IS RIGHTLY CLAIM that we must maintain positon or intransigence towards ail wings or tne bureaucracy. This is not, however, a very concrete gude Lo C aCHOn Kevo uuonam Mar sis takea intransigent attitude towards the Social Democratic Parties in the West. But we will also engage in united fronts with them. We will not, however, maintain fronts with bourgeois parties. So we have to decide what this intransigence means in Eastern Europe. This is not at all an academic issue in a situation of political crisis in Eastern Europe.
For example, after the invasion of Czechoslovakia there were currents within the Party leadership taking various degrees of opposition to the invasion. None of these currents could be called revolutionary Marxist but we would combine intransigent political criticism with demands for them to join a united movement of mass action against the regime. But for the IS would Inis not amount to a popular iront witn capitals! forces? The Czechoslovak masses had great hopes tha smrkovsky would lead oppositon to une livasion al normalisation When he refused to do so. the mass issues [Britain and overseas "THE PROGRAMME WE NEED' - IMG CONFERENCE DOCUMENT Single copies 75p [including postage], subscriptions £3 for 4 surface mail], £6 for 4 issues
The Fourth International & 'State Capitalism' Political Revolution or Social Revolution?
ALL THE VARIOUS ISSUES discussed in this article are summarised in the two drierent programmatic formulae: political revolution and social revolution. The IS comrades sometimes try to say that the phrase political revolution means that Trotskyists do not see the need lor changes in the functioning or the economy and the social institutions of East European societies. Such a charge is utterly groundless. complete overhaul of the planning institutions in these countries and of just about every social institution that exists from the trade unions to women's magazines is vital.
The term political revolution is not concerned with the purely political arrangements in the society, but is a scientific term that indicates the nature of the enemy which has to be overthrown in the USSR, what that enemy's interests are, and what the key objectives must be in order to defeat that enemy. The meaning of this concept can best be grasped by looking at the way Marxists have understood bourgeois political revolu tions in the capitalist world and then comparing such political revolutions with the political revolution in the East European states.
Political revolutions are a common enough phenomenon in capitalist Western Europe. ¡ney involve the forcible destruction of one political form of the state and its replacement by another form without altering the basic social character of the state. Thus, in 1974 there Was In a political revolution: the forcible overthrow of the Papadopoulos dictatorship and a creation of a new form of bourgeois democratic state. But the ruling class has not changed one iota in Greece. The workers are still brutally exploited there.
Organise a political revolution in an East European Conclusion IN THE 1930s AND 1940s when the nature of the East European states was being passionately debated, there was little real experience of mass struggle against the Soviet bureaucracy upon which to tackle many of the burning political problems of the revolutionary forces in the East. At the same time the debate on the class nature of the USSR was bound up with a crucial • international political issue - - ine sane oake u0 the event of war between the imperialist powers and the USSR. Hence the necessarily fierce form of the general theoretical debate.
Today the position is entirely different. The international workers movement has a great deal of experience of mass struggle against the bureaucracy in Eastern Europe and a whole series of vital political issues have been raised, and are posed today over how 'Bureaucratic Collectivism'.
THE exceptional importance which the Russian discussion has assumed, TITSEEINC Trotskyist movement, and now in the whole world, both in working class and bourgeois public opinion, is due to the absolutely unforeseen development of Russian society since the October kevolution, and to the first-rate position which Russia occupies in world relations -Today. The importance of the Russian Question' in ideological discussions is only a reflection of the historic importance of the October Revolution Hungary 1956 - high school students read new proclamations. to conduct inis struggle. Al ine same ume the question of defence of the Soviet workers state in the event of In these conditions it is the responsibility of all sides would saw londachin hotle the chillinadeanate of view of the concrete political conclusions which now rom ue anieren scones. • use round nie! national has always tried, not without mistakes on occasions, to bind its theoretical conceptions abou the bureaucratised workers states to the political conclusions necessary to carry forward the workers ПОУСПІСИЕ An examination of the relationship between the theories of the IS comrades and the real political problems confronting revolutionary Marxists in Eastern Europe points towards one conclusion: they have been obsessed with making theoretical debating points to try, fruitlessly, to maintain the Marxist respectability and coherence of their general theory. But as a result iney nave produced a set or notons unal coura lead to serious political errors if taken seriously by socialist militants in Eastern Europe.
