Eastern Eure world revolt

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Comania, December 1989: workers and soldiers lead the anti-Stalinist revolution.

The capitalist news media continue to rejoice at the spectacle of the Communist (Stalinist) parties' headlong rush to save themselves from the "anarchy" of snowballing anti-bureaucratic mass movements. Seeing the grisly specter of their own future in the executions of Nicolae and Elena Ceaucescu, the late heads of Romanian Stalinism, has persuaded the Soviet Stalinists-from Gorbachev, the reformer, to Ligachev, the hardliner—to give up their formal monopoly on political power.

But no one should be fooled. The Stalinists have no intention of giving up their positions of power and privilege. On the contrary, they are desperately striving to find a way, at whatever cost, to hold on to the levers of domination.

The world's leading capitalists keep pinching themselves to make sure they're not dreaming. They sincerely believe that the anti-capitalist conquests that they delight in calling "communism" or "socialism" are on their way out. Nor are their hopes totally misplaced.

They have confidence in the Gorbachevs and Ligachevs throughout the Stalinist world for good reason. They understand that the bureaucrats have nowhere to go except toward the restoration of capitalism in order to maintain their privileges, including their affluent life-styles.

It is evident, moreover, that there has been a meeting of minds on this fundamental question between Gorbachev and Bush at Malta and at other secret meetings. But the workers are an enormous obstacle to the anti-socialist perspective of both bosses and bureaucrats.

The most sober ideologists of world capitalism are acutely aware that these societies are on the edge of "anarchy," by which they really mean an uncontrollable workers' anti-bureaucratic revolution—not at all an anti-socialist uprising. The ruling capitalists, with President Bush at their head, therefore, have not for one moment been complacent; they have been working assiduously to assist the bureaucracy in maintaining its hold on the basic elements of power.

At the same time, imperialism has not missed a trick in its efforts to establish further footholds wherever the opportunity arises among the more unrestrained pro-capitalist middle-class competitors with the bureaucracy.

The world's capitalist rulers are not fools and pushovers. They are ardent students of history. They consistently strive to correct their mistakes. They are flexible, as their current close collaboration with Stalinist "reformers" again demonstrates.

These facts of life underscore the absolute necessity for the working classes to construct their own conscious revolutionary leadership. As long as world capitalism retains its equilibrium in its main bastions of power in the imperialist centers, they also retain the ability to mobilize counterrevolutionary forces that can only be overcome by a mass revolutionary party that has absorbed the lessons of history, a party that is no less respectful of historical lessons than are the ideologists of capitalism.

Such a proletarian party would not be a mere electoral formation. Its main tasks must be to organize workers into their own natural fighting organizations—unions, workplace committees, neighborhood committees, consumers' committees, and other mass organizations—oriented toward mobilizing every sector of the working class, and its natural allies in a determined struggle for a genuine workers' democratic government.

Teachings of Leon Trotsky It would be next to impossible to fully comprehend the meaning of the struggle unfolding in the world's bureaucratized workers' states (the so-called socialist countries) and its effect on the world movement toward socialism without studying Leon Trotsky's "The Revolution Betrayed.' The unprecedented upsurge in the bureaucratized workers' states has already made an indelible impact on the consciousness of working people in every corner of our planet. The demonstration of the power of millions in the streets to bring down oppressive regimes will play a big role in the capitalist world when the threatening economic crisis erupts and sends the class struggle to new heights.

Trotsky was not a mere critic of Stalinism. He, along with V.I. Lenin, played a decisive role in the October Revolution and in the military and political defense of the new workers' state in the difficult early years of its existence. He also led the fight against the bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet Union.

Trotsky's viewpoint, therefore, represents a vital link in the continuity of revolutionary Marxist thought. Today, in fact, Trotskyism is the name of revolutionary Marxism.

From the very outset, the strategy guiding the Russian revolutionary leadership headed Simon Robine/AFP by Lenin and Trotsky was based on the goal of extending the workers' conquest of state power in Russia to the entire world. The concept of world revolution is at the very heart of socialist strategy going back to the time of Marx and Engels, since only on a world scale do the necessary resources exist for the actual construction of socialism.

The Third (Communist) International was formed in 1919 by the victorious Bolshevik leadership of the October Revolution to carry out this goal. Lenin summed up their central outlook by characterizing the new Soviet state as "the advanced outpost of the world revolution."

Democracy is inseparable from this orientation. Workers' democracy everywhere, on every level—in the party, the unions, the workplaces, and in the soviets (workers' councils) is a vital component of all revolutionary processes.

Revolution requires the greatest individual and group freedom, and initiative for problem-solving. Democracy is indispensable for mobilizing mass creativity in the struggle for workers' power-and afterward, when workers must shoulder the task of managing the planned economy. It was, therefore, deeply rooted in the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Trotsky and in the state and governmental institutions created by the October Revolution. [See accompanying article on soviet democracy.] The outrageous slander that the source of Stalinist terror and dictatorship is to be found in Leninism is now gleefully promoted by both capitalists and Stalinists. This shameless assault on truth was first made by Stalin, who insisted that his grotesque smashing of soviet and party democracy was Leninism par excellence!