On the question of Eastern Europe, what was the process of the counter-revolution and why was there not a serious revolutionary movement of the Russian working class?
We have written a lot of material on this. The collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was one of the greatest setbacks for the working class and Marxists in history. It was perhaps one of the three most important events in the 20th century: 1917 and its repercussions; the end of the Second World War and the balance of forces that came out of that; and the collapse of these Stalinist regimes. The positions that Marxists took towards those events was crucial for the subsequent development of the forces of Marxism and Trotskyism.
Having previously held a perspective that it was unlikely that there would be a return to capitalism, we began to amend that position in the late 1980s. This provoked a schism in our ranks. Whereas Ted Grant and his supporters clung to the previous perspective, we, in the light of the events in Poland, said there could now be a return to capitalism. Why did we say that? Because of the world capitalist boom of the 1980s and the evident signs of economic stagnation in the Soviet Union. On the basis of a modern economy, it was no longer possible to use the bureaucratic methods of Stalinism.
The choice was between workers’ democracy and a return to capitalism. If we had had forces inside Russia we may have come to a more correct conclusion about the process much earlier. What was the consciousness of the masses? In the 1980s, Solidarity was, at bottom, a searching by the Polish workers for the ideas of workers’ democracy but also with pro-capitalist elements in the movement, as there were in 1956 in Hungary. But the predominant feature in the documents and congresses of Solidarity, despite its religious colouration and the cover of Catholicism, was this search for the idea of workers’ democracy: accepting the planned economy but with democracy. However, the suppression of Solidarity in 1981 and Jaruzelski’s rise to power (who subsequently admitted it was a mistake for him to resort to military measures and to recentralise and maintain the bureaucratically controlled economy) changed the consciousness of the Polish workers. Under the pressure of events they moved towards the right, assisted by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. The intervention of Thatcher and George Bush senior, and the move of the bureaucracy itself towards a pro-capitalist position, laid the basis for the change in consciousness by suggesting that, while ‘everything else had been tried’, maybe the market was the way forward.
In Russia and in East Germany there were, at least in the first period, elements of the ideas of workers’ democracy to the fore. It was not a worked-out perspective but it was there. Bob Labi wrote a book on the collapse of East Germany in 1989 in which some of these features are explained. We carried a lot of material, including an important document, on the collapse of Stalinism. Our ex-comrades disagreed with us and split away to form the Grant-Woods group. But the main reason why the elements of workers’ democracy, evident at the beginning of the movement, did not develop further was because the Russian working class had been kept in the dark almost since the 1920s. They experienced the purges of the 1930s and the dark night of Stalinism afterwards, a period of about 60 years. There were flare-ups, when sections of the population, while defending the planned economy, looked towards workers’ democracy. But as the 1980s developed, it was quite clear there was only a minority then who believed, understood or even had access to the ideas of workers’ democracy. There was a passivity amongst certain layers, even in the factories, which our comrades reported on when they travelled to the country at the end of the 1980s. The net result was a return to capitalism by the bureaucracy, without a ‘civil war’. This seems to contradict a point Trotsky once made that there could not be a class change in Russia without a civil war because this would mean that the “film of reformism would be run backwards”.
Yes, that is related to the question on the purpose of the theory of state capitalism today. Trotsky said that the working class would struggle against the restoration of capitalism but they did not struggle and there was no civil war. Also, that a restoration was impossible without a counter-revolution.
