Eastern Europe and the world revolution today
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Romania, December 1989: workers and soldiers lead the anti-Stalinist revolution. on.
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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 excelience!
When Stalin's faction, representing the bureaucratic apparatus of the party and state, definitively broke from the Bolsheviks' internationalist perspective at the end of 1924 and took the road of preserving and extending their caste privileges, they were compelled to begin suppressing all forms of opposition.
The logic of their political course, whatever their original intentions, sucked them into a vortex of increasingly open opposition to the class interests of the Soviet and international proletariat. Once on this reactionary path, they could hold on to power in the Soviet Union only through an ever-more brutal suppression of workers' democracy everywhere and on every levelincluding in all the sections of the Communist International (Comintern).
A pact to fight Stalin By the spring of 1923, Lenin became convinced that the bureaucracy was threatening the democratic and socialist conquests of the Russian Revolution. Stalin's suppression of the national rights of Georgians aroused Lenin's greatest concern. He viewed the aspirations of oppressed nationalities as entirely just and, in fact, an organic component of the class struggle. Most importantly, he explained, proletarian international solidarity was impossible through compulsion!
Lenin urgently proposed that Trotsky join him in a bloc against the anti-democratic course being followed by Stalin's faction. Trotsky enthusiastically accepted, with the words: "It is a pleasure to form a bloc with a good man."
Unfortunately, before they could take joint action, Lenin's lingering illness grew worse. He was incapacitated, for the most part, until his death in January 1924, and was unable to mount a decisive attack on Stalin and bureaucratism.
Still, before his death, he took the demonstrative step of formally breaking off all personal and political relations with Stalin and writing his "Last Testament." (In this document he urged that Stalin be removed from his position as general secretary of the Communist Party.)
Trotsky, fulfilling his pact with Lenin, went on to become the most intransigent opponent of the bureaucratic caste and its trampling of workers' democracy in the Soviet Union.
Stalin's blood purges
Hundreds of thousands of Lenin and Trotsky's supporters were ultimately imprisoned and murdered by Stalinincluding virtually the entire generation of Bolsheviks who had led the Soviet workers to power. This essentially lawless beheading of the revolution's leadership was accompanied by show trials in which virtually every defendant was first tortured, or lives of loved ones threatened, and thus forced to "confess."
Millions of others were terrorized, many suffering abominable conditions of imprisonment in Stalin's gulags. Of those imprisoned, additional hundreds of thousands (according to the most conservative estimates) died from the extreme hardship in these prison camps, or were shot.
Trotsky himself was exiled and relentlessly hounded by Stalin from country to country. He eventually found refuge in Mexico but was assassinated in August 1940 by Stalin's agent.
"The Revolution Betrayed," Trotsky's insightful theoretical analysis of the root causes of the Stalinist degeneration, provides the only consistent basis for understanding today's unfolding political revolution in the bureaucratized workers' states.
The prognosis in this 1936 book was that either the working class will topple the Soviet bureaucratic dictatorship from political power and re-establish a regime of workers' democracy, or the Stalinist bureaucracy will ultimately restore capitalist property as the new social base for its privileges. This prediction is being dramatically played out today in Eastern Europe and China, as well as in the Soviet Union itself.
Role of middle-class opposition Despite the crumbling of the system of monolithic control in all these countries, the Stalinist bureaucrats have not been dislodged from their positions of power and privilege. On the contrary, in every case the bureaucratic dictatorships have so far been compelled only to share political power with sections of the middle classes which had previously been excluded from direct influence.
Even as the Stalinist Communist parties disintegrate, the bureaucracies which had ruled through these parties remain in control of the industrial and state institutions where power is still lodged.
For the moment, the middle-class opponents of the bureaucratic dictatorship play a dual role. While they have articulated and championed the mass aspirations for democracy and political freedom, they have also given a powerful impetus to the pro-capitalist tendency of the bureaucracy.
This should come as no surprise. The middle class cannot advance an independent solution to society's problems. They invariably reflect the ideology of one or the other of the main contending classes- in modern society—workers and capitalists. In The parliamentary system being put in place in East Europe and the Soviet Union is a sophisticated political mechanism developed during hundreds of years of capitalism to block the workers from power while it provides the ruling class the luxury of democratic resolution of differences among themselves.
