[Internal document of the Revolutionary Communist Party, 1949]
The resolution of the IS entitled “The Evolution of the Countries in the Buffer Zone”, and submitted to the last IEC gives no satisfactory answer to what are some of the major problems facing our movement. It seems that a desire to hang on at all costs to the World Conference Resolution while partially recognising the facts of life – which wholly contradict whole sections of that resolution – has given rise to mystical formulas which saturate this recent document of the IS.
It was impossible at the World Conference, it has been impossible since to even begin to give a clear analysis of “buffer” state developments starting from the basis that theses states are capitalist. Developments confirmed the RCP amendment submitted to the World Conference that in these countries “the basic overturn of capitalist property relations has already been or is in the process of being completed. The capitalist control of the Government and the apparatus of the state has been, or is in the process of being, destroyed”, as it has confirmed the amendment of the BLPI [Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India] declaring “the Soviet bureaucracy is therefore compelled in these ‚buffer zone‘ countries slowly but steadily to bring the property relations existing in these countries into conformity with the property elations existing in the Soviet Union.”
As against this, the World Conference resolution declared the capitalist nature of these countries to be “apparent”. The results of clinging at all costs to this conception have borne fruits in the contradictions inherent in the recent IS resolution, not to speak of the fact that this resolution is driven more and more away from dealing with class relationships and class characterisations to dealing with secondary aspects of these states! We are told that “The most exact definition one can give to the social nature of these countries, is a definition affected by description”. It thereafter gives us a list of eight factors which it declares exist in these states. However the description remains … only a description. It is precisely a Marxist definition of these societies which is lacking in this arithmetical method. A Marxist definition is not, nor can it be, a lifeless enumeration of various aspects of a given society; on the contrary, it must seek to place these aspects in their relation one with the other, putting the society within its scientific category by defining its essential – its class-relationships. The “descriptive” method signifies an attempt to avoid a Marxist definition, to avoid search-lighting the essence of the phenomena. When Trotsky in the “Revolution Betrayed” (p. 255 Pioneer) describes the contradictory forces at work in the Soviet Union he has already defined the essence of Russian society. As a result of his analysis of the class relationships he has defined Russia as a Workers‘ State, a society halfway between Capitalism and Socialism. His “description” is of forces in a framework of decisive class relations already analysed. Later, in “Defence of Marxism”, it was precisely this method of “definition by description” which incurred his scorn.
“Marx, who in distinction from Darwin was a conscious dialectician“, Trotsky wrote, „discovered a basis for the scientific classification of human societies in the development of their productive forces and the structure of the relations of ownership which constitute the anatomy of society. Marxism substituted for the vulgar descriptive classification of societies and states, which even up to now still flourishes in the universities, a materialistic dialectical classification. Only through using the method of Marx is it possible correctly to determine both the concept of a workers‘ state and the moment of its downfall.“
The „Defence of Marxism“ contains invaluable lessons on the Marxist method of analysing societies. Let us give a further paragraph from Trotsky.
„In Marxist sociology the initial point of analysis is the class definition of a given phenomena, e.g., state, party, philosophical trend, literacy school etc. In most cases, however, the mere class definition is inadequate., for a class consists of different strata, passes through different stages of development, comes under different conditions, is subject to the influence of other classes. It becomes necessary to bring up these second and third rate factors in order to round out the analysis, and they are taken either partially or completely, depending upon the specific aim. But for a Marxist, analysis is impossible without a class characterisation of the phenomena under consideration.“ Trotsky speaks of „bringing up the second and third rate factors to round out the analysis. We hope to show here that it is precisely the second and third rate factors which form the core of the IS position. On the other hand, the starting point for Trotsky – the class characterisation – is precisely what is ignored (or never reached) by our comrades.