As a general proposition that is correct and was valid at a certain historical stage. When Trotsky was writing, the Russian Revolution was still fresh in the minds of the proletariat. There was still a consciousness, wrote Trotsky, of the gains of the October Revolution and even a fear that if the bureaucrats were overthrown it would open the gates to bourgeois counter-revolution. Trotsky’s proposition is correct as a general theoretical norm. But a theoretical norm can never completely describe reality. As Goethe once said: “Theory is grey and green is the tree of life, my friend.” Lenin was fond of repeating that point. Even in relation to the transformation from feudalism to capitalism, in general, reforms prepared the way for revolution. But there were occasions when there was a deadlock. The bourgeoisie was too timid and afraid of leading the people to carry through the bourgeois-democratic revolution. Feudal layers, ‘from the top’, do the job of curtailing feudal elements and take the step of going over to capitalism. Engels makes the point that the Junkers, based in the large estates of Prussia, were forced to carry through the measures that laid the basis for the development of German capitalism because the bourgeoisie itself was too timid and afraid of the proletariat to take the lead, as 1848 had shown. You could also say that something similar happened in Japan and, in particular, in the aftermath of the Second World War. MacArthur actually carried through land reform from the top.
Some of Cliff’s other theoretical ideas – for instance, that surplus value was created in 1928 – are just bogus. The essence of a workers’ state is that many of the elements of capitalism still exist in the first period: classes, production of commodities, money, the production of value and the production of surplus value. The difference is that it becomes social, appropriated by the workers’ state rather than by the individual capitalists or the capitalist class as a whole. So the idea that there was not a surplus produced in the early stages of the Russian Revolution is just wrong. But the appropriation of the surplus by the state, therefore, alters the situation; quantity turns into quality. The new society still bears the birthmarks of the previous one but it is a qualitatively different state.
There are periods in history when there is a deadlock, when the dominant class – or caste in this case – is in a blind alley and cannot take society forward. The population of the ‘Soviet Union’ saw the dislocation 70 years after the revolution and contrasted this to the seeming dazzling economic success of the West. The bureaucracy, the majority of it, used this to go over to capitalism. The resistance then comes when the effects of capitalism are felt by the proletariat. The fast-track return to capitalism which the Chinese have avoided, for fear of the social consequences, absolutely stunned the proletariat.
The level of poverty and unemployment in Russia in the first part of the 1990s had no precedent in history. The only comparison is the US of 1929-33 and, in real terms, Russia’s was a much greater collapse. Some bourgeois economists say that Russia today has an equivalent economic power to Belgium. I think that is an underestimation of Russia’s economic strength because it does not take into account oil. But the very fact that this comparison is used is a measure of the economic and industrial collapse which was accompanied by a stunning reduction in social services, education, etc. Life for millions became a struggle for a piece of bread. There seemed to be no alternative to capitalism.
When I was in Russia in 1998, never mind the early 1990s, comrades from Kazakhstan related that there was no electricity. The masses were breaking up their furniture and the doors of their houses. They had open fires in the streets in sub-zero temperatures just to keep warm. In a situation like that, particularly after being kept in the dark night of Stalinism for 60 years, how could the masses have developed the necessary consciousness to fight for workers’ democracy? The CWI said, when we discussed the question of Stalinism in the past, that it would be possible once the spark ignited a mass movement, that this could overthrow the bureaucracy, even though the Trotskyists and conscious Marxist forces did not then exist in these societies. In Hungary in 1956, the masses had experienced 20 years of Horthy fascist terror, ten years of Stalinist terror, and the period of democracy was short, a very ‘delicate flower’ going back to Bela Kun in 1919. What democratic traditions did the Hungarian workers have? Yet when they rose in 1956, two general strikes smashed the first Russian army. The second intervention used Mongolian troops who were told they were going to fight a fascist uprising in Berlin! But the workers’ councils of Hungary developed all the elements of workers’ democracy: election of officials, right of recall, etc. They were ideologically very muddled – there were pro-capitalist and fascist elements in the movement – but the predominant outlook of the working class was for workers’ democracy. But that was in the period when the planned economy had a certain viability. In Czechoslovakia in 1968, it was a matter of ‘the human face of socialism’, but there were elements of the political revolution there too, although Dubček reflected ‘liberal’ national Stalinism.
