THE MOST COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY FORCE IN THE WORKING CLASS.
IN THE 1930s Trotsky made a fundamental revision of Marxism-Leninism. He started the argument that “Stalinism” had become the most counter-revolutionary force in the working class. This was at a time when social democracy was defending imperialism, as it still does today, and when the “Stalinists” were defending the Soviet Union, aiding anti-imperialist movements around the world and mobilising support for anti-fascist struggles. One example was communist support for the republican side in the Spanish civil war through Soviet material assistance and the communist-organised International Brigade, consisting of 35,000 fighters who were prepared to die to defeat fascism. Another example was when the British communists stopped the fascists at Cable Street. These initiatives and movements were led by people who were, to one degree or another, supporters of Stalin. In view of all this, why did Trotsky come out with such a ludicrous position, suggesting that “Stalinism” was more counter-revolutionary than the social democratic movement, which had remained pro-imperialist from 1914, siding with the bourgeois regimes against the working class at every opportunity?
Below, the Editor of the International Marxist-Leninist Review talks to Tony Clark in an attempt to throw light on his views on this important issue.
IMLR: The first thing to ask is, why did Trotsky call people who were defending the Soviet Union, aiding the anti-imperialist movement, and supporting and leading the struggle against fascism such as in the Spanish civil war or at Cable Street, the most counter-revolutionary force in the working class?
TC: The simple answer to that question would be that Trotskyism is an ultra-left ideology. It is far more successful than other ultra-left ideologies because it is able to claim a connection with the 1917 revolution in which Trotsky participated as a leading member. Ultra-leftists are people who pay little or no attention to concrete factors when putting forward all types of radical slogans and tactics, which are in contradiction to actual, concrete circumstances. Trotsky was such a man, although when he was a member of the Bolshevik party under the leadership of Lenin his ultra-left tendencies were restrained to some extent. The problem we have with Trotskyism is that it is able to conceal its ultra-leftist ideology from those who are unschooled in Marxism-Leninism by hiding behind the tradition of the Russian revolution.
IMLR: What would you say was a good example of the ultra-leftism contained within Trotskyism?
TC: The subject of this discussion is a good example, in fact the best example of the ultra-leftism contained within Trotskyism. Here we see a perfect example of how ultra-leftists, in this case Trotskyists, ignore concrete factors to argue that “Stalinism” is the greatest counter-revolutionary force in the working class through-and-through. The facts which they ignore, and facts are stubborn things, are facts such as Stalinists defending the Soviet Union, supporting national liberation movements against imperialism, organising anti-fascist resistance in Spain and elsewhere like Cable Street in London, fighting racism in the United States, supporting anti-imperialist regimes. The Trotsky theory has to ignore all the above facts, brush them aside, so to speak, for it to be able to argue that “Stalinism” is the greatest counter-revolutionary force in the working class, through-and-through. To be able to ignore facts to such an extent, in order to put forward a line which you want people to believe is revolutionary, is a sure sign of ultra-leftism.
Ultra-leftists, therefore, do not reason from the facts or all the facts, or even the most important facts; they ignore all the facts, or some of the facts, or the most important facts. If you are not arguing from the facts, it means you are arguing from your subjective feelings and wishes. When you can ignore the facts to one degree or another, it means that you can argue, for instance, that the most counter-revolutionary force in the international working class are the people who support the Soviet Union, the anti-imperialist national liberation movements, the anti-fascist struggles, anti-imperialist regimes. This is precisely what Trotskyism does.
What I am arguing basically is that a political tendency in the working class which supported the Soviet Union and associated countries, and the struggles and movements I have referred to above and also anti-imperialist regimes cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be regarded as the most counter-revolutionary force in the working class. I think it is important to make this point because it is not a side issue; what we are talking about is the political foundations of Trotskyism from the 1930s onwards.
IMLR: You have argued that on the most fundamental level of communist politics Trotskyists are in opposition to Marxism-Leninism when they assert that “Stalinism” is the most counter-revolutionary force in the working class. Can you elaborate? How is this difference fundamental?
