[Militant International Review, No 25, February 1984, p. 11-19]
Just before he died Moscow wags had already passed verdict on Andropov’s brief fifteen months in power. A variation on an old joke read as follows: Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Andropov are travelling on a red train. The train breaks down. “Fix it” orders Stalin. They repair it but the train still doesn’t move. “Shoot everyone” orders Stalin. They shoot everyone, but the train still won’t budge. Stalin dies. „Rehabilitate everyone!“ orders Khrushchev They are rehabilitated, but the train remains motionless. Khrushchev is removed. “Close the curtains” orders Brezhnev, „and pretend we are moving.” Brezhnev dies, Andropov gets out, kicks the wheel and breaks his toe.”
Before long the same tale will be told with as much force about Chernenko, successor to Andropov and the oldest at 72 to hold power in the Kremlin since the foundation of the state. He inherits a regime beset by crises. Indeed all the conditions for the overthrow of the Russian and the East European Stalinists have now ripened and are rotten ripe.
It was Marx who pointed out that the key to the development of society was the development of the productive forces, science, technique and the organisation of labour. He wrote with regard to the incapacity of capitalism to fully develop the potential latent in the productive forces which it has itself built up. However, Marx’s aphorism now applies with equal force to the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe and Russia. In the past the advantages of nationalisation and a plan of production, the main conquest of the Russian Revolution, were evident in the colossal development of the productive forces and the increased living standards of the Russian proletariat and peasantry.
The productive forces developed at two and, sometimes, three times the rate of capitalism in the West. Thus despite all the horrors of Stalin’s regime – the purge trials, the slave labour camps, the “‘gulag“ – Stalinism, given the lag of the world revolution, played a relatively progressive role. It fulfilled in Russia the tasks which capitalism was incapable of carrying out, developing industry, borrowing technique from the West and constructing the infrastructure, through the development of heavy industry, of a modern industrial country.
It is true, as Trotsky pointed out, that this was achieved at two or even three times the cost under capitalism. Nevertheless, no economy in history has managed to increase the productive forces on such a scale as the Russian economy since 1917. Even the Japanese economy over a similar period of time has not had the rate of growth of the Russian economy. This fact was underlined in an article in the journal Scientific American, which doesn’t usually discuss economic trends. Even in the post-war period we saw the enormous advantages of nationalisation and a plan of production in Russia’s rapid economic recovery from the terrible destruction of the war. The economy increased in general at twice the rate of capitalism in the 1950s. Russia’s overall industrial production increased in the decade of the 1950s by 230%. Consumer goods doubled while the production of the means of production increased approximately 2½ times. Capital investment in industry more than doubled and the productivity of labour rose during the decade of the 1960s by 66%. Roy Medvedev, a representative of the liberal trend within the bureaucracy, estimated that overall industrial production reached 75% of the USA in 1970. During the 1950s Khrushchev had boasted Russia would catch up and outstrip the capitalist West, including capitalist America by the 1970s.
Brezhnev postponed the “‘catching up“ date but maintained that Khrushchev’s boast would be reached in the 1970s or the 1980s. Yet recent estimates of Russia’s national output puts it at only 60% of America. (Roy Medvedev, a Russian historian, puts it at only 55% of America’s output.) In heavy industry – steel, cement, etc. – Russia outstrips most of the capitalist powers. But also now in the most modern industries such as micro-processors Russia is only two to three years behind America in the design and development in this key field. It is planned that 100,000 computers will be introduced into Russian industry by 1985-86. Thus the productive potential, if not the actual productivity of labour, is similar to the most advanced capitalist countries of the West.
This represents a huge development in comparison to the Russia at the time of the revolution of 1917. The material conditions for socialism did not exist in Russia at that time but only on a world scale. The leaders of the Russian Revolution, Lenin, Trotsky and the other Bolshevik leaders saw the Russian Revolution as the spark which would ignite the world revolution and lay the basis for a socialist world federation. Not one leader of the revolution, including Stalin himself at the time, conceived that it was possible with the meagre economic and cultural resources of Russia to construct socialism in that country. But the lag of the world revolution – in its turn the product of the betrayal of the Social Democratic leaders in the West – the civil war, together with the extreme backwardness of Russia led to the elbowing aside of the working class the usurpation of power by the bureaucratic elite in the state, the army and the party.