Russian Stalinism was a nightmare for the Russian workers. Marx said that tradition lies on the brain of the living like an alp. This was a terrible historical experience which did not prepare the working class for the period of 1988-89. We speculated, even though we were weak, that if a revolution like Hungary broke out in Russia, only a thousand cadres would be needed to begin to build a mass party. But that proved to be utopian. In the course of a revolution the masses improvise and throw up their own organisations, and could even establish the outline of a workers’ state, in the same way as the Paris Commune was the first workers’ state, an anticipation of the future workers’ state. But the Hungarian workers were not given sufficient time to create a party able to consolidate and spread the revolution.
It is not a question of just following the texts or phrases of Trotsky but to understand his method of analysis. After the shock which the Russian proletariat experienced, it has inevitably taken a long time for them to recover. This is the paradox of the 1990s. The area of the world in which it has been most difficult to establish viable genuine Marxist or Trotskyist forces has been in Russia, the former USSR and Eastern Europe. Why? Because of the discrediting of the official doctrine of ‘Marxism’, at least in the minds of the freshest elements, the youth. They were the most enthusiastic about the return to the market and the opportunities which they believed would open up, whereas the older generation, which suffered most, were the ones who retained their support for the so-called ‘Communist’ Party and even harked back to the planned economy. Nevertheless, the CWI has been the most success organisation to establish a base for Trotskyism there.
In passing, Cuba could be a different situation what happened in Russia and Eastern Europe. US imperialism has made a big mistake with the adoption of the Helms-Burton Act. It gives no section of the bureaucracy a way out. In East Germany after reunification the government said all the expropriations of land of 40 years previously could not be touched. But the Helms-Burton Act stipulates that all expropriated property in Cuba must be returned after a counter-revolution. The Mafia controlled one tenth of the assets taken over by Castro! So the heirs of Luciano and Meyer Lansky, the Mafia leaders in Cuba in the 1950s, would have the theoretical right to claim back their property. Not one section of the bureaucracy could come to an agreement with the US on this basis. If it is a question of struggle, the Cuban workers and even sections of the bureaucracy will fight. It is not a simple straightforward issue. Whether the bureaucracy has a basis in the population is another issue entirely.
Was Trotsky right?
Bob Labi: “Each country is different. From the mid-1980s onwards, we did begin to identify the development of a pro-capitalist wing inside the bureaucracy, sense that the crisis in the regime had split the bureaucracy…”
Trotsky had the position that when the political revolution started there would be a split inside the bureaucracy.
Bob Labi: “It was more a crisis of the system. Peter said we underestimated the stagnation of the system. The fact was that, especially in the Soviet Union, they had problems and a section of the bureaucracy began to look quite clearly for a more capitalist way out. At that stage we identified things which had a certain similarity to, shall we say, Bukharinite developments of the late 1920s and early 1930s, not in the sense of resurrecting Bukharin’s ideas but in looking towards capitalism as the way out. We identified that but we did not expect it to became the predominant wing, although it did. We did not expect that immediately. At the same time, we did not have the illusions that some had in Yeltsin when he came into – conflict with Gorbachev. When Gorbachev removed Yeltsin as Moscow party boss, there were some who had illusions that perhaps Yeltsin represented that layer which was edging towards the political revolution. We were far more cautious on that. We did not have illusions in Yeltsin but we did not expect the actual movement to go in the way it did.
Obviously, if you look at Trotsky’s writings of the 1930s, the main bulk is directed towards the question of either political revolution against the bureaucracy or a bourgeois counter-revolution on fascist lines, in fact, not in the pseudo-democratic form which took place. But he also gave a warning in a couple of lines in Revolution Betrayed where he writes that the stagnation in society was preparing ‘an explosion… which may completely sweep out the results of the [1917] Revolution’, and in a way that is what happened. [Page 286, New Park Publications edition, London, 1973) This was linked to the illusions in the West, which I think is an important question – not just of the higher living standards in Western Europe but also the existence of democratic rights, the fact that by the end of the 1980s in Western Europe there were only bourgeois-democratic regimes. The old military dictatorships of Greece, Spain and Portugal had gone, so the pro-capitalists could present capitalism as a democratic system. The combination of high living standards and democratic tights were attractive in comparison to the Stalinist regimes.
