Problems of Poli

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Or hoists red flag above the Reichstag at the , new policy imnlementer. nancide Kremlin chief Brezhnev with servile army chiefs Two Leon Trotsky was murdered by Stalin's agent in 1940. As a result his writings leave unanswere a number of questions that arise in the struggle for the political overthrow of the Stalinist bureau:

cracy in the deformed workers' states.

His death came in the early years of the Second imperialist World War, and his analysis up to that time could not have anticipated the contradictory way in which the political and economic weakness of imperialism and the strength of the still leaderless working class would emerge in the post-war world.

Power extended

Trotsky had anticipated that the war would precipitate either the successful political revolution in the Soviet Union, or a restoration of capitalism if Stalin's policies led to outright defeat.

But as events turned out the-still unstable-Kremlin bureaucracy not only survived the war but, due to the unparallelled sacrifice and struggle of the Soviet and European masses, found its power 'extended into a circle of East European "buffer" states.

The uneven, hesitant, tentative and contradictory way in which the Kremlin leaders embarked on the process that was eventually to transform the capitalist property relations in these countries and instal monolithic Stalinist governments subordinate to the Soviet Union is examined in detail in the essays in the WSL's book Communists Against Uprisings® But the fact 'that this superficially straightforward extension of Soviet power actually weakened the control and stability of the Kremlin bureaucracy has been demonstrated time and again-from the 1948 inter-bureaucratic split between Tito and Stalin, to the series of political revolts and uprisings that have characterised the post-war history of Eastern Europe.

These uprisings have given substance to many of the general propostitions of Russian soldiei programme for political revolution spelled out by Trotsky.

For instance Trotsky calls for a "revision of the planned economy" and for the "opening of the books" of the workers state, without spelling out who should carry out such revision, or to whom these books should be opened.

Need for party

The Hungarian revolution of 1956 not only showed the strength of such demands, but also brought forward the organisations to implement them, and by its eventual failure tragically confirmed Trotsky's insistence on the need for a revolutionary party to lead the political revolution.

At the centre of the Hungarian events was the working class, which formed a "National Council of Free Trade Unions"

According even to the British Stalinist paper the Daily Worker (Oct. 1956) workers formed:

"Workers Councils in every factory to establish tem of state central planning and directing."

Stalinist-imposed managers were driven out of the factories and an entirely hoists red flag above the Reick new policy implemented:

"It called for the estab. lishment of a workers' militia, removal of Soviet troops, worker and techni. cian management of the factories and mines, and an end to the bureaucratic methods of central economic planning.

"Production norms were to be abolished (this proved a universal demand) except when agreed to and set by the workers factory committe in question.

"Minimum and maximum wage limits were to be set in accordance with socialist principles of equality.

"To back up this assault [on the bureaucracy] it intended to lean upon armed workers organised into factory and trade union militias.

"Through workers' participation in planning and factory management, the regulation of production and the distribution of its benefits could now come under the scrutiny and control of the working class and its independent organisations.

"In this way it could expose and make impossible the graft and corruption upon which the state and Party bureaucracy thrived and added to. its already considerable privileges."

(Robert Black: The Newsletter, Nov. 12 1966)

In this major struggle new soviets began to develop in Hungary; elected committees challenged bureaucratic administrators for the control and management of industry.

And at the same time workers raised the demand for the release of all polítical prisoners and for an "unconditional amnesty for all revolutionists"

But without the leadership of a Trotskyist party capable of fully grasping the contradictory nature and historical origin of the bureaucracy, internationally and otne fighting simultaneously in the Soviet Union and the other workers' states to prevent any military intervention, the odds were stacked against the Hungarian masses.

Joint militias

The uprising did, however, ofter an answer-albeit an improvised and spontaneous one-to another problem not tackled in Trotsky's programme for political revolution: the Stalinist secret police.

The Hungarian workers hunted them down, dragged them out and shot them. And they began the formation of the necessary alternative machinery-joint militias of workers, students and rank and file soldiers.

But further questions stand in obvious need of development if the Transitional Programme is to be made adequate to the tasks of political revolution in our epoch.

In particular the struggle against the Stalinists' suppression of national rights within the borders of the Soviet Union itself (where less than half the population regards itself as Russian) takes on a particular significance as national antagonisms begin to reemerge as one of the forms of anti-bureaucratic From time Brezhnev notorious '"Georgian affair"

onwards, Stalin's domestic policy was characterised by a brutish chauvinism towards national minorities, with whole peoples finding themselves literally transplanted at gunpoint to conform to the wishes of the Kremlin.