TC: Well, from about the 1930s Trotskyism has been telling the Marxist intelligentsia, in fact, anyone sympathetic to Marxism and the working class vanguard, that “Stalinism” had become the greatest counter-revolutionary force in the international working class. In fact, as I previously said, this ideology, this theory with no facts to support it, became the cornerstone of Trotskyism, the stone that the builders did not reject. Trotsky’s struggle against what he called “Stalinism” was on the basis that this tendency represented, or grouped together the most counter-revolutionary elements in the working class. Therefore, I do not think there can be any Trotskyism without this argument. This is in fundamental opposition to Marxism-Leninism, which views social democracy as the greatest agency of imperialism in the working class.
IMLR: Are you saying that the Trotskyist argument about “Stalinism” being the greatest counter-revolutionary force in the working class is what defines Trotskyism and if so, what about his other arguments?
TC: Marxism-Leninism teaches that social democracy is the greatest counter-revolutionary agency of imperialism in the working class, so that anyone who agrees with the Marxist-Leninist position and who formerly went along with the Trotskyist view will be faced with the task of re-evaluating the whole of Trotskyism. However, many of these people are petty bourgeois in nature and their method of thinking is eclectic so they can choose to reject certain aspects of Trotskyism while keeping the rest. They will not see that if a major cornerstone of Trotskyism is false then they must re-examine the whole body.
The theory that “Stalinism” had become the greatest counter-revolutionary force in the working class begins to define Trotskyism from about the 1930s. All Trotsky’s other arguments are preparations for and lead up to this final statement, the final conclusions of Trotskyism. From this time onwards people who are won over to Trotskyism are first won over to this basic argument, which is a theory opposed to the facts as I have indicated, and consequently opposed to Marxism-Leninism. Leftists who find themselves in a Trotskyist circle will then begin to learn about all the other aspects of Trotskyist theory after they accept the basic line of Trotskyism, which is that “Stalinism” is the greatest counter-revolutionary force in the working class. This is important because most of the people who join Trotskyist groups do so as a protest against social democracy. Having done so, they are then brainwashed into believing that “Stalinism” is the greatest counter-revolutionary agency of imperialism in the working class.
IMLR: You mention Trotsky’s other arguments, which lead up to the final arguments. Which ones are these in your view?
TC: These you already know, such as the theory of permanent revolution, opposition to building socialism in one country and, in practice, a one-sided approach to bureaucracy; the Trotskyists also came out against peaceful-coexistence, failing to distinguish the Khrushchevite, revisionist version from the Marxist-Leninist version.
In the first case, the early transition from the democratic revolution to the socialist revolution in Russia was made possible by the imperialist war of 1914-1818, a little fact which the Trotskyists ignore to bolster their theory of permanent revolution.
In the second case, Trotsky had argued that Stalin substituted the theory of socialism in one country for the theory of world revolution. This is the spurious argument that Stalin ignored the international character of the socialist revolution. This argument crumbles when confronted with the textual authority, which shows that Stalin was only defending Lenin’s theory of the possibility of socialism in one country, or several countries as a stage in the world revolution. In any case, if Stalin was ignoring the international nature of the socialist revolution why did he support the anti-imperialist movement and the foreign communist parties? Here we see Trotskyism ignoring concrete facts again.
On this issue the Trotskyists think they have clinched the argument when they claim that the international nature of the modern productive forces rules out the possibility of socialism existing in one country. However, Marxist-Leninists do not say that socialism can exist in one country indefinitely. To the extent that it is possible in certain circumstances is a result of the contradictions between the capitalist powers and the fact that the basic motive force for socialist production is not production for profit like capitalism, where the unplanned accumulation of capital is not a by-product of the system but its very essence. In a socialist society, which is a transitional society between capitalism and communism, production for need becomes the most dominant form of production.
