Editorial

Stalinism.. RIP Mike Freeman "The historic events unfolding in China are the most dramatic, but far from the only, evidence that the dynamic of communism the nineteenth-century ideology which came of age in this century to win control of both the largest country on carth and the most populous has all but run its course..

"For the rest of the world, communism has ceased to be something to be adopted or imitated; it has lost all connection with change for the better or the best human aspirations. It stands nakedly, in a heartland and not a satellite, for all that is worst in human endeavour.

Communism, the ideology that began this century as the wave of the future, might not even be around in any recognisable form for the start of the next.' (Communism.. RIP, Sunday Times, I| June 1989) The bloody suppression of China's democracy movement' in the June massacres in Tiananmen Square in Peking is the latest blow to the international standing of Marxism-Leninism. The brutalities of China's octogenarian dictatorship take their place with Stalin's purges, the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the atrocities of Pol Pot in Kampuchea and Jaruzelski's martial law in Poland as irrefutable evidence in the capitalist case against communism as a valid alternative way of 5 ordering modern society.

Today's obituaries for world communism are of a piece wit attempts to use the two hundredth anniversary of the Frenc Revolution to show the futility of any project for revolutionar change in society. Western historians and politicians har discovered a common thread that links the Jacobin terror ( 1793-94, the Bolshevik terror in the early Soviet Union and th repressive policies of modern Stalinist regimes: Robespierre an Lenin; Stalin, Pol Pot and Deng Xiaoping are brothers united i revolutionary blood-lust. The argument that any attempt 1 change the world through mass popular struggle guided by revolutionary leadership is doomed to end in terror an corruption provides powerful support for the status quo.

However, it is Stalinism, not Marxism-Leninism, that ha been discredited by recent events in China, and in the Sovie Union and Eastern Europe. Far from discrediting Marxism Leninism, the historic role of the system established unde Stalin's rule in the Soviet Union owes much more to th capitalist world than it does to the theory of communism. Th global impact of the disintegration of the Stalinist system in th 1980s provides the context for the current propaganda offensiv against revolution in all its forms. The crisis of Stalinism was th main theme of a symposium organised by the Revolutionar Communist Party at Easter 1989 at Eastbourne. The paper presented there form the bulk of this issue of Confrontation.

It is important to clarify what we mean by the term Stalinism In popular usage it has become little more than a term of abus that can be levelled against anybody who exhibits authoritaria tendencies. Because they consider that they have long sinc repudiated Stalin's characteristically authoritarian methods supporters of most of today's Western Communist partie bitterly resent being referred to as Stalinists. Yet we continue tr regard both the parties led by Mikhail Gorbachev in the Sovie Union and by Achille Occhetto in Italy as Stalinist. We do thi because they are united in pursuing the logic of the policy o 'socialism in one country'-the policy that came to dominate th administration of the Soviet state and the international com munist movement under Stalin.

In the early twenties the Soviet state was in a highly precariou position. It had survived revolution, civil war and imperialis intervention, but at enormous cost. Its economy was devastated its industry was in ruins and the agricultural sector over whelmingly backward; the working class was decimated anc vastly outnumbered by the peasantry. In 1921 Lenin declarec that two conditions were necessary for the survival of the Sovie 6

state: a revolution in the more advanced capitalist world and a compromise with the peasantry. To enhance the prospects of the former he recommended further encouragement of the revolutionary potential of the Communist International; to achieve the latter he embarked on the New Economic Policy which gave Within a few years it became apparent that, though the prospects of revolution in the West had receded, the NEP had been fairly successful in encouraging a revival in agriculture. A grouping around Stalin in the Soviet leadership began to turn the temporary expedient of the NEP into a long-term development strategy. Stalin generalised from the experience of the NEP at a time when the Soviet state was forced to try to develop in isolation from the world economy, arguing the proposition that it was possible to create 'socialism in one country. Furthermore, Stalin's preoccupation with securing the development of the Soviet cconomy came to take priority over Lenin's first con- By the mid-twenties, the international consequences of Stalin's theory became increasingly apparent. Attempting to create the most favourable conditions possible for domestic growth, the Soviet state sought to establish collaborative relations with Western capitalist states. Lenin's tactical approach to alliances was replaced by Stalin's strategic goal of peaceful coexistence.

