Trotsky and the Soviet revisionism.
Victor Shapinov
THE REVOLUTION BETRAYED: FROM OPPORTUNISM TO TREASON
In March 1985, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU elected Mikhail Gorbachov as its Secretary General. Hardly any of the left today will say a kind word about the persona of the last Secretary General. And fans of Gorbachov's political line have become quite an exotic curiosity. Everyone understands that Gorbachov betrayed socialism - the cause he verbally supported.
It is important to remember, however, that the collapse of the Soviet Union was not a matter of one day, or even of several years. The mechanics of counterrevolution were operational for many years before giving irreversible results. No less important it is to realize that no separate individuals, nor even figures such as Mikhail Gorbachov, were to destroy the first socialist state.
It's not about the personal qualities of Gorbachov, and not about the act of his betrayal. Here the words of Friedrich Engels are worth recalling: "when you inquire into the causes of the counter-revolutionary successes, there you are met on every hand with the ready reply that it was Mr. This or Citizen That who "betrayed" the people. Which reply may be very true or not, according to circumstances, but under no circumstances does it explain anything - not even show how it came to pass that the "people" allowed themselves to be thus betrayed. And what a poor chance stands a political party whose entire stock-in-trade consists in a knowledge of the solitary fact that Citizen So-and-so is not to be trusted."[1]
Gorbachov's betrayal of socialism is clear to everybody today. This is such a commonplace that one doesn't want to repeat it again. It will be more interesting to show that those ideological and theoretical preconceptions, which Gorbachov’s leadership was guided by while completing the liquidation of socialism in the USSR, persist in the post-Soviet left movement, that largely "has forgot nothing and has learned nothing", like the Bourbons.
Why ideology is important for socialism? Isn’t it that, according to Marxism, ideology is derived from the class struggle, which in turn is determined by economic development? But this standpoint is completely true only regarding a class-based society, but not the time of its destruction, which socialism happens to be. While capitalism develops spontaneously in a feudal society, and a bourgeois revolution only seals the victory of the new relations already accomplished by slow economic development, communist relations do not develop spontaneously within capitalism. Accordingly, the factor of the conscious activity of the revolutionary power, or the class of wage workers - the proletariat organized into a state, has a much higher importance.
Socialist transformation is not a product of natural development of social production, which makes people act one way or another with a force of a natural law. Its implementation can be only deliberate. Certain measures of a proletarian state do not reinforce something that has come into being on its own, but rebuild, remold and transform the fabric of social relations.
Is there any idealism or voluntarism in this? Not a bit. Materialism in this instance does not imply that the builders of the communist society are passive subjects of blind circumstances that form behind their backs. It implies that the revolutionary transformation of social relations must be conducted according to the logic of history which has to be studied and understood. If such a transformation is implemented without regard to the logic of development of those relations, this move will lead to most unexpected results, and in any case will not bring the society closer to communism, but throw it back.
This idea was expressed by Lenin in his famous formula, which can seem as "idealistic" to some: "Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement".[2]
That is why theoretical errors and misconceptions of fighters of the socialist revolution, the lack of clear understanding may cost dearly, while the leaders of the bourgeois revolutions may be unaware of the true meaning of their activity, which may appear to them in some illusory form ("The Kingdom of Reason"), and that would not impede their revolutionary work. Since communism does not grow spontaneously from capitalism, certain decisions by the proletarian authorities may be critical for the consolidation of the new communist relations. On the other hand, if the process of transformation is frozen or slowed down, the capitalist relations remaining within the transitional socialist society can and will inevitably develop spontaneously "by themselves".
Here we come to the first theoretical assertion, which became commonplace in the Soviet times and played a destructive role as far as the revolutionary theory was concerned. The ideologues in the late Soviet Union understood socialism not as a transitional phase from capitalism to communism, during which communist and capitalist relations are in a struggle, but as a distinct form of society, or - even worse (although it was rarely spoken so in the open) - as a distinct social economic formation. Naturally, such a theory directed the body politic towards the consolidation of the status quo, which was called "the socialist social relations", and it was considered "the strengthening of socialism". In reality, in every field of the socialist society there was an ongoing struggle between the capitalist and communist relations, a struggle complex and muddled up, in which, as Ilyenkov writes, it was difficult to tell apart the opponents that were intertwined like "wrestlers on the mat". But they must be distinguished, because if they aren’t, if the capitalist relations are not constantly transformed into the communist relations, then it will be capitalism that develops with perfect spontaneity, without any "aid" from us.
This understanding (or rather, misunderstanding) of socialism as a consistent, non-transitory society completed in itself, is naturally followed up by the next assertion, namely, that there are no classes and class struggle in socialism. If we don’t see the struggle between capitalism and communism in every cell of the socialist society, we, of course, will not see the social dimension of this struggle. And that means that social contradictions will be glossed over, "swept under the rug", concealed. Will they disappear in this way? Of course not. They will certainly "crawl out" into the light in a different form, and in a most unexpected place. In this case analyzing those contradictions and drawing a distinct line between the "friendlies" and the "hostiles" will be difficult if not impossible. Of course, classes and class contradictions exist under socialism not in the same way as under capitalism, because we are on the move towards communism; they are not exactly the old classes, but rather classes in the process of their destruction. But the process itself is impossible without the social struggle of those that push this process forward against those that pull it back.
If we deny the class struggle under socialism, we must deny the existence of the state also. However, the state in the USSR was undoubtedly an empirical fact. Therefore, the necessity of a class state was denied, and the Soviet Union was declared a state of the whole people and the CPSU - a party of the whole people. From the point of view of Marxism, the existence of a non-class state and a non-class party is absurd: "the existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are irreconcilable", Lenin wrote.[3] However, it was this nonsense that became the basic theoretical explanation of the existence of the Soviet society in the Khrushchov-Brezhnev-Gorbachov period. The rejection of the dictatorship of the proletariat under socialism by the Soviet ideologists became a major departure from the theory of Marx and Lenin.
