Issuing body: Conference for the Fourth International (Movement for the Fourth International)
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The Fourth International and the USSR
1. The theses of the Seventh World Congress of the Comintern, affirming that socialism has "definitively and irrevocably" triumphed in the USSR — without regard to the low level of labour productivity compared with that of the advanced capitalist countries, and independently of the race for development undertaken by the rest of the world — are crudely and dangerously mendacious. They rest on the fact that the territory of the USSR covers "one-sixth of the earth's surface," whereas what is far more decisive in this question is that only 8.5% of humanity occupies this territory. In reality, the triumph of socialism always depends on the struggle between two irreconcilable systems: socialism and capitalism. This struggle has not been decided, and cannot be decided, within the borders of the USSR. The question can be settled "definitively and irrevocably" only in the world arena.
2. The principal means of production have developed considerably and remain in the hands of the state in industry; in agriculture, they remain in the hands of the kolkhozes, halfway between state property and private property. But even state property is not yet social property, for the latter has its premises in the withering-away of the state as guardian of property, in the reduction of inequalities and the gradual dissolution of the very concept of property in the morals and customs of society. The real development of the Soviet Union has, in recent years, followed the opposite path. Inequality is growing, and with it the compulsion exercised by the state. Under favourable conditions, both internal and international, the transition from present-day state property to socialism is possible. Under unfavourable conditions, however, a return to capitalism is equally possible.
3. During the transition period, every workers' state must retain the wage system, or, as Marx put it, "bourgeois norms of distribution," in order to increase the productive forces. However, the fate of this system depends on the general direction of development. Should revolution break out in the advanced countries and social wealth increase rapidly, inequality would very quickly diminish, and the state would no longer have to play this role of guardian. Under the conditions of isolation and backwardness in which the USSR finds itself, bourgeois norms of distribution have become crudely reinforced (enormous wage differentiation, bonuses, titles, ranks, etc.) and have engendered retrograde tendencies that endanger the system of state property.
4. Low productivity, accompanied by heavy capital investment, considerable military expenditure, and the enormous waste represented by an uncontrolled apparatus, translates into an acute and constant shortage of the principal products of individual consumption for the mass of the population. Economic successes, which are far too modest to ensure a substantial rise in the material and cultural levels of the masses, already permit the emergence of a broad privileged stratum. In the course of the second five-year plan, social antagonisms have not diminished but have on the contrary become markedly sharper. Social inequality is advancing by leaps and bounds. Hymns to "the happy life" are sung only by those at the top, while the lower strata are still kept silent.
5. Playing on the multiplication of social antagonisms (between town and country, intellectual and manual labour, private plots, the kolkhozes and the kolkhoz members' small private plots, the Stakhanovites and the rest of the labouring masses), the bureaucracy has acquired real independence from the workers. Like every bureaucracy, it settles these antagonisms in accordance with the interests of the strongest and the best-provided-for. Like every bureaucracy, it ultimately appropriates to itself a substantial share of the national income, thereby becoming the most privileged of the privileged strata.
6. At the present time, Soviet society displays a very steep hierarchy of individual conditions of existence, running from the bezprizorny (vagrant), the prostitute and the sub-proletarian to the "ten thousand" leaders who live the life of European magnates of capital. Contrary to the assertions of the Seventh Congress of the Comintern, socialism has not yet triumphed, either from the standpoint of objective economic conditions (on the basis of labour productivity) or from the standpoint of the consciousness of the producers (on the basis of individual consumption).
7. However — and this is of decisive importance — it remains the case that social relations in the USSR, which is to say also the privileges of the Soviet aristocracy, rest in the long run on state and kolkhoz property, which stem from the expropriation of the bourgeoisie and which make possible, in contrast to capitalist property, the development of industry and culture. The historic leap accomplished by the October revolution still makes it possible to distinguish the planned economy of the Soviet state from capitalist "statism," which represents the intervention of the state to save private property, and which "directs" a decaying economic system by braking the development of the productive forces and lowering the standard of living of the masses. To identify the Soviet economy with that of the fascist countries (Italy, Germany), as bourgeois economists frequently do, is in reality to display ignorance and a lack of scruple. The victory of the Bonapartist bureaucracy over the vanguard of the proletariat can in no way be confused with the victory of capitalist counter-revolution, even though it conditions the latter.