When the document declares that the countries o Eastern Europe are capitalist, the reader is asked to accept this as an act of faith, For neither the facts of life nor the resolution prove that is surely the decisive criterion – that the bourgeoisie in these countries is the dominant class. Indeed, the resolution itself clearly asserts the contrary1. We find it developing the thesis that Stalinism in the second stage of its policy in the „glacis“ has been „compelled to engage in the course of gradual and bureaucratic ‚liquidation‘ of the capitalist forces in the glacis.” True, the authors here soften the blow by placing quotation marks around liquidation thus throwing doubts into the mind of the reader as to whether or not the bourgeoisie is really being eliminated. To continue reading the resolution however will shatter those doubts. For we are told that the description of societies in the “buffer zone”, “by no means implies the presence in power of the bourgeoisie as the dominant class in these countries.”
The World Congress document had, of course, a different point of view. In a list of reasons as to why the capitalist nature of these countries was “apparent” we were given as the first: “Nowhere has the bourgeoisie as such been destroyed or expropriated (with the exception of certain groups placed in the category of collaborators).” Now that the IS has dropped this from its descriptive list it has recognised certain facts. Nevertheless, by continuing to hang on to the conclusions of the World Congress resolution it is placed in the position of determining the nature of these states, not by the class relations but by secondary relations, it is driven into the mystical instead of the dialectical method.
Qualitative differences?
The essay into dialectics on the „Evolution of the Countries of the Buffer Zone“, discloses the weakness of a position which ignores the class relationships. According to the ideas developed here the social differences between the Soviet Union and the „glacis“ countries are of a qualitative character. From a quantitative point of view, however, these countries are closer to the Soviet Union than to a „normal“ capitalist country, just as the Soviet Union finds itself quantitatively nearer capitalism than socialism. Let us try to sort this out.
The qualitative change from capitalist state to workers‘ state is in the change of class relationships; the change of property forms. Now, what is the qualitative difference that exists between the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe? Are the class relationships different? Are bourgeois property relations dominant? The IS cannot grapple clearly with these two questions. It evades them. The facts, however, answer them clearly enough, in the negative. A survey of the resolution reveals that the differences listed between the Soviet Union and the Satellite states are precisely nothing more than quantitative differences, while qualitatively there are no differences at all.
One has only to pose the question: what were these countries before the war to see clearly that the changes which have taken place are qualitative. Before the war these states were semi-feudal states or bourgeois republics with foreign capital playing a major role in many of them. Today, the land reform has shattered the feudal rulers, the bourgeoisie is without political power, even eliminated from political life, and what is more important, its ownership of industry has been completely shattered. Even according to the witness of the IS itself, surely these states have passed through qualitative changes? They declare the bourgeoisie is no longer in power as the dominant class; that in place of the bourgeoisie we have the Stalinists – a workers‘ bureaucracy – who “dispose of their own state apparatus, control the economy and are responsible for the general policy of the whole country.“ (IS Resolution on Yugoslavia and the Crisis of Stalinism“. Passed by the Oct. ’48 I.E.C.). Qualitatively speaking, that is from the point or view of the determining property forms, from the point of view of the relationship of the classes to the means of production, how does such a society differ from the Soviet Union?
Planning in Eastern Europe
What are the main differences that the IS describes as qualitative? If we run through them carefully we will find that they are conditional but not determining differences.
First, the question of planning. The document declares „… this new orientation of the Soviet bureaucracy could not eliminate from the economies of these countries the structural difficulties of the planning which resulted from the Stalinist policy in the preceding stages: the existence of the Soviet burden on the economies of these countries; the narrow national limitations in which they had previously been enclosed; the capitalist character of agriculture; the apathy and often passive hostility of the proletariat in face of the bureaucratic attempts at ‚“planning“, etc. That is why the planning maintains all its hybrid character and further differs structurally, fundamentally (my emphasis) from the Soviet planning, which is at the same time a bureaucratic deformation of real socialist planning.“.
