The first, the basic, the indispensable task of a revolutionary international is to define correctly the working class organization it proposes to overthrow. In this task the failure of orthodox Trotskyism is complete.
The Transitional Program asserts:
"The definite passing over of the Comintern to the side of the bourgeois order ..".1
Later the same document says:
"The Third International has taken to the road of reformism ... The Comintern's policy... demonstrates that the Comintern is likewise incapable of learning anything further or of changing".2
In the December, 1938, issue of the New International we read why:
"Ten years ago it was predicted that the theory of socialism in one country must inevitably lead to the growth of nationalist tendencies in the sections of the Comintern. This prediction has become an obvious fact... Today we can predict with assurance the inception of a new stage. The growth of imperialist antagonisms, the obvious proximity of the war danger and the equally obvious isolation of the USSR must unavoidably strengthen the centrifugal nationalist tendencies within the Comintern. Each one of its sections will begin to evolve a patriotic policy on its own account. Stalin has reconciled the communist parties of imperialist democracies with their national bourgeoisies..". (Emphasis in original).3
In the last pages of The Draft Program of the Comintern can be seen the prediction that Stalin's theory of socialism in one country would lead the Comintern to disintegration into national sections, like the Social-Democracy on August 4th, 1914.4
This is the theory from 1929 to 1938, absolutely clear and absolutely wrong.
It is precisely this question, this and no other which, since the end of World War II, has crippled the French party. To this day the International does not know whether the Chinese Stalinists are enemies of the Chinese bourgeoisie or collaborators with it.
At the World Congress in 1948 those in Europe who held our views moved that the quoted sections be deleted from the Transitional Program. The motion was voted down.
Trotsky, basing himself on the experience of 1914-1918, believed that there were two fundamental political currents in the world working class movement. One was reformism, the Second International, based upon private property, the defense of the national state, enemy of the proletarian revolution. The other was revolutionary, based upon or fighting for state-property, repudiating the national state, advocate and defender of the proletarian revolution. Between them were various brands of centrism.
Upon these premises he saw the bureaucracy in Russia as centrist, and inevitably headed, as all bureaucracies, for the restoration of private property. That is why the Transitional Program says:
"The fascist, counter-revolutionary elements, growing uninterruptedly express with ever greater consistency, the interests of world imperialism. These candidates for the role of compradors consider, not without reason, that the new ruling layer can insure their positions of privilege only through rejection of nationalization, collectivization and monopoly of foreign trade in the name of the assimilation of 'Western civilization,' i.e.. capitalism. Between these two poles, there are intermediate, diffused Menshevik-SR-liberal tendencies which gravitate toward bourgeois democracy (p. 48. Emphasis added).5
And a little later: "From them, i.e., from the right, we can expect ever more determined attempts in the next period to revise the socialist character of the USSR and bring it closer in pattern to 'Western civilization' in its fascist form" (pp. 49-50).6
Again at the World Congress it was moved to delete this from the Program. This was voted down.
Two years after the World Congress Pablo has come to a decision. When he says that we have to make up our minds to deal with degenerated workers' states for centuries, he is saying that the bureaucracies in Eastern Europe are organically attached to the state-property forms, that they perform a function in production, and this is a form of economy superior to capitalism. The same applies to the Russian bureaucracy, parent and sponsor of the satellite bureaucracies. This, we have to admit, is Trotskyism, logical and complete. Pablo leaves out only the one thing that Trotsky did not leave out, namely, that if this were so, then Marxism is Utopia.
"Johnson-Forest" repudiate all this, theory, practice and methodology. We base our analysis on the theory of state-capitalism. It is commonly believed that this has mainly to do with defeatism or defensism of Russia. That is the least of our concerns.
This is the position of "Johnson-Forest":
(a) As the Social-Democrats were the labor bureaucracy of monopoly capitalism, the Stalinists are the labor bureaucracy of the period of "vast state-capitalist trusts and syndicates".
(b) The Stalinists are not class-collaborationists, fools, cowards, idiots, men with "supple spines," but conscious clear-sighted aspirants for world-power. They are deadly enemies of private property capitalism. They aim to seize the power and take the place of the bourgeoisie. When they support a war or do not support, support the bourgeoisie or do not support, they know exactly what they are doing. The bourgeoisie also knows. In fact everybody, including most workers, knows this, except orthodox Trotskyism.
(c) But the Stalinists are not proletarian revolutionists. They aim to get power by help, direct or indirect, of the Red Army and the protection of Russia and the Russian state. That is the reason why they follow the foreign policy of the Kremlin - it is sheer naked self-interest.
(d) Theirs is a last desperate attempt under the guise of "socialism" and "planned economy" to reorganize the means of production without releasing the proletariat from wage-slavery. Historical viability they have none; for state-ownership multiplies every contradiction of capitalism. Antagonisms of an intensity and scope so far unknown already have Stalinism in their grip. Power merely brings these into the open.
(e) The dilemma of the Fourth International is that it has to recognize that there now exists a labor bureaucracy which is the enemy of private property and national defense and yet is counter-revolutionary. The Fourth International cannot escape this decision: if the destruction of private property and the repudiation of national defense are revolutionary, then Stalinism is revolutionary and there is no historical need for a Fourth International.
(f) These are the questions with which the theory of state-capitalism deals. The theory is not primarily concerned with defensism or defeatism in Russia, about which we can do little. We are primarily concerned here with what the refusal to accept this theory does to the party, its solidarity, its capacity to fight its enemies, its capacity to preserve itself and to grow, in brief, to prepare the liquidation of Stalinism.
1 The quote is from the 'The Proletariat and its Leadership', section of Trotsky's The Transitional Program, (1938).
2 The quote is from the 'Against Opportunism and Unprincipled Revisionism', section of The Transitional Program.
3 Leon Trotsky, 'A Fresh Lesson', The New International, Vol. IV, No. 12, December 1938.
4 The reference is to Section 10, 'The Theory of Socialism in One Country as a Series of Social Patriotic Blunders', in Trotsky's The Draft Program of the Communist International, (1928).
5 The quote is from the 'The USSR and Problems of the Transitional Epoch', section of Trotsky's The Transitional Program, (1938).
6 Ibid.
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