• Stalin's heirs have proved themselves no less contemptuous of national rights both within the borders of the USSR and throughout the European buffer zone.

Self-determination

The revolutionary regime headed by Lenin and Trotsky in far weaker material circumstances, took steps to guarantee the right of national minorities to self-determination within the USSR.

This policy must today be defended and incorporated into the programme for political revolution.

Position of women

Other aspects. of bureaucratic oppression must also be consciously brought forward and combatted. In particular, Revolution Betrayed highlights the impact of Stalinist policies on the position of women in society.

The 1930s saw a sustained drive by the Stalinists to restore and strengthen the individual family unit left over from bourgeois society.

The early moves made after the October Revolution towards socialisation of domestic labour-in particular communal dining rooms and child care-were thrown into reverse by a bureaucracy seeking to check progressive social movements and build a base of support among the most backward layers of Soviet society.

The call for the restoration of the right to free abortion on demand, free divorce, full state provision of child care, and communal catering is an essential part of a fight to return to the path of Lenin and the October Revolution.

Youth The struggle against the reimposed shackles of the family also involves a clear demand for an end to all forms of repression and discrimination against gays.

The youth, too, suffer from the rigorous regimenThe Workers Socialist League bases itself on the struggie for the reconstruction of the Fourth International as the basis for the overthrow of capitalism and of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the deformed workers states of Europe, Asia and Cuba.

The problems posed in each case are different.

Workers in the capitalist countries are faced with the task of social revolutionthe expropriation of the means of production from the capitalist class through the building of independent organs of workers' power:

But in the deformed tation of thought and discussion by the bureaucracy;

and from the continued oppression of the family unit.

In 1936 Trotsky argued that rebellious youth faced a choice of either going into science or going underground to fight.

, The subsequent imposition of Party discipline on scientific theories has. removed any illusions that the first option offers any real way out.

But the substitution of "psychiatric treatment" in the modern-day USSR for the more brazenly physical Stalin head tortures utilised by Stalin against opponents mean that any form of political opposition must remain furtively organised, underground resistance.

The demand for the right to open political expression thus takes on a particular importance for the development of the youth-potentially the most determined force to combat the deadening weight of bureaucracy.

Red Army Perhaps the most complex issue to be tackled in a programme for political revolution is the question of the Red Army.

In Revolution Betrayed Trotsky makes the call for the election of officers, and the abolition of ranks, recently reintroduced by Stalin. The Transitional Programme includes Red Army men along with workers as those who should be allowed in to the soviets.

Indeed it is within the Red Army that the building of soviets is crucial.They do not at present exist.

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workers' states, private ownership of the means of production has already been eliminated. State power however is monopolised by a parasitic Stalinist bureaucracy.

The task in , these countries is political revolution-the overthrow of this reactionary bureaucracy and the establishment of workers' management of the This article will concentrate on the problem of political revolution, and point to elements of programme necessary to prepare for it.

They were ended, and permanent ranks and privileges reintroduced as a conscious policy by Stalin who required total bureaucratic control over the army as over every other aspect of Soviet society.

As part of this stranglehold Stalin . ordered the execution of the vast majority of the leading cadres in the army, in order to break its links with the revolutionary heritage of the Bolshevik revolution.

But for all: this clear evidence of the way in which the Army has been moulded into a tool of the " mass military demonstration Kremlin bureaucracy, a profound contradiction remains-flowing from the dual nature of the bureauçracy itself.

While the Red Army is undoubtedly used at present to defend the privileges and political dictatorship of the ruling Stalinist clique, at the same time it is also the armed force that defends, according to the bureaucratic methods of the bureaucracy, the nationalised property relations upon which these privileges and political power are based.

Our understanding of imperialism makes us recognise that it is driven by its crisis towards attacking the workers' states in a bid to force them back into its orbit of' exploitation.

Armed defence against such an eventuality is crucial. Hence the necessity for the Red Army and Warsaw Pact to defend the workers' states.

Despite the fact that the .:unter-revolutionary : ¿inist strategy of "pe ace: existence" effecti rely May Day parade, 1937: three strengthens imperialism, we stand for unconditional defence of the socialised property relations in the deformed workers' states.

Of course those tendencies that see only one side of the actions of the bureaucracy fal to recognise the contradiction.

Some see only the reactionary face of bureaucratic intervention as in East Germany in 1953 or Hungary in 1956. They draw from these impressions a call for the disbanding of the Red Army.

