In New Left Review 139 Perry Anderson provided an assessment of Trotsky's analysis of Stalinism. In International (Vol 8 No 5) Phil Hearse replied. Chris Arthur argues that although Hearse made some good points, he failed to convince on two crucial issues: the definition of Stalinism and its contemporary reality.
Trotsky held that there was an asymmetry in the role of Stalinism: within the USSR, the Stalinist bureaucracy played a contradictory role, repressing the working class while opposing imperialist attempts to restore capitalism; outside the USSR the Stalinist Comintern was purely counter-revolutionary.
Anderson makes two points in criticism of Trotsky's diagnosis. 'Firstly he erred in qualifying the external role of the Soviet bureaucracy as simply and unilaterally ''counter-revolutionary'' — whereas in fact it was to prove profoundly contradictory in its actions and effects abroad, just as much as it was at home. Secondly, he was mistaken in thinking that Stalinism represented merely an ''exceptional'' or ''aberrant'' refraction of the general laws of transition from capitalism to socialism, that would be confined to Russia itself. The structures of bureaucratic power and mobilisation pioneered under Stalin proved to be both more dynamic and more general a phenomenon on the international plane than Trotsky ever imagined.' (p56)
The first point here is the adoption of the pernicious politics of 'Socialism in One Country' with the consequent sacrifice of the world revolution to the shifting diplomatic interests of the USSR. After the spasm of the 'Third Period' perspective, the Comintern settled down to a consistently class-collaborationist practice which appeared to provide ample evidence for Trotsky to write it off as subordinate to the Kremlin bureaucracy. Nonetheless the objective weight of the growing power of the Soviet Union in the world, including its hurling back of the Nazi invasion, could not fail to have international effects in spite of Stalin's misleadership.
When the Red Army occupied large parts of Eastern Europe Stalin was still obsessed with maintaining an anti-fascist alliance. All indigenous revolutionary circles that had survived underground were crushed and the Communist Parties reconstituted under Stalinist leaders flown in from Moscow. Assured that no uncontrollable revolution would break out, and acting under the pressure of imperialist Cold War tactics, Stalin moved in 1948 to destroy capitalism from above. Hearse says that, 'the creation of buffer states was carried out not because Stalin was innately hostile to capitalism in Eastern Europe, but for the military defence of the USSR.' This is true but rather beside the point. The actual effect was to demonstrate that Stalinism was capable of extending itself geographically and to weaken thereby capitalism as a world system. The likes of Winston Churchill would not have been mollified by Hearse's fine distinction, in spite of Stalin's Yalta concessions. Defending its own interests, the Soviet state apparatus weakened capitalism in the short term, while storing up big trouble for itself, and ultimately damaging the standing of Communism in the eyes of the international working class, by establishing its dictatorship over new peoples. That is why we can say that its role was contradictory.
Having said that, we must also stress the limitations inherent in the nature of Stalinism's defence of the Soviet Union. As a fossilised layer of conservative bureaucrats totally divorced from the masses, the Kremlin Stalinists are quite incapable of defending the Soviet Union in a revolutionary way. The best defence of the Soviet Union lies in the extension of the world revolution, but the Stalinist bureaucrats have no confidence in the masses or capacity to lead them. They only know how to act under the umbrella of the Red Army. They reply to H-bombs with H-bombs.
I would therefore criticise Anderson for being overgenerous to the Soviet bureaucracy as an 'international revolutionary factor' in speaking of 'external gains by exploited classes'. Part of the truth here is that the objective weight of the surviving conquests of October provides the Stalinist apparatus with an inherent strength which is easily confused with the apparatus itself. The antagonism of the imperialist world to those conquests creates a situational logic in which the apparatus is forced to rely on that strength to defend itself — externally as well as internally.
In their debate Hearse and Anderson emphasise different aspects of this. Anderson points out the importance that the existence of the Soviet Union, even under Stalinist misleadership, has for new workers' states, the colonial revolution, and so on. But no Trotskyist has ever denied this. Hearse picks up the appalling opportunism of the Soviet Stalinists in misusing this strength. Because the strength of October is now mediated through the Stalinist apparatus its potential is blocked, misappropriated, and distorted.
The crucial question Trotsky was addressing, however, when he asked whether Stalinist conservatism had reached the point where it was counter-revolutionary, related to its inability to promote socialist revolution through a massive mobilisation of the working class (Trotsky never dreamed of saying that Stalinism was always against bourgeois revolutions, or national revolutions, or the colonial revolution within strictly bourgeois limits.) Here the historical record of the Soviet bureaucracy, and the Comintern apparatus controlled by it, speaks for itself.
Anderson writes of the Soviet state being 'persistently anti-capitalist' externally (p58). Yet, leaving aside the structural assimilation of part of Eastern Europe to the USSR regime, we can see that nowhere has the political practice of the Soviet bureaucracy brought about such an overthrow of capitalism. Every serious commentator on the Chinese, Yugoslav, Vietnamese, and Cuban revolutions stresses the indifference, or downright hostility of the Soviet rulers to the prospect of the revolutionary seizure of power.