The development of the productive forces in Russia over the last sixty six years, under the supervision of the bureaucracy, has for the first time furnished the material base for the construction of socialism. Yet with the same amount of machinery as in capitalist America at the elbow of the working class the output of Russia is 60 or 70% of the USA. That fact alone would condemn the rule of the bureaucracy. For it was Marx who pointed out that “all economy comes down in the last analysis to an economy of time”. Trotsky expanded on this profound statement by explaining that this meant that all human struggle with nature at all stages of civilisation, reduced to its primary basis, meant that history is nothing but a struggle for an economy of working-time. „Socialism could not be justified by the abolition of exploitation alone; it must guarantee to society a higher economy of time than what is guaranteed by capitalism“. Fifty years ago Trotsky could write “Soviet economy is still far from learning to make use of time, that most precious raw material of culture.”
Yet the waste of the bureaucracy then was a mere trifle compared to the squandermania, inefficiency and wastage today. The bureaucracy has vitiated the gigantic advantages of the planned economy. When set against the background of the world economic crisis of 1930s with its attendant mass unemployment, poverty and hunger the economic development of Russia attracted support from the workers in the capitalist states and also from a layer of intellectuals. But now Russia’s rate of development is the same and even less than some of the major capitalist powers of the West. Even in the 1960s and ’70s we saw the slowing down in the development of the Russian economy.
It increased by an average of 12% during the 1950s. Yet only in the single year of 1967 did the economy increase by 10% in the following decade. In the 1970s the rate of growth was only half the rate of the previous decade. And in the two of the last four years there has been a catastrophic decline in the rate of growth in the Russian economy. In 1981 and 1982 there was a yearly increase of 2½%. This is the lowest since the Second World War. In 1983 it probably increased by about 4%. Agriculture grew by 4% in the same period after four years of decline. But despite an enormous investment in agriculture this figure is still below the 1970 level.
What these figures mean is that all the advantages enjoyed by Russia and the other Stalinist states in the past which resulted from nationalisation and a plan of production are now almost completely cancelled out by the monstrous incubus of Stalinism. The rate of development of the Russian economy is hardly different to the measly growth rate of the capitalist countries in the West. America grew at 3½% in 1983. The Stalinist bureaucracy is now an absolute fetter on the further development of the Russian economy and of Russian society. It is a monstrous historical road block which can only be removed by the political revolution of the Russian working class acting in consort with the working class throughout the whole of Eastern Europe.
The events in Poland between 1980 and ’81 were a harbinger of the coming political revolution in the East. But even those mighty events will be put in the shade by the grandiose movements of the Russian proletariat in the next period. Indeed it is a race against time as to which will come first – the socialist revolution in the capitalist West or the political revolution in the Stalinist states of Russia and Eastern Europe.
The strategists of capital in their serious publications recognised the dangers to them as well as to Stalinism posed by the Polish events. The Economist journal, for instance, in September 1981 in an article on Poland had a headline ‘Solidarity Whoa!”’. They went on to warn that “‘the possibility of workers in other East European countries imitating the Poles is far from remote. In the tighter economic climate that now prevails one incident (like the miners’ strike in Romania in 1977) could touch off a union revolution in any Communist state including the Soviet Union itself“. Thus while the capitalists are prepared to use the crimes of Stalinism as a scarecrow against socialism in the West, at the same time they recognise the mortal dangers which are posed to them and their system by political revolution in the East.
In fact, Stalinism and capitalism feed off one another and lean on each other against the threat of social revolution in the West and political revolution in the East. One of the factors in the past which restrained the Russian proletariat in moving to overthrow the Stalinist bureaucracy was the fear of military intervention by the imperialist powers and the consequent wiping out of the gains of the October revolution. On the other hand, imperialism uses Stalinism to ward off the threat posed to them by the movement of the proletariat in the capitalist West. In the 1930s Fascism and the threat of military intervention was used by Stalinism as a means of checking the movement of the Russian working class. Trotsky pointed out that Stalinism and Fascism were symmetrical. Although they rested on fundamentally different and antagonistic social systems they both arose from the same cause – the lag of the world revolution.
There are of course no Mussolinis, Francos or Hitlers on the horizon which the Stalinist bureaucracy can now use. However, the: bellicose threats of Reagan and Thatcher are used in an attempt to check any movement of the Russian working class. The bureaucracy feels and fears the power of the Russian working class today. Like the capitalists in the West they have presided over the mighty development of industry. They have therefore given a gigantic impulse to the growth of their own grave-digger the Russian proletariat. Without doubt the Russian working class in now the most powerful on the planet. Russia is no longer a backward society with a predominantly rural population. Agriculture now employs only 20% of the labour force. The increased power and social weight of the working class is shown in the following figures. There are now 18 cities of more than one million people: there were only five in 1970! 270 cities now have a population of 100,000 or more. This is fifty more than in 1970. Twenty new towns are created each year in Russia alone.