OLIVER MACDONALD a) The degeneration of the workers state is not the product of conditional factors (isolation of the revolution, the backwardness of the country, interaction between the bureaucratization in Russia and the bureaucratization of the Communist International, etc.), but is inherent either in the nature of Bolshevism (the revolutionary party) or in the proletariat itself, or in a combination of both.
b) The bureaucratic dictatorship in Russia does not constitute a historic 'accident' which will merely prove to be a passing stage on humanity's road to socialism. On the contrary, it is a necessary phase in the historic development of mankind (or its fall into barbarism).
c) The retreat of the working class movement in the interval from 1923 to 1939 is not due to the problem of Armoured personel carriers in the streets of Athens not long before the last coup country and the present social group which oppresses the workers there will disappear. The workers will have their own political leaders in government and because of the nature of the economy it will precisely within such a government that the basic regulation of economic life will have to take place. For there; the basic regulative mechanism of the economy is not the law of value operating on the basis of the competition of private capitals independent of the state machine: it is the planning principle, or, to be more accurate the political principle. The Stalinist bureaucracy has economic power base in the form of private capitalist property to turn to. It will be finished as a political force.
But some may object that the change over in Greece was a very small affair, a conspiracy within the state machine itself, especially the army and among a handful of powerful capitalists — it all went on behind the backs of the masses. But such a small conspiracy will never bring about the political revolution in Eastern Europe.
In 1974 in Greece the political revolution there was combination of the two.
The most finished 'anti-Stalinist' expression of this revisionism has been worked out — under the pressure of imperialism in the United States! - by Burnham in his Managerial Revolution and by Dwight MacDonald (I). The most finished "pro-Stalinist' expression of this TCvisionisill under the pressure or samsm France! - has been supplied by Bettelheim, Martine and Co in the Revue Internationale. (2)
The parallelism of these two revisionist tendencies strikes the eye. There is no room for them 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 looid of this incinient revisionism and make BATTLE OF IDEAS 20 January 1977 3 carried out behind the backs of the masses by conspiracies at the top. But it would be quite wrong to ever conceive or the pontical revolution to overenrov the bureaucratic dictatorship in East Europe as being of the same type as the change in the political form of the Greek bourgeois state. The working class The bourgeoisie is a small and relatively compact force with endless leisure for engaging in politics and with multiple links with the personnel of the state bureaucracy and the army, making conspiracies and coups a favourite form of its activities. The working class is a multi-million strong force permanently engaged in exhausting productive labour and with no such compact relationship to the bureaucratic machinery of the state.
This means that while bourgeois political revolt tions today are par excellence conspiracies within th bowels of the state bureaucracy, the political revoluton in workers states must take the form of the collective political mobilisation of the great masses of the working people.
the Marxist conception of our epoch, and one which carries with it the danger of branching out more anc more into a complete revision of Marxism.
The adherents of the theory of bureaucratic advantage over those who consider the USSR as 'state capitalist" to the exten that they clearly understand the non-capitalist nature of the USSR and are capable of understanding the changes in production and property relations brough about by the capitalist invasion of the USSR and thos effected after their withdrawal. . But, on the other hand, their revision of Marxism does not stop with the Russian question itself.
Not only are they obliged completely to revise th Marxist conception of the development of capitalis society, but. they also question a series of the fundamental concepts of historical materialism. Thi is, of course, their full right. One must only ask them [1] After some years in the revolutionary movement James Burnham advanced the theory of 'Manageria Revolution ПІЛКІЛ Soviet Union and Naz Germany. He winisned. as an extreme non" wit supporter of American imperialism. Dwight Mac Donald was one of his chief supporters in the literar field
4 BATTLE OF IDEAS 20 January 1977 so be more consistent. As Trotsky has already stated and as only the thoroughgoing revisionists (MacDonald, Burnham and Co.) have clearly expressed, the logical outcome of the theory of bureaucratic collectivism is the conception that the proletariat is incapable of fulfilling its historic mission and the rejection of Marxism as utopian.
The term "class" is not anacocenta nonon in Marxist sociology. It is ine basic concept in une application or negation of the whole Marxist conception of history. For this reason, it has well-defined and distinct limits. The application of these delimitations to the bureaucracy leads to the absurd conclusion that the bureaucracy is a 'class" which possesses none of ine charac ensuc trans or omer classes in nistory_ characteristics to the bureaucracy can result only in a justification of its historic role and in a historic condemnation of the proletariat. If the bureaucracy is really a class, it follows that the bureaucratic stage of society's development is a historic necessity and that the proletariat is not yet capable of ruling the world. This was Burnham's conclusion which the adherents of the theory of 'bureaucratic collectivism' in the revolutionary movement have not dared to draw.
