Author: Marcel Bleibtreu Issuing body: Parti Communiste Internationaliste (PCI), French section of the Fourth International — internal discussion document
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WHERE IS COMRADE PABLO GOING?
Marcel Bleibtreu, June 1951
Preamble
Clarity in discussion arises from the affirmation of divergent theses, on the one hand, and from polemic, on the other; the two methods are not opposed but are closely complementary. To refrain from affirming one's theses, to wage a guerrilla war of partial amendments when principles are at stake, or, worse still, to confine oneself to polemicizing against the weak points of the opposing thesis, is characteristic of tendencies that have neither principles nor any sense of their duties toward our world party of the revolution. We, for our part, believe that the method which governed the international discussion on the problems posed by the people's democracies — each thesis being set out in full by various comrades (we are speaking of the comrades of the majority that took shape at the First World Congress against the revisionist tendencies which have since collapsed after combating us with sideways attacks — the Haston prototype) — is the correct method.
We believe in particular that Germain's ten theses, "What Must Be Changed and What Must Be Maintained in the Theses of the Second World Congress on the Question of Stalinism?" — we say specifically the "Ten Theses" and not their strange foreword — represent a positive document, perfectly appropriate to the discussion for the world congress, and one which, by its clarity, very adequately dispenses with polemic against the views expressed on various occasions by Pablo: that is how a healthy discussion ought to begin. But for it to remain healthy, it is not permissible to stop there. The contentious points must be brought fully into the light, which only polemic can do.
That is the purpose of this text, which is addressed to our whole international, and especially to all our leading comrades in the international, in order to tell them fraternally and without evasion of the danger that a whole series of new assertions represents for the programme, the action, and the very existence of our international. We say: watch out, the scratch can become a wound, and then gangrene. We make no claim to infallibility; we do not think our own theses are free of numerous shortcomings; we do not feel entitled to lecture any of our comrades; but we do say to them: "Alert — our ship is off course, it is urgent to take our bearings and correct the heading."
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In his text "Where Are We Going?", comrade Pablo throws a harsh light on the revisionist tendencies contained in the SI's draft theses, though masked in the compromise resolution of the Ninth Plenum.
From the very first lines, the violence of tone of this document is surprising, all the more so since we do not know which members of the IEC and the SI were being targeted... in January 1951. We shall doubtless never know the names of those addressed — "those people who despair of the fate of humanity," nor those who wrote that "the thought of the international seems to be coming apart," nor those who "weep hot tears" (whom Pablo is willing to believe sincere), nor those who "cut history down to their own size," nor those careerists of Trotskyism "who would like socialism to be achieved within the span of their own short lives so as to be rewarded for their efforts on behalf of the revolution."
[p. 53]
The Theory of "Blocs" and "Camps" Makes Its Entrance into the International
"The history of humanity is the history of the class struggle," one reads in that dusty old relic, the Communist Manifesto. But one must move with the times and frankly acknowledge, with Pablo, that "the objective social reality for our movement is composed essentially of the capitalist regime and the Stalinist world." Dry your tears and listen: the very essence of social reality is composed of the capitalist regime (!) and the Stalinist world (?). We had thought that social reality was the opposition of the fundamental classes: proletarians and bourgeois.
Wrong, because henceforth the capitalist regime, which precisely encompasses these two classes, becomes a whole that is opposed to... the Stalinist world.
The term "world" is rather obscure, you will say; but it offers great convenience, allowing states and social groups to be classified according to the supreme criterion: their "nature," Stalinist or non-Stalinist. Thus the state born of the third Chinese revolution (whose economy, let us recall, has to this day retained a capitalist structure) is placed by Pablo in the Stalinist world. We shall return to this question. On the other hand, the Yugoslav workers' state (where the economy is nationalized and planned in its near-totality) has excluded itself from the Stalinist world and, since it cannot remain outside objective social reality, slips insensibly, objectively, into the enemy camp (bag, baggage, and dictatorship of the proletariat included!).
To dispel any ambiguity as to his conception of contemporary history, Pablo continues: "Moreover, whether one likes it or not, these two elements (the capitalist regime and the Stalinist world) constitute objective social reality, period, for the overwhelming majority of the forces opposed to capitalism is even now directed or influenced by the Soviet bureaucracy." Thus Pablo's "social" criterion, period, turns out to be nothing other than the political nature (Stalinist or non-Stalinist) of states and human groupings. He gives us no clarification about that tiny remaining minority which is neither directed nor influenced [by the bureaucracy]. Let us grant that it is the exception that proves the rule. What, then, is this tiny minority of anti-capitalist yet non-Stalinist forces? We do not think it can be a matter of the millions of proletarians of the USA, England, Canada, Germany, etc., who are neither influenced nor directed by Stalinism. We must therefore conclude that the proletariats of the most advanced countries in the world do not constitute "forces opposed to capitalism." They are labelled, filed away in the drawer marked "capitalist regime."
The label is harder to affix to the movement for emancipation of the masses of North Africa, Black Africa, Madagascar, India, Ceylon, and Indonesia — a movement which cannot be regarded either as a tiny minority or as belonging to the Stalinist world.
Thus, willy-nilly, classes, states, and nations must all be lumped together into one camp or the other (capitalist regime and Stalinist world), and Pablo adds, making Zhdanov's thesis his own, that the relationship of international social forces is, "to put it schematically, the relationship of forces between two blocs." What Pablo calls schematizing is in reality nothing but confusing everything, muddling everything, arriving at an implausible mess. One cannot abandon
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the class line for a single instant in the analysis of situations without arriving at such "schemas," such mush for the cats. What is this? The international relationship of forces is the relationship of forces between the two blocs. Well, that gets us far. Since contemporary social reality is the two blocs, the relationship of social forces is quite naturally... the relationship of forces between the two blocs! This logic is impeccable, for it expresses a tautology.
