Women Who Won The Right to Vote

The Suffragist Movement

by Joyce Cowley

Joyce Cowley was one of the original signers of the June 1962 “In Defence of the Revolutionary Program”, the founding statement of the Revolutionary Tendency within the US Socialist Workers Party.

From Fourth International, Vol.16 No.2, Spring 1955, pp.48-56. Copied from  http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/fi/vol16/no02/cowley.html ]

WOMEN got the vote in the United States in 1920. The amendment to the Constitution granting women that right was the climax of a struggle it hat began almost a hundred years earlier. Suffrage leaders were ridiculed and persecuted while they were alive. Today they are either forgotten or contemptuously referred to as disappointed old maids who hated men. This concept of the woman’s rights movement as a war against men by sexually frustrated women is even accepted by some modern psychiatrists. But it is historically inaccurate and a great injustice to a number of truly remarkable women.

The status of women in society began to change with the breakdown of feudalism and the rise of capitalism. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England, women first entered trades. They were frequently partners in the husband’s business; widows and daughters carried on the family business. There are records of women pawnbrokers, stationers, booksellers, contractors and even shipowners. In the seventeenth century there were three women to every man in the woolen industry and many women were employed in the silk industry. They also worked in the fields and the agricultural labor of women was an important factor in the new American colonies.

The “woman question” was discussed as early as the Elizabethan period but this talk did not develop into an organized movement. It was in 1792 that Mary Wollstonecroft wrote the Vindication of the Rights of Womanwhich, historically, marks the conscious beginning of the struggle for woman’s rights. This book was a direct reflection of Mary Wollstonecroft’s sympathies with the French and American revolutions, a demand that woman’s rights be included in the rights of man for which the revolutionists were fighting.

It was in America, not England, that the woman question first developed into an organized movement rather than a subject of discussion in literary circles. This reflects the more advanced position of women in the American colonies, which was strikingly different from that of women in Europe. The laws of the colonies, modeled on those of England, gave women few legal rights. But the realities of pioneer life, particularly the scarcity of women and the appreciation of their skills, meant that they actually had a great deal of responsibility, engaged in numerous occupations that were supposedly “masculine” and consequently enjoyed rights and privileges, and a degree of freedom, unknown to women in England.

The Puritan concept of work further influenced the general attitude towards women’s activities. In their moral code, work was something you could never get too much of and they did not disapprove of women working, on the contrary they encouraged it. It made no difference whether the woman was married or not; the more she worked the better, and the less likely she was to succumb to the temptations of the devil.

In the colonial period women could vote, and sometimes did vote, as the right to vote was based on ownership of property and not on sex. They were gradually disfranchised by laws prohibiting women from voting – in Virginia in 1699, New York 1777, Massachusetts 1780, New Hampshire 1784 and New Jersey 1807.

At that time men engaged in agriculture and women in home manufacture. Women made most of the products used by the colonists that were not imported. The preponderance of women in the earliest factories in the United States is due largely to the fact that their work was transferred from the home to the factory. This was particularly true of the first major industry, the spinning and weaving of cotton, and accounts for the prominent role of women in early labor struggles, especially the fight of cotton-mill workers for the ten-hour day.

The woman’s rights movement, however, did not grow out of the trade-union struggles of women. It was never closely associated with trade-union activities nor particularly interested in the problems of working women. This may seem contradictory unless you keep in mind that the woman’s movement was primarily a fight for legal, not economic rights. The legal battle of the suffragists has been won, but in the Twentieth century women still face severe discrimination in wages and job opportunities.

The woman’s rights movement did spring directly from the abolitionist movement. Every prominent fighter for woman’s rights was first an abolitionist; and the two movements were closely allied for fifty years, although the “woman question” frequently caused division in the abolitionist ranks, as the Negro cause became more respectable and more popular than that of women.

Just how did the anti-slavery movement give birth to the struggle for woman’s rights? There is a simple explanation for what may seem at first a surprising evolution. Women who started out to plead for the slave found they were not allowed to plead. They were ridiculed when they appeared on a speakers’ platform, they were not accepted as delegates when they attended anti-slavery conventions. Within a short time, most of the women prominent in abolitionist circles spoke up for their own rights, too, although a formal organization advocating complete legal equality and suffrage was not formed for another twenty years.

The Early Leaders

A number of misconceptions about the pioneers for woman’s rights are prevalent. In the first place, it is assumed that they were all women – women united in a war against men. The truth is men were in the forefront of the struggle for woman’s lights, notably such spokesmen as William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass and Wendell Phillips. They were attacked even more viciously than the women and labelled “hermaphrodites” and “Aunt Nancy men.”

Furthermore, none of the women in this movement were exclusively pre-occupied with sex equality and women’s problems. They were, as I said, invariably abolitionists and frequently advocated a great many other reforms – the Utopian variety of socialism, trade unions, atheism, temperance, free love, birth control and easier divorce. Many of these causes were not too popular in the early part of the last century and this accounts to some extent for the common opinion that these women were freaks and probably immoral.

It is not true that most of the feminist leaders were either libertines or embittered virgins. With the exception of Susan B. Anthony, the best known – Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Carrie Chapman Catt – were happily married. Mrs. Mott and Mrs. Stanton, founders of the movement, were mothers of large families. They didnot marry weak husbands who were dominated by their crusading wives. The husbands were generally men of outstanding ability and achievement, enthusiastic supporters of the woman’s cause. The only reason they were to some extent overshadowed by their wives was that the unusual activities of the wives attracted a good deal of attention.

Frances Wright was probably the first woman to speak publicly in this country and to advocate woman’s rights. She was Scotch, coming to America in 1818. Brilliant and courageous, she was also one of the extremists, exactly the type who were slandered and laughed at but never ignored. Among numerous other activities, she founded a colony primarily intended to set an example of how to free slaves and give them economic independence. But she was an opponent of marriage and her colony became more famous for its open repudiation of this institution than for any service to the Negro cause.

Opposition to marriage was common among the early advocates of freedom for women. They saw in it – quite correctly, in my opinion – an institution designed for the subjugation of their sex. In those days a married woman had no right to own property, her wages belonged to her husband and so did her children. The simplest way to avoid these evils was to stay single.

In spite of their audacity, these women frequently surrendered to local pressure. Mary Wollstonecroft gave birth to one illegitimate child; but when she became pregnant a second time by another lover, she found the struggle too difficult and married him. Frances Wright and her sister both married for the same reason – they were pregnant.

The sex question explains a lot about the notoriety associated with the first feminist leaders. As the movement grew and became more respectable, it attempted to dissociate itself from advocacy of “free love,” but was never completely successful.

About the same time that Frances Wright founded her well-publicized colony, Lucretia Mott became a Quaker minister. She is one of the most striking personalities in the woman’s rights movement. Of unusual intellect and breadth of vision, she studied intensively and was an active lecturer and organizer for fifty years. She supported trade unions when they were almost unknown and generally illegal, which was rare among abolitionist leaders, who seemed to think there was some kind of conflict between the two movements. She also raised six children and apparently enjoyed domestic activities like cooking and sewing, although you wonder as you read her biography how she found time for them.

She was at the meeting held in Philadelphia in 1833 where the first anti-slavery group was organized and from which the American Anti-Slavery Society developed. Although she spoke several times during the convention and played an influential role, it did not occur to her to sign the Declaration that was adopted. Samuel May, in his reminiscences, wrote: “Men were so blind, so obtuse, they did not recognize the women guests as members of the convention.”

Lucretia’s next step was to form a Women’s Anti-Slavery Society, but the women were so ignorant of parliamentary procedure that they found it necessary to get a man to chair the meeting – James McCrummel, an educated Negro. The brazen conduct of women in forming this society was attacked by clergymen as an “act of flagrant sedition against God.” While women were clothing and feeding the Negro on his way to Canada, “clergymien huddled in churches and wrung their hands, forecasting the doom of the American home and the good old traditions.”

Five years after the Women’s Anti-Slavery Society was organized, it held a convention in Pennsylvania Hall, a public building recently dedicated to “liberty and the rights of man.” While the delegates conducted their business, a mob surrounded the hall. Stones were thrown at the windows, breaking pane after pane, and vitriol was hurled through the gaping holes, while a cry rose, “Burn the hall!” Two or three hours after the women vacated the hall, it went up in flames.

That night Philadelphia was in an uproar. The mayor wanted to stop abolitionist activities and police protection was non-existent. The mob headed for the home of James and Lucretia Mott. There was a period of tense waiting inside the house while the yells and turmoil in the street grew closer. But as the minutes passed, the noise seemed to recede and gradually fade into the distance. The next day they learned that a friend had joined the mob and when they were within a block of the house, he flourished a stick and cried: “On to the Motts!” then led them up a succession of wrong streets. This was one of many similar incidents for Lucretia Mott, and her calm composure in a riot became legendary.

Sarah and Angelina Grimke, aristocratic women from the South, were among the earliest speakers and organizers of the abolitionist movement. I came across an interesting quotation from a speech by Angelina Grimke delivered before a Massachusetts legislative committee in 1832:

“As a moral being I feel I owe it to the slave and the master, to my countrymen and to the world, to do all that I can to overturn a system of complicated crimes built upon the broken hearts and prostrate bodies of my countrymen in chains and cemented by the blood, sweat and tears of my sisters in bond.”

Evidently Churchill knew a good phrase when he saw it.

Begin Organizing

Factional struggles inside the abolitionist movement led Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to call a convention for woman’s rights in 1848.

Eight years earlier, a fight had taken place over the election of a woman to a business committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society. The vote was favorable to the candidate, Abby Kelly; and the anti-woman group seceded from the organization and formed their own anti-slavery society. A world-wide anti-slavery convention had been called in London. Purged of its reactionary elements, the American Anti-Slavery Society elected Lucretia and two other women to their executive committee and chose her and Charles Remond, a Negro, as delegates to the London convention. Lucretia also headed the delegation from the Women’s Anti-Slavery Society.

Another delegation – one hundred per cent male, of course – was sent by the newly formed organization. In London every effort was made to keep peace by persuading the women delegates to withhold their credentials, but Lucretia insisted that the responsibility for rejection must rest with the convention.

Wendell Phillips opened the fight on the convention floor by proposing that all persons with credentials be seated. He pointed out that the convention’s invitation had been addressed to all friends of the slave and Massachusetts had interpreted this to mean men and women. Clergymen at the convention were particularly eloquent in their opposition to seating women. “Learned Doctors of Divinity raced about the convention hall Bible in hand, quoting words of scripture and waving their fists beneath the noses of disputing, brethren who did not know woman’s place.”

The reactionaries won. Women were admitted as guests only and seated behind a curtain which screened them from public gaze. Garrison, the greatest figure in the abolitionist world, was scheduled to be the main speaker. On his arrival he climbed the stairs to the women’s balcony, sat beside Lucretia behind the curtain, and remained there until the close of the convention.

It was on this trip to England that Lucretia met Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a young bride of one of the delegates. It was here that they decided to start a crusade for woman’s rights on their return to America, although eight years passed before they were able to carry out their plans and call the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848.

This Equal Rights Convention, the first ever held in any country, was the official beginning of the suffrage struggle. The first day of the convention had been advertised as open to women only. When the women arrived at the Unitarian church they found they were locked out. A young professor climbed through a window and opened the door for them. On the spot, they decided to admit men, which turned out to be a fortunate decision for the suffrage cause.

James Mott was chairman of the meeting, as the women were still timid and did not know too much about parliamentary procedure. The Declaration of Sentiments adopted by the convention was signed by 68 women and 32 men. The resolution called for complete equality in marriage, equal rights in property, wages and custody of children, the right to make contracts, to sue and be sued, to testify in court – and to vote.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton introduced the suffrage amendment. It was opposed by Lucretia Mott because she considered it too radical and thought it would arouse public antagonism and ridicule. Frederick Douglass seconded Mrs. Stanton’s motion and made one of the most eloquent speeches in history for woman’s equality and her right to vote. His speech inspired the women to overcome their hesitation and pass the suffrage resolution. Within a year a National Woman’s Rights Association was organized and state and national conventions were held regularly.

Persecution and Abuse

The woman’s movement was met with a storm of abuse, particularly from the clergy, although a great many men just considered it funny. Within a few years, as it gained momentum, it met more serious opposition. Opponents of suffrage were divided as to whether the population would decrease because women were unsexed or illegitimately increase because of the practice of free love.

A typical example of the anti-suffrage point of view appears in a book by Dr. L.P. Brockett, quoted at some length in Hare’s biography of Lucretia Mott. It gives a picture of just what would happen if women were allowed to vote and declares it will be a gala day for the prostitutes, as “modest refined Christian women” would refuse to go to the polls in such company. Hare paraphrases the book:

“What a lesson of evil would be taught children on that day. Imagine the innocent offspring, clutching its mother as it stands in the presence of poor wretches, bedizened in gaudy finery, with bold, brazen faces, many of them half or wholly drunk and uttering with loud laughter, horrible oaths and ribald and obscene jests! What an impression the child would receive! And if the mother attempted to tell her daughter that these were bad women, the child might query: ‘But mother, they are going to vote. If they were so very bad, would they have the same right to vote that you and other ladies have?’ Unable to answer so precocious a question, the ‘modest, refined Christian mother’ would scurry home, leaving the polls to her male representatives and the women of the underworld.”

“To drive home the lesson,” says Hare, “the book is illustrated with a picture showing the refined woman at the polls completely surrounded by a vicious group of derelicts of both sexes. The picture vividly warns any woman who is on the verge of becoming a follower of Lucretia Mott, the type of men and women with whom she must associate if she votes. It also discloses the unintentional fact that the voting male is the uncouth immigrant, the bowery heeler, and the pimp; the same male hailed by opponents of female rights as woman’s natural representative in affairs of government. One glance at the men in the picture convinces the reader that woman’s benign influence in the home had gone awry, despite this best chosen argument of the anti-suffragettes.”

Dr. Brockett also predicts that some disastrous changes will occur in the appearance of women:

“The blush of innocence, the timid, half-frightened expression which is, to all right-thinking men a higher charm than the most perfect self-conscious beauty, will disappear and in place of it we shall have hard, self-reliant bold faces, and in which all the loveliness will have faded, and naught remain save the look of power and talent.”

The suffrage workers encountered additional ridicule at this time due to the introduction of the Bloomer costume. It was rather strange in appearance, consisting of trousers partly concealed by a full skirt that fell six inches below the knees. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone and Susan B. Anthony probably suffered greater martyrdom, because of this costume than for any other phase of their crusade, and after a few years they discontinued wearing it, feeling that it did more harm than good. Nevertheless, the outfit did give much greater freedom of action and was adopted by many farm women of the period and recommended by doctors for use in sanitariums. It was the first step toward the freedom of the modern dress.

Mrs. Stanton became one of the most active suffrage leaders and it was in this period that her life-long collaboration with Susan B. Anthony began. She was the mother of five boys and two girls, and whenever her schedule of lectures, conventions and meetings became too heavy, she would threaten to interrupt it by having another baby. Lucy Stone, now best known as the woman who insisted on keeping her maiden name, also became prominent in the 1850s. Lucy’s use of her own name grew out of her original opposition to marriage. When she did marry, the unusual ceremony attracted considerable comment, none of it favorable. She and Henry Blackwell opened the wedding with a statement:

”While we acknowledge our mutual affection by publicly assuming the relation of man and wife, yet in justice to ourselves and a great principle, we deem it a duty to declare that this act on our part implies no sanction of, nor promise of voluntary obedience to, such of the present laws of marriage as refuse to recognize the wife as an independent, rational being while they confer upon the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority, investing him with legal powers which no honorable man would exercise and no man should possess. We protest especially against the laws which give the husband:

“1. The custody of the wife’s person.

“2. The exclusive control and guardianship of their children.

“3. The sole ownership of her personal property and use of her real estate, unless previously settled upon her, or placed in the hands of trustees as in the case of minors, lunatics and idiots.

“4. The absolute right to the product of her industry.”

They continued with the regular marriage ceremony, omitting the word “obey,” but there was a popular feeling, especially since Lucy kept her own name, that they were not really married.

Many Negro women like Harriet Tubman, the extraordinary leader of the underground railway, and Sojourner Truth, also played an active role in the woman’s rights movement. Tubman is reported to have been an amazingly eloquent speaker, but for reasons of personal safety the speeches were rarely recorded.

Not a Soft Occupation

Even a bare outline of the lives of these early women leaders arouses admiration. Lecturing for woman’s rights was not exactly a soft occupation. Travelling was pretty rough then and the reception was likely to be rough, too. These women kept going at a remarkable pace in spite of large families and heavy domestic responsibilities.

Mrs. Stanton wrote most of her speeches after midnight while the children were sleeping – I don’t know when she slept. Most of the women continued their work without let-up even when they were in their sixties and seventies. Lucretia Mott was 83 when she spoke at the 25th anniversary of the suffrage association. They were middle-class women but many of them faced economic hardships. Lucy Stone went to Oberlin College – the first to admit women – and worked her way through, sweeping and washing dishes at three cents an hour. Her life as an abolitionist and woman’s rights speaker was not exactly a cinch either. She lived in a garret in Boston, sleeping three in a bed with the landlady’s daughters for six and one-fourth cents a night. Constance Burnett in Five for Freedom describes a fairly typical meeting at which she spoke. (She was the outstanding orator of the woman’s movement, a real spellbinder.)

“Lucy posted her own meetings, hammering her signs on trees with tacks carried in her reticule and stones from the road. The first poster usually drew an army of young hoodlums who followed her up and down streets, taunting, flinging small missiles and pulling down her notices as soon as her back was turned …

“For her ability to remain unperturbed through hoots, jeers and murderous assault, she had few equals. It was a common thing for her to face a rain of spitballs as soon ae she stepped before an audience. Once a hymn book was flung at her head with such force it almost stunned her. On another night, in midwinter, icy water was trained on her from a hose thrust through a window. Lucy calmly reached for her shawl, wrapped it around her shoulders and went on talking.

“At an open air anti-slavery meeting on Cape Cod, the temper of the crowd seemed so dangerous that all the speakers, one after the other, vanished hastily from the platform. The only two left were Lucy and Abby Kelly’s husband, Stephen Foster, a firebrand abolitionist of the same mettle from New Hampshire.

“Before either of them could get to speak, Lucy saw the mob begin its advance. ‘They’re coming, Stephen. You’d better run for it,’ she warned him hurriedly.

“Stephen no more than Lucy ever ran from danger. ‘What about you?’ he protested, and with that the surging, yelling mass was upon them. Overpowered, Foster disappeared in the melée, and Lucy, suddenly deserted, looked up into the face of a towering ruffian with a club.

“‘This gentleman will take care of me,’ she suggested sweetly, taking his arm, and too astonished for words, he complied. Reasoning calmly with him as he steered her out of the violence, she won his reluctant admiration and his consent to let her finish her speech. The platform was demolished by then, but he conducted her to a tree stump, rounded up the rest of the ‘gentlemen’ and preserved order with raised club until she was through talking. Lucy gave the whole gang a piece of her mind, not neglecting to collect twenty dollars from them to replace Stephen Foster’s coat, which in their gentlemanly exuberance they had split in two.”

The Alliance Ends

During the Civil War there was little activity in the woman’s movement. All of the women were devoted to the abolitionist cause and enthusiastically entered into various types of war work. But the end of the war brought the end of the fifty-year alliance between the woman’s cause and the Negro movement.

The split took place when Negro men got the vote. The Republican Party and the Negro leaders were both pressing for passage of the 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution to enfranchise Negro men. The Republicans were not particularly interested in Negro rights but they wanted votes. The Democrats, who opposed the Negro vote, now gave lip service to woman suffrage in order to annoy the Republicans and hypocritically charge them with hypocrisy.

Negro leaders argued that this was the “Negro’s hour” and it was a matter of practical politics to push through the vote for Negro men while it had a chance of ratification. Adding woman suffrage to the amendment would inevitably result in its defeat. Negro and abolitionist leaders insisted that they were devoted to the woman’s cause and would continue to fight for universal suffrage after Negro men got the vote.

Many of the women were embittered by what they considered a sell-out. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in an argument with Wendell Phillips, said: “May I ask just one question, based on the apparent opposition in which you place the Negro and woman? Do you believe the African race is composed entirely of males?”

For fifty years these women had fought for the abolitionist cause and they felt that they had won the right to be included in the suffrage amendment. They would not agree to being left out on grounds of political expediency. They got little support and the 15th amendment was passed, giving the vote to Negro men only.

At the American Equal Rights Association convention in 1869, a formal split occurred; with the majority, the more conservative grouping, supporting the Boston abolitionist wing. Among the majority were Julia Ward Howe and Lucy Stone, who formed the American Woman Suffrage Association. The radical minority, led by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, organized the National Woman Rights Association. For twenty years these two groups remained separate.

As I have indicated, the principal cause of the split was the division of opinion over supporting Negro suffrage while the question of woman suffrage was postponed. I’ve read some eloquent statements on both sides of this argument. Negro leaders like Frederick Douglass, the first man to speak up for woman suffrage in this country, felt that the Negro cause was jeopardized by the women who selfishly advanced their own demands instead of waiting until it was more “practtical” to advocate suffrage for women, too. Women felt this attitude was a great injustice on the part of the abolitionists, showing ingratitude to the women who had fought so long and so courageously for the Negro cause.

In Lucretia Mott’s biography there is a description of the Centennial Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence:

“The newly enfranchised citizens appreciated what had been done for them – by their sex. Women on the sidewalks watched them carry banner after banner emblazoned with the names of Garrison or Phillips or Douglass. They searched in vain for a tribute to Lucretia Mott, or the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or any other woman of the anti-slavery conflict.”

Both the Negro and the woman’s movement were greatly weakened by the split in their ranks and it was another fifty yeairsi before women got the vote. In several accounts of this split written by men in sympathy with the Negro side of the argument, the women were held responsible for the delay because extremists in their ranks insisted prematurely on suffrage.

Historically there is not much point in speculating about what would have happened if the Negroes and women had stuck together – how long this would have delayed Negro suffrage (if at all) – and whether or not woman suffrage would have been won at an earlier date. Most Negro men were enfranchised in name only, and even to this day millions have not been able to exercise their constitutional right to vote. Personally I can’t help sympathizing with the women who felt they had been deserted and betrayed. It’s unfortunate that the reform movement was split as a result but I’m not sure this was entirely the fault of a few women “radicals.” There were heterogeneous elements in the Equal Rights Association, many of whom felt that their cause, Negro emancipation and enfranchisement, had been won, and it is probable that this conservative element would have broken away in any case.

The history of the woman’s movement from, this point on, divorced from the other reform struggles for which the women originally fought, becomes a bit dull. It is more bourgeois in character, exclusively concerned as it is with the vote.

The Struggle for the Vote

Immediately after the passage of the 15th amendment, Susan B. Anthony decided to test the new law, which was worded in such a way that it might possibly be construed to include women. In Rochester, N.Y., she and twelve other women armed with a copy of the Constitution demanded the right to vote. The election inspectors were so startled by this move that the women were allowed to cast ballots. They were promptly arrested for voting illegally. Susan was fined $100. She refused to pay the fine, hoping that she would be imprisoned and the case could be carried to the Supreme Court. But the judge was a shrewd politician and did not order her arrest. The fine has not yet been paid.

In the twenty-five years following the Equal Rights Convention of 1848, women achieved many of their original demands. More and more states passed laws giving married women the right to custody of their children, to disposal of their wages and their property.

Curiously enough, the first and most successful advocates of these laws were men whose interests were threatened. In upstate New York wealthy Dutch fathers-in-law became indignant when their daughters’ property was squandered by spendthrift husbands. The Married Women’s Property Bill was passed largely through their influence. In one of the Southern states a similar bill was introduced by a man who wanted to marry a wealthy widow. Heavily in debt himself, he knew her property could be attached to pay his debts if they got married. When the bill passed she could keep her property and they could both live comfortably on her income.

The Territory of Wyoming was the first to give women the vote in 1869; Utah followed the next year; Colorado and Idaho a little later. Pioneers in the West, accustomed to women who could load a gun, ride a horse and run a homestead as competently as a man, were more easily persuaded than Eastern men that women are not frail or feeble-minded. Twenty years later when Wyoming applied for statehood, the fact that women voted there became a political issue. Wyoming declared: “We will remain out of the union 100 years rather than come in without woman suffrage.”

Susan B. Anthony continued to campaign for another thirty years. Her final speech to a Woman’s Rights Convention was made in 1904 when she was 86 years old. An incident reported in Five for Freedom gives some idea of her remarkable energy:

“During this year Susan delivered 171 lectures, besides hundreds of impromptu talks. She traveled ceaselessly. The journey home through the Rockies in January became rugged when her train ran into mountainous drifts. Tracks had been recently laid, breakdowns were frequent and waits interminable. Passengers had nothing to eat but the cold food they had the foresight to bring. Many nights were spent sitting bolt upright.

“Susan did get back finally, in time for the annual convention of her National Woman Suffrage Association in the capital.

“‘You must be tired,’ they greeted her in Washington.

“‘Why, what should make me tired?’ asked Susan. ‘I haven’t been doing anything for two weeks.’

“The restfulness of transcontinental rail trips in the 1870s was not apparent to others.”

By 1900 the suffrage movement had become more powerful, but so had the opposition. The liquor interests, afraid that women would vote for prohibition, poured millions of dollars into campaigns to defeat woman suffrage. In state after state women lost out when the suffrage question came to a popular vote. The following circular published in Portland, Ore., is an example of how the liquor crowd worked:

“It will take 50,000 votes to defeat woman suffrage. There are 2,000 retailers in Oregon. That means that every retailer must himself bring in twenty-five votes on election day.

“Every retailer can get twenty-five votes. Besides his employees, he has his grocer, his butcher, his landlord, his laundryman and every person he does business, with. If every man in the business will do this, we will win.

“We enclose twenty-five ballot tickets showing how to vote.

“We also enclose a postal card addressed to this Association. If you will personally take twenty-five friendly voters to the polls on election day and give each one a ticket showing how to vote, please mail the postal card back to us at once. You need not sign the card. Every card has a number and we will know who sent it in.

“Let us all pull together and let us all work. Let us each get twenty-five votes.”

This was signed by the Brewers and Wholesale Liquor Dealers Association. In this case the liquor interests were successful and woman suffrage was defeated. In spite of such defeats, the suffrage cause won more and more mass support. Jesse Lynch Williams gives a description of a suffrage parade which he watched from the window of a Fifth Avenue club:

“It was Saturday afternoon and the members had crowded behind the windows to witness the show. They were laughing and exchanging the kind of jokes you would expect. When the head of the procession came opposite them, they burst into laughing and as the procession swept past, laughed long and loud. But the women continued to pour by. The laughter began to weaken, became spasmodic. The parade went on and on. Finally there was only the occasional sound of the clink of ice in the glasses. Hours passed. Then someone broke the silence. ‘Well boys,’ he said, ‘I guess they mean it!’”

In Albany, a representative from New York City said that not five women in his district endorsed woman suffrage. He was handed a petition signed by 189 women in his own block.

Turn to Militant Tactics

The split following the Civil War lasted twenty years. In 1890 the two suffrage organizations united as the National American Woman Suffrage Association. But in 1913 the movement split again, this time over the question of militant tactics imported from Great Britain.

The British suffragists started later than the American but once they got going, they really went to town. The militant suffragist movement in England, organized by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters in 1905, battled cops and hounded public officials. They chained themselves to posts or iron grillwork of public buildings and went on talking while the police sawed them loose. They climbed on rafters above Parliament and lay there for hours so that they could speak out at any opportune moment. Hundreds were arrested. In jail they continued to battle prison officials, went on hunger strikes, were subjected to forcible feeding.

A book written by one of Mrs. Pankhurst’s daughters gives a colorful glimpse of the lively character of their protest. A poster, reproduced in the book, reads: “Votes for Women – Men and women, help the Suffragettes to rush the House of Commons, on Tuesday evening, the 13th of October.” (In the subsequent trial there was a good deal of debate as to just what the word “rush” meant.)

The title of Chapter 20, June and July 1909, is followed by a brief summary:

“Attempt to insist on the constitutional right of petition as secured by the Bill of Rights, arrest of Mrs. Pankhurst and the Hon. Mrs. Haverfield, Miss Wallace Dunlop and the hunger strike, 14 hunger strikers in punishment cells. Mr. Gladstone charges Miss Garnett with having bitten a wardress.”

Chapter 21, July to September 1909, gives this summary:

“Mr. Lloyd George at Lime House, 12 women sent to prison, another strike, hunger strikers at Exeter Gaol, Mrs, Leigh on the roof at Liverpool, Liverpool hunger strikers,” etc. Some of the pictures have captions like “Lady Constance Lytton before she threw the stone at New Castle.” “Jessie Kenny as she tried to gain admittance to Mr. Asquith’s meeting disguised as telegraph boy.”

Two American women, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, took part in the English demonstrations, were imprisoned and went on hunger strikes. They returned to this country determined to introduce some new methods into the now rather conventional woman’s movement.

In 1913 Miss Paul organized a suffrage parade in Washington, D.C. Some 8,000 women marched down Pennsylvania Avenue. As the procession approached the White House, it was blocked by hostile crowds. “Women were spit upon, slapped in the face, tripped up, pelted with burning cigar stubs, insulted by jeers and obscene language.” Troops had to be brought from Fort Meyer. Afterwards the suffragists forced a Congressional inquiry and the chief of police lost his job.

Alice Paul concentrated on passing a federal amendment which the older suffragists had more or less shelved while they fought local battles from state to state. Miss Paul followed the political tactics of the English movement. This was to hold the party in power responsible for the delay in granting woman suffrage and to campaign against all candidates of that party regardless of whether or not they supported suffrage as individuals. By that time women had the vote in a number of states and Miss Paul systematically campaigned against all candidates of the Democratic Party, in power at the time.

Conservative elements in the suffrage movement did not accept this tactic and Miss Paul and others were expelled in 1913. They formed a new organization which took the name National Woman’s Party in 1916. This organization also followed the British policy of putting a lot of pressure on top officials. (It got so that the British Prime Minister and cabinet officials were afraid to speak in public and only appeared at bazaars and social affairs.) To get favorable action from Wilson, who saw numerous delegations but kept stalling, a picket line was thrown around the White House in January, 1917. It continued day after day. On Inauguration Day, in a heavy rain, 1,000 pickets circled the White House four times.

In April, war was declared but the picketing continued. In June patriotic mobs began to tear down their banners and maul the pickets. On June 22 police started arresting the women, who refused to pay their fines. Hundreds were sent to prison, including Lucy Burns and Alice Paul. A history of the National Woman’s Party gives some details as to how they were treated:

“Instantly the room was in havoc. The guards from the male prison fell upon us. I saw Miss Lincoln, a slight young; girl, thrown to the floor. Mrs. Nolan, a delicate old lady of seventy-three, was mastered by two men … Whittaker (the Superintendent) in the center of the room directed the whole attack, inciting the guards to every brutality. Two men brought in Dorothy Day, twisting her arms above her head. Suddenly they lifted her and brought her body down twice over the back of an iron bench … The bed broke Mrs. Nolan’s fall, but Mrs. Cosu hit the wall. They had been there a few minutes when Mrs, Lewis, all doubled over like a sack of flour, was thrown in. Her head struck the iron bed and she fell to the floor senseless.”

As for Lucy Burns, “They handcuffed her wrists and fastened the handcuffs over her head to the cell door.”

Alice Paul’s hunger strike lasted twenty-two days. The authorities insisted on an examination of her mental condition. The doctor reported: “This is a spirit like Joan of Arc and it’s useless to try to change it. She will die but she will never give up.”

In the meantime, speakers of the National Woman’s Party were arousing the whole country against the treatment of the prisoners. Suddenly, on March 3, they were released. They were promised action on the suffrage amendment; but the following June, when Congress continued to stall, they started picketing again. Soon they were back in jail and on their hunger strikes.

The Senate finally voted on the amendment. It lost by two votes. The women transferred their pickets to the Senate.

Alice Paul started a “watch fire” in an urn in front of the White House. Every time President Wilson made a speech abroad that referred to freedom even in a passing phrase, a copy of the speech was burned in the “watch fire.” Invariably, police arrested the women who burned the speech. Evidently reports reaching Europe of the “watch fire” embarrassed the President, for he cabled two Senators asking them to support the suffrage amendment.

In February, 1919, the Senate voted again and the amendment lost by one vote. In June it was finally passed. It still had to be ratified by the states and this meant a state-to-state struggle lasting another year. The women of the United States voted in the presidential elections of 1920.

I seem to have given most of the credit for final passage of this law to the National Woman’s Party. The older suffrage organization continued its work during these seven years. It had a membership of almost two million as compared with a top membership of fifty thousand in the National Woman’s Party. But it was this militant minority that gave the final push to the suffrage drive.

The Struggle Ahead

Since I have limited myself to the struggle of American women for legal equality, I have not attempted to describe their economic development in this hundred-year period, their entry into industries, office work, trades and professions, or their role in the trade-union movement. That story would require another article, but its close relationship to the growth of the woman’s movement is obvious. As women achieved economic independence, their demand for the vote was taken more seriously. Laws change slowly and are generally a reflection of changes that have already occurred on the economic and social level.

Almost thirty-five years have passed since women got the vote. We are in position now to appraise what women achieved when they won the suffrage and what they did not achieve.

Many people are disappointed over the results of woman suffrage – for example, all those who believed that politics would be “purified” by the participation of women. Reactionaries insist that suffrage and the entry of women into industry have actually achieved nothing, that modern women are miserably unhappy, frustrated and hysterical and go insane at a faster rate than ever before. (All this because women are allegedly emotionally passive and have been forced against their true nature into competition with men.) The solution, if we are to believe them, seems to be to hurry back to what’s left of the home, which is something like going all out for the horse as a means of modern transportation. Modern Woman – the Lost Sex by a woman psychiatrist, Marya Farnham, is a good example of this reactionary trend.

Even people who approve of modern woman are disappointed at the results of the woman’s rights struggle. Purdy in his biography of Mary Wollstonecroft says:

“All that has been done for women in the last century and a half has not saved them from the tragedies that afflicted Mary Wollstonecroft, Eliza Bishop and Fanny Blood. Inherited poverty, brutal or indifferent parents, disease following overwork and neglect, reluctant or faithless lovers, incompatible husbands, the struggle to wring a living from an apathetic world – has not been ended by female suffrage or any other abstract benefits women have recently achieved.”

I can’t help wondering just how many problems they thought woman suffrage could solve. The vote was, a simple question of democratic rights and not a magic formula that could dissolve all the bitterness and frustrations of women’s daily lives. Men have been voting a hundred years longer than women and they’ve still got problems. That doesn’t mean they should give up voting. If Negroes suddenly achieved complete equality with whites, they would still face unemployment, the threat of war, reaction and all the other difficulties that confront every worker, regardless of race or sex. That doesn’t mean they should give up the fight for full equality.

I don’t doubt that women are unhappy. The legal equality and other democratic rights for which they fought so heroically are meaningless as long as their position in economic and family life remains basically unaltered.

The economic status of women is undergoing change. This is bringing about the first fundamental difference in women’s lives. Women now constitute one-third of the labor force and 25% of all married women are working. This is a revolutionary development that in the long run will mean a great deal more than the vote.

But the majority of women still face discrimination in wages and jobs. The average income of women workers is less than half that of men. They are also doubly exploited, as wage earners and as wives. A survey by General Electric revealed that the average work week of employed wives is 79 hours – 40 on the job and 39 at home.

This explains why women are not too enthusiastic about their so-called “emancipation.” Women workers are obviously not emancipated, any more than male workers, Negro workers, or any other section of the working class.

The structure of the family is also undergoing change, partly as a result of women’s changing economic position. Women are not as restricted in their sex and family relationships as they were when Mary Wollstonecroft first rebelled against marriage.

I believe it is significant that the first women who fought for equality and woman’s rights directed a large part of their protest against bourgeois family relationships. Only at a later date did they center their attention on issues like the vote. It may be that in our re-examination of women’s problems we will return to their starting point. In the light of modern psychological and anthropological knowledge, we should study the relations of husbands and wives, parents and children, in a society that is founded upon the institution of private property and where marriage laws and customs reflect this basic concept of private ownership.

Both the economic and sex status of women is changing, but these changes are only the first steps toward a revolution in human relationships which will take place in the future. The fight for freedom is indivisible and no basic change can be achieved in a society where men, as well as women, are not free.

When women are really emancipated from the economic exploitation and emotional restrictions of our society, men too will be freed from the frustrations and unhappiness which the same system inflicts upon them. Bull this can onlybe achieved in the cooperative atmosphere of a socialist commonwealth where our personal relationships will not be an expression of the property forms of a competitive society.

Trade Unionists And Revolutionists

by James P. Cannon

Delivered: May 11, 1953 in New York. First printed in Fourth International, Vol.15 No.2, Spring 1954. Copied from http://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/1953/unions.htm

For several months we have been discussing the contrasting proposals of the two sides in our internal party conflict. It is time now, I think, to go a step further; to advance the discussion to an examination of the basic causes of the fight. You will recall that Trotsky did this in the 1939-40 fight with Burnham and Shachtman. At a certain stage of that struggle, after the positions of both sides were made clear – not only what they had to say but what they didn’t say, how they acted, the atmosphere of the fight, and everything else – when it was fairly clear what was really involved Trotsky wrote his article “A Petty-Bourgeois Opposition in the Socialist Workers Party”.

That article summed up his judgment of the Burnham-Shachtman faction as it had revealed itself in the fire of the struggle – when it had become clear that we were not dealing, as sometimes happens, with a mere difference of opinion among cothinkers on a given point or two that might be settled by fraternal discussion and debate. Burnham and his supporters – and his dupes – were moved by a profound inner compulsion to break with the doctrine and tradition of the party. They carried their revolt against the party to the point of frenzy, as petty-bourgeois factionalists always do. They became impervious to any argument, and Trotsky undertook to explain the social basis of their faction and their factional frenzy. We must do the same now once again.

The social groupings in the present opposition are not quite the same as in 1940. In that fight it was a case of a few demoralised intellectuals based on a genuine petty-bourgeois social composition of a section of the party, especially in New York, but also in Chicago and some other parts of the country – a petty-bourgeois concentration revolting against the proletarian line of the party.

The social composition of the party today is far better and provides a much narrower base of support for an opportunist faction. As a result of the split with the Burnhamites and our deliberate concentration on trade union work, the party today is far more proletarian in its composition, especially outside New York. Despite all that, the real social composition of the party is by no means uniform; it reflects some of the changes which have taken place in the American working class. This has been strikingly demonstrated by the line-up of the party trade unionists in our factional struggle. The revolutionists among them – the big majority – on the one side, and the conservatised elements – a small minority – on the other, have chosen different sides instinctively and almost automatically.

Since the consolidation of the CIO unions and the 13-year period of war and postwar boom, a new stratification has taken place within the American working class, and particularly and conspicuously in the CIO unions. Our party, which is rooted in the unions, reflects that stratification too. The worker who has soaked up the general atmosphere of the long prosperity and begun to live and think like a petty bourgeois is a familiar figure in the country at large. He has even made his appearance in the Socialist Workers Party as a ready-made recruit for an opportunist faction.

In our 1952 convention resolution, we explained the situation in the American working class as a whole in the two sections “The Causes of Labour Conservatism and the Premises for a New Radicalisation” and “Perspectives of a New Radicalisation”. In my report at the national convention, I called those two sections “the heart of the resolution” and centred my report around them.

It appears to me now, in the light of the conflict in the party and its real causes, which are now manifest, that those sections of the convention resolution dealing with the class as a whole require further elaboration and amplification. We need a more precise examination of the stratifications within the working class, which are barely touched there, and of the projection of these stratifications in the composition of the unions, in the various inner-union tendencies, and even in our own party. This, I believe, is the key to the otherwise inexplicable riddle of why one proletarian section of the party, even though it is a small minority, supports a capitulatory opportunist faction against the proletarian-revolutionary line and leadership of the party.

Examples from history

This apparent contradiction – this division of working class forces – in party factional struggle is not new. In the classical faction struggles of our international movement since the time of Marx and Engels, there has always been a division, in the party itself, between the different strata of workers. The proletarian left wing by no means ever had all the workers, and the opportunist petty-bourgeois wing was never without some working-class support, that is, working class in the technical sense of wage workers. The revisionist intellectuals and the trade union opportunists always nestled together in the right wing of the party. In the SWP at the present time, we have a repetition of the classical line-up that characterised the struggle of left and right in the Second International before the First World War.

Trotsky told us on one of our visits with him – I think he also wrote it somewhere – that there was a real social division between the two factions of the original Social Democratic Party of Russia, which later became separate parties. The Mensheviks, he said, had nearly all the intellectuals. With a few exceptions, the only intellectuals Lenin had were those whom the party had trained, a good deal like our own worker-intellectuals for the greater part. The intellectual – I mean the professional intellectual of the Burnham type, the man from the professor’s chair, from the universities – was a rarity on Lenin’s side, whereas the Mensheviks had shoals of them.

In addition, the Mensheviks had most of the skilled workers, who are always the privileged workers. The printers union was Menshevik even through the revolution. The railroad workers’ bureaucracy tried to paralyse the revolution; it was only by military force and the aid of a minority that the Bolsheviks were able to prevent the Menshevik railroad workers’ officialdom from employing their strategic position against the revolution.

Trotsky said that the Mensheviks also had most of the older workers. Age, as you know, is associated with conservatism. (In general, that is, but not always; there are exceptions to the rule. There are two different ways of measuring age. In ordinary life you measure it by the calendar, but in revolutionary politics you measure it by the mind and the will and the spirit – and you don’t always get the same result.)

On the other hand, while the older workers, the skilled and the privileged, were with the Mensheviks, the unskilled workers and the youth were with the Bolsheviks; that is, those of them who were politicalised. That was the line of division between the factions. It was not merely a question of the arguments and the program; it was the social impulses, petty-bourgeois on one side, proletarian on the other, which determined their allegiance.

The same line-up took place in Germany. The prewar German Social Democracy in its heyday had a powerful bloc of opportunist parliamentarians, Marxologists who utilised their scholastic training and their ability to quote Marx by the yard to justify an opportunist policy. They were supported not merely by the petty shopkeepers, of whom there were many, and the trade union bureaucrats. They also had a solid base of support in the privileged stratum of the aristocracy of labour in Germany. The trade union opportunists in the German Social Democratic Party supported Bernstein’s revisionism without bothering to read his articles. They didn’t need to read them; they just felt that way. The most interesting facts on this point are cited by Peter Gay in his book on Bernstein and his revisionist movement, entitled The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism.

All through the prewar fight over revisionism, then through the war and postwar days, through 1923 and 1933, the skilled, privileged trade unionists were the solid base of support of the opportunist Social Democratic leaders – while the communist revolutionaries, from the time of Liebknecht and Luxemburg all the way down to the fascist catastrophe in 1933, were the youth, the unemployed, and the unskilled, less privileged workers.

If you will go back and read Lenin again, in case you’ve forgotten it, you will see how Lenin explained the degeneration of the Second International, and its eventual betrayal in the First World War, precisely by its opportunism based upon the adaptation of the party to the conservative impulses and demands of the bureaucracy and aristocracy of labour.

We had the same thing in the US, although we never had a Social Democracy in the European sense and the working class was never politically organised here as it was there. The organised labour movement, up to the ’30s, was largely restricted to a privileged aristocracy of labour – as Debs and De Leon used to call it – of skilled craftsmen, who got better wages and had preferred positions, “job trusts”, and so on. The chief representative of this conservative, privileged craft union stratum was Gompers.

On the other side, there was the great mass of the basic proletariat, the unskilled and semiskilled, the mass production workers, the foreign born, and the jobless youth. They were without benefit of organisation, without privileges, the outcasts of society. It was not without reason that they were more radical than the others. Nobody paid any attention to them except the revolutionists and radicals. Only the IWW of Haywood and St. John, Debs, and the left Socialists voiced their bitter grievances, did the organising work, and led the strikes of the mass production workers in those days. If the official labour bureaucracy intervened in the spontaneous strikes of the unorganised it was usually to break them up and sell them out.

The officials of the skilled unions did not welcome the great upsurge of the unorganised workers in the ’30s. But they could not prevent it. When the spontaneous strikes and drives for organisation could no longer be ignored, the AFL began to assign “organisers” to the various industries – steel, rubber, auto, etc. They were sent however, not to lead the workers in a struggle but to control them, to prevent the consolidation of self-acting industrial unions. They actually wouldn’t permit the auto workers in convention to elect their own officials, insisting that the AFL appoint them “provisionally”. The same with the rubber workers and other new industrial unions.

These new unions had to split with the conservative labour fakers of the AFL before they could consolidate unions of their own. The drives behind the 1934-37 upsurge were the bitter and irreconcilable grievances of the workers; their protest against mistreatment, speedup, insecurity; the revolt of the pariahs against the pariah status.

This revolt, which no bureaucracy could contain, was spearheaded by new people – the young mass production workers, the new, young militants whom nobody had ever heard of. They were the real creators of the CIO. This revolt of the “men from nowhere” reached its high tide in the sit-down strikes of 1937. The workers’ victory in these battles definitely established the CIO and secured stability of the new unions through the seniority clause.

Conservatising influences

It is now 16 years since the sit-down strikes made the new CIO unions secure by the seniority clause. These 16 years of union security, and 13 years of uninterrupted war and post-war prosperity, have wrought a great transformation in the unprivileged workers who made the CIO.

The seniority clause, like everything else in life, has revealed a contradictory quality. By regulating the right to employment through time of service on the job, it secures the union militant against arbitrary discrimination and layoffs. It is an absolute necessity for union security. That is the positive side of the seniority clause. But, at the same time, it also gradually creates a sort of special interest in the form of steadier employment for those unionists who have been longest in the shop. That is its negative side.

In time, with the stretching out of their seniority rights and their upgrading to better jobs, a process of transformation in the status of the original union militants has taken place. In the course of 16 years, they have secured more or less steady employment, even in times of slack work. They are, under the rules, the last to be laid off and the first to be rehired. And in most cases, they have better jobs than newcomers to the shop. All of this, combined with war and postwar prosperity, has changed their material position and, to a certain extent, their social status.

The pioneer militants of the CIO unions are 16 years older than they were in 1937. They are better off than the ragged and hungry sit-down strikers of 1937; and many of them are 16 times softer and more conservative. This privileged section of the unions, formerly the backbone of the left wing, is today the main social base of the conservative Reuther bureaucracy. They are convinced far less by Reuther’s clever demagogy than by the fact that he really articulates their own conservatised moods and patterns of thought.

But these conservatised ex-militants are only part of the membership of the CIO, and I don’t think that our resolution at the convention deals specifically and adequately with that fact. In these mass production industries, which are real slave pens and hell holes, there are many others. There is a mass of younger workers who have none of these benefits and privileges and no vested interest in the piled-up seniority rights. They are the human material for the new radicalisation. The revolutionary party, looking to the future, must turn its primary attention to them.

If we, counting on a new upsurge in the labour movement, look to those who led it 16 years ago, we could indeed draw a gloomy picture. Not only are they not in a radical mood now; they are not apt to become the spearhead of a new radicalisation. That will take youth, and hunger, and raggedness, and bitter discontent with all the conditions of life. We must look to the new people if, as I take it, we are thinking in terms of the coming American revolution and not limiting our vision to the prospect of a new shake-up in the bureaucracy and of caucus combinations with slick “progressive” fakers for little aims.

This new stratification in the new unions is a feature which the party can no longer ignore. All the more so, since we now see it directly reflected in our party. A number of party members in the auto union belong to this privileged upper stratum. That’s the first thing you have to recognise. Some of the best militants, the best stalwarts of the party in the old times, have been affected by the changed conditions of their own lives and by their new environment. They see the old militants in the unions, who formerly cooperated with them, growing slower, more satisfied, more conservative. They still mix with these ex-militants socially, and are infected by them. They develop a pessimistic outlook from the reactions they get on every side from these old-timers, and, unknown to themselves, acquire an element of that same conservatism.

That, in my opinion, is the reason why they support a crudely conservative, pessimistic, capitulatory tendency in our internal faction fight. This, I am afraid, is not a misunderstanding on their part. I wish it were, for in that case our task would be easy. The miserable arguments of the Cochranites cannot stand up against Marxist criticism – provided one accepts the criteria of revolutionary Marxism.

But that’s the rub. Our conservatised trade unionists no longer accept these criteria. Like many others, who “used to be radicals themselves”, they are beginning to talk about our “Theses on the American Revolution” as a “crackpot” idea. They don’t “feel” that way, and nobody can talk them out of the way they do feel.

That – and perhaps a guilty conscience – is the true explanation of their subjectivity, their rudeness and factional frenzy when one tries to argue with them from the principled standpoint of the “old Trotskyism”. They do not follow Cochran out of exceptional regard for him personally, because they know Cochran. They simply recognise in Cochran, with his capitulatory defeatism and his program of retreat from the fighting arena to a propaganda circle, the authentic spokesman of their own mood of retreat and withdrawal.

Just as the older, more skilled and privileged German trade unionists supported the right against the left, and as their Russian counterparts supported the Mensheviks against the Bolsheviks, the “professional trade unionists” in our party support Cochranism in our fight. And for the same basic reasons.

I, for my part, must frankly admit that I did not see this whole picture at the beginning of the fight. I anticipated that some tired and pessimistic people, who were looking for some sort of rationalisation to slow down or get out of the struggle, would support any kind of an opposition faction that would arise. That happens in every faction fight. But I didn’t anticipate the emergence of a conservatised workers’ stratum serving as an organised grouping and a social basis for an opportunist faction in the party.

Still less did I expect to see such a grouping strutting around in the party demanding special consideration because they are “trade unionists”. What’s exceptional about that? There are 15 million trade unionists in this country, but not quite so many revolutionists. But the revolutionists are the ones who count with us.

Losing faith in the party

The revolutionary movement, under the best conditions, is a hard fight, and it wears out a lot of human material. Not for nothing has it been said a thousand times in the past: “The revolution is a devourer of men.” The movement in this, the richest and most conservative country in the world, is perhaps the most voracious of all.

It is not easy to persist in the struggle, to hold on, to stay tough and fight it out year after year without victory; and even, in times such as the present, without tangible progress. That requires theoretical conviction and historical perspective as well as character. And, in addition to that, it requires association with others in a common party.

The surest way to lose one’s fighting faith is to succumb to one’s immediate environment; to see things only as they are and not as they are changing and must change; to see only what is before one’s eyes and imagine that it is permanent. That is the cursed fate of the trade unionist who separates himself from the revolutionary party. In normal times, the trade union, by its very nature, is a culture-broth of opportunism. No trade unionist, overwhelmed by the petty concerns and limited aims of the day, can retain his vision of the larger issues and the will to fight for them without the party.

The revolutionary party can make mistakes, and has made them, but it is never wrong in the fight against grievance-mongers who try to blame the party for their own weaknesses, for their tiredness, their lack of vision, their impulse to quit and to capitulate. The party is not wrong now when it calls this tendency by its right name.

People often act differently as individuals, and give different explanations for their actions, than when they act and speak as groups. When an individual gets tired and wants to quit, he usually says he is tired and he quits; or he just drops out without saying anything at all, and that’s all there is to it. That has been happening in our international movement for 100 years.

But when the same kind of people decide as a group to get out of the line of fire by getting out of the party, they need the cover of a faction and a “political” rationalisation. Any “political” explanation will do, and in any case it is pretty certain to be a phony explanation. That also has been going on for about 100 years.

The present case of the Cochranite trade unionists is no exception to this rule. Out of the clear sky we hear that some “professional trade unionists” are suddenly against us because we are “Stalinophobes”, and they are hell-bent for an orientation toward Stalinism. Why, that’s the damnedest nonsense I ever heard! They never had that idea in their heads until this fight started. And how could they? The Stalinists have gotten themselves isolated in the labour movement, and it’s poison to touch them. To go looking for the Stalinists is to cut yourself off from the labour movement, and these party “trade unionists” don’t want to do that.

The people in Michigan who are hollering for us to make an orientation toward the Stalinists have no such orientation on their own home grounds. And they’re perfectly right about that. I don’t deny that people like Clarke, Bartell, and Frankel have heard voices and seen visions of a gold mine hidden in the Stalinist hills – I will discuss this hallucination at another time – but the Cochranite trade unionists haven’t the slightest intention of going prospecting there. They are not even looking in that direction. What’s amazing is the insincerity of their support of the orientation toward the Stalinists. That’s completely artificial, for factional purposes. No, you have to say the orientation toward Stalinism, as far as the Michigan trade unionists are concerned, is a phony.

What is the next thing we hear? That they are full of “grievances” against the party “regime”. I always get suspicious when I hear of grievances, especially from people whom you didn’t hear it from before. When I see people revolting against the party on the ground that they’ve been badly treated by this terrible regime in our party – which is actually the fairest, most democratic and easy-going regime in the history of the human race – I always remind myself of the words of J. Pierpont Morgan. He said: “Everybody has at least two reasons for what he does – a good reason and the real reason.” They’ve given a good reason for their opposition. Now I want to know what the hell is the real reason.

It can’t be the party’s hostility to Stalinism, as they say – because the Cochranite trade unionists wouldn’t touch the Stalinists with a 10-foot pole, not even if you stood behind them with bayonets and lighted firecrackers under their coat-tails.

It can’t be the Third World Congress,35 concerning which they are suddenly working up a lather. These comrades in Michigan have many admirable qualities, as has been shown in the past, but they’re by no means the most internationalist-minded section of the party; not by far. They’re not that section of the party most interested in theoretical questions. The Detroit branch, sad to say, has been most remiss in the teaching and study of Marxist theory, and is now paying a terrible price for it. This branch hasn’t got a single class going; no class in Marxism, no class in party history, no class on the Third World Congress or anything else. So when they suddenly erupt with the demand that the Third World Congress be nailed to the party’s masthead, I say that’s another good reason, but it’s a phony too.

The real reason is that they are in revolt against the party without fully knowing why. For the young militant, the party is a necessity valued above everything else. The party was the very life of these militants when they were young and really militant. They didn’t care for jobs; they feared no hazards. Like any other first-class revolutionists, they would quit a job at the drop of a hat if the party wanted them to go to another town, wanted them to do this or that. It was always the party first.

The party is the highest prize to the young trade unionist who becomes a revolutionist, the apple of his eye. But to the revolutionist who becomes transformed into a trade unionist – we have all seen this happen more than once – the party is no prize at all. The mere trade unionist, who thinks in terms of “union politics” and “power blocs” and little caucuses with little fakers to run for some little office, pushing one’s personal interest here and there – why should he belong to a revolutionary party? For such a person the party is a millstone around his neck, interfering with his success as a “practical” trade union politician. And in the present political situation in the country, it’s a danger – in the union, in the shop, and in life in general.

The great majority of the party trade unionists understand all this as well as we do. The vulgar “trade unionist” appeal of the Cochranites only repels them, for they consider themselves to be revolutionists first and trade unionists second. In other words, they are party people, as all revolutionists are.

I think it’s a great tribute to our tradition, to our cadres, to the leadership of our party, that we have succeeded in isolating Cochranism to a narrow section of the party membership. It’s a great satisfaction, in these troubled and heavy times, to see the great majority of the party standing firm against all pressures. In the further course of the discussion, we will strike still heavier blows and chip off a few more here and there. We don’t want to see anybody leave the party if we can help it.

But soul-saving is not our main occupation. We are determined to protect the party from demoralisation, and we will do that. We are concerned with individuals only within that framework. The rescue of political derelicts can be left to the Salvation Army. For us, the party comes first, and nobody will be allowed to disrupt it.

This fight is of the most decisive importance because the prospect before our party is the prospect of war and all that goes with it. We see the dangers and the difficulties – as well as the great opportunities – which lie ahead of us, and just because of that we want to get the party in shape before the worst blows fall upon us.

The party line and perspectives, and the party leadership, will be settled in this fight for a long time to come. When harder times come, and when new opportunities open up, we don’t want to leave any doubt in any comrade’s mind as to what the party line is and who the party leaders are. These questions will be settled in this fight.

The Socialist Workers Party has the right, by its program and its record, to aspire to a great future. That’s my opinion. That was the opinion of Trotsky. There is a line in the document of the Cochranites that sneers at the 1946 SWP convention and at the “Theses on the American Revolution” adopted there. It says: “We were children of destiny, at least in our own minds.” In that derision of the party’s aspiration, the whole pessimistic, capitulatory ideology of Cochranism is contained.

In 1929, when Trotsky was deported to Constantinople, the victory of Stalinism was complete, and he was isolated and almost alone. Outside the Soviet Union, there were only about 200 people supporting him in the whole world, and half of them were the forces we had organised in the US. Trotsky wrote us a letter at that time in which he hailed our movement in the United States. He said our work was of world historical significance because, in the last analysis, all of the problems of the epoch will be settled on American soil. He said that he didn’t know whether a revolution would come here sooner than in other places, but in any case it was necessary to prepare by organising the nucleus of the party of the future revolution.

That’s the line we have been working on. Our cadres have been raised on that doctrine. When I read in the Cochranite document that cynical dismissal of our revolutionary aspirations, I remembered a speech I made to our young comrades 13 years ago in Chicago. The occasion was our Active Workers Conference, held just a month or so after the death of the Old Man,36 when everybody felt bereft; when the question in the minds of all, here and all over the world, was whether the movement could survive without Trotsky.

At the end of the conference, I gave a speech and I said to the young activists there: “You are the real men of destiny, for you alone represent the future.” In the 1946 convention theses we put the same concept.

That has been the position of all our militants who are standing together through this long, hard battle. A young comrade in California, one of the leading party activists, pointed the Cochranite sneer out to me and said: “What about that? If I didn’t think our party has a great future, why should I be willing to devote my life and everything I have to the party?” Anyone who low-rates the party and crosses off its future ought to ask himself what he is doing in the party. Is he here on a visit?

The party demands a lot, and you can’t give a lot and risk everything unless you think the party is worth it. The party is worth it, for it is the party of the future. And this party of the future is now once again getting its share of historical luck. Once again, as in 1939-40, it has the opportunity to settle a fundamental conflict in open discussion before a war, on the eve of a war.

Before World War II the party was confronted with a faction which threatened its program and, thereby, its right to exist. We didn’t have to jump immediately into the war before the question was settled. We were working in the open while the rest of our comrades in Europe were underground or in concentration camps. We here in America were privileged to conduct a debate for the whole International over a period of seven months.

The same thing is happening again now. We ought to recognise this historical luck and take advantage of it. The best way to do this is to extend and amplify the discussion. I will repeat what Comrade Dobbs said, that our aim is not to split the party but to break up the split and save the party. We will try to prevent a split by a political fight which hits the opposition so hard that it can have no perspectives in a split. If we can’t prevent a split, we will reduce it to the smallest possible size.

Meantime, we will develop the party work on all fronts. No party work is going to be sabotaged. If the attempt is made, we will move our forces in everywhere and take over. We will not permit the party to be disrupted by sabotage or derailed by a split, any more than we did in 1940. We have made a good start, and we won’t stop until we have won another complete victory in the struggle for a revolutionary party.

The Problem of Leadership and Program

[by Vincent Grey (Vince Copeland)

[First printed in Fourth International, Summer (northern hemisphere) 1954. Copied from
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/fi/vol15/no03/grey.html ]

[Revolutionary Regroupment note: Many on the left would be suprised that the faction in the Socialist Workers Party associated with Sam Marcy (of which Vine Copeland was an important leader) initially sided with James P. Cannon against Michel Pablo’s tailing after the Stalinists. Important criticisms of Marcy’s factions earlier years (before the turn towards an almost uncritical adaptation towards the Stalinists) aside, this document, critiquing Pabloism and Maoism, stand in very stark contrast to the current politics of the Workers World Party and it’s split, the Party for Liberation and Socialism (both of which claim the heritage if Marcy’s Global Class War tendency.]

IF WE may regard the Chinese revolution as the deformed child of the 1917 Russian revolution, then we may also regard Pabloism, in the field of theory, as an even more deformed offshoot of the Chinese revolution. The fact that Pabloism can thus trace its lineage back to the great Russian revolution is not very important here, because Pabloism’s main proposition is that its classical grandparent has been superseded. By what? Pabloism itself does not clearly and distinctly say; but it senses with a somewhat legitimate filial instinct, and half-mumbles with a tongue-tied persistency, that the Chinese revolution – or at least its concept of the Chinese revolution – is to be the matrix and fountainhead of the future.

The task of answering this false theory is the more difficult because the Pabloites have not made a logical and consistent exposition of it. The reader will quickly see, however, that we are not imputing any ideas to the Pabloites that they do not possess. We are merely tracing the source of some of their newly discovered historical laws, and attempting to pose and, to some extent, answer certain questions raised by the Chinese revolution, questions which we would have to answer quite independently of Pabloism.

Consciously or not, Pabloism is superimposing the Chinese experience – and only half understood at that – on the whole world. With no special analysis of the history and development of China in the last few decades, either from a Marxist or a revisionist point of view, Pabloism has blithely concluded that there is a “new world reality.” Their “new world reality,” however, is to be found not nearly so much in the mighty dynamics of the Chinese revolution itself as in the policies of the Chinese Stalinists, and thence, by a kind of transubstantiation, in world Stalinism.

While it is true that Pablo himself (like Clarke) first began to discover the “new world reality” in the Titoist party of Yugoslavia, he did not announce it in its present more comprehensive revisionist form until some time later. Actually it was not Yugoslavia, but China, which had the greatest impact upon the Pabloites. Regardless of the date of Pablo’s own conversion, Pabloism itself could only gain a certain growth by virtue of the greater revolution in China which had more of a world effect.

Unlike the Russian revolution, which raised the theoretical level along with the fighting class-consciousness of the workers of nearly all countries of the world, the Chinese revolution has left its mark in a twisted, peculiar way. The Chinese was a truly great revolution. It really shook the world – but unfortunately it shook the Marxism out of some Marxists as well. It is the fate of all great revolutions to reveal the weak spots, the accumulated rust in theory, and consequently to increase the weaknesses of some of the theorists. But the Chinese revolution has had an effect more contradictory than usual in this respect.

As the Pabloists have so often informed us, they are not sectarians. By no means! They have been extremely sensitive to the developments in the real world, including the development of the Chinese revolution. Rut the trouble is that their sensitivity, like a harp that anyone can play upon, also responds sympathetically to false ideas. The brain, a most sensitive instrument, is often, by the same token, a weak instrument. How hard it is for a revolutionist con-slantlv to oppose the ruling ideas of the ruling class – no matter how banal or illogical these ideas are! How hard it is to resist the ideas of the ruling caste in the Soviet Union as well, especially at a time when Stalinism seems to have a new historic validity, when it is the ideology of the leadership of several large states, when it is the current ideological banner of millions of fighting class-conscious workers!

Naturally Pabloism is not a duplication of Stalinism. But it rationalizes the apparent validity of Stalinism, and projects a progressive historic evolution for it. How can such an inferior idea take possession of a superior mind, trained in Trotskyism? We have to look outside the realm of ideas to answer this question. Trotskyism, has the same validity today as it did formerly. Its logic is just as sound. Its critique of Stalinism is just as correct. But it is more isolated. It seems less important. History seems to threaten to pass it by! This can be very frightening to a revolutionist.

To stand up directly against the reaction, to fight capitalism and overthrow it, to make the revolution without complications, just the good against the bad – that is a very natural and understandable desire. But then to see a great revolution put into power those whom one did not expect to take power at all – that is hard, even on a mind trained in Marxism. But the mind is “resourceful.” It covers up its shaken confidence and resolution with new rationalizations and new “theory.” Thus a great revolution can have some reactionary results! And thus Pablo could find fertile ground for Pabloism.

New Role for Stalinism?

Now the leading party, which assumed state power in revolutionary China, was the Stalinist party. The question of the real dynamics of the revolution and the class nature of the new state did not trouble the Pabloites nearly ,so much as another intriguing, and in fact very important question: “Cannot the Stalinists then take power on a worldwide basis, lead the world revolution, be the ‘wave of the future,’ and eliminate the necessity for ourselves, the Trotskyists?” This is the way the Pabloite leaders, who were oh-so-objective in regard to their own revolutionary role, began to pose the question – at first to their most private looking-glasses, and later on to the party, in their mumbling ruminations and qualifications, sandwiched in the guise of confusion between points of their resolutions.

Had the leading Pabloites raised this question frankly and honestly from the beginning (as revisionists seldom do), it would have been much easier to answer them, and to answer on a thoroughly theoretical basis. They contented themselves, however, with half-raising the question of the historic role of the Trotskyist parties – as parties – while they reaffirmed their belief in the historic role of Trotskyism. This meant that the Stalinist parties (or Social Democratic parties, as the case might be) could eventually adopt the Trotskyist program without necessarily becoming Trotskyist parties – by a process of political osmosis, as it were, without sharp splits, fights, clashes between Stalinists and Trotskyists that would result in new Trotskyist parties combatting all other tendencies and contending for leadership of the workers of the world. Posing the question this way, without reviewing the relationship of Stalinism and Trotskyism to the world revolution, it appeared to the Pablo followers that it was a choice between trying to lead the revolution with a small “sectarian” party or with the much larger and “almost” revolutionary Stalinist party.

Considering the latter-day “objectivity” of those who have lost faith in their own program, and considering the necessity for a theoretical answer generally, we really ought to take up Pablo’s theory of Trotskyism without the Trotskyist party. This theory should not be considered by itself, “subjectively” (for we are surely too blinded by our own desire to lead the revolution to do this adequately!). It should be considered in the framework of the role and relationship of the party to the mass in general, of “spontaneity” in general, of revisionism in general, and of the Chinese revolution in particular.

What does the Chinese revolution, viewed through the lens of Marxism instead of the impressionist mirror of Pabloism, have to tell us about these things? Consider, for example, the newly discovered historical law that the proletarian masses “choose” their own instrument (party) and accomplish their revolution with it, more or less regardless of the content of the party’s program, even re-fashioning the program in the process and imposing a “revolutionary orientation” or the leading party. Is not China the source of this utterly false and fatally deceptive idea? It is not China, but its half-baked interpreters we have to blame! Actually, as we shall later demonstrate, the Stalinist program in China was not especially different in 1949 from what it was in 1929. The Chinese Revolution swept over its leadership and swept up its leadership far more than it shaped the leadership.

But this is only one of the subordinate parts of the revisionism the Pabloites have sucked out of their thumbs while staring at China. The question can be posed in a much more basic way. China, the Pabloites have finally concluded, however pragmatically, is a workers’ state. Now in the opinion of the present author, this is true. But if it is true, what then?

Why then, the Chinese masses’ quarter-century of struggle erupted into a workers’ state without the benefit of Trotskyist leadership! And if that is so, what then? “Why then,” formal logic triumphantly replies to the prostrate Pabloite, “either this is a pattern for world revolution or it is not. And since we are not Chinese exceptionalists, it is a pattern. This is the new world reality!”

True, the Pabloites do not put the matter so bluntly or so clearly as this. They only make the conclusions which flow from this.

Like Joseph with the forgetful Pharaoh’s dream, we are compelled to articulate their idea in clear daylight, as well as to show its meaning – and answer it. Such ruthless logic can’t be answered, of course, if we concern ourselves only with the rigid, formal premises of this kind of logic. The living logic of the revolution, however, has little trouble replying to such copybook sentences.

