SOCIALIST ACTION (USA)
Gorbachev, Stalinism
and the crisis of the
Fourth International
-HE TENDENCY for the Programme of the Fourth International (TPFI) is *ased on the following three documents which have been submitted to the -ternational Internal Discussion Bulletin in preparation for the 13th World Congress of the Fourth International. • The Soviet Union and the Meaning of Gorbachev's Reforms • The USec Majority, Stalinism and Eastern Europe • The Deepening Crisis in the Fourth International Today A summary of the general line of these documents follows: 1. USSR: Capitalist restoration The central thrust and direction of the Gorbachev project is to prepare the ground for the restoration of capitalism in the USSR. The deepening degeneration of the Soviet workers' state is a combined product of the counter-revolutionary policies of the Stalinist bureaucracy and the imperialist exclusion of the USSR and the deformed workers' states from me world division of labour. The Stalinist bureaucracy, faced with the virtual collapse of the Soviet economy and the associated emergence of an angry and disaffected working
228 International Marxist Review class, is preparing the way for its conversion into a capitalist ruling class. Given the choice of attempting to maintain its privileges based on its parasitic relationship to state property or the elimination of state property and the destruction of the workers' state, the bureaucracy is opting for the capitalist solution.
To minimize the dangers of political revolution, Gorbachev, has sought the direct assistance of imperialism. As an incentive for imperialist aid, the Stalinists offer the potential of new markets and the deepening of their counterrevolutionary policy of "peaceful coexistence". Trotsky predicted in the Transitional Programme:
The USSR embodies terrific contradictions. But it still remains a degenerated workers' state.
Such is the social diagnosis. The political prognosis has an alternative character. Either the bureaucracy, becoming ever more the organ of the world bourgeoisie in the workers' state, will overthrow the new forms of property and plunge the country back into capitalism; or the working class will crush the bureaucracy and open the way to socialism.
These are the counterposed alternatives taking shape in the USSR today— either a counter-revolutionary restoration involving a crushing defeat of the workers, or a revolutionary upsurge dealing the deathblow to Stalinism and resuming the march to socialism. Glasnost, parliamentarism and soviet democracy
Gorbachev's glasnost is organically connected to his perestroika project. The democratic openings provided by glasnost are subordinate to its central objective, the establishment of a parliamentary-type system designed to atomize and disperse the workers into the general populace, and maximize the weight of pro-capitalist petty-bourgeois layers within a multiclass, geographically defined electorate.
While we welcome the democratic openings which are limited to enabling Gorbachev's restorationist course, we perceive glasnost's primary function to be to divert the political activity of an atomized working class into ineffectual choices between competing petty bourgeois parliamentary sharks.
The Fourth International sees the creation of soviet forms of democracy as the indispensable form of workers' political rule. All forms of genuine workers' democracy begin in the workplace, unfold in the streets and other arenas of struggle, and constitute an indispensable medium of class war. Moreover, as the October Revolution demonstrated, the soviets, or workers councils, are a natural institutionalized form of workers' power in the struggle to overthrow capitalism and for the subsequent construction of a socialist society. The soviet form of democracy is both legislative and executive. Political decisions are made and executed by the elected and recallable representatives
Gorbachev, Stalinism and the crisis of the Fourth International 229 of the workers. Capitalist democracy, in sharp contrast, begins and ends at the ballot box; and keeps the ultimate power of the state in the hands of a virtually irremovable bureaucratic administrative apparatus and the bodies of armed men which enforce the latter's executive authority.
Gorbachev's restructured "soviets", based on geographic electoral districts separate and apart from the workplace, are diametrically opposed to the genuine soviets championed by Lenin and Trotsky.
Parliamentary democracy is also designed to open up the Soviet political process to imperialist influence. This is intended as a kind of guarantee for foreign capital and its compradore Soviet junior partners by providing them with a political lever for defending their newly acquired property.