You are misinterpreting what Pablo says, we shall be told; he means to speak of the international relationship of forces between classes, which, schematically, is the relationship between the blocs. But what has this old idea of classes got to do with it? Where does Pablo, in his text, give even the slightest serious analysis of the situation of the international proletariat? Had he attempted to do so, he would certainly not have arrived at this astonishing idea of "blocs," nor at defining the strength of the international proletariat by that of the famous "Stalinist world." Moreover, he himself explains, in a perfectly clear way, the respective roles of Stalin and of the revolutionary proletariat within the "Stalinist world" itself. For him, "the revolutionary élan of the masses risen up against imperialism adds itself as a supplementary force to the material and technical forces that are fighting it." That is indeed perfectly clear: the forces of the revolution are those of the Stalinist world. But within this Stalinist world there are the principal forces: these are the material and technical forces, Soviet industry, the divisions of the Red Army; and there are the supplementary forces, a sort of territorial guard, which come to add themselves to these technical forces. The revolutionary élan of four hundred million Chinese workers, of the Vietnamese, the Koreans, and of all the workers of the "Stalinist world," is the territorial guard of the socialist bastion led by Stalin.
This is the conclusion one is inevitably driven to when the petty-bourgeois conception of the "bloc" between states is substituted for the analysis of world class reality (that of the world proletariat facing the world imperialist bourgeoisie), the only reality of the present-day world. Whether one likes it or not, on the basis of this conception one cannot but bring grist to Zhdanov's mill, whose thesis rests on the supreme postulate: the touchstone of revolutionaries is loyalty to the Soviet Union and to its leader, Stalin. The petty-bourgeois conception of blocs necessarily results in a choice between Stalin (with or without reservations) and Truman (with or without reservations). The direction in which the choice is made depends solely on the dominant pressure. In Central and Western Europe, the petty bourgeoisie tends to lean in a "neutralist" direction, that is, toward adaptation to the Stalinist bureaucracy, which seems to it clothed in the prestige of strength and of numerous "victories" in Asia, in the "buffer zone," etc., and whose "material and technical forces" impress it by their proximity.
Marxists were in the habit of starting from the class criterion. It was this class criterion that enabled Leon Trotsky and the Fourth International to combat revisionism on the question of the USSR and to place the degenerated workers' state in the camp of the international proletariat. Today, it seems, we must turn Marxism upside down, put it back on its Hegelian head, feet raised toward the sky of "life," of "objective social reality, period" (the worst of abstractions in this case), and, in this awkward position, classify this or that class fraction, this or that state, this or that technical force, into one "bloc" or the other, the capitalist regime or the Stalinist world.
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A Sketch of Revision Regarding the Nature of the Bureaucracy
We find developed in Pablo's writing the idea of a bureaucracy of the USSR surviving the world revolution and then withering away as a result of the development of the productive forces. We read, indeed, that the bureaucracy of the USSR will disappear in two (contradictory) ways: "through the repercussions in the USSR itself of anti-capitalist victories in the world, stimulating the resistance of the masses to the bureaucracy"; "through the elimination, in the long run, of the objective reasons for bureaucracy — for any bureaucracy — as the capitalist regime retreats and an ever greater and economically more important part [of the world] escapes it and organizes itself according to a nationalized and planned economy favouring the growth of the productive forces."
Thesis no. 2, that of the disappearance of the bureaucracy through the development of the productive forces, contains as many errors as it does words.
1. It sets up an amalgam between the bureaucracy of the USSR and the bureaucratism such as it manifested itself in the USSR, for example, in Lenin's lifetime.
2. It starts from the idea of a slow and gradual retreat of the capitalist regime ("as... [the capitalist regime retreats]") and of the slow accretion of sectors where a planned economy is established; this is in flagrant contradiction with the perspective of a war that will be the final struggle between the classes, a war that will decide the existence of world capitalism and which excludes its being whittled away over the long run.
3. Does Pablo, who elsewhere regards the third world war as imminent, mean that even in the course of the war itself the development of the productive forces (which would be turned entirely toward the war effort at the expense of the consumption of the masses) is liable to push back the norms of bourgeois distribution? Or does Pablo not take seriously the idea that the third world war will be a final struggle, his perspective admitting, at the close of this war, a new situation of equilibrium between the fundamental classes, with the coexistence of fewer bourgeois states and more workers' states?
In reality, the principal defect of this thesis no. 2 is that it exists at all, for it amounts to admitting that the Soviet bureaucracy can survive the victory of the world revolution over imperialism. It is in direct contradiction with thesis no. 1 (the traditional Trotskyist thesis), which is juxtaposed to thesis no. 2 (Pablo's thesis) in an eclectic manner.
In the draft resolution submitted to the Ninth Plenum, whose kinship with Pablo's personal positions we have noted, the only explanation given for the hostility of the Soviet bureaucracy to world revolution was this vulgar economistic explanation: "It [the bureaucracy] cannot surrender to imperialism without losing itself as such in the USSR; nor, on the other hand, can it rely on the proletariat and on the extension of the world revolution, which would remove, through the organization and development of the productive forces in the world, the objective reasons for the existence, and above all [?] for the omnipotence, of any bureaucracy." The idea here is perfectly clear, and it is substituted for the Trotskyist idea of the incompatibility of the bureaucracy — not with planning and the development of the productive forces, but with the revolutionary action of the masses, of which,
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Trotsky said, "the first revolutionary victory in Europe will produce on the Soviet masses the effect of an electric shock, will awaken them, will raise their spirit of independence, will revive the traditions of 1905 and 1917, will weaken the position of the bureaucracy, and will have no less importance for the Fourth International than the victory of the October revolution had for the Third International."
The bureaucracy is not afraid of the development of the productive forces. It is not voluntarily that it slows their development in the USSR, but through incapacity. To the extent that its very character allows it, it strives to work at this. The poverty of its results in relation to the great possibilities of planning within the USSR and outside the USSR is not due to a fear of disappearing through an increase in income that would erase social inequality. What the bureaucracy fears is not the development of the productive forces. What it fears is the awakening of the consciousness of the Soviet masses through contact with revolution in other countries.
The principal danger of the explanation given by Pablo (even when juxtaposed, after discussion, with another explanation, a correct one) is that its effect is to mask the organically counter-revolutionary character of the workers'-state bureaucracy of the USSR. This bureaucracy cannot be identified with the bureaucratism inherent in any society ruled by scarcity, [the product of] nearly thirty years of degeneration of the workers' state. It has politically and totally expropriated the Soviet proletariat. Everywhere it can act bureaucratically, or maintain its bureaucratic control over the masses, the bureaucracy of the USSR, contrary to Pablo's assertion, strives to develop the productive forces (in the USSR and in the annexed or satellite territories) in order to strengthen the basis and the volume of its own privileges. By contrast, its record of liquidating the revolution begun in France in 1936, of bloodily crushing the conscious cadres of the Spanish revolution, of complicity with Hitler in letting him crush the Warsaw uprising in blood, its Yalta policy against the Greek, Italian, Yugoslav, and French revolutions, its blockade and military pressure against the Yugoslav workers' state in the hope of delivering it bound hand and foot to imperialism (in defiance of the interests of the defence of the USSR itself) — all this expresses, unambiguously, the incompatibility between the Soviet bureaucracy and the development of the proletarian revolution, which represents an immediate and direct threat to its existence, with all the more acuteness the less economically backward the country in which it takes place.
