Documents 3 to 17 and 19 to 24 originally published in Internal Bulletins of the SWP and the International Bulletins of the International Committee
Clarke's Views on Stalinism
Revisionism comes from a masked change in the fundamental theory, methods and perspectives of the revolutionary workers' movement. It is a departure from scientific socialism in theory and in practice which derails the class struggle from a correct and consistent coarse. It is undertaken under pressure from alien social ideas, interests and forces. In its first stages, revisionism does not come forward in an open and forthright challenge to the Marxist position, but proceeds by stealth. It vies to insinuate its new ideas into the structure of the established ones, inserting them as levers in order to undermine and eventually overthrow the established positions. It doles out its modifications bit by bit, until it becomes bold enough to counterpose its revisions squarely to the old line.
This procedure often may appear like deliberate deceit; it is imposed upon the revisionists, however, by circumstances beyond their control. On the one hand, this procedure reflects the objective trend of revisionist thinking, which deviates from Marxism a step or so at a time -- often without admitting that fact to itself, or to speak of others. On the other hand, the revisionists have to reckon at every stage with the solidly-rooted traditions of the revolutionary movement, which stand like a giant barrier athwart its path; and they must therefore resort to protective colouration. The favourite pretext is to claim that they are doing nothing but bringing Marxism up to date, modernizing it, bringing it abreast of new events unforeseen by anyone, especially the founders and great leaders of the movement. For example, in 1939-40, Shachtman counterposed to Trotsky's vigorous defence of Marxism, what he called the 'concreteness of living events.' And that is precisely how the Cochranites have been proceeding.
I propose to demonstrate this by analyzing George Clarke's article in the January-February magazine entitled, 'Stalin's Death -- Stalinism's Future.' In this article we see evidence of a growing disposition to embellish Stalinism, and to eliminate the distinctive counter-positions of Trotsky. Clarke alters the history of the Soviet Union since 1923; he alters our scientific definition of Soviet society and the Stalinist bureaucracy; he paints up the role of Stalin -- all of this in order to pave the way for a change in certain planks of the Trotskyist programme, especially our position on the inevitability of a political revolution through the mass uprising of the Soviet workers against the Kremlin caste. Clarke does not do this directly but in a concealed fashion, by confusions, omissions, as well as outright falsifications.
It is quite possible, of course, for a comrade now and then to strike a false note. When it is called to the comrade's attention, he will correct his error. Even though he may persist, one needn't place too much weight upon it if it is an incidental, episodic falsity. But when a leading comrade, who presumably speaks in the name of the party as executive editor of its theoretical organ, writes an article on such an occasion on such a subject, and strikes a whole series of false notes then one detects a methodical line, and one says: This is not simply a false note, but a new tune.
This was a smuggling operation on two counts. First, Clarke didn't show the article to any of the majority comrades who had co-responsibility for the contents of the magazine. Second, we can assume that his reason for not showing the article was that, under the guise of presenting an orthodox Trotskyist analysis, he wanted to slip in views which have a different trade mark and another content. That is why it is necessary to subject his article to careful scrutiny and critical dismemberment.
Let us first contrast the two versions of the history of the Soviet Union since 1923 -- the Trotskyist version and the version Clarke sketches. For us, the development of the Soviet Union in the last 30 years has been an extremely contradictory one. Politically, these 30 years have been essentially a period of counter-revolution. After the giant revolutionary leap forward, the working class was totally deprived of its power and rights. A bureaucratic caste numbering millions concentrated all power in its hands and set up a totalitarian apparatus to oppress the people and to guard its power, privileges and income. Stalin became the agent, the head, the supreme arbiter of this completely counter-revolutionary social stratum upon which his regime directly rested. This domination of the usurping bureaucracy in the Soviet Union led to the transformation of the Communist International and the Stalinist parties into mere instruments of the bureaucracy. It led to one defeat after another of the world working class, and to the degeneration of the Stalinized international movement into a reactionary, and finally, a counter-revolutionary political force in the world labour movement, as was witnessed in Spain and during the Second World War.