They have tried to escape this fundamental contradiction of their position by emphasizing the 'unique' character of the bureaucracy, born of exceptional Kussian condinions. ror tne same reason tney nave pur forward the anti-Marxist theory thar in an epoch of "collective' ownership — as if such an epoch exists outside the epoch of the proletarian revolution! — class domination no longer alters property relations, but alters only the domination of the state. However, the expansion of the bureaucracy beyond the Soviet State Capitalism' The adherents of the theory of the existence of state canitalism' trv on the whole to maintain their views within the framework of the general Marxist conception of our epoch. They maintain in its entirety the Leninist strategy of the proletarian revolution. They count neitner ine revolutionary capacity of the proletariat nor the possibility of building a revolutionary party by relying, first and foremost, on the class struggle and the experience of the workers struggles. Their revisionism appears when, by characerising the USSR as a capitalist country, they must orically considerine present soviet sociery as a sort or uture nicture or canalist society in general. and A Russian 'Fiat' production line must, as much as Burnham, point out the 'statification' tendencies outside Russia. This is based on superficial and formal analogies, which completely distort the understanding of the profound tendencies of contemporary capitalism and of the fundamental overturn constituted by the October Revolution.
These analogies are, in the main, the following:
a) The analogy between the nationalisation of the means of production in the USSR and the tendency toward the statification of the means of production in the capitalist world. frontiers has impelled these theoreticians toward a new revisionist extension of their theory. The Communist parties throughout the world are now considered as nuclei' of a new class. With this definition the whole Marxist definition of class is invalidated.
ror ll is evident tnal ine communist parties and their members do not play any independent role in the process of production and would become a "class" solely on the strength of political privileges. And it is evident that they can obtain these privileges only to the extent that the proletariat proves incapable of overthrowing decaying capitalism. A new stage would open up in the history of mankind, that of bureaucratic collectivism on a continental (or even world) scale, more or less identified with barbarism.
The proponents of this theory have never tried to analyse the laws of the development of this new society and to show through what operation of social contradictions it would ever cease existing. insisting on the 'decay' of the proletariat and its reduction to "slave status, they can only underline the cone usion. flowing from this theory, that the proletariat is incapable of fulfilling its historic mission. Its proponents, if they were consistent, would have to abandon the programme of the socialist revolutior- at least in those countries where bureacratic collectivism has, according to them, been victorious; and replace it with a new minimum programme' for the defence of the slaves' interests. By its implications, this theory would liquidate the Fourth international in mese countries, and us logica application would completely paralyse the activities in capitalist countries in face of the problem of the Dials Dares This is the most obvious example of the formal character of these analogies. As a matter of fact, in Russia it was a question of expropriating and destroying the bourgeoisie as a class through the revolutionary action of the proletariat and the workers state. In capitalist countries what we have is une nauonausauon - wiln compensation - of certair unprofitable sectors of the bourgeois economy for the benent of the big monopolies. Ihe lusion between the state and economy' in Russia meant the destruction of the bourgeoisie as a class. The fusion between the state and economy in the capitalist countries - DarCUary Germany and the USA — meant the destruction of the independence of certain capitalist sectors and their complete subjection to monopoly capital. The fundamental difference between these two processes lies in this. that only the oro earan revolution snows ne "striving to expropriate the monopolists', whereas the capitalist countries do not show this 'striving' but on the contrary show a tendency to strengthen and enrich the monopolists who subject the whole social life to their direct control.
b) The analogy between the tendency toward the fragmentation of the world market, inherent in decaying capitalist economy, and the monopoly of foreign trade established by the October Revolution.
