****************************************************************** 'THE REUOLUTlon BETRAYED' -[.J. Arthur ****************************************************************** In spite of Trotsky's tremendous role in the as opposed ~o,Cc) . victory of the Russian Revolution, his name will be forever associated primarily with the struggle The dOctrine is that in the Workers' State a against its decline, with his patient exposures bureaucratic degeneration or deformation has of Stalin's falsifications of the programme, and occured which re~uires a to the history, of the revolution. establish socialism proper, but that no social revolution is required because capitalist property The unprecedented and unforeseen problems relations have, broadly speaking, iHready been associated with the decline of the revolution faced replaced. The objection that a Workers' State can ~Iarxism with an acute crisis of theory and practice. hardly be said to exist when the workers ~ave no ~Jo-one can deny Trotsky the foremost place amongst rights and are tyrannised over by bureaucratic those who faced up to them seriously on the basis gangsters is got round by pointing out that 'the of uncompromising revolutionary principle. political form of bourgeois dictatorships can vary from parliamentary to fascist without affecting the In my view his main work of analysis in this social base of society, because the latter is field, The Revolution Betrayed, has still not been determined primarily by the economic form. superseded. Cl) '10s t of Trotsky' s cri tics fall into one or other of two camps whose physiognomy he It is this doctrine, and in particular the idea accurately described as follows: that we can counterpose political and social revolution in our programmes so slickly, that I "There: are some who say that since the propose to re-examine. actual state which has emerged from the proletarian revolution does not correspond Preliminaries to ideal a priori norms, therefore they turn their backs on it. That is political In the first place let us note the unfortunate snobbery, common to pacifist-democratic, ambiguity in the term "Workers' State". By this libertarian, anarcho-syndicalist, and is meant, of course, the basic character of society qenerally ultra-Left circles of the as a whole. The state in the narrower sense of the petty-bourgeois intelligensia. There word (i.e. the complex of coercive institutions) is are others who say that since this state acknowledged by not to be in the hands of has emerged from the proletarian the , but of the party bureaucracy, which revolution therefore every criticism has expropriated the proletariat politically. Even u[ it is sacrilege and counter-revolution. so, it is held that in so far as the interests of That is the vo~ce of hypocrisy behind the bureaucracy itself are connected with nationalised whic!) lurk most often the immediate property, it will in some way or other be likely to materlal interests of certain groups defend the latter against capital.ist encroachment "mony this very same petty-bourgeois and thus be partially a defender of proletarian lntelliJensia, or among the workers' interests. !Jurcaucracy." (2) So far so good. However, the neat dichotomy Ih)\H'Vl'r, it would be surprising if this first political/social begins to disintergrate when attempt, hy even a very capable ~1arxist, to grasp Trotsky argues that is is inexplicable how such a thC'll)'l't i ,';( 11:- the mean ing of the horrors of degeneration could occur solely at the political h:ld -;llL'~'L'l'ded, given the unforeseen nature of the level and fills out his account of the political (I t'L'UIlI-; LIIlCl'S. I think one can detect a certain expropriation of the proletariat by giving this a fu)'cin)..: (If the ~Iarxist categories in Trotsky's social basis. :1 tt cmpt -; to comprehend the new material, conceptual ise it. and ,ldapt the revol ut i onary programme to the new "This whole stratum which does not engage t:]-;/-.5. ilere I try to argue, in a tentative way, directly in productive labour, but th:!t the concepts relied on in The Revolution administers, orders, commands, pardons n0tra~cd do not adequately grasp the dialectic of and punishes - teachers and students we tr:ln5ition from capitalism to socialism. The are leaving aside - must be numbered at I'l'CC i ved doct r i ne revolves around the Trinity of five or six million ." l'oncepts: Ca) Workers' State; Cb) Political Revolution, "In the whole mass of the bureaucracy, the communists together with the Communist Youth 'constitute a block of l~ to 2 Even such a severe critic of Trotsky as Nicolas million - at present, owing to continued Krasso (in his New Left Review article of 1967) purgations, rather less than more. This can find no objection ~o the work other than its is the backbone of the sta te power. These "demagogic title". The -debate started by Krasso same communist administrators are the has been republished as TROTSKY: THE GREAT DEBATE backbone of the party, and of the RENEWEO, ed. N Krasso, New Critics Press (St Communist Youth. The former Bolshevik Louis, ~10.) 1971. This book also contains an party is now no longer the vanguard of earlier, longer, version of my present argument. the proletariat, but the political organisation of the bureaucracy ... 'The Workers' State and the Question of Thermidor and ', New International, "Hypothetically, we may assume that the .Tul:- 1935 2 labour and collectivised peasant aristocracy, th6 Stakanovists, the non-party 'active' buildings: trusted personages, their relativ6s and relatives in law, approximate the same "I am a K.P.D. official invited here from figure we adopted for the bureaucracy, that the Wes t. I ha ve been gi ven sorre chi ts is five to six million '" Twel V8 pe>: for meals, but I don't know where the cent, or perhaps 15 per cent of the dining room is." population - that is the authentic "That depends what sort of ticket you have." social basis of the autrocratic ruli~g He looked at me in surprise an~ showed me circles." (3) his ticket. It was Category III - a ticket for less important rrembers af staff. I Thus Trotskyists always argue that even the showed him the way. personal dictatorship of St~lin had social roots in "But tell me - are the meals different for a stratum of society - a stratum which Trotsky had different rrembers of staff in the little difficulty in showing had very conisderable Central Corrunittee?" material privileges which sharply differentiated "Yes of course. There are different their interests from those of the masses. kinds of ticket, according to the class of work one is doing. The last A question that immediately arises is that if, two categories are for technicians and even allowing for the relative autonomy of the clerks." . politic~l sphere, ~e find this political expropriation "Yes but ... aren't they all members has a soclal basis in such a stratum, can we talk of the Party?" about a merely political r~volution wh~n such a "Yes, of course, They are all certified revolution would clearly involve dispossessi~g thi~ Party rrembers, including the