LETTER TO 'THE WEEKLY WORKER'
(July 31 2008)

Lenin - the originator of Socialism in One Country.

My letter to the Weekly Worker (July 31 2008) drew some ultra-left fire; however, I stand by my argument that socialism in one country was a tactical imperative based on the strategy of world revolution and that this policy was derived from Lenin.

Graham Taylor accuses me of missing the “essential point”, which is that capitalism is a global system and therefore socialism in one country would not be able to abolish the capital-wage labour relationship. This relationship is just another name for capitalist production for profit, which can be abolished within one country. Were this not the case, the Soviet Union would have experienced the same economic depression as the capitalist world in the 1930s, but instead saw a huge expansion of production.

Taylor’s appeal to the Communist manifesto against socialism in one country is ignorant of the fact that Lenin raised the possibility of the latter on the basis of his study of imperialism, an era which came after the 1848 Manifesto, and which Lenin regarded as the eve of the socialist revolution, hence the possibility of socialism in one country as part of the world revolutionary process on the basis of uneven development of capitalism.

Lenin’s defence of socialism in one country, proving it was possible, was aimed at pre-empting those opportunist leaders of social democracy who would justify betraying revolutions in their own countries on the grounds that revolution had to be international. Trotsky brought this social democratic thinking into the Bolshevik Party and deployed it against Stalin.

Earl Gilman, another ultra-leftist, claims that ‘Stalinism’ proposed a policy of popular fronts with the nationalist bourgeoisie. He is totally unaware that it was Lenin and other leading communists who put forward the policy that the national bourgeoisie should be supported to a certain degree if it fought against imperialist domination.

On the other hand, Colin McGhie wants us to look again at the events leading up to 1917, and to correct the ‘Stalinist’ falsifications. I am all for correcting falsifications of course, and the most glaring is the one committed by Trotskyists, claiming that Stalin was the originator of the theory of socialism in one country instead of Lenin.

From 1924, the issue of socialism in one country has divided the Marxist left, which defended the Russian Revolution. Anyone who now talks about left unity and forming a new Marxist party, while avoiding the question of how this theory came to divide the revolutionary left and who was its real originator, cannot be taken seriously. The first step towards unity of those who claim to be Marxists must be resolving the issue of socialism in one country, its origins and consequences.

Tony Clark 19^th August 2008.