However, while betraying the revolution at home and abroad and destroying the gains in the Soviet super-structure, the Stalinist bureaucracy did not do away with the fundamental economic conquests of the revolution -- the nationalized property, planned economy and monopoly of foreign trade. These were maintained, developed and after the Second World War, even extended. The socialized property and productive relations were factors and forces primarily responsible for the amazing achievements registered by the Soviet Union in war and peace. These achievements were possible because of the surviving institutions of the 1917 revolution -- and despite the crimes and mismanagement of the bureaucracy at home and abroad. The credit for them belongs, we have always contended, not to Stalinism, but to the revolution which the bureaucracy opposed and exploited for its selfish aims. That has always been the Trotskyist viewpoint.
Now one would have expected a Trotskyist spokesman to have presented that viewpoint as the line of an article summing up Stalin's lifetime from 1923 on. But what is the history of these years according to Clarke? For him, the Stalinist epoch was a period, not of political counter-revolution, but of 'reaction.' He does not once use the designation 'political counter-revolution' in his article summarizing the past 30 years. One would gather from his treatment that what actually took place was not a collision between the forces of the revolution and of the counter-revolution within the Soviet Union, but rather a revolution which went forward in a zig-zag way. During this period, despite twists and turns and setbacks, the revolution, according to Clarke, continued.
For example, he writes that, after a right turn from 1923 to 1929, 'The revolution turned to the left again. ...The proletariat imposed its historic interests on this bureaucracy. ...The Stalinist bureaucracy were compelled in the interests of self-preservation to again arouse the plebeians of the 20th century.' And how was this done? They summoned the working class 'to carry the major brunt of toil and sacrifice in the execution of the Five-Year Plans' and sent out the 'most hardy and courageous elements of this class' to collectivize peasants. This aroused colossal enthusiasm among the workers during this period and the revolution spurted forward.
Now it is true that the course of leaning upon the kulaks in the struggle against the revolutionary elements of the working class was abruptly halted and turned about after 1928-1929. But, as Trotsky explained, the resultant left nun of the Stalinist bureaucracy, taken in panic, did not represent a renewal of the revolution but rather an attempt by the bureaucracy to save itself from further aggressions on the part of the openly restorationist elements. In the course of this struggle, the working class in the Soviet Union was prostrate, bound and gagged, and a new aristocracy crystallized.
The workers naturally gave support to the bureaucracy insofar as the latter proceeded against the kulaks -- though giving no sanction to the methods of the bureaucracy. They were naturally drawn in, and with great enthusiasm, to the first achievements of the Five-Year Plan, since this too was an objective in their own interests. But at the same time they were completely excluded from democratic participation in the Plan, and mercilessly deprived of the necessary means to,, give their best to it. According to Clarke, however, this period was essentially an upsurge of the revolution.
Clarke's picture of the historical process is not one of the revolution reversed and betrayed, but the revolution impeded yet carried forward, though in a harsh, expensive and bureaucratic manner. What, according to Clarke, was the role of the bureaucracy in this process? Was it counter-revolutionary? No. According to Clarke, it was 'anti-revolutionary.' Clarke introduces here a change in the vocabulary, traditional to our movement; and this change in vocabulary is part and parcel of his change in appraisal. All this is so consistent that one can only deduce that it springs from a different set of estimates of the events themselves. The bureaucracy is not the promoter of the counter-revolution, but in certain of its aspects and activities becomes, the involuntary promoter of the revolution. This is reflected in Stalin's role, since obviously no one better represented the bureaucracy than Stalin himself.