Understanding of socialism as a classless and stateless society is so prevalent a theoretical deviation that it penetrated even the "anti-Soviet" versions of Marxism. For instance, Trotsky in "The Revolution Betrayed" and other works denies the existence of the state and classes under socialism (for example, "Soviets are a form of state, and socialism is a social regime. ... Insofar as the social organization has become socialistic, the soviets ought to drop away like the scaffolding after a building is finished"[4]; "the official edict is that socialism has been realized ... But here the main difficulty presents itself. To believe Marx, Engels, and Lenin, the state is the organ of class rule. ... In that case, what does the state mean in a country where “classes have been destroyed? The sages in the Kremlin have more than once wracked their brains over this question.”[5], etc.). He has to come up with yet another separate stage between capitalism and socialism, calling it the "period of the workers' state". Here again, socialism is regarded as something complete and static, devoid of contradictions and inner tension, the only difference from the late-Soviet ideologists being, that the USSR was claimed to have not yet reached this ideal condition and got stuck in the "workers' state" due to the malicious intent of the bureaucracy. It is not hard to notice that both in the Soviet and the Trotskyist versions the Marxist-Leninist theory gets severely distorted. It's enough to pay attention to "The State and Revolution" by Lenin, where the Bolshevik leader clearly points out: "For the state to wither away completely, complete communism is necessary".[6]
If we understand socialism as a completed social body, then, accordingly, its empirically inherent characteristics will be declared essentially inherent. This is especially important with respect to commodity production and commodity-money relations, which were pronounced socialist in the late USSR. Grotesque definitions were born, such as "socialist commodity production", "socialistically modified value", and then "socialist profit" also, and so on. For any person familiar with the theory of Marx and Lenin, it is obvious, that the commodity-money relations are a spontaneously emerging form of relationship between isolated individual producers. But under socialism individual producers merge together into a single economic mechanism, and the society, in the words of Lenin, turns into a "unified factory". Shops do not trade with each other at a factory; the produce of one shop is transferred to another without hitting the market and without expressing its value in the universal equivalent - money. Therefore, wherever there is commodity production under socialism, it is the remnant of the old capitalist relations, which has to be struggled against and transformed into the communist non-commodity one. If this conversion stops (as it happened in the late USSR), the spontaneous development of the commodity-money forms is inevitable, and it will be absorbing and subordinating the elements of the communist economy to itself, until the full restoration of capitalism. The persistence of commodity-money relations, even within a unified people's economic system, induced some of its elements to compete for resources, gradually leading to the formation of factions in the bureaucratic nomenklatura that sought division and, ultimately, privatization of separate parts of the economic organism.
Here again we run into a sort of mirror image of the late-Soviet theory of market socialism in the "anti-Soviet" Marxism. For example, Trotsky in "The Soviet Economy in Danger" ridicules the very idea of central planning: "If a universal mind existed, of the kind that projected itself into the scientific fancy of Laplace - a mind that could register simultaneously all the processes of nature and society, that could measure the dynamics of their motion, that could forecast the results of their inter-reactions - such a mind, of course, could a priori draw up a faultless and exhaustive economic plan, beginning with the number of acres of wheat down to the last button for a vest."[7] This caricature of understanding of converting the spontaneously existing economic forms into consciously planned ones leads Trotsky to the conclusion about the necessity of commodity relations in the planned economy itself: "The plan is checked and, to a considerable degree, realized through the market. The regulation of the market itself must depend upon the tendencies that are brought out through its mechanism. ... The system of the transitional economy is unthinkable without the control of the ruble. ... Economic accounting is unthinkable without market relations."[7] The elimination of the market and commodity production is likewise - as in the works of the late-Soviet ideologists - postponed till the transcendental faraway non-contradictory, classless, stateless "socialism", but at the heart of the "period of the workers' state" (that is, what Marx and Lenin called socialism) all spontaneous economic relations continue to thrive and blossom. ("The role of money in the Soviet economy is not only unfinished but, as we have said, still has a long growth ahead. The transitional epoch between capitalism and socialism taken as a whole does not mean a cutting down of trade, but, on the contrary, its extraordinary extension."[8] Here Trotsky anticipates the future Soviet "commoditists").
The Soviet ideologists did not realize that socialism had the task of transforming the entire system of social and, first of all, production relations which it inherited from all the pre-communist formations. Thus, the transitional socialistic period must solve the problems, the volume of which equals that of the entire preceding history of mankind, and it is opposed not only to capitalism as the final and completed stage of the economic formation of society, but to all the forms of class society that existed before. How was this transformation understood by the late-Soviet ideologists? Contrary to Marx and Lenin, for whom the assumption of power by the proletariat and the centralization of ownership in the hands of its state had been only the first step of socialism, they regarded this first step as "building of socialism" itself.
The transfer of the means of production into state property after the revolutionary assumption of power is only the first step of communism. The first step is very important, necessary, there is no way around it, but it's totally not enough, because if the whole affair is limited to this first step, communism will come to an end quite quickly, which the late USSR serves as a sad example of. Sure enough, this first step has never been something too easy; on the contrary, it is fraught with enormous difficulties, which we also know about from the history of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries of the 20th century.
All Marxists probably remember the words from "The Communist Manifesto": "The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property." [9], but few remember what private property is and what the process of its abolition involves, according to Marx and Lenin. And it is this: "Division of labour and private property are", Marx and Engels wrote, "identical expressions: in the one the same thing is affirmed with reference to activity as is affirmed in the other with reference to the product of the activity."[10]. Therefore, the "expropriation of the expropriators" is just the beginning of the elimination of private property, but not by any means the whole process. The formal abolition of private property, its conversion into a socialist state's property only creates the necessary conditions and prerequisites. The full elimination of private property is identical with the elimination of the social division of labor, and matches the timeframe of what we call socialism, that is, the transition from capitalism to complete communism. Thus, the essence of socialism is the elimination of the social division of labor, as the basis for existence of classes, exploitation, etc.
The conversion of all people into workers of the total public capital is just the first step of socialism. Then follows the phasing out of various forms of alienated activity. In the USSR they stopped after the first step and got the restoration.
That which, for Marx and Lenin, was a transformation of the very nature, the very kind of the activity of the publicly interacting people, for the late-Soviet ideologists turned into a transformation of distribution of the products of that activity. Here the saving grace for the Soviet Marxism were the words of Marx on socialism and communism from the critical notes to the program of the German workers' party. It is well known that Marx in the "Critique of the Gotha Program" writes, and Lenin in "The State and Revolution" repeats that the difference between socialism and communism is that the in the former the norm is "from each according to his ability, to each according to the amount of labor performed" (as amended to the necessity of aid for the disabled, reserves, etc.), and in the latter it is "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". However, those slogans were borrowed by Marx from the utopian socialists of the past, and were used by him only to explain the errors of the German socialists who drafted the Gotha Program. They deal only with distribution, but do not disclose the essences of socialism and communism completely and in full.