To leave open, however timidly, the hypothesis of a survival of the USSR's Thermidorian bureaucracy through a third world war is to revise the Trotskyist analysis of the bureaucracy. It means, first, as we have seen, calling into question its nature as a parasitic excrescence of the labour movement living on the equilibrium between the fundamental classes and, at the same time, opening the door to the denial of its workers'-state nature. It means, second, overestimating the capacity of the technical means of the USSR as against the technical means of imperialism. It means, third, underestimating the scale of the revolutionary movement in Asia and in the world. It means, fourth, believing in the peaceful cohabitation of the bureaucracy in the USSR with victorious revolution in the advanced countries. It means, above all — and here lies Pablo's true thought — admitting that the bureaucracy of the USSR will not oppose the extension of the revolution and will even
[p. 57]
stimulate it. Yet, in giving primacy to "technical and material forces" over the revolutionary struggle of the masses, Pablo does not go as far as the thesis of our Lyon comrades. This apparent advantage expresses a total failure to understand the predominant role of the revolutionary struggle of the masses in the course and outcome of a third world war.
The very marked inferiority of the technical means available to the proletariat in the present configuration of the world — that of the "blocs," as Pablo puts it — turns into a superiority of the proletariat to the very extent of its revolutionary mobilization, of the raising of its class consciousness and its socialist consciousness, of its revolutionary victories against imperialism. The relationship of military forces will be determined politically. The Thermidorian bureaucracy of the USSR will play a counter-revolutionary role that will be all the more pronounced the more clearly it sees the rise of the revolution and of the socialist consciousness of the masses threatening its own domination in the USSR. In its gigantic struggle to break the coalesced imperialist bourgeoisie and its enormous material resources, the revolution will liquidate, in its march forward, the Thermidorian bureaucracy of the USSR. If it does not, the Thermidorian bureaucracy, by braking, sabotaging, and militarily combating the revolutionary movement of the masses, will open the way to the victory of imperialist barbarism and to its own disappearance as a parasitic caste of the degenerated workers' state.
All the experience since 1933 has shown ever more clearly the role of the bureaucracy of the USSR and expresses quite simply the dual character of the bureaucracy — workers'-state and counter-revolutionary — its fundamentally contradictory nature and its impasse. This bureaucracy will not survive the third world war, a war between classes, a war whose outcome can only be world revolution or, failing that, the victory of imperialism liquidating all the workers' gains in the USSR and in the world.
From the "Stalinist Ideology" to the New "Bureaucratic Class"
Tendencies toward revision of the Trotskyist conception of the Soviet bureaucracy have often expressed themselves in the past through the belief in an ideology proper to Stalinism. Pablo seems today to share this belief when he speaks to us of a "joint leadership of the international Stalinist movement" by China and the Kremlin. "China," he writes, "will not be able to play the role of a mere satellite of the Kremlin, but rather that of a partner which imposes on the Soviet bureaucracy the joint leadership of the international Stalinist movement; [we note] that this joint leadership is nevertheless a disintegrating element of Stalinism..." ("Where Are We Going?") What does this Russo-Chinese "joint leadership" of the international Stalinist movement mean? Is there, then, a Chinese Stalinism alongside Russian Stalinism? What are the social bases of this Chinese Stalinism? What, then, is its ideology? Does a Stalinist ideology exist? To all these questions we answer in the negative.
The bureaucracy of the USSR has never been able, nor even attempted, to define a new ideology, contrary to what every historically necessary social formation, every class, does. To speak of the Stalinism of a Communist party is not to speak of a theory, of a
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comprehensive programme, of definite and lasting conceptions, but only of the subordination of its leadership to the imperatives of the Kremlin bureaucracy. Such is the Trotskyist conception, and the "Stalinism" of the international Stalinist movement is defined by the subordination of that movement to the bureaucracy of the USSR.
"The Stalinist bureaucracy has nothing in common with Marxism; it is, moreover, alien to any programme, doctrine, or system whatsoever. Its ideology is imbued with an utterly police-like subjectivism, its practice with an empiricism of pure violence. By the very substance of its interests, the caste of usurpers is hostile to theory: it can give an account of its social role neither to itself nor to others. Stalin revises Marx and Lenin not with the pen of theoreticians but with the boots of the GPU." (Leon Trotsky, Stalinism and Bolshevism, 1937) Could there be a possibility of Stalinist joint leadership, of a double subordination one of whose terms would be... the Chinese revolution in full swing? Would an amended Stalinist ideology even have been born in the course of the revolution?
But, Pablo adds, this joint leadership is a disintegrating element of Stalinism. This clarification introduces a new confusion. We must say, on the contrary, that the disintegrating element of the "international Stalinist movement" as such is the Chinese revolution, and that this famous joint leadership, far from being a disintegrating element, expresses an altogether temporary compromise between the counter-revolutionary bureaucracy of the USSR and its negation, the Chinese revolution. This compromise reflects the lag of consciousness behind reality, and more specifically the slowness with which China is engaging in the accomplishment of the tasks of the permanent revolution. We shall return to this question.
The idea of joint leadership shows a great failure to understand the irreducible character of the opposition between the Soviet bureaucracy and the revolution in motion. On several occasions we are told of "victories" of Stalinism, or of "pseudo-victories" of Stalinism, to designate the development of the revolution in China, in Asia, or elsewhere.
For comrade Pablo, the most important lesson of the Yugoslav revolution and of the Chinese revolution is that they must not be confused with a "pure and simple (?) victory of the Soviet bureaucracy"! For us, the lesson is that the development of the revolution is a defeat and a mortal threat for the bureaucracy, which does not view "revolution in all its forms" through the same spectacles as comrade Pablo. When this comrade adds that "the evolution of China may prove different from that of the Soviet bureaucracy," we reach the height of confusion. We should be curious to have someone explain to us in what conjuncture, in what year, on what planet, the evolution of China can prove even comparable to that of the Soviet bureaucracy.