I will quote what Clarke says on this: 'The revolution not only survived' -- that is, survived the throttling of the revolutionary wing of the Russian working class, the smashing of the left opposition and the removal of the proletariat 'as the conscious guiding force of the revolution and from all direct participation in the state and the economy' -- 'it not only survived but it even succeeded in making its agent in a distorted and unexpected way the very engineer of the triumphant reaction, Stalin himself.'Note here the avoidance of that terrible word 'counter-revolution. 'Stalin is no more than the engineer of the 'triumphant reaction.' Further on, Clarke states this view even more precisely: 'Stalin's role was fundamentally a barrier to the progress of the Russian Revolution.
Now this puts everything upside down. It was not Stalin who was a 'barrier to the revolution,' but the revolution which was the greatest of barriers to Stalin. It was not the revolution which 'impressed Stalin unwillingly into its service,' but the counter-revolution which willingly impressed him into its service. At least this is the way Trotsky explained it to us. It was precisely the living forces of the revolution, its conquests as embodied in the structure of the Soviet Union itself and the consciousness of the people which stood as the barrier to the political counter-revolution embodied in the bureaucracy and directed by Stalin as its spearhead.
Let us listen further to Clarke. The achievements of the Russian Revolution in the post-Lenin era 'were consequently a victory over Stalin's opportunism.' Over Stalin's 'opportunism'!! -- not over his counter-revolution. 'It was not he who led the revolution (there is a real discovery!) but the revolution which impressed him unwillingly into its service, at tremendous cost to itself.' Such a description could by and large be applied to a Tito who did, in an opportunistic and empirical fashion, so lead the Yugoslav revolution. We say: 'the revolution caught up Tito and his party and his movement and projected them forward.' But that was not true of Stalin. He led the counter-revolution, not only in relation to the Soviet Union, but later in relation to Yugoslavia itself.
For Clarke, Stalin appears to have played a political role similar to his military role in the Second World War. He wasn't a volunteer of the revolution but its conscripted Marshal drawn into it willy-nilly just as he led the Soviet Union to victory in the war, though in a bureaucratic and reactionary way, so, despite zig-tags and in a bureaucratic and reactionary way, he was pulled along with the revolution which crawled forward during his period of rule.
Confusion is an indispensable weapon of revisionism. As a matter fact, we can say that with the revisionists confusion is almost an art. Clarke's article you find this art displayed. Take the term 'regime,' example. Clarke uses the word in two different and opposing ways. one point, be uses it to mean the political regime, that is, the political superstructure; at another point, the term refers to the social regime. He says, for instance, that it is a 'totally false conception that Stalin like other dictators in the past was the keystone of the Soviet regime.' Now in one sense that is true; but in another sense, it is not true. Stalin was certainly not the keystone of the economic regime in the USSR, that is, the social foundation. But on the other hand, he was the centre of the bonapartist dictatorship which is the governing system in the Soviet Union. But this dictatorship rests upon foundations of a completely contradictory character; a social regime, on the one hand, which issued from the October Revolution, and a political regime, on the other hand, which issued from a counter-revolution against the achievements of the revolution. Yet at one point Clarke compares the Stalin regime with Lenin's regime and with the post-Stalin regime, and one would therefore naturally assume that by 'regime' he means simply political regime. At another time he uses the term in comparing Stalin's regime with Cromwell's regime, as though he were talking about the social foundations of the regime.
Now this again is not accidental. By using the word in two different senses and not making it clear that he is doing so, he blurs over and in fact erases the fundamental and growing conflict between the social foundations of the regime and the totalitarian rulership which is essentially opposed to it. As you examine these examples of Clarke's method, it becomes increasingly clear that confusion is the objective result if not its conscious aim. The result of Clarke's blurring of the characterization of the political regime, is that it becomes not counter-revolutionary but 'reactionary' and 'anti-revolutionary'; it is no longer a more or less conscious agent of counter-revolution, but its leaders become converted into objective agents of the revolution.