Must View in Context

To understand the Chinese revolution we not only have to acquaint ourselves thoroughly with the mighty upheaval of the Chinese millions, but we must view this upheaval in the context of the world revolution and the international situation, outside of which it is meaningless and, in fact, could not have taken place. More than that, the “workers’ state” is a more provisional, more transitional thing, in a smaller world, than it was in the 1917 period. In other words, China is, in my opinion, a workers’ state. But in the world of today, even such a great state as China cannot be regarded in as definitive a sense as the Soviet Union of 1917 – and of course not remotely as definitive as was the early American bourgeois republic among the world’s distant, almost unreachable feudal monarchies.

A workers’ state is a transitional regime – even a transitional society, if you will – between capitalism and socialism, a bridge from one to the other. (Needless to say, this regime is definitive enough for revolutionaries all over the world to defend intransigently.) Rut this transitional edifice, unlike a bridge between two solid shores, is a constantly changing, supremely sensitive, living thing, rooted in the past and only pointing to the future, subject to overthrow, degeneration and downfall, as well as to the fulfilment of its rational function. It is a provisional thing, even on the basis of its own national aims. On a world basis, this provisionalism is magnified and multiplied. The weight, the stability, the static importance, of any national revolution have decreased simultaneously with, and because of, the tremendously increased dynamism of the world revolution.

It is the worldwide class war, which Pablo thought he understood but will be compelled to reconsider if he continues to whitewash Moscow – it is this war which dictates that the inner Chinese struggle must become transformed and merged into the outer international struggle, and that state power can only be validated on a world basis. This cannot be done by simple “repetitions” of China, even if such repetitions were possible. The Pabloites generally say that the Kremlin’s worldwide dilemma forces it to keep encouraging the Stalinists to take power in each colonial revolution (and possibly the European too) in order to defend the Soviet Union – and itself – against imperialism. Pablo himself does not dare to say that this compulsion would finally drive Moscow into giving consistent leadership for world revolution itself. But since this is a logical outcome of his proposition, as well as a widely held belief of the bourgeoisie, we should take a good look at the proposition itself. It is necessary, among other things, to take a look at what the Stalinists are actually doing.

The Stalinists, as well as we, have noticed the imminence of the Third World War. And they justify their shameless betrayal in Iran, for example, which is admittedly a tinder-box, by the threat of the same world war whose logic is supposed to drive them to victory, not only in Iran, but in such countries as … France! Moscow and Peking are even now maneuvering Indo-China into a peace which, despite its immediate practical advantages, is a class peace, a restoration of some “stability” to the Far East, and to that extent to the world. This is an attempt to restore the status quo, an attempt which will not, of course, prevent the bigger war, but only prepare its outbreak under conditions more unfavorable for the workers. And in Italy and France, where the Stalinist policy alone prevents the drive to power and refuses to make even the most elementary military preparations, the threat of American intervention and atomic explosion is the chief rationalization the Stalinists give to themselves and their followers for their treacherous policies.

The Stalinists could not hold back the revolutionary tide in China. But they have proved again and again, and since China, that they are more than adequate in other places to turn victory into defeat. Pablo has failed to notice that – given the character of the Stalinists and the desperation of the Kremlin – the imminence of the war, class war though it is, also acts as a brake upon the revolution. Thus each succeeding “repetition” of China (if there are to be any at all) will not increase the contradictions of the ideology of Stalinism, as Pablo theorizes, but on the contrary will confront the various national Stalinist leaderships, each time the question of power is raised, with tasks which become more and more impossible without breaking with Stalinism – not obliquely or by implication, but openly and consciously breaking with the Kremlin (whose material assistance is fully as important to them as the bourgeoise say it is). This is not possible without ideological battles in the course of explaining the role of the Kremlin, even while the Kremlin is helping a given struggle, without splits, and the formation of Trotskvist parties. To any serious revolutionary, this means that trere must be a fighting organization of Trotskyism (the independent party).

The Real Question

Are we predicting that Indo-China, Burma, India or even, for that matter, France and Italy, could not possibly have revolutions under the leadership of the Stalinists? Some of the most important pre-conditions for the Stalinist success in China are missing in these countries, of course. But it is not necessarv to deal in absolute predictions of this sort. (If the possibility exists, it still does not relieve us from the duty of building a revolutionary party in those countries.) It is mere speculation whether the experience of China can somewhere, sometime, be “repeated.” The real question is: can it solve the world problem? Is the Chinese method sufficient for the success of the world revolution?

That is the way practical, professional revolutionaries who are serious about the world revolution must pose the question. “Revolutionary” pipe-dreamers and sideline “Marxist” commentators will not pose this question at all. They will accept the affirmative answer to the above question, partly because they don’t clearly formulate the question, partly because they are afraid to ask it, and partly because, after all, wouldn’t it be nice if it were true? But as long as this question is not clearly formulated, as long as wish-thinking and impressionism substitute for thinking on this question, then all their schoolboy-revolutionist talk about strategy and tactics with the Stalinists is only a discussion of the tempo of their own liquidation.

As we have already remarked, Pabloism was extremely impressed by China. But what impressed it most was the leadership. Pablo himself correctly claims the “credit” for having made new contributions on the nature of Stalinism. It is a common fault to be more impressed by the leadership than by the essence of historical movements. Pablo, with a tradition of Marxism, fairly well conceals this fault. But he has it. And he did not first display it in the recent struggle.

A few years ago, under the influence of the right turn of the Stalinists, a leading Pabloite wrote that it was false to say that the defense of the USSR was “dictated chiefly by its sociological and political characteristics: ‘workers’ state,’ ‘outpost of the revolution’ and the like.” He finished his article with the words:

“The Fourth International – already firm on many planks of its program – must bring up to date its position on the question of the USSR …”

(Fourth International, May 1945, pp.136, 138.)

Had the Stalinists not made their left turn in 1947, it is hard to say where this Pabloite would have wound up, with his quotation-marked “workers’ state” and his insistence on unity with the Shachtmanites at that time.

The point is this: With all his “contributions” on the bureaucracy and Stalinism, in general, what Pablo fails to concern himself with is the working class, the revolution, the revolutionary state. He cannot see this essence directly, dynamically, dialectically, but sees only a sort of romantic disfiguration through the gaudy prism of the actions of the leadership. And now he graduates from a more or less unnoticed failing to a theoretical elaboration of this fault. First, the state is nearly cursed because of its leadership (Soviet Union). Next, the leadership is glorified because of the revolution (China). And now, the revolutionary will of the masses becomes frozen into a revolutionary pattern in the brain-cells of the leaders.

This is not an isolated mistake, but a new world-theory. Now Bolshevism is no longer necessary! The independent party is passé. Pablo has made no guarantees, of course, that the leadership will keep this transmuted revolutionary program in their heads in the event that the masses go through a difficult period when conservatism and even reaction possess them. (However, he has somewhat provided for this by explaining that the “revolutionary wave is irreversible” … Can we then conclude that Stalinism’s regeneration is irreversible?)

Defense of China and USSR

We are the real defenders of China, as of the Soviet Union. And we do not  base ourselves on the actions of the leadership, but on the actions of the masses and the nature of their social conquests. Mao’s murder of Trotskyists, for example, in no way determines our attitude on the historic importance of the mass struggle which Mao happened to lead. It is instructive to note that the impressionistic Pablo suppressed information about these murders, thus proving not only that he apologizes for Chinese Stalinism, but also that an impressionist may become so fond of one impression that he can inoculate himself against a contrary one!

Pablo’s trouble is not merely a small theoretical mistake in analyzing the nature of the Chinese state, not merely that he skipped a page or two while reading State and Revolution, not merely his incorrect understanding of the role of leadership in general. His trouble stems from the stubborn fact that, regardless of the chain of events which caused it, the Stalinists did find themselves at the head of the revolution, and finally in the administration of the state. Bemused and bedazzled by this fact, Pablo reminded himself that Trotskyism had not provided a place for the victory of the Stalinists in China, and proceeded – somewhat carefully for one bedazzled – to project the theory of a revolutionary orientation for Stalinism.

Now it would be terribly wrong to gloss over the events in China, or to rationalize the revolution out of existence, merely in order to prove the inadequacies of Stalinism. But it would be even worse, it would be a disarming of the world vanguard to say, as Pablo says in effect, that the Chinese revolution cuts out a new pattern for the world revolution, with the implication that the Stalinists, with a few lectures from us, can guide the world revolution to victory. We must agree with Pablo, of course, that it has proved possible for a party to take state power against the logic of its own program. But that was also proved by the Paris Comune in 1870. And trade union bureaucrats lead strikes every day in spite of their program of class collaboration. This encourages pragmatists to sneer at the validity of theory and the necessity for program. But does it prove them correct? Are the Marxist theory and program sideline commentaries on the class struggle, or are they the indispensable instrument in the hands of living people (a party) to the socialist conclusion of that struggle? Can a working-class party take power in the United States by the Chinese Stalinist method – that is, without a thorough understanding of the nature of the state, the nature of the liberal capitalist politicians, the nature of fascism, etc., etc., even with the most heroic cadre and the best will in the world?

Leadership and Program

The Pabloites slur over this question, partly because they half-believe that the blind revolution in China does set a new world pattern, partly because they half-believe that the world revolution is already won, or will be won by the addition of one or two more states to the workers’ bloc. A pernicious and fatal delusion! That is, it would be fatal if Pablo were to play any real strategic role in guiding the destinies of the world working class This is excluded, however, by the very nature of his political position. He does not really even regard himself as a leader of the Fourth International, but only as a sort of armchair Clausewitz writing admonitions for the generals of the Third. These gentlemen would manage to lose and/or betray the world revolution with or without the sideline comments of Pablo.

According to Trotsky, the question of leadership and program is the most important in our epoch. According to Pablo, this is no longer true (were not the Stalinists the leadership in China?). Now the masses “choose” a party to be their instrument to power, reshaping the instrument during the actual course of the revolution, somewhat as constant usage reshapes a handle better to the hand. With a peculiar logic, Pablo theorizes that it is the increased revolutionary drive of the masses that makes this possible and changes Trotsky’s thesis. But it is precisely the epic forces now going into battle that need, more urgently than ever before, a conscious, revolutionary Marxist leadership.

Basing ourselves always on the revolution itself in China, on the actions of the millions, let us reverse the method of Pablo and look briefly at the Chinese Communist Party’s history in the framework of the revolution. How did this party get catapulted to power without “projecting any revolutionary orientation” beyond their general orientation in 1931 or even earlier?

Is there anything in the past history of the Chinese CP, even previous to the taking of power and even previous to the “new world reality.” which might indicate a different future for it than for most other CPs of the world? And if there were such differences, what were they, how deep were they, and what caused them? Above all, what differences were there in the general Chinese situation?

To begin with, there was a revolutionary situation in China from 1925 to 1927. If there is anything to the proposition that the revolutionary drive of the masses becomes a revolutionary program in the heads of inadequate leaders, this was the time for it to be demonstrated. But the revolutionary masses at that time could not succeed in imposing the correct position and the drive for power on the minds of the CP leaders. (The few leaders who did finally understand the correct position got it from Trotsky, who was not in the Chinese mass movement at all.)

But Chiang’s success in 1927, his doublecross and defeat of the Chinese CP, proved to be incomplete; and the surviving cadres had a more correct line imposed upon them, insofar as Chiang’s intransigence prevented collaboration, and insofar as the general revolutionary situation in the countryside continued. It was precisely the subordination of the CP to Chiang and to the bourgeois Kuomintang that was the basic Stalinist error of 1925-27. The growth of independent class armies under the leadership of the Stalinists was in itself an objective correction of this error.

The great difference between the Chinese CP and other CPs of the world, even at this early time, lay in the fact that it was an independent armed body leading a civil war, as an aftermath of a revolution.

Furthermore, a larger and larger section of the oppressed peasant population armed itself under their banner. Still further, actual sections of territory came under the Stalinists’ armed rule. They had, so to speak. achieved power on a territorial basis long ago. The objective requirements and responsibilities of power were always a great factor, if not always the deciding factor, in their decisions. Finally, both their promises and their performances among the peasantry, in the whole long period of the civil wars and colonial war, were such as had to be transferred to the national field as soon as they achieved power; and these promises and performances, their program, and actions, were of the character of the bourgeois-democratic revolution.

Torrential Movement

In 1949 they fought for the same bourgeois-democratic demands they fought for in 1925-27. But this time they had to fight against the bourgeoisie instead of subordinating themselves to it. Chiang Kai-shek took care of that. But over and above everything was the torrential movement of hundreds of millions of human beings breaking through the rotting dams of feudalism, pouring out of the reaches of the ancient past, raging without let or hindrance into the present, still trying to cut a channel to the future.

It was not only the cataclysmic pressure of the revolutionary peasant masses in the concrete, who catapulted the Stalinists to power in China in a physical, mechanical sense; it was also the general bourgeois-democratic revolution in the abstract, that had to hurl a workers’ party into the breach since no bourgeois party would carry out the democratic tasks. (This explains why large sections of the left bourgeoisie could share power with the Stalinists, and, regardless of the mutual illusions of both parties, fail to put their class stamp on the state.) As Owen Lattimore commented several years before the revolution, if Chiang Kai-shek did not lead the democratic revolution, the Stalinists would have to do so. Lattimore correctly sense irrepressible nature of the Chinese revolution, and correctly called the turn on the Stalinist assumption of power, even if he did not understand the class nature of this power. But then, neither did the Stalinists.

Pablo might agree with this proposition. But this is not the same as saying that mass pressure converts itself into a revolutionary theory, or makes Stalinists become non-Stalinists. Nor does it permit us to generalize on the experience of China, since few places in the world duplicate the long history of armed struggle and the shifting boundaries of territorial civil war in China. (Nor is it now possible for the Stalinists to take state power in any other colonial country without being fully aware of what they have on their hands!)

It is worth noting also that Trotsky, in the 13 years he lived subsequent to the 1927 defeat, keenly observing the world situation, did not consider this unquestionably different situation of the Chinese CP so different as to raise any question as to whether it was really Stalinist or not. The fact is that the Chinese CP, through all the ups and downs of the long civil war, through the colonial war against Japan, through all the heroic and even epochal struggles, and through certain oblique differences with Moscow, followed the general turns of Kremlin policy.

It is true, however, and very important, that its flips and flops were somewhat less extreme than in other countries. But this was not for lack of trying. It was because of the basically different situation of the Chinese CP, and because of the specific history of the Chinese revolution. A man walks differently in water than on dry land!

Consider the famous Sian incident of 1937. The left-bourgeois “Young Marshall” Chang had kidnapped Chiang Kai-shek and called upon the Stalinists to join him in giving Chiang the mass trial before the people that they, the Stalinists, had so long been calling for. But the Stalinists double-crossed the “Young Marshall,” helped Chiang send him to prison, agreed to end land expropriations, gave up the civil war itself – all for a joint pact with Chiang to fight Japan. Subjectively, this was as much of a flip-flop as you could ask for; but objectively, it amounted to a “united front” with the colonial bourgeoisie (rather than a “popular front”) against imperialism, which as Trotsky said at the time was essentially a principled thing.

It was a “united front,” a joint action of worker-peasant armies and colonial nationalist armies against imperialism. The same Moscow-directed flip-flops in Europe at this period were “popular fronts”; that is, a subordination of the interest and ranks Of the workers to the liberal bourgeoisie of the imperialist countries. If the Chinese CP is qualitatively different from the other CPs, it was certainly different at that time as well. But was it?

Trotskyists, in the same situation, would also have made a united front agreement with Chiang in 1937, on the basis of the colonial struggle against imperialism, and on the basis of their program, and understanding of the permanent revolution. Did the Stalinists proceed from such a programmatic basis? No. The Soviet Union was being ground between the twin jaws of German and Japanese imperialism, and the Kremlin was conducting a cold war of maneuver between them and the so-called “democracies.” The Kremlin wanted to unite any and all forces it could, regardless of class, against Germany in the west and Japan in the east. The Kremlin ordered the Stalinists in France, England, etc., to unite with the liberal bourgeoisie against fascism (which meant Germany, as far as the Kremlin was concerned). And with exactly the same intent, they wanted the CP in China to unite with the Chinese colonial bourgeoisie against Japan. Due to objective circumstances (which also included the independent class armies under the Stalinists), what they wanted in the second case had a far different effect, and far-reaching results. And long before this, the Chinese Stalinists were conducting the most intense, hard-fought civil war, against monumental odds, even setting up soviets in the countryside. During these epic struggles from 1929 to 1937 had they ceased to be Stalinist? Did they entertain the notion of taking back the Trotskyist Oppositionists whom they had expelled, fingered, and harassed? No, they followed the Kremlin’s line most faithfully on this crucial question, and they committed themselves deeply. This was not a mere ritual on their part, for then, as well as now, they were extremely intolerant of any leftist criticism of their line, Trotskyist or otherwise.

But they had done one thing, more or less independently of strictly Stalinist considerations, which affected them inexorably for 25 years. They themselves had unwittingly raised the question of power by forming independent class armies after the defeat of 1927. (The whole essence of the tragedy of 1927 was the failure to have an independent party. Now, with the party taking the shape of an army, it was independent with a vengeance.) But it was not the mass pressure as such which forced the CP to break with Chiang. It was Chiang’s break with them and his drive to exterminate them. Their armies could only exist on the basis of revolutionary support from still other civilian armies of the poor. They had committed themselves to a civil war, which dictated by its own dynamics that they would have to end in utter annihilation or by taking power altogether.

Even at that, they might have actually ended in utter annihilation but for three other important considerations:

1) the logic of the permanent revolution, which prevented Chiang Kai-shek from carrying out his bourgeois-democratic program, and which enmeshed the Stalinists in its drive precisely because they were armed and subject to the above pressures;

2) the fact that Moscow’s politics, translated into Chinese conditions after 1927, could not have, as we have shown, the same effects they had in Germany, Spain, France, etc.;

3) the pre-condition of everything – that after 25 years of revolution, counter-revolution, famine, war and pestilence, the great masses still pushed forward, carrying the Stalinists upon their shoulders.

Having taken state power on the unprecedented wave of peasant revolt, the Stalinists were compelled to call upon the working class, whom they at first hamstrung, in order to carry out the demands of their revolutionary peasant base. Or to put it theoretically: The democratic dictatorship of the peasantry could only exist as the dictatorship of the proletariat, no matter how deformed. The Stalinists, by their inevitable and predictable response to the revolutionary demands of their peasant base (once they had the full field and full responsibility, i.e., state power), made clearer to the world, if not to themselves, the real historical class basis of their dictatorship.

Why Program Is Needed

So much for the revolution without a program. But can anyone seriously believe that this blind struggle can repeat its “success” on a world basis? True, the Chinese leadership arms Korea and Indo-China. But this flows from even the most conservative concepts of national defense. Do they, however, call upon the workers and peasants of India, for example – to say nothing of the United States – to prepare the socialist revolution? Do they, above all, explain to the workers and peasants of China that it is not possible to build socialism there without the aid of the world revolution? Certainly the Pabloites must know the answers to these questions. Certainly they must understand it is not “merely” the murder of the Trotskyists that prevents the Chinese Stalinist leaders from being genuine revolutionaries – that is, the kind of revolutionaries that history now requires.

It is not only Stalinist theory, such as it is, and Stalinist tradition that pull ideally upon the minds of the Chinese party. It is the material pull of 450 million hungry mouths which, under present conditions, the Chinese revolution alone cannot feed, which imperialist intervention makes still harder to feed, and which a summons to the world revolution and its consequently still greater sacrifices may make quite impossible to feed. Even the fortuitous conjunction of all the conditions for “success” of the Chinese revolution of 1949 could not remotely solve these problems or provide leadership for the coming titanic struggle.

For this, a program of world revolution is needed, and before that, a fight for this program. Why a fight? Because there is already a new bureaucracy, which has an interest in maintaining the status quo. If all the ties with Moscow were to be cut off tomorrow, the Chinese CP would still retain its own conservative incubus on top. Not only the Stalinist tradition in the abstract, but the concrete hold of the leadership on the rank and file must be fought, as it would have to be fought even in the least bureaucratized party we were trying to influence.

And when we consider that the demands of the world revolution not only conflict with the material interests of the bureaucracy, but require still greater sacrifices from the already bleeding Chinese workers and peasants themselves; when we consider this, in addition to all the rest, we must conclude that it is impossible for the Chinese leadership to fall accidentally into either the theory or the practice of world revolution; and we must conclude that it is fantastic even to dream of “fructifying” Mao’s party, just as it was to have any illusions about Tito. Revolutionary work in the Chinese CP must be the secret, underground work of Trotskyists who are determined to build their own party out of the indubitably excellent material in the rank and file of the CP. The leisurely “propaganda group” approach of Pabloism to the CP is not only inadequate but fatuous and suicidal – that is, if a hypothetical Chinese Pabloism would have any Trotskyist criticism of Mao at all.

The Chinese revolution itself raises the alternatives point-blank. Either we live in the age of separate distinct national socialist revolutions, step-by-step conquests of power, each conquest conservatively defending itself without regard to the needs of the rest of the world proletariat; or we live in the age of interconnected and interdependent revolutions and revolutionary movements. Either the Russian degeneration and the non-Bolshevik leadership in China are patterns of the future development over a long historical period; or the one is “a horrible relapse,” and the other a temporary conjuncture. Either there will be “centuries of degenerated workers’ states,” or there will be a new birth of mankind on the basis of revolution in the advanced countries, particularly the United States. Pablo sees this in a way, but in a wishy-washy way. He fails to see that each of these alternatives excludes the other.

The colonial revolutions, including the great Chinese revolution, though indecisive on a world basis (and that is the only real basis today), are not any less important because of these considerations. The genuine socialization of China, or India and China combined, for that matter, cannot be accomplished apart from the socialization of the United States. But on the other hand, the impact of the colonial revolutions on the struggle in the “advanced” countries is incalculable.

Sharpen The Crisis

The colonial revolutions, in depriving modern imperialism of its indispensable supports at the very time of crisis, still further sharpen the crisis and bring on still bigger explosions. The subjective aims of the colonial struggle, however – peaceful enjoyment of the land and the free development of industry – are impossible without the destruction of world imperialism, that is, without the world revolution. And the parties of the colonial revolution must be educated in this spirit of world revolution or they will sink inevitably into narrow Stalinist nationalism! or some variety of it. It is not by making a “mystique” of the coming world war, or by viewing it as a magic talisman, that the laws and strategy of the world revolution are to be learned. Anyone who, like Pablo, understimates the initial power of the US counter-revolution or fails to understand the absolute necessity of the American socialist revolution to the world revolution, is only playing at revolution, is unfit to speak of world strategy, and is falsely, even demagogically, invoking the name of internationalism to win our comrades in the colonial countries.

Pablo’s false theory of the colonial revolution, and his false appeal to it, go hand-in-hand with his false theory of the long-drawn-out nature of the revolutionary epoch. The long-drawn-out transition from feudalism to capitalism, which began in the fifteenth century, and in most countries is not even now complete, cannot be repeated in modern times by a similarly lengthy change-over from capitalism to socialism. The imposition of enforced Wail Street unity upon the world, the effects of uneven development and combined development, the proletarianization of even the most backward people and the penetration of modern material needs and aspirations among them, have all invested the modern revolution – that is, the socialist revolution – with a historic simultaneity that it had only partially achieved in the post-1917 world.

The world now resembles one great factory, whose different departments, making different parts of the common product, are manned by people of different nationalities – some of the departments being of a super-exploited, subterranean nature and for that reason all the more explosive, all the more likely to push the “upper,” more “advanced” sections into action. But it is the objective, absolute interconnection of all the departments, their common role of producers and consumers of the same product, which in the approaching crisis make the international strike-call ever more insistent, ever more appealing, even while it dictates that success depends upon the integration of the whole.

A romantic or impressionist understanding of this fact, this interrelationship, this imminence of world revolution, can lead to self-effacement, to illusions about Stalinism – in a word, to Pabloism. But a serious, professional, revolutionary understanding can lead only to the conviction that a world leadership, that is, a Trotskyist leadership, is the indispensable need of the working class.

The Chinese revolution, far from disproving this need, far from relieving us of the necessity of fighting for the hegemony of the Fourth International, has imposed upon us, in our forging of the world leadership, the additional, irrevocable duty of vindicating the heroic struggles of the Chinese masses, which otherwise would have been in vain.

by Peng Shuzi

[This open letter to James P. Cannon by the veteran leader of Chinese Trotskyism followed the decision of the Chinese Trotskyist organization to adhere to the International Committee. Copied from http://www.marxists.org/archive/peng/1953/dec/30.htm ]   

December 30, 1953

Dear Comrade Cannon,

Quite early this year I intended to write to you about the events and things which I have experienced and observed in person since my participation in the IS, and about the serious bureaucratic organizational tendency and revisionist political tendency represented by Pablo which, I was afraid, would eventually bring a crisis in our International. But out of “prudence” (this was also what Manuel advised me at that time) this letter was continuously postponed. Now the crisis has actually exploded with ferocity. I am therefore obliged to write this already retarded letter.

The reason for my writing to you is not only because you are the founder and leader of the SWP, the leading section of the world Trotskyist movement, but also because you closely collaborated with Trotsky in completing the Transitional Program and in founding our International, and led several victorious struggles over a long period of time against opportunism, sectarianism and revisionism. No less important is the fact that you fought through the whole epoch of the Comintern, in its ascendancy under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky and in the subsequent period of initial degeneration under the control of Stalin, and have thus obtained rich and profound experiences, which have since become a part of the most precious lessons in safeguarding and advancing our movement. I believe that with your rich experience and the capacities of the SWP, and your collaboration with the genuine Trotskyists of other countries, it is possible to overcome the present crisis.

The “Letter to Trotskyists Throughout the World” recently published by the SWP, though quite exceptional and unprecedented, is nevertheless necessary for saving the International from the extremely grave immediate danger. This “exceptional action” can be proved necessary and justified here too by the painful experiences of my personal participation in the IS during these two years.

Despite the fact that I became responsible for activity in the Trotskyist movement in China more than twenty years ago, it was hardly possible to maintain an intimate relation with the International and to participate in its activities because of the particular conditions in which I was placed: constant oppression and extreme persecution by all kinds of reactionary forces, often resulting in a state of isolation. When Mao’s party came to power, I was obliged to leave China and come abroad. I then cherished great hopes that on the one hand, I could submit to the International a detailed report of the events which had occurred in China in recent years to facilitate a common discussion that would result in a correct resolution and general orientation for the Trotskyist movement in China and the other backward countries of the Orient. On the other hand, I was prepared to contribute within the limits of my capacity my own experiences to the leadership of the International to help it in advancing our movement. But the experiences of these two and a half years have shown that the reality is completely different from my original aspirations, for I saw with my own eyes a frightful crisis brewing, growing, spreading and penetrating more and more into the different sections of the International. This has greatly disturbed and pained me and made it difficult for me to remain silent.

Now let me relate in a chronological order what I witnessed and experienced in person during this whole period, as follows:

At the Third World Congress, a “Far East Commission” was set up with the aim of holding a more or less penetrating discussion of the Chinese question and proposing a resolution on this important question to the World Congress to proceed on a broader discussion and eventual adoption of a more fully and correctly elaborated resolution. I was then designated as the reporter on this question. But before my report had gone half way, the representative of the IS, Comrade A. of India, who was in charge of the Commission, suddenly made a motion interrupting my report on the pretext of “security,” and demanded that this Commission proceed to vote for the adoption of the two previous resolutions on the Chinese question, i.e., the two adopted by the 7th and 8th Plenums of the IEC. I was quite surprised and expressed my indignation and protest. I declared that the Far East Commission was created by the Congress which stood above all the other organisms, and therefore could not simply submit itself to any instructions to cease functioning that were issued by the IS which was itself to be reelected. If the Far East Commission had the task of merely proceeding to vote the previous resolutions, then it was completely superfluous. And I reminded them that it was constituted for the purpose of reaching a more correct decision after an all round discussion according to the development of the events and new realities. Atthe same time, I stated that since I was requested to make the report, I had the responsibility and right not only to complete my report but to listen furthermore to the opinions of the delegates present (whether or not they agreed with or were against my report) and thus to obtain a conclusion endorsed by the majority of the Commission to submit to the Congress. Thanks to my protest and the objection of the great majority of the Commission regarding A’s intervention, I was reluctantly allowed to finish my report. But without passing to any discussion, the Far East Commission was terminated; in reality, it was aborted.

The inconclusiveness of the Far East Commission was mainly due to the fact that the representative of the IS, hearing my report in the first session, feeling that my views did not conform to theirs, and being afraid that my views would influence the comrades present, did not hesitate to interrupt me in the midst of the report in a domineering manner. This was later revealed in the “explanation” of Livingstone who attended the second session in place of A. He said, “The IS had not expected such a development of the Commission.” In other words, they had not expected me to express in my report views different from theirs. To the representative of the IS, it seemed that the Commissions created by the Congress had the sole task of justifying or proving the correctness of the IS’s previous resolutions or views by employing new facts and arguments. Otherwise, they would not hesitate to hand down orders to stop Commission proceedings.

To adopt such an arbitrary attitude toward important political problems (since all the delegates of the Congress considered the Chinese question as the most important immediate problem) and to exercise such control over the Commissions created by the Congress are practices far removed from the tradition of Bolshevism. This was my first unpleasant impression after coming here.

My discontent about the Far East Commission was of course sensed by Pablo. His explanations were made through Burns and the responsibility was attributed to A. in the explanations. Besides, Burns said that Pablo was willing to accept the opinions of others and hoped that I would participate in the IS to collaborate with him, especially to undertake more responsibility on the colonial and semi colonial questions in the Orient. Although I was not quite satisfied with Burns’ explanations, I was still prepared in all sincerity to collaborate with Pablo and others in order to serve the development of our movement.

Immediately after the Congress there exploded once again the divergences and conflict between the majority and minority in the French party. The crisis involved in this conflict culminated at the beginning of 1952. During the two meetings of the IS when the French question was discussed, Pablo always stressed the incorrigibility of the bad tendency of the majority leaders and the necessity of adopting severe measures. The opinion I expressed invariably was that because the majority represented the overwhelming majority of the party, among whom there were a large number of industrial workers in important sectors, we should still do our best and utmost to convince the majority of the comrades, especially the worker comrades, even though certain leaders at the top had manifested bad tendencies. (At that time, I also had certain bad impressions about a few leaders of the majority. But I must admit now that my bad impressions were formulated chiefly as the result of my excessive confidence and trust in Pablo and the minority in their portrayal of the majority leaders.) For this purpose, I said, it was necessary to carry out a universal and thorough political discussion in the French party, and if necessary to extend this discussion to the other sections of the International. In this manner, it would not only be possible to find the demarcation of different political views of both sides, but also to exploit this occasion for elevating the political level of the members as a whole. This opinion did not meet with any objection. Pablo, however, proceeded entirely according to his own plan.

It then happened that Pablo attended the Plenum of the Executive Committee of the French party last January (1952) and announced on the spot the suspension of the 16 majority members of the EC from their function. The fact is that the IS had not made any decision of this kind. Among the five members of the IS, three were completely ignorant of this decision: Germain and Manuel were both outside of the country, and I was not informed beforehand, although I was in Paris. Besides, only the IEC is entitled to sanction or suspend the function of the members of the executive committee of a section formally elected, even if they had committed grave political errors, and even violated discipline in action, while the IS is not at all entitled to this right. Moreover the IS did not make such a decision! Pablo’s suspension of the 16 members of the EC of the French party from their function by borrowing the name and authority of the IS fully exposed his unrestrained personal dictatorial conduct in abusing authority and in violating our organizational tradition.

After Pablo’s suspension of the majority leaders, Germain returned to Paris; he came to see me and asked my opinions about this event. The gist of what I told him was about as follows: The political views of the majority of the French party were still limited to divergences on tactics, and had not yet passed over to a general discussion. To take an organizational measure at that moment was entirely inappropriate. Besides, the measure employed by Pablo had not been approved by all leading members of the International and was therefore nothing but an arbitrary action in violation of our organizational tradition. Expressing his complete agreement with my position, he told me in addition that the leaders of the majority were all very active, and Pablo, etc., had previously praised them highly; and now they were suddenly described as not worth a penny, and even threatened with being completely thrown out of the movement! In saying this, Germain was not able to restrain his indignation.

In order to discuss the aggravated situation produced by this act of suspension adopted by Pablo, the IS called an enlarged IS meeting (which could be considered as the preparatory conference of the January 1952 Plenum of the IEC). At this meeting, Germain, J. of the German section, L. of the Italian section and I were all against the measure taken by Pablo. But the latter still tried obstinately to defend himself, saying, “The previous session of the IS decided on the necessity of adopting a severe measure, and the members who were present at that session should all be responsible for it.” But what was the real content of this so called “severe measure”? Under what conditions should it be applied? About these Pablo had never said a word and of course we could not have made any formal decision on them, and in reality we had not at all made such a decision. But Pablo utilized the “severe measure” mentioned before as an “algebraic formula” and he pretended he had obtained everyone’s agreement to fill this formula himself with the “arithmetical figures,” that is, the suspension from their function of the 16 majority members of the EC of the French party. This further exposed Pablo as a deliberate and systematic intriguer.

This enlarged IS meeting should have seriously examined the mistake of Pablo’s act of suspending the EC members of the French party and should have challenged his authority to do so, in order to open the road for a reasonable solution of the question of the French majority. But Pablo exerted his strongest pressure by threatening and maneuvering to prevent any discussion of this problem, and turned round to propose negotiation with the French majority in another attempt for compromise. That was nothing else than to nullify in effect the suspension of the majority EC members, and to form a leading Committee containing both the factions, with Germain, representing the IS, as the arbitrator. This was the sole result of the February session of the IEC. Here, again, it was evident that Pablo was playing intrigues to cover up for the moment his absurd conduct toward the leadership of a section and to prepare the way for his revenge. Thus the question of the French majority became more and more involved in confusion and could not be solved correctly which is proved by the outcome later.

Having seen Pablo’s arbitrary action on the question of the majority in the French party and his intrigues, I strongly felt that frightful consequences would result if the IS were to submit completely to the handling and control of Pablo. With this apprehension, on a trip to the south of France I had a formal conversation with Manuel, who was already there. I pointed out to him that Pablo’s suspension of the 16 members of the EC of the French party from their function all by himself disclosed very serious weaknesses in the IS itself, which deserved our serious observation and attention; since we have lost Trotsky, only the formation of a collective leadership could avoid internal crises and confront external events. At that time, I still considered that Pablo was indispensable for the leadership but that he should not be permitted to act arbitrarily on his own will. Moreover, I believed that as far as important political and organizational questions were concerned, not only was the IS not competent to make certain decisions, but that even the JEC was also not adequate (since the members who could be present at IEC meetings were limited), and that the IS should seek the opinions of responsible and experienced leaders and co thinkers throughout the world.

After I had expressed these views as stated above, Manuel said that he agreed with the fundamental idea expressed by me on collective leadership and would reexamine the question of the French majority, and that he intended to have a sincere conversation with Pablo the next day. But before Manuel could talk to Pablo, the latter started a violent and brutal attack on me in Manuel’s presence. Perhaps this was why Manuel cancelled his intended talk with Pablo.

When I returned from the south to Paris (in the middle of May, 1952), Pablo had framed up two charges to launch a fierce attack on me ”attempting to injure the prestige of the International” and “liberal action” (which meant violation of discipline). The “facts” he enumerated were: we (my wife and I) had slandered the International in front of an Australian couple; after returning to Paris, we had again slandered the International before the Vietnamese comrades; and we had moved from one hotel to another lodging without giving him notice beforehand. When I first heard about these ungrounded charges, though extremely enraged, I still restrained myself and requested Pablo to meet me in order to clarify the misunderstandings. But he was so arbitrary as to refuse my request, and declared that the “stories mentioned by him were true and facts.” Hence I realized that Pablo was deliberately and systematically attempting to trap me by slanders in order to discredit me and further to exclude me from the IS. I was therefore obliged to request the IS to discuss the matter of all these calumnies against me by Pablo.

At the IS meeting I proved with indisputable facts that all the charges made by Pablo against me, such as hurting the prestige of the International, etc., were completely false, and could be disproved by the testimony of the Australian couple and the Vietnamese comrades. As to the charge on my “liberal action,” it was still more absurd. The explanation is very simple: as I was not able to pay high rent in the hotel, I was forced to seek help from the Vietnamese comrades to get a cheaper lodging, and it was not at all necessary to give a notice to Pablo beforehand. I asked him to make a reply and explain his calumnies against me with concrete facts. He was not only not able to explain but started to shout and declared, “I am the General Secretary, I have my rule about things!” I told him, “The General Secretary has no privileges, and our rule is democratic centralism. Nobody is entitled to be dictator, to slander and constrain others.” Finally a resolution was proposed by Germain on the dispute between Pablo and me, which was generally as follows: there were no facts to prove that I had attempted to discredit the International and to violate discipline, but also that Pablo had not slandered me. This was a clever resolution to please both sides without any justice done to the truth. My statement was: I would not accept such a kind of a resolution and I reserved my right to appeal to the conference of a higher body.

I consider that when the General Secretary of the IS slanders another secretary at his will with the charges of “discrediting the International’ and “violating discipline,” it is not at all an ordinary “personal dispute” nor “trivial” but a serious phenomenon within the leading apparatus concerning the question of organization and functioning of its component members. In other words, this is a most naked expression of base bureaucratic methods to exclude personal opponents. This kind of phenomenon was quite frequently seen in the Stalinist parties, but was unprecedented in our own movement.

Afterwards, Burns told our daughter that through the independent observation of the Australian couple he learned the details of how Pablo’s wife treated us, especially my wife, tyrannically, and that was not less than madness, and he was sympathetic with us. But he said that it was by mistake that Pablo accepted his wife’s account as the truth, and he urged us not to insist on an “appeal.” Meanwhile, Manuel also did his best to dissuade me from doing so, saying that if I made this matter public, Pablo would not be able to continue his function, but who then was to replace him? In short, he persuaded me to leave it alone. For the sake of “preserving the integrity of the movement in general” I refrained from making any further protest. Nevertheless, I have always thought that the calumnies made by Pablo are not only inexcusable but express a dangerous tendency considering the position he holds. If he were in power, he would very probably have committed all those persecutions Stalin had done in the past.

During a whole year, from my arrival in Europe until the 11th Plenum of the IEC in June 1952, I was allowed to make a report on the Chinese question only at the Third World Congress and the Far East Commission, and there was never any exchange of views or discussion of this question in the IS. Even when the draft resolution was submitted to discussion in the IS, I was not invited to express my views. Besides, I had not heard in person what position was adopted by Pablo before he expressed his views at the 11th Plenum. Only indirectly I learned that Pablo assumed that Mao Tse tung had completed all the fundamental theses of the Permanent Revolution, that the Chinese CP had already become a centrist party, and that Mao’s regime was a proletarian dictatorship. Frank’s position was entirely unknown to me then. Only Germain had exchanged some views with me, but he declared that on the Chinese question his position was the most moderate. Thus on a question as important as China, the IS leadership had not even exchanged views with me, or had deliberately avoided doing so beforehand. It was not at all intended to have a collective discussion in order to arrive at agreement on a correct position as the basis for the resolution to be submitted to the IEC for discussion and adoption. On the contrary the IS leadership launched a sudden attack at the IEC meeting against the views which they considered to be erroneous, with the sole aim of gaining a majority to adopt their own draft resolution, and hastily made an end to the whole discussion on this question. In this way I discovered that the leading members of the IS were not prepared for a sincere discussion and mutual consultation to facilitate collaboration, but deliberately struck blows by all means against divergent views. This was particularly noticeable in Pablo who openly stressed at the IEC session that there existed a sectarian faction in the Chinese section which must be got rid of. (These words were not included in the published remarks of Pablo in the special issue of the International Bulletin on “The Report and Discussion on the Third Chinese Revolution.”) The sectarian he referred to was obviously me, and the reference was a threat and prelude to pushing me out of the International. I was not overawed by his bureaucratic threat, but once more it was demonstrated that Pablo was prepared to deal with the Chinese comrades with the same methods that were employed against the majority of the French section.

I believe that you already know the content of the resolution of the Third Chinese Revolution; my criticisms of this resolution, e.g., “A Few Remarks to Serve as Amendments to the Draft Resolution on the Third Chinese Revolution,” were sent to you two months ago, so it is not necessary to repeat them here. I have only one more point to make on this. When this resolution arrived in China, it not only failed to clarify the original divided views but enhanced the confusion and bewilderment. Aside from the comrades who oppose the resolution with theoretical arguments and facts, even those who are in agreement with it have quite diverse interpretations among themselves. Consequently, it has not been possible for them to elaborate a program of action with majority agreement on the basis of this resolution. The worst thing is that nobody can find a perspective for the Chinese Trotskyists in this resolution. For instance, a responsible comrade, F., who is completely in agreement with this resolution said, “We must dissolve our organization in order to participate effectively in mass activities led by Mao’s party.” This is evidently a liquidationist attitude. Another comrade, Y., said more frankly, “The Resolution of the International is correct, but there is no perspective for us Trotskyists.” This is pessimism through and through. Thus, the whole organization was politically disarmed and disoriented, and hence involved in endless organizational disputes, and was more and more approaching the edge of disintegration.

Naturally I do not intend to say that the resolution of the IS is entirely responsible for such a dangerous state into which the Chinese organization was led. I would say rather that this is the result mainly of the objective situation the victory of Mao’s party, its persecutions, and the incomparable pressure weighing down upon us. But it is an undeniable fact that the resolution of the International did not make a reasonable and correct analysis and explanation of this objective situation nor did it point out a convincing perspective and orientation for the Chinese organization.

First of all, this resolution is a mixture of Pablo’s revisionism and Germain’s conciliationism (i.e., conciliation with Pablo), filled with theoretical fallacies, factual errors and self contradictions. These together with its idealization of Mao’s regime and illusions on its perspective, make it a strong expression of the tendency of conciliation with Stalinism. The liquidationism and pessimism which prevailed among the Chinese comrades was originated from here. Therefore I can say that Pablo’s revisionism, that is, his conciliation towards Stalinism, has already caused frightful consequences in the Chinese organization. This deserves serious concern among all comrades.

At the 12th Plenum of the IEC, November 1952, the IS let me report on the organizational situation in the Chinese section for the first time. When I reported the news of the incessant and systematic persecution of Chinese Trotskyists by Mao’s regime during these recent years, the whole meeting was greatly shaken. The Italian, L., rose and questioned why the IS did not give the sections the information about the persecutions of the Chinese comrades. In the midst of this tense atmosphere, Pablo, evidently embarrassed, stood up to defend himself, saying that the massacre of Trotskyists by Mao’s regime was not a deliberate action but a mistake, that is, the Trotskyists had been mistaken as Kuomintang agents; and that even if Mao’s persecution of Trotskyists were a fact, this could only be considered as an exception. T hen Germain posed another question: under what conditions were the Trotskyists massacred? I cited all the facts and “conditions” to demonstrate that the persecution of Trotskyists by Mao’s regime originated from a deep rooted tradition of Stalinist hostility towards Trotskyists, and was a systematic and deliberate attempt to exterminate the Trotskyists. I also pointed out that this persecution was not at all an “exception.” Not long ago, Ho Chi Minh slaughtered the entire Trotskyist leadership in Vietnam, and in the Spanish Civil War the GPU of the Stalinist party brutally persecuted innumerable Trotskyists all these are iron proofs. But Pablo turned to inquire of me, “So you have annulled the tactic of entrism into the Stalinist party and the mass organizations under its control, which you approved?” I replied, “This tactic of entrism into the Stalinist party was started by us four years ago, that is, since 1949. But precisely because of the severe persecutions Mao inflicts on the Trotskyists, we have to be particularly cautious and serious in carrying out this tactic, and should not have the slightest illusion about the Stalinists.” I urged the French and Italian sections to examine the lessons of the Chinese section and to organize very seriously in applying this tactic. Otherwise, the danger of ruin would be incurred, and in this case the IEC would be responsible. In short, from this illustration of Pablo’s defense for Stalinist persecution of Chinese Trotskyists, you can see the extent of his idealization and illusions toward Mao’s regime.

In the meantime, I received the English version of the special issue of the International Bulletin containing the report and discussion on the Third Chinese Revolution, and I discovered that my document criticizing the draft resolution on the Third Chinese Revolution did not appear in it. I therefore pointed this out at the meeting of the enlarged IS and questioned Pablo about the reason for not publishing my document. The reply was that the document was published in another issue of the International Bulletin. But I later looked through all the International Bulletins and could not find my critique of the draft resolution. It was obvious that Pablo had deliberately suppressed this document, as my critique pointed out with irrefutable facts several fundamental errors in the draft resolution: the revision of the theory of the Permanent Revolution, distortion of the “Workers and Peasants Government,” the fiction of the alleged “violation of the intentions of the Kremlin by Mao’s party,” and the illusion of the “transformation of the entire party of Mao Tse tung into a centrist party.” None of these criticisms was refuted or rejected either by the reporter or the participants of the discussion with theoretical argumentation or facts. Precisely for that reason, Pablo was resolved to conceal my criticism of the draft resolution from the comrades by keeping it in the dark. This is a typical manifestation of the bureaucratic methods of Stalinism, and was precisely what we resolutely combatted within the Comintern in the initial stage of its degeneration 25 years ago, and one of the main causes for constituting the Left Opposition. But Pablo did not stop there. When I asked him why he had not published my document, he openly lied that it was published in another issue of the International Bulletin. This added lying and cheating, on top of arbitrary bureaucratic methods.

Here I must mention that particularly since the beginning of 1952 when I opposed Pablo’s arbitrary measure on the French question, Pablo, for the period of a whole year, not only employed various bureaucratic methods to attack me, but he also informally deprived me of the right to participate in all meetings of the IS; that is, during this whole year, Pablo never called on me to attend any meeting of the IS itself. The members of the IS were officially elected by the IEC. But without going through a formal discussion and decision in an IEC meeting, he privately deprived me the right to participate in the IS meetings. This is clearly another manifestation of the most arbitrary and insolent bureaucratism!

Around the same period, I found out that Manuel was excluded from the IS meetings by another method: he was sent to another country in the name of helping the work there, thus being in effect informally deprived of his right to attend and work in the IS. But everyone knew that Manuel came with the sole purpose of participating in the activities of the IS. This fully proves that in order to monopolize the IS, Pablo did not halt at any bureaucratic methods and intrigues to gradually exclude representatives of the Western Hemisphere and Asia from the is.

On the other hand, I became generally acquainted with the fact that Clarke had started a factional struggle in the SWP and launched attacks on the party leadership in an attempt to seize the leadership of the party. This was evidently instigated by Pablo behind the scenes. I heard very often from the entourage of Pablo that “Clarke is the best leader in the U.S.” which was tantamount to saying that the SWP should be led by him. At the same tiine, a Chinese comrade, H., who was studying here told me personally that since last spring (1952) Pablo had acted particularly friendly and confidential toward hiyn, and had offered several times to send him back to China to “reorganize the party.” This comrade replied, “I do not have authority and prestige in the Chinese organization.” Then Pablo encouraged him by saying, “Don’t be afraid, our International will support you. You have just to proceed boldly.” From these words uttered by Pablo, H. clearly understood that not only Pablo did not trust me at all but was hostile toward me, and therefore wanted to give him this special mission to start factional work in the Chinese organization. Naturally, he was not at all willing to engage in such an affair, and consequently frankly told us.

From the facts enumerated above, I deeply felt that Pablo had manifested a revisionist tendency, and especially that he was employing terrible bureaucratic methods to exercise control over the IS and had started to build up his own factions in different sections in an attempt to dominate the whole international movement. For this reason, when Manuel was leaving here and came to bid farewell to us, I enumerated a few of these facts and told him frankly that a serious danger was hidden in the leading apparatus of the International, and was developing at an accelerating speed. I expressed the hope that he would find a way to make this opinion known to the leadership of the SWP and especially to you, so that you would be alerted in time and try to mend the situation. Though Manuel did not express any reaction toward my words, he promised to forward my opinions to you and some other leaders of the party.

On the Plenum of the IEC in May 1953, there are two things worth mentioning:

1. In the discussion of the resolution on the problem of the USSR after Stalin’s death, a considerable dispute was aroused. In this dispute, Burns first pointed out the spirit of the resolution was too optimistic; he warned that from the failure to fully grasp the significance of the Yugoslav events, which resulted from a too optimistic appreciation, we should have learned certain lessons. He also stated that the Stalinist parties remained Stalinist parties, and we should not have too many illusions about them. But Pablo made a threatening attack against his remarks. The sum of his words was that as a responsible leader, Burns should refrain from expressing views in violation of the line of the International. According to him, all the resolutions drafted by the IS conform to the “line of the International” and no doubt or objection is allowed. Hence the members of the IEC have simply to raise their hands in adopting any resolution concerning any newly occurred events or any important problems. Any doubts or views opposing the draft resolution of the IS are considered to “violate the line of the International.” Is this different from the bureaucratic attitude in the CP’s regarding Stalin’s “general line” which it was forbidden to criticize?

2. At this Plenum, Pablo proposed the election of a new IS. The reason was that there were not enough efficient members to participate in the activities of the IS, so two members from the British and Italian sections were added as permanent members of the IS. In this manner, representatives from the Western Hemisphere and Asia were formally eliminated, and the IS has virtually become an ES (European Secretariat). Since then, Pablo has “legally” modified the composition of the IS to enable himself to freely control and manipulate it, and to proceed “legally” with his design of excluding and eliminating his opponents and his plot of usurping the International.

At the May Plenum of the IEC, I submitted two documents ”An Appeal for Aid from the Chinese Trotskyists” and my “Open Letter to the Leadership of the Chinese CP” protesting the persecution of Trotskyists, in the hope that the Plenum would discuss and comment on them and decide to publish them in the public organs of different sections, in order to carry on a broad campaign to aid the persecuted Trotskyists in China. But Pablo told me through Germain that these documents should be discussed and decided only in the IS. At the IS meeting (this time only Pablo and Frank were present), I stated that I hoped that both these documents would be transmitted to the sections for publication, and would be made the occasion for a campaign to rescue the persecuted comrades. Both Pablo and Frank agreed to publish the “Appeal from the Chinese Trotskyists,” but said that they could not agree on several points contained in my letter of protest, and would consult with me in order to make a final decision.

From May to September, four months had elapsed, but I still did not see the appearance of the “Appeal from Chinese Trotskyists.” Then I began to suspect that Pablo had again suppressed a document. At the beginning of September I sent a copy of this document to the United States, asking that it be sent to the Militant, and inquiring if it had already reached there from the IS. The reply I received was, “Not received at all.” Once again I discovered that Pablo was playing tricks to deceive me. On his motive for resorting to such tricks to suppress this document: Firstly, he always idealizes Mao’s regime. The publication of this appeal would have exposed the reality contradicting his illusions and idealization. Secondly, he had for a long time been propagating in different sections the notion that the Chinese Trotskyists were sectarians, fugitives from the revolution, etc. The publication of this document would have categorically unmasked his lies and calumnies. Thirdly, Pablo was afraid that the publication of this document would interfere with his most strongly advocated ideal of “entrism,” that is, he feared that on seeing the cruel persecution of Chinese comrades by Mao’s party, as revealed in this appeal, the French, Italian, and Vietnamese comrades would start to doubt about the idealized “entrist tactic,” and would demand a new discussion.

By suppressing this document, Pablo not only deliberately deceived me and the Chinese comrades, but also committed two inexcusable crimes: (1) Objectively he helped the Chinese CP to conceal before the masses the most concrete and horrible facts of its persecution of the Chinese Trotskyists. (2) He has made it impossible for the comrades of different countries, applying or about to apply the “entrist tactic,” to learn lessons from the brutal persecutions afflicted on the Chinese comrades. This is like putting them to work in a danger zone without letting them know about the danger. A veritable ostrich policy! Let me cite another incident to illustrate this attitude. When the Vietnamese comrades were ready to return to their country to apply the “entrist policy,” and called a meeting in which I was invited to make a speech, the chairman of this meeting made a request of me not to mention before the comrades the recent persecutions experienced by the Chinese comrades. I knew quite well that it was an instruction or suggestion from Pablo. Al though I observed the request of the chairman, I still warned him personally that the “ostrich policy” was the most dangerous.

My Open Letter was written as the result of a proposal by Manuel at the November Plenum of the IEC, 1952, which was then approved unanimously and decided by all the members. Its aim was to make public internationally the facts about the persecutions afflicted on the Chinese Trotskyists in order to arouse the sympathy of the world working class and progressive groups and to exercise pressure on Mao’s party to restrain it from continuing to persecute the Chinese Trotskyists arid other revolutionary elements. Because of a desire to collect the most reliable data, this letter was finished only in April. It was already somewhat late. But under the pretext of sending somebody to consult me about the content of this letter, Pablo again succeeded in holding it up for two months more (during these two months, Frank discussed with me twice, pointing out a few not very important places to argue about with me, and of course, there was no conclusion whatever). Finally, at the beginning of July, Germain came to talk with me about it. He started by criticizing the form of the letter as completely wrong, and asked that it be written over again. According to their ideas, I should have opened the letter by first expressing a total support for the movement under the leadership of Mao’s party, praising its revolutionary achievements, and then at last come to the point of enumerating the facts of their persecutions and made the protest. Secondly, Germain remarked that the views expressed in this letter diverged considerably from the line of the resolution of the International, and for this reason he denounced me as a “hopeless sectarian.” At last he said that the IS could not undertake the responsibility of sending this document to the different sections for publication. If I insisted on having it published, I myself was to be responsible for any step taken concerning it.

It was quite a surprise for me to see how greatly Germain’s attitude had changed from his previous “moderate” and conciliatory one toward me. This time it was Pabloite through and through. I already understood that Pablo was absolutely unwilling to have this letter published; the reasons were generally the same as those in regard to the “Appeal of the Chinese Trotskyists.” As to whether or not this letter was written “completely in the wrong way” in its “form” and is “hopeless sectarianism” in its content, since it is now published in the Militant, those who have read it can make an open judgment. It is least of all my intention to defend myself. Nevertheless, from the above views expressed by Germain as representative of the IS, one can see clearly that they expected me to submit a panegyric to Mao’s party in order to seek conciliation with it. The conciiationist tendency toward Stalinism is again indirectly reflected here.

At this point, I would like to make a brief comment on the modification of Germain’s attitude during these two years, which might be of some help to you in understanding his role in the IS and in the present struggle.

I can say that ever since my first contact with Germain after coming here, I have always had the warmest sympathy toward him. This feeling derived from my observation of his seriousness and devotion in his work, his sincerity and warmth toward comrades, his consider able political maturity and respect for our tradition in organizational matters, and I once deemed him to be one of the most promising new leaders of our movement. Although I had also noticed his lack of penetrating analysis in observing various problems, his impressionist temperament, wavering and conciliationist spirit manifested very often on important problems, and his facility in modifying his own positions, I still trusted that he would be able to overcome these weaknesses through the experiences in the movement as it develops. So when I heard among the entourage of Pablo all kinds of unfavorable propaganda about him over a long period, picturing him as lacking any independent views, or even as simply “a secretary with the function of collecting materials for Pablo” (in the words of A.), I felt quite indignant for the injustice done on his worth. When the crisis of the French party exploded anew, Germain openly opposed the arbitrary measure taken by Pablo. I saw myself how he was violently attacked by Pablo and the French minority, and often felt very bad for him. I had sent him sympathetic regard through my daughter, and he said that without the support of the German and Italian sections, he would have been beaten down long before. Precisely because he had this support, Pablo made special compromises toward him and promoted him as the representative of the IS to participate in the “coalition leadership” of the French majority and minority, and made him the “arbitrator.” Henceforth, Germain was placed in the forefront of direct conflict with the French majority, and executed for Pablo the preconceived design which he had once been violently against. Around the same time, Pablo assigned him the task of drafting the resolution on the Chinese question, to put him in opposition to me. Ever since then, under Pablo’s “compromises” and “promotions” (almost raised to the height only next to Pablo himself), Germain gradually abandoned his conciliationary position, and more and more involved himself in the trap of Pablo’s bureaucratism.

Today his taking a position completely on the side of Pabloism in opposition to the struggle led by the SWP against revisionism and bureaucratism indicates how unconsciously he has fallen into Pablo’s trap. I am still very sorrowful over his degeneration. If Pablo did not have Germain’s support this time, that is, the support through him of the German and Italian leaderships, he would not be able to continue along his path all by himself, and a split might be avoided. From this point of view, the criminal role Germain played in this struggle is of decisive nature. In sum, I have to make the following conclusion from my observations and experiences with Germain during these two years: In many respects, especially in his temperament, he resembles Bukharin. He often wavers between revolutionary conscience and the momentary consideration of power. When the latter is satisfied for a time, the former is cast aside. For him to return to orthodox Trotskyism will be possible only when his revolutionary conscience is awakened by discovering Pablo’s entire conspiracy, and when he realizes that he is already involved in a terrible trap.

I have learned that the conflict in your party between the majority and the minority had proceeded for more than a year and a half, was accentuated after the May Plenum and then came closer and closer to the brink of a split. If the secretary of the IS had really been con cerned with the interest of our movement, he would have called in time an extraordinary session of the IEC, to discuss and examine the divergences of both sides, and to adopt a correct position in order to help the victory of the correct side. Even if this could not have been the case, at least the IS should have sent to the members of the lEG and to the leaderships of the different sections the documents of dispute in your party to enable them to study, discuss and express their opinions and criticisms, to indirectly help the conflict in your party to proceed objectively. Yet the IS under Pablo’s control concealed completely the news of your struggle and all documents of discussion from the members of the IEC and the leaderships of different sections. For instance, in my case, it was only in the beginning of September that I learned vaguely about the principal arguments of both sides through a friend. Without this source I would have remained completely in the dark until the time when you published the Open Letter. The fact is simply that the responsible members of the IS had never informed me about the situation of the internal struggle in your party. Pablo & Co. adopted bureaucratic methods to keep the information from us because they had a design they wanted kept hidden. And now it is all quite clear: The minority in your party is not only the advocator, defender and elaborator of Pablo’s revisionism, but they were inspired and directed behind the scenes by Pablo in the struggle, as is fully revealed by the methods they adopted and their conduct of sabotage. In other words, the degree and the consequence of split attained by the conflict in your party is caused directly by Pablo’s conduct in the interest of his own faction.

From all these facts stated above, which I witnessed and personally experienced, a general conclusion can be drawn as follows: Politically Pablo’s revisionist tendency in conciliation with Stalinism is totally unveiled by his idealization of Mao’s party and its present regime and the illusions cherished toward it, and especially by his excusing and defending Mao’s party for its persecution of Trotskyists. This conciliationism has already involved the Chinese section in extreme confusion, and even brought it to the edge of disintegration through liquidationism and pessimism derived from Pablo’s theses. Organizationally, the astonishing and dangerqus point reached by Pablo’s bureaucratism has been demonstrated by these facts that he freely abused the name of the IS in privately suspending the majority members of the EC of the French party and in excluding his opponents at his will; that he monopolized the IS and controlled the IEC through the IS; that he attempted to and did create a personal clique, conspiring to seize the leadership of the sections, that he suppressed the documents which should have been published, and even those he promised to publish; and that he isolated and disrupted the normal relations among leading comrades, and he slanders, calumniates, lies about and deceives them. All these crimes that I personally saw and encountered 25 years ago in the degenerated Comintern under Stalin’s control I now saw performed once again in the leading organ of the International under Pablo’s control! The splitting of parties conducted by the minorities in America and Britain in the recent time, and Pablo’s accelerated conspiratory activities to split the whole International right now were the logical developments of his personal ambition to usurp the whole International and of his bureaucratism.

The facts enumerated above and their conclusions have sufficiently justified the exceptional action adopted by the SWP as necessary and correct.

Recently a responsible comrade of the Chinese section (who politically agrees with your position) wrote to me and asked, “Why didn’t the SWP proceed according to democratic centralism, trying through the international discussion to win the support of the majority, instead of issuing first of all an open letter (referring to the Letter to Trotskyists Throughout the World) appealing to all sections to throw Pablo out?” Comrades like him, who do not understand the true state of affairs and still cherish innocent legalistic conceptions, are not of very small number. It is precisely in an attempt to exploit this situation that Pablo and his supporters are making a great hue and cry, “The open letter published by Cannon is completely in violation of Trotskyist organizational tradition, and in violation of the discipline of democratic centralism “hoping thereby to confuse and deceive comrades, and to cover up Pablo’s own conspiracy to usurp the authority of the International by bureaucratic methods, of his own trampling on organizational tradition and of his own violations of the discipline of democratic centralism. Therefore, I made the following reply on the 8th of this month to the Chinese section on the question posed above:

“Although there are such serious divergences between the political views of both sides (referring to yours and those represented by Pablo) yet, if the IS could have maintained its normal and reasonable procedure, there might be and ought to be the possibility for a full internal discussion, and to arrive at a solution through democratic centralism. But the extremely unfortunate thing is that the IS has been entirely controlled and usurped by Pablo who utilizes this “legal apparatus” to arrogantly proceed with the organizing of his conspiracy by arbitrarily excluding his opponents from the IS and secretly setting up his own clique or faction with the aim of seizing the leadership of a section or splitting the organization. This has rendered impossible any normal discussion according to the principle of democratic centralism, and thus obliged the SWP, led by Cannon, to adopt this exceptional action of today, to publish the Open Letter demanding the expulsion of Pablo and his agents from the International’s leading organ. This is really unprecedented in the history of our international movement, and is an action of revolutionary nature. This action has become necessary not only to crush Pablo’s attempt at usurpation, but also to gain time in which to rescue the movement, and to reorganize and co ordinate it in time to confront the approaching new world war and revolution. If the mobilization of this struggle should be prolonged until the explosion of the Third World War, it would be too late.”

I also have to point out that Pablo’s conspiracy of usurping the leading organ of the International during these recent years, and all kinds of bureaucratic methods of extremely arbitrary and absurd nature, have more or less been revealed on many sides. The fact is that our International as a whole and the responsible leaders of the different sections have not been vigilant enough, and did not exercise early enough severe surveillance, criticism, intervention and restraint. The result this extremely dangerous and uncontrolled situation deserves our special examination and review. Every responsible member and every orthodox Trotskyist should derive a serious lesson from this Pablo affair. (About this, if you wish, I can offer some materials and views for discussion with you.)

As a last point, I want to tell you in passing that since the Chinese organization received the open letter of the SWP, its leading organ, the National Committee, immediately held a series of meetings devoted to a most serious discussion. As a result, almost all unanimously (with only one abstention) approved the views and positions contained in your Open Letter, and expressed a resolute will to participate in this struggle led by you against revisionism and bureaucratism. Having gone through this discussion, they have recovered their original confidence, and are beginning to disentangle themselves from the confusions, conflicts and bewilderment of recent years. They are now initiating a general discussion in the rank and file in the attempt to re examine all fundamental political questions according to the orthodox Trotskyist tradition, and to obtain unanimity and unity to march forward on a revolutionary party. I consider this as the first most optimistic sign in the process of the struggle against revisionism.

Fraternally yours, S. T. Peng

[The following letter was first published in the 16 November 1953 issue of The Militant.  

From the 25th Anniversary Plenum of the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party. First posted at http://www.bolshevik.org/history/pabloism/Trpab-4.htm]   

To All Trotskyists:

Dear Comrades:

On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Trotskyist movement in the United States, the Plenum of the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party sends its revolutionary socialist greetings to orthodox Trotskyists throughout the world.

Although the Socialist Workers Party, because of undemocratic laws passed by the Democrats and Republicans, is no longer affiliated to the Fourth International — the World Party of Socialist Revolution founded by Leon Trotsky to carry on and fulfill the program betrayed by the Second International of the Social Democrats and the Third International of the Stalinists — we take interest in the welfare of the world-wide organization created under the guidance of our martyred leader.

As is well know, the pioneer American Trotskyists 25 years ago brought the program of Trotsky, suppressed by the Kremlin, to the attention of world public opinion. This act proved decisive in breaching the isolation imposed by the Stalinist bureaucracy on Trotsky and in laying the foundation for the Fourth International. With his exile shortly thereafter, Trotsky began an intimate and trusted collaboration with the leadership of the SWP that lasted to the day of his death.

The collaboration included joint efforts to organize revolutionary socialist parties in a number of countries. This culminated, as you know, In the launching of the Fourth International in 1938. The Transitional Program, which remains the keystone of today’s program of the world Trotskyist movement, was written by Trotsky in collaboration with the leaders of the SWP and at his request was submitted by them for adoption at the founding Congress.

The intimacy and thoroughness of the collaboration between Trotsky and the leadership of the SWP can be judged from the record of struggle In defense of orthodox Trotskyist principles in 1939-40 against the Petty-Bourgeois Opposition headed by Burnham and Shachtman. That record has had profound influence in shaping the Fourth International in the past 13 years.

After the murder of Trotsky by an agent of Stalin’s secret police, the SWP took the lead in defending and advocating his teachings. We took the lead not from choice but from necessity — the second world war forced the orthodox Trotskyists underground in many countries, especially in Europe under the Nazis. Together with Trotskyists in Latin America, Canada, England, Ceylon, India, Australia and elsewhere we did what we could to uphold the banner of orthodox Trotskyism through the difficult war years.

With the end of the war, we were gratified at the appearance in Europe of Trotskyists from the underground who undertook the organizational reconstitution of the Fourth International. Since we were barred from belonging to the Fourth International by reactionary laws, we placed all the greater hope in the emergence of a leadership capable of continuing the great tradition bequeathed to our world movement by Trotsky. We felt that the young new leadership of the Fourth International in Europe must be given full confidence and support. When self-corrections of serious errors were made on the initiative of the comrades themselves, we felt that our course was proving justified.

However, we must now admit that the very freedom from sharp criticism which we together with others accorded this leadership helped open the way for the consolidation of an uncontrolled, secret personal faction in the administration of the Fourth International which has abandoned the basic program of Trotskyism.

This faction, centered around Pablo, is now working consciously and deliberately to disrupt, split, and break up the historically created cadres of Trotskyism in the various countries and to liquidate the Fourth International.

The Program of Trotskyism

To show precisely what is involved, let us restate the fundamental principles on which the world Trotskyist movement is built:

(1) The death agony of the capitalist system threatens the destruction of civilization through worsening depressions, world wars and barbaric manifestations like fascism. The development of atomic weapons today underlines the danger in the gravest possible way.

(2) The descent into the abyss can be avoided only by replacing capitalism with the planned economy of socialism on a world scale and thus resuming the spiral of progress opened up by capitalism In its early days.

(3) This can be accomplished only under the leadership of the working class as the only truly revolutionary class in society. But the working class itself faces a crisis of leadership although the world relationship of social forces was never so favorable as today for the workers to take the road to power.

(4) To organize itself for carrying out this world-historic aim the working class in each country must construct a revolutionary socialist party in the pattern developed by Lenin; that is, a combat party capable of dialectically combining democracy and centralism — democracy in arriving at decisions, centralism In carrying them out; a leadership controlled by the ranks, ranks able to carry forward under fire in disciplined fashion.

(5) The main obstacle to this is Stalinism, which attracts workers through exploiting the prestige of the October 1917 Revolution in Russia, only later, as it betrays their confidence, to hurl them either Into the arms of the Social Democracy, into apathy, or back to illusions in capitalism. The penalty for these betrayals is paid by the working people in the form of consolidation of fascist and monarchist forces, and new outbreaks of wars fostered and prepared by capitalism. From its inception, the Fourth International set as one of its major tasks the revolutionary overthrow of Stalinism inside and outside the USSR.

(6) The need for flexible tactics facing many sections of the Fourth International, and parties or groups sympathetic to its program, makes it all the more imperative that they know how to fight imperialism and all of its petty-bourgeois agencies (such as nationalist formations or trade-union bureaucracies) without capitulation to Stalinism; and, conversely, know how to fight Stalinism (which in the final analysis Is a petty-bourgeois agency of imperialism) without capitulating to imperialism.