Distribution follows production, so the point is to transform the relations of production, such as the social division of labor, not to just organize fair distribution, like the utopian socialists thought. Where activities remain the same, changes in the distribution of their product will inevitably violate the economic mechanism and be thrown back to the old ways of distribution.
The problem of bureaucracy and democracy in a socialist society derives from the process of elimination of the social division of labor. Any other formulation of it is false by default, and will lead to a bourgeois-democratic solution (like the experience of the Perestroika shows). For a long time the Soviet ideology simply ignored that problem, as though there were no contradictions at all between the mental and physical, managerial and performer's labor in the USSR. And when it was put forward during the Perestroika, the only solution the public was offered by the party ideologists consisted of opposing "democracy" to the "nomenklatura", which inevitably led to the restoration of a bourgeois democracy.
The flip side of this neglect was the idealization of the worker and the collective farmer. They were idealized not as revolutionary agents, but exactly as the representation of their own narrow niches in the social division of labor. The conservative side of the proletarian social status was idealized, not the revolutionary one.
Drawing on this negative experience, the left has to understand once and for all, that it is impossible to foster the new man by decorating the chains of mechanical labor with ideological flowerets of "respect for the man of toil". It's no good being in love with the worker of the lathe and the peasant on a tractor. The goal of socialism, as Engels wrote correctly, is that there must be no architects and barrow pushers by profession. And it is not that the professional architects must love the professional barrow pushers. In other words, the goal is the elimination of the social division of labor, and not the praise, nor even better pay for those who occupy the lower levels of it.
In the early 1920's Lenin once found himself at a meeting of young communists. In the room where they held the meeting, there was a placard: "The reign of the workers and peasants will last for ever". Lenin sharply criticized the slogan.[11] As a Marxist, he knew that if the worker and especially the peasant were perpetuated forever, then sooner or later the capitalist and the landlord would appear. One side of the contradiction does not exist without the other. And while having forcibly removed the bourgeoisie, but keeping the working class in place, you will inevitably get the rebirth of bourgeoisie in another form. And, like Mao wrote, it will come out where nobody expects it from - the Communist Party itself.
The revolutionary spirit of the working class under socialism is measured by the success it achieves at fighting for its own destruction as a class, by the extent to which it is involved in the management of society, the extent to which science, culture and education are returned to production and cease to be the privilege of special social groups, and the production itself becomes production of the social man.
Here again the opportunism of the Soviet ideologists is reflected in the "anti-Soviet" Marxism like in a curved mirror. Daniel Bensaid, a known Trotskyist theorist, writes: "According to Trotsky's thesis, enriched by Mandel, the main contradiction of the transitional society was between the socialized form of the planned economy and the bourgeois norms of distribution at the origin of bureaucratic parasitism and privileges. The “political revolution” consisted then in bringing the political superstructure into conformity with the acquired social infrastructure."[12]. Thus, for Trotskyists, the economy, that is, the social division of labor in the USSR was all okay, it's just the superstructure that was off a little.
Marxism, in contrast to Trotsky and his followers, considers bureaucracy not a part of the "superstructure" alien to the nationalized economy, but a product of a certain type of division of labor. It does not disappear by itself from that nationalized economy, but is destroyed by a long and hard process of elimination of the social division of labor. Instead of such a process, Trotsky, as we know, proposed a quick "political revolution" against the bureaucracy. In reality, even if such a revolution could be possible, it would have led only to replacement of one faction of bureaucracy (Stalin's) with another (the Trotskyist), since it would not have affected the social division of labor, which was the basis, the roots of all bureaucratism.
It is unlikely that a single Trotskyist can clearly explain on which day that "political revolution" would eliminate the distinction between Trotsky himself and his typist, cook or driver; and it is exactly this distinction that has essential importance for socialism, and exactly the subject which Trotsky did not write a single line on. Even if we set an equal salary for Trotsky and his cook, it would do little to fundamentally change the social relations.
Socialism, as the period of elimination of the relations of the class society, as the transition to communism, must already put emphasis not on material production, but on the production of man, with a comprehensively developed personality. Not just on the "satisfaction" of the spontaneously piled "needs", but on the very production of social man, with respect to whom the production of goods would assume its proper subordinate position. As we know, it was the satisfaction of needs the Soviet ideologists always talked about, which led to the formation of the Soviet version of consumer society and inevitable domination of the petty bourgeois ideology.
Along the road to communism not the alienated relations of production (the "basis"), but the truly human relations have to play the dominant role. A comprehensively developed person, to whom all the horizons are open for further perfection, would never support restoration of capitalism, condemning himself to be forever confined to just one of the universal human abilities. "The Soviet Man", to whom that communist horizon remained closed, was not massively resisting the market and private property, which promised him consumer abundance. The work of the restoration was carried out by the same spontaneous market forces; left alone, they found themselves executives from the ranks of the Soviet bureaucracy.
Upon taking into account all these theoretical ideological positions utterly contradictory to the Marxist understanding of socialism, and the fact that they were employed as official ones, it is not hard to realize why the counterrevolutionary activity of the Gorbachov leadership of the CPSU was taken in and supported by the masses, including the masses of communists and honest supporters of socialism. The demagogy about the "return to Lenin's ideas" was taken in by the society, because, among other things, the actual content of the ideas of Marx and Lenin had been forgotten or distorted, primarily along the aforementioned lines.
And yet again, this theoretical and political opportunism of the Soviet communists, was reflected by the "anti-Soviet" communists like in a mirror. The leader of the Trotskyist 4th International, Ernest Mandel, said in 1990: "Perestroika is truly a new revolution. Our movement had upheld the same thesis for 55 years, and was for this reason called counter-revolutionary. Today, one understands better who were the real counter-revolutionaries and who were the real revolutionaries."[13] "Yeltsin, the reformer, represents the tendency that wants to reduce the immense bureaucratic machine. By doing this, he follows in the steps of Trotsky." Even in 1991, Mandel wrote about the failed coup attempt against Gorbachov: "It was necessary to oppose the coup, and, therefore, to struggle beside Yeltsin." Thus, the theoretical blindness of the Soviet communists was fully shared by their political opponents - the Trotskyites.
The worst thing is that this theoretical opportunism, having paved the way for Gorbachov’s counterrevolutionary deeds, is well alive in the left movement even now.