In discussing the nature of societies, fundamental differences are class differences. What, then, are the class differences between the basis of Russian planning and that of the buffer zone? Up to the present we have seen two types of „planning“ – the „planning“ of a controlled capitalism on the basis of private property; and the planning of a Workers‘ State based op nationalised property. Does the planning in Eastern Europe take place on the basis of limiting and controlling private property only to preserve it? Or is it fundamentally different to capitalist „planning“, based, as in Russia, on state ownership of the major part of the economy, on the smashing of the bourgeoisie and landlord class, and carried out by a bureaucracy based on collectivised property? Surely the fundamental difference is not between the planning of the Soviet Union and that of its satellites, but between their planning and that capitalism? The existence of the Russian burden, etc., are secondary characteristics, (We can deal with the problem of the “capitalist character of agriculture” later). With regard to the other „fundamental“ factors it is sufficient to point out that Soviet planning also was enclosed also in narrow national limitations, exaggerated by the policy of “Socialism in One Country”: the Soviet planning today takes place with the “apathy and often passive hostility of the proletariat”. Indeed, in the first stages of planning in the Eastern European countries, there is invoked in some a greater degree of enthusiasm among the proletariat than in the USSR. Is it not clear that these fundamental differences are not fundamental at all, but can only be characterised as distorting factors?
Internal and World Market
According to the IS resolution, the factors which determine the social or qualitative differences between the buffer countries and the Soviet Union add up to a situation “where the major part of the production of these countries is still destined for the capitalist market (be it internally or externally) … The conditions of fusion between the petit-bourgeois peasant market, state industry and the world capitalist market, which Lenin and Trotsky showed to be a danger for the USSR in the period of the NEP, is today the determining situation of the countries of the glacis”.
Surely the determining factors for the characterisation of these countries are to be found in production not exchange! As in Russia under NEP, in exchange we had the state controlled and directed processes combined with the uncontrolled and elemental processes of the market. But that by no means signifies that the productive relations are capitalist. What is important is that the state control of the decisive spheres of the economy and can intervene and regulate the market relationships. So far as our information goes, it appears that in all theses countries wholesale trade is in the hands of the state or the co-ops. In the different countries a varied proportion of retail trade remains in private hands but it is exceedingly doubtful that a careful survey will disclose that a proportion of private capital in trade reaches the 50% that in Russia existed under NEP.
As for external trade: trade with the capitalist world does not of itself determine a social difference in the internal relations of these countries as compared with those of the Soviet Union. The overthrow of capitalism in one country does not end the world division of labour. If the greater part of the world is capitalist, then any workers‘ state, healthy or deformed, must participate in the world market. That participation does not measure social differences although it can introduce the danger of them developing. The IS resolution seems to regard the “reversal of the economic and commercial agreements with the “West” as being one of the progressive measures which would “modify” their present evaluation of the “buffer” zone. Are we to infer then, that Bolsheviks were wrong in seeking to extend their trade with the rest of the world?* Was Trotsky wrong when he declared: “In our foreign trade, conducted by the state, adaptable and supplementary to the work of the state industries and home trade, we have a powerful means of speeding up our economic development”? (“Towards Capitalism or Socialism, p. 91) The Crux of the question of trading with capitalism is the maintenance of the monopoly of foreign trade, with foreign trade supplementary to state planning.
The resolution declares that the fusion between the petit-bourgeois peasant market, state industry and the world capitalist market is the determining situation in Eastern Europe today. How is this fusion taking place? What is meant by the determining situation? Is the foreign trade policy dictated by the petty-bourgeois peasant market! The danger which Lenin and Trotsky saw was surely the breakdown of the state monopoly and the creation of direct links between the peasants and world capitalism, or the foregoing of industrialisation in favour of the import of manufactured goods for a peasant receiving enhanced prices for his grain. Insofar as the Eastern European are concerned, the Stalinists firmly retain the monopoly of foreign trade, and the determining factor in this trade is not the peasant market but the Stalinist industrialisation plans.
## Nationalisation of the Land – a Decisive Criterion
We come now to the question of the nationalisation of the land. Is the failure to nationalise the land a ‚qualitative‘ factor? The nationalisation of the land must be discussed in line with the precise relations within industry and the state. The agricultural relations are not decisive of themselves for a characterisation of the economy of these countries. What is decisive is that the basic sections of the economy are in the hands of the State. The Stalinist bureaucracy is forced to develop these countries industrially thus increasing the specific weight of the state sectors.