Revolutionists must utilize all democratic openings to advance the interests of the workers, including all opportunities provided by capitalist democracy. But, it is wrong to accept or advocate parliamentary democracy as a substitute for the soviet form, and it is false to credit Gorbachev for providing such openings. This creates dangerous illusions in his objectives and, therefore, in the false notion that he represents a "progressive" layer of the bureaucracy. Political revolution
The political revolution in the USSR will be the product of the massive mobilization of the working class and the resultant destruction of the political institutions of the Stalinist government. This process will be led by a revolutionary party whose ranks are in the vanguard of the anti- bureaucratic struggle. The possibility that individual bureaucrats can come over to support the workers' and political revolution independent of and subordinate to the struggle against bureaucratic rule. Stalinism
We reject the notion that the Gorbachevites, or any other faction of the bureaucracy, is not Stalinist, or that the USSR is a "post-Stalinist" state. Stalinism is not confined to a political system based exclusively on one-man rule, repression and terror. It is a Bonapartist caste which can play no independent social role. But Stalinism is fully able to make whatever tactical manoeuvres are necessary in defense of its privileges— including by the transformation of itself from a parasitic caste into a property owning class.
Stalinism, like all ruling privileged minorities, is compelled to use all the reactionary prejudices that fester in darkness and backwardness to divide the oppressed majority and perpetuate their dominant position in society.
Gorbachev has not rejected the use of violence and terror. To the contrary, he has employed Soviet troops against the rising national movements. In the
face of mounting working class resistance, such as we saw during and after the days of the Tianenman massacres in China, the Russian Stalinists can be expected to resort to whatever force and terror is necessary to preserve their dominance. Expecting less, would be to operate on the false and dangerous assumption that either the political revolution will be a peaceful process of self-reform or that the client regime will stand by idly as the workers rise to
Soviet foreign policy is reactionary. It is designed to foster Gorbachev's domestic objectives. Even the previous modest support to national liberation movements is precipitously declining. The Stalinists are desperately seeking to cash in their international "bargaining chips" with the imperialist bankers.
In exchange, they are hoping for credits and other assistance to ease and facilitate the transformation of their privileges into property rights.
The withdrawal from Afghanistan was not a sudden moral conversion to honouring the right of nations to self-determination. It is no less a product of a military and political defeat than the American imperialist withdrawal from
Vietnam. Similarly, the aim of the INF treaty was primarily intended to further assure US imperialism of Gorbachev's class collaborationist intentions.
As we well know, imperialism was and remains primarily responsible for the arms race and the threat of nuclear annihilation of the human race.
Like virtually every other nuclear weapons treaty, imperialist concessions to humanity's abhorrence of capitalist wars was inconsequential. The number of weapons eliminated was minuscule in relation to the total, and, more important, all are slated to be replaced by newer, more effective weapons of
The struggle of the oppressed nations in the USSF for self-determination is inseparable from the political revolution. As this struggle deepens, it must challenge Stalinist bureaucratic power. To be successful, it must be based on proletarian mobilization and independent organization. Opposition to the right of secession on the grounds that the current leadership of the various movements is "pro- capitalist", is reactionary. The only way to effectively challenge the current petty-bourgeois leadership of the oppressed nations is for revolutionaries to be in the forefront of the struggle for the unqualified
Separation from the USSR, if it represents the genuine aspirations of the oppressed nations, can lay the basis for the deepening of the revolutionary
230 International Marxist Review remove it from power.
Foreign policy mass destruction.
The national question right to self-determination.
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Gorbachev, Stalinism and the crisis of the Fourth International 231 process and the ultimate unification of the oppressed nations into a voluntary socialist association based on mutual benefit. Building the Fourth International
The prerequisite for the political revolution is the construction of a political party based on the historic programme of the Fourth International The opportunities to assemble cadre to build such a party now in the USSR have never been greater. Subordination of this task to regroupments with centrist or reformist currents who lack political clarity on the essential elements of political revolution is a fatal mistake. II. Eastern Europe/Germany:
We hail the mass mobilizations of the East European workers which have begun to shatter the rule of the Stalinist bureaucracies across Eastern Europe. They are entirely progressive in character, representing the opening shots of the political revolution.
Stalinism in Eastern Europe, like its Soviet mentor, has opted for the capitalist solution for essentially the same reasons. And similarly, although severely weakened. Stalinism is still the central political force to be reckoned with by the Eastern European masses. Despite the emergence, of petty-bourgeois and openly pro-capitalist forces and parties in Eastern Europe, control of the economies and key state institutions such as the army, police and the governmental and industrial bureaucracies of these workers' states, still remain in the hands of the Stalinists.
The Stalinists share common interests and goals with the petty- bourgeois figures who have emerged in several instances to share government power with them. Like in the USSR, these include the establishment of parliamentary-type institutions and the introduction of the market aimed at the restoration of capitalism.
