‘UNEVEN economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country taken separately’.

It was on the above theoretical foundation that J.V. Stalin, after the death of Lenin in 1924, came to the defence of Leninism against Trotskyism’s attempts to replace Leninism with Trotsky’s variation of the Permanent Revolution theory. The post-Lenin ideological struggle in the Soviet Communist Party began principally around this issue. Without Stalin, it is hard to believe that what became known as Marxism-Leninism would have survived in the international communist movement. For this survival and the continuation of Marxism-Leninism today Communists owe a great debt to J.V. Stalin.

These were very difficult times. It is all too easy for a later generation to underestimate the enormous problems Stalin and his supporters in the communist movement had to face and overcome. These hurdles were external and internal in character. Externally and internally, the Soviet Union was surrounded by people opposed to socialism. In relation to the advanced capitalist countries, the Soviet Union at the time was a backward society with a peasantry, which constituted the numerical majority, a class that is normally not predisposed towards socialism. After the defeat of the Landlords and Capitalists, the basic contradiction in the Soviet Union was that between the socialist proletariat on the one hand, and on the other, the mass of peasants. Lenin had taught that the alliance between these two classes was the essential prerequisite, not only for maintaining the dictatorship of the proletariat but also for taking advantage of any possibility which existed for building socialism within the Soviet Union. Theoretically, as is shown in the quote above, Lenin had admitted the possibility of building socialism in one country in August 1915. Whether such a statement was a one-off, or whether it contained any concrete applicability to the actual situation facing the revolution in the 1920s can be regarded as settled by another passage taken from Lenin’s writings, in which he argued

‘…state power over all large scale means of production, state power in the hands of the proletariat, the alliance of this proletariat with the many millions of small and very small peasants, the assured leadership of the peasantry by the proletariat, etc.- is not this all that is necessary for building a complete socialist society from the co-operatives, from the co-operatives alone, which we formerly looked down upon as huckstering and which from a certain aspect we have the right to look down upon as such now, under NEP? Is this not all that is necessary for building a complete socialist society? This is not yet the building of a socialist society, but it is all that is necessary and sufficient for this building’. (V.I. Lenin: CW. Vol. 27; p.392)

The basic task, which Trotsky set himself, was to overturn Marxism-Leninism on these cardinal points. This meant the replacement of the Leninist theory of the world revolutionary process with the Trotskyite theory of this process. Trotsky attempted to break the link between Leninist internationalist perspectives and the Leninist view on socialism in one country. While the Leninist theory strives to attain to the concrete, the Trotskyite theory is highly abstract. As we have said elsewhere, the struggle between Marxism-Leninism and Trotskyism, from the standpoint of method of cognition, is in fact a contradiction between the concrete and the abstract. The problem for Trotsky was that the top leadership of the Soviet communist party knew of Lenin’s position, or was made fully aware of it in the course of the ideological struggle. All the leaders and party members where made fully aware of Lenin’s position. Naturally, when there are two, or more different opinions people begin to take sides. Just as the majority had sided with Lenin in the famous trade union debate. of 1920-1921, which led to the defeat of the Trotskyites, now the majority sided with Stalin over applying Lenin’s teaching concerning the possibility of socialism in several or one country to the concrete situation facing the Soviet Union. This situation was one in which working class political power had been established in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, following which the revolutionary tide had began to recede by the early 1920s.

Trotskyism, as a form of pseudo-leftism (Ultra-Leftism) was not prepared to take this into account and therefore found himself on collision course with Stalin and his supporters. It is perhaps of some interest that we are unable to find any writings of Trotsky, openly or otherwise, refuting Lenin’s 1923 position, which makes it abundantly clear that working class power over large-scale industry, given the leadership of the peasant masses by the proletariat, is all that is necessary and sufficient to build socialism in the Soviet Union. Why did Trotsky not come out and oppose Lenin in 1923, but was prepared to oppose Stalin on the same issue in 1924? Obviously, if Trotsky were a principled revolutionary he would have opposed Lenin on the issue of socialism in one country in 1923. If the matter was one of principle why wait until Lenin was out of the way. Only two answers to this question seem possible. The first is that Trotsky was not fully cognisant of Lenin’s attitude, or, on the other hand, he was fully aware of Lenin’s attitude but did not treat it as a matter of principle when Lenin was alive and remained the most influential person in the leadership. In view of Trotsky’s pseudo-leftist version of the theory of Permanent Revolution, and his defence of this position in opposition to ‘socialism in one country’ as part of the world revolutionary process, we consider the latter possibility the most likely.