This notion is admissible only if we first accept the Burnhamite thesis of the rapid formation (or, better, the pre-existence) of a bureaucracy of the Russian type in the very course of a revolution. Such a bureaucracy would then have not only an internationally valid ideology, but we should have to recognize it as playing a historically
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progressive role. Everything leads us to affirm, on the contrary, that the fate of a revolution, even an isolated one, will necessarily prove different and distinct from that of the USSR, even if, owing to its isolation and weakness, that revolution should degenerate. Trotsky clearly demonstrated, against the revisionists, the historically specific character of the degeneration of the USSR.
Centuries of Transition
Must we, on this point too, revise Trotsky's opinion? Are the norms of the dictatorship of the proletariat, of the withering away of the state, outdated, condemned by "life" and by experience? Is the workers' state in the USSR truly a degenerated workers' state (a counter-revolutionary workers' state, as Trotsky says), or is it, on the contrary, the prototype of what the transition between capitalism and socialism will be after the victory of the world revolution?
Although he does not decide clearly one way or the other, and his statements are on this point highly contradictory, comrade Pablo seems to incline toward the second answer. To the people-who-despair-of-the-fate-of-humanity, he replies that the transitional society between capitalism and socialism will last several centuries — two to three centuries, he specifies orally. "This transformation will occupy a historical period of several centuries, which will be filled in the meantime by transitional forms and régimes between capitalism and socialism, necessarily far removed from pure forms and norms."
We are, without hesitation, with anyone who fights the purist utopia that subordinates reality to norms in order to reject reality. But we do not see the point of this fight, being aware of no expression of this "purism" within the international majority that emerged from the Second World Congress. What we do see, on the other hand, is that the bureaucratic degeneration of the USSR is becoming the new norm; that Pablo is building, on that basis, a new utopia; that the transitional society (a matter of several centuries...) is taking on a character such that the Soviet-type bureaucracy (conflated with any bureaucratism inherent in a low level of development of the productive forces and of culture) becomes a historically necessary evil, that is to say, a class.
What we see is that the bureaucratic caste of the USSR, which we regarded as the specific product of twenty-five years of degeneration of the first workers' state, would be nothing but the prefiguration of the "caste" called upon to lead the world for two or three centuries. In that case, to hell with "the caste" — it is indeed a matter of a class not foreseen by Marx, Engels, Lenin, or Trotsky. As realists, let us take up again Trotsky and his work from The New Course onward, for it is riddled with errors and misunderstandings about the historically progressive role of the bureaucracy in the USSR. His explanation of the formation of the bureaucracy in the USSR is vitiated at its root by norms that are old-fashioned, utopian, obsolete, refuted by reality. His attachment to these norms led him to regard the evolution of the USSR as a particular, exceptional, specific infraction. "In the bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet state, it is not the general laws of contemporary society in its passage from capitalism to socialism that find expression, but a particular, exceptional, and temporary infraction of these laws, occurring in
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the presence of the backward condition of a revolutionary country and of capitalist encirclement." (Leon Trotsky, The USSR in War)
What he called degeneration is in reality the process that must begin after the victory of the world revolution and last two or three centuries. He placed himself on the wrong side of the barricade when he wrote: "The clearest-sighted of the 'friends of the USSR' console themselves by saying that a certain degeneration was inevitable. Granted! Resistance to evil is no less so. Necessity has two ends: that of reaction and that of progress. History teaches us that the men and parties who solicit it in opposite senses end up finding themselves on the two sides of the barricade." (Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, p. 45) He did not foresee that the Soviet bureaucracy is called upon, in the third world war, to perform the function of gravedigger of world imperialism, to carry out an international anti-capitalist revolution, or at the very least to cooperate in it. Of this, neither Trotsky nor the Fourth International — this tragic historical misunderstanding — had until now become aware.
Light on an Incorrect Formulation
When we read, in the resolution of the Ninth Plenum, the following definition of the defence of the USSR: "The defence of the USSR constitutes the strategic line of the Fourth International, and its tactical applications remain, as in the past, subordinated to the free development of the mass movement, against any attempt by the Soviet bureaucracy, the Russian army, and the Stalinist leaderships to stifle and break it," we are tempted to see in this merely an incorrect formulation. But we should be blind if we stopped there, after having studied the document in which the secretary of the international, setting out his perspective more fully, derives it from the division of the world into a capitalist regime and a Stalinist world, a division regarded as the essence of the social reality of our epoch.
Were we to adopt this revisionist optic, it would seem necessary to us to go much further, to carry the reasoning through to the end and to subordinate tactical applications to the strategic line. It is precisely this principled attitude, this constant subordination of tactics to strategy, that distinguishes Marxism from opportunism of every stripe.
Pablo cannot stop there, sitting between two stools. He must bring tactics into line not only with strategy but with the social analysis (his analysis) of the world "as it now is." If, on the contrary, we remain faithful to the analysis of society given by Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky, and to their methods of analysis; if we refuse to abandon the solid ground on which the foundations of our international rest for the shifting marsh of revision, our Third World Congress must return to the Trotskyist definition of the defence of the USSR. For Trotsky, the defence of the USSR does not constitute "the strategic line." The strategic line of the Fourth International is world revolution. The defence of the USSR against imperialism, like the defence of any workers' state, is one of the tasks of this strategy, a task entirely subordinate to the perspective of world revolution, to the strategy of revolutionary mobilization of the masses. The defence of the USSR, no more than that of Yugoslavia, or of any workers' state whatever, can
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take the place of the strategic line of the world party of the revolution.
Herein lies the difference between Trotskyism and the Titoist or Stalinist varieties of centrism.
In the present discussion, no ambiguity may be allowed to remain. Incorrect formulations on such questions are genuine errors of doctrine. No document of the international can today permit itself the slightest imprecision in the definition of the defence of the USSR and of its place in our strategy. The defence of the USSR, and of all workers' states, constitutes a task of the Fourth International, a task which, as such and in all its tactical applications, is entirely subordinate to the strategy of the struggle for world revolution, to the free development of the masses, etc.
