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Trotsky's ideas today - fifty years on AUGUST 21, 1990, MARKS the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Leon Trotsky at the hand of Stalin's assassin. Militant International Review 44 is a special commemoration issue. We cover the background to Trotsky's murder: his unwavering 'defence of October' and his tenacious opposition to the development of Stalinist bureaucracy and its disastrous policies on the world arena. We also show how in the Soviet Union today the 'blank pages' of Soviet history are being filled up, with the beginning - somewhat tentative and confused - of a discussion of Trotsky's historical role, his theoretical contribution to Marxism, and the policies he advocated in relation to the first workers' state and the Communist International. We repeat the call for the full judicial, historical and political rehabilitation of Trotsky. Above all, this issue of the journal is dedicated to showing the relevance of Trotsky's ideas today.
The Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union and the similar regimes in Eastern Europe have undergone many changes 20 MIR over the last few decades. Since 1989 they have been convulsed by mass movements which toppled most of their governments. Nevertheless, Trotsky's fundamental analysis of the origin and character of Stalinism remains indispensable to understanding developments in the USSR and Eastern Europe. The developments of recent years have thrown up many new features, and the ideas worked out by Trotsky in the 1930s must be applied concretely to new developments. But the fundamental programme of the political revolution, based on the idea of the smashing of the ruling bureaucracy and the establishment of workers' democracy, has lost none of its relevance. The complete degeneration of Stalinism, it is true, has opened the door to capitalist counter-revolution. This is now virtually complete in the case of East Germany, which has been absorbed by West German capitalism. At the same time, pro-restoration governments, which would like to steer society back along the capitalist road, have taken over in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hun-
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gary, etc. This does not in any way confound Trotsky's method, which always took account of the interaction of international class relations.
Capitalist restoration, if carried through in Poland and other Eastern European states or in the Soviet Union itself would, of course, place the social revolution on the agenda. Here too the programmatic ideas elaborated by Trotsky shortly before his death retain their fundamental validity.
Until very recently, the propaganda machine of the Soviet bureaucracy, in a monotonous riff, denounced "Trotskyism (as) Marxism-Leninism's sinister most enemy. Under Brezhnev, it is true, the Charge that Trotsky worked in alliance with the Nazis was dropped. But it was still claimed that Trotsky and his followers 'objectively' aided the class enemies of the Soviet Union. While piling accusation onto accusation, many of them too absurd to require an answer, the official hacks studiously avoided any description of Trotsky's criticism of Stalinism, avoiding even mentioning the title of books like The Revolution Betrayed. One frequent assertion, for example, was that Trotsky opposed the defence of the Soviet Union at the opening of World War II, ignoring Trotsky's struggle within the international opposition movement to detend the gains of October, in spite of Stalin. Trotsky's contribution is documented in the book In Defence of Marxism.
It is one of the great ironies of history, therefore, that the current Gorbachev leadership of the Soviet Union is abandoning the defence of the planned economy and turning towards capitalism. Can it not be said with truth that they are 'objectively' succumbing to the pressure of world capitalism and acting as its cat's paw? Late last year, Gorbachev said that in the early days of perestroika, shortly after he became general secretary in 1985, "we assumed that what was under discussion was, in the main, simply correcting particular deformations of the social organism, about perfecting the system which, on the whole, was considered to be sound." In other words, Gorbachev aimed to reform the bureaucratic apparatus in order to improve its performance and secure its continued existence. But by 1989, Gorbachev admitted, "we are speaking about the necessity of a radical re-making of the entire social edifice - from its economic foundations to Gorbachev.
its super-structure." (Pravda, 28 November 1989) This, it is clear, entails the abandonment of socialised property relations and the plan of production.
The old Stalinist leader of the Finnish Communist Party, Otto Kuusin, once boasted that he had "cast his skin seven times in his life, like a snake." Stalin, Kuusin and their cohorts sloughed off support for world revolution, relying instead on a totalitarian state and a bureaucratic economy to preserve their own power and privileges. Now Gorbachev and company has sloughed off another skin, abandoning defence of planned production in favour of a return to capitalism.
