Why Russia isn’t Socialist (Pt. 3)

IV. The Stalinist Counter‑Revolution

This imposture disguises one of the most misunderstood events of contemporary history. Not only does a genuine view of the October revolution remain buried under half a century of political and doctrinal falsifications, but it has come to represent to those who have actually managed to unravel things, such an incredible affront to the rhythm of history, such a superhuman ambition considering the conditions in Russia at the time, that it hardly seems credible to them anymore. As we will never cease repeating, the key to a Socialist solution lay outside of Russia.

In the Russia of the twenties, the double character of the revolution couldn’t be kept up indefinitely, for the economic development that required the bourgeois revolution completed could only undermine and eventually overwhelm the purely political victory of the Socialist revolution.

In fact, within the interior of Russia, all that proceeded from national economic necessity, everything which expressed Russian social interests, constituted a moral danger for Communism, and every conceivable internal social strategy for Russia concealed, depending on the state of the International Revolution, the same fatal risk for the Russian proletariat.

Thanks to the destruction of feudal landed property, the bourgeois peasantry acquired a considerable economic and social influence. They bought up the land of the poor peasants and then rented it out. They illegally employed wage labour and went as far as monopolising wheat and starving out the cities. In the administration, where tens of thousand of militant Communists have metamorphosed into functionaries, there develops a bureaucratic machinery whose motto is „administration for administration’s sake“ and „the State for the State’s sake“. In a country where famine rages, to have work or accommodation becomes a privilege. Finally, after 1923, defending a genuine Communist opinion becomes an act of heroism.

But why particularly after 1923? Certainly, what we refer to as the Stalinist counter-revolution was the culmination of a process that spanned a period of several years, and it is difficult to exactly ascertain the „key“ moment. Yet 1923 isn’t an arbitrary point of reference for it marked the definitive defeat of the German Revolution. With this, the last chance for an immediate extension of Communism in Europe fades away. The shattering significance of this fact was so well understood, that in the Russian party the news provoked suicides. It is also the year in which the catastrophic situation of Russian production is revealed by the „scissors“ crisis: thus are respectively represented, in the diagram shown by Trotski at the l2th party congress, the curves of agricultural and industrial prices, and their growing divergence poses a grave problem of economic orientation and social strategy. Must heavy industry be helped immediately, or should instead the policy of tax relief in favour of the peasantry be continued at heavy industry’s expense? The issue is left unsettled, but the situation continues to worsen with 1,250,000 unemployed.

Additionally, in 1923, Lenin suffered a third attack of arterio-sclerosis which was to cause his death in January 1924; but not before he had been able to denounce, in what can be considered to be his political testimony, „the powerful forces which are deviating the Soviet State form its course“. He had also broken with Stalin who embodied, he said, „an apparatus that is thoroughly alien to us, and represents a hotchpotch of bourgeois and tsarist reversions“. 1923 is also the year in which the first plot against Trotski was hatched during Lenin’s illness, due partly, it is worth mentioning, to the blindness of the „old Bolsheviks“ manipulated by Stalin. Against the organiser of the Red Army are now propagated the first political falsifications which will go on to become the slanderous pack of foul and ludicrous accusations which the riffraff of the other Stalinist parties, despite all their denials – including those of their ex-venerated Khruschev – still continue to use today as their historical reference points. Lenin’s best comrades in arms would only understand two years later, that the real enemy of the revolution was the „foreign body“ in the Bolshevik party, which history destined, in the course of the next ten years, to be its own executioner.

Looking at the vain efforts and countless vicissitudes of the opposition regrouping around Trotski against Stalin’s almighty clique, we can see today how feeble and precarious were the strictly Russian foundation of Lenin’s great perspective, considering that the West (which any revolution in Russia, according to Marx, ought to „stir up“) was not in a position to respond forcefully to the call.