Pablo Yields Ground to Martinet
One of the most fully developed expressions of this idea that the defence of the USSR (or of the "Stalinist world") must be the strategic line is given by Gilles Martinet. This Martinet is in fact the spokesman for the whole of the Stalinist intelligentsia in France. His position was rightly characterized by the Second World Congress as the Stalinist counterpart of Burnhamite revisionism.
The pro-Stalinist manifestation, a product of Stalinist pressure in France — the most complete expression of this revisionism was given by Bettelheim, Martinet, and Co. in the Revue Internationale. Applying these same conceptions to the present world situation, they arrive at the following conclusions:
a) because of its lack of homogeneity and technical culture, the working class necessarily passes, after its seizure of power, through a stage of differentiation and social inequality. Historical progress is guaranteed by the privileged strata of the proletariat (the bureaucracy). The function of the state is to defend their privileges;
b) in the epoch of decadent imperialism, the proletariat ceases to develop intellectually and numerically, but retreats, sees its strength diminish and its social structure decay. The failure of the "classic" proletarian revolutions of 1918–1923 is definitive. The Leninist strategy of proletarian revolution has had its day. Faced with this incapacity of the proletariat to fulfil its historic mission, humanity has no other path of progress open to it than an attempt to "participate" in the nationalization of the means of production by the Soviet bureaucracy on an ever wider scale, and to work out a new minimum programme to mitigate the violent character of this process...
"These fully developed revisionist tendencies no longer have any place in the revolutionary movement. Certain of their traits appear at the root of the mistaken conceptions on the question of the USSR which have manifested themselves in our own ranks. What matters is, first, to detect the internal logic of this incipient revisionism and to make its partisans aware of its dangerous consequences for Marxism as a whole." (Resolution of the Second World Congress)
Throwing this analysis overboard, Pablo declares in "Where Are We Going?": "The fundamental difference (!) between us and certain neo-apologists of Stalinism, of the Gilles
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Martinet type in France, does not lie in the fact that there are indeed objective causes imposing forms of transition considerably removed from the norms sketched by the classics of Marxism before the Russian Revolution, of the society and power that succeed capitalism. It lies in the fact that these neo-Stalinists present the policy of Stalinism as the expression of consistent, realistic Marxism, which, consciously, with full knowledge of the facts, pursues a course leading toward socialism while taking account of the demands of the situation."
Let us note first that, contrary to the idea Pablo develops further on, Martinet does not deny the existence of the Soviet bureaucracy, but regards it as a necessary evil to which falls, de facto, the task of destroying imperialism and which will be historically superseded by the development of the productive forces. More than his assessments of Stalin's "Marxism," his servility before the fait accompli, his tendency to generalize from the degeneration of the first workers' state, turning a specific historical fact into a general historical necessity, make Martinet the most skilful theoretician of the Thermidorian counter-revolution. To him applies in full the definition given by Trotsky in After Munich: "Only the overthrow of the Bonapartist clique of the Kremlin will make possible the regeneration of the military strength of the USSR. Only the liquidation of the ex-Comintern will open the way to revolutionary internationalism. The struggle against war, imperialism, and fascism demands a struggle against Stalinism, covered as it is in crimes. Whoever defends it directly or indirectly, whoever keeps silent about its betrayals or exaggerates its military power, is the worst enemy of the revolution, of socialism, and of oppressed peoples. The sooner the Kremlin clique is overthrown by the armed offensive of the workers, the greater will be the chances for the socialist regeneration of the USSR, the closer and broader will be the prospect of international revolution."
Such is the language we expected from the secretary of the Fourth International with regard to this wing of the bourgeoisie which capitulates before Stalinism and its supposed "victories." Instead of this, we must swallow an ambiguous demarcation (an absence of demarcation) based on a specious quarrel about Stalin's merits as a theoretician.
The Error of the Chinese Comrades Corrected by Another Error
It would be futile to deny that the error of the Chinese Trotskyists weighs very heavily on the present discussion. Not only does it partly explain Pablo's present orientation, but comrade Pablo himself openly uses it as an argument to defend his thesis, in the hope of overwhelming his opponents with it.
We are not overwhelmed by it, and for a number of reasons, among others these:
1. In the course of April 1950, one of us, comrade Bleibtreu, gave a public lecture at the Cercle Lénine, attended by Vietnamese, Ceylonese, and French comrades, on the problems of the Chinese revolution. He concluded, from an analysis of the Chinese revolution and of the Chinese CP, that it was necessary for the Trotskyists to enter the Chinese Communist Party, to constitute within it the consistent Marxist wing, capable of resolving, theoretically and practically, the tasks of the permanent revolution. This, moreover, earned him being energetically contradicted by one of the members of the SI.
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2. The Central Committee of the PCI, meeting on 2 December 1950, passed a resolution asking the SI to take a position on the events in China and on the errors of the Chinese comrades. We have so far had no reply from the SI, nor from the IEC. We hope that this document will see the light of day before the world congress, for it would represent an essential element of clarification.
Faced with this persistent silence, we are reduced to taking the initiative for a discussion which the international leadership ought to have undertaken.
What Does the Error in China Consist Of?
For comrade Pablo, this error is supposed to have begun "the day after the victory of Mao Tse-tung." In our opinion, it is much earlier than that victory.
In China there has developed, since 1946, a revolution into which the Trotskyists had to integrate themselves. Abandoned by Stalin, whose good offices — aimed at constituting a national-front government with Chiang — they had rejected, and encircled as a result of the Red Army's handing over of Manchuria to Chiang, the Chinese leaders had to face the most powerful offensive the White troops had ever launched against the Seventh Army. The only way out left open to them (as to the leaders of the Yugoslav Communist Party in 1942–1943) was the revolutionary mobilization of the masses. Rejecting their Stalinist course of preceding years, they adopted a limited programme of agrarian reform which the masses seized upon with immense enthusiasm. Everywhere there arose mass peasant committees, everywhere there arose partisans organizing to defend the agrarian reform and carry it further, to crush Chiang, the mandatary of the landlords. The advance of Mao's army was above all the revolutionary mass uprising of the peasantry and the parallel collapse of Chiang's peasant army, infected by the revolution and thirsting for land. The CP itself was modified in its social composition. The literati, sons of well-to-do peasants, who had until then constituted the bulk of its cadres, and some of whom tried to oppose the outburst of elemental violence unleashed by their party's turn, were overwhelmed by an influx of new militants forged in the very fire of the revolution. Thus:
1. the birth of the Chinese revolution was the beginning of the end of the "Stalinism" of the Chinese CP, a "Stalinism" that was never very solid at any moment in the history of that party. Besides the documents published by Fourth International, the reading of the works of Mao Tse-tung (where every page contains a more or less veiled attack on Stalin) is very instructive in this regard;
2. the CCP ceased to be subordinate to the directives of the Kremlin, and became dependent on the masses and on their action;
3. its very social composition was modified;
4. the CCP ceased to be a Stalinist party and became a centrist party moving forward with the revolution. This does not mean that the CCP thereby ipso facto became a revolutionary party. It retained from its past a series of false, bureaucratic conceptions, which found expression in its acts: in the timid character of the agrarian reform; in its
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confinement to North China; in a conscious effort by the CCP to keep the urban proletariat out of the course of the revolution.
