Trotsky's 'Revolution Betrayed'- Key to understanding

Scan page 15

'The first act of Stalin's political counterrevolution was to strip the soviets 16 SOCIALIST ACTION MAY 1989 Leon Trotsky's analysis of the degeneration of the Soviet state remains the only coherent theoretical basis for understanding the crisis in Soviet society today. Trotsky, co-leader with Vladimir I. Lenin of the October 1917 revolution, wrote his analytical work, "The Revolution Betrayed," in 1936only months before the beginning of Stalin's mass purges was announced.

"The Revolution Betrayed" is more than an analysis of the social and economic foundations for Stalinism and its counterrevolutionary role. It is a powerful and unqualified defense of the conquests of the first successful workers' revolution and its consolidation on a national scale. The author shows how, despite Stalinism's policy of systematic betrayal of the class interests of the working class inside and outside the country, the Soviet Union remained a powerful objective force for economic development, and has set an example that is still changing the world.

The importance of this work cannot be overestimated; world capitalism has utilized the crimes of Stalinism to discredit socialism. The propagandists of capitalism have convinced many that a workers' state and bureaucratic dictatorship are indivisible. Trotsky fought tirelessly against this false conclusion. He brilliantly argued that political revolution—the overthrow of the bureaucratic dictatorship and the restoration of the proletarian democracy that flowered in the first five years of the Russian Revolution—is the way forward.

"The Revolution Betrayed" begins on the very first page by comparing the "unprecedented tempo of Russia's industrial development" with the dismal rate of development of countries like India and China. The author goes on to explain how since the end of the 19th century backward nations can no longer carry through their own democratic revolutions and enter the era of industrial development on the basis of capitalism. "The bourgeois revolution," Trotsky writes of the dynamic of the October Revolution, "was directly bound up with the first stages of a socialist revolution."

Now, in the 72 years of its existence, the Soviet Union has risen to become the second most powerful nation on earth. It did this despite massive destruction to its economy caused by World Wars I and II, and a civil war assisted by a 14-nation imperialist military invasion during its first five years of existence. And despite Stalin's mistakes and crimes, Soviet economic development has left the super-exploited vassal nations of the world far behind.

This feat, moreover, was accomplished in the context of world capitalism's rigidly imposed exclusion of the Soviet economy from free access to the world division of labor. Imperialism, fearing the success of the great historic test of the system of planned production—for society's needs, not profit— consistently worked to cripple it by all means at its disposal. Meanwhile, capitalist India remains where it was in 1917, relative to the developed countries. And China, even more ravaged by imperialist invasion and civil war, only began to emerge from its era of famine and plague after capitalism there, too, was overthrown.

How bureaucratic dead-weight drags down the socialized economy In the face of the dreadful burden of bureaucratic mismanagement, the Soviet Union was able to make enormous gains through a series of five-year plans, which put the resources of the entire nation at work to build a modern, industrial economy. But bureaucratic methods which exclude workers from control and management of the workplaces and the economy as a whole have increasingly slowed • the tempo of Soviet development.

While the Soviet Union was constructing its basic industrial infrastructure-where none was yet in existence-its rate of growth easily outpaced any similar attempt by a backward country, despite bureaucratic inefficiency, bungling, and waste. But this initial advantage has been exhausted. Moreover, many of the shiny new factories have long since gotten old and rusty, and in too many instances bureaucratic management has proved unable to keep them abreast with the rate of technological development in the imperialist centers of world capitalism.

Furthermore, the swift march forward in the first stages of industrialization was fated to prematurely exhaust its possibilities because of a short-sighted failure to develop the economic infrastructure for iong-term development. There was no real effort to divert a sufficient portion of the surplus product to such basic needs as developing the network of roads, railroads, and other means of transportation indispensable to continued industrial progress.

A remarkable consequence of this lapse is that an enormous proportion of Soviet agricultural production-grains, fruits, vegetables, etc.—rots before it can be brought to consumers! Even capitalism in its hey-day had the foresight to put a necessary portion of the surplus value expropriated from the workers into development of the infrastructure required for sustained economic expansion.

The huge proportion of the surplus product consumed by the privileged bureaucracy, moreover, robs the Soviet economy of capital that could be put to social use. And the sight of special stores loaded with quality goods for the bureaucratic elite, while the masses must endure long lines for poorer-quality goods, is infuriating. This demoralizing consequence of bureaucratic privilege, undermining a sense that hard work results in a better life, does Forta (councils) of all power...

even greater damage to the Soviet economy.

