THIRTY QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS about the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
By ERNEST GERMAIN
Question 12: Did Lenin express this opinion about the danger of a bureaucratic deformation of the Soviet state only in an occasional way? Answer: No. Lenin's warnings on this subjeet formed the genuine Leitmotiv of the last years of his political activity. They became more and more pressing as he had to give up the daily leadership of the party and the state. One gets the impression that, moved by tragie forebodings, Lenin did his possible and impossible to mobilize the party cadres against this danger — in vain, alas, as history was to show. Only the Left Opposition and, later, the Unified Oppositions, followed his counsels.
Thus, during the discussions against the "Workers' Opposition" (Shliapnikov, Sapronov, Kol. lontaï, et al) at the IXth Congress of the Russian Communist Party, and just after the IXth Con-
Lenin constantly returns to the problem of bureaucratism, and admits that the ultra-leftist opposition was partly right. Speaking to the Moscow Province Party Conference, he asserts:
The task of the soviet power consists of completely destroying the old apparatus and giving the power to the soviets. But in our programme we already admit that bureaucratism has reappeared, that the economie foundations of a really socialist society do not yet exist. [...] It is understandable that the bureaucratism that has arisen in soviet institutions must exert a dissolving influence also on the party organizations. for the party tops are the tops of the soviet apparatus.
[Pp 616-7 of volume XXX of the Complete
Works, German edition, 1930.]
Farther on in the same speech, Lenin emphasizes that in the assertions of the Workers' Opposition, there are "many healthy, necessary, and inevitable things" (ibidem, p 617). He adds that the struggle against the bureaucracy by the aid of the Worker and Peasant Inspection (directed by Stalin) is very difficult, because it The first part of this study appeared in our Summer issue. The last question treated there concerned Lenin's warnings about the risks of a graver and graver bureaucratie deformation in case that control from below should not be reënforced in all spheres of the Soviet economy and society.
is itself a bureaucratized institution, it exists only
"pious hope." as a In 1921, during the trade-union discussion at the Xth Congress of the Russian CP, Lenin corrects Trotsky when the latter speaks of the US SR as a "workers' state"; he specifies that the Soviet Republie is a "bureaucratically deformed workers' state."
In his report to the XIIth Party Congress, on 27 March 1922, Lenin declares:
If we consider Moscow — 4,700 communists in responsible posts - and if we consid.
er this bureaucratic machine, this mountain, then who is leading and who is led? I strongly doubt that it can be said that communists are leading this mountain. To tell the truth, it is not they who are leading.
It is they who are led. [P 962 of uvres
Choisies, volume II.]
In the same report, Lenin furthermore asserts that the state apparatus is "frankly bad."
On 23 January 1923, he returns to the same subject in a proposal made to the XIIth Party Congress:
I do not deny that the question of our state apparatus and its improvement is very difficult: it is far from being solved, and it is at the same time an eminently pressing question.
Our state apparatus, except for the
People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, is to a large degree a survival from the past, which has undergone the minimum of serious modifications. It is only slightly embellished on the surface, it remains the real type of our old state apparatus [ibidem, p 1026].
In his last article It Were Better to Do Less But Better," written 2 March 1923, the same idea returns like a genuine obsession:
Things are going so badly with our state apparatus, not to say that they are detestable, that we must first of all seriously reflect how to fight against its defects, which, let us not forget, go back to the past [...].
Our new Worker and Peasant Inspection, we hope, will leave far behind it that quality which the French call pruderie, and that we might call ridiculous affectation
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL or ridiculous ostentation, and which plays to the highest degree into the hands of our whole bureaucracy, of both our soviet and party institutions, for, be it said in parentheses, the bureaucracy exists among us not only in the soviet but also in the party institutions. [bidem, p 1031, 1038. Our emphasis.] In volume XXXVI of the Complete Works, where there have just been collected writings not published in the previous "complete" edition of Lenin's Works, dozens of examples of this obsession are to be found:
With us, everything has sunk into the noisome bureaucratie swamp of the "administrations." To fight every day against that, much intelligence, authority, and force are needed. The administrations? Filth! The decrees? Filth! [Letter to Tsiurupa, 21 Feb 1922, vol XXXVI,
The State Bank is now just a bureaucratie game of paper-shuffling. That's the truth, if it's the truth you want to know, and not the sugar-and-honey patter of the communist bureaucrats [..]. [To the President of the State Bank, 28 Feb 1922, vol XXXVI, p 579.]
Not to fear to reveal errors and incompetence; to give broad popularity and make publicity, with all our strength, around any worker on the spot who distinguishes himself even a little, to set him up as an example - the more such work is undertaken, and the more we plunge into living practice, turning our attention and that of our readers away from this infected atmosphere of the Moscow bureaucrats and intellectuals, then the more improvements we shall see. [letter to Ossinski, 12 Feb 1922, vol XXXVI, p 590.]
I see things this way: a few dozen workers who would enter the Central Committee would be better able than anyone else to undertake to check, improve, and rearrange our apparatus. [...] The workers who will form part of the Central Committee must in my opinion not be recruited particularly from among those who have put in a long period of work in the soviets (among the workers that I am speaking of in this passage of my letter, I am also everywhere including the peasants), because in these workers there have already been created certain traditions and pre. judices, which are precisely what it would be necessary to fight against.
Among these worker members of the
39
Central Committee the principal place should be held by workers located below this stratum which for five years now has been joining the ranks of soviet function.
aries, by • workers who belong rather to the ranks of simple workers and peasants.
[Letter to the Congress (third codicil to the "Testament"), 26 Dee 1922, vol XXXVI,
PP 609-10.]
If these passages are reread (and we could quate still dozens of others!), is it impossible not to conclude: on the eve of his death, Lenin was obsessed by thoughts about the bureaueratic deformation and degeneration of the state and party apparatuses. Question 13: Did the party leadership follow these counsels of Lenin, did it react to his warnings? Answer: No. It concealed the text of his Testament from the party (except the delegates to the XIIIth Congress), and even publicly denied its existence. On a motion by Trotsky, it voted in 1923 a motion putting the fight against the bureaucracy on the agenda and asserting that workers' democracy could be broadened. But when Trotsky in 1923 published The New Course, in which he took up again — sometimes even textually — Lenin's appeal for a "renewal of the apparatus," the party leadership reacted violently, identifying itself with the bureaucracy. Instead of joining Trotsky in this struggle against the bureaucracy in the name of Lenin, it joined the bureaucracy "against Trotskyism," thus trampling underfoot Lenin's warnings, destroying the last vestiges of workers' democracy, and ending up in the Bonapartist dictatorship of the bureauoracy which an attempt is being made today to present under the euphemistic label of "the personality cult." This choice of the party leadership was decisive. For though the bureaucracy's power in 1923 Russia stemmed without any doubt from objective conditions (the revolution isolated in one backward country; the weight of the capitalist past and surroundings; the lack of culture and technical skills among the laboring masses; the limited number and insufficient specific weight of the proletariat in the population, ete) and was in this sense inevitable, the attitude of the subjective factor — the party leadership and cadres — in this respect was not inevitable. The party could have reacted against this state of affairs by broadening the democratic bases of power, by having a growing number of rank-and-file workers participate in the exercise of power, by deepening the freedom of discussion and criticism in the party and in the soviets, by carrying out an economic policy that speeded up
40 industrialization and increased the weight of the workers in the country. This was the orientation that Lenin was calling for with all his remaining strength. This was the orientation that Trotsky and the Left Opposition were calling for thenafter. It was because it did not understand the danger of bureaucratie degeneration, or understood it too late, that the leadership of the Russian CP was transformed from an obstacle to this degeneration into its principal vehicle. Most of the party leaders, what is more, paid with their lives for this tragic error. Question 14: Does The History of the CP of the Ü S SR reëstablish the historical truth on the subject of Lenin's Testament? Answer: In the 1938 Short Course, Lenin's Tesis completely passed over in silence. In tament the new History, it is quoted on pages 387-8, but in a singularly mutilated and falsified way.