Such is the organic degeneration of the Stalinist system, Gorbachev has been unable to carry through his policy of modernisation and reform. Since about the mid 1970s, the economy has been in a complete impasse. Planned production, even under a bureaucracy, allowed the foundations of a modern industrial economy to be built up. In the last period of Brezhne's leadership, however, the bureaucracy exhausted its ability to take the economy forward - and there has been even a regression under Gorbachev. Moreover, the party of the bureaucracy, the so-called Communist Party of the Soviet Union, together with its official ideology and all the many institutions that it dominated, have been MIR 03
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completely discredited throughout Soviet society. In a recent opinion poll, the newspaper Sibirskaya Gazeta asked people the question: "Whose interest does the party promote?" Eighty-five per cent replied: party functionaries. Only two per cent said 'the working class'. Gorbachev advocates a turn towards a 'regulated market. In his opening speech to the 28th Congress of the CPSU in July, he attacked those "who sought a bourgeois regime... who link the solution of today's complex situation to a return to capitalism." He even repudiated his own Prime Minister, Nikolai Ryzhkov, whose proposed price rises, no doubt approved by Gorbachev at the time, were hastily withdrawn earlier in the year for fear of mass protests. Deputy prime minister, Leonid Abalkin, one of the architects of Gorbachev's current economic policies, also said: "we are against the development of private property with the use of hired labour. This is unacceptable and incompatible with the socialist choice made by this country." Commenting on a policy statement presented by the leadership, even Izvestia's reporter had to say, "only a blind person will not notice this document abounds in contradictions and wishfulness."
In Pravda (4 June), Abalkin wrote that people must learn to forget the old negative connotations of the market - that is capitalism and soaring prices - and to concentrate on the end result which he defined as "the creation of a modern economy, highly efficient, flexible, responsive to scientific progress and orientated to the consumer."
Moreover, the implications ur Gorbachev's new economic policies were spelt out in an interview with the semi-official news agency Interfax by Dr Nikolai Petrakor, now prominent in the president's inner circle of economic advisers. Gorbachev's 'plan', Petrakov said, would be "a programme of an accelerated transition to creating a modern full-blooded market." This would go together with "an austerity regime economising budgetary funds." The economy would be de-monopolised and opened up to private ownership. Not only workers but "enterprises and banks, including foreign banks and firms," would be allowed to buy apartments, houses, garden plots, shares in enterprises, etc.
Gorbachev and company are indulging in cynical double-talk. In one breath they
defend their commitment to socialism and the socialist character of the regulated market economy. In the next breath, they call for acceptance of capitalist conditions.
GORBACHEV IS ALSO facing two ways in the ideological field. Formally he still detends Marxism. Marx, Engels and Lenin, he says, "bear no responsibility for the distortions (of the idea of socialism) that occurred when it was put into practice." (Time, 4 June 1990) However, Gorbachev sponsors spokesmen among his advisors who are attempting to provide an intellectual justification for the complete repudiation of Marxism. One of this circle, Alexander Tsipko, argues that Lenin and Stalin were faithful disciples of Marx. The fault, therefore, for the "deformations of socialism" plaguing the Soviet Union lies "not with the moustaches but with the beards" - that is, not with Stalin's interpretation' of Marx, but with the fundamental 'utopianism' of Marx's ideas.
Earlier this year, Gorbachev's aide Georgii Shakhnazarov wrote an article in the CP's theoretical journal, Kommunist, advising the leadership to abandon the idea of communism altogether. Rejecting Stalinist "state socialism" Shakhnazarov calls for a new model of "humane, democratic socialism." But while clinging to the label "SOCialist" , however, Shakhnazarov in reality advocates western-style democracy and the market economy, that is, capitalism.