The Stalinists and their local and international allies are blocked or slowed in implementing their policies by their fear of provoking a mass working class reaction which would involve the crystallization of workers' institutions fighting for a socialism. Parliament vs. soviets, political revolution and the party Everything said earlier regarding parliamentary democracy vs. soviet democracy; the need for political revolution and for its victory; and the necessity of constructing sections of the FI, applies with full force in East Europe as well.
We fully support the reunification of Germany today. Opposition to the right of the German people to reunify their nation, as well as any reference to
German "collective guilt" is reactionary. Revolutionary socialists must champion reunification based on defending and extending the interests of the workers against the capitalist bosses and the- Stalinist bureaucrats.
The mass mobilizations of the German workers which led to the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and the weakening of the Stalinist apparatus, are revolutionary conquests of the workers, opening the way to greater independent organization and struggle. An analysis, which sees these developments as reactionary because new openings have also been created for capitalist penetration, is false. The East German Stalinists played no progressive role in relation to defending the interests of the workers or state property. Instead, they are centrally responsible for the political and economic conditions
Nicaragua is a capitalist state. Its capitalist character was not changed with the July 19, 1979 victory of the Sandinista Revolution, although the state was
The Sandinista leadership, attempting to hold a course between the forces of revolution and counter-revolution was threatened on the one side by Nicaraguan and world capitalism, which sought to crush them along with the continuing revolutionary threat and on the other, by the worker and peasant masses who pressed the Sandinistas to deepen the revolution and resolve the
The FSLN leadership failed to follow the example of Cuba which made a successful transition to a workers' state in the very heat of the revolution.
From the inception of the 1979 revolution, the FSLN a party of revolutionists-of-action, not a proletarian party of revolutionary socialism, failed in the a) The FSLN failed to expropriate the landed estates and divide the land b) The FSLN did not implement any form or workers control of industry or c) The FSLN's commitment to a "mixed economy" constituted a subordination of the interests of workers and peasants—the revolution—to a class
232 International Marxist Review
German reunification
Ill. Nicaragua severely weakened question of which class shall rule.
following areas:
among the landless peasants.
agriculture.
which led to the mass mobilizations against them.
collaborationist alliance with Nicaraguan capitalists.
Gorbachev, Stalinism and the crisis of the Fourth International 233 d) The FSLN did not establish any forms of workers' democracy, that is, institutions of workers and peasants self- government. There was no distinction between the party and the government e) The FSLN did not construct a revolutionary party based on the democratic participation of the vanguard. Virtually every state and party decision was made by the nine-member Sandinista Directorate f) The FSLN subordinated a proletarian internationalist foreign policy to seeking political and economic support from capitalist governments in Latin America and Europe. The 1990 Nicaraguan elections
The 1990 elections in Nicaragua marked a qualitative turning point in the relationship of class forces in Nicaragua, although a turning point in the revolution occurred at least as early as the August 7, 1987 signing of the Arias Peace Plan in Esquipulas, Guatemala, by Daniel Ortega.
Now the FSLN has formed an open alliance with the Chamorro government, taking key posts in the administration of the state including the head of the army. The army has been reduced in size and today operates under the control of the new government, policing, albeit carefully, the recent strikes as "neutrals' in the class conflict.
12,000 contras are returning to public and political life. with some integrated into the police force, also under the direction of FSLN leaders. Others, responding to Nicaraguan Vice President Godoy's call, have begun to form fascist-type paramilitary gangs which have already attracted and murdered workers during the strike of July 1990.
The FSLN has overseen the disarming of the workers and peasants in the countryside. After some farming communities were disarmed, armed contras arrived to terrorize the rural workers and peasants and confiscate their cattle and other personal property. Defenceless peasants and farmworkers leaving their land and streaming into the cities is a dramatic consequence of the qualitative change in the class relation of forces. Failure of USec majority The majority view that Nicaragua was and remains a workers' state is absurd. It flies in the face of the central tenets of the Fourth International. Moreover, bowing to the petty bourgeois policies and practices of the FSLN. the FI has opposed the construction of a section in Nicaragua. Any balance sheet of the Nicaraguan Revolution which fails to take note of the consequences of the absence of a revolutionary proletarian party is doomed to repeat these errors.
