30.05.1996
The advocates of historical truth?
Phil Sharpe of the TUG replies to recent letters by Partisan about Stalinism and Trotskyism
Partisan’s criticisms of the Trotskyist Unity Group can be divided into two main areas. Firstly, the purges of the 1930s, and secondly, the political history of Trotskyism. In Weekly Worker (May 2), Hankin and Clark use the views of Sheila Fitzpatrick (as I will try to show, the word ‘use’ is highly significant in this context) in order to refute the views of Professor Rogovin about the purges of the mid-1930s. Mysteriously they are reluctant to give the reader any details of the quote they utilise in order to substantiate their views, (Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution 1917-32, Oxford University Press pl59).
We can only speculate as to the motives for this shyness about quotation details. Maybe one reason is similar to that made by the judge at the famous Lady Chatterley obscenity trial. Do you want the plebs to read this book? But there is a more probable explanation, in that - far from Fitzpatrick justifying the views of Partisan in simple, infallible terms - the truth is far more complex. Or, as the followers of Derrida might argue, it is not theoretically possible to have one literal and unquestioned reading of the text. Rather the text is a site of ideological struggle. I will now try to demonstrate this point.
One of the main arguments of Fitzpatrick’s book concerns the rapid upward mobility of a significant section of the newly formed proletariat of the late 1920s. For this created the political and ideological conditions for mass support of Stalin’s modernising ‘revolution from above’, as represented by forced collectivisation and industrialisation (p8-9).
This social context expressed the objective conditions for the relative political isolation and defeat of the left and right oppositions, and also generated support for Stalin’s autarkic version of the building of socialism in one country. To Fitzpatrick, the ideology of revolution from above was a continuation and consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the class dictatorship of the most privileged section of the working class over the majority of the working class. This ideology was connected to the hierarchical requirements of running the Party-state apparatus and managerial administration.
The upheavals of civil war, war communism, the end of NEP and the embarking upon extensive modernisation objectively required an authoritarian Party regime as the only viable form of the dictatorship of the proletariat (p80-84). In order to facilitate ideological support for modernisation, the perspective of socialism in one country was presented as an heroic mythology of intransigent class struggle and the development of proletarian revolution, and the related ending of the retreat of the NEP - the supposed period of accommodation to the kulaks and bourgeois specialists (p100-109).
Thus a demagogic ideology of class struggle was utilised to gain mass support for the coercive measures involved in imposing collectivisation upon a reluctant peasantry (p110-113).
In other words, this ideological standpoint was necessary to maintain working class support in a situation of growing economic chaos caused by the voluntaristic character of collectivisation - partly generated by the subjective illusions of this mythical heroic imagery - and the increasing hardships imposed by the rapid character of urban industrialisation. The political capacity of the CPSU to retain mass support, in a situation where ideology was increasingly divergent from its effects within reality, is explained by Fitzpatrick in terms of the concept of cultural revolution.
The political call to oppose the class enemies of the working class was sustained by a massive propagation within literature and the arts of utopian imagery about the imminent building of a classless and egalitarian society. This was connected to a crude ideological accommodation to the anti-intellectual aspects of working class spontaneous consciousness, and the promotion of a xenophobic and nationalist version of the virtues of Soviet communism:
“But there was a kind ofgentlemen’s agreement within the NEP leadership not to appeal to working class prejudices or, in Bukharin’s phrase, unduly ‘fan the flames of class war’. It was not until 1928, when the staging of the Shakhty trial broke this agreement, that it became clear that Stalin saw working class prejudices and resentments as a political resource which could be used both against his opponents in the leadership and as a means of re-creating the revolutionary atmosphere of crisis and struggle after the lull of NEP” (pl32).
Thus in objective terms, the political regression from the proletarian internationalism of the October revolution to the ideological hegemony of petty-bourgeois national utopian socialism was caused by rapid social mobility and incorporation of sections of the working class into the expanding Party bureaucracy (pl33-134). In subjective terms, the dynamism of cultural revolution could sustain an image of socialism which was both egalitarian and idealist through an emphasis upon the importance of the Party as the subject of historical transformation.
