Friday, June 24, 2011

Trotsky: The Fight Against Stalinism

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The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was supposed to be proof that socialism can not work. The tiny minority of multi-millionaires that run the world have been trying to drive home a “lesson” to young people and workers ever since – that there is no alternative to the inequality, poverty and chaos of the market, and that global capitalism is the only system that can work.

They want us to believe that any attempt to get rid of capitalism would end up with dictatorship, bread queues and eventual collapse . . . just like Russia.

But the system that collapsed in Soviet Russia in 1991 was not socialist. Despite all the red flags, red stars and statues of Lenin, it was a million miles from socialism. By 1991 the rulers of the Soviet Union had trampled on every one of the principles of the socialist revolution led by Lenin and Trotsky in 1917.

The Soviet Union was not socialist – it was Stalinist.

What’s the difference? It’s hard to know where to start.

In 1917 the privileges of the rich were abolished, and their money was taken away to try to abolish the division between rich and poor. But under Stalinism the rulers of Russia salted away huge sums for themselves and lived in luxury compared to the rest of the people.

In 1917 housing was shared out and the second homes of the rich were confiscated and handed over to the homeless and the poor. By 1991 the rulers of Russia had the poshest flats in Moscow, and villas by the Black Sea.

In 1917 women were given full legal equality. Abortion, contraception and divorce were legalised. By 1991 the rulers of Russia held to the line that a woman’s duty was motherhood, and abortion was illegal once more.

In 1917 homosexuality was legalised. By 1991 it was illegal once again.

In 1917 other nations ruled by Russia were given the right to determine their own future and to separate from Russia if the people wished. By 1991 whole nations were being held inside the Soviet Union against their will, and Russians had privileges over other nationalities.

Workers control

Above all in 1917 the working class had control of society through delegate-based councils of workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ representatives (the ‘Soviets’). In the Bolshevik Party members had full rights to debate out their different views and have a free vote over political decisions. By 1991 there was no democracy at all for the working class. Members of the Party (now called Communist party of the Soviet Union) had no rights at all to speak out against the line argued by the leaders at the top.

These were steps backwards, steps away from socialism. To build a socialist society, the working class will need to take power through workers’ councils or soviets, and then set about abolishing class distinctions. For this the maximum working class democracy is essential. The workers themselves will need to plan the economy. All divisions in the working class over race, sex or nationality will have to be overcome.

This process of transforming society in a socialist direction was underway after the 1917 revolution. But in the 1920s and 1930s, Stalinism threw the whole process into reverse.

What the capitalists never tell us about the history of the Soviet Union is that many of the leading Bolsheviks fought against this reversal and betray al of the revolution. They never tell us that there was an alternative to both capitalism and Stalinism.
That is why today REVOLUTION still thinks the history of Russia is important. It was a workers’ revolution – which means it is part of our history. And the struggle between Trotskyism and Stalinism is of burning relevance today, because it is filled with lessons for our future and the revolution that the workers and youth of the world are going to make in the 21st Century.

Rise of Stalinism

Russia had been a backward country before the revolution. The working class and the Bolshevik Party knew they had a huge job on their hands to modernise the country, build power lines and heavy industry, and to educate millions of illiterate peasants. But they were never left in peace to get on with the job.

14 capitalist countries invaded Russia and lined up with ‘White Armies’ loyal to the landlords and the former royal family in an attempt to destroy the workers’ republic. By 1921, under Trotsky’s military leadership, the Red Army of workers and peasants had won the Civil war.

But the Russian Revolution was to be defeated, not by enemies from the outside, but by a deadly enemy from within.
Josef Stalin was not single-handedly responsible for destroying the Russian Revolution. No revolution backed by millions of workers could be overthrown by the actions of one man. Stalin came to power because he represented a growing force inside the Soviet State: the bureaucracy.

Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks had always realised that socialism could not be built in one country, let alone one as backward as Russia. Capitalism is a world system. Socialism will only succeed when it can deliver a higher standard of living and a stronger economy than world capitalism.

The Russian Revolution blew into the fire of working class struggles all over the world. In Europe, great revolutions broke out. Soviet-type councils were formed in Hungary and Germany. Italian workers seized their factories in two years of mighty struggles. But one by one these opportunities went down to defeat because no strong workers’ party like the Bolsheviks was primed and ready to take over power.