These fundamental principles established by Leon Trotsky retain full validity in the increasingly complex and fluid politics of the world today. In fact the revolutionary situations opening up on every hand as Trotsky foresaw, have only now brought full concreteness to what at one time may have appeared to be somewhat remote abstractions not intimately bound up with the living reality of the time. The truth is that these principles now hold with increasing force both In political analysis and In the determination of the course of practical action.

Pablo’s Revisionism

These principles have been abandoned by Pablo. In place of emphasizing the danger of a new barbarism, he sees the drive toward socialism as “irreversible”; yet he does not see socialism coming within our generation or some generations to come. Instead he has advanced the concept of an “engulfing” wave of revolutions that give birth to nothing but “deformed,” that is, Stalin-type workers states which are to last for “centuries.”

This reveals the utmost pessimism about the capacities of the working class, which is wholly in keeping with the ridicule he has lately voiced of the struggle to build independent revolutionary socialist parties. In place of holding to the main course of building independent revolutionary socialist parties by all tactical means, he looks to the Stalinist bureaucracy, or a decisive section of it, to so change itself under mass pressure as to accept the “ideas” and “program” of Trotskyism. Under guise of the diplomacy required in tactical maneuvers needed to approach workers in the camp of Stalinism in such countries as France, he now covers up the betrayals of Stalinism.

This course has already led to serious defections from the ranks of Trotskyism to the camp of Stalinism. The pro-Stalinist split in the Ceylon party is a warning to all Trotskyists everywhere of the tragic consequences of the illusions about Stalinism which Pabloism fosters.

In another document, we are submitting a detailed analysis of Pablo’s revisionism. In this letter we will confine ourselves to some recent tests that show in the decisive field of action how far Pablo has gone in conciliationism to Stalinism and how grave the danger is to the existence of the Fourth International.

With the death of Stalin, the Kremlin announced a series of concessions in the USSR, none of them political in character. In place of characterizing these as nothing but part of a maneuver aimed at further entrenchment of the usurping bureaucracy and part of the preparation for a leading bureaucrat to assume the mantle of Stalin, the Pabloite faction took the concessions as good coin, painted them up as political concessions, and even projected the possibility of the “sharing of power” by the Stalinist bureaucracy with the workers. (Fourth International January-February, 1953, p. 13.)

The “sharing of power” concept, promulgated most bluntly by Clarke, a high priest of the Pablo cult, was indirectly sanctioned as dogma by Pablo himself in an unanswered but obviously leading question: Will the liquidation of the Stalinist regime take the form, Pablo asks, “of violent inter-bureaucratic struggles between elements who will fight for the status quo, if not for turning back, and the more and more numerous elements drawn by the powerful pressure of the masses?”

(Fourth International, March-April, 1953, p. 39.)

This line fills the orthodox Trotskyist program of political revolution against the Kremlin bureaucracy with a new content; namely, the revisionist position that the “ideas” and “program” of Trotskyism will filter into and permeate the bureaucracy, or a decisive section of it, thus “overthrowing” Stalinism in an unforeseen way.

In East Germany in June the workers rose against the Stalinist-dominated government in one of the greatest demonstrations in the history of Germany. This was the first proletarian mass uprising against Stalinism since it usurped and consolidated power in the Soviet Union. How did Pablo respond to this epochal event?

Instead of clearly voicing the revolutionary political aspirations of the insurgent East German workers, Pablo covered up the counter-revolutionary Stalinist satraps who mobilized Soviet troops to put down the uprising (“the Soviet leaders and those of the various ‘People’s Democracies’ and the Communist Parties could no longer falsify or ignore the profound meaning of these events. They have been obliged to continue along the road of still more ample and genuine concessions to avoid risking alienating themselves forever from support by the masses and from provoking still stronger explosions. From now on they will not be able to stop halfway. They will be obliged to dole out concessions to avoid more serious explosions in the immediate future and if possible to effect a transition ‘in a cold fashion’ from the present situation to a situation more tolerable for the masses.”) (Statement of the International Secretariat of the Fourth International published in The Militant July 6.)

Instead of demanding the withdrawal of Soviet troops — the sole force upholding the Stalinist government — Pablo fostered the illusion that “more ample and genuine concessions” would be forthcoming from the Kremlin’s gauleiters. Could Moscow have asked for better assistance as it proceeded to monstrously falsify the profound meaning of those events, branding the workers in revolt as “fascists” and “agents of American imperialism,” and opening a wave of savage repression against them?

The French General Strike

In France in August the greatest general strike in the history of the country broke out. Put in motion by the workers themselves against the will of their official leadership, it presented one of the most favorable openings in working-class history for the development of a real struggle for power. Besides the workers, the farmers of France followed with demonstrations, indicating their strong dissatisfaction with the capitalist government.

The official leadership, both Social Democrats and Stalinists, betrayed this movement, doing their utmost to restrain it and avert the danger to French capitalism. In the history of betrayals it would be difficult to find a more abominable one if it is measured against the opportunity that was present.

How did the Pablo faction respond to this colossal event?

They labeled the action of the Social Democrats a betrayal — but for the wrong reasons. The betrayal, they said, consisted of negotiating with the government behind the backs of the Stalinists. This betrayal, however, was a secondary one, deriving from their main crime, their refusal to set out on the road to taking power.

As for the Stalinists, the Pabloites covered up their betrayal By that action they shared in the Stalinist betrayal. The sharpest criticism they found themselves capable of uttering against the counter-revolutionary course of the Stalinists, was to accuse them of “lack” of policy.

This was a lie. The Stalinists had no “lack” of policy. Their policy was to maintain the status quo in the interests of Kremlin foreign policy and thereby to help bolster tottering French capitalism.

But this was not all. Even for the internal party education of the French Trotskyists Pablo refused to characterize the Stalinist role as a betrayal He noted “the role of brake played, to one degree or another, by the leadership of the traditional organizations” -— a betrayal is a mere “brake”! — “but also their capacity — especially of the Stalinist leadership — to yield to the pressure of the masses when this pressure becomes powerful as was the case during these strikes.” (“Political Note No. 1”)

One might expect this to be sufficient conciliation to Stalinism from a leader who has abandoned orthodox Trotskyism, but still seeks the cover of the Fourth International. However, Pablo went still further.

An Infamous Leaflet

A leaflet of his followers addressed to the workers at the Renault plant in Paris declared that in the general strike the Stalinist leadership of the CGT (main French trade-union federation) “was correct in not introducing demands other than those wanted by the workers.” This in face of the fact that workers by their actions were demanding a Workers and Farmers Government!

Arbitrarily separating the Stalinist-headed unions from the Communist Party — evidence of the most mechanical thinking or evidence of deliberate design in covering up the Stalinists? — the Pabloites declared in their leaflet that so far as the significance of the strike and its perspectives were concerned “this point only concerned the trade union secondarily. The criticism to make on this point does not apply to the CGT which is a trade union organization, which must first and foremost act as such, but to the parties whose role it was to point out the deep political significance of this movement and its consequences.” (Leaflet “To the Workers’ Organizations and to the Workers of Renault,” dated Sept. 3, 1953. Signed by Frank, Mestre, and Privas.)

In these statements we see the complete abandonment of everything Trotsky taught us about the role and the responsibilities of the trade unions in the epoch of the death agony of capitalism.

Then the Pabloite leaflet “criticizes” the French Communist Party for its “absence of line,” for simply placing itself “on the level of the trade union movement instead of explaining to the workers that this strike was an important stage (!) in the crisis of French society, the prelude (!) to a vast class struggle, where the problem of workers’ power would be posed in order to save the country from capitalist swindling and open the way to socialism.”

If the Renault workers were to believe the Pabloites, all that the perfidious French Stalinist bureaucrats were guilty of was a trace of syndicalism instead of a deliberate betrayal of the biggest general strike in the history of France.

Pablo’s approval of the policy of the CGT leadership seems scarcely credible, yet there is the inescapable fact staring one in the face. In the biggest general strike ever seen in France, Pablo blandly puts as “correct,” a French version of Gompers’ bourgeois policy of keeping the unions out of politics. And this in 1953!

If it is incorrect for the CGT leadership to advance political demands in consonance with objective needs, including formation of a Workers and Farmers Government, then why is the Socialist Workers Party demanding of the present-day Gompers’ of the American trade-union movement that they organize a Labor Party? A Labor Party that would aim at putting a Workers and Farmers Government in power in the United States?

Pablo’s rubber-stamp OK appears in a still stranger light when we remind ourselves that the CGT leadership happens to be highly political. At the slightest gesture from the Kremlin, it is prepared to call the workers out on no matter what wild political adventure. Recall, for instance, its role in the events initiated by the anti-Ridgway demonstrations last year. These Stalinist trade-union figures did not hesitate to call for strikes to protest the arrest of Duclos, a leader of the Communist Party.

The fact is that the CGT leadership revealed its highly political character once again in the general strikes. With all the skill of years of perfidy and double dealing, it deliberately tried to head off the workers, to stifle their initiative, to prevent the workers’ political demands from breaking through. The Stalinist trade-union leadership consciously betrayed. And it is this course of betrayal that Pablo calls “correct”!

But even this does not complete the account. One of the principal aims of the Pabloite leaflet is to denounce French Trotskyists who conducted themselves in the Renault plant during the strike as genuine revolutionists. It specifically names two comrades who have “been expelled from the Fourth International and its French Section for more than a year.” It states that this “group has been expelled for reasons of indiscipline; and the orientation which it has followed, especially in the course of the last strike movement, is opposed to that actually defended by the PCI (French Section of the Fourth International).” The reference to the “group” is actually to the majority of the French Section of the Fourth International which was arbitrarily and unjustly expelled by Pablo.

Has the world Trotskyist movement ever before heard of such a scandal as officially denouncing Trotskyist militants to Stalinists and providing rationalizations to the workers for an abominable Stalinist betrayal?

It should be noted that the Pabloite denunciation of these comrades before the Stalinists follows the verdict of a workers’ tribunal acquitting the Trotskyists in the Renault plant of slanders leveled at them by the Stalinists.

The American Pabloites

The test of these world events is sufficient, in our opinion, to indicate the depth of Pabloite conciliationism toward Stalinism. But we would like to submit for public inspection of the world Trotskyist movement some additional facts.

For over a year and a half the Socialist Workers Party has been engaged in a struggle against a revisionist tendency headed by Cochran and Clarke. The struggle with this tendency has been one of the most severe in the history of our party. At bottom it is over the same fundamental questions that divided us from the Burnham/Shachtman group and the Morrow-Goldman group at the beginning and end of World War IL It is another attempt to revise and abandon our basic program. It has Involved the perspective of the American revolution, the character and role of the revolutionary party and its method of organization, and the perspectives for the world Trotskyist movement.

During the post-war period a powerful bureaucracy consolidated itself in the American labor movement This bureaucracy rests on a large layer of privileged, conservative workers who have been “softened” by the conditions of war prosperity. This new privileged layer was recruited in large measure from the ranks of former militant sectors of the working class, from the same generation that founded the CIO.

The relative security and stability of their living conditions have temporarily paralyzed the initiative and fighting spirit of these workers who previously were in the forefront of all militant class actions.

Cochranism is the manifestation of the pressure of this new labor aristocracy, with its petty-bourgeois ideology, upon the proletarian vanguard. The moods and tendencies of the passive, relatively satisfied layer of workers act as a powerful mechanism transmitting alien pressures into our own movement. The slogan of the Cochranites, “Junk the Old Trotskyism,” expresses this mood.

The Cochranite tendency sees the powerful revolutionary potential of the American working class as some far-off prospect. They denounce as “sectarian” the Marxist analysis which reveals the molecular processes creating new fighting regiments in the American proletariat.

Insofar as there are any progressive tendencies within the working class of the United States they see them only in the ranks or periphery of Stalinism and among “sophisticated” union politicians — the rest of the class they consider so hopelessly dormant that they can be awakened only by the impact of atomic war.

Briefly, their position reveals: Loss of confidence in the perspective of the American revolution; loss of confidence in the role of the revolutionary party in general and the Socialist Workers Party in particular.

Features of Cochranism

As all the sections of the world movement well know from their own hard and difficult experiences, pressures exist far greater than prolonged war prosperity and the sweep of reaction such as has been bearing down upon us m the United States. But the factor that sustains cadres under the most difficult circumstances is the burning conviction of the theoretical correctness of our movement, the knowledge that they are the living means for advancing the historic mission of the working class, the understanding that to one degree or another the fate of humanity depends on what they do, the firm belief that whatever the momentary circumstances may be, the main line of historic development demands the creation of Leninist combat parties that will resolve the crisis of humanity through a victorious socialist revolution.

Cochranism is the substitution of skepticism and theoretical improvisations and journalistic speculation for this orthodox Trotskyist world outlook. It is this that has made the struggle in the SWP irreconcilable in the same sense that the struggle with the Petty-Bourgeois Opposition in 1939-40 was irreconcilable.

The Cochranites have manifested the following features in the course of the struggle:

(1) Disrespect for party tradition and the historic mission of the party. Hardly an opportunity is lost by the Cochranites to denigrate, ridicule and preach contempt for the 25-year tradition of American Trotskyism.

(2) A tendency to replace principled Marxist politics with unprincipled combinations against the party “regime.” Thus the Cochranite faction is composed of a bloc of contradictory elements. One group, centered mainly in New York, favors a kind of “entry” tactic in the American Stalinist movement.

Another group, composed of conservatized union elements, centered primarily in Detroit, sees little to be gained by turning to the Stalinists. It bases its revisionist outlook on an over-estimation of the stability and lasting power of the new labor bureaucracy.

Also attracted to Cochranism are individuals grown tired, who can no longer stand the pressures of the present adverse conditions and who are looking for a plausible rationalization with which to retire into inactivity.

The cement binding this unprincipled bloc is common hostility to orthodox Trotskyism.

(3) A tendency to shift the party away from what our main arena must be in America, the politically unawakened workers of the mass production industries. The Cochranites, in effect, dropped the program of transitional slogans and demands which the SWP has used as a bridge toward these workers and argued that the majority in continuing this course was adapting itself to the backwardness of the workers.

(4) A conviction that all possibility of the American working class coming forward in radical opposition to American imperialism before the Third World War is ruled out.

(5) Gross experimental theorizing with “left” Stalinism that boils down to the extravagant belief that the Stalinists “can no longer betray,” that Stalinism includes a revolutionary side which makes it possible for the Stalinists to lead a revolution in the United States, in the process of which they would absorb Trotskyist “ideas” so that the revolution would eventually “right itself.”

(6) Adaptation to Stalinism in the face of new events. They support and defend the conciliation to Stalinism found in Pablo’s interpretation of the downfall of Beria and the subsequent sweeping purges in the USSR. They repeat all the Pabloite arguments covering the counterrevolutionary role of Stalinism in the great uprising of the East German workers and the French general strike. They even interpret the turn of American Stalinism toward the Democratic Party a mere “right oscillation” within a “left turn.”

(7) Contempt for the traditions of Leninism in questions of organization. For a time they attempted to set up “dual power” in the party. When they were rebuffed by the overwhelming majority of the party at the May 1953 Plenum, they agreed in writing to abide by the rule of the majority and the political line as decided by the Plenum. Subsequently, they broke their agreement, renewing their factional sabotage of party activities on a more feverish and hysterical basis than ever.

Cochranism, whose main features we have indicated above, was never more than a weak minority in the party. It would never have amounted to more than the most feeble and sickly expression of pessimism had it not been for the aid and encouragement it received from Pablo behind the backs of the party leadership.

Pablo’s secret encouragement and support was exposed soon after our May Plenum, and since then Pablo has been openly collaborating with the revisionist faction in our party and inspiring them in their campaign of sabotage of party finances, disruption of party work and preparations for a split

The Pablo-Cochran faction finally culminated this disloyal course with an organized boycott in New York of the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Celebration of the party, which was combined with a wind-up rally in the New York municipal election campaign.

This treacherous, strikebreaking action constituted, in effect, an organized demonstration against the 25-year struggle of American Trotskyism, and, at the same time, an act of objective aid to the Stalinists who expelled the initiating nucleus of American Trotskyism in October 1928.

The organized boycott of this meeting was, in effect, a demonstration against the campaign of the Socialist Workers Party in the New York municipal election.

All who participated in this treacherous, anti-party action obviously consummated the split which they had long been preparing, and forfeited all right to membership in our party.

Formally recording this fact, the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Plenum of the SWP suspended the National Committee members who organized the boycott and declared that all members of the Pablo-Cochran faction who participated in this treacherous, strikebreaking action or who refuse to disavow it have by that fact placed themselves outside the ranks of the SWP.

Methods of the Comintern

Pablo’s duplicity in presenting one face to the leadership of the SWP while secretly collaborating with the revisionist Cochranite tendency is a method that is alien to the tradition of Trotskyism. But there is a tradition to which It does belong — Stalinism. Such devices, used by the Kremlin, were instrumental in corrupting the Communist International Many of us had personal experience with all this in the 1923-28 period.

The evidence is now decisive that this way of operating is not an isolated aberration on the part of Pablo. A consistent pattern is apparent

For instance, in one of the leading European sections of the Fourth International, an outstanding party leader recently received an order from Pablo, directing him to conduct himself as one “who defends until the Fourth World Congress the majority line and the discipline of the International.” Along with the ultimatum Pablo threatened reprisals if his orders were not obeyed.

The “majority” to which Pablo refers here is simply the modest label he places on himself and the small minority hypnotized by his revisionist novelties. Pablo’s new line is in violent contradiction to the basic program of Trotskyism. It is only beginning to be discussed in many parts of the world Trotskyist movement Not having been backed by a single Trotskyist organization, it does not constitute the approved official line of the Fourth International.

The first reports we have received indicate outrage at his high-handed attempt to foist his revisionist views on the worldwide organization without waiting for either discussion or a vote. We already have enough information to state that the Fourth International is certain to reject Pablo’s line by an overwhelming majority.

Pablo’s autocratic demand to a leader of a section of the Fourth International to refrain from criticizing Pablo’s revisionist political line is bad enough. But Pablo did not stop there. While trying to gag this leader and prevent him from participating in a free discussion in which the rank and file might benefit from his experience, knowledge and Insight, Pablo proceeded to intervene organizationally, attempting to crystallize a minority revisionist faction to conduct war on the leadership of the section.

This procedure is out of the foul tradition of the Comintern as It underwent degeneration under the influence of Stalinism. If there were no other issue than this, it would be necessary to fight Pabloism to a finish to save the Fourth International from internal corruption.

Such tactics have an obvious purpose. They are part of the preparation for a coup by the Pabloite minority. Utilizing Pablo’s administrative control, they hope to impose his revisionist line on the Fourth International and wherever it is resisted to reply by splits and expulsions.

This Stalinist organizational course began, as is now quite clear, with Pablo’s brutal abuse of administrative control in his disruptive campaign against the majority of the French section of the Fourth International more than a year and a half ago.

By fiat of the International Secretariat, the elected majority of the French section was forbidden to exercise its rights to lead the political and propaganda work of the party. Instead, the Political Bureau and the press were put under the control of a minority through the Cominternist device of a “parity commission.”

At the time, we deeply disapproved this arbitrary action by which a minority was used to arbitrarily overturn a majority. As soon as we heard about it, we communicated our protest to Pablo. However, we must admit that we made an error in not taking more vigorous action. This error was due to insufficient appreciation on our part of the real issues involved. We thought the differences between Pablo and the French section were tactical and this led us to side with Pablo, despite our misgivings about his organizational procedure, when, after months of disruptive factional struggle, the majority was expelled.

But at bottom the differences were programmatic in character. The fact is that the French comrades of the majority saw what was happening more clearly than we did. The Eighth Congress of their party declared that “a grave danger menaces the future and even the existence of the Fourth International…Revisionist conceptions, born of cowardice and petty-bourgeois impressionism have appeared within its leadership. The still great weakness of the International, cut off from the life of the sections, has momentarily facilitated the installation of a system of personal rule, basing itself and its anti-democratic methods on revisionism of the Trotskyist program and abandonment of the Marxist method.” (La Verite, Sept 18, 1952.)

The whole French situation must be re-examined in the light of subsequent developments. The role of the majority of the French section played in the recent general strike demonstrated in the most decisive way that they know how to uphold the fundamental principles of orthodox Trotskyism. The French section of the Fourth International was unjustly expelled. The French majority, grouped around the paper La Verite, are the real Trotskyists of France and are so openly recognized by the SWP.

Particularly revolting is the slanderous misrepresentation Pablo has fostered of the political position of the Chinese section of the Fourth International. They have been pictured by the Pablo faction as “sectarians,” as “fugitives from a revolution.”

Contrary to the impression deliberately created by the Pablo faction, the Chinese Trotskyists acted as genuine revolutionary representatives of the Chinese proletariat. Through no fault of theirs they have been singled out as victims by the Mao regime in the way that Stalin singled out for execution the entire generation of Lenin’s Bolsheviks in the USSR, emulating the Noskes and Scheidemanns of Germany who singled out the Luxemburgs and Liebknechts of the 1918 revolution for execution. But Pablo’s line of conciliationism toward Stalinism leads him inexorably to touch up to the Mao regime couleur de rose while putting gray tints on the firm, principled stand of our Chinese comrades.

What to Do

To sum up: The lines of cleavage between Pablo’s revisionism and orthodox Trotskyism are so deep that no compromise is possible either politically or organizationally. The Pablo faction has demonstrated that it will not permit democratic decisions truly reflecting majority opinion to be reached. They demand complete submission to their criminal policy. They are determined to drive all orthodox Trotskyists out of the Fourth International or to muzzle and handcuff them.

Their scheme has been to inject their Stalinist conciliationism piecemeal and likewise in piecemeal fashion, get rid of those who come to see what is happening and raise objections. That is the explanation for the strange ambiguity about many of the Pabloite formulations and diplomatic evasions.

Up to now the Pablo faction has had a certain success with this unprincipled and Machiavellian maneuverism. But the qualitative point of change has been reached. The political issues have broken through the maneuvers and the fight is now a showdown.

If we may offer advice to the sections of the Fourth International from our enforced position outside the ranks, we think the time has come to act and to act decisively. The time has come for the orthodox Trotskyist majority of the Fourth International to assert their will against Pablo’s usurpation of authority.

They should in addition safeguard the administration of the affairs of the Fourth International by removing Pablo and his agents from office and replacing them with cadres who have proved in action that they know how to uphold orthodox Trotskyism and keep the movement on a correct course both politically and organizationally.

With fraternal Trotskyist greetings,

National Committee of the SWP

by James P. Cannon

[First printed in the Militant, June 16 1952. Reprinted in Notebook of an Agitator.]

THE WHOLE story of Koje Island is not yet known, but from the few scraps of information which have been blown out of the prisoners’ compounds, like hot rocks from a heaving volcano, the world is becoming uneasily aware of awful and fateful events transpiring there, with the premonition of more to come.

Through a breach in the military censorship the world is catching glimpses of a conflict of gigantic proportions in which ordinary men, as often before in history, play big parts because of the things they represent. In the great crises of history some men always, rIse above themselves and attain the stature of heroes. That happened In our own history—in 1776 and again in 1861. In the men who made these two revolutions young America saw the magnified image, of itself.

The same thing appears to be happening now once again in a far-off land, and we are witness to it. The transcendant issues of our century are being dramatized on Koje Island in human terms, as in a heroic epic which has for its theme the death agony of an old social order and the birth pangs of a new one. Colonial oppression and struggle for national independence; western supremacy and Asian self-assertion; war and revolution — these are the colossal Involved in the confrontation of white and yellow men across a barbed-wire barricade.

Outwardly it would appear that the struggle Is unequal, outcome foreordained. The American army, which never lost a war goes into the battle of Koje Island with much better equipment than the “Ragged Continentals” of 1776, who defended their land and their homes with an odd assortment of old muskets and sticks and stones, and a more impetuous policy than the patient General Washington’s strategy of attack and retreat to wear out the enemy and keep his own army in being.

For the battle of Koje Island we needed a different kind of general and we found him. To the atta-boy applause of the editorial writers, who unfortunately can’t leave their desks to take part. General Boatner has proclaimed a crack-down and he has the stuff to make good with it. Press dispatches bristle with accounts of the formidable array of armament he has brought up for use against prisoners of war who persist in waving their own banners within the compounds. There are daily reports of prisoners being killed and wounded since Boatner took charge and announced a “get tough” policy.

Things are moving to some kind of a show-down in this battle of Koje Island; and the American people, with the historic memory of Bunker Hill not yet entirely obliterated, would do well to ask for a little more information about what we are fighting for there. We have heard the explanations of the brass hats. The captured “gooks,” it seems, are “surly” and “fanatical”. They “don’t know who’s boss” and they have to be shown. The compounds have to be split up into smaller units so that the prisoners can be “screened” more effectively. The improvised banners, waved from sticks, inside the compounds, must come down. These are our declared war aims at Koje.

The prisoners’ side of the story didn’t come through yet, although a UP dispatch of May 21 reports that they made a strenuous effort to tell correspondents what it is. “When the prisoners inside saw new.,, men arrive they set up a clamor to be allowed to talk to them,” says the report. “One shouted in English: ‘Let us talk to these war correspondents! ‘ Authorities refused.” Could this incident, buried in a long dispatch, have been a correspondent’s indirect way of telling the world that the whole truth is not coming out because he and his colleagues are not allowed to send it?

As the climax approaches, the papers are full of information about the battle plans of the forces outside the barbed wire. The New York Times, June 9, reports: “General Boatner has shaped lip a full-scale offensive with all the troops under his command. . . . The plans call for battalions of infantrymen with fixed bayonets to crash through the barbed-wire barricades into the compounds, supported by several Patton tanks and under the protective range of machine guns.”

That ought to do it. Military doctrine says that, other things being equal, superior fire-power prevails and decides. What chance then, remains for the Koje prisoners who have no fire-power whatever? They have no chance at all—if other things are equal. But could it be that the prisoners keep their morale unshaken in the face of superior force because they think that the other things are not equal? That they have on their side some intangibles not comprehended by the military mind—some secret weapon more powerful than a bomb, some moral force generated by the things their banners represent and symbolize to them?

If that is the case, history tells us that such men will not be easy to conquer. History also tells us that men so inspired can lose a battle and still win the war. The most dangerous animal on earth is the man who has nothing to lose and is convinced that he has everything to gain. That’s the trouble with the ill-starred American adventure in Korea — it is up against men like that, who are convinced that their historic hour has come; that they have great allies; that hundreds of millions of their kindred are behind them because they are in the same fix.

Such a conviction can make all things possible. From such a conviction comes the fanatical courage of the Koje prisoners — you can even call it heroism and you won’t go wrong — to face all the military power of America unarmed and defiant. Yesterday they knew nothing, with no rights that a white man was bound to respect. But a mighty revolution, coming up like thunder out of China and echoing throughout the entire Orient, has changed all that. Revolution has made new men out of them, lifted them to their feet and inspired them to sing and firmly believe: “We have been naught, we shallbe all!”

That may be the secret weapon of the prisoners of Koje Island.

[Originally published in Internal Bulletins of the SWP and the International Bulletins of the International Committee. Copied from http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/1950-1953/ic-issplit/05.htm ]  

[Note: This correspondence is of more historic than programmtic significance, as it documents Cannon’s initial failure to support the French Trotskyist struggle against Pablo’s opportunism and bureaucratism]

Dear Comrade Cannon,

I am taking the liberty of writing you today because I think that you are one of the most qualified comrades in the Trotskyist movement for evaluating the situation in our section and the dispute which currently places the French party in opposition to the International Secretariat.

I have read In Defence of Marxism and The Struggle for the Proletarian Party; the exertions, struggles and experiences through which the American Trotskyists, and you especially, have passed, give you the necessary background for telling me what you think of what we are doing here.

All the leaderships of the Trotskyist sections are now in possession of a document from the International Secretariat dated January 21, 1952, concerning the French section.

However, this document in its five pages of text does not give an exact version of what is taking place. It does not present a political; view of the situation but strictly an administrative version of the dispute. From a reading of this document it could be concluded that the leading comrades of the French section are acting stubbornly and sulking at the decisions of the IS merely from whim.

The facts are really altogether different. Nobody in the International is unaware of the differences which have opposed the French majority to the IS up to the World Congress. These differences have been expressed in votes and in documents. The French majority has tried to clarify the nature of these differences, especially in the period 1 of preparation of the Seventh Congress of the French Party. But the differences which set the French Party in opposition to the IS were settled, if not solved, by the Third World Congress. And this found its expression in a resolution of the French Commission of the World Congress, a resolution which the Central Committee of our section unanimously approved, insofar as it is the line for applying the policies adopted by the Third World Congress. To say, as the IS does, that the French majority has ‘continued’ in practice to wish to apply the line of the Seventh Congress of the PCI is inaccurate and refuted by the entire attitude and policy as applied by the French leadership from the World Congress up to now.

Let me begin by stressing that Pablo, in opposing any vote at the World Congress on the documents which our delegates presented there (especially the 10 theses drawn up by Comrade Germain and adopted by our Seventh Congress), and this upon the contention that the International had not discussed them, was by this token unable to have our positions condemned by the Congress.

The truth is that whatever the spheres of activity of our party, nothing has given rise to the slightest criticism by any of the leading bodies of the International regarding remissness in applying the line laid down by the last World Congress.

In ‘youth’ work a draft resolution was presented to the Political Bureau. It gave rise to a certain amount of criticism, especially on the part of minority comrades. A parity commission of PB members was elected. This commission submitted a new, revised youth document, which was finally adopted. It is some four months since this resolution has been applied. Its application has called forth no important criticism, neither in the ranks of the minority nor from the IS.

If we take trade union work, up to and including the last meeting of the National Contact Commission of ‘Unite’, this work has gone ahead on the basis of complete agreement between the majority of the French Party and the IS. A document on directives was submitted unanimously by a commission of which Comrade Frank was a member. It was subsequently called into question anew by a totally different document with which I will deal presently.

Finally, the last sphere but not the least: our central organ, La Verité, has never been questioned in any fundamental way, by anyone whatever, for not having applied the line of the Third World Congress. What is more, Comrade Pablo stated to a meeting of the Paris Region that La Verité was showing ‘the obvious progress made by the French leadership in applying the political line laid down by the Third World Congress’. But if, as the IS letter declares, the French leadership’continues to wish to apply the line of the 7th PCI Congress’, where would this be more evident than in La Verité? Our paper, the principal external expression of our party, is best capable of reflecting in the light of events, the political positions of the leadership which publishes it.

Thus, since the Third World Congress, the French leadership has effectively endeavoured to apply the policies of our International ‘with understanding and discipline’. Further, it has maintained complete silence inside the party on the ever new demands imposed upon it by the IS. Inadequacies may have shown up here and there. They were inevitable. But this was in no sense wilful. If it were so, if the leadership had really desired to carry out a different line, this would have revealed itself not accidentally in episodic and piecemeal cases, but in the entire activity of the party, in all spheres, daily, and at every step. Examples of such an undisciplined attitude would be so numerous that there would be no difficulty in presenting a great many of them.

But the letter of the IS nowhere makes any precise, clearly formulated accusations.

In point of fact, there are two clearly distinct phases in the struggle between the IS and the French leadership. The first phase takes place after the Third World Congress, a period during which the party was orienting itself in its work on the basis of the French resolution. This application takes place with some necessary adjustments. Then there is a second phase whose date can be established precisely: it is December 6, 1951 when the IS issues a document entitled, ‘For the reorientation of our trade union work in France’.

This document, of which it was not known whether it was a mandatory resolution effective upon its appearance, or a contribution to the discussion of the trade union problem in France, called into question anew the decisions and documents of the Third World Congress. The stupefaction and indignation which such a document raised in the leadership of the French party were well founded. It was no longer a question of interpretation, of doing a job of exegesis on one sentence or another: this text was in fundamental and formal opposition with the text of the French commission of the World Congress.

For instance, in the French resolution, the following statement is made: ‘The necessary turn in the activity of the French party which results from the world turn in the situation does not in any case mean the abandonment of activities engaged in and of results achieved in such activities. On the contrary…,etc.

The text of the IS explains: ‘In order to realize these objectives which are possible right now, it is necessary not to attempt to set ourselves up as a distinct tendency (within the CGT), which is not objectively justified at the present stage — but to integrate ourselves there by promptly becoming the best workers for the unification of the trade union movement, by taking everywhere a clear unequivocal position for the unity proposals of the CGT, and by skilfully maneuvering as regards the Stalinist leaders so as to allay their suspicions about us and so as to let them consider us as useful instruments for the unity policy’. (Emphasis in the original).

About all this, the letter of the IS dated January 21 does not say a word; in this way it makes the dispute between the French party and the IS incomprehensible. The opposition which manifests itself on administrative and organizational questions can only find their explanation in the light of the political positions of each of the opponents. Every other way of trying to clarify the discussion can in fact only muddy it up.

This is all the more true when one considers the January 14 letter of the IS to the members of the Central Committee. There too, and anew, the CC found itself confronting totally new positions contrary to the letter and spirit of the Third World Congress. The question was that of envy into the CP but of a very special kind of envy, sui generis as the IS itself described it. Independent work was to be subordinated to this entry. (‘Independent work must be understood as having for its main ‘aim the aiding of “entrist” work and is itself to be directed primarily at the Stalinist workers’. —’Entrist work will develop in scope as we come closer to war’. Letter of the IS to the members of the CC).

But the World Congress stated precisely: ‘In the countries where the majority of the working class still follows the CP, our organizations, of necessity independent, must direct themselves toward more systematic work aimed at the ranks of these parties and of the masses which they influence’. (Theses on international Perspectives and the Orientation of the Fourth International).

This is so true that the Italian comrades, whose political situation is analagous to ours in many ways, have elaborated a resolution for work directed at the workers of the CP. The question of entry is envisaged and resolved in the following way: ‘This “entrist” tactic does not exclude but presupposes independent work …

‘Taking these requirements into account, we reach the conclusion that independent work must not be liquidated, but that on the contrary, it will be necessary to assign additional forces to this work’. The Italian comrades, in writing this, believe they are applying the line of the Third World Congress. But to say, as does the IS, that this Italian resolution ‘advocates a tactic identical to that proposed by the letter of the IS of January 14 to the CC of the French party’, constitutes a refusal to understand the obvious. The position of the IS in France makes independent work a supplement to entrist work; the Italian comrades are doing just the reverse. It is necessary to have a certain amount of political myopia to identify these two positions.

In my opinion the IS is seeking to mask the real reasons for the discussion by accusing the French majority of not wanting to apply the line of the Third World Congress and of wishing to substitute the line of the Seventh Congress of our party. Truthfully, the French leadership is not in opposition to the IS but to what we in France have labelled ‘Pabloism’. That is what is involved. And today, under the cover of our international leadership, Comrade Pablo is trying to have his own positions carried out. When the French majority says that the trade union resolution, as well as the letter of the IS to the members of the Central Committee of January 19 and 20, is not the honest expression of the World Congress, it is only expressing in another form that Pabloism did not win out at the Third World Congress. To convince oneself all one has to do is to return to the article, ‘Where Are We Going?’ and to the theses of the Third World Congress.

The struggle in which the French party has found itself engaged and in which I am taking part, has had for its setting the punitive action of the IS in suspending the majority of the Central Committee, a measure directed against all the living forces of the party, against everything which directly or indirectly touches working class and trade union work. This punitive measure is unjust and unjustifiable. It is a suppression of all genuine leadership in all spheres of work. And how does the IS explain this measure? By charging ‘political and organizational decomposition’. And upon what does it base this charge? Upon hearsay and gossip. But where the leadership of a party is decomposing politically and organizationally that ought to be confirmed by other means than by the charges of minority comrades. Decomposition, if it is political, must show itself in documents, and especially in the documents submitted precisely to the CC Plenum, where the majority was suspended. Political decomposition should also show itself in our central organ, La Verité, of which ten issues have appeared since the World Congress. This aspect of the question of political decomposition of our leadership is all the more important because allusion is made in this letter, to Shachtman, to the POUM, to the Yugoslavs. Those of our comrades who participated in the Second World Congress took a stand against the proposal to recognize the WP as a ‘sympathetic section’. Since that time we have neither said nor written a word which could justify an amalgam with Schachtman. No basis for comparison exists between our position and that of the POUM, to which Verité has replied in connection with its attacks against our Third World Congress. No position of ours is the same as the Yugoslavs against whom we have been conducting an offensive for over 18 months in all spheres where they have shown themselves (brigades, trade unions, youth). In what, directly or indirectly, does the argumentation employed by the French leadership resemble the positions taken by Schachtman, the POUM, the ‘Yugoslavs’? In nothing. And there you have an unprincipled amalgam which can only condemn those who make use of it.

As for the decomposition of the leadership of our party from an organizational standpoint, what are the symptoms which reveal this? Have members resigned? Has the paper failed to appear? Have directives not been issued in order to initiate this or that action at this or that moment? If the leadership is decomposing as the motor force of the party, what better test than the last strike movements of February 12 as a verification of this? But there again, as in the past, our leadership, conscious of its experience, of the situation in the party caused by the violent coup of the IS, proved itself equal to the greatness of its task.

Ah this tends to demonstrate that a bad cause has the need for bad methods in order to defend itself. And this likewise explains why for us the struggle against Pabloism is not a struggle of secondary importance. The French majority has acquired the conviction in the course of many months in which it has been opposed to Pabloism, that the latter means the destruction of Trotskyism, at least in Western Europe. The sharpness of the struggle, on both sides, can be explained or justified solely in this perspective.

If we return to the question of trade union work, we see in the French resolution of the World Congress, a resolution which our CC has adopted, the following perspective described in these words: ‘The agreements which have served as basis for ‘Unité’ (essential element of the trade union work of the French section) are taking place under the hallmark of free expression for the various currents gathered together around this paper. The general activity of the party in ‘Unité’ continues without any changes’. This is clear and without the slightest ambiguity. Four months after these lines were written, we can read the following sentences from the pen of the IS: ‘It is necessary not to attempt to set ourselves up as a distinct tendency’ as against the Stalinists. What is the meaning of such a sentence if not to deliver ourselves bound hand and foot over to the Stalinist bureaucrats. For us, however, the perspective is clear: the situation in the French trade union movement`is such that it imposes upon us the requirement not to surrender in any way the orientation laid down by the French resolution of the World Congress. That variations in Stalinist policy require of us this or that tactic is obvious. But it is a question of something quite different in the foregoing text of the IS.

If we return to the question of entry into the CP, our perspective is clear. We are not hostile to the examination of this possibility, and we had already formulated it well in advance of the letter of the IS of January 14 to the members of the CC. But for us it was above all a matter of fraction work which cannot change the work of the independent party and above all cannot in any way change the independent character of the Trotskyist programme with reference to Stalinism. Not only do we think that this fraction work in the CP is necessary and indispensable, but we say that this idea of entry in the CP must be considered by the whole party as the eventuality for which we must prepare ourselves in the perspective of great social upheavals and continued upheavals in the Stalinist apparatus. For Pablo it is quite another thing that is involved. It is a matter of pure and simple integration into Stalinism, ascribing to the latter the accomplishment of a certain number of historical tasks that Trotskyism is incapable of fulfilling.

Politics has its own logic, and particularly the politics of Pablo. Did not he state to the CC of the 19th and 20th of January that ‘the Transitional Programme’ was an inadequate instrument for effectively judging what Stalinism is at the present time? This may appear as a momentary error of Pablo, but since this statement, this idea has made its own way, and at the last meeting of the Parisian region, Comrade Frank, a member of the IS, stated that it is an incorrect idea of the Transitional Programme when it states that the ‘Third International had definitely passed over to the side of the bourgeois order’. And has not Comrade Corvin, member of the Central Committee, also said that to speak of the oscillations of the Stalinist bureaucracy means to put in question the workers’ character of the USSR, adding that we will no longer see oscillations, but hesitations by Stalinism in accomplishing the tasks of the revolution. Has not Comrade Mestre, member of the Political Bureau, stated that entry sui generis has become necessary because ‘Stalinism has changed’? All this is evidently not a product of chance. All this only expresses, in our ranks, the growing pressure of Stalinism upon the petty bourgeoisie of Western Europe which finds its echo in our organization.

This explains why I have personally stated that confronted by such positions the party must rise, unanimously, to condemn such crimes. I am not concerned with creating an atmosphere of hostility in the French section ‘against the International’ as the letter of the IS implies. I am concerned with defending the essential programmatic foundations of our movement, which is its wealth and which is its surest guarantee of victory.

The position which I have taken in this battle is the product of all the experience which I have accumulated during years of membership in the working class movement and particularly of my struggle for Trotskyism in the Renault plant. To create the notion that our opposition to the Pabloite line proceeds from an infantile anti-Stalinism is to conceal the real character of Pabloism, as it is revealing itself every day increasingly, every day more clearly. Today Pablo is compelled to call into question the fundamental ideas of the Transitional Programme in order to prop up his line. What will happen tomorrow?

The methods used by Pablo have caused me to reflect a great deal and I have in particular relived the struggle which Trotsky conducted against Schachtman, Burnham and Abern in 1939-40 in the American section. The methods used by the IS are absolutely the reverse of these. Trotsky, and all the American comrades at his side, fought politically and vied to convince the SWP comrades by the widest possible discussion and the most fundamental. In particular, Trotsky constantly turned towards the party’s working class base, addressed himself to it, used the best pedagogical forms so as to accomplish this, that the discussion would at least serve to educate the party. Here, we see the working class base of the party disdained, because it is the majority. We see fundamental questions evaded under false pretexts. To an entire leadership which is opposed to its line the IS replies: ‘Suspension’ and justified itself by insults.

From all this the party (and when I say party, I mean the whole International) can only lose. It is impossible to destroy a Trotskyist section under the pretext that it does not share the personal ideas of Pablo on the role of the Soviet bureaucracy and on ‘centuries of transition’. To destroy is not the role of a leader of the International: his role is not to destroy the human foundation of all politics, entrist or otherwise.

My letter has no other purpose than to warn you of this danger, to explain the situation and to ask your opinion. I hope I have accomplished my task.

With fraternal Bolshevik-Leninist best wishes, dear comrade, I am,

Daniel Renard

* * *

New York, N.Y.

May 29, 1952

Daniel Renard

Paris

Dear Comrade Renard:

I received your letter of February 16. Copies were also distributed to all the members of our National Committee, and in formulating the following reply I have had the benefit of discussion with them on the matter. If I have waited so long to answer, it is only because I am always reluctant to intervene in the affairs of another party without knowing all the pertinent facts and the people concerned. I make this explanation to assure you that I meant no disrespect to you by my delay in answering your letter. Just the contrary. My purpose was to give your communication the serious and deliberate answer it deserves.

In the meantime, the Tenth Plenum of the IEC has taken place, and its basic document on ‘The Tactical Application of the Third World Congress Line’, as well as its Organizational Resolution on the French situation, have been received here. We have also received a copy of the ‘Declaration by the Political Bureau Majority on the Agreements Concluded at the International Executive Committee’. These documents — the Tenth Plenum decisions and the Declaration of your Political Bureau Majority — seem to me to advance the dispute to another stage and to throw more light on it.

I have used the intervening time, since receiving your letter, for an attentive study of all the relevant documents, including those above mentioned. Naturally, from such a great distance I cannot feel qualified to pass judgment on the many secondary questions and personal antagonisms which are unfailingly involved in such a sharp dispute as your party is now experiencing. However, the general picture from a political point of view now seems clear enough to justify me in offering you and the other French comrades a frank opinion, as follows:

I think the Third World Congress made a correct analysis of the new post-war reality in the world and the unforeseen turns this reality has taken. Proceeding from this analysis, the Congress drew correct conclusions for the orientation of the national Trotskyist parties toward the living mass movement as it has evolved since the war. Further, the Tenth Plenum, in its basic document on the tactical application of the Third World Congress line, has faithfully interpreted, amplified and concretized the line of the Third World Congress as regards its tactical application under the different conditions in the different countries.

I note your statement that the majority are ‘not hostile’ to the ‘idea of entry into the CP’ as ‘the eventuality for which we must prepare ourselves’. That would seem to put the majority in basic agreement with the line of the IEC and clear the way for a jointly-elaborated programme of practical actions leading to an agreed-upon end. The ) differences seem to be reduced to questions of timing and pace. I should like to remind you, however, that in a fluid situation timing and pace can be decisive for the success or failure of an action. In such a situation, where an objective is agreed upon in principle, my own preference would be for decisiveness and speed.

I disagree in part with your formulation of the question of entry as ‘above all a matter of fraction work which cannot change the work of the independent party and above all cannot in any way change the independent character of the Trotskyist programme with reference to Stalinism’. Two different questions, which ought to be separated, are combined in this formula.

Of course, neither entry, nor any other policy or tactic which could be devised, can ‘in any way change the independent character of the Trotskyist programme with reference to Stalinism’. But ‘the work of the independent party’ in France, in the present historical conjuncture, can and must be radically changed, and that without unnecessary delay, for there is not much time left to seize the opportunity now open. We must get into the movement of Stalinist workers while there is yet time and by such means and methods as the situation permits, not those we might prefer to arbitrarily insist open.

A policy of maintaining the French party as an essentially independent party, with fraction work in Stalinist-controlled organizations as supplemental and secondary, would turn the necessities of the situation upside down. The situation in France now imperatively requires a policy of entry (of a special kind) into the Stalinist movement. The independent party and press should serve, stimulate and guide the entrist movement, not substitute for it or contradict it. It is true, as every Trotskyist knows, that the independence of the revolutionary vanguard party is a principle. Its creation is an unchanging aim of the revolutionary vanguard, always and everywhere and under all conditions. The function of the party, however, is not to exist for itself but to lead the workers in revolution. Further progress in the construction of a revolutionary party, capable of leading the revolutionary masses, requires now in France a wide and prolonged detour through the workers’ movement controlled by the Stalinists, and even eventually through a section of the Stalinist party itself.

The aim to build the Trotskyist party into a mass party remains fixed and unchanging, but the road toward it in France is by no means a straight one. If our French comrades should grow stubborn and formally insist on the functioning of the independent party as the primary and most essential work in the given situation, the living mass movement with its unbounded revolutionary potentialities would certainly pass it by and leave us with the form without the substance.

The breakup of the coalition on the trade union field around the paper, ‘L’Unité, was a progressive development for our party. Those reformist trade unionists who make a speciality of ‘anti-Stalinism’ in order to cover and justify their pro-imperialist policy are an international breed, and they are well known to us. They are not fit allies for Trotskyists in the United States, in France or anywhere else. The logic of their Stalinophobia inexorably impels them to the right, and no tactical diplomacy on our part can arrest the process. On the other hand, the French Stalinist workers, by the logic of the irreversible international trend of things, must be impelled more and more on a radical course. It is a matter of life and death for our comrades to establish connections with them and form an alliance with them against imperialism. The disruption of the ‘L’Unité’ coalition, provoked by the right wing, should be taken as a fortunate and most favourable springboard into this new and more fruitful arena.

As far as the anarchist phrasemongers are concerned — in the United States, in France, or anywhere else — time-wasting parleys and coalitions with them for the purpose of waging the class struggle against the imperialist bourgeoisie would make a mockery of things which ought to be taken seriously. This would not be revolutionary politics but a substitute for it.

Your letter, Comrade Renard, as well as the Declaration of the Majority of your Political Bureau on the Tenth Plenum, explains the political essence of your position in the conflict as opposition to ‘Pabloism’. You define this as a revisionist tendency, aiming at ‘pure and simple integration into Stalinism’ and thereby a capitulation to it. This question, as you may be aware, has a history in the Socialist Workers Party and is, consequently, familiar to us. As far back as 1950, when the new tactical turn was first indicated, the Johnsonites attempted to terrify the party with the scare of ‘Pabloism’. They sought to construe a struggle in the International Trotskyist movement of ‘Cannonism vs. Pabloism’. Since we were fully in favour of the new tactical turn from the start, we did not see any ground for such a contradistinction of tendencies, and said so when the question was first raised by the Johnsonites — an answer which no doubt hastened their departure from our ranks.

We, for our part, are orthodox Trotskyists since 1928 and thereby irreconcilable enemies of Stalinism or any conciliationism with it, not to speak of capitulation. I do not think I overstate the case if I say that should any kind of a pro-Stalinist tendency make its appearance in our international movement, we would probably be the first to notice it and to say: ‘This is an alien tendency with which we cannot compromise’. We do not see such a tendency in the International leadership of the Fourth International nor any sign nor symptom of it.

We judge the policy of the International leadership by the line it elaborates in official documents — in the recent period by the documents of the Third World Congress and the Tenth Plenum. We do not see any revisionism there. All we see is an elucidation of the post-war evolution of Stalinism and an outline of new tactics to fight it more effectively. We consider these documents to be completely Trotskyist. They are different from previous documents of our movement, not in principle or method, but only in the confrontation and analysis of the new reality and the tactical adjustment to it. It is the unanimous I opinion of the leading people of the SWP that the authors of these documents have rendered a great service to the movement for which they deserve appreciation and comradely support, not distrust and denigration.

I am sure that the International movement will not sanction or support a factional struggle based on suspicion of future intentions which cannot be demonstrated, or even deduced, from present proposals and positions formulated in documents. Nobody can learn anything from such fights, and the party is bound to be the loser. If you comrades of the majority should insist on a struggle against a ‘revisionism’ which is not evident to others, you could only disorient a number of worker comrades in the party ranks, isolate them from the other cadres of the International movement and lead them into a blind alley. Unfortunately, this has been done often enough in the past history of the French party by impulsive leaders who did not take thought of their course or heed the opinions of International comrades who sought to help them with friendly advice. I earnestly hope it will not happen this time.

It would be far better, in my opinion, to lay the suspicions aside or, in any event, not to make them the axis of discussion — and try to come to agreement with the IS on practical steps toward an effective penetration into the movement of Stalinist workers — leaving the different views as to the prospects to the test of experience. Political tendencies which are not clearly revealed cannot be fruitfully debated. If there is in fact any illusion about Stalinism on the one side, or a fetishism of formal independence on the other, the test of experience will mature and clarify such errors and make it possible to deal with them politically. Conversely, if there are no serious differences latent in the conflict, experience will eliminate any ground for suspicion in either respect.

An entry into the Stalinist workers’ movement and eventually into the Stalinist party itself, under the given conditions, with its rigid bureaucratic structure, is an extremely difficult and dangerous undertaking in the best case. It will be all the more difficult if there is no unity in the party leadership. The situation would be made many times worse if the French party has to be punished with one more unnecessary split. This possibility cannot be ignored.

Don’t deceive yourself, Comrade Renard. There is great danger of a split, even though both sides may have renounced any intention in this regard. A split is implicit in the situation as it has been developing in the recent period. In my opinion, the best way to avoid such a calamity — perhaps the only way — would be to shift the discussion for the time being to a concrete step-by-step programme, worked out jointly by the party leadership and the IS, to effectuate the imperatively-dictated entry into the Stalinist workers’ movement and eventually into a section of the Stalinist party itself.

Along that line — if our judgment is correct — the French party should soon get into a position to expand its influence and prepare for the great role which history has assigned to it in the approaching war and revolution. You can surely count on the sympathy and support of International comrades in this great endeavour.

Yours fraternally,

James P. Cannon

by Bleibtreu-Favre, June 1951

[First posted online at http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/1950-1953/ic-issplit/04.htm ]  

[Revolutionary Regroupment note: While expressing confusion on Yugoslavia and China, the document’s more general critique of Pablo, who looked to the Stalinists to act as substitutes for the working class and it’s Trotskyist vanguard, was key in laying the groundwork for the 1953 split.]

……………………………………………………………………

Introduction by La Verite

The document we are serializing appeared at the beginning of June 1951 under the title ‘Where is Comrade Pablo Going?’ Its publication has been postponed for several months at the request of a member of the International Secretariat—Comrade Germain, the author of ‘Ten Theses’ (see issues 300-304 of La Verite)— who warned the leadership of the Parti Communiste Internationaliste (PCI) against ‘the trap Pablo has laid for destroying the French section.

When the author of the ‘Ten Theses’ opposed their adoption by the PCI Central Committee, he left no room for doubt that he had renounced defending his ideas. He had capitulated, like Zinoviev and others had done before him, like Calas did recently before the French CP’s Central Committee. Trotsky had learned from experience that the rarest and most necessary quality for a revolutionary leader is ‘that little thing called character’!

The Trotskyist critique of the revisionist notions expressed by Pablo in ‘Where Are We Going?’ began with ‘Where Is Comrade Pablo Going?’ The reader can refer to the former document, which appeared in the February 1951 issue of the magazine Quatrieme Internationale. It is interesting to note that neither ‘Where is Pablo Going?’ nor any other political documents of the PCI were published in the international bulletins preparing for the World Congress.

‘Where Are We Going?’ was the ideological proclamation of Pabloism. To date, the split in France has been the main practical result. May it be the last!

Where is Comrade Pablo Going?

Clarity in a discussion arises from the presentation of opposing theses on the one hand and from polemics on the other; the two methods do not contradict each other but are instead complementary, in the strictest sense of the word.

To refrain from stating your theses, to stage a sort of guerrilla warfare of partial amendments when principles are at stake or, even worse, to restrict yourself to polemicizing against the weak points of the contested thesis is the distinguishing characteristic of tendencies that have neither principles nor any consciousness of their duty to our World Party of the Revolution.

As for us, we think that the method that guided the international discussion on the problems posed by the people’s democracies is the correct method; each thesis was fully presented by various comrades (we are speaking of the comrades of the majority who at the Second World Congress came out against the revisionist tendencies, which dissolved after having fought us with a series of indirect attacks [Hasten is the prototype in this regard—F.B.]).

In particular, we believe that Germain’s ‘Ten Theses: What Should Be Modified and What Should Be Maintained in the Theses of the Second World Congress of the Fourth International on the Question of Stalinism!’—we emphasize that we mean the ‘Ten Theses’ and not their bizarre foreword—is a positive and extremely timely document in the discussion preparing for the World Congress. Its clarity fully exempts it from the obligation to engage in a polemic against the points of view expressed on several occasions by Pablo. This is the way a healthy discussion should start. But to remain healthy, it can’t stop there. The points on which there is disagreement must be brought before the full light of day, which is something that only a polemic can accomplish.

The goal of this document, which is addressed to our entire International, especially to all our leading comrades in the International, is to tell them fraternally and frankly of the danger that a whole series of new positions represents for the program, the activities, and the very existence of our International. We say: be careful; the scratch may become infected, and then gangrene can set in.

We don’t pretend to be infallible, we don’t think our theses are exempt from a number of insufficiencies, we don’t feel we have the right to give lessons to any of our comrades; but we say to them ‘Look out, our ship has lost its course; it’s urgent that we take our bearings and change our course.’

In his document ‘Where Are We Going!’ Comrade Pablo brings into full daylight the revisionist tendencies that were included in the International Secretariat’s draft thesis but were disguised in the Ninth Plenum’s [November 1950!] compromise resolution.

Beginning with its opening lines, the violent tone of this document is surprising, all the more so since we don’t know which members of the International Executive Committee and the International Secretariat were being taken to task in … January 1951. We will undoubtedly never know the names of the people in question, those ‘people who despair of the fate of humanity,’ nor those who have written that ‘the thinking of the international seems out of joint,’ nor those who ‘cry bitter tears’ (which Pablo wants to believe are genuine), nor those who ‘tailor history to their own measure,’ nor of those Trotskyist careerists who ‘desire that the entire process of the transformation of capitalist society into socialism would be accomplished within the span of their brief lives so that they can be rewarded for their efforts on behalf of the Revolution.’ [Emphasis added.]

I. The Theory of ‘Blocs’ and ‘Camps’ Makes in Appearance in the International.

‘The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles, one reads in that dustbin known as the Communist Manifesto.

But it’s necessary to keep abreast of the times and to admit without hesitation along with Pablo that:

‘For our movement objective social reality consists essentially of the capitalist regime and the Stalinist world. [International Information Bulletin, March 1951, ‘Where Are We Going?’ p.2. Emphasis added.]

Dry your tears and listen: the very essence of social reality is composed of the capitalist regime (!) and the Stalinist (!) world (?).

We thought that social reality consisted in the contradiction between the fundamental classes: the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Clearly an error, for from now on the capitalist regime, which encompasses precisely these two classes, becomes a totality that is counterposed …to the Stalinist world.

The term ‘world’ is quite obscure, you will say; but it offers some significant conveniences and permits classifying states and social groups according to the supreme criterion: their Stalinist or non-Stalinist ‘nature.’

Thus the state that arose from the Third Chinese Revolution (whose economy, let us recall, has retained a capitalist structure up to the present) is classified by Pablo as being in the Stalinist world. We will return to this question.

On the other hand,the Yugoslav workers state (where the economy is almost fully nationalized and planned) is expelled from the Stalinist world. And since it cannot remain outside the realm of objective social reality, it drifts objectively, though imperceptibly, into the enemy camp (along with its arms, bags and baggage, and dictatorship of the proletariat!).

In order to dispel any uncertainty as to his conception of contemporary history, Pablo continues:

‘Furthermore, whether we like it or not, these two elements (the capitalist regime and the Stalinist world) essentially constitute objective social reality, for the overwhelming majority of the forces opposing capitalism are tight now to be found under the leadership or influence of the Soviet bureaucracy.’ [‘Where Are We Going?,’ p.2. Emphasis added.]

Thus the sum total of Pablo’s ‘social’ criterion seems to be the political nature (Stalinist or non-Stalinist) of states and human groupings.

He gives us no details about the tiny remaining minority that is neither under the leadership nor influence of the bureaucracy. Let’s admit that it’s the exception that proves the rule. What then is this tiny minority of forces that are anticapitalist but non-Stalinist?

We don’t think it’s intended to include the millions of workers in the USA, England, Canada, Germany, etc., who are neither influenced nor led by Stalinism. We must then conclude that the proletariat in the most advanced countries of the world do not constitute ‘forces opposed to capitalism.’ They have been labelled and pigeonholed under the category ‘capitalist regime.’

It’s more difficult to pin this label on the massive liberation movements in North Africa, Black Africa, Madagascar, India, Ceylon, and Indonesia, a movement that cannot possibly be considered as either a tiny minority or belonging to the Stalinist world.

Thus, like it or not, classes, states, and nations must rush pell-mell into one camp or the other (capitalist regime or Stalinist world). Moreover, Pablo adds, the international relationship of social forces is, ‘to express it in a schematic way, the relationship of forces between the two blocs.’ [1] (p.5.)

What Pablo calls ‘expressing it in a schematic way’ in reality constitutes mixing and jumbling everything together, ending up with an incredible confusion. When analyzing situations it is impossible to abandon class lines even for an instant without ending up with such ‘schematic concepts’ and fruitless endeavors.

What? The international relationship of forces is the relationship of forces between the two blocs! Some progress.

Since contemporary social reality consists of the two blocs, the relationship of social forces is naturally .. .the relationship of forces between the two blocs! This logic is irreproachable, because it is a tautology.

We will be told that we have misinterpreted what Pablo is saying; he meant the international relationship of forces between the classes which, schematically, is the relationship between the blocs. But where is there any room here for the old-fashioned notion of classes? Where in Pablo’s document is there any serious analysis of the situation of the International proletariat? If he had tried to give any, he certainly wouldn’t have ended up with this astonishing notion of ‘blocs,’ nor would he have designated the international proletarian forces as the forces of this extraordinary ‘Stalinist world.

Furthermore, he explains what he means quite clearly when he talks about the respective roles of Stalin and the revolutionary proletariat within the very ‘Stalinist world.

According to him, ‘the revolutionary spirit of the masses directed against imperialism acts as an ADDITIONAL FORCE supplementing the material and technical forces raised against imperialism.’ (p.5 Emphasis added.)

In effect, he is making it quite clear that the revolutionary forces are the forces of the Stalinist world. But within this Stalinist world there are major forces: these are the material and technical forces—Soviet industry, the divisions of the Red Army; and there are supplementary forces, a sort of National Guard that is tacked on to these technical forces. The revolutionary spirit of 400 million Chinese workers, the Vietnamese, the Koreans, and all the working people in the ‘Stalinist world’ are the auxiliary forces of the socialist bastion led by Stalin.

Here you have the conclusion that necessarily emerges when the petty-bourgeois concept of a ‘bloc’ between states is substituted for a class analysis of world reality (an analysis of the contradiction between the international proletariat and the international imperialist bourgeoisie), that is, for the basic reality of the world we live in. Like it or not, on the basis of this concept the most one can do is provide more ammunition for Zhdanov, whose thesis rests on the following supreme postulate: the acid test for revolutionaries is their loyalty to the Soviet Union and to its leader Stalin. The petty-bourgeois concept of blocs necessarily leads to a choice between Stalin (with or without reservations) and Truman (with or without reservations).

The direction in which the choice is made depends solely on where the dominant pressure is coming from. In Central and Western Europe, the petty bourgeoisie tends to lean in a ‘neutralist’ direction, that is,to adapt to the Stalinist bureaucracy, which they see as having the prestige of power and of numerous ‘victories’ in Asia, in the buffer zone, etc.—and whose ‘material and technical forces’ are impressive by virtue of the fact that they are quite close at hand.

Marxists have been accustomed to starting out with the criterion of class. It was this class criterion that enabled Leon Trotsky and the Fourth International to take on the revisionists on the question of the USSR and to classify the degenerated workers state in the camp of the international proletariat. Today we are supposed to turn Marxism upside down, stand it on its Hegelian head, its legs waving toward the sky ‘of life’, of ‘objective social reality, in its essence’ (the worst of abstractions under the circumstances). And from this inconvenient position we are supposed to classify such-and-such section of a class, and such-and-such state, and such-and-such technical force in one or the other ‘bloc’, capitalist regime or Stalinist world.

II. The Beginning of a Revision on the Nature of the Bureaucracy

In Pablo’s article we discover the notion of a Soviet bureaucracy that will survive after the world revolution and then wither away by virtue of the development of productive forces. We read, in fact, that the Soviet bureaucracy will disappear in ‘two (contradictory) ways’:—’by the counterblows of the anti-capitalist victories in the world and even in the USSR, stimulating resistance of the masses to the bureaucracy’;

—’by elimination in the long run of the objective causes for the bureaucracy, for all bureaucracy, in direct proportion as the capitalist regime suffers setbacks and an ever increasing and economically more important sector escapes from capitalism and organizes itself on the basis of a state-ized and planned economy, thereby stimulating the growth of the productive forces.’ (p.5 Emphasis added.)

The second thesis, the idea that the bureaucracy will disappear through the development of the productive forces, contains as many errors as words:

(1) It establishes an amalgam between the Soviet bureaucracy and bureaucratism as it appeared in the USSR during Lenin’s lifetime.

(2) It begins with the notion of a slow and gradual decline (‘in direct proportion’) and of a slow accumulation of sectors in which a planned economy is installed. This is in flagrant contradiction with the perspective of a war that will be the final struggle between the classes, of a war that will determine the fate of world capitalism and that excludes capitalism’s being nibbled away over a lengthy period.

(3) Does Pablo—who believes, by the way, that a third world war is imminent—mean that in the very course of the war the development of the productive forces (which would be turned entirely toward the war effort at the expense of consumer goods for the masses) is capable of forcing a retreat in bourgeois norms of distribution? Or doesn’t he take seriously the notion that the third world war will be a final struggle, that is, does his perspective admit the possibility that the outcome of this war might be a new situation of equilibrium between the fundamental classes, with fewer bourgeois states coexisting with more numerous workers states?

Actually, the principal fault with the second thesis is the fact that it even exists, because it is equivalent to conceding that the Soviet bureaucracy can survive after the victory of the world revolution over imperialism. It is in direct contradiction with the first thesis (the traditional Trotskyist thesis), which is juxtaposed in an eclectic manner to the second thesis (Pablo’s thesis).

In the draft theses that Pablo presented to the Ninth Plenum of the IEC, whose relationship to his personal positions we have noted, the sole explanation given for the Soviet bureaucracy’s hostility to world revolution was the following vulgar economist explanation:

‘If (the bureaucracy) cannot capitulate to imperialism without undermining its existence as such in the USSR; on the other hand, it cannot base itself on the proletariat and the extension of the world revolution, which would remove, by organizing and developing the productive forces in the world, the objective reasons for its existence and above all(?) : for die omnipotence of any bureaucracy!’

The notion here is perfectly clear and is substituted for the Trotskyist notion of the bureaucracy’s incompatibility, not with planning and the development of productive forces, but with the revolutionary action of the masses, whose ‘first revolutionary victory in Europe,’ [2] Trotsky said, ‘will have the effect of an electric shock on the Soviet masses, awakening them, reviving the traditions of 1905 and 1917, weakening the position of the bureaucracy; it will have no less importance for the Fourth International than the victory of the October Revolution had for the Third International.’

The bureaucracy is not afraid of the development of productive forces. It is not holding back development in the USSR of its own will but rather through its incapacity. To the extent that its very character permits, it will try to increase development. Its slender results in relation to the great possibilities of planning both inside and outside the USSR don’t stem from a fear of disappearing following a growth in income sufficient to eradicate social inequality. [3] What the bureaucracy fears is not the growth of productive forces. What they fear is the awakening of the consciousness of the Soviet masses in contact with a revolution in another country.

The main danger in the explanation given by Pablo (even when juxtaposed with the discussion of another, correct explanation, the above one) is that it has the effect of masking the organically counterrevolutionary nature of the workers bureaucracy in the Soviet Union. This bureaucracy cannot be equated with the bureaucratism inherent in any society in which a scarcity in consumer goods exist. This bureaucracy is the result of nearly thirty years of the degeneration of a workers state. Politically, it has totally expropriated the Soviet proletariat. Contrary to what Pablo states, wherever it has been able to act bureaucratically or to maintain its bureaucratic control over the masses, the Soviet bureaucracy had tried to develop the productive forces (in the USSR and in the annexed or satellite territories) in order to strengthen the base of its own privileges and increase their extent. On the other hand, its liquidationist attitude toward the revolution that began in France in 1936; the way it brutally crushed the conscious cadres of the Spanish revolution; its complicity with Hitler in order to allow him to crush the Warsaw uprising; its Yalta policy against the interests of the revolution in Greece, Italy, Yugoslavia, and France; its blockade and military pressure against the Yugoslav workers state in the hope of delivering it bound hand and foot to imperialism (contrary to the interests of defending the USSR itself) unequivocally express the incompatibility between the Soviet bureaucracy and the development of the proletarian revolution. Such a revolution would represent a immediate and direct threat to the bureaucracy’s existence and it would do so even more sharply if it were to take place in an economically less backward country.

* * *

Leaving the door open, however timidly, to the hypothesis that the Thermidorian bureaucracy of the USSR could survive a third world war is to revise the Trotskyist analysis of the bureaucracy. First, as we have seen it calls into question the bureaucracy’s nature as a parasitic growth of the workers movement that lives off the advantage of the equilibrium between the fundamental classes. At the same time, this concept leaves the door open to the negation of its working-class nature. [4]

—Second, it overestimates the capacity of the USSR’s technical means when confronted with those of imperialism. —Third, it underestimates the breadth of the revolutionary movement in Asia and around the world. — Fourth, it accepts the notion that the Soviet bureaucracy can exist peacefully alongside a victorious revolution in the advanced countries.

— Above all, and here is where what Pablo really thinks comes in, it accepts the notion that the Soviet bureaucracy will not oppose the extension of the revolution but will even stimulate it.

In giving priority to ‘technical and material forces’ as opposed to the revolutionary struggle of the masses, however, Pablo does not go as far as the thesis of our comrades in Lyon. [5] This apparent superiority expresses a total incomprehension of the predominant role of the mass revolutionary struggle in the development and the outcome of a third world war.