If such is the case then it would be further proof of Trotsky’s unprincipled politics that he should not raise the issue when Lenin was alive, but rushed to make it an issue with Stalin after Lenin’s death. Stalin was simply defending an aspect of Leninism, more correctly a cornerstone of Lenin’s teaching, which he saw fit to promulgate in the period of a revolutionary ebb and the increasing, if temporary stabilisation of international capitalism. For Stalin this was to become the essential issue in furthering the goal of the revolution. We must also assume that for Stalin it was unforgivable that Trotsky and his followers should seek to split the international communist movement with a demand to take sides on the issue of socialism in one country or world revolution. In Stalin’s view, there was no need to oppose socialism in one country to international revolution. Building socialism in the Soviet Union would promote the international revolution, which would in time reinforce the revolution and socialism in the USSR.

In view of the fact that Trotsky did not see fit to challenge Lenin on the same issue, we must assume that factional considerations were uppermost in Trotsky’s calculations, not matters of principle. This development is the key to understanding how Stalin’s view of Trotskyism was transformed in the course of the ideological struggle in the 1920s. Previously Trotskyism was viewed as a variant of pseudo-leftism, or a left-deviation in communism. But now the logic contained in Trotsky’s opposition and the new Zinoviev opposition of 1926, when Zinoviev began to tailor his views out of factional considerations to facilitate the forming of the Joint Opposition, changed matters considerably. Trotsky’s ideological game plan, with Lenin out of the way, was to convince his followers and through them the communist movement, that the policy of the Central Committee majority, which supported Stalin’s line, of building socialism in one country was in fact the outcome of bureaucratic counterrevolution. Trotsky saw no need to explain the glaring contradiction of how Stalin could represent ‘counterrevolution’ by his determination to build socialism in one country, i.e., the Soviet Union. Nor was Trotsky able to explain to any person capable of dialectical thinking when considering the world revolutionary process, how support for socialism in one country led to opposing, rather than, what would seem more logical, supporting the extension of the international revolution. The Soviet leadership was simply blamed for the revolutionary ebb, and on this basis, it was argued that the Soviet bureaucracy set out to consolidate its privileges at the expense of the world revolution. For Trotsky, socialism in one country expressed bureaucratic conservatism and not an aspect of Lenin’s teaching concerning the world revolutionary process.

A summary of Lenin’s teaching concerning the revolutionary process is firstly, recognising the need for a single revolutionary centre, opposed to the dispersal of revolutionary leadership, purged of revisionists and opportunists as far as possible; secondly, the recognition of the need for working class political power in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, necessary for defeating those who seek to exploit the workers and leading the semi-proletrian and non-proletarian strata over to socialism, and thirdly: the chain of international capitalism will tend to break at its weakest links first, giving rise to revolution beginning in those countries where the bourgeoisie are weakest, hence the possibility of the transition to socialism starting with the more backward countries as a result of uneven development. It was failure to grasp this latter point, for principled or unprincipled reasons, that brought the Trotskyites into conflict with the genuine Marxist-Leninists that had gathered around Stalin. It also served to change the attitude Stalin had of Trotskyism as an ideological tendency.

Thus in January, 1925, Stalin made the trenchant remark that

‘…whoever wants to emerge from NEP as the victor must bury Trotskyism as an ideological trend’. (Stalin: Works 7; p.32,)