The importance of the nationalisation of the land lies in the struggle for a collective agriculture, in preventing new capitalist layers from arising – a problem also linked with the development of industry and the technological level of agriculture. Despite their former opportunist promises the Stalinists, having consolidated their power, now suppress such layers and prepare to collectivise the land in a most brutal fashion. While the Russian bureaucracy rests on collectivised property it is forced to struggle against any danger to itself arising from kulak elements either in the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe. The struggle may take place empirically, it may even engender stresses within the bureaucratic apparatus itself; nevertheless the bureaucracy is compelled to collectivise agriculture, with or without the nationalisation of the land.
The Question of the State
The IS tells us that in Eastern Europe there is the necessity for the disappearance of the „present hybrid state apparatus, and the constitution of a state apparatus of a new type, a reproduction without doubt of that of the USSR.“ There is, therefore, it would appear, a qualitative difference between the state apparatus of these countries and that of the Soviet Union, But the World Congress resolution declared very clearly that the bureaucracy was forced to maintain the bourgeois function and structure of the state. If the bourgeois function has been maintained, then certainly these states differ qualitatively from the state of the Soviet Union. But in actual fact, although the structure of the state in the buffer countries may appear similar to that of a bourgeois state, as does the state of the Soviet bureaucracy, the function is entirely different. Let us not mistake the form for the content. To build Socialism, to express their needs, the working class have need of a state with which they have direct and living connections, but both the state of the bourgeois and the state dominated by the Stalinist bureaucracy are identical in this – that they are separated from the masses.
Under the specific post war conditions existing in Eastern Europe an extremely weak bourgeoisie, whose state apparatus was disrupted and decisively weakened by the retreat or German Imperialism the advance of the Red Army, and the actions of the masses, had no alternative but so allow the Stalinists to build up the repressive organs, the essence of the state: bodies of armed men, under their control. Any resistance of the bourgeoisie was countered by pressure from Moscow or by the controlled pressure of the masses.
True, for a period there existed Stalinist coalitions with the bourgeoisie or with the shadow of the bourgeoisie. In all cases however, the Stalinists gained control of the armed and repressive bodies of men. In a normal coalition with the bourgeoisie the workers‘ representatives are hostages. In the concrete situation in Eastern Europe the bourgeoisie became the hostages, even though in the first period of the „liberation“ the Stalinists utilised them in suppressing the workers movement. The bourgeoisie hoped to maintain a certain economic and political basis until the withdrawal of Russian troops or a more favourable balance of national or international forces.
In the first period following the war, the shadow of the bourgeoisie could have gained and was gaining substance. Given a different relationship of forces internationally, developments could have been entirely different to those which actually took place. However, because it could not afford to share the power and because of its struggle against world imperialism, the bureaucracy, calling on the pressure of the masses shattered the bourgeoisie completely.
The general form and structure of the state may appear the same as in bourgeois society, as does, to repeat, the state of the Soviet Union. But it would be wrong to draw the conclusion that its function remains bourgeois. It is clear that were these countries assimilated into the Soviet Union the state machine would require only incidental alterations. When we discuss function, not form, it becomes clear that there is no qualitative difference between the state in Eastern Europe and in Russia. It is flying directly against facts to declare that the state has a bourgeois function – that of defending Bourgeois private property. The state in those countries has performed the function of eliminating the bourgeoisie (not suppressing them politically or limiting them economically in the manner of a Bonapartist capitalist state but depriving them of their economic base and shattering them in all the decisive economic sectors). At the same time as protecting state property, and extending it with the aid of the pressure of the masses, the state suppresses the workers‘ initiative and deprives them of political rights. Those are functions not of a bourgeois state, but of a deformed and bureaucratic workers‘ state.
We think that the foregoing is sufficient to establish that the IS stands quantity and quality on their heads, and nowhere proves that the differences between the “glacis“ countries and the Soviet Union are other than … quantitative.
The IS and „Assimilation“
To come to what appears to be the nub of the IS position when they sum up their description of the countries of the buffer zone. Those countries are capitalist countries on the „road of structural assimilation with the USSR“. The IS will find it necessary to modify their appreciation of the social nature of these countries when the conditions of this assimilation have been effectively completed; i.e., „the suppression of the national frontiers between the ‚glacis‘ countries.”
