In his recent Open Polemic contribution, for 10^th October 2000, Lambert criticises me for not providing an historian who can substantiate my claim that Stalin opposed the potential consolidation of the Soviet bureaucracy into a new class, apart from remarking that because Stalin was a communist we should thereby presume such opposition on his part.

In other words, what Lambert wants is not a eulogy on Stalin's good intentions but hard historical evidence. This evidence exists in abundance, although much of it is highly distorted by the aims and parameters of bourgeois historical research.

In the works of Getty, Sheila Fitzpatrick, and Lars T. Lih, there is ample hard historical evidence of Stalin's conflict with Soviet bureaucracy, a conflict that contained his opposition to its potential consolidation into a class. Perhaps the clearest account from bourgeois scholarly research can be found in the 63-page introduction by Lars Lih, in 'Stalin's Letters to Molotov'. I have appended a review of this introduction. This is hard irrefutable historical evidence. Of course opportunists, who are far removed from the scientific approach, can use the 'bricks' of facts to construct whatever distorted view of reality they prefer in accordance with their pre-existing prejudices. Certainly for the most shameless academic servants of the bourgeoisie, the struggle against communism requires this kind of flexibility.

Lambert's point is that the Soviet bureaucracy, headed by a ruling elite composed by the party leadership, was for Trotsky

'....central to counter-revolutionary developments in the Soviet Union'. (Lambert: OP Contributions, October, 2000)

According to Lambert, the forces of the Third International rejected this view. This was because this view placed the CPSU and all communist party leaderships at the centre of a betraying, counterrevolutionary tendency, and

'That is the reason why Tony could not find any textual evidence by any historian of the 1917 revolution that Stalin was in conflict with "the bureaucracy" of which he was supposedly the leader'. (Lambert: OP Contributions, October, 2000)

It is true of course that Marxist-Leninists reject the view that the CPSU in the period of Stalin's leadership had degenerated into revisionism. This does not mean that they had become complacent about the potential for treachery of the bureaucrats. The Stalin leadership was fully aware of the secret war going on against socialism in the Soviet Union, something Lambert appears to be blissfully oblivious to. This secret war reached up to the highest level of government. Had these enemies not been unmasked, the Soviet Union would not have been able to stand up to the test of Nazi invasion, and the anti-Stalin lobby in some sections of the communist movement would not be here to denigrate Stalin.

I do not want to turn this discourse into one concerning the nature of bureaucracy. We must assume that bureaucracies exist in all societies, which have reached a certain stage of development. Lambert outlines Trotsky's view that the bureaucracy involved a qualitative separation of administration from the proletariat, and this resulted from socialism in one country. No real evidence is provided for these assertions and no explanation is given for what is meant by a 'qualitative' separation, so that we are left with the hazy notion that the working was excluded from public administration in the period of Stalin. This was not the view of Pat Sloan, who lived in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Slaon's account tells a different story to that promoted by Stalin's enemies:

'...so as to draw into the work of administration a vast number of working people--far more than could actually be elected to membership of the Soviets-a system was early evolved by which working men and women, in their spare time, should represent their fellows in the various organs of State administration, national and local, and participate in their work...' (Pat Sloan: Soviet Democracy; London; 1937; p.170)

What Lambert objects to is my argument that under certain conditions, hypothetically speaking, bureaucracy can turn itself into a new, privileged ruling stratum. This could lead to the formation of a new ruling class. I am, of course, speaking here of the uppermost layers of a bureaucracy. Lambert simply asserts that bureaucracy cannot transform itself into a new ruling. This assertion is made in opposition the putative historical evidence, a bizarre conclusion when we consider the experience of the Soviet Union, where the top-level bureaucrats, did succeed in transforming themselves into a new class and gradually seized power from the working class. You need not be a Maoist to agree that the rise of revisionism in the communist party signifies the rise of the bourgeoisie.

In the case of socialism, high-ranking bureaucrats are in a position to give themselves privileges and create conditions, which are conducive to transforming themselves into a new ruling class. A similar process could happen in a capitalist society, which had nationalised most, if not all of the means of production. The leading stratum in this society would become a bureaucrat-capitalist class: the managers of state capital. Such a capitalist class could in fact rule under the banner of socialism, fronted by a communist party. In fact this is the historic role of revisionism in the communist movement, and this is why the rise of revisionism is the ideological reflection of the rise of the bourgeoisie, a new bourgeoisie connected to state capital. Objectively speaking, the revisionists reflect this state capitalist stratum.

Lambert claims that Tony is tending towards the modern revisionism of cliffism, but what Marxist-Leninists mean by this term is the reformist policies promoted in the international communist movement by the Khrushchevites, in the period after the death of Stalin. The point with Lambert is that he fails to recognise that the ideological representatives of state capitalism in the communist movement today, are the modern revisionists. This explains their alliance with traditional Social Democracy and present day revisionists.