charwomen stratum not only of its political expression but and chauffers and night-watchmen." also of its material privileges? Especially when He looked at me in astonishment and said, Trotsky computes that over twelve per cent of the "Different tickets - different meals - population may be involved? and they are all rrembers of the Party!" He turned and went wi thout another word. In The Revolution Betrayed Trotsky bases his A morrent later I heard the creak of the analysis primarily on antagonisms in the sphere of front door. My comrade had left the distribution flowing from a low level of productivity. Central Corrunittee building. Thoughtfully However far more important than its effect on I crossed the courtyard to the dining­ distribution will be the effect of the so-called room. I went through the rooms in which political revolution on production itself. Trotsky Categories III and IV the lower classes does not stress this, partially because of the were fed; a~for tii; first time I had administrative bent Lenin noted (4) no doubt, an uneasy feeling as I opened the door partially again perhaps because the low level of the into the dining-room reserved for our masses in his day makes my point academic. This category. Here at a table covered with point is that the social character of production in a white cloth, the senior members of staff the sets fetters on the most important enjoyed an excellent rreal of several productive force of all, namely the initiative and courses. Curious, I thought, that this creativity of the worker himself. The completely has never struck me before!" (5) hierarchical command structure of the Soviet economy makes the individual worker the same kind of labour What is important in this example is not so power machine and nothing else, that he is in a much that such a hierarchy exists but that no-one capitalist factory. Who can doubt that a new upsurge thinks it particularly odd. Values have to change of proletarian revolution, sweeping away bureaucratic with the structures - large-scale transformations privilege, would also restructure production itself of people's unders tanding of themselves and thei r so as to provide avenues of expression for the social relationships - if socialism is to come out enthusiasm and ingenuity of the workers. It is not of this at all a question, as the C.P.S.U. right-wing and the bourgeois press duet, of personnel changes, i.e. The Basis of the degeneration replacing politically reliable but stupid cadres with technically competent ones; but of the entry of an Before we proceed let us consider the vulgar educated working class into the arena. Trotskyist thesis that the case of the Soviet Union and its degeneration is an 'exception' easily Such an access of strength to the productive explicable by certain special circumstances - forces again requires us to ask if it can be ones that we have no reason to expect to obtain comprehended by the merely 'political revolution'. generally:- backwardness, isolation, encirclement, and so on. However, although it is obvious enough Moreover (if with some trepidation) one is also that the circumstances cited clearly conditioned forced to speak of cultural revolution here. A new Soviet development, the 'exception' theory begins upsurge of proletarian revolution in the Soviet Union to seem over-simple when we take into account other could not possibly succeed in changing organisational experiences. There are now some dozen or more forms in abstraction from the forms of thought, "workers' states" and, although there are enormous values, and character of the population. It is differences between them, none of them corresponds perfectly clear that, in many respects, bourgeois to the expected 'model' of socialism. All these values and ideology, superstition, religion, all regimes, like the U.S.S.R. are in a traditional kinds of vice, profoundly permeate Soviet society. state somewhere between capitalism (or colonialism) and socialism. One simple example from WOlfgang Leonhard's book Child of the Revolution illustrates the Indeed, only abstract moralisers with no Marxist necessity for a thoroughgoing reappraisal of Soviet understanding could fail to understand that a more style 'socialism' by its citizens - though the or less long period of transition towards socialism actual example is from Soviet-sponsored East Berlin. is unavoidable. Furthermore, this period cannot be Leonhard relates that in Berlin in October 1945 a expected to be one of continuous smooth transition: communist from the West, who had spent the war it too must have its dialectic, its periods of underground, accosted him in the Central Committee decline and renewal. It should be recognised that historical experience proves that any revolution inevitably undergoes a period of ebb, of degeneration, 3 THE REVOLUTION BETRAYED (below R.B.) 1965 ed. NY, P .138 5 W Leonhard: CHI LP or TilE REVOLUTION (London, 4 In the 'Testament' 3 1957), p.377 its severity depending on circumstances. The swift not in a position to know all the relevant rise of bureaucratism in post-revolutionary Russia considerations. It was always possible that some was conditioned not only by the allegedly exceptional new revolutionary breakthrough in the West might conditions of the time, but also had, in addition, have come to the aid of the U.S.S.R., which w~uld endemic roots in the revolutionary process itself. have changed the conditions of their struggle. Then again it could be argued that a stubborn rear­ When the Left Opposition was grappling with the guard action might ameliorate or slow-down a process frightening phenomena of degeneration, Rakovsky was of degeneration. Finally it is possible for a the one who saw this most clearly. Trotsky justly revolutionary tendency, even if defeated, to make a quotes his document on the subject several times in positive contribution from the longer term point of The Revolution Betrayed. view; for when a new upsurge of revolution comes it can go back and learn from the struggle and analyses In his analysis of the "professional dangers" of the heroic groups that kept alive the programme of of power, RakQvsky stressed: revolution instead of capitulating to 'realities'. That is why The Revolution Betrayed is still an "I do not refer here to the objective important book today - because it represents not only difficulties due to the whole complex of the dying embers of one revolutionary upsurge but historical conditions, to the capitalist also a point of renewal for the future. encirclement on the outside, and to the pressure of the petty-bourgeoisie inside To return to the main point: we have enough the country. No, I refer to the inherent experience of transitional regimes to see now that difficulties of any new directing class, tendencies towards bureaucratic degeneration are consequent on the taking, and on the endemic to the transitional situation, are internal exercise of power itself, on the ability to it, and would have to be guarded against even if or inability to make use of it" (6) Imperialism did not exist.

