This is a Google translation of a complicated analysis (with some changes made by me based on the grammar and meaning in the English translation provided) Google translate does not work too bad! After the Second World War ended, Stalinism had consolidated itself in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and China, and the Stalinist machinery appeared invincible. Nevertheless Ted Grant predicted the fall of then Berlin wall in this article from June 1951, when he analyze the changing environment of Stalinism post WWII. The article is an indispensable document for the understanding of Stalinism and the development up to the Soviet Union, as well as preparation for future events. Part 1 The Second World War ended with complex and utterly unexpected relations between nations and classes. It ended with victory for two continental powers in the world: US imperialism and the Russian bureaucracy. It was the dominant factor in the world: the division of the world between two competing blocs. For the first time in history the great powers of Europe were reduced to secondary positions; France, Germany and Italy were defeated, and England became a second-rate power. Japan was reduced to an occupied territory without all its colonies and spheres of influence. The struggle between the classes can only be understood in light of this decisive conflict of the epoch. The decay of capitalism was above all reflected in a weakening of imperialism and the uprising of the masses in Asia and the revolutionary wave in Western and Eastern Europe. Uprising of the masses in Asia in the struggle for national liberation forced the British to withdraw from India, Burma and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and enter into a different relationship with the national bourgeoisie in these countries. The Dutch imperialism was forced to withdraw from Indonesia and reach a compromise with the native ruling class. In Indochina, the French imperialism ever since the war been bogged down in a desperate attempt to keep the national liberation struggle down. In Malaya, the British imperialism in spite of all its resources have not been able to defeat the Malay peoples struggle for independence. In China, US imperialism suffered an unprecedented defeat. Despite the lavish gift of a rain of munitions and other supplies to help Chiang Kai Shek regime, the Chinese landlordism-capitalism-imperialism, represented by the corrupt Kuomintang clique, was driven into the sea with only a precarious foothold on the island of Formosa (Taiwan), protected only by sea and now the US Navy. That Korea has been divided into Russian and American influence areas reveals the weakness of imperialism throughout the Far East. Outside of the direct intervention of US imperialism the Korean Chiang Kai Shek would have collapsed in the same disgraceful manner as the Chiang regime of China. At best, US imperialism will be able to maintain a foothold after a protracted struggle, and the US forces will be defeated like the French forces in Indochina and the British in Malaya, even in the event of a complete victory in the south. This is a measure of the decay of old relationship of capitalism and imperialism. Capitalism is rotting at its weakest point. In Europe, Russias victory in the war and uprisings of the masses after the defeat of German-Italian fascism also developed a tremendous revolutionary wave that threatened to sweep capitalism away from the continent. However, Russias victory in the war had complex and contradictory consequences. Temporarily, but nevertheless for a whole historical period, Stalinism has been strengthened enormously. The destruction and bloodshed that Russia was exposed to left the country in an exhausted and weak state (while Anglo-American imperialism was barely touched in the war and suffered little loss of resources and human lives - the United States has reached the height of its military and economic power). Because of peoples mood and the relationship between the classes in the world, the imperialists were unable to intervene against Russia. Although intervention in size to the one that followed the First World War, was impossible. On the contrary, the Allies were forced to swallow Russian rule in Eastern Europe and parts of Asia, that they even would have never have ceded to the reactionary tsardømme. The Russian bureaucracy achieved dominance over the region that went far beyond Tsarist Russias wildest dreams. The process by which capitalism was overthrown in Eastern Europe and Stalinism was expanded, took place in a special way. The void in the state power in Eastern Europe that followed the Nazis and their Quislings defeat was filled by the Red Army forces. The weak bourgeoisie of these areas had largely been eradicated, incorporated as a quisling for German imperialism or reduced to Nazi small partners in the war years. They had been relatively weak in Eastern Europe even before the war, and the states of this