Further, the role of the Communist International changed: the first priority of the Communist parties was no longer to fight for the conquest of power in their own countries, but to take whatever position was consistent with the defence of the project The subordination of the parties of the Communist International to Stalin's policy of 'socialism in one country' turned them into local agents of Stalinist diplomacy. It also had the effect of encouraging them to pursue "national' roads to socialism at home- a course that inevitably brought them closer and closer to social democratic parties that had long accepted the framework imposed by the capitalist nation state. As early as 1928 Trotsky anticipated the national reformist and fragmentary consequences of the Stalinist doctrine for the international 'If it is at all possible to realise socialism in one country, then one can believe in that theory not only after, but also before the conquest of power. If socialism can be realised within the national boundaries of backward Russia, then there is all the more reason to believe that it can be realised in advanced Germany. Tomorrow the leaders of the ce wit Frenc tionar is hav еттог с and th erre an nited i mpt t ed by ог an 0. hat ha Sovie arxisn i unde to th m. Th m in th ffensiv was thi tionar paper ation. linism f abus ritarial g sinc ethods partie tinue te Sovie do thi olicy o nate the al comcarious perialis astated r Overted and eclared - Soviel 7 communist movement: some scope for private enterprise in farming.

dition for Soviet progress— international revolution.

of building socialism in the Soviet Union.

Communist Party of Germany will undertake to propound this theory... The day after tomorrow the French party will have its turn. It will be the beginning of the disintegration of the Comintern along the lines of social-patriotism. (The Third International After Lenin, p72 As Trotsky emphasised, it is not, of course, a question ol subjective intentions, but of the objective logic of politica thought (ibid, p6l). The remarkable feature of the disinteg ration of the Stalinist world that we are witnessing today is not that it is happening, but that it has taken so long to occur.

The key factor in explaining the resilience of Stalinism is the weakness of world capitalism. The slump of the thirties not only created mass unemployment and misery in the most advanced nations, it unleashed the rivalries among the major world powers that culminated in the global barbarism of the Second World War, discrediting capitalism in Europe and unleashing a wave of national liberation struggles in the third world. As a result Stalinism not only succeeded in consolidating its rule in the Soviet Union, it was also able to export its system to Eastern Europe and China in the immediate post-war period. The apparent success of Stalinism by contrast with the failures of capitalism meant that it was espoused by European labour movements and national liberation movements around the world. The Cold War of anti-communist propaganda and repression unleashed by the USA in the late forties reflected the insecurity of the capitalist world before the threat of Stalinism.

It is only over the past two decades that the capitalist world has gradually gained the confidence to take on the Stalinist bloc.

The contrast between the steady economic expansion achieved by the major capitalist countries in the post-war period and the chronic stagnation and backwardness of the Stalinist countries has undermined the appeal of the Stalinist model of development. Even the return of capitalist recession since the seventies and the return of mass unemployment in Europe have not allowed the Eastern bloc to emerge as a positive alternativeliving standards there have deteriorated too, and from a lower starting point. The programme of market reforms initiated by Gorbachev in the late eighties has delivered the final blow to the notion that the Soviet system has any progressive potential.

When the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union himself declares that only the capitalist market can provide some dynamism to the Soviet economy, what more proof could be required of the bankruptcy of the communist system?

For the third world too, the Stalinist system has uniformly 8 failed to provide a viable alternative to capitalism. Only the

- this poorest and most beleaguered third world nations Ethiopia, rn. It South Yemen, Angola, Mozambique and Cuba--retain their g the loyalties to Moscow and even here relations are greatly strained p72 as Western pressures mount. Events in south-east Asia since Vietnam's historic defeat of the USA in the early seventies have n of dealt a severe blow to Stalinist influence in national liberation itical movements. The massacres conducted by the Khmer Rouge, ategthough on a smaller scale than those inflicted by the USA in the • not region, did little to inspire other anti-imperialist movements to follow a similar course. The subsequent invasions, of Kams the puchea by Soviet-backed Vietnam and of Vietnam by China, are only only the most gruesome consequences of the fragmentation of nced the Stalinist world. WeTS The final act in the grotesque death agony of Stalinism has orld now opened in China. In China, Marxism-Leninism was never ve of anything more than a rhetorical justification for Han nationalesult ism. It enabled a capable military leader, Mao Zedong, to the compensate for the weakness of the national bourgeoisie by tern rallying mass popular support for the quest to oust the The imperialist powers at a time when they were unable to concert es of their forces: After the revolution, the Stalinist model provided a DOur mechanism for mobilising the masses to achieve a basic level of the economic self-sufficiency. No sooner had the Chinese bureauand cracy established secure control over the country in the after- I the math of the cultural revolution than it became an ally of Western Ism. imperialism. Since Deng Xiaoping launched his 'open door' orld policy in 1978 the Chinese leadership has been feted in the West loc. and has hosted a succession of Western dignitaries. Meanwhile ved Western capital has poured in to the specially designated ports the and economic zones and Chinese opposition to the Soviet Union tries has greatly facilitated Western intervention in the third worldopnotably in south-cast Asia and Africa.