This leads Clarke to revise our traditional concepts of the social regime itself. He characterizes the Soviet economy as 'nationalized in form, socialist in essence.' In addition, he states that the methods of planning now in force are 'socialist methods.' Comrades who have studied The Revolution Betrayed know that Trotsky polemicized against the Stalinists on this very point. Trotsky explained that Soviet society was a transitional system halfway between capitalism and socialism, and marked by all kinds of contradictions. In its foundations there were the elements necessary for a socialist society: on the other hand, in the superstructure and in Soviet society itself there were forces and tendencies which were directly anti-socialist. He explained that it was necessary to take all of these into account in estimating the real character and direction of development of the Soviet Union. He said that the methods of planning of the bureaucracy were not at all those which would be proper to a democratic workers' government or to a socialist society; that these methods of planning were carried on for the benefit of the bureaucracy in the first place, even though in the last analysis the forces of production in the Soviet Union experienced a great development thanks to their nationalized character. The Soviet economy, he explained, represents a higher system of property and production relations; but in order for the methods of planning to be genuinely socialist in tendency, they would have to be under democratic control and with the direct participation of the producing and consuming masses themselves.
One would have expected that, in a review of 30 years of Stalinist rule, Clarke would give a proper characterization of Stalinism. But in his article he characterizes Stalinism solely as 'a philosophy of conservatism and defeatism,' 'the rationalization of a temporary phenomenon,' and so forth. That is, he gives us an ideological definition. He includes a political characterization, up to a certain point, when he indicates some of the historical circumstances which formed the Stalinist bureaucracy. But what he leaves out are the material interests of the Soviet bureaucracy, the power and income of a social stratum which numbered, according to Trotsky's figures when he wrote The Revolution Betrayed, about 25 million people who benefitted from the privileges of the labour aristocrats and bureaucrats. The material interests of this enormous bureaucracy find their political and ideological expression through Stalinism, and are projected internationally through all its agencies. But it is precisely this material content of Stalinism that fades away in Clarke's definition.
I could go into several other deficiencies in the article, but I want now to point out the function which these revisions perform. They are all links in a chain. The revision of Soviet history, of the nature of "Soviet economy, of the Stalinist methods of planning, of the nature of the Stalinist bureaucracy and Stalin's role -- all these are necessary steps leading up to Clarke's specific political conclusions. According to Clarke, the revolution is once more moving to the left within the Soviet Union. This process has been gathering momentum since 1943. It was already visible at the 19th Congress of the Communist Party. It has been accelerated considerably since Stalin's death. (In Clarke's discussion article,'Shake-up in the Kremlin,' in the latest magazine, he says: 'Writing about events since Stalin's death a scant four months ago is almost like describing a scene from a fast-moving train.' One comrade remarked that this is an optical illusion -- Clarke is moving away so fast from Trotskyist positions that he confuses his own motion with movement to the left on the part of the Stalinist bureaucracy.)
But to return to Clarke's description of the movement of Stalinist bureaucracy. Today, he says, as has happened on several occasions in the past, the momentum of the revolutionary upsurge dragging the bureaucracy along with it, though the bureaucracy resists the pressure, either in whole or in part. The film of history, says, has reversed its direction and 'is now unwinding toward social democracy in the USSR.' Now we do not deny, thanks to all revolutionary developments which issued out of the Second World War and its aftermath, that this is the underlying and fundamental direction of development and that it has been gaining momentum that is to say, that the fundamental positions of Stalinism and the Stalinist bureaucracy are being undermined on a world scale and in part, within the Soviet Union itself.
But the question to be asked and answered is: How is the destruction of the bureaucracy going to come about? What is our fundamental line on that? We say that the overthrow of Stalinism and of its bearers, the Soviet bureaucracy, can and will occur only through an uprising of the Soviet workers against the totalitarian regime, the smashing and overthrow of this regime by the workers, and by a renovated workers democracy.
Clarke offers a different set of ideas and perspectives. In his article 'Stalin's Role -- Stalinism's Future,' he projected them openly for the first time. He raised there the possibility of three variants for the process of the downfall of Stalinism. I would like to read the salient paragraph. 'Will the process take the form of a violent upheaval against the bureaucratic rule in the USSR? Or will concessions to the masses and sharing of power -- as was the long course in the English bourgeois revolution in the political relationship between the rising bourgeoisie and the declining nobility -- gradually undermine the base of the bureaucracy? Or will the evolution be a combination of both forms? That we cannot now foresee. But that this process means not the end of socialism, but in great renaissance -- that is certain.'