There are huge concentrations of the proletariat in individual factories which dwarf those in the capitalist West. For instance, in the Gorky automotive factory there is a total of 200,000 workers in the factory complex! In the Togliatti factory there are 170,000 workers! A strike in protest against rationing in 1980 in these two factories alone assumed almost the character of a general strike!
The incapacity of the regime to develop the productive forces has in its turn meant the failure to satisfy the demands of an increasingly confident and cultured working class. In the past, it is true, there was an appreciable rise in the average wages of most categories of workers. During the 1950’s and the 1960’s there was a also a corresponding growth in the fields of education and science which far outstripped the capitalist West. There were 4.6 million students in Russia in 1970. 257,000 graduated in engineering alone. Yet only 50,000 graduated in the same year in America. The real living standards of the proletariat in all the countries of Eastern Europe have increased during the post-war period. The living standards of the East German working class, in most respects – with the exception perhaps of ownership of cars – is higher than the British working class at the present time.
In these societies culture is no longer monopolised by the bureaucratic elite. Engels pointed out that throughout history where an elite or class control art, government and science, they use and abuse their position to enhance their position. We now have a very educated proletariat in all the countries of Eastern Europe, but particularly in Russia itself. Russia is now an advanced industrial country, the second industrial country in the World. But at best Russian and Eastern European Stalinist States can now only inch ahead. Only East Germany had the rate of development of 5% in 1982 which exceeded most of the capitalist countries. These figures show, like the diminishing heartbeats of a sick organism, the coming collapse of Russian Stalinism.
As with capitalism the Stalinist autocracy is no longer capable of presiding over the further development of industry and society. It lurches from one expedient to another; each economic zig-zag is less effective than the previous one. Thus Andropov launched his reforms with an “anti-corruption” drive in the early part of 1983. Like Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev before him Andropov, while representing the privileged bureaucratic stratum nevertheless was alarmed at the mismanagement, the waste and the enormous part of the surplus consumed by this elite.
In an attempt to cut down the swollen privileges of the bureaucracy special brigades swooped on fashionable cafes, raided saunas and the other luxury palaces of the bureaucracy, in Leningrad, Moscow and other cities. For a very short period this seemed to have some effect. In the early part of the year the economy seemed set to increase by 5% or 6% but by May or June the economy dropped back and the same problems only in a more aggravated form which beset Brezhnev and Khrushchev confronted the feeble and ailing Andropov and now Chernenko. The history of the Stalinist regimes has been a history of one economic zig-zag, of one economic adventure, piled upon another. In a dizzying change of policy the Stalinist regimes have moved from centralisation to de-centralisation and back to recentralisation.
No modern economy could work with the rigid centralised control exercised by the privileged stratum in Moscow. Even 10,000 Lenin’s, Trotsky’s, Marx’s and Engels’, would not be capable alone of running a highly sophisticated economy like that of Russia. Capitalism has at least the check of the market. In a planned economy only the conscious control and management of the state and society by the working class can exploit its full potential. Only workers’ control and management could eliminate the monstrous wastage which blights Russian society and economy at the present time. The untrammelled rule of the Kremlin elite has led to the absurdity of the central ministries in Moscow trying to determine the plans of thousands of individual factories sometimes situated thousands of miles away.
These plans, moreover, were determined with the crudest methods; by targets of weight and output. Thus in one factory the plan was set in volume per output and bonuses were awarded on the basis of the total output of the factory. Huge nails were therefore produced which sometimes were bigger than the wood they were supposed to go into! The plan was then changed to the number of products turned out. Tiny nails were then produced which were equally useless! The centralised control exercised was equivalent to the British Treasury attempting to determine the output of a small factory in Rochdale.
The Brezhnev regime attempted in the 1960’s to escape from its impasse with experiment in “controlled“ de-centralisation and the introduction of the “profit motive” together with one man management in individual factories. As we predicted at the time, this merely duplicated the deficiencies of the centralised bureaucracy many times over. Limited control was ceded to the different “nationalities” which created 16 mini-bureaucracies in the national republics which added to the inefficiency and waste of the centralised Moscow bureaucracy. At the same time, bribery and corruption have reached monumental proportions. In 1936 Trotsky pointed out that the bureaucracy swallowed a considerable part of the surplus value created by the labour of the working class. The bureaucracy in the trade apparatus consumed one tenth of the total production of Russia at that time. He estimated that the bureaucracy as a whole numbered 5 to 6 million out of a total population of 170 million.