Thus the History passes over in silence all the uttered by Lenin concerning the Bol. sheviks he mentions in his Testament (Trotsky, Zinovier, Kamenev, Bukharin, Piatakov) and keeps only the criticisms. It suppresses Lenin's opinion that Trotsky is "the most gifted" member of the Central Committee. It suppresses Lenin's opinion that Bukharin and Piatakov were "the most markedly competent among the younger members." It suppresses Lenin's opinion that "Bukharin is a most outstanding theoretician and of great value [who] quite rightly enjoys the aflection of the entire party."
To these omissions two falsifications are to be added. According to the History, Lenin warned the party against Trotsky's "non-Bolshevism"; in reality Lenin wrote that Trotsky's non-Bolshevik past must not be brought up any more than the errors committed by Zinovier and Kamener on the eve of the October Revolution. According to the History, Lenin warned the party against "Trotsky's very dangerous relapses into Menshevism." Of this, there is not one word in the entire Testament.
These omissions and falsifications are all the more grotesque in that the Testament has been published in the USS R and each reader can realize, by comparing the two texts, how much the editor-bureaucrats continue "to fool the people" like vulgar "bourgeois politicians," to revive Lenin's formula.
Question 15: Why was the Left Opposition formed? Answer: The History of the CP of the USS R asserts that the Left Opposition dates from October 1923:
Profiting by the fact that the head of the
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL party, Lenin, was gravely ill and not in a position to fight, Trotsky renewed the struggle against the Leninist Central Committee and the party. He believed that the difficulties created in the country would be able to aid his project: to take the leadership of the party and adopt a line which, in the last analysis, would have led to the restoration of capitalism.
Trotsky sent a letter to the Central Com. At the beginning of October 1923, mittee in which, in substance, he slandered the activity of this organism. I...] Shortly after Trotsky's letter, the Central Committee received the "Declaration of the 46,"
signed by the Trotskyists, the Detsists, and elements which, already before this time, had belonged to the groups of the
"Left Communists" and the "Workers' Opposition." The declaration was also signed by some members of the C C. The "46"
asserted in a slanderous way that the apparatus had taken the place of the party.
and they were trying to make the com.
munists rise up against the leading apparatus [vol I, p 392].
If an accusation of the place taken by the apparatus in the party and the state meant "Menchevism" and working "in the last analysis" for the restoration of capitalism, then the person most guilty of such a deviation was Lenin himself, who, in the third codicil of his l'estament, also calls for "the renewal of the apparatus." We have seen with what violence Lenin attacked "bureaucratic rottenness." The oppositional platform of the "46" repeated Lenin's formula less vigorously, but all called for concrete measures the ma tự tong to permit a reëstablishment of workers' democracy in the party and in the soviets. We find the justification of these demands in the above. mentioned attacks by Lenin.
The History goes on to set up a crude amalgam by asserting that the opposition basically expressed the demands of the
Mensheviks, the S-Rs, and the new bourgeoisie, who wanted to appear openly on scene in conformity [!] with the
NEP [vol I, p 393].
As for the assertion that Trotsky wanted "in the last analysis" to reëstablish capitalism, it is curious that his then contemporaries did not notice it, since they left him for years in leading functions of the state and party. What we have here are slanders without any foundation, miserable vestiges of the Stalinist slanders which had to be suppressed as a result of the condemnation of the "personality cult."
The tragicomic aspect of this whole fake thesis
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL is that the majority of the members of that famous October 1923 Central Committee, which allegedly personified the Leninist virtues... was yout later liquidated by Stalin as counter-revolutionary. The authors of the History then find themselves faced by the impossible task of having to condemn both this majority and the opposition; they prefer not to mention the composition of this Central Committee, which would be too embarrassing for them. Question 15: What was the economic policy proposed by the Left Opposition, beginning with 1923? Answer: It is enough just to raise this question in order to realize to what extent the slander that the opposition "basically," "objectively," "in the last analysis," expressed the "pressure" of the "class enemy," the kulaks and Nepmen, is untenable and easy to unmask. The fact is that the Left Opposition, right from its formation, called for a policy of speeded-up industrialization, of stepped-up struggle against the kulaks, of a more pronounced class struggle both in the cities (by strengthening the economic and political position of the workers) and in the rural regions (by relying on the poor peasants and aiding the development of producers' coöperatives).
E H Carr, who is nevertheless hostile on the whole toward Trotsky and approves the "esta. blished facts," describes the proposals of the opposition in the following way: an overall economie plan plus credits to heavy industry. (A History of Soniet Russia, vol IV, "The Interreg. num," pp 91-92.) And it would suffice to take any Communist publication of the period to realize this. Thus in the Pravda of 1,3, and 4 January 1924 there appears the text of a long debate between Rykov, speaking for the majority of the Central Committee, and the spatesmen for the opposition (Ossinsky, Preobashensky, Piatakow, and IN Smirnov). The draft resolution of the opposition attributes the economic crisis from which the US SR was suffering at that moment "to the lack of a plan unifying the labor of all the sectors of the state economy." And this draft resolution insists on the fact that it is the development of industry that is the key to economic upsurge, and rejects the idea of the supremacy of the market in favor of the idea of an economic plan. It must be added simply that Mikoyan, spokesman for the Stalinist fraction, attacked the "Trotskyist" idea of a single development plan for industry as "the height of utopia." (Carr, ibidem, p. 128.)