P. S. On the difficulties of a dispute with believers.
My attempt to show that a pair of loud slogans from a book by Trotsky is not sufficient for a victory over bureaucracy in a socialist society will undoubtedly cause disturbance in the camp of his supporters. Accusations of "apology of bureaucracy" and other heinous sins will pour. Unfortunately, many think that, if you criticize Trotsky and Trotskyism, you automatically fall in the same company with Yezhov and Beria. This is like it for a believer: anyone who criticizes the tenets of his religion, is no doubt in collusion with the Enemy of Mankind.
Naturally, I do not think and have never claimed that Trotsky is an opponent of the plan in principle. Trotsky only postulates the necessity to check plan with market, the "control of the ruble", that is, he favors amalgamation of the plan and the market principles, and even submission ("control") of the plan to the market. He also ridicules those who reckon that the plan is possible without market. I described it as a mockery of the very idea of central planning, because if consistently implemented, the centralized planning rules out the market, and vice versa.
Moreover, Trotsky does himself write, that market is indispensable throughout the entire transitional period, which, as we can learn from Trotsky’s book "The Revolution Betrayed", ends with a classless and stateless society, commonly known as communism. Then Trotsky writes also about the expansion of the commodity economy. And he does not mean just the conversion of the patriarchal economy of small peasants into a market economy (the NEP), during which it is permissible. He means the "era, taken as a whole".
Thus, Trotsky's opinion is conveyed in my article, first, literally, secondly, correctly. Anyone may go reread those parts of "The Revolution Betrayed" and "The Soviet Economy in Danger" article. There is exactly what I have described in my article. Possible cries of "distortion" would be intended only to cover up the obvious theoretical errors of the idol, which I point out in my text.
Trotsky writes: " The role of money in the Soviet economy is not only unfinished but, as we have said, still has a long growth ahead. The transitional epoch between capitalism and socialism taken as a whole does not mean a cutting down of trade, but, on the contrary, its extraordinary extension. All branches of industry transform themselves and grow. New ones continually arise, and all are compelled to define their relations to one another both quantitatively and qualitatively. The liquidation of the consummatory peasant economy, and at the same time of the shut-in family life, means a transfer to the sphere of social interchange, and ipso facto money circulation, of all the labor energy which was formerly expended within the limits of the peasant’s yard, or within the walls of his private dwelling. All products and services begin for the first time in history to be exchanged for one another."[8]
Mark Trotsky's argumentation for the necessity of market not only by the commodification of peasants' farms, which was characteristic to the NEP, but also by the relationships of the branches of industry with one another, among other things. The fact of the matter is that the entire system of the "transitional economy" is thought as a market one at its core by Trotsky. It is this understanding of the "transitional economy" as a market one, that I speak of.
In reality, after the NEP was rolled up, there was a struggle of the two principles in the Soviet economy, the planning one and the market one. Any expansion of the former meant contraction of the latter. And vice versa. The struggle against the patriarchal economy ended with the collectivization of agriculture.
Yes, market is more progressive than subsistence farming. But in the 1930s the struggle was already not between these two economic structures, but mainly between the commodity and the planned non-commodity production. On this struggle, Trotsky did not take a clear-cut position. And, at least for me, Trotsky's standpoint seems very close to that of the Soviet "market socialists", or "commoditists".
The postulate of the impossibility of decent planning without the market was a reiteration of the arguments of the Soviet "commoditists" almost verbatim. And this is not about when it was said, in 1932, 1936 or 1965, this is about the principle.
The "commoditists" of the 1960s hold views almost identical to Trotsky. They too spoke about the need to "find the measure of an organic combination of the market and the plan", without acknowledging that they were antagonistic forces, which were the manifestation of the struggle of communism and capitalism as far as economy was concerned. I hope, it is not necessary to remind specifically, what the victory of the "commoditists" in the Soviet leadership led to.
Unfortunately, for some Trotskyists "The Revolution Betrayed" is apparently enough to consider themselves experts on all the problems of the Soviet economy. Of course, it's easier and more pleasant to cry loud against the bureaucracy, than to study the particular contradictions in the specific situations of the concrete socialism, which gave power to that very bureaucracy. Except when you engage in this kind of "criticism of the bureaucracy Trotsky-style" you might find yourself in a mishap like that of Mandel: you join the camp of the most rightist of the bureaucratic factions supporting Gorbachov and Yeltsin.
Trotsky was for the existence of the market principle throughout the entire "transitional period". Trotsky does not write anywhere in "The Revolution Betrayed" about the necessity of its gradual and permanent phase-out. Therefore, he supports what in the 1960s was called the "commoditists'" standpoint or the "market socialism". I reckon, that Marxists must harshly reject such views. If you do not agree with this, comrades Trotskyites, then defend Trotsky's position - if you have the pluck.
I also consider it necessary to stress that by my criticism of Trotsky I do not claim that Trotsky equals Gorbachov, or that Trotsky was responsible for the course of the late-Soviet leadership, that led to the collapse of socialism, as some unattentive readers from the ranks of the "believers" might think. There is no such thing in this article. The article shows that Trotsky and the Trotskyists, for all their criticism of the USSR, which was often justified and rightful, do not differ that much in their understanding of the contradictions of socialism from the Soviet bureaucracy, and often repeat the theoretical errors and illusions of the latter. As the practice has shown, the loud cries against the bureaucracy do not save one from such errors. The real safeguard against them is the diligent study of the communist theory of Marx and Lenin. Which I advise these comrades to get on with, instead of seeking out the imaginary distortions of the views of their own idols.
___________________
1. F. Engels. Revolution and Counter-revolution in Germany
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/germany/ch01.htm
2. V. I. Lenin. What is to be done?
http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/i.htm
3. V. I. Lenin. The State and Revolution.
http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm
4. L. Trotsky. The Revolution Betrayed.
http://marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch03.htm
5. L. Trotsky. The Bonapartist Philosophy of the State.
http://marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/05/bonapartism.htm
6. V. I. Lenin. The State and Revolution.
http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch05.htm
7. L. Trotsky. The Soviet Economy in Danger.
http://marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1932/10/sovecon.htm
8. L. Trotsky. The Revolution Betrayed.
http://marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch04.htm
9. K. Marx & F. Engels. Manifesto of the Communist Party.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm
10. K. Marx & F. Engels. The German Ideology.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm
11. See: http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/mar/27.htm
12. D. Bensaïd. Theses of Resistance.
http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/article.php3?id_article=14
13. Interview with the "New Times" no. 38, 1990.
Original article in Russian: http://liva.com.ua/twenty-years.html
THE REVOLUTION BETRAYED: FROM OPPORTUNISM TO TREASON
In March 1985, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU elected Mikhail Gorbachov as its Secretary General. Hardly any of the left today will say a kind word about the persona of the last Secretary General. And fans of Gorbachov's political line have become quite an exotic curiosity. Everyone understands that Gorbachov betrayed socialism - the cause he verbally supported.