Here you have three possibilities: (1) a violent upheaval against bureaucratic rule in the USSR; (2) the reform of the bureaucracy, its 'sharing of power' with the Soviet people; and (3) a combination of both forms. I am at a loss, as I said before to deal with the third variant -- except to point out the intrinsic absurdity of combining the mutually exclusive perspectives and programmes of the reform of the bureaucracy with its revolutionary overthrow. We understand that in the first stages of the gathering of forces of the new revolution there can be concessions and modifications in the Soviet set up produced by shifts in the relations between the masses and the bureaucracy, prior to the decisive overthrow of the bureaucracy. But how you can take two completely opposed forms of development and put them together into a single reality -- that I will leave to Clarke to explain.
But I want to concentrate here on the two counter-positions, namely, the perspective of political revolution and the perspective of reform. In this article Clarke doesn't give anything to substantiate the possibility of a reform except a historical parallel in the 'Glorious Revolution' of 1688-89 in England. This was a political revolution, to be sure, but of a special bourgeois type. The government of James II was overthrown and replaced by the government of William III by means of an armed struggle. William landed on England with a certain number of forces and there were a few battles, but not a long civil war or convulsive social upheaval like the 'Great Rebellion.' But the social essence of the revolution was revealed in its outcome: an agreement between the ruling bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisified nobility, in which the latter were exclusively subordinated to the former and thereupon became the direct agency of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie governed through Parliament, which was thereby elevated to the political supremacy it has held ever since. This was a compact between two propertied classes, directed against the masses -- similar to the compact, for example, between the Southern planters and the Northern bourgeoisie in establishing the US constitution of 1788-89 against the masses of the people. It was precisely because there were common material bonds of property and privilege, that these two classes could share the power, with the dominant class, the bourgeoisie, giving a few concessions to the other in order to arrive at a constitutional compromise.
We must now ask: How does this resemble the relations between the Soviet ruling caste and the workers? Here there is a privileged commanding stratum, in full possession of all the institutions and instruments of power, confronting a vast, potentially all-powerful but unarmed working class, politically atomized, without any property of its own, without any organizations at its disposal. This working class has no control over the Communist Party, over the government, over the unions. It cannot hold meetings of its own. It has no newspapers. It is even afraid to talk openly because of fear of the secret police.
How is this working class going to gain some rights? Even more, how are these mighty millions of Soviet workers going to get rid of the omnipotent bureaucracy? They can certainly do this only by the most ruthless mass struggle against that power. The struggle will no doubt have to pass through quite a few stages, and we cannot know now what the praise processes will be before the bureaucracy is overthrown. But the essence of our position lies in the inevitability of the revolutionary struggle of the workers against the bureaucracy.
Clarke's perspective is quite different. It is one of the bureaucracy, under increasing pressure from below, doling out reform bit by bit, dispersing the power little by Little from itself to the masses -- a new deal, one card at a time, until the proletariat feels it has such a strong hand it can play the trump card. Then the bureaucracy will either have to come to terms or be destroyed. But there is one little omission here, namely the decisive moment -- that is, the revolutionary upheaval itself, the general uprising of the workers, the qualitative change in the situation. That is precisely what Trotsky stressed time and again after 1933 when the Trotskyists, from their analysis of the historical development of the Stalinist bureaucracy and its grip upon Soviet society, came to the position that it would require a revolutionary offensive of tremendous power to get rid of this entrenched caste.