The main such inherent feature is that upon All these preliminary queries impel us to try taking power proletarians do not automatically to develop a more sophisticated methodology for become supermen. They are the same proletarians analysing transitional regimes. whose behaviour before the revolution fluctuated wildly; as their confidence rose and sank; as they We must understand that the historical dialectic were shaped by their political and cultural is not one-dimensional; nor are its phases of a experience. The revolutionary seizure of power by single amplitude. Indeed it might be more accurate a previously oppressed class that has lived all its to speak of an infinitely large number of dialectics; life under the hegemony of another class, represents of differing social levels (economic, ideological, by definition an extraordinarily high peak of etc.); of differing historical specificity; and of activity, unity and consciousness on its part. differing generality with regard to space and time. Is it surpr~sing that when all problems are not (Thus from. the point of view of a very general solved the day after taking power, the revolutionary historical dialectic, proletarian revolution may tide ~egins to ebb? represent a simple moment of transition, but judged internally it reveals enormous complexities which ,';pathy, cynicisr.l, fragmentation, selfishness, require a more specific historical analysis to withdrawal, disperses the masses from the stage of supplement the other.) Those who think that all history again, leaving behind the apparatus thrown Dialectics has to say about the transition from up by them, but no longer representative of, or capitalism to socialism is: bourgeoisie v proletariat controlled by, the class in whose name it rules. results in classless society; or, private property Now the road is open for negative developments in th~ relations v socialised productive forces results in apparatus itself which reinforces the demoralisation a socialist mode of production - or even both - of the class (bureaucratic arrogation of power and inevitably fall into mechanistic or fatalistic views privilege; careerism; corruption); until finally, with regard to questions posed at more concrete instead of expressing the dictatorship of the levels. They tend to reduce the related but proletariat the apparatus exercises dictatorship automomous dialectics to a single simple contradiction; ever the proletariat. How far such tendencies and they treat transitional phases with the criteria actually go, of course will be conditioned by the of formal abstract categories (often of a highly kind of circumstances usually cited in explaining 'moral' content) instead of grasping their historicity, the degeneration that took place. Also, it goes seeing them as moments of a development and analysing without saying that we have here, not simply an their specific contradictions. objective process, but one mediated by particular people and their subjectivity (Stalin etc.) so that What I am pointing to here, to put it crudely, there is a certain openness about the situation, is the 'Chinese-box' character of the historical within which area subjective factors (e.g. Stalin's dialectic - we have totalities within totalities, jealousy and suspiciousness) help to determine the dialectics within dialectics. outcome. Nevertheless, we must recognise that the objective forces do set limits to what even the This involves, not only seeing that the greatest individual can achieve. transitional period has its own phases and stages, but also of seeing that an epoch like capitalism is It is not a question of saying that if Trotsky not just a stage in history but has its own history, had been leader, he would have done the same as i.e. is made up of a series of transitions. It does Stalin. That is horribly abstract. For Trotsky not just grow smoothly up to its limit, it has its to have been at the head of affairs, either the own internal dialectic in which various subordinate objective circumstances would have had te have been contradictions work themselves out and fetters are other than they were, or, Trotsky would have had to overcome. The Common Market project for example, have been ... Stalin! is an outstanding case of an attempt by the more far-sighted European capitalists to overcome the On any objective consideration, the Left fet~ers of tariffs and piddling markets, and to Opposition was doomed to defeat. This is not to say resolve the contradictions between national capitals, that their struggle was worthless, that they should by creating F'Jropean firms in a European market. have helped Stalin or retired into private life. Apart from the psychological impossibility of such Once we get away from concentrating on the single, a course by a man like Trotsky, at the time they were simple, global contradiction and begin to develop the idea of dialectics of different levels of specificity, it begins to seem less extraordinary S Rakovskv: in A It\~BOOK OF SOCIALIST ruOUGHT tt-at Dost-revolutionary societies may exhibit all 4 '",,,'" n<:<:l fv into various forms of partial supercessson of previous conditions sociality cannot be completely established in a which then be:::ome fetters on further c:eve lopment. (7) positive way.