Yet the privileges enjoyed by the Stalinist apparatus of 1936 seems almost like the “kick backs”’ to a village policeman compared to the monstrous corruption and squandermania of the latter day Stalinist grandees. The so-called „Russian Communist Party’ is in effect the party of the bureaucracy. This has swollen to a nominal membership figure of 18 million out of a population of 270 million. Of course this privileged officialdom stretches from the lords in the Kremlin down to the village and town official The bribery and corruption has reached such a monumental scale that not even Trotsky could have anticipated. It is now estimated that 50% of the total output of Russia’s economy is wasted either through inefficiency, mismanagement or outright corruption.
Andropov revealed the extent of corruption amongst Brezhnev’s immediate entourage. He criticised Brezhnev himself only after the latter was incapable of answering back from beyond the grave. Brezhnev had been awarded a diamond encrusted sword from the leader of the Azerbaijanian Republic just before he died. The Minister of Fisheries was shot for “economic crimes“. This involved the smuggling of vast amounts of caviar to the West in boxes which were labelled as herrings! Similarly, the Airways Minister has been executed for similar crimes which caught up in the web of corruption thousands of people in his Ministry. No matter which way they turn the bureaucracy cannot solve the insurmountable problems which now beset their regime.
The attempt to ape some features of the capitalist market in the so called Lieberman reforms in the 1960’s were only partially applied in Russia itself. The Hungarian regime of Kadar, on the other hand, took up some aspects of Lieberman’s proposals and implemented them in Hungary. Andropov now has been toying with the idea of imitating the so-called „Hungarian model”. Thus the Russian bureaucracy seek to imitate their own imitators in an attempt to extricate themselves from their difficulties. The much-vaunted Hungarian reforms gave a certain independence to factory managers.
It also represented an attempt on the part of the bureaucracy to draw a section of the Hungarian working class into sharing out the privileges enjoyed by the elite. It was coupled with an attempt to introduce into Hungarian conditions a kind of Stakhanovite movement like that in Russia in the 1930’s. Trotsky pointed out that this represented an attempt by Stalin to involve a section of workers in sharing out the privileges of the bureaucracy. Stalinist regimes are incapable of inspiring the proletariat to develop industry and society. Instead the Kadar bureaucracy sought to buy the support of a section of the Hungarian proletariat through bribery. The outcome of the „Hungarian reforms“ has been the huge growth of disparities within Hungarian society.
Certain theoreticians imagined in the past that the growth of industry in the Stalinist States would narrow the differentials which existed between the Soviet aristocracy and the working class. Now even a former Hungarian Prime Minister Hegedüs has estimated that the income of the top 5% in Hungary was 80 times that of the bottom 5%! Corruption is now so widespread that every layer of Hungarian society, even including Hungarian football teams, have been drawn into an enormous web of corruption. Throughout all the States of Eastern Europe and not just in Poland there is enormous simmering discontent that could easily boil over in the next period. Hungary experienced a growth in its economy following the revolution of 1956. This arose partially from the participation of the Hungarian economy on the World Market. But in 1983 the Hungarian national income was expected to drop by 2%.
However, the weakest link in the chain of Stalinism next to Poland is perhaps Yugoslavia. Inflation is already exceeding 40% a year. This is mostly imported inflation from the West arising from the trade of Yugoslavia with the capitalist bloc. Unemployment has now reached 10% of the labour force; at least 1 million emigrants work abroad, mostly in West Germany. This “unemployment” does not arise from the same causes as capitalism, i.e. economic crisis and over production. In fact in some of the Stalinist States there is a big labour shortage at the present time in contrast to the West.
In Russia and East Germany it is estimated that they have a labour shortage of millions at the present time. The 10% „unemployed”’ rate in Yugoslavia is itself a product of the complete snarling up of production because of Stalinist corruption and mismanagement. One report has actually revealed that there are more chauffeurs driving „Communist” functionaries in Yugoslavia than there are miners! Even the lower layers of the bureaucracy have not escaped from the effects of their misrule. Thus a recent report has revealed that there are actually 73,000 members of the Yugoslav „Communist” Party who are presently out of work.
