03.12.1998

Stalin and socialism

Phil Sharpe replies to Harpal Brar of the Socialist Labour Party

In this article I will not resort to quotations in order to resolve the issues raised by Harpal Brar about Stalin and the history of the USSR (Weekly Worker November 12). Instead I will attempt to show that his defence of Stalin relies upon idealist ideology.

This is because in philosophical terms we can locate the content of Stalin’s actions as the expression of subjective idealism. Stalin’s alienated consciousness represented an estrangement from the material world, which meant he distrusted everyone who existed outside of his own sensations. Consequently the only possibility he had to control this frightening external social environment was to destroy and liquidate. Stalin did not start out as a dictator justified through subjective idealism, but the social transformation of the Soviet Union and the formation of brutal new class domination was the structural basis to reduce this new social formation to the expression of the estranged wishes of the dictator who feared everyone, and was prepared to constantly subject society to purges and terror in order to try to alleviate his fears.

Harpal Brar obviously does not want to defend Stalin, the subjective idealist, but he cannot overcome the idealist aspect of Stalin’s theory and practice, and so he essentially justifies this idealism in political terms. His standpoint is to essentially conceive of Lenin as Hegel’s wise and dynamic world historical individual, and so after Lenin Stalin becomes the next world historical individual, which is expressed by his personification of the spirit of socialism. Thus Stalin can do no wrong, and this means his political opponents, such as Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin, become counterrevolutionary and must be liquidated. Stalin is the self-appointed expert on Leninism, and consequently he is the defender of the faith against anti-Leninists.

Stalin’s ideas and actions have a direct and inherently correct relationship to reality, because Stalin is the omnipotent absolute spirit and infallible leader who is guiding the Soviet Union towards communism. There is no need to define socialism except as the expression of the heroism of Stalin, and the ‘fact’ that the Soviet people are willing to work, fight and die for him, shows that the consciousness of the workers and peasants is based upon a love for Stalin. This unity between the workers and peasants with Stalin represents a socialist consciousness, and shows the deeply held aspiration of the Soviet people is to follow Stalin in the building and defending of socialism.

This approach of Harpal Brar represents a form of utopian socialism: the elite introduction and development of socialism from above. He makes no attempt to show that the relationship between the Soviet people and Stalin is democratic. The question of whether Stalin is accountable to the people is essentially considered to be irrelevant, and the additional question of whether real and meaningful soviet and party democracy exists is also considered irrelevant. This effective dismissal of the question of the content of party and class relations is because it has been resolved through the relationship that exists between leader and people. Stalin is held to be the infallible leader, and this means the people express spontaneous gratitude to Stalin for his wise leadership. Hence the people are prepared to spontaneously bestow and project this gratitude in the form of alienating (separating) their political power to Stalin, and as a result of this process of the mass abdication of political power the masses are prepared to be passive yet enthusiastic participants in the soviet elections. They are also willing to join mass participatory events, such as demonstrations against Trotsky and the Moscow trail defendants.

Given this hierarchical, yet apparently voluntary, relationship between the masses and Stalin, the actual use of coercion and terror against the Soviet people can be dismissed as a Trotskyist slander. Harpal Brar is essentially justifying the utopian socialist view - the masses lack their own initiative and wisdom to be active participants in the struggle for socialism. Thus Stalin’s socialism has the ideology of a new absolute monarchy - ‘the state is me’. Consequently, Brar is elaborating a central aspect: the justification of the omnipotent leader, or the red tsar. The people become reduced to instruments (rather than an active agency) for the building of socialism in accordance with the instructions of the leader. The uncritical hero worshipping of Stalin by his supporters means that the horrors and problems of collectivisation and industrialisation are considered by these Stalinist apologists to be an unfortunate and yet necessary aspect of this instrumental process of modernising and building socialism. It is not possible to build the productive forces without misery and distress. But eventually these problems will be overcome, and reality will conform to the aspirations of the leader in terms of the increasingly successful completion of the building of socialism.

