In dealing with ‘state capitalism’, we see the kind of fetishism of which Marx spoke and which can even affect the revolutionary movement – change the name of a thing and you change its essence! Trotsky described it as ‘terminological radicalism’. But sticking these labels on to the phenomenon of Stalinism does not change the character of the regime. Such a method has nothing in common with Marxism. As a matter of fact, if the idea of state capitalism or bureaucratic collectivism is correct, then the whole theory of Marx becomes a Utopia. Let us proceed from fundamental propositions. According to the theory of Marx, no society passes from the scene of history until it has exhausted all the potentialities within it. For a whole historical period, the Soviet regime made unexampled strides forward, much greater than anything seen in the West. We have the absurdity of a new revolution, according to the advocates of state capitalism, a proletarian revolution in 1917, changing the economy into – state capitalism. As Trotsky explained: “An attempt has been made to conceal the enigma of the Soviet regime by calling it ‘state capitalism’. This term has the advantage that nobody knows exactly what it means.” (Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, p. 245.)
Where Trotsky found proof of a workers’ state in the transformation of the forms of property, the supporters of the theory of state capitalism find proof of the reverse. They may argue that unless the working class has direct control of the state, it cannot be a workers’ state. In that case, they will have to reject the idea that there was ever a workers’ state in Russia, except possibly in the first few months after October. Even here it is necessary to reiterate that the dictatorship of the proletariat is realised through the instrument of the vanguard of the class, i.e. the Party, and in the Party through the Party leadership. Under the best conditions this will be effected with the utmost democracy within the state and within the Party. But the very existence of the dictatorship, its necessity to achieve the change in the social system, is already proof of profound social contradictions which can, under unfavourable historical circumstances, find a reflection within the state and within the Party. The Party, no more than the state, can automatically and directly reflect the interests of the class. Not for nothing did Lenin think of the trade unions as a necessary factor for the defence of the workers against their state, as well as a bulwark for the defence of their state.
Here again, we see the results of substituting formalistic thinking for dialectical analysis. The advocates of this theory base themselves on pure abstractions – a workers’ state in general, as opposed to the real workers’ state formed under conditions of frightful backwardness, poverty, illiteracy. A materialist approaches the subject in an entirely different way. While it is the most homogeneous class in society, the proletariat is not entirely homogeneous. There are important differences between different layers of the class – skilled and unskilled, backward and advanced, organised and unorganised, and so on. The same processes can take place in the working class as in other classes, according to the concrete conditions.
The history of the workers’ organisations under capitalism, which can experience a process of bureaucratisation under certain conditions, especially where the workers are not participating actively, is a useful analogy. Trotsky in the last analysis compared a workers’ state to a trade union which has conquered power. After a long strike, with no victory in sight, the workers tend to lapse into inactivity and apathy, beginning with the most backward elements. Likewise, in Russia, after years of war, revolution and civil war, the workers were exhausted. Gradually, they fell into inactivity. The soviets, the unions and other organs of workers’ power became bureaucratised over a period as a result. A similar process can be seen in the French Revolution, although with a different class content. If it was possible for the party of the working class (the Social Democracy), especially through its leadership, to degenerate under the alien pressures of capitalism, why is it impossible for the state set up by the workers to follow a similar pattern? Why cannot the state gain independence from the class, and at the same time (in its own interests) defend the new economic forms created by the revolution? In reality, the transition from one society to another was found to have been far more complex than could have been foreseen by the founders of scientific socialism.
No more than any other class or social formation has the proletariat been given the privilege of inevitably having a smooth passage in the transition to its domination, and thence to its painless and tranquil disappearance in society, i.e., to socialism. That was a possible variant. But the degeneration of both Social Democracy and the Soviet state under the given conditions was not at all accidental. It represented in a sense the complex relations between a class, its representatives, and the state, which, more than once in history the ruling class, bourgeois, feudal and slave-owning, had cause to rue. It mirrors in other words, the multiplicity of historical factors which are the background to the decisive factor: the economic.
Contrast the broad view of Lenin with the mechanistic view of the exponents of state capitalism. Lenin emphasised over and over the need to study the transition periods of past epochs especially from feudalism to capitalism, in order to understand the laws of transition in Russia. He would have rejected the conception that the state which issued from October would have to follow a preconceived norm, or thereby cease to be a workers’ state. Lenin knew very well that the proletariat and its party and leadership had no God-given power which would lead, without contradictions, smoothly to socialism once capitalism had been overthrown. That is necessarily the only conclusion which must follow from the Kantian norms categorically laid down by proponents of state capitalism. That is why in advance Lenin emphasised that the dictatorship of the proletariat would vary tremendously in different countries and under different conditions.