In reality, the protectionist and "autarchic tendencies, which are elements of war economy and palliative measures against crises resorted to by the decadent East Berlin 1953 - the first uprising against the bureaucracy bourgeoisie, do not save these countries from exploitation by foreign capital, but rather increase the latter's pronts to the degree that these countries attempt to become "self-sufficient'. At their highest level of "autarchy", capitalist Germany and Japan returned the highest profits to American capital. In the case of the USSR, there has been a drastic elimination of the country's exploitation by foreign capital. pressure of the world market continues, but only indirectly.
c) The analogy between planning' tendencies inherent in monopoly capital and the Soviet planning. The national "planning' of monopoly capital, Trotsky said, consists in artificially restricting production in certain sectors and building up, just as artificially, orner sectors ar colossai expenaltures. i resus ma unstable regularization, bought at the price of a lowering of national economy taken as a whole, an increase in the world chaos, and a complete shattering of the financial system, absolutely indispensable for socialist planning. Soviet planning, on the contrary, while far from being harmonious, has nevertheless succeeded in realising enormous and real economic progress, developing the productive forces in al sectors, raising - at least until the inception of the Third Five-Year Plan - the living standards and wants of tens of millions of ordinary men and women There is a qualitative difference between these two tendencies. The one maintains profits as the regulator of the economy and subordinates plans' together with the whole of economic life not to the interests of an abstract "capitalism' but interests, quite tangible, concrete and definite, of the monopolists. Soviet planning, on the contrary, derives its profound impetus from the fact that private appropriation of surplus value has been radically suppressed, and that consciousness is beginning to replace profit although in a distorted form — as the decisive element in the regulation of economic development.
d) The analogy between production for production's sake' in the capitalist system and the development of productive forces in the USSR (in the first place, the growth of the sector of the means of production; the analogy between the operation of the law of value in the capitalist countries and in the USSR, and so on.
What is really involved here is a question of starting from unproved premises. Proceeding from assumption that Russia is a capitalist country, the proponents of this theory interpret the development of Soviet productive forces in terms of the capitalist form of the law of value. But a stupendous development of the productive forces, especially of heavy industry, characterises not only capitalism but also the transitional society after the conquest of power by the proletariat. The law of value' applies not alone to capitalist society but to all pre- and postcapitalist societies where the production of commodities continues to exist. In Russia, the 'law of. value is certainly valid and has not ceased operating since 1917, but it no longer applies in the same way as in capitalist society. Prices are not dependent upon the BATTLE of IDEAS average rate of profit. Money does not possess the quality of transforming itself into capital.
This whole theory is based on a total absence of any attempt to analyse the specific forms of transitional economy such as will exist in every workers state until the complete disappearance of classes and the final advent of communism.
The reproach levelled against us by the adherents of the "state capitalism' theory, that we are "Economists or that we base our analysis on a 'fetishism of nationalised property is absurd. In reality, our analysis starts from the fundamental difference between bourgeois nationalisations (England, France the 'buffer zone countries) and all of the upheavals that have taken place in Russia as a result of the proletarian revolution, culminating in the expropria tion and destruction of the bourgeoisie as a class and the transfer of the means of production into collective ownership It is up to the adherents of the theory of 'state capitalism' to explain how the bureaucracy constitutes a state capitalist' class, while at the same time preserving property relations that resulted from the destruction of capitalism and while itself destroying the new rural bourgeoisie in the USSR. It is up to them to explain how the annihilation of the conquests of October has been possible without a change in property relations and without a new social overturn. It is up to them to explain how they car reconcile the 'capitalist' nature of the USSR with the total overturn in production and property relations which German imperialism was obliged to institute in the occupied areas of the USSR, as well as those changes which the Soviet bureaucracy found itself obliged to institute in the reoccupied areas and the provinces annexed to the USSR. On all these points. tnis tneory clearly snows its incapacity to interpret tne reality of Soviet life in a Marxist manner.
However, the most obvious internal contradiciton of this theory appears in its conception of the Stalinis parties. Here it attempts to reconcile the needs of revolutionary strategy - which necessitate the conception of Stalinist parties as degenerated workers parties with the conclusions of this theory, according to which the Stalinist parties must be considered as agents of a capitalist-fascist power. The absurd results achieved by this reconciliation - which involves a transformation of Stalinist parties from workers' parties into bourgeois parties the moment they conquer power - opener wit me mooss oint of explaining the self-evident phenomenon that the influx of the radicalised masses into the parties which are agents of a 'capitalist" power is a sign of the revolutionary tide - this itself is the most striking refutation of this theory International, 1948.
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The Popular Front and
'Socialist Workers Party'. _ ED.
To avoid possible confusion, the title 'International Socialists has been used throughout the above article. In any future material we will refer to the IS by their newly adopted name,
Extracts resolutions passed at the 2nd World Con- gress of the Fourth