The marked inferiority of the technical means at the disposal of the proletariat in the present world situation, a situation of ‘blocs,’ as Pablo puts it, becomes transformed into the proletariat’s superiority in direct proportion with its revolutionary mobilization, with an increase in its level of class consciousness and socialist consciousness, and with its revolutionary victories over imperialism. The military relationship of forces is politically determined. The Thermidorian bureaucracy in the USSR will play an even more emphatic counter-revolutionary role when it sees an upsurge in the revolution take shape, and when it sees mass socialist consciousness threatening its own domination in the USSR.

In its enormous struggle to smash the coalition of the imperialist bourgeoisie and its vast material means, the revolution will liquidate the Thermidorian bureaucracy in the USSR along the way. Otherwise the Thermidorian bureaucracy will impede, sabotage, and use military force against the revolutionary movement of the masses, paving the way for the victory of imperialist barbarism and for its own disappearance as a parasitic caste in the degenerated workers state.

All the experiences since 1933 have shown the role of the Soviet bureaucracy with increasing clarity and simply express its dual character—working-class and counter-revolutionary—its fundamentally contradictory nature, and its impasse. This bureaucracy will not survive a third world war, a war between the classes, a war whose outcome can only be world revolution or, failing that, a victory for imperialism that would liquidate all the conquests of the working class in both the USSR and the rest of the world.

III. From ‘Stalinist Ideology’ to the New ‘Bureaucratic Class’

Several times in the past the tendency to revise the Trotskyist concept of the Soviet bureaucracy has been expressed through the notion that Stalinism has its own ideology. Pablo seems to share this belief today when he speaks of the ‘co-leadership of the international Stalinist movement’ (our emphasis) by China and the Kremlin.

‘…China,’ he writes,’could not play the role of a mere satellite of the Kremlin but rather of a partner which henceforth imposes upon the Soviet bureaucracy a certain co-leadership of the international Stalinist movement. This co-leadership is, however, a disruptive element within Stalinism. …’ (‘Where Are We Going!’ p. 9. Emphasis added.)

What does this Russian-Chinese ‘co-leadership’ of the international Stalinist movement mean? Is there then a Chinese Stalinism alongside Russian Stalinism! What is the social base of this Chinese Stalinism? What then is its ideology? Is there really a Stalinist ideology?

We reply in the negative to all these questions.

The bureaucracy in the USSR has never even been capable of trying to define a new ideology, contrary to the way in which any historically necessary social formation, any class, operates. When you speak of the Stalinism of a Communist Party, you are nor speaking of a theory, of an overall programme, of definite and lasting concepts, but only of its leadership’s subordination to orders from the Kremlin bureaucracy. This is the Trotskyist conception. The ‘Stalinism’ of the international Stalinist movement is defined by this movement’s subordination to the bureaucracy of the USSR.

‘The Stalinist bureaucracy, however, not only has nothing in common with Marxism but is in general foreign to any doctrine or system whatsoever. Its ‘ideology’ is thoroughly permeated with police subjectivism, its practice is the empiricism of crude violence. In keeping with its essential interests the caste of usurpers is hostile to any theory: it can give an account of its social role neither to itself nor to anyone else. Stalin revises Marx and Lenin not with the theoretician’s pen but with the heel of the GPU.’ (Leon Trotsky: Stalinism and Bolshevism, New Park Publications, 1974, p.15.)

Would it be possible to have a Stalinist co-leadership, a dual subordination, one part of which would be .. .the Chinese revolution in full ascendancy? Is a modified version of Stalinist ideology supposed to have survived the victory of the revolutionary masses in China or is it supposed to have arisen in the course of the revolution?

But, Pablo adds, this co-leadership is a disruptive element for Stalinism. This clarification introduces a new confusion.

We are compelled on the contrary to state that the disruptive element in the ‘international Stalinist movement’ as such is the Chinese revolution and that this celebrated co-leadership, far from being a disruptive element, expresses an inherently temporary compromise between the counter-revolutionary bureaucracy of the USSR and its NEGATION, the Chinese revolution. This compromise reflects the lag between consciousness and reality, and more particularly the slowness with which China has begun to accomplish the tasks of the permanent revolution. We will return to this question.

The notion of co-leadership betrays a vast incomprehension of the irreducible character of the contradiction between the Soviet bureaucracy and a revolution in motion. Pablo has spoken several times of the victories ‘victories’ or ‘pseudo-victories’ of Stalinism when designating the development of the revolution in China, Asia, or elsewhere.

For Comrade Pablo, the most important lesson of the Yugoslav and Chinese revolutions is that it is important not to confuse them with ‘pure and simple victories (?) of the Soviet bureaucracy’!

For us, the lesson is that the development of the revolution is a defeat and a death threat for the bureaucracy, which does not evaluate the ‘revolution in all its forms’ from the same perspective as Comrade Pablo.

When this comrade adds that ‘the evolution of China can prove different from that of the Soviet bureaucracy,’ we have reached the height of confusion.(p.l2. Emphasis added.)

If someone can explain to us at what conjuncture, in what century, and on what planet the evolution of China could have even proved comparable to that of the Soviet bureaucracy—we’d like to hear about it.

This notion is only admissible if we accept beforehand Burnham’s thesis of the rapid formation (if not the pre-existence) of a bureaucracy of the Soviet type within the very course of a revolution.

In that case, this bureaucracy would not only have an ideology of international value, but we would have to accord it a historically progressive role. On the contrary, however, everything leads us to believe that the outcome of a revolution—even one that is isolated—will necessarily prove different and distinct from that of the USSR even if this revolution must degenerate because of its isolation and weakness. Trotsky has clearly demonstrated, in opposition to the revisionists, that the degeneration of the USSR has a specific historical character.

The Centuries of Transition

Are we compelled to revise Trotsky’s opinion on this point as well? Are the norms of the dictatorship of the proletariat, of the withering away of the state, outmoded and consigned to the rubbish bin by ‘life’ and by experience? Is the Soviet workers state really a degenerated workers state (a counter-revolutionary workers state, Trotsky said) [6] or, on the contrary, is it the prototype of what the transition between capitalism and socialism will be like after the victory of the world revolution? Although he doesn’t pronounce himself clearly in favour of one position over the other, and although his statements on this point are quite contradictory, Comrade Pablo does seem to lean toward the second response.

To those people-who-despair-of-die-fate-of-humanity, he replies that the transitional society between capitalism and socialism will last for several centuries (in oral discussion he has been more precise and has spoken of two or three centuries). [7] ‘… this transformation will probably take an entire historical period of several centuries and will in the meantime be filled with forms and regimes transitional between capitalism and socialism and necessarily deviating from ‘pure’ forms and norms.’ (‘Where Are We Going?’ p.13. Emphasis added.)

We are quite ready to engage in any struggle against purist utopians who subordinate reality to norms in order to reject reality. But we don’t see any sense in such a struggle at present, since we are unaware of any expression of this ‘purism’ within the international majority that emerged from the Second World Congress.

What we do see, on the other hand, is that the degenerated bureaucracy of the USSR has become the new norm, that Pablo is constructing a new utopia based on it, that the transitional society (‘several centuries …’) takes on a character of the sort that the Soviet-type bureaucracy (which is confused with all manifestations of bureaucratism that are inherent wherever you have a low level of the development of productive forces and a low level of culture) becomes a historically necessary evil, that is, a class.

What we see is that the bureaucratic caste of the USSR, which we consider to be the specific product of twenty-five years of degeneration of the first workers state, is supposed to be only the prefiguration of the ‘caste’ called on to lead the world for two or three centuries. So the notion of a ‘caste’ has been sent packing, and what’s really involved here is a class that was not foreseen by Marx, Engels, Lenin, or Trotsky.

As realists, we will have to revise Trotsky and his writings since the New Course because they are full of errors and misunderstandings on the historically progressive role of the bureaucracy. His explanation for the formation of the bureaucracy in the USSR is tainted from the start by its old-fashioned, utopian, and outmoded norms that have been contradicted by reality.

His attachment to these norms led him to consider the evolution of the USSR as a particular, exceptional, and specific violation of the norm.

‘In the bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet state it is not the general laws of modern society from capitalism to socialism which finds expression but a special, exceptional, and temporary refraction of these laws under the conditions of a backward revolutionary country in a capitalist environment. (Leon Trotsky: ‘The USSR in ‘War’ in In Defence of Marxism, New Park Publications, 1971, p.8.)

What Trotsky calls degeneration is thus in reality the process that must begin after the victory of the world revolution and will last two or three centuries. And Trotsky put himself on the wrong side of the barricades when he wrote:

“The most honest or open-eyed of the ‘friends’ of the USSR console themselves with the thought that ‘a certain’ bureaucratic degeneration in the given conditions was historically inevitable. Even so! The resistance to this degeneration also has not fallen from the sky. A necessity has two ends: the reactionary and the progressive. History teaches us that persons and parties which drag at the opposite ends of a necessity turn out in the long run on opposite sides of the barricade.” (Leon Trotsky: ‘Socialism in One Country,’ in The Revolution Betrayed, New Park Publications, 1973, pp.307-8.)

He didn’t foresee that in the third world war the Soviet bureaucracy would be called on to carry out the function of gravedigger for world imperialism, to make an ‘international’ anti-capitalist revolution, or at least to co-operate with it. Neither Trotsky nor the Fourth International—a tragic misunderstanding—were aware of that up to this day.

Some Clarifications on an Incorrect Formulation

When we read in the Ninth Plenum resolution the following declaration on the defense of the Soviet Union: ‘The defence of the USSR constitutes the strategic line of the Fourth International, and its tactical application remains, as in the past, subordinated to unimpeded development of the mass movement in opposition to any attempt on the part of the Soviet bureaucracy, the Russian army, and the Stalinist leaderships to throttle and crush it. When we read this we are tempted to see no more than an incorrect formulation.

But we would be blind if we were to maintain this position after having studied the document in which the secretary of the International sets forth his perspective more fully, deriving it from the division of the world into the capitalist regime and the Stalinist world, a division considered as the essence of social reality in our epoch.

If we adopted this revisionist perspective it would seem to be necessary to go much further, to follow its logic to the end and to subordinate tactical application to the strategic line. It is precisely this principled attitude, this constant subordination of tactics to strategy, that distinguishes Marxism from opportunism of every stripe.

Pablo cannot remain there, straddling a fence. He must bring tactics into accord with not only strategy but also with a social analysis (his analysis) of the ‘present’ world.

If on the contrary we retain Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky’s analysis of society and their methodology, if we refuse to abandon the solid ground on which the foundations of our International rest, if we refuse to abandon this in favour of the quicksand of revisionism, our Third World Congress will of necessity return to the Trotskyist definition of the defence of the Soviet Union.

For Trotsky, the defence of the USSR did not constitute a ‘strategic line.’ The strategic line of the Fourth International is the world revolution.

Defence of the USSR against imperialism, like the defence of any workers state, is one of the tasks of this strategy, tasks that are entirely subordinated to the perspective of world revolution, to the strategy of the revolutionary mobilization of the masses.

Defence of the USSR cannot take the place of the strategic line of the World Party of Revolution—any more than the defence of the Yugoslav workers state or any other workers state could.

Therein lies the difference between Trotskyism and the Titoist and Stalinist varieties of centrism.

No unclarity can be allowed to remain in this discussion. Incorrect formulations on such questions are genuine errors of doctrine. No document of the International can today allow itself the slightest imprecision in defining the defence of the USSR and the place of this defence in our strategy. The defence of the USSR and of all the workers states constitutes a task of the Fourth International, a task that as such and in all its tactical applications must be entirely subordinated to the strategy of the struggle for the world revolution, to the unimpeded development of the masses, etc. [8]

Pablo Yields Ground to Martinet

This notion that the defense of the USSR (or of the ‘Stalinist world’) must be a strategic line has perhaps been most thoroughly developed by Gilles Martinet. Martinet is, in fact, the spokesman for the entire Stalinist intelligentsia in France. The Second World Congress correctly characterized his position as the Stalinist counterpart to Burnham’s revisionism.

The pro-Stalinist manifestation (a product of the Stalinist pressure in France) of this revisionism has been given its fullest form by Bettelheim, Martinet, & Co. in Revue Internationale. When they themselves apply the concepts mentioned above to the present world situation, they arrive at the following conclusions:

‘a) Owing to its lack of homogeneity and technical education, the working class will be obliged to pass through a stage of social differentiation and inequality after its conquest of power. Historic progress is assured by the privileged strata of the proletariat (the bureaucracy). It is the task of the state to defend these privileges.

‘b) During the epoch of decaying imperialism, the proletariat ceases to grow numerically and ideologically and instead retreats, witnessing the decline of its strength and the decay of its social structure. The failure of the ‘classic’ proletarian revolutions of 1918-23 is final. The Leninist strategy of the proletarian revolution is a thing of the past. In views of this incapacity of the proletariat to fulfill its historic mission, humanity has no other road to progress except to try to ‘participate’ in the stratification of the means of production by the Soviet bureaucracy on an ever larger scale,and to draw up a new minimum programme in order to attenuate the violent character of this process. …

‘There is no room for [these revisionist tendencies] in the revolutionary movement. But some of their features appear at the bottom of mistaken conceptions on the Russian question which have found expression in our own ranks. What is important is first of all to lay bare the inner logic of this incipient revisionism and make its proponents aware of its dangerous consequences to the whole of Marxism. [‘The USSR and Stalinism: Theses Adopted by the Second World Congress of the Fourth International, April 1948,’ in Fourth International, June 1948, p. 125.]

In ‘Where Are We Going?’ Pablo throws this analysis overboard, declaring:

‘Our fundamental (!) difference with certain neo-apologists for Stalinism, of the Gilles Martinet stripe in France, does not involve the fact that there are objective causes at work imposing transitional forms of the society and of the power succeeding capitalism, which are quite far from the ‘norms’ outlined by the classics of Marxism prior to the Russian Revolution. Our difference is over the fact that these neo-Stalinists present Stalinist policy as the expression of a consistent, realistic Marxism which, consciously and in full awareness of the goal, is marching toward socialism while taking into account the requirements of the situation.’ (p.8.)

Note first of all that contrary to the notion Pablo elaborated above, Martinet does not repudiate the Soviet bureaucracy; instead he considers it a necessary evil on which falls defacto the task of destroying imperialism, and which will be overturned historically by the development of productive forces. It is his servility when faced with an accomplished fact, his tendency to generalize on the basis of the degeneration of the first workers state in order to transform a specific historical fact into a general historical necessity, more than his evaluations of Stalin’s ‘Marxism’ that make Martinet the most agile theoretician of the Thermidorian counter-revolution. The definition Trotsky gave in ‘After Munich’ applies to him without qualification:

‘Only the overthrow of the Bonapartist Kremlin clique can make possible the regeneration of the military strength of the USSR. Only the liquidation of the ex-Comintern will clear the way for revolutionary internationalism. The struggle against war, imperialism, and fascism demands a ruthless struggle against Stalinism splotched with crimes. Whoever defends Stalinism directly or indirectly, whoever keeps silent about its betrayals or exaggerates its military strength is the worst enemy of the revolution, of socialism, and of the oppressed peoples. The sooner the Kremlin gang is overthrown by the armed offensive of the workers, the greater will be the chances for a socialist regeneration of the USSR, the closer and broader will be the perspectives of the international revolution.’ (Writings of Leon Trotsky: 1938-9, p.16.)

Such is the language we expected from the secretary of the International in regard to the wing of the petty bourgeoisie that has capitulated before Stalinism and its supposed ‘victories.’ In place of that we are supposed to accept an ambiguous definition (actually the absence of a definition) based on a stupid quarrel over Stalin’s merits as a theoretician.

The Chinese Comrades’ Error Corrected With Another Error

It would be useless to deny that the Chinese comrades’ error weighs very heavily on the present discussion. Not only does it explain in part the orientation presented by Pablo, but Comrade Pablo also uses it openly as an argument in defence of his thesis and in the hope of overwhelming his adversaries.

We are not overwhelmed and for a whole series of reasons, among them the following:

(1) In April 1950 one of us, Comrade Bleibtreu, spoke before a public meeting of the ‘Lenin Circle’ on the problems of the Chinese revolution. Vietnamese, Chinese, French, and Sinhalese comrades attended the meeting. It concluded with an analysis of the Chinese revolution and the Chinese Communist Party, and with the necessity for Trotskyists to enter the Chinese Communist Party and form its consistent Marxist wing, a wing capable of resolving in both theory and practice the tasks of the permanent revolution.

This led, among other things, to his being vigorously contradicted by a member of the International Secretariat.

(2) The Central Committee of the PCI [Parti Communiste Internationaliste—Internationalist Communist Party met December 2, 1950, and passed a resolution asking the International Secretariat to take a position on the Chinese events and on the errors of the Chinese comrades. To date we have had no response from the International Secretariat or the International Executive Committee. We hope that this document will see the light of day before the World Congress, because it would represent an essential element of clarification.

In the face of this persistent silence, we are compelled to take the initiative in a discussion that the international leadership should have begun.

What Was the Error in China?

According to Comrade Pablo, this error began ‘following the victory of Mao Tse-tung.’ (‘Where Are We Going?’ p. 17.) In our opinion, it predates this victory by quite a bit.

A revolution had been developing in China since 1946, a revolution in which the Trotskyists should have been an integral part. Abandoned by Stalin, whose advice aimed at forming a National Front government with Chiang Kai-shek they had rejected,and encircled by virtue of the fact that the Red Army had given up Manchuria to Chiang, the Chinese leaders had to confront the most powerful offensive the white troops ever launched against the Seventh Army. The only possibility that remained open to them (like the situation confronting the leaders of the Yugoslav Communist Party 1942-43) was the revolutionary mobilization of the masses. Rejecting their Stalinist course of the previous years, they adopted a limited programme of agrarian reform, which the masses greeted with immense enthusiasm. Mass peasant committees and resistance groups sprang up everywhere and organized themselves to defend and extend the agrarian reform and to crush Chiang, the representative of the landlords. The advances Mao’s army made were above all the product of the massive levy of the revolutionary peasantry, and of the parallel collapse of Chiang’s peasant army, which was contaminated by the revolution and the thirst for land. The Chinese CP itself underwent a change in its social composition. The literate sons of well-to-do peasants, who constituted the backbone of its cadres up to that time (and certain among whom tended to oppose the explosion of elementary violence set off by the turn their party had made), were submerged by an influx of new militants hardened on the forge of the revolution itself.

Thus:

(1) The birth of the Chinese revolution was the beginning of the end of the Chinese CP’s ‘Stalinism.’ [9]

(2) The Chinese CP stopped subordinating itself to directives from the Kremlin and became dependent on the masses and on their actions.

(3) Its social composition was actually modified.

(4) The Chinese CP stopped being a Stalinist party and became a centrist party advancing along with the revolution. This doesn’t mean that the Chinese CP became a revolutionary party ipso facto. It retained from its past a series of incorrect and bureaucratic concepts that came to be reflected in its actions:

—by the timid character of its agrarian reform;

—by its limiting itself to North China;

—by the Chinese CP’s conscious effort to keep the urban proletariat isolated from the revolution. [10] The dialectic of social reality has already partially withdrawn certain barriers, and there are reasons to hope that this course will continue.

In any event, it is absurd to speak of a Stalinist party in China, and still more absurd to foster belief in even the resemblance of a ‘victory of Stalinism in China.’

The Korean war temporarily presented Stalin with both the means to slow down the Chinese revolution’s progress toward the solution of the tasks of the permanent revolution and to re-establish partial control over the Chinese CP. This explains Stalin’s policy of ‘nonintervention’ at the time when the victorious march of the Korean armies could, with a minimum of support, have driven the imperialists into the sea. This also explains the scantiness of his present aid and his fear of a solution, especially of a solution in favour of the Korean revolution.

But when all is said and done, the reality of class struggle will prove more powerful than the Kremlin apparatus and its maneuvers.

The error of the two Chinese groups is precisely to have failed to grasp the social reality. They have identified the revolution with Stalinism, which means identifying Stalinism with its negation.

The Chinese comrades turned their backs on the revolutionary movement of the masses, fell back when confronted with its march forward, and finally ended up in Hong Kong. [11]

Their greatest error was not their failure to understand Stalinism; it was a different and much more serious lack of comprehension.

They didn’t recognize the very face of the revolution. They saw the advance of Mao’s revolutionary armies as a step forward for Stalinism. They failed to understand that it is the action of classes that is fundamental,that it is social classes and not the apparatuses that make history, and that once it gets going, the action of masses is more powerful than the strongest apparatus.

In many respects Comrade Pablo revives the analytical errors of the Chinese comrades, even if he draws conclusions that are contrary, though just as disastrous.

He makes the same error on the nature of the Chinese revolution, which he considers as a victory—not a ‘pure and simple victory’ but nevertheless a victory of Stalinism.

This error flows from the erroneous notion of the Stalinist world and is expressed in the notion of Russian-Chinese co-leadership of the international Stalinist movement.

He shares the same erroneous criteria concerning the ‘Stalinist’ nature of a Communist Party. The Stalinist nature of a CP is constituted by its direct and total dependence in respect to the interests and policy of the Kremlin. A refusal on the part of the Chinese CP to accept the legal existence of a Trotskyist tendency—either inside or outside its ranks—and even the repression against this tendency would in no way constitute a criterion that ‘demonstrates its bureaucratic and Stalinist character’ (Pablo), but solely its lack of understanding of the permanent revolution, a lack of understanding that is not specifically Stalinist. We have often been served up such absurdities to ‘prove’ the ‘Stalinist’ character of the Yugoslav CP, which petty-bourgeois idealists don’t hesitate to define as Stalinism without Stalin!

He shares the same lack of understanding of the relationships between the masses, the CP, and the Kremlin bureaucracy: Pablo places an equals-sign between the dual nature of the CPs and the dual nature of the Soviet bureaucracy.

Generally, we would not deny that 2=2. But combining two errors (for example, Comrade Pablo’s error and the Chinese comrades error) is not the equivalent of combining two correct statements(for example, the thesis of our Central Committee and Comrade Germain’s ‘Ten Theses’). Thus it’s not always true that 2=2.

The dual nature of the Soviet bureaucracy is both the reflection and the product of contradictions in Soviet society. It is expressed through the Bonapartism of Stalinism when it is confronted with social forces inside the Soviet Union and on a world scale. The policy of the bureaucracy is not dual but rather forms an integral whole throughout all its variations: it’s a policy of balancing between the basic classes.

The dual nature of the CP means something quite different and expresses a different contradiction because of the fact that a parasitic bureaucracy of the Soviet type doesn’t exist internationally. The duality, the contradiction of a CP stems from the fact that it is a workers party by virtue of its social base (a necessary base for the Kremlin’s balancing act) and a Stalinist party by virtue of its politics and its leadership (a leadership chosen from above on the basis of its total submission to the Kremlin’s orders).

The thing that defines a workers party as Stalinist.—as opposed to a revolutionary party or a social-democratic party (linked to the bourgeoisie) or any sort of a centrist party—is neither a Stalinist ideology (which doesn’t exist), nor bureaucratic methods (which exist in all kinds of parties), but rather its total and mechanical subordination to the Kremlin.

When for one reason or another this subordination ceases to exist, that party ceases to be Stalinist and expresses interests that are different from those of the bureaucratic caste in the USSR. This is what happened (because of the revolutionary action on the part of the masses) in Yugoslavia well before the break in relations; the break only made it official. This is what has already happened in China, and will inevitably be reflected by a break in relations no matter what course the Chinese revolution takes.

A break in relations or a gradual differentiation within the Chinese CP, an eventuality that flows first from the correct evaluation of the nature of the CPs (an evaluation we gave in some detail at the Fourth Congress of our party in 1947) that was developed by the Second World Congress, and then from the lessons of the Yugoslav experience, would have the effect of greatly stimulating the revolutionary struggle in Asia, Europe, and Africa. It would also facilitate revolutionary victories in a series of countries, diminish considerably imperialism’s capacity for resistance and counterattack, and increase the level of consciousness and the combativity of workers in the advanced industrial countries. At the same time, it would modify in a favourable way the relationship of forces within the workers movement, making it more receptive to the revolutionary programme and thus infinitely more effective in the class struggle. The Chinese CP’s declaration of its independence in regard to the Kremlin and its steps toward accomplishing the tasks of the permanent revolution both in China and internationally are events that will probably take place before imperialism can start a world war.

It is under this perspective—with the Chinese masses, with the Chinese CP, against Stalin—that the actions of our Chinese comrades must be corrected. In every country where a Stalinist party has an extensive working-class base, the International must work under this broader perspective of the independence of the workers movement and its communist vanguard with respect to the Kremlin’s policy.

Concerning our Tasks

Never before has the Fourth International had such possibilities for implanting itself as the leadership in a mass revolutionary struggle. Nor has it ever (and this is a corollary of the revolutionary upsurge around the world) had such possibilities for gaining the ear of Communist workers organized in the Stalinist parties. Never in the past (and this is a function of the very development of the worldwide revolutionary upsurge) have we witnessed so profound a worldwide crisis of Stalinism.

Despite the fact that they consider these things as Stalin’s ‘victories,’ as proof of ‘his revolutionary effectiveness,’ the most conscious Communist workers will not accept the notion advanced by their leaders that socialism will be installed by the Red Army. They are seeking the road of class action, of the emancipation of workers by the workers themselves. This concern of theirs actually touches upon a fundamental aspect of the proletarian revolution, an aspect that dominates the works of Marx and Lenin: that is, that the essence of a proletarian revolution is not this or that economic measure but rather the proletariat’s gaining of consciousness, its molecular mobilization, the formation of its consciousness as an active and dominant class. This notion of Marx and Lenin has been strikingly confirmed by the example of the buffer zone on the one hand and, inversely, by the Russian revolution [12] and partially by the revolution in Yugoslavia on the other. We are not talking about a priori norms but rather about the very essence of the proletarian revolution: the working class gaining a consciousness of itself and setting itself up as the ruling class,not only by taking power but also and above all by exercising the dictatorship of the proletariat and building socialism. And this latter task is not a mechanical phenomenon (the opposite of capitalist development) but requires the intervention of the proletariat as a conscious class. [13] This is the ABC. The experience of the USSR confirms it 100 per cent (relative stagnation domestically and a counter-revolutionary policy abroad), as does the Yugoslav experience, the Chinese experience and, in a negative way, the experience in the buffer zone.

No serious Communist worker criticizes Stalin for being afraid of world war, for refusing to declare the war-revolution or the revolution-war. On the contrary, what the best of them criticize him for is for subordinating the class struggle in other countries to the diplomatic and military needs of the USSR, subordinating the strategic line of the proletarian revolution to one of its tasks, the defence of one of the workers states.

In France the crisis of Stalinism, which has just manifested itself in the split among the mine workers, is fuelled continually by the ample proof that the French CP is an inadequate instrument for making a revolution:

— the ineffectiveness of its policy of supporting national fronts, of building ‘New Democracy’ (the politics of Yalta);

—the ineffectiveness of its policy of [parliamentary] opposition, of its leadership in the important class struggles since 1947 (the Zhdanov line);

—the incapacity of Stalinism to contribute toward uniting the proletarian forces.

All the strikes up to the present have reinforced the impression held by Communist workers that the French CP is not leading the proletariat toward revolution, but toward neutralization of the French bourgeoisie and a period of waiting for the war and the Red Army’s entry into it.

The Communist workers witnessed their struggle against the war in Vietnam—an undertaking the French CP had entered with a violence tainted with adventurism—subordinated to the campaign around the Stockholm appeal.

They witnessed their struggle against the eighteen months halted in mid-course and used as a springboard for the Sheffield-Warsaw appeal.

A great uneasiness spread among members of the French CP (and certainly among members of other CPs) in the fall of 1950, when the imperialist armies in Korea were within an inch of pulling out and a minimum of material support would have been sufficient to assure a success of immense scope for the entire Asian revolution. They saw that Stalin—applying the same policy of non-intervention he had used against the ascendant phase of the Spanish revolution—then allowed the imperialist armies to regain the offensive. This uneasiness was expressed so widely that the leadership of the French CP had to respond publicly—using Jeanette Vemersch as a mouthpiece—in the following way: Those who demand that the USSR intervene in Korea don’t understand what a world war would be like. This response disarmed the burgeoning opposition, because no Communist worker wanted a world war. What they were demanding wasn’t intervention but an end to the de facto embargo on arms that was strangling the Korean revolution.

It comes as no surprise that the Stalinist leaders are still inventive enough to pull the wool over the eyes of Communist workers. But what is surprising and inadmissible is that La Verite, through Comrade Pablo’s [14] articles, did nothing to take advantage of this crisis, although:

—it explained that it was difficult to make pronouncements about Stalin’s intentions;

— it remained silent about the meaning of his non-intervention;

—it did not wage a systematic and sustained campaign to publicize the demand the Communist workers were making on their leadership: Airplanes and artillery for Korea,

—worse yet, it adopted J. Vermersch’s evaluation of the situation as its own (aiding Korea means a world war), simply adding that if Stalin were a real revolutionary he wouldn’t be afraid of entering a world war (war-revolution, revolution-war).

Here we have a convincing application of the orientation Comrade Pablo refers to as ‘Closer to the Communist workers.’ It reminds us of the politics of the right-wing tendency that left our party. This tendenency also fought for the slogan ‘Closer to the Communist workers,’ which meant closer to Stalinist politics.

In the present case, La Verite was closer to Stalinist politics (it played the role of the MacArthur of the ‘Stalinist world’) but quite far removed from the concerns of the Communist workers; it didn’t help them find the correct response to their uneasiness.

By virtue of its methodology, perspectives, and application, this brand of politics is related to the most negative aspects of the history of our International. Through its impressionism and empiricism, its passive submission before accomplished facts and apparent ‘power,’ and through its abandonment of a class strategy, it revives all the errors of the right wing in the French party, of Hasten [15],” and of many other tendencies that followed a liquidationist course.

The Alarm Signal

We think that Comrade Pablo’s orientation is neither clear nor definitively set. We are convinced that he will correct his errors without too great a difficulty. But this isn’t the question. Comrade Pablo is also a leader of the International. This means that the positions he takes do not involve just him. His line has already been partially expressed in the Plenum resolution, which is a confused and contradictory document, the result of an unprincipled bloc between two lines, and the very model of an eclectic document.

But above all, a whole series of alarming signs have emerged as direct consequences of this theoretical hodgepodge.

On the one hand, a Stalinist tendency is rapidly developing in the International. Certainly Comrade Pablo can say, like the sorcerer’s apprentice, that this isn’t what he wanted. He can even apply a vigorous ‘self-criticism’ across the shoulders of politically weak comrades who tried to be more consistent than those who inspired them. But the remedy only disguises the disease and doesn’t heal it.

Similar destructive tendencies in the International have appeared on the editorial staff of our English comrades.

In France they cropped up among our comrades in Lyon, whose resolution we have cited.

They have appeared in our Central Committee, where Comrade Mestre stated her support for the Stalinist slogan of a struggle against German rearmament, manifestly subordinating the problem of the German and French proletariat’s gaining consciousness and taking up revolutionary struggle to the military defence of the USSR, seen in Stalinist terms as the number-one priority, the strategic line.

On the other hand, tendencies toward rejecting the defence of the USSR have already appeared and will inevitably develop. Some comrades who are troubled by the present tendency toward revisionism on the nature of the bureaucracy and on the Trotskyist concept of the defence of the USSR will inevitably break away from both Trotskyism and the defence of the USSR. We must seriously consider the defection of Natalia Trotsky, whose radically false concepts on the question of the USSR didn’t prevent the Second World Congress from placing her on its honorary presidium.

The orientation that has been outlined threatens to lead to the splintering of our International into a Stalinist tendency and a tendency that is defeatist toward the USSR.

We must react without delay and return to the Marxist method of analyzing society, return to the Leninist concept of the function of the working class, return to the Trotskyist analysis of the degeneration of the USSR and of the character of the bureaucracy, return to Trotsky’s fundamental statement that the crisis of humanity is and remains the crisis of revolutionary leadership, return to the revolutionary working-class line, that of the construction and the victory of the Fourth International, the World Party of the Socialist Revolution.

Footnotes

[1] Thus two camps have been formed in the world: on the one hand there is the imperialist and anti-democratic camp, whose basic goal is to establish American imperialism’s domination over the world and to crush democracy; on the other hand there is the anti-imperialist and democratic camp, whose basic goal consists in undermining imperialism, strengthening democracy, and liquidating the remnants of fascism.

‘The struggle between these two camps, between the imperialist and anti-imperialist camp, unfolds under conditions of a continued deepening of the overall crisis of capitalism, of a weakening of the forces of capitalism, and of the strengthening of the forces of socialism and democracy. (Zhdanov Theses, 1947, given to the first meeting of the Cominform in 1947.)

[2] So far as Europe is concerned, consider the bureaucracy’s policy in France (1936), Spain (1936-39), Poland (Warsaw uprising), Greece (1944-45), its efforts to prevent and overturn the Yugoslav revolution, its policy in France and Italy in the face of the revolutionary upsurge following the second world war.

[3] ‘…economic growth, while slowly bettering the situation of the toilers, promotes a swift formation of privileged strata,’ Trotsky said in the fundamental document defining the USSR (Revolution Betrayed, point D in the definition of the USSR, New Park Publications, 1973, p.255.)

[4] The draft theses presented by Pablo to the Ninth Plenum of the International Secretariat (point 2l, paragraph 3) spoke of the ‘conditions of economic exploitation’ of the Soviet proletariat by the bureaucracy. The idea of class exploitation no longer appears in the text adopted by the International Executive Committee, by the notion of historically necessary social layer (a class!) turns up again in Pablo’s document.

[5] “Once the war breaks out …the bureaucracy will no longer have any reason to oppose the development of mass revolutionary struggles in the imperialist camp. Quite the contrary the bureaucracy will have every interest in developing anything that will help undermine the military strength of the imperialist camp, including revolutionary movements of great scope. …’ (Thesis of the Lyons cell.)

The thesis as a whole comes down to this: up to the present the bureaucracy has been opposed to the revolution out of fear of military intervention by the imperialists. In the third world war the bureaucracy will no longer have this preoccupation and will become the leadership of the world revolution. This is much more consistent than Pablo’s thesis. The author of this resolution nevertheless was weak enough to renounce it in favour of Pablo’s position.

[6] Some voices cry out: “If we continue to recognize the USSR as a workers’ state, we will have to establish a new category: the counter-revolutionary workers’ state.” This argument attempts to shock our imagination by opposing a good programmatic norm to a miserable, mean, even repugnant reality. But haven’t we observed from day to day since 1923 how the Soviet state has played a more and more counter-revolutionary role on the international arena? Have we forgotten the experience of the Chinese Revolution, of the 1926 general strike in England and finally the very fresh experience of the Spanish Revolution? There are two completely counter-revolutionary workers’ internationals. These critics have apparently forgotten this “category.” The trade unions of France, Great Britain, the United States and other countries support completely the counter-revolutionary politics of the bourgeoisie. This does not prevent us from labelling them trade unions, from supporting their progressive steps and from defending them against the bourgeoisie. Why is it impossible to employ the same method with the counter-revolutionary workers’ state? In the last analysis a workers’ state is a trade union which has conquered power. The difference in attitude in these two cases is explainable by the simple fact that trade unions have a long history and we have been accustomed to consider them as realities and not simply as ‘categories’ in our programme. But, as regards the workers’ state there is being evinced an inability to learn to approach it as a real historical fact which has not subordinated itself to our programme. (Leon Trotsky:’Again and Once More Again on the Nature of the USSR,’ in In Defence of Marxism, New Park Publications 1971, pp.30-31)

[7] In 1651, three centuries ago, the bourgeoisie began to emerge in England.

In 1751, two centuries ago, it began to appear in France.

The two or three century transition period in which Pablo accords a necessary role to the bureaucracy would be longer than the period of bourgeois domination in the countries that developed the earliest, and three to six times longer than the worldwide domination of the capitalist bourgeoisie. It would therefore be difficult to find fault with applying the term class to the Soviet bureaucracy.

[8] In the Second World Congress theses there was already an unfortunate formulation, though it was appreciably different: ” ‘Defend what remains of the conquests of October’ is a (“a,” and not “the”) strategic line for the revolutionary party, and not alone a ‘slogan.’ ” [‘The USSR and Stalinism,’ Fourth International, June 1948, p. 114] It would have been more correct to say: ‘a strategic task’ or ‘a strategic orientation,’ formulations that are clearly opposed to the notion that the defense of the USSR is just a ‘slogan.’

‘The defence of the USSR coincides for us with the preparation of world revolution. Only those methods are permissible which do not conflict with the interests of the revolution. The defence of the USSR is related to the world socialist revolution as a tactical task is related to a strategic one. A tactic is subordinated to a strategic goal and in no case can be in contradiction to the latter.'(Leon Trotsky: ‘The USSR in War,’ in In Defence of Marxism, New Park Publications, 1971, p.ll.)

[9] A ‘Stalinism’ that was never very deeply entrenched at any given moment in the history of this party. Apart from the documents published by the Fourth International, a reading of the works of Mao Tse-tung (each page of which contains a more or less veiled attack on Stalin) is quite helpful in this regard.

[10] It is quite clear that the reasons for this stem from the difference between the proletariat’s aspirations and forms of action, and those of the peasantry. The peasantry desires bourgeois-democratic reforms and mobilizes spontaneously in the form of partisan armies. The proletariat has socialist aspirations and its revolutionary mobilization creates proletarian organs of power, both of which lead to a direct contradiction with the Stalinist bureaucracy right from the start.

[11] We request that the International Secretariat present its file of correspondence with the Chinese comrades to the World Congress,and in this way inform the congress of the directives that it had the right and the duty to give to the Chinese section.

[12] The Russian revolution unfolded in a way that was far removed from the ‘pure norms’; Lenin thought it was even further removed than any future revolution in an advanced country would be.

[13] ‘The primary political criterion for us is not the transformation of property relations in this or another area, however important these may be in themselves, but rather the change in the consciousness and organization of the world proletariat, the raising of their capacity for defending former conquests and accomplishing new ones. From this one, and the only decisive standpoint, the politics of Moscow taken as a whole, completely retains its reactionary character and remains the chief obstacle on the road to world revolution.'(Leon Trotsky: ‘The USSR in War,’ in In Defence of Marxism, p.23.)

[14] The Militant, the newspaper of the American Trotskyists, waged an excellent campaign around the revelations on this question. In France, where the basic cadres of the working class are organized in the CP, an extensive campaign should have been mounted around the theme: ‘Airplanes for Korea.’

[15] A reading of Hasten’s amendment to the World Congress is instructive: it is a timid outline of ‘Where Are We Going?

by Ted Grant

September/October 1950

First posted at http://www.tedgrant.org/archive/grant/1950/bsfi.htm

[Editor’s Note: ‘B.S.F.I.’ means the British section of the Fourth International. This open letter was written by Ted Grant after he was expelled from the section.]

Revolutionary Regroupment note: This letter was written after Ted Grant’s expulsion from the “the Club”. While correctly pointing to the developing revisionism within both the British section and the FI as a whole at a time of rampant confusion, Grants group was excluded from participation in the 1953 split with Pablo’s supporters due to Gerry Healy’s bureaucratic purge of his supporters. Tragically, in the aftermath, Grant’s isolation pushed him to ally with Pablo, in the process sealing his political fate as a revolutionary. In his “Go Forth and Multiply”, satirical British gadfly John Sullivan concluded.

“Grant’s historic meeting with Pablo can be seen as marking the death of British Trotskyism, once one of the Fourth International’s best sections. The meeting created British Pabloism, that strange mutation combining Trotskyist vocabulary with capitulation to whatever happens to be in fashion.”

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/critiques/sullivan/fourth1.html#mil

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British Trotskyism has reached an impasse on the road which has been travelled by the official Trotskyist organisation; there is no way forward towards the development of a healthy revolutionary tendency rooted in the masses.

For three reasons, as a revolutionary tendency, the Fourth International in Britain has collapsed:

1) Capitulation to Tito-Stalinism internationally.

2) Policy and programme in Britain.

3) Lack of internal democracy.

Titoism

As a result of the development which followed World War Two an unforeseen relationship of forces has developed on a world scale between Stalinism, reformism and capitalism. The prognosis of the Fourth International before the war that the problem of Stalinism would be solved either during the war or immediately after has been falsified by events.

Owing to the viability of state ownership, the frightful decay and collapse of imperialism and capitalism, the revolutionary wave following World War Two and the weakness of the revolutionary internationalist tendency, Stalinism was enabled to take advantage of all these factors and emerged with the U.S.S.R. as second world power enormously strengthened throughout the globe. Stalinism has become the mass tendency in Europe and Asia.

The collapse of capitalism in Eastern Europe enabled Stalinism as a Bonapartist tendency to manipulate the workers and manoeuvre between the classes – establishing deformed workers’ states of a Bonapartist character with more or less mass support. Stalinism in the present peculiar relationship of class forces, basing itself in the last analysis on the proletariat – in the sense of standing for the defence of the new economic form of society – is Bonapartism of a new type manoeuvring between the classes in order to establish a regime on the pattern of Moscow.

In China and Yugoslavia, the Stalinist parties came to power on the basis of overwhelming mass support and established regimes relatively independent of the Moscow bureaucracy.

The fact that the revolution in China and Yugoslavia could he developed in a distorted and debased character is due to the world factors of:

(a) The crisis of world capitalism.

(b) The existence of a strong, deformed workers’ state adjacent to these countries and powerfully influencing the workers’ movement.

(c) The weakness of the Marxist current of the Fourth International.

These factors have resulted in an unparalleled development, which could not have been foreseen by any of the Marxist teachers: the extension of Stalinism as a social phenomenon over half Europe, over the Chinese sub-continent and with the possibility of spreading over the whole of Asia.

This poses new theoretical problems to be worked out by the Marxist movement. Under conditions of isolation and paucity of forces, new historical factors could not but result in a theoretical crisis of the movement, posing the problem of its very existence and survival.

After a period of extreme vacillation and confusion throughout the International, including all tendencies, three distinct tendencies have emerged:

(a) A movement of despair and revisionism, so-called state capitalism; organisational Menshevism of Haston and the ideological disintegration of Morrow, Goldman, Craipeau, etc.

(b) A tendency in the direction of neo-Stalinism (the I.S. and the British Section).

(c) The Marxist current striving to carry on the best traditions of Trotskyism.

Faced with formidable problems, the I.S. and the British leadership have revealed themselves theoretically bankrupt. Without any adequate theoretical explanation or conscientious analysis of their past position, they have changed 180 degrees in true Zinovievist fashion overnight, from one maintaining that Eastern Europe and China were capitalist regimes to one where Yugoslavia – since the break with Stalin – has mysteriously changed into a healthy workers’ state.

In Britain, echoing the I.S. and without the least attempt at theoretical understanding, the Healy leadership gives its crudest application. Their method of reasoning follows along these lines: (a) the Fourth International has predicted that Stalinism could not make the revolution (b) Stalinism has made the revolution, therefore… (c) it is not Stalinism! The second line of argument of which both the I.S. and the Healy leadership are guilty, is that there can only be one Stalin! Why? There can be more than one Fascist dictator because they have a class basis in the capitalist class, but Stalin, apparently, has no class basis.

Idealising and white-washing the Tito leadership because of their break with Moscow, the British leadership has suppressed all fundamental criticism of this tendency, and regards Yugoslavia in this light of a ‘normal’ proletarian dictatorship: i.e. a healthy workers’ state with this or that minor blemish of no real importance. Taking as a platform the fact that, since the break with Moscow, the Tito leadership has been compelled to borrow many of the arguments from the arsenal of Marxism in their criticism of the Moscow oligarchy, they do not see the conflict as a reflection of the national struggle against the oppression and the exploitation of the Moscow bureaucrats, and as one which was reflected throughout Eastern Europe, and even within the boundaries of the Soviet Union itself – the Ukraine, the Crimea Tartars, Volga German Republic, etc. The only important difference being the possibility of a successful resistance owing to the independent character of the state apparatus in Yugoslavia.

Despite zigzags to the left, partly demagogic partly sincere, the fundamental basis of the regime in Yugoslavia remains as before… socialism in one country (and tiny Yugoslavia at that), manoeuvring between world imperialism and the Russian bloc (only thanks to which Yugoslavia can maintain itself). The regime remains totalitarian – workers’ democracy does not exist.

The attempt to apologise for these ideas as a merely secondary hangover from Stalinism is criminal and false. Some correct criticisms of the Moscow regime do not transform Tito’s set­up any more than some of the correct criticisms of the Cominform change the nature of the regime in the countries where the Cominform holds power.

The crisis within Stalinism makes the problem of building the Fourth International more complex than before. The creation of new Stalinist states – independent, or semi-independent from Stalin – has added further confusion in the minds of the world working class. The Fourth International, while taking advantage of the rift within Stalinism in order to expose the real nature of this Bonapartist disease, must not make concessions to neo-Stalinism. While giving full support to the struggle for national self-determination on the part of the Yugoslav nation against the brutal attacks of Great Russian chauvinism, the Fourth International must not thereby underwrite the political position of Tito.

Whilst representing the national aspirations of the Yugoslav masses, the Tito leadership – on a Lilliputian scale – use the methods and fulfil a similar role as the Kremlin clique. It must not be forgotten that the break did not come from the Yugoslav side but was forced on the Yugoslav bureaucracy by the relentless and uncompromising attempt at Moscow domination. Since the break there has been no fundamental change in the principles and methods of the Yugoslavs… How could it be otherwise? Socialism in one country remains the axis around which the ideas of the Yugoslavs revolve. To them the degeneration of the Russian bureaucracy is purely an accidental phenomenon which they do not explain from the Marxist point of view that conditions determine consciousness. Nor could it be otherwise – on a smaller scale the conditions in Yugoslavia are similar to those in the Soviet Union (backward country, small minority proletariat, hostile environment, imperialism and Stalinism). Like causes produce like results. In foreign and in domestic policy the position of the Yugoslavs is not fundamentally different to that of Stalinism in its early phases. In the long run it will have the same consequences.

Instead of taking advantage of the conflict in order to demonstrate the real nature of Stalinism and the vitally necessary attributes which a healthy workers’ state, [they] have converted themselves into a replica of the Friends of the Soviet Union. The organisation has become the exculpatory tourist agency for Yugoslavia.

From the inception of the Socialist Fellowship by Ellis Smith, to the Korean Crisis, the organisation went through a period of collaboration and accommodation to various elements inside the Labour Party. These stretched from the social democratic left reformists such as Ellis Smith and Brockway to Stalinist fellow travellers, such as Tom Braddock and Jack Stanley. In the absence of a genuine left wing the Healy leadership helped to construct a shadow. In order to maintain this shadow they were forced to accommodate themselves to it. Thus when the Socialist Fellowship produced its policy, after the General Election, this leadership took a leading role in drafting a programme which was false and opportunistic.

At the same time, illusions were spread about the so-called working class leaders, Ellis Smith, Mrs. Braddock, etc.

At the first serious crisis when the Korea dispute arose, the inevitable splitting of this organisation took place, with Ellis Smith and Company departing. With the departure of the important left reformists, the group veered more openly in the direction of accommodating itself to the Stalinist fellow traveller wing. They remain in the rump of the Socialist Fellowship on a semi-Stalinist position.

In fact the Trotskyists form the backbone in membership, organisation and activity of the Socialist Fellowship.

The Trotskyists have expended their energy propagating an opportunist policy instead of building a revolutionary nucleus around themselves.

‘Socialist Outlook’

During the period of the development of the Socialist Fellowship, the Socialist Outlook carried out its stated task: “to reflect the confusion of the left wing.” (1949 Conference document). The political role of the Socialist Outlook was determined not by the anaemic editorials, but by the leading articles of those M.P.s, etc., whose policies were transparently one of sweetening the bitter pills of the right wing.

At the same time, the editorials were coloured by the need not to “offend” the Stalinist fellow travellers on the Editorial Board.

The editorial produced a line of “criticism” which is worthy of the notorious “Friends of the Soviet Union”. “The leadership…would like it to be.” “We are far from suggesting that the Russian Government at all times and under all conditions supports progressive movements.” “There is a distinct flavour of power politics about Moscow’s attempt to secure peace in Korea in return for an extra seat on the Security Council.” These are examples of “serious Trotskyist criticism”! Amongst such statements – which have a very distinct flavour – falls the following: “Russian foreign policy is determined by what the government of that country considers is in the interests of the Soviet Union, but that as India proved does not, by any means, always coincide with what is in the best interest of the international working class. Or even, in the long run, the best interest of the Soviet Union itself.”!

On this basis of political accommodation, the Healy tendency boasts in Britain and internationally of its numerical and organisational successes in the “building of the left wing” within the Labour Party. Claims which were largely without foundation in fact.

Even with their most strenuous efforts it remains an unimportant and semi-fictitious organisation. Without their propping up it would collapse immediately.

The Socialist Outlook is a “forum” with no revolutionary tendency reflected in it. Neither is revolutionary criticism allowed in the paper. For instance, S.L.’s [Sam Levy] attack on the April editorial and M.L.’s [Marion Lunt] attack on the position of Yugoslavia were not published, whilst quantities of out-and-out reformist and Stalinist material was published. In this respect they compare unfavourably even with the centrist Socialist Leader. The important point must be borne in mind that the dominating forces in the Socialist Outlook are the Trotskyists.

The Socialist Outlook being in reality the paper of the group, should be the organiser of the Group, instead it has become a channel for Stalinist influence in the Labour Party.

The whole line of the paper and the policy of this grouping has its crassest expression in the notorious Korea supplement. There was no criticism whatsoever of the role of the Stalinist bureaucracy. There was a white-washing of the role of the Yugoslavs at U.N.O. Whilst correctly supporting the struggle of the North there was not a syllable on the Stalinist set-up.

In the League of Youth [Labour Party youth wing], where there are the most favourable conditions for work, we see not a Trotskyist concept of spreading our ideas and gaining support for them, but the concept of controlling the whole L.O.Y. organisationally. In its struggle in the L.O.Y., while correctly fighting for democratic and organisational demands, it does so at the expense of a political position. The whole approach in the Labour Party is a Stalinist one of controlling machines, a Socialist Fellowship, a Socialist Outlook, an entire League of Youth, at the expense of political ideas and programme. However, it has not the saving grace that side by side with organisational appendages, the Stalinists simultaneously organise their own powerful independent party and press.

This liquidationist policy becomes the mixing of banners, policy and programme.

Lack of Internal Democracy

Without a proper sense of proportion and magnifying the dangers, the conference was held under most disadvantageous conditions. Delegates only, apart from the favoured few, were allowed to attend. Individual members, on the grounds of security, were refused the right to attend or even to know where the conference was being held.

The document of the State Capitalists was refused publication after the General Secretary had accepted it, on the grounds that its author was expelled (ex-poste facto). This constituted a provocation, which, of course, assisted the State Capitalists. They were a tendency represented at the conference and should have had the right to put forward a document to express their ideas even if the author was outside the organisation.

The Liverpool branch document was not published on the grounds that it was presented too late, although some of the ideas were incorporated in the last minute document, without acknowledgement.

The “amended” major document was, in fact, an entirely new document. By adding new ideas in an amalgam with the old, it could only succeed in disorientating and confusing the members. The leadership presented an entirely new document while at the same time claiming that they had only amended the old document. This is Zinovievist trickery.

At the conference the political discussion and voting took place in an atmosphere of disciplinary threats. On the resolution on reformism the delegates were told that anyone voting against its implementation would be expelled, notwithstanding the fact that some delegates disagreed with the document. In all Bolshevik organisations members have the right to vote against documents, although a majority decision determines policy, automatically. The resolution on implementation was put in order to force the minority to vote for a resolution to which they were opposed, on threat of expulsion. This ultimatistic attitude has more in common with Stalinist monolithism than Bolshevism.

They did not take the opportunity to allow the ventilation of the ideas of the State Capitalists by having a full discussion at the conference, despite the fact that growing numbers of the members were becoming sympathetic to state capitalism as a reaction to the semi-Stalinist line of the leadership.

Arbitrarily, and bureaucratically, the leadership dissolved and amalgamated branches, without taking into account the needs of the party, but only the needs of the clique. For example, the General Secretary went down to the Kilburn branch and declared the branch dissolved in order to “separate the branch from ‘malign’ influences”. This was not ratified by the Executive Committee (E.C.) until a week later.

In Liverpool, there was a deliberate attempt to split the branch in two for the purposes of dividing the “Deane family” from the rest of the comrades in Liverpool.

Branches were deliberately isolated from one another in order to facilitate control from the centre. There was no knowledge of what was taking place in the organisation as a whole, correspondence between branches was restricted and the statements which came through the E.C. had the specific purpose of rubber-stamping E.C. actions. Branches and individuals who disagreed were threatened with expulsion or attacked viciously as anti-party comrades.

As a consequence of this regime, political discontent was bound to reflect itself both in the infraction of discipline and dropping away of members.

The only reply to the infraction of discipline was instantaneous expulsion (Percy Downey in Birmingham). The decision to expel was taken to the branches for endorsement. Those who voted against the E.C.’s action on the grounds that a full discussion was necessary and that these violations were a result of the lack of political discussion and the lack of democracy inside the organisation, were themselves instantly expelled (Birmingham, West London). Thus, they insisted upon the monolithic principle of unanimity.

Leading opposition comrades such as J.D. [Jimmy Deane] and S.L. [Sam Levy] who were members of the National Committee were expelled on flimsy pretexts or on technical infractions of discipline.

By restricting the rights of members, by utilising technical points, by the dictatorial attitude of the leadership and the general intimidation of members, the group has shrunk. Due to the number of members resigning or the expulsions, it has been reduced to a shambles. In the provinces it has become a mere skeleton. In London members are losing confidence in such a leadership. These have been large losses.

Only the younger and inexperienced comrades and the hardened elements of the clique remain. The fact of an increasing number of members leaving the group, plus the fact of the expulsion of leading comrades, one a member of the National Committee and the only opposition representative on this important body, shows that it is both impossible and at the same time ceases to have any meaning, to fight for an alternative leadership in such a caricature of a Bolshevik organisation.

An Appeal

Comrades, these issues which we raise are not light ones. They are fundamental questions, which affect the fate of Trotskyism, nationally and internationally. We have not come lightly to the decision to break from this ideologically and organisationally disintegrating tendency. If the precious heritage of ideas left by Trotsky is to be preserved, expanded and developed it is necessary to break with those who trail in the wake of Stalinism. Today, groupings of the Fourth International, owing to various historical factors are small and weak. All the more necessary then, that the fundamental principles of Trotskyism should be retained intact. Today, the main task is one of ideological preparation for the development of a mass organisation at a later stage. On a programme of neo-Stalinism only disaster can be prepared. Only the training of developed revolutionary cadres can prepare the way for the future.

With the world situation and the conditions existing as they are, it is impossible to foresee the development of the mass Trotskyist movement in Britain very quickly. This will require years of patient work.

At this stage, the main activity of the group will have to lie inside the Labour movement and the mass organisations of the working class, as an entrist group. A left wing will inevitably develop in the Labour Party in the coming years. But the foolish endeavour to create a left wing out of nothing and declare that the left wing is already here has only demonstrated the impotence of the Healyites except in their own imaginings. In order to prepare for the left wing it is necessary now for serious and sober criticism of all tendencies in the Labour Party to be conducted in the press and in the Labour Party. At the same time a relentless exposure of Stalinism as well as of imperialism must be consistently carried on, in order to avert the possibility of sections in the Labour Party going over in despair to Stalinism.

For the conduct of the work scrupulous democracy and full freedom of discussion within the organisation must be maintained. Without this it will not be possible for a revolutionary grouping to be created and survive in the difficult period that lies ahead.

For all these reasons we appeal to all sincere comrades in the movement to join us in this task. Only in this way, will a fighting, living movement be created. Patient day to day work inside the Labour movement will achieve results if it is conducted on a correct basis. The years that lie ahead can be fruitful ones. The tasks are difficult, but the opportunities from a long term point of view [are] unbounded. Forward to the building of the revolutionary tendency in Britain.

September/October 1950

Against the Theory of State Capitalism

Reply to Comrade Cliff

By Ted Grant, 1949. Original source: The Unbroken Thread. The Development of Trotskyism over 40 Years. Edited by John Pickard. London: Fortress Books, 1989. Copied from https://www.marxists.org/archive/grant/1949/cliff.htm.

The document of Comrade Cliff entitled The Nature of Stalinist Russia^[source] at first sight gives the impression of erudition and scientific analysis. However, upon careful examination, it will be observed that not one of the chapters contains a worked-out thesis. The method is a series of parallels based on quotations, and its basic weakness is shown by the fact that conclusions are not rooted in the analysis. From his thesis it is not possible to conclude whether Stalinist Russia remains a progressive system (despite its deformations), or whether for Cliff it has now assumed the same reactionary role as ‘individual’ capitalism or fascism. The weakness is sharply brought out by the fact that no practical conclusions emerge. Is Russia to be defended, or is the revolutionary party to be defeatist? Instead of the answer being rooted in and flowing from the analysis, it has to be worked out a posteriori.

Despite the fact that Comrade Cliff asserts that the Stalinist bureaucracy is a new class, nowhere in his thesis is a real analysis made or evidence adduced as to why and how such a class constitutes a capitalist class and is not a new type of class.

And this is not accidental. It flows from the method. Starting off with the preconceived idea of state capitalism, everything is artificially fitted into that conception. Instead of applying the theoretical method of the Marxist teachers to Russian society in its process of motion and development, he has scoured the works to gather quotations and attempted to compress them into a theory.

Nowhere in the document does Cliff pose the main criterion for Marxists in analysing social systems: Does the new formation lead to the development of the productive forces? The theory of Marxism is based on the material development of the forces of production as the moving force of historical progress. The transition from one system to another is not decided subjectively, but is rooted in the needs of production itself. It is on this basis and this basis only that the superstructure is erected: of state, ideology, art, science. It is true that the superstructure has an important secondary effect on production and even within certain limits, as Engels explained, develops its own independent movement. But in the last analysis, the development of production is decisive.

Marx explained the historical justification for capitalism, depite the horrors of the industrial revolution, despite the slavery of the blacks in Africa, despite child labour in the factories, the wars of conquest throughout the globe – by the fact that it was a necessary stage in the development of the forces of production. Marx showed that without slavery, not only ancient slavery, but slavery in the epoch of the early development of capitalism, the modern development of production would have been impossible. Without that the material basis for communism could never have been prepared. In Poverty of Philosophy Marx wrote:

“Direct slavery is just as much the pivot of bourgeois industry as machinery, credits, etc. Without slavery you have no cotton; without cotton you have no modern industry. It is slavery that has given the colonies their value; it is the colonies that have created world trade, and it is world trade that is the precondition of large-scale industry. Thus slavery is an economic category of the greatest importance.

“Without slavery North America, the most progressive of countries, would be transformed into a patriarchal country. Wipe out North America from the map of the world, and you will have anarchy – the complete decay of modern commerce and civilisation.” [source]

Of course, the attitude of Marx towards the horrors of slavery and the industrial revolution is well known. It would be a gross distortion of Marx’s position to argue that because he wrote the above, therefore he was in favour of slavery and child labour. No more can it be argued against the Marxists of today that because they support state ownership in the USSR that they therefore justify the slave camps and other crimes of the Stalin regime.

Marx’s support of Bismarck⁽¹⁾ in the Franco-Prussian war was dictated by similar considerations. In spite of Bismarck’s ‘blood and iron’ policy and the reactionary nature of his regime, because the development of the productive forces would be facilitated by the national unification of Germany, Marx gave critical support for the war of Prussia against France. The basic criterion was the development of the productive forces. In the long run, all else flows from this.

Any analysis of Russian society must start from that basis. Once Cliff admits that while capitalism is declining and decaying on a world scale, yet preserving a progressive role in Russia in relation to the development of the productive forces, then logically he would have to say that state capitalism is the next stage forward for society, or at least for the backward countries. Contradictorily, he shows that the Russian bourgeoisie was not capable of carrying through the role which was fulfilled by the bourgeoisie in the West and consequently the proletarian revolution took place.

If we have state capitalism in Russia (ushered in by a proletarian revolution), then it is clear that the crisis of capitalism on which we have based ourselves for the past decades was not insoluble but purely the birth pangs of a new and higher stage of capitalism. The quotation he himself gives from Marx – that no society passes from the scene till all the possibilities in it have been exhausted would indicate that if his argument is correct, a new epoch, the epoch of state capitalism, opens up before us. This would shatter the entire theoretical basis of the Leninist-Trotskyist movement. Cliff says, without explaining why, that if we hold on to the theory of the degenerated revolution, we must abandon the theory of the permanent revolution. Yet he fails to see that to accept the theory of state capitalism, the theory of the permanent revolution, which is based on the idea that capitalism has so exhausted itself on a world scale that it is incapable of even carrying out the tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution in backward countries, would have to be abandoned. For in Eastern Europe, the ‘state capitalists’ would have carried out the tasks of the bourgeois revolution on the land etc. Cliff skirts around this question of the agrarian revolution, which in the backward countries, Trotsky argued, only the proletariat could carry through. If the ‘state capitalist’ parties of the Stalinists can perform this task, not only is the theory of the permanent revolution thrown out of the window, but the viability of the new state capitalism in a historical sense must be clear to all.

If Comrade Cliff’s thesis is correct, that state capitalism exists in Russia today, then he cannot avoid the conclusion that state capitalism has been in existence since the Russian Revolution and the function of the revolution itself was to introduce this state capitalist system of society. For despite his tortuous efforts to draw a line between the economic basis of Russian society before the year 1928 and after, the economic basis of Russian society has in fact remained unchanged.

Incorrect Usage of Quotations

Comrade Cliff seeks to prove that Trotsky was moving to the position that the bureaucracy was a new ruling class. For this purpose he gives quotations from the book Stalin, and then from Living Thoughts of Karl Marx.

Cliff writes:

“A clear step in the direction of a new evaluation of the bureaucracy as a ruling class finds expression in Trotsky’s last book, Stalin. He writes:

“’The substance of Thermidor was, is and could not fail to be social in character. It stood for the crystallisation of a new privileged stratum, the creation of a new substratum for the economically dominant class. There were two pretenders to this role: the petty bourgeoisie and the bureaucracy itself. They fought shoulder to shoulder (in the battle to break) the resistance of the proletarian vanguard. When that task was accomplished a savage struggle broke out between them. The bureaucracy became frightened of its isolation, its divorce from the proletariat. Alone it could not crush the kulak ⁽²⁾ nor the petty bourgeoisie that had grown and continued to grow on the basis of the NEP; it had to have the aid of the proletariat. Hence its concerted effort to present its struggle against the petty bourgeoisie for the surplus products and for power as the struggle of the proletariat against attempts at capitalistic restoration’.” (The Nature of Stalinist Russia, Tony Cliff, June 1948, page 10) [source]

And Comrade Cliff comments:

“The bureaucracy, Trotsky says, while pretending to fight against the capitalistic restoration, in reality used the proletariat only to crush the kulaks for ‘the crystallisation of a new privileged stratum, the creation of a new substratum for the economically dominant class’. One of the pretenders to the role of the economically dominant class, he says, is the bureaucracy. Great emphasis is lent to this formulation when we connect this analysis with the fight between the bureaucracy and the kulaks with Trotsky’s definition of the class struggle. He says: ‘The class struggle is nothing else than the struggle for surplus produce. He who owns surplus-produce is master of the situation – owns wealth, owns the state, has the key to the Church, to the courts, to the sciences and to the arts’.” (Cliff, page 10)

And Cliff concludes:

“The fight between the bureaucracy and the kulaks was, according to Trotsky’s last conclusion, the ‘struggle…for the surplus products’.”

To illustrate the way in which Comrade Cliff has constructed his case, let us examine these quotations in context and we will see that the conclusion that flows is precisely the opposite to what he argues:

“The kulak, jointly with the petty industrialists, worked for the complete restoration of capitalism. Thus opened the irreconcilable struggle over the surplus product of national labour. Who will dispose of it in the nearest future – the new bourgeoisie or the Soviet bureaucracy? – that became the next issue. He who disposed of the surplus product has the power of the state at his disposal. It was all this that opened the struggle between the petty bourgeoisie, which had helped the bureaucracy to crush the resistance of the labouring masses and of their spokesmen the Left Opposition, and the Thermidorean bureaucracy itself, which had helped the petty bourgeoisie to lord it over the agrarian masses. It was a direct struggle for power and income.

“Obviously the bureaucracy did not rout the proletarian vanguard, pull from the complications of the international revolution, and legitimise the philosophy of inequality in order to capitulate before the bourgeoisie, become the latter’s servant, and be eventually itself pulled away from the state feed-bag.” (Stalin by Leon Trotsky, Harper, London 1941, page 397, our emphasis)

Cliff makes Trotsky look foolish by appearing to contradict himself by juxtaposing the two quotations and adducing therefrom that Trotsky was changing his position on the class character of the bureaucracy. A few pages further on, Trotsky explains his idea. he shows the organic tendency of the decay of capitalism everywhere. It is only on this basis that the nationalised productive forces have been maintained in Russia. The whole tendency of the economy in the last 50 years on a world scale has been towards the statification of the productive forces. The capitalists themselves have in part been compelled to ‘the recognition of the productive forces as social forces’ (Engels). In fact, this is the key to the explanation of why Russia survived the war. The disorientation of the movement which is expressed in Cliff’s document, is largely due to the failure to appreciate the implications of this tendency. In his book on Stalin, Trotsky raises the theoretical possibility of the bureaucracy continuing to rule for some decades.

A few pages after the quotations given by Cliff, Trotsky says:

“The counter-revolution sets in when the spool of progressive social conquests begins to unwind. There seems no end to this unwinding. Yet some portion of the conquests of the revolution is always preserved. Thus, in spite of monstrous bureaucratic distortions, the class basis of the USSR remains proletarian. But let us bear in mind that the unwinding process has not yet been completed, and the future of Europe and the world during the next few decades has not yet been decided. The Russian Thermidor would undoubtedly have opened a new era of bourgeois rule, if that rule had not proved obsolete throughout the world. At any rate the struggle against equality and the establishment of very deep social differentiation has so far been unable to eliminate the socialist consciousness of the masses or the nationalisation of the means of production and the land, which were the basic socialist conquests of the revolution…” (Stalin, page 405)

We believe this sufficiently demonstrates that Cliff has taken a quotation from Trotsky’s Stalin out of context and read something into it which is not there. In his last work, as in all others on the Russian question, Trotsky had a consistent theme in his characterisation of the Soviet Union. It is not possible to draw the conclusion from any of his writings that he was altering his fundamental position.

Can there be a Struggle between Two Sections of the Same Class? French Revolution – Russian Revolution

To understand the Russian Revolution we can take the analogy of the French Revolution which is striking in its similarity and course although obviously on a different economic basis. As is known, the rule of the bourgeoisie was ushered in in France in the revolution of 1789. Marx explains the progressive rule of the revolutionary Jacobins: this revolutionary dictatorship of the sans culottes went further than the bourgeois regime. Because of that they made a clean sweep of all feudal rubbish, and did in months what the bourgeoisie would have required decades to achieve. This was followed by the Thermidorian reaction and the Bonapartist counter-revolution.

Anyone who compared the Bonapartist counter-revolution with the revolution – at least in its superstructure – would have found as great a difference as between the regime of Lenin and Trotsky in Russia and that of Stalin in latter years. To superficial observers the difference between the two regimes was fundamental. In fact, insofar as the superstructure was concerned, the difference was glaring. Napoleon had reintroduced many of the orders, decorations and ranks similar to those of feudalism; he had restored the Church; he even had himself crowned Emperor. Yet despite this counter-revolution, it is clear that it had nothing in common with the old regime. It was counter-revolution on the basis of the new form of property introduced by the revolution itself. Bourgeois forms of property or property relations remained the basis of the economy.