The April 17 New York Times reports a dramatic confirmation of this underlying factor causing Gorbachev's desperation. The headline tells the story: "Moscow Importing Consumer Goods To Appease Public, Emergency Fund Set Up, Government, in Switch, Buys Items from Razor Blades to Pantyhose in West."

Socialist versus capitalist

incentives There are two, opposing, objective solutions to the faltering Soviet economic system. One points forward, toward unleashing the creative power of the working class by substituting democratic control over the planned economy in the place of the existing hierarchical system of top-down bureaucratic command. The other points toward capitalist restoration.

Socialist-oriented planning requires the input of workers at every step in the process of production. Only an uninhibited democratic system of workers' control over every aspect of the economy can break the bureaucratic log-jam. The workers, as producers and consumers, are the eyes and ears of the socialist system of planned production, and must be empowered to democratically elaborate, adjust, and alter the plan; oversee the standards of quality and the setting of prices; and regulate the distribution of goods.

Neither Gorbachev nor any other representative of the ruling elite can take this course. The reason is simple. Once allowed to exercise even limited control over economic and political life, the workers wouldn't stop until they wrenched complete control from the bureaucratic dictatorship.

Gorbachev knows that with the workers in the driver's seat, a process would begin that could not be stopped until social parasitism was expunged and the bureaucracy excluded from all positions of political power. Those guilty of crimes against the workers and farmers would be punished, and others, less guilty, would be re-educated and reintegrated into the economy as productive workers.

The Soviet bureaucratic caste is incapable of even risking such a profound reform. It would amount to political suicide. History has never șeen such a ruling group voluntarily give up its privileges. And there is no reason to expect it now. Gorbachev, as the authentic representative of the privileged caste of bureaucrats, has opened the door to capitalist market methods for regulating the faltering Soviet economic system. As the representative of the bureaucratic caste, he has no choice but to risk the restoration of capitalism in his desperate attempt 1o forestall the rising wave of working-class opposition.

The real purpose of Gorbachev's "democratization"

Gorbachev's new parliamentary system, in sharp contrast to the governmental system inaugurated in October 1917, guarantees the dominance of the middle classes-—and in the last analysis, the bureaucracy-over this capitalist-type democratic institution. The bureaucracy's base of support in the population narrows in proportion with its economic failures. Gorbachev's "democratization" is intended only to win allies from the middle class against the kind of threat foreshadowed by the mass worker upsurges in Poland and other Eastern European countries.

The middle classes are favored by the parliamentary electoral system, which atomizes the workers by organizing them on the basis of geographical districts rather than occupational units. And the division of execCooperative farmers selling vegetables at Moscow's Rizhsky Market. utive and legislative powers permits the state and Communist Party functionaries to remain free from control by any democratic institution.

Scan page 16

The new government established by the October Revolution went beyond the parliamentary system of developed capitalism. In the parliamentary system, in place here in the United States, those who control the printing presses, the radio and television systems—and other instruments for forming "public opinion"-determine the outcome of elections. This control is far more difficult to exercise when elections take place in the workplaces of the nation, where every voter is accessible to every candidate for office-and where all candidates are known to their coworkers; that is, their constituencies.

Completely free and democratic election of delegates from their workplaces to the soviet governing bodies was the single greatest conquest of the October Revolution. This soviet form (the word means "council") of representative democratic government, unlike the parliamentary system, combines both the legislative and executive branches in one decision-making body composed of delegates, subordinate only to the workers and farmers who elect them, and subject to immediate recall by their electors.

The true soviet system of democratic rule by the working class is directly and immediately responsive to the changing consciousness and changing needs of society. It also provides for full democratic control over state functionaries at every level.

The soviet system also works to block the degeneration of the people's representatives into a privileged caste by limiting their pay to the levels paid to workers. These qualities are what defined the new Soviet government as the workers' and farmers' government, in the sense of what Marx called "the dictatorship of the proletariat."

The first act of Stalin's political counterrevolution after he defeated the Left Opposition led by Leon Trotsky, was to strip the soviets of all power and transform them into decorative institutions, entirely under the control of the Stalinized Communist Party. At the same time, democracy in the Communist Party, itself, was obliterated by Stalin along with the defeat of the Bolshevik cadre that led the October Revolution. And, of course, limits on the incomes of the bureaucracy were abolished, and bureaucratic privilege institutionalized.

