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New Introduction to The Marxist Theory of the State and the Collapse of Stalinism
by the International Trotskyist Committee
The International Trotskyist Committee is proud to republish this 1995 document of the Workers International League. This document clarifies and develops the Marxist theory of the state and is a powerful weapon for forging a genuine revolutionary party. It defended and clarified Trotskys defence of the USSR as a deformed workers state and it elaborated in detail both the way that Stalinism overturned the bourgeois property relations in Europe in late 1947 and early 1948 and it also spelled out in detail how the film was run in reverse when these deformed and degenerated workers states were returned to capitalism between 1989 and 1991. It clarified the political problems which contributed to the decent into centrism of the Fourth International in 1950-51. It had real political influence beyond its own organisation. It made a significant political contribution to politically clarifying the international opposition current in the League for a Revolutionary Communist International. It is quoted extensively in the Declaration of the Proletarian Faction which was the basis of the international opposition and produced by the Communist Workers Group (CWG) of New Zealand, which went on to form the Liaison Committee of Militants for a Revolutionary Communist International (LCMRCI). Workers Power adopted the LTT line in 2000 on Richard Brenners motion who admitted that he was convinced by the Trotsky quotes in the piece. However there are a number of problems with the text when we come to the restoration of capitalism in the USSR. Without capitulating to the democratic counterrevolution as many of the right-centrist Trotskyist groups and the LRCI/Workers Power did, it was soft on 'democracy' and did not consistently make imperialism the main enemy, which problem became worse in relation to Izetbegovi in Bosnia and the KLA in Kosovo, as they adopted positions almost as bad as Workers Power. The LTT should have opposed the pro-imperialist capitalist restorationist leadership in the Baltic States and demanded independent soviet states, as Trotsky did for the Ukraine in 1938. These movements were used by Russian restorationist leaders like Yeltsin as a lever to begin the breakup of the USSR. Secondly they should not have condoned any form of political bloc with Yeltsin apart from one in defence of life and limb. Saying that workers should have supported the general strike, briefly mooted by Yeltsin, was a form of political support as was rallying with Yeltsin at the White House. But, whilst Yeltsin was the preferred agent of a section of the imperialist before and after the coup surely the main enemy of the Russian and therefore the world working class during the short period of the coup itself was Yanayev, it was he who immediately threatened their lives and organisations and so they were entitled to make a military but not a political bloc even with Yeltsin (with the devil and his grandmother as Trotsky said). That being said the LTT took a far better position than the LRCI and these mistakes could easily have been corrected, as the LCMRCI did over Yeltsin. Workers, apart from some miners leaders who supported Yeltsin, took no action and supported neither side. As both the coupists and Yeltsin were restorationists the matter at issue was the pace of restoration and which sections of the bureaucratic apparatus would retain which privileges after that restoration. The coup, after all, was apparently directed against Gorbachev not Yeltsin. Gorbachev had attempted some defence of nationalised property relations up to then, although with waning conviction. When he abandoned even this with the Union Treaty breaking up the USSR Yanayev launched his coup because he saw the impending demise of that section of the bureaucracy on which he was based. But the coup clearly had as its prime target the working class and its organisations, as its statements made clear. Had the coupists succeeded, and there was international ambiguity about who to support as the LTTs The Marxist theory of the state points out, then restoration would have taken place at a more planned and rationalised pace which would have been better for capitalism in the former USSR and for world Leon Trotsky, I am confident in the victory of the Fourth International, Go Forward! Page 1
Stalinophobic thirdcampism
In Section 5 Trotsky and the Possible Paths of Counter-Revolution we find, Trotskys thinking underwent a corresponding evolution, and increasingly saw the bureaucracy itself as the principal source of internal danger. Indeed, his view that the Bukharinite right was the main danger and the Thermidorian wing of the party led the Left Opposition to refuse to countenance any bloc on internal democracy. The characterisation of the Right Opposition as the masked form of counterrevolution, as the proxy for the kulaks and NEPmen, runs through many of Trotskys writings in Alma Ata. Whatever the merits of this position, the ease with which Stalin crushed the Right made this too an increasingly less likely scenario. This section does whiff slightly of Stalinophobic thirdcampism and does suggest that