In his article in the January-February magazine Clarke only brought forward these variants as hypotheses. But in his two articles in the latest issue, one on the Beria purge and the other on the events in East Germany, he makes more explicit what we had already deduced from his generalized revisions. In the article, 'Shake-up in the Kremlin,' he specifically brings forward the possibility and even probability that a section of the bureaucracy, the reformist, liberalized section, will pit itself against the diehards who want to continue the old policy of repression; and this 'liberal' section may summon the masses into action and even lead them in struggle in the first phases of the revolution.
I will read you what he said on this in the original version of his article (the passage as published was modified a bit after we challenged it). 'One section of the bureaucracy, because of its training, its attachments, because it is therefore more susceptible to pressure from below and to the needs of Soviet society -- and, in the interest of sheer self-preservation -- may attempt in the ensuing struggles to mobilize and organize the masses in independent action. In that struggle the masses will eventually devise their own programme which will signify the end of all bureaucratic rule. More likely is the possibility' -- Clarke is a great one for variants -- 'that goaded by their discontents, encouraged by the more apparent weaknesses of the regime, the masses will utilize the divisions on the top and the consequent greater freedom of action to launch their own independent struggles; they will find spokesmen more generally reflecting their needs and aspirations and draw a section of the bureaucracy behind them in their struggle to re-establish workers' democracy.'
Now here you have the cart, and here you have the horse, in either order. In the first case, the bureaucracy is going to lead the masses. In the second case, the masses are going to lead the bureaucracy, more precisely a section of it. Take your choice between these two variants. In any event, there is going to be team work between a section of the bureaucracy and the masses -- whether a part of the bureaucracy takes the initiative and leads the masses in independent action, or the masses take independent action and lead a part of the bureaucracy. This is the probable outcome, as Clarke projects it, of the 'new course' pursued by the post-Stalin regime in the Soviet Union.
In his article on Germany, this perspective also finds its reflection in Clarke's remarks on the conduct of the Soviet army. One of his main points in this article is to show how moderately the occupying forces behaved toward the workers' uprising. He muffles his point, of course, by saying that the workers hesitated to take on both the East German regime and the Soviet troops and tanks at the same time which is true. But what he left out was the objectively counterrevolutionary role of the occupying forces, no matter how moderately they behaved.
Let me explain precisely what this role was, and what it was incumbent upon a Trotskyist to set forth. The East German working class almost in its entirety -- certainly all the energetic elements in it -- set out to get rid of the hated Stalinist regime. The regime had no strength within itself at all. It was merely a group of frightened bureaucrats, as shown by its panicky reactions. It couldn't even rely upon its own police forces. What saved the regime? Was it American imperialism! No. Was it the lack of strength within the East German workers? No. They had the forces to get rid of the regime. The sole objective factor which prevented the political revolution of the East German workers from being victorious was the presence of the occupying forces of the Kremlin.
It is precisely that fact which constituted the counter-revolutionary role and effect of Stalinism in East Germany. Again a Trotskyist had to ask himself: Even if the aim of the working class was limited to democratizing East Germany, how could that have been done without getting rid of all the agencies of the Kremlin bureaucracy? Not only the Grotewohl regime; not only its bureaucratically dominated Communist Party; but above all, its main instrument of force, the Soviet troops and tanks in that territory. Clarke, however, sets out to give quite the opposite impression.
Finally, in neither of these two latest articles -- and this is the other side of his position -- does he bring forward the inescapable necessity of the mass uprising to get rid of the Kremlin bureaucracy. It is for that reason that we decided to open a public discussion with Clarke and the Cochranites in the March-April issue of the magazine. We are publishing a letter by Comrade Stein challenging two of the main errors in the January-February article; a long editorial note by the editors -- that is, the majority editors -- in which we solidarize ourselves with Comrade Stein's criticisms; and a statement disassociating ourselves from Clarke's analysis, and announcing for the next issue an article which will present our estimate of recent events in the Soviet Union and East Germany. From there we propose to take the discussion throughout the party and the world movement.
Trotskyism Versus Revisionism Document Index | Toward a History of the Fourth International | Trotsky Encyclopedia Home Page
Last updated 17.8.2003