The disjunction political revolution/social As far as the Soviet Union is concerned, its revolution obscures this reality because it locat('~ constitution declares that the state is 'the state the trouble (at any rate, in its terminology) at onh' of the whole people': but this is an obvious one level, thus introdu~ing arradical discrepancy mystification. In the absence of concrete institutions between this level and others. In fact a'more of proletarian democrac)' - soviets, rights of sophisticated analysis would surely show contradictions tendency, workers' councils etc. - talk of 'the at other levels. The terminology is an attempt to state of the whole people' is a form of fetishism behind which are concealed the interests of the express theoretically the progressive character of . " Soviet society with respect to capitalism; but bureaucrat ic stratum. (10) because of its poverty-stricken conceptual framework it can do so only by locating the 'good side' in the Clearly, in the case of the U.S.S.R., state base and the 'bad side' in the superstructure. property is more than a convenient juridical mediation, because of the role played by the bureaucracy (which The Nature of Bureaucracy Trotsky did not hesitate to compare with the fascist bureaucracy.) Let us now proceed to look more closely at the nature of bureaucracy. To begin with it is necessary There has always been a somewhat intractable to recognise that the institution of state property problem of locating the state bureaucracy in the is an historical necessity. As Trotsky puts it: class structure of society. Marx criticised, very early on, Hegel's idealisation of bureaucracy, (11) "In order to become s ocia l, pr i va te pro per t y and he writes (in a striking passage in The Eighteenth must inevitably pass through the state stage Brumaire) of "this executive power with its enormous as the caterpillar in order to become a bureaucratic and military organisation, with its butterfly must pass through the pupal stage. ingenious state machinery, embracing wide strata, But the pupa is not a butterfly ... State with a host of officials numbering half a million, property becomes the property of 'the whole besides an army of another half million, this people' only to the degree that social appalling parasitic body which emeshes the body of privilege and differentiation disappear French society like a net and chokes all its pores." and therewi th the necessi ty of the s ta te ... " (8) This is very reminiscent of Trotsky's description State property is therefore an intermediate form. of the Soviet bureaucracy. lloh'ever the pr ob lem is From one point of view it is the first form of compounded here by further features: ; from another, the final term of the property system, universalised private property - "In no other regime has a bureaucracy ever hence private prop3rty in the process of being achieved such a degree of independence from the negated. dominating class. In bourgeois society, the bureaucracy represents the interests of a This property form has its peculiar ideological possessing and educated class, which has at its expression. The state is seen as the incarnation and disposal innumerable means of everyday control guardian of the socialist economy over against the over its administration of affairs. The Soviet individual members of society. The individual is bureaucracy has risen above a class which is subjugated to a hypostatized universality which hardly emerging from destitution and darkness, nominally includes him, but also constrains him. and has no tradition of dominion or command." Marx criticised this ideology in advance when he (12) wrote: The Stalinist bureaucracy appears to have a "What is to be avoided above all is the preponderant role in social life beyond anything re-establishing of 'society' as an previously experienced in history. This is what abstraction vis a vis the individual. makes facile comparisons between it and previous The individual is the social being." (9) 6tatist formations located within class systems so misleading. The Stalinist bureaucracy has. not only However the existence of some form of state through the transition period seems to imply that 10 I Deutscher once said to ~e, on the question of there are good material reasons why this implicit" the existence of alienation in the U.S.S.R., that it was not their labour but their state that was 7 There is a utopian, apocalyptic strain in alienated from the proletariat. that views socialism as the final resolution of all contradictions. Personally 11 "Hegel proceeds from the separation of the I take such talk with a grain of salt, preferring 'state' and 'civil society' - from 'particular to regard such a resolution as an asymptotic interests' and the 'completely existent universal'. limit never reached. In particular I reject And bureaucracy is indeed based on this separa­ Marcuse's reduction (in REASON AND REVOLUTION) tion .... For the individual bureaucrat the of the manifold contradictions 'of social life state's purpose becomes his private purpose of to a single class-based dialectic. He concludes hunting for higher positions and making a career that socialism makes it obsolete, and the new for himself .... In bureaucracy the identity of development must be understood as a 'purely the state's interest and particular private rational' one. This looks suspiciously like the purpose is established in such a way that the re-insertion of Hegel's absolute. Curiously state's interest becomes a particular private enough the Maoists characterise Liu Shao-ch'i in purpose opposed to other private purposes. a similar way: "In the opinion of [Liu] Communist The transcendence of bureaucracy can mean only society is a bed of roses, without darkness or that the universal interest becomes the contradiction; all is well, without the existence particular interest in actuality and not, as of opposites .... What [Liu] is doing here is with Hegel, merely in thought and abstraction. preaching metaphysics." Peking Review, 12 May This is possible only when the particular 1967, p.9. interest becomes universal." ('Critique of Hegel' 1943: WRITINGS OF THE YOUNG MARX ON 8 R. B., 248 PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIETY, ed. L 0 Easton and K H Guddat [NY, 1967] pp.183-l87) 9 Marx: ECONOMIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL MANUSCRIPTS (1844) Moscow FLPH, p. 104. 5 12 R.B., 248 st :-i~ ,. . - ~ut all power in its hands. As Trotsky states, superintendance and universa1 ~::" Y' r­ adIP dass in whose name it rules is utterly ence by the government comprises both ~.:;,c c.is,::harge ". i t' "lpans whatever of exerting hegemony over of communi ty affairs I the need for :,:,;:::h ar",- ses th. 'Oh which has separated itself from the in all societies, and the speclfic ~unctions cla"; ..,." )Ppo<;ed itself to it. Indeed some arising from the antagonism betwE·_-r. the:;overn- comm(~:'l 1:)'S have gone so far as to say that, following ment and the mass of the people." (14) the llquidation of the old proletariat ritself a tiny minority in Russian society) in the Civil War, and This dual function is also apparent in the case the gradual displacement and final liquidation of of the Soviet bureaucracy. Some of its functions and their political representatives (the revolutionary functionaries are concerned with the organisation of ), the Stalinist bureaucracy created and production, others with the SUbjugation of the workers. moulded the expanding proletariat that is supposed to But here this is not done in the interests of some furnish its basis. third group, the rentiers, but, through the media:ion of state property, simply in the interest of jefending Trotsky concedes that: the material privileges of the bureaucracy itself.