However, Lenin hammered home the point that in the transition from feudalism to capitalism the dictatorship of the rising bourgeoisie was reflected in the dictatorship of one man. A class could rule through the personal rule of one man. Ex post facto Tony Cliff is quite willing to accept this conception as it applies to the bourgeoisie. But one could only conclude from his schematic arguments that such a development would be impossible in the case of the proletariat. For the rule of one man implies absolutism, arbitrary dictatorship vested in a single individual without political rights for the ruling class whose interests, in the last analysis, he represents. But Lenin only commented thus to show that under certain conditions the dictatorship of the proletariat could also be realised through the dictatorship of one man. Lenin did not develop this conception. But today, in the light of the experience of Russia and Eastern Europe, China, Cuba and the other deformed workers’ states, we can deepen and understand not only the present but the past developments of society as well.
Under certain circumstances, the dictatorship of the proletariat can take the form of the dictatorship of one man. We are not talking about a healthy workers’ state, but a distortion that can arise from the separation of the state from the class it represents. This means that the apparatus will almost inevitably tend to become independent of its base and thus acquire a vested interest of its own, hostile and alien to the class it represents. That was the case in Stalinist Russia. When we study the development of bourgeois society, we see that the autocracy of one individual, with the given social contradictions, served the needs of the development of that society. This is clearly shown by the rule of Cromwell and Napoleon. But although both stood on a bourgeois base, at a certain stage bourgeois autocracy becomes, from a favourable factor for the development of capitalist society, a hindrance to the full and free development of bourgeois production.
However, the dictatorial regime of absolutism does not then painlessly wither away. In France and England, it required supplementary political revolutions before bourgeois autocracy could be changed into bourgeois democracy. But without bourgeois democracy a free and full development of the productive forces to the limits under capitalism would have been impossible. If this applies to the historical evolution of the bourgeoisie, how much more so to the proletariat in a backward and isolated country where the dictatorship of the proletariat degenerated into the dictatorship of Stalin – of one man?
In order that the Russian proletariat should take the path of socialism, a new revolution, a supplementary political revolution was necessary to turn the Bonapartist proletarian state into a workers’ democracy. This entirely fits in with the experience of the past. Just as capitalism passed through many stormy contradictory phases (we are far from finished with them yet, as our epoch bears witness), so in the given historic conditions did the rule of the proletariat in Russia. So also through a mutual reaction, Eastern Europe and China passed through this proletarian Bonapartist phase.
The peculiar notion that a workers’ state is always born as immaculate as the Virgin Mary, and must under all conditions appear in the classical form of a perfect workers’ democracy, or else must be damned as a ‘new class state’, is a mystical idea which has nothing whatever to do with the materialist method of Marxism. It is the product of thinking in abstract, formal categories. In point of fact, it is in the interrelation between the class and its state under the given historical conditions that we find the explanation of Stalinist degeneration, not in supra-historical abstractions.
As a matter of fact, even now the class nature of the Russian state has not been decisively determined. But the protagonists of the empty and superficial theory of state capitalism are least of all capable of shedding light on the processes that are unfolding in the former Soviet Union. If the present move in the direction of capitalist restoration proves unsuccessful, in the long run, the economic factor (property relations), after many upheavals and catastrophes, will prove decisive. It is a question of which property forms will ultimately prevail – nationalisation or private property. This struggle is still unfolding, but the result is not yet decided. Of course, if we accept that Russia has been capitalist (even if ‘state capitalist’) for the past 60 or 70 years, then this is just a little detail, about which we should not concern ourselves too much.
The Russian working class, through painful experience, has come to understand that there is indeed a fundamental difference between a nationalised planned economy and capitalism. At the moment of writing, the Russian miners are striking against the bourgeois government in Moscow. An increasing number of workers are learning the need to defend what is left of nationalised industry against the depredations of the nascent capitalist class. Does this mean some kind of capitulation to the bureaucracy? Not at all. The Russian workers will fight against the nascent bourgeoisie with their own methods, strikes, demonstrations, general strikes. In so doing they will soon rediscover the great revolutionary traditions of the past. But the prior condition for this is the realisation of the need to wage an all-out struggle against the immediate threat of capitalist counter-revolution.
Having blocked the road to capitalist counter-revolution in struggle, they will acquire a sense of their own strength and the necessary consciousness that will enable them to overthrow the bureaucracy and organise a healthy workers’ democracy on a higher level. Such a development will not be a return to the position of the weak and impoverished Soviet state of 1917. On the basis of the technological and scientific advances made possible by the achievements of the nationalised planned economy in the past, they will be able to decree immediately a general reduction of the working week. Within one or, at most two, five-year plans, with the democratic control and participation of the masses, the whole situation will be transformed. Given the present level of development, it should be possible quite soon to introduce the 32-hour week, followed by a further reduction of hours and a general raising of living standards and culture. Then the workers’ state will, more or less, correspond to the ideal norm worked out by Marx and Lenin.