Marxist theory and its relevance for today

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framework of capitalist property rights. They were nevertheless forced to go beyond these self-imposed limits when the counterrevolution and irreconcilable economic crises threatened to overwhelm them.

The imperialists, along with the Stalinists themselves, explain away this contradiction between stated aims and actual results very simply-as "insidious" or "tactical" deception (adjectives chosen by each for their own reasons). But this "explanation" is not consistent with the facts.

Fidel Castro, in contrast to the Stalinists, has honestly explained his own surprise at the course the Cuban revolution followed. He makes no claim of having been a Marxist-a revolutionary socialist-until some time after the overthrow of the Batista dictatorship.

And to the credit of Fidel Castro and the team of revolutionary fighters which led their struggle, Cuba advanced the furthest of all the postWorld War Il social revolutions, establishing a workers' state relatively free of the bureaucratic deformations that Spanish workers mobilize cists in 1930s. have made the workers' states in Eastern Europe and Asia caricatures of the socialist future.

Prepares ground for defeat The facts of history stubbornly testify that the reformist theory of stages politically and militarily disarms the workers and peasants and prepares the ground for defeat.

The theory was first systematically developed by the Mensheviks, who opposed the socialist revolution in Czarist Russia. First, they argued, Russia must go through a period of capitalist development. Only then would it be in order to fight for socialism.

Refuted by the October 1917 revolution itself, the two-stage theory was, following Lenin's death, resurrected by Stalin and applied in China. It led the workers who followed the Communist Party to accept their being disarmed, without a fight, by the political leader of the "anti-imperialist" Chinese capitalists, Chiang Kai-shek.

Tens of thousands of Chinese workers were then slaughtered, and along with them, the Chinese revolution of 1925-27.

The two-stage revolution is really the rationalization for class collaboration. It restricts the struggle of workers and peasants to reforms within the limits of capitalism.

Theory is generalized

The theory of stages was soon adapted to the imperialist countries themselves. The operative section of this Menshevik-Stalinist theory of stages is its advice to workers to have confidence in an allegedly "anti-imperialist" or "anti-fascist" or "progressive" wing of the bourgeoisie.

In the Spanish revolution of 193639, the Popular Front was the new name invented by the Stalinists to hide the class-collaborationist essence of their strategy.

The Popular Front, a strategic alliance with "anti-fascist" capitalists, required the workers to oppose the peasants' demand for land and the Morrocan peoples' demand for independence from Spain.

The champions of the Popular Front insisted on paying this price for the help of the "progressive" capitalists against the fascist counterrevolution —a price far more costly to the revolution than that "gained" from the alliance with the "anti-fascist" capitalists.

In the same period France underwent a similar crisis. The Stalinist-led Popular Front, there too, proved to be the political road to defeat.

The stupendous horror of World War Il itself was a consequence of defeats in Spain and France-two of the most outstanding of the missed opportunities for socialist revolution during the world capitalist crisis of the 1930s.

Victorious workers' revolutions in these two advanced capitalist coun tries, with their more numerous and experienced working classes, would have given a powerful impetus to world revolution. In a context of successful revolutions in one or both these countries, the "luxury" of interimperialist war to settle their quarrels would have been fatal for the in Eastern Europe and Japan in Asia, the main bulwarks of capitalism in the countries they conquered, were militarily defeated. This, paradoxically, deprived world capitalism of an effective military instrument for defending itself against an unabating upsurge of workers and peasants.

While the imperialist countries-victor and vanquished alike-prospered in the post-World War Il boom, it was at the expense of the super-exploited masses at the neocolonial extremities of world capitalism.

The resulting decay and decomposition of any remaining social base for capitalism in these countries so weakened the local ruling classes that, like rotted trees, could dull axe.

This, in a nutshell, is the Fourth International's historically developed analysis of the post-World War Il overturns of capitalism. It remains the only consistent materialist analysis of these events.

It explains the defeats in Spain, Chile, and Indonesia, as well as the victories in Cuba and China. In fact, any "theory" that cannot account for defeats, is worthless as a guide to action.

A majority in the Fourth International today have had a change of mind. The following selections in this review are indicative of some of the views in contention today in our world movement. - NAT WEINSTEIN • ON OCTOBER 1985 7

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and Algeria, ownership of many of the

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"The theory of stages restricts the struggle in capitalist limits."