region were largely semi-colonies of the major powers like the South American states were colonies of the United States. The Eastern European Regimes before the war were in constant crisis because of the Balkanization of the area and the ruling classs inability to solve even the bourgeois-democratic revolution. They were almost all weak, militarized dictatorships without any real roots among the masses. Russias victory in the war undoubtedly provoked a rebellion among the masses, either quickly or in some countries slightly delayed. The socialist revolution was on the agenda. This was not only dangerous for the bourgeoisie, but also for the Stalinist bureaucracy. The bureaucracy achieved their goal by deftly balancing between and manipulating classes in typical Bonapartist fashion. The trick was to form a popular front between the classes and create a national unity government. However these popular fronts had a different basis and a purpose than the former popular fronts. In Spain, the popular front was designed to destroy the powers and the workers state, which was in its embryonic form, by destroying the workers revolution. This was achieved by making an alliance with the bourgeoisie, or rather the shadow of the bourgeoisie, stifle the control that workers had established in the factories and the armed workers militias and restore the capitalist state under the control of the bourgeoisie. The consequence of this policy was that at the end of the war was a militarized dictatorship on both sides of the lines. The purpose of the coalition of the defeated bourgeoisie, or its shadow, in Eastern Europe had a purpose other than to give power back to the capitalist class. In previous popular fronts, the real power of the state - the armed groups, police and state apparatus - was in the firm grip bourgeoisie , with working parties as appendages. In Eastern Europe - with one important variation or another - the real power, ie: control of the armed groups and the state apparatus, was in the hands of the Stalinists. Bourgeoisie occupied the position as pendant without real power. Why then the coalition? It served as a cover under which a fixed state machine after Moscows model could be built and consolidated. The bureaucracy used the bourgeoisie to organize the workers, who had been awakened by the Red Army and the events of the war, from achieving a socialist revolution like the October Revolution. The bureaucracy played off the bourgeoisie in the name of unity against the working class. They prevented the Bonapartist maneuvering workers from establishing control over the factories. By implementing land reform and expropriation of the landlord class, they secured for a time support or acquiescence of the peasants. After having consolidated and built up a strong state under their control, they went on to the next stage. By mobilizing workers, they turned against the bourgeoisie, as they were no longer needed as a counterweight to the workers and peasants, and step by step they expropriated them. The bourgeoisie was without the support of foreign imperialism and unable to provide decisive resistance. A totalitarian regime that was more and more the Moscow Stalinist model, was been gradually introduced. After elimination of the bourgeoisie and the beginning of a large-scale industrialization, the bureaucracy has turned against the peasants, and embarked on a road of collectivisation of agriculture. Yugoslavia In Yugoslavia and China events were somewhat, if not fundamentally different, in relation to developments in Eastern Europe. After Yugoslavia was subject to the forces of German imperialism it began to develop a national liberation struggle against the foreign oppressor. This had a broad base because of Yugoslavias traditions and its peoples battles against Turkish and Austria-Hungary domination before the First World War. This led to a peasant war and a guerrilla warfare in the mountains. Under normal conditions such a struggle could only lead to the victory of the bourgeoisie and possibly land reform, even if it were led to victory. But the dominant factors in our epoch consists of the October Revolution and the victory of the bureaucracys deformation of the revolution. On the one hand there is a strong workers state (though in a degenerate form), and on the other hand, the imperialist and capitalist terrible decline worldwide and the local bourgeoisies inability to solve any of the national and democratic tasks the country faces, and the masses push towards socialist revolution. This leads, once again, to the degeneration of the revolution into a strange deformation of the local Stalinists battle. The farmers can not play an independent role. You may follow one or the other main classes in modern society. In contrast with the earlier classical Marxist theory which began the game with that small sections of the workers, the Stalinist leadership took up the mountains and organized a peasant war of national