Was Lenin a Stalinist (or vice versa)?

Was Lenin a Stalinist (or vice versa) ? Mick Hume Right-wing politicians and historians have long sought to identify a direct continuity between Lenin and Stalin, and thus to locate the origins of the stagnant and repressive character of the Soviet social system in the 1917 Revolution itself. This theme has assumed a particular significance at times of crisis in the Soviet Union, when it has been taken up by many radical critics of the Soviet system, and even by those who call themselves Marxists. The view that Leninism leads inexorably to totalitarianism was already prevalent in 1918. before the world had even heard of Stalin. Western reformists claimed that the repressive policies that Lenin introduced to cope with the post-revolutionary crisis and the war against the "whites" and Western powers marked the first step down the road to a bureaucratic dictatorship. The most prominent of these critics was the German social democratic leader Karl Kautsky. In the thirties, many who defected from the official Communist parties in disgust at Stalin's purges blamed Bolshevism for the degeneration of the Russian Revolution. At the time, Trotsky conducted a fierce polemic against those known as the innovators, who attempted to link Stalin's crimes with Lenin's methods. A similar pattern recurred in the fifties, when most of those who defected from the Stalinist movements after the Kremlin crushed the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 rejected the entire project of the Leninist party and the proletarian dictatorship. Today, as Gorbachev confronts a severe economic and political crisis in the Soviet Union, the innovators have returned 13 (now they are called 'the new thinkers). The old anti-Leninist

arguments are being revived once again in both the East and th West. And now, for the first time, similar sentiments are bein voiced within the Soviet hierarchy itself.

Most historical debates reveal more about the present tha they do about the past. The current debate about Leninism an Stalinism arises, not from a preoccupation with the issues raise in the period of "war communism' between 1918 and 1921, by from the drive to extend the capitalist market and bourgeoi democracy in the Eastern bloc in the late eighties. The essence d

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the argument is that the free market and Western-styl parliamentary democracy are inseparable and that freedom i the economy is the only guarantor of political rights and civi liberties. It follows that any attempt to curb the operation of th market (such as the Bolshevik Revolution) inevitably leads tr the formation of a bureaucratic system with anti-democrati tendencies (such as the Stalinist state).

The view that revolution leads to backwardness and tyrann appears to be strongly vindicated by the historical experience o Stalinism in the Soviet Union. The Soviet system indeer provides apologists for capitalism with powerful support for thi argument that suppressing the market can have only negativi consequences. But to carry this argument in full it is not enougl to locate the problem in Stalin's personality or policies. It i necessary to connect Stalin's anti-democratic methods with the very idea of interfering with capitalism. Hence they emphasist the continuity in theory and policy between Stalin and Lenin and even trace the origins of Soviet totalitarianism to thi writings of Marx. Since Marx's aim was the abolition of the capitalist market, his doctrines are also held to be discredited by the degenerate character of Soviet society.

The striking feature of today's attempts to use events in the Soviet Union to discredit the entire Marxist tradition is tha some of the leading exponents of these views are intellectual: from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. One such Sovie new thinker is Alexandre Tsipko, from the Institute of the Economics of the World Socialist System, who earlier this yea stated the case in breathtakingly stark terms: *Struggle against the market always results in totalitarianism, in thi violation of the rights and dignity of individuals, and in the creation o an omnipotent administrative and bureaucratic apparatus."

Prominent Eastern bloc academics are now going further that 14 Western reactionaries in identifying anti-capitalist measure

with totalitarianism, and are thus providing valuable propaganda for capitalist idcologues. All this creates a pressing need to restate the Marxist case for the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Let's deal with the accusation that Stalinism was an inevitable progression from Leninism in two stages. First, by clarifying the nature of the Leninist dictatorship. And second, by looking at some key differences in the political practice of Lenin and Stalin.

