COUNTRIES which Marxist-Leninist, and where capitalism has been overthrown. are and nave been involved in military operations or even partial wars against countries of the same social character.
This raises at least two questions: - What are the causes of these conflicts? Is it possible that in conflicts of this kind will develop and take on the dimensions of a war unlimited in time and space?
Trotskyists characterise a series of European and Asian countries (not to mention Cuba, which is a very specific case) as transitional societies. But at the time they specify societies nave an suricica a proround bureaucratic degeneration or deformation.
This bureaucratisation consists of two basic elements: the absence socialist democracy allowing effective participation of the masses — and in the first place the working class - in political leadership, construction of socialism' amits of a single country.
In other words, if certain structural elements are absent or are completely deformed, the society being built concretely takes on very characteristics, and it is inevitably drawn into a different dynamic from that of a society actually advancing towards socialism.
The absence of socialist democracy means that the working class and the mass of working people in general are cxcaca trom poncal cadersmp. it means, for instance, that decisions on claim to be and make it count.
inherited from construction. and preferable future other and in the practice of workers states.
in Tact, that these bureaucracy's power.
economic of national framework. the party within the political capitalism. specific framework and such a logic -the absolute economic unity which involves national limits.
The Soviet bureaucracy sends its army to crush the Hungarian uprising. war or peace can be made without the masses being able to express their will The building of socialism in one country means that the national state — the bourgeoisie becomes the framework of socialist This is even necessary according to the theorisations of half a century (from those of Stalin/Bukharin in 1924 to the existing This is a central element. The national state as such is presented as the roundanon or te wransinonal society. An it is the source Can one say that this has economic roots? Only in a mediated form, in the sense that the bureaucrats conceive of construction within this But the source of bureaucratic powe is control over the state apparatus apparatus which essentially integrated into the state. That is why the basic motivation is a logic of a state constructed within a national framework, inherited from Conflicts between workers states are inevitable once one accepts such a acquire - once one working class interests are concerned, is prerequisite for real socialist construction: an international wish. the start the breaking down of existing COULLEY H occurred, there capitalist 1968.
'foreign' These conflicts can be fuelled by, among other things, different or even opposed economic interests. This was the case in the immediate post-war years in relation to the mixed societies between the USSR and the countries of Western Europe; and it could arise now in the event of certain specific choices made by Comecon.
But the fundamental causes are to be found on the political level: international policy should be adopted in a given period, what agreements made and what alliances sought, what form of military preparation defence should be chosen.
example the importance Ene start Sino-Soviet conflict of the problem of detente and relations with the United States (at the time the positions held were une opposite or wial uncy are today and the question of nuclear weapons (the Chinese refused to accept Moscow's thesis that the USSR was and should remain the nuclear shield of the entire "socialist world').
From the viewpoint of 'socialism in one country it becomes logical to accept and even to advocate a division into spheres of influence; and therefore to become preoccupied defence — and eventual extension - of these spheres. Border questions in turn an importance which exceeds their intrinsic significance.
In fact a terrible logic is unleashed which can escape the control of the bureaucratic leading groups themselves and carry them further than they would How can such disputes, based on the existence of different 'socialisms in one become transformed armed conflicts?
On the basis of what has already outline possibilities: 1. A bureaucratic leadership inter venes militarily when it considers that exists a short-term danger of restoration in workers state, whose leadership seems incapable of confronting the danger.
As we know, that was Moscow's justification for its interventions Hungary and Czechoslovakia. But in fact this theoretical hypothesis has yet to be translated into reality. 2. A bureaucratic leadership intervenes with its army to prevent or destroy mass anti-bureaucratic movements taking on a dymanic of political revolution. This is what happened in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in In these cases what occurred was more exactly civil war, bureaucracy intervened against both the masses and sections of and decisive week.
the bureaucracy, Moscow considered that the latter were incapable of warding off the threats to the bureaucratic regime itself, or were involved in extreme y dynamic of concessions.
3. Bureaucratic leaderships engage in military conflicts without there being any danger of capitalist restoration or political the logic of competing 'socialisms in one country'- in other words, the defence or extension of far spheres of interest, the maintenance of control by one country over another which seeks independence for itself, etc.
This is what happened with the Sino-Soviet conflict, especially in the present phase, conflicts in Asia. into VIETNAMESE peasants killed by Chinese shelling in the Laokal city region last because dangerous revolutionary revolution because of the bureaucratic caste. interests temporary bureaucracy. win greater more than ever and with the current they put forward 1968 — the Prague Spring is crushed by the Soviet invasion.
This article does not aim to draw conclusions as to political orientation or to advance precise slogans. What it is concerned to underline is that the logic of socialism in one country - just like the bureaucratic denial of socialist democracy - has to be fought from a position, from the perspective of a political revolution for overthrow runng This does not exclude the adoption of tactical positions in response to particular attitudes or moves by this or that section of the But, from the strategic point of view, revolutionaries must fight - today against all the bureaucratic regimes, whatever their specific characteristics and whatever the ideological/political justifications Socialist Challenge 15 March 1979 page