It is important to remember, however, that the collapse of the Soviet Union was not a matter of one day, or even of several years. The mechanics of counterrevolution were operational for many years before giving irreversible results. No less important it is to realize that no separate individuals, nor even figures such as Mikhail Gorbachov, were to destroy the first socialist state.
It's not about the personal qualities of Gorbachov, and not about the act of his betrayal. Here the words of Friedrich Engels are worth recalling: "when you inquire into the causes of the counter-revolutionary successes, there you are met on every hand with the ready reply that it was Mr. This or Citizen That who "betrayed" the people. Which reply may be very true or not, according to circumstances, but under no circumstances does it explain anything - not even show how it came to pass that the "people" allowed themselves to be thus betrayed. And what a poor chance stands a political party whose entire stock-in-trade consists in a knowledge of the solitary fact that Citizen So-and-so is not to be trusted."[1]
Gorbachov's betrayal of socialism is clear to everybody today. This is such a commonplace that one doesn't want to repeat it again. It will be more interesting to show that those ideological and theoretical preconceptions, which Gorbachov’s leadership was guided by while completing the liquidation of socialism in the USSR, persist in the post-Soviet left movement, that largely "has forgot nothing and has learned nothing", like the Bourbons.
Why ideology is important for socialism? Isn’t it that, according to Marxism, ideology is derived from the class struggle, which in turn is determined by economic development? But this standpoint is completely true only regarding a class-based society, but not the time of its destruction, which socialism happens to be. While capitalism develops spontaneously in a feudal society, and a bourgeois revolution only seals the victory of the new relations already accomplished by slow economic development, communist relations do not develop spontaneously within capitalism. Accordingly, the factor of the conscious activity of the revolutionary power, or the class of wage workers - the proletariat organized into a state, has a much higher importance.
Socialist transformation is not a product of natural development of social production, which makes people act one way or another with a force of a natural law. Its implementation can be only deliberate. Certain measures of a proletarian state do not reinforce something that has come into being on its own, but rebuild, remold and transform the fabric of social relations.
Is there any idealism or voluntarism in this? Not a bit. Materialism in this instance does not imply that the builders of the communist society are passive subjects of blind circumstances that form behind their backs. It implies that the revolutionary transformation of social relations must be conducted according to the logic of history which has to be studied and understood. If such a transformation is implemented without regard to the logic of development of those relations, this move will lead to most unexpected results, and in any case will not bring the society closer to communism, but throw it back.
This idea was expressed by Lenin in his famous formula, which can seem as "idealistic" to some: "Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement".[2]
That is why theoretical errors and misconceptions of fighters of the socialist revolution, the lack of clear understanding may cost dearly, while the leaders of the bourgeois revolutions may be unaware of the true meaning of their activity, which may appear to them in some illusory form ("The Kingdom of Reason"), and that would not impede their revolutionary work. Since communism does not grow spontaneously from capitalism, certain decisions by the proletarian authorities may be critical for the consolidation of the new communist relations. On the other hand, if the process of transformation is frozen or slowed down, the capitalist relations remaining within the transitional socialist society can and will inevitably develop spontaneously "by themselves".
Here we come to the first theoretical assertion, which became commonplace in the Soviet times and played a destructive role as far as the revolutionary theory was concerned. The ideologues in the late Soviet Union understood socialism not as a transitional phase from capitalism to communism, during which communist and capitalist relations are in a struggle, but as a distinct form of society, or - even worse (although it was rarely spoken so in the open) - as a distinct social economic formation. Naturally, such a theory directed the body politic towards the consolidation of the status quo, which was called "the socialist social relations", and it was considered "the strengthening of socialism". In reality, in every field of the socialist society there was an ongoing struggle between the capitalist and communist relations, a struggle complex and muddled up, in which, as Ilyenkov writes, it was difficult to tell apart the opponents that were intertwined like "wrestlers on the mat". But they must be distinguished, because if they aren’t, if the capitalist relations are not constantly transformed into the communist relations, then it will be capitalism that develops with perfect spontaneity, without any "aid" from us.
This understanding (or rather, misunderstanding) of socialism as a consistent, non-transitory society completed in itself, is naturally followed up by the next assertion, namely, that there are no classes and class struggle in socialism. If we don’t see the struggle between capitalism and communism in every cell of the socialist society, we, of course, will not see the social dimension of this struggle. And that means that social contradictions will be glossed over, "swept under the rug", concealed. Will they disappear in this way? Of course not. They will certainly "crawl out" into the light in a different form, and in a most unexpected place. In this case analyzing those contradictions and drawing a distinct line between the "friendlies" and the "hostiles" will be difficult if not impossible. Of course, classes and class contradictions exist under socialism not in the same way as under capitalism, because we are on the move towards communism; they are not exactly the old classes, but rather classes in the process of their destruction. But the process itself is impossible without the social struggle of those that push this process forward against those that pull it back.
If we deny the class struggle under socialism, we must deny the existence of the state also. However, the state in the USSR was undoubtedly an empirical fact. Therefore, the necessity of a class state was denied, and the Soviet Union was declared a state of the whole people and the CPSU - a party of the whole people. From the point of view of Marxism, the existence of a non-class state and a non-class party is absurd: "the existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are irreconcilable", Lenin wrote.[3] However, it was this nonsense that became the basic theoretical explanation of the existence of the Soviet society in the Khrushchov-Brezhnev-Gorbachov period. The rejection of the dictatorship of the proletariat under socialism by the Soviet ideologists became a major departure from the theory of Marx and Lenin.