In reply to these idealist illusions it can be argued that even if the productive forces can be rapidly developed in Stalinist terms (which they were not because of the widespread economic chaos in the 1930s) the problematical question of working class and peasant participation in running the economy remains. The leader promises a socialist and communist future to the masses in order to motivate them and develop enthusiasm for carrying out economic tasks, but he is still very reluctant to ‘bestow’ the realisation of meaningful economic and political democracy. Instead he hopes that the masses will be content with formal elections and election meetings. The tension between elitist utopian socialism from above and the lack of working class and socialist democracy remains an enduring feature of society.

The utopian socialist ideology of the leader (and of the leaders who succeed him) is used to try and console the working class and peasants that the only feasible socialism is that of socialism from above. The system is full of this tension between the fallible and shallow ideology of Stalinism and the suppressed aspirations of the workers and peasants. Resolution of this tension does not occur, and so an advance towards socialism cannot take place because the workers and peasants are still in a subordinate position within the relations of production.

Eventually, under Gorbachev, the Stalinist bureaucracy starts to recognise that their system is in deep crisis. The economy is inefficient and the bureaucracy are increasingly unpopular and hated by the Soviet people. Gorbachev has enlightened the bureaucracy with some home truths about the crisis, and he introduces perestroika to bring about economic reform, but it does not work adequately. Increasingly the bureaucracy are forced to acknowledge that the omnipotent leader no longer provides workable solutions for the requirements of society (that is to say, the requirements of the bureaucracy). They are forced to look at themselves (getting out of the consoling shadows of the Plato’s cave of philosophical illusions is a very demoralising experience), and can only recognise themselves as ghosts of a glorious past, with little hope for the future.

This means they have to admit that there is no real alternative to capitalism, and Thatcherite ideology has become hegemonic. This ideological counterrevolution facilitates the fragmentation of the bureaucracy and the way is prepared for Yeltsin to come to power with a restorationist perspective. Utopian socialism is over, but the working class has become atomised by the economic, political and ideological structures of the system, and so it is not possible to develop an independent revolutionary alternative in this period of the crisis of the elite.

A number of specific points of Harpal Brar’s presentation will now be analysed.

Firstly, he refers to Lenin’s support for socialism in one country. He refers to Lenin’s famous article on the military programme of proletarian revolution and the articles on cooperation in order to substantiate his viewpoint. But even if we accept the validity of Brar’s standpoint in relation to these articles, we could also provide other quotes that indicated Lenin’s world revolution perspective. But what is important is not a selective quotation conflict, but rather whether we are able to explain reality in an emancipatory manner. In this context Harpal Brar’s use of quotes and references to articles by Lenin does not amount to justification of a non-utopian process of transition to socialism. Instead Lenin is used in a selective textual manner in order to support a utopian illusion about the prospect of building socialism in one country.

It is idealism to equate an infallible textual Lenin with the validity of socialism in one country, because this amounts to defining reality through the text in an a priori manner. Socialism becomes conceived in idealist terms - as the metaphysical truths of Lenin’s intentions as a world historical individual. These intentions are outlined in the text and are then realised in practice as the concrete and inevitable expression of revealed truth. In actuality, the retreat into the Soviet state after the Brest-Litovsk treaty, and the failure to re-establish soviet democracy after the civil war, the ban on factions and the construction of a one-party state, and primarily the isolation of the Soviet Union and the repressive and exploitative character of collectivisation and industrialisation show the objective difficulties and improbability of realising socialism in one country.

Any amount of quotes from Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky are not sufficient in themselves to prove either the actuality or impossibility of socialism in one country. Rather it is necessary to develop a historical materialist approach that can facilitate a non-idealist understanding of the Soviet Union, and on that basis the textual work of Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky becomes explanatory rather than obscurantist. Significantly, Harpal Brar continues to prefer his idealist approach as the basis to uphold socialism in one country. He uses quotes from Deutscher to indicate the mass popularity for Stalin. This subjective approach cannot establish the economic and political reasons to uphold the building of socialism in one country: rather a selection of impressions are used to create images of socialism, and we are back to the consoling shadows of Plato’s cave.

Secondly, Harpal Brar quotes from Trotsky in order to show the productive forces were developed as the material basis for socialism. But far from showing that socialism was being built, Trotsky’s comments primarily indicate the problems with his theory of degenerated workers’ state. To Trotsky the economic base of the Soviet Union was essentially sound and represented the potential to realise socialism, but the political superstructure was counterrevolutionary. This contradiction between base and superstructure was essentially not explanatory about the Soviet Union, in that the importance of exploitation within the relations of production was glossed over. Furthermore, the reactionary nature of the political superstructure was not separate from, but was instead connected to the class character of the economic base, and Trotsky ignored the importance of the ideological structures which actively upheld utopian socialism.