" ... the very fact of its appropriation of The organisation of industry has, been rat ionalised, political power in a country where the principal by instituting, at the level of the economy as a whole, means of production are in the hands of the the rationality of the capitalist workshop. This is state, creates a new and hitherto unknown relation good: but it is not good enough. between the bureaucracy and the riches of the ,nation. The means of production belong to the "The same bourgeois mind which priases the division state. But the state, so to speak, 'belongs' to of labour in the workshop, life-long annexation of the bureaucracy." (13) the labourer to a partial operation and his complete subjection to capital, as being an organisation of Trotsky characterises this new and hitherto labour that increases its productiveness- that same unknown relation as one of a gigantic parasitism. bourgeois mind denounces with equal vigour every However this metaphor strikes me as giving rather too conscious attempt to socially control and regulate passive a picture, and one too orientated towards the process of production, as an inroad upon such distribution. The metaphor implies that. attached to sacred things as the rights of property, freedom an otherwise whole and healthy body, there is a and unrestricted play for the bent of the individual separate organism exacting tribute. But it is clear capitalist. It is very characteristic that the that there is no such distinct separation in Soviet enthusiastic apologists of the factory system have society. The bureaucracy is as much constitutive of nothing more damning to urge against a general the body of Soviet society as is the working class. organi~ation of the labour of society, than that It does not simply levy a toll on the produce of the it would turn all society into one immense economy - it organises production itself; it alone factory." /15) projects the course of the econa.y. Although the workshop organisation is more Of course there are sectors of the bureaucracy rational than the macro-economic anarchy, it remains solely employed on the non-economic functions necessary despotic, maintains a division of labour (especially for the general rule of the stratum (army and political crippling in the form of a division between mental and police) and this represents an enormous waste of physical labour), and makes the labour of the resources. ~evertheless it is incontestable that the producers a meaningless routine. It is clear that bureaucracy does not simply exact tribute with the this estrangement from the process of production, this mailed fist, but has a basis in production itself right 'forced labour', is as characteristic of the Soviet down to factory level. The mode of production itself Union's industry (as .far as its factory organisation has a bureaucratic character. is concerned). as it is of capitalist industry. In ideology this is denied. The Soviet worker has a quite In this connection it is interesting to see what different attitude to his work, finds meaning in it, 'larx had to say about the managerial stratum in because he is now working for himself instead of for industry: the capitalist - such is the story. It follows that he has no right to strike because that would be "The labour of superintendence and .aanagement will striking 'against himself'. Such a purely ideological naturally be required whenever the direct process connection of the worker with the purposes of the of production assuaes the form of a combined despotic hierarchy above him has no empirical meaning social process, and does not rest on the isolated because there exist no mediating institutions which labour of independent producers. It has, however, would enable the workers in reality (not in ideality) a two-fold character. to control their collective organisation, to set its purposes, rules. etc. On the one hand, all work in which atany individuals co-operate necessarily requires for the co-ordination and unity of the process a "Bonapartis."? directing will, and functioas which are not concerned with partial operations but with the This direct organisation of production by the total activity of the workshop, siailar to those bureaucratic stratum as an independent power. serving of the conductor of an orchestra. This is a kind no class but itself. represents a new historical of productive labour which aIIst be performed in situation. every mode of co-operative production. Trotsky tries to understand this power on the On the other hand .•. this supervisory labour basis of traditional analyses by taking over, and necessarily arises in all modes of production making use of. the somewhat problematical term, which are based on the antagonism between the "Bonapartism" . worker as direct producer and the owner of the means of production. The greater this antagonism "Caesarism, or its bourgeois form, Bonapartism, the more mportaltt is the role played by super­ enters the scene in those moments of history vision~ lIence it reaches its aaxilJllDl in the slave .,·fWli the sharp struggle of two ccuaps raises the system. art it is iDdispentMble also in the state Pt,wer, so to spealc, above the nation, and capitalist .ade of pzoclrlct.ion, since the process of production is at the sa.e t.I.e the process by 14 Marx: CAPITAL, Vo1.111 (FLPH 1962 p.376: Kerr which the capitalist Coasa.es the l&bour-power 1909 pp.451-452) of the worker. In the saae _9, in despotic 15 CAPITAL, Vol. I, ch.XIV, FLPH 1954 p.3S6; Kerr R.B., 249 6 p.391