The third argument of Trotskyism is that a Stalinist, conservative and counter-revolutionary bureaucracy based on a privileged stratum of bureaucrats formed itself around Stalin and took power in the Soviet Union. The first thing I have to point out here is that Stalin instigated frequent purges of the Soviet bureaucracy. This belies the notion that there was a specifically Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union. The other argument that the bureaucracy was one-sidedly conservative, that is, opposed to change, also crumbles when confronted with the fact that the Soviet Union experienced the greatest changes of the 20th Century and perhaps in world history with the rapid industrialisation and collectivisation programme set in motion by the communist party. In other words, the conservative elements in the Soviet bureaucracy did not determine the party programme. As for the argument that the Soviet bureaucracy was counter-revolutionary, this relates to the argument that it was conservative. Marxism-Leninism teaches that there was no such thing as a counter-revolutionary, Stalinist bureaucracy, but there were counter-revolutionary elements within the bureaucracy. This means that Marxist-Leninists did not talk about a ‘political revolution’ to overthrow a non-existent counter-revolutionary bureaucracy but rather the need to purge the bureaucracy of counter-revolutionary elements. It is true that there was a relatively privileged stratum of bureaucrats in the Soviet Union and I think that some pro-Soviet people did not like to talk about this and found it rather embarrassing. But Lenin recognised the existence of this caste, a word which Stalin used to describe it. Lenin viewed it as the price the working class had to pay to hold on to power. Trotsky himself started this system of privilege in regard to the Red Army to keep it on the side of the working class. Forced on the revolution because of backwardness and the perilous position of the proletarian dictatorship, Lenin recognised the system of privilege was a step backward for the revolution that must be eliminated as soon as possible. Under Lenin and Stalin, this stratum did not become a ruling caste or class. In fact, they were, in the period of Stalin, more repressed than any other bureaucratic stratum in a similar position. So we see that Trotskyism put before us several theories, which simply disintegrate in your hands when confronted with the facts.
To uphold Trotskyism is the same as saying Leninism is counter-revolutionary. This is because socialism in one country is derived from Lenin, and Trotskyists maintain that this theory is the ideological expression of a counter-revolutionary bureaucracy and so on. All this, of course, is opposed to the facts. Anyone who can uncritically accept all these preliminary arguments of Trotskyism is not far away from accepting the conclusion of Trotskyism, which is that “Stalinism” is the greatest counter-revolutionary agency of imperialism in the working class. This argument is possible only by ignoring the facts relating to the support that the Soviet Union and pro-Stalin communists gave to socialist countries, anti-imperialist movements and regimes, and also the role of these same people in the anti-fascist struggles, in Spain, at Cable Street and so on. Anyone who can ignore the Marxist-Leninist position that social democracy is the greatest counter-revolutionary force in the working class, which is not a secondary question but a central one, will have no problems with ignoring other facts.
So you see the ideological mess the Trotskyists led their followers into. The Stalinists are the greatest counter-revolutionary force in the working class because they defended Lenin on socialism in one country as a stage in the world revolution and because they supported the Soviet Union, the other socialist countries, the anti-imperialist movements and the anti-imperialist regimes, not to mention leading anti-fascist struggles.
IMLR: Since the Marxist-Leninist position is that social democracy is the most counter-revolutionary agency of imperialism in the working class, while Trotskyism ignores the facts and assigns this role to “Stalinism”, what evidence do they give to try and support their theory?
TC: Marxism-Leninism regards itself as a science, which means that its supporters do not play with revolutionary phrases and they endeavour to use language in as precise a manner as possible. For instance, ‘counter-revolutionary’ means essentially to be opposed to revolution. Now when the Trotskyists say that “Stalinism” is the greatest counter-revolutionary force in the working class, they mean that the Stalinists are more opposed to revolution than any other tendency in the working class, and since social democracy remains a tendency in the working class, according to the logic of Trotskyism the Stalinists must even surpass the pro-imperialist social democrats in being counter-revolutionary. Now if you can believe this Trotskyist fairy story you can believe anything. But you ask what evidence do the Trotskyists rely on to support their arguments.
