Tical Revolution

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Brezhnev with leading Stalinist bureaucrats in doing so ensures a superior share-out for himself.

The queues and the bureaucrats are of course still present in the Soviet Union today. Trotsky saw the solution to this dilemma only in terms of international revolution.

Until 1933 he and the Left Opposition continued to argue for a clear alternative domestic policy to Rally in Budapest, 1956 that of the Stalinist bureaucracy.

But at the same time they saw the life blood of this fight as the international struggles of the working class.

They showed how the defeat of the 1926 General Strike in Britain and the 1926/7 struggles in China arose out of the policies of Stalin and the newlyemerging bureaucracy.

And they showed also how, by furthet isolating the USSR, they also strengthened the Stalinists.

Political revolution

During this period Trotsky insisted on a perpective of fighting to =form the Communist - arties both within Russia - : internationally. It was = aftermath of the defeat he German working class Trotsky and the Left Opposition by the Nazis that changed this perspective.

The defeat of the German working class--the best organised workers' movement in the world at that time-flowed directly out of the criminally wrong policies of the German Communist Party.

The German Stalinists had followed the lead of the Comintern in its ultra-left "Third Period" , which split the working class movement by denouncing the Social Democrats as 'social fascists' worse than the Nazis, and declaring that it was better that the Nazis come to power.

This suicidal policy allowed Hitler to power without even token resistance called by the mass Communist Party. .

Yet within the Comintern there was not the slightest response to this catastrophic defeat-not a ripple of opposition to the totally false policies that had led to it.

It was this evidence that the Comintern had degenerated into an unthinking monolithic instrument of the Stalinist bureaucracy that : led Trotsky and the Left Opposition to declare that it was not reformable, and that it was necessary to construct a new, Fourth Within the USSR itself the Trotskyists took up the call for "political" revolution for the working class to regain the power that the bureaucracy had usurped.

Bureaucratised

No longer was it possible to persuade the Soviet CP to change course. It had become totally bureaucratised. It would have to be overthrown by a revolution-but a revolution that would not need to expropriate the bourgeoisié, merely re-establish the control of the working class through Soviets.

By the time of writing • Betrayed Trotsky estimates the bureaucracy as numbering 6 million people. It was this material force that Stalin represented.

In the hands of these six million people were the whole state apparatus police, armed forces, and means of communication, ideology and education.

In struggling against these odds the Trotskyists fought to develop a programme based on the real contradictions between the interests of the working masses and those of the They did not simply describe or attack the greater social differentation within Soviet society, and the growing Stalinist attacks on workers' democracy; they saw in this the basis of a programme to mobilise the Soviet masses in the struggle to regain this last political power.

That programme centres first and foremost on the necessity for world revolution to end the isolation and backwardness of the Soviet economy-hence the clear demand "Long live the international revolution"

But at the same time the policy of 'socialism in one country' opens up the danger of both internal and external attacks on the nationalised property relations in the USSR.

The imperialists want Russia brought back into their orbit of exploitation, while within Russia itself there are whose who:

"consider, not without reason, that the new ruling layer can insure their positions of privilege only through the rejection of nationalisation, collectivisation and • monopoly of foreign trade in the name of assimilation of 'Western civilisation'"

Transitional Programme Hence the second point of programme is defence of the Soviet Union; of the nationalised property relations.

This position is made more complex by the dual nature of the Stalinist bureaucracy. It is a parasitic privileged elite which oppresses the working class politically; but it is at the same time based on nationalised property Hungarian masses, 1956 relations which at times it is obliged to defend in order to defend its own power and privileges.

Though such "defence" takes bureaucratic and military forms, which open the acute danger of defeat, under certain conditions it must be supported.

For instance, whilst Trotskyists opposed the Stalinist invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the crushing of the Czech working class, had NATO or the UN intervened, posing as the defender of the Czech people, we would have supported the Soviet Union -since NATO and the UN would act solely in the interests of imperialism in a bid to restore capitalism in Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union itself.