liberation. The vast majority of the liberation army consisted of peasants. The partisans were farmers. Its nature was found in the civil war, which began during the occupation, in which Draža Mihailović represented capitalists and the upper middle class (or rather, the debris that had not sold completely out of German imperialism). The Bonapartist bureaucracy relied on peasants and led the struggle under the guise of popular front that reminded us of those who became established in Eastern Europe. Towards the end of the war, Tito controled large areas of the country, with the exception of the big cities, where there was a need for help from the Red Army, especially to occupy Belgrade. However events in Yugoslavia played out differently than in Eastern Europe. In Eastern Europe, with the partisans were either weak, almost non-existent or underdeveloped when the Red Army arrived. In countries where there was a resistance movement with mass basis, there were special circumstances which did not exist in Yugoslavia. The important difference between Yugoslavia (and China) and the rest of Eastern Europe is that Tito and the Yugoslav Stalinists had already established an independent state basis before the Red Army arrived. They enjoyed the support of the vast majority of the masses to the revolutionary struggle they had taken up. This allowed the Yugoslavs (and the Chinese) to resist the Russian bureaucracys attempts to achieve real control. They were not so dependent on Moscow as the other satellite parties. In the Soviet Union, conflicts inevitably arose between the national republics and the Stalinist bureaucracy. The Moscow cliques great Russian tendencies of centralization and bureaucratic oppression began to show. In Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan and the Volga German Republic and in all the Russian republics there developed opposition to the suffocating economic and cultural national oppression of this clique. In Ukraine oppression developed to such an extent that Trotsky raised the slogan of an independent Ukrainian Soviet Republic. Opposition of the masses to the republics clique was such that the hand-picked Stalinist leadership purged and killed almost in bourgeois magnitude in order to consolidate the rule of the bureaucracy. To date the national question remains crucial in the fight against the bureaucracy. Stalins propensity to make Eastern Europe a province for the benefit of the Russian bureaucracy through the subordination of these countries economys interests to the Moscow bureaucracys economic needs, is bound to arouse opposition from the masses that will echo all the way into the dominant Stalinist parties. It was on this basis that the breach between the Stalinist regime in Moscow and the Yugoslav Stalinist regime had to take place. the independent base and support from the masses is the basis that the Yugoslav bureaucracy could defeat the Kremlin. Even against the cruel blockade from Kominform, because of tensions between East and West, Yugoslavia was able to maintain a precarious balance. It is the national question which explains the Yugoslav resistance base. The Yugoslav bureaucracy wanted to maintain their position as a minor partner rather than a vassal state in Moscow. Where the Ukrainian and Georgian bureaucrats had luck with them, succeeded the Yugoslav bureaucracy. (???? unable to understand the Google translation of this sentence) In the other states in Eastern Europe the opposition treated the same way as in the nation in the Soviet Union. The leading elements such as Gomulka, Rajk and Kostov were executed or imprisoned, and state machine purged from top to bottom to make it into an obedient tool. The trial in Yugoslavia, however, ended with the arrest and imprisonment of the Stalinist agents Zujobic and Hebrang. Does the break between the Tito and Stalin regimes mean in Yugoslavia that there ceases to be a Stalinist regime? The regime is still a Yugoslav variant of the Russian Stalinism. Stalinism means a totalitarian regime with a privileged bureaucratic caste that rules over the economic basis of a workers state. In Yugoslavia, with this or that difference or with this or that modification, Yugoslavia nonetheless is similar to the regime in Russia. This is in the same way as the Dollfus regime in Austria looked like Hitler and Mussolini. In the same way that it is possible that there may be various fascist regimes in different countries, so there may under certain circumstances be different Stalinist regimes, different democratic bourgeois states and various forms of workers states in accordance with the norm. The key considerations in our characterization of a regime: first, the basic social characteristics - workers state capitalist state, feudal state, slave state and so on. Then, but still vital, its political superstructure. In the case of a capitalist state - fascist, democratic, imperialist, colonial and so on. In the case of a workers state - bureaucratic