._ .._--_ ...... -._--- _.. _-- - ._------.------guarantees it, in appearance, a complete to go beyond anything that could be comprehended by independence of classes - in reality, only the such analogies with the past. freedom necessary for the defence of the privi­ leged. The Stalin regime, rising above a The only sound point in 's book Russia~ politically atomised society, resting upon a A Marxist Analysis is that, '''ith a nationalised economy, police and officers' corps, and allowing of no the distinction between the political and the social control whatever, is obviously a variation of revolution is put in question. Of course he gives Bonapartism - a Bonapartism of a new type not away more than he realises here, since, if this is the before seen in history .... Stalinis~ is a case in the U.S.S.R.; then it must have undergone a variety of the same system, but upon the basis profound transfonnation which makes it absurd to of a workers' state torn by the antagonism between classify it as capitalist, because in the latter system an organised and armed soviet aristocracy and " the distinction can be made. the unarmed toiling masses." (16) (Even so, one shou Id always bear in mind l,1arx' s Thus Trotsky sees the novelty solely in the remark: occurrence of a Bonapartist regime in a workers' state. But since Bonapartism is supposed to take advantage of "There is never a political movement which is a sharp struggle between the classes to perform a not at the same time social." (18) balancing function it is a little hard to interpret this in the case of the antagonism between the "anned Leaving aside the precise way in which one might soviet aristocracy" and the ''unarmed toi ling masses". distinguish political and social revolution there How, and in what way, could the Stalinist bureaucracy seems to me no question but that, hecause of the role be independent of both camps when it constitutes the the bureaucracy plays in the 'base'-production core of one of them, the side that has all the cards? itself - and its fettering of the most important productive forces, it represents a social layer related Sometimes Trotskyists refer to Stalinism as a to production in a definite way (.i.e. control) and Bonapartist mediation between the Soviet proletariat one which is oppo~5d to the working class (which and Imperialism. But this is even more problematical. latter naturally has an interest in controlling It is true that the Soviet bureaucracy accommodates production for its own benefit). itself to Imperialism and demobilises the by playing the 'peaceful coexistence' game. Even when Trotsky formulates his thesis in tenns Nevertheless, although this illustrates something about of "political revolution" he is formed to mention the nature of the regime, I do not find it plausible "social consequences": to use this to explain its basis. After all, any conservative national bureaucracy has to pay some "The revolution which the bureaucracy is attention to the international conjuncture in its preparing against itself will not be social, policy. like the of 1917. It is not a question this time of changing the economic ~ore suggestive perhaps than these accounts is to foundations of society, of replacing certain compare the situation in Russia with the analysis Harx forms of property with other forms. History has gives in The German Ideology of conditions in Gennany known elsewhere not only social revolutions around 1800: which substituted the bourgeois for the feudal regime, but also political revolutions which, "The impotence of each separate sDhere of life without destroying the economic foundations of (one cannot speak here of estates or classes, but society, swept out an old ruling upper crust at most only of former estates and classes not (1830 and 1848 in France, February 1917 in Russia yet born) did not allow any of them to gain etc). The overthrow of the Bonapartist caste exclusive domination. The inevitable consequence will, of course, have deep social consequences, t-"as that ... the special sphere in which, owing but in itself it will be confined within the to the division of labour, was responsible for limits of political revolution." (19) the work of administration of public interests acquired an abnormal independence, which became Notice here that Trotsky bases his case on the still greater in the bureaucracy of modern times. assertion that the bourgeois epoch can and does Thus the state built itself up into an apparently accommodate itself to radical changes in political independent force, and this position, which in superstructures without these affecting the base. other countries was only transitory, a transition Are we being perverse in questioning this possibility stage, it has maintained-in Germany until the in the proletarian epoch? I do not think so, because present day." (17) it is precisely the separation of political and civil life that 4arx takes to be one of the key features of Is not the situation in which the only forces in the bourgeois epoch - and this makes such a way of the field are a primitive peasantry, a dispossessed talking plausible in that case but not necessarily in bourgeoisie, and a small proletariat whose experienced other cases - such as feudalism for example. It is cadres were shattered by civil war and economic collapse the partial overcoming of this separation, in precisely such a situation of universal impotence? societies transitional between capitalism and social­ And of hi atus between a broken social order and an ism that produces the sense of strain in carrying over unfomed new one? a way of speaking previously appropriate.

