The two
contributions of Socialist Action to the pre-World Congress
Discussion -- “The USec majority, Stalinism and Eastern Europe,”
and “The Soviet Union and the meaning of Gorbachev’s reforms” (IDB
5) -- deal with one of the most important aspects of world
development of the last years: the meaning of the momentous
upheavals which have occurred in the USSR and Eastern Europe.
But they deal with that serious problem in an unserious way.
They subordinate the analysis of objective events to pure
factional purposes, distorting positions, knocking down
self-erected straw men, evading the debate around the real
differences.
The
triangular struggle in the USSR and Eastern Europe
SA writes:
“For Mandel and the USec leadership … the Stalinist bureaucracy
is an intermediate caste with a dual nature: that is, it has a
progressive character insofar as it is identified, even if only
in a distorted (or inhuman) manner, with socialism and the
workers state.”
This is a
misrepresentation of our position. SA will not find any
documentary proof of that allegation. Nowhere and no time did
we write that the Stalinist bureaucracy has anything to do with
socialism or that it is progressive. The concept that you could
build socialism with “inhuman means” is totally anathema to us.
But if the
Stalinist bureaucracy is not socialist, it is not capitalist
either. It represents a new historical phenomenon, a
privileged, oppressive and exploitative ruling layer in a
post-capitalist society.
The Soviet
Union is a society in transition between capitalism and
socialism, frozen at that stage by the delay of world revolution
and the stranglehold of bureaucratic power upon it.
Historically, it can either revert to capitalism following a
social counter-revolution or advance again on the road towards
socialism, following a victorious political anti-bureaucratic
revolution (advance towards socialism, not actually
arriving there: socialism in one country is impossible even
under the healthiest conditions of democratic soviet power).
But as long
as neither of those decisive turns have occurred, it remains a
degenerated workers’ state, ruled by a non-socialist and
non-capitalist bureaucracy. This bureaucracy plays an overall
counter-revolutionary role, inasmuch as it operates as a break
upon world revolution and as an obstacle towards new advances in
the direction of socialism in the USSR itself. It thereby, in
the long run, favors a capitalist restoration in the Soviet
Union.
But it is
still a counter-revolutionary labor bureaucracy. A
counter-revolutionary “socialist” or “centrist” is a
contradiction in terms: a counter-revolutionary labor
bureaucracy is not. Social democracy has been ruled by just
such a counter-revolutionary labor bureaucracy since 1914.
Neither the
Soviet bureaucracy nor the reformist bureaucracies in the
capitalist countries are bourgeois bureaucracies. If Kirkland
and Co. were bourgeois instead of labor
lieutenants of Capital, the AFL/CIO would be a yellow company
union. It isn’t. If the Soviet bureaucracy was a bourgeois
democracy, the USSR would be a bourgeois state. It isn’t.
The idea
that a workers’ state -- be it an extremely degenerate one --
could be administered by a bourgeois bureaucracy is incompatible
with Marxism. You can’t have a ruling bourgeois bureaucracy
without a ruling bourgeois class and a bourgeois state. You
don’t have a ruling bourgeois class or a bourgeois state in the
USSR.
Furthermore, that idea has absurd implications. The FRG and the
GDR before the Anschluss, North and South Korea today,
would then be ruled by bureaucracies of the same class nature.
As the officer and police corps is an important branch of the
bureaucracy, both Nato and Warsaw Pact generals would have had
an identical class nature. People with the same class nature
would be running the CIA and the KGB. This is all blatant
nonsense.
If the
Soviet bureaucracy is still a labor bureaucracy, this means that
it has a dual nature. It both undermines the workers’ state in
the long run and maintains it, for the time being -- exactly as
Kirkland & Co. both undermine the unions in the long run and
maintain them in the meantime. This dual role implies that
while the overall balance of its actions is indeed
counter-revolutionary, not all its actions are.
When the
Soviet bureaucracy resisted Hitler’s military onslaught on the
USSR, this was not a counter-revolutionary action. When it
accorded help to the Chinese revolution in a belated,
insufficient and contradictory way in 1950-1960, when it did the
same to the Cuban revolution after 1960 against U.S.
imperialism, when it helped colonial and semi-colonial people
against imperialism as it did with Egypt in 1956 and in Southern
Africa in the seventies and early eighties, it didn’t act in a
counter-revolutionary way.