Understanding of socialism as a classless and stateless society is so prevalent a theoretical deviation that it penetrated even the "anti-Soviet" versions of Marxism. For instance, Trotsky in "The Revolution Betrayed" and other works denies the existence of the state and classes under socialism (for example, "Soviets are a form of state, and socialism is a social regime. ... Insofar as the social organization has become socialistic, the soviets ought to drop away like the scaffolding after a building is finished"[4]; "the official edict is that socialism has been realized ... But here the main difficulty presents itself. To believe Marx, Engels, and Lenin, the state is the organ of class rule. ... In that case, what does the state mean in a country where “classes have been destroyed? The sages in the Kremlin have more than once wracked their brains over this question.”[5], etc.). He has to come up with yet another separate stage between capitalism and socialism, calling it the "period of the workers' state". Here again, socialism is regarded as something complete and static, devoid of contradictions and inner tension, the only difference from the late-Soviet ideologists being, that the USSR was claimed to have not yet reached this ideal condition and got stuck in the "workers' state" due to the malicious intent of the bureaucracy. It is not hard to notice that both in the Soviet and the Trotskyist versions the Marxist-Leninist theory gets severely distorted. It's enough to pay attention to "The State and Revolution" by Lenin, where the Bolshevik leader clearly points out: "For the state to wither away completely, complete communism is necessary".[6]
If we understand socialism as a completed social body, then, accordingly, its empirically inherent characteristics will be declared essentially inherent. This is especially important with respect to commodity production and commodity-money relations, which were pronounced socialist in the late USSR. Grotesque definitions were born, such as "socialist commodity production", "socialistically modified value", and then "socialist profit" also, and so on. For any person familiar with the theory of Marx and Lenin, it is obvious, that the commodity-money relations are a spontaneously emerging form of relationship between isolated individual producers. But under socialism individual producers merge together into a single economic mechanism, and the society, in the words of Lenin, turns into a "unified factory". Shops do not trade with each other at a factory; the produce of one shop is transferred to another without hitting the market and without expressing its value in the universal equivalent - money. Therefore, wherever there is commodity production under socialism, it is the remnant of the old capitalist relations, which has to be struggled against and transformed into the communist non-commodity one. If this conversion stops (as it happened in the late USSR), the spontaneous development of the commodity-money forms is inevitable, and it will be absorbing and subordinating the elements of the communist economy to itself, until the full restoration of capitalism. The persistence of commodity-money relations, even within a unified people's economic system, induced some of its elements to compete for resources, gradually leading to the formation of factions in the bureaucratic nomenklatura that sought division and, ultimately, privatization of separate parts of the economic organism.
Here again we run into a sort of mirror image of the late-Soviet theory of market socialism in the "anti-Soviet" Marxism. For example, Trotsky in "The Soviet Economy in Danger" ridicules the very idea of central planning: "If a universal mind existed, of the kind that projected itself into the scientific fancy of Laplace - a mind that could register simultaneously all the processes of nature and society, that could measure the dynamics of their motion, that could forecast the results of their inter-reactions - such a mind, of course, could a priori draw up a faultless and exhaustive economic plan, beginning with the number of acres of wheat down to the last button for a vest."[7] This caricature of understanding of converting the spontaneously existing economic forms into consciously planned ones leads Trotsky to the conclusion about the necessity of commodity relations in the planned economy itself: "The plan is checked and, to a considerable degree, realized through the market. The regulation of the market itself must depend upon the tendencies that are brought out through its mechanism. ... The system of the transitional economy is unthinkable without the control of the ruble. ... Economic accounting is unthinkable without market relations."[7] The elimination of the market and commodity production is likewise - as in the works of the late-Soviet ideologists - postponed till the transcendental faraway non-contradictory, classless, stateless "socialism", but at the heart of the "period of the workers' state" (that is, what Marx and Lenin called socialism) all spontaneous economic relations continue to thrive and blossom. ("The role of money in the Soviet economy is not only unfinished but, as we have said, still has a long growth ahead. The transitional epoch between capitalism and socialism taken as a whole does not mean a cutting down of trade, but, on the contrary, its extraordinary extension."[8] Here Trotsky anticipates the future Soviet "commoditists").
The Soviet ideologists did not realize that socialism had the task of transforming the entire system of social and, first of all, production relations which it inherited from all the pre-communist formations. Thus, the transitional socialistic period must solve the problems, the volume of which equals that of the entire preceding history of mankind, and it is opposed not only to capitalism as the final and completed stage of the economic formation of society, but to all the forms of class society that existed before. How was this transformation understood by the late-Soviet ideologists? Contrary to Marx and Lenin, for whom the assumption of power by the proletariat and the centralization of ownership in the hands of its state had been only the first step of socialism, they regarded this first step as "building of socialism" itself.
The transfer of the means of production into state property after the revolutionary assumption of power is only the first step of communism. The first step is very important, necessary, there is no way around it, but it's totally not enough, because if the whole affair is limited to this first step, communism will come to an end quite quickly, which the late USSR serves as a sad example of. Sure enough, this first step has never been something too easy; on the contrary, it is fraught with enormous difficulties, which we also know about from the history of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries of the 20th century.
All Marxists probably remember the words from "The Communist Manifesto": "The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property." [9], but few remember what private property is and what the process of its abolition involves, according to Marx and Lenin. And it is this: "Division of labour and private property are", Marx and Engels wrote, "identical expressions: in the one the same thing is affirmed with reference to activity as is affirmed in the other with reference to the product of the activity."[10]. Therefore, the "expropriation of the expropriators" is just the beginning of the elimination of private property, but not by any means the whole process. The formal abolition of private property, its conversion into a socialist state's property only creates the necessary conditions and prerequisites. The full elimination of private property is identical with the elimination of the social division of labor, and matches the timeframe of what we call socialism, that is, the transition from capitalism to complete communism. Thus, the essence of socialism is the elimination of the social division of labor, as the basis for existence of classes, exploitation, etc.
The conversion of all people into workers of the total public capital is just the first step of socialism. Then follows the phasing out of various forms of alienated activity. In the USSR they stopped after the first step and got the restoration.
That which, for Marx and Lenin, was a transformation of the very nature, the very kind of the activity of the publicly interacting people, for the late-Soviet ideologists turned into a transformation of distribution of the products of that activity. Here the saving grace for the Soviet Marxism were the words of Marx on socialism and communism from the critical notes to the program of the German workers' party. It is well known that Marx in the "Critique of the Gotha Program" writes, and Lenin in "The State and Revolution" repeats that the difference between socialism and communism is that the in the former the norm is "from each according to his ability, to each according to the amount of labor performed" (as amended to the necessity of aid for the disabled, reserves, etc.), and in the latter it is "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". However, those slogans were borrowed by Marx from the utopian socialists of the past, and were used by him only to explain the errors of the German socialists who drafted the Gotha Program. They deal only with distribution, but do not disclose the essences of socialism and communism completely and in full.
