NEITHER CAPITALISM NOR SOCIALISM Theories of Bureaucratic Collectivism Copyright ©2008 Center for Socialist History All Rights reserved Center for Socialist History PO Box 626 Alameda CA 94501 Tel: 510 601-6460 www.socialisthistory.org [email protected] CENTER FOR SOCIALIST HISTORY ISBN 1456310623 EAN­13 9781456310622 Second Edition Editors: E Haberkern & Arthur Lipow NEITHER CAPITALISM NOR SOCIALISM Theories of Bureaucratic Collectivism Edited by E. Haberkern and Arthur Lipow A NOTE ON THE COVER ILLUSTRATION: Most of the articles in this anthology are concerned with the appearance in the 20th century of statified economies which appeared to offer an alternative to traditional capitalism. The brutality of the Stalinist and Fascist “models” of this new order tended to distract attention from the more important questions raised by these phe- nomena. To have chosen a cover featuring, for example, Hugarian revolutionaries decapitating Stalin’s statue in 1956 would have emphasized this aspect of the new society. We have chosen instead Max Beerbohm’s caricature of Sidney Webb drawn before 1921. As Eric Hobsbawm pointed out in his thesis on the Webbs, they developed their thoroughly bureaucratic concept of the new society well before Stalin or Hitler. In this caricature Webb, guide by THE STATE and HUMAN NATURE, arranges the toy soldiers who are the subjects of his new society in a carefully laid out plan. No muss, no fuss, no blood, just the all- knowing bureaucrat doing what is best for everybody. The only thing we don’t understand about this portrait is that Max Beerbohm was supposed to be Sidney Webb's friend. NEITHER CAPITALISM NOR SOCIALISM Theories of Bureaucratic Collectivism TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction i Chapter I— The Revolution Betrayed 1 From Formula to Reality - James Burnham 3 The Fourth International and the Russian Counterrevolution-Yvan Craipeau 25 Chapter II — The Hitler-Stalin Pact 41 The Managerial Revolution - James Burnham 42 The End of Capitalism in Germany - Dwight MacDonald 60 Is Russia a Workers’ State - Max Shachtman 87 Chapter III - The Defense of Collectivized Property 121 The Basis for Defensism in Russia - Ernest Erber 122 Bureaucratic Collectivism - Joseph Carter 135 The Russian Question - Max Shachtman 155 Chapter IV - The Third Camp 171 Triangle of Forces- Hal Draper 172 The Economic Drive Behind Tito - Hal Draper 187 The Nature of The Chinese State - Jack Brad 207 The Strange Case of Anna Louise Strong - Jack Brad 221 Chapter V — Beyond the Third Camp 233 Aspects of the Labor Government S Max Shachtman 235 Neo-Corporatists and Neo-Reformists S Hal Draper 241 The New Social-Democratic Reformism S Hal Draper 270 The Permanent War Economy S Seymour Melman 295 Appendix A - The Myth of Bruno Rizzi 313 Appendix B - The Myth of Max Shachtman 325 Index 331 INTRODUCTION As this collection was being prepared, the death of socialism and the end of history were once more being announced to the world. For the last several years, the collapse of the international Communist movement and the Soviet Union, so long a thorn in the side of capitalism and its defend- ers, has been offered as proof that it is no use tampering with the natural order of things. This is not the first time that such an argument has been made, nor is it likely to be the last. Every previous defeat of a revolution, every previous revelation that a state built by a revolutionary movement has become nothing more than a new bastion of privilege, has produced prophetic warnings against vain, “millenarian”, hopes for a better society. Each time the prophets have predicted that this would be the last such attempt. And yet, each time the prophecies have proved false. Agivenrevolutionarymovement, partyorgovernmentmaybetraythe hope and trust of the people but the hope born of necessity for a better future itselfremains. Whatthedefendersof“reallyexisting capitalism” do not understand is that this hope is not based on the attractiveness of the various revolutionary alternatives that have appeared so far and failed; it is based on the impossibility, for billions of people, to continue living under the existing social order. TheRussianRevolutionmayhavefailed, liketheAmericanandFrench revolutions before it. But the idea of revolution, of remaking society from below, is stronger than ever. The revolutionary upheavals in Eastern Europe of the last couple of decades, while repudiating the discredited formulas of Stalinism, have reinforced in the popular mind the power of the revolutionary democratic ideals which gave birth to the Russian Revolution and its predecessors. In 1815, the end of the revolutionary period that began in 1789 was marked by the triumph of the military force of the old order over Napoleon. The victors established a new world order—which lasted for nearly fifteen years—from above. Stalinism, however, was overthrown in Eastern Europe, not by external military force, but by the pressure of popular opposition. Our would-be Metternichs—Thatcher, Reagan and, in his own way, Gorbachev—exploited this popular movement as best they