This is fully explained by the difference in nature between the aspirations and forms of action of the proletariat and of the peasantry. The peasantry aspires to bourgeois-democratic reforms and mobilizes spontaneously in the form of a partisan army. The proletariat has socialist aspirations, and its revolutionary mobilization creates organs of proletarian power, both of which come immediately into contradiction with the Stalinist bureaucracy.
The dialectic of social facts has already partially pushed back certain barriers, and there is reason to hope that this course will deepen. Be that as it may, it is absurd to speak of a Stalinist party in China, and still more absurd to allow the impression, even the appearance, of a "victory of Stalinism in China."
The Korean War offers Stalin, momentarily, the means to slow the progress of the Chinese revolution in the solution of the tasks of the permanent revolution, and to re-establish partial control over the CCP. This explains Stalin's policy of "non-intervention" during the period when the victorious advance of the Korean armies could, with minimal support, have thrown the imperialists into the sea. This explains the niggardly character of his present aid, and his fear of a solution — above all, of a solution favourable to the Korean revolution. But, in the final analysis, class reality will prove stronger than the Kremlin apparatus and its manoeuvres.
The error of the two Chinese groups was precisely their failure to grasp social reality. It was their having identified the revolution with Stalinism, having identified Stalinism with its own negation. The Chinese comrades turned their backs on the revolutionary movement of the masses, retreating before its advance, only to find themselves finally in Hong Kong.
It is not a failure to understand Stalinism that must above all be reproached to them, but a different and much more serious failure to understand. They did not recognize the face of the revolution. They saw, in the advance of Mao's revolutionary armies, an advance of Stalinism. They did not understand that what is fundamental is the action of classes, not the apparatuses, that makes history, and that, once it begins, the action of the masses is stronger than the strongest of apparatuses.
In many respects, comrade Pablo repeats the analytical error of the Chinese comrades, even though he draws from it opposite and equally harmful conclusions. The same error concerning the nature of the Chinese revolution, which he regards as a victory — not a "pure and simple victory," but a victory nonetheless — of Stalinism. An error stemming from the mistaken idea of a Stalinist world, and which finds expression in that of Russo-Chinese co-leadership of the international Stalinist movement.
The same mistaken criteria regarding the "Stalinist" nature of a Communist party. The Stalinist nature of a CP is its direct and total dependence on the interests, on the policy, of the Kremlin. A refusal on the part of the Chinese CP to accept the legal existence of a Trotskyist tendency within its ranks or outside its ranks, or even repression against such a tendency, would in no way be a criterion "demonstrating its
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bureaucratic and Stalinist character" (Pablo), but only its failure to understand permanent revolution, a failure that has nothing specifically Stalinist about it. We have often been served such absurdities to "prove" the "Stalinist" character of the Yugoslav CP, which petty-bourgeois idealists do not hesitate to define as Stalinism without Stalin!
The same failure to understand the relations between the masses, the CP, and the Kremlin bureaucracy: Pablo places an equals sign between the dual nature of the CPs and the dual nature of the Soviet bureaucracy.
We do not deny, in general, that two equals two, but the addition of two errors (for example, that of comrade Pablo and that of the Chinese comrades) is not equal to the addition of two correct assertions (for example, that of the thesis of our Central Committee with the ten theses of comrade Germain). It is not always true that two equals two.
The dual nature of the Soviet bureaucracy is the reflection and product of the contradictions of Soviet society. It expresses itself through the Bonapartism of Stalinism in the face of social forces within the USSR and on a world scale. The policy of the bureaucracy is not dual, but one throughout its variations: it is a policy of oscillation between the fundamental classes.
The dual nature of the CPs has an altogether different significance and expresses a different contradiction, for the reason that there does not exist, internationally, a parasitic bureaucracy of the Soviet type. The duality, the contradiction, of a CP is that it is working-class by its base (a base necessary to the Kremlin's game of oscillation) and Stalinist by its policy and its leadership (a leadership selected from above according to its total submission to the Kremlin's demands).
What defines as Stalinist a workers' party, as opposed to a revolutionary party, or a social-democratic party (with its links to the bourgeoisie), or any centrist party, what totally defines the Stalinism of a workers' party, is neither a Stalinist ideology (which does not exist) nor bureaucratic methods (which exist in every kind of party), but mechanical and total subordination to the Kremlin.
When, for one reason or another, this subordination ceases to exist, that party ceases to be Stalinist and expresses interests other than those of the bureaucratic caste of the USSR. This is what happened, as a result of the revolutionary action of the masses, in Yugoslavia, well before the break, and which the break did no more than formalize. This is what has already happened in China and which will inevitably manifest itself in a break, whatever course the Chinese revolution takes.
The possibility of a break, or of a progressive differentiation, of the Chinese CP — a possibility that follows from a correct appraisal of the nature of the CPs (an appraisal that we
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set out precisely at our party's Fourth Congress — 1947 — and which was developed by the Second World Congress, and then in the light of the Yugoslav experience) — would be of a nature to considerably stimulate the revolutionary struggle in Asia, in Europe, and in Africa, to facilitate revolutionary victories in a series of countries, to considerably diminish the capacity of imperialism to resist and hit back, to raise the consciousness and combativity of the workers in the industrially advanced countries, while at the same time favourably modifying the relationship of forces within the labour movement, making it more receptive to the revolutionary programme and thereby infinitely more effective in the class struggle. The affirmation by the CCP of its independence from the Kremlin, and its advance in the accomplishment of the tasks of the permanent revolution in China and internationally, is the event that will probably occur before imperialism is able to engage in a world war.