Gorbachev's apologists claim that he has begun a process of "revitalization of the soviet system." Nothing could be further from the truth. His "democratization" is entirely in tune with Stalin's self-proclaimed "most democratic Constitution in the world." And Gorbachev's economic reform is entirely on the order of Bukharin's and Stalin's ill-fated policy in the 1920s of encouraging capitalist accumulation among rich peasants. This policy gave a powerful stimulus to regenerating a new class of capitalists from among this group, and from the traders that sprang up from the middle classes and the bureaucracy itself.

In "The Revolution Betrayed," Trotsky analyzes Stalin's new Constitution, inaugurated in 1936, in detail. He reveals its thoroughly anti-democratic character from beginning to end. The purge trials, mass imprisonment, and execution of Trotsky's supporters, which followed on the heels of Stalin's own "democratization," was grisly confirmation of the analysis in this book.

How Soviet workers see perestroika The whole world is watching the big changes taking place in the Soviet Union with great interest. Working people everywhere approvingly react to the nearly universal hatred being voiced by the Soviet peoples to the new revelations of the crimes of Stalin's bloody dictatorship and to the freer political atmosphere, being ever-widened by mass mobilizations. Despite Gorbachev's intentions, glasnost is providing a semi-legal cover for revolutionary opposition to the bureaucratic dictatorship.

Thus while many in the Soviet Union credit Gorbachev for the new freedoms being permitted, even more are tensely watchful and openly critical of the iron grip still being held by Gorbachev's machine over Soviet society. The most critical, and the least impressed by the bureaucracy's promises, are the workers— especially in the oppressed Soviet Republics.

While the capitalist world can hardly conceal its gleeful anticipation, Soviet workers are extremely dubious that any benefits will come to them from economic "reforms"

Which are based on • the introduction of capitalist-type incentives. These so called "market mechanisms" are designed to punish "lazy workers" with unemployment, while the bureaucracy, a notoriously overpaid and underworked parasitic formation, is exempted from any equivalent sacrifice.

Capitalist "incentive" also means higher prices, as greed increasingly becomes the mainspring of the productive process. And while the bureaucracy can raise its pay by its own edict, and entrepeneurs can increase profits by raising prices, workers will be compelled to struggle to catch up with the resulting inflation. And, as is the case everywhere in the world, the workers who will suffer greatest are those in the oppressed nations.

Gorbachev's economic program is not restricted merely to encouraging small enterprises to fill in the gaps in a democratically controlled and managed, centrally planned economy. (Such small privately owned service enterprises are not inconsistent with a soçialized economy so long as the state is unable to provide these services.)

Perestroika goes far beyond such gapfilling; it threatens to break up the state-owned, planned economy. It would permit individual bureaucrats to make unilateral decisions over production, buying, selling, and pricing, which would conflict with a centralized and planned economy, and threatens its ultimate destruction.

Perestroika further undermines the socialized basis of the Soviet economy by permitting imperialist capital to be invested in unregulated deals with state enterprises. Moreover, Gorbachev's plan allows foreign capitalists to own-and control—majority interest in soviet economic enterprises. This would open a door in the state monopoly over foreign trade that would give imperialism powerful levers for making further inroads into the conquests of the October Revolution.

Foreign capital would inexorably bring individual bureaucrats under its influence, much as so-called compradors (small-time agents and junior partners of imperialism in developing countries) are transformed into puppets serving the interests of their imperialist "partners."

"Democratization" and the repression of national minorities The hopes of oppressed nationalities in the Soviet Union that glasnost meant an opening to genuine self-determination were dashed when the Gorbachev-led bureaucracy revoked a long-standing Soviet Constitutional right to independence. So far Gorbachev-style democratization has led to maiming, murder, and imprisonment for Soviet national minorities attempting to peacefully demonstrate their wholely progressive aspirations for self-determination.

The most recent manifestation of "democratization" occured on April 8, when Red Army tanks were dispatched into Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, a nominally "independent" Soviet Republic. The Soviet Foreign Ministry has admitted to the killing of 19 Georgian demonstrators in an assault by troops early on the morning of April 9, after a week of strikes and peaceful protest demonstrations. The Stalinist regime insists on imposing severe penalties for "undermining the Soviet state."

On the contrary, it is the undemocratic, forcible repression of mass peoples' movements for the right to self-determination which undermines the Soviet workers' state. The April 12 New York Times reports a conversation between Georgians, now settled in Moscow, which eloquently illustrates this.

