a. The Stalinist theory and practice of the party is the direct result of the Stalinist conception of Plan. The party consists of the elite, the most efficient, the most loyal, the most devoted, etc. The party mobilizes the proletariat, politically, economically and morally, to carry out the Plan. There is here no parallel with the political parties and politics of capitalist competition and bourgeois democracy. In state-capitalism the state becomes capitalistic in the sense of administration, supervision, control against the proletariat. The party forms the state in its own image, which is the reflection of the productive process of state-capitalism. That was the party of Hitler (despite historical differences), that is the party of Stalin.
The Stalinist parties outside Russia function on the same model. Their attitude to the membership and the proletariat is that of an elite leading backward workers. All initiative, policy, direction comes from the Stalinist leaders. Society will be saved if it follows them, defends them, puts its trust in them. Historical circumstances may alter their practice, but in their fundamental conceptions there is no difference whatever between the CP in Russia and the CP in the United States.
b. Upon the basis of its analysis of state-capitalism and Plan, the Leninist party must form its own revolutionary theory of the party. The party is, in Lenin's words, based upon the factory but upon the progressive co-operation aspect of the factory: unity, discipline and organization of the working class, in unalterable opposition to the theory and practice of the elite.
Every age has its own specific development of production and its specific social relations. Each separate International has its own separate (and antagonistic) conception of the party which is rooted in its own social base and its conception of its political tasks in relation to that base. Marx's conception of the party in 1848, the way he organized the First International, carefully explained by him; the organization of the Second International which Lenin accepted as sound up to 1914; the organization of the Third International, all were different and show a dialectical progression. Lenin never conceived of a mass party of two and a half million people before the struggle for power.
The whole of the Stalinist theory and practice of the organization of the party is based upon the administrative-bureaucratic Plan.
Conversely, the revolutionary party expands and develops its own theory on the basis of the vast revolutionary upheavals which are stimulated in the Proletariat by the structure of state-capitalism. The European proletariat in Italy, in France, in Spain, and the American proletariat, have already shown us that from the beginning of the social revolution, the proletariat as a whole will be organized to become the state and to manage production. Here concretely is the embodiment of Lenin's reiterated phrase "to a man" which was impossible of realization in backward Russia in 1917.
Not only does the revolutionary proletariat of our age make its tremendous mass mobilizations. The petty-bourgeoisie does the same as in the Nazi party and the almost overnight creation of the French Rally of millions by de Gaulle. The Stalinist leaders aim to control the mass proletarian mobilizations in exactly the same manner as de Gaulle aims to control those of the petty-bourgeoisie. The Leninist party in 1950, in practice where it can, but in theory always, must be the expression of the mass proletarian mobilization aimed against the bureaucracy as such. This bureaucracy in Russia, in France and Italy (even where it is in opposition) and in the United States is the embodiment of the Plan of state-capitalism.
No question is more important theoretically, not only internally but externally, than this of the relation between party, the state and the Plan. For theoreticians and millions of workers everywhere it is the central question. No substantial section of any society today will die in defense of private property. That today is dead. The question is: can the nationalized property be planned without having as the inevitable consequence the domination of a single party? The popular formulation, one-party state, is absolutely and exactly right. "Johnson-Forest" have given here the essentials of the answer.
c. What does the Fourth International have to say on this question? It can be summed up in the following: The Stalinists are criminals, opposed to democracy in the party; the Trotskyists are believers in democracy as practiced by Lenin.