Moreover, all the regimes of Eastern Europe and Russia itself are incapable of satisfying the aroused expectations of a more and more assertive working class. Thus practically every regime in Eastern Europe and Russia is beset by big shortages of food and consumer goods. It is not generally realised that rationing was only introduced in the ‘70s in Russia. But now rationing is widespread in European Russia quite apart from Central Asia and Southern Russia. The working class of Russia is restricted to two kilos of meat per person. Yet the Polish working class consumes 8 kilos of meat per person and is discontented. The meat ration was one of the factors in the upheavals in Poland itself. Riots and upheavals have affected every one of the Stalinist regimes in the past three years. In Yugoslavia there were riots over washing powder in the recent period.
Also Yugoslavia shows in a particularly sharp fashion the incapacity of Stalinism to solve the national problem. Without Lenin’s programme and extreme sensitivity on the issue on the National question the Russian Revolution itself would not have been possible. When the Bolsheviks took power they gave the right of self-determination, including the right to secede from the Russian Socialist Federation. The Bolsheviks were even compelled to invent alphabets and further the development of national groupings so backward were some of the peoples of Russia. And yet we saw the fusing together of the different nationalities of Russia into one democratic socialist federation. Through workers’ democracy in Russia and internationally and through the World revolution there is no question that the national question would be in the process of being solved throughout the globe at the present time. The resurgence of the national question is the price the working class is forced to pay for the crimes of reformism on the one side and Stalinism on the other. It is a product, once again, of the lag of the world revolution.
It should never be forgotten that the first battle that Lenin took up against Stalin and the growing bureaucracy in Russia was precisely on the national question. The great Russian chauvinism and nationalism which Stalin displayed and Lenin came out against has developed to enormous proportions in Russia itself. Events have shown the incapacity of Stalinism to solve the national problem either in Russia or in Eastern Europe. the Balkans remain Balkanised. Such are the tensions involved in the sharpening of the national problem now that it is not excluded that we could see the break up of Yugoslavia if the bureaucracy maintains its rule.
This tendency is already evident in Kosovo which is populated by people of Albanian extraction and is close to Albania itself. A movement has developed there for links with Albania. This is despite the fact that Albania is on a lower economic and cultural level than Yugoslavia itself. The nationalist movement in Kosovo has been fuelled by the backwardness and economic disparity between the region and the rest of Yugoslavia. Kosovo has only one sixth of the income of Slovenia. Kosovo is demanding the status of a Republic which is supposed to be guaranteed under the Yugoslav constitution for all national minorities. But the dominant Serb/Slovene bureaucracy fear that the granting of this right would lead to the demand for secession from Yugoslavia.
Throughout Eastern Europe and Russia the national question is a powder keg for these states. In Russia for instance by the end of the century it is possible that the Slavs will form a minority of the Federation. They are now 55% of the population. But the Muslim and other populations in the south, it is estimated, will reach 100 million by the end of the century. The Russian bureaucracy feared that the Iranian revolution would have a big effect on the Muslim population of Russia itself. The recent murder of the Prime Minister of the Kirghiz Republic which borders China is linked to the resurgence of Muslim nationalism in this area.
In the Baltic States too we have a tremendous movement for national rights and against Russification. In Estonia there was a wide-spread revolt of the youth in 1981. In Lithuania similar movements have taken place. Only a genuine socialist federation would be able to unify the nationalities of Eastern Europe and of Russia. Such a regime would replace the crazy duplication of one economy by another which exists in Eastern Europe and Russia at the present time with a harmonious democratic socialist plan.
Thus each of these states has developed a separate steel industry, a machine tool industry and so on. This arose in part because of the ruthless domination of Stalin of the countries of Eastern Europe in the immediate post-war period. Comecon was used as a means of ensuring the domination by the Russian bureaucracy of the countries of Eastern Europe. Rumania was the bread basket of Russia, Bulgaria the fruit market etc.
Following Stalin’s death and the break up of the monolith we saw the development of national Stalinist regimes in the countries of Eastern Europe. Certain „theoreticians” used this domination by the Russian Stalinist regime of Eastern Europe as a vindication of their characterisation of Russia as „State capitalist” because of its alleged “imperialist tendencies”. At this time Russia sold goods above the world market prices to Eastern Europe and bought goods from these countries at below world market prices.
This situation has now been completely reversed. Russia subsidises the countries of Eastern Europe: it sells below world market prices and buys back above world market prices. What kind of “imperialist“ regime subsidises its “‘colonies”’ in this fashion?
