IN AN ARTICLE entitled ‘Khrushchev’s Speech to the 20th Congress of the CPSU’, appearing in the June, 2006 Marxist Review, a journal describing itself as the “Monthly International Journal of Trotskyism”, Tony McEvoy makes the following observation

‘Fifty years on from Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin in his 20^th Congress speech it is important to look back at it, not out of historical interest, but because Stalinism remains the most counterrevolutionary agency of imperialism in the working class movement today’. (MR; P.19)

It is a fundamental view of Trotskyism that “Stalinism” represents the most counterrevolutionary agency of imperialism in the working class. The idea is also expressed with a related view that Stalinism is counterrevolutionary through-and-through. This Trotskyist notion, a blatant repudiation of Marxism-Leninism, which maintains that social democracy is and remains the most counterrevolutionary agency of imperialism in the working class, would require no comment because of its obvious falsity, if it did not lead to obscuring and concealing the counterrevolutionary role of Social Democracy in the working class movement.

A brief review of the counterrevolutionary role of Social Democracy would not be amiss. For instance, we can point to the Social Democracy’s collaboration with the bourgeoisie in suppressing the German revolution in 1918. We can also point to the support Social Democracy gave to imperialism in trying to overthrow the Soviet regime. The Russian Mensheviks for instance supported the “Whites” in the civil war against the Bolsheviks. We can point to the fact that the alliance between Social Democracy and imperialism continued from 1917 and throughout the cold war. Social Democracy, particularly British Social Democracy backed all the hostile moves of imperialism against the former Soviet Union.

We must not forget that the alliance between Social Democracy and imperialism was not only directed against the former Soviet Union and the other socialist countries. This alliance was also aimed against the national liberation movements. For instance, the leaders of British Social Democracy in particular gave support to US imperialism’s drive to crush the Vietnamese national liberation struggle. In order to achieve their aims the US dropped more bombs on Vietnam than were used in the Second World War. The leaders of British Social Democracy support the struggle to overturn the Cuban revolution. British Social Democracy fought to defeat the Irish national liberation movement. Historically, the leaders of British Social Democracy opposed all national liberation movements around the world.

We have only listed a few examples where Social Democracy stood side-by-side with imperialism against the former socialist countries and the national liberation movements. In all the above cases, those whom the Trotskyists call “Stalinists” stood on the side of those opposed to imperialism. It should be absolutely clear that, whatever opinion we may hold of them, the actions of those whom the Trotskyists call “Stalinists” do not lend support to the argument that these people were and are the most counterrevolutionary agency of imperialism in the working class; nor do their actions support the other Trotskyist idea that they are counterrevolutionary through-and-through, when we compare them to Social Democracy. The revisionists, whom the Trotskyists like to call “Stalinists”, are junior partners of Social Democracy in the game of counterrevolution and were not as consistently counterrevolutionary as the Social democrats.

The claim that Trotsky’s “Stalinists” were the most counterrevolutionary agency of imperialism in the working class - through-and-through as well - not only does not stand up to serious criticism but is also a fine example of playing with the revolutionary phrase which is typical of petty-bourgeois revolutionaries, and of which Trotsky became a celebrated practitioner.

Trotsky’s view that “Stalinism” was the most counterrevolutionary agency of imperialism, through-and-through was not a Marxist analysis but merely an emotional outburst which, in part, gave expression to personal grievances of having fallen from his former position. As long as the Soviet leaders defended socialised property and gave support to the national liberation movement, both in the “Stalinist” and revisionist periods to one degree or another, they could not be regarded as the most counterrevolutionary agency of imperialism within the working class. Thus Trotsky’s attempt to replace Social Democracy with “Stalinism” as the most counterrevolutionary agency of imperialism in the working class was a piece of anti-Marxist, confused analysis based on a incorrect understanding of what he called “Stalinism”. Those who defend the Trotskyist argument must explain how the Soviet leaders, who defended socialised property and gave support to the anti-imperialist national liberation movements, even in the period of the revisionist degeneration, became the most counterrevolutionary agency of imperialism in the working class.

