How the American 'Left' analyzed attempted coup in Soviet Union

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"The leaders of the Workers World Party present themselves as critics of the bureaucracy, even quoting Trotsky in private. But their support of the bureaucracy, or sections of it, and Stalinist methods against the workers to "save" the workers state, inevitably leads them to prettify bureaucratic rule." 16 SOCIALIST ACTION OCTOBER 1991 The attempted military-KGB coup in the Soviet Union and its aftermath have shaken left-wing parties and tendencies in the United States and worldwide.

Below, we critically review the positions of tendencies on the American left who claim the heritage of the Russian Revolution. All have been put to a key test by these events.

Once again, all the issues raised by the development of Stalinism and the Trotskyist opposition to it have come to the fore.

We begin with the position of the Workers World Party not because it is the most important formation but because of all the groups supporting the coup, their position is the slickest.

Reflects the views of the Workers World Party (WWP).

Workers World (WW) supported the August coup as an "ill-fated attempt to halt the process of capitalist restoration in the USSR, ," in the words of WWP Chairman Sam Marcy. (Workers World, special issue dated Aug. 25, 1991)

However, in the Sept. 8 issue of WW, Marcy sharply criticizes the coup leaders. He says that they "issued an utterly inept and scandalously vague statement calculated to assure the imperialist bourgeoisie that foreign policy toward the imperialists would remain the same and the reforms at home would continue.

Not even the word socialism was mentioned in the manifesto, which promised that private property and the market economy would continue."

But the coup leaders hid their real aims, he asserts, to fool the imperialists, because they were afraid of foreign intervention. They didn't really mean their own statements, according to Marcy: "Even though they had gone very far with the Gorbachev reforms, they were regarded as opposed to the restoration of capitalism."

So "regarded" by whom, other than Sam Marcy? The only "proof" offered for Marcy's assertion is that Bush and other imperialist leaders denounced the coup and backed Yeltsin.

However, while Bush and others did back Yeltsin in this split within the ruling bureaucracy, intervention was never a realistic or desired option on the part of the imperialists.

They simply preferred stability in the Soviet bureaucracy, correctly fearing that the attempt to reimpose an outright military dictatorship at this time would lead to a social explosion by the masses. This could result in the working people and oppressed nationalities putting their stamp upon the course of events. To the extent that has happened, Washington and the other imperialist centers express deep concern.

Moreover, the imperialists were ready to deal with the coup leaders if they were successful, while making propaganda points in favor of "democracy." During the three days of the coup attempt, imperialist pundits were preparing public opinion for this course if it would be necessary—a point developed by Henry Kissinger on CNN, for example.

Marcy's criticism of the coup leaders was that they were inept and indecisive, and did not appeal to the masses.

Why didn't they appeal to the masses? According to Marcy, it was because they suffered from the same incorrect view as the great French revolutionary Auguste Blanqui: "Blanqui relied upon the conspiracy of a small group against the reactionary ruling class, thinking that if they succeeded in carrying out a blow against the state, the masses would follow."

First of all, it is a monstrous slander of Blanqui to equate him with the leaders of the coup. Blanqui was not a Marxist, but he was a revolutionary and fought for the working people. He spent most of his adult life in French prisons for his revolutionary activity and was absolutely selfless in his devotion to the cause of the downtrodden.

The coup leaders, by contrast, never worked a day in their lives for their fat privileges—for their limousines, dachas, special restaurants, big salaries, lucrative kickbacks and bribes, special vacation spas, access to Western goods in special stores, and all the other goodies that come with being at the top of the Soviet bureaucracy. They never spent time in jail for resistance to injustice and privilege-they put people in jail for doing that.

They didn't appeal to the masses because they rightfully have a deadly fear and hatred of them, because their material interests are directly opposed to the great mass of workers and peasants. They view working people as objects to be contained and suppressed-they have the same basic mentality as Gorbachev and the rest of the bureaucrats.

For the sake of argument, let's grant "Chairman Marcy" (as his followers call him) his strongest argument for a moment. That is, let's assume for a moment that their goal was to maintain the nationalized and planned economy, but with the domination of a privileged bureaucratic caste over the working people. Even if that were the case, it would be no solution whatever in defense of the social foundations of the workers state.

The rule of the bureaucracy has already led to the stagnation and decline of the planned economy since the 1970s. Bureaucratic rule has not only disrupted, disorganized and sabotaged the planned economy established by the great socialist revolution, as it did from 1923 on, it has become an absolute brake upon the planned economy.

This is the underlying cause of the current crisis. To protect its privileged position, the bureaucracy in the main and as a whole can see no way out except capitalist restoration in cooperation with imperialism.

So even if the coup plotters were Stalinists who wanted to rule in the old way, they would have immediately faced the exact same crisis and be compelled to take the same course towards capitalist restoration that the Gorbachevites have done.

This was not their orientation, however. The plotters meant what they said about continuing on Gorbachev's economic road.

