On Trotskyism - Modern Revisionism - IC

Modern Revisionism

The L.W.R. in some recent publications has been doing what it can to maintain some semblance of a credible position on the revision­ ist economies. On the political economy of those economies they have published nothing of substance. They have a dogmatic committ­ ment to the notion of "deformed workers' states resting on nationalised property relations'. The nonsensical nature of their general theoretical position makes it unsafe for them to engage in any concrete analysis of these economies . All they can do is to try to exploit inadequacies in the published material of the I.C.O. : and they can't even do that with much intelligence. We will give a few samples :

 • • • the Maoites have discovered that Khruschev "restored capi­ talism'' in Russia. According to them the working class had direct political power in Russia," [Mr Paddy Healy maintains that they had 'indirect'political power, which they exercised through their bureaucratic oppressors], "which was a full-blown 'socialist' country up to Stalin's death. By a short year or two later capitalism had been 'restored' due to a struggle with­ in the C.P., when Khruschev came to power and introduced a new economic policy. All this happened, presumably, while the ruling class, the workers, were having their lunch."(Workers Republic -magazine- No.25)

'At least in Eastern Europe the industries are run in the int­ erests of the workers. There is guaranteed employment and education for all. This is possible because industry is nat­ ionalised and the economy is planned. Yet these countries are ruled and the workers oppressed by wasteful and inefficient bureaucrats, which itself just goes to show the superiority of a nationalised planned economy." (Workers Republic -bulletin­ Jan 10th , 1970)

Russia was Socialist, these gents claim, until the "20th Cong­ ress", shortly after Stalin 's death, when a number of economic reforms were made. This, according to our Gaelic 'Communists'• changed the whole nature of the Soviet State and reintroduced capitalism. Thus there was a qualitative change in the econo­ mic structure of Russian society. But as these people must surely know , such changes take place only through violent rev olution accompanied by rapid transformation of the superstruc­ture. When and where did the revolution take place? No answer! Perhaps the "Red Bourgeois" tricked the Russian work­ ers? - how Irish can some of these 'Communists'get!" Young  Socialist, - published by Trotskyists in the Labour Party- No. 12.

What the ICO has established is that Marxist political economy was dominant in Russia in the Stalin period, but that bourgeois political economy became dominant subsequently; that economic policy was socialist in the Stalin period and became bourgeois subsequently; that economic construction was socialist in the Stalin period and was designed to reconstruct the market subsequently. The LWR has nothing to say about these things . On the most elementary level it is blinkered by dogma and incapable of accurate description . Where is there in Eastern Europe now 'guaranteed employment'? In 'Stalinist' Albania . Elsewhere , the new economic policy rules out guaranteed employment. ln Yugoslavia, where the new policies have been longest in operation, there is massive unemployment. Guaranteed employment is in conflict with the principles of new economic policy and the system which it is forming . If the LWR is unaware of this awkward little fact it is living in a complete fantasy world.

If the Soviet government implemented a socialist economic policy in the Stalin period , and is now implementing a non-socialist economic policy, there has in fact been a qualitative change in economic policy. An investigation of the new economic policy shows it to be bourgeois . But the LWR finds this approach very 'amusing' . Their approach, you see, it to start by stating that such a qualitative change could only have occurred through a violent counter-revolution. Since they can find no trace of the latter, it follows that the qualitative economic change has not occurred. If, nevertheless, a qualitative economic change has occurred, it has not occurred in the approved manner and must be ruled out of order. It is a piece of reality that does not come within the terms of reference of Trotsky­ ism.

The LWR engages in some weak sarcasm about peaceful counter-revolu­ tion. More is known about the counter-revolution in Yugoslavia than elsewhere in Eastern Europe. It did not happen while the workers were having their lunch. It so happens that they were in jail. Many thousands of the most class-conscious workers were imprisoned by the Titoites . A good many of them were murdered. If a Connnunist govern­ ment looks crooked at a bourgeois intellectual the whole imperialist and opportunist press sends up a howl. But they never raised a mur­ mer about the mass imprisonment and execution of communists in Yugo­ slavia. That is perfectly normal . In the class struggle one class doesn 't agitate against the oppression of representatives of the enemy class. The totskyists, as a detachment of bourgeois politics; supported Tito and raised no objection to the execution of Yugoslav 'Stalinists' . Perfectly natural . That doesn't mean that the counter -revolution was peaceful. It only means that, from the bourgeois viewpoint, the right people were killed. Less detail is known about what happened in Russia . It is known that a number of leading memb­ ers of the Communist Party died shortly after Stalin. Khruschev boasted of how they shot Beria without even the pretence of a trial. He said that Beria had been an imperialist agent since the 1930s.