The situation that now obtains in Eastern Europe and Russia is qualitatively different to what existed in the past. All the objective political pre-requisites for a successful political revolution against the bureaucracy have matured in all the states of Eastern Europe and in Russia itself. The bureaucracy itself is riven into different factions with one section seeing the need for reform from above in order to prevent revolution from below. Another section insists on „harsh measures” to prevent the coming revolt of the workers and peasants of these states. It feels itself as an excrescence, as an impediment to the further development of society.
Some of the most visible signs of opposition have come precisely from within the ruling stratum itself, from their sons and daughters. In January 1982 we had such an example with the arrest and trial of a discussion group of 40, mostly young people who came together to discuss Trotsky’s ideas because, in their own words, he described the „the betrayal of the Russian Revolution“. Stalinism is utterly rotted and decomposing before our eyes.
In Poland the complete collapse of the so-called Communist Party, the organ and vehicle of the bureaucracy, reflected the evaporation of the last vestiges of the authority of Stalinism in the eyes of the overwhelming majority of the population. In one year its membership dropped from a nominal three million to 2.3 million, an indication that even the lower layers of the bureaucracy, completely disillusioned with the regime, were being drawn behind the Polish workers’ movement. In contrast Solidarity reached a membership of ten million in the cities and four million in the rural areas.
It should be noted in passing that the Polish workers, on the issues of the „Communist Party”, gravitated towards one of the demands that Trotsky predicted would form the platform of a political revolution in Russia itself. Trotsky advocated that the “bureaucracy should be driven from the Soviets“. In August 1980 the Gdańsk workers’ councils specifically prevented any member of the committee from being a member of the „Communist Party”’. Like the Hungarian proletariat of 1956 the Polish working class instinctively embraced many of the demands that Trotsky had theoretically worked out for the political revolution against the Russian Stalinist autocracy.
The crucial factor missing in the Polish events is the most decisive for the successful outcome of any revolution, whether it be social or political revolution: that is the role of a bold Marxist leadership and mass party. And one of the ironies in the Polish situation was the fact that it was precisely the leaders of the opposition around KOR – the workers’ self-defence group – who proved to be the main stumbling block for the formation of such a leadership and party.
In the August events of 1980 and the following months the Stalinist bureaucracy were suspended in mid-air. When Jaruzelski was asked to use the army against the Polish workers at this stage his reply to his boss Gierek was: „what army?” Jaruzelski, coming from an old aristocratic Polish family, represents the more intelligent wing of the bureaucracy. He realised that any attempt to use the army would result in its complete dissolution. And yet 18 months later the army could be safely used by Jaruzelski to crush the revolution. The explanation for this is to be found in the failure of the Polish workers to find the necessary leadership and a party capable of seizing power in good season.
There was the beginnings of the political revolution in Poland in the August events. Yet the working class cannot be kept at fever pitch indefinitely. The laws of political revolution as with social revolution mean that unless a favourable opportunity is utilised to take power the forces of the old order can re-establish themselves. A half revolution will always allow the ruling class or caste to re-establish its position by utilising the inevitable chaos and mismanagement which results from such a situation.
We have seen this many times in the case of incomplete social revolutions in the west. For example in the Portuguese revolution, 70% of industry was taken over, yet the failure to establish a planned economy with workers’ control, management and democracy and a workers’ state, allowed the forces and the state of Portuguese landlordism and capitalism to be re-established.
The Polish workers were pushing mightily in the direction of the political revolution. Because the regime was allegedly based on „Marxism“, and because of the powerful elements of Polish nationalism which historically were reflected through the church, the opposition of the workers were channelled through the church. Trotsky himself anticipated that some opposition to the Nazi regime would be reflected first through the Catholic church. To a much greater extent was this the case in Poland. However, the grip of the Catholic religion on the Polish population, while having important historical roots, nevertheless would not have been decisive in preventing the political revolution. The Catholic church has authority in terms of religion in the eyes of the Polish masses. However, as even the bourgeois press has recently commented, for most of the youth the teachings of the church on abortion and divorce were conspicuously ignored.
We saw in the Polish events an anticipation of what will happen in the coming political revolution in Russia itself. One of the most striking features was the speed with which the consciousness of the proletariat developed in the course of the revolution. The Polish workers, like some sections of the Russian proletariat today, started off on a primitive level by demanding democratic and trade union rights. However, this movement took place in a different social system to capitalism and therefore the consciousness of the working class developed differently and almost daily.
All the ideas of Trotsky for the political revolution with one important addition were perfectly fitted for the situation that developed in Poland. We saw the demand for the complete abolition of the privileges of the bureaucracy, bribes to managers and the removal of corrupt governors, etc. The corruption of the whole governing elite was typified for the Polish working class by the revelations of the ex-head of Polish TV Szczepański. This worthy had instituted a system of corruption on a Byzantine scale. This involved the employment of call girls, special villas, ski chalets for favoured clients, use of a yacht owned technically by Polish TV, a massive personal fortune, a private helicopter and many other „perks“.