Quotations could be continued. But what is the use? It would be enough to reproduce any Russian communist periodical whatever of the years 1923 to 1927, to perceive that the opposi-
41 tion did indeed make a systematie campaign in favor of a plan for speeded-up industrialization, in favor of a stepped-up fight against the kulaks. It is true that for this reason the bureaucracy in power keeps all these texts well hidden. But for the same reason Stalin carefully prevented the public from having access to the 1917-18 documents which permit showing the real roles of Trotsky, the Old Bolsheviks, and- of himself, before, during, and after the October Revolution. Now these texts are being published today. It will not require very much time before the Soviet youth learns the truth about the struggles around positions, in the documents of the period, and despite the lies of the History of the GP of the USSR. Question 17: Is it true that the opposition "launched adventurist slogans" in favor of the increase in agricultural taxes and in the prices of consumers' goods in its proposals for the industrialization of the country? Answer: Here we see how the accumulation of forgeries ends up in dazzling contradictions! On page 393 of volume I, the History asserts that the oppositions's proposals only supported the Nepmen; but on page 390 Trotsky is accused of having extolled "the development of industry by the exploitation of the peasants." "To exploit" the kulak is a strange way of supporting him. The same accusation becomes still clearer on page 16 of volume II:
The Trotskyist proposals to increase the agricultural taxes hitting the peasants, and to increase the sales price of industrial products were particularly dangerous. [...]
The policy of capitulation !!! of the
Trotskyists and Zinovievists would have led in practice to the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet country.
How a policy that increases the taxes that the peasants must pay is simultaneously a policy of "capitulation" to these peasants or to the bourgeois elements among these peasants (whom; Trotsky proposed to tax specially; we shall return to this) is a mystery that only bureaucratie logic can explain.
What really happened? As early as 1923, Trotsky had already revealed the phenonemon of the "scissors": the prices of farm produets were falling, under the pressure of a more rapid revival of production in agriculture than in industry; the prices of industrial products were rising, under the pressure of a demand for these products that was greater than their supply. It is therefore not true that Trotsky was in favor of an increase in the prices of industrial products; on the contrary, he hoped that, thanks to a more rapid de-
42 velopment of industry, industrial prices might rise less rapidly than farm prices, or even come down. This was the surest means of maintaining the alliance between the workers and the peasants.
But the peasantry was not a united class. As early as 1923, Trotsky and the Left Opposition drew the party's attention to the fact that a growing proportion of the wheat sold to the cities was being sold only by the kulaks, who were beginning to concentrate the whole farm surplus in their own hands. And, profiting by the freedom of trade, the Nepmen, the private traders and traffickers of the cities, were also concentrating a good part of accumulation funds in their own hands. Preobashensky estimated this private accumulation during the years 1923 to 1925 at some 500 million gold rubles. The opposition proposed that a good part of these two surpluses, which was in the hands of exploiting strata of society, be mopped up by an appropriate tax and price poliey. The funds thus obtained were to be used to speed up industrialization and especially to improve the situation of the poor peasants.
This policy was not adopted. For five years the party leadership denied the dangers pointed out by Trotsky and the opposition. Bukharin and Stalin asserted that there was no contradiction between private accumulation and the interests of the economic development of the state. They asserted that the opposition "exaggerated" the danger of the kulaks. And in fact they aceused the Opposition's proposals of running the risk of precipitating a break of "the alliance between the workers and the peasants."
But events were to give dramatie proof that Troisky and the opposition were right. As the History itself observes on page 33 of volume II, during the winter of 1927-28 "the kulaks, who possessed great reserves of grain, refused to sell [this wheat] to the state at the prices set by the Soviet authorities" - just as the Opposition had been predicting for years.? On page 54 this 2 Bukharin, speaking at the VIIth session of the larged Executive Committee of the Communist International in the name of the CC against the Opposition (according to the minutes, he was "greeted by lively applause. The delegates sang the Internationale"), stated especially:
What was the strongest argument of our opposition against the Central Committe? (I am thinking of 1925.) It was saying then: The contradiction;
are increasing immeasurably, and the Central Committee is not in a position to understand it. It was saying then: The kulaks, who have cornered almost all the surplus of grains, are organizing against us a
"grain strike." [...] Now the results say the con-
International Correspondence, 14 Jan 1927, ra year, a b, pee results" completely confirmed this
One year prognosis of the opposition, and the History in volume IT describes the same phenomenon in the same terms: strike in grain deliveries by the kulaks.
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL argument is repeated even more forcefully. The reaction of the Stalinist fraction was violent: it (p 33) "confiscated the grain" of the kulaks! In other terms, after having accused Trotsky of having wanted "to destroy the alliance between the workers and the peasants" by taxing the kulaks more, the Stalinist fraction was forced simply to expropriate them — which caused a terrible civil war and a fall in agricultural production that was a catastrophe whose effects still continue to be felt even today.
If the opinion of the opposition had been followed, increasing parts of the kulaks' "surplus" would have been seized as early as 1923. In. dustrialization would have been speeded up
The effort concentrated on the years from 1928 to 1934 could have been spread over the period from 1924 to 1934; the sacrifices imposed as a result on the Soviet people would have been infinitely less onerous, the losses and waste much more limited, and the results much more impressive than those obtained by the tardy but feverish industrialization decided on by Stalin.
All this the Soviet youth will observe for itself by studying and comparing the documents of the period. All the falsifications of the History of the CP of the US S R will not much longer hide this dazzling truth.
Quesion 19he disagreements onb
Question 18: The History asserts that at the heart of the disagreements about principles between the party and the Trotskyist-Zinovierist bloc was the question of the possibility of the victory of socialism in the USSR [...]
The Trotskyist-Zinovievist anti-party bloc obstinately denied the possibility of the victory of socialism in a single country, the USSR [... they were] open ca.
pitulators, hostile to the conquests of the October socialist revolution [vol II, pp 15-16].
Is this true? Answer: It is true that the question of victoriously completing the building of socialism in a single country was one of the main theoretical questions debated between the Left Opposition and the Stalinist fraction in the Central Committee during 1923-27. But, contrary to what is insinuzted by the authors of the History, this question did not turn on the problem of industrializing the USS R, of drawing up Five-Year Plans, of developing the productive forces. It could not turn on these problems, because it was the opposition and not the majority fraction which was the first to draw up projects in this sense, against
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL the resistance and sarcasms uttered by the Stalinist fraction.
The real problem, therefore, was not that of the launching of industrialization, of the beginning of the building of socialism, but that of completing this construction in a single country. Basically, therefore, it was, at least apparently, a quarrel about definitions.
If socialist society is defined as a society in which the means of production are collective property, then naturally it is possible to complete this process in a big country (although in the US SR, it is not yet so today: the kolkhozes still possess numerous means of production: they have even just obtained the ownership of farm machines; and the private peasants still possess a good part of the livestock and millions of acres of land).
But this definition, "invented" by Stalin, nowise corresponds to the Marxist-Leninist tradition. It can be justified only by the help of some rare quotations from Lenin, torn out of their contexts, uhere Lenin uses the term "socialism" as a synonym of "socialist revolution" (especially the famous 1915 article on the "United States of Europe, " invoked thousands of times in this connection by Stalinist authors). There exist on the contrary very numerous passages where Marx and Lenin define socialist society as a society where all classes have disappeared, where the state, for the same reason, has also disappeared, where the level of development of the productive forces and of labor productivity is far superior to that of the most advanced capitalist countries, ete. In this classic mearing of the term, the US SR is far from having "completed the construction of socialism" today, not to mention the years 1936, when this "completion" officially "proclaimed" (thereby discrediting socialism, which was identified, in the eyes of the working masses of many countries, with living standards lower than those in the most advanced capitalist countries).