In one sense it is true that there could have been no Stalinism without Leninism. That is a dialectical progression; it is like saying that there can be no counter-revolution without revolution. We are confronted, however, with the claim that there is a direct, logical progression. As there is little new in the arguments of today's anti-Leninists, it is worth returning to the The founding father of the critique of Leninism was Karl Kautsky. Once 'the Pope of Marxism', the leading theoretician of the Second International, Kautsky turned renegade and became one of the leading left-wing opponents of Bolshevism during and after the First World War. Kautsky's polemical attack on the dictatorial character of the post-1917 revolutionary regime provided the key elements in the subsequent Lenin-Stalin thesis. His critique of Leninism is particularly significant because he begins, not from the standpoint of overt anticommunism, but by raising the question: how can the working class overthrow capitalism, take and maintain power, without Writing in 1918, Kautsky argued that the Bolshevik Revolution of the previous year could only lead to disaster and bureaucratic dictatorship, because it had failed to follow the path of parliamentary or "pure democracy. He insisted that violent revolution belonged to the era of bourgeois revolt against aristocratic and monarchical tyranny. Once the bourgeoisie had achieved power by these methods, it had typically introduced some form of representative government through an elected parliament. Democracy rendered violent revolution redundant.

claimed Kautsky, insisting that the working class could now come to power by peaceful, economic, legal and moral means, Kautsky denied that the newly established Soviet state was an example of the dictatorship of the proletariat as defined by Marx. He argued that all Marx had meant by the proletarian dictatorship was a state of sovereignty'-that is, that the and thi e bein; at tha sm ant raiser 21, bu irgeoi ence d n-styl tom in id civi i of thi lads tr ocratic ranny ince ol ndeed for the gative nough - It is led by in the that ctuals oviet if the year in the ion of than sures 1. The nature of the Leninist dictatorship 15 betraying democracy? more coherent formulations of their predecessors.

instead of by physical force?

proletariat should exercise the voting majority within parliamentary system: "By the dictatorship of the proletariat w are unable to understand anything else than its rule on the basi of democracy." Kautsky went so far as to cite the 1871 Pari Commune, which Marx and Engels had used as an example o an embryonic proletarian dictatorship, to support his case. H argued that the commune was run on the lines of pur democracy, extending the suffrage universally, to friends an Commu foes alike. The Soviet regime violated Kautsky's vision of the transitio to socialism through 'pure democracy. He criticised the Bolshevi government as the rule of an unrepresentative minority installer by a coup, rather than a Marxist dictatorship of the proletaria brought about by democratic means. If Lenin's Bolsheviks hac the support of the majority of the voting public, he demanded then why did they need to repress the opposition and deprive sections of the population of democratic rights? In particular Kautsky protested at two examples of Lenin's undemocrati practice: the abolition of the constituent assembly in Januar 1918, in favour of concentrating power in the soviets; and the subsequent banning of the opposition from the soviets, which gave the Bolsheviks an effective monopoly of political power.

Kautsky claimed that the Bolsheviks lack of respect for democracy was ultimately a consequence of the backward, semifeudal character of Russian society, Russia was unripe for socialism and the revolution premature: thus Lenin could onl attempt to leap over essential stages of historical developmen by bureaucratic means. Given the superficial similarity between some of Lenins actions and Stalin's later reign of terror, Kautsky's strictures are often cited as a far-sighted appreciation of the dangers inherent in Leninism, and his arguments are still repeated today. In the article quoted carlier, for example, Tsipko specifically cites the abolition of the constituent assembly as an example of the inherently anti-democratic and Stalinist nature of the revolutionary regime. What is the Marxist response to this critique? First, Kautsky!

use of the term "pure democracy is illegitimate. There can be no such thing as pure democracy in a society divided along class lines. The question is always-democracy for which class?

Ancient Greece, for example, is always cited as the classical democracy; yet it was a democracy of slaveowners. The decisive factor in deciding the true character of any form of democracy is 16 identifying the class character of the state concerned.

Kautsky looked to the parliamentary democracy of a ithin 2 bourgeois republic as the method by which the working class ariat we could assume power. Generations of reformists and social he basis democrats have endorsed this approach and his repudiation of 1 Paris Lenin's revolutionary strategy. Yet, once we look at the class mple of character of the state, it becomes clear that the parliamentary ase. He system is simply a democratic disguise for the dictatorship of the f 'puri bourgeoisie; whatever happens in parliament, the state machine ds and continues to operate in the interests of an oppressive minority, the capitalist class. nsition The precondition for creating democracy for the majority in ishevik society is the destruction of the capitalist state, and its stalled replacement with a state that serves the interests of the working letariat class. This is the true meaning of the dictatorship of the ks had proletariat. In the course of the Russian Revolution, the anded. proletarian dictatorship was expressed through the soviets, teprive committees including representatives of workers, soldiers and icular peasants. The Soviet state was, in Lenin's words a million times ocratic more democratic than any bourgeois republic.* However, it still anuary needed to exercise a repressive dictatorship, even though, at the nd the time of Kautsky's critique, the Bolsheviks had come to represent which the majority of the population through the number of party ower. delegates elected to the soviets. The reasons for this help to et for clarify the Marxist attitude to democracy.