These
actions didn’t change the overall counter-revolutionary nature
of the Kremlin. They were preceded, accompanied and followed by
many counter-revolutionary actions. But, in and by themselves,
they could not be condemned by any class-conscious worker.
Likewise,
the counter-revolutionary nature of the reformist and
trade-union bureaucracies does not imply that each and every one
of its actions is counter-revolutionary. The introduction of
the National Health Service in Britain by the Atlee government,
in spite of that government’s many counter-revolutionary
actions, was not counter-revolutionary in and of itself.
Neither was the recent campaign by the IG-Metall union
bureaucracy for the 35-hour week in West Germany.
This has
been the position of our movement on the Soviet bureaucracy
since 1936 at least, if not earlier. It was the position taken
by Trotsky in The Revolution Betrayed, in the
Transitional Programme, in In Defence of Marxism, in
Stalin. It was the position of Jim Cannon and the SWP
majority in 1939-1940.
In
Stalin we read:
“Although
by the nature of its own mode of life, its conservatism, its
political sympathies, the overwhelming majority of the
bureaucracy was drawn toward the new petty bourgeoisie, its
economic roots were largely in the new conditions of ownership.
The growth of bourgeois relations threatened not only the
socialist basis of property, but the social foundations of the
bureaucracy itself. It may have been willing to repudiate the
socialist perspective of development in favor of the petty
bourgeoisie. But under no circumstances was it ready to
repudiate its own rights and privileges in favor of the
petty-bourgeoisie.” (p. 406, 1st edition.)
We don’t
know whether it is still the position of Socialist Action. If
it is, their violent polemics against the USec majority on the
nature of the Soviet bureaucracy are unfounded -- just a
manifestation of blind factionalism. For they then attack
comrades whose opinions they share.
If they
have changed their position, they have the perfect right to do
so. But they should argue their case openly, against Trotsky’s
and Cannon’s arguments, and not hide that change behind
unfounded allegations about Mandel and the USec majority.
The real
differences concerning the triangular social and political
struggle going on in the USSR do not hinge upon anybody’s
illusions about the “socialist” or “progressive” character of
the Kremlin bureaucracy. The concern the relative autonomy
of the bureaucracy as a social force, and the operation in
these countries of bourgeois restorationist forces separate and
apart from the majority of the bureaucracy.
The Soviet
bureaucracy is not a new ruling class. It has neither the roots
in society nor the economic functions which precondition the
emergence of ruling classes. In the final analysis, it is a
transmission belt of international capital upon the Soviet
state. But only in the final analysis, from a very
long-term point of view.
For a whole
intermediate historical period it can play and has played a
relatively autonomous role, both anti-socialist and
anti-capitalist.
You cannot
make head nor tail of what has been going on during the last 60
years in the USSR if you don’t recognize that basic truth.
During the
two gravest crises experienced by the USSR, in 1927-33 and
1941-43, Stalin did not restore capitalism. He did fight
the restorationist forces. But did he advance socialism? In no
way whatsoever. He defended the power and privileges of the
Soviet bureaucracy against both its enemies.
When the
East German workers rose up in 1953, when the Hungarian workers
rose up in 1956, when the Prague Spring took place in 1968, the
Soviet bureaucracy did not restore capitalism. Neither did it
advance socialism. It crushed the workers in order to maintain
its own power and privileges.
To deny
that there are genuinely pro-restorationist forces in Eastern
Europe today (on a much smaller scale in the USSR too) is to
deny reality.
That some
of them were part of yesterday’s nomenklatura is
undeniable. But these pro-restorationist forces are different
and apart from those sectors of the nomenklatura which
cling to their power and privileges on the basis of collective
ownership of the means of production. That’s what the debate is
all about.
The
analysis of the Soviet bureaucracy as based upon a triangular
struggle comes to the logical conclusion that there are three
possible outcomes to the upheavals presently unfolding in the
USSR and Eastern Europe:
* A victory
of the political revolution (which is quite different from the
beginning of such a revolution), i.e. the exercise of
power by the ruling class through whatever organs they choose to
rule, and their control over the means of production and the
social surplus project.