When we study the further history of France, we see the variety of forms of government and of the superstructure which developed in the course of the class struggle. The restoration of the monarchy after the defeat of Napoleon, the revolutions of 1830 and of 1848 – what was the class struggle there? There was a different division of the income, but after all these revolutions the economy remained bourgeois.

The subsequent history of France saw the dictatorship of Louis Bonaparte, the restoration of bourgeois democracy and the Republic and, in recent days, the regime of Petain. Under all these regimes there were differences in the division of the national income between the classes and between different strata of the ruling class itself. Yet we call all these regimes bourgeois. Why? It can only be because of the form of property.

Given the backwardness of the Soviet Union, which is very well explained by Cliff, and the isolation of the revolution, why should not a similar process take place? In fact it did. Let us return to Trotsky’s book Stalin. The Old Man was clear. After the quotation where Trotsky shows that the substance of the Thermidor could not but be social in character and was the struggle for the surplus product, he went on to explain what was meant. Let us continue where Cliff stopped:

“Here the analogy with French Thermidor ceases. The new social basis of the Soviet Union became paramount. To guard the nationalisation of the means of production and of the land, is the bureaucracy’s law of life and death, for these are the social sources of its dominant position. That was the reason for its struggle against the kulak. The bureaucracy could wage this struggle, and wage it to the end, only with the support of the proletariat. The best proof of the fact that it had mustered this support was the avalanche of capitulations by representatives of the new Opposition.

“The fight against the kulak, the fight against the right wing, the fight against opportunism – the official slogans of that period – seemed to the workers and to many representatives of the Left Opposition like a renaissance of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the socialist revolution. We warned them at the time: it is not only a question of what is being done, but also of who does it. Under conditions of Soviet democracy, ie, self-rule of the toilers, the struggle against the kulaks might not have assumed such a convulsive, panicky and bestial form and might have led to a general rise of the economic and cultural level of the masses on the basis of industrialisation. But the bureaucracy’s fight against the kulak was single combat (fought) on the backs of the toilers; and since neither of the embattled gladiators trusted the masses, since both feared the masses, the struggle assumed an extremely convulsive and sanguinary character. Thanks to the support of the proletariat, it ended with victory for the bureaucracy. But it did not lead to a gain in the specific weight of the proletariat in the country’s political life.” (Stalin page 408, our emphasis)

When Trotsky speaks here of ‘the creation of a new substratum for the economically dominant class’ what is clearly meant is the proletariat, which dominates through the form of property. Cliff says: ‘One of the pretenders to the role of the economically dominant class, he says, is the bureaucracy. Great emphasis is lent to this formulation…’ Here we see the dangers in the method of working on the basis of preconceived ideas and the attempt to select quotations to fit into these ideas.

In this same chapter, Trotsky shows the similarity and the differences with the French revolution and why the reaction took a different form in France to that which it took in Russia:

“The privileges of the bureaucacy have a different source of origin. The bureaucracy took for itself that part of the national income which it could secure either by the exercise of force or of its authority or by direct intervention in economic relations. In the matter of the national surplus product the bureaucracy and the petty bourgeoisie quickly changed from alliance to enmity. The control of the surplus product opened the bureaucracy’s road to power.” (Stalin, page 40)

The theme of Trotsky is sufficiently clear. The struggle for the surplus product can be waged not only between different classes, but between different strata and different groupings representing the same class.

Does the law of Value Operate within the Russian Economy?

The whole of the section of Cliff’s document on the law of value is unsound from a Marxist point of view. In the most involved and peculiar manner he argues that the law of value does not apply within the Russian economy, but only in its relations to world capitalism. He finds the basis of the law of value, not in Russian society, but in the world capitalist environment.

“Let us now find out what importance the internal relations in Russia has when abstracted from the influence of world economy.

“The abstraction has solved one fundamental question: that the source of the activity of the law of value is not to be found in the internal relations of Russian economy itself. In other words it has brought us so far nearer solving the problem of whether the Russian economy is subordinated to the law of value by showing us where not to look for its source.” (Cliff, page 98. Emphasis in original)

According to the Marxist view, it is in exchange that the law of value manifests itself. And this holds true for all forms of society. For example, the way in which the break-up of primitive communism took place was through the exchange and barter between different primitive communities. This led to the development of private property. In slave society, in the same way, the products of the slave became commodities when they were exchanged. Through this development, the ‘commodity of commodities’ appeared: money. It was thus that the product enslaved the producer and in the end the contradiction caused by the money economy resulted in the destruction of the old slave society. Under feudalism, the exchange of the surplus produced by the self-sufficient lords and barons in their ‘natural economy’ became commodities, and in fact, was the starting point of capitalist development through the rise of merchant capital.

Therefore, if it was in exchange only between Russia and the outside world that the law of value manifested itself, all that this would mean is that the Russian surplus was exchanged on the basis of the law of value. What consequences that would have for the internal economy is a different question which would have to be worked out.

However, because of the small degree of participation of the Soviet Union on the world market, in comparison with the total production of Russia, Cliff unavoidably realises the weakness of this point. Thus, amazingly, Cliff finds the law of value manifesting itself not in exchange, but in competition. Even this would not be so bad if he argued that this was competition on the world market on classical capitalist lines for markets. But he cannot argue this because it is at variance with the facts. So he introduces a new conception. He finds his ‘competition’ and his ‘law of value’ in the production of armaments!

The pressure of world capitalism forces Russia to devote an enormous proportion of the national income on armaments production and defence on the one hand, and the greatest capital construction in history in proportion to the national income for the needs of defence, on the other. Here Cliff finds his law of value. The law of value manifests itself in the armaments competition between two social systems! This can only be described as a concession to Shachtman’s theory of bureaucratic collectivism. If this theory is correct, the theory of an entirely new economy, never before seen in history or foreseen by the Marxists, would apply.

Here again we would point out the dangers of indiscriminate use of quotations and amalgamations of ideas to form a ‘thesis’. In reality this document is not a state capitalist document; it is a hybrid in the union of bureaucratic collectivism and state capitalism. If this section of Cliff’s document means anything at all, it leads straight to the road of Schachtman’s bureaucratic collectivism.

This idea is partially borrowed from Hilferding⁽³⁾ who consistently argued that in Russia and in Nazi Germany the law of value did not apply and that these were entirely new social formations. It is also based on a misunderstanding of some passages in Bukharin’s Imperialism and the World Economy, where he argued on the basis of ‘state capitalism’ – the organic union of trusts with finance capital – and in which he, together with Lenin, brilliantly prophesied a form of dictatorship which was later realised in Italian fascism and nazism. Not state ownership of the means of production, but the fusion of finance capital with the state. In fact Bukharin chose as one of his classic examples of such a state…America.

The argument on armaments partakes of a mystical and not an economic category. At best, even if we accepted it as correct, it would only explain why Russian produces armaments, but not how or on what economic basis the armaments are produced. Even if Russia were a healthy workers’ state, in imperialist encirclement, there would be the absolute necessity to produce armaments and compete with the arms technique and production of the rival capitalist systems. But this argument about armaments is entirely false. The greater part of production in Russia is not armaments but means of production. Again, this would explain why the bureaucracy is attempting to accumulate the means of production at a frantic speed, but it explains nothing of the economic system of production itself. It is probably true that in a healthy workers’ state accumulation of arms would be smaller for social reasons (internationalist and revolutionary policy towards workers in other lands), but it would nevertheless take place under the pressure of world imperialism.

A quicker or slower tempo in the development of the means of production does not necessarily tell us the method by which these are produced. Cliff says that the bureaucracy is developing the means of production under the pressure of world imperialism. Good. But all this tells us again is why the pace is fast. From the point of view of even classical bourgeois political economy, Cliff’s argument is a pure evasion. It merely poses what has to be proved.

Not for nothing did Trotsky point out in Revolution Betrayed that the whole progressive content of the activity of the Stalinist bureaucracy and its preoccupation, was the raising of the productivity of labour and the defence of the country.

We have seen that if the law of value only applies because of the existence of capitalism in world economy, then it would only apply to those products exchanged on the world market. But Cliff argues two contradictory theses in relation to the Russian economy. On the one hand he says:

“This does not mean that the price system in Russia is arbitrary, dependent on the whim of the bureaucracy. The basis of price here too is the costs of production. If price is to be used as a transmission belt through which the bureaucracy directs production as a whole, it must fit its purpose, and as nearly as possible reflect the real costs, that is, the socially necessary Labour absorbed in the different products…” (Cliff, page 94, our emphasis)

Two pages later, Cliff describes as the central point he intends to prove:

“…that in the economic relations within Russia itself one cannot find the autonomy of economic activity, the source of the law of value, acting.” (Cliff, page 96, emphasis in original)

In the first quotation, Cliff shows precisely the way in which the law of value manifests itset internally in Russian society. Even if one abstracts from the world market, leaving aside the interacting effect which it undoubtedly has – when Cliff says that ‘the real costs, that is the socially necessary labour absorbed in the different products’ must reflect the real prices, he is saying that the same law applies in Russian society as in capitalist society. The difference is that whereas in capitalist society it manifests itself blindly by the laws of the markets, in Russia conscious activity plays an important role. In this connection the second quotation crushingly refutes Cliff’s argument that it is capitalism which exists in Russia under these given conditions because the law of value does not operate blindly, but is consciously harnessed. In capitalist society, the law of value, as he says, manifests itself through the ‘autonomy of economic activity’, ie, it is the market which dominates. The first quotation shows clearly that the market – and this is the point – is within given limits controlled consciously and therefore it is not capitalism as understood by Marxists.

Previously Cliff said that the law of value did not operate in Russia. Here he is showing precisely how it does operate: not on the lines of classical capitalism, but of a transitional society between capitalism and socialism.

We see therefore, that Cliff claims that Russia is a capitalist society – yet he finds the source of the basic law of capitalist production outside of Russia. Now, in any capitalist society in which the reserve fund is in the hands of the capitalist class, as Engels explained:

“… if this production and reserve fund does in fact exist in the hands of the capitalist class, if it has in fact arisen through the accumulation of profit…then it necessarily consists of the accumulated surplus of the product of labour handed over to the capitalist class by the working class, over and above the sum of wages paid to the working class by the capitalist class. In this case, however, it is not wages that determine value, but the quantity of labour; in this case the working class hands over to the capitalist class in the product of labour a greater quantity of value than it receives from it in the shape of wages; and then the profit on capital like all other forms of appropriation without payment of the labour product of others, is explained as a simple component part of the surplus value discovered by Marx.” (Anti-Dühring, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1969, page 233) [source]

This indicates that where there is wage labour, where there is the accumulation of capital, the law of value must apply, no matter in how complicated a form it may manifest itself. Further on Engels explains in answer to Dühring’s⁽⁴⁾ five kinds of value, and the ‘natural costs of production’, that in Capital Marx is dealing with the value of commodities and ‘in the whole section of Capital which deals with value there is not even the slightest indication of whether or to what extent Marx considers the theory of value of commodities applicable to other forms of society’. In this sense it is clear that in the transitional society also: ‘Value itself is nothing more than the expression of the socially necessary labour materialised in an object.’ Here it is only necessary to ask: what determines the value of machines, consumer goods, etc, produced in Russia? Is it arbitrary? What determines the calculations of the bureaucracy? What is it that they measure in price? What determines wages? Are wages payments for labour power? What determines ‘money’? What determines profits of enterprises? Is there capital? Is the division of labour abolished?

Cliff gives two contradictory answers to these questions. On the one hand he agrees that it is the law of value on which all calculations and the movement of Russian society develops. On the other, he finds the law of value only operating as the result of pressure from the outside world although how he does not explain in any serious way.

The Role of Money in Russia

The surprising thing is that Cliff himself points out that the bureaucracy does not and cannot determine prices arbitrarily. That it does not and cannot determine the amount of money in circulation arbitrarily either. And this has been so in every society where money (let us remember, the commodity of commodities) has played a role. Engels, dealing with this problem, pertinently asked Dühring:

“If the sword (no matter who wields it – bureaucrat, capitalist, or government – EG) has the magic economic power ascribed to it by Herr Dühring, why is it that no government has been able to succeed in permanently compelling bad money to have the ‘distribution value’ of good money, or assignats to have the ‘distribution value’ of gold? (Anti-Dühring, page 228) [source]

In Revolution Betrayed, Trotsky explains this problem very clearly. He shows that the economic categories peculiar to capitalism still remain in the transitional society between capitalism and communism, the dictatorship of the proletariat. Here is the key: the laws remain, but are modified. Some of the laws of capitalism apply and some are abrogated. For example, Trotsky argues:

“The role of money in Soviet economy is not only unfinished but, as we have said, still has a long growth ahead. The transitional epoch between capitalism and socialism taken as a whole does not mean a cutting down of trade but, on the contrary, its extraordinary extension. All branches of industry transform themselves and grow. New ones continually arise, and all are compelled to define their relations to one another both quantitatively and qualitatively. The liquidation of the consummatory peasant economy, and at the same time of the shut-in family life, means a transfer to the sphere of social interchange, and ipso facto money circulation, of all the labour energy which was formerly expended within the limits of the peasant’s yard, or within the walls of his private dwelling. All products and services begin for the first time in history to be exchanged for one another.” (Revolution Betrayed, NY, 1972, page 67, our emphasis) [source]

What is the key to this enigma? It can only be found in the fact that we have here a transitional society. The state can now regulate, but not arbitrarily, only within the confines of the law of value. Any attempt to violate and pass beyond the strict limits set by the development of the productive forces themselves, immediately results in the re-assertion of the domination of production over producer. This is what Stalin had to discover in relation to price and money when the Russian economy was inflicted with a crisis of inflation which completely distorted and disrupted the plan. The law of value is not abolished, but is modified. This is what Trotsky meant when he said:

“The nationalisation of the means of production and credit, the co-operativising or state-ising of internal trade, the monopoly of foreign trade, the collectivisation of agriculture, the law of inheritance – set strict limits upon the personal accumulation of money and hinder its conversion into private capital (usurious, commercial and industrial). These functions of money, however, bound up as they are with exploitation, are not liquidated at the beginning of a proletarian revolution, but in a modified form are transferred to the state, the universal merchant, creditor and industrialist. At the same time the more elementary functions of money as measure of value, means of exchange and medium of payment, are not only preserved, but acquire a broader field of action than they had under capitalism.” (Revolution Betrayed, page 66, emphasis in original)[source]

One has only to pose the problem in this way to see that an economic analysis must lead one to conclude that we have here a transitional society in which some of the laws peculiar to socialism apply and some peculiar to capitalism. That is after all, the meaning of transition.

Although Cliff does not recognise this, in fact he admits it, because when he says that the bureaucracy can consciously regulate (though within limits) the rate of investment, the proportions between means of production and means of consumption, the price of articles of consumption, etc, he is proving that certain of the basic laws of capitalism do not apply.

Is there a transformation of money into capital in Russia? In polemicising against Stalin, Trotsky answers this by showing that the investments are made on the basis of a plan, but nevertheless, what is invested is the surplus value produced by the workers. Here Trotsky shows the basic fallacy in Stalin’s idea that the state could decide and regulate without reference to the economy. We might add that Stalin never denied that there was commodity production in Russia.

In spite of the fact that there is only one ‘employer’ in Russia, nevertheless, the state buys labour power. It is true that because of the full employment which would normally place the seller of the commodity labour power in a strong position, the state has imposed various restrictions on the free sale of labour power, just as in a period of full employment under fascism. Or even in Labour Britain, where the same situation exists, by means of regulations and devices the employers have the state intervene to offset the advantages which accrue from this situation for the sale of labour power. But only one who argued in abstractions, could argue that this negated labour power.

It is true that in the classical capitalist economy there was free sale of labour power. However, in Marx’s Capital itself there was a whole section devoted to showing the ferocious laws which were introduced against the nascent proletariat after the Black Death in England had so reduced the population that the proletarians were in a favourable position to demand higher wages. Did this mean that the basic Marxian laws did not apply? On the contrary, Marx was dealing with a ‘pure’ capitalism which never did exist, from which he extracted the fundamental laws. The distortion of this or that element will not alter the basic laws. That is why in nazi Germany, despite many perversions, it remained fundamentally a system of capitalist economy, because the economy was dominated by production on the basis of private property.

One has only to compare the slave labourer in Siberia with the proletariat in the Russian cities to see the difference. The one is a slave based on slave labour, the other is a wage slave. The one sells his labour power, the other is purely an instrument of labour himself. There is the fundamental distinction.

It is not at all accidental that the ‘money’ used by the state must necessarily have the same basis as money in capitalist society. Not accidentally, as Trotsky explained, the only real money in Russia (or in any transitional economy – even an ideal workers’ state) must be based on gold. The recent rouble devaluation in Russia was in itself a striking confirmation of the fact that the law of money circulation, and thus of the circulation of commodities, maintains its validity in Russia. In a transitional economy the economic categories of money, value, surplus value, etc, must necessarily continue as elements of the old society within the new society.

Cliff argues that ‘the most important source of state income is the turn-over tax, which is an indirect tax.’ He introduced interesting material showing the tremendous burden which the turn-over tax imposes upon the masses.

However, the turn-over tax to which he refers in connection with the exploitation of the masses, in an indirect way, proves that the law of value applies in Russian society. Cliff shows how the turn-over tax applies in Russia. But he does not see that this tax must be based on something. No matter how much the state might add to the price by placing an additional tax, the price must be based on something: what else can this be but the value of the product, the socially necessary labour time contained in it?

Engels ridiculed Dühring’s tax by the sword, out of which the surplus is developed, when he said:

“Or, on the other hand, the alleged tax surcharges represent a real sum of value, namely that produced by the labouring, value-producing class but appropriated by the monopolist class, and then this sum of value consists merely of unpaid labour; in this event, in spite of the man with the sword in his hand, in spite of the alleged tax surcharges, we come once again to the Marxian theory of surplus value.” (Anti-Dühring, page 226) [source]

The turn-over tax in Russia and the other manipulations of the bureaucracy do not in any way invalidate the law of value. What is the essence of the law of value? That the value of the product is determined by the average amount of socially necessary labour time. That must be the point of departure. It necessarily manifests itself through exchange. Marx devoted a great part of his first volume of Capital to explaining the historical development of the commodity form from accidental exchange among savages through its transitions, till we arrive at commodity production par excellence, capitalist production.

Even in a classical capitalist economy the law of value does not reveal itself directly. As is known, commodities are sold above or below their value. Only accidentally would a commodity be sold at its actual value. In the third volume of Capital Marx explains the price of production of commodities. That is to say, that the capitalist only gets the cost of production of his commodity plus the average rate of profit. Thus some capitalists will be paid below the actual rate, others above. Because of the different organic composition of different capitals, only in this complicated fashion does the law of value reveal itself. This is effected, of course, through competition. Monopoly is merely a more complicated development of the law of value in society. Because of the controlling position held by some monopolies, they can extort a price above the value of the commodities, but only by other commodities being sold below their value. The total values produced by society would still amount to the same.

Was there Surplus Value before 1928? Cliff’s Arbitrary Division

In this connection, Cliff is not at all consistent. Shachtman, in his endeavour to deny that Russia is a transitional society in which capitalist laws continue to operate, as well as the laws of the future society, at least argues consistently. He says that the law of value does not operate, therefore all the laws flowing from it do not operate. It is not surplus value which is produced, but surplus product; it is not labour power that the workers sell, since they are slaves, etc, etc. Cliff, however, admits that commodity production continues, labour power and surplus value remain. But once these Marxian categories are accepted as valid for Russian society, then clearly the law of value must operate internally, or the whole position becomes nonsensical.

The whole contradiction, a contradiction within the society itself and not imposed abitrarily – is in the very concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat. If one considers the problem in the abstract, one can see that this is a contradictory phenomenon: the abolition of capitalism yet the continuation of classes. The proletariat does not disappear. It raises itself to the position of ruling class and abolishes the capitalist class. But in the intervening period it remains the working class. Therefore, surplus product in the form of surplus value is produced. It is the case today as it was under Lenin and Trotsky. We have only to pose the problem: what was the surplus value produced when Russia was still a workers’ state – though even then with bureaucratic deformations? What was the process by means of which surplus product before 1928 mysteriously became surplus value after 1928? What was this curious unexplained process? We would like to ask the question here: Did the existence of capitalism outside Russia before 1928 have a similar effect on Russia’s economy? Of course it did. In fact a far greater effect because of the weakness of the Russian economy. Why was there not capitalism in Russia then?

Or further: leave aside the period from 1917 to 1923 – what was the situation from 1923 to 1928 when the Stalinist bureaucracy was consolidating itself? There were far more actual individual capitalist elements in the economy of the country then than there are today. The pressure of world capitalism from an economic point of view was indisputably far greater. Merely to pose the problem is to show the arbitrary method.

The abuse of power and the legal and illegal consumption of surplus value by the bureaucracy, necessarily took place even in the early stages of bureaucratic control. Comrade Cliff has to construct a lifeless scheme which bears no relation to reality in order to create a distinction between the two periods: the period when the bureaucracy represented a degenerated workers’ state, and the period when the bureaucracy became a capitalist class. What, according to Cliff, is the difference? Incredible as it may seem, the bureaucracy really earned its income and only from 1928 onwards did they consume surplus value. Cliff writes:

“The statistics we have at our disposal conclusively show that although the bureaucracy had a privileged position in the period preceding the Five-Year Plan, it can on no account be said that it received surplus value from the labour of others. It can just as conclusively be said that with the introduction of the Five-Year Plans, the bureaucracy’s income consisted to a large extent of surplus value.” (page 45)

This is at variance with the analysis made not only by Trotsky but by the other Marxists of the time in relation to this problem. First of all, even in the most ideal workers’ state, in the transitional period there will unavoidably be a certain consumption of the surplus value by the specialists and bureaucrats. Otherwise, we would have the immediate introduction of communism, without any inequalities or the continuance of the division between mental and manual labour. It is only necessary to refer here to the Left Opposition on this very problem. As early as 1927, the Left Opposition commented on the enormous part of the surplus value being consumed by the bureaucratic apparatus. They protested that the ‘swollen and privileged administrative apparatus is devouring a very considerable part of the surplus value’. ^[source] (See Revolution Betrayed, page 141)

It is clear that from 1920 onwards, the bureaucracy consumed a great part of the surplus value, legitimately and illegitimately. As Marx explained in any case, in a workers’ state in the transitional period, the surplus value will be used for the speedy building up of industry and so prepare the way for the quickest possible transition to equality and then complete communism.

What else was Lenin speaking of in 1920 and 1921 when he stressed the step backward the Bolsheviks had been forced to make, when they paid the specialists according to bourgeois standards and in the old ‘bourgeois way’?

The Economics of the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism

The most significant thing about all tendencies who seek to revise Trotsky’s position on the Russian question is that they always deal with the problem in the abstract and never concretely explain the laws of the transitional society between capitalism and socialism and how such a society would operate. This is not accidental. A concrete consideration would impel them to the conclusion that the fundamental economy in Russia is the same as it was under Lenin and that it could not be otherwise.

The germ of the capitalist mode of production, which began under feudalism through the development of commodity production, lies in the function of the independent craftsmen and merchants. When it reaches a certain stage we have capitalist relations with a feudal superstructure. These are burst asunder by the revolution and the possibilities latent in capitalist production then have the free possibility of fruition unhampered by feudal restrictions.

The whole essence of the revolution (capitalist and proletarian) consists of the fact that the old relationships and the old forms do not correspond with the new ripened method or mode of production. In order to free itself from these restrictions, the productive forces have to be organised on a different basis and the whole of human history and movement of history consists in the development of this antagonism at its various stages in different societies.

However, the bourgeois revolution does not immediately destroy feudalism at one blow. Powerful feudal elements still remain, and to this day the remnants of feudalism exist even in the most highly developed capitalist countries.

One can speak of the feudal mode of production in the sense of the superstructure, despite the capitalist basis which has developed beneath. Or one can even speak of the feudal mode of production at its inception where the germs of capitalism and the possibility of the development of capitalism could be faintly discerned.

The fundamental error of this ‘state capitalist’ theory and its abstractions relating to the transitional period, lies in the failure to distinguish between the mode of production and the mode of appropriation. In every class society there is exploitation and a surplus which is utilised by the exploiting class. But in itself this tells us nothing about the mode of production.

For example, the mode of production under capitalism is social in contradiction to the individual form of appropriation. As Engels explained:

“The separation between the means of production concentrated in the hands of the capitalists on the one side, and the producers now possessing nothing but their labour power, on the other, was made complete. The contradiction between social production and capitalist [read individual or private, as Engels had already explained – EG] appropriation became manifest as the antagonism between proletariat and bourgeoisie.” (Anti-Dühring, page 321) [source]

The transitional economy which, as Lenin pointed out, can and will vary enormously in different countries at different times, and even in the same country at different times, also has a social mode of production, but with state appropriation, and not individual appropriation as under capitalism. This is a form which combines both socialist and capitalist features.

Under capitalism, the system of commodity production par excellence, the product completely dominates the producer. This flows from the form of appropriation, and the contradiction between the form of appropriation and the mode of production; both factors flow from the private ownership of the means of production. Once state ownership takes its place, whatever the resulting system may be, it cannot be capitalism because this basic contradiction will have been abolished. The anarchic character of social production with private appropriation disappears.

Under socialism also, there will be a social mode of production but there will also be a social mode of distribution. For the first time production and distribution will be in harmony.

Therefore, merely to point out the capitalist features in Russia today (wage labour, commodity production, that the bureaucracy consumes an enormous part of the surplus value) is not sufficient to tell us the nature of the social system. Here too, an all-sided view is necessary. One can only understand social relationships in the Soviet Union by taking the totality of the relationships. From the very beginning of the revolution various sectarian schools have produced the most untenable ideas as a result of their failure to make such an analysis. Lenin summed up the problem thus:

“But what does the word ‘transition’ mean? Does it mean, as applied to economics, that the present order contains elements, particles, pieces of both capitalism and socialism? Everyone will admit that it does. But not all who admit this take the trouble to consider the precise nature of the elements that constitute the various social-economic forms which exist in Russia at the present time. And this is the crux of the question.” (Left wing childishness and the petty-bourgeois mentality, Collected Works, Volume 27, page 335) ^[source]

To abstract one side must lead to error. What is puzzling about the Russian phenomenon is precisely the contradictory character of the economy. This has been further aggravated by the backwardness and isolation of the Soviet Union. This culminates in the totalitarian Stalinist regime and results in the worst features of capitalism coming to the fore – the relations between managers and men, piece-work, etc. Instead of analysing these contradictions Comrade Cliff endeavours as far as possible to try and fit them into the pattern of the ‘normal’ laws of capitalist production.

In addition, the tendency under capitalism for the productive forces not only to become centralised but even for measures of statification to be introduced can result in a wrong conclusion. To prove that ‘state capitalism’ in Russia is in the last analysis the same as individual capitalism with the same laws, Cliff cites the following passage from Anti-Dühring:

“The more productive forces it [the state – TC] takes over, the more it becomes the real collective body of all the capitalists, the more citizens it exploits. The workers remain wage-earners, proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not abolished; it is rather pushed to an extreme. But at this extreme it changes into its opposite. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but it contains within itself the formal means, the key to the solution.” (Anti-Dühring, page 330) ^[source]

In point of fact, Engels is arguing precisely the opposite. Let us re-examine the passages and see how we draw different conclusions:

“If the crisis revealed the incapacity of the bourgeoisie any longer to control the modern productive forces, the conversion of the great organisations for production and communication into joint-stock companies and state property shows that for this purpose the bourgeoisie can he dispensed with. All the social functions of the capitalists are now carried out by salaried employees. The capitalist has no longer any social activity save the pocketing of revenues, the clippng of coupons and gambling on the stock exchange, where the different capitalists fleece each other of their capital. Just as at first the capitalist mode of production displaced the workers, so now it displaces the capitalists, relegating them, just as it did the workers, to the superfluous population, even if in the first instance not to the industrial reserve army.

“But neither the conversion into joint-stock companies nor into state property deprives the productive forces of their character as capital. In the case of joint-stock companies this is obvious. And the modern state, too, is only the organisation with which bourgeois society provides itself in order to maintain the general external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against encroachments either by the workers or by individual capitalists. The modern state, whatever its form, is an essentially capitalist machine; it is the state of the capitalists, the ideal collective body of all capitalists. The more productive forces it takes over as its property, the more it becomes the real collective body of all the capitalists, the more citizens it exploits. The workers remain wage earners, proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not abolished; it is rather pushed to an extreme. But at this extreme it is transformed into its opposite. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but it contains within itself the formal means, the key to the solution.” (Anti-Dühring, page 330, our emphasis) ^[source]

Surely the idea in the foregoing is clear. Insofar as the forces of production have now developed beyond the framework of capitalist relations (that is, the germ of the contradiction has now grown into a malignant disease of the social system, reflecting itself through the crises) the capitalists are compelled to ‘socialise’ huge means of production – first, through joint-stock companies and then later, even to ‘statify’ sections of the productive forces. This particular idea was brought out sharply by Lenin in Imperialism, where he showed that the development of monopolies and socialisation of labour were in factelements of the new social system within the old.

Once the productive forces had reached this stage, capitalism had already accomplished its historic mission, and because of this the bourgeoisie becomes more and more superfluous. From being a necessity for the development of the forces of production, they now become ‘superfluous’, ‘parasites’, ‘coupon-clippers’. In this they are transformed into parasites in the same way and for the same reason as the feudal lords also became ‘parasites’ once their mission had been fulfilled.

This is merely an indication of the ripeness of capitalism for the social revolution. Writing in Capital Marx had shown that credit and joint-stock companies were already an indication that the productive forces had outgrown private ownership. Engels had shown that the social productive forces even compel the capitalists to recognise their character as social and not as individual productive forces.

Wherever the capitalist state is constrained to take over this or that sector of the economy, it is true the productive forces do not lose their character as capital. But the whole essence of the problem is that where we have complete statification, quantity changes into quality, capitalism changes into its opposite.

How otherwise explain the statement of Engels: ‘But at this extreme it [the capitalist relationship] is transformed into its opposite. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but it contains within itself the formal means, the key to the solution’?

If one takes into account the fact that this follows the previously quoted passage in the same section where Engels defines capitalist mode of production (as social production, individual appropriation), we must conclude that Engels hopelessly contradicts himself, if we accept Cliff’s conclusions. But from the context, Engels’ meaning is clear. He explains that the solution to the contradictions of capitalism lies in the recognition of the social nature of the modern productive forces: ‘In bringing, therefore, the mode of production, appropriation and exchange into accord with the social character of the means of production. ‘But he shows that this ‘recognition’ precisely consists in asserting conscious organisation and planning, in place of the blind play of forces of the market on the basis of individual ownership. This, however, cannot be done at one stroke. Only ‘gradually’ can social control be fully asserted. The transitional form to this is state ownership. But complete state ownership does not abolish all the features of capitalism immediately, otherwise there would be social ownership, ie socialism would he introduced immediately.

But in the same way as we have the new within the old system in the development of society, so in the transitional society we still have the old within the new. Complete statification marks the extreme limit of capital. The capitalist relation is transformed into its opposite. The elements of the new society which were growing up within the old, now become dominant.

What causes the conflict within capitalism is the fact that the laws manifest themselves blindly. But once the whole of industry is nationalised, for the first time control and planning can be consciously asserted by the producers. Control and planning will, however, in the first stages, take place within given limits. These limits will be determined by the level of technique when the new social order takes over.

Society cannot step from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom overnight. Only on the basis of a limitless development of the productive forces will freedom, in its fullest sense, become a reality. The stage will be reached which will witness the ‘administration of things’.

Before such a stage is reached, society must pass through the transitional period. But in so far as immediately after private ownership has been abolished, control and planning become a possibility for the first time, then for the first time also the realm of necessity is left behind. But while it is now possible to speak of ‘freedom’, this is only so in the sense that necessity has become consciously recognised. At this stage (the transitional period), Engels pointed out:

“The social character of the means of production and of the products…is quite consciously asserted by the producers, and is transformed from a cause of disorder and periodic collapse into the most powerful level of production itself.

“The forces operating in society work exactly like the forces operating in nature; blindly, violently, destructively, so long as we do not understand them and fail to take them into account. But when once we have recognised them and understand how they work, their direction and their effects, the gradual subjection of them to our will and the use of them for the attainment of our aims depends entirely upon ourselves. And this is quite especially true of the mighty productive forces of the present day.” (Anti-Dühring, page 331, our emphasis) ^{[source (translation differs)]}

Engels, quoting Hegel, further summed up the relationships between freedom, necessity and the transitional period, thus:

“Freedom is the realisation of necessity. ‘Necessity is blind only insofar as it is not understood.” (Anti-Dühring, page 136) ^{[source (translation differs)]}

Marx and Engels only touched on the contradictory character of the transitional period. They left its elaboration to succeeding generations, laying down only the general laws. But clearly they showed the need for state ownership as the necessary transitional state for the development of the productive forces. Engels explained the need for the state during this stage for two reasons:

To take measures against the old ruling class. Because the transitional society cannot immediately guarantee enough for all.

The logic of Cliff’s thesis is that in the transitional society there are no vestiges of capitalism in the internal economy. While Comrade Cliff may argue vehemently that he agrees with the need for the state in the transitional period, it is evident that he has not thought out the economic reasons which make the state necessary and what character the economy assumes in this period. Before socialism can be introduced there must necessarily be a tremendous development of the forces of production, far beyond those reached under capitalism.

As Trotsky explained, even in America there is still not enough production to guarantee the immediate introduction of socialism. Therefore, there will still have to be an intervening period in which capitalist laws will operate in modified form. Of course, in America, this would be of short duration. But it will not be possible to skip this stage entirely. What are the capitalist laws which will remain? Comrade Cliff not only fails to answer this; he falls into the trap of bureaucratic collectivism by failing to recognise that money, labour power, the existence of the working class, surplus value, etc, are all survivals of the old capitalist system which were carried over even under the regime of Lenin. It is impossible to introduce immediately direct social production and distribution. Particularly was this the case in backward Russia.

Writing to Conrad Schmidt in 1890, Engels gave a magnificent example of the thoroughly materialist approach to the problem of the economics of the transition from capitalism to socialism. He wrote:

“There has been a discussion in the Volkstribune about the division of products in the future society, whether this will take place according to the amount of work done or otherwise. The question has been approached very ‘materialistically’, in opposition to certain idealistic forms of phraseology about justice. But strangely enough it has never struck anyone that, after all, the method of division essentially depends on how much there is to divide, and this must surely change with progress of production and social organisation, so that the method of division may also change. But to everyone who took part in the discussion ‘socialist society’ appeared not as involved in continuous change and progress but as a stable affair fixed once and for all which must, therefore, have its method of division fixed once and for all. All one can reasonably do, however, is (1) to try and discover the method of division to be used at the beginning, and (2) to try and find the general tendency in which the further development will proceed. But about this I do not find a single word in the whole debate.” (Marx, Engels, Selected Correspondence, Progress, Moscow, 1975, page 393)^[source]

Writing in Anti-Dühring, Engels pointed out:

“Direct social production and direct distribution exclude all exchange of commodities, therefore also the transformation of the product into commodities (at any rate within the community) and consequently also their transformation into values.” (Anti-Dühring, page 366, our emphasis) ^[source]

But only socialism could realise this. In the transitional period, distribution still remains indirect – only gradually does society gain complete control over the product – and therefore the production of commodities and of exchange between the different sectors of production must necessarily take place. The law of value applies and must apply until there is direct access to the product by the producers. This can only take place on the basis of complete control of social production and thus direct social distribution, namely, each individual taking whatever he requires. Marx deals with this problem in passing in Volume III of Capital (Chapter 49), where he is discussing the problem of capitalist production as a whole:

“Accordingly a portion of the profit, of surplus value and of the surplus product, in which only newly added labour is represented, so far as its value is concerned, serves as an insurance fund…This is also the only portion of the surplus-value and surplus product and thus of surplus-labour, which would continue to exist, outside of that portion which serves for accumulation and for expansion of the process of reproduction, even after the abolition of the capitalist system…and the fact that all new capital arises out of profit, rent, or other forms of revenue, that is, out of surplus labour…” (Capital, Volume III, Progress, Moscow, 1971, page 847-8, our emphasis) ^[source]

In this chapter Marx is dealing, in an analysis of the process of production, in his own words, with ‘the value of the total annual product of labour (which) is under discussion, in other words, the value of the product of the total social capital.’

Repeating this in the same chapter, in answer to Storch, one of the bourgeois economists, he declared:

“In the first place, it is a false abstraction to regard a nation, whose mode of production is based upon value or otherwise capitalistically organised, as an aggregate body working merely for the satisfaction of the national wants.

“In the second place, after the abolition of the capitalist mode of production, but with social production still in vogue, the detemination of value continues to prevail in such a way that the regulation of the labour time and the distribution of the social labour among the various groups of production also the keeping of accounts in connection with this, becomes more essential than ever.” (Capital, Volume III, page 851, our emphasis) ^[source]

This is in line with the scattered remarks of Marx and Engels at various times in dealing with the transitional period: where Engels explains that under capitalism joint-stock companies and state ownership are beyond the framework, properly speaking, of capitalist production; where Marx already pointed out that credit also extended production beyond its framework even before the transition to the dictatorship of the proletariat. After that, as shown in the above passages and also in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx considered that bourgeois law, bourgeois distribution and in that sense a bourgeois state still remain.

Discussing the role of money and the state in the transitional period, Trotsky developed this idea even further:

“…These two problems, state and money, have a number of traits in common, for they both reduce themselves in the last analysis to the problem of problems: productivity of labour. State compulsion like money compulsion is an inheritance from the class society, which is incapable of defining the relations of man to man except in the form of fetishes, churchly or secular, after appointing to defend them the most alarming of all fetishes, the state, with a great knife between its teeth. In a communist society, the state and money will disappear. Their gradual dying away ought consequently to begin under socialism only at that historical moment when the state turns into a semi-state, and money begins to lose its magic power. This will mean that socialism, having freed itself from capitalist fetishes, is beginning to create a more lucid, free and worthy relation among men. Such characteristically anarchist demands as the ‘abolition’ of money, ‘abolition’ of wages, or ‘liquidation’ of the state and family possess interest merely as models of mechanical thinking. Money cannot be arbitrarily ‘abolished’, nor the state and the old family ‘liquidated’. They have to exhaust their historic mission, evaporate, and fall away. The death-blow to money fetishism will be struck only upon that stage when the steady growth of social wealth has made us bipeds forget our miserly attitude toward every excess minute of labour, and our humiliating fear about the size of our ration. Having lost its ability to bring happiness or trample men in the dust, money will turn into mere book-keeping receipts for the conveniences of statisticians and for planning purposes. In the still more distant future, probably these receipts will not be needed. But we can leave this question entirely to posterity, who will be more intelligent than we are.

“The nationalisation of the means of production and credit, the co-operativising or state-ising of internal trade, the monopoly of foreign trade, the collectivisation of agriculture, the law on inheritance – set strict limits upon the personal accumulation of money and hinder its conversion into private capital (usurious, commercial and industrial). These functions of money, however, bound up as they are with exploitation, are not liquidated at the beginning of a proletarian revolution, but in a modified form are transferred to the state, the universal merchant, creditor and industrialist. At the same time the more elementary functions of money, as measure of value, means of exchange and medium of payment, are not only preserved, but acquire a broader field of action than they had under capitalism.” (Revolution Betrayed, page 65-6, emphasis in original)^[source]

To sum up. Whereas before private ownership of the means of production is abolished, the market is dominant over man who is helpless before the laws of the economy he himself has created, after its abolition, he begins for the first time to consciously assert control. But consciousness here merely means the recognition of law, not the abolition of law. That is the peculiarity of the transitional period, that because man now understands the nature of the productive forces, to that extent he can exercise control over them. But he cannot transcend the limits of the given development of the productive forces. However, now that the productive forces have been released from the fetters of individual capitalist production, they can be developed at such a pace and with such expansion that very rapidly they can be transformed from state ownership as an intermediate form, into social ownership by society. Once this stage has been reached (socialism), there is real social production and distribution for the first time. Money withers away, the law of value withers away, the state withers away. In other words, all the forces of constraint which are a necessary reflection of the limits of technique and the development of production at any given stage, now disappear with the disappearance of the division of labour. Until such time, all the features referred to above, capitalist features carried over from the old capitalist society, will linger on in the transitional period.

The position of Comrade Cliff, as with Shachtman and all others who have revised Trotsky’s position on Russia, remains, on the transitional period, a blank. And for a very good reason. If one considers the theory of the transitional stage in the light of the Russian experience, there are only one of two conclusions: either Russia today is still in a transitional stage, which has taken on horrible distortions, or Russia was never a workers’ state from the very beginning. There are no other alternatives.

The Marxian Theory of the State. Two Classes One State – Cliff’s Contradiction

In the first chapter of his work, Comrade Cliff endeavours to prove that Trotsky’s analysis of the Russian state contradicts the theory of the state as developed by Marx and elaborated by Lenin.

The first chapter contains an elaborate scheme which sets out to prove that two classes cannot use one state machine. Here Cliff believes he has found a fundamental error in Trotsky. Taking the ideas developed by the Old Man at different times and in differing circumstances, he counterposes them to each other. He counterposes, for example, a quotation from Trotsky in the early stages of the degeneration of the bureaucracy and the expulsion of the Left Opposition, when he argued for the reform of the soviet state, and incidentally, also for the reform of the Bolshevik Party which controlled the state. (It was at this stage that Trotsky wrote the letter to the CC of the CPSU demanding that Stalin be removed.) Who can deny that had the international events developed differently it was theoretically possible that the Bolshevik Party could have spewed forth the bureaucracy and re-established a healthy workers’ state?

Cliff counterposes to this the quotation from Revolution Betrayed, in which Trotsky says that if the Russian workers come to power they will purge the state apparatus; and if the bourgeoisie come to power ‘a purgation of the state apparatus would, of course, be necessary in this case too. But a bourgeois restoration would probably have to clean fewer people than a revolutionary party’. Cliff’s answer to this is:

“Whether we assume that the proletariat must smash the existing state machine on coming to power while the bourgeoisie can use it, or whether we assume that neither the proletariat nor the bourgeoisie can use the existing state apparatus (the ‘purgation of the state apparatus’ necessarily involving such a deep change as would transform quantity into quality) – on both assumptions we must come to the conclusion that Russia is not a workers’ state. To assume that the proletariat and the bourgeoisie can use the same state machine as the instrument of their supremacy is tantamount to a vindication of the theoretical basis of social democracy and a repudiation of the revolutionary concept of the state expressed by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. To assume that different layers, groups or parties of one and the same class cannot base themselves on the same state machine is equally a repudiation of the Marxist concept of the state.” (Cliff, page 4)

This whole formalistic method is the fatal weakness of Cliff’s case. It would have been impossible for Trotsky in the early stages to deal with the problem in the abstract. He had to deal with the concrete situation and give a concrete answer. But the further degeneration posed the problem in an entirely different way. Once it had been established that it was impossible to reform the Stalinist party, that it was impossible to reform the Soviet state (we assume that Cliff also believes this was the task since up to 1928 since he says Russia was a degenerated workers’ state), then the question had to be viewed in a somewhat different light. It is foreign to the Marxist method to search for isolated contradictions, real or apparent. What is required is an examination of a theory in its broad general development, in its movement, and its contradictions.

But let us examine Cliff’s own thought processes on this subject. He too cannot avoid the very trap which he tries to lay for Trotsky. Chapter 1 (no less than eighteen pages) is devoted to proving the impossibility of two classes using the one state. But lo and behold, Chapter 4 accomplishes the miracle! The impossible gulf is bridged! Both the capitalist class and the proletariat of Russia have used precisely the same state machine. Why? Because more surplus value was produced! Realising this dilemma, Cliff is compelled to advance something truly new and unique in the movement: that the bureaucracy did not consume surplus value before 1928 but by the introduction of the Five Year Plan, the state was changed from a workers’ state into a capitalist state. (Any enemy of the Fourth International could immediately retort that the state of Stalin on this basis is purely an extension and deepening of the state of Lenin. For in the economic sense nothing fundamentally was changed. We have dealt with this in preceding chapters. Significantly it is only on the economic argument – and this is astonishing – that Cliff advances his theory. Despite the title of his first Chapter ‘An Examination of the Definition of Russia as a Degenerated Workers’ State’, he does not deal with the political question at all here or in any other chapter. Here is how Cliff sees the transformation from a workers’ state into a capitalist state:

“The statistics we have at our disposal conclusively show that although the bureaucracy had a privileged position in the period preceding the Five-Year Plan, it can on no account be said that it received surplus value from the labour of others. It can just as conclusively be said that with the introduction of the Five-Year Plans, the bureaucracy’s income consisted to a large extent of surplus value.” (Cliff, page 45)

In other words, Cliff sees the transition from one system to the other not by smashing of the state machine. How does this fit into his scheme in Chapter 1?

Cliff’s attempt to manufacture an artificial bridge between the workers’ state and the capitalist state, because he has not been able to find the smashing of the workers’ state machine, has led him to seek economic differences between the two periods – pre-1928 and post-1928. In this he falls into the most formalistic and abstract conceptions of the workers’ state prior to 1928. As we have shown in the previous chapters, even in the healthiest of workers’ states, according to Marx, surplus value must necessarily be produced in order to develop industry to the point where the state, money, and the proletariat itself and all the other survivals of capitalism will have disappeared. So long as the working class exists as a class, surplus value will be produced.

A statement of the Left Opposition in 1927 pointed out that the bureaucracy was consuming an enormous part of the surplus value. Cliff’s method of introducing this subject is totally incorrect. Instead of setting himself the task of proving a thesis, he blandly makes assertions and takes them as proven. That Chapter 4 contradicts everything in Chapter 1 is another matter! Just examine the way in which Comrade Cliff sums up this Chapter 4, in which he openly claims that a transition has been achieved without a revolution and without smashing the state machine.

He begins:

“In this chapter we shall describe the transformation of the class character of the Russian state from a workers’ to a capitalist state. We shall do this by dealing with the following points…” (Cliff, page 33)

He thereupon proceeds to detail a number of economic changes which have nothing to do with the structure of or the transformation of state power, and ends up with the subsection: ‘Why the Five Year Plan Signifies the Transformation of the Bureaucracy into a Ruling Class.’ All the economic arguments in this chapter have nothing to do with the state or its overthrow.

Cliff deals at length with the differentiation in the army, the introduction of privileges for the officers, military discipline, etc. He here merely repeats what Trotsky said a thousand times on the transformation of the bureaucracy into an uncontrolled caste. But let us see his conclusions. He writes:

“Again the Five-Year Plan marks the turning point. Then the organisation and the structure of the army began to change fundamentally. From a workers’army with bureaucratic deformations it became the armed body of the bureaucracy as the ruling class…” (page 59)

Let us see now whether what excludes a gradual social revolution excludes a gradual counter-revolution.

“If the soldiers in an hierarchically built army strive for decisive control over the army, they immediately meet with the opposition of the officer caste. There is no way of removing such a caste except by revolutionary violence. As against this, if the officers of a people’s militia become less and less dependent on the will of the soldiers, which they may do as they meet with no institutional bureaucracy, their transformation into an officers’ caste independent of the soldiers can be accomplished gradually. The transition from a standing army to a militia cannot but be accompanied by a tremendous outbreak of revolutionary violence: on the other hand, the transition from a militia to a standing army, to the extent that it is the result of the tendencies inside the militia itself, can and must be gradual. The opposition of the soldiers to the rising bureaucracy may lead the latter to use violence against the soldiers. But this does not exclude the possibility of a gradual transition from a militia to a standing army. What applies to the army applies equally to the state. A state without a bureaucracy, or with a weak bureaucracy dependent on the pressure of the masses may gradually be transformed into a state in which the bureaucracy is free of workers’ control.” (Cliff, page 82, our emphasis)

Cliff now sets out to prove that there can be a gradual transition from a workers’ state to a capitalist state, and clinches his chapter by producing a quotation from none other than Trotsky…whom he has so sternly discredited as an authority on this subject in his Chapter 1.

Cliff writes:

“The Moscow Trials⁽⁵⁾ were the civil war of the bureaucracy against the masses, a war in which only one side was armed and organised. They witnessed the consummation of the bureaucracy’s total liberation from popular control. Trotsky, who thought that the Moscow trials and the ‘Constitution’ were steps towards the restoration of individual capitalism by legal means, then withdrew the argument that a gradual change from a proletarian to a bourgeois state is ‘running backwards the film of reformism’. He wrote:

“’In reality, the new constitution…opens up for the bureaucracy “legal” roads for the economic counter-revolution, ie, the restoration of capitalism by means of a “Cold stroke”.’ (Fourth International and the Soviet Union, Thesis adopted by the First International Conference for the Fourth International, Geneva, July 1936.)” (Cliff, page 82)

Here we see the full light on Cliff’s thesis and his bad method. Starting off with the thesis that Trotsky is no Marxist because he says two classes can use one state machine, Cliff ends up saying precisely the same thing and using as his authority the same Trotsky.

Nationalisation and the Workers’ State

On page 2 of his work, Cliff gives a quotation from Revolution Betrayed:

“The nationalisation of the land, the means of industrial production, transport and exchange, together with the monopoly of foreign trade, constitutes the basis of the Soviet social structure. Through these relations, established by the proletarian revolution, the nature of the Soviet Union as a proletarian state is for us basically defined.” (Revolution Betrayed, page 248) ^[source]

One of Cliff’s conclusions is that, in this case, ‘neither the Paris Commune nor the Bolshevik dictatorship were workers’ states as the former did not statify the means of production at all, and the latter did not do so for some time.’ Here we see that Cliff bases his case on whether or not the working class has control over the state machine. We will deal with the question of workers’ control in a later chapter. But here let us examine Cliff’s method of separating the economic basis of a workers’ state from the question of workers’ control of the state machine. For a temporary period, for shorter or longer duration, it would be possible for the proletariat to take power politically while not proceeding economically to transform society. This was the position in Russia where the proletariat took power in October 1917, but did not undertake major nationalisation until it was forced upon them in 1918. But if the proletariat did not proceed to carry through the economic transformation, then inevitably the proletarian regime would be doomed to collapse. The laws of the economy will always break through in the end. Either the proletariat would proceed to nationalise the entire economy, or inevitably the capitalist system would emerge predominant. Cliff fails to show how the basic forms of Russian economy would differ under a healthy workers’ state. He has taken refuge in the surplus value consumed by the bureaucracy, but this evades the fundamental issue.

No better is Cliff’s case based upon the experience of the Paris Commune and the first stage of the Russian Revolution. The same would apply to them as aforementioned. These regimes were a transition to the complete economic rule of the proletariat. Such transitions are more or less inevitable in the change over from one society to another. Both in the case of the Commune and in the case of the Russian Revolution, they could not be long lasting if the proletariat did not proceed to nationalise industry. Has Cliff forgotten that one of the main lessons taught by Marx and assiduously learned by the Bolsheviks, was the failure of the French proletariat to nationalise the Bank of France? So we see a state can be a proletarian state on the basis of political power, or it can be a proletarian state on the basis of the economy; or it can be a transition to both of these as we will show.

The same laws would apply to the counter-revolution on the part of the bourgeoisie. The Old Man correctly argued that in the event of a bourgeois counter-revolution in Russia, the bourgeoisie might, for a time, even retain state ownership before breaking it up and handing it to private ownership. To a scholar it would appear then that you can have a workers’ state and a bourgeois state on the basis of state ownership, or you can have a workers’ state or a bourgeois state on the basis of private ownership.

However, it is obvious that one could only arrive at this mode of reasoning if one failed to take into consideration the movement of society in one direction or another.

Not only that, but all sorts of unforeseen relationships can develop because of the class structure of society and the state. To take the example of Russia. In 1917 up to the capture of control of the soviets by the Bolsheviks, we had the situation as sketched by Trotsky in the History of the Russian Revolution, where, because of the Menshevik majority, in a certain sense the bourgeoisie ruled through the soviets – the organs of workers’ rule par excellence! According to Cliff’s schema, how could this possibly happen? Of course, had the Bolsheviks not taken power, the bourgeoisie, having used the Mensheviks and through them, the soviets in the transitional period, would have abolished the soviets as they did in Germany after 1918.

In the transition from one society to another, it is clear that there is not an unbridgeable gulf. It is not a dialectical method to think in finished categories; workers’ state or capitalist state and the devil take any transition or motion between the two. It is clear that when Marx spoke of the smashing of the old state form in relation to the Commune, he took it for granted that the economy would be transformed at a greater or lesser pace and would come into consonance with the political forms. We will see later in relation to Eastern Europe that Cliff adopts the same formalistic method.

The Dialectical Conception of the State

It may be well to deal here with the nature of the state. According to Marxists, the state arises as the necessary instrument for the oppression of one class by another class. The state in the last analysis, as explained by Marx and Lenin, consists of armed bodies of men and their appendages. That is the essence of the Marxist definition. However, one must be careful in using their broad Marxist generalisations, which are undoubtedly correct, in an absolute sense. Truth is always concrete but if one does not analyse the particular ramifications and concrete circumstances, one must inevitably fall into abstractions and errors. Look at the cautious way in which Engels deals with the question, even when generalising. In Origins of the Family, Engels wrote:

“But in order that these antagonisms, classes with conflicting economic interests, shall not consume themselves and society in fruitless struggle, a power, apparently standing above society, has become necessary to moderate the conflict and keep it within the bounds of ‘order’, and this power, arisen out of society, but placing itself above it and increasingly alienating itself from it, is the state.” (The Origin of the Family, Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1946, page 194) ^[source]

On the next page he goes on to show that:

“…it is enough to look at Europe today, where class struggle and rivalry in conquest have brought the public power to a pitch where it threatens to devour the whole of society and even the state itself.”

Engels goes on to show that once having arisen, the state within certain limits, develops an independent movement of its own and must necessarily do so under given conditions: “In possession of the public power and the right of taxation, the officials now present themselves as organs of society standing above society.” (Emphasis in original) ^[source]

Contrary to Cliff’s conception that the state plays a direct role, one can see the meticulous care with which Engels treats the question of the independent role of the state, relative of course, to society. In the whole of Cliff’s material, the fact that the state under given conditions can and does play a relatively independent role in the struggle between the classes is forgotten. His is a ‘logical’ scheme: either it is a state of workers, directly controlled by the workers, or it must be a capitalist state. There is no room for the interplay of forces in Cliff’s method. Again, contrast this with Engels:

“As the state arose from the need to keep class antagonisms in check, but also arose in the thick of the fight between the classes, it is normally the state of the most powerful, economically ruling class, which by its means becomes also the political ruling class, and so acquires new means of holding down and exploiting the oppressed class…Exceptional periods, however, occur when the warring classes are so nearly equal in forces that the state power, as apparent mediator, acquires for the moment a certain independence in relation to both…” (page 196, our emphasis) ^[source]

Again, on page 201, Engels wrote:

“The central link in civilised society is the state, which in all typical periods (our emphasis) is without exception the state of the ruling class, and in all cases continues to be essentially a machine for holding down the oppressed, exploited class…” ^[source]

Note the difference between Cliff’s black and white formulae and Engels’ careful formulations…’it is normally’, in ‘typical periods’, etc.

Why is it that the proletariat cannot take over the ready made state machine? Not for mystical reasons but because of certain very concrete facts. In the modern state all the key positions are in the hands of those people who are under the control of the ruling class: they have been specially selected by education, outlook, and conditions of life, to serve the interests of the bourgeoisie. The army officers, particularly the higher ranks, the civil servants, and in the nationalised industries today the key technicians, are moulded in their ideas and outlook to serve the interests of the capitalist class. All the commanding positions in society are placed in the hands of people whom the bourgeoisie can trust. That is the reason the state machine is a tool in the hands of the bourgeoisie which cannot be used by the proletariat and must be smashed by them. Now, what does the smashing of the state machine mean? To say the least, Cliff’s ideas on this question appear to be very nebulous.

It is possible that many, perhaps even the majority of the officials of the bourgeois state, will be used by the proletariat once they take power. But they will be subordinate to the workers’ committees and organisations. For example in the Soviet Union, in the early days after the Czarist army had been dissolved, the Red Army was led by ex-Czarist officers. Likewise in the state apparatus where a proportion of the officials were the same ex-Czarist officials. Because of unfavourable historical factors this was later to play an important role in the degeneration of the Russian regime. Not for nothing did Lenin say that the Soviet state is ‘a bourgeois Czarist machine…barely varnished with socialism’. (Incidentally this honest characterisation is very far from the idealised and false picture of the state under Lenin and Trotsky which is drawn by Cliff. How the process of degeneration could have taken place with the idyllic picture painted by Cliff would be difficult to understand. However, this will be dealt with in the later sections.)

The proletariat, according to the classical concept, smashes the old state machine and proceeds to create a semi-state. Nevertheless, it is forced to utilise the old technicians. But the state, even under the best conditions, say in an advanced country with an educated proletariat, remains a bourgeois instrument, and because of this the possibility of degeneration is implicit in it. For that reason Marxists insist on the control of the masses, to ensure that the state should not be allowed to develop into an independent force. As speedily as possible, it should be dissolved into society.

It is for the very reasons given above that, under certain conditions, the state gains a certain independence from the base which it originally represented. Engels explained that though the superstructure is dependent on the economic base, it nevertheless has an independent movement of its own. For quite a lengthy period, there can be a conflict between the state and the class which that state represents. That is why Engels speaks of the state ‘normally’ or in ‘typical periods’ directly representing the ruling class. The great Marxist teachers have analysed the phenomenon of Bonapartism to which Engels refers above. In the Eighteenth Brumaire Marx pointed out how the drunken soldiery of Louis Napoleon, in the name of ‘the law, order and the family’, shot down the bourgeoisie whom they presumably represented. ^[source]

Thus, one can only understand class society if one takes into account the many-sided dialectical inter-dependence and antagonisms of all the factors within it. Formalists usually get lost in one or other side of the problem. For example, Cliff can write:

“…It needs just as high a degree of mental acrobatics to think that Mikolajcik⁽⁶⁾ and his ilk who flee abroad or waste away in prisons are the rulers of Poland as to consider that the rulers of Russia are the slave labourers in Siberia.” (Cliff, page 13)

Were the bourgeoisie under Louis Napoleon the ruling class? It needs no high degree of mental acrobatics to answer this.

When considering the development of society, economics must be considered the dominant factor. The super-structure which develops on this economic base separates itself from the base and becomes antagonistic to it. After all, the essence of the Marxist theory of revolution is that with the gradual changes in production under the embryo of the old form, ie, super-structure in both property and state, a contradiction develops which can only be resolved by abolishing the super-structure and re-organising society on the base of the new mode of production which has developed within the old.

Economy in the long run is decisive. Because of this, as all the Marxist teachers were at pains to explain, in the long run the superstructure must come into correspondence with it. Once having abandoned the criterion of the basic economic structure of society, all sorts of superficial and arbitrary constructions are possible. One would inevitably be lost in the maze of history, like Perseus in the mythology of ancient Greece who was lost in the Palace of mines, but without a thread to lead one out. The thread of history is the basic economic structure of society, or the property form, its legal reflection.

Let us take as a case extremely rich in examples, the history of France. The bourgeois revolution took place in 1789. In 1793 the Jacobins⁽⁷⁾ seized complete power. As Marx and Engels pointed out, they went beyond the framework of bourgeois relations and performed a salutary historical task because of that, accomplishing in a few months what would have taken the bourgeoisie decades or generations to accomplish; the complete cleansing from France of all traces of feudalism. Yet this regime remained rooted in the basis of bourgeois forms of property. It was followed by the French Thermidor and the rule of the Directory, to be followed by the classic dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon re-introduced many feudal forms, had himself crowned Emperor and concentrated the supreme power in his hands. But we still call this regime bourgeois. With the restoration of Louis XVIII the regime still remained capitalist…and then we had not one but two revolutions – 1830 and 1848. These revolutions had important social consequences. They resulted in significant changes even in the personnel of the state itself. Yet we characterise them both as bourgeois revolutions in which there was no change in the class which held power.

Let us proceed further. After the Paris Commune of 1871 and the shake-up of the relations which this involved, we had the organisation of the Third Republic with bourgeois democracy which lasted for decades. This was followed by Petain, then the De Gaulle-Stalinist regime⁽⁸⁾, and now the Quielle Government. Examine for a moment the amazing diversity of these regimes. To a non-Marxist it would seem absurd to define in the same category, shall we say, the regime of Robespierre and that of Petain. Yet Marxists do define them as fundamentally the same – bourgeois regimes. What is the criterion? Only the one thing: the form of property, the private ownership of the means of production.

Take, similarly, the diversity of regimes in more modern times to see the extreme differences in super-structures which are on the same economic base. For instance, compare the regime of nazi Germany with that of British social democracy. They are so fundamentally different in super-structure that many theorists of the non-Marxist or ex-Marxist school have found new class structure and a new system of society entirely. Why do we say that they represent the same class and the same regime? Despite the difference in super-structure, the economic base of the given societies remained the same.

If we take the history of modern society, we get many examples where the bourgeoisie is expropriated politically and yet remains the ruling class. Trotsky describes the regime of Bonapartism, or as Marx calls it, ‘naked rule by the sword over society’.

Look what happened in China after Chiang Kai Shek had, with the dregs of the Shanghai gangs, crushed the Shanghai working class. The bankers wished to give him banquets and applaud him as the benefactor and saviour of civilisation.

But Chiang wanted something more material than the praise of his masters. Unceremoniously, he clapped all the rich industrialists and bankers of Shanghai in jail and extracted a ransom of millions before he would release them. He had done the job for them and now demanded the price. He had not crushed the Shanghai workers for the benefit of the capitalists, but for what it meant in power and income for him and his gang of thugs. Yet who will presume to say that the bankers who were in jail were not still the ruling class though they did not hold political power? The Chinese bourgeoisie (no Marxists!) must have reflected sadly on the complexity of society where a good portion of the loot in the surplus value extracted from the workers had to go to their own watchdogs, and where many of their class were languishing in jail.

The bourgeoisie is politically expropriated under such conditions; naked force dominates society. An enormous part of the surplus value is consumed by the top militarists and bureaucrats. But it is in the interests of these bureaucrats that the capitalist exploitation of the workers should continue, and therefore while they squeeze as much as they can out of the bourgeoisie, nevertheless, they defend private property. That is why the bourgeoisie continues to be the ruling class.

Here lies the anwer to those who assert that it is sheer sophistry to claim that a working class can be a ruling class when a great proportion of them are in jail in Siberia. Unless we are guided by the basic property forms of society we will lose the Marxist road. Many examples could be given in history of the way in which one section of the ruling class has attacked other sections. For example, in the Wars of the Roses in Britain the two factions of the ruling barons virtually exterminated one another. At one time or another in history big sections of the ruling class were either in jails or were executed. One has only to consider Hitler’s treatment of his bourgeois opponents. They lost not only their property but their lives as well.

In dealing with the role of the state, the most important question that must be answered and one which Cliff cannot answer is: the state must be an instrument of a class – which class does it represent in Russia and Eastern Europe? It cannot represent the capitalist class because they have been expropriated. It cannot be argued that it represents the interests of the peasant class, or the petty-owners in the cities. Under a fascist or Bonapartist regime, even though the gangsters might have the bourgeoisie by the throat, nevertheless there is a capitalist class in whose interests the economy operates as a whole, and on whom this parasitic excrescence clings. If they do not represent the proletariat, as Trotsky said, as a special form of Bonapartism in the sense that they defend the nationalisation of the means of production, planning and the monopoly of foreign trade, whom do the Stalinist bureaucrats represent? Cliff’s answer is that the bureaucracy constitutes the new ruling class, the capitalist class of Russia. But serious consideration of this would show that this cannot be the case. What he is saying is that the state is a class. The bureaucracy owns the state, the state owns the means of production, therefore the bureaucracy is a class. This is dodging the issue, he is saying in effect that the state owns the state.

According to Lenin, the state:

“…has always been a certain apparatus which separated out from society and consisted of a group of people engaged solely, or almost solely, or mainly, in ruling. People are divided into ruled and into specialists in ruling, those who rise above society and are called rulers, representatives of the state.

“This apparatus, this group of people who rule others, always takes command of a certain apparatus of coercion, of physical force, irrespective of whether this coercion of people is expressed in the primitive club or – in the epoch of slavery – in more perfected types of weapons, or in the firearms which appeared in the middle ages or, finally, in modern weapons which, in the twentieth century, are marvels of technique and are entirely based on the latest achievements of modern technology.

“The methods of coercion changed, but whenever there was a state there existed in every society a group of persons who ruled, who commanded, who dominated and who, in order to maintain their power, possessed an apparatus of physical coercion, an apparatus of violence, with those weapons which corresponded best to the technical level of the given epoch. And by examining these general phenomena, by asking ourselves why no state existed when there were no classes, when there were no exploiters and no exploited, and why it arose when classes arose – only in this way shall we find a definite answer to the question of the essence of the state and its significance.

“The state is a machine for maintaining the rule of one class over another.” (The State, Collected Works, Volume 29, page 477) ^[source]

The state by its very nature is composed of bureaucracy, officers, generals, heads of police etc. But these do not constitute a class; they are the instrument of a class even if they may be in antagonism to that class. They cannot themselves be a class.

We must ask Cliff: Which section of the bureaucracy owns the state? It cannot be all the bureaucrats, because they, the bureaucracy itself, are hierarchically divided. The little civil servant is part of the bureaucracy as much as the big bureaucrat. Is it then the commanding stratum in Soviet society? This is clearly unsound. In capitalist society, or in any class society, no matter how privileged the top, they wield the instrument to protect the ruling class which has a direct relationship to the means of production, ie, in the sense of their ownership. We know who Napoleon represented. We know who Louis Napoleon, Bismarck, Chiang Kai Shek, Hitler, Churchill and Attlee represented. But who do the bureaucrats represent: the bureaucrats? Clearly this is false. In another section we have shown that the relationship of the bureaucracy to the means of production is necessarily one of parasitism and partakes of the same parasitism as the nazi bureaucracy. They are not a necessary and inevitable category for the particular mode of production. At best they are entitled to wages of superintendence. If they take more, it is in the same way as the nazi bureaucracy consumed part of the surplus value produced by the workers. But they were not a class.

Innumerable references could be given to show that a capitalist state presupposes private property, individual ownership of the means of production. The state is the apparatus of rule: it cannot itself be the class which rules. The bureaucracy is merely part of the apparatus of the state. It may ‘own’ the state, in the sense that it lifts itself above society and becomes relatively independent of the economically dominant, ie, ruling class. That was the case in nazi Germany, where the bureaucracy dictated to the capitalists what they should produce, how they should produce it, etc, for the purposes of war. So in the war economy of Britain, USA and elsewhere, the state dictated to the capitalists what and how they should produce. This did not convert them into a ruling class. Why? Because it was in defence of private property.

Cliff argues that the bureaucracy manages and plans industry. True enough. Whose industry do they manage and plan? In capitalist society, the managers plan and manage industry in the individual enterprises and trusts. But it does not make them the owners of those enterprises and trusts. The bureaucracy manages the entire industry. In that sense it is true that it has more independence from its economic base than any other bureaucracy or state machine in the whole of human history. But as Engels emphasised and we must re-emphasise, in the final analysis the economic basis is decisive. If Cliff is going to argue that it is in their function as managers that the bureaucrats are the ruling class, then clearly he is not giving a Marxist definition of a capitalist class. He is calling the Russian bureaucracy a class, but he must work out a theory as to what class this is.