Ities The recent upsurge of mass resistance to the Chinese leadernot ship—and the subdued response in the West to its suppression reveals the contradictory consequences of the collapse of the wer Stalinist world. The effect of the extension of market forces in I by China has been to erode the existing national economic the framework and to undermine the authority of the bureaucracy.

tial. The proliferation of corruption and wealth on the one hand and Bon unemployment and hardship on the other have provoked me intense social conflict. Economic insecurity and political disbe illusionment have fuelled mass support for a challenge to bureaucratic rule. Western rulers, who have long upheld the mly cause of democracy as a propaganda weapon against Stalinist 9 the

regimes, were obliged to support the student-led campaign for liberalisation and to denounce the regime's bloody clampdown.

But democracy is conspicuous by its absence in the Westernbacked regimes in Asia, from South Korea through Hongkong to Singapore. Western reaction is dominated by fears of the consequences of instability in China, first for the region's financial centre in Hongkong, and more broadly for the whole of Asia. Events in Europe are no less significant in the wider disintegration of Stalinism. In the Soviet Union murderous ethnic strife has spread from the trans-Caucasian republics to Soviet central Asia; everywhere national minorities are in a ferment, threatening the break-up of the country. In Yugoslavia too, regional and ethnic tensions threaten the survival of the nation in its modern form. In the June elections in Poland, the Communist Party was humiliated as Solidarity took 160 of the 161 non-party seats in the lower house and 92 of the 100 openly contested seats in the upper house. In Hungary, the party leadership's attempt to win legitimacy by rehabilitating the leaders of the 1956 revolt against Soviet domination risks further destabilising the regime. In Western Europe too the collapse of Stalinism proceeds apace. In the May local elections in Italy, popular support for the Communist Party dropped from 22 per cent to 17 per cent, falling behind Bettino Craxi's Socialist Party at the polls for the first time. Apparently impregnable only a decade ago as Europe's biggest and most respectable Communist party, the PCI now seems destined to follow its sister parties to oblivion.

Though the fact that the leaders of the Stalinist world have openly embraced capitalism gives new hope to those who uphold the existing world order, they are far from confident about their capacity to control the unpredictable sequence of cvents that is likely to foilow the collapse of the major states currently under Stalinist regimes. The fact that they now feel obliged to denounce the French Revolution and its legacy of liberal thought with the same sort of ferocity they have long directed against the Russian Revolution and the resulting influence of Marxism-Leninism reflects this insecurity. While Margaret Thatcher proclaimed a crusade to destroy socialism after her 1987 election victory, George Bush focused his election campaign last year on denouncing the L word'- liberalism. The rulers of the capitalist world are now so fearful for the future that they need to rewrite the history of their own class as well as to disparage the historic first attempt of the working class to 10

I for transcend the limitations of the capitalist system. The existing order is now so fragile that it cannot tolerate even liberal wn. criticism, never mind revolutionary opposition.

ern- The process now unfolding in China, the Soviet Union and in cong the Eastern Europe is indeed unprecedented and its consequences on's are unpredictable. For Marxists these events require careful observation and analysis. It will take a considerable time and the much discussion and debate before its becomes clear whether it diswill be possible for the capitalist system to reintegrate the hnic Stalinist states into the world market, at what pace and at what viet cost to the existing world political order and balance of international class forces. The British left's traditional approach ent, of swapping impressions and trading labels unfortunately Loo, tion already flourishing in the debate of the Gorbachev phenomenon — the will not yield many useful results. The papers published here represent the first stages in the RCP's investigation of the demise the enly of world Stalinism. We welcome contributions to this discussion which we hope to continue in the journal.

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