The Soviet Union was isolated. Compromises had to be made with rich peasants so that food could be supplied to the cities. A layer of middle-men and office officials began to emerge who drew a relatively comfortable life from the situation. They owed their position to the Soviet State, so they did not want capitalism back. But at the same time, the whole need for these people only existed because Russia was isolated. They came to fear the possibility of revolution abroad, which would break Russia’s isolation. In particular they came to fear the working class itself. They began to suppress discussion, debate and democracy, both inside the soviets and inside the Communist Party.

Stalin was General Secretary of the Party. He expressed the interests of this bureaucratic caste ever more clearly. In his Testament, published after his death, Lenin said Stalin had too much power and should be removed from his post.

After Lenin died, Stalin then came forward with a “theory” that was an attack on everything the Bolsheviks had stood for. He claimed that Russia could build socialism on its own. “Socialism in One Country” meant that the world revolution was no longer necessary as far as the bureaucracy was concerned. Instead of world revolution, the Stalinists argued for peaceful co-existence with capitalism abroad.

Every time the Stalinists did a deal with one of the capitalist powers, Stalin put pressure on Communists abroad not to do anything to upset their new-found allies. By the 1930s this meant that the Stalinists were arguing against the working class taking power in countries like France and Spain. Instead, revolutions were to be limited to the goal of democracy, not socialism.

Trotsky fights back

In 1923, Trotsky opened a political war against Stalin and everything he represented. He demanded a return to real working class democracy in the party and in every walk of life. He called for a democratic plan to run the economy in the interests of the workers, not the bureaucrats. And above all, he rejected the theory of socialism in one country and upheld the fight for world revolution.

The Trotskyists were defeated by a campaign of bullying and terror. They were banned, imprisoned in labour camps, exiled and murdered. In a series of purges and stitched up “Show Trials” the Trotskyists were accused of being everything from agents of Hitler to saboteurs of industry. Every problem in Russia, every failure of the regime, was blamed on the Trotskyists. Stalin even whipped up disgraceful anti-Jewish propaganda, because Trotsky and several other leading oppositionists were from Jewish backgrounds. Thousands died in Siberia or with a bullet in the back of the head.

Trotsky’s son Sergei – a Soviet engineer with no interest in politics – was blamed for deliberately causing an accident at work and disappeared without trace. His son Leon Sedov – a revolutionary active in France – was murdered by a Stalinist agent.
Trotsky himself was thrown out of Russia and was then forced to move from country to country by capitalist governments who were just as scared of him as Stalin was. One by one Trotsky’s secretaries were assassinated by Stalin’s secret police.

Eventually they cut down Trotsky himself in Mexico in 1940.

At first Trotsky thought that the Stalinist sickness could be cured by reforming the Soviet Union. By the mid-1930s he came to realise that armed revolution was the only way to overthrow a vicious anti-working class dictatorship like Stalin’s. At the same time Trotsky insisted that capitalism had not yet been restored in Russia. After overthrowing the Stalinists the workers would need to preserve the state plan and state-owned industries, but should put them under working class control in order to get back on the road to socialism.

For Trotsky, the Soviet Union was neither capitalist nor socialist: it was a degenerated workers’ state run by bureaucrats. He explained that the Soviet Union could be called a workers’ state “in approximately the same sense . . . in which a trade union, led and betrayed by opportunists, that is by agents of capital, can be called a workers’ organisation.” The Soviet Union should still be defended if attacked by capitalist states, as it was when Nazi Germany invaded Russia in 1941. But there should be no support for Stalin or his gang. Unless the working class overthrew the Stalinist bureaucrats and put democratic workers’ councils back in power, Trotsky believed that eventually the bureaucrats themselves would lead Russia back to capitalism.

How right he was! After 1991 it was former Stalinist officials who were at the front of the rush to become capitalist multi-millionaires as the market and the profit system were steadily re-introduced across Russia and Eastern Europe, bringing mass unemployment, crime, inflation and corruption with them.

In the battle with Stalin, most would say that Trotsky lost. Some bright sparks even believe that Trotsky must have been wrong, because if he had been right he would have won. These people should think carefully. If anyone who loses a struggle is automatically in the wrong, then justice is on the side of some of the worst dictators and tyrants in history.

But Trotsky’s critics are wrong in another, even more important sense. It was not socialism that collapsed in 1991. It was Stalinism. So when millions of young people see through the capitalist system over the years to come, they will turn not to the ideas that have failed, but the genuine ideas of Bolshevism, to the ideas that Leon Trotsky fought and died for: working class democracy, equality, and world revolution.

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