* A
temporary consolidation of the bureaucracy’s rule through
whatever political regime it can achieve that goal.
* A social
counter-revolution, a restoration of capitalism supported and
financed by world capitalism.
Before any
of these three possible outcomes have occurred, the USSR could
well go through a protracted process of uninterrupted crises.
To exclude
any of these three possibilities is to revise the Transitional
Program and Trotsky’s writings of 1939-40.
It is true
that the outcome of the triangular struggle will depend in the
final analysis upon the outcome of concrete working class
struggles. But there is at least one case where a real process
of restoration of capitalism has gone beyond the point of no
return: the case of the GDR. And in that case, capitalism is
being introduced not by Honecker, Krenz or Modrow, but by the
Deutsche Bank, Siemens, Daimler-Benz, Kohl and Genscher,
with the criminal complicity of the social-democracy.
For sure,
parts of the SED nomenklatura are jumping on the
band-wagon. But it is the imperialists who are conducting the
band-wagon, not the bureaucracy. It is imperialist capital
which is taking over, not the miserable dregs of the corrupt
bureaucrats.
To warn
the masses in the USSR and Eastern Europe that the bureaucracy’s
rule could be temporarily consolidated is equal to capitulating
before the bureaucracy according to SA! Only blind factionalism
can produce such twisted “logic.”
How did
Gorbachev arise and what does he represent?
The basic
question posed for Marxists by the emergence of Gorbachev and
Gorbachevism in 1985 is: what do they represent socially and
politically? Why did they emerge in that moment and in that
form?
Blind
factionalism prevents the comrades of SA from giving a clear
answer to these elementary questions. They defend successively
three completely different opinions.
First,
Gorbachev is supposed to represent the bureaucracy in its
totality. Then he is supposed to represent at least its
majority. He ends up by representing nobody -- just himself.
There is neither rhyme nor reason in this analysis.
Here we are
really at the heart of the matter. The Soviet bureaucracy did
not introduce the Gorbachev reforms in 1985 under the pressure
of the IMF or of American Big Business. It did not introduce
them out of fear of the workers either. It introduced them as a
result of the deep crisis of its system and of its rule, a
crisis which had been growing since 10 years at least. It
introduced them in order to preserve its power and
privileges, not those of an inexistent Soviet capitalist class
nor those of foreign capital.
But it
introduced them under conditions of a serious deterioration of
the relationship of forces both between the Kremlin and
imperialism and between the Kremlin and the Soviet masses. All
the contradictions and waverings of Gorbachev’s policies, as
well as all the inner contradictions of the bureaucracy, can be
explained in the light of that changed situation.
For 10
years, the rate of growth of the Soviet economy has been
inferior to that of the USA. It had fallen so low that it had
become materially impossible to pursue simultaneously the
further modernization of the Soviet economy, the arms race with
imperialism stepped-up under Carter and Reagan, and a modest
increase in the masses’ standard of living. From year to year,
the technology gap with imperialism was growing.
If these
trends continued, the USSR was in danger of becoming a
second-rate power, with all the ensuing consequences for the
bureaucracy’s privileges.
The
deepening economic crisis had fueled a deepening social crisis.
Social services declined. Poverty rose dramatically. The
political credibility of the system was questioned in broader
and broader circles -- not yet by direct or political actions,
but by manifestations of clear massive discontent. The Kremlin
was losing its grip on the country.
It was
under the pressure of that deep systemic crisis that a younger,
modernist, better-educated and better-informed group of
bureaucrats around Gorbachev replaced the dinosaurs of the
Brezhnev-Chernenko type. Their purpose was to rationalize the
functioning of the regime in every field of social life, in
order to defend the bureaucracy’s power and privileges in a more
efficient way.
But given
the deteriorating relations of forces, they could only combine
such an attempt at streamlining with serious concessions both to
imperialism and to the masses:
* The
concessions to imperialism have the general purpose of reducing
the arms race and hence military expenditure, and obtaining
large credits as well as technological know-how from the West
and Japan.
* The
concessions to the masses are aimed at channeling social
tensions in a way compatible with bureaucratic control, be it a
reduced one, to restore at least some legitimacy to the regime
and to reduce workers’ resistance to the technocratic
rationalization of the economy.
July 15,
1990
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