What is in fact the first and foremost lesson of
the “short 20th Century” ?
Tony Clark
MIKE MACNAIR is right to argue
the necessity of going back over strategic debates of the past in order to
effectively address strategy now. He is opposed to ‘…echoing uncritically one or another side of the
old debates, as often occurs with the left today’. (Weekly Worker, No. 629;
June 15, 2006) However, in the same contribution, i.e., Republican democracy and revolutionary patience, regarding one of
these debates, Macnair uncritically asserts that
‘The first and foremost lesson of the “short 20th Century”
is the impossibility of socialism in a single country’.
The debate with the Trotskyists
about whether socialism was possible in one or several countries during the process
of world revolution was the most important debate of the comintern years, which
formed the background to all the other debates.
Lenin’s argument that the first
stages of the world revolution would see the victory of socialism in several or
even in one country went uncontested after the revolution until Trotsky chose
to define his opposition on this particular matter. Lenin’s theory was that ‘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 singly’. (V.I.
Lenin: Selected Works, Eng. Ed. Vol.5; August 1915)
In the post-Lenin period, Stalin
made this the starting point for defending the revolution from those perceived
as doom mongers. Trotsky opposed Lenin’s theory of how the world revolutionary
process would work, and was even able to misinform a section of the vanguard
that it was Stalin who was the real author of the theory in 1924 rather than
Lenin.
One of the reasons why people like Macnair oppose Lenin on
this matter is because they have an incorrect understanding of what socialism
is. Firstly, they fail to see that socialism in one or several countries is
part of the world revolutionary process. In essence, therefore, Macnair is, on
this issue, expressing unadulterated Trotskyism. Secondly, it is important to
stress that socialism in one or several countries is not only part of the world
revolutionary process, representing a strategic advance in the world
revolution, it is also a transitional society. As a transitional society
between capitalism and communism, socialism has both positive and negative
features to begin with. Also, a transitional society can go forward, or
backward to capitalism. Preventing this latter development requires a constant
struggle against concealed bourgeois elements in the party, State, and in the
cultural apparatus generally. This means a struggle with the representatives of
the bourgeois elements in the communist party leadership and other institutions.
It is also not surprising that from Trotskyism Macnair finds it so easy to revert to
Menshevism and Kautskyism with the argument that, ‘taking the power in any single country, unless the workers’ party is
on the verge of at least a continental majority, is likely to lead to
disaster.’ As the saying goes, there is nothing new under the sun. In
refurbishing these old opportunist arguments, Macnair can hardly claim to
represent an advance on Leninism.
Trotsky’s opposition to Lenin on
the question of socialism in one country as part of world revolution led to
some basic absurdities on the Soviet Union. Trotskyist opposition could only
lead to defeatism over the question of building socialism. The militant determination to oppose
imperialism and defend the revolution by proceeding to build socialism is
reinterpreted by Trotskyism as the actions of a conservative ‘Stalinist
bureaucracy’. The struggle to purge the revisionists, fifth columnists,
defeatists, doom mongers and other bourgeois counterrevolutionaries is
portrayed by Trotskyists as another sign of Stalinist conservatism and
criminality. The open bourgeois academics come to a similar conclusion.
So, what is the most important
lesson of the ‘short 20th Century’? It was not the impossibility of socialism
in a single country as part of world revolution, as Macnair argues, but rather
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.
Tony Clark, 10th July,
2006