Strange to say, the imperialists were unanimous in their approval of the murder of this influential agent of theirs There is strong circumstantial evidence that Stalin was murdered. An earlier issue

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of "Workers Republic" approved of this killing Trotsky declared in the 30s that Stalin was a servant of wold impei:.ialism. And again the whole imperialist world went into rejoicing on the death of a counter-revolutionary imperialist agent.

In addition to propagating the illusion that the revisionist counter-revolution in the Soviet Union and E. Europe was peaceful , the trotskyists also negate entirely the power of opportunism to disrupt and destroy working class politics. They suggest that because the revisionists do not say they are restoring capitalism, because they do not restore the most superficial forms of capital­ ism, and because they approach the problem of restoring the essentials of capitalism in an intelligent opportunist fashion - then, in fact, they are not restoring capitalism .

In a previous issue we referred the LWR to our pamphlet MARXISM AND MARKET SOCIALISM for an answer to their rhetorical questions about the restoration of captialism by revisionism. They declare that they can find nothing relevant to the question in that pamphlet.

We can well believe that. But the reason is not because the pam­ phlet does not deal with the question, but because trotskyism has no grasp of Marxist political economy, except on the most superfic­ ial level. If they had they would see the absurdity of the notion of a collectively-owned economy based on commodity production.

Since trotskyism adopted market socialism forty years ago, it is understandable that it should be incapable of understanding a Marx­ ist refutation of market socialism .

Market socialism is an impossibility. An economy based on market relations cannot be collectively owned and controlled by the work­ ing class. Collective ownership cannot give rise to commodity ex­ change in the means of production, because commodity exchange involves a change of owners . Where commodity production is the general form of production there must be numerous private owners. If there is a single collective owner, i.e. the working class, how can there be a change of ownership? How can there be commodity exchange?

If commodity exchange is general, then, whatever the superficial appearance, there are numerous private owners in reality. Where production is carried on by numerous private owners (whether indiv­ iduals, companies or co-ops)who buy and sell with one another, collective control of the economy is impossible. Without real collective ownership there can be no collective control by society . And where there is collective ownership, commodity production is impossible.

The economic backwardness of the Soviet Union in the 1920s made it impossible to establish comprehensive collective ownership all at once. But in the 1930s the major means of production were brought into the collective ownership of the working class. They then cea­ sed to be colIIIIlodities, and their production and distribution was governed by consciously determined social requirements and the availability of resources. But there were certain areas in which com­ modity production remained. As a concession to the petty bourgeois character of a large proportion of the peasantry, small private plots were allowed to collective farmers in which they produced commodities for sale on the market. This market could be influenced to a great extent by the state, but it was nevertheless a market.

But the main commodity exchange took place between the collective farms proper and the state. The collective farms owned their own produce and sold it to the state (i.e. to the collective working class). This again was necessary because of the petty bourgeois cha­ racter of the peasantry. But though the collective farmers owned their own produce co-operatively, they did not own their major means of production . They had the use of the land from the state, and the agricultural machinery was owned by the state. State-owned Machine and Tractor Stations were attached to the collective. These M.T.S.s made it possible for the technology of agriculture to proress more rapdily than would have been the case if the collective farms had to buy their machinery, and were also a means of exercising working class control over the collective farmers.

In 1952 Stalin showed that the main economic measure needed then for the further development of the socialist economy was the elimination of market relations between the state and the collective farms, which could only be done by making the collective farms state property and thus eliminating the two forms of ownership that gave rise to these market relations. (This could only be done when the peasantry, under working class influence, and as a result of the experience of collectivisation, shed their petty bourgeois characteristics and deve­ loped into workers.)

No sooner had Stalin outlined the situation, and indicated the gene­ ral direction of economic change required, than he died (either being killed, or dying naturally at an exceptionally convenient time for the bourgeoisie). His death was followed by the death of other leading communists .