or working democracy. On this basis Yugoslavia remains a deformed workers state. Marxists support the Yugoslav masses struggle against the Russian bureaucratic chauvinistic national oppression in the same way that we support Ukraine or Polands struggle for freedom from Moscows domination. In Yugoslavia itself, the Fourth Internationalists fight to overthrow the Yugoslav bureaucracy through a political revolution. This political revolution requirements will be to place the control in the hands of the masses through a regime of workers democracy - as a minimum - the right of all working tendencies to participate freely in all political life, the abolition of the privileges of the bureaucracy, the restoration of the right to strike and so on. The Yugoslav regime is in its methods and its outlook closer to Stalinism than revolutionary Marxism. Stalinism pressures force the Yugoslav bureaucracy to largely borrow from the Marxist criticism of Stalin. Verbal gestures to the left transform the regime into a healthy workers state, like the sometimes correct Stalinist critique of reformism and capitalism transforms the Stalinist bureaucracy to a genuine Marxist flow. In a similar way Stalinism remains a centrist current is the Yugoslav bureaucracy too. This tape is fresher than the one in Moscow. It probably has more support among the working people. The Five Year Plan, as in Russia in the beginning, attracted enthusiastic support among the masses who think they are building socialism. Nevertheless, the differentiation is as great as it was in the early years of the five-year plan in Russia. The ruling clique basic traits indicated that they remain wedded to the theory of socialism in one country - albeit at a lower level, on the basis of the small Yugoslavia compared to Russias vast resources. Yugoslavs utopian position, surrounded on one side by the hatred of bureaucracy in the east, and capitalism / imperialism in the west, and the balancing of these contradictions in order to sustain itself, shows itself in the first skirmishes in the battle between the US and USSR. The abject capitulation to Western imperialism with the requirement of UN mediation in Korea, is the best indication of the non-Marxist character of the Yugoslav bureaucracy. Since they are not based on internationalism, they can only - like other small states - slip back and forth between the major powers Russia and the United States without the ability to have an independent role. Only an internationalist position can save them from the shameful role played Yugoslavia in the United Nations. Zig-zags to the left of the word - like the Stalinist zig-zags to the left - do not change the basic conditions in Yugoslavia. Yugoslavias economic base - a backward country, not much more developed than Russia before its industrialization - produces inexorable consequences of the bureaucracy that was developed in Moscow. With a convulsive turn right and left, the economic trend, with the same reasons, cause the same effect. The Yugoslav regime will be more and more approaching that of Moscow. Stalinism in China The special relationship of forces, which led to the victory of Stalinism in Eastern Europe are moving towards the same results in Asia. In China, we have an outstanding example of this result by a host of historical factors. The defeat of the revolution of 1925-27 (due to mistakes of the Stalinists) who had had every chance of success, led the Stalinist leadership and the cadres, they had insisted to leave the cities and take to the mountains to rely on peasant war - a war that has had many precedents in Chinas long history.6 The feudal-capitalist military controlled decay and decline shown by its complete inability to solve a single one of Chinas problems in the period 1924-45. The Cabinet, which was far more corrupt than even the worst of Tsarist Russia, was able to make the whole population - with the exception of the small clique of Chiang Kai-shek at the top - to his enemies. There was no one who was willing to defend the regime in peril. In this period the decay of imperialism after World War II, the imperialists were unable to intervene. In 1925-27 answered British imperialism an insult to the flag by bombarding Chinas main ports from its warships. This was done with the support of the leaders of the trade unions and the Labour Party. In 1949, the relationship of forces, the imperialists rejoiced that the warship Amethyst to flee the Yangtze river! How has the relationship of forces changed. The US imperialists intervened with large quantities of arms, ammunition and money to help Chiang Kai-shek gang, but almost all of the supplies fell into the hands of the Chinese Red Hær.7 These factors, together with the fact that the mighty Russia was next door, affected all the political development in China. Under normal circumstances, the Peasant War in China have ended as all such wars have ended, or the Chinese peasant leaders would have teamed up with