In this idealist manner the objective difficulties created by the growing class antagonisms between the proletariat and peasantry, and the repressive character of the Party-state apparatus, could be glossed over as secondary and transitory problems. Hence the ending of the objective basis for this ideological hegemony of petty-bourgeois socialism - the limiting of social mobility and the increasing hardships of rapid industrialisation - led to an ideological crisis and to increasing mass support for the left and right oppositions.
For the promise of an egalitarian society was increasingly restricted and the expression of a repressive, alienating state power over the working class, even if it was partly the ideological product of the proletariat alienating its revolutionary capacities onto the bureaucratic Party-state.
Consequently, to Fitzpatrick, the political basis for the purges of’ 1936-38 was the development of a new ideology in order to sustain the rule of this consolidated bureaucratic elite. It was necessary to actively repress any political expression of the utopian and egalitarian ideology which had motivated working class support for the five-year plans and the modernisation of the Soviet Union. In other words it was necessary to purge those Party members who still held to ideological illusions of the ‘heroic’ period of 1928-32:
“Class war and the revolutionary spirit of ‘storming the fortresses’ fell out of favour. The working class lost its special position, and the regime firmly disassociated itself from the egalitarianism which had traditionally been a part of the workers’ (and, to a lesser degree, the Bolsheviks’) revolution. The managerial values of discipline, order and cost-effectiveness came to the fore, and were now described as socialist values” (pl42-143).
The new ideology of opposition to equality, and its implicit critique of egalitarianism, was used to establish political conformity with the consolidation of the hierarchy of an authoritarian Party regime and the emerging bureaucratic social relations of production. Fitzpatrick argues that this embourgeoisement of the CPSU did not mean that society was capitalist, but it did express an end to the revolution from above (pl46-153). In this context the purges of the 1930s - their coercive depth within Soviet society - went wider than previous purges, in order to ensure obedience and support for a system that had not established a viable ideological alternative to the previous forms of ideological justification of bureaucratic rule. Thus Stalin could not be certain of firm support within the bureaucracy for his consolidation of the bureaucratic system. Only by 1939, or after the process of extensive purging had taken place, could he be confident that his petty-bourgeois socialist and bonapartist regime had established loyal Party support.
Thus Fitzpatrick’s formal view that the purges were still a continuation of the methods of the revolution is contradicted by her own explanation of the consolidation of Stalin’s autocratic rule as the only possible instrumental basis to bring about a new ruling class, and overcome the ideological contradictions present in its process of emergence and fruition. For Stalin was only able to make the most tentative ideological appeal for mass support during the purges in terms of an appeal for support for the strong Party leader against the proletarian utopian socialist Party of 1928-34. It is the convergence of political interest between the Kirov, Bukharin and left opposition wings of the CPSU that created more favourable objective conditions for an ideological struggle against Stalin’s control of the Party. In other words, Fitzpatrick’s analysis may politically differ from that of Professor Rogovin, but is certainly not absolutely opposed, as Partisan would argue. For a wider evaluation of recent historical analysis of these question, the reader should consult Chris Ward, Stalin’s Russia, Edward Arnold, 1993.
In regards to the second point (Weekly Worker March 28), it is not possible to give a comprehensive answer because its scope covers the entire history of Trotskyism. However it is noticeable that Clark and Hankin presume political ignorance on the part of the Weekly Worker readership in order to express their view in typically demagogic fashion. You would get the impression that no opposition took place to the popular frontist degeneration of the LSSP in Sri Lanka. But, contrary to this attempt to rewrite history, a conscious political struggle took place within the LSSP against this opportunist accommodation to a Stalinist political perspective, and this eventually resulted in the formation of the Revolutionary Communist League of Sri Lanka. This organisation was to the forefront of the struggle against the political degeneration of the Workers Revolutionary Party in the mid-1980s.
