Letters

Learning to rule

I would like to comment on Jack Conrad’s interesting article, ‘Genesis of bureaucratic socialism’ (Weekly Worker December 19 1996).

1. The term, “bureaucratic socialism”:

One can characterise the Soviet system combining the word socialism with various negative adjectives, like bureaucratic, despotic, authoritarian, distorted, deformed, expressing in this way his disagreement. But it is not always practical to say that A is not A, but a deformed B.

For example if we press a sphere, making a cube, then we can argue whether this is a cube or a deformed sphere, just wasting our time. Anyway, it must be clear that, regardless of the characterisation adopted for this kind of socialism, we cannot avoid the very question of whether that system was indeed socialist.

The most concise definition of socialism is the society where the working class is the ruling class. Of course one can go a step further by saying that socialism means workers’ power and public ownership of the means of production, showing in this way the political and economic aspects of the subject. But this step is not always an easy matter. Firstly, we have to take in to account the dialectic between economics and politics, which means we have to make a synthesis, going in this way back again to the notion of ruling class.

Secondly, we must not forget in how many different ways a class can dominate the politics and the economics of a society.

Finally, we have to agree that the best characterisation of a social system is the one describing better the social relations between the classes. And if, in the contradictory term “bureaucratic socialism”, the word ‘bureaucratic’ depicts the political power and economic privileges of bureaucracy, what is the cover of the word ‘socialism’ in the reality of the social relations in Soviet Union?

2. Revolution and Revolutionaries:

A revolutionary, simultaneously, leads and follows a revolution. That is, in the dialectic between conscience and action, as far as conscience leads the action, a revolutionary leads the revolution, and as far as conscience follows action, a revolutionary follows the revolution. The dialectic of the relations of Party and class cannot be very different. A working class revolutionary Party, in the same manner, simultaneously leads and follows the class.

From this point of view - that is, seeing the revolutionaries inside the revolution, and the Party inside the class - any thought of justifying or condemning Bolsheviks for their role in starting off the revolution, is a misleading pseudo-dilemma. On the contrary, it must be stressed that the arguments between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were not arguments between revolutionaries with different opinions, but between revolutionaries and non-revolutionaries.

3. The objective factors:

My main objection to Jack Conrad’s work regards the underlying logic in his treatment of the objective factors. I’ll start with his note on the Kronstadt revolt. One has to agree that Kronstadt had rather symbolic rather than real political meaning. One has also to agree that in the improbable case of a Kronstadters’ victory, the future of the Revolution and revolutionaries was rather gloomy. Jack Conrad’s description (with the exception that Russia would have become a semi-colony) is quite fair. But the most interesting is that despite Kronstadt’s defeat, his predictions still came true: Russia’s population “subjected to untold suffering”. The objective weakness of working class was an unsurpassable obstacle for the revolution. And the question is, what were the tasks of the socialists in face of this tremendous weakness of the working class? Can a socialist say: ‘All right, the working class cannot run the economy in a way that will keep my Party in power, so, I have to rely on the managers and directors, and temporarily on Nepmen. Consequently I have to take measures against the control of the working class over the economy. The same with politics, I have to rely on the bureaucracy, the new one coming from the Party, as well as the old Tsarist one.’ We have to see that every attempt of the Bolsheviks to cling on the power was moving them away from the weak working class, and so was altering their character as a socialist party.

4. The lessons of the past and the future:

It is true that because of the prematurity of Russian Revolution, Bolsheviks faced difficulties that no socialist party is going to meet again. But this doesn’t mean that the

study of the Russian Revolution has only historic interest. The working class can develop power and conscience in capitalism, and can obtain a high level of experience and knowledge. But surely the working class will not learn under capitalism something very basic for a socialist society: that is, how to be the ruling class. This is not a simple problem. We must not forget that the bourgeoisie, having already control of the economy, learnt to run politics after a painful process, with a lot of backward steps and a lot of chaotic stumbles. The working class can learn how to be the ruling class only by ruling the society.

Yiannis Ivrissimtzis
North London

Clear proof

An article in the November 14 issue of the Weekly Worker, entitled ‘Muddying the waters’ by Don Preston, proclaims that Workers Hammer (no153, November/December 1996) erred in its characterisation of your positions. While we hardly pretend to possess “the absolute truth about everything”, as you so snidely put it, we do know your line on the ballot in the 1984-85 miners’ strike, Maastricht, and Afghanistan.

You complain that we reminded our readers that “the CPGB (then The Leninist) ... denounced the lack of a ballot in the miners’ strike”. “Not true as such,” you say. But your own publication tells a different story. In January 1985 The Leninist said: “The lack of a ballot to call the overtime ban, the lack of a ballot over strike action ... showed that the NUM leadership trusted bureaucratic manoeuvre more than their arguments for solidarity, and this had its costs.” Your words, not ours. The demand that the NUM organise a strike ballot, well after the strike began, was also the battle cry of all those who wanted to see the heroic miners lose, from Thatcher and the scabs, to Labour traitor Neil Kinnock.