The Trotskyists use the term “Stalinist” to cover all the stages of the Soviet regime from Stalin to Gorbachev. At the time of writing this, even the present bourgeois regime in Russia is referred to as “Stalinist” by the Trotskyists of the Workers Revolutionary Party in Britain. The truth is that the Soviet leaders went over to revisionism after dumping Stalin. This, however, did not change the fact that Social Democracy remained the most counterrevolutionary agency of imperialism in the working class.

If the Soviet leaders, the so-called “Stalinists”, supported, for instance, the Cuban revolution and the Social Democracy supported US imperialism against the Cuban revolution, how is it possible for the Trotskyists to argue that  “Stalinism” is the most counterrevolutionary agency of imperialism in the working class?

There must be a powerful class force behind this incredible distortion of history to make this lie go unchallenged in Trotskyist circles. Trotskyism closes the eyes of its followers to the important distinction that while Social Democracy opposed the Soviet Union and the national liberation movements against imperialism, the “Stalinists” in general supported anti-imperialist movements. The quality of the advice they gave to these movements is another issue. The “Stalinists” in other countries continued to support the Soviet Union through most of the cold war. How did this make them the most counterrevolutionary agency of imperialism in the working class?

We do not write this to prettify the former Soviet revisionists, who usurped power after Stalin, or to cover up their counterrevolutionary features, but merely to expose the Trotskyist ideology that the “Stalinists” are the most counterrevolutionary agency of imperialism in the working class - through-and-through.  For some strange reason, which the Trotskyist do not bother to explain, this through-and-through most counterrevolutionary agency of imperialism in the working class decided, under Stalin, that the best way to serve their imperialist masters was to break one-third of the world from imperialism and proceed to build socialism. They also did this in the face of imperialist nuclear blackmail. Those who remain in the arena of the politically sane must agree that this is indeed a strange way to serve imperialism.

Although the Soviet Union no longer exists, McEvoy make the following bizarre assertion:

The imperialists are today more than ever reliant on the Stalinists, whether in the Soviet Union, China, or the European, American, Australian and other trade union bureaucracies, to drive back the struggles and retake the gains of the revolutionary working class as they prepare for ever more risky imperialist wars’. (P.22)

The above passage suggest that for Trotskyists, “Stalinists” are not only still in control of a none-existent Soviet Union, but control China and the world labour movement as well, driving back the struggle of a revolutionary working class in the interest of imperialism. The Trotskyists are unable to explain the contradiction between the “Stalinists” fighting to save capitalism while the bourgeoisie are waging the anti-Stalin campaign. There are indeed revisionists in influential positions in some trade union apparatuses, but they have little or nothing to do with Stalin.

The revisionists who form the leadership of many communist parties around the world have certainly sabotaged revolutionary struggles – but this did not make them the most counterrevolutionary tendency in the working class when compared to international Social Democracy. Social Democracy remained more counterrevolutionary than the revisionist communist parties. This did not mean that these revisionist parties were less dangerous to the working class, but simply less counterrevolutionary. It is still possible to debate with them, and under certain conditions, win them over to a revolutionary view. Trotsky’s argument that all these parties had already, definitively passed over to the side of the bourgeoisie was simplistic, premature, and basically sectarian. Most of these parties still waver between revolution and counterrevolution, that is between the working class and the bourgeoisie, socialism and capitalism. They represent a form of Kautskyism. This cannot be said about present day Social Democracy. They no longer waver between socialism and capitalism; they fully support the latter against the working class. They have become the direct, open representatives of monopoly capitalism in the working class.