In regards to the alleged sectarianism of China and Vietnam Trotskyists, the standpoint of Partisan represents uncritical support for bourgeois nationalist revolution. In contrast the Trotskyists within China and Vietnam tried to maintain a principled standpoint of political independence in relation to the Stalinist-led bourgeois revolutions. Indeed, as Walter Daum has pointed out in ‘The life and death of Stalinism’ (Socialist Voice, 1990), these bourgeois revolutions were only made possible by the previous important defeats inflicted upon the Chinese and Vietnamese proletariat (p252-256).
However a larger question still remains to be answered. Why have the various forces of Trotskyism not been able to build viable revolutionary parties? To Al Richardson and Sam Bernstein in ‘War and the International’ (Socialist Platform, 1986) the answer is provided in sociological terms. Apart from brief periods in very few organisations - eg, the Revolutionary Communist Party of 1944-49 - the membership of Trotskyist organisations has been middle class rather than proletarian (p237-243). This empirical approach cannot explain theoretical degeneration within Trotskyism, and instead Richardson and Bernstein have to revert to the organisational view that centralist measures led to the bureaucratic degeneration of the Fourth International. In other words, it is all the fault of Cannon and his support for Healy against the Haston-Grant leadership of the RCP (pl60-235). Thus the political situation of British Trotskyism becomes the basis to explain the whole international degeneration of world Trotskyism. Such a British-centred view cannot explain what actually were the theoretical limitations of Cannon and other important figures within post-war Trotskyism.
Cannon’s standpoint was that America represented the geographical centre of world revolution: “The issue of socialism or capitalism will not be finally decided until it is decided in the US. Another retardation of the proletarian revolution in one country or another will not save American imperialism from its proletarian nemesis at home. The decisive battles for the communist future of mankind will be fought in the US” (James P Cannon, Speeches to the Party, Pathfinder Press 1973, p331). In his ‘Theses on the American Revolution’ this national-centred view of world revolution was outlined in economic catastrophist terms (p323-337).
However, these economic perspectives were the form rather than the content of this accommodation to a teleological conception of history, in which inexorable imperatives lead towards realising communism. Thus the attempt to retain a political commitment to the open-ended character of class struggle was ideologically compromised by this reduction of the universal character of world revolution to a particular essence.
This strategic approach did not automatically produce opportunist politics, because Cannon was still able to use this perspective to oppose the pro-Stalinist objectivism of Pablo and others, who viewed the USSR as the distorted centre of world revolution. This was outlined in the famous open letter of 1953 (For an historical analysis see David North, The heritage we defend, Labor Publications 1988, p229-248). However, the philosophical idealist standpoint of his strategic perspective, and its related historical materialist limitations, became fully apparent between 1960 and 1963. The bourgeois nationalist revolution in Cuba was explained by the US SWP as a distorted proletarian revolution and the renewed beginning of world revolution, and the connected ideological regeneration of American socialism (North, p347-390). The Socialist Labour League led a theoretical and political struggle against this opportunism, but over a period of time they also accommodated to a nationalist view of world revolution with Britain as its unique centre. Consequently opportunism has become a repeated political pattern because the forces of principled Trotskyism have not reflected upon their own historical materialist premises. Instead programme, or a dogmatic form of dialectical and historical materialism, have become party ideological substitutes for this necessary process of theoretical self-criticism.
The result has been the constant reproduction of the petty-bourgeois socialist or Stalinist conception of history. This represents an acceptance of an idealist objectivist and teleological view of history within a Trotskyist political form (For an elaboration of this analysis see ‘Theoretical history of the Fourth International’ in Trotskyist Unity No1).
The TUG is well aware that there are no guarantees which will ensure that these theoretical problems can be avoided in the future. But at least an awareness of problems can help to clarify what is theoretically necessary in the struggle to rebuild the political forces of principled Trotskyism.