semi- From the formal bourgeois point of view, which Kautsky pe for adopted, a society is divided between a political majority and a d only minority; once the majority has spoken, the issue is supposedly pment decided. But from the Marxist point of view, a class society is divided between the exploited and the exploiters. When the enin's exploited seize power, and exercise a voting majority, this does es are not for a moment mean that the exploiters will accept the new merent arrangements. However small their minority, they still retain In the important advantages over the exploited-wealth, influence, es the experience and the support of the international capitalist of the system. They will use this power to fight to regain their former f the status as rulers, regardless of any election results. Thus the exploited class requires a machinery of repression dictatorship tsky's to preserve democracy for the proletariat by denying it to be no the exploiters. class The transition from capitalism to socialism cannot be achieved class? in a moment, and certainly not as the outcome of an election ssical" campaign. The transformation of a social system can only be the cisive result of a period of acute class conflict, until the exploiters are acy is finally vanquished. The proletariat needs its dictatorship to 17

repress and terrorise the capitalist class. The experience of th carly Soviet state, which was invaded by a dozen armies from th Western powers and was forced to resort to the terror tactics o war communism to survive, graphically illustrates this lan of history. Kautsky's reference to the Paris Commune was, to say th least, cynical. The most important legacy of the Communard was not that they won any election, but that they broke the ol state machinery and armed the people to replace it. Th commune introduced universal suffrage for one side in a civ war, while the forces of reaction were all encamped outsid Paris, at Versailles scarcely an example of "pure democracy Indeed, in sharp contrast to Kautsky, Marx and Engels used th commune as an example of the necessarily authoritariar character of proletarian power.› As Lenin remarked, Kautsky distortion of the nature of the proletarian dictatorship ha turned Marx into a common liberal"" Let's look at Kautsky's evidence of Lenin's "Stalinism'. Th abolition of the constituent assembly provides a practica example of the differences between bourgeois and proletariar democracy. The constituent assembly undoubtedly had formal democrati and constitutional status as Russia's parliament. But, from th standpoint of proletarian democracy, the interests of the revolution that would put power in the hands of the majority had te come before merely legal considerations. It is the balance of clas forces at any moment that determines the Marxist attitude ti what is democratic, not the paper rules of a state constitution In January 1918 the constituent assembly was no longe representative of the true balance of forces in society. Election to the assembly took place in mid-October 1917, 'at a time when as Lenin wrote in December, 'the overwhelming majority of the people could not yet know the full scope and significance of the October, soviet, proletarian-peasant revolution'? By the tim: the assembly was convened, some three months after th elections, seismic changes had taken place in society. Mos importantly two congresses of soviets had met, "both of whic had demonstrated as clear as could be that the masses had swun to the left, had become revolutionised...and had passed over to the side of the Bolsheviks'* The constituent assembly had now become a'reactionary body", an obstacle to further expansion o the democratic process unleashed in October 1917.9 Moreover, once the reactionaries launched a civil war at thi 18 end of 1917, the bourgeois assembly had become the rallying

point for the forces of counter-revolution, whose slogan was e' of thi now "All power to the constituent assembly. This was the rom thi consideration which finally forced the Bolsheviks to abolish it, actics o as a necessary blow against the class enemy. To recognise the his lav formal democracy and constitutional rights of the constituent assembly would have risked the overthrow of the revolution.

say th Instead, the Bolsheviks demonstrated their commitment to unard proletarian democracy by investing power in the soviets.