This thoroughly atomised social situation was When a critic seized on the phrase "social reconstituted under the aegis, and in the image, of consequences" in the above quotation Trotsky replied the bureaucracy into whose hands power fell. by arguing:

How".'ver, the weakness of the 'Bonapartist' "But the bourgeois political revolutions of 1830, anJlysis, I suggest, is that it does not do justice 1848, and September 1870 also had social conse­ to t~e extent of the bureaucracy's power. Bonapartism quences in so far as they seriously changed the is essentially a state form, which, however much it division of the national income. But .•. the xYlterferes in civil life, leaves the class structure ~ore or less as it finds it. The role of the Marx: THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY (Moscow FLPH, Staljnist bureaucracy in production itself seems to me 18 n.d.) p.197

16 R _B . .l 277 19 R.B.,288. Notice the expression "caste". In struggling to avoid "class" Trotsky has hit 7 on an even more rigid, hereditary, type of social stratification. social changes provoked by the so-called political It was relatively easy to evade the prohlem in revolutions, serious as they were, really appear the analysis of the pre-revolutionary period hy seeing to be secondary when they are compared with the bureaucratic formations, even including the labour great , which was the bourgeois bureaucracy, simply as servants of capital. Thus, social revolution ~ excellence." (20) denying that any authentic problem exists in its own right, this crude approach in the case of Russia He goes on to invoke the law of quantity into results either in denying the facts (i.e. white­ quality. washing of the bureaucracy) or in saying that since the bureaucracy was an epiphenomenon of capitalism The trouble is that in Russia we are not talking before, so it must be now - ergo capitalism still Simply of changes in income, but of the management of exists! industry. If this change is "secondary" it must be so in a quite different sense. Although taking state power enormously facilitates the opportunities for bureaucracy to develop, its germ can easily be seen in eXisting working-class The Ultra-Left View organisations. (One classic study of this was Robert ~ichel's book Political Parties,.written before the However I do wish to say that I distinguish my First World War, and based mainly on a study of the position from that of many ultra-lefts. Continental social-democratic parties. It provided the empirical basis for his well-known "iron law of As far as the history of the Russian Revolution oligarchy". (21) is concerned my view, very definitely, is that the negation of the revolution was brought forth by, was internal to, the revolution itself. Just as in Conclusion developing its power and strength the bourgeoisie produced its own gravediggers, the revolutionary In the last part of this paper let us summarise prOletariat; so the proletariat, on a less 'cosmic' Trotsky's view and advance our qualifications of it. scale, produced its own butchers who expropriated Trotsky provided his own summary in Chapter IX of the revolution and built a society in their own image The Revolution Betrayed: - rather than that of the proletariat. However, because this negation developed within the movement itself, "To define the Soviet regime as transitional, or on the basis of new conditions and structures, it intermediate, means to abandon such finished could not be simply a re-installation of the former social categories as capitalism ... and also regime - ho~ever updated. socialism .... The Soviet Union is a contradictory society halfway between capitalism and socialism, Once again a movement in the name of humanity, in which: (a) the productive forces are still has negated conditions which were the negation of very far from adequate to give tha state property human ones. But, once again, instead of this negation a soCialist character; (b) the tendency toward of the negation growing over into the self-sustaining primitive accumulation created by want breaks out positive, free of contradiction, it has developed through innumerable pores of the planned economy; its own contradictions, and established a new negation (c) norms of distribution preserving a bourgeois of humanity in the shape of the repressive bureaucratic character lie at the basis of a new differentia­ machine. tion of society; (d) the economic growth, while slowly bettering the situation of the toilers, But that this system, permeated as it may be by promotes a swift formation of privileged strata; contradiction, is different from capitalism can only (e) exploiting the social antagonisms, a bureau­ be denied by those who have no dialectical sense and cracy has converted itself into an uncontrolled simply lump together all conditions that are formally caste alien to socialism; (f) the social revolu­ opposed to truly human ones, as indifferently hostile, tion, betrayed by the ruling party, still exists thus in effect eliminating history as a form of in property relations and in the consciousness of knowledge and going back to utopianism. the toiling masses; (g) a further development of the accumulating contradictions can as well lead The kind of people that I am thinking of here are to socialism as back to capitalism; (h) on the those who talk in terms of a capitalist restoration - road to capitalism the counter-revolution would not just of tendencies, but of actual restoration. have to break the resistance of the workers; The main trouble with the label 'state capitalism' as (i) on the road to socialism the workers would applied to Russia, is that it makes no economic sense, have to overthrow the bureaucracy. In the last but I have no space to deal with that - I simply draw analysis, the question will be decided by a attention to a sociological point. struggle of living social forces, both on the national and the world arena. What the ultra-left critics simply refuse to recognise is the origin of authoritarian strata in the Doctrinaires will doubtless not be satisfied with workers' own organisations; they simply spirit in a this hypothetical definition. They would like state-capitalist class from nowhere, without explain­ categorical formulae; yes-yes, and no-no ••. ing its origins. It is useless to point to the old In our analysis, we have above all avoided doing Tsarist officers - the working-class can and did violence to dynamic social formations which have provide plenty of its own bureaucrats. no precedent and have no analogies. The scienti~ fic task, as well as the political, is not to give It is not accidental, by the way, that the same a finished definition to an unfinished process, ul tra-lefts who view the Soviet bureaucrats as a but to follow all its stages, separate its state-capitalist class, generally see in the Trade progressive from its reactionary tendencies, Union bureaucrats in the West nothing but capitalist expose their mutual relations, foresee possible lackeys; without locating their specific role through variants of development, and find in this fore- the fact that they are also dependent on a working sight a basis for action." (22) class basis. Conceiving of the proletariat in an essentially idealist way, as the bearer of simon-pure socialist values, they persistently duck away from the This insistence by Trotsky on doing justice to problem of bureaucratisation, which must be understood as a problem internal to the workers' movement. R Michels: POLITICAL PARTIES (English translation 1915) (See especially p.305, 383, 407-8) 20 'Once Again: The U.S.S.R. and its Defence' 8 ~0vember 1937 R.B., 254-256