If we take the presence of national frontiers as the key to the social nature of states we shall never see a workers‘ state until communism has been consummated throughout the world and boundaries together with states have „withered away“. It is not out of place hero to declare – as Lenin did of the Polish Social Democrats – that our comrades „Assume that the democratic state of victorious socialism will exist without boundaries (like a ‚complex of sensations‘ without matter)“.
The degree of assimilation of the satellite countries into the Soviet Union does not determine their social nature. The IS stands everything on its head when it declares this is the decisive factor for evaluating the situation.
The World Congress resolution declared „By its social nature the Soviet bureaucracy is incapable of integrating the ‚buffer‘ countries with the Soviet economy, failing the complete destruction of capitalism in those countries.“ That is true. Only the overthrow of capitalist relations make possible the elimination of frontiers and assimilation. However, it is false to measure that overthrow by the degree to which the possibilities flowing from it are carried out.
These possibilities can be conditioned by factors other the overthrow of the old bourgeoisie.
How untenable is this position is shown by the practical conclusions which flow from it. If we measure the social change in these countries by the degree of assimilation, then all developments opposing that must be viewed as reactionary. It means that the break of Yugoslavia, which strengthened national barriers, must be condemned as retrogressive and all support given to the Cominform demand for „organic unity“. By the same token the demand for an Independent Soviet Ukraine – a strengthening of national boundaries – becomes retrogressive as indeed does Lenin’s demand for the complete freedom of secession for nations under a workers state.
It is not certain that the Kremlin will completely abolish the national frontiers of these states. A formal independence can possibly at this stage, and even in the future, serve its interests better. However, the Kremlin maintains a rigid control over those countries; maintains the national Stalinist parties and the state structure under its dominance; dominates the economy of these countries. If we talk of assimilation, then these are expressions of it. The statifications themselves force an integration of those countries as formal republics of the USSR then that will be for other reasons than that capitalism has not been destroyed.
The methods whereby the Russian bureaucracy distorts these economies, disposes arbitrarily their economic role and military strategy; all this must be condemned. The theoretical lead of the IS however, is in the opposite direction. The IS argues that assimilation – that is the suppression of even the formal independence of these countries, their complete and direct by the Russian bureaucracy is the process that changes the social nature of these states. Which leads directly to the conclusion that this process must be supported.
The IS, of course, will not accept this conclusion. It therefore argues that the forms of exploitation by the Russian bureaucracy in these countries are not part of the assimilation but are obstacles to it. One could accept as correct an argument that the “specific forms of exploitation‘ introduced by the Soviet bureaucracy” engender national hatred against them which is an obstacle to assimilation. However, it would appear that the position of the IS is something different; that the “specific forms of exploitation” heighten the capitalist nature of the states, and thus prevent assimilation – which cannot take place without the “complete destruction of capitalism.”
The world Conference document stated that “the ’special forms of exploitation‘ appear within the framework of these countries as forms of capitalist exploitation”. However, the participation of the Soviet bureaucracy in the mixed companies in Hungary and Rumania, its annexation of the uranium mines of Czechoslovakia, are no more a measure of capitalist exploitation than the complete annexation of Bessarabia, the Baltic countries and Eastern Poland. They are an expression of the bureaucratic methods by which the bureaucracy attempts to extend its own interests, and it is as such they are to be condemned.
We can only place the conflicts engendered by the specific forms of domination of the Soviet bureaucracy in their correct perspective if we accept the fact that the social overturn has already taken place in these countries. The bureaucracy attempts to cushion the difficulties of its own economy by direct participation in certain of the industries of some of these countries; by preferential treaties etc. It must seek to exert 100% control over the state machine of these countries so that this arbitrary Bonapartist forces can preserve untrammelled its freedom of manoeuvre. Hence the purges of individuals who are in any way under the pressure of native social forces, or who possess a base of their own, and the attempt to place in control “men from Moscow”. This is a framework of the conflicts in Eastern Europe. It was the Cominform which declared that the struggle with the YCP was a struggle against bourgeois nationalists. If the IS developed any clear conclusion from its position that Yugoslavia is a capitalist state, then it must accept this characterisation of the struggle.