Let us quote just a few passages from Lenin in support of this classic definition of the formula "to complete the building of socialism":
For the victory of socialism, it is not enough to overthrow capitalism; the diffe.
rences between proletariat and peasantry must also be done away with. [Speech to the Ird Pan-Russian Congress of the Trade
Unions, Complete Works, vol XXV, p 175 of 1936 German edition.]
Did anyone among the Bolsheviks ever deny that the revolution can be definitively victorious only when it has included all countries, or at the very least some of the most advanced countries? [Complete Works,
43 vol XVI, p 195 of the Russian edition.]
The social revolution in a single country can lead to a definitive victory only on two conditions: on the condition that it be backed up in time by the social revolution in one or several advanced countries. The second condition is an agreement of the proletariat, which establishes its dictatorship and takes the state power into its own hands, with the majority of the peasant population I...]. [Complete Works, vol
XVIII, PP • 137-38 of the Russian edition.]
Stalin himself was still writing in 1924 in his book Lenin and Leninism:
To overthrow the bourgeoisie, the efforts of a single country are enough. But for of socialism, for the organization of socialist production, the efforts of one country, and especially «f an agrarian country like Russia, are not enough. For that the efforts of the workers of a certain number of very developed countries are needed [pp 40-41].
Even in the first edition of his Questions of Leninism, we find the same formula again! Let uS add that if today the problem of the completion of socialism takes on a certain realistic aspect (in a still rather distant future, it is true), this is I) because the isolation of the Russian Revolution has been broken by the great Chinese Revolution and the creation of numerous deformed (or degenerated) workers' states in Europe and Asia: 2) because the US S R, unlike what it was in 1923-28, has become one of the most advanced industrial powers, ranking second in the world.
The question may be raised as to why the debate on this obscure point of Marxist thenry, a debate which is after all a purely academie one, turning on a question of definition, has occupied such a place in the history of the Bolshevik party. Some people have asserted that, by opposing the theory of "socialism in a single country," Trotsky "was setting the international spread of the revolution up in opposition to the industrialization of the U S S R." We have alrendy shown that this interpretation of the fraction struggle in the Russian party is false, because the opposition simultaneously called for speededup industrialization and fought against the "theory of the possibility of completing the building of socialism in a single country."
These terms, therefore, have to be rever:ed. If for a part of the leaders of the Russian CP the problem of this "possibility" took on so much importance, that was because it already objectively reflected the nationalist, petty-bourgeois, deformation of their thought, which wanted to subordinate
44 the development of the international revolution to the (alleged) interests of the building of socialism in the U SS R. This led the Stalinist fraction, first into catastrophic political errors, especially in the 1925-27 Chinese revolution, and in 1930-33 Germany that ended up in Hitler's coming to power, and later into an openly counterrevolutionary policy in France, Spain, ete from 1934 to 1938, and in France, Italy, ete from 1944 to 1948. And that ideology only expressed the special social interests of a given social formation, the Soviet bureaucracy.
For it is clear that objectively, far from "aiding" the economic upsurge of the USSR or of ensuring it a period of "respite" before an imperialist aggression, this counter-revolutionary policy of the Stalinist fraction brought immense harm to the USSR. It permitted Hitler: to reunite the concentrated forces of all Europe against the Soviet Union, just as the History recognizes on page 109 of volume II. A policy that ends up in such a disastrous result is contrary to the interests of the US S R. It is in conformity only with the interests of the bureaucratic caste. Question 19: "In the matter of foreign policy, the Trotakyists and the Zinovievists denied [!] the need to defend the US SR against imperialist intervention," the History writes (vol II, p 16). Is this true? Answer: Once again this is a case of just plain slander. Trotsky fought till his life's last breath for the Marxist principle of the defense of the US S R, a workers' state even though degener. ated, against imperialism. All his writings bear witness to this. The last political battle that he waged — see his book, In Defense of Marxism -was concerned with precisely this question. The Trotskyist Fourth International has right down to this day remained faithful to this same Marxist principle. History will testify in any case that the Trotskyists knew how to remain faithful to principles and rigorously to set aside all "political subjectivism"; for they remained attached to the defense of the US SR in spite (and at the very moment) of the worst excesses the Soviet bureaucracy committed against them (assassinations of old Oppositionists in the USSR; assassinations and kidnapings in Spain and elsewhere; the assassination of Trotsky; assassinations committed during and just after the Second World War). Question 20: Was the Left Opposition in favor of setting up a second soviet party? Answer: Up until 1934, the Left Opposition defended the viewpoint that it was useless to create a new party, that it was necessary to struggle to straighten out the Russian C P, the
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL Communist International, and all the Communist Parties, deformed by the Stalinist leadership. The opposition struggled first as a tendency; and then as a fraction, because it was obliged to by bureaucratic repression. In a healthy democratic party whose policy is correct, tendency formations are of a short-lived nature; so it was in the Bolshevik Party in Lenin's period. When fractions appeared, it was the indication that something was objectively wrong. Lenin interpreted things period of the Shliapnikov fraction ("Workers'" Opposition"), which he nevertheless fought against. Stalin did not want to admit it. He replaced the Marxist-Leninist conception of the revolutionary party as an association of equals by the bureaucratie and conservative conception according to which any tendency in disagreement with the majority of the Central Committee was automatically and necessarily an "objective agency of the class enemy." The practical application of this conception was in fact to prevent any democratic discussion in the party. Now both theory and experience teach that it is absurd to suppose that the majorities in leading organisms succeed automatically and on every occasion in adopting a correct position. The problems faced by a revolutionary party - and a fortiori by a revolutionary party holding power in a workers' state — are often new problems whose solution is hardly to be ensured by reference to the classics or to situations in the past. Only a frank and democratic discussion, a confrontation of new and successive experiences, per. mit finally finding this solution. On more than one occasion, Marx and Lenin - to take only these two examples - found themselves put in a minority in the leading organisms of the parties to which they belonged. To choke off discussion and tendency struggle is to render definitively more difficult the process by which the revo. lutionary party adapts itself to constantly changing reality, in order to react in the way most in conformity with the interests of the proletariat.
Nor is it possible to defend the thesis accord. ing to which this discussion ought to be permitted only within central committees and lead. ing organisms. As a matter of fact, any practice of this nature tips the scales in favor of the majority of the Central Committee and the party apparatus. Now if it be admitted that this majority can be mistaken, to prevent a democratic discussion in the ranks is to make it more difficult to correct any errors that have been committed - which can bring about disastrous consequences for the party, the working class, the workers' state, as the example of the Stalinist agricultural policy shows us.