In an effort to provide theoretical justif ication for this, Shakhnazarov abandons one of the fundamental ideas of Marxist theory that the character of society is primarily determined by property relationships. A socialist system, according to Shakhnazarov's interpretation, can be built on the basis of either private, state, or co-operat ive ownership. A socialist society is simply a "society in which the collective predominates over the private." The "degree of socialisation of a socialist system," Shakhnazrov claims, "can be objectively measured... on the following scale: the predominance of organisation over spontaneity; of equality over freedom; of government over self government: of the collective over the individual."
The most important distinction between societies. Shakhnazarov argues, is not whether they are socialist or capitalist, but whether they are democratic or tyrannical
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The primary task of the leaders of the USSR at the present time is to establish a system capable of providing for the welfare of the population, he argues. This, of course, begs the question of whether the economic system is capable of developing the productive forces, the basis of 'the welfare of the people'.
The leadership pite its frequent down the road How far they will er question.
The capitalists of the West, who were criumphantly congratulating themselves on the 'death of communism', are in no hurry to invest huge amounts of capital in the economies of the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe. "The early enthusiasm about Eastern Europe is turning to scepticism," commented the Financial Times (13 June): "If the transition to a market system is proving so difficult for Poland, will it not prove impossible for other countries which lack the unifying force of Solidarity and the Polish government's will to reform?"
At the same time, the leadership in the Soviet Union face massive opposition from the working class. In so far as 'the market' is identified with improved living standards and modern consumer goods, workers are in favour of the market. But there is deeprooted resistance to the idea of private ownership of enterprises, to the growth of inequality, to the emergence of unemployment, and enormously higher prices for basic necessities like housing, food, and transport. The growing refusal to accept passively the seizing-up of the planned economy and the failure of perestroika is reflected in the growing number of strikes. During the first half of 1989 there were on average 15,000 workers on strike every day. During the second half of the year, that rose to 50,000. And in the first five months of 1990, there was an average of 130,000 workers on strike every day.
The potential power of the working class in the Soviet Union, and their likely resistance to the introduction of capitalist conditions, was explicitly acknowledged recently by Gavriil Popov, the opposition candidate who was elected mayor of Moscow last April. Known as radicals' , people like Popov are even more openly pro-capitalist than Gorbachev and his circle. Popov acknowledges that "we could not have over-
around Gorbachev, desdisclaimers, has turned of capitalist restoration.
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thrown the powerful totalitarian system without the active participation of millions of ordinary people." However, there will now be a contradiction, he warns, between those 'left populist' forces and "the policies leading to denationalisation, privatisation and inequality."
Popov warns of a "renaissance of leftwing popularism." Calling these 'populist' forces New Communist, Popov deliberately tries to link the spontaneous opposition of millions of workers with the last-ditch resistance of Communist Party functionaries to being deprived of their power and privileges. Popov advocates rapid denationalisation and privatisation of property, to try to avoid being "attacked by waves of workers fighting for their own interests." He also calls for "new mechanisms and institutions for political power that will depend less on popularism," surely a veiled call for a dictatorial form of regime which could push through a restoration against the opposition of the working class.
As in Eastern Europe, the mass movement against the Stalinist system has been captured by 'radical' leaders who, in reality, constitute a wing of the ruling elite which has gone over to a pro-capitalist position. The majority of workers are much clearer about what they are against than what they are for. Undoubtedly, because of the prolonged economic growth in the West since 1980, workers also have enormous illusions in the viability of capitalism. In the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe the biggest 'deficit' (shortage) of all is that of consciousness. Profound revulsion at the counterfeit version of Marxism propagated by the bureaucracy has led to a summary rejection of the ideas of Marxism on the part of millions. Enthusiasm for change, on the other hand, has aroused massive support for 'radicals' who appear to offer an alternative, and whose real aims have yet to be made clear to the majority of workers. The events of the next few years, however, both in the Stalinist states and the capitalist world, will bring home to the working class the impossibility of finding solutions through a turn back to capitalism. Through their own experience of struggle, first the advanced workers, and then wider layers, will find the road back to the genuine ideas of Marxism. Then the theoretical legacy of Trotsky will be reclaimed by the proletariat in the land of the October revolution.O
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