You complain further about our statement that you “refuse to oppose the anti-working class Maastricht Treaty, and are part of the Militant-led Socialist Alliance, which is committed to electing a Blair government”. “All untruths,” you assert. To be sure, a Weekly Worker article (November 21 1996) states “total opposition to the Maastricht Treaty (any version)”. But in November 1991, a month before the Maastricht summit, The Leninist said: “We communists in Britain do not take a pro or anti position on what exact course the United Kingdom government takes as regards European integration” (our emphasis). Behind a posture of not advising the capitalist government, The Leninist in fact advocated an abstentionist position before the working class. Revolutionary Marxist internationalists, in sharp contrast, have always stood in working class opposition to the EU: it is a bosses’ trade bloc and a vehicle for capitalist collaboration against the European working class. Our proletarian internationalist opposition to Maastricht is sharply distinguished from the SLP’s ‘little Englandism’. We fight for a Socialist United States of Europe.

When the Militant-dominated Scottish Socialist Alliance calls to “maximise the anti-Tory vote” (SSA founding document), it seems pretty transparent to us. Perhaps this is not a (thinly veiled) call to vote for Blair’s Labour, but instead a call to vote for the (bourgeois) Scottish National Party? You protest that CPGB members inside the SSA do not want to see a Labour government, and assure us that the CPGB criticises Militant from the left. But you are happy to co-exist with an organisation that sponsors Billy Hutchinson, a known loyalist death squad member.

The WH article you refer to nailed your denial that what was posed in Afghanistan was the defence of the Soviet Union. We said that: “For the CPGB with its left-nationalist outlook, fundamentally derived from the Stalinist dogma of ‘socialism in one country’, the issue was a supposed ‘proletarian dictatorship’ in Afghanistan.” We added that, “Opposed to the ‘export of revolution’, the CPGB thought the only role of the USSR should have been as auxiliary to this ‘revolution’.” Your article complains that we have “stupidly accused” you, “just because” you “believe there was a revolution in 1978 and pointed to the treacherous nature of the Soviet bureaucracy”. But now, two weeks after your reply to us, Mark Fischer declared that: “Throughout the 1980s, The Leninist stood by the thesis that the revolution had ‘ushered in a new order, a dictatorship of the proletariat’ (Jack Conrad The Leninist February 10 1988). I think we must now say that this assessment was not correct” (Weekly Worker November 28 1996). Whereas previously you were uncritical supporters of the Khalq wing of the PDPA, now you say: “These brave revolutionaries’ final, desperate calls for Soviet military assistance underline their programmatic failure.”

The essential point here is that by insisting that the real issue is one of “revolution” in Afghanistan you continue to duck the real question. The intervention of the Red Army into Afghanistan was a progressive act on the part of the bureaucracy, an act in defence of the gains of October and the rights of Afghan women, an act which avowed the dual nature of the Soviet bureaucracy. Although undertaken purely for defensive, geopolitical reasons, it did cut across the grain of the Stalinists’ abject pursuit of ‘peaceful coexistence’ with imperialism. Afghanistan was a battle line in the imperialist Cold War against the Soviet deformed workers’ state. By arming and backing to the hilt the barbaric mujahedin murderers, the imperialists were waging proxy war against the Soviet Union.

Our call, “Hail Red Army in Afghanistan” and “Extend the gains of the October Revolution to the Afghan peoples”, was defence of the Soviet Union against imperialism. This was premised on the fact that there was no indigenous proletariat in Afghanistan, which is why the Red Army could be the engine for social liberation. When Gorbachev and co abandoned Afghanistan with the futile aim of trying to appease imperialism, making a point of renouncing the supposed “Trotskyite heresy” of “export of revolution”, this was the direct precursor to the Soviet bureaucracy’s sell-out of East Germany and thus of the Soviet Union itself. We fought for proletarian political revolution in the Soviet Union and East Germany. We invite your readers to read for themselves our article, ‘Afghanistan: hell for women’, in Workers Hammer no153 (November/December 1996).

Andrew Gastos
Spartacist League (Britain)

CRR too?

I have read with interest the material you have been publishing from the Committee for Revolutionary Regroupment. I see that they are advocating the transitional method and the foregrounding of programme, just as the Workers Socialist League did in 1974 when it split from the sectarian Workers Revolutionary Party.

This is exactly the type of necessary turn to the masses which led me and the WSL away from sectarianism and abstract questions. We were later able to draw anti-Leninist conclusions from this experience.

Can we look forward to seeing the CRR openly in the anti-Leninist camp? Or are they determined to continue associating with the sectarianism that dogs British socialism?

Robin Blick
Surrey

Good forum

I enclose a donation of £200 agreed at a recent aggregate of the Revolutionary Democratic Group towards your paper costs, recognising what a good forum it is to discuss our politics. Keep up the good news on SLP work.

Eric Hooper
Treasurer, RDG