DV asked me: "So at what point does your allegiance split off (or maintain the true centre) of that line, later in the SU? And why?
And I replied:
The change in the political character of the USSR can be located most simply in the year 1924. Lenin died in January, 1924, and during the year Stalin was able to consolidate his power in the Bolshevik party apparatus, principally by opening the floodgates to new members with interests that were bureaucratic and careerist rather than class-based and socialist. The struggle against this development can be traced in the history of the Left Opposition to Stalin and the bureaucracy, which Trotsky founded in 1923 while Lenin was still alive, albeit incapacitated.
Evidence of healthy working-class socialist internationalism is abundant in the records of the first four Congresses of the Third International (ie before 1924). After 1924 the politics of the Soviet government turn against all the principles of the Bolshevik party that carried out the October Revolution and led the successful defence of the new non-capitalist workers state against the imperialists and reactionaries of the surrounding world and Old Russia.
The best brief account of the general development can be found in Trotsky's book The Revolution Betrayed (1936) (http://www.marxists.org/
The Stalinist bureaucracy instituted a new regime in the Soviet Union that Trotsky and the Left Opposition characterized as politically counter-revolutionary, although on a non-capitalist economic foundation. In other words, the USSR remained a workers state, but was run by a degenerate and counter-revolutionary regime
The catastrophe of the Nazi capture of power in Germany in 1933, resulting largely from the appalling anti-Marxist leadership provided by the German Communist party following orders from Moscow - Social-Democracy was called the main enemy of the German working class, rather than Nazism - drove Trotsky and his comrades to conclude that the Third International was beyond recovery and led them to prepare the foundation of a new working-class socialist international - the Fourth International. This was achieved in 1938, and the founding document - the Transitional Programme, "The Death Agony of Capitalism" (http://www.marxists.org/
2 comments:
The degeneration of the Soviet union wasn't simply the consequence of the death of Lenin and the resultant loss of leadership. Or even simply the policy of Stalin to induct second grade careerist bureaucrats from the time of the Czar into the Bolshevik party. It was the result of a whole structural degeneration brought about by the cripling civil war which the nascent revolutionary state had to fight.
For a healthy socialist transition it is necessary that the revolutionary state have adequate means of production under its control and develop these further in order to bring about the fullest development of society. If folks don't have clothes to wear, food to eat, and a house to live what cultural or spiritual development would he have ? During the course of the civil war Russians even resorted to barbarism to survive !
Stalin could do what he did and get away with it, precisely because of the situation which faced the USSR at the time. Where there is shortage and where there is hostility and the threat of war constantly surrounding you, the counter-revolutionaries can get away with capitulationist and despotic politics. What was worse is that they took the cover of Leninism to justify it ! All the centralist and wartime measures which were induced to defend the revolution were kept intact and resurrected under Stalin and used against all opposition.
The question is not so much as 'when the USSR turned its back on Marxism', the question is more as to 'why' it was forced to abandon marxism. After the Russian revolution and the first world war still raging, the imperialist nations of the world felt threatened by the so-called 'Red plague'. The British, the French, the Japanese and Americans worked to engage in a disastrous intervention hoping to place the remnants of the Tsar's forces back in power. The white army was funded and armed fully by Britain and assisted most vigorously by the Japanese *( first to come last to leave ! ) . The ruin which was left by this mammoth counter-revolutionary force in Russia forced the USSR to begin compromising with imperialism just to survive. On this point , the failure of the German revolution *( due entirely to bad leadership ) proved the death knell for the Russian revolution. It was proved eventually that a backward country under conditions of crippling isolation could never flourish as a healthy and democratic worker's state. Consciously or unconsciously the British knew of this, and the poison they left materialized in the form of Stalin.
Of course the great beauty of all this is that the Russians still blame Lenin for the disastrous famine and starvation which befell the Russian revolution in it's aftermath. A smooth criminal always gets away with the crime, and the Brits are the smoothest there is ;) .
However, one might still argue, despite all of this, the bolsheviks could have still managed to save Russia from Stalin's counter-revolution. On this point it's pertinent to note, the two approaches which were gaining ground for this. Lenin's approach was to effect an immediate rise in productivity which could bring about the economic base for a healthy worker's democracy, and normalize relations with the countryside. Trotsky's approach was that of continuing war communism and readying the state constantly for a showdown with imperialism. The jury is still out as to which approach would have worked better, especially when considering the Kronstadt uprising and the period of the 'third revolution'. I personally am more in favor of Lenin's approach, if anything we're seeing the real power of an NEP in China today than we ever did in the USSR. The immense productivity China has achieved through this means, the bureaucracy can't rule with the absolutism we saw in Russia. They have to concede and concede still more the more China's NEP gets the Chinese workers organized !
In our century, I feel quite strongly, that the questions left unresolved by Russia would be resolved in China. The only other bet is India.
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