Distribution follows production, so the point is to transform the relations of production, such as the social division of labor, not to just organize fair distribution, like the utopian socialists thought. Where activities remain the same, changes in the distribution of their product will inevitably violate the economic mechanism and be thrown back to the old ways of distribution.
The problem of bureaucracy and democracy in a socialist society derives from the process of elimination of the social division of labor. Any other formulation of it is false by default, and will lead to a bourgeois-democratic solution (like the experience of the Perestroika shows). For a long time the Soviet ideology simply ignored that problem, as though there were no contradictions at all between the mental and physical, managerial and performer's labor in the USSR. And when it was put forward during the Perestroika, the only solution the public was offered by the party ideologists consisted of opposing "democracy" to the "nomenklatura", which inevitably led to the restoration of a bourgeois democracy.
The flip side of this neglect was the idealization of the worker and the collective farmer. They were idealized not as revolutionary agents, but exactly as the representation of their own narrow niches in the social division of labor. The conservative side of the proletarian social status was idealized, not the revolutionary one.
Drawing on this negative experience, the left has to understand once and for all, that it is impossible to foster the new man by decorating the chains of mechanical labor with ideological flowerets of "respect for the man of toil". It's no good being in love with the worker of the lathe and the peasant on a tractor. The goal of socialism, as Engels wrote correctly, is that there must be no architects and barrow pushers by profession. And it is not that the professional architects must love the professional barrow pushers. In other words, the goal is the elimination of the social division of labor, and not the praise, nor even better pay for those who occupy the lower levels of it.
In the early 1920's Lenin once found himself at a meeting of young communists. In the room where they held the meeting, there was a placard: "The reign of the workers and peasants will last for ever". Lenin sharply criticized the slogan.[11] As a Marxist, he knew that if the worker and especially the peasant were perpetuated forever, then sooner or later the capitalist and the landlord would appear. One side of the contradiction does not exist without the other. And while having forcibly removed the bourgeoisie, but keeping the working class in place, you will inevitably get the rebirth of bourgeoisie in another form. And, like Mao wrote, it will come out where nobody expects it from - the Communist Party itself.
The revolutionary spirit of the working class under socialism is measured by the success it achieves at fighting for its own destruction as a class, by the extent to which it is involved in the management of society, the extent to which science, culture and education are returned to production and cease to be the privilege of special social groups, and the production itself becomes production of the social man.
Here again the opportunism of the Soviet ideologists is reflected in the "anti-Soviet" Marxism like in a curved mirror. Daniel Bensaid, a known Trotskyist theorist, writes: "According to Trotsky's thesis, enriched by Mandel, the main contradiction of the transitional society was between the socialized form of the planned economy and the bourgeois norms of distribution at the origin of bureaucratic parasitism and privileges. The “political revolution” consisted then in bringing the political superstructure into conformity with the acquired social infrastructure."[12]. Thus, for Trotskyists, the economy, that is, the social division of labor in the USSR was all okay, it's just the superstructure that was off a little.
Marxism, in contrast to Trotsky and his followers, considers bureaucracy not a part of the "superstructure" alien to the nationalized economy, but a product of a certain type of division of labor. It does not disappear by itself from that nationalized economy, but is destroyed by a long and hard process of elimination of the social division of labor. Instead of such a process, Trotsky, as we know, proposed a quick "political revolution" against the bureaucracy. In reality, even if such a revolution could be possible, it would have led only to replacement of one faction of bureaucracy (Stalin's) with another (the Trotskyist), since it would not have affected the social division of labor, which was the basis, the roots of all bureaucratism.
It is unlikely that a single Trotskyist can clearly explain on which day that "political revolution" would eliminate the distinction between Trotsky himself and his typist, cook or driver; and it is exactly this distinction that has essential importance for socialism, and exactly the subject which Trotsky did not write a single line on. Even if we set an equal salary for Trotsky and his cook, it would do little to fundamentally change the social relations.
Socialism, as the period of elimination of the relations of the class society, as the transition to communism, must already put emphasis not on material production, but on the production of man, with a comprehensively developed personality. Not just on the "satisfaction" of the spontaneously piled "needs", but on the very production of social man, with respect to whom the production of goods would assume its proper subordinate position. As we know, it was the satisfaction of needs the Soviet ideologists always talked about, which led to the formation of the Soviet version of consumer society and inevitable domination of the petty bourgeois ideology.
Along the road to communism not the alienated relations of production (the "basis"), but the truly human relations have to play the dominant role. A comprehensively developed person, to whom all the horizons are open for further perfection, would never support restoration of capitalism, condemning himself to be forever confined to just one of the universal human abilities. "The Soviet Man", to whom that communist horizon remained closed, was not massively resisting the market and private property, which promised him consumer abundance. The work of the restoration was carried out by the same spontaneous market forces; left alone, they found themselves executives from the ranks of the Soviet bureaucracy.
Upon taking into account all these theoretical ideological positions utterly contradictory to the Marxist understanding of socialism, and the fact that they were employed as official ones, it is not hard to realize why the counterrevolutionary activity of the Gorbachov leadership of the CPSU was taken in and supported by the masses, including the masses of communists and honest supporters of socialism. The demagogy about the "return to Lenin's ideas" was taken in by the society, because, among other things, the actual content of the ideas of Marx and Lenin had been forgotten or distorted, primarily along the aforementioned lines.
And yet again, this theoretical and political opportunism of the Soviet communists, was reflected by the "anti-Soviet" communists like in a mirror. The leader of the Trotskyist 4th International, Ernest Mandel, said in 1990: "Perestroika is truly a new revolution. Our movement had upheld the same thesis for 55 years, and was for this reason called counter-revolutionary. Today, one understands better who were the real counter-revolutionaries and who were the real revolutionaries."[13] "Yeltsin, the reformer, represents the tendency that wants to reduce the immense bureaucratic machine. By doing this, he follows in the steps of Trotsky." Even in 1991, Mandel wrote about the failed coup attempt against Gorbachov: "It was necessary to oppose the coup, and, therefore, to struggle beside Yeltsin." Thus, the theoretical blindness of the Soviet communists was fully shared by their political opponents - the Trotskyites.
The worst thing is that this theoretical opportunism, having paved the way for Gorbachov’s counterrevolutionary deeds, is well alive in the left movement even now.