The 1985 World Congress marked the USec majority retroactively characterizing Nicaragua as a workers' state from July 19, 1979. This was done with full knowledge that the governmental alliance forged by the FSLN upon coming to power included leading bourgeois figures such as Alfonso Robelo
The USec majority justified this class collaborationist alliance by borrowing the rationalization for popular frontism of Stalinists and other reformists:
Programmatic multi-class coalitions are okay '-if the workers have
In 1937 Trotsky explained that the Popular Front in Spain, was almost exclusively composed of the Stalinist, Social democrat and Anarchist organizations of the workers, and had only the "bourgeoisie's shadow" present in
These political phantoms played the decisive role in the revolution. How? Very simply. By incarnating the principles of the 'democratic revolution,' that is, the inviolability of private
"Worker hegemony" in the Spanish Popular Front changed nothing. The presence of even bourgeois lawyers and other phantom representatives of the capitalists in an electoral or other programmatic coalition constitutes a pledge to block the workers and peasants from anti- capitalist and anti-
The break with our programme in Nicaragua was rapidly extended to Peru and Uruguay. Electoral blocs including leading bourgeois figures and parties as in the Frente Amplio in Uruguay and the Izquierda Unida in Peru were supported despite all the disastrous past consequences of popular front politics. The result in Peru was the dissolution of the section of the FI and its incorporation into a centrist party, the PUM, which participated in the Peru-
The "proletarian hegemony" rationalization was extended further when the press of the FI openly supported Aquino in the Philippines and Alwyn in
Chile. Critical support was extended to these bourgeois figures in the name of opposing the candidacy of fascists or military dictators—Aquino over
At the same time, the FI majority offered support to various Stalinist or neo-Stalinist coalitions formed to back these "democratic" capitalists. The historic positions of the Fourth International on the popular front were reject-
234 International Marxist Review and Violetta Chamorro.
hegemony.' the Popular Front.
property.
landlord action.
vian popular front
Marcos, Alwyn over Pinochet
Working class "hegemony" and the popular front
FI support to undisguised bourgeois politicians i
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Gorbachev, Stalinism and the crisis of the Fourth International 235 ed as "sectarian". IV. Mexico and Brazil
The result of the proletarian "hegemony" position has been to misorient sections of the FI in Brazil and Mexico. These sections approved, at the regional level, electoral alliances between the Mexican PRT and the Cardenista Party on the one hand, and of the Brazilian Workers Party (PI) and the bourgeois parties of Brizola and Covas on the other. Class independence, has been subordinated to unprincipled blocs with capital at the expense of the workers and peasants. V. South Africa
To achieve the liberation of the South African people the class character of the South African revolution must be proletarian. Only a victorious workers' government can abolish racist oppression and carry through a combined democratic and socialist revolution.
World imperialism seeks to head off the proletarian revolution in South Africa by pressing for a negotiated solution that will maintain the bourgeois state and capitalist property, as well as imperialist interests. It supports a bourgeois parliamentary system based on a Black-led government.
Imperialism and the dominant sectors of South African capital seek the cooperation of the ANC for this project The ANC, still heavily influenced by the South African Communist Party, is engaged in negotiations with the South African government toward this end.
The heated and sometimes violent debate over the Freedom Charter versus the Workers' Charter or openly socialist proposals centres on the question of permanent revolution, honoured by the majority of the Fourth International in the abstract, but ignored in the concrete.
Like the Barnes-led SWP, the press of the Fl has de facto embraced the concept of a "two-stage" revolution. It has refrained from any critical comments on the policies and practice of the ANC including its most recent declarations (by Mandela and others) that private property (the mixed economy) is necessary and will be protected. In deference to ANC-led forces in COSATU and other formations, the USec majority has ignored attacks on opponents of the ANC, even when these were instigated to deal political blows to advocates of socialist positions. Independent forces in South Africa who identify with Trotskyism and who require our support in the construction of a party of the Fourth Interna-
tional have been ignored in favour of an uncritical stance towards the ANC.