the ok The subsequent exclusion of bourgeois and even radical it. Th parties from the soviets raises further questions about the i a civi dictatorship of the proletariat. It could be argued that Bolshevik outside domination of the soviets removed them from democratic ocracy control by the working class. But this idea misunderstands the ised the role of the revolutionary party. In 1918, remember, we are itarian speaking of a Bolshevik Party which represented the highest autsky! form of organised working class consciousness in history. The Hip hac party was not yet the bureaucratic machine which it soon became, as the vanguard of the working class was destroyed in m. The the terrible years of war, famine and disease that followed ractical the revolution. etarian The precondition for proletarian democracy is that the working class holds state power. The working class can only locratic achieve state power through the leadership of a revolutionary om the party that organises the vanguard of the class. Without Bolshevik of the leadership the soviets could only be talking shops, incapable of had te achieving power and reduced to tailing behind bourgeois of class liberalism the role they played under Menshevik leadership for tude te much of 1917. rution. Nevertheless, exeluding the opposition from the soviets was longer not a step that the Bolsheviks took lightly. For the Bolsheviks it ections was necessary to suppress the opposition, not because of the when' power of its arguments in the constituent assembly, but because of the of its activities in the class struggle outside the soviets. Antiof the Bolshevik factions participated in the right-wing Kornilov e time mutiny, in the Czech war against the Soviet government and in a er the wide range of counter-revolutionary activity. Lenin recognised Most that excluding the opposition posed certain dangers, not because which of the tactic itself, but because it revealed the insecurity of the swung proletarian dictatorship, and the drastic steps needed to over to preserve it. But the Soviet state was indeed highly vulnerable to id now subversion by capitalist forces inside and outside the country.

sion of The Bolsheviks could not hesitate to take desperate measures to safeguard proletarian democracy, even at the cost of curtailing at the democracy for the bourgeois forces.

allying 19

War communism was not a pre-planned stage in the socialist project. It was a tactical response to an immediate crisis Particular anti-democratic" actions endorsed by Lenin can only be understood in the context of the intense class struggle prevailing after the First World War, not only in the Soviet state, but throughout Europe. The exigencies of the class struggle dictated the changing forms of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Yet, whatever form that dictatorship took, it retained a revolutionary democratic content. since it represented the interests of the majority. No pre-conceived set of rules or conventions, such as Kautsky's "pure democracy, could be allowed to restrict the dictatorship from doing what was necessary to defend proletarian democracy What, finally, about Kautsky's argument that Russia was too backward for a socialist revolution? The view that bureaucratic degeneration was the inevitable result of premature revolution is another old prejudice now enjoying new popularity, East and West. We have no time here to reopen the old debate about the development of capitalism in Russia. It is enough to note that.

even if Kautsky's point about the immovable barrier of Russian backwardness had been true, the Bolshevik Revolution would have been justified in relation to the international situation alone. For Lenin the First World War had created a revolutionary situation throughout the capitalist world (indeed, before the war began, this had been the view of all social democrats, including Kautsky). As internationalists, the Bolsheviks regarded a revolution in Russia as a blow struck against the weakest link in the imperialist chain, which was bound to have far-reaching consequences for the world situation.

Events proved that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were right. Their action in seizing state power in Russia had a greater revolutionary impact on the working class everywhere than anything done by left-wing parties in their own countries. It laid the basis for the Third International, and established a model for the seizure of power by the working class. Lenin hammered this point home in his response to Kautsky in 1918: *Not only the general European, but the world proletarian revolution is maturing before the eyes of us all, and it has been assisted, accelerated and supported by the victory of the proletariat in Russia. All this is not enough for the complete victory of socialism, you say? Of course it is not enough. One country alone cannot do more. But this one country, 20 thanks to Soviet government, has done so much that even if Soviet

government in Russia were to be crushed by world imperialism tomorrow, as a result, let us say, of an agreement between German and Anglo-French imperialism-even granted that very worst possibility — it would still be found that Bolshevik tactics have brought enormous benefit to socialism and have assisted the growth of the invincible world While Lenin was writing, imperialist armies were arriving in Russia to support the counter-revolutionary revolt: that very worst possibility was a very real one. Yet win or lose, Lenin's point was that the Bolsheviks had been right to fight because of the impact they could have on the balance of forces internationally. Lenin's emphasis on international revolution, and the straightforward observation that of course. one country alone cannot do more' already suggests important differences between Leninism and Stalin's theory of socialism in one country. Let's now turn to consider this contrast further.