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
A democratic discussion therefore presupposes that the various tendencies in the Central Committee be able, before congresses, freely to make their positions known to the ranks, in platforms and in written and oral debates around these platforms. In other terms, it presupposes the freedom to organize tendencies. But if fractions are forbidden, any tendency struggle can be choked off by accusing a minority tendency of transforming itself into a fraction. And if the right to form various soviet parties is suppressed, fraction or tendency struggles can be stifled by asserting that the minority is "objectively" transforming itself into a second party. In practice, furthermore, when political divergences on which history has not yet said its last word become too acute and show themselves for too long a time, it is preferable, from the viewpoint of the party's interests themselves, to allow a minority to organize itself separately than to paralyze the party's life to a great extent by an endless struggle. It is from the clash between the platforms of different soviet parties that the correct position will finally emerge.
The Stalinists - and the Khrushchevists -justify their opposition to the right to form various soviet parties, the right to form fractions and the right to tendencies, by equally specious objective and subjective arguments.
The objective argument is that, when there are no class oppositions, the existence of various parties is not justified. This argument presupposes first of all that there are no confliets of class interests in the US S R, and next that each class historically expresses its interests in a single party. Both assertions are false. There are in the US S R two social classes — the working class and the peasantry — whose historical and immediate interests are often different. And next, history teaches us that various social classes have internally sufficiently different interests of strata, groups, and sections to justify the existence of several parties for long periods of time.
As for the subjective argument, it insists on the difficult situation of the Soviet state, surround. ed by enemies, a besieged fortress, with a working class that is in a considerable minority. This argument had a certain value, but only for an acute period of civil war, during which a certain limitation of soviet democracy may be inevitable. But is it not striking that at the height of the Civil War, there were not only constantly tendency struggles in the Bolshevik party, but even various soviet parties (particularly the Left Social - Revolutionaries, the Mensheviks, the Anarchists, and the Bund) legalized for considerable periods, whereas in the USSR of today, which is neither disarmed, nor surrounded,
45 nor supported only by • a proletariat in the minority, but which is the second-ranking military and industrial power in the world, the masses have neither freedom to form soviet parties, nor fraction rights, nor tendency rights? (vol it, p. 2r) that the Left Opposition "openly The History of the CP of the USS R violated the Soviet laws" by organizing public demonstrations at the time of the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution. In fact, nothing in the Soviet Constitution of that period forbade the organization of either soviet parties or public meetings or street demonstrations. These traditional democratic rights of the workers have never been formally revoked. The cynical assertion of the History reveals the gulf that separates Soviet legality from the practice of the bureaucracy. Question 21: Why was the Left Opposition expelled from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union? Answer: The Left Opposition was expelled because its members refused to repudiate their convictions. This emerges clearly from the resolution of the XVth Congress of the CP of the Soviet Union which asserted particularly:
The Congress calls for the ideological and organic disarming of the Opposition, asks their withdrawal of the views expressed above as anti-Leninist and Menshevik, and the acceptance of the obligation to defend everywhere the conceptions and decisions of the party, of party congresses, of party conferences, and of the party CC.
Rykov, in his speech winding up the XVth Congress, speaking in the name of the C C majority, had furthermore specified:
In regard to each of the active participants in the opposition, to the degree that he will renounce his ideological errors, the party, in accepting him back, must work out measures and conditions that will exclude the possibility of a renewal of what has been going on during these last two years.
!International Correspondence, 1927, n° 12, p. 1991.]
The History, furthermore, repeats substantially the same idea (vol Il, p 31). In the name of the opposition, Kamener had replied in advance to this impermissible demand (Trotsky and Zinoviev, the two main spokesmen of the opposition, had been expelled from the party on the eve of the XVth Congress and had not been able to speak there). He had declared:
[We decide] to submit to all the decisions
46 of the party congress, however harsh they may be for us [Interruption: "That's formal!"], and carry them out.
By so acting, we are acting in a Bolshevik way: but if — to this complete and unconditional submission to all the decisions of the party congress, to the complete renunciation and liquidation of any fractional struggle in all its forms and the dissolution of fractional organizations — to all that we further add a renunciation of our points of view, that, in our opinion, would not be Bolshevik. If there occured on our part a renunciation of the opinions that we were still advocating a week or two ago, that would be hypocrisy, and you would not accord it any credence. [International
Correspondence, 1927, n° 128, p. 1965.]
Here twn different organizational conceptions confront each other: that of democratic centralism, which makes obligatory the carrying out, the application, and the public defense of the decis. ions taken by the majority, but which leaves minorities the right to keep their own opinions and defend them inside the party, and to bring the majority decisions into question again after a certain test by events, in periods of discussion decided on by the leading organisms (especially the periods preceding national congresses and conferences); and the conception of bureaucratic centralism which obliges minorities "to disarm ideologically," to abandon the defense of their ideas inside the party as well, to give up any attempt at revision of the majority decisions, and which as a result prevents any correction of errors committed by the majority. It is needless to say that the whole Leninist practice is contrary to bureaucratie centralism, and that Lenin never required Bolsheviks who were not in agreement with him on this or that question to give up 'their ideas in order to remain in the party.
is known, had a tragie continuation. Contrary to his own declaration, which we have just reproduced, Kamener and his tendeney friends, at the end of the XVth Congress, made a declaration renouncing their ideas. And as might have been expected - as the opposition had foreseen and Kamenev himself had announced — the party leaders soon began to accuse the capitulating oppositionals of "duplicity," "hypocrisy," ete (History, vol II, p 32, et al). But why then had they required such public sell-abasement except to break these men morally and start them on the road that would lead to their lying "confessions" at the Moscow Trials?
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL III. MARXIST EXPLANATION OF
THE "PERSONALITY CULT," IE, OF THE PERIOD OF STALINIST DICTATORSHIP Question 22: How was Soviet agriculture collectivized and what the results of this particular form of collectivization? Answer: Soviet agriculture was collectivized by majority of bath th force and against the resistance of the great majority of both the rich and middle peasants. Its results were disastrous: a systematic slaughter of livestock and a disastrous drop in agricultural production. It was followed by a crisis in the provisioning of the Soviet cities (and toilers) which, as even Khrushchev confesses, has not yet been solved 25 years later.
According to the statistical collection, National Economy of the US S R, published by the Sovict government (Foreign Language Publishing House, Moscow, 1957), horned cattle in 1928 (within the present borders of the U S S R) amounted to 66.8 million units. In 1930 it had fallen to 50.6 million, in 1931 to 42.5 million, in 1932 to 38.2 million, and in 1934 to 33.5 million: half the cattle had disappeared in the space of five years! The evolution in grain production was no less catastrophic. It took till 1937 to catch up with the 1927 production level, and the 1937 per capita level has not yet been equaled even in 1960.
