratic elite. This layer acts under the pressure of workers at times and of imperialism at others, but always lacks commitment to the process of transition to socialism, both in its political prerequisites (proletarian democracy), as well as material ones (democratic economic planning and the struggle for the victory of the revolution worldwide).

It was the accumulation of the contradictions of the bureaucratic regime, added to the tremendous imperialist pressure and the delay of the international revolution which led to counterrevolutions in Eastern Europe (1989-90) and the Soviet Union (1991). Such processes were not the result of imperialist invasions, but of the tendencies towards capitalist restoration within the countries, especially pro-capitalist wings in the governing circles of the bureaucracy, eager to become individual proprietors. These events were huge defeats for the workers’ movement across the world.

The bureaucratized workers’ states that still exist today are China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam and Laos. We unconditionally defend these states and their right to defend themselves against imperialist threats, coups and attacks. We denounce the lies and defamation campaigns of the capitalist media monopolies against these countries. We are also opposed to economic sanctions and blockades which weaken their economies and starve and deprive their peoples.

The governing bureaucracies have undergone different ideological realignments and correlations of forces with imperialism over the years. Experience has shown the impossibility of managing an industrialized economy efficiently with bureaucratic planning alone. Two possibilities emerge from this: incorporating workers into the administration (democratic planning), which conflicts with the political monopoly of the bureaucracy; or accepting the role of the market as a means of allocating investment. Currently, this second road has been taken, supported by the increase in economic pressure from the world bourgeoisie for openings after the fall of the USSR. It led to the creation of a (non-dominant) capitalist sector in the economies of these countries, with which the state has a relation of acceptance and growing dependence. The bureaucratic Bonapartism of these regimes was based from the beginning on mediation between the pressures of the workers and the international bourgeoisie. The creation of native bourgeoisies with social influence did not decisively destroy this balance, but placed it in increasing instability.

We reject the claims that China, Cuba, etc. have become capitalist dictatorships (or even an imperialist power in the case of China) after the economic reforms of the last decades. But we also criticize those who minimize the enormous risks and inequalities created by these reforms and who support the direction taken by the ruling Communist Parties. The statements by the Chinese government, for example, that claim to be “building socialism”, are totally deceptive. If workers do not take the helm of these transitional societies, they will increasingly suffer the risk of counterrevolutions that will re-establish the bourgeois state and realize the full restoration of the capitalist mode of production. The leaders of the Communist Party of China have come up with a new doctrine by proclaiming the perfect harmony between market economy and collectivized state property, so-called “market socialism with Chinese characteristics”. Such an aberration will have a concrete end if it is not defeated in time: the ruin of what remains of the social achievements of the Chinese revolution, leading to a brutal worsening of the workers’ living conditions.

The question of capitalist counterrevolution is posed in the remaining workers’ states, but has not yet been resolved by history. It tends to acquire a clearer shape as economic and social crises arise in these countries. This is especially true in China, where the immensity of the contradictions is only possible due to high rates of economic growth, waiting for moment of crisis to explode with full force. Two possible paths exist: to move ahead towards proletarian democracy based on workers’ councils, or to retreat into an authoritarian bourgeois regime, even if it seeks a “democratic” facade at first. The question of the future Chinese crisis is central to the global revolution and revolutionaries must be able to develop a correct perspective on it.

In the remaining bureaucratized workers’ states, it is necessary to establish proletarian democracies, that is, a political power based on workers’ councils, from which a system of regional and national management bodies is built. The elected representatives of these bodies will be revocable at all times by the proletarian organizations that appointed them, so that they are politically subordinate to the working class and are not, as is the bureaucracy in these countries today, a parasitic layer with enormous autonomy.

Workers’ organizations must review the economy from top to bottom, which in the current circumstances includes renationalizing a large part of private industry and commerce, and expropriating capitalist investments without compensation. They must also carry out a review of the state sector (which is still the fundamental component of the economy) in the interest of the real producers – the workers – eliminating the parasitism of bureaucracy. One of the most immediate effects will be a severe reduction of social inequality.

Marxists fight for the end of all privileges to the ruling bureaucracy. Each state official must receive only the average salary of a worker. Costs for official functions will be payed by the workers’ state, but officials must be prevented from using positions for personal gain. The wealth accumulated by the bureaucrats must be immediately confiscated, unveiling their secrecy.

It is necessary to immediately halt the use of the police apparatus against the movements of workers and the youth who are fighting capitalist restoration and bureaucratic oppression. We want the corrupt despots who contributed to the growth of inequalities and the advance of capitalist relations to face an independent trial by the workers’ organizations. This struggle must lead to the expansion of democratic rights for the working class and its organizations, but not for the bourgeoisie and political groups acting directly under its interest. The newspapers, websites and books of Marxists, militant workers, radical student circles and leftist activists must have full freedom of expression. Full freedom of organization for unions and political parties committed to the defense of the revolution and of its social achievements!

We also want the involvement of the workers’ states in the international arena in favor of proletarian and anti-imperialist struggles, actively supporting them materially and raising a program based on the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat. No country can reach socialism on its own – revolutionary victory is necessary in several countries, including imperialist centers. For the effective fulfillment of this internationalist role, and of all the other tasks presented here, the rise of a proletarian leadership is necessary – a political revolution of the workers that removes the governing bureaucratic clique from power through an insurrection and subordinates the political-administrative apparatus to working-class organs.

In face of any attempts at counter-revolution coming from imperialists, from native bourgeois forces, from sections of the bureaucracy or even a combination of these elements, we call workers to stand up for the defense of the workers’ states by all available means. Workers in other countries must carry out movements in solidarity, especially those workers in the capitalist countries that are participating in counter-revolutionary attempts. In the event that certain groups of the bureaucracy also oppose the counterrevolutionary forces (even for their own interests), we would defend a practical unity of action on this issue, without at any time abandoning the workers’ political independence and our criticisms of the bureaucracy.

Down with the bureaucratic elite! Long live proletarian democracy! Long live the international socialist revolution!