In spelling out the necessity to remove the bureaucracy, a Transitional Programme points out clearly its main differentiation from the working class; and the need to wipe out social inequality:

"Down with the privileges of the bureaucracy! Down with Stakhanovism! [special rewards to workers who achieve "exemplary" output] Down with the Soviet aristocracy and its ranks and orders! [this refers to the reintroduction of ranks in the army] Greater equality of wages for all forms of labour!"

Trotsky goes on to outline a programme against the political oppression of the working class through the struggle for soviet democracy.

Stalin's new "Constitution" of 1936 had stripped away even the nominal power that had been held by the Soviets.

Places of work

The importance of soviets had been that they were formed from elected workers committees at the place of work. They formed a link with the 1917 revolution, and a reminder that the leading role in society had to be played by the working class.

In their place the New Constitution offered universal suffrage-whereby, as Trotsky pointed out, the worker's voice was only one of a mass.

The same period saw the Moscow Trials, in which all of the main surviving leaders of the Russian Revolution were condemned to death.

Trotskyists to this day see the struggle for the rehabilitation of these Communists and of Trotsky himself as part of the programme for political revolution, since it points to the right to struggle politically within the Soviets.

New Soviets While the Transitional Programme calls for the democratisation and driving of the bureaucracy from the Soviets, the lessons of the last 40 years make it clear that new Soviets, or workers councils, must be formed independently of the bureaucracy in order to carry through the political The vivid experience of 1956 uprising in Hungary saw the spontaneous beginnings and a glimpse of the potential of precisely such a development, and is crucial in the elaboration of the programme for political Such new Soviets will have no room for the bureaucracy, the GPU, or any of the men of privilege. And, as Trotsky makes clear, the workers in such bodies will decide by their votes which political parties should be recognised as entitled to a voice in the Soviets.

•The call for such Soviets stands at the centre of our for the deformed workers' states. As such it differentiates our position from those who call for democracy in general, giving unnecessary concessions to bourgeois democracy.

Alongside the struggle for soviet democracy; we call for the basic demands of the restoration of free trade unions and factory committees, freedom of the press and the right to free assem bly.

The bureaucracy is mortally afraid of such demands because they recognise that the moment they are enacted they open the road for the masses to organise in struggle for more far-reaching demands, and for political revolution itself.

Any slight concession along these lines-as in Czechoslovakia 1968, or, to a lesser extent, in China today-opens up the danger that the bureaucracy itself could be swept away by a hostile mass movement.

Political oppression

This is why the Soviet bureaucracy-even at times when it has made minimal economic concessions to the working class-has steered well clear of any relaxation of their political oppression.

And today this is the reason behind the heavy-handed Kremlin suppression of small unrepresentative groups of 'dissidents' and a rudimentary would-be 'free trade union'.

Trotsky in the Transitional Programme goes on to spell out the call for a revision of the planned economy 'in the interests of producers and comsumers' , giving factory committees the right to control production.

The Programme makes a similar call for the collective farms.

Open the books

As a step towards the reestablishment of workers" management of a planned economy warped by years of bureaucratic incompelence, Trotsky in Rerolution Betray'ed points to the need to:

"open the income and expense book of Soviet society"

And to expose also the manipulation of the state apparatus and judiciary by the bureaucracy, the Transitional Programme calls for the Moscow Trials to be "reviewed in the light of complete publicity"

Similarly Trotsky calls for an end to the reactionary secret diplomatic. wheeling and dealing by the Kremlin bureaucracy:

"The complete diplo. matic correspondence of the Kremiin to be published. Down with secret diplomacy!"

These elements of programme have come down to us from the Transitional Programme and others of Trotsky's writings on the Soviet Union.

But there are clearly many aspects that are not dealt with in Trotsky's analysis-largely those connected with the post-war experiences of struggle and uprisings against the Stalinist bureaucracy.

These aspects of the fight for political revolution will be dealt with in Part 2 of this article next week.

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Page 8 SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday ? February 1979