8. To assert, as the anarchists and ultra-lefts do, that the USSR has the same attitude toward the revolutionary proletariat as the imperialist states do, is to assert that it is a matter of indifference to the working class whether the positions of state industry and Soviet agriculture are maintained and even strengthened, or whether the Soviet economy is thrown back into a state of total decomposition ending, through civil war, in fascist capitalism. Such an attitude befits the "friends of the USSR," a prey to disenchantment and idealism — that is, the political verbiage of the liberal and anarchist type — but not revolutionary Marxists, who never lose sight of the fundamental factor of history: the development of production.
9. As we have said, the social stratification of Soviet society develops principally in the sphere of distribution, and only partially, above all in agriculture, in the sphere of production. But distribution and production are not separated by an impenetrable wall. By stimulating individual and group appetites alike, and allowing them to flourish, the bureaucracy directly discredits the idea of social property. The growth of economic privilege sows a justified doubt in the consciousness of the masses: who, in the long run, will really benefit from the system? Bourgeois norms of distribution, which have already exceeded the tolerable limit, ultimately threaten to blow apart the social discipline of the planned economy and, at the same time, state and kolkhoz property.
10. The question of the family clearly reveals the possibilities of a restoration of the bourgeois system. Having failed in its tasks of social support and education, the bureaucracy — which arose out of the country's low material and cultural levels and the crushing of the initiative of the masses — is beginning to restore and glorify the petty-bourgeois family, including the small private property attached to it, that nursing mother of all social vices. The bureaucracy, which seeks political support in the conservative family, feels frustrated of total and complete domination because it cannot pass on its material privileges. The question of the right of inheritance raises that of the further extension of the boundaries of private property. This is one of the possible roads to capitalist restoration. In every sphere of social life, the bureaucracy endangers every progressive factor of the Soviet system. Instead of being the guardian of "social property," it becomes its gravedigger.
11. The political significance of the new Soviet Constitution runs directly counter to its official interpretation. The Stalinist Constitution does not represent a step forward "from socialism to communist society," as the official authorities impudently claim, but on the contrary a step backward from the dictatorship of the proletariat to a bourgeois political regime. In the political sphere, the development of a socialist society must find its expression in the withering-away of the state. The degree of progress of this withering-away constitutes the surest measure of the successes of the development of socialism. The withering-away of the state constitutes the complete liquidation of the bureaucracy, which has raised itself above society. The new Constitution in reality legalises the reverse process of development. It could not be otherwise. The rise of privilege requires the control of the gendarme.
12. Under the new Constitution, state coercion is not relaxed, and it tends to become very strongly concentrated, acquiring an open and cynical character. The local and central organs — that is, the "municipal" and "parliamentary" institutions founded on the plebiscitary principle — have nothing in common with the soviets, the organs of struggle of the labouring masses. The latter, moreover, are stripped of their true significance. The new Constitution officially hands over power and control of the economy to the Stalinist "party," which is independent both of the people and of its own members, and becomes a political instrument of the ruling class.
13. In passing, the Constitution liquidates de jure the dominant position of the proletariat in the state, a position that has long since been liquidated de facto. It declares that henceforth the dictatorship is "devoid of class character," is "popular" — a pure aberration from the Marxist point of view. The dictatorship of the "people" over itself signifies the dissolution of the state into society, that is, the disappearance of the state. In reality, the new Constitution seals the dictatorship of the privileged strata of Soviet society over the labouring masses, thereby rendering the withering-away of the state impossible, and opens to the bureaucracy the "legal" road to counter-revolution in the economic sphere — that is, the restoration of capitalism "in cold blood," which the bureaucracy is directly preparing while creating the illusion of the "victory of socialism." Our task is to call on the working class to oppose, by its own strength, the pressure of the bureaucracy — in defence of the conquests of October.
14. Contrary to the official lies, the new Constitution does not extend Soviet "democracy" but confirms its complete strangulation. In every one of its clauses it proclaims that the present masters of the situation will not willingly yield their positions to the people. The aristocratic and absolutist character of the new Constitution is expressed very clearly by the new crusade announced on the very day of its publication — the crusade of "extermination of the enemies of the people, the Trotskyist scum and monsters" (Pravda, 5 June 1936). The bureaucracy knows perfectly well where the danger threatening it comes from, and it directs its Bonapartist terror against the elements of the vanguard of the proletariat.