Demands for the removal of corrupt and privileged officials would not be to the fore in the demands of striking workers in individual enterprises or even in whole industries in the capitalist West at this stage. For instance we do not get in Britain, or in most other countries, demands for the removal of the manager of the factory of the director of a company at national level because they have unjustified privileges. However, once the working class in the Stalinist states obtains independent organisations the removal of the stolen privileges of the ruling stratum is automatically raised by the working class. This indicates the difference in the character of the revolution in these countries as opposed to the social revolution in the West. However, the Polish events have demonstrated once again that the crucial importance for the success of the political revolution is the existence of a leadership and a party with authority amongst the masses.
Such was the situation in Poland that a small number of Marxists numbering hundreds with a clear programme and perspective could have rapidly become a mass tendency. The enormous development of the most advanced elements of the Polish proletariat was indicated in the historical Solidarity conference in September 1981 just before the declaration of martial law. Not only did the working class demand election of officials, with right of recall against the privileges of the bureaucracy but at the September congress the issue of workers’ power in Poland, throughout Eastern Europe and in Russia itself was raised in a very confused but nevertheless unmistakable fashion.
Thus one of the demands raised was for “another Parliament of the workers“ to replace the official Stalinist parliament. Lech Wałęsa, who became more and more a brake on the movement, was compelled to denounce those who in his own words „wanted to smash the totalitarian system“. Speeches and declarations which unequivocally stated that there was no question of going back to capitalism got automatic standing ovations. But what is of decisive importance was the international appeal which was made in that congress, not only to the East European working class but to the mighty Russian proletariat, to emulate their Polish brothers and sisters. There were also calls to abandon support for the so-called „leading role“ of the Communist Party. Solidarity had only agreed in the first place to support this under pressure from the KOR leaders following the 1980 August events. Speeches were also made which correctly said that Solidarity was not just a Trade Union but a Party or a potential Party, and called upon the leaders of Solidarity to take power. The 1981 September Solidarity Congress set alarm bells ringing in the Kremlin and throughout Eastern Europe. Unfortunately these conclusions of the more advanced workers came when the mood of the over whelming majority of Polish working class and peasants was beginning to ebb. It was in this situation that the Polish bureaucracy, in consort with their Russian counter parts, struck. It is a measure of the complete collapse of the so-called „Communist Party” that it was the military wing of the bureaucracy which alone had even the semblance of authority to carry through the bureaucratic counter revolution. Stalin was very careful to curb the power of the military, involving the slaughter of the officer corps during the purges, for fear of action against his regime and his personal position coming from this quarter in the event of a crisis. But so utterly rotten was the Polish „Communist” Party that only the army tops who had some semblance of authority were capable of assuming power. The intervention of the army in December 1981 marked the termination for a period of the Polish revolution.
Marxists, as the most realistic tendency in the labour movement, recognise that it is fatal to mix up counter revolution with revolution. It is fundamentally false to compare the present opposition of the Polish workers to Jaruzelski’s regime to the events of August 1980 and subsequently. This latter period was a period of revolution, to be more precise the beginning of the political revolution. The capitalist press in the West for their own reasons have fed the impression that the movement has continued at the same level as 1980. But even the big demonstrations in support of the Pope were only a pale echo of the movement of August 1980 and afterwards.
December 81 represented the ebbing for a time of the movement in Poland and a defeat of the working class. A mood of despair and even demoralisation now affects widespread sections of the Polish proletariat at the present time. For instance the use of vodka, drunkenness and drug addiction have appeared on a widespread scale. Yet in August 1980 in the Gdańsk soviet, alcohol was banned. Poland is the largest producer of morphine in the world, and now there are 300,000 heroin addicts in Poland as a whole with 30,000 in Warsaw.
However, the Polish events were a dress rehearsal for the coming revolution in Russia. The Russian bureaucracy were terrified of the repercussions of the Polish events within Russia itself. That is why they castigated the official “trade unions” for allegedly not doing their job in Russia. In fact, the state and party bureaucracy threatened to prosecute the trade union bureaucracy, if they did not act as a more accurate sounding-board of the mood of the masses. They feel the colossal subterranean revolt of the Russian proletariat.