the capitalist elements in urban and betrayed the peasant masses. The revolution would have assumed a capitalist character. However, the above factors led to a different outcome than what could be predicted. Without Russia as a neighbor, without the Russian controlled degeneration as an additional factor, without the complete degradation of the Chinese regime, where the old ruling class so miserably had outlived itself, without the international Stalinist movements degeneration, without the genuine Marxist current extreme weakness without weakness of imperialism on a world scale, the events in China and the rest of Asia have been different. Either in the direction of a workers revolution of the standard (with all its international significance in terms of the spread of the revolution to Europe and the rest of the world) or the victory of capitalist counterrevolution. This had been the alternatives. But history is full of countless variations that can not be predicted. Theory is gray, but the tree of life is green. All the complicated factors have combined led to the revolution has been implemented in a different way than theory had previously indicated. At the same technique as in Yugoslavia - with peasant mass movement as the basis - Mao and the Chinese Red Army (possibly with an even greater popular mass base than Tito) led a revolutionary war on the ground. Kuomintang clique armies melted away. Here was a peasant war in the classic revolutionary tradition. Bonapartist clique of Stalinism was based on the farmers desire to land. Leading the peasant war got the masses powerful backing. Here we have a special variant of the permanent revolution (where a victorious peasant army was led by ex-Marxists). Because of the crisis of the regime and the Stalinist paralysis of the movements in cities, Mao Tse Tung and the other Stalinist leaders of an independent base in the peasant army, classical instrument of Bonapartism. But as a result of the epoch and the various factors we have already discussed, it could not end like a peasant war independently of a mass movement in the cities would normally end. Mao Tse Tung and his group succeeded, after taking the cities with at least passive acceptance from the working class and the petty bourgeoisie in the cities, balancing between the classes Bonapartist fashion. The Bonapartist bureaucracy began with the gradual elimination of landlordism in the areas they had conquered (after the movements early stages bureaucracy was concerned to prevent any independent movement among the peasants or workers who could not directly harnessed and controlled by themselves), and the confiscated immediately what they called bureaucratic capitalism, that is the most important centers of the great industrial and financial sector, which was found, and the Bonapartist bureaucracy was able to maneuver between the classes. For a temporary period, and to help consolidate the bureaucratic caste, they have tolerated commercial and industrial capitalism in a new version of NEP.8 By maneuvering between the classes they will establish a fortified and strong state apparatus. By building alternately on the peasants, the workers and the bourgeoisie to achieve different objectives, the balance between them as a chief judge and guardian of class relations. They will inevitably go ahead and subsequently confiscate private property in the industry, as well as expropriation of the peasantry as in Russia and in Eastern Europe. Because of powerlessness and weakness of the bourgeoisie, who are without a historical perspective and without a historic task to perform, it will be eliminated with relatively ease. Mao will rely on workers to strike blows against the bourgeoisie, as Stalin did when kulaks and nepmen eliminated. A Stalinist bureaucracy can not tolerate sharing power with the bourgeoisie, because this would weaken it and reduce it to play a subordinate role, with a corresponding loss of income, power and privilege. The farmers who are unable to find another way, will be mercilessly suppressed. Gradually there will be established a totalitarian state that more and more similar to Moscow. After a while basing themselves on the workers to eliminate capitalists and consolidate power, the bureaucracy will turn against the working class and crush any element of workers democracy that may exist or be developed in the process. Stalinism in China are facing a long-term perspective of power growth and consolidation despite the social convulsions. It is relatively progressive because of the development of industry and the unification of China for the first time, and on this basis, the development of the productive forces a huge boost. They can be based on the Chinese conditions maintain their rule for a long time. They will consolidate more and more entrenched in the coming period. The factors that make this possible, has been the endless war and civil war, which China has been involved in during the past two