Let us now address the second point made by Anderson — and this is the important one. He expands on it as follows: 'Stalinism proved to be not just an apparatus, but a movement — one capable not only of keeping power in a backward environment dominated by scarcity (USSR); but of actually winning power in environments that were yet more backward and destitute (China, Vietnam) ... Stalinism as a broad phenomenon — that is a workers' state ruled by an authoritarian bureaucratic stratum — did not merely represent a degeneration from a prior state of (relative) class grace: it could also be a spontaneous generation produced by revolutionary class forces in very backward societies, without any traditions of either bourgeois or proletarian democracy' (p57).
What is comrade Hearse's answer to this? Surely brute historical facts have to be taken into account in our conceptualisations? Unfortunately Hearse attempts to solve the problem by means of a definition. He defines Stalinism as 'subordination to the diplomatic interests of the Kremlin'. This allows him to deny that the Chinese, Albanian, Yugoslav, or Vietnamese revolutions were led by Stalinists because all these Communist Parties 'broke with Moscow, generally over the crucial question of whether or not to take power.' In asking the question whether Trotsky was right in assuming that the Comintern was purely counter-revolutionary Anderson imagined himself to be addressing a question of fact. With Hearse no facts are relevant because Stalinism is counter-revolutionary by definition.
But Trotsky became convinced of the need to found a new International, when he concluded that as a matter of fact the Third International was dead for revolutionary purposes. If Hearse insists on his definition, then Trotsky's diagnosis may be expressed by saying that he believed the Comintern parties were incapable of breaking with Stalinism. History proved him wrong. I have enough respect for Trotsky to believe he would have readily admitted that he had over-generalised the experience of the thirties.
But should Hearse's definition be accepted? Isn't it the case that the parties concerned profess loyalty to Stalin, and to this day model themselves on the conceptions, methods and organisational structures introduced by Stalin? Isn't it the case that the one country in the world with a profusion of public monuments to Stalin is Albania? Yet, because of the Albanian CP's antipathy to Moscow, Hearse's definition forces us to say that it has broken with Stalinism!
This definition of Stalinism — 'subordination to the diplomatic interests of the Kremlin' — refers purely to the political level, and to a very specific political conjuncture at that. It is more or less useless from a materialist point of view. In the thirties it might have passed muster, for there was only one workers' state and its Stalinist rulers had succeeded in subordinating the Comintern to their sway. This could all be passed off as a deviant phenomenon to be explained by special circumstances.
We are now fifty years on. We have several 'workers' states' in the world, beyond the control of the Kremlin, established under the leadership of parties coming out of the Stalinised Comintern and retaining the same regime. These states are similar to the USSR in their basic political system, and each of them bases their foreign policy on the narrow interests of their own state apparatus. Furthermore there have emerged, and there still exist, a lot of parties of varying size, marked by the same general features of 'Stalinism'. Hearse says this argument 'does not affect the substance of the matter' (p32). But it has everything to do with the substance of the matter because it shows that we are dealing with a general phenomenon. This provides a conclusive argument against Hearse's narrow definition of Stalinism, and for introducing a conception based on a scientific analysis of this new development. Hearse himself cites Trotsky: 'The most dangerous thing in politics is to fall captive to one's own formula that yesterday was appropriate but is bereft of all content today.' Yet he ignores it. It is a sign of our failure that we still resort to the personalised label 'Stalinism' long after his death, to refer to phenomena for which he could not be held personally responsible, namely the 'spontaneous generation' of 'Stalinist' tendencies on a world scale.
There are two broad dimensions of Stalinism as we know it. It represents a differentiation within the workers' movement whereby the apparatus becomes independent from, and dominant over, the mass membership, and legitimates itself in terms of such themes as homogeneity; so-called 'democratic centralism'; discipline from the top down; banning of tendencies; the imposed slate in elections; no open discussion of policy changes; so-called criticism and self-criticism: in sum a constellation of methods and concepts pioneered by Stalin in the USSR. Above all, Stalinism approaches mass work in a manipulative way rather than endeavouring to spark self-mobilisation by the working class. It also consists in the fusion of this apparatus with a state apparatus, and a set of policies pioneered by Stalin under the slogan 'Socialism in One Country' which subordinates the interests of the world revolution, and of other workers' states, to the national interests of the state apparatus.
It is of course not adequate to characterise Stalinism simply in terms of its theoretical conceptions and institutional practices; we have to look to its material basis. The objective roots of Stalinism consist in the difficulty a subaltern class has in realising its own power and keeping its representative organs as servants rather than masters, and the uneven development of capitalism which leads to the disaggregated character of world revolution.