Trotsky would have been correct to make a bloc with the restorationist Bukharin. A bloc of the left and right against the centre, even on democracy would have been correctly seen internationally as opportunism and would have invalidated his attempts to fight Stalinist betrayals in Germany and Spain in particular. This issue came up at the time of the WIL split and provoked a sharp but brief interchange in a LTT meeting between RP and GD. The document correctly quotes Trotsky in relation on the invasion of Poland, the Baltic States and Finland in 1939 as a consequence of the Hitler-Stalin pact. The primary political criterion for us is not the transformation of property relations in this or another area, however important these may be in themselves, but rather the change in the consciousness and organisation of the world proletariat, the raising of their capacity for defending former conquests and accomplishing new ones. From this one, and only decisive standpoint, the politics of Moscow, taken as a whole, completely retains its reactionary character and remains the chief obstacle on the road to the world revolution. But the right of nations to self-determination cannot be allowed to undermine the gains of the working class; it is in the end only a tactic (although a very important one) used to advance the class-struggle. As Trotsky said (and the document acknowledges this) in relation to Georgia during the Civil War, We do not only recognize, but we also give full support to the principle of self-determination, wherever it is directed against feudal, capitalist and imperialist states. But wherever the fiction of self-determination, in the hands of the bourgeoisie, becomes a weapon directed against the proletarian revolution, we have no occasion to treat this fiction differently from the other principles of democracy perverted by capitalism. The LTT document says, Todays sectarians uphold a new programmatic norm: that the defence of a workers state always takes the priority over the fight of national self-determination. This position proceeds from the pessimistic assumption that the majority of the working class does not, and will not, defend the workers state, and that the action of the working class must be replaced by military means. Under Lenin and Trotsky, the revolutionary prestige of the Soviet state was such that the departure from the programmatic norm in Georgia could be justified. This is wrong. Trotsky, in In Defence of Marxism defends the Red Armys invasion of Poland, the Baltic states and Finland in 1939, although this violated these nations right to self-determination, because of the security of the USSR was threatened by Hitler and the Allies as WWII approached. Section 8 The August Coup and the End of the Soviet Union is also wrong in that it does not identify Yeltsin as imperialisms main agent and so the main enemy (apart from at the time of the coup) and does not defend the nationalised property relations of the USSR,
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... either the bureaucracy, becoming ever more the organ of the world bourgeoisie in the workers state, will overthrow the new forms of property and plunge the country back into capitalism; or the working class will crush the bureaucracy and open the way to socialism. Leon Trotsky, 1938
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1. The defence of the Soviet Union and its historical significance The collapse of Stalinism throughout Eastern Europe and the ex-Soviet Union between 1989-1991 is the most important development in world politics in the past half-century. It has resulted in a major shift in the international balance of power, and unleashed in its wake wars, economic crisis and upheaval throughout the region. Its tremors have been felt throughout the world in nationalist and workers organisations, which for the previous 75 years had defined themselves in one way or another by their attitude to communism and In particular, its effects have gripped all those who identify with Marxism. But the results of much of the wave of reassessment and self-examination provoked by the collapse have in the main proved woefully inadequate. It is our contention that only by theoretically rearming the vanguard of the working class in relation to this watershed experience can there be a revolutionary future for Marxism. The Russian question has been at the heart of many of the sharpest struggles between those who have identified themselves as Trotskyists. By origin, it turned on whether the Soviet Union remained a workers state which should be defended against imperialism, particularly in the event of war. By extension, the Russian question came to embrace the deformed workers states of Eastern Europe, Asia and Cuba. Each time the question was presented anew, particularly in the buffer zone debate of 1946-51 and the controversy surrounding the Cuban Revolution from 196163, it caused new crises among the descendants of Trotskys Fourth International. From the outset, revolutionaries identified this defence of the Soviet Union primarily with the gains of the October Revolution, rather than the territorial integrity of the Soviet state. Even in the final stages of the death agony of the degenerated/deformed workers states of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the question of military defence of the workers states remained relevant in so far as imperialism continued to exert military pressure on them. But the decisive blows of social counter-revolution were to be political rather than military. With the coming to power of
