The theories of bureaucratic collectivism and state capitalism were demolished by Trotsky in the 1930s. Trotsky used the Marxist method to understand the nature of Stalinism. Far from being rigid and formalistic, as Tony Cliff claimed, Trotsky was scrupulously dialectical in his analysis of Stalinism, meticulously examining the contradictory features of the process unfolding at each stage. For him, the process was not simply black or white, but far more complicated and complex. He was not looking for nice neat categories to satisfy the laws of formal logic, but sought out the contradictory reality of what was actually taking place within the Soviet Union.
Cliff’s method was totally different. In a most shallow way, he examined the surface characteristics of Stalinism in Russia and then drew a superficial analogy with certain aspects of capitalism, without understanding the real nature of the Soviet Union and the contradictory processes taking place within it. Without doubt, there were similarities with capitalism, but there were also fundamental differences. “In Russia, the horrors of forced industrialisation, of brutal collectivisation of the peasantry, the deprivation of workers’ rights to organise in trade unions or to strike, the police terror, all were by-products of an unprecedented rate of capital accumulation,” states Cliff. (Binns, Cliff and Harman, Russia: From Workers’ State to State Capitalism, p. 11.) These features of Stalinism existed, but they were not due to the primitive accumulation of some alleged state capitalist society.
Trotsky explained these developments, not as the result of the workings of capitalist economic laws, but arising from the actions of the Stalinist bureaucracy attempting to consolidate its privileged position by catching up with the West. Other bureaucracies have acted in a similar ruthless fashion – for example, the Nazi bureaucracy, which sought world domination. However, this fact did not change the class nature of the regime. Given Cliff’s fundamentally different approach, he rightly concludes: “Our analysis of the class nature of Russia under Stalin, and today, differs from that made by Leon Trotsky.” (Ibid., p. 12) The point is that Trotsky was correct in his method and analysis, and Cliff is wrong.
Tony Cliff asserts that the Stalinist bureaucracy is a new ruling class, but nowhere in his writings is a real analysis made or evidence adduced as to why and how such a class constitutes a capitalist class. This is not accidental, it flows from his method. Starting off with the preconceived idea of state capitalism, everything is artificially fitted in to that conception. Instead of applying the theoretical method of Marxism to Russian society in its process of motion and development, he has scoured the works of the great Marxists to gather quotations and attempted to compress them into a new theory.
The main criterion for Marxists in analysing social systems is this: Does the new formation lead to the development of the productive forces? Cliff skirts around this question by false comparisons of individual capitalist growth rates and the fact that world industrial production has actually grown since 1891. But what needs to be compared is the growth rate of the Soviet Union and the rest of the capitalist world. The theory of Marxism is based on the material development of the forces of production as the moving force of historical progress. The transition from one system to another is not decided subjectively, but is rooted in the needs of production itself. It is on this basis and this basis alone that the superstructure is erected: of state, ideology, art, science and government. It is true that the superstructure has an important secondary effect on production and even within certain limits, as Engels explained, acquires its own independent movement. But in the last analysis, the development of production is decisive.
Marx explained the historical justification for capitalism, despite the horrors of the industrial revolution, despite the slavery of the blacks in Africa, despite child labour in the factories, the wars of conquest throughout the globe – by the fact that it was a necessary stage in the development of the forces of production. Marx showed that without slavery, not only ancient slavery, but slavery in the epoch of the early development of capitalism, the modern development of production would have been impossible. Without that the material basis for socialism could never have been prepared. In a letter to P.V. Annenkov, 28 December 1846, Marx wrote:
Direct slavery is just as much the pivot of bourgeois industry as machinery, credits, etc. Without slavery, you have no cotton; without cotton you have no modern industry, it is slavery that has given the colonies their value; it is the colonies that have created world trade, and it is world trade that is the precondition of large-scale industry. Thus, slavery is an economic category of the greatest importance.
Without slavery, North America, the most progressive of countries, would be transformed into a patriarchal country. Wipe out North America from the map of the world, and you will have anarchy – the complete decay of modern commerce and civilisation. (MESW, Letter – Marx to P.V. Annenkov in Paris, Vol. 1, pp. 523-4.)
Of course, the attitude of Marx towards the horrors of slavery and the industrial revolution is well known. It would be a gross distortion of Marx’s position to argue that because he wrote the above, therefore he was in favour of slavery and child labour. Similarly, no more can it be argued against the Marxists that because they supported state ownership in the USSR that they therefore justified the slave camps and other crimes of the former Stalinist regime. Marx’s support of the German ruler Bismarck in the Franco-Prussian war was dictated by similar considerations. In spite of Bismarck’s ‘blood and iron’ policy and the reactionary nature of his regime, because the development of the productive forces would be facilitated by the national unification of Germany, Marx gave critical support for the war of Prussia against France. The basic criterion was the development of the productive forces. In the long run, all else flows from this.
Any analysis of Russian society must start from that basis. Once Cliff admits that while capitalism was declining and decaying on a world scale, yet preserving a progressive role in Russia in relation to the development of the productive forces, then logically he would have to say that state capitalism is the next stage forward for society, or at least for the backward countries. Contradictorily, he shows that the Russian bourgeoisie was not capable of carrying through the role which was fulfilled by the bourgeoisie in the West and consequently the proletarian revolution took place.
If we say that there was state capitalism in Russia (ushered in by a proletarian revolution), then it is clear that the crisis of capitalism is not insoluble but only the birth pangs of a new and higher stage of capitalism (state capitalism). The quotation that Cliff himself gives from Marx – that no society passes from the scene till all the possibilities in it have been exhausted – would indicate that if his argument is correct, a new epoch, the epoch of state capitalism, would have opened up before us. The idea of Lenin that imperialism was the highest stage of capitalism would be false. The whole of Marxism would have to be revised from beginning to end.