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From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 24, 29 April 1933, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
(This is the second of two articles on this subject. The first appeared in the Militant of April 1.)
All the elements of the objective situation favored the revolutionary solution of the German crisis under the leadership of the Communist party. The crisis was brought to a head by the ravages of the world economic depression. The social democracy was becoming increasingly discredited by the collapse of ah social legislation – “practical” reformism – in the country (the Stalinist leadership of the party even went to the fantastic extreme of declaring the social democracy exposed as “social Fascists” – twin brothers of Fascism). The progress achieved by the Five Year Plan was a powerfully vivid demonstration of the superiority of planned socialist economy (the Stalinists themselves even went further with monstrous exaggerations of the successes and the proclamation of the establishment of a classless society within the next few years). What more could be desired? Yet the Communist Party of Germany failed miserably in the face of the tasks and the possibilities.
It is impossible to grasp the extent of this failure and the responsibility of the Stalinist faction for it without considering the particular policy; pursued in the light of fundamental perspective. The highly unrealistic policy of the ultimatist united front from below was not accidental. It flowed directly from the whole zigzag course initiated by the rise of the petty bourgeois current of Stalinism within the Communist International. It is this basic perspective – or rather, lack of perspective – which prepared the German catastrophe arid it is for that reason that the disastrous policy in Germany can and must be stigmatized as a policy of betrayal.
Bolshevism grew and developed in the struggle against the treacherous petty bourgeois ideology of social democracy. In this struggle it led the proletariat of Russia to victory and showed the working class of the world the way, creating for it the Communist International in the fire of combat. Stalinism arose within the Bolshevik party and the Communist International as a reaction to Bolshevism, feeding upon the fatigue of the Soviet masses after the years of the Strenuous civil war and upon the temporary defeats of the West European proletariat in the years 1918 to 1923. It was in all respects a hangover from the petty bourgeois ideology of the pre-Bolshevik period. Stalin had as late as March 1917 held on to the idea that it is the task of the provisional (democratic) government to “consolidate the achievements” of the revolution in which the masses were the chief actor. On the higher plane of the situation created by the October Revolution, Stalinism reproduced all the basic defeats of the social democracy – its national reformism, its short-sighteduess.
The German social democratic bureaucracy, raised to power in the trade unions and mass organizations by the struggle of the working masses within the framework of the bourgeois state, rejected the Marxist perspective of the permanent revolution even within the narrow bounds of their own country. They rejected the proletarian dictatorship for the Weimar Republic. Their basic motivation was the fear for the preservation of their bureaucratic powers, the little posts and positions which the petty bourgeois layer of the movement had attained to. In the end, their shaky policy inevitably caught them within the trap of its own logic – and landed them in the lap of Fascist reaction.
The Stalinist bureaucracy, raised to power within the Soviet state by the October revolution is no more and no less than this same, petty bourgeois bureaucracy reproduced on a higher historical stage. The anxiety for its own self-preservation and perpetuation has also been its guiding line. It is along this line that Stalinism started on its career with an attack upon the Marxian conception of the permanent revolution defended by L.D. Trotsky and the Russian Bolshevik-Leninists. The Stalin faction declared a, struggle to the end against the permanent revolution in 1923. Two years later it broadened this breach with Marxism by setting up the theory of the possibility of establishing a socialist society in a single country – for all “practical” purposes, in Russia.
Within the framework of national boundaries the perspective of the permanent revolution signified steering a course toward the proletarian dictatorship. Only the dictatorship of the working class could serve as a conclusive guarantee for the completion of the democratic revolution. On the international scene, created by the establishment of the first workers’ republic, this perspective pointed out a course leading to the extension of the October revolution to the rest of the world. Only the victory of the proletarian dictatorship in several of the advanced capitalist countries could assure the establishment of a socialist society in Soviet Russia with all its economic backwardness. This basic perspective called for a policy of intense attention and active aid to the development of the proletarian revolutionary movement in the capitalist world, in the first place. Secondly, it called for an internal policy of strengthening the Soviet; regime by increasing the share of the socialist sector in economy so as to maintain the alliance of the working class and the peasantry as the practical base of the proletarian dictatorship. The rejection of the fundamental perspective meant, in reality, also a rejection of the policies flowing from it.