To some non-Marxist-Leninists, far removed from the ideological struggles of this period, this may seem like factional intolerance on the part of Stalin. Certainly, the ‘Open Polemic’ group in Britain would likely take such a view. This would be to miss the real importance of this debate between Stalin and Trotsky. The dual character of NEP in the Soviet Union formed a struggle between the socialist and the private sectors of the economy. One side would eventually gain the ascendancy. In the view of Lenin, a view defended by Stalin, working class hegemony over big industry and the leadership of the peasantry on the basis of the co-operatives assured the victory of the socialist sector. Those like Trotsky, and later Zinoviev, who argued that socialism could not be built in one country, i.e., the Soviet Union, were actually postulating that within the mixed economy of NEP the private sector would automatically gain the ascendancy. In other words, the contradiction between the socialist and the private sector of the economy would be resolved in favour of the latter. However, it should not be considered that opposition to building socialism within the Soviet context was a peculiarly Trotskyite preoccupation. On the contrary, this had been an integral part of Menshevik opposition to the Bolshevik seizure of power with the support of the working class and peasantry. The view that Russia was not ready for Socialism, and that in any case socialism was impossible in one country, formed the ideological stock-in-trade of Menshevism. Trotskyism had not invented anything new in this respect. Trotsky, like Martov, had always been on the ‘left’ wing of Menshevism. In this respect, there is nothing surprising about Trotsky reverting to his Menshevik roots on this matter.

Trotsky, of course, was not opposed to the industrialisation of the Soviet Union. Indeed, he was among the first to suggest concrete ways in which this could be achieved. The issue was not industrialisation as such, but whether such industrialisation could lay the basis for building socialism in one country in the absence of revolution in one or more of the already developed capitalist countries. As we have shown, Leninism answers this question in the affirmative, while Trotskyism denies this possibility. For Lenin the possibility of socialism in one country, arising on the basis of uneven development formed an integral part of the world revolutionary process. Unlike Trotsky, Lenin saw no need to divide people ideologically into two camps, i.e., ‘supporters of socialism in one country’ and ‘supporters of international revolution’. The promotion of this division is the necessary by-product of Trotskyite pseudo-leftism. Like all forms of pseudo-leftism, the counterrevolutionary consequences were not far behind.

Trotskyism, from the standpoint of Marxism-Leninism, represented a pseudo-left interpretation of the world revolutionary process. In this respect Trotsky was bound to attract to his side those elements in the communist movement who were predisposed, in one degree or another, to ultra-left forms of thinking. However, the differences between Leninism and Trotskyism on the question of socialism in one country as part -and -parcel of the international revolutionary process, went beyond abstract, academic debates. What was at stake was the continuation of the Russian revolution in the absence of revolutions in other more advanced countries. The bourgeoisie and the Mensheviks had stood behind the ideology that socialism in one country, particularly Russia, was an impossibility. Consequently, when the Trotskyites were found to share this view, this added further grist to the mill of the bourgeois counterrevolution. The aim of the counterrevolution was to undermine the confidence of the communist party and the working class that socialism could be built in the Soviet Union. Now with Trotsky, a leading member of the communist party, on their side, they could not but count their blessings. For them the importance of Trotskyism was not its left rhetoric, but rather that Trotskyism could be used to undermine the confidence of the Communists and working class about the prospect of building socialism in the Soviet Union.

Having joined the bourgeoisie and the Mensheviks on the platform of the impossibility of building socialism in one country, i.e., the Soviet Union, Trotskyism was transformed from being a species of pseudo-leftism, to a movement whose objective role was to demoralise the communist and working class movement, particularly in the Soviet Union, on the basis of the impossibility of building socialism in one country. This Trotskyite defeatism was in sharp contrast to the support the Soviet Union received from the international working class and anti-imperialist movement around the world. The role of Trotskyism became one of serving the Russian bourgeois counterrevolution behind a façade of leftist rhetoric. From this Marxist-Leninist perspective, the survival of the revolution, the enhancement of the confidence of Soviet communists, of the working class in general, particularly in view of the unstable support of the majority of the population, the peasantry, necessitated the defeat of Trotskyism.

One of the core mythologies of Trotskyism, which stems partly from disregard for Lenin’s teaching on this matter, was the theory that ‘socialism in one country’ gave expression to the conservative moods developing in the Soviet Union after the failure of revolution to spread. We have pointed out that this was the exact opposite of reality. Determination to build socialism in the Soviet Union, although successful revolutions had not taken place elsewhere, expresses, in fact, revolutionary zeal of the highest order. It was this zeal that Stalin and his supporters set out to tap and encourage. Faced with all the objective and subjective difficulties of that time, is it any wonder that Marxist-Leninists everywhere today regard Stalin and co. as real life heroes. Communists today, faced with what promises to be the greatest crisis of capitalism earth-wide will do well to draw inspiration from Lenin and his best disciple, J.V. Stalin.

Tony Clark.