But of course the sectarian wiseacres have argued that if the subjective factor (i.e. a mass party with a Marxist leadership) is crucial, then there is no possibility of a political revolution in Russia without this subjective factor, being created first. This idea is false. A mass party with a clear-sighted and authoritative leadership is vital for the success of the political revolution. But it is virtually impossible to construct such a party before the process of political revolution begins in Russia.
It is true that sections of the liberal bureaucracy like Roy Medvedev imagine that you could have a similar situation in Russia as exists with bourgeois democracy in the West. But the capitalists in the West can switch from Bonapartism, i.e. military police dictatorship, to democracy and back to Bonapartism. They can allow bourgeois democracy – the rights of the workers and their organisations – because the capitalists are a class which has roots in bourgeois society. They are necessary for the development of capitalist society. As Marx pointed out they are the “trustees” of capitalist society. They play a role in the development of industry and society. They can tolerate at least for certain historical periods the independent rights of the workers’ organisations.
But the situation is entirely different in the Stalinist states. Once the proletariat has its own organisations, has freedom to criticise and so on, the whole position of the bureaucracy comes into question. The call for the immediate removal of privileges would be made. Therefore long periods, with the working class having their own independent organisations and rights, without political revolution, is ruled out in the Stalinist states. We can have a period of dual power, as we had in Poland for a period of 14 months, but unless it leads to the political revolution we will inevitably see the triumph of a new version of the bureaucratic counter-revolution.
Therefore what conclusion can be drawn in relation to the process of the political revolution in the Stalinist States? How can a party and leadership be formed which will lead the proletariat to victory?
Under the regimes of bureaucratic absolutism, even small organisations of the proletariat face repression. For instance, Roy Medvedev has revealed that innocent organisations of cactus growers have been banned in Russia. Ceaușescu in Rumania has recently banned transcendental medicine, yoga. Therefore powerful underground organisations with mass influence are virtually ruled out in these states. But what the Hungarian revolution and now the Polish events have demonstrated, is that very quickly a mass party of the proletariat can be created and improvised by the working class in these states. The Hungarian revolution started off with all kinds of illusions in the United Nations, and even in the capitalist states in the West. But it lasted for six weeks, was based on the creation of soviets throughout the country, and it ended up with an appeal to the proletariat of the world; „workers of the world unite.” If it had been allowed to develop, there is no doubt the Hungarian workers would have created a mass Party in the process of the revolution.
In Poland the main obstacle to such a development was the existence of the so-called Workers’ Defence Group led by Jacek Kuroń which acted as a brake on the movement to the Polish proletariat.
Another factor in the Polish situation, which was crucial, was the fear of Russian intervention. This is undoubtedly an important factor in the whole of Eastern Europe. But once a movement takes place in Russia, the bureaucracy will be powerless to stop it. Particularly if the revolution began in Moscow or Leningrad. Where will the forces for the bureaucratic counter-revolution come from? The population of Moscow now is 20 million. Once the proletariat in one of the major centres of Russia begins this will be the beginning of the end of the bureaucracy. Moreover, with correct leadership, a peaceful political revolution is entirely possible. Trotsky pointed out that despite the enormous size of the bureaucracy, it is more heterogeneous than the peasantry. It reaches from the humblest policeman in the town and village right up to the lords in the Kremlin. Once there is a movement of the Russian proletariat, the bureaucratic elite at the top will be suspended in mid air. Therefore the present situation in Russia and Eastern Europe points towards the coming political revolution in Russia and throughout the whole area.
Both in the advanced capitalist and and the underdeveloped world there is hardly one country untouched by an economic and social crisis. This now exists to the same extent in the Stalinist states. There is not one regime which is now stable, which does not face opposition from the proletariat. There is growing opposition in Czechoslovakia and in East Germany, where 100,000 youth gathered to protest under the banner of the Lutheran church in early 1983, in Hungary. It is also visible in Hungary, and in Rumania, where the miners actually stoned Ceaușescu’s helicopter in the Jiului valley and he was forced to flee. The crew on his private yacht have recently fled to the West!
To a much greater extent than 1956, 1968, or even 1980, all the conditions for a continental political revolution are being prepared in Russia and Eastern Europe. The present regimes in these countries are doomed but their demise might assume a more drawn out character, because of the absence of the subjective factor. The process could be similar to the death agony of capitalism in the West. But the first spark for the coming world revolution can come from Eastern Europe and Russia. Once it begins it will be one of the greatest dramas in the whole of human history. It will put in the shade even the mighty October revolution itself, and begin the transformation of the globe through revolution.
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