They look at the history of the class struggle since the 1917 revolution, after the period of 1923 and they see setbacks and defeats: the defeat of the 1926 British general strike, the Chinese revolution in 1927, the defeat of German communism with the victory of the Nazi in 1933, and the victory of Franco in the Spanish civil war in 1939. Marxist-Leninists have analysed all these defeats but unlike the Trotskyists do not blame these defeats on Stalin personally or that the comintern was alone responsible for these defeats. Whether or not anyone agrees with the ‘Stalin and the comintern were responsible’ thesis is beside the point. Even if anyone believes that Stalin and the comintern never got anything right this cannot be used to support the theory that “Stalinism” is the greatest counter-revolutionary force in the working class. If anyone supports the Trotskyist critique of the communist movement they can argue that the Stalinists played into the hands of the counter-revolution, but this would be a different argument from the Trotskyist line that “Stalinism” is the greatest counter-revolutionary force in the working class. They cannot use the comintern's mistakes – if they believe such mistakes were made – to support the Trotskyist argument.
IMLR: You have argued elsewhere that this conclusion applies to the revisionist period of the Soviet Union.
TC: Lets stick with the comintern for a while. The comintern helped to build up communist parties in other countries. It gave support to the anti-imperialist movements around the world. Stalin had his supporters in the comintern. Whether it made mistakes or not, it cannot be simultaneously anti-imperialist and the greatest counter-revolutionary force in the working class. I think it is criminal to describe an anti-imperialist party, or other organisation in this way. The comintern had all the weaknesses we would expect an international organisation to have: lack of experience, right-deviations, left-deviationism, in other words mistakes of right and left opportunism, over-centralisation, and even the notion that the world revolution can be best guided from one international centre was later re-examined. All these weaknesses of the old comintern have to be understood, but to use the mistakes of the comintern, as the Trotskyists do, to argue that it became the greatest counter-revolutionary force in the working class is completely nonsensical.
IMLR: So how does Trotskyism arrive at its conclusions; what is the best way to explain what can be regarded as Trotsky’s final conclusions about “Stalinism”?
TC: For Trotskyists to argue that “Stalinism” is the greatest counter-revolutionary force in the working class – let me repeat, they have to do two things. First, they have to ignore or minimise the importance of the alliance between social democracy and imperialism, an alliance which Lenin regarded as the main social prop of bourgeois rule. The second thing the Trotskyists need to do is ignore the alliance between the international communist movement and the former Soviet Union. They have to ignore, to suppress the fact that the international communist movement, led by people who were nominally Stalinists, as far as Trotskyists are concerned, gave support to the Soviet Union and the other socialist transitional societies, anti-imperialist movements, regimes and anti-fascist struggles. Only when you can ignore all of this, as I previously said, can you argue that Stalinism is the greatest counter-revolutionary force in the working class. As I previously said, ultra-leftists have the ability to ignore the facts.
Now to answer your question about whether the argument I am putting forward applies to the revisionist period of the Soviet Union. Within Trotskyism there is no division between the Stalinist period and the revisionist periods of the Soviet Union. These two periods simply relate to the type of people who were leading the Soviet Union ideologically. Within Trotskyism the post-Stalin Soviet revisionists are regarded as Stalinists. My arguments also apply to them. Although pursuing a line, which was rightist, they still gave support to anti-imperialist movements and regimes not to mention the other socialist countries, to one degree or another. So the Soviet revisionists did not replace pro-imperialist social democracy as the greatest counter-revolutionary force in the working class.
Trotsky, in the 1930s, was seeking to find some accommodation with social democracy, while at the same time exposing it. Arguing that Stalinism was the greatest counter-revolutionary force in the working class was one way of wining support for this new tactical orientation.
IMLR: How important was this tactic in influencing Trotsky to argue that Stalinism was the greatest counter-revolutionary force in the working class?
TC: That is not easy to answer. I only claim that it was part of the reason, and that all his previous arguments were leading up to his characterisation of what he called “Stalinism” as the greatest counter-revolutionary force in the working class. This line became Trotskyism’s basic political ideology in opposition to Marxism-Leninism, which insists that the pro-imperialist social democracy is the greatest counter-revolutionary agency of imperialism in the working class.
IMLR: Do you think that those within Trotskyism can understand this?
