[Workers International News, Vol. 6, No. 9, p. 267-269]
Conference reaffirms the basic programmatic conceptions of the Fourth International as they relate to the Soviet Union, to the dual nature of the system of society in the USSR as a transitional regime between capitalism and socialism and which therefore has both capitalist and socialist forces at conflict with each other.*
It declares that the payment of wage labour, the production of commodities, the circulation of money, and the differentiations which exist on the basis of these capitalistic social relations, give a capitalist character to the state (which occupies the same position in relation to the national economy as the capitalist occupies in relation to a single enterprise) in the first stages of even a healthy proletarian revolution. In this sense, the capitalist state exists but without a capitalist class.
Insofar as the state in Russia is bureaucratic, degenerated and totalitarian, which encourages the tendency towards capitalist differentiation, the capitalist characteristics of this state assume tremendous and growing proportions. Nevertheless, on the basis of these features it is erroneous to draw the conclusion that Russian economy is a state capitalist economy.
The fundamental class nature of the USSR as a workers’ state that has degenerated in the direction of capitalism is established for us on the basis of the nationalisation of land, of the basic means of production, transport and exchange, the planned system of economy, and monopoly of foreign trade centred in the hands of the state. These remain the fundamental gains of the October Revolution of 1917, and are the economic premise for our class characterisation.
Among many other factors established by Leon Trotsky, the backwardness of Russian economy in 1917 and the isolation and encirclement by imperialist capitalist states resulted in the political expropriation of the proletariat and the entrenchment of the totalitarian Stalinist bureaucracy in complete control of the state apparatus, of the economic means of life of the Russian people, and thus gave rise to the economic exploitation of the Russian workers and peasants by the state bureaucracy. Meanwhile, there has developed the growth of rouble millionaires on the basis of capitalist forms of degeneration. These transformations testify that the dual nature of the Russian state can lead back to capitalism if the workers of Russia fail to take political control and the direction of economy which this entails, out of the hands of the bureaucracy, no less than the statification can lead to the further development of the socialist economy if the working class, as in the early days of the Russian Revolution, take control once again into their own hands.
The defence of state property from the encroachments of private individuals, from the encroachments of the bureaucracy and from the economic penetration and eventual military attack of world imperialism, is a progressive historical task which the Fourth International has set itself by means of revolutionary communist politics. Conference reaffirms its complete solidarity with the necessity for this defence and by the methods established in the programme of the Fourth International as hitherto propagated by the RCP.
Conference rejects the conception that Russian society is a new form of class exploitive society, sociologically defined as managerial society or bureaucratic collectivism. It declares that these theories are essentially revisionist as they relate to Marxian economics, that they substitute the philosophy of pragmatism in place of historical materialism, and must inevitably, lead – as they have already done on the part of those who adopted these theories in the past -, to a complete break with communism and to further theoretical revisionism and mistaken policies in the class struggle. Conference rejects the conception of this revisionist tendency that we are defeatists in relation to Russia during war in the same way as we are defeatists in relation to the capitalist powers.
The transitional character of the USSR requires that we constantly check our theories in the light of changing social conditions. The further entrenchment of the bureaucracy, the widening differentiation in the social conditions of the Russian population, and the extended legislation of capitalist inheritance rights, are processes which necessitate that the sociological nature of Russian society be constantly re-examined by the organisations of the Fourth International. Such a re-examination is especially necessary in view of the social transformations that have already taken place and are in the process of evolution in the countries of Eastern Europe that are under Russian occupation and control.
Conference notes that our own organisation and especially the leading comrades have failed as have all other sections of the Fourth International, to examine and explain the social transformations taking place in these Eastern European countries, to establish the class character of the process, and especially to establish the class nature of the states that have come into being. This is an indication of theoretical hesitation and indecision on the part of our International movement as a whole in the light of new and amazingly complicated special phenomena.
In Czechoslovakia, as in the other countries where, primarily as the result of the war and the effects of the Russian occupation and of the uprising of workers and peasants which the approach of the Red Army engendered, the land has been confiscated from the large landowners and nationalised or broken up, or where the means of production, transport and exchange have been nationalised, the RCP defends these measures of statification and reforms from the counter-revolution and seeks to extend these new property forms on the basis of workers’ control and the seizure of state power by the proletariat. Despite the large-scale measures taken against private ownership of the land and means of production, the working class parties share the power with the capitalists in these countries, incorporating the Liberal and even more reactionary sections of the bourgeoisie into the state political machine and economic organisation. The precise nature of the regimes in Czechoslovakia and Eastern Europe, which are essentially transitional regimes, must be established on the basis of a thorough analysis of the economic and political transformation (which requires comprehensive data) in an international political discussion. In view of the confusion which undoubtedly exists in the ranks of the Fourth International and of the urgency for clarification of this problem for the whole future of the International, Conference requests that the IS issue a declaration establishing its position and with the purpose of initiating an international discussion. Conference instructs the PB to open a discussion in the theoretical journal of the British Party.
*The capitalist forces within the Soviet Union have undoubtedly been strengthened during the war, but the following definition of the dual nature of the Soviet Union given by Trotsky in 1935 [1936] remains essentially correct :—
“The Soviet Union is a contradictory society half-way between capitalism and socialism, in which: (a) the productive forces are still far from adequate to give the state property a socialist character; (b) the tendency toward primitive accumulation created by want breaks out through innumerable pores of the planned, economy; (c) norms of distribution preserving a bourgeois character lie at the basis of a new differentiation of society; (d) the economic growth, while slowly bettering the situation of the toilers, promotes a swift formation of privileged strata; (e) exploiting the social antagonisms, a bureaucracy has converted itself into an uncontrolled caste alien to socialism; (f) the social revolution, betrayed by the ruling party, still exists in property relations and in the consciousness of the toiling masses; (g) a further development of the accumulating contradictions can as well lead to socialism as back to capitalism; (h) on the road to capitalism the counter-revolution would have to break the resistance of the workers; (i) on the road to socialism the workers would have to overthrow the bureaucracy. In the last analysis the question will be decided by a struggle o living social forces, both on the national and the world arena.” (Revolution Betrayed. p. 255)
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