“In each country, there was a different development. In some countries, there was potential at different stages for a workers’ movement. The discussions in Solidarity in 1980-81 were on a lower political level than the previous movements in Poland of 1956 or even in the late 1970s. Part of the reason for that was that in Hungary in 1956 and also in Poland, there was a section of workers who had struggled against the fascist regime and military dictatorships and had more of an idea of what socialism should be. There was a clearer consciousness than even in Poland in Solidarity in 1980-81, where there was much debate over what sort of society there should be. The whole question of whether there should be democratic control of the economy was an important issue in the very first congress of Solidarity. The left wing, so to speak, in Solidarity called for democratic control of the economy in a vague form, which was defeated by the more pro-capitalist elements. The Catholic Church also influenced the leadership and played a role. But each country was different.
“In East Germany, initially, the movement was not so explicitly pro-capitalist nor, in general, in favour of the reunification of Germany, But that changed, partly because the mass of workers in Germany were shocked by the living standards and higher productivity that they found in the West. They thought: what future have we got on our own? The Stalinists did attempt, in late 1989-90, to reassert control, which provoked a serious reaction. West Germany offered West German living standards. That was a lie as it turned out. But at the time, the majority of the East German population did not realise this. But the promise was: you will have a ‘blooming landscape‘, you will live like West Germans, the East German mark will be transferred one-for-one for West German marks, which was a unique situation. It was not like what had been offered in other countries. That prepared the way for a capitalist united Germany.”
In a way, the West German capitalists did not have a choice. Kohl, the German chancellor, declared that either we take the ‘mark‘ to the East or the East will come to the mark! In other words, there would be mass emigration from the East to the West, which would have economically paralysed West Germany.
Bob Labi: “There were actually demonstrations in East Germany of workers, of East Germans marching with empty suitcases, demanding unification and saying: ‘if we don’t get unification, next time we’ll come with full suitcases and leave.’ In that sense, while each country was different, the speed of capitalist restoration in East Germany was a pace setter for the whole of Eastern Europe.”
From a theoretical and historical point of view, Trotsky was correct again, I think, when he said: the bureaucracy will split into different factions and we would give critical support to that section of the bureaucracy which would defend, in their own way, the planned economy, without politically agreeing with them and we would go further than them. He wrote that, if there was an uprising against Stalin in Russia, then the masses, in the first instance, may turn to known figures like Zinoviev, for instance. Yet Zinoviev capitulated to Stalin, denied the Left Opposition and so on.
But if there had been an uprising in the 1930s, the masses would have gone, to begin with, to those figures that they recognised from the heroic period of the revolution. The Trotskyists would give critical support to the wing represented by Zinoviev, Bukharin and others from the mid-1920s. Bukharin represented, paradoxically, an unconscious opening towards the market, towards capitalism. But on the question of the party regime he became critical of Stalin and his regime.
But by the 1980s, there was no wing of the bureaucracy that was prepared to defend the planned economy. Ted Grant made a mistake on this issue, The majority of the bureaucracy had reached their conclusions, empirically. Gorbachev did not start out consciously by going over to capitalism. It was a process with the problems of the economy leading to decentralisation. This did not work and then there was the opening to the market. Events got out of control – it was an uncontrolled movement. By 1989, no section of the bureaucracy, not even the organisers of the 1991 coup in Russia, intended to go back to Stalinism. Jaruzelski, through his 1981 coup, had sought to return to a centralised, military form of Stalinism. It was unprecedented that a member of the military wing of the so-called Communist Party should organise a Stalinist counter-revolution. But within a matter of two years it was unviable. He could not maintain the position on the basis of a bureaucratic regime.
The situation in Russia was not the one analysed by Trotsky in the 1930s. How could it be? We tried to work out the issues ourselves. Marxists may sometimes get it right and sometimes all that is possible is a rough approximation. Where we are wrong, then we have to correct this on the basis of events. The CWI has done this in relation to our analysis of the different stages of the counter-revolution in Russia and Eastern Europe.
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