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See L. Trotsky, The Workers State, Thermidor and Bonapartism in: Writings of Leon Trotsky (1934-35), Pathfinder, 1971, pp. 166184, and R. V. Daniels: The Conscience of the Revolution, Simon and Schuster, 1969 Samizdat, p.207 M. Dewar, The Quiet Revolutionary, Bookmarks, 1989, p.16 L. Trotsky, Writings of Leon Trotsky (1937-38), pp.34-44 G. Breitman (ed), The Founding of the Socialist Workers Party, Monad, 1982, pp.141-5; L. Trotsky, Writings of Leon Trotsky (193738), pp.60-71 See L. Trotsky, In Defence of Marxism, New Park, 1975, and J.P. Cannon, The Struggle for a Proletarian Party, Pathfinder, 1972. B. Rizzi, The Bureaucratization of the World, Tavistock, 1985 J. Burnham, The Managerial Revolution, Penguin, 1962 T. Cliff, State Capitalism in Russia, Pluto, 1974 M. Djilas, The New Class, Unwin, 1966
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Socialist Action (US), World Political Resolution submitted to the USFI 14th World Congress, August 1994 Class Struggle, No. 51, December 1992 L. Trotsky, Writings of Leon Trotsky (1933-34), Pathfinder, 1972, p.104
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The cutting edge of distinction between bourgeois states and workers states is not some decisive degree of nationalisation (Militant/CWI), nor the existence of central planning (Workers Power/LRCI), nor the alleged commitment of the state apparatus to defend the socialised forces of production (ICL and IBT), but which class interests the economy and the state apparatus ultimately serve. Neither elements of private ownership on the one hand, nor extensive nationalisation on the other, in and of themselves, determine the class character of the state, because the state is at least partly autonomous from the economy. This is why the character of the state and the economy can change at different speeds. For example, the New Economic Policy (NEP) in the 1920s was a concession to private capital forced on the Bolsheviks in the difficult circumstances of the period, which was at least initially within the overall framework of defending working class interests. In contrast, the Chinese Stalinists policy today of encouraging private enterprise in the special economic zones is preparing the restoration of capitalism. Militants theory of proletarian Bonapartism19 is the crassest example of vulgar materialism in awe of nationalised property. The states which Militant characterises as workers states, Angola, Burma etc, were capitalist states from their inception. The high degree of nationalisation carried out by the nationalist petty-bourgeoisie or army officers were the basis for the emergence of a bourgeois class, whose interests were defended by the state apparatus and the legal system.
L. Trotsky, Writings of Leon Trotsky (1937-38), p.65, p.61 W. l. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, Moscow, 1965, p.335 CWG/LTT Fusion Declaration, Workers News, No. 44, Mar-Apr 1993 T. Grant, The Unbroken Thread, Fortress, 1989, pp.342-70
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K. Harvey, Polands Transition to Capitalism, Permanent Revolution 9, Summer/Autumn 1991 21 Workers Power/lrish Workers Group, The Degenerated Revolution: The Origins and Nature of the Stalinist States, WP/lWG, 1982, p.53 22 Ibid., p.59 23 Ibid., p.72 24 F. Engels, Anti-Dhring, cited in A. Richardson (ed), In Defence of the Russian Revolution: A Selection of Bolshevik Writings 19171923, Porcupine, 1995, viii 25 Trotskyist International, No. 11, May-Aug, 1993, p.45 26 The Degenerated Revolution, p.97
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Permanent Revolution No. 9 The Degenerated Revolution, p.46 Trotskyist International, No. 11, p.47 Trotskyist International, No. 16, Jan-Apr 1995, p.24
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Trotskyist International, No. 11, p.45 L. Trotsky, Writings of Leon Trotsky (1934-35), p.182 Documents of the Vern-Ryan Tendency, Communard Publishers, n.d., p.33 Ibid., p3 Much of the empirical information, although not the argument, of the following paragraphs is drawn from T. Wohlforth and A. Westoby, Communists Against Revolution, Folrose, 1978; C. Harman, Class Struggles in Eastern Europe 1945-48, Bookmarks, 1988 and A. Westoby, Communism Since World War II, Harvester, 1981
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F. Claudin, The Communist Movement: From Comintern to Cominform, Peregrine, 1975, p.464
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See J. Bloomfield, Passive Revolution: Politics and the Czechoslovak Working Class 1945-48, Allison and Busby, 1979 K. Marx, The Civil War in France, Marx-Engels Collected Works, Vol. 22, Moscow, 1986, p.328 L. Trotsky, Writings of Leon Trotsky (1933-34), p.103 A. Richardson, Introduction to In Defence of the Russian Revolution, vii-ix In Wohlforth and Westoby, Communists Against Revolution Ibid., pp.87-8 Communism Since World War II, p.387