decades, the weariness of the people who demand peace, the relatively progressive role they play in China and the absence of any alternative on Chinese basis alone. All these factors strengthen powerfully the role of Chinese Stalinism. Of course, events in China accelerated or retarded by developments in Western Europe, the US and Russia. These remain the crucial parts of the world. A successful proletarian revolution in the West, creating a workers state, according to the Marxist norm, will naturally lead to a revival of the revolution in China and pave the way for healthy development by accelerating the political revolution. But with Chinese forces as a basis, it is clear that Mao, like Stalin, will develop the forces of the future will overthrow his machinery. The relatively strict government that is not under control of the masses, will become more and more corrupt. State power is a powerful source of infection and disease. The bureaucratic caste will increase their separation from the masses, raise himself higher and higher above the people - as a new aristocracy - provoking hatred among the masses. Because of Chinas history, its traditions and its terrible backwardness, the Chinese Stalinism with its own forces inevitably develop an even more monstrously oppressive machine than Stalinism in Russia. The bureaucratic caste that crystallize more and more, will only be removed by force. The new political revolution will lead to the creation of a healthy workers democracy, but at a higher industrial level. In the long run, Chinas fate, like the rest of the East will be determined by the fate of the revolution in Eastern Europe and the United States. With an independent basis, Mao Zedong regime is likely to conflict with the Stalinist bureaucracy in Russia. Reluctantly, after the experience of Yugoslavia, the bureaucracy has been forced to treat China as a partner rather than a pure satellite or Moscow province. Despite attempts to avoid it, it is quite likely that Mao Tse Tung - if he can obtain favorable agreements with Britain and the United States - will break out and play an independent role. In this sense, it is - as soon established an independent basis - difficult if not impossible for Moscow to maintain direct control or dominance. Read the second part of the article here notes: 1. Kuomintang (KMT) was a bourgeois nationalist party in China founded by Sun Yat-Sen in 1912. In 1927, oppressed KMT headed by Chiang Kai Shek bloody Government is working in Shanghai and oversaw a weak and unstable military government until they were defeated in the revolution 1946-49. Then fled the remnants of the KMT to Formosa (Taiwan), where they still have magten.↩ 2. The concept - derived from the Balkans - refers to the division of an area into small states with conflicting interesser.↩ 3. Mihailovitch was the leader of the Chetniks, an ultra-nationalist militia that helped the Nazis to fight Tito partisaner.↩ 4. Cominform (Communist Information Bureau) was the name of the Joint Forum of communist parties after the dissolution of the Comintern in 1943. The Cominform was formed in 1947 at a conference in Poland, which was convened by Josef Stalin in response to disagreements between Eastern European governments on whether you should attend the Paris Conference on Marshall Aid in July 1947. [Translators note] 5. Władysław Gomułka was General Secretary of the Workers Party of Poland from 1945-48. He was removed and imprisoned in 1951-54. He was released in 1956 and became first secretary of the party until the uprising in 1970. Mr Traicho Kostov Djunev was a member of the Hungarian Communist Party for 30 years, and while he was prime minister in 1948, he was executed as an agent. Laslo Rajk, lifelong member of the Hungarian Communist Party, was executed in 1948 as fascist spy . 6. Mao Tse Tung (in the article is the old transliteration used - the modern form is Mao Zedong) attended the founding congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921. After the defeat in 1927 led Mao leadership in the partys escape to the countryside and organized the long march . He was chairman of the Chinese Communist Party in 1935 and was the leader of the Peoples Republic of China from 1949 to his death in 1976. 7. Chinas Red Army was formed in 1927, and was later transformed into Peoples Liberation Army - the Peoples Republic of Chinas military. [Translators note] ↩ 8. The New Economic Policy (NEP) was introduced by the Bolshevik government in Russia in 1921 to replace war communism. It was a temporary measure that was intended to grant limited concessions for small business owners to breathe life into the economy that had been devastated by war and subsequent civil war. It was replaced by the first five-year plan. NEP people was another word for spekulanter. marxist.dk/artikler/historie/4697-stalinisme-i-efterkrigstiden-forste-del.html
Posted on: Mon, 10 Nov 2014 20:39:56 +0000
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