In view of these unquestionable facts, certain assertions of the History take on a really odious character. Thus it is asserted (vol II, p 40) that the formation of kolkhozes lagged behind (!) "the sweep of the movement of the peasant masses" toward collectivization, and the masses of poor and middle peasants are explicitly mentioned. Now these poor and middle peasants formed 85% of the Soviet peasantry. If this mass had really rushed with enthusiasm toward the kolkhozes, how is the tragie fact to be explained that, on the way, they killed off half the Soviet livestock so as not to have to turn it over to producers' coöperatives?
On pages 44-45 and 51 of volume II, the authors of the History claim that the integral collectivization of Soviet agriculture was "prepared" by the party and the state by a series of economic measures that permitted the creation of an adequate technical and agrotechnical basis for the great kolkhozian enterprises. In reality, have seen how the leaders of the ruling fraction of the C P had refused to listen to the warnings of the Left Opposition, had refused to prepare the gradual collectivization of agriculture, had, beginning with 1928, taken action precisely under the effect of panic, without adequate preparation. Worse still: the traction-power
the IS S R to change this erroneous policy for They had believed that the "Hitlerite adventure"
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL destroyed by the mass slaughter of horses was greater than the traction-power of tractors up until the middle of the '50s! And despite a broad extension of the tilled areas, production scarcely increased (except for plants destined for industry) - which proves that productivity had not risen but fallen.
Farther on, indeed, the authors of the History admit that "errors and excesses" were committed in collectivization, and that "many peasants, yielding to the provocations of the kulaks, had slaughtered cows, hogs, sheep, and poultry [vol II, P 59]." But, let us repeat, if it was more than the half of Soviet livestock that was slaughtered, it was not a matter merely of "many peasants," but of a large part (half, almost half, or over half) of the peasantry which was hostile to collectivization and which was obliged by force to enter the kolkhozes. And if this is the way it was, how can any credence still be given to the assertion of the authors of the History (vol Il, p 51), according to which "the passing over to integral collectivization marks a radical turn of the basic peasant masses toward socialism"? Question 23: Why were the errors in Stalinist agricultural policy not corrected for 25 years? Ansuer: Drawing up the balance-sheet of the First Five-Year Plan, the History emphasizes not only the unquestionable and impressive springs forward of industrial production, but also "the radical improvement in the material situation of the toilers" in the city as in the country (vol II, p 81). It asserts farther on (p 1006) that, beginning with 1934, the problem of provisioning the cities with wheat was entirely solved.
New 21 years later, in 1955, Khrushchev abruptly confessed that this problem of provisioning was still not solved, and two years later he took Malenkov to task for having asserted the contrary in 1952. That is to say how slight and baseless is the assertion of the authors of the History.
In reality, the Stalinist agricultural policy brought on a crisis in food supplies to the Soviet people which lasted from 1928 till 1955-56, i e, for 27 years, which imposed terrible sacrifices on the people, sacrifices that could have been avoided. It is obviously impossible to explain a social phenomenon of such scope by a simple psychological fact ("the personality cult"). As Marxists, we take as our starting-point the conception that social phenomena (i e, involving millions of individuals) must find a social explanation, i e, can be explained only by special aspects of the relations mutually connecting social classes or strata.
The fact that it was impossible for the CP of erroneous policy for
47 more than a quarter of a century, despite its disastrous consequences for the country, the working class, and the alliance between the workers and the peasants, peremptorily demonstrates that something was rotten in that party, that there was no longer either democratic centralism or freedom of discussion, either at the top or in the ranks. The thesis according to which this party had undergone a process of bureaucratic degene ration, a thesis defended by the Left Opposition from 1927 on, is thus confirmed.
But this bureaucratie degeneration of a workers' party ruling a workers' state cannot remain a purely political phenomenon. It must have precise social These must be exposed. That is what we shall do farther on. Question 24: How was Hitler able to take power? Ansuer: Hitler's arrival at power is the determinant fact of world history of the '30s. It had terrible effects, first on the German working class, then on the European working class, and finally on the Soviet people and state themselves, whom it cost 20 million dead and incalculable devastations.
Now, following the authors of the 1938 Short Course, the authors of the History (vol II, P 89) are satisfied to observe that, despite the "revoluawakening" of the German working class, which "was demonstrated with particular force," the bourgeoisie "decided to give the power to the Hitlerites." Full stop; that's all. But in a country torn by class struggle, the "decision" of one of the sides facing each other is not generally sufficient to seize victory. It is necessary also for the correlation of forces to be favorable to it, or for the poliey followed by the other side to allow it to get its own way. Now in Germany the power of the working class was such that it was possible to impose a fascist dietatorship on the country, to destroy all the workers' organizations, only as a result of division and passivity in the working class.
Unquestionably the Social-Democratic leaders bear a heavy responsibility for this state of affairs. That was emphasized in the 1938 Short Course (p 285); it was omitted in the 1959 History. But what about the Communist Party? The 1938 Short Course mentioned that it had received six million votes. The History modestly omits this significant fact, no doubt lest the question be raised: Why was this impressive force unable to bar the road to fascism?
The facts provide us with the sad answer to this question. The Communist leaders of the period, including Stalin, had completely under. estimated the seriousness of the fascist danger.
48 would be only a brief interlude before conquest of power by the German CP. They had not understood at all the disastrous effects of a fascist victory, both on the German working class and on the situation in Europe. Despite the rise of the fascist : danger, they had in practice sabotaged the policy of united action by the working class, by asserting that the Social-Democracy was the "main danger," by taking up Stalin's idiotic thesis that "Social-Demoeracy and fascism are twins," the theory of social-fascism. 3 Trotsky and the international Trotskyist movement cautioned the Russian, German, and international Communists against this false policy. They called for setting up a Communist-Socialist united front, from top to drive back the fascist offensive, and then, with their forces thus cementod, to set out on the assault of capitalism. And even when Hitler was named chancellor and the workers' organizations still had some months' respite, no attempt was undertaken to organize an anti-fascist uprising. * Question 25: What happened in the USSR between the assassination of Kirov and the resignation of Zhejov as head of the G PU? Answer: According to the History, between 1 December 1934 and 1 Decembre 1936, in the C P of the US SR, only one event occurred that deserves mention: the verification of the party membership cards (vol II, pp 103-4). As the assassin of Kirov, first secretary of the CP at Leningrad, had a party membership card, it was decided to verify these cards in order to expe! unworthy elements. The mistake was made, however, of expelling also passive elements. incredible but true: that is all that the History [sic] of the C P of the U SS R has to say of the somewhat tumultuous events of these years.
The 1938 Short Course was already a little more explicit. It asserts (p 308) that the assassination of Kirov had been perpetrated "by that band of Trotskyists and Zinovievists joined to. gether." It goes on to state that this "band" had sold itself "to the fascist espionnage services." It with complacency (p 308) the three Moscow Trials where "these scoundrels" (the members of the famous Leninist Central Committee!) had confessed to preparing assassination "of all [!] the other leaders of the party and the government." Finally it is explained why these "cast-offs of the human race" (p 327) were executed, after having perpetrated "heinous crimes for twenty years." 3 See a recent - and tardy - criticism of this policy by Palmiro Togliatti, examined in our Winter 1959-60 issue.