By repudiating the perspective of revolutionary realism the Stalinists deprived the Soviet government and the Communist International, of which they had gained control, of the possibility of conducting a consistent policy corresponding with the practical tasks. The utopianism of their theory of socialism in one country predicated their utterly barren strategy and tactics in the problems which arose.
The perspective of the permanent revolution coupled with the Leninist evaluation of the imperialist epoch as one of social convulsions, wars and revolutions, signified struggle. That is above all what the petty bourgeois wants to avoid. The petty bourgeois Stalinist bureaucracy preferred to console itself with the possibility of shutting itself off from the rest of the world. On the basis of the theory of building a socialist society within the isolated Soviet state, Stalinism proceeded to heap disaster upon the international proletariat. The problem of the Chinese revolution arose. The task there was poised as one of not throwing Chiang Kai-Shek (the national bourgeoisie) into the arms of imperialism, of not giving the imperialists an occasion for intervention against Soviet Russia where socialism could be established if foreign intervention was forestalled. The defenders of the permanent revolution, the Bolshevik-Leninists pointed out that the problem was one of strengthening the bonds between the Chinese masses and the Soviet Union, that the Chinese masses could be won as fighting allies only through the development of the proletarian revolution and the setting up of the proletarian dictatorship. That required the independence of the Chinese Communist Party and a course toward Soviets. The Stalin faction had its way. For the sake of not losing Chiang Kai-Shek, it handed over the Communist party to the bourgeois Kuo Min Tang – bag and baggage. The result is well known. Chiang Kai-Shek and the Chinese bourgeoisie received all the Stalinist aid gleefully and in due time slaughtered the vanguard of the working masses; made their peace with the imperialists and in 1929 came to the brink of a war against the Soviet Union itself.
The problem of the British General Strike and the movement that preceded it, is an equally illuminating example of the period of outright opportunism that followed immediately upon the heels of the orientation toward “socialism in one country”. The disasters of the Chinese revolution and the British General Strike on a large scale and all the lesser disasters, on a smaller scale as well as the bankruptcy of the opportunist policy within the Soviet Union itself – the bloodless insurrection of the kulaks in the spring of 1928 finally opened the eyes of the Stalinist empiricists – pushed the bureaucracy toward a sharp turn to the extreme Left.
Again it was a matter of self-preservation. Soviet economy was at an impasse. The tactics of the “bloc of four classes” in China and of the Anglo-Russian Committee had only increased the isolation of the U.S.S.R. and undermined the basis of the bureaucracy itself. The zigzag to the ultra-Left which initiated the famous “third period” clearly revealed the political character of Stalinism as that of a vacillating bureaucratic Centriam.
Its method appeared clearly as the method of empiricism, of trial and terror – lacking in all foresight and irresponsible in its consequences. The policy of ultimatism, of commands from above, was substituted for the policy of opportunist blocs. In place of the united front with any one and every one and under all conditions came the united front “from below only”. The highest fruit of this blind policy, which was accompanied by a growing disinterestedness in the progress of the international Communist movement, was the debacle of January 1933 in Germany. The failure of the German Communist Party to lead the working class against the Fascist onslaught, its miserable disappearance from the scene, is the culmination point of the whole headless course of Stalinism in the Communist International.
The collapse of the Communist Party of Germany deprives the Communist International of its one great mass party and the Soviet Union of its strongest ally in the capitalist world. It is the last item in the balance sheet of ten years of the rule of bureaucratic Centrism in the Communist movement. The course of Stalinism, which began with the repudiation of the concept of permanent revolution, has wound up in the most frightful isolation of the workers’ fatherland. The Stalinist bureaucracy too, has been caught within the trap of its own logic. It has endangered the existence of the Soviet Union from without and from within.
Hitler’s Brown Shirts are on the march. The alliance between the workers and peasants – the practical basis of Soviet economy and the proletarian dictatorship – is being threatened by that same headless, un-Marxian course which has led to disaster in Germany, by the course of vacillating bureaucratic Centrism. No time is to be lost. If Communism, if the Soviet Union if to live, Stalinism must be destroyed. Only the re-establishment of the Marxian perspective of the permanent revolution, only the return of its defenders – of L.D. Trotsky, Rakovsky and the Bolshevik-Leninists – to their rightful posts can aid in cleansing the working class vanguard of the petty bourgeois poison which had been paralyzing it and clear the road for the effective defense of the fortress of the proletarian revolution and for a new upsurge of the revolutionary movement in the International.
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