It is in this perspective — with the Chinese masses, with the Chinese CP, against Stalin — that the action of our Chinese comrades must be set right. It is in the broader perspective of the independence of the labour movement and of its Communist vanguard from the policy of the Kremlin that the international must work, in all countries where the Stalinist party has a broad working-class base.
On Our Tasks
Never in the past has the Fourth International had such possibilities of inscribing itself as a leadership in the revolutionary struggle of the masses. Never has it had, as a corollary of the revolutionary upsurge in the world, so many possibilities of gaining the ear of Communist workers organized in Stalinist parties. Never in the past, and this is a function of the very development of the revolutionary upsurge in the world, have we witnessed so profound a crisis of Stalinism in the world.
Despite what they regard as Stalin's "victories," as proof of "his revolutionary effectiveness," the most conscious Communist workers do not accept the idea, spread by their leaders, that socialism will be established by the Red Army. They are seeking the path of class action, that of the emancipation of the workers by the workers themselves. This concern of theirs in fact touches on a fundamental aspect of the proletarian revolution, an aspect that dominates the work of Marx and that of Lenin — namely, that the essence of the proletarian revolution is not this or that economic measure, but the growth of consciousness, the molecular mobilization, the constitution of the proletariat into a conscious, active, and dominant class. The example of the "buffer zone" on the one hand, and, conversely, of the revolution in Russia, and partially in Yugoslavia, on the other, confirm this idea of Marx and Lenin with striking clarity. This is not a matter of an a priori norm; it is a matter of the very essence of the proletarian revolution: the working class becoming conscious of itself and raising itself to the status of ruling class, not only for the seizure of power, but also and above all for the exercise of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the building of socialism — a construction that is not a mechanical phenomenon (unlike capitalist development), but one that requires the intervention of the proletariat as a conscious class. This is the ABC. This is confirmed one hundred per cent by the experience of the USSR (relative internal stagnation and counter-revolutionary policy on a world scale), by the experience of Yugoslavia, by the experience of China, and negatively by the experience of the countries of the "buffer zone."
Not a single serious Communist worker reproaches Stalin for being afraid of world war, for refusing to declare war-revolution or revolution-war. What the
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best of them reproach him for is, on the contrary, subordinating the class struggle in the various countries to the diplomatic and military needs of the USSR, subordinating the strategic line of proletarian revolution to one of its tasks, the defence of one of the workers' states.
In France, the crisis of Stalinism, which has just manifested itself in a break within the proletariat of the mining industry, is fed permanently by the observation of the PCF's ineffectiveness for the revolution: the ineffectiveness of its policy of a national front, of building "new democracy" (the Yalta policy); the ineffectiveness of its policy of opposition and its leadership in the great struggles of the working class since 1947 (the Zhdanov policy); its incapacity to respond to the central preoccupation of the period, the achievement of the workers' united front.
All the strikes so far have reinforced this impression among Communist workers that the PCF is not leading the proletariat in the direction of revolution, but in the direction of a neutralization of the French bourgeoisie and of waiting for war and for the entry of the Red Army.
Communist workers have seen their struggle against the war in Vietnam, undertaken by the PCF with a violence tinged with adventurism, used to serve the campaign for the Stockholm Appeal. They have seen their struggle against the eighteen months' [conscription], stopped in full swing, serve as a springboard for the agitation for the Sheffield–Warsaw Appeal.
In autumn 1950, great anxiety gripped the militants of the PCF (and certainly of other CPs too) when the imperialist armies in Korea were within an inch of being pushed back into the sea, when only a minimal supply of material was needed to secure a success of immense significance for the whole Asian revolution. They then saw Stalin, applying the same policy of non-intervention he had applied against the rising phase of the Spanish revolution, let the imperialist armies go back on the offensive. This anxiety expressed itself so widely that the leadership had to reply publicly, through the mouth of Jeannette Vermeersch, as follows: those who demand that the USSR intervene in Korea do not understand what world war would mean. This reply disarmed the incipient opposition, for no Communist worker wants world war. What they were asking for was not intervention, but the cessation of the de facto embargo on arms that was strangling the Korean revolution.
That the Stalinist leaders should still have enough inventiveness to deceive the Communist workers surprises no one. But what is surprising, inadmissible, is that La Vérité, through the pen of comrade Pablo, who had assigned himself a monopoly over articles on Korea, did nothing to make use of the crisis that then manifested itself: it explained that it was difficult to pronounce on Stalin's intentions; it kept silent on the significance of non-intervention; it did not echo, through a systematic and sustained campaign, the demand that Communist workers addressed to their leadership: planes, guns for Korea; worse still, it took up on its own account J. Vermeersch's assessment (helping Korea means world war), merely adding that if Stalin were a true revolutionary he would not be afraid to engage in the world
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war (war-revolution, revolution-war).
Here is a telling application of this orientation which comrade Pablo calls "Closer to the Communist workers." It reminds us of the policy of the right-wing tendency that left our party, which likewise campaigned under the slogan "Closer to the Communist workers," which meant: closer to Stalinist policy. In the present case, La Vérité has been closer to Stalinist policy (it played at being the MacArthur of the "Stalinist world") but very far removed from the concerns of the Communist workers, whom it did not help find the right answer to their anxieties.
In its methods of analysis, in its perspectives, in its applications, this policy resembles everything most negative in the history of our international. Through its impressionism and its empiricism, through its passive submission to the fait accompli and to apparent "strength," through its abandonment of class strategy, it repeats all the errors of the French right-wingers, of Haston, and of many other tendencies that have liquidated themselves.
Alarm Signal
We think that comrade Pablo's orientation is neither very clear nor definitively fixed. We are convinced that he will correct his errors without too much difficulty. But that is not the question. Comrade Pablo is also a leader of the international. As such, his positions do not commit him alone. Already his line has found partial expression in the plenum resolution, which is a confused, contradictory text, the result of an unprincipled bloc between two lines, the very model of an eclectic document. But, above all, a whole series of alarming manifestations are appearing as direct consequences of this theoretical mess.