See Leon Trotsky's Euvres Choisies, volume HII, largoly devoted to these problems.
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
Of all that, no trace remains in the 1959 His-
The only thing it keeps is the verification of the party membership cards. But to learn the full and complete truth about occurring in the events that were then US S R, we possess today a witness of some weight: IN Khrushchev, First Secretary of the CP of the US S R, declared the following in his famous "secret" report to the XXth Congress:
It has been established that, out of the
139 members or alternates elected to the party CC at the XVIIth Congress, persons, i e 70%, were arrested and shot
(most of them in 1937-38), [...] It was this same fate that was suffered by not only the C C members but also the majority of the delegates to the XVIIth Congress of the party. Out of the 1956 delegates with voice or vote, 1,108 were arrested under indictment of' counter-revolutionary crimes, ie, more than half. That fact itself shows how fantastic and contrary tr common sense were the accusations of counter-revolutionary crimes, made against, we now see, the majority of the participants in the XVIIth Congress (1934). [..] That was the result of abuses of power by Stalin, who was beginning to resort to mass terror against the party cadres.
In another "secret" speech, Khrushchev estimated at "several million" the number munists and honest workers who were liquidated during the period from 1935 to 1938. But this whole succession of tragedies and crimes on a colossal scale, which ended up in the physical liquidation of the major part of the Communist cadres in the US S R — all that, for the authors of the History of the CP of the USS R, is reduced to the verification of membership cards!
It is true that farther on — without any connection with the Kirov affair, the persecutions of the oppositionals, or the Moscow Trials - the History mentions "the mass repression against the politically defeated ideological enemies," which also made victims "of numerous [!] communists and honest citizens," and "persecutions and deaths" of which Zhejov and Beria were the authors. But this is a matter only of two or three sentences in a passage on "the personality cult " itsell — it is hard to believe it, but that's the way it is! - fitted into a long development concerning-. "the strengthening of Soviet democracy" and "greater| democracy in the party"! (Vol II, pp 124-27). Question 26: Does the "personality cult of Stalin" Furnish a sufficient explanation for all these baffing phenomena?
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL Answer: One after another, we have examined three "errors" of Stalin that brought on the most baleful consequences for the Soviet state and working class, as also for the world proletariat: forced collectivization, with the destitution and semi-famine that followed it; the policy of socialfascism, with the arrival of Hitler in power, the destruction of the workers' movement in a large part of Europe, and the invasion of the US SR, the probability of which, furthermore, Stalin did not want to admit in spite of many warnings (vol II, p 163): and the physical destruction of a good part of the cadres of the Soviet CP by a "mass terror."
All these phenomena are explained by the authors of the History by the "personality cult," which "slowed down the development of Soviet society but which could not stop it, and did not modify the socialist nature of the Soviet structure."
It is absolutely unsatisfactory from the Marxist viewpoint to explain social phenomena of such scope by a single incident of individual psychopathology. As we have already pointed out. social phenomena can have only a social explanation. The only valid Marxist explanation of the Stalinist phenomenon is that a bureaucratic stratum having privileges to delend — but enjoying these privileges on the basis of the made of production created by the October Revolution -usurped political power in the USSR and politically expropriated the proletariat.
This Marxist thesis, defended by Leon Trotsky and the Fourth International, permits explaining both the contradictory aspects of Soviet reality sure, the tetic to the si.
tence of a mode of production superior to that of capitalism: and the terrible crimes commited against the interests of the Soviet and international proletariat by this selfsame Soviet bureau-
To assert that "socialism has triumphed" in the US SR, or to assert that a "state capitalism" reigns there — these do not permit explaining the two faces of the Soviet medallion. Question 27: Is the Soviet bureaucracy a new class? Answer: No. It does not have its own roots in the process of production or in the economic life of the country; it has no particular historical role to play. What we have here is a parasitical excrescence that has appeared on the Soviet proletariat, the workers' state, at a particular period of its history, owing to quite special historical phenomena; the isolation of the first workers" state, its maintenance in spite of the temporar: ebb of the world revolution, but its maintenance
49 in a country that was poor and bled white, suffering from an enormous economic and cultural backwardness. And so, to wipe out bureaucratie degeneration in the US S R, it is not necessary to have a social revolution, it is not necessary to overthrow the mode of production or the social order; a political revolution is sufficient, a change in the forın of government, reëstablishing political freedoms for the Soviet proletarians, internal democracy in the party, the soviets, and the state. Question 28: Do the events that have occurred in the US S R since Stalin's death not demonstrate that the bureaucracy is not a social stratum having its own interests and privileges to defend? Answer: Giuseppe Boffa, special correspondent of l'Unità in Moscow from 1953 to 1957, and intelligent spokesman for the Khrushcher theses, writes in The Big Turn — from Stalin to Khrushchev:
The aceusation of Trotskyist and Social-
Democratic — and later Jugoslav — origin, which considers that the "Stalinist bureaucracy" has become a "new class" falls of its own weight. It could never alter the production relationship in its own favor. No essential principle of communism was ever threatened. It is the nature of bureaucratic elements to tend to become differentiated and stratified, and to become separated from the people. But this tendency cannot be in accordance with the structure of Soviet society: it enters into open conflict with it.
This is confirmed by the history of these last years. The anti-bureaucratic action being carried out today by the Soviet Union through speeches and publications has the very accent of a "class struggle." This method has been critieized with some reason, for it overmagnified the target. It well demonstrates, however, the intolerance of this people toward anything which, from near or far, seems to attack its principles.
Lenin had remarked that the struggle against bureaucratic phenomena stretched out over dozens of years; socialist society contains the conditions for their final defeat.
[lage 113 of the French edition, published by François Maspéro.]
We have deliberately quoted this long text by an official ideologist of the Communist Parties in order to strip bare the deformations, contradictions, and boomerangs that it contains.
We have just reminded our readers that Leon Trotsky and the Trotskyist movement have never considered the Soviet bureaucracy to be a new class; to be fair, it must also be added that nei-
50 ther have the Jugoslav Communists ever adopted such a position, except during the brief period during which Milovan Djilas exerted a predominant ideological influence over them. As for the Social-Democrats, eternal adversaries of the October Revolution and the Soviet Union, it is a pure amalgam to mix their positions up with those of communist tendencies like the Trotskyists or the Titists.
In the passage of Boffa that we have just quoted, it is admitted that "the anti-bureaucratic action" being carried on today in the US SR takes on the very accent of a "class struggle," or, more exactly, of a social struggle. The assertion that it is "the Soviet Union" (i e, the state itself) that is carrying out this action is contradicted in the following sentence, since it is there asserted that "this method been criticized with some reason." In reality, it is the state which criticized, and definite social strata (youth, progressive intellectuals, workers) who vigorously carried on this "anti-bureaucratic action." But if these strata have in fact been carrying on the anti-bureaucratic action as a social struggle, how could one continue to dispute the fact that it is indeed a matter of a social phenomenon, i e. of the appearance of a stratum of privileged people?