could. Their successors have yet to reestablish order of any kind, old or new. Neither Capitalism nor Socialism Unfortunately, the response of the left, broadly or narrowly defined, has been demoralization and defeatism. For many, the collapse of totalitarian state planning has proved the impossibility of socialism and the permanence of capitalism. That says very little about socialism itself and a great deal about what many who have called themselves socialists meant by “socialism”. Their conclusion is to embrace “the market” unreservedly while arguing for some state aid to help clean up the human mess that is the inevitable byproduct of unregulated capitalism. The triumphant defenders of “market economics” pure and simple see no need for their services. They have nothing to fear and no reason to make concessions. Others on the left, unwilling to think through the significance of the collapse of “really existing socialism”, and quietly nostalgic for the old order, content themselves with pointing out what a disaster “the free market economy” has proved in Eastern Europe economically as well as in human terms. The solution hinted at, though not very boldly, is that a reformed version of the old regime might not be a bad idea. There is even a certain nostalgia for “the good old days.” The electoral revival of the parties representing the chastened apparatchiks in Poland and East Germany is seen as a hopeful sign even though the programs offered by these parties differ little from those of the professional anticommunists who have been discredited over the years since the collapse of the USSR. What is missing is any serious attempt to think about what happened. Were these regimes socialist? Is there something worth preserving in the Stalinist past? What about China? Are the defenders there of the state sector—heavily dependent on slave labor—fighting a progressive battle against the encroaching capitalist “enterprise zones”? There is little discussion of such questions. Yet, there is a political and intellectual tradition on the left which did begin to deal with these problems long before the Soviet Union collapsed. In the late 1930s, Leon Trotsky opened up a political discussion on the Soviet Union and what was happening to it that raised all the questions being discussed today from a revolutionary point of view. This ii Introduction at a timewhenconservativepoliticians, for their own reasons, began to look to the new power in the east as a possible ally. Trotsky’s savage attack on the parvenu class that was liquidating the revolutionary tradition ideologically and the revolutionary generation physically provoked a vigorous debate among his followers and the broader left, especially in France and the United States where Trotsky and his ideashadsignificantinfluenceamongintellectualsandtrade unionists. As Isaac Deutscher pointed out in volume three of his biography of Trotsky, the latter’s 1936 The Revolution Betrayed represented a “new Trotskyism.” Originally, Trotsky, along with most other observers, had thought that by restoring normalcy and rejecting the revolutionary ideology of the period from 1917 through the early 1920s Stalin and the new bureaucracy were moving, consciously or not, in the direction of restoring capitalism. From this it followed that the main task of the left was to mobilize whatever forces could be mobilized in defense of nationalized industry. The belief that the new class of bureaucrats were planning to “privat- ize” industry predated the passage of Trotsky and Lenin into the ranks of the opposition. The opposition groups of the early 1920s, the adherents of the Democratic CentralistandWorkers’Opposition factions, also saw this as the main threat. Trotsky’s first attempt at a general synthesis was a “three factions” theory according to which the overwhelmingly peasant population of Russia provided an enormous reservoir of support for an amorphous “right wing” of the Communist Party whose reputed leader was Nikolai Bukharin. On the left was the opposition which remained faithful to the ideals of socialism and revolution.* *. Trotsky sometimes referred to his supporters and the left opposition in general as the “proletarian” wing of the party. But he knew all too well that the massive de-industrialization of the country consequent on years of war, civil war and economic blockade had devastated the Russian working class and destroyed it as an organized political force. “Bolshevik-Leninist” was the more common designation Trotsky chose to describe his position and it more accurately describes the opposition: an ideological current within the (continued...) iii Neither Capitalism nor Socialism Stalin, in this schema, represented the inertia of the bureaucracy. These “centrists” defended the new state created by the revolution against both the restorationist right and the revolutionary left. Of course, they would have been happy with a capitalist restoration that left them in possession of their privileges if that were possible. Meanwhile, however, they were forced to confront the openly restorationist politics of the right.