August/September 1951 (Third World Congress debate) Pierre Bleibtreu, delegate of the French majority
There is no crisis of the French party. It is a quite different phenomenon: disagreements with the positions of the IEC. There are repercussions in the party because comrades have come out in favour of these positions.
We rejected the theses of the Ninth Plenum not because everything in them is mistaken, but because they are confused on many points and contradictory on basic notions. In these conditions (an eclectic juxtaposition of two different lines), it was our duty to define new bases for the discussion at the world congress.
To make progress in examining the disagreements, it is necessary to clear the ground of the problem of the war. From the outset, we have stated clearly that the divergences do not bear on this problem. The divergences that exist on this problem are only the reflection of deeper divergences concerning Stalinism. Our critique defends the gains of Trotskyism.
On the war, I will state our position briefly. In the aftermath of the Korean War, we were unanimous in considering that there had been a turn towards the irreversible preparation of war. This orientation of imperialism towards war stems from conditions that grip it implacably by the throat: the decomposition of imperialism, the mobilisation of the masses which calls the existence of capitalism into question. From this point of view, the elementary Marxist notion is that imperialism will engage in partial wars against the revolution, alternating with compromises with the Soviet bureaucracy. This without being able to evade the necessity of confronting the whole of the revolutionary forces with modern means. This overall necessity, this theoretical schema, does not by itself resolve the whole set of problems. The congress is meeting with a period ahead of it that is not one of the immediate declaration of war. Of course, imperialism must intervene against the revolution, but the Korean War has shown us that theoretical necessity is not enough, for in that case it is the strategy of MacArthur that should have triumphed. Such a period exists because of the degree of strength of the revolution and the degree of technical weakness of imperialism. There is a need to prepare such a war in order to achieve the objective of destroying the revolutionary movement. This period of two to four years is not marked by the prostration of the proletariat. What dominates this interval is the dynamic of the revolutionary movement, of the mass movement. From this point of view, we have a disagreement with the IEC, which does not attach real importance to this period of revolutionary upsurge in the world. The Fourth International can integrate itself into and play an important role in the struggle of the masses. Moreover, victories remain possible before the war. Such victories will have an effect on the consciousness of the masses, on the problem of revolutionary leadership and on the problem of Stalinism.
On the nature of the war: in essence, it will be a class war. Even if it involved only the USSR and the USA it would be a class war. From this point of view, we must reject any formula of "transformation of the world war into civil war," because it is a civil war. But, within the framework of this definition, one must distinguish, within the ranks of the working class, the revolutionary action of the masses from the action of the bureaucracy as such. It can reach its completion only in the victory or the crushing of the working class and its conquests, with the establishment of an imperialist neo-barbarism.
The most probable perspective is the victory of the revolution. But the other outcome can be eliminated only by the active intervention of the masses and of the Fourth International to break the brake within the workers' ranks. This is conceivable only if, from now on, the International maintains its understanding of Stalinism and reformism, combining it with this or that tactical task. It is on this problem that we are fighting the revisionist tendencies that appear in certain documents, but only in a contradictory form in the texts of the IEC.
These tendencies are expressed through a method of analysis that excludes the action of the revolutionary masses. Through equivocal formulas on the question of the relations between the apparatuses and the masses. Through a mistaken formula concerning the defence of the USSR, which cannot be either "the" or "a" strategic line, but only the struggle for world revolution to which it is subordinated. Through the definition of the workers' state ("working-class origin and anti-capitalist nature"), we will return to these questions. Through a complete silence on the tasks of the Bolshevik-Leninists in the USSR. Through the complete silence on the central problem posed by Trotskyism, specified by the Second World Congress and made even more important by the nature of the war: that of the activity of the revolutionary masses in the USSR. This problem becoming ever more important through the link between the Fourth International and the revolutionary mass movement. Through the silence on the Chinese problem, which ought to dominate this congress by far. Through the silence on the Korean War, the role of the masses and of the bureaucracy in that war.
All this expresses tendencies of Pablo's, most visible in "Where Are We Going?" These tendencies consist in revising, on essential questions concerning Stalinism, the fundamental gains of Trotskyism. He starts from an impressionist method, religiously accepting the accomplished fact, taking appearances for reality. He starts from the idea that the fundamental opposition is between Stalinism and the capitalist regime. This is false, for the capitalist regime is contradictory, and it is false to speak of the Stalinist world, especially if one includes in it phenomena distinct from Stalinism such as the Chinese revolution and its victory. The rapporteur's document can only introduce errors: the forces of the revolution coming to be added as supplementary forces to the technical and material forces. Confusion is introduced concerning the very nature of the Russian bureaucracy, which is confused with the bureaucratism inherent in any regime at a low level [of development]. He obscures the specific character of the Russian bureaucracy, a caste forged over thirty years and having politically expropriated the proletariat.
These confused conceptions, joined to those of centuries-long transitional societies in which bureaucracy or bureaucratism would supposedly manifest itself, joined to those of the two paths of destruction of the bureaucracy, lead to the conception of revolution by stages. The first being a bureaucratic one, in which the Fourth International would contribute a little salt of proletarian morality.
A new confusion is introduced regarding the dual character of Stalinism, whose counterpart is found in Germain's ten theses. It is a tendency to confuse the action of the masses with that of the bureaucracy of the USSR.
To cover this whole set of confusions, we have seen the birth of "the Russian revolution in all its forms." It finds its application in the inability to analyse the Chinese revolution clearly. This revolution is fundamentally distinct from Stalinist activity, that is, from defending the interests of the Kremlin as in the "buffer zone." This distinction is the condition for a correct policy in China and for an understanding of the role to be played there and of the role of the Chinese Communist Party. This party, formerly Stalinist, has ceased to be so and has become a centrist party, still bearing some blemishes of the past but no longer having the fundamental characteristic of Stalinism: total subordination to the Kremlin.
What is essential is that there is a tendency to lose sight of the Bonapartist nature of the bureaucracy, balanced between the classes, which means that it will strive, against all hope, to maintain its domination, and that for this purpose it will not merely brake but strike directly at the revolution, as in Warsaw, as in the course of the Spanish revolution, and this even against the interests of the defence of the USSR.
It would be necessary, through the Yugoslav and Chinese experiences, to study the problem of the relations between the bureaucracy and the Communist Parties.
To these criticisms, the only response has been the assertion that there is a crisis in France, or that we are misinterpreting the texts. But not a political response. We would have preferred that no diversion be made by replying that the real divergences are on the war. If there are still divergences on the war, they are subordinate to the assessment of the role of the bureaucracy in the war. We are confident that the congress will define a correct orientation, rectifying what is perilous. In carrying out a rectification, the International will preserve the essential, without which a correct perspective is impossible: the fundamental problem of Stalinism vis-à-vis the basic classes.
I will ask to present a declaration on the problem of the resolutions, from Marin and myself.