Two of these people were perestroika enthusiasts; they had opened a restaurant specializing in Georgian dishes. They defended Gorbachev against a third Georgian, a patron named Tengiz:

"'I was home one month ago and they were praising Gorbachev,' Mrs. Karchava said, praising the Soviet leader herself because her one-year-old family enterprise restaurant has become a booming success here under his economic program. 'I think he has many enemies everywhere, and they stirred up the students in Tbilisi. The people should be calmed and told eventually there will be freedom. Don't pour gasoline on a fire."

Tengiz asked: "If they mean freedom, then why are they shooting at people?.. Beginning from the Czar, there's been a system of boot rule for Georgians, of the military deciding everything... I think there will be more deaths because the people will not be stopped... If the majority of the people vote to be free, why not?"

Here too, "The Revolution Betrayed" explains how the Great Russian chauvinism of the Soviet bureaucracy disrupts proletarian internationalism, the glue which binds all the peoples of the Soviet Union together in their class interests. The founders of the first workers' state provided for the right of nations to separate as the only guarantee for maintaining the unity of Soviet people. This guarantee has been violated by the bureaucracy from the days of Stalin to Gorbachev.

The Bonapartist character of the Soviet bureaucracy Bonapartism is the name given to a regime that appears to rise above the nation when the sharp struggle of opposing camps in bourgeois society is stalemated. Such a regime has the appearance of being independent of opposing classes. Bonapartist , regimes, characteristically, maneuver between classes to keep their grip on the state apparatus, but defend the form of property upon which the state is based. Classic Bonapartist regimes may repress individual capitalists along with the workers as a class, but they do so in order to defend capitalist property forms, upon which their power rests.

Soviet Bonapartism is something new in history. It differs from previous varieties in that it rests on the socialist forms of property established by the October Revolution. It defends the conquests of October with its own methods, and moreover, only to serve its own privileged interests.

There is no capitalist class in the Soviet Union. But in the context of encirclement by world imperialism and scarcity, neo-capitalist tendencies are steadily being regenerated; primarily from the middle classes and from the bureaucracy itself. The Bonapartist bureaucratic caste continues to preserve state property only to the extent it fears the proletariat.

When threatened by the workers, the bureaucracy leans on those forces inside and outside the Soviet Union to protect its privileges. And when threatened by imSOCIALIST i David Burnett-Contact perialism it leans on the socialist institutions created by the workers' revolution to defend the material basis of these privileges. But it hasn't, and can't have, an independent policy. Its very existence is dependent on the perpetuation of the world status quo between socialism and capitalism.

Soviet Bonapartism differs from the capitalist variety, to sum up, in that its basis for continued independent existence disappears with the victory of either of the opposing classes between which it balances itself. Even upsurges of class struggle, especially in the imperialist centers of world capitalism, undermine the grip on Soviet society by this parasitic formation, and conversely setbacks spur bureaucratic retreats toward fundamental accommodation with imperialism.

The trade union analogy The essence of scientific analysis of any phenomenon requires the most careful differentiation between its contradictory parts; like a surgeon who must distinguish between cancerous and healthy tissue. The contradictory character of the bureaucracy is better seen by comparing it to reformist bureaucrats at the head of trade unions everywhere in the world. Even in the case of gangster-domination, such unions are an objective instrument for the defense of class interests.

No trade union can be perpetuated if it does absolutely nothing to defend class interests. Workers would in that case drop out of the union and stop paying dues. Without members there can be no material base for a privileged bureaucracy. So even gangsters must justify the continued existence of the union by not allowing wages and conditions to be driven to the level of those in the unorganized sectors. But bureaucratized, class-collaborationist unions become ever more vulnerable to outright destruction by its capitalist antagonists.

Bureaucratic misleaders, like deadly parasites, must be removed by a resurgent membership or unions will continue to be drained of their life juices and die. Similarly, the Soviet workers must remove their parasitic ruling caste or else the socialist revolution begun in 1917 will be ultimately undermined and crushed by world imperialism.

Coming next issue:

New situation in Poland With unbridled enthusiasm, President Bush has announced plans to provide economic aid to Poland in response to the "round-table" accords reached between the Polish government and the top Solidamosc leadership.

The "round-table" accords legalized Solidarnosc but removed its independence from the burcaucracy. The accords were based on a political agreement between the Polish government, Lech Walesa, and the Catholic church that the key to economic recovery is to step up the penetration of capitalism into Poland.

In our next issue, we will feature an in-depth analysis of the new Polish situation by Solidarnosc activist Zbigniew Kowalewski.

STION