At the crucial moments, there were only a few hundred genuine Communists, courageously opposing about a million new, generally inexperienced elements introduced en masse into the Bolshevik Party by Stalin to back his policy of liquidating the International Revolution. Such a disproportion of forces is inexplicable unless a fundamental issue of the October Revolution is taken into account; that beyond the purely bourgeois tasks of the revolution, the „Russian nation“ – that is, all the classes except an extremely small proletarian minority – represent nothing but an obstacle to the struggle for Socialism. This is the cardinal fact that is either ignored or underestimated by all democratic critics of Stalinism who correctly contrast the scientific honesty of Lenin with the coarse political brutality of the unscrupulous Stalin, but who don’t go beyond what is merely the phenomenology of a colossal movement of historical and social force, i.e. Russian capitalism. A political party which was conceived to usher in Socialism, was considered, with good cause, as its most immediate obstacle, and to make its way, Russian capitalism is forced to brake its political backbone by emptying it of its social content.

We will not go on to explain here, even briefly, how this came about. Whilst referring the reader to our study „Bilan dunes Révolution“, we will limit ourselves to outlining its main features on the political level.

During the internal struggles which preceded the definitive victory of Stalinism in 1929-30, none of the economic measures over which the party factions clash claim to be free from the framework of capitalist production relations; none of them have the right to declare themselves Socialist. In the picturesque formulation of the „scissors“ crisis, the problem keeps worsening with all the resultant economic and social consequences, with all its corresponding effects on the state of industrial productions and the social balance of forces. Trotski’s left maintains the principle of a preliminary industrialisation as a precondition for the development of agriculture, sanctioning at the same time support for the poor peasant. Bukharin’s right (though names are given here as points of reference only) counted on the enrichment of the middle peasant and on the increase of his working capital, thinking towards its eventual confiscation. Stalin’s centre doesn’t have a position, being content to pilfer from the right and the left anything that allows it to keep at the helm of the State, and it is for this reason therefore that its polemics do not show a clear demarcation between revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries. Thus the Stalinist centre, able to use any old measure, whether inspired by the „right“ or the „left“, has in the last analysis one function: saving and reinforcing the Russian State. By forcing the double revolution into an anti-feudal, and therefore capitalist, pigeonhole, it is completely anticommunist.

Both faithful to Lenin, the right and the left know that everything depends, in the end, on the International Revolution, that it is a matter of holding out until it triumphs, and if there are violent conflicts between them, it is on the respective efficacy of the various measures that are proposed for that purpose. The centre is preoccupied with other things however; it has already broken with the International Revolution and has therefore only one political point of view: to eliminate those who still pursue the International Revolution. The way in which Stalin finally triumphs illustrates this clearly. First of all he supports the right from which he adopts the programme of support for the middle peasant, meanwhile showering Trotski with abuse and accusing him of sabotaging the infallible „Leninist“ alliance of peasantry and proletariat. Next, in the face of the failure of thins policy, and panic stricken by the threat of the kulaks, he dismisses the right and engages in mud slinging at Bukharin who he accuses – wrongly – of expressing the interests of the rural bourgeoisie. The manoeuvre succeeds so well that Bukharin, when he would have attempted a rapprochement with Trotski, fails to convince him that the right is Marxist whilst the centre isn’t; in fact, certain of Trotski’s supporters will even consider Stalin borrowing some of their positions, for his own interests, as a step of the centre towards the left.

Needless to say, this „physical“ struggle taking place at the head of the party and State is merely the expression of the subterranean offensive that we have mentioned above, but it shows how drastic a reversal on the political level was necessary for them to be able to triumph. Meanwhile, on the economic level it wasn’t so indispensable to proceed in the same way, since neither the solution of the left or right was Socialist. The Stalin solution’ wasn’t more so, although it seemed to draw its inspiration – through forced collectivisation – from a caricature of Trotski’s position. The explanation of this paradox resides in the fact that no Russian solution could bring about, even in the long term, the realisation of Communism if the International Revolution was defeated.

The superhuman effort of those who tore each other to pieces over the means of preventing this hard historical reality, hid from view the common enemy; which Bukharin identified perhaps only at the moment when he felt the cold revolver of the executioner on his neck.

The fact that the enemy of a social revolution could be a mere gang of killers proves that if isolated from the anticipated support of the International Proletariat, the socialist character of October 1917 reduces itself to being the will of a party, i.e. a group of people, which, moreover, becomes thinned out under the weight of hostile events; to kill revolutionaries is well nigh incumbent on any counterrevolution.