But they were addressing a real problem that Yeltsin, Gorbachev and whoever else is in office for the bureaucracy must grapple with. And this is the fact that capitalism cannot be restored in the USSR, or in Eastern Europe for that matter, without crushing the working class resistance to the prerequisites for capitalism: The creation of an unemployed sector of the working class, the closing down of "inefficient" plants, creation of a true market system and higher prices for basic necessities, massive privatization, cutbacks in social services, acceptance of the domination of foreign imperialist capital, etc.—all of which means a reduced standard of living and a bleak future for the workers and peasants.

In order to do this a strong state of some type will have to be established that can crush the workers. The coup plotters tried to do this through a military dictatorship that proved impossible to establish right now because the masses resist going back to the Stalinist past. Furthermore, the rest of the bureaucracy didn't think they could get away with it without provoking a social explosion.

So for the present, the bureaucracy is going along with the "democratic" fig leaf of Yeltsin and Gorbachev, although with emergency measures and rule by decree.

The only way forward for working people is to sweep away the whole bureaucracy, reestablish workers democracy in the government and in the factories, and thereby put the planned economy on a rational and democratic basis, thereby releasing the pent-up creativity of the working class.

This would go hand in hand with internationalist solidarity with the struggles of workers and peasants the world over, and reversing the Stalinist policy of subordinating the interests of the working people to deals with imperialism.

But the Marcyites don't look in the direction of the workers and their fight against the bureaucracy. In every major conflict between the masses and the bureaucracy since 1956, the followers of "Chairman Marcy" have sided with the bureaucracy, in the name of "defending socialism."

They supported the crushing of the Hungarian workers by Soviet tanks in 1956, of the Czechoslovakian masses and the "Prague Spring" in 1968, of the Polish working class by the military coup in 1981, of the Chinese students in Peking and the workers in Shanghai in 1989. Is it any wonder they supported the attempt to establish a military dictatorship by a sector of the Soviet bureaucracy in 1991?

The leaders of the Workers World Party present themselves as critics of the bureaucracy, even quoting Trotsky in private. But their support of the bureaucracy, or sections of it, and Stalinist methods against the workers to "save" the workers state, inevitably leads them to prettify bureaucratic rule.

For example, they lament the present struggles of the oppressed nationalities in the USSR, on the grounds that national oppression and great Russian chauvinism were eliminated by the revolution. John Catalinotto, writing in the Sept. 5 issue of WW, blames the current upsurge in the oppressed nationalities solely on Gorbachev and Yeltsin, saying nothing about the period from the death of Lenin up to the 1980s.

The impression given is that the whole period of Stalinism up to then was a continuation of Lenin's policies on the national question. But the opposite is true.

While the Bolsheviks championed the oppressed nationalities of the former Tsarist empire, and stood for their right of self-determination including the right to leave the USSR, the bureaucracy under Stalin reversed this course, once again relying on great Russian domination as a prop to its rule (see article by Gerry Foley, p. 20].

The upsurge of the oppressed nationalities is a justified rebellion against the "prison house of nations" that Stalin and his heirs reimposed on the USSR. Lenin's program supporting self-determination for the oppressed nations and nationalities is as applicable today as it was in the revolution against Tsarism because the bureaucracy adopted a policy parallel to Tsarism's.

Many people are socialists and communists in the sense they believe in the ultimate establishment of a classless society. But Marxism is a specific current within socialism that holds that the historic agent for carrying through the socialist transformation is the working class created by capitalism.

Marcy, in contrast, looks to a sector of the petty bourgeois bureaucracy to save the day, even against the working class. But a workers state cannot be defended against the working class. Workers World ends up providing a left cover for the preservation of Stalinism.

Marxists, on the other hand, take their stand with the masses in their battle against the bureaucratic caste, in spite of whatever illusions the masses have in capitalism as a result of decades of bureaucratic misrule.

The Soviet masses have begun their fight under the slogans of democracy and against the privileges of the bureaucracy. The more democratic rights the workers win, the more they will fight for their class interests. This will bring them into conflict with whomever in the bureaucracy seeks to restore capitalism. It is through this fight that the masses will (continued on next page)

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(continued from previous page) learn in practice what capitalist restoration means, will rebuild a new Leninist leadership to overthrow the bureaucracy in toto, and once again will move towards socialism.

PEOPLE'S WEEKLY are, for the most part, technocrats.

"There is no reason to believe the group which took over briefly last week would have put the brakes on radical economic reform. If anything they might have speeded up the process....

"Some members of the coup group issue, as does a fear of the class battles looming in the USSR and at home. A petty bourgeois despair concerning the Soviet masses is the undertone.

Guardian writer Michio Kaku captures this mood best: "I have mixed feelings witnessing one of the most important events in my lifetime, the collapse of the Soviet Union. On one hand, I applaud the courageous democratic forces that have taken to the streets. People should be free to decide their own fate. It lizing for democracy; the rapid dismantling of the tyranny of the KGB and the Communist party bureaucracy; the fulfillment of the Baltic peoples' legitimate and democratic desire for national independence."

Concerning Yeltsin, Solidarity says he is a "former Communist Party boss who reform, party to embrace radical market ...Yeltsin deserves credit for resisting the coup, certainly-and the hundreds of thousands who responded to