Between 1924 and 1929 a degenerated workers’ state did exist, in that a counterrevolution had occurred in the state apparatus with the development of the hegemony of the Stalinist bureaucracy. In this period the bureaucracy had no secure material foundation, and the New Economic Policy did not provide a big enough surplus for the bureaucracy to become a cohesive ruling class. However, collectivisation and industrialisation consolidated the economic and political power of the bureaucracy through repression and coercion directed against the peasants and workers. The ideology of utopian socialism based upon the role of the infallible leader was vitally important for obtaining mass support for the social regime of a new ruling class that exploited the workers and peasants in the name of the workers and peasants.

The initial political counterrevolution of the mid-1920s became the basis for economic counterrevolution in the late 1920s, and then an ideological counterrevolution was developed in the early 1930s in relation to the transformation of the right centrist position of the 1920s into the systematic counterrevolutionary utopian ideology of Stalin as the spirit of socialism.

Trotsky did not study the ideology of Stalinism, and he did not systematically study the economic activity of the Soviet Union. His theoretical emphasis was upon the political internal and external actions of Stalinism, such as the relation of Soviet Stalinism to 1930s revolutionary situations and the purge trials. In methodological terms this one-sidedness led him to abstract the political from the economic and ideological, and this resulted in him eclectically and impressionistically praising the building of the productive forces in the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, no one knew better than Trotsky the limitations of the perspective of socialism in one country, and his analysis continues to help us to understand the problems and crises of the Soviet Union in its 74-year history.

Thirdly, Harpal Brar argues that Trotsky’s defeatism about the prospects of the Soviet Union in the world war is an indication of his subjectivism about the Soviet Union. Deutscher was more accurate when commenting about the immense prestige of Stalin that enabled him to lead the Soviet Union to victory. In order to uphold his standpoint Harpal Brar has to ignore the significance of Stalinist political activity that facilitated the victory of fascism in Germany and Spain and resulted in the increased encirclement of the Soviet Union. This situation encouraged the prospect of German imperialist invasion, and the Nazi-Soviet Pact would only postpone and not overcome the threat of military action against the Soviet Union.

When German imperialism advanced into Soviet territory the Soviet people were faced with the prospect of fighting or becoming colonial slaves. Only the barbarism of imperialism was worse than the terrible tyranny of Stalinism. In other words, it was in spite of Stalin rather than real affirmative support for the Stalinist system that led the Soviet people to accept the necessity to fight German imperialism. No doubt many people expressed gratitude to Stalin for being their leader during the period of the war, just as gratitude was felt towards Churchill, the imperialist wartime leader of Britain. Such expressions of gratitude do not define a regime in Marxist terms - it is subjective and impressionistic to equate spontaneous and transitory moods of an alienated consciousness with the nature of a given social system.

Indeed it is significant that Stalin’s wartime popularity did not lead to a more advanced regime in peacetime. The purges and terror were continued, and the working class and peasantry remained subordinate and atomised within the exploitative relations of production of bureaucratic utopian socialism. Only proletarian revolution could have liberated the working class of the Soviet Union and eastern Europe after 1945, and only an independent working class mobilisation against utopian socialism was the basis of human emancipation from the red tsar.

So was Trotsky a defeatist about the Soviet Union? Was he nothing more than a sceptic? Trotsky certainly was not sceptical about the workers and peasants and he believed that they could defend the ‘gains’ of the revolution. But he was aware that the actions of the bureaucracy were leading the Soviet Union to potential military defeat. The victory of the Soviet people was an immense achievement against a formidable opponent, but nothing really changed after the war. The system of bureaucratic socialism remained and, as Trotsky was aware, the longer the system existed and revolution did not occur, the possibility for capitalist restoration became more real.

The events of 1991 showed that the idealist ideology of the rule of the infallible red tsars was now thoroughly discredited, and the new tsars extolled the virtues of a vicious market capitalism. Stalin’s successor was now Yeltsin.