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41 42 43
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44
I. Deutscher, Russia, China and the West 1953-1966, Penguin, 1970, p.47. For a detailed account of twists and turns of Soviet policy on Germany see D. Dallin, Soviet Foreign Policy After Stalin, Lippincott, 1961
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Russia, China and the West, p.48 L. Trotsky, In Defence of Marxism, p.22 Ibid., p.23 Ibid., p.36. Ibid., p.113 Ibid., p.34 D. North, The Heritage We Defend, Labor Publications, 1988, p.145 P. Frank: The Fourth International, Ink Links, 1979, pp.72-3 S. Bornstein and A. Richardson, War and the International, Socialist Platform, 1986, p.217 E. Germain, The Soviet Union after the War, SWP International Information Bulletin, Vol. 1, No. 2, September, 1946 Quoted in S. Bornstein and A. Richardson, The War and the International, p.217
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48 49 50 51 52 53 54
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Ibid., p.217 See B. Pitt, The Fourth International and Yugoslavia (1948-50), Workers News supplement, July 1991 Ibid Class, Party, and State and the Eastern European Revolution, SWP Education for Socialists, 1969, p.13 Ibid., p.11 Ibid., p.14 Ibid., p.19 Quote in D. North, The Heritage We Defend, pp.162-3 Quoted in ibid., p.175 Class, Party, and State and the Eastern European Revolution, p.22
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64 65
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M. Pablo, Yugoslavia and the rest of the Buffer Zone, SWP International Information Bulletin, May 1950 Class, Party, and Stare and the Eastern European Revolution, p.40 Ibid., p.41-2 Pablo considered that the transition from capitalism to socialism might span an entire historic period, occupied by a whole gamut of transitional regimes which would suffer from some degree of deformation. This unremarkable prognosis, not greatly dissimilar from Lenins conception of the transition period, became transformed by those who formed the International Committee, into the legend of centuries of deformed workers states. D. North, The Heritage We Defend, p.181 Pierre Franks report to the congress, Class, Party, and Stare and the Eastern European Revolution, p.50
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L. Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, New Park, 1982, p.255 See W. I. Lenin and L. Trotsky, Lenin s Fight Against Stalinism, Pathfinder, 1975, and M. Lewin, Lenins Last Struggle, Pluto, 1975 L. Trotsky, Socialism and the Market, Workers News No. 31, May 1991
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Ibid L. Trotsky, Towards Socialism or Capitalism?, New Park, 1976 The Platform of the Joint Opposition (1927), New Park, 1973 L.Trotsky, The Challenge of the Left Opposition (1926-27), Pathfinder, 1980, pp.258-64 Ibid., pp. 260-1 L. Trotsky, Writings of Leon Trotsky (1933-34), p.117
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81 82 83 84 85 86 87
L. Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, pp.250-53 Ibid., p.253 L. Trotsky, Writings of Leon Trotsky (1935-36), Pathfinder, 1977, p.63 L. Trotsky, Writings of Leon Trotsky (1937-38), p.63 Trotsky, In Defence of Marxism, pp.19-20 For an autobiographical account of life under the occupation see A. Kuznetsov, Babi Yar, Penguin, 1982 L. Trotsky, Writings of Leon Trotsky (1934-35), p.170
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L. Trotsky, Writings of Leon Trotsky (1937-38), p.35 Although at what cost is debatable. The short term benefit to the balance of payments must be offset against the negative effects of diverting huge resources away from other branches of the economy The dissident Andrei Amalrik perceptively noted in 1969: The so-called economic reform, of which I have already spoken, is in essence a half-measure and is in practice being sabotaged by the party machine, because if such a reform were carried to its logical end, it would threaten the power of the machine. A. Amalrik, Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?, Penguin, 1980, p.34.) See D. Singer, The Road to Gdansk, Monthly Review, 1982, chap. 3
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On this point, see D. Bruce, Trotsky and the Materialist Analysis of Stalinism. A Reply to Cliff Slaughter., WRP internal document, and A. Richardson, Introduction to In Defence of the Russian Revolution L. Trotsky, Writings of Leon Trotsky (1937-38), p.65 Ibid., p.67
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For the IBT, therefore, the August coup was justified, because Gorbachev
refused to carry the Baltic intervention to its logical conclusion and depose the governments there. He once more began pushing marketization.96 The German section of the ICL trumpeted in January 1992: Dissolution of the Soviet Union means disaster.97 The question which divided the bureaucracy most sharply on the eve of the coup was how to preserve the great power status of the Soviet Union and how to maintain the existence of large parts of the bureaucracy. This latter concern found its expression in the hardliners use of overt Great Russian chauvinism which in turn strengthened the influence of reactionary nationalists in the non-Russian republics.