On the one hand, a Stalinizing tendency is developing rapidly within the international. Of course, like the sorcerer's apprentice, comrade Pablo can say that this is not what he wanted. He can even apply a vigorous "self-criticism" onto the shoulders of politically weaker comrades who strive to be more consistent than those who inspired them. But the remedy only masks the disease without curing it. Such tendencies, destructive of the international, are showing themselves in the editorial team of our English comrades. They are showing themselves in France among the Lyon comrades whose resolution we have cited. They are showing themselves in our Central Committee, where comrade Mestre declares herself in favour of the Stalinist slogan of struggle against German rearmament, plainly subordinating the question of raising the consciousness and revolutionary struggle of the German and French proletarians to the military defence of the USSR, conceived in the Stalinist manner as the number-one imperative, the strategic line.
On the other hand, tendencies to reject the defence of the USSR are already showing themselves and would inevitably develop. Comrades troubled by the present tendencies toward revisionism on the nature of the bureaucracy and on the Trotskyist conception of the defence of the USSR will inevitably break away both from Trotskyism and from the defence of the USSR. We must take seriously the defection of Natalia Trotsky (who made known her break with the Fourth International in a letter addressed to the IEC on 9 May 1951), whose radically mistaken conceptions on the question of the USSR had not prevented the Second
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World Congress from placing her on its honorary presidium.
The orientation sketched out threatens to provoke the splitting of our international into a Stalinist tendency and a tendency defeatist on the question of the USSR.
We must react without delay, return to the Marxist method of analysing society, return to the Leninist conception of the function of class, return to the Trotskyist analysis of the degeneration of the USSR and of the character of the bureaucracy, return to the fundamental Trotskyist affirmation that the crisis of humanity is and remains the crisis of revolutionary leadership; return to the revolutionary class line, that of building the victory of the Fourth International, world party of the socialist revolution.
Internal Bulletin of the PCI, June 1951.
Notes
1. See, for Europe, the bureaucracy's policy in France (1936), in Spain (1936–1939), in Poland (the Warsaw Commune), in Greece (1944–1945), its efforts to prevent and crush the Yugoslav revolution, its policy in France and Italy in the face of the revolutionary upsurge after the Second World War.
2. "Economic development, while slowly improving the workers' conditions, rapidly helps to form a privileged stratum," says Trotsky in the fundamental document defining the USSR, The Revolution Betrayed, point D of the definition "What Is the USSR?"
3. The draft thesis submitted by the SI to the Ninth Plenum (point XXI, paragraph 3) spoke of the "conditions of economic exploitation" of the Soviet proletariat by the bureaucracy. The idea of class exploitation has disappeared from the text adopted by the IEC, but that of historically necessary social strata (of class!) reappears in Pablo.
4. "Once war has broken out (...), the bureaucracy will no longer have any reason to oppose the development of the revolutionary struggles of the masses in the imperialist camp. Quite the contrary (...), the bureaucracy will have every interest in developing everything that will help undermine the military power of the imperialist camp, including large-scale revolutionary movements." (Theses of the Lyon cell) The whole thesis amounts to this: the bureaucracy has hitherto opposed the revolution out of fear of imperialist military intervention. In the third world war, the bureaucracy will no longer have this concern and will become the leadership of the world revolution. This is much more consistent than Pablo's theses. Yet the author of this resolution had the weakness to declare himself for Pablo's positions.
5. "Some voices exclaim: if we continue to regard the USSR as a workers' state, we shall have to establish a new category: the counter-revolutionary workers' state. This argument attempts to strike our imaginations by opposing to a sound programmatic norm a wretched, contemptible, even repugnant reality. But have we not observed, day by day since 1923, how the Soviet state has played an ever more counter-revolutionary role on the international scene? Have we forgotten the experience of the Chinese revolution, of the 1926 general strike in England, and, finally, the very fresh experience of the Spanish revolution? There are two completely counter-revolutionary workers' internationals. Its critics have apparently forgotten this 'category.' The trade unions of France, Great Britain, the United States, and other countries fully support the counter-revolutionary policy of their bourgeoisie. Why is it impossible to apply the same method to the counter-revolutionary workers' state? In the last analysis, a workers' state is a trade union that has conquered power. The difference in attitude in these two cases is explained by the simple fact that trade unions have a long history and that we are accustomed to regarding them as realities and not merely as categories in our programme. But with regard to the workers' state there appears an inability to learn to approach it as a real historical fact which must not itself be subordinated to our programme." (Trotsky, "Again and Once More on the Nature of the USSR")
6. In 1651, three centuries ago, the bourgeoisie was taking its first steps in England. In 1751, two centuries ago, it was preparing itself in France. The transition period of two or three centuries, in which Pablo assigns the bureaucracy a necessary role, will be longer than the period of bourgeois domination in the earliest-developed countries, and three to six times longer than the world domination of the capitalist bourgeoisie. It is then difficult to balk at the term "class" applied to the Soviet bureaucracy.
7. In the theses of the Second World Congress there was already an unfortunate formula, though appreciably different: "To defend what remains of the conquests of October is a strategic line [a, and not the] for the revolutionary party, and not a 'slogan in itself.'" It would have been more correct to say "a strategic task" or "a strategic orientation," a formulation clearly opposed to the idea of the defence of the USSR as a "slogan in itself." "The defence of the USSR coincides for us with the preparation of the international revolution. Only those methods are permissible which do not contradict the interests of the revolution. The relation between the defence of the USSR and international socialist revolution is the same as that between a tactical task and a strategic task. Tactics are subordinated to the strategic goal and can in no case contradict it." (Trotsky, "The USSR in War")
8. We ask that the SI submit to the world congress the document of its correspondence with the Chinese comrades and thereby inform the congress of the directives it had the right and the duty to give to the Chinese section.
9. The Russian Revolution was very far removed from "pure norms," and Lenin thought it was much further removed from them than any revolution will be in the future in any advanced country.
10. The fundamental criterion of politics, for us, is not the transformation of property in this or that partial territory, however important these may be in themselves, but the changes in the forms of consciousness and organization of the world proletariat, the raising of its capacity to defend its old conquests and to accomplish new ones. From this decisive point of view, the policy of Moscow, taken as a whole, retains its thoroughly reactionary character and remains the principal obstacle in the path of international revolution. (Trotsky, "The USSR in War")
11. The SWP's newspaper The Militant conducted an excellent campaign of exposures on this question. In France, where the bulk of the working-class cadres are organized in the PCF, this campaign ought to have taken on very large proportions around the theme: "Planes for Korea."
12. Reading the Haston amendment at the World Congress is very instructive: it is a rough sketch of "Where Are We Going?"