Critics of Stalinism tend to focus one-sidedly on either subjective or objective factors in explaining his pernicious role. It is Radical defenders of Lenin who concentrate on subjective factors tend to identify differences between Lenin and Stalin largely at the ideological level. Though a cursory examination of their writings confirms Lenin's undisputed theoretical superiority, this is not enough to explain the degeneration of the revolution under Stalin's rule. Left wingers who treat Stalinism as a body of ideas that evolved from Leninism in the mind of an intellectual and moral inferior make the familiar mistake of bourgeois historians. They abstract individuals and their ideas from the social context in which they operated. But neither Leninism nor Stalinism existed in the abstract: both were confronted with the practical problems of ensuring the survival of the world's first workers' state in an intensely hostile climate and both were The central difference between Lenin and Stalin was over the question of internationalism. This was not merely a theoretical dispute between Lenin's project of world revolution and Stalin's notion of 'socialism in one country. The fundamental point at issue was Stalin's departure from the internationalist content of Though Lenin made many compromises —most notably the Brest-Litovsk treaty with German imperialism that got the Soviet ocialist crisis. an only truggle ate, but ictated at. Yet. nonary of the such as ict the etarian ras Loo ucratic ition is st and ut the e that, ussian would nation ionary he war luding ded a link in ching Their опагу ine by or the ure of ime in lution erated is not untry, Soviet Why Stalin was not a Leninist 21 revolution. "o important to strike the right balance.

forced to make major compromises in the process.

Lenin's political practice.

state out of the First World War and the New Economic Policy it encouraged small private enterprises to stimulate the ruin economy he never lost sight of the fundamental fact that t fate of the Soviet state depended on working class revolution the more advanced capitalist nations. As Trotsky later explaine Lenin's compromises were all founded on the basic Bolshe understanding 'that the conquest of power, however importan may be in itself, by no means transforms the party into sovereign ruler of the historical process'.!!

A revolutionary movement that seized power in one coun still had to cope with the pressures of the international cla struggle. Indeed, having assumed power, the proletari leadership, while able to exert much more influence, now had deal with far greater external pressures than it did while opposition. This objective reality led Lenin to make compromi at crucial junctures, when the alternative was to sacrifice t gains of the revolution altogether.

What distinguished Lenin was that his compromises were n simply reflex reactions to immediate problems, but were ma with a view to securing clearly defined strategic objectives in t given conditions. The strategic objective to which all Lenin tactics were directed was saving the revolution.

The international isolation of the Soviet state in the yea immediately following the revolution forced Lenin to adop policy of holding the line in the Soviet Union, while giving possible encouragement to revolutionary movements in Euro and the rest of the world. The repressive measures implement by the early Soviet state were necessary responses to the mena of international attack and domestic subversion. These measu aimed to provide the revolutionary regime with a breath space while the international struggle progressed. Trotsky not the direct relationship between the international situation an dictatorial methods in the Soviet Union with his comment th if the revolution in Germany had been successful at the end the First World War, the Bolsheviks would have had no need banish the opposition from the soviets? In the absence o favourable shift in the world situation, Lenin was forced resort to expedients that could otherwise have been avoided For Lenin the future of the Soviet state was inextricab linked to the development of the Communist Internation While they held the line in Moscow, between 1917 and 1923 Bolshevik leaders constantly emphasised the point that inte national revolution was the only way to prevent the degenerati 22 of the Soviet Union. The encouragement of revolutiona

movements everywhere, from the colonial world to the Americas to Europe, was central to the Leninist perspective. Stalin's Stalin too was confronted by adverse circumstances that would have severely limited any leader's room for manoeuvre.

But it was the perspective from which he approached the problems that ultimately ensured the disastrous outcome. In contrast to Lenin's policy of holding the line and working for international breaks, Stalin set about holding the line in the The concessions that Stalin made to counter-revolutionary forces were based on considerations only of the moment.

Tactical manoeuvres no longer bore any relation to the strategic objective of saving the revolution that had consistently informed From the Stalin takeover in the mid-twenties onwards, as the revolutionary tide ebbed in many parts of the world, the Soviet Union survived in a state of siege. These conditions were certainly conducive to the development of the narrow, nationally oriented policy that Stalin pursued. Yet it is also worth noting that the tendency to think only of the moment, and to divorce immediate tactical decisions from broader strategic considerations, was already apparent in Stalin during the days of Lenin.