McEvoy, in his article, claims that Khrushchev’s purpose when he denounced Stalin

 ‘…was to dump Stalin in order to maintain Stalinism’. (p. 20) 

This interpretation of Khrushchev’s speech fails to grasp the real origin and purpose behind Khrushchev’s “secret speech”, which was so secret that it was in the hands of certain imperialist newspapers even before the leaders of foreign communist parties had seen it. The denunciation of Stalin by the revisionist Khrushchevite leadership makes sense when we view it within the context of the beginning of the cold war started by imperialism against the Soviet Union. Following the Second World War, the imperialists no longer needed the services of Stalin to defeat the Nazis, and feared the development of a socialist bloc aligned with the Soviet Union and the growth in influence of communism. US imperialism developed the policy of containment and reversal of communism. Part of this policy involved ideologically starting the anti-Stalin campaign. Khrushchev’s dumping of Stalin must be viewed within the context of the imperialist bourgeoisie’s campaign against Stalin. The revisionists, having increasingly broken from important positions of Marxism, hoped that by denouncing Stalin they would earn the acceptance of the imperialists, to pursue their distorted version of Lenin’s policy of peaceful coexistence. Instead, there was the Hungarian uprising in 1956, plotted in connivance with the intelligence service of imperialism and of course supported by Trotskyism.

It was not Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin which led the bourgeoisie to start the anti-Stalin campaign. It was rather that the bourgeoisie’s anti-Stalin campaign led the revisionists to denounce Stalin. Khrushchev’s “secret speech” signalled that the bourgeoisie had won the first round in the cold war, which finally culminated in the collapse of the Soviet Union. After the revisionists captured state leadership, the collapse of the Soviet Union became inevitable sooner or later.

The bourgeoisie’s anti-Stalin campaign bore its first fruit in the denouncing of Stalin. This surprising development made the ideological strategist of the bourgeoisie realise that anti-Stalinism should become the main ideological weapon in the struggle against communism. For the bourgeoisie anti-Stalinism was, and still is, a potent weapon in the class struggle. This is especially the case when aimed at politically naïve workers and intellectuals on the left who do not fully understand the class struggle. Many of those on the left who participate in the bourgeoisie’s anti-Stalin campaign do so on the basis of Trotsky’s writings, and therefore it is important for Marxist-Leninists to expose both Trotsky’s views and the real ideological purpose of the anti-Stalin campaign.

In a reply to Mike Macnair, who argued in the Weekly Worker for June 15, 2006, No. 629, that the first and foremost lesson of the “short 20^th Century” is the impossibility of socialism in a single country, we objected and pointed out that the real lesson for the revolutionary movement was

‘…the emergence of a new bourgeoisie in the apparatus of the communist party and socialist state, who would take advantage of the transitional nature of socialism to restore capitalism. The struggle of the bourgeoisie to gain control of communist parties and socialist states under the banner of anti-Stalinism is the real lesson, which the left in the imperialist countries must learn.’

As if to confirm this position the Weekly Worker published our reply in No. 635, for July 27, 2006, while expurgating the above passage, that is, the main lesson gained in the struggle against modern revisionism. Most Marxist-Leninists know that the bourgeoisie have used and are using ‘anti-Stalinism’ to gain control of communist parties and socialist states.  This lesson has not yet been learnt by most of the left in the imperialist countries. But no one can deny that this bourgeois policy has met with undoubted success, albeit temporarily. Exposing the meaning of the “anti-Stalin” policy of the bourgeoisie as a strategy for gaining control of communist parties and socialist states requires open, principled debate with those individuals on the left who participate in this campaign. Unfortunately, our experience is that most of those who participate in this bourgeois campaign against Stalin fear open principled debate like the devil fears holy water. Finally, while Marxist-Leninists argue that Social Democracy is the most counterrevolutionary agency of imperialism in the working class, Trotskyism argues that it is “Stalinism” which plays this role – a vivid example of their lack of understanding of monopoly capitalism, i.e., imperialism and the split in the working class.

T. Clark, 5^th August 2006