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1917, No. 11,Third Quarter, 1992 Ibid. Spartakist, No. 92, January 1992
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1917, op cit. W. I. Lenin Collected Works, Vol. 29, Moscow, 1965, p.127 N. Bukharin and E. Preobrazhensky, The ABC of Communism, Penguin, 1970, p.248
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Guardian, June 21, 1993 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 20, 1991 Putsch -The Diary, p.19
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L. Trotsky, In Defence of Marxism, p.31, p.36; Writings of Leon Trotsky (1937-38), p.64-5 L. Trotsky, Writings of Leon Trotsky (1937-38), p.65 Spartakist, January 1992 Workers Vanguard, December 27,1991 Financial Times, December 1, 1991 Spartakist, January 1992 How the Soviet Workers State was Strangled, Spartacist pamphlet, 1991
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4. 5.
the abolition of restrictions on commerce and capital transactions, and the development of a capitalist banking system the withdrawal of the state from the economy, transforming nationalised property and the work-force into capital 6. the establishment of a new tax and fiscal administration.
The tasks relating to the state and the economy are inter-related, but not identical. The transition from the workers state to capitalism is marked by a period of state capitalism mirroring the opposite development in Eastern Europe in the 1940s. Far from representing a continuation of planned economy, it is the only viable means of preparing large parts of the economy for privatisation. A central component of this strategy is the conversion of money into capital. The exposure of currencies to international comparison, and the freeing of prices via big bangs restore money as a real (i.e. capitalist) measure of value, and facilitate capital formation through the pauperisation of the masses, on the one hand, and the creation of commodity production for profit on the other. This process is the consequence, rather than the cause, of the creation of bourgeois states. The primitive accumulation of capital relies to a considerable extent upon comprador and directly criminal methods together with the exploitation of the old Stalinist apparatus of political and economic management. The development of the new bourgeoisie is therefore characterised by corruption and the pillage of state property by any means necessary. But while such methods are necessary in the creation of a capitalist class, they simultaneously obstruct the normal functioning of a bourgeois state, which is obliged to create a stable legal framework for capitalist activities. In its birth pangs, therefore, the new bourgeois state lacks even the legitimacy of modern imperialist states, which are obliged to appear impartial in their dealings with capitalist citizens. It cannot meet the needs of a developed capitalism. But neither capitalist nor bourgeois state apparatuses have to be ideal or ready in order to be pressed into service. We have already pointed to the fact that capitalism can coexist for a period with other forms of production inherited from the past. In transitional periods it is the character and the real policy of the leadership of a state which is decisive in determining its class character. Only guided with this criterion can we give clear answers to the problems posed, in conformity with the rhythm of history. The class struggle never entirely disappeared in the degenerated and deformed workers states; nor has it in the restored bourgeois states, even if it takes new forms. A period of prolonged political instability is inevitable, in which rival groupings of aspiring capitalists will struggle to win control over the levers of political power. New relations are being established between the classes and the state, and between the different strata of classes. These constant changes in class relations and state institutions do not contradict our characterisation of these states as bourgeois. Rather, their weak character means that this instability is likely to continue so long as authoritative political parties and other means of regulating relations between the new bourgeoisie and the state institutions do not exist.
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How the Soviet Workers State was Strangled, Spartacist pamphlet, 1991
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