Take the 1918 debate about the Brest-Litovsk treaty. For Lenin, the treaty meant making undesirable territorial concessions to Germany, but it took some pressure off the new regime, so that the Bolsheviks could reorganise, regather their strength, and set about spreading the revolutionary message to the West. For Stalin, however, the treaty was an end in itself, "There is no revolutionary movement in the West....There are no facts: there is only a possibility, and with possibilities we cannot reckon."

Here is the voice of the fledgling bureaucrat, reckoning only on established realities and not considering the potentialities in a highly volatile international situation. Whereas Lenin was a revolutionary with an internationalist perspective, concerned above all to survive to fight another day, Stalin was already the pragmatic nationalist, concerned only to make a virtue out Once holding the line became an end in itself, removed from the original strategic objective, the line itself began to change. It became not just a question of a different emphasis, but of an icy th ruin: hat ti tion laine Ishev: rtant into punti I cla taria had i hile omis ice th ere ne mad in th enin year lopt ng a игор lente enac asurc athin note n an t tha ind o eed ti • of ed ti led. cabl iona 23 th inter atio опаг 23 Lenin's practice. of necessity. approach was quite different.

Soviet Union as an end in itself.

designed simply to secure the Soviet state's borders:

entirely new policy. This is the significance of the development o the theory identified with Stalin, that of socialism in on country. This theory should not be seen as a conscious attemp to justify Stalin's betrayal of the revolution. Rather, it was retrospective codification of Stalin's practical renunciation o internationalism and of Lenin's central strategic objective saving the revolution. The notion that there is a direct continuity between Leninisn and Stalinism must be rejected, not merely on ideological o theoretical grounds, but because the objectives they pursued it practice were different. Rosa Luxemburg's famous distinction between revolutionaries and reformists is apposite: she observer that reformists declare that they share the same goal a revolutionaries, but simply choose to take a different route however, it soon becomes apparent that their choice of different route in practice amounts to the choice of a different goa The second, and equally flawed, critique of Stalinisn attributes the degeneration of the revolution to the objective circumstances facing the Soviet Union from the twenties onwards, We have already emphasised the enormous difficultie facing Soviet society: economic devastation resulting from civi war and imperialist intervention, international isolation, the decimation of the working class, and, most importantly, the physi cal destruction of the proletarian vanguard. Yet we should no over-objectify the rise of Stalinism, or allow the Stalinist themselves to get off the hook. The question of the politica leadership of the working class in the international class struggk in modern times is of decisive importance. The failure of the Stalinist leadership to provide consistent anti-capitalist direction to the international working class played a key role in ensuring the isolation and decay of the Russian Revolution.

Lenin enthusiastically encouraged revolutionary movements abroad, seeking to make openings for the Soviet regime by spreading the revolution. Stalin, by contrast, could not even take advantage of opportunities that arose, because he had renounced internationalism in practice. When revolutionary situations developed that could have allowed Stalin to break down the isolation of the Soviet Union, his cautious and conservative responses led to setbacks to the revolutionary cause that only strengthened the position of Western reaction. Where Lenin hac sought to exploit the weakness of the imperialist powers after the First World War, Stalin's regime became complicit in the imperialist drive to stabilise international affairs. This was the 24 start of the process that was to turn the Soviet Union into a