The state is the instrument of class rule, of coercion, a glorified policeman. But the policeman is not the ruling class. The police can become unbridled, can become bandits, but that does not convert them into a capitalist, feudal or slave-owning class.

What Happened in Eastern Europe

Events in Eastern Europe and the nature of the states which have arisen can only be explained by the Marxist-Leninist theory of the state, and only Trotsky’s conceptions can explain events in Eastern Europe from this point of view.

First it is necessary to understand what took place in Eastern Europe with the advance of the Red Army. No one can deny (leaving aside the question of Germany for a moment) that in all the Balkan and Eastern European countries the advance of the Red Army resulted in a revolutionary movement not only among the workers, but among the peasants as well. The reason for this lay in the whole background of these states, where, before the war, apart from Czechoslovakia, capitalism was very weak. We had here decaying feudal-military-capitalist dictatorships whose regimes were completely incapable of further developing the productive forces of the countries.

The general world crisis of capitalism was particularly exacerbated because of the backwardness and the artifical splitting up of the area which had followed the first world war. The very term Balkanisation comes from this part of Europe. Split up into small weak states, overwhelmingly agrarian in character, with a very shaky industry, these areas inevitably became almost semi-colonies of the great powers. France, Britain, and to a certain extent Italy, then Germany, became the dominant powers of this area. Through her trade relations, German industry dominated the backward economies of Eastern Europe in the Balkans. In all these countries foreign capital played an important role. In most of them, foreign investments were dominant in what little industry existed.

With the occupation of these countries by Hitler, not only was ‘non-Aryan’ capital expropriated, but also the native capitalists were to a large extent squeezed out and replaced by German banks and trusts. German capital seized the decisive place – all the key positions and sections of the economy. The capital that remained was owned by collaborators and Quislings largely, and remained subordinate to German capital.

The regime was made up of Quislings who relied on German bayonets for their support. What little popular support was possessed by the pre-war regimes – military police dictatorships had, in the course of the war, disappeared. With the collapse of the power of German imperialism and the victory of the Red Army, an undoubted impulse was given to the socialist revolution. In Bulgaria, for example, in 1944, the moment the Red Army had crossed the frontier, there was an uprising in Sofia and other big towns. The masses began the organisation of soviets or workers’ committees. Soldiers and peasants organised committees and workers seized the factories.

Similar movements took place in all the countries of Eastern Europe, apart from Germany. Let us examine what happened in Czechoslovakia. Here too, the advance of the Red Army was followed by insurrection in Prague, the seizure of factories by workers and land by peasants. Here too, there was fraternisation on the borders of Bohemia and Moravia between the Czech and Sudetan-German masses.

The elements of proletarian revolution were quickly followed by Stalinist counter-revolution. The trouble with Cliff is that he fails to separate out the elements of the proletarian revolution from the Stalinist counter-revolution which rapidly followed.

Let us take the two examples: Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. In Bulgaria we had a situation which has developed over and over again throughout the tragic history of the working masses. The real power was in the hands of the working class. The bourgeois state was smashed. How? The Germans had gone; the officers no longer had control over the soldiers; the police had gone into hiding; the landlords and capitalists had no control. There was a vacuum; a classical period of dual power where the masses were not sufficiently conscious to organise their own power, and the bourgeoisie too weak to reassert their domination.

This is not a situation with which Marxists are unfamiliar: Germany 1918, Russia 1917, Spain 1936. Perhaps a comparison with Spain would be useful. Here too the masses seized the factories and the land in Catalonia and Aragon. The bourgeois ‘government’ was suspended in mid-air. The masses completely smashed the police and the army. There was only one armed force: the workers’ militias. All that was necessary was for the masses to organise sovicts or committees, brush aside the phantom government and take power.

It is well enough known what took place. The Stalinists proceeded to make a coalition not with the bourgeoisie – the factory owners and bourgeoisie had fled to the side of Franco as a consequence of the mass insurrection – but with the ‘shadow of the bourgeoisie’. The Stalinists did this in Spain with the express purpose of destroying the socialist revolution for fear of repercussions in Russia and, of course, because of the existing international line-up and their desire to demonstrate to the British and French imperialists that they had nothing to fear. In Spain, therefore, gradually, they helped the shadow to acquire substance.

Gradually they recreated a capitalist army and capitalist police force, under the control of the capitalist class. Once this had been accomplished, the land was returned to the landlords and the factories to their owners. The consequence of this was seen towards the end of the civil war when the bourgeois state – the bourgeois military machine which they bad helped to create, organised a coup d’etat which established a military dictatorship in Republican territory and promptly illegalised the Communist Party itself.

In Bulgaria, as in all other countries of Eastern Europe, the Stalinists proceeded to make an agreement with the shadow of the bourgeoisie. The socialist revolution had commenced and there was a danger that it might be carried through to a conclusion. This, of course, the Stalinists feared. But on the other hand, they also did not want the power to pass to the bourgeoisie. They derailed the socialist revolution by organising the so-called Fatherland Front in Bulgaria and headed off the movement of the masses round slogans of chauvinism and anti-Germanism. Fraternisation in Bulgaria was swiftly made punishable, the soviets formed in the army were dissolved, the worker and peasant committees emasculated. They formed a front of ‘National Unity’, the union of the entire nation. But the difference with Spain was that here the key positions in this so-called coalition, where the shadow of the bourgeoisie possessed no power, remained firmly in Stalinist hands. They took over the police and the army. They selected the key and commanding personnel. All important positions in the civil service were placed in the hands of obedient tools. Clearly, behind the screen of national unity, they concentrated real state power in their hands. They had created an instrument in their own image – a state machine on the model of Moscow.

The process was crystal clear in the case of Czechoslovakia. When the Stalinists entered the country there was no government. The Germans with their Quislings and collaborators had fled. The committees formed by the masses had control of the industrial enterprises and the land. The Stalinists brought in the government of Benes⁽⁹⁾ from Moscow. The real power, the key posts, were firmly in their hands; they retained the substance and gave the bourgeoisie the shadow.

Partly to destroy the socialist revolution, partly to arrive at a compromise with American imperialism, they allowed certain sectors of the economy to remain in the hands of private enterprise. But the decisive power, ie, armed bodies of men, were organised by them and under their control. This was not the same state machine as previously. It was an entirely new state machine of their own creation.

In order to derail the revolution the Stalinists played on chauvinism and dealt the country a terrible blow with the expulsion of the Sudetan Germans. The original instinct of the masses was on internationalist lines. Reports from Czechoslovakia show that in the beginning there was fraternisation between the Czechs and Sudetan Germans. We see how Cliff does not see the element of the counter-revolution, the activities of the bureaucracy to destroy the revolution and the revolution itself.

Of course, the attempt of the Stalinists to maintain a compromise with the bourgeoisie – let it not be forgotten with their control and their state power – could not continue indefinitely. Shadows can acquire substance. The attempt of the American bourgeoisie to base themselves on their points of support in Eastern Europe in the shape of the remnants of the bourgeoisie and those sectors of the economy which they controlled, with Marshall Aid as the wedge, was the danger signal. With precipitous speed the bureaucracy acted and ordered all Eastern European states to reject Marshall Aid. All history has shown the impossibility of maintaining two antagonistic forms of property. Although the bourgeoisie were very weak, they had begun to gain a base due to the fact that they retained a good proportion of light industry under their control. The mounting antagonism of America, the impossibility of relying on the bourgeoisie, their incompatibility with a proletarian state with power in the hands of the bureaucracy, forced the latter to take measures to complete the process. Here we might add that Trotsky saw in the extension of nationalised property in the areas under Stalinist domination, proof of the fact that Russia was a workers’ state. The February events on which world attention has been focused, highlighted in dramatic fashion, a process taking place in all Stalinist dominated areas. The factor which was decisive was that the Stalinists had the support of the workers and peasants in the nationalisations and the division of the land. All Cliff saw was that the state machine remained the same, presumably, as it was under the Germans. No doubt the bourgeoisie wished that it had!

According to all observers the Stalinists, because of their compromises and the disillusionment of the masses in the factories, would probably have lost votes in the forthcoming elections. The bourgeois elements were gathering strength, basing themselves on the petty bourgeoisie in the cities and among disillusioned workers and peasants. Gradually the bourgeoisie hoped to gain control of the state and organise a counter-revolution with the aid of Anglo-American imperialism. Although the bureaucracy had control of the state machine, this was precarious by virtue of the way in which it had been obtained.

In order to complete the process, as Trotsky had foreseen, however cautiously, the bureaucracy was compelled to call upon the masses. They issued the call for Action Committees which were bureaucratically controlled at the top, but were nevertheless relatively democratic at the bottom. The Stalinists armed the workers, ie, organised a workers’ militia. The enthusiasm of the masses under these conditions, naturally became apparent. Even the Social Democratic workers who hated and were distrustful of the Stalinists, enthusiastically participated in these measures against the bourgeoisie. Trotsky once said that as against a lion one used a gun, against a flea one’s fingernail. Faced with a Stalinist state apparatus, with the mass movement as a threat, the bourgeoisie was impotent.

However, the formation of the Action Committees, the arming of the workers, meant necessarily that an embryo new soviet regime was in the making. Of course, the bureaucracy speedily proceeded to crush the independence of the masses and totalitarianise the regime. New elections were rapidly organised on Moscow lines, with one list and strict supervision.

In the face of these events, Cliff asks:

“What then is the future of the Fourth International; what is its historical justification? The Stalinist parties have all the advantages over the Fourth International – a state apparatus, mass organisations, money, etc, etc. The only advantage they lack is the internationalist class ideology…

“If a social revolution took place in the Eastern European countries without a revolutionary proletarian leadership, we must conclude that in future social revolutions, as in the past, the masses will do the fighting but not the leading. In all the struggles of the bourgeoisie, it was not the bourgeoisie itself who did the fighting, but the masses who believed it was in their interests. The sans culottes of the French revolution fought for liberty, equality, fraternity, while the real aim of the movement was the establishment of the rule of the bourgeoisie. This was the case at a time when the bourgeoisie was progressive. In reactionary imperialist wars, the less the masses who are the cannon fodder know about the war aims, the better soldiers they are. To assume that the ‘new democracies’ are workers’ states, means to accept that in principle the proletarian revolution is, just as the bourgeois wars were, based on the deception of the people…

“If these countries are workers’ states, then why Marxism, why the Fourth International? We could only be looked upon by the masses as adventurists, or at best impatient revolutionaries whose differences with the Stalinists are merely tactical.” (Cliff, pages 14-15)

Cliff has addressed the questions to the wrong people. In reality, he should have posed these questions to himself and he should have given the answers. If his theory is correct, then the whole theory of Marx becomes a Utopia. Cliff thinks that if he sticks the label ‘state capitalism’ on to the phenomenon of Stalinism, he has salved his conscience and has restored the ‘lost’ role of the Fourth International to his own satisfaction. Here we see the fetishism of which Marx spoke and which even affects the revolutionary movement: change the name of a thing and you change its essence.

It is not possible to explain or trace the class historical threads of present day developments without the existence and degeneration of the workers’ state in Russia. One can only trace the events in Eastern Europe to the October Revolution of 1917. It is useless for Cliff to argue that the bureaucracy used the masses in Czechoslovakia, without posing to himself the question as to who was used in 1917. Was not the October Revolution followed by the victory of Stalinism? The good intentions, or the subjective wishes of the Bolshevik leadership or the working class, is beside the point. According to the theory of Marx, no society passes from the scene till it has exhausted all the potentialities within it. If a new period of state capitalism looms ahead – and this necessarily follows from Cliff’s theory because there can be no economic limit to the development of production under this so-called state capitalism then to talk of this being a period of the disintegration of world capitalism reduces itself to mere phrasemongering. We have the absurdity of a new revolution – a proletarian revolution in 1917, organically changing the economy into … state capitalism. We also have the no less absurd postulation of a revolution in Eastern Europe, where the entire capitalist class has been expropriated…to install what? Capitalism! A moment’s serious reflection would show that it is not possible for Cliff to maintain this position in relation to Eastern Europe without also transferring the same argument to Russia itself.

Cliff himself points to the fact that in the bourgeois revolution the masses did the fighting and the bourgeois got the fruits. The masses did not know what they were fighting for, but they fought in reality for the rule of the bourgeoisie. Take the French Revolution. It was prepared and had its ideology in the works of the philosophers of the enlightenment, Voltaire, Rousseau, etc. However, they really did believe in the idealisation of bourgeois society. They believed the codicils of liberty, equality and fraternity which they preached. As is well known, and as Cliff himself quotes Marx to prove, the French Revolution went beyond its social base. It resulted in the revolutionary dictatorship of the sans culottes which went beyond the bounds of bourgeois society. As Marx explained, this had the salutory effect of completing in a few months what would otherwise have taken the bourgeois decades to do. The leaders of the revolutionary wing of the petty bourgeoisie which wielded this dictatorship – Robespierre, Danton, etc, sincerely believed in the doctrines of the philosophers and attempted to put them into practice. They could not do so because it was impossible to go beyond the economic base of the given society. They inevitably had to lose power and merely paved the way for bourgeois society. If Cliff’s argument is correct, one could only conclude that the same thing happened with the Russian as with the French Revolution. Marx was the prophet of the new state capitalism. Lenin and Trotsky were the Robespierres and Carnots of the Russian Revolution. The fact that Lenin and Trotsky had good intentions is beside the point, as were the good intentions of the leaders of the bourgeois revolution. They merely paved the way for the rule of the new state capitalist class.

Thus, if the bureacracy used the masses of Czechoslovakia, and this constitutes the proof that it is state capitalism, no less did the Russian bureaucracy use the proletariat in the 1917 revolution. However, this theory can satisfy no one. The fact that the bureaucracy, because Russia is a workers’ state, with all its degeneration, has assimilated Eastern Europe into the economy, and instantaneously strangled the developing socialist revolution, means that simultaneously with the socialist revolution, they have consciously carried through a process which extended over many years in Russia. They have telescoped developments in the image of Russia. This much should be clear: that without the existence of a strong degenerated workers’ state, contiguous or near to these countries, these developments would have been impossible. Either the proletariat would have conquered with a healthy revolution on classical lines and spread the revolution, or imperialism would have crushed it.

Does this mean that the Stalinists have accomplished the revolution and therefore there is no need for the Fourth International? Many times in history we are confronted with a complicated situation. For instance, in the February revolution in Russia which overthrew Czarism, the masses then proceeded to come under the influence of the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. This meant that the masses, having completed one task, the overthrow of Czarism – a political revolution – created new barriers in their path and had to pay for this by a second revolution – a social revolution in the form of October. The fact that the masses have accomplished the basic social revolution in Eastern Europe only to have this revolution immediately bureaucratised by the Thermidorian bureaucracy, means that they will now have to pay with a second revolution – a political revolution.

Cliff has only to pose the question: what are the tasks of the Fourth International in Russia? They are identical with those in Eastern Europe. In order to achieve socialism the masses must have control of administration and the state. This the Stalinists can never give. It can only be achieved by a new revolution. It can only be accomplished with the overthrow of the bureaucracy in Eastern Europe as in Russia. The tasks of the Fourth International are clear: to struggle for a political revolution to establish workers’ democracy – a semi-state and the speedy transition to socialism on the basis of equality.The form of property will not be changed. The fact that Cliff calls it a social revolution alters nothing.

Where Trotsky found proof of a workers’ state in the extension of the forms of property, Cliff finds proof of the reverse.

Cliff may argue, that unless the working class has direct control of the state, it cannot be a workers’ state. In that case, he will have to reject the idea that there was a workers’ state in Russia, except possibly in the first few months. Even here it is necessary to reiterate that the dictatorship of the proletariat is realised through the instrumentality of the vanguard of the class, ie the party, and in the party through the party leadership. Under the best conditions this will be effected with the utmost democracy within the state and within the party. But the very existence of the dictatorship, its necessity to achieve the change in the social system, is already proof of profound social contradictions which can, under unfavourable historical circumstances, find a reflection within the state and within the party. The party, no more than the state, can automatically and directly reflect the interests of the class. Not for nothing did Lenin think of the trade unions as a factor necessary for the defence of the workers against their state, as well as a bulwark for the defence of their state.

If it was possible for the party of the working class (the social democracy), especially through its leadership, to degenerate and fail directly to reflect the interests of the class before the overthrow of capitalism, why is it impossible for the state set up by the workers to follow a similar pattern? Why cannot the state gain independence from the class, and parasitically batten on it while at the same time (in its own interests) defend the new economic forms created by the revolution? As we have previously shown, Cliff tries to make a distinction by drawing a metaphysical line at 1928 between when he thinks surplus value was not consumed by the bureaucracy and when it was. Apart from being, factually inaccurate, it is a singularly lifeless way of examining the phenomena.

In reality, the transition from one society to another was found to have been far more complex than could have been foreseen by the founders of scientific socialism. No more than any other class or social formation has the proletariat been given the privilege of inevitably having a smooth passage in the transition to its domination, and thence to its painless and tranquil disappearance in society, ie, to socialism. That was a possible variant. But the degeneration of both social democracy and the soviet state under the given conditions was not at all accidental. It represented in a sense the complex relations between a class and its representatives and state, which, more than once in history the ruling class, bourgeois, feudal and slave-owning, had cause to rue. It mirrors in other words, the multiplicity of historical factors which are the background to the decisive factor: the economic.

Contrast the broad view of Lenin with the mechanistic view of Cliff. Lenin emphasised over and over the need to study the transition periods of past epochs especially from feudalism to capitalism, in order to understand the laws of transition in Russia. He would have rejected the conception that the state which issued from October would have to follow a preconceived norm, or thereby cease to be a workers’ state.

Lenin well knew that the proletariat and its party and leadership had no god-given power which would lead, without contradictions, smoothly to socialism once capitalism had been overthrown. That is necessarily the only conclusion which must follow from the Kantian norms categorically laid down by Cliff. That is why in advance Lenin emphasised that the dictatorship of the proletariat would vary tremendously in different countries and under different conditions.

However, Lenin hammered home the point that in the transition from feudalism to capitalism the dictatorship of the rising bourgeoisie was reflected in the dictatorship of one man. A class could rule through the personal rule of one man. Ex post facto Cliff is quite willing to accept this conception as it applies to the bourgeoisie. But one could only conclude from his arguments that such would be impossible in the case of the proletariat. For the rule of one man implies absolutism, arbitrary dictatorship vested in a single individual without political rights for the ruling class whose interests, in the last analysis, he represents. But Lenin only commented thus to show that under certain conditions the dictatorship of the proletariat could also be realised through the dictatorship of one man. Lenin did not develop this conception. But today in the light of the experience of Russia and Eastern Europe and with developments in China, we can deepen and understand not only the present but the past developments of society as well.

While the dictatorship of the proletariat can be realised through the dictatorship of one man, because this implies the separation of the state from the class it represents, it also means that the apparatus will almost inevitably tend to become independent of its base and thus acquire a vested interest of its own, even hostile and alien to the class it represents as in the case of Stalinist Russia. When we study the development of bourgeois society, we see that the autocracy of one individual, with the given social contradictions, served the needs of the development of that society. This is clearly shown by the rule of Cromwell and Napoleon. But although both stood on a bourgeois base, at a certain stage bourgeois autocracy becomes, from a favourable factor for the development of capitalist society, a hindrance to the full and free development of bourgeois production. However, the dictatorship of absolutism does not then painlessly wither away. In France and England it required supplementary political revolutions before bourgeois autocracy could be changed into bourgeois democracy. But without bourgeois democracy a free and full development of the productive forces to the limits under capitalism would have been impossible.

If this applies to the historical evolution of the bourgeoisie, how much more so to the proletariat in a backward and isolated country where the dictatorship of the proletariat has degenerated into the dictatorship of one man?

For the proletariat to take the path of socialism, a new revolution, a supplementary political revolution which will turn the Bonapartist proletarian state into a workers’ democracy is necessary. Such a conception fits in with the experience of the past. just as capitalism passed through many stormy contradictory phases (we are far from finished with them yet, as our epoch bears witness) so in the given historic conditions has the rule of the proletariat in Russia. So also by a mutual reaction, Eastern Europe and China are passing through this Bonapartist phase, resulting in the inevitability of new political revolutions in these countries in order to install workers’ democracy as the prerequisite for a transition to socialism.

It is in the inter-relation between the class and its state under given historical conditions that we find the explanation of Stalinist degerieration, not in the mystical idea that a workers’ state, under all conditions, must be a perfect workers’ democracy or the transformation of the state into a class. In the long run, the economic factor, as in bourgeois society, with many upheavals and catastrophes, will emerge triumphant. The working class, having been enriched by the historical experience and profiting from its lessons, will victoriously overthrow Stalinist absolutism and organise a healthy workers’ democracy on a higher level. Then the state will, more or less, correspond to the ideal norm worked out by Marx and Lenin.

Notes

⁽¹⁾ Otto von Bismarck, chancellor of the Prussian government from 1862, introduced the Anti-Socialist Law of 1878. He carried through the unification of Cermany, under Prussia, by successful wars against Denmark, Austria-Hungary and then France.

⁽²⁾ Russian term for rich peasant.

⁽³⁾ Rudolf Hilferding was a German Social Democratic leader.

⁽⁴⁾ Eugen Dühring was a prominent German social democrat. In 1874-5 he published works challenging the Marxist ideology of the German movement, to which Engels replied in Anti-Dühring.

⁽⁵⁾ The Moscow Trials of 1936 and 1938 were monstrous frame-ups resulting in a generation of revolutionaries and opponents of the bureaucracy being physically exterminated. In 1936 Stalin proposed a new constitution – it was abandoned on the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936, as the bureaucracy was fearful of repercussions within the USSR.

⁽⁶⁾ Stanislaw Mikolafjcik, leader of the Polish Peasants Party, was the head of the Polish ‘government in exile’ based in London, from 1943. On liberation in 1945 he became the deputy prime minister in Poland, but real power lay with the Stalinists, supported by the Red army. By the time elections were held in 1947 many of his supporters were imprisoned and the party was later suppressed.

⁽⁷⁾ The Jacobins were the extreme radical wing of the French revolution. Their leader, Maximilien Robespierre (1758-94) wielded supreme power from 1793 until he was overthrown in 1794 and executed. The Directory was the government of the First French Republic from 1795-9.

⁽⁸⁾ From 1945-8 the French CP held various cabinet posts in the Government of National Union, headed by de Gaulle. The government of Henri Quielle, established in September 1948, was attacked by the CP for being ‘directed against the workers’.

⁽⁹⁾ Edvard Benes, a member of the Social Nationalist Party, was President of Czechoslovakia 1935-38, and from 1941 head of the Czech provisional government in London. In 1945 he became president of the provisional government in Czechoslovakia. He resigned in June 1948 in the aftermath of the ‘Prague Coup’.

Published by Ted Grant in January 1949

WITH THE spectacular advance of the Chinese Red Army, the diplomats of the State Department in America and the Foreign Office in Britain are seriously discussing the possibility of the complete collapse of the Chiang Kai Shek regime. The entire capitalist press writes gloomily of the prospect of North and Central China to the Yangtse coming under Stalinist sway.

Within three years of the collapse of Japanese imperialism, the Red Army has conquered Manchuria and most of North China. The Chinese capital Nanking, with the richest city of China, Shanghai, which has a population of five million, are rapidly coming within the grasp of the Red Army. The territory which the Stalinists already dominate has a population of more than 170 million.

The British capitalists, with investments in China amounting to £450 million, are dismayed at the prospect of the loss of this lucrative field of investment. American imperialism, within whose sphere of influence China fell with the weakening of the other imperialist powers during the war, has given the Kuomintang government aid to the extent of $3 billion, in a fruitless attempt to save China for imperialist exploitation.

But the American imperialists now realise that further aid is merely throwing away good money after bad. With all the military and technical advantages in its favour in the early stages of the civil war that followed the world war, the Kuomintang has suffered defeat after defeat. The Kuomintang regime, under the dictatorial rule of Chiang Kai Shek, represents the feudal landlords and capitalists. It is controlled by an utterly corrupt military clique which oppresses the workers and peasants and battens on their masters.

Chiang Kai Shek came to power after the defeat of the Chinese revolution of 1925-7 in which he played the role of chief butcher of the working class. He succeeded in this because of the policy of Stalin and Bukharin and the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. Their policy then was to form a bloc with the Chinese landlords, capitalists and feudal warlords, allegedly in the interests of the struggle against imperialism. In consequence, they sabotaged the attempts of the workers to take over the factories and the peasants to take the land. A ‘communist’ Minister of Labour sabotaged strikes and punished striking workers. A ‘communist’ Minister of Agriculture had peasants shot down when they attempted to seize the land.

The capitalist Kuomintang was taken into the Communist international as a sympathising section. In The Third International After Lenin by Trotsky, the Stalinists’ role is shown in an explanatory note:

“The Kuomintang was admitted to the Comintern as a sympathising party early in 1926, approved by the Politbureau of the CPSU, with the sole dissenting vote of Trotsky. Hu Han-min, right-wing Kuomintang leader, participated in the Sixth Plenum of the ECCI, February, 1926, as a fraternal delegate from the Kuomintang. Shao Ki-tze a henchman of Chiang Kai Shek, was fraternal delegate to the Seventh Plenum, ECCI, November, 1926 (Minutes German edition, pp. 403f)” (London edition, 1936)

On March 21 and 22, 1927, the workers of Shanghai captured the city. Chiang immediately began preparations to butcher them. He conspired with the imperialists to crush the workers.

Instead of preparing for the struggle the Stalinists gave full support to Chiang. The Comintern official journal International Press Correspondence, French edition, March 23, 1927, page 443, said: ‘Far from dividing, as the imperialists say, the Kuomintang has only steeled its ranks.’

On March 30 they wrote:

“A split in the Kuomintang and hostilities between the Shanghai proletariat and the revolutionary soldiers are absolutely excluded for the moment Chiang Kai Shek himself declared that he would submit to the decisions of the party…A revolutionist like Chiang Kai Shek will not go over, as the imperialists would like to have it believed, to Chang Tao-lin (the Northern militarist) to fight against the emancipation movement…”

Chiang proceeded to organise a coup, massacre the flower of the workers, illegalise the trade unions, the peasant organisations, the Communist Party, and deprive the masses of all rights.

The masses were utterly defeated and the remnants of the Chinese leadership of the Communist Party fled to the peasant areas – and there tried to organise a peasant war.

Peasant Army

The guerrilla struggle threw up leaders of remarkable military genius. Mao Tse Tung, Chu The[1] and others succeeded in evading the powerful military forces which the Kuomintang had arrayed against them. Despite the false political line which led to successive disasters, in one of the most remarkable military feats in world history, Mao was driven from Central and South China in a 6,000-mile retreat to the mountain fastnesses around Yenan, where a ‘soviet’ republic was set up. There, despite all the efforts of the Chiang regime to dislodge them, they succeeded in holding out against one attack after another. The secret of their success was that the land had been divided among the peasants in this small area, comprising, according to some estimates, about 10 million population.

In the intervening period between the wars, the Chiang regime piled up ever increasing burdens on the workers and peasants. In some areas the taxes were collected from the peasants by the corrupt local officials 80 years in advance.

There was an endless militaristic squandering of wealth, and the feeble Kuomintang regime showed itself incapable of waging a revolutionary struggle against the incursions of imperialistic Japan.

The Chiang regime resolved itself into one of bribery and police terror. In a period of two decades it became so completely degenerate from top to bottom that it had lost most of its support even among the middle class.

After the collapse of Japan, with a certain aid from the Red Army in Manchuria which helped the Stalinists to capture Japanese munitions, large parts of Manchuria and the North fell into the hands of the Stalinists. The Chinese Red Army had waged a guerrilla struggle against Japanese militarism throughout the war and were in a strategic position to seize certain areas with the Japanese collapse. Even throughout the war Chiang’s main preoccupation was the social danger at home, to deal with the Stalinists and workers, and had it not been clear that Japan was going to be defeated in the later stages, it is quite likely that he would have capitulated and made a compromise with Japanese imperialism.

A Dying Regime

American imperialism assisted Chiang by pouring in munitions and other supplies, and even direct military intervention in the transport of Kuomintang troops to Manchuria and North China by the US fleet and air force. Chiang had initial successes, but all in vain. He was leading a dying regime, more archaic than even the Czarist regime in Russia. So rotten was the regime that large parts of the supplies were sold by officials to the Stalinist armies for gold, and ministers and other officials in Chiang’s government pocketed a great part of the dollars supplied for the war by America. Only the lesser part of the supplies and munitions actually reached the Nationalist troops at the front.

The military commanders ceaselessly intrigued against one another, as in all doomed regimes. Chiang, for example, starved General Fu Tso Yi, the only outstanding general who showed any real capacity on the Nationalist side, of supplies, for fear he might seek to replace him. The generals were outclassed by the superior strategy and tactics of the Red Army command.

Social Questions Involved

However, the main reason for the victories of the Chinese Stalinists has been readily pointed out by Mao Tse Tung: the social questions involved. ‘Land to the peasants,’ as in the Russian revolution, sounded the death knell of feudal landowners and their corrupt regime. In large part, the Chinese Stalinists have carried out the agrarian revolution. That is the significant difference between the struggle in 1927 and now. It is this which has been responsible for the melting away of the armies which Chiang tried to use to crush the agrarian rebellion. Chiang’s armies are composed of peasants – the poorest peasants at that – who have not enough money to escape conscription by bribing the officials.

Even the News Chronicle (11 December 1948) admits:

“There is discontent among the rank and file of the Nationalist army.Chiang’s privates get about five pence a month.

“In some villages conscripts are roped together on the way to barracks, and when they travel by train carriage doors and wagons are locked so that they cannot escape.”

Naturally, they desert with their arms, even to the extent of whole divisions when confronted with the agrarian programme of the Stalinists.

The Stalinist Agrarian Programme

At the national agrarian conference of the Chinese Communist party held on September 13, 1947, it was proposed to carry through an agrarian law containing the following provisions:

“Article 1. The agrarian system of feudal and serni-feudal exploitation is abolished. The agrarian system of ‘land to the tiller’ is to he established.

“Article 2. The land ownership rights of all landlords are abolished.

“Article 3. The land ownership rights of all ancestral shrines, temples, monasteries, schools, institutions, and organisations, are abolished.

“Article 4. All debts incurred in the countryside prior to the reform of the agrarian system are cancelled.”

Article 10, aimed directly at the soldiers and even the officers of the Kuomintang reads, in part:

“Section c. All personnel of the People’s Liberation Armies, democratic governments, and all peoples’ organisations whose home is in the countryside shall be given land and properties equivalent to that of peasants for themselves and their families.

“Section d. Landlords and their families shall be given land and properties equivalent to that of the peasants.

“Section e. Families of Kuomintang officers and soldiers, Kuomintang Party members and other enemy personnel whose homes are in rural areas, shall he given land and properties equivalent to that of the peasants.”

One of the outstanding facts in the situation in China is the relative passivity of the working class. It is true that as a result of the collapse of the Chiang armies, there have been widespread strike struggles in the large cities, Shanghai, Canton, Hankow and Nanking, despite the repressive conditions. However, it is clear that as the Stalinists advance towards the big cities on the Yangtse, the workers, for lack of a mass alternative, can only rally to their banner. The workers never supported the Chiang Kai Shek regime.

Every socialist worker will wholeheartedly applaud the destruction of feudalism and of large-scale capitalism in this important section of Asia, even though it is carried out under the leadership of Stalinism. In its long-term implications it is as important as the October revolution itself. One could give no better Marxist analysis of the gloomy picture for the world capitalist class than that expressed in the editorial of The Times, 10 November 1948:

“At the best this spells only a single check (Hsuchow held by the Nationalists at the time and since fallen) after months of gains which have swung the balance of power – military, industrial, ideological to the communist side. Their widening hold on large areas of Northern and Central China has a much deeper meaning than the Japanese invasion of ten years ago, for the communists – decisively helped by Russia as they have been and Marxists as they remain – summon up and organise native revolutionary forces. In its vastness and in its all too likely consequences the present upheaval has rather to be compared with the Russian revolution of 1917 – from which it directly and obviously springs. Wider success for the Chinese communists would offer wider influence, and at the ripe moment wider success, for the power with which they ally themselves. Long-cherished Soviet plans for swinging the backward millions of Asia into the camp which already stretches from the Oder to Sakhalin would receive the greatest measure of reinforcement so far.

“…They can draw upon the peasantry for their divisions, and they have been able to win over the support of the peasantry by expropriating most of the landlords and redistributing the land. So far the agricultural reforms of the communists have prospered the more obviously because they have not had to feed many large towns; the food has mainly been kept in the country areas.

“In some regions a commander has ruthlessly shot or imprisoned those whom he has judged to be anti-communist; in others there has been a show of tolerance with few changes in the traditional way of life. Businessmen and others have even been given the choice of staying or leaving. This show of tolerance seems to be the policy of Mao Tse Tung, the highly astute communist leader. His writings and speeches show him to he an unshakeable Marxist, but one who recognises that Marx’s analysis of the opportunities for revolution in the industrial Europe of last century cannot be applied strictly to the mainly agricultural and primitive state of much of China. He seems to have decided to reach his communist goal by two stages. First, there is to be a system of relatively free trading, similar to the New Economic Policy which Lenin introduced after the initial failure of militant communism in Russia. It is this stage which he proclaims at present, hoping, not without success – not only to win the peasants but to assuage the fears of many townspeople. Secondly when the first stage has been accomplished, he plans to make the further step to Marxist socialism.”

The references to Marxism and the communist policy of Mao are of course false. The policy of Stalinism in Russia, in Eastern Europe and in China has been labelled Marxist by all present day capitalist journalists. It is a perversion of Marxism. Nevertheless The Times sees that the tactics of the Chinese Stalinists will be similar to those of the Stalinists in Eastern Europe.

Two Sides of The Coin

While supporting the destruction of feudalism in China, it must be emphasised that only a horrible caricature of the Marxist conception of the revolution will result because of the leadership of the Stalinists. Not a real democracy, but a totalitarian regime as brutal as that of Chiang Kai Shek will develop. Like the regimes in Eastern Europe, Mao will look to Russia as his model. Undoubtedly, tremendous economic progress will be achieved. But the masses, both workers and peasants, will find themselves enslaved by the bureaucracy.

The Stalinists are incorporating into their regime ex-feudal militarists, capitalist elements, and the bureaucratic officialdom in the towns who will occupy positions of privilege and power.

On the basis of such a backward economy, a large scale differentiation among the peasants (as after the Russian revolution during the period of the NEP) aided by the failure to nationalise the land: the capitalist elements in trade, and even in light industry, might provide a base for capitalist counter-revolution. It must be borne in mind that in China the proletariat is weaker in relation to the peasantry than was the case in Russia during the NEP owing to the more backward development of China. Even in Czechoslovakia and other Eastern European countries similarly, where the capitalist elements were relatively weaker, nevertheless the danger of a capitalist overturn existed for a time. The fact that the workers and peasants will not have any democratic control and that the totalitarian tyranny will have superimposed upon it the Asiatic barbarism and cruelties of the old regime, gives rise to this possibility. However, it seems likely that the capitalist elements will be defeated because of the historical tendency of the decay of capitalism on a world scale. The impotence of world imperialism is shown by the fact that whereas they intervened directly against the Chinese revolution in 1925-7, today they look on helplessly at the collapse of the Chiang regime.

However, it is quite likely that Stalin will have a new Tito on his hands. The shrewder capitalist commentators are already speculating on this although they derive cold comfort from it. Mao will have a powerful base in China with its 450-500 million population and its potential resources, and the undoubted mass support his regime will possess in the early stages. The conflicts which will thus open out should be further means of assisting the world working class to understand the real nature of Stalinism.

NOTES

[1] Chu Teh joined the Chinese CP (CCP) in 1922. His military forces joined with those led by Mao Tse Tung in 1928. Chu became the principal military leader of the CCP on the long March and in the civil war against Japan.

From the Archives of Trotskyism

Declaration of the International Communists of Buchenwald

[Printed in Spartacist #26, Winter 1979]

It is with great satisfaction that we publish for the first time in English this moving and historically important document. The “Declaration of the International Communists of Buchenwald” is a programmatic manifesto by cadres and sympathizers of the Trotskyist movement who survived the Nazi concentratIon camp. Neither fascist torture not Stalinist persecution broke these comrades political courage.

Originally written in German, the declaration was issued a little more than a week after Buchenwald was liberated in April 1945. Its third section was printed in a 1946 issue of Neuer Spartakus the first German language Trotskyist press published after the war. This part of the document was reprinted in October 1974 in Die Internationale, journal of the West German Pabloists. More recently, two different French translations of the full text have been published. One appeared in the Bulletin  (No. 10) of the Centre d’etudes et de Recherches sur les Mouvements Trotskyste et Revolutionnaires Internationaux (CFRMI RI): the second in Critique Communiste (No. 25, November 1978) journal of the French Pabloists. Our translation is from the original German text which was obtained from the CERMTRI archives in Paris. This introduction is largely based on the prefaces to the text which arreared in the CERMTRI Bulletin and Critique Communiste.

The “Declaration of the Internationalist Communists of Buchenwald” was the collaborative work of four comrades: the two Austrians Ernst Federn and Karl Fischer, Marcel Beaufrere and Florent Galloy, French and Belgian Trotskyists respectively. Like many other German and Austrian Trotskyists, Federn and Fischer were seized by the Nazis even before the outhreak of the second imperialist war. Both were first arrested for their revolutionary activities in Austria in 1935. Federn was released but Fischer and other Austrian Trotskyists were imprisoned and tried in Vienna in 1937. Sentenced to five years imprisonment, they were released in the amnesty decreed on the eve of the German annexation of Austria in February 1938 and escaped to Belgium and later to France. Federn was arrested again in 1939, sent to the Nazi camp at Dachau and later moved to Buchenwald.

Many of the Trotskyist cadres who were to join Federn at Buchenwald spent the first years of the war clandestinely organizing among German workers and soldiers under the Nazi occupation. Their internationalist struggle made the scattered Trotskyist cells the target of not only the Gestapo but also the Stalinists. Marcel Beaufrere was typical of those Trotskyist militants whose clandestine work was punished by the Nazis with imprisonment in the death camps. In and out of prison since 1939, when he had first been arrested for “provoking disobedience in the army,” Beaufrere worked closely with Marcel Hic, who had succeeded in regularly publishing La Verite right under the Nazis’ noses. In September 1943 Beaufrere was assigned to head up the Trotskyist cell in Brittany, where the underground paperArbeiter und Soldat was printed and distributed among the German armed forces. Despite fierce repression (in October 1943 the Gestapo caught and shot some 65 members of the cell, including 30 German soldiers and sailors), Trotskyist propaganda in German continued to be produced in great quantity (with press runs as high as 10,000 copies) and disseminated as late as August 1944. Beaufrere was finally arrested in October 1943, tortured and then sent to Buchenwald.

Many of the Trotskyist militants active in this work did not live to read the document produced by the Buchenwald comrades. Marcel Hic survived Buchenwald only to perish at Dora in 1944. Robert Cruau, the 23-year-old militant who headed the Trotskyist cell in the Wehrmacht at Brest, was arrested in 1943 and, according to the Critique Communiste introduction by Rodolphe Prager:

“A little after his arrest Rohert Cruau faked an escape in order to get himself killed. He wanted to be certain not to talk and he was the primary target of the interrogators.”

And Abram Leon, gifted author of the still definitive Marxist work on the Jewish question and leader of the Belgian Trotskyist cell in the Wehrmacht, was arrested in June 1944 when he arrived in the Charleroi region to assume control of the clandestine work among the miners, which covered some 15 mines and included publication of Le Reveil des Mineurs. Tortured by the Gestapo, Leon was exterminated in a gas chamber at Auschwitz at the age of 26.

Despite the Nazi terror, the Trotskyists in the concentration camps sought to continue fighting for their revolutionary program. Several accounts testify to the heroism and courage of the Trotskyist cell at Buchenwald. According to an interview which Beaufrere gave to an iSt representative in January 1979, when the Nazis were preparing to abandon Buchenwald to the approaching Allied forces, the camp commandants broadcast over the loudspeaker system an order for the prisoners to assemble. Recognizing that a final round-up and execution of the Jewish inmates were very likely in the offing. Beaufrere and his comrades immediately began to urge the inmates not to report for the assembly and to get the political prisoners to give their identifying red emblems to the Jews, who were forced to wear yellow stars on their uniforms. An almost certain mass slaughter of Jews (and perhaps communists as well) was thus partially averted .

The political authority which the Internationalist Communists earned within the camp played no small role in their survival. As was the case at other Nazi camps, at Buchenwald the Trotskyists lived under the constant threat of assassination by the Stalinists, who in most cases controlled the clandestine military apparatuses formed in some camps. According to the interview with Beaufrere, the French Stalinist cell at Buchenwald recognized him as a Trotskyist upon his arrival in January 1944 and vowed to kill him. Elsewhere, Trotskyists were indeed murdered by the Stalinists– for example, Pietro Tresso (Blasco), a leader of the clandestine Trotskyist organization (the PCI), “disappeared” after a Stalinist-organized raid freed some 80 resistance fighters from Puy, a Nazi camp in France. At Buchenwald the French Stalinists used their administrative positions as trustees to assign Beaufrere to a task that would almost certainly lead to his death. Beaufrere was saved from this “death warrant” by the active solidarity of the German and Czech Stalinist cells, eventually also gaining the support of the other cells (which were organized along national lines), including the Russian group.

What enabled Beaufrere to gain the sympathy and respect of these Stalinist cadres was in no small measure the anti-chauvinist stand of the Trotskyists. Evidently many of the German and Austrian Stalinists were repelled by the anti-German chauvinism of their French CP “comrades.” (At the time of the Allied “liberation” of France L’Humaniteran headlines such as “Everybody Get a Kraut!”) After his arrival in Paris in 1945, Beaufrere recounted for the French Trotskyist press the impact of the Buchenwald declaration on the German Stalinists:

“Some old German Communists came to find our Trotskyist comrades [in Buchenwald], Beaufrere recounted on his return to Paris, and said to them, the hour has come, you must publicly show yourselves, and they asked for a preliminary political discussion. A text of our German comrades which declared us in favor of a soviet German republic had a profound impact on the German Communist comrades, who asked to keep in touch with the Trotskyists.”

La Verite, 11, May 1945, quoted in Critique Communiste, November 1978

The Buchenwald declaration is not without its weaknesses. From the standpoint of Trotskyism the manifesto contains formulations on the questions of the USSR and the Fourth International that are fuzzy if not simply ambiguous, Thus, while, the Soviet bureaucracy is referred to as a caste, the declaration avoids characterizing the USSR as a degenerated workers state. It quite explicitly puts a question mark over the future evolution of the regime and nowhere calls for the unconditional military defense of the USSR.

Likewise, while “IV International” appears at the end of the document in parentheses, the Fourth International and Trotskyism are not mentioned in the text. Rather, the declaration states that “a new world revolutionary party” remains to be created.

These were not hasty formulations but the result of much discussion, Beaufrere and Fischer held widely divergent positions on the class character of the USSR and on the Fourth International. Even before the war, Fischer had adopted a “state capitalism” analysis of the USSR and his group had grown increasingly aloof from the Fourth International.

The Buchenwald declaration represented a compromise. Karl Fisher explained in a 29 May 1946 letter to his comrades in Paris.

“It was composed jointly by Federn, Marcel Beaufrere, Florent Galloy and me. In regard to Russia and the Trotskyists I had to enter into a compromise, otherwise nothing at all would have come out.”

Quoted in Bulletin of the CERMTRI, No. 10

It should aIso be noted that the Declaration rather categorically predicts the imminent eruption of major inter-imperialist rivalrv between the U.S. and Britain, Such a projection, of course. was very soon revealed to be false. However. the issues involved were not new; in the mid-1920’s Trotsky already analyzed the bases for future Anglo-American interimperialist rivalries. But at the close of World War II the U.S, was clearly emerging as the hegemonic imperialist power.

Even with these weaknesses, the Buchenwald declaration on balance is a principled and powerful statement of revolutionary internationalism, an affirmation of revolutionary optimism in the capacity of the communist vanguard to lead the resurgent proletariat out of its crisis of Ieadership and toward the conquest of power.

* * * * * *

I. The International Conjuncture of Capitalism

In the wake of the second imperialist war Italy, Germany and Japan have lost their stature as great imperialist powers, while that of France has heen severely undermined.

The imperialist antagonisms and conflicts between the USA and Great Britain dominate the conjuncture of world imperialist politics.

At the heginning of this world war R lIssia emerged from its isolation and today confronts the task of politically and economically consolidating its military successes in opposition to the appetites of the victorious imperialist powers.

Despite its enormous efforts China remains a pawn of the great imperialist powers, an inevitable consequence of the victory of the Chinese bourgeoisie over the Chinese proletariat.

The unanimity so ostentatiously displayed at the international imperialist peace conferences is intended to lure the masses by concealing the antagonisms inherent among the capitalist powers. However, coinciding military interests vis-a-vis Germany cannot prevent the explosion of the antagonisms in the Allied camp. To these antagonisms must be added the inevitable crises and the social tumult of the decaying capitalist mode of production.

A precise analysis of the international situation using the methods of Marxism-Leninism is the indispensable precondition for a successful revolutionary line.

II. The International Situation of the Working Class

This development renders it possible for the German proletariat to rapidly recover from its profound defeat and to again place itself at the head of the European working class in the battle for the overthrow of capitalism. Isolated by the failure of the revolution in Europe, the Russian revolution has taken a course which has led it further and further away from the interests of the European and international proletariat. The policy of “socialism in one country,” at first just a defense of the interests of the ruling bureaucratic clique, today leads the Russian state to carry out a nationalistic policy shoulder to shoulder with the imperialist powers. Whatever the course of events in Russia may be, the international proletariat must cast off all illusions regarding this state and with the aid of a clear Marxist analysis realize that the presently ruling bureaucratic and military caste defends exclusively its own interests and that the international revolution cannot count on any support from this government.

The total military, political and economic collapse of the German bourgeoisie opens the road to liberation for the German proletariat. To prevent the restabilization of the German bourgeoisie, facilitated by imperialist antagonisms, and to establish workers power, the revolutionary struggle of the working class of each country against its own bourgeoisie is necessary. The working class was deprived of its revolutionary leadership by the politics of the two international workers organizations, which actively fought and sabotaged the proletarian revolution that alone could have prevented this war. The Second International is a tool of the bourgeoisie. Since the death of Lenin the Third International has been transformed into an agency of the foreign policy of the Russian bureaucracy. Both Internationals actively participated in the preparation and prosecution of this imperialist war and therefore share responsibility for it. To attribute responsibility, or partial responsibility, for this war to the German and international working class is only another way of continuing to serve the bourgeoisie.

The proletariat can fulfill its historic task only under the leadership of a new world revolutionary party. The creation of this party is the most pressing task of the most advanced sections of the working class. International revolutionary cadres have already come together to construct this world party in the struggle against capitalism and its reformist and Stalinist agents. In order to carry out this difficult task there must be no avoiding the issue through the more conciliatory slogan of a new 2-1/2 International. Such an intermediary formation would prevent the necessary ideological clarification and would sap revolutionary will.

III. Never Again a 9 November 1918!

In the imminent pre-revolutionary period what is necessary is to mobilize the working masses in the struggle against the bourgeoisie and to prepare the construction of a new revolutionary International that will forge the unity of the working class in revolutionary action.

All theories and illusions about a “peoples state” or a “peoples democracy” have led the working class to the bloodiest defeats in the course of class struggle in capitalist society. Only irreconcilable struggle against the capitalist state-up to and including its destruction and the construction of the state of workers and peasants councils– can prevent similar new defeats. The bourgeoisie and the uprooted petty bourgeoisie brought fascism to power. Fascism is the creation of capitalism. Only the successful, independent action of the working class against capitalism is capable of eradicating the evil of fascism, along with its root causes. In this struggle the hesitant petty bourgeoisie will join forces with the revolutionary proletariat on the offensive, as the history of the great revolutions demonstrates.

In order to emerge vietoriolls from the class battles to come the German working class must struggle for the implementation of the following demands:

-Freedom of organization, assembly and the press!
-Freedom of collective action and the immediate restoration of all the pre-1933 social gains!
-Confiscation of their property for the benefit of the victims of fascism!
-Conviction of all representatives of the fascist state by freely elected peoples courts!
-Dissolution of the Wehrmacht and its replacement by workers militias!
-Immediate free election of workers and peasants councils throughout all of Germany and a convocation of a general congress of these councils!
-Preservation and extension of these councils, while utilizing all the parliamentary institutions of the bourgeoisie for revolutionary propaganda!
-Expropriation of the banks, heavy industry and the large estates!
-Control of production by the unions and the workers councils!
-Not one man, not one penny for the war debts and the war reparations of the bourgeoisie!
-The bourgeoisie must pay!
-For pan-German socialist revolution! Against a dismemberment of Germany!
-Revolutionary fraternization with the proletarians of the occupying armies!
-For a Germany of workers councils in a Europe of workers councils!
-For world proletarian revolution!

The Internationalist Communists of Buchenwald
(IV International) – 20 April 1945

Testament of Leon Trotsky

My high (and still rising) blood pressure is deceiving those near me about my actual condition. I am active and able to work but the outcome is evidently near. These lines will be made public after my death.

I have no need to refute here once again the stupid and vile slander of Stalin and his agents: there is not a single spot on my revolutionary honour. I have never entered, either directly or indirectly, into any behind-the-scenes agreements or even negotiations with the enemies of the working class. Thousands of Stalin’s opponents have fallen, victims of similar false accusations. The new revolutionary generations will rehabilitate their political honour and deal with the Kremlin executioners according to their deserts.

I thank warmly the friends who remained loyal to me through the most difficult hours of my life. I do not name anyone in particular because I cannot name them all.

However, I consider myself justified in making an exception in the case of my companion, Natalia Ivanovna Sedova. In addition to the happiness of being a fighter for the cause of socialism, fate has given me the happiness of being her husband. During the almost forty years of our life together she remained an inexhaustible source of love, magnanimity, and tenderness. She underwent great suffering, especially in the last period of our lives. But I find some comfort in the fact that she also knew days of happiness.

For forty-three years of my conscious life I have remained a revolutionist; for forty-two of them I have fought under the banner of Marxism. If I had to begin all over again I would of course try and avoid this or that mistake, but the main course of my life would remain unchanged. I shall die a proletarian revolutionist, a Marxist, a dialectical materialist, and, consequently, an irreconcilable atheist. My faith in the communist future of mankind is not less ardent, indeed it is firmer today, than it was in the days of my youth.

Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression, and violence and enjoy it to the full.

Leon Trotsky.

Mexico
February 27th 1940

A coda was added later dated March 3rd 1940. Mainly dealing with what should happen should he be involved in a serious drawn out illness, it ends with the following words:

“… But whatever may be the circumstances of my death I shall die with unshaken faith in the communist future. This faith in man and in his future gives me even now such power of resistance as cannot be given by any religion.”

Copied from http://www.marxist.com/testament-of-leon-trotsky.htm

Milwaukee’s Brand of Socialism

Socialism in One City

by James Boulton

First printed in Fourth International, Vol.I No.7, December 1940. Copied from http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/fi/vol01/no07/boulton.htm

We particularly recommend this 1940 Trotskyist polemic with US social democracy to supporters of groups historically associated with the late Ted Grant. To those familiar, the parallels in the politics critiqued are quite striking.

1. A Tenor Sings Socialism Away

The morning of April 3, 1940, broke dismally in the city of Milwaukee, heralding the defeat of Mayor Daniel W. Hoan and the return to capitalism. Dan, the Socialist mayor toward whom Norman Thomas could point with pride in every speech, the mayor whose treatise on City Government has now become a classic, who as City Attorney after the election of 1912 indicted and convicted hundreds of corrupt politicians and thereby ushered into office for over two decades the Milwaukee Socialist Party, its elected and appointed officials, and made the name of Milwaukee a star in international encyclopedias, the mayor, however, whose twenty-four years in office failed to produce any change in the life of Milwaukee’s proletariat.

When the final count came in, the beer parties in the wards were already ebbing and the golden haired thrush, Mayor-elect Carl Zeidler, had decreed the abolition of socialism. The major setback was not felt among the more “stupid” proletariat, but it did forebode ill among the many party Gifte Shoppe, butcher, book, and barber shop, tavern keeper, insurance salesman, and law suite members. Panic reigned in the City Hall and other municipal buildings; and in the offices of the stunned comrades of Norman Thomas there swelled a wave of defeatism that rolled right through the heart of the party convention which took place right afterward.

“What happened in Milwaukee?” was the paramount question put to delegates from the Cream City. Why had the workers cast their ballots for a tenor instead of for Dan?

When the initial delirium subsided, there still lingered a feeling of strength: Police Chief Kluchesky and “the Force” remained firmly entrenched in municipal power. All is not lost so long as comrade Police Chief Kluchesky remains at the head of the Force.

“Klooch,” as his comrades of the Socialist Party fondly call him, is expected to persist in waging the fight to liquidate the six mounted policemen, introduced by reactionaries to break the monotony of socialist civic life. Whole elections have been fought on this issue. The mounty funds, contend the Hoan men, could best be used in solving the problem of unemployment. Milwaukee Joe, when he is not busy “settling” strikes, will undoubtedly have something to say on this issue.

2. History and Achievements of Milwaukee Socialism

Pulling through the World War with very little to mar their record except the ride of Dan Hoan at the head of a Preparedness Day parade, the Milwaukee socialists continued on their march toward clean and efficient city government and a bigger and better convention city.

The first political boss of the Milwaukee local of the Socialist Party was Congressman Berger, who shared the job with Hoan until his death. Hoan now shares it with Andy Biemiller, Progressive caucus chairman in the assembly and author of the famous plea: “We must give aid to the Allies, our comrades!” Otto Hauser, ex-preacher and Hoan’s secretary to the Mayor, helps manage the dwindling machine, although he is mainly preoccupied with selling real estate.

“Old Vic” Berger merely bossed the party. Joe Kluchesky extended the practice of democracy against the general populace.

Frank Zeidler, State Secretary of the Socialist Party and a Sunday school teacher, readily concedes that nothing much was done in socializing the means of production. Nevertheless by the time Hoan retired to law practice in 1940, Milwaukee was the proud possessor of a socialized sewage disposal plant and many publicly owned streets.

Under the influence of comrade C.B. Whitnall, first elected in 1910 as City Treasurer, great strides were made in expanding the county parks; and today the Socialist county towers above the nation in quantity and quality of sweetheart’s rests.

In the course of this development Ernest Unterman, who reminds everyone that he is the Editor of the Fourth German Edition of Capital, was appointed Director of the Washington Park Zoo. Besides painting murals and collecting ostrich eggs, Unterman has also produced a work called Lenin’s Maggot.

In 1935, in a convention with eight other organizations, Milwaukee’s socialists gave birth to the Farmer-Labor Progressive Federation. The name was changed to Progressive Party Federation at the last convention when Comrade Hoan suggested that they should not give the impression of existing for farmers and workers alone. As a mass party the FLPF disappointed many. Some found it difficult to draw the line between the SP and the FLPF, the former usually meeting after the latter, often in the same hall or tavern as the case may be. A late comer was often heard questioning: “Is this the meeting of the SP or the FLPF?”

In all fairness to the party it must be added that much has been accomplished in placing 500 salaried election booth clerks, winning aldermanic, supervisory, and assemblymanic seats, appointing many tried and true men to various civic committees, administrative boards, and executive offices.

The achievements of the party culminated in the appointment of Joe Kluchesky and the completion of a really efficient police force, as the workers well may testify.

3. A Socialist Police Chief

Comrade Kluchesky is notable for his unique construing of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and for his view that transients do not vote and consequently are of no value to a crime-free socialist city.

The Socialist Party spent $10,000 for Norman Thomas’ New Jersey fight in which he contended handbill ordinances were undemocratic. But in the stronghold of Norman Thomas socialism, not a cent was spent to fight against such a handbill ordinance. As a matter of fact the Milwaukee comrades appreciated the ordinance’s value in keeping socialist streets litter-free and were inclined to favor it; so that, when the US Supreme Court invalidated that type of ordinance, comrade Kluchesky dissented and proposed an alternative ordinance to prevent the littering of public streets. The Milwaukee Young People’s Socialist League, at the instigation of a group who subsequently became Trotskyists, issued a statement to the press, repudiating the Police Chief’s action. The culprits were admonished before the SP’s Executive Board by Ed Knappe, who stated plainly: “The point is you cannot attack public officials.”

Klooch demonstrated his socialist efficiency during the Allen-Bradley strike. A trade union leader and member of the Socialist Party testified before the Party’s County Central that, in a conference with himself, Klooch, and President Bradley of the struck corporation, Klooch said:

“If law and order are not preserved I will have to put the police at the disposal of Mr. Bradley.”

Another act for which Hoan’s appointee has been criticized by some people was, in reality, not as arbitrary as it may seem, but logically arose from the Kluchesky theory that people ought to at least vote if they would breath Cream City rarefied air. This act took place at the Catholic Worker Family House, a haven for underprivileged transients. On March 23, 1940, a police detail under orders from the Chief raided the house without warrant and arrested seventeen inmates, on charges, substantially, that they were non-voters, unemployed, transient, loiterers, and defiled by their presence the grand beauty of a fair city. During the raid some people were mishandled, insulted, questioned and searched in violation of constitutional rights which apply to transients as well as voters.

When this act was brought (by those who later became Trotskyites) to the attention of the Party County Central with the pointer that under capitalism there is a fundamental antagonism between police and workers, and when the naively. indignant complainant vainly pressed for action, an Executive Board member objected to the use of Marxist formulas and windbagging, suggesting ejection of the disrupter.

At present Comrade Kluchesky’s force is cooperating with the FBI in cataloguing Socialist Workers Party street corner speakers and Socialist Appeal salesmen, no doubt crushing Trotskyism before it breeds Stalinism.

Recently there was a solemn ceremony, when 260 party members received “diplomas” for membership in the party of twenty-five years or more. One of those, grown gray in the service, was Comrade Police Chief Joe Kluchesky.

Believe it or not, some of those old boys who hold those diplomas aren’t able to figure out why the party didn’t once more this year win the election!

Milwaukee’s Brand of Socialism

Socialism in One City

by James Boulton

First printed in Fourth International, Vol.I No.7, December 1940. Copied from http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/fi/vol01/no07/boulton.htm

We particularly recommend this 1940 Trotskyist polemic with US social democracy to supporters of groups historically associated with the late Ted Grant. To those familiar, the parallels in the politics critiqued are quite striking.

1. A Tenor Sings Socialism Away

The morning of April 3, 1940, broke dismally in the city of Milwaukee, heralding the defeat of Mayor Daniel W. Hoan and the return to capitalism. Dan, the Socialist mayor toward whom Norman Thomas could point with pride in every speech, the mayor whose treatise on City Government has now become a classic, who as City Attorney after the election of 1912 indicted and convicted hundreds of corrupt politicians and thereby ushered into office for over two decades the Milwaukee Socialist Party, its elected and appointed officials, and made the name of Milwaukee a star in international encyclopedias, the mayor, however, whose twenty-four years in office failed to produce any change in the life of Milwaukee’s proletariat.

When the final count came in, the beer parties in the wards were already ebbing and the golden haired thrush, Mayor-elect Carl Zeidler, had decreed the abolition of socialism. The major setback was not felt among the more “stupid” proletariat, but it did forebode ill among the many party Gifte Shoppe, butcher, book, and barber shop, tavern keeper, insurance salesman, and law suite members. Panic reigned in the City Hall and other municipal buildings; and in the offices of the stunned comrades of Norman Thomas there swelled a wave of defeatism that rolled right through the heart of the party convention which took place right afterward.

“What happened in Milwaukee?” was the paramount question put to delegates from the Cream City. Why had the workers cast their ballots for a tenor instead of for Dan?

When the initial delirium subsided, there still lingered a feeling of strength: Police Chief Kluchesky and “the Force” remained firmly entrenched in municipal power. All is not lost so long as comrade Police Chief Kluchesky remains at the head of the Force.

“Klooch,” as his comrades of the Socialist Party fondly call him, is expected to persist in waging the fight to liquidate the six mounted policemen, introduced by reactionaries to break the monotony of socialist civic life. Whole elections have been fought on this issue. The mounty funds, contend the Hoan men, could best be used in solving the problem of unemployment. Milwaukee Joe, when he is not busy “settling” strikes, will undoubtedly have something to say on this issue.

2. History and Achievements of Milwaukee Socialism

Pulling through the World War with very little to mar their record except the ride of Dan Hoan at the head of a Preparedness Day parade, the Milwaukee socialists continued on their march toward clean and efficient city government and a bigger and better convention city.

The first political boss of the Milwaukee local of the Socialist Party was Congressman Berger, who shared the job with Hoan until his death. Hoan now shares it with Andy Biemiller, Progressive caucus chairman in the assembly and author of the famous plea: “We must give aid to the Allies, our comrades!” Otto Hauser, ex-preacher and Hoan’s secretary to the Mayor, helps manage the dwindling machine, although he is mainly preoccupied with selling real estate.

“Old Vic” Berger merely bossed the party. Joe Kluchesky extended the practice of democracy against the general populace.

Frank Zeidler, State Secretary of the Socialist Party and a Sunday school teacher, readily concedes that nothing much was done in socializing the means of production. Nevertheless by the time Hoan retired to law practice in 1940, Milwaukee was the proud possessor of a socialized sewage disposal plant and many publicly owned streets.

Under the influence of comrade C.B. Whitnall, first elected in 1910 as City Treasurer, great strides were made in expanding the county parks; and today the Socialist county towers above the nation in quantity and quality of sweetheart’s rests.

In the course of this development Ernest Unterman, who reminds everyone that he is the Editor of the Fourth German Edition of Capital, was appointed Director of the Washington Park Zoo. Besides painting murals and collecting ostrich eggs, Unterman has also produced a work called Lenin’s Maggot.

In 1935, in a convention with eight other organizations, Milwaukee’s socialists gave birth to the Farmer-Labor Progressive Federation. The name was changed to Progressive Party Federation at the last convention when Comrade Hoan suggested that they should not give the impression of existing for farmers and workers alone. As a mass party the FLPF disappointed many. Some found it difficult to draw the line between the SP and the FLPF, the former usually meeting after the latter, often in the same hall or tavern as the case may be. A late comer was often heard questioning: “Is this the meeting of the SP or the FLPF?”

In all fairness to the party it must be added that much has been accomplished in placing 500 salaried election booth clerks, winning aldermanic, supervisory, and assemblymanic seats, appointing many tried and true men to various civic committees, administrative boards, and executive offices.

The achievements of the party culminated in the appointment of Joe Kluchesky and the completion of a really efficient police force, as the workers well may testify.

3. A Socialist Police Chief

Comrade Kluchesky is notable for his unique construing of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and for his view that transients do not vote and consequently are of no value to a crime-free socialist city.

The Socialist Party spent $10,000 for Norman Thomas’ New Jersey fight in which he contended handbill ordinances were undemocratic. But in the stronghold of Norman Thomas socialism, not a cent was spent to fight against such a handbill ordinance. As a matter of fact the Milwaukee comrades appreciated the ordinance’s value in keeping socialist streets litter-free and were inclined to favor it; so that, when the US Supreme Court invalidated that type of ordinance, comrade Kluchesky dissented and proposed an alternative ordinance to prevent the littering of public streets. The Milwaukee Young People’s Socialist League, at the instigation of a group who subsequently became Trotskyists, issued a statement to the press, repudiating the Police Chief’s action. The culprits were admonished before the SP’s Executive Board by Ed Knappe, who stated plainly: “The point is you cannot attack public officials.”

Klooch demonstrated his socialist efficiency during the Allen-Bradley strike. A trade union leader and member of the Socialist Party testified before the Party’s County Central that, in a conference with himself, Klooch, and President Bradley of the struck corporation, Klooch said:

“If law and order are not preserved I will have to put the police at the disposal of Mr. Bradley.”

Another act for which Hoan’s appointee has been criticized by some people was, in reality, not as arbitrary as it may seem, but logically arose from the Kluchesky theory that people ought to at least vote if they would breath Cream City rarefied air. This act took place at the Catholic Worker Family House, a haven for underprivileged transients. On March 23, 1940, a police detail under orders from the Chief raided the house without warrant and arrested seventeen inmates, on charges, substantially, that they were non-voters, unemployed, transient, loiterers, and defiled by their presence the grand beauty of a fair city. During the raid some people were mishandled, insulted, questioned and searched in violation of constitutional rights which apply to transients as well as voters.

When this act was brought (by those who later became Trotskyites) to the attention of the Party County Central with the pointer that under capitalism there is a fundamental antagonism between police and workers, and when the naively. indignant complainant vainly pressed for action, an Executive Board member objected to the use of Marxist formulas and windbagging, suggesting ejection of the disrupter.

At present Comrade Kluchesky’s force is cooperating with the FBI in cataloguing Socialist Workers Party street corner speakers and Socialist Appeal salesmen, no doubt crushing Trotskyism before it breeds Stalinism.

Recently there was a solemn ceremony, when 260 party members received “diplomas” for membership in the party of twenty-five years or more. One of those, grown gray in the service, was Comrade Police Chief Joe Kluchesky.

Believe it or not, some of those old boys who hold those diplomas aren’t able to figure out why the party didn’t once more this year win the election!

A Letter to Trotsky

copied from
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backiss/vol3/no2/trotsky.html

The following letter of greeting was sent to Trotsky after the victory of the three Trotskyists in the elections to the Saigon colonial council, and appeared in the Socialist Appeal (USA), Volume 3 No.58, 11 August 1939.

Trotsky was much encouraged by this, and quoted from the issue of La Lutte that announced this in The Kremlin in World Politics, 1 July 1939 (Writings of Leon Trotsky 1938-39, New York, 1974, p.368) and India Faced with Imperialist War, 25 July 1939 (Writings of Leon Trotsky 1939-40, New York, 1973, pp.33-4). These texts can otherwise be found conveniently collected in S. Pirani (ed.), Vietnam and Trotskyism, Australia 1987, pp.110-3.

Dear Comrade Trotsky,

You must be acquainted with the results of the colonial elections of last 30 April in Cochin China. Despite the shameful coalition of the bourgeois of all types and the Stalinists, we have won a shining victory …

We went to battle, the flag of the Fourth International widely unfurled. Our victory is one of all the Fourth over the bourgeoisie, naturally, but above all, over their Social-Democratic and Stalinist agents. We have faith in the final victory of the Fourth International.

This faith you have imparted to us. Today, more than ever, we understand the importance not only of the programme of the Fourth International, but also of your struggle of 1925-28 against the theory and practice of Socialism in One Country, of your struggle against the Peasants’ International, the Anti-Imperialist League and other show committees, Amsterdam-Pleyel and others.

In these days of hope engendered by our recent victory, we think of you, of the moral and physical sufferings that you and your comrade have endured. We want to say to you that even in this remote corner of the Far East, in this backward country, you have friends who agree with you, comrades who struggle for that to which you have devoted your life, for socialism, for communism!

Our affectionate Bolshevik-Leninist salutations.  

Phan Van Hum
Tran Van Thach
Ta Thu Thau
and the group La Lutte
18 May, 1939

Fighting Against the Stream

by Leon Trotsky

April 1939.