TC: Who can tell? What I do know is that most people do not think scientifically at the present time. They think religiously. Views are held as articles of faith often with little or no factual support or evidence to back them up. People need to understand that faith thinking and scientific thinking are two different types of thinking. People who use faith thinking in politics, treat their views as revealed knowledge from on high, the authority of which is beyond question. So you are asking me whether Trotskyists can question the authority of Trotsky. The most intellectually developed of them can, in the same way as a religious person can question the authority of his or her religion.
IMLR: Since social democracy aligned itself with the imperialist regimes while the international communist movement sided with the Soviet regime, the other socialist regimes, the anti-imperialist movements and regimes, how can the Trotskyists continue to argue that “Stalinism” is the greatest counter-revolutionary force in the working class?
TC: As I said, Trotskyism is a variety of ultra-leftism. The main feature of ultra-leftists is disregarding facts; for them politics is a faith not a science. If you remember, in a letter to you I wrote about the ‘end of Trotskyism’. What I meant by this was that only the most backward elements, theoretically speaking, will continue to defend Trotskyism. Trotskyism is synonymous with the view that the greatest counter-revolutionary elements are the Stalinists, but since it was the Stalinists who defended the socialist countries the most, and supported the anti-imperialist struggles – even the Soviet revisionists supported Cuba and Vietnam – only the most theoretically backward elements can continue to give credence to Trotsky’s main political line.
Those who do not start on a firm premise that imperialism is the main counter-revolutionary system in the world, and that consequently, those who are in alliance with imperialism, that is the social democracy, must be the greatest counter-revolutionary force in the working class, can end up misleading people with little or no knowledge of Marxism-Leninism into believing the Trotskyist argument that “Stalinism” is the greatest counter-revolutionary force in the working class instead of social democracy. This is what can happen when people are prepared, for one reason or another, to ignore facts.
IMLR: I think that lack of understanding of imperialism can lead to this view, that the communist movement is more counter-revolutionary than social democracy!
TC: Precisely. To be a Marxist-Leninist means you have an understanding of imperialism and the split in the working class – between the pro-imperialist and the anti-imperialist elements, that is between those who support imperialism and those who oppose it. It was the Soviet Union and the international communist movement; both led by people who the Trotskyists call “Stalinist”, in a pejorative sense, that gave the most support to anti-imperialist movements and regimes.
IMLR: And this includes the period of revisionism, that is, after Stalin, under people like Khrushchev and Brezhnev?
TC: It does. Marxist-Leninists expose the right, revisionist danger in the international communist movement represented by the Khrushchevites. This was a contradictory period when the Soviet Union was in transition back to capitalism but had not yet given up support for anti-imperialism. This is why the Soviet Union could still give support and assistance to China, North Korea, Vietnam, or Cuba. Therefore, while Marxist-Leninists condemn revisionist theories and policies, we do not argue that the revisionists replaced social democracy as the greatest counter-revolutionary force in the working class – through and through – as the Trotskyites would have it.
The Trotskyist argument is readily subscribed to by ultra-leftist circles in the rich imperialist countries that are ignorant of the meaning of Marxism-Leninism. On the other hand, those who were really struggling against imperialism, people who gave up their privileged backgrounds to go into the hills and jungles to fight imperialism, completely rejected Trotskyism.
IMLR: The Maoists later developed a position similar to the Trotskyists.
TC: In my opinion, they developed a position that was worse than the Trotskyists as far as the Soviet Union was concerned. If Trotsky sought to replace social democracy with “Stalinism” as the greatest counter-revolutionary force in the working class – an argument that stands in contradiction to all the facts, late Maoism sought to paint the Soviet revisionists as the number one enemy of the world revolution. The Soviet revisionists were never the number one enemy of world revolution and progress; US imperialism was and remains the number one enemy. If you had an Enver Hoxha leading the Communist Party of China, I dare to say this mistake would not have been made.
IMLR: The Maoist struggle against revisionism started out from a basically correct basis, with few mistakes, then degenerated into ultra-leftism, but surely Trotskyism contained strong elements of ultra-leftism from the beginning?