While parliamentary electoralism must be utilized as a tool to organize workers, raise their level of consciousness, and as a measure of the revolutionary party's influence, it would be a colossal mistake to believe that a shift of state power from the oppressors to the oppressed can be accomplished through the parliamentary system.
History has shown that the road to a workers' government is through the kind of revolutionary democracy that enabled the Russian workers to take power in October 1917. The soviet-type state, based on workers' councils which are composed of elected delegates coming from every workplace, every fighting class institution, and every political faction of the working class is the most democratic system the world has seen.
Such a system of democracy includes a few other essential conditions. In contrast to the bourgeois parliamentary system now being established in the East, which is based on a division of governmental and state powers, the soviet, or Commune-type state, combines in one body both legislative and executive functions.
It provides for immediate recall of delegates by its constituencies, and for good measure, it also provides for delegates to be paid workers' wages—a provision intended to forestall a
Scan page 12
ope and the ution today Hundreds of thousands demonstrate in Prague, Czechoslovakia, on Nov. 20, after When Stalin's faction, representing the bureaucratic apparatus of the party and state, definitively broke from the Bolsheviks' internationalist perspective at the end of 1924 and took the road of preserving and extending their caste privileges, they were compelled to begin suppressing all forms of opposition.
The logic of their political course, whatever their original intentions, sucked them into a vortex of increasingly open opposition to the class interests of the Soviet and international proletariat. Once on this reactionary path, they could hold on to power in the Soviet Union only through an ever-more brutal suppression of workers' democracy everywhere and on every level— including in all the sections of the Communist International (Comintern).
A pact to fight Stalin By the spring of 1923, Lenin became convinced that the bureaucracy was threatening the democratic and socialist conquests of the Russian Revolution. Stalin's suppression of the national rights of Georgians aroused Lenin's greatest concern. He viewed the aspirations of oppressed nationalities as entirely just and, in fact, an organic component of the class struggle. Most importantly, he explained, proletarian international solidarity was impossible through compulsion!
Lenin urgently proposed that Trotsky join him in a bloc against the anti-democratic course being followed by Stalin's faction. Trotsky enthusiastically accepted, with the words: "It is a pleasure to form a bloc with a good man.
Unfortunately, before they could take joint action, Lenin's lingering illness grew worse. Soviet bureaucratic dictatorship from political power and re-establish a regime of workers' democracy, or the Stalinist bureaucracy will ultimately restore capitalist property as the new social base for its privileges. This prediction is being dramatically played out today in Eastern Europe and China, as well as in the Soviet Union itself.
Role of middle-class opposition Despite the crumbling of the system of monolithic control in all these countries, the Stalinist bureaucrats have not been dislodged from their positions of power and privilege. On the contrary, in every case the bureaucratic dictatorships have so far been compelled only to share political power with sections of the middle classes which had previously been excluded from direct influence.
Even as the Stalinist Communist parties disintegrate, the bureaucracies which had ruled through these parties remain in control of the industrial and state institutions where power is still lodged.
For the moment, the middle-class opponents of the bureaucratic dictatorship play a dual role. While they have articulated and championed the mass aspirations for democracy and political freedom, they have also given a powerful impetus to the pro-capitalist tendency of the bureaucracy.
This should come as no surprise. The middle class cannot advance an independent solution to society's problems. They invariably reflect the ideology of one or the other of the main contending classes- in modern society—workers and capitalists. In resignation of Stalinist government.
the absence of an organized revolutionary workers' party in these countries, middle-class intellectuals tend to fall under the influence of world capitalism.
When masses of people are first drawn by events onto the field of history, their consciousness inevitably lags behind events. And those who are first chosen to lead reflect past consciousness, but are rapidly replaced as the level of consciousness of the masses Pavel Stecha advances in accord with experience.
The course of revolution tends to follow a logic in which middle-class reformers are the first to rise to the head of the objectively revolutionary process erupting from the depths of society. And as the masses become more conscious of the gulf between their class needs and the petty-bourgeois leadership, they help push the more radical of the reformers onto the center of the stage upon which history plays itself out-until they are replaced by a conscious
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