I will not go into the question of what OP calls 'leader-centralism' here. I will only argue that Lambert's position, and presumably the position of the OP editorial board, that there was no democracy in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when Stalin was a leading member, is a wild claim to make. Lambert should make the effort to garner us with some hard historical evidence.

Like Lambert, I believe that working class political power depends on the communist party, which fights against the revisionists. Consequently the nature of the party is of paramount importance. That the communist movement has external and internal enemies should be obvious, but Lambert denies, or belittle the role of the concealed enemies of communism, saying that, Tony's notion of a modern revisionism beginning with Khrushchev, as a concealed enemy of socialism, is nothing other than a dogmatic, post-Stalin variation on the petty-bourgeois conspiracy theme.

With one stroke Lambert denies the whole history of the international communist movement, the struggle against the revisionists, past and present, that is, against the concealed enemies of communism. They are not, however, concealed from Marxist-Leninists.

Revisionism, the struggle to defend capitalism in one form or another, will exist as long as capitalism exists and obviously does not openly declare its class nature in the communist movement. It is the role of Marxism-Leninism to expose this trend to the working class. Naturally we start from the objective role of political tendencies, not from what the members of such tendencies consider their role to be, i.e., what they think about themselves, which is a secondary consideration in matters relating to the class struggle. Lambert, although he would have no difficulty in recognising the external enemies of the communist movement, his dismissal of the threat posed by the internal, concealed enemies, leaves him open to becoming their servant.

In fact when he attacks Stalin we see Lambert playing this role on the political stage. He is of course joined by all the other invisible dramatis personae from which Lambert receives his cue. Once again Lambert returns to his favourite theme which has been developing for some time, the argument that Stalin was one of the pioneer of modern revisionism in the communist movement which the 1936 Soviet constitution gave expression, because

'With this proclamation, Stalin's utopianism had led him to revise two fundamentals of Marxist theory which are, firstly that the completion of the building of a new socialist society takes place within the international state of socialism and, secondly, that the end of the international state marks the qualitative change to the higher phase of communism'. (Lambert: OP Contributions October, 2000)

Marxism-Leninism teaches that the first phase of the transition to communism is called socialism. Socialist society seen from this standpoint can be regarded as an immature, infant communist society. It is a transitional society containing features of capitalism and features of the lower phase of communism. With the completion of socialism there begins a gradually transition to the higher phase of communism. Naturally this transitional period at the end of the socialist phase contains elements of the higher society. Containing these contradictory features is what the word 'transitional' means, but Lambert ignores this dialectical materialist point to buoy is contention that Stalin introduced revisionism into the communist movement. Only in the absence of dialectics can this argument be kept afloat.

No one would deny, certainly any Marxist-Leninists, that there is a period of transition from capitalism to the first phase of communist society, which we call socialism. It should also be obvious to everybody, although apparently not to Lambert, that the transition from the lower to the higher phase of communist society contains features of both levels hence the word 'transition'.

When society reaches the stage of the completion of the construction of socialism, which is the lower phase of communist society, we arrive at another qualitative transition; i.e. is to communism proper. Those of us who agree on the meaning of the term 'transition' must also agree that the developmental process leading from 'socialism' to 'communism' must contain features of both, and consequently, Stalin can in no way be slandered as a 'utopian' revisionist for the Soviet constitution which spoke of the 'gradual transition to communist society'. Only by rejecting dialectics is Lambert able to make scandalous allegations against Stalin.

Having falsely accused Stalin of 'utopian' revisionism, Lambert introduces some blatant revisionism himself when he argues

'Marxism-Leninism actually teaches that the withering away of the state, of the class and its party takes place during the period of the international state of socialism, for only that can finally create the economic and political basis for such a development'. (Lambert: OP Contributions, October 2000)

This of course is opposed to Marxism-Leninism. The withering away of the state does not 'take place' in the period of the international state of socialism. It 'begins' to wither away when society approaches the higher phase of communism.

Lambert claims that it was Lenin who invented the first form of 'modern revisionism'. This was related to the uneven development of capitalism and therefore the possibility of socialism in one country, which Lambert approves of.

Marxism-Leninism does not teach that this was revisionism. Lambert may have his own definition of revisionism, but the Marxist-Leninist definition of revisionism is the struggle against Marxism within the Marxist movement itself. Revisionism is therefore the distortion of Marxism so as to serve the interest of a capitalist class.

For Lambert, and no doubt for the OPEB, the notion of leader-centralism is central to explaining the return of the Soviet Union to capitalism. In this view, Lenin and Stalin are equally to blame. In the eyes of OP it is really 'leader-centralism', which lay at the heart of all the problems of the communist movement. We can only ask Lambert, if your theory about 'leader-centralism' is true, why, then, did the Soviet Union survive for over seventy years.

Tony, Communist Party Alliance