Yugoslavia
The most extraordinary contradiction in the document is its position on Yugoslavia. Although Yugoslavia, like the other countries of Eastern Europe is “qualitatively” different to the Soviet Union, although it is a capitalist state, we are asked to support Tito against Stalin! The reason? “The defence of Yugoslavia takes is place within the framework of our appreciation of the workers movement in this country, of the origins of its state of the overt revolutionary possibilities of the workers movement which takes precedent over the purely economic (and class? – B.H.) considerations.”
The IS resolution declares that our tasks in relation to these Eastern European states remains the same as at the World Congress. But the World Congress Resolution calls for revolutionary defeatism in the glacis countries in the event of an imperialist attack. Thus, while we defend Yugoslavia against the Russian bureaucracy presumably we are not to do so against imperialism!
Confusion grows more confounded. Things are even worse when we come to examine closely the formula – “appreciation of the workers movement”, “origins of the state”. What is meant by “origins of the state”? That the state “came into being by actions of the masses”. Who dominates it now? The last IEC (October) informed us that the states of Eastern Europe are dominated by the CPs and that the “leadership of the YCP (which dominates the state – B.H.) represent up to the present a bureaucratic deformation of a revolutionary anti-capitalist (my emphasis) plebeian current”. The state is dominated by a bureaucratic deformation of an anti-capitalist current. Now what property relations does that state defend? At the last YCP Congress, it was declared by Kidrič that “Two years after the war the Yugoslav state owned 55% of industry and had 27% under control. Now all Federal and Republic industry had been nationalised and 70% of local industry, so had all banks, all transport, all foreign trade, all wholesale and most of retail trade.” He pointed out that the comparative situation under the Soviet Union of 1926-27 was “14% of industry, 32% of commerce and 5% of wholesale trade was in private hands.” Accepting Kidrič’s facts, accepting the IEC resolution as to the nature of the controlling force in the Yugoslav state, what remains to determine Yugoslavia as a capitalist state?
For the IS to state that our attitude to Yugoslavia is determined by the appreciation of the workers movement is correct, given one thing: that this workers movement has seized power and is eliminating capitalism.
The Halfway House Comrades
Here perhaps would be an opportunity to comment on the position of those halfway-house comrades who, while declaring Yugoslavia is an workers state, refuse to do the same for the other countries of Eastern Europe. The comrades cannot remain long in this position. Insofar as there are no fundamental differences between the economy of Yugoslavia and those of the other buffer states, the logic of the discussion must drive them to accept the fact that throughout Eastern Europe a social overturn has taken place.
In Yugoslavia too, the land has not been nationalised; compensation was paid to home and foreign capitalists. The constitution is based on that of the Soviet Union, but so are the constitutions of most of the other states. It is hardly necessary to state that structural assimilation – with the Soviet Union – is less advanced than in the other countries.
It would appear that the only argument which the comrades can advance to support their position is the scope and depth of the mass movement on with the new Yugoslav state was based. That is important when dealing with the question of the Tito-Stalin conflict. The scope of the whole Yugoslav-Cominform conflict was determined by the fact that for the first time within Stalinism itself the Kremlin bureaucracy was faced with elements with a base of their own in a separate state machine and in the masses. However it does not introduce a decisive social difference between Yugoslavia and the other states of Eastern Europe. The overturn in these other countries may not have been carried out in the classical manner, nevertheless it was an overturn forced on Stalinism, the manner of it dictated by specific conditions. At the beginning of the war, Trotsky could speak of a civil war in Finland, even though the struggle was not being conducted under the leadership of a revolutionary party based on mass support. In ‚Defence of Marxism‘ he said (p. 89), „Naturally, this is a civil war of a special type. It does not arise spontaneously from the depths of the popular masses. It is not conducted under the leadership of the Finnish revolutionary party based on mass support. It is introduced on bayonets from without. It is controlled by the Moscow bureaucracy. All this we have dealt with in discussing Poland. Nevertheless, it is precisely a question of civil war, of an appeal to the lowly, to the poor, a call to them to expropriate the rich, drive them out, arrest them, etc. I know of no other name for these actions except civil war.”