P. S. On the difficulties of a dispute with believers.
My attempt to show that a pair of loud slogans from a book by Trotsky is not sufficient for a victory over bureaucracy in a socialist society will undoubtedly cause disturbance in the camp of his supporters. Accusations of "apology of bureaucracy" and other heinous sins will pour. Unfortunately, many think that, if you criticize Trotsky and Trotskyism, you automatically fall in the same company with Yezhov and Beria. This is like it for a believer: anyone who criticizes the tenets of his religion, is no doubt in collusion with the Enemy of Mankind.
Naturally, I do not think and have never claimed that Trotsky is an opponent of the plan in principle. Trotsky only postulates the necessity to check plan with market, the "control of the ruble", that is, he favors amalgamation of the plan and the market principles, and even submission ("control") of the plan to the market. He also ridicules those who reckon that the plan is possible without market. I described it as a mockery of the very idea of central planning, because if consistently implemented, the centralized planning rules out the market, and vice versa.
Moreover, Trotsky does himself write, that market is indispensable throughout the entire transitional period, which, as we can learn from Trotsky’s book "The Revolution Betrayed", ends with a classless and stateless society, commonly known as communism. Then Trotsky writes also about the expansion of the commodity economy. And he does not mean just the conversion of the patriarchal economy of small peasants into a market economy (the NEP), during which it is permissible. He means the "era, taken as a whole".
Thus, Trotsky's opinion is conveyed in my article, first, literally, secondly, correctly. Anyone may go reread those parts of "The Revolution Betrayed" and "The Soviet Economy in Danger" article. There is exactly what I have described in my article. Possible cries of "distortion" would be intended only to cover up the obvious theoretical errors of the idol, which I point out in my text.
Trotsky writes: " The role of money in the Soviet economy is not only unfinished but, as we have said, still has a long growth ahead. The transitional epoch between capitalism and socialism taken as a whole does not mean a cutting down of trade, but, on the contrary, its extraordinary extension. All branches of industry transform themselves and grow. New ones continually arise, and all are compelled to define their relations to one another both quantitatively and qualitatively. The liquidation of the consummatory peasant economy, and at the same time of the shut-in family life, means a transfer to the sphere of social interchange, and ipso facto money circulation, of all the labor energy which was formerly expended within the limits of the peasant’s yard, or within the walls of his private dwelling. All products and services begin for the first time in history to be exchanged for one another."[8]
Mark Trotsky's argumentation for the necessity of market not only by the commodification of peasants' farms, which was characteristic to the NEP, but also by the relationships of the branches of industry with one another, among other things. The fact of the matter is that the entire system of the "transitional economy" is thought as a market one at its core by Trotsky. It is this understanding of the "transitional economy" as a market one, that I speak of.
In reality, after the NEP was rolled up, there was a struggle of the two principles in the Soviet economy, the planning one and the market one. Any expansion of the former meant contraction of the latter. And vice versa. The struggle against the patriarchal economy ended with the collectivization of agriculture.
Yes, market is more progressive than subsistence farming. But in the 1930s the struggle was already not between these two economic structures, but mainly between the commodity and the planned non-commodity production. On this struggle, Trotsky did not take a clear-cut position. And, at least for me, Trotsky's standpoint seems very close to that of the Soviet "market socialists", or "commoditists".
The postulate of the impossibility of decent planning without the market was a reiteration of the arguments of the Soviet "commoditists" almost verbatim. And this is not about when it was said, in 1932, 1936 or 1965, this is about the principle.
The "commoditists" of the 1960s hold views almost identical to Trotsky. They too spoke about the need to "find the measure of an organic combination of the market and the plan", without acknowledging that they were antagonistic forces, which were the manifestation of the struggle of communism and capitalism as far as economy was concerned. I hope, it is not necessary to remind specifically, what the victory of the "commoditists" in the Soviet leadership led to.
Unfortunately, for some Trotskyists "The Revolution Betrayed" is apparently enough to consider themselves experts on all the problems of the Soviet economy. Of course, it's easier and more pleasant to cry loud against the bureaucracy, than to study the particular contradictions in the specific situations of the concrete socialism, which gave power to that very bureaucracy. Except when you engage in this kind of "criticism of the bureaucracy Trotsky-style" you might find yourself in a mishap like that of Mandel: you join the camp of the most rightist of the bureaucratic factions supporting Gorbachov and Yeltsin.
Trotsky was for the existence of the market principle throughout the entire "transitional period". Trotsky does not write anywhere in "The Revolution Betrayed" about the necessity of its gradual and permanent phase-out. Therefore, he supports what in the 1960s was called the "commoditists'" standpoint or the "market socialism". I reckon, that Marxists must harshly reject such views. If you do not agree with this, comrades Trotskyites, then defend Trotsky's position - if you have the pluck.
I also consider it necessary to stress that by my criticism of Trotsky I do not claim that Trotsky equals Gorbachov, or that Trotsky was responsible for the course of the late-Soviet leadership, that led to the collapse of socialism, as some unattentive readers from the ranks of the "believers" might think. There is no such thing in this article. The article shows that Trotsky and the Trotskyists, for all their criticism of the USSR, which was often justified and rightful, do not differ that much in their understanding of the contradictions of socialism from the Soviet bureaucracy, and often repeat the theoretical errors and illusions of the latter. As the practice has shown, the loud cries against the bureaucracy do not save one from such errors. The real safeguard against them is the diligent study of the communist theory of Marx and Lenin. Which I advise these comrades to get on with, instead of seeking out the imaginary distortions of the views of their own idols.
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1. F. Engels. Revolution and Counter-revolution in Germany
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/germany/ch01.htm
2. V. I. Lenin. What is to be done?
http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/i.htm
3. V. I. Lenin. The State and Revolution.
http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm
4. L. Trotsky. The Revolution Betrayed.
http://marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch03.htm
5. L. Trotsky. The Bonapartist Philosophy of the State.
http://marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/05/bonapartism.htm
6. V. I. Lenin. The State and Revolution.
http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch05.htm
7. L. Trotsky. The Soviet Economy in Danger.
http://marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1932/10/sovecon.htm
8. L. Trotsky. The Revolution Betrayed.
http://marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch04.htm
9. K. Marx & F. Engels. Manifesto of the Communist Party.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm
10. K. Marx & F. Engels. The German Ideology.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm
11. See: http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/mar/27.htm
12. D. Bensaïd. Theses of Resistance.
http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/article.php3?id_article=14
13. Interview with the "New Times" no. 38, 1990.
Original article in Russian: http://liva.com.ua/twenty-years.html