status que power, resisting all change in the global balance The clearest example of how the Stalinists threw away an opportunity to change the course of the twentieth century came in China in the mid-twenties. Here was a situation in which the Communist Party, under the guidance of a genuine Communist International, could have taken power. Stalin's almost instinctive response, however, was to seek to cool things down, in the interests of his international diplomacy. Yet, the crisis in China was at least as susceptible to a revolutionary solution as that in Russia in 1917. The communists were well-placed, the masses were willing, and the state machine barely existed. China was ripe for the formation of the world's second workers" state, a development that would have simultaneously ended the isolation of the Soviet Union. A successful revolution in China would have brought about a major shift in the international balance If China had fallen to the communists in the twenties, the whole of Asia could have followed. The imperialist powers with a stake in China-particularly Britain, the USA and Japan were overstretched and divided among themselves. They would have been even less able to launch a successful intervention in revolutionary China than they had been to defeat the Bolsheviks after 1917. A Chinese revolution could have altered the world situation as drastically as the Russian Revolution had, throwing The opportunity was lost. The defeat of the Chinese communist movement in 1927, at the hands of Chiang Kaishek's Guomindang, was not brought about by objective conditions. It was primarily the result of the conservative policies put forward by the Stalinists in the Soviet leadership, who were far more concerned with keeping the peace and ensuring their national security than with promoting inter- In addition to China there were other, less dramatic, international openings—in Germany, and even in Britain. All were wasted. Thus the isolation of the Soviet state and the degeneration of the revolution were the result of subjective as well as objective factors; the lack of an internationalist leadership in the Soviet Union and the Communist International ultimately played a decisive role. Even a thoroughly Leninist leadership throughout the twenties might have failed: programmatic correctness is no guarantee of success in the class struggle. But even if the Soviet leaders had tried to take advantage of these ment of in onc attemp was a tion of ctiveninisn ical or sued in inctior served coal a route, e of i at goal alinism jective wenties culties im civil an, the physiald not alinists olitica ruggle of the rection suring ments me by en take unced lations vn the vative it only in had ter the in the as the into a 25 of power. of forces. the imperialists on to the defensive everywhere.

national revolution.

opportunities and failed, they could at least have ensured the survival of a vital internationalist tradition. Instead they destroyed it in pursuit of narrow, national objectives.

In conclusion, we can say that Lenin certainly passed on to Stalin some important forms within which his bureaucratic rule could develop for example, the party monopoly on power. But Stalinism was only able to develop through destroying the Leninist content of Soviet power.

Leninism may have provided the organisational and juridical point of departure for Stalinism. But it was the defeats of the international working class that really Stalinised Soviet society.

The Stalinists were not passive observers of those defeats; they played a central part in bringing them about. The decadent character of the Soviet Union does not invalidate Leninism. li shows what can happen when revolutionary objectives are sacrificed to expediency. As that great anti-Stalinist Trotsky put it, the experience of Stalinism does not refute the teaching of Marxism, but confirms it by inversion" Notes Cited in Radio Liberty. Report on the USSR. Vol | No 8.

24 February 1989. 2. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, 1971 edition. p38 (original 1918). 3. Ibid. p58. 4. The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky: 1970 edition, p24 (original 1918).

5. F Engels, "On authority", in Marx & Engels, Selected Works, 1962 edition, Vol 1. p6.39.

6. The Proletarian Revolution.... op cit. pl8.

7. "Theses on the constituent assembly: appendix to The Proletarian Revolution.... op cit. p95.

8. The Proletarian Revolution.... op cit. p47.

9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. p69. H. Stalinism and Bolshevism. 1974 edition, p7 (original 1937).

12. Ibid. pl3. Cited in D Yergin, The Origin of the Cold War and the 13. National Security State, 1978, p10.

14. Stalinism.... op cit. pIl.

26

Dramatic events are taking place in the Soviet Union. Blustering career bureaucrat Boris Yeltsin has become a man of the people.

Twelve members of the party central committee voted recently against their leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, being proposed for the supreme soviet. One member of the politburo failed to win an open election for the same body, even though he was the only There is a ferment of open discussion among intellectuals and party activists which has not been seen in the Soviet Union since the twenties. This is how one leading economist summed up the new enthusiasm for market forces and acknowledged the obstacles to their free operation in the Soviet economy: •Nowhere is the need for the market disputed today. It is everywhere acknowledged that the market is indifferent to the social order, that its main function is to force commodity producers to reduce costs, improve quality of output, and to accelerate scientific-technological progress ...however nowhere yet has market compulsion become the main factor that determines the behaviour of economic production and trade Since becoming Soviet leader in 1985 Gorbachev has increased the pace of economic restructuring, perestroika, and his campaign for greater political openness, glasnost. Gorbachev's political reform is designed to compensate for the slowness of economic change. He hoped to give the working class a stake in the system, and thus give greater legitimacy to the bureaucracy's rule at a time when material incentives are not available to satisfy workers discontent. Gorbachev is also aiming to create a 1 the they in to rule - But the dical f the ciety. they dent m. It are y put ig of 70 27 candidate. enterprises.