[First printed in Fourth International [New York], Vol. 2 No. 4, May 1941. Copied from http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/04/stream.htm ]

NOTE: The following is a rough uncorrected transcript of of a discussion held in April 1939, between Trotsky and an English Fourth Internationalist, who had raised a number of questions concerning the development of the Fourth International in France, Spain, Great Britain and the United States. In his reply, Trotsky sketched the main reasons for the isolation and slow progress of the Fourth International in the first stages of its development and pointed out how a new turn in the world situation, like the present war, would inevitably lead to a radical change in the tempo of development, social composition and mass connections of the Fourth International.

TROTSKY: Yes, the question is why we are not progressing in correspondence with the value of our conceptions which are not so meaningless as some friends believe. We are not progressing politically. Yes, it is a fact which is an expression of a general decay of the workers’ movements in the last fifteen years. It is the more general cause. When the revolutionary movement in general is declining, when one defeat follows another, when Fascism is spreading over the world, when the official “Marxism” is the most powerful organization of deception of the workers, and so on, it is an inevitable situation that the revolutionary elements must work against the general historic current, even if our ideas, our explanations, are as exact and wise as one can demand.

But the masses are not educated by prognostic theoretical conception, but by the general experiences of their lives. It is the most general explanationthe whole situation is against us. There must be a turn in the class realization, in the sentiments, in the feelings of the masses; a turn which will give us the possibility of a large political success.

I remember some discussions in 1927 in Moscow after Chiang Kaishek stilled the Chinese workers. We predicted

this ten days before and Stalin opposed us with the argument that Borodin was vigilant, that Chiang Kaishek would not have the possibility to betray us, etc. I believe that it was eight or ten days later that the tragedy occurred and our comrades expressed optimism because our analysis was so clear that everyone would see it and we would be sure to win the party. I answered that the strangulation of the Chinese revolution is a thousand times more important for the masses than our predictions. Our predictions can win some few intellectuals who take an interest in such things, but not the masses. The military victory of Chiang Kaishek will inevitably provoke a depression and this is not conducive to the growth of a revolutionary fraction.

Since 1927 we have had a long series of defeats. We are similar to a group who attempt to climb a mountain and who must suffer again and again a downfall of stone, snow, etc. In Asia and Europe is created a new desperate mood of the masses. They heard something analogous to what we say ten or fifteen years ago from the Communist Party and they are pessimistic. That is the general mood of the workers. It is the most general reason. We cannot withdraw from the general historic currentfrom the general constellation of the forces. The current is against us, that is clear. I remember the period between 1908 and 1913 in Russia. There was also a reaction. In 1905 we had the workers with usin 1908 and even in 1907 began the great reaction.

Everybody invented slogans and methods to win the masses and nobody won themthey were desperate. In this time the only thing we could do was to educate the cadres and they were melting away. There was a series of splits to the right or to the left or to syndicalism and so on. Lenin remained with a small group, a sect, in Paris, but with confidence that there would be new possibilities of arising. It came in 1913. We had a new tide, but then came the war to interrupt this development. During the war there was a silence as of death among the workers. The Zimmerwald conference was a conference of very confused elements in its majority. In the deep recesses of the masses, in the trenches and so on there was a new mood, but it was so deep and terrorized that we could not reach it and give it an expression. That is why the movement seemed to itself to be very poor and even this element that met in Zimmerwald, in its majority, moved to the right in the next year, in the next month. I will not liberate them from their personal responsibility, but still the general explanation is that the movement had to swim against the current.

Our situation now is incomparably more difficult than that of any other organization in any other time, because we have the terrible betrayal of the Communist International which arose from the betrayal of the Second International. The degeneration of the Third International developed so quickly and so unexpectedly that the same generation which heard its formation now hears us, and they say, “But we have already heard this once!”

Then there is the defeat of the Left Opposition in Russia. The Fourth International is connected genetically to the Left Opposition; the masses call us Trotskyists. “Trotsky wishes to conquer the power, but why did he lose power?” It is an elementary question. We must begin to explain this by the dialectic of history, by the conflict of classes, that even a revolution produces a reaction.

Max Eastman wrote that Trotsky places too much value on doctrine and if he had more common sense he would not have lost power. Nothing in the world is so convincing as success and nothing so repelling as defeat for the large masses.

You have also the degeneration of the Third International on the one side and the terrible defeat of the Left Opposition with the extermination of the whole group. These facts are a thousand times more convincing for the working class than our poor paper with even the tremendous circulation of 5000 like the Socialist Appeal.

Against the Stream

We are in a small boat in a tremendous current. There are five or ten boats and one goes down and we stay it was due to bad helmsmanship. But that was not the reasonit was because the current was too strong. It is the most general explanation and we should never forget this explanation in order not to become pessimisticwe, the vanguard of the vanguard. There are courageous elements who do not like to swim with the currentit is their character. Then there are intelligent elements of bad character who were never disciplined, who always looked for a more radical or more independent tendency and found our tendency, but all of them are more or less outsiders from the general current of the workers’ movement. Their value inevitably has its negative side. He who swims against the current is not connected with the masses. Also, the social composition of every revolutionary movement in the beginning is not of workers. It is the intellectuals, semiintellectuals or workers connected with the intellectuals who are dissatisfied with the existing organizations. You find in every country a lot of foreigners who are not so easily involved in the labor movement of the country. A Czech in America or in Mexico would more easily become a member of the Fourth than in Czechoslovakia. The same for a Frenchman in the U.S. The national atmosphere has a tremendous power over individuals.

The Jews in many countries represent the semiforeigners, not totally assimilated, and they adhere to any new critical, revolutionary or semirevolutionary tendency in politics, in art, literature and so on. A new radical tendency directed against the general current of history in this period crystallizes around the elements more or less separated from the national life of any country and for them it is more difficult to penetrate into the masses. We are all very critical toward the social composition of our organization and we must change, but we must understand that this social composition did not fall from heaven, but was determined by the objective situation and by our historic mission in this period.

It does not signify that we must be satisfied with the situation. Insofar as it concerns France it is a long tradition of the French movement connected with the social composition of the country. Especially in the past the petty bourgeois mentalityindividualism on the one side, and on the other an clan, a tremendous capacity for improvising.

If you compare in the classic time of the Second International you will find that the French Socialist Party and the German Social Democratic Party had the same number of representatives in parliament. But if you compare the organizations, you will find they are incomparable. The French could only collect 25,000 francs with the greatest difficulty but in Germany to send half a million was nothing. The Germans had in the trade unions some millions of workers and the French had some millions who did not pay their dues. Engels once wrote a letter in which he characterized the French organization and finished with “And as always, the dues do not arrive.”

Our organization suffers from the same illness, the traditional French sickness. This incapacity to organization and at the same time lack of conditions for improvisation. Even so far as we now had a tide in France, it was connected with the Popular Front. In this situation the defeat of the People’s Front was the proof of the correctness of our conceptions just as was the extermination of the Chinese workers. But the defeat was a defeat and it is directed against revolutionary tendencies until a new tide on a higher level will appear in the new time. We must wait and preparea new element, a new factor, in this constellation.

We have comrades who came to us, as Naville and others, 15 or 16 or more years ago when they were young boys. Now they are mature people and their whole conscious life they have had only blows, defeats and terrible defeats on an international scale and they are more or less acquainted with this situation. They appreciate very highly the correctness of their conceptions and they can analyze, but they never had the capacity to penetrate, to work with the masses and they have not acquired it. There is a tremendous necessity to look at what the masses are doing. We have such people in France. I know much less about the British situation, but I believe that we have such people there also.

Why have we lost people? After terrible international defeats we had in France a tide on a very primitive and a very low political level under the leadership of the People’s Front. The People’s Front1 think this whole periodis a kind of caricature of our February Revolution. It is shameful that in a country like Prance, which 150 years ago passed through the greatest bourgeois revolution in the world, that the workers’ movement should pass through a caricature of the Russian Revolution.

JOHNSON: You would not throw the whole responsibility on the Communist Party?

TROTSKY: It is a tremendous factor in producing the mentality of the masses.

The active factor was the degeneration of the Communist Party.

From Isolation to Reintegration With the Masses

In 1914 the Bolsheviks were absolutely dominating the workers’ movement. It was on the threshold of the war. The most exact statistics show that the Bolsheviks represented not less than threefourths of the proletarian vanguard. But beginning with the February Revolution, the most backward people, peasants, soldiers, even the former Bolshevik workers, were attracted toward this Popular Front current and the Bolshevik Party became isolated and very weak. The general current was on a very low level, but powerful, and moved toward the October Revolution. It is a question of tempo. In France, after all the defeats, the People’s Front attracted elements that sympathized with us theoretically, but were involved with the movement of the masses and we became for some time more isolated than before. You can combine all these elements. I can even affirm that many (but not all) of our leading comrades, especially in old sections, by a new turn of situation would be rejected by the revolutionary mass movement and new leaders, fresh leadership will arise in the revolutionary current.

In France the regeneration began with the entry into the Socialist Party. The Policy of the Socialist Party was not clear, but it won many new members. These new members were accustomed to a large milieu. After the split they became a little discouraged. They were not so steeled. Then they lost their notsosteeled interest and were regained by the current of the People’s Front. It is regrettable, but it is explainable.

In Spain the same reasons played the same role with the supplementary factor of the deplorable conduct of the Nm group. He was in Spain as representative of the Russian Left Opposition and during the first year we did not try to mobilize, to organize our independent elements. We hoped that we would win Nm for the correct conception and so on. Publicly the Left Opposition gave him its support. In private correspondence we tried to win him and push him forward, but without success. We lost time. Was it correct? It is difficult to say. If in Spain we had an experienced comrade our situation would be incomparably more favorable, but we did not have one. We put all our hopes on Nm and his policy consisted of personal maneuvers in order to avoid responsibility. He played with the revolution. He was sincere, but his whole mentality was that of a Menshevik. It was a tremendous handicap, and to fight against this handicap only with correct formulas falsified by our own representatives in the first period, the Nins, made it very difficult.

Do not forget that we lost the first revolution in 1905. Before our first revolution we had the tradition of high courage, selfsacrifice, etc. Then we were pushed back to a position of a miserable minority of thirty, or forty men. Then came the war.

JOHNSON: How many were there in the Bolshevik Party?

TROTSKY: In 1910 in the whole country there were a few dozen people. Some were in Siberia. But they were not organized. The people whom Lenin could reach by correspondence or by an agent numbered about 30 or 40 at most. However, the tradition and the ideas among the more advanced workers was a tremendous capital which was used later during the revolution, but practically, at this time we were absolutely isolated.

Yes, history has its own laws which are very powerfulmore powerful than our theoretical conceptions of history. Now you have in Europe a catastrophethe decline of Europe, the extermination of countries. It has a tremendous influence on the workers when they observe these movements of the diplomacy, of the armies and so on, and on the other side a small group with a small paper which makes explanations. But it is a question of his being mobilized tomorrow and of his children being killed. There is a terrible disproportion between the task and the means.

If the war begins now, and it seems that it will begin, then in the first month we will lose twothii’ds of what we now have in France. They will be dispersed. They are young and will be mobilized. Subjectively many will remain true to our movement. Those who will not be arrested and who will remainthere may be three or five1 do not know how many, but they will be absolutely isolated.

Only after some months will the criticism and the disgust begin to show on a large scale and everywhere our isolated comrades, in a hospital, in a trench, a woman in a village, will find a changed atmosphere and will say a courageous word. And the same comrade who was unknown in some section of Paris will become a leader of a regiment, of a division, and will feel himself to be a powerful revolutionary leader. This change is in the character of our period.

I do not wish to say that we must reconcile ourselves with the impotence of our French organization. I believe that with the help of the American comrades we can win the PSOP and make a great leap forward. The situation is ripening and it says to us, “You must utilize this opportunity.” And if our comrades turn their backs the situation will change. It is absolutely necessary that your American comrades go to Europe again and that they do not simply give advice, but together with the International Secretariat decide that our section should enter the PSOP. It has some thousands. From the point of view of a revolution it is not a big difference, but from the point of view of working it is a tremendous difference. With fresh elements we can make a tremendous leap forward.

Now in the United States we have a new character of work and I believe we can be very optimistic without illusions and exaggerations. In the United States we have a larger credit of time. The situation is not so immediate, so acute. That is important.

Then I agree with Comrade Stanley who writes that we can now have very important successes in the colonal and semicolonial countries. We have a very important movement in IndoChina. I agree absolutely with Comrade Johnson that we can have a very important Negro movement, because these people have not passed through the history of the last two decades so intimately. As a mass they did not know about the Russian Revolution and the Third International. They can begin the history as from the beginning. It is absolutely necessary for us to have fresh blood. That is why we have more success among the youth in so far as we are capable of approaching them. In so far as we have been capable of approching them, we have had good results. They are very attentive to a clear and honest revolutionary program.

Fighting Against the Stream

by Leon Trotsky

April 1939.

[First printed in Fourth International [New York], Vol. 2 No. 4, May 1941. Copied fromhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/04/stream.htm ]

NOTE: The following is a rough uncorrected transcript of of a discussion held in April 1939, between Trotsky and an English Fourth Internationalist, who had raised a number of questions concerning the development of the Fourth International in France, Spain, Great Britain and the United States. In his reply, Trotsky sketched the main reasons for the isolation and slow progress of the Fourth International in the first stages of its development and pointed out how a new turn in the world situation, like the present war, would inevitably lead to a radical change in the tempo of development, social composition and mass connections of the Fourth International.

TROTSKY: Yes, the question is why we are not progressing in correspondence with the value of our conceptions which are not so meaningless as some friends believe. We are not progressing politically. Yes, it is a fact which is an expression of a general decay of the workers’ movements in the last fifteen years. It is the more general cause. When the revolutionary movement in general is declining, when one defeat follows another, when Fascism is spreading over the world, when the official “Marxism” is the most powerful organization of deception of the workers, and so on, it is an inevitable situation that the revolutionary elements must work against the general historic current, even if our ideas, our explanations, are as exact and wise as one can demand.

But the masses are not educated by prognostic theoretical conception, but by the general experiences of their lives. It is the most general explanationthe whole situation is against us. There must be a turn in the class realization, in the sentiments, in the feelings of the masses; a turn which will give us the possibility of a large political success.

I remember some discussions in 1927 in Moscow after Chiang Kaishek stilled the Chinese workers. We predicted

this ten days before and Stalin opposed us with the argument that Borodin was vigilant, that Chiang Kaishek would not have the possibility to betray us, etc. I believe that it was eight or ten days later that the tragedy occurred and our comrades expressed optimism because our analysis was so clear that everyone would see it and we would be sure to win the party. I answered that the strangulation of the Chinese revolution is a thousand times more important for the masses than our predictions. Our predictions can win some few intellectuals who take an interest in such things, but not the masses. The military victory of Chiang Kaishek will inevitably provoke a depression and this is not conducive to the growth of a revolutionary fraction.

Since 1927 we have had a long series of defeats. We are similar to a group who attempt to climb a mountain and who must suffer again and again a downfall of stone, snow, etc. In Asia and Europe is created a new desperate mood of the masses. They heard something analogous to what we say ten or fifteen years ago from the Communist Party and they are pessimistic. That is the general mood of the workers. It is the most general reason. We cannot withdraw from the general historic currentfrom the general constellation of the forces. The current is against us, that is clear. I remember the period between 1908 and 1913 in Russia. There was also a reaction. In 1905 we had the workers with usin 1908 and even in 1907 began the great reaction.

Everybody invented slogans and methods to win the masses and nobody won themthey were desperate. In this time the only thing we could do was to educate the cadres and they were melting away. There was a series of splits to the right or to the left or to syndicalism and so on. Lenin remained with a small group, a sect, in Paris, but with confidence that there would be new possibilities of arising. It came in 1913. We had a new tide, but then came the war to interrupt this development. During the war there was a silence as of death among the workers. The Zimmerwald conference was a conference of very confused elements in its majority. In the deep recesses of the masses, in the trenches and so on there was a new mood, but it was so deep and terrorized that we could not reach it and give it an expression. That is why the movement seemed to itself to be very poor and even this element that met in Zimmerwald, in its majority, moved to the right in the next year, in the next month. I will not liberate them from their personal responsibility, but still the general explanation is that the movement had to swim against the current.

Our situation now is incomparably more difficult than that of any other organization in any other time, because we have the terrible betrayal of the Communist International which arose from the betrayal of the Second International. The degeneration of the Third International developed so quickly and so unexpectedly that the same generation which heard its formation now hears us, and they say, “But we have already heard this once!”

Then there is the defeat of the Left Opposition in Russia. The Fourth International is connected genetically to the Left Opposition; the masses call us Trotskyists. “Trotsky wishes to conquer the power, but why did he lose power?” It is an elementary question. We must begin to explain this by the dialectic of history, by the conflict of classes, that even a revolution produces a reaction.

Max Eastman wrote that Trotsky places too much value on doctrine and if he had more common sense he would not have lost power. Nothing in the world is so convincing as success and nothing so repelling as defeat for the large masses.

You have also the degeneration of the Third International on the one side and the terrible defeat of the Left Opposition with the extermination of the whole group. These facts are a thousand times more convincing for the working class than our poor paper with even the tremendous circulation of 5000 like the Socialist Appeal.

Against the Stream

We are in a small boat in a tremendous current. There are five or ten boats and one goes down and we stay it was due to bad helmsmanship. But that was not the reasonit was because the current was too strong. It is the most general explanation and we should never forget this explanation in order not to become pessimisticwe, the vanguard of the vanguard. There are courageous elements who do not like to swim with the currentit is their character. Then there are intelligent elements of bad character who were never disciplined, who always looked for a more radical or more independent tendency and found our tendency, but all of them are more or less outsiders from the general current of the workers’ movement. Their value inevitably has its negative side. He who swims against the current is not connected with the masses. Also, the social composition of every revolutionary movement in the beginning is not of workers. It is the intellectuals, semiintellectuals or workers connected with the intellectuals who are dissatisfied with the existing organizations. You find in every country a lot of foreigners who are not so easily involved in the labor movement of the country. A Czech in America or in Mexico would more easily become a member of the Fourth than in Czechoslovakia. The same for a Frenchman in the U.S. The national atmosphere has a tremendous power over individuals.

The Jews in many countries represent the semiforeigners, not totally assimilated, and they adhere to any new critical, revolutionary or semirevolutionary tendency in politics, in art, literature and so on. A new radical tendency directed against the general current of history in this period crystallizes around the elements more or less separated from the national life of any country and for them it is more difficult to penetrate into the masses. We are all very critical toward the social composition of our organization and we must change, but we must understand that this social composition did not fall from heaven, but was determined by the objective situation and by our historic mission in this period.

It does not signify that we must be satisfied with the situation. Insofar as it concerns France it is a long tradition of the French movement connected with the social composition of the country. Especially in the past the petty bourgeois mentalityindividualism on the one side, and on the other an clan, a tremendous capacity for improvising.

If you compare in the classic time of the Second International you will find that the French Socialist Party and the German Social Democratic Party had the same number of representatives in parliament. But if you compare the organizations, you will find they are incomparable. The French could only collect 25,000 francs with the greatest difficulty but in Germany to send half a million was nothing. The Germans had in the trade unions some millions of workers and the French had some millions who did not pay their dues. Engels once wrote a letter in which he characterized the French organization and finished with “And as always, the dues do not arrive.”

Our organization suffers from the same illness, the traditional French sickness. This incapacity to organization and at the same time lack of conditions for improvisation. Even so far as we now had a tide in France, it was connected with the Popular Front. In this situation the defeat of the People’s Front was the proof of the correctness of our conceptions just as was the extermination of the Chinese workers. But the defeat was a defeat and it is directed against revolutionary tendencies until a new tide on a higher level will appear in the new time. We must wait and preparea new element, a new factor, in this constellation.

We have comrades who came to us, as Naville and others, 15 or 16 or more years ago when they were young boys. Now they are mature people and their whole conscious life they have had only blows, defeats and terrible defeats on an international scale and they are more or less acquainted with this situation. They appreciate very highly the correctness of their conceptions and they can analyze, but they never had the capacity to penetrate, to work with the masses and they have not acquired it. There is a tremendous necessity to look at what the masses are doing. We have such people in France. I know much less about the British situation, but I believe that we have such people there also.

Why have we lost people? After terrible international defeats we had in France a tide on a very primitive and a very low political level under the leadership of the People’s Front. The People’s Front1 think this whole periodis a kind of caricature of our February Revolution. It is shameful that in a country like Prance, which 150 years ago passed through the greatest bourgeois revolution in the world, that the workers’ movement should pass through a caricature of the Russian Revolution.

JOHNSON: You would not throw the whole responsibility on the Communist Party?

TROTSKY: It is a tremendous factor in producing the mentality of the masses.

The active factor was the degeneration of the Communist Party.

From Isolation to Reintegration With the Masses

In 1914 the Bolsheviks were absolutely dominating the workers’ movement. It was on the threshold of the war. The most exact statistics show that the Bolsheviks represented not less than threefourths of the proletarian vanguard. But beginning with the February Revolution, the most backward people, peasants, soldiers, even the former Bolshevik workers, were attracted toward this Popular Front current and the Bolshevik Party became isolated and very weak. The general current was on a very low level, but powerful, and moved toward the October Revolution. It is a question of tempo. In France, after all the defeats, the People’s Front attracted elements that sympathized with us theoretically, but were involved with the movement of the masses and we became for some time more isolated than before. You can combine all these elements. I can even affirm that many (but not all) of our leading comrades, especially in old sections, by a new turn of situation would be rejected by the revolutionary mass movement and new leaders, fresh leadership will arise in the revolutionary current.

In France the regeneration began with the entry into the Socialist Party. The Policy of the Socialist Party was not clear, but it won many new members. These new members were accustomed to a large milieu. After the split they became a little discouraged. They were not so steeled. Then they lost their notsosteeled interest and were regained by the current of the People’s Front. It is regrettable, but it is explainable.

In Spain the same reasons played the same role with the supplementary factor of the deplorable conduct of the Nm group. He was in Spain as representative of the Russian Left Opposition and during the first year we did not try to mobilize, to organize our independent elements. We hoped that we would win Nm for the correct conception and so on. Publicly the Left Opposition gave him its support. In private correspondence we tried to win him and push him forward, but without success. We lost time. Was it correct? It is difficult to say. If in Spain we had an experienced comrade our situation would be incomparably more favorable, but we did not have one. We put all our hopes on Nm and his policy consisted of personal maneuvers in order to avoid responsibility. He played with the revolution. He was sincere, but his whole mentality was that of a Menshevik. It was a tremendous handicap, and to fight against this handicap only with correct formulas falsified by our own representatives in the first period, the Nins, made it very difficult.

Do not forget that we lost the first revolution in 1905. Before our first revolution we had the tradition of high courage, selfsacrifice, etc. Then we were pushed back to a position of a miserable minority of thirty, or forty men. Then came the war.

JOHNSON: How many were there in the Bolshevik Party?

TROTSKY: In 1910 in the whole country there were a few dozen people. Some were in Siberia. But they were not organized. The people whom Lenin could reach by correspondence or by an agent numbered about 30 or 40 at most. However, the tradition and the ideas among the more advanced workers was a tremendous capital which was used later during the revolution, but practically, at this time we were absolutely isolated.

Yes, history has its own laws which are very powerfulmore powerful than our theoretical conceptions of history. Now you have in Europe a catastrophethe decline of Europe, the extermination of countries. It has a tremendous influence on the workers when they observe these movements of the diplomacy, of the armies and so on, and on the other side a small group with a small paper which makes explanations. But it is a question of his being mobilized tomorrow and of his children being killed. There is a terrible disproportion between the task and the means.

If the war begins now, and it seems that it will begin, then in the first month we will lose twothii’ds of what we now have in France. They will be dispersed. They are young and will be mobilized. Subjectively many will remain true to our movement. Those who will not be arrested and who will remainthere may be three or five1 do not know how many, but they will be absolutely isolated.

Only after some months will the criticism and the disgust begin to show on a large scale and everywhere our isolated comrades, in a hospital, in a trench, a woman in a village, will find a changed atmosphere and will say a courageous word. And the same comrade who was unknown in some section of Paris will become a leader of a regiment, of a division, and will feel himself to be a powerful revolutionary leader. This change is in the character of our period.

I do not wish to say that we must reconcile ourselves with the impotence of our French organization. I believe that with the help of the American comrades we can win the PSOP and make a great leap forward. The situation is ripening and it says to us, “You must utilize this opportunity.” And if our comrades turn their backs the situation will change. It is absolutely necessary that your American comrades go to Europe again and that they do not simply give advice, but together with the International Secretariat decide that our section should enter the PSOP. It has some thousands. From the point of view of a revolution it is not a big difference, but from the point of view of working it is a tremendous difference. With fresh elements we can make a tremendous leap forward.

Now in the United States we have a new character of work and I believe we can be very optimistic without illusions and exaggerations. In the United States we have a larger credit of time. The situation is not so immediate, so acute. That is important.

Then I agree with Comrade Stanley who writes that we can now have very important successes in the colonal and semicolonial countries. We have a very important movement in IndoChina. I agree absolutely with Comrade Johnson that we can have a very important Negro movement, because these people have not passed through the history of the last two decades so intimately. As a mass they did not know about the Russian Revolution and the Third International. They can begin the history as from the beginning. It is absolutely necessary for us to have fresh blood. That is why we have more success among the youth in so far as we are capable of approaching them. In so far as we have been capable of approching them, we have had good results. They are very attentive to a clear and honest revolutionary program.

Open the Road to the Woman Worker! Open the Road to the Youth!

by Leon Trotsky

[Excerpted from the Transitional Program – 1938. Copied from http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/tp-text2.htm#wy ]

The defeat of the Spanish Revolution engineered by its “leaders,” the shameful bankruptcy of the People’s Front in France, and the exposure of the Moscow juridical swindles – these three facts in their aggregate deal an irreparable blow to the Comintern and, incidentally, grave wounds to its allies: the Social Democrats and Anarcho-syndicalists. This does not mean, of course, that the members of these organizations will immediately turn to the Fourth International. The older generation, having suffered terrible defeats, will leave the movement in significant numbers. In addition, the Fourth International is certainly not striving to become an asylum for revolutionary invalids, disillusioned bureaucrats and careerists. On the contrary, against a possible influx into our party of petty bourgeois elements, now reigning in the apparatus of the old organizations, strict preventive measures are necessary: a prolonged probationary period for those candidates who are not workers, especially former party bureaucrats: prevention from holding any responsible post for the first three years, etc. There is not and there will not be any place for careerism, the ulcer of the old internationals, in the Fourth International. Only those who wish to live for the movement, and not at the expense of the movement, will find access to us. The revolutionary workers should feel themselves to be the masters. The doors of our organization are wide open to them.

Of course, even among the workers who had at one time risen to the first ranks, there are not a few tired and disillusioned ones. They will remain, at least for the next period as bystanders. When a program or an organization wears out the generation which carried it on its shoulders wears out with it. The movement is revitalized by the youth who are free of responsibility for the past. The Fourth International pays particular attention to the young generation of the proletariat. All of its policies strive to inspire the youth with belief in its own strength and in the future. Only the fresh enthusiasm and aggressive spirit of the youth can guarantee the preliminary successes in the struggle; only these successes can return the best elements of the older generation to the road of revolution. Thus it was thus it will be.

Opportunist organizations by their very nature concentrate their chief attention on the top layers of the working class and therefore ignore both the youth and the women workers. The decay of capitalism, however, deals its heaviest blows to the woman as a wage earner and as a housewife. The sections of the Fourth International should seek bases of support among the most exploited layers of the working class; consequently, among the women workers. Here they will find inexhaustible stores of devotion, selflessness and readiness to sacrifice.

Down with the bureaucracy and careerism!
Open the road to the youth!
Turn to the woman worker!

Splinters in Politics and Art (excerpt)

by Leon Trotsky (1938)

“In the June issue of your magazine I found a curious letter from an editor of a Chicago magazine, unknown to me. Expressing (by mistake, I hope) his sympathy for your publication, he writes: “I can see no hope however [?] from the Trotskyites or other anemic splinters which have no mass base.” These arrogant words tell more about the author than he perhaps wanted to say. They show above all that the laws of development of society have remained a seven times sealed book for him. Not a single progressive idea has begun with a “mass base,” otherwise it would not have been a progressive idea. It is only in its last stage that the idea finds its masses – if, of course, it answers the needs of progress. All great movements have begun as “splinters” of older movements. In the beginning, Christianity was only a “splinter” of Judaism; Protestantism a “splinter” of Catholicism, that is to say decayed Christianity. The group of Marx and Engels came into existence as a “splinter” of the Hegelian Left. The Communist International germinated during the war from the “splinters” of the Social Democratic International. If these pioneers found themselves able to create a mass base, it was precisely because they did not fear isolation. They knew beforehand that the quality of their ideas would be transformed into quantity. These “splinters” did not suffer from anemia; on the contrary, they carried within themselves the germs of the great historical movements of tomorrow.

“In very much the same way, to repeat, a progressive movement occurs in art. When an artistic tendency has exhausted its creative resources, creative “splinters” separate from it, which are able to look at the world with new eyes. The more daring the pioneers show in their ideas and actions, the more bitterly they oppose themselves to established authority which rests on a conservative “mass base,” the more conventional souls, skeptics, and snobs are inclined to see in the pioneers, impotent eccentrics or “anemic splinters‚” But in the last analysis it is the conventional souls, skeptics and snobs who are wrong – and life passes them by…

…..

“Every new artistic or literary tendency (naturalism, symbolism, futurism, cubism, expressionism and so forth and so on) has begun with a “scandal,” breaking the old respected crockery, bruising many established authorities. This flowed not at all solely from publicity seeking (although there was no lack of this). No, these people – artists, as well as literary critics – had something to say. They had friends, they had enemies, they fought, and exactly through this they demonstrated their right to exist.”

Excerpted from “Art and Politics in our Epoch”
Fourth International, March-April 1950.

On the Founding of the Fourth International

by Leon Trotsky (October 1938)

First printed in Fourth International, Vol.1 No.5, October 1940. Copied from http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/10/foundfi.htm

On October 28, 1938 an inspiring mass meeting in New York celebrated the founding of the Fourth International as well as the tenth anniversary of the Trotskyist movement in this country. American imperialism would not permit Trotsky to be present at that memorable celebration. But an electrical transcription of Trotsky’s speech to the meeting helped to bring him closer.

Trotsky never wasted words; the celebration became for him the occasion to press home two fundamental thoughts. First, the unique nature of the revolutionary party and the relation between the individual and the party: “For a revolutionary to give himself entirely to the party signifies finding himself.” Second, such a party cannot be destroyed by Stalin’s murder gangs: “It is possible to kill individual soldiers of our army, but not to frighten them.” Thus did Trotsky, in advance, armor us against deserters and the GPU – EDITORS of FOURTH INTERNATIONAL

Dear Comrades and Friends:

I hope that this time my voice will reach you and that I will be permitted in this way to participate in your double celebration. Both events: the tenth anniversary of our American organization as well as the foundation congress of the Fourth International deserve the attention of the workers incomparably more than the war-like gestures of the totalitarian chiefs, the diplomatic intrigues, or the pacifist congresses.

Both events will enter history as important milestones. No one has now the right to doubt that.

It is necessary to remark that the birth of the American group of Bolshevik-Leninists, thanks to the courageous initiative of Comrades Cannon, Shachtman, and Abern, didn’t stand alone. It approximately coincided with the beginning of the systematic international work of the Left Opposition. It is true that the Left Opposition arose in Russia in 1923, but regular work on an international scale began with the Sixth Congress of the Comintern.

Work Began in 1928

Without a personal meeting we reached an agreement with the American pioneers of the Fourth International, before all, on the criticism of the program of the Communist International. Then, in 1928, began that collective work which after ten years led to the elaboration of our own program recently adopted by our International Conference. We have the right to say that the work of this decade was not only persistent and patient, but also honest. The Bolshevik-Leninists, the international pioneers, our comrades across the world, searched the way of the revolution as genuine Marxists, not in their feelings and wishes, but in the analysis of the objective march of events. Above all were we guided by the preoccupation not to deceive others nor ourselves. We searched seriously and honestly. And some important things were found by us. The events confirmed our analysis as well as our prognosis. Nobody can deny it. Now it is necessary that we remain true to ourselves and to our program. It is not easy to do so. The tasks are tremendous, the enemies – innumerable. We have the right to spend our time and our attention on the jubilee celebration only insofar as from the lessons of the past we can prepare ourselves for the future.

The Party Is Everything

Dear friends, we are not a party as other parties. Our ambition is not only to have more members, more papers, more money in the treasury, more deputies. All that is necessary, but only as a means. Our aim is the full material and spiritual liberation of the toilers and exploited through the socialist revolution. Nobody will prepare it and nobody will guide it but ourselves. The old Internationals – the Second, the Third, that of Amsterdam, we will add to them also the London Bureau are rotten through and through.

The great events which rush upon mankind will not leave of these outlived organizations one stone upon another. Only the Fourth International looks with confidence at the future. It is the world party of Socialist Revolution! There never was a greater task on the earth. Upon every one of us rests a tremendous historical responsibility.

Our party demands each of us, totally and completely. Let the philistines hunt their own individuality in empty space. For a revolutionary to give himself entirely to the party signifies finding himself.

Yes, our party takes each one of us wholly. But in return it gives to every one of us the highest happiness: the consciousness that one participates in the building of a better future, that one carries on his shoulders a particle of the fate of mankind, and that one’s life will not have been lived in vain.

The fidelity to the cause of the toilers requires from us the highest devotion to our international party. The party, of course, can also be mistaken. By common effort we will correct its mistakes. In its ranks can penetrate unworthy elements. By common effort we will eliminate them. New thousands who will enter its ranks tomorrow will probably be deprived of necessary education. By common effort we will elevate their revolutionary level. But we will never forget that our party is now the greatest lever of history. Separated from this lever, everyone of us is nothing. With this lever in hand, we are all.

Stalin Cannot Frighten Us

We aren’t a party as other parties. It is not in vain that the imperialist reaction persecutes us madly, following furiously at our heals. The assassins at its services are the agents of the Moscow Bonapartistic clique. Our young International already knows many victims. In the Soviet Union they number by thousands. In Spain by dozens. In other countries by units. With gratitude and love we remember them all in these moments. Their spirits continue to fight in our ranks.

The hangmen think in their obtuseness and cynicism that it is possible to frighten us. They err! Under blows we become stronger. The bestial politics of Stalin are only politics of despair. It is possible to kill individual soldiers of our army, but not to frighten them. Friends, we will repeat again in this day of celebration … IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO FRIGHTEN US.

Ten years were necessary for the Kremlin clique in order to strangle the Bolshevik party and to transform the first Workers’ State into a sinister caricature. Ten years were necessary for the Third International in order to stamp into the mire their own program and to transform themselves into a stinking cadaver. Ten years! Only ten years! Permit me to finish with a prediction: During the next ten years the program of the Fourth International will become the guide of millions and these revolutionary millions will know how to storm earth and heaven.

LONG LIVE THE SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES!
LONG LIVE THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL!

L. TROTSKY
Coyoacan, D. F.
October 18, 1938

Workers’ and Farmers’ Government [Extract]

by Leon Trotsky (1938)

Extracted from the Transitional Program and originally posted online athttp://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/index.htm

This formula, “workers’ and farmers’ government,” first appeared in the agitation of the Bolsheviks in 1917 and was definitely accepted after the October Revolution. In the final instance it represented nothing more than the popular designation for the already established dictatorship of the proletariat. The significance of this designation comes mainly from the that it underscored the idea of an alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry upon which the Soviet power rests.

When the Comintern of the epigones tried to revive the formula buried by history of the “democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry,” it gave to the formula of the “workers’ and peasants’ government” a completely different, purely “democratic,” i.e., bourgeois content, counterposing it to the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Bolshevik-Leninists resolutely rejected the slogan of the “workers’ and peasants’ government” in the bourgeois-democratic version. They affirmed then and affirm now that. when the party of the proletariat refuses to step beyond bourgeois democratic limits, its alliance with the peasantry is simply turned into a support for capital, as was the ease with the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries in 1917, with the Chinese Communist Party in 1925-27, and as is now the ease with the “People’s Front” in Spain, France and other countries.

From April to September 1917, the Bolsheviks demanded that the SRs and Mensheviks break with the liberal bourgeoisie and take power into their own hands. Under this provision the Bolshevik Party promised the Mensheviks and the SRs, as the petty bourgeois representatives of the worker and peasants, its revolutionary aid against the bourgeoisie categorically refusing, however, either to enter into the government of the Mensheviks and SRs or to carry political responsibility for it. If the Mensheviks and SRs had actually broke with the Cadets (liberals) and with foreign imperialism, then the “workers’ and peasants’ government” created by them could only have hastened and facilitated the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. But it was exactly because of this that the leadership of petty bourgeois democracy resisted with all possible strength the establishment of its own government. The experience of Russia demonstrated, and the experience of Spain and France once again confirms, that even under very favorable conditions the parties of petty bourgeois democracy (SRs, Social Democrats, Stalinists, Anarchists) are incapable of creating a government of workers and peasants, that is, a government independent of the bourgeoisie.

Nevertheless, the demand of the Bolsheviks, addressed to the Mensheviks and the SRs: “Break with the bourgeoisie, take the power into your own hands!” had for the masses tremendous educational significance. The obstinate unwillingness of the Mensheviks and SRs to take power, so dramatically exposed during the July Days, definitely doomed them before mass opinion and prepared the victory of the Bolsheviks.

The central task of the Fourth International consists in freeing the proletariat from the old leadership, whose conservatism is in complete contradiction to the catastrophic eruptions of disintegrating capitalism and represents the chief obstacle to historical progress. The chief accusation which the Fourth International advances against the traditional organizations of the proletariat is the fact that they do not wish to tear themselves away from the political semi-corpse of the bourgeoisie. Under these conditions the demand, systematically addressed to the old leadership: “Break with the bourgeoisie, take the power!” is an extremely important weapon for exposing the treacherous character of the parties and organizations of the Second, Third and Amsterdam Internationals. The slogan, “workers’ and farmers’ government,” is thus acceptable to us only in the sense that it had in 1917 with the Bolsheviks, i.e., as an anti-bourgeois and anti-capitalist slogan. but in no case in that “democratic” sense which later the epigones gave it, transforming it from a bridge to Socialist revolution into the chief barrier upon its path.

Of all parties and organizations which base themselves on the workers and peasants and speak in their name, we demand that they break politically from the bourgeoisie and enter upon the road of struggle for the workers’ and farmers’ government. On this road we promise them full support against capitalist reaction. At the same time, we indefatigably develop agitation around those transitional demands which should in our opinion form the program of the “workers’ and farmers’ government.”

Is the creation of such a government by the traditional workers’ organizations possible? Past experience shows, as has already been stated, that this is, to say the least, highly improbable. However, one cannot categorically deny in advance the theoretical possibility that, under the influence of completely exceptional circumstances (war, defeat, financial crash, mass revolutionary pressure, etc.), the petty bourgeois parties, including the Stalinists, may go further than they wish along the road to a break with the bourgeoisie. In any case one thing is not to be doubted: even if this highly improbable variant somewhere at some time becomes a reality and the “workers’ and farmers’ government” in the above-mentioned sense is established in fact, it would represent merely a short episode on the road to the actual dictatorship of the proletariat.

However, there is no need to indulge in guesswork. The agitation around the slogan of a workers’-farmers’ government preserves under all conditions a tremendous educational value. And not accidentally. This generalized slogan proceeds entirely along the line of the political development of our epoch (the bankruptcy and decomposition of the old bourgeois parties, the downfall of democracy, the growth of fascism, the accelerated drive of the workers toward more active and aggressive politics). Each of the transitional demands should, therefore, lead to one and the same political conclusion: the workers need to break with all traditional parties of the bourgeoisie in order, jointly with the farmers, to establish their own power.

It is impossible in advance to foresee what will be the concrete stages of the revolutionary mobilization of the masses. The sections of the Fourth International should critically orient themselves at each new stage and advance such slogans as will aid the striving of the workers for independent politics, deepen the class struggle of these politics, destroy reformist and pacifist illusions, strengthen the connection of the vanguard with the masses, and prepare the revolutionary conquest of power.

The Champion from Far Away

by James P. Cannon

[First printed in Labor Action, January 16, 1937. First posted online athttp://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/1937/sfchampion.htm ]  

SINCE coming to San Francisco I have been watching at close range the “build-up” of a new Stalinite labor leader — a transparent mediocrity who was unknown yesterday and will be forgotten tomorrow-and I keep thinking of a fine story Ben Hecht once wrote about the wrestling racket and the way its phony “champions” are made. The story, if I remember correctly, was called, “The Champion From Far Away”, and it had to do with a palooka who became a champion for a while without ceasing to be a palooka at heart.

The champion from far away, a muscle-bound lout, was originally a gravedigger in a metropolitan cemetery. There, equipped with the tools of his trade-a “sharp-shooter” and a pick and a No. 2 shovel-he performed his not-too-complicated tasks and, in his own sub-human way, was happy in his work and satisfied with his lot in life. Day in and day out he went through his practiced one-two-three motions like a natural-born muck-stick artist, with never a thought in his thick, hard head of any possible change in the routine until, in the normal course of events, surviving fellow-craftsmen would one day dig a grave for him and plant him underneath the daisies.

But God proposes — and the promoters of the wrestling racket fix things to suit themselves. One day of destiny a couple of these weisenheimers happened in on the cemetery where our hero worked. It seems that one of the outstanding figures in the racket had stopped a score or so machine-gun slugs in a private dispute among the boys, and the two promoters had turned out to the funeral to pay their last respects to the fallen comrade, and to make sure at the same time that he was put away for keeps.

They spotted the big gravedigger swinging his shovel in the cemetery and, needing a new champion, decided then and there that he was it. He appeared to meet all the specifications they required. He came from a distant land-that gave him novelty, mystery and color. He was big and powerful looking-what the public expects in a champion. And he was dumb-which would make him easy to handle. All in all, he looked like a “natural” to the promoters. They signed him up on the spot while his loose mouth was still open in wonderment, and led him away like a captive ox to a new short life of manufactured glory as the greatest wrestler the world had ever seen.

It was all very simple and easy. The promoters gave the gravedigger the “build up”. His non-existent merits were ballyhooed far and wide. Sports writers, secretly on the payroll of the promoters, wrote learnedly and objectively about his new and strange technique, his “color” and his mysterious origin in a far-off land. Fixed matches were arranged and the erstwhile shovel stiff marched triumphantly across the country, sports commentators fell for the general ballyhoo and the clodhopper’s impressive string of arranged victories, and they also began to beat the drums for the Champion From Far Away. The wrestling public was worked up into a lather of admiration for the unbeaten and unbeatable phenomenon.

Even the gravedigger himself-and that’s the saddest part of the story-began to believe the phony build-up. He began to think he was really out-wrestling the trained setups who rolled over on their backs and played dead at the appointed moments. The poor sap took the counterfeit publicity of the promoters for real coin.

That was too bad, for it wasn’t long afterward that the house of cards collapsed. Through some slip-up in the arrangements, the Champion From Far Away got into the ring one night with an opponent who knew how to wrestle and hadn’t been fixed to fall down, and he was mean and tough besides. He put the manufactured champion through an agony of real hammer locks, half nelsons and toe holds which made him long for the old simple life in the graveyard and to wonder why his own highly tooted “technique” didn’t seem to work any more. The tough mug kept after him, scowling viciously, gouging and biting when he got a chance and squeezing the made-to-order champion until he began to have a real fear that he was coming apart. He became utterly convinced that the wrestling racket had aspects which were not so good.

Finally, when the referee was looking the other way, the rough wrestler who hadn’t been fixed, shoved his elbow with a vicious, trip-hammer thrust into the belly of the Champion From Far Away. Then it was his turn to roll over and play dead, like so many of the set-ups had done for him — only he was sincere about it. The referee slapped “the winner and new champion” on the back and our hero was done, finished, his trail of glory ended. It had taken a long time to build him up, but one mean elbow-jab in the belly brought him down. In a single night the champ became a chump.

The promoters who had built him up surveyed the human wreckage of their hand-made champion sadly, but philosophically. And then they calmly went about the business of hunting for another palooka who might be made to look like a champion. They weren’t discouraged by the catastrophic result of their failure to fix the match securely, and they never thought for a minute of changing their ways and going straight in the future. For the entrepreneurs of the wrestling racket disagree with Lincoln, and will bet even money any time on the proposition that you can fool all the people all the time.

That is likewise the basic assumption of the cynical gentry who comprise the general staff of the Communist Party, whose operations in the labor movement are far more on the order of a racket than a principled struggle. From old habits, or by way of camouflage, they still occasionally mention Marx and Lenin as their sources of inspiration, but you will never find a clue to their methods and psychology in the books of these great-hearted rebels and honest men. The real model of the Stalinites is the American advertising game which has been developed to its fullest flower by the racketeering promoters of the world of commercial sports.

The rules of this game are few and simple, and are considered sure-fire by the people who think the world is divided into two classes -wise guys and suckers. Rule No. 1 says you can make people believe anything if you repeat it often enough; and Rule No. 2 says Mark Twain was right when he remarked that “a lie can travel half way around the earth while truth is putting its shoes on”. That in a nutshell, is the credo of the Stalinites and the essence of their technique in advertising and “building up” labor leaders.

Nowhere has this technique been more crudely employed than in the present campaign to build up the new champion Labor Leader From Far Away, the Great Whoosis who is touted and advertised as though he were a combination of Christ and Buddha and the Sacred Cow. As for Debs and Haywood and Vincent St. John and Albert Parsons-such real men and real leaders of the great tradition, whose memory might truly inspire the new generation of labor militants if they but knew the simple truth about their rich abilities, so nobly and generously devoted to the workers’ cause-as for them, the Stalinite School of Ballyhoo can find no place at all beside the new divinity, the Johnnie-come-lately who just arrived from nowhere. Indeed, in this part of the country, at least, you would think, if you took the ballyhoo seriously, that the history of the labor movement only began with the discovery of the Great Whoosis a short time ago.

One of the tricks-and not exactly a new one-for putting this four-flushing false alarm across is to represent him as super-human, beyond comparison with ordinary mortals, above criticism, not to be touched or pinched to see whether he is real or a motion picture, and, above all, not to have the elbows of inconsiderate opponents shoved into his belly.

As remarked above, this trick is not new. They used it to bamboozle the ignorant long before the Great Whoosis came down to survey the situation on our planet, like God on a vacation. “The King can do no wrong”, was the original formula for the trick. In the prize-fighting and wrestling rackets they translate the same principle: “Don’t knock the champ-because he’s the champ.” Out here they hang a tin halo around the ears of a two-spot and say in effect:

“Don’t throw tomatoes at the Great Whoosis, you might smear his halo. ”

Everybody is supposed to rise to his feet when the Great Whoosis enters the room and when he starts to speak. I had heard about this crude stunt, but being from Missouri, had to see it myself at a public meeting before I would believe that even Stalinites would attempt to introduce such a degrading slave-minded practice, and in the West of all places!

I saw the Great Whoosis finally get his “rising ovation”, but the whole thing was too transparent a fake to impress me. There was an organized claque down front, rising in unison as though in response to a signal, and waving and motioning to others to get up. Then one could see individuals milling around at strategic points in the crowd, like cowboys around a herd of cattle, motioning for everybody to get up. Finally, as though anxious to get the thing over with, about half of the crowd slowly stood up and quickly sat down again.

It was all organized, perfunctory, like taking off your hat in a court room when his honor, the judge, comes in. There was nothing spontaneous about it-and what is a demonstration worth to a self-respecting man, if it isn’t spontaneous? The very fact that a “leader” will stand for such a shoddy tribute earmarks him as a base pretender.

In my time I have heard Debs speak; and I can remember yet the hearty, joyous shouts of affection and comradeship with which the great agitator was greeted as he entered the hall. But there was no formal rising when he began to speak. For one thing, Debs was too eager to plunge into his speech and always deprecated unnecessary demonstrations.

I have heard Haywood speak in the heat of bitter struggle to strikers who adored him, but there was none of this formal, organized rising, like serfs greeting the feudal lord. Big Bill would have been mortally offended by such cut-and-dried horseplay. When Haywood was on the platform he made the workers feel that here was a comrade and fellow-worker, one of their very own. That was one of the secrets of the real power of real leaders of the workers like Debs and Haywood.

I have even heard Lenin speak-at the Fourth Congress of the Communist International in 1922. I must confess that I really wanted to rise to my feet on that memorable occasion. The whole Congress rose as one man, in spontaneous, heart-felt acclaim for the leader of the Russian Revolution, and we didn’t need any claque down front to set the example, nor any cowboys running through the aisles to whip us into line. There were ushers and “inside people” in the aisles, but they served another purpose. They asked us to please sit down because the “Old Man” was not feeling very well, and he didn’t like formal demonstrations anyway!

The real leaders of the working class could dispense with all the empty fakery of capitalist advertising, ballyhoo and “build-up” because their merits were genuine and they honestly and truly represented the cause of the workers. They were tried and tested over a long period of time. Their deeds spoke for them and they had no need of press agents, lackeys, sycophants and organized hand-clappers. They grew, with deep roots in the workers’ movement, and did not require artificial props.

It is precisely because they lack these qualities, because they play a game of deception and fraud under a hypocritical pretense of radicalism, that the Stalinites require entirely different methods borrowed from the shadiest fringes of the capitalist world. The system of Stalinism has no use or place for honest militants of tested character and ability and independent opinions. It needs pliable nonentities, parvenus and careerists on the make. Against the former it employs the frame-up; for the latter it provides the build-up. This is the whole sum and substance of the attitude of Stalinism to leaders of the labor movement, the real and the counterfeit.

But the whole strategy of the Stalinites, like that of their prototypes in the wrestling racket, is founded on an illusion and is doomed to explode. Lincoln was right: You can’t fool all the people all the time. And the truth, slow-moving at the start, will eventually catch up with the lie. And built-up Champions From Far Away, in the labor movement as well as in the ring, eventually encounter opponents who don’t believe the ballyhoo. This is bad news for the Great Whoosis, who like the ill-starred hero of Ben Hecht’s story, is beginning to take his own phony build-up seriously and is beginning to strut and pose like a real. champion. But it’s the truth just the same, and the truth never hurt anybody that was on the level.

The Struggle Against the Youth

by Leon Trotsky

[Excerpted from The Revolution Betrayed, 1936, Copied from http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch07.htm#ch07-2 ]

Every revolutionary party finds its chief support in the younger generation of the rising class. Political decay expresses itself in a loss of ability to attract the youth under one’s banner. The parties of bourgeois democracy, in withdrawing one after another from the scene, are compelled to turn over the young either to revolution or fascism. Bolshevism when underground was always a party of young workers. The Mensheviks relied upon the more respectable skilled upper stratum of the working class, always prided themselves on it, and looked down upon the Bolsheviks. Subsequent events harshly showed them their mistake. At the decisive moment the youth carried with them the more mature stratum and even the old folks.

The revolution gave a mighty historical impulse to the new Soviet generation. It cut them free at one blow from conservative forms of life, and exposed to them the great secret – the first secret of the dialectic – that there is nothing unchanging on this earth, and that society is made out of plastic materials. How stupid is the theory of unchanging racial types in the light of the events of our epoch ! The Soviet Union is an immense melting pot in which the characters of dozens of nationalities are being mixed. The mysticism of the “Slavic soul” is coming off like scum.

But the impulse given to the younger generation has not yet found expression in a corresponding historic enterprise. To be sure, the youth are very active in the sphere of economics. In the Soviet Union there are 7,000,000 workers under twenty-three – 3,140,000 in industry, 700,000 in the railroads, 700,000 in the building trades. In the new giant factories, about half the workers are young. There are now 1,200,000 Communist Youth in the collective farms. Hundreds of thousands of members of the Communist Youth have been mobilized during recent years for construction work, timber work, coal mining, gold production, for work in the Arctic, Sakhalin, or in Amur where the new town of Komsomolsk is in process of construction. The new generation is putting out shock brigades, champion workers, Stakhanovists, foremen, under-administrators. The youth are studying, and a considerable part of them are studying assiduously. They are as active, if not more so, in the sphere of athletics in its most daring or warlike forms, such as parachute jumping and marksmanship. The enterprising and audacious are going on all kinds of dangerous expeditions.

“The better part of our youth,” said recently the well-known polar explorer, Schmidt, “are eager to work where difficulties await them.” This is undoubtedly true. But in all spheres the post-revolutionary generation is still under guardianship. They are told from above what to do, and how to do it. Politics, as the highest form of command, remains wholly in the hands of the so-called “Old Guard”, and in all the ardent and frequently flattering speeches they address to the youth the old boys are vigilantly defending their own monopoly.

Not conceiving of the development of a socialist society without the dying away of the state that is, without the replacement of all kinds of police oppression by the self-administration of educated producers and consumers – Engels laid tile accomplishment of this task upon the younger generation, “who will grow up in new, free social conditions, and will be in a position to cast away all this rubbish of state-ism.” Lenin adds on his part: “… every kind of state-ism, the democratic-republican included.” The prospect of the construction of a socialist society stood, then, in the mind of Engels and Lenin approximately thus: The generation which conquered the power, the “Old Guard”, will begin the work of liquidating the state; the next generation will complete it.

How do things stand in reality? Forty-three per cent of the population of the Soviet Union were born after the October revolution. If you take the age of twenty-three as the boundary between the two generations, then over 50 per cent of Soviet humanity has not yet reached this boundary. A big half of the population of the country, consequently, knows nothing by personal recollection of any regime except that of the Soviets. But it is just this new generation which is forming itself, not in “free social conditions,” as Engels conceived it, but under intolerable and constantly increasing oppression from the ruling stratum composed of those same ones who – according to the official fiction – achieved the great revolution. In the factory, the collective farm, the barracks, the university, the schoolroom, even in the kindergarten, if not in the creche, the chief glory of man is declared to be: personal loyalty to the leader and unconditional obedience. Many pedagogical aphorisms and maxims of recent times might seem to have been copied from Goebbels, if he himself had not copied them in good part from the collaborators of Stalin.

The school and the social life of the student are saturated with formalism and hypocrisy. The children have learned to sit through innumerable deadly dull meetings, with their inevitable honorary presidium, their chants in honor of the dear leaders, their predigested righteous debates in which, quite in the manner of their elders, they say one thing and think another. The most innocent groups of school children who try to create oases in this desert of officiousness are met with fierce measures of repression. Through its agentry the GPU introduces the sickening corruption of treachery and tale-bearing into the so-called “socialist schools.” The more thoughtful teachers and children’s writers, in spite of the enforced optimism, cannot always conceal their horror in the presence of this spirit of repression, falsity and boredom which is killing school life. Having no experience of class struggle and revolution, the new generations could have ripened for independent participation in the social life of the country only in conditions of soviet democracy, only by consciously working over the experience of the past and the lessons of the present. Independent character like independent thought cannot develop without criticism. The Soviet youth, however, are simply denied the elementary opportunity to exchange thoughts, make mistakes and try out and correct mistakes, their own as well as others’. All questions, including their very own, are decided for them. Theirs only to carry out the decision and sing the glory of those who made it. To every word of criticism, the bureaucracy answers with a twist of the neck. All who are outstanding and unsubmissive in the ranks of the young are systematically destroyed, suppressed or physically exterminated. This explains the fact that out of the millions upon millions of Communist youth there has not emerged a single big figure.

In throwing themselves into engineering, science, literature, sport or chess playing, the youth are, so to speak, winning their spurs for future great action. In all these spheres they compete with the badly prepared older generation, and often equal and best them. But at every contact with politics they burn their fingers. They have, thus, but three possibilities open to them: participate in the bureaucracy and make a career; submit silently to oppression, retire into economic work, science or their own petty personal affairs; or, finally, go underground and Iearn to struggle and temper their character for the future. The road of the bureaucratic career is accessible only to a small minority. At the other pole a small minority enter the ranks of the Opposition. The middle group, the overwhelming mass, is in turn very heterogeneous. But in it, under the iron press, extremely significant although hidden processes arc at work which will to a great extent determine the future of the Soviet Union.

The ascetic tendencies of the epoch of the civil war gave way in the period of the NEP to a more epicurean, not to say avid, mood. The first five-year plan again became a time of involuntary asceticism – but now only for the masses and the youth. The ruling stratum had firmly dug themselves in in positions of personal prosperity. The second five-year plan is undoubtedly accompanied by a sharp reaction against asceticism. A concern for personal advancement has seized upon broad circles of the population, especially the young. The fact is, however, that in the new Soviet generation well-being and prosperity arc accessible only to that thin layer who manage to rise above the mass and one way or another accommodate themselves to the ruling stratum. The bureaucracy on its side is consciously developing and sorting out machine politicians and careerists.

Said the chief speaker at a Congress of the Communist Youth (April 1936): “Greed for profits, philistine pettiness and base egotism are not the attributes of Soviet youth.” These words sound sharply discordant with the reigning slogans of a “prosperous and handsome life,” with the methods of piecework, premiums and decorations. Socialism is not ascetic; on the contrary, it is deeply hostile to the asceticism of Christianity. It is deeply hostile, in its adherence to this world, and this only, to all religion. But socialism has its gradations of earthly values. Human personality begins for socialism not with the concern for a prosperous life, but on the contrary with the cessation of this concern. However, no generation can jump over its own head. The whole Stakhanov movement is for the present built upon “base egotism.” The very measures of success – the number of trousers and neckties earned – testifies to nothing but “philistine pettiness.” Suppose that this historic stage is unavoidable. All right. It is still necessary to see it as it is. The restoration of market relations opens an indubitable opportunity for a considerable rise of personal prosperity. The broad trend of the Soviet youth toward the engineering profession is explained, not so much by the allurements of socialist construction, as by the fact that engineers earn incomparably more than physicians or teachers. When such tendencies arise in circumstances of intellectual oppression and ideological reaction, and with a conscious unleashing from above of careerist instincts, then the propagation of what is called “socialist culture” often turns out to be education in the spirit of the most extreme antisocial egotism.

Still it would be a crude slander against the youth to portray them as controlled exclusively, or even predominantly, by personal interests. No, in the general mass they are magnanimous, responsive, enterprising. Careerism colors them only from above. In their depths arc various unformulated tendencies grounded in heroism and still only awaiting application. It is upon these moods in particular that the newest kind of Soviet patriotism is nourishing itself. It is undoubtedly very deep, sincere and dynamic. But in this patriotism, too, there is a rift which separates the young from the old.

Healthy young lungs find it intolerable to breathe in the atmosphere of hypocrisy inseparable from a Thermidor – from a reaction, that is, which is still compelled to dress in the garments of revolution. The crying discord between the socialist posters and the reality of life undermines faith in the official canons. A considerable stratum of the youth takes pride in its contempt for politics, in rudeness and debauch. In many cases, and probably a majority, this indifferentism and cynicism is but the initial form of discontent and of a hidden desire to stand up on one’s own feet. The expulsion from the Communist Youth and the party, the arrest and exile, of hundreds of thousands of young “white guards” and “opportunists”, on the one hand, and “Bolshevik-Leninists” on the other, proves that the wellsprings of conscious political opposition, both right and left, are not exhausted. On the contrary, during the last couple of years they have been bubbling with renewed strength. Finally, the more impatient, hot-blooded, unbalanced, injured in their interests and feelings, are turning their thoughts in the direction of terrorist revenge. Such, approximately, is the spectrum of the political moods of the Soviet youth.

The history of individual terror in the Soviet Union clearly marks the stages in the general evolution of the country. At the dawn of the Soviet power, in the atmosphere of the still unfinished civil war, terrorist deeds were perpetrated by white guards or Social Revolutionaries. When the former ruling classes lost hope of a restoration, terrorism also disappeared. The kulak terror, echoes of which have been observed up to very recent times, had always a local character and supplemented the guerrilla warfare against the Soviet regime. As for the latest outburst of terrorism, it does not rest either upon the old ruling classes or upon the kulak. The terrorists of the latest draft are recruited exclusively from among the young, from the ranks of the Communist Youth and the party – not infrequently from the offspring of the ruling stratum. Although completely impotent to solve the problems which it sets itself, this individual terror has nevertheless an extremely important symptomatic significance. It characterizes the sharp contradiction between the bureaucracy and the broad masses of the people, especially the young.

All taken together – economic hazards, parachute jumping, polar expeditions, demonstrative indifferentism, “romantic hooligans”, terroristic mood, and individual acts of terror – are preparing an explosion of the younger generation against the intolerable tutelage of the old. A war would undoubtedly serve as a vent for the accumulating vapors of discontent – but not for long. In a war the youth would soon acquire the necessary fighting temper and the authority which it now so sadly lacks. At the same time the reputation of the majority of “old men” would suffer irremediable damage. At best, a war would give the bureaucracy only a certain moratorium. The ensuing political conflict would be so much the more sharp.

It would be one-sided, of course, to reduce the basic political problem of the Soviet Union to the problem of the two generations. There are many open and hidden foes of the bureaucracy among the old, just as there are hundreds of thousands of perfected yes-men among the young. Nevertheless, from whatever side the attack came against the position of the ruling stratum, from left or right, the attackers would recruit their chief forces among the oppressed and discontented youth deprived of political rights. The bureaucracy admirably understands this. It is in general exquisitely sensitive to everything which threatens its dominant position. Naturally, in trying to consolidate its position in advance, it erects the chief trenches and concrete fortifications against the younger generation.

In April 1936, as we have said, there assembled in the Kremlin the tenth congress of the Communist Youth. Nobody bothered to exclaim, of course, why in violation of its constitution, the congress had not been called for an entire five years. Moreover, it soon became clear that this carefully sifted and selected congress was called at this time exclusively for the purpose of a political expropriation of the youth. According to the new constitution the Communist Youth League is now even juridically deprived of the right to participate in the social life of the country. Its sole sphere henceforth is to be education and cultural training. The General Secretary of the Communist Youth, under orders from above, declared in his speech: “We must … end the chatter about industrial and financial planning, about the lowering, of production costs, economic accounting, crop sowing, and other important state problems as though we were going to decide them.” The whole country might well repeat those last words: “as though we were going, to decide them!” That insolent rebuke: “End the chatter!” welcomed with anything but enthusiasm even by this supersubmissive congress – is the more striking when you remember that the Soviet law defines the age of political maturity as 18 years, giving all electoral rights to young men and women of that age, whereas the age limit for Communist Youth members, according to the old Constitution, was 23 years, and a good third of the members of the organization were in reality older than that. This last congress adopted two simultaneous reforms: It legalized membership in the Communist Youth for people of greater age, thus increasing the number of Communist Youth electors, and at the same time deprived the organization as a whole of the right to intrude into the sphere, not only of general politics – of that there can never be any question! – but of the current problems of economy. The abolition of the former age limit was dictated by the fact that transfer from the Communist Youth into the party, formerly an almost automatic process, has now been made extremely difficult. This annulment of the last remnant of political rights, and even of the appearance of them, was caused by a desire fully and finally to enslave the Communist Youth to the well-purged party. Both measures, obviously contradicting each other, derive nevertheless from the same source: the bureaucracy’s fear of the younger generation.

The speakers at the congress, who according to their own statements were carrying out the express instructions of Stalin – they gave these warnings in order to forestall in advance the very possibility of a debate explained the aim of the reform with astonishing frankness: “We have no need of any second party.” This argument reveals the fact that in the opinion of the ruling circles the Communist Youth League, if it is not decisively strangled, threatens to become a second party. As though on purpose to define these possible tendencies, another speaker warningly declared: “In his time, no other than Trotsky himself attempted to make a demagogic play for the youth, to inspire it with the anti-Leninist, anti-Bolshevik idea of creating a second party, etc.” The speaker’s historic allusion contains an anachronism. In reality, Trotsky “in his time” only gave warning that a further bureaucratization of the regime would inevitably lead to a break with the youth, and produce the danger of a second party. But never mind: the course of events, in confirming that warning, has converted it ipso facto into a program. The degenerating party has kept its attractive power only for careerists. Honest and thinking young men and girls cannot but be nauseated by the Byzantine slavishness, the false rhetoric, concealing privilege and caprice, the braggadocio of mediocre bureaucrats singing praises to each other – at all these marshals who because they can’t catch the stars in heaven have to stick them on their own bodies in various places. [1] Thus it is no longer a question of the “danger” as it was twelve or thirteen years ago of a second party, but of its historic necessity as the sole power capable of further advancing the cause of the October revolution. The change in the constitution of the Communist Youth League, although reinforced with fresh police threats, will not, of course, halt the political maturing of the youth, and will not prevent their hostile clash with the bureaucracy.

Which way will the youth turn in case of a great political disturbance? Under what banner will they assemble their ranks? Nobody can give a sure answer to that question now, least of all the youth themselves. Contradictory tendencies are furrowing their minds. In the last analysis, the alignment of the principal mass will be determined by historic events of world significance, by a war, by new successes of fascism, or, on the contrary, by the victory of the proletarian revolution in the West. In any case the bureaucracy will find out that these youth deprived of rights represent a historic charge with mighty explosive power.

In 1894 the Russian autocracy, through the lips of the young tzar Nicholas II, answered the Zemstvos, which were timidly dreaming of participating in political life, with the famous words: “Meaningless fancies!” In 1936 the Soviet bureaucracy answered the as yet vague claims of the younger generation with the still ruder cry: “Stop your chatter!” Those words, too, will become historic. The regime of Stalin may pay no less dear for them than the regime headed by Nicholas II.

Thermidor in the Family

by Leon Trotsky

[Excerpt from the book The Revolution Betrayed, 1936. Copied from http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch07.htm#ch07-1 ]

The October revolution honestly fulfilled its obligations in relation to woman. The young government not only gave her all political and legal rights in equality with man, but, what is more important, did all that it could, and in any case incomparably more than any other government ever did, actually to secure her access to all forms of economic and cultural work. However, the boldest revolution, like the “all-powerful” British parliament, cannot convert a woman into a man – or rather, cannot divide equally between them the burden of pregnancy, birth, nursing and the rearing of children. The revolution made a heroic effort to destroy the so-called “family hearth” – that archaic, stuffy and stagnant institution in which the woman of the toiling classes performs galley labor from childhood to death. The place of the family as a shut-in petty enterprise was to be occupied, according to the plans, by a finished system of social care and accommodation: maternity houses, creches, kindergartens, schools, social dining rooms, social laundries, first-aid stations, hospitals, sanatoria, athletic organizations, moving-picture theaters, etc. The complete absorption of the housekeeping functions of the family by institutions of the socialist society, uniting all generations in solidarity and mutual aid, was to bring to woman, and thereby to the loving couple, a real liberation from the thousand-year-old fetters. Up to now this problem of problems has not been solved. The forty million Soviet families remain in their overwhelming majority nests of medievalism, female slavery and hysteria, daily humiliation of children, feminine and childish superstition. We must permit ourselves no illusions on this account. For that very reason, the consecutive changes in the approach to the problem of the family in the Soviet Union best of all characterize the actual nature of Soviet society and the evolution of its ruling stratum.

It proved impossible to take the old family by storm – not because the will was lacking, and not because the family was so firmly rooted in men’s hearts. On the contrary, after a short period of distrust of the government and its creches, kindergartens and like institutions, the working women, and after them the more advanced peasants, appreciated the immeasurable advantages of the collective care of children as well as the socialization of the whole family economy. Unfortunately society proved too poor and little cultured. The real resources of the state did not correspond to the plans and intentions of the Communist Party. You cannot “abolish” the family; you have to replace it. The actual liberation of women is unrealizable on a basis of “generalized want.” Experience soon proved this austere truth which Marx had formulated eighty years before.