TC: It’s best that we stick to talking about Trotskyism. If we start talking about Maoism now it will make this discussion too long. Yes, you are right; Trotskyism had ultra-left features at the beginning. Later, he failed to understand what the split in the working class meant, or its various forms of manifestations. With the 1917 revolution, the split in the working class between the opportunist and the revolutionary elements assumed the form of a pro-imperialist social democratic movement versus a pro-Soviet international communist movement. Trotskyists are people who did not base themselves on this split, that is why they could argue that “Stalinism” had become the greatest counter-revolutionary agency of imperialism in the working class.
IMLR: To what extent do you think that Stalin understood the nature of this polarisation in the working class movement?
TC: I think he understood it very well. That is why he said that ‘A revolutionary is one who is ready to protect, to defend the USSR without reservation, without Qualification, openly and honestly’. See Volume 10; p.53 of his writings.
Social democracy did not defend the Soviet Union, rather it defended imperialism. This was the meaning of the split in the working class. The communists sympathetic to Stalin became the leaders of the international communist movement; they defended the Soviet Union, the other socialist countries, and in general supported those who were fighting for their national liberation against imperialism. The contradictory nature of the Soviet Union meant that even when the revisionists started to attack Stalin – they continued to give support to anti-imperialist movements. Those who sympathised with Trotsky, like the late Tony Cliff, decided under the pressure of bourgeois public opinion, when the cold-war got under way, that a third camp position was best: neither Washington or Moscow, but international socialism became his line. However, no one can remember Washington giving aid to the national liberation movements against imperialism. We cannot say the same about Moscow.
IMLR: What you are saying is that some people can’t see the wood for the trees?
TC: We must focus on the general picture and proceed to understand the particular in its relation to the general. The general picture is that the working class became polarised between a pro-imperialist camp and an anti-imperialist camp. Social democracy supported the imperialist camp and the international communist movement supported the anti-imperialist camp. Social democracy sided with US imperialism and the international communist movement sided with the former Soviet Union.
So when the Trotskyists come forward and say that “Stalinism” is the greatest counter-revolutionary force in the working class, ask yourself who benefits from this political line, whose interest are they objectively serving. The answer is obvious – it’s not exactly rocket science. Imperialism and social democracy benefit.
IMLR: You said Trotsky’s line leads to shielding the opportunists, the social democratic leadership.
TC: If anyone claims that the pro-Soviet, anti-imperialist elements are the greatest counter-revolutionary force in the working class – through-and-through – this means, in my opinion, that they are shielding the social democratic leadership. It is criminal to call the “Stalinists” the greatest counter-revolutionary agency of imperialism in the working class when the social democracy has stood by imperialism for over 90 years. That is why those who persist in this are shielding the social democracy. The role of social democracy is to divert the working class from revolution and socialism. The bourgeoisie need a party in the working class that defends capitalism. The social democracy wins over mass working class support to the side of capitalism; this is its historic function.
The Trotskyist line, which I have shown is opposed to the facts, about “Stalinism” being the greatest counter-revolutionary force in the working class – if we did not know its origin, we would assume it came straight from social democratic headquarters.
IMLR: I think that most people in the workers’ movement know that the communist movement led by people who are often referred to as “Stalinists” defended the Soviet Union and were the most pro-Soviet elements in the working class, they support anti-imperialism and defend anti-imperialist regimes. Most of these people have a record of opposing imperialism’s oppression of the ‘third world countries’. They cannot possibly be referred to as the most counter-revolutionary elements in the working class. In pointing this out, what is your main intention?
TC: I wanted to illustrate, once again, the difference between Marxism-Leninism and Trotskyism by using an easy to understand point, which is: it is social democracy in alliance with imperialism which represents the greatest counter-revolutionary force in the working class, not “Stalinism”, in alliance with the former Soviet Union and the other socialist countries and the anti-imperialist movements.
This means that in fighting the revisionism in the communist movement – in opposing the right danger we must always be ready to oppose the left danger as well.
IMLR: That sums it up well and brings our discussion to a close.
International Marxist-Leninist Review 1st November 2006 www.oneparty.co.uk