The history of Trotskyist theory of the party, however, reinforces Stalinism in spite of all its criticism. In 1931 Trotsky believed that "with the weakening of the party or with its degeneration even an unavoidable crisis in economy can become the cause for the fall of the dictatorship".1 What actually took place was the reverse. When the bureaucratic-administrative Plan of the ruling class was finally substituted for the planning of the revolutionary proletariat, it was the Bolshevik party that was liquidated. State-property remained.
d. Fifteen years later with the Bolshevik party destroyed, the Fourth International improves upon the original thesis. The World Congress thesis says:
"The political dictatorship today as twenty years ago is decisive in preventing the complete collapse of planning, the break through of the petty-capitalist market, and the penetration of foreign capital into Russia".2
"The political dictatorship" is an abstraction. Concretely it is the party of Stalin, the murderers of the Bolshevik Party, the antithesis in every respect of the Bolshevik Party. The theory is false whether it is standing on its head or its feet, and in either form it is useless as a theoretical weapon against Stalinism.
e. Unfortunately, this conception is not confined to Russia. The first sentence of the Transitional Program states that the crisis of the revolution is the crisis of revolutionary leadership.3 This is the reiterated theme.
Exactly the opposite is the case. It is the crisis of the self-mobilization of the proletariat. As we shall show, and it is perfectly obvious logically, this theme of orthodox Trotskyism implies that there is a competition for leadership, and that whereas the other Internationals have betrayed, the Fourth International will be honest. Exactly the contrary must be the analysis.
The concept that the whole problem is a problem of revolutionary leadership does not, cannot, upon its political premises, pose on the one hand the Stalinist leadership as clear-sighted, determined leaders with their own theory, program, policy for the enslavement of the proletariat; and opposed to them, ourselves as leaders, not simply "honest" but with a totally different conception of the role, movement and function of the proletariat. Honesty and dishonesty, sincerity and betrayal imply that we shall do what they, because of "supple spines," have failed to do. We do not propose to do what they have failed to do. We are different from them in morals because we are different from them in everything, origin, aims, purposes, strategy, tactics and ends. This fundamental antagonism "Johnson-Forest" derive from the theory of state-capitalism.
From the Stalinists' observation of state-capitalism, their conception of the party becomes the essence of bureaucracy, bureaucratic administration, bureaucratic organization, the bureaucratic party. For the Fourth International, on the other hand, it is a matter of life and death, in the analysis of modern economy, to counterpose what has been created by the modern economy, the mass mobilization of the proletariat and sections of the petty-bourgeoisie, as an opposition in form and content to Stalinism and the Social Democracy, and our role as a party in relation to this. To say that all the proletariat needs is revolutionary leadership drowns all differences between us and strengthens their conception of the party.
Trotsky at any rate was practiced in the leadership of revolution. The Transitional Program and particularly the conversations preceding it are sufficient indication of his profound comprehension of the mass movement. But as this whole document has shown, he gave it no theoretical basis. He did not relate it to the new stage of world economy. The result is the increased revolutionism of the masses becomes nothing else in the minds of his followers but an increased reaction to the crimes of capitalism, a mass base for leadership.
The theory as stated has had funereal consequences in our movement. Germain, for example, writes in an exhaustive analysis of the Stalinist parties:
"But despite all that has been revealed about the crimes of the GPU, the large mass of Stalinist workers will continue to follow their Stalinist leaders - or will fall back in to complete passivity - until the day when the Trotskyist parties can prove to them in practice the superiority of their policy over the policy of Stalinism". (Fourth International, May, 1947).4
In the resolution presented to the World Congress in 1948 by our European co-thinkers, there was pointed out in detail the practical consequences for politics of this conception of the party which constantly appears in the strategy and tactics of the Fourth International, particularly in France. It is the placing of this impossible, this fantastic, responsibility upon the Trotskyist organizations as they are that in the end produces Pablo.
1 The editor has been unable to identify the source of this quote.
2 The quote is from the section 'The Social Nature of the USSR' of the Resolution on The USSR and Stalinism, adopted by the Second Congress of the Fourth International, in Paris, in April 1948.
3 See the opening sentence of The Transitional Program, (1938).
4 The quote is from the section 'A New Edition of the "Third Period"' of: Ernest Germain, 'Stalinism: How to Understand It and How to Fight It', Fourth International, Vol.8 No.5, May 1947, pp.136-144.
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