15. The Soviet working class has been stripped of the last possibility of restructuring the state by legal means. The struggle against the bureaucracy necessarily becomes a revolutionary struggle. In accordance with Marxist traditions, the Fourth International categorically rejects individual terrorism, as it does all political adventurism. Only the conscious movement of the masses can sweep away the usurping, parasitic and totalitarian bureaucracy. Just as capitalist restoration in the USSR requires a social counter-revolution resulting in the overthrow of state property in the means of production and the land, and hence in the re-establishment of private property, so the further development of socialism inevitably requires a political revolution — that is, the violent elimination of the bureaucracy's political despotism, while maintaining the property relations established by the October revolution. The vanguard of the Soviet proletariat, relying both on the labouring masses of the country and on the international revolutionary movement, will have to overthrow the bureaucracy by force, restore Soviet democracy, eliminate the enormous privileges, and make possible real progress toward socialist equality.
16. In the question of war, as elsewhere, the sections of the Fourth International must not be guided by formalistic and idealistic considerations and sympathies, but solely by Marxist analysis. If, for example, they support Abyssinia, despite the slavery that prevails there and the political barbarism of the regime, it is not only because the national independence of the state represents a progressive historical stage for a country of pre-capitalist structure, but also because the defeat of fascist Italy would be the shadow of the collapse of decadent capitalist society. The world vanguard of the proletariat will support the USSR in the event of war, in spite of the parasitic bureaucracy and the uncrowned negus of the Kremlin,[1] because the social regime of the USSR, for all its deformations and all its ulcers, represents a great historical step forward compared with rotting capitalism. The defeat of an imperialist country in the new war will provoke the collapse not only of its state form but also of its social foundations, and will result in the replacement of private property by state property. The defeat of the Soviet Union would sweep away the Soviet bureaucracy, but it would also substitute capitalist chaos for state and collective property. Under these conditions, the political choice is obvious.
Addendum to point 16 adopted by the conference
The resolute and fearless support given to the USSR by the world proletarian vanguard during the war does not, however, mean that the proletariat must become the ally of the USSR's imperialist allies.
"The proletariat of a capitalist country that finds itself allied with the USSR fully and entirely maintains its implacable hostility toward the imperialist government of its own country [...]. The implacable proletarian opposition to the USSR's imperialist ally should be deployed on the ground both of the internal class policy and of the imperialist aims of the given government, of the perfidious character of its alliance, of its speculation on a bourgeois coup d'État in the USSR, etc. The policy of the proletarian party in an imperialist country, whether ally or enemy, must consequently tend toward the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the seizure of power. Only along this road can a genuine alliance with the USSR be created and the first workers' state be saved from collapse." (Points 44 and 45 of the theses of the International Secretariat of the ICL, "The Fourth International and War," June 1934.)
17. The fears of the ultra-lefts, who consider that the victory of the USSR could lead to a further consolidation of the positions of the Bonapartist bureaucracy, are based on a mistaken conception both of international relations and of the internal development of the USSR. The imperialists of the various camps will not be able to make peace with the USSR so long as private property in the means of production has not been re-established. Whatever alliances exist at the start of the war, the imperialist countries will know, in the very course of the war, how to reach an understanding and regroup — and this will always be at the expense of the USSR. The USSR will emerge victorious from the war on only one condition: that it be supported by revolution in the West as in the East. But the international revolution, which is the only means of saving the USSR, will at the same time strike a fatal blow at the Soviet bureaucracy.
18. Is the Soviet state a workers' state? It is a state founded on the property relations issuing from the proletarian revolution and administered by a labour bureaucracy in the interest of new privileged strata. The USSR may be described as a workers' state in the same way — and despite the differences of scale — that a trade union led and betrayed by opportunists, that is, in fact by agents of capital, is described as a workers' organisation. Just as revolutionaries defend any trade union, even the most thoroughly reformist, against its class enemies, while at the same time fighting its treacherous leadership without making it any concession, so the sections of the Fourth International defend the USSR against the blows of imperialism without for a single instant ceasing the struggle against the reactionary Stalinist apparatus. In time of war as in time of peace, they will continue to preserve their freedom both to criticise the ruling Soviet caste and to fight against agreements concluded with imperialism at the expense of the interests of the USSR and of the international revolution.
(Translated from Writings of Leon Trotsky, 1935–36, Pathfinder.)
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[1] The negus was the title of Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, an absolute despot.