Taking up Lenin's position on the problem of bureaucracy, Boffa rightly stresses that the founder of the Soviet state emphasized the fact that the problem is complex and of long duration. But he carefully refrains from pioking up the quotations reproduced here, which confirm that Lenin nowise exeluded the possibility of a bureaucratic degeneration of the US S R. Need we recall that even Stalin, as late as 1925, nowise excluded this possibility?
The fact that the Soviet bureaucracy has never on a misunderstanding. The bureaucracy had no interest in "altering" the existing production relationships, for the good reason that these scarcely prevented the flowering and extension of its privileges. Those privileges are, roughly, limited to the sphere of distribution. To ensure itself these privileges, the bureaucracy has to have supreme control over the whole social product. It is in this arbitrary and parasitical control of the Soviet social surplus product by a well. delimited stratum of people, that, in the last analysis, the root of bureaucratic degeneration lies. This root has not been extirpated since Stalin's death or since the XXth Congress.
Even if it has been somewhat lessened, social inequality in the US S R continues to be extraordinary for a country which claims to be socialist. Directors of trusts, and other highly placed bur.
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL eaucrats, earn easily 10 to 20 times as much as a medium-skilled worker (not to speak of the worstpaid strata - women street-sweepers, business clerks, etc — whose salary is exceded by some. times 30 times). The management of the enterprises and the economy is strictly reserved for the members of the privileged stratum. is neither genuine workers' co-management nor the semblance of democratie workers' control. their collective The laboring masses have no way of bringing their collective weight to bear on central decisions about planning and economic policy. The most they can do is to protest against the effects of this policy on their immediate living standards, and thus bring a certain pressure on the government. The arrival of the Khrushchev era has nowise modified the basic features of this regime. The only democratization that has taken place has been at the top of the bureaucracy, for which the Central Committee has become a genuine small parliament. many reforms of the Khrushcher period have improved the masses' living and working conditions; but these were conceded to the masses under growing pressure from 1953 to 1956 — a pressure which found its logical conclusion in the Polish and Hungarian revolutions, which Khrushcher tried at any cost to avoid in the US S R. These reforms no more certify the disappearance of the bureaucratic regime in the US S R than the reforms wrenched from capitalism in the West since the rise of the labor movement certify the disappearance of capitalism.
And when Boffa asserts that no essential prin. ciple of communism was ever threatened, he contradicts what he himself said a few pages earlier where he recalls that, contrary to Lenin's teachings, the high salaries for "specialists" were extended to party and state functionaries, thus violating the rule of the Paris Commune." Now Lenin explicitly stated — following Mars, what is more - that these high salaries constituted the main source of a possible "demoralization" of the soviet power, its bureaucratic degeneration. That is therefore precisely what it is about in the Soviet Union since the victory of Stalin. Question 29: Since foreign policy is the natural prolongation of internal policy, does that also in its turn certify a bureaucratie degeneration in the US SR? Answer: No doubt about it. Without going back to phenomena from before World War II (defeat of the Chinese revolution, power, policy of a Popular Front in France and Spain, ete), we can draw the proofs thereof from the (quite brief) developments in the second
volume of the History of the CP of the USS R a thesis disarms the toilers, sows passivity and
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL concerning the Soviet Union's postwar international policy.
Thus the History does mention the conquest of power by the Jugoslay CP and the Chinese C P, but it takes care not to mention, in the case of these two - the only two victorious social revolutions that took place during and after World War II — that it was Stalin, it was the Soviet CP, that advised Tito and Mao TseTung against taking power. Is it not bizarre that a pure workers' state, that a "socialist" government, sets the brakes against the development of communism in the world?
When the authors of the History take up the first postwar phase (vol II, Pp 230-31), they do mention the strengthening of the French and Italian Communist Parties, the aggravation of the class struggle. But suddenly they are talk. ing about the offensive of the bourgeoisie and the threat of faseist and cryptofascist regimes! This raises the question: Why did these Communist Parties, profiting by the terrible weakness capitalism in their respective countries, which the History admits, not first try to use the offensive arm? The answer is well known: at the moment when capitalism was the most weakened, the French, Italian, and Belgian C Ps. throwing Lenin's teaching overboard, entered bourgeois coalition governments, collaborated in rebuilding the bourgeois state apparatus (Maurice Thorez: "A single state, a single army, a single police."), held back strikes, and drove with all their strength for the reconstruction of the capitalist economy. It was only when this criminal policy had sufficiently strengthened previously weak capitalism that the bourgeoisie was able to go over to the offensive, beginning in 1947-48, for the masses had been demoralized and disappointed by the reformist policy followed by the CI's.
Can such a policy, which was nevertheless dictated by Moscow, be the emanation of a really communist government?
And lastly, beginning with the XXth Congress, the CP of the US SR has been with increasing violence extolling the revisionist policy called "peaceful coexistence" -_ a poliey poses that the war can be avoided without the destruction of capitalism, that capitalism collapse without a proletarian revolution, that the world victory of socialism can be the more or less automatic, more or less direct, resuit of the strengthening of the Soviet economy. Such
51 skepticism about the revolutionary possibilities of the world proletariat, and in practice thwarts authentie revolutions that have burst out in spite of the policy of the GPs, such as the Algerian revolution.
In another quarter, unquestionably, the Soviet government carried on a victorious war against Nazi imperialism, the existence of the Soviet Union permitted the destruction of capitalism (from above, without revolution) in the countries of Eastern Europe, and it aided the development of the colonial revolution. But these two contradictory • aspects of Soviet international poliey are only the reflection of the contradictory nature of the bureaucracy: it is attached to the new torms of property and the mode of production ereated by the October Revolution, while being a conservative force that exploits these new forms for its own selfish interests. This dual aspect of the bureaucracy we find again here in its international policy. Question 30: Is the Soviet Union a classless society, a socialist society? Answer: The authors of the History of the CP of the U SS R assert (vol II, p. 113) that the exploiting elasses have been suppressed in the U S S R. This assertion is correct. But that does not prevent two distinct classes from continuing to exist in the country: the working class and the peasant class, whose interests, without being permanently in opposition, often clash, and in a violent way. The survival of these two classes is due in the last analysis to the insufficient degree of development of the productive forces. The survival of production for the market, of money, of wages — this has definitively same roots. As Marxists we understand that the survival of the state is also due to this cause. The assertion that the survival of the state would be due to the need to organize the economy or to defend the country (vol II, p 129) is untenable from the Marxist viewpoint, for these functions can be more adequately fulfilled in a classless society, by other forms of social organization.
Consequently, the US S R has not yet built socialism (the classless society), but still finds itself a transitional phase from capitalism to socialism. And as the productive forces develop and the cultura! level rises, the masses will sweep away the bureaucratic regime that is an obstacle to the optimum upsurge of society.
Three Declarations and an Open Letter of the
International Secretariat of the Fourth International