The bayonets of the Red Army, even if sometimes only in the background, the control of the Moscow bureaucracy, the appeals to the lowly, these were the instruments in the other European countries of an overturn similar to that in Jugoslavia.
We await with interest what arguments can be brought forward by the comrades to refute this and justify their position that there is a qualitative difference between Yugoslavia and the other satellite countries.
A Correction is Necessary
Facts are stubborn things and sooner or later force their recognition. The R.C.P. amendments on Eastern Europe, presented to the World Congress gain strength and justification by having facts as an ally. It is evident that many comrades, even some who accuse the R.C.P. of “capitulation to Stalinism” because of its position, are being driven relentlessly towards a similar position. In this connection the memorandum submitted by Comrade E. R. Frank to the last I.E.C. is to be welcomed by the R.C.P.
The fog in which the I.S. Resolution has enveloped the question of Eastern Europe shows what happens when the facts are left behind, and attempts made to analyse the nature of society without dealing with the class relationships.
It would be utterly false to believe that a recognition of the social overturn in the “buffer” zone means to want jettison the fundamentals of our past analysis of Stalinism. Trotsky said of Poland in 1939 [1940], “This overturns was forced upon the Kremlin oligarchy through its struggle for self preservation under specific conditions.”
It was that same struggle for self preservation which was the determining factor in the Kremlin’s post war policy in Eastern Europe. Our analysis of Stalinism flows from an analysis of the origin and the development of the soviet Union, the nature of the Soviet regime and its relation to world revolutionary developments. The fact that Stalinism under certain specific circumstances carries out revolutionary measures does not cancel out its past, its origins, its conservative and counter-revolutionary aspects, its bureaucratic base and the effect of its methods on the world working class movement. On the other hand we cannot be blinded to the particular progressive measures Stalinism is forced to carry out because of the viability of the property forms on which it rests. The Fourth International is not to be justified by ignoring facts, or attempting to pour them into preconceived theoretical vessels. In that way lies a fog of mysticism.
To declare that under every and all particular conditions the Stalinist bureaucracy must compromise with the bourgeoisie means never to understand the events in Eastern Europe. The situation in the post-war world, the dominance of the Russian bureaucracy in certain areas under certain conditions meant that its struggle for self preservation took the form of a social overturn. However, this does not mean that the bureaucracy has taken up the banner of world revolution. Its struggle still remains a defensive one within the framework of gaining the best possible compromise with world imperialism, prepared, however, at this stage to press ahead the mobilisation of the masses where it can retain control, and where the imperialists are too paralysed to intervene. Tomorrow it will just as readily aid the imperialists in suppressing the mass movement in order to preserve a compromise with imperialism. The very mobilisation itself creates greater problems for the bureaucracy as events in Yugoslavia have already shown, and as China will assuredly show in the future. These clashes within Stalinism heighten the conservativism of the bureaucracy, fearing the development of “Titoist” tendencies where local Stalinists come to power as a result of a mass movement, weakening the undoubted confidence it must have gained during and after the war in its ability to manipulate the workers movement.
The problems which face us as a result of the evolution of the “buffer” countries are complex. Our movement will overcome them. One thing, however, is evident; until the majority of the Fourth International has reached a clear and worked-out position on these developments – a position which does not ignore reality – then we labour under an incubus that can bear down on every aspect of our activity.
May 1949
1In the text “country”
*… In this connection it is pertinent to recall Lenin’s advice to the Communists of the Soviet Republics of the Caucasus. “Make the utmost, intense and speedy economic use of the capitalist West by means of a policy of concessions and commercial intercourse … Economically base yourselves at once on commercial intercourse with the capitalist countries; do not begrudge the cost; let them have scores of millions worth of valuable minerals”. (To the Communists of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, Dagestan, and the Gorski Republic”, Sel[ected] Works, Vol 9, p. 203)
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