The Zionist state of Israel was carved out of Palestine in violation of the national rights of the Palestinian people. The Fourth International has, until recently, rejected any proposal which compromised the national rights of the
Palestinians. Today, retreating from this position, it advocates a "two-state"
solution in the name of "partial self- determination", a solution which has been put forward in the press of the FI as consistent with the "right of self- determination" for Israeli Jews. This position, supported by the petty- bourgeois and bourgeois leadership of the PLO, reflects the unceasing pressure of imperialism on all national liberation struggles. It must be rejected by the Fourth International. The right of self-determination extends only to
The USec's criticisms of the form of the 1990 Nicaragua elections (there were no criticisms of the 1984 elections) was limited to the fact that imperialist intervention had forced various violations of Nicaraguan sovereignty including massive funding to Chamorro and huge numbers of so-called out-
But the major default of the USec is its failure to advocate the forrnation of institutions of workers' democracy in Nicaragua. Steps toward the independent organization of the workers and oppressed, including workers' control of industry and council-type bodies, in the content of the revolutionary upsurge m Nicaragua, could have set in motion a process leading to a break by the masses with the capitalist economy and bourgeois-style political
The advocacy of Nicaraguan-style elections for Cuba, even without the conditions imposed by imperialism, is a capitulation to bourgeois liberalism.
Unlike Nicaragua, Cuba has abolished capitalism. The institution of bourgeois-type political forms in Cuba would represent a regressive step for the revolution. This is not to say that we support the present political structures which have not established any real institutions for workers' democracy in
We advocate soviet-forms of government in Cuba, that is political institutions which complement the class nature of the Cuban state. These would strengthen the Cuban revolution internally and provide the most solid basis
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VI. Palestine side observers.
institutions.
Cuba.
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oppressed nations and people, not to their oppressors. VII. Elections in Cuba and Nicaragua
Gorbachev, Stalinism and the crisis of the Fourth International 237 for its defence. VIII. Centrism and Stalinism:
We have witnessed a growing tendency of the USec majority to orient to a variety of political tendencies which are characterized as "centrist" or "revolutionary".
The Juquin grouping in France, for example, was characterized as "centrist" although it had not broken with the main tenets of Stalinism, including the Gorbachev course towards bourgeois parliamentarism and market mechanisms.
The Philippine CP is characterized as "revolutionary" despite its support for the capitalist Aquino government,
The Peruvian PUM is seen as "revolutionary" despite its support to the popular frontist Izquierda Unida. The PUM rejects permanent revolution advocating a stagist conception of "revolution".
The Gerran KDP was seen as "revolutionary" despite its failure to break with its Stalinist past.
These characterizations by the USec majority are not accidental. They were aimed at unifying our forces with left reformist groups based on ambiguous, at best, programmatic agreement and without a policy designed to win militants in these formations to our programme. In each case the designation "centrist" or "revolutionary" disarms our cadre and disorients sections in the work of constructing Trotskyist parties. The result has been an adaptation to left reformism. IX. Why a faction is necessary:
This summary of the three documents submitted by the Tendency for the Programme of the Fourth International points to the central question facing the 13th World Congress, the crisis of leadership. It shows how the deepening crisis flows from the USec majority's alarmingly increasing adaptation to Stalinism and other reformist currents worldwide
At the moment this is being written, the USec majority is following the deadly logic of its adaptationist politics as our German co-thinkers pursue fusion with the East German Stalinists, which has barely disguised the class collaborationist character of their "reformed" party. (This fusion goes on unabated while Gorbachev and Co. give carte blanche to US imperialism's military assault on the Arab nation in the guise of "United Nations peacekeeping" in the Persian Gulf crisis.)
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It is impossible to build the FI anywhere in the world based on the openly revisionist positions taken by the USec. Without a change of leadership in the International, the FI will be led to its demise.
We have stated our view to the ranks of the Fourth International. that the direction of the leadership continues unchanged despite world-shaking events which should have led to a reconsideration of the erroneous positions adopted. The revisions of our historic programme have led to an unnecessary loss of cadre, including whole sections, to demoralization of our ranks. and to missing of significant opportunities to intervene effectively in the class struggle.
Tragically, this comes at a time when world events are proving once again the correctness of the theory of permanent revolution and the Transitional Programme. There has never been such a historical opportunity to build our world movement as is now unfolding.
We are committed to a fight in the Fourth International, for a resumption of its historic line of march, confident that events will lead the ranks to give careful consideration to the views we have raised.
While we are presently organized as an ideological tendency, we believe that a faction is required to most effectively respond to the deepening crisis of the Fourth International. We will reconsider our organizational form in light of the response from the membership of the FI. ' Note
1. Because of reactionary U.S. legislation, Socialist Action participates in the international discussion in the Fourth International only in a fraternal capacity.