The Soviet revolution was breaking new ground all along the way. There was no historical experience for it to learn from. At every turn an entirely new historical situation had to be analysed and entirely new policies had to be developed for it. It is in a situation like this that opportunism can wreak havoc .

Every revolutionary class develops from out of itself a leadership composed of its mo t determined, most capable, and most class con­ scious members . When it is breaking new ground historically a class is very dependent on its leadership. If we take the British bourg­ eoisie of today, which has three centuries of experience as a ruling class, and whose business is merely to keep in control of a situat­ ion which it knows very well, it is clear that the assassination of individual political leaders would do it very little damage . It has vast reserves of politically capable people. If the entire Cabinet, shadow Cabinet, the heads of the Civil Service, and the Army Chiefs of Staff were done away with, they could be replaced overnight.

But in the time of the bourgeois revolution. in the 1640s, when the old society was being overthrown and a bourgeois society was being made for the first time in history, in desperate struggle against the old society, the bourgeoisie were then very dependant for lead­ ership on a particular body of leaders thrown up in the course of the revolutionary struggle . If the Cromwell leadership had been lost it could well have been irrepla,'Ceable. Realising this , the revolutionary bourgeoisie gave Cromwell very extensive personal authority and freed him from Parliamentary control.

The historical task of the working class is infinitely more far­ reacing than that of the bourgeoisie. Its revolutionary leadership must be developed under very difficult circumstances in bourgeois society The loss of particular groups of leaders can do severe short-term damage to its political struggle. Opportunist leadership can have very far-reaching effects

The loss of an experienced revolutionary leadership in a complex situation in which the maintenance and further development of the revolution requires the breaking of entirely new ground, and its replacement with a sophisticated variety of opportunism which,

under the pretext of developing Marxism, generated confusion on the very questions which are essential to the further development of the revolution : that is what happened in the Soviet Union in the early fifties.

In trotskyism the "rule of the working class' becomes a metaphysical abstraction . The working class is said to rule through a bureaucr­ atic caste which is hostile to it, and which oppresses it. What kind of 'rule ' is that?

In the reality of the class struggle the working class can only rule when the state is controlled by a leadership which is the active representative of its interests: a leadership composed of the most class conscious, militant and politically developed members of its class . In the early stages of socialism, as Lenin often pointed out, the working class will necessarily include sections which remain in the grip of the bourgeois world outlook . Between this and the state leadership of the class a great variety of stages of political development will be found. In order to be able to rule , the bulk of the class must be developed enough to understand the elements of socialism. There must be an adequate political leader­ ship. And there must be a substantial cadre force.

In Russia in the late thirties working class rule was acquiring a substantial flesh and blood reality, The Nazi invasion had a cata­ strophic effect on this. The communist cadre force suffered parti­ cularly heavily. There was a Nazi regulation to the effect that no communist prisoners were to be taken. All communists and all sus­ pected of sympathy to communism were to be shot on the spot where they were captured. And since the communists were in the forefront of the resistance, the casualties among the politically developed workers were exceptionally high. That is the reality behind the cheap sneers of the trotskyists about peaceful counter-revolution .

The political flower of the Soviet working class was slaughtered by the Nazis; there was vast destruction of the economy; bourgeois remnants who were prepared to oppose the Nazis had to be conceded a certain degree of freedom. In 1945 the work of restoring industry, of preparing against a nuclear attack by the USA, of curbing the bourgeois nationalists who had used their war-time freedom to extend their tentacles, and of developing all over again a strong communist cadre force, had to be undertaken.

What was done in the economy in the years after 1945 was every bit as remarkable as the economic development of the 1930s, A campaign against the bourgeois nationalists was launched in 1947/8. But at all levels except the very highest there had been a considerable weakening of communist politics which it was not easy to overcome . Provided that revolutionary leadership was maintained there was no reason why there should not be a consistent development of communist politics. But the mass development of communism io the working class was nowhere near high enough to detect, expose and overcome a sophisticated opportunist leadership.

It was not through any miracle, but as a result of the combination of circumstances favourable to opportunism, which we have outlined above, that the bourgeois counter-revolution gained control in the Soviet Union in the mid-fifties.

(Irish Communist, June/July 1970)