On the question of the fusion of party apparatus and state apparatus, Trotsky admits there is a 'grain of truth' in anarchism. In Stalinism and Bolshevism he says: 'The state as an apparatus of constraint is undoubtedly a source of political and moral infection. This also applies, as experience has shown, to the workers' state ... Stalinism is a product of a condition of society in which society was still unable to tear itself out of the straitjacket of the state.' To those making their careers in such a national state apparatus, national chauvinism comes naturally. I would argue that Stalinism is spontaneously nationalist. This was obscured in the period of the Comintern by the Orwellian use of the phrase 'proletarian internationalism' to mobilise support for the Kremlin in the Comintern. Later, Stalinist leaderships used the support of the USSR against their memberships. However the subordination of the Comintern parties to the dictates of the Kremlin was not really a spontaneous process. It required a brutal campaign of systematic deceit, slander, intrigue, bribery and violence. Ultimately, though, Stalinist leaderships which acquired an independent base, especially if they achieved state power, were to imitate, rather than collaborate with, the Kremlin.
As a general rule of thumb, one can say of the parties of the Comintern that the smaller they were the more they remained loyal to Moscow (whose moral and material support was required), and the larger they were the more they became autonomous (having a material base in the indigenous workers' movement, or, sometimes, the local governmental apparatus). The Kremlin had to displace the leadership of the German party four times before leaders pliant enough were installed. It is known that Mao tse-tung was not Stalin's candidate for the leadership of the Chinese CP. Mao defeated Wang Ming, the Kremlin-trained stooge, in a factional battle. The Chinese and Vietnamese CPs declared war on Trotskyism rather later than [illegible].
What remains at issue in all this, as in 1938, is the perspective for world revolution. Hearse objects to the idea that bureaucratic forms of mobilisation in the semi-colonial countries are generalised spontaneously. He links this to the analysis of the bureaucratic degeneration of the Russian revolution. In both cases he argues that to say such developments are inevitable amounts to apologetics for Stalinism. This is a completely fallacious argument.
Let us take the Russian case first. Given the actual material conditions Stalinism in the USSR was inevitable. To believe otherwise is tantamount to giving supernatural powers to Joseph Stalin. If one is a materialist at all, one must accept the necessity of such consequences of a revolution taking place in a backward country, with a hostile imperialist world. The struggle of the Left Opposition was doomed to failure without the spread of the world revolution. However, it is simply bad logic to infer from this that Stalinism was justified. The real problem is: how can one justify the struggle of the opposition against overwhelming odds?
It was always possible that some new revolutionary upsurge in the West might have come to the aid of the USSR which would have changed the conditions of their struggle. The international role of the Left Opposition to Stalinism was well worth undertaking, for there the situation was more open. Even now, it is hard to understand how Stalinism and Social Democracy so comprehensively blocked the emergence of a revolutionary leadership in Europe.
When Hearse turns to the revolutionary movement in the semi-colonial countries he becomes completely abstract. He asserts that bureaucratic forms in the transitional regimes are 'the product of the lack of a conscious fight against bureaucratism, that is to say, the absence of a revolutionary Marxist leadership.' This is a pathbreaking method in social science to be sure. Positive facts are brought into being by other positive facts and not by absences! It is true that, speaking colloquially, we sometimes use expressions like: 'He died from lack of oxygen'; such expressions only make sense, however, if in normal conditions the factor is present. In our case the revolutionary Marxist leadership is generally absent so Hearse's expression is meaningless. If it were the case that revolutions in semi-colonial countries were normally carried out by Marxist leaderships and led to egalitarian and democratic regimes, then we might explain an exception in the first instance by 'absence of a revolutionary Marxist leadership'. But this is not what historical experience shows. It is necessary therefore to explain the actual trend (including 'the lack of a conscious fight against bureaucratism') by reference to material conditions, and discuss under what conditions a different leadership could emerge.
I have no idea whether Anderson accepts the inference comrade Hearse attributes to him — namely that his analysis might lead to 'abstentionism from the task of building parties which base themselves on the tradition of Trotsky and the Left Opposition.' However, it seems to me that the scope and persistence of Stalinism makes such a task more and not less vital.
There are four reasons why it is necessary to build an authentic revolutionary International:
1) Although we have had to modify Trotsky's perspectives it is still largely true that Stalinist parties are incapable of overthrowing capitalism. Experience shows that Stalinist parties are not very well suited to making revolution but well adapted to organising defeats (eg Chile) especially when they persist in the Menshevik 'two stage' theory of social revolution.
2) Only the Fourth International has the political programme which can relate the struggles of workers in the 'workers' states' to the authentic Marxist tradition and hence facilitate a thoroughgoing anti-Stalinist struggle.
3) It is necessary to carry out a persistent struggle in the capitalist world to convince the working class that socialism does not have to equal Stalinism and to popularise the programme of proletarian democracy.
4) Above all the International is necessary to promote genuine internationalism, relentlessly to criticise the narrow nationalism of Russia, China etc, to combat the virus of chauvinism in the workers' movement in the imperialist countries, and to strive to build the most appropriate form for the expression of proletarian interests, namely an international organisation dedicated to communist world revolution.
CHRIS ARTHUR lectures in philosophy at Sussex University.