During the lean years, the workers wherever possible, and in part their families, ate in the factory and other social dining rooms, and this fact was officially regarded as a transition to a socialist form of life. There is no need of pausing again upon the peculiarities of the different periods: military communism, the NEP and the first five-year plan. The fact is that from the moment of the abolition of the food-card system in 1935, all the better placed workers began to return to the home dining table. It would be incorrect to regard this retreat as a condemnation of the socialist system, which in general was never tried out. But so much the more withering was the judgment of the workers and their wives upon the “social feeding” organized by the bureaucracy. The same conclusion must be extended to the social laundries, where they tear and steal linen more than they wash it. Back to the family hearth! But home cooking and the home washtub, which are now half shamefacedly celebrated by orators and journalists, mean the return of the workers’ wives to their pots and pans that is, to the old slavery. It is doubtful if the resolution of the Communist International on the “complete and irrevocable triumph of socialism in the Soviet Union” sounds very convincing to the women of the factory districts!

The rural family, bound up not only with home industry but with agriculture, is infinitely more stable and conservative than that of the town. Only a few, and as a general rule, anaemic agricultural communes introduced social dining rooms and creches in the first period. Collectivization, according to the first announcements, was to initiate a decisive change in the sphere of the family. Not for nothing did they expropriate the peasant’s chickens as well as his cows. There was no lack, at any rate, of announcements about the triumphal march of social dining rooms throughout the country. But when the retreat began, reality suddenly emerged from the shadow of this bragging. The peasant gets from the collective farm, as a general rule, only bread for himself and fodder for his stock. Meat, dairy products and vegetables, he gets almost entirely from the adjoining private lots. And once the most important necessities of life are acquired by the isolated efforts of the family, there can no longer be any talk of social dining rooms. Thus the midget farms, creating a new basis for the domestic hearthstone, lay a double burden upon woman.

The total number of steady accommodations in the creches amounted, in 1932, to 600,000, and of seasonal accommodations solely during work in the fields to only about 4,000,000. In 1935 the cots numbered 5,600,000, but the steady ones were still only an insignificant part of the total. Moreover, the existing creches, even in Moscow, Leningrad and other centers, are not satisfactory as a general rule to the least fastidious demands. “A creche in which the child feels worse than he does at home is not a creche but a bad orphan asylum,” complains a leading Soviet newspaper. It is no wonder if the better-placed workers’ families avoid creches. But for the fundamental mass of the toilers, the number even of these “bad orphan asylums” is insignificant. Just recently the Central Executive Committee introduced a resolution that foundlings and orphans should be placed in private hands for bringing up. Through its highest organ, the bureaucratic government thus acknowledged its bankruptcy in relation to the most important socialist function. The number of children in kindergartens rose during the five years 1930-1935 from 370,000 to 1,181,000. The lowness of the figure for 1930 is striking, but the figure for 1935 also seems only a drop in the ocean of Soviet families. A further investigation would undoubtedly show that the principal, and in any case the better part of these kindergartens, appertain to the families of the administration, the technical personnel, the Stakhanovists, etc.

The same Central Executive Committee was not long ago compelled to testify openly that the “resolution on the liquidation of homeless and uncared-for children is being weakly carried out.” What is concealed behind this dispassionate confession? Only by accident, from newspaper remarks printed in small type, do we know that in Moscow more than a thousand children are living in “extraordinarily difficult family conditions”; that in the so-called children’s homes of the capital there are about 1,500 children who have nowhere to go and are turned out into the streets; that during the two autumn months of 1935 in Moscow and Leningrad “7,500 parents were brought to court for leaving their children without supervision.” What good did it do to bring them to court? How many thousand parents have avoided going to court? How many children in “extraordinarily difficult conditions” remained unrecorded? In what do extraordinarily difficult conditions differ from simply difficult ones? Those are the questions which remain unanswered. A vast amount of the homelessness of children, obvious and open as well as disguised, is a direct result of the great social crisis in the course of which the old family continues to dissolve far faster than the new institutions are capable of replacing it.

From these same accidental newspaper remarks and from episodes in the criminal records, the reader may find out about the existence in the Soviet Union of prostitution – that is, the extreme degradation of woman in the interests of men who can pay for it. In the autumn of the past year Izvestia suddenly informed its readers, for example, of the arrest in Moscow of “as many as a thousand women who were secretly selling themselves on the streets of the proletarian capital.” Among those arrested were 177 working women, 92 clerks, 5 university students, etc. What drove them to the sidewalks? Inadequate wages, want, the necessity to “get a little something for a dress, for shoes.” We should vainly seek the approximate dimensions of this social evil. The modest bureaucracy orders the statistician to remain silent. But that enforced silence itself testifies unmistakably to the numerousness of the “class” of Soviet prostitutes. Here there can be essentially no question of “relics of the past”; prostitutes are recruited from the younger generation. No reasonable person, of course, would think of placing special blame for this sore, as old as civilization, upon the Soviet regime. But it is unforgivable in the presence of prostitution to talk about the triumph of socialism. The newspapers assert, to be sure insofar as they are permitted to touch upon this ticklish theme – that “prostitution is decreasing.” It is possible that this is really true by comparison with the years of hunger and decline (1931-1933). But the restoration of money relations which has taken place since then, abolishing all direct rationing, will inevitably lead to a new growth of prostitution as well as of homeless children. Wherever there are privileged there are pariahs !

The mass homelessness of children is undoubtedly the most unmistakable and most tragic symptom of the difficult situation of the mother. On this subject even the optimistic Pravda is sometimes compelled to make a bitter confession: “The birth of a child is for many women a serious menace to their position.” It is just for this reason that the revolutionary power gave women the right to abortion, which in conditions of want and family distress, whatever may be said upon this subject by the eunuchs and old maids of both sexes, is one of her most important civil, political and cultural rights. However, this right of women too, gloomy enough in itself, is under the existing social inequality being converted into a privilege. Bits of information trickling into the press about the practice of abortion are literally shocking. Thus through only one village hospital in one district of the Urals, there passed in 1935 “195 women mutilated by midwives” – among them 33 working women, 28 clerical workers, 65 collective farm women, 58 housewives, etc. This Ural district differs from the majority of other districts only in that information about it happened to get into the press. How many women are mutilated every day throughout the extent of the Soviet Union?

Having revealed its inability to serve women who are compelled to resort to abortion with the necessary medical aid and sanitation, the state makes a sharp change of course, and takes the road of prohibition. And just as in other situations, the bureaucracy makes a virtue of necessity. One of the members of the highest Soviet court, Soltz, a specialist on matrimonial questions, bases the forthcoming prohibition of abortion on the fact that in a socialist society where there are no unemployed, etc., etc., a woman has no right to decline “the joys of motherhood.” The philosophy of a priest endowed also with the powers of a gendarme. We just heard from the central organ of the ruling party that the birth of a child is for many women, and it would be truer to say for the overwhelming majority, “a menace to their position.” We just heard from the highest Soviet institution that “the liquidation of homeless and uncared-for children is being weakly carried out,” which undoubtedly means a new increase of homelessness. But here the highest Soviet judge informs us that in a country where “life is happy” abortion should be punished with imprisonment – just exactly as in capitalist countries where life is grievous. It is clear in advance that in the Soviet Union as in the West those who will fall into the claws of the jailer will be chiefly working women, servants, peasant wives, who find it hard to conceal their troubles. As far as concerns “our women”, who furnish the demand for fine perfumes and other pleasant things, they will, as formerly, do what they find necessary under the very nose of an indulgent justiciary. “We have need of people,” concludes Soltz, closing his eyes to the homeless. “Then have the kindness to bear them yourselves,” might be the answer to the high judge of millions of toiling women, if the bureaucracy had not sealed their lips with the seal of silence. These gentlemen have, it seems, completely forgotten that socialism was to remove the cause which impels woman to abortion, and not force her into the “joys of motherhood” with the help of a foul police interference in what is to every woman the most intimate sphere of life.

The draft of the law forbidding abortion was submitted to so-called universal popular discussion, and even through the fine sieve of the Soviet press many bitter complaints and stifled protests broke out. The discussion was cut off as suddenly as it had been announced, and on June 27th the Central Executive Committee converted the shameful draft into a thrice shameful law. Even some of the official apologists of the bureaucracy were embarrassed. Louis Fischer declared this piece of legislation something in the nature of a deplorable misunderstanding. In reality the new law against women – with an exception in favor of ladies – is the natural and logical fruit of a Thermidorian reaction.

The triumphal rehabilitation of the family, taking place simultaneously – what a providential coincidence! – with the rehabilitation of the ruble, is caused by the material and cultural bankruptcy of the state. Instead of openly saying, “We have proven still too poor and ignorant for the creation of socialist relations among men, our children and grandchildren will realize this aim”, the leaders are forcing people to glue together again the shell of the broken family, and not only that, but to consider it, under threat of extreme penalties, the sacred nucleus of triumphant socialism. It is hard to measure with the eye the scope of this retreat.

Everybody and everything is dragged into the new course: lawgiver and litterateur, court and militia, newspaper and schoolroom. When a naive and honest communist youth makes bold to write in his paper: “You would do better to occupy yourself with solving the problem how woman can get out of the clutches of the family,” he receives in answer a couple of good smacks and – is silent. The ABCs of communism are declared a “leftist excess.” The stupid and stale prejudices of uncultured philistines are resurrected in the name of a new morale. And what is happening in daily life in all the nooks and corners of this measureless country? The press reflects only in a faint degree the depth of the Thermidorian reaction in the sphere of the family.

Since the noble passion of evangelism grows with the growth of sin, the seventh commandment is acquiring great popularity in the ruling stratum. The Soviet moralists have only to change the phraseology slightly. A campaign is opened against too frequent and easy divorces. The creative thought of the lawgivers had already invented such a “socialistic” measure as the taking of money payment upon registration of divorces, and increasing it when divorces were repeated. Not for nothing we remarked above that the resurrection of the family goes hand in hand with the increase of the educative role of the ruble. A tax indubitably makes registration difficult for those for whom it is difficult to pay. For the upper circles, the payment, we may hope, will not offer any difficulty. Moreover, people possessing nice apartments, automobiles and other good things arrange their personal affairs without unnecessary publicity and consequently without registration. It is only on the bottom of society that prostitution has a heavy and humiliating character. On the heights of the Soviet society, where power is combined with comfort, prostitution takes the elegant form of small mutual services, and even assumes the aspect of the “socialist family.” We have already heard from Sosnovsky about the importance of the “automobile-harem factor” in the degeneration of the ruling stratum.

The lyric, academical and other “friends of the Soviet Union” have eyes in order to see nothing. The marriage and family laws established by the October revolution, once the object of its legitimate pride, are being made over and mutilated by vast borrowings from the law treasuries of the bourgeois countries. And as though on purpose to stamp treachery with ridicule, the same arguments which were earlier advanced in favor of unconditional freedom of divorce and abortion – “the liberation of women,” “defense of the rights of personality,” “protection of motherhood” – are repeated now in favor of their limitation and complete prohibition.

The retreat not only assumes forms of disgusting hypocrisy, but also is going infinitely farther than the iron economic necessity demands. To the objective causes producing this return to such bourgeois forms as the payment of alimony, there is added the social interest of the ruling stratum in the deepening of bourgeois law. The most compelling motive of the present cult of the family is undoubtedly the need of the bureaucracy for a stable hierarchy of relations, and for the disciplining of youth by means of 40,000,000 points of support for authority and power.

While the hope still lived of concentrating the education of the new generations in the hands of the state, the government was not only unconcerned about supporting the authority of the “elders”, and, in particular of the mother and father, but on the contrary tried its best to separate the children from the family, in order thus to protect them from the traditions of a stagnant mode of life. Only a little while ago, in the course of the first five-year plan, the schools and the Communist Youth were using children for the exposure, shaming and in general “re-educating” of their drunken fathers or religious mothers with what success is another question. At any rate, this method meant a shaking of parental authority to its very foundations. In this not unimportant sphere too, a sharp turn has now been made. Along with the seventh, the fifth commandment is also fully restored to its rights as yet, to be sure, without any references to God. But the French schools also get along without this supplement, and that does not prevent them from successfully inculcating conservatism and routine.

Concern for the authority of the older generation, by the way, has already led to a change of policy in the matter of religion. The denial of God, his assistance and his miracles, was the sharpest wedge of all those which the revolutionary power drove between children and parents. Outstripping the development of culture, serious propaganda and scientific education, the struggle with the churches, under the leadership of people of the type of Yaroslavsky, often degenerated into buffoonery and mischief. The storming of heaven, like the storming of the family, is now brought to a stop. The bureaucracy, concerned about their reputation for respectability, have ordered the young “godless” to surrender their fighting armor and sit down to their books. In relation to religion, there is gradually being established a regime of ironical neutrality. But that is only the first stage. It would not be difficult to predict the second and third, if the course of events depended only upon those in authority.

The hypocrisy of prevailing opinion develops everywhere and always as the square, or cube, of the social contradictions. Such approximately is the historic law of ideology translated into the language of mathematics. Socialism, if it is worthy of the name, means human relations without greed, friendship without envy and intrigue, love without base calculation. The official doctrine declares these ideal norms already realized – and with more insistence the louder the reality protests against such declarations. “On a basis of real equality between men and women,” says, for example, the new program of the Communist Youth, adopted in April 1986, “a new family is coming into being, the flourishing of which will be a concern of the Soviet state.” An official commentary supplements the program: “Our youth in the choice of a life-friend – wife or husband – know only one motive, one impulse: love. The bourgeois marriage of pecuniary convenience does not exist for our growing generation.” (Pravda, April 4, 1936.) So far as concerns the rank-and-file workingman and woman, this is more or less true. But “marriage for money” is comparatively little known also to the workers of capitalist countries. Things are quite different in the middle and upper strata. New social groupings automatically place their stamp upon personal relations. The vices which power and money create in sex relations are flourishing as luxuriously in the ranks of the Soviet bureaucracy as though it had set itself the goal of outdoing in this respect the Western bourgeoisie.

In complete contradiction to the just quoted assertion of Pravda, “marriage for convenience,” as the Soviet press itself in moments of accidental or unavoidable frankness confesses, is now fully resurrected. Qualifications, wages, employment, number of chevrons on the military uniform, are acquiring more and more significance, for with them are bound up questions of shoes, and fur coats, and apartments, and bathrooms, and – the ultimate dream – automobiles. The mere struggle for a room unites and divorces no small number of couples every year in Moscow. The question of relatives has acquired exceptional significance. It is useful to have as a father-in-law a military commander or an influential communist, as a mother-in-law the sister of a high dignitary. Can we wonder at this? Could it be otherwise?

One of the very dramatic chapters in the great book of the Soviets will be the tale of the disintegration and breaking up of those Soviet families where the husband as a party member, trade unionist, military commander or administrator, grew and developed and acquired new tastes in life, and the wife, crushed by the family, remained on the old level. The road of the two generations of the Soviet bureaucracy is sown thick with the tragedies of wives rejected and left behind. The same phenomenon is now to be observed in the new generation. The greatest of all crudities and cruelties are to be met perhaps in the very heights of the bureaucracy, where a very large percentage are parvenus of little culture, who consider that everything i8 permitted to them. Archives and memoirs will some day expose downright crimes in relation to wives, and to women in genera], on the part of those evangelists of family morals and the compulsory “joys of motherhood,” who are, owing to their position, immune from prosecution.

No, the Soviet woman is not yet free. Complete equality before the law has so far given infinitely more to the women of the upper strata, representatives of bureaucratic, technical, pedagogical and, in general, intellectual work, than to the working women and yet more the peasant women. So long as society is incapable of taking upon itself the material concern for the family, the mother can successfully fulfill a social function only on condition that she has in her service a white slave: nurse, servant, cook, etc. Out of the 40,000,000 families which constitute the population of the Soviet Union, 5 per cent, or maybe 10, build their “hearthstone” directly or indirectly upon the labor of domestic slaves. An accurate census of Soviet servants would have as much significance for the socialistic appraisal of the position of women in the Soviet Union as the whole Soviet law code, no matter how progressive it might be. But for this very reason the Soviet statistics hide servants under the name of “working woman” or “and others”! The situation of the mother of the family who is an esteemed communist, has a cook, a telephone for giving orders to the stores, an automobile for errands, etc., has little in common with the situation of the working woman who is compelled to run to the shops, prepare dinner herself, and carry her children on foot from the kindergarten – if, indeed, a kindergarten is available. No socialist labels can conceal this social contrast, which is no less striking than the contrast between the bourgeois lady and the proletarian woman in any country of the West.

The genuinely socialist family, from which society will remove the daily vexation of unbearable and humiliating cares, will have no need of any regimentation, and the very idea of laws about abortion and divorce will sound no better within its walls than the recollection of houses of prostitution or human sacrifices. The October legislation took a bold step in the direction of such a family. Economic and cultural backwardness has produced a cruel reaction. The Thermidorian legislation is beating a retreat to the bourgeois models, covering its retreat with false speeches about the sacredness of the “new” family. On this question, too, socialist bankruptcy covers itself with hypocritical respectability.

There are sincere observers who are, especially upon the question of children, shaken by the contrast here between high principles and ugly reality. The mere fact of the furious criminal measures that have been adopted against homeless children is enough to suggest that the socialist legislation in defense of women and children is nothing but crass hypocrisy. There are observers of an opposite kind who are deceived by the broadness and magnanimity of those ideas that have been dressed up in the form of laws and administrative institutions. When they see destitute mothers, prostitutes and homeless children, these optimists tell themselves that a further growth of material wealth will gradually fill the socialist laws with flesh and blood. It is not easy to decide which of these two modes of approach is more mistaken and more harmful. Only people stricken with historical blindness can fail to see the broadness and boldness of the social plan, the significance of the first stages of its development, and the immense possibilities opened by it. But on the other hand, it is impossible not to be indignant at the passive and essentially indifferent optimism of those who shut their eyes to the growth of social contradictions, and comfort themselves with gazing into a future, the key to which they respectfully propose to leave in the hands of the bureaucracy. As though the equality of rights of women and men were not already converted into an equality of deprivation of rights by that same bureaucracy ! And as though in some book of wisdom it were firmly promised that the Soviet bureaucracy will not introduce a new oppression in place of liberty.

How man enslaved woman, how the exploiter subjected them both, how the toilers have attempted at the price of blood to free themselves from slavery and have only exchanged one chain for another – history tells us much about all this. In essence, it tells us nothing else. But how in reality to free the child, the woman and the human being? For that we have as yet no reliable models. All past historical experience, wholly negative, demands of the toilers at least and first of all an implacable distrust of all privileged and uncontrolled guardians.

Trotsky on “Worshipers of the Accomplished Fact”

[Originally titled “The ‘Friends’ of the Soviet Union” which was an appendix to the 1936 Revolution Betrayed. Copied from http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch12.htm#ch12-1]

The “Friends” of the Soviet Union

For the first time a powerful government provides a stimulus abroad not to the respectable right, but to the left and extreme left press. The sympathies of the popular masses for the great revolution are being very skillfully canalized and sluiced into the mill of the Soviet bureaucracy. The “sympathizing” Western press is imperceptibly losing the right to publish anything which might aggrieve the ruling stratum of the Soviet Union. Books undesirable to the Kremlin are maliciously unmentioned. Noisy and mediocre apologists are published in many languages. We have avoided quoting throughout this work the specific productions of of the official “friends”, preferring the crude originals to the stylized foreign paraphrases. However, the literature of the “friends”, including that of the Communist International, the most crass and vulgar part of it, presents in cubic metres an impressive magnitude, and plays not the last role in politics. We must devote a few concluding pages to it.

At present the chief contribution to the treasury of thought is declared to be the Webbs’ book, Soviet Communism. Instead of relating what has been achieved and in what direction the achieved is developing, the authors expound for twelve hundred pages what is contemplated, indicated in the bureaus, or expounded in the laws. Their conclusion is: When the projects, plans and laws are carried out, then communism will be realized in the Soviet Union. Such is the content of this depressing book, which rehashes the reports of Moscow bureaus and the anniversary articles of the Moscow press.

Friendship for the Soviet bureaucracy is not friendship for the proletarian revolution, but, on the contrary, insurance against it. The Webbs are, to be sure, ready to acknowledge that the communist system will sometime or other spread to to the rest of the world.

“But how, when, where, with what modifications, and whether through violent revolution, or by peaceful penetration, or even by conscious imitation, are questions we cannot answer.”

This diplomatic refusal to answer – or, in reality, this unequivocal answer – is in the highest degree characteristic of the “friends”, and tells the actual price of their friendship. If everybody had thus answered the question of revolution before 1917, when it was infinitely harder to answer, there would have been no Soviet state in the world, and the British “friends” would have had to expand their fund of friendly emotion upon other objects.

The Webbs speak as of something which goes without saying about the vanity of hoping for a European revolution in the near future, and they gather from that a comforting proof of the correctness of the theory of socialism in one country. With the authority of people for whom the October Revolution was a complete, and moreover an unpleasant, surprise, they give us lessons in the necessity of building a socialist society within the limits of the Soviet Union in the absence of other perspectives. It is difficult to refrain from an impolite movement of the shoulders! In reality, our dispute with the Webbs is not as to the necessity of building factories in the SOviet Union and employing mineral fertilizers on the collective farms, but as to whether it is necessary to prepare a revolution in Great Britain and how it shall be done. Upon that question the learned sociologues answer: “We do not know.” They consider the very question, of course, in conflict with “science.”

Lenin was passionately hostile to the conservative bourgeois who imagines himself a socialist, and, in particular, to the British Fabians. By the biographical glossary attached to his Works”, it is not difficult to find out that his attitude to the Webbs throughout his whole active life remained one of unaltered fierce hostility. In 1907 he first wrote of the Webbs as “obtuse eulogists of English philistinism”, who try to represent Chartism, the revolutionary epoch of the English labor movement, as mere childishness.” Without Chartism, however, there would have been no Paris Commune. Without both, there would have been no October revolution. The Webbs found in the Soviet Union only an administrative mechanism and a bureaucratic plan. They found neither Chartism nor Communism nor the October revolution. A revolution remains for them today, as before, an alien and hostile matter, if not indeed “mere childishness.”

In his polemics against opportunists, Lenin did not trouble himself, as is well known, with the manners of the salon. But his abusive epithets (“lackeys of the bourgeoisie”, “traitors”, “boot-lick souls”) expressed during many years a carefully weighed appraisal of the Webbs and the evangels of Fabianism – that is, of traditional respectability and worship for what exists. There can be no talk of any sudden change in the views of the Webbs during recent years. These same people who during the war support their bourgeoisie, and who accepted later at the hands of the King the title of Lord Passfield, have renounced nothing, and changed not at all, in adhering to Communism in a single, and moreover a foreign, country. Sidney Webb was Colonial Minister – that is, chief jailkeeper of British imperialism – in the very period of his life when he was drawing near to the Soviet bureaucracy, receiving material from its bureaus, and on that basis working upon this two-volume compilation.

As late as 1923, the Webbs saw no great difference between Bolshevism and Tzarism (see, for example, The Decay of Capitalist Civilization, 1923). Now, however, they have fully reorganized the “democracy” of the Stalin regime. It is needless to seek any contradiction here. The Fabians were indignant when the revolutionary proletariat withdrew freedom of activity from “educated” society, but they think it quite in the order of things when a bureaucracy withdraws freedom of activity from the proletariat. Has not this always been the function of the laborite’s workers’ bureaucracy? The Webbs swear, for example, that criticism in the Soviet Union is completely free. A sense of humor is not to be expected of these people. They refer with complete seriousness to that notorious “self-criticism” which is enacted as a part of one’s official duties, and the direction of which, as well as its limits, can always be accurately foretold.

Naïveté? Neither Engels nor Lenin considered Sidney Webb naive. Respectability rather. After all, it is a question of an established regime and of hospitable hosts. The Webbs are extremely disapproving in their attitude to a Marxian criticism of what exists. They consider themselves called to preserve the heritage of the October revolution from the Left Opposition. For the sake of completeness we observe that in its day the Labor Government in which Lord Passfield (Sidney Webb) held a portfolio refused the author of this work a visa to enter Great Britain. Thus Sidney Webb, who in those very days was working on his book upon the Soviet Union, is theoretically defending the Soviet Union from being undermined, but practically he is defending the Empire of His Majesty. In justice be it said that in both cases he remains true to himself.

* * *

For many of the petty bourgeoisie who master neither pen nor brush, an officially registered “friendship” for the Soviet Union is a kind of certificate of higher spiritual interests. Membership in Freemason lodges or pacifist clubs has much in common with membership in the society of “Friends of the Soviet Union”, for it makes it possible to live two lives at once: an everyday life in a circle of commonplace interests, and a holiday life evaluating to the soul. From time to time the “friends” visit Moscow. They note down in their memory tractors, creches, Pioneers, parades, parachute girls – in a word, everything except the new aristocracy. The best of them close their eyes to this out of a feeling of hostility toward capitalist reaction. Andre Gide frankly acknowledges this:

“The stupid and dishonest attack against the Soviet Union has brought it about that we now defend it with a certain obstinacy.”

But the stupidity and dishonesty of one’s enemies is no justification for one’s own blindness. The working masses, at any rate, have need of clearsighted friends.

The epidemic sympathy of bourgeois radicals and socialist bourgeois for the ruling stratum of the Soviet Union has causes that are not unimportant. In the circle of professional politicians, notwithstanding all differences of program, there is always a predominance of those friendly to such “progress” as is already achieved or can easily be achieved. There are incomparably more reformers in the world than revolutionists, more accommodationists than irreconciables. Only in exceptional historic periods, when the masses come into movement, do the revolutionists emerge from their isolation, and the reformers become more like fish out of water.

In the milieu of the present Soviet bureaucracy, there is not a person who did not, prior to April 1917, and even considerably later, regard the idea of a proletarian dictatorship in Russia as fantastic. (At that time this “fantasy” was called … Trotskyism.) The older generation of the foreign “friends” for decades regarded as Realpolitiker to Russian Mensheviks, who stood for a “people’s front” with the liberals and rejected the idea of dictatorship as arrant madness. To recognize a dictatorship when it is already achieved and even bureaucratically befouled – that is a different matter. That is a matter exactly to the minds of these “friends.” They now not only pay their respects to the Soviet state, but even defined it against its enemies – not so much, to be sure, against those who yearn for the past, as against those who are preparing the future. Where these “friends” are active preparing, as in the case of the French, Belgian, English and other reformists, it is convenient to them to conceal their solidarity with the bourgeoisie under a concern for the defense of the Soviet Union. Where, on the other hand, they have unwillingly become defeatists, as in the case of the German and Austrian social patriots of yesterday, they hope that the alliance of France with the Soviet Union may help them settle with Hitler or Schussnigg. Leon Blum, who was an enemy of Bolshevism in its heroic epoch, and opened the pages of Le Populaire for the express purpose of publicly baiting the October revolution, would now not print a line exposing the real crimes of the Soviet bureaucracy. Just as the Biblical Moses, thirsting to see the face of Jehovah, was permitted to make his bow only to the rearward parts of the divine anatomy, so the honorable reformists, worshipers of the accomplished fact, are capable of knowing and acknowledging in a revolution only its meaty bureaucratic posterior.

The present communist “leaders” belong in essence to the same type. After a long series of monkey jumps and grimaces, they have suddenly discovered the enormous advantages of opportunism, and have seized upon it with the freshness proper to that ignorance which has always distinguished them. Their slavish and not always disinterested kowtowing to the upper circles in the Kremlin alone renders them absolutely incapable of revolutionary initiative. They answer critical arguments no otherwise than with snarling and barking; and, moreover, under the whip of the boss they wag their tails. This most unattractive aggregation, which in the hour of danger will scatter to the four winds, considers us flagrant “counterrevolutionists.” What of it? History, in spite of its austere character, cannot get along without an occassional farce.

The more honest or open-eyed of the “friends”, at least when speaking tete-a-tete, concede that there is a spot on the Soviet sun. But substituting a fatalistic for a dialectic analysis, they console themselves with the thought that “a certain” bureaucratic degeneration in the given conditions was historically inevitable. Even so! The resistance to this degeneration also has not fallen from the sky. A necessity has two ends: the reactionary and the progressive. History teaches that persons and parties which drag at the opposite ends of a necessity turn out in the long run on opposite sides of the barricade.

The final argument of the “friends” is that reactionaries will seize upon any criticism of the Soviet regime. That is indubitable! We may assume that they will try to get something for themselves out of the present book. When was it ever otherwise? The Communist Manifesto spoke scornfully of the fact that the feudal reaction tried to use against liberalism the arrows of socialist criticism. That did not prevent revolutionary socialism from following its road. It will not prevent us either. The press of the Communist International, it is true, goes so far as to assert that our criticism is preparing military intervention against the Soviets. This obviously means that the capitalist governments, learning from our works of the degeneration of the Soviet bureaucracy, will immediately equip a punitive expedition to avenge the trampled principles of October! The polemists of the Communist International are not armed with rapiers but wagon tongues, or some still less nimble instrument. In reality a Marxist criticism, which calls things by their real names, can only increase the conservative credit of the Soviet diplomacy in the eyes of the bourgeoisie.

It is otherwise with the working class and its sincere champions among the intelligentsia. Here our work will cause doubts and evoke distrust – not of revolutionaries, but of its usurpers. But that is the very goal we have set ourselves. The motor force of progress is truth and not lies.

The Soviet Thermidor

by Leon Trotsky

[Chapter 5 of “The Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and Where is it Going?” (1936). Copied fromhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/index.htm ]

1. Why Stalin Triumphed

The historians of the Soviet Union cannot fail to conclude that the policy of the ruling bureaucracy upon great questions has been a series of contradictory zigzags. The attempt to explain or justify them “by changing circumstances” obviously won’t hold water. To guide means at least in some degree to exercise foresight. The Stalin faction have not in the slightest degree foreseen the inevitable results of the development; they have been caught napping every time. They have reacted with mere administrative reflexes. The theory of each successive turn has been created after the fact, and with small regard for what they were teaching yesterday. On the basis of the same irrefutable facts and documents, the historian will be compelled to conclude that the so-called “Left Opposition” offered an immeasurably more correct analysis of the processes taking place in the country, and far more truly foresaw their further development.

This assertion is contradicted at first glance by the simple fact that the fiction which could not see ahead was steadily victorious, while the more penetrating group suffered defeat after defeat. That kind of objection, which comes automatically to mind, is convincing, however, only for those who think rationalistically, and see in politics a logical argument or a chess match. A political struggle is in its essence a struggle of interests and forces, not of arguments. The quality of the leadership is, of course, far from a matter of indifference for the outcome of the conflict, but it is not the only factor, and in the last analysis is not decisive. Each of the struggling camps moreover demands leaders in its own image.

The February revolution raised Kerensky and Tsereteli to power, not because they were “cleverer” or “more astute” than the ruling tzarist clique, but because they represented, at least temporarily, the revolutionary masses of the people in their revolt against the old regime. Kerensky was able to drive Lenin underground and imprison other Bolshevik leaders, not because he excelled them in personal qualifications, but because the majority of the workers and soldiers in those days were still following the patriotic petty bourgeoisie. The personal “superiority” of Kerensky, if it is suitable to employ such a word in this connection, consisted in the fact that he did not see farther than the overwhelming majority. The Bolsheviks in their turn conquered the petty bourgeois democrats, not through the personal superiority of their leaders, but through a new correlation of social forces. The proletariat had succeeded at last in leading the discontented peasantry against the bourgeoisie.

The consecutive stages of the great French Revolution, during its rise and fall alike, demonstrate no less convincingly that the strength of the “leaders” and “heroes” that replaced each other consisted primarily in their correspondence to the character of those classes and strata which supported them. Only this correspondence, and not any irrelevant superiorities whatever, permitted each of them to place the impress of his personality upon a certain historic period. In the successive supremacy of Mirabeau, Brissot, Robespierre, Barras and Bonaparte, there is an obedience to objective law incomparably more effective than the special traits of the historic protagonists themselves.

It is sufficiently well known that every revolution up to this time has been followed by a reaction, or even a counterrevolution. This, to be sure, has never thrown the nation all the way back to its starting point, but it has always taken from the people the lion’s share of their conquests. The victims of the first revolutionary wave have been, as a general rule, those pioneers, initiators, and instigators who stood at the head of the masses in the period of the revolutionary offensive. In their stead people of the second line, in league with the former enemies of the revolution, have been advanced to the front. Beneath this dramatic duel of “coryphées” on the open political scene, shifts have taken place in the relations between classes, and, no less important, profound changes in the psychology of the recently revolutionary masses.

Answering the bewildered questions of many comrades as to what has become of the activity of the Bolshevik party and the working class – where is its revolutionary initiative, its spirit of self-sacrifice and plebian pride – why, in place of all this, has appeared so much vileness, cowardice, pusillanimity and careerism – Rakovsky referred to the life story of the French revolution of the 18th century, and offered the example of Babuef, who on emerging from the Abbaye prison likewise wondered what had become of the heroic people of the Parisian suburbs. A revolution of the heroic people of the Parisian suburbs. A revolution is a mighty devourer of human energy, both individual and collective. The nerves give way. Consciousness is shaken and characters are worn out. Events unfold too swiftly for the flow of fresh forces to replace the loss. Hunger, unemployment, the death of the revolutionary cadres, the removal of the masses from administration, all this led to such a physical and moral impoverishment of the Parisian suburbs that they required three decades before they were ready for a new insurrection.

The axiomatic assertions of the Soviet literature, to the effect that the laws of bourgeois revolutions are “inapplicable” to a proletarian revolution, have no scientific content whatever. The proletarian character of the October revolution was determined by the world situation and by a special correlation of internal forces. But the classes themselves were formed in the barbarous circumstances of tzarism and backward capitalism, and were anything but made to order for the demands of a socialist revolution. The exact opposite is true. It is for the very reason that a proletariat still backward in many respects achieved in the space of a few months the unprecedented leap from a semi-feudal monarchy to a socialist dictatorship, that the reaction in its ranks was inevitable. This reaction has developed in a series of consecutive waves. External conditions and events have vied with each other in nourishing it. Intervention followed intervention. The revolution got no direct help from the west. Instead of the expected prosperity of the country an ominous destitution reigned for long. Moreover, the outstanding representatives of the working class either died in the civil war, or rose a few steps higher and broke away from the masses. And thus after an unexampled tension of forces, hopes and illusions, there came a long period of weariness, decline and sheer disappointment in the results of the revolution. The ebb of the “plebian pride” made room for a flood of pusillanimity and careerism. The new commanding caste rose to its place upon this wave.

The demobilization of the Red Army of five million played no small role in the formation of the bureaucracy. The victorious commanders assumed leading posts in the local Soviets, in economy, in education, and they persistently introduced everywhere that regime which had ensured success in the civil war. Thus on all sides the masses were pushed away gradually from actual participation in the leadership of the country.

The reaction within the proletariat caused an extraordinary flush of hope and confidence in the petty bourgeois strata of town and country, aroused as they were to new life by the NEP, and growing bolder and bolder. The young bureaucracy, which had arisen at first as an agent of the proletariat, began ow to feel itself a court of arbitration between classes. Its independence increased from mouth to mouth.

The international situation was pushing with mighty forces in the same direction. The Soviet bureaucracy became more self-confident, the heavier blows dealt to the working class. Between these two facts there was not only a chronological, but a causal connection, and one which worked in two directions. The leaders of the bureaucracy promoted the proletarian defeats; the defeats promoted the rise of the bureaucracy. The crushing of the Bulgarian insurrection in 1924, the treacherous liquidation of the General Strike in England and the unworthy conduct of the Polish workers’ party at the installation of Pilsudski in 1926, the terrible massacre of the Chinese revolution in 1927, and, finally, the still more ominous recent defeats in Germany and Austria – these are the historic catastrophes which killed the faith of the Soviet masses in world revolution, and permitted the bureaucracy to rise higher and higher as the sole light of salvation.

As to the causes of the defeat of the world proletariat during the last thirteen years, the author must refer to his other works, where he has tried to expose the ruinous part played by the leadership in the Kremlin, isolated from the masses and profoundly conservative as it is, in the revolutionary movement of all countries. Here we are concerned primarily with the irrefutable and instructive fact that the continual defeats of the revolution in Europe and Asia, while weakening the international position of the Soviet Union, have vastly strengthened the Soviet bureaucracy. Two dates are especially significant in this historic series. In the second half of 1923, the attention of the Soviet workers was passionately fixed upon Germany, where the proletariat, it seemed, had stretched out its hand to power. The panicky retreat of the German Communist Party was the heaviest possible disappointment to the working masses of the Soviet Union. The Soviet bureaucracy straightway opened a campaign against the theory of “permanent revolution”, and dealt the Left Opposition its first cruel blow. During the years 1926 and 1927 the population of the Soviet Union experienced a new tide of hope. All eyes were now directed to the East where the drama of the Chinese revolution was unfolding. The Left Opposition had recovered from the previous blows and was recruiting a phalanx of new adherents. At the end of 1927 the Chinese revolution was massacred by the hangman, Chiang Kai-shek, into whose hands the Communist International had literally betrayed the Chinese workers and peasants. A cold wave of disappointment swept over the masses of the Soviet Union. After an unbridled baiting in the press and at meetings, the bureaucracy finally, in 1928, ventured upon mass arrests among the Left Opposition.

To be sure, tens of thousands of revolutionary fighters gathered around the banner of the Bolshevik-Leninists. The advanced workers were indubitably sympathetic to the Opposition, but that sympathy remained passive. The masses lacked faith that the situation could be seriously changed by a new struggle. Meantime the bureaucracy asserted:

“For the sake of an international revolution, the Opposition proposes to drag us into a revolutionary war. Enough of shake-ups! We have earned the right to rest. We will build the socialist society at home. Rely upon us, your leaders!”

This gospel of repose firmly consolidated the apparatchiki and the military and state officials and indubitably found an echo among the weary workers, and still more the peasant masses. Can it be, they asked themselves, that the Opposition is actually ready to sacrifice the interests of the Soviet Union for the idea of “permanent revolution”? In reality, the struggle had been about the life interests of the Soviet state. The false policy of the International in Germany resulted ten years later in the victory of Hitler – that is, in a threatening war danger from the West. And the no less false policy in China reinforced Japanese imperialism and brought very much nearer the danger in the East. But periods of reaction are characterized above all by a lack of courageous thinking.

The Opposition was isolated. The bureaucracy struck while the iron was hot, exploiting the bewilderment and passivity of the workers, setting their more backward strata against the advanced, and relying more and more boldly upon the kulak and the petty bourgeois ally in general. In the course of a few years, the bureaucracy thus shattered the revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat.

It would be naive to imagine that Stalin, previously unknown to the masses, suddenly issued from the wings full armed with a complete strategical plan. No indeed. Before he felt out his own course, the bureaucracy felt out Stalin himself. He brought it all the necessary guarantees: the prestige of an old Bolshevik, a strong character, narrow vision, and close bonds with the political machine as the sole source of his influence. The success which fell upon him was a surprise at first to Stalin himself. It was the friendly welcome of the new ruling group, trying to free itself from the old principles and from the control of the masses, and having need of a reliable arbiter in its inner affairs. A secondary figure before the masses and in the events of the revolution, Stalin revealed himself as the indubitable leader of the Thermidorian bureaucracy, as first in its midst.

The new ruling caste soon revealed soon revealed its own ideas, feelings and, more important, its interests. The overwhelming majority of the older generation of the present bureaucracy had stood on the other side of the barricades during the October revolution. (Take, for example, the Soviet ambassadors only: Troyanovsky, Maisky, Potemkin, Suritz, Khinchuk, etc.) Or at best they had stood aside from the struggle. Those of the present bureaucrats who were in the Bolshevik camp in the October dys played in the majority of cases no considerable role. As for the young bureaucrats, they have been chosen and educated by the elders, frequently from among their own offspring. These people could not have achieved the October revolution, but they were perfectly suited to exploit it.

Personal incidents in the interval between these two historic chapters were not, of course, without influence. Thus the sickness and death of Lenin undoubtedly hastened the denouement. Had Lenin lived longer, the pressure of the bureaucratic power would have developed, at least during the first years, more slowly. But as early as 1926 Krupskaya said, of Left Oppositionists: “If Ilych were alive, he would probably already be in prison.” The fears and alarming prophecies of Lenin himself were then still fresh in her memory, and she cherished no illusions as to his personal omnipotence against opposing historic winds and currents.

The bureaucracy conquered something more than the Left Opposition. It conquered the Bolshevik party. It defeated the program of Lenin, who had seen the chief danger in the conversion of the organs of the state “from servants of society to lords over society.” It defeated all these enemies, the Opposition, the party and Lenin, not with ideas and arguments, but with its own social weight. The leaden rump of bureaucracy outweighed the head of the revolution. That is the secret of the Soviet’s Thermidor.

2. The Degeneration of the Bolshevik Party

The Bolshevik party prepared and insured the October victory. It also created the Soviet state, supplying it with a sturdy skeleton. The degeneration of the party became both cause and consequence of the bureaucratization of the state. It is necessary to show at at least briefly how this happened.

The inner regime of the Bolshevik party was characterized by the method of democratic centralism. The combination of these two concepts, democracy and centralism, is not in the least contradictory. The party took watchful care not only that its boundaries should always be strictly defined, but also that all those who entered these boundaries should enjoy the actual right to define the direction of the party policy. Freedom of criticism and intellectual struggle was an irrevocable content of the party democracy. The present doctrine that Bolshevism does not tolerate factions is a myth of epoch decline. In reality the history of Bolshevism is a history of the struggle of factions. And, indeed, how could a genuinely revolutionary organization, setting itself the task of overthrowing the world and uniting under its banner the most audacious iconoclasts, fighters and insurgents, live and develop without intellectual conflicts, without groupings and temporary factional formations? The farsightedness of the Bolshevik leadership often made it possible to soften conflicts and shorten the duration of factional struggle, but no more than that. The Central Committee relied upon this seething democratic support. From this it derived the audacity to make decisions and give orders. The obvious correctness of the leadership at all critical stages gave it that high authority which is the priceless moral capital of centralism.

The regime of the Bolshevik party, especially before it came to power, stood thus in complete contradiction to the regime of the present sections of the Communist International, with their “leaders” appointed from above, making complete changes of policy at a word of command, with their uncontrolled apparatus, haughty in its attitude to the rank and file, servile in its attitude to the Kremlin. But in the first years after the conquest of power also, even when the administrative rust was already visible on the party, every Bolshevik, not excluding Stalin, would have denounced as a malicious slanderer anyone who should have shown him on a screen the image of the party ten or fifteen years later.

The very center of Lenin’s attention and that of his colleagues was occupied by a continual concern to protect the Bolshevik ranks from the vices of those in power. However, the extraordinary closeness and at times actual merging of the party with the state apparatus had already in those first years done indubitable harm to the freedom and elasticity of the party regime. Democracy had been narrowed in proportion as difficulties increased. In the beginning, the party had wished and hoped to preserve freedom of political struggle within the framework of the Soviets. The civil war introduced stern amendments into this calculation. The opposition parties were forbidden one after the other. This measure, obviously in conflict with the spirit of Soviet democracy, the leaders of Bolshevism regarded not as a principle, but as an episodic act of self-defense.

The swift growth of the ruling party, with the novelty and immensity of its tasks, inevitably gave rise to inner disagreements. The underground oppositional currents in the country exerted a pressure through various channels upon the sole legal political organization, increasing the acuteness of the factional struggle. At the moment of completion of the civil war, this struggle took such sharp forms as to threaten to unsettle the state power. In March 1921, in the days of the Kronstadt revolt, which attracted into its ranks no small number of Bolsheviks, the 10th Congress of the party thought it necessary to resort to a prohibition of factions – that is, to transfer the political regime prevailing in the state to the inner life of the ruling party. This forbidding of factions was again regarded as an exceptional measure to be abandoned at the first serious improvement in the situation. At the same time, the Central Committee was extremely cautious in applying the new law, concerning itself most of all lest it lead to a strangling of the inner life of the party.

However, what was in its original design merely a necessary concession to a difficult situation, proved perfectly suited to the taste of the bureaucracy, which had then begun to approach the inner life of the party exclusively from the viewpoint of convenience in administration. Already in 1922, during a brief improvement in his health, Lenin, horrified at the threatening growth of bureaucratism, was preparing a struggle against the faction of Stalin, which had made itself the axis of the party machine as a first step toward capturing the machinery of state. A second stroke and then death prevented him from measuring forces with this internal reaction.

The entire effort of Stalin, with whom at that time Zinoviev and Kamenev were working hand in hand, was thenceforth directed to freeing the party machine from the control of the rank-and-file members of the party. In this struggle for “stability” of the Central Committee, Stalin proved the most consistent and reliable among his colleagues. He had no need to tear himself away from international problems; he had never been concerned with them. The petty bourgeois outlook of the new ruling stratum was his own outlook. He profoundly believed that the task of creating socialism was national and administrative in its nature. He looked upon the Communist International as a necessary evil would should be used so far as possible for the purposes of foreign policy. His own party kept a value in his eyes merely as a submissive support for the machine.

Together with the theory of socialism in one country, there was put into circulation by the bureaucracy a theory that in Bolshevism the Central Committee is everything and the party nothing. This second theory was in any case realized with more success than the first. Availing itself of the death of Lenin, the ruling group announced a “Leninist levy.” The gates of the party, always carefully guarded, were now thrown wide open. Workers, clerks, petty officials, flocked through in crowds. The political aim of this maneuver was to dissolve the revolutionary vanguard in raw human material, without experience, without independence, and yet with the old habit of submitting to the authorities. The scheme was successful. By freeing the bureaucracy from the control of the proletarian vanguard, the “Leninist levy” dealt a death blow to the party of Lenin. The machine had won the necessary independence. Democratic centralism gave place to bureaucratic centralism. In the party apparatus itself there now took place a radical reshuffling of personnel from top to bottom. The chief merit of a Bolshevik was declared to be obedience. Under the guise of a struggle with the opposition, there occurred a sweeping replacement of revolutionists with chinovniks. [1]The history of the Bolshevik party became a history of its rapid degeneration.

The political meaning of the developing struggle was darkened for many by the circumstances that the leaders of all three groupings, Left, Center and Right, belonged to one and the same staff in the Kremlin, the Politburo. To superficial minds it seemed to be a mere matter of personal rivalry, a struggle for the “heritage” of Lenin. But in the conditions of iron dictatorship social antagonisms could not show themselves at first except through the institutions of the ruling party. Many Thermidorians emerged in their day from the circle of the Jacobins. Bonaparte himself belonged to that circle in his early years, and subsequently it was from among former Jacobins that the First Consul and Emperor of France selected his most faithful servants. Times change and the Jacobins with them, not excluding the Jacobins of the twentieth century.

Of the Politburo of Lenin’s epoch there now remains only Stalin. Two of its members, Zinoviev and Kamenev, collaborators of Lenin throughout many years as émigrés, are enduring ten-year prison terms for a crime which they did not commit. Three other members, Rykov, Bukharin and Tomsky, are completely removed from the leadership, but as a reward for submission occupy secondary posts. [2]

And, finally, the author of these lines is in exile. The widow of Lenin, Krupskaya, is also under the ban, having proved unable with all her efforts to adjust herself completely to the Thermidor.

The members of the present Politburo occupied secondary posts throughout the history of the Bolshevik party. If anybody in the first years of the revolution had predicted their future elevation, they would have been the first in surprise, and there would have been no false modesty in their surprise. For this very reason, the rule is more stern at present that the Politburo is always right, and in any case that no man can be right against Stalin, who is unable to make mistakes and consequently cannot be right against himself.

Demands for party democracy were through all this time the slogans of all the oppositional groups, as insistent as they were hopeless. The above-mentioned platform of the Left Opposition demanded in 1927 that a special law be written into the Criminal Code “punishing as a serious state crime every direct or indirect persecution of a worker for criticism.” Instead of this, there was introduced into the Criminal Code an article against the Left Opposition itself.

Of party democracy there remained only recollections in the memory of the older generation. And together with it had disappeared the democracy of the soviets, the trade unions, the co-operatives, the cultural and athletic organizations. Above each and every one of them there reigns an unlimited hierarchy of party secretaries. The regime had become “totalitarian” in character several years before this word arrived from Germany.

“By means of demoralizing methods, which convert thinking communists into machines, destroying will, character and human dignity,” wrote Rakovsky in 1928, “the ruling circles have succeeded in converting themselves into an unremovable and inviolate oligarchy, which replaces the class and the party.”

Since these indignant lines were written,the degeneration of the regime has gone immeasurably farther. The GPU has become the decisive factor in the inner life of the party. If Molotov in March 1936 was able to boast to a French journalist that the ruling party no longer contains any factional struggle, it is only because disagreements are now settled by the automatic intervention of the political police. The old Bolshevik party is dead and no force will resurrect it.

* * *

Parallel with the political degeneration of the party, there occurred a moral decay of the uncontrolled apparatus. The word “sovbour” – soviet bourgeois – as applied to a privileged dignitary appeared very early in the workers’ vocabulary. With the transfer to the NEP bourgeois tendencies received a more copious field of action. At the 11th Congress of the party, in March 1922, Lenin gave warning of the danger of a degeneration of the ruling stratum. It has occurred more than once in history, he said, that the conqueror took over the culture of the conquered, when the latter stood on a higher level. The culture of the Russian bourgeoisie and the old bureaucracy was, to be sure, miserable, but alas the new ruling stratum must often take off its hat to that culture. “Four thousand seven hundred responsible communists” in Moscow administer the state machine. “Who is leading whom? I doubt very much whether you can say that the communists are in the lead …” In subsequent congresses, Lenin could not speak. But all his thoughts in the last months of his active life were of warning and arming the workers against the oppression, caprice and decay of the bureaucracy. He, however, saw only the first symptoms of the disease.

Christian Rakovsky, former president of the soviet of People’s Commissars of the Ukraine, and later Soviet Ambassador in London and Paris, sent to his friends in 1928, when already in exile, a brief inquiry into the Soviet bureaucracy, which we have quoted above several times, for it still remains the best that has been written on this subject.

“In the mind of Lenin, and in all our minds,” says Rakovsky, “the task of the party leadership was to protect both the party and the working class from the corrupting action of privilege, place and patronage on the part of those in power, from rapprochement with the relics of the old nobility and burgherdom, from the corrupting influence of the NEP, from the temptation of bourgeois morals and ideologies … We must say frankly, definitely and loudly that the party apparatus has not fulfilled this task, that it has revealed a complete incapacity for its double role of protector and educator. It has failed. It is bankrupt.”

It is true that Rakovsky himself, broken by the bureaucratic repressions, subsequently repudiated his own critical judgments. But the 70-year-old Galileo too, caught in the vise of the Holy Inquisition, found himself compelled to repudiate the system of Copernicus – which did not prevent the earth from continuing to revolve around the sun. We do not believe in the recantation of the 60-year-old Rakovsky, for he himself has more than once made a withering analysis of such recantations. As to his political criticisms, they have found in the facts of the objective development a far more reliable support than in the subjective stout-heartedness of their author.

The conquest of power changes not only the relations of the proletariat to other classes, but also its own inner structure. The wielding of power becomes the speciality of a definite social group, which is the more impatient to solve its own “social problem”, the higher its opinion of the own mission.

“In a proletarian state, where capitalist accumulation is forbidden to the members of the ruling party, the differentiation is at first functional, but afterward becomes social. I do not say it becomes a class differentiation, but a social one …”

Rakovsky further explains:

“The social situation of the communist who has at his disposition an automobile, a good apartment, regular vacations, and receives the party maximum of salary, differs from the situation of the communist who works in the coal mines, where he receives from 50 to 60 rubles a month.”

Counting over the causes of the degeneration of the Jacobins when in power – the chase after wealth, participation in government contracts, supplies, etc., Rakovsky cites a curious remark of Babeuf to the effect that the degeneration of the new ruling stratum was helped along not a little by the former young ladies of the aristocracy toward whom the Jacobins were very friendly. “What are you doing, small-hearted plebians?” cries Babeuf. “Today they are embracing you and tomorrow they will strangle you.” A census of the wives of the ruling stratum in the Soviet Union would show a similar picture. The well-known Soviet journalist, Sosnovsky, pointed out the special role played by the “automobile-harem factor” in forming the morals of the Soviet bureaucracy. It is true that Sosnovsky, too, following Rakovsky, recanted and was returned from Siberia. But that did not improve the morals of the bureaucracy. On the contrary, that very recantation is proof of a progressing demoralization.

The old articles of Sosnovsky, passed about in manuscript from hand to hand, were sprinkled with unforgettable episodes from the life of the new ruling stratum, plainly showing to what vast degree the conquerors have assimilated the morals of the conquered. Not to return, however, to past years – for Sosnovsky finally exchanged his whip for a lyre in 1934 – we will confine ourselves to wholly fresh examples from the Soviet press. And we will not select the abuses and co-called “excesses”, either, but everyday phenomena legalized by official social opinion.

The director of a Moscow factory, a prominent communist, boasts in Pravda of the cultural growth of the enterprise directed by him. “A mechanic telephones: ‘What is your order, sir, check the furnace immediately or wait?’ I answer: ‘Wait.’” [3] The mechanic addresses the director with extreme respect, using the second person plural, while the director answers him in the second person singular. And this disgraceful dialogue, impossible in any cultures capitalist country, is related by the director himself on the pages of Pravda as something entirely normal! The editor does not object because he does not notice it. The readers do not object because they are accustomed to it. We are also not surprised, for at solemn sessions in the Kremlin, the “leaders” and People’s Commissars address in the second person singular directors of factories subordinate to them, presidents of collective farms, shop foremen and working women, especially invited to receive decorations. How can they fail to remember that one of the most popular revolutionary slogans in tzarist Russia was the demand for the abolition of the use of the second person singular by bosses in addressing their subordinates!

These Kremlin dialogues of the authorities with “the people”, astonishing in their lordly ungraciousness, unmistakably testify that, in spite of the October Revolution, the nationalization of the means of production, collectivization, and “the liquidation of the kulaks as a class”, the relations among men, and that at the very heights of the Soviet pyramid, have not only not yet risen to socialism, but in many respects are still lagging behind a cultured capitalism. In recent years enormous backward steps have been taken in this very important sphere. And the source of this revival of genuine Russian barbarism is indubitably the Soviet Thermidor, which has given complete independence nd freedom from control to a bureaucracy possessing little culture, and has given to the masses the well-known gospel of obedience and silence.

We are far from intending to contrast the abstraction of dictatorship with the abstraction of democracy, and weight their merits on the scales of pure reason. Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures. The dictatorship of the Bolshevik party proved one of the most powerful instruments of progress in history. But here too, in the words of the poet, “Reason becomes unreason, kindness a pest.” The prohibition of oppositional parties brought after it the prohibition of factions. The prohibition of factions ended in a prohibition to think otherwise than the infallible leaders. The police-manufactured monolithism of the party resulted in a bureaucratic impunity which has become the sources of all kinds of wantonness and corruption.

3. The Social Roots of Thermidor

We have defined the Soviet Thermidor as a triumph of the bureaucracy over the masses. We have tried to disclose the historic conditions of this triumph. The revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat was in part devoured by the administrative apparatus and gradually demoralized, in part annihilated in the civil war, and in part thrown out and crushed. The tired and disappointed masses were indifferent to what was happening on the summits. These conditions, however, are inadequate to explain why the bureaucracy succeeded in raising itself above society and getting its fate firmly into its own hands. Its own will to this would in any case be inadequate; the arising of a new ruling stratum must have deep social causes.

The victory of the Thermidorians over the Jacobins in the 18th century was also aided by the weariness of the masses and the demoralization of the leading cadres, but beneath these essentially incidental phenomena a deep organic process was taking place. The Jacobins rested upon the lower petty bourgeoisie lifted by the great wave. The revolution of the 18th century, however, corresponding to the course of development of the productive forces, could not but bring the great bourgeoisie to political ascendancy in the long run. The Thermidor was only one of the stages in this inevitable process. What similar social necessity found expression in the Soviet Thermidor? We have tried already in one of the preceding chapters to make a preliminary answer to the question why the gendarme triumphed. We must now prolong out analysis of the conditions of the transition from capitalism to socialism, and the role of the state in this process. Let us again compare theoretic prophecy with reality.

“It is still necessary to suppress the bourgeoisie and its resistance,” wrote Lenin in 1917, speaking of the period which should begin immediately after the conquest of power, “but the organ of suppression here is now the majority of the population, and not the minority as had heretofore always been the case…. In that sense the state is beginning to die away.”

In what does this dying away express itself? Primarily in the fact that “in place of special institutions of a privileged minority (privileged officials, commanders of a standing army), the majority itself can directly carry out” the functions of suppression. Lenin follows this with a statement axiomatic and unanswerable:

“The more universal becomes the very fulfillment of the functions of the state power, the less need is there of this power.”

The annulment of private property in the means of production removes the principal task of the historic state – defense of the proprietary privileges of the minority against the overwhelming majority.

The dying away of the state begins, then, according to Lenin, on the very day after the expropriation of the expropriators – that is, before the new regime has had time to take up its economic and cultural problems. Every success in the solution of these problems mens a further step in the liquidation of the state, its dissolution in the socialist society. The degree of this dissolution is the best index of the depth and efficacy of the socialist structure. We may lay down approximately this sociological theorem: The strength of the compulsion exercised by the masses in a workers’ state is directly proportional to the strength of the exploitive tendencies, or the danger of a restoration of capitalism, and inversely proportional to the strength of the social solidarity and the general loyalty to the new regime. Thus the bureaucracy – that is, the “privileged officials and commanders of the standing army” – represents a special kind of compulsion which the masses cannot or do not wish to exercise, and which, one way or another, is directed against the masses themselves.

If the diplomatic soviets had preserved to this day their original strength and independence, and yet were compelled to resort to repressions and compulsions on the scale of the first years, this circumstance might of itself give rise to serious anxiety. How much greater must be the alarm in view of the fact that the mass soviet have entirely disappeared from the scene, having turned over the function of compulsion to Stalin, Yagoda and company. And what forms of compulsion! First of all we must ask ourselves: What social cause stands behind its policification The importance of this question is obvious. In dependence upon the answer, we must either radically revise out traditional views of the socialist society in general, or as radically reject the official estimates of the Soviet Union.

Let us now take from the latest number of a Moscow newspaper a stereotyped characterization of the present Soviet regime, one of those which are repeated throughout the country from day to day and which school children learn by heart:

“In the Soviet Union the parasitical classes of capitalists, landlords and kulaks are completely liquidated, and thus is forever ended the exploitation of man by man. The whole national economy has become socialistic, and the growing Stakhanov movement is preparing the conditions for a transition from socialism to communism.” (Pravda, April 4, 1936)

The world press of the Communist International, it goes without saying, has no other thing to say on this subject. But if exploitation is “ended forever”, if the country is really now on the road from socialism, that is, the lowest stage of communism, to its higher stage, then there remains nothing for society to do but throw off at last the straitjacket of the state. In place of this – it is hard even to grasp this contrast with the mind! – the Soviet state has acquired a totalitarian-bureaucratic character.

The same fatal contradiction finds illustration in the fate of the party. Here the problem may be formulated approximately thus: Why, from 1917 to 1921, when the old ruling classes were still fighting with weapons in the hands, when they were actively supported by the imperialists of the whole world, when the kulaks in arms were sabotaging the army and food supplies of the country, – why was it possible to dispute openly and fearlessly in the party about the most critical questions of policy? Why now, after the cessation of intervention, after the shattering of the exploiting classes, after the indubitable successes of industrialization, after the collectivization of the overwhelming majority of the peasants, is it impossible to permit the slightest word of criticism of the unremovable leaders? Why is it that any Bolshevik who should demand a calling of the congress of the party in accordance with its constitution would be immediately expelled, any citizen who expressed out loud a doubt of the infallibility of Stalin would be tried and convicted almost as though a participant in a terrorist plot? Whence this terrible, monstrous and unbearable intensity of repression and of the police apparatus?

Theory is not a note which you can present at any moment to reality for payment. If a theory proves mistaken we must revise it or fill out its gaps. We must find out those real social forces which have given rise to the contrast between Soviet reality and the traditional Marxian conception. In any case we must not wander in the dark, repeating ritual phrases, useful for the prestige of the leaders, but which nevertheless slap the living reality in the face. We shall now see a convincing example of this.

In a speech at a session of the Central Executive Committee in January 1936, Molotov, the president of the Council of People’s Commissars, declared:

“The national economy of the country has become socialistic. (applause) In that sense [?] we have solved the problem of the liquidation of classes.” (applause)

However, there still remain from the past “elements in their nature hostile to us,” fragments of the former ruling classes. Moreover, among the collectivized farmers, state employees and sometimes also the workers, spekulantiki[“petty speculators”] are discovered, “grafters in relation to the collective and state wealth, anti-Soviets gossip, etc.” And hence results the necessity of a further reinforcement of the dictatorship. In opposition to Engels, the workers’ state must not “fall asleep”, but on the contrary become more and more vigilant.

The picture drawn by the head of the Soviet government would be reassuring in the highest degree, were it not murderously self-contradictory. Socialism completely reigns in the country: “In that sense” classes are abolished. (If they are abolished in that sense, they they are in every other.) To be sure, the social harmony is broken here and there by fragments and remnants of the past, but it is impossible to think that scattered dreamers of a restoration of capitalism, deprived of power and property, together with “petty speculators” (not even speculators!) and “gossips” are capable of overthrowing the classless society. Everything is getting along, it seems, the very best you can imagine. But what is the use then of the iron dictatorship of the bureaucracy.

Those reactionary dreamers, we must believe, will gradually die out. The “petty speculators” and “gossips” might be disposed of with a laugh by the super-democratic Soviets.

“We are not Utopians,” responded Lenin in 1917 to the bourgeois and reformist theoreticians of the bureaucratic state, and “by no means deny the possibility and inevitability of excesses on the part of individual persons, and likewise the necessity for suppressing such excesses. But … for this there is no need of a special machine, a special apparatus of repression. This will be done by the armed people themselves, with the same simplicity and ease with which any crowd of civilized people even in contemporary society separate a couple of fighters or stop an act of violence against a woman.”

Those words sound as though the author has especially foreseen the remarks of one of his successors at the head of the government. Lenin is taught in the public schools of the Soviet Union, but apparently not in the COuncil of People’s Commissars. Otherwise it would be impossible to explain Molotov’s daring to resort without reflection to the very construction against which Lenin directed his well-sharpened weapons. The flagrant contradictions between the founder and his epigones is before us! Whereas Lenin judged that even the liquidation of the exploiting classes might be accomplished without a bureaucratic apparatus, Molotov, in explaining why after the liquidation of classes the bureaucratic machine has strangled the independence of the people, finds no better pretext than a reference to the “remnants” of the liquidated classes.

To live on these “remnants” becomes, however, rather difficult since, according to the confession of authoritative representatives of the bureaucracy itself, yesterday’s class enemies are being successfully assimilated by the Soviet society. Thus Postyshev, one of the secretaries of the Central Committee of the party, said in April 1936, at a congress of the League of Communist Youth: “Many of the sabotagers … have sincerely repented and joined the ranks of the Soviet people.” In view of the successful carrying out of collectivization, “the children of kulaks are not to be held responsible for their parents.” And yet more: “The kulak himself now hardly believes in the possibility of a return to his former position of exploiter in the village.”

Not without reason did the government annul the limitations connected with social origins! But if Postyshev’s assertion, wholly agreed to by Molotov, makes any sense it is only this: Not only has the bureaucracy become a monstrous anachronism, but state compulsion in general has nothing whatever to do in the land of the Soviets. However, neither Molotov nor Postyshev agrees with that immutable inference. They prefer to hold the power even at the price of self-contradiction.

In reality, too, they cannot reject the power. Or, to translate this into objective language: The present Soviet society cannot get along without a state, nor even – within limits – without a bureaucracy. But the case of this is by no means the pitiful remnants of the past, but the mighty forces and tendencies of the present. The justification for the existence of a Soviet state as an apparatus of compulsion lies in the fact that the present transitional structure is still full of social contradictions, which in the sphere of consumption – most close nd sensitively felt by all – are extremely tense, nd forever threaten to break over into the sphere of production. The triumph of socialism cannot be called either final or irrevocable.

The basis of bureaucratic rule is the poverty of society in objects of consumption, with the resulting struggle of each against all. When there is enough goods in a store, the purchasers can come whenever they want to. When there is little goods, the purchasers are compelled to stand in line. When the lines are very long, it is necessary to appoint a policeman to keep order. Such is the starting point of the power of the Soviet bureaucracy. It “knows” who is to get something and how has to wait.

A raising of the material and cultural level ought, at first glance, to lessen the necessity of privileges, narrow the sphere of application of “bourgeois law”, and thereby undermine the standing ground of its defenders, the bureaucracy. In reality the opposite thing has happened: the growth of the productive forces has been so far accompanied by an extreme development of all forms of inequality, privilege and advantage, and therewith of bureaucratism. That too is not accidental.

In its first period, the Soviet regime was undoubtedly far more equalitarian and less bureaucratic than now. But that was an equality of general poverty. The resources of the country were so scant that there was no opportunity to separate out from the masses of the population any broad privileged strata. At the same time the “equalizing” character of wages, destroying personal interestedness, became a brake upon the development of the productive forces. Soviet economy had to lift itself from its poverty to a somewhat higher level before fat deposits of privilege became possible. The present state of production is still far from guaranteeing all necessities to everybody. But it is already adequate to give significant privileges to a minority, and convert inequality into a whip for the spurring on of the majority. That is the first reason why the growth of production has so far strengthened not the socialist, but the bourgeois features of the state.

But that is not the sole reason. Alongside the economic factor dictating capitalist methods of payment at the present stage, there operates a parallel political factor in the person of the bureaucracy itself. In its very essence it is the planter and protector of inequality. It arose in the beginning as the bourgeois organ of a workers’ state. In establishing and defending the advantages of a minority, it of course draws off the cream for its own use. Nobody who has wealth to distribute ever omits himself. Thus out of a social necessity there has developed an organ which has far outgrown its socially necessary function, and become an independent factor and therewith the source of great danger for the whole social organism.

The social meaning of the Soviet Thermidor now begins to take form before us. The poverty and cultural backwardness of the masses has again become incarnate in the malignant figure of the ruler with a great club in his hand. The deposed and abused bureaucracy, from being a servant of society, has again become its lord. On this road it has attained such a degree of social and moral alienation from the popular masses, that it cannot now permit any control over wither its activities or its income.

The bureaucracy’s seemingly mystic fear of “petty speculators, grafters, and gossips” thus finds a wholly natural explanation. Not yet able to satisfy the elementary needs of the population, the Soviet economy creates and resurrects at every step tendencies to graft and speculation. On the other side, the privileges of the new aristocracy awaken in the masses of the population a tendency to listen to anti-Soviet “gossips” – that is, to anyone who, albeit in a whisper, criticizes the greedy and capricious bosses. It is a question, therefore, not of spectres of the past, not of the remnants of what no longer exists, not, in short, of the snows of yesteryear, but of new, mighty, and continually reborn tendencies to personal accumulation. The first still very meager wave of prosperity in the country, just because of its meagerness, has not weakened, but strengthened, these centrifugal tendencies. On the other hand, there has developed simultaneously a desire of the unprivileged to slap the grasping hands of the new gentry. The social struggle again grows sharp. Such are the sources of the power of the bureaucracy. But from those same sources comes also a threat to its power.

Notes

1. Professional governmental functionaries.

2. TRANSLATOR’S NOTE – Zinoviev and Kamenev were executed in August 1936 for alleged complicity in a “terrible plot” against Stalin; Tomsky committed suicide or was shot in connection with the same case; Rykov was removed from his post in connection with the plot; Bukharin, although suspected, is still at liberty.

3. TRANSLATOR: It is impossible to convey the flavor of this dialogue in English. The second person singular is used either with intimates in token of affection, or with children, servants and animals in token of superiority.