------_.------the complexity and originality of the problem is Given that, in spite of its primitive character undoubtedly impressive. and its infection by bourgeois norms of distribution, consumerist ideology etc, the U.S.S.R. is a crucial As he points out elsewhere there are further step beyond capitalism, it is still worth defending. implications of one's analysis of the Soviet Union Just as Marx said that the proletariat could join with (and, one must now add, of the other countries that the bourgeoisie in the overthrow of feudalism, but have escaped the domination of Imperialism). For must maintain its own organisation to fight its future the question is bound up with the more general problem enemies, so today capitalism is the main enemy: but we of World Revolution. , must be preparing to smash the existing bureaucracies (not least in order to fight capitalism more effect­ It has been said that Lenin worked always on the ively) and must fight the seeds of authoritarianism basis that this century is at the time of the actualit~ already evident in the workers' organisations. ~f proletarian revolution. To put in question the . achievements of the October Revolution is to put in The bureaucracy (particularly once in power in question the whole historical perspective of Harxism. society) is a social layer developed on the basis of functional differentiations in the workers' organisa­ The bourgeoisie came into the world as a social tions and post-revolutionary institutions, which soon class born of a new form of production; it remained developes interests of its own, becoming a conservative an historic necessity as long as the new form of force strangling further revolutionary development. production had not exhausted its possibilities. The However, precisely because of its origin in the same applies to all previous social classes. "In process of the proletarian revolution itself, the their time, they were all the representatives and distinction between the proletariat and the bureaucracy leaders of a system of production which had its place is more ill-defined and variable than is the sharp in the advance of hum an i ty." Trotsky argues that distinction between capitalist property owners and the "to give the bureaucracy the name 'possessing class' proletariat. This means that the 'space' between IS not only an abuse of terminology, but moreover a capitalism and pure socialism, can be filled by an ~reat political danger which can lead to the complete almost infinite variety of transitional forms, in derailment of our historical perspective." (23) assessing which more than one dimension has to be taken into account - inequalities in income, He counterposes to such a pessimistic outlook the distribution of power, even ideological criteria that view "that the degeneration of the Soviet State is the may help to determine the direction of change etc. product of the retardation in the world revolution", The U.S.S.R. is an extreme case. Yugoslavia, China, that is to say, the result of political and conjunct~ and Cuba, provide less severe, more complex, cases, ural events. in which one should by no means assume homogeneity in the bureaucracy. There is the political bureaucracy, I would certainly agree that the period up to the technocrats, and even sections still in contact the completion of the world revolution, through the with the masses that might well come over if the latter final overthrow of Imperialism on a world scale, is launch a struggle. bound to be one in which we cannot expect socialism to be established in a single country - it is a Broadly, these transitional regimes are ones in transitional epoch with the problems of transition. which proletarian power has been deformed and overlaid by bureaucratic power; in which the programme of However I would argue that even after the over­ socialist revolution remains in the consciousness of throw of capitalism on a world scale problems will the toilers, if in a distorted way (so that the still exist because they are internal to the nature bureaucracy has to legitimate itself in these terms). of post-revolutionary society and its struggle to move towards abundance. Michels' 'Iron Law of The task is to establish workers' power. What I Oligarchy' remains a permanent danger, but one which think is inadequate, even to Trotsky's own analysis, becomes less acute as the material basis of society is the slogan 'make a political revolution'; because improves (thus allowing the masses to express more of more or less acute contradictions exist at all levels. their energy in controlling the direction of social What is required is a new upsurge of proletarian life), and as people learn from experience of the revolution. Permanent proletarian revolution must problem. continue throughout the pre-socialist epoch. Its meaning will vary according to the precise nature of Nationalisation of the economy does not dispose the fetters that need to be overcome at each time and overnight of deeply-rooted social habits and attitudes. place. There is no general formula. The demands that Given a material basis in relative scarcity, these revolutionaries will advance will depend upon what is will find expression somehow. (Everyone knows that possible and where the contradictions are manifesting there exist enormous scandals in the U.S.S.R. about themselves. However, the aim should always be to the turning of state property to personal use.) maximise the opportunities for the creative energy of the masses to express itself. Communism, the fullest The root cause of the consolidation of a bureau­ expression of human power and freedom, is not a state cratic dictatorship in the Soviet state is undoubtedly of affairs to be presented on a plate; it grows the low level of productive forces in the country. throughout history by the continual overcoming of The further development of the productive forces will obstacles, through the struggle of the masses. Marx bring present contradictions (economic, political, has already replied to those who talk of the benignity cultural et c) to a head, and the future history of the of certain rulers, or of the possibility of reform U.S.S.R. and the establishment of socialism on a world from on top. scale will continue to develop on the basis of the working out of further contradictions. "Both for the production on a mass scale of this canmunist consciousness, and for the success of The contradiction as far as the sphere of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass production is concerned, is that between the productive scale is necessary, an alteration which can only force represented by the initiative of the workers and take place in a practical movement, a revolution; the command structure into which they are integrated this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only and which stifles this force. The contradiction between because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in social forces is that between those who relate to the any other way, but also because the class ~ means of production as controllers and those who relate throwing it can only in a revolution succeed in to it as its slaves. Associated with this are ridding itself of all the muck of ages and conspicuous differentials in income. became fitted to found society anew." (24) 23 'Once Again: The U.S.S.R. and its Defence' November 1937 9 24 THE GERMAN IDEOLOGY, p.86