Impressions

Others see only the progressive side of the Red Army-its role in the overturn of capitalist property relations in post-war Eastern Europe. These impressions led them in 1953 to make no call for the withdrawal of the Red Army from East Germany, even while it moved in to crush an anti bureaucratic workers' uprising.

It is crucial to recognise both sides of the role played by the Red Army.

For instance in Czechoslovakia in 1968 Trotskyists called for the immediate withdrawal of Soviet troops precisely because their role was defence of the Kremlin and Czech bureaucracy against the working class.

But had NATO troops intervened in a bid to restore capitalism in Czechoslovakia Trotskyists would have declared themselves unequivocally for the victory of the Russian troops over imperialism.

Context

Indeed even when we describe certain actions of the Red Army as historically progressive we must keep sight of the overall context in which such actions take place, and the totally counter-revolutionary strategy of the bureaucracy taken as a whole.

Such an approach essential for instance of the Generals in the front row analysing the intervention of Cuban troops in Angola.

Here their initial progressive' role in carrying forward the fight against imperialism has led onto their current role as chief military prop for President Neto's petty bourgeois nationalist regime.

And the whole intervention took place as a part of Moscow's attempts to establish bureaucratic/military alliances in Africa to compensate for the failure of its. diplomacy in the Middle East, growing splits within the Warsaw Pact, and the growing support given by the 'Eurocommunist' parties to their 'own' bourgeoisies and the NATO alliance.

Cuban • troops now defend Neto against any revolutionary oppositon as he cements closer ties with imperialism for the continuation of the exploitation of oil and mineral resources in Cabinda and the operation of the Benguela rallway.

But the left' credibility established by the initial anti-imperialist struggle has equipped the Cuban forces to give a 'left' face to the reactionary Derg military dictatorship, and intervene behind a smokescreen of 'socialist' rhetoric to help the Derg's bid to • smash the Eritrean liberation Contradiction Trotsky in In Defence of Marxism stressed the necessity of understanding the 'progressive' actions of the Red Army as one side of a contradiction. • Writing on the Russian invasion of Eastern Poland in 1939, he pointed out that:

"The primary political criterion for us is not the transformation of property relations in this or another area, however important these may be in themselves, but rather the change in the consciousness and organisation of the world proletariat, the raising of their capacity for defending were killed by Stalin shortly afterwards former conquests and accomplishing new ones. From this one, and the only decisive standpoint, the politics of Moscow, taken as whole, completely retains its reactionary character and remains the chief obstacle on the road to the worid Our general appraisal of the Kremlin and the Comintern does not, however, alter the particular fact that the statification of property in the occupied territories is in itself a progressive measure. We must recognise this openly. Were Hitler on the morrow to throw his armies against the east to restore 'law and order' in eastern Poland, the advanced workers would defend against. Hitler these new property forms established by the Bonapartist Soviet bureaucracy.

The statification of the means of production is, as we said, a progressive measure. but is progressiveness is relative; its specific weight depends on the sumtotal of all the other factors. Thus, we must first and foremost establish that the extension of the territory dominated by bureaucratic autocracy and parasitism, cloaked by 'socialist' measures, can augment the prestige of the Kremlin, engender ulusions con - 1-- :11.. cerning the possibility of replacing the proletarian revolution by bureaucrațic manoeuvres, and so on. This evil by far outweighs the progressive content of Stalinist reforms in Poland."

Withdraw troops

Following this approach we call now in Ethiopia for the withdrawal of Russian and Cuban troops and the arming of the Eritrean liberation forces. In this way the Ethiopian and Eritrean masses would best be able to pursue their revolutionary struggles against the Derg.

On the other hand we did not take the 'position initially held by the American Socialist Workers Party of calling for the withdrawal of all troops from 'Angola at the time of the Cuban intervention.

We gave critical support to the MPLA against the CIA and South African-backed FNLA/UNITA forces. And when the MPLA requested the aid of Cuban troops in their anti-imperialist struggle we supported them being sent, while at the same time warning of the petty bourgeois nationalist nature of the MPLA leadership and the need for a revolutionary Soviets But one element of programme not spelled out by the WSL at that time was for the Angolan workers' movement to connect up in every way possible with the Cuban soldiers, and for the soldiers themselves to fight for control of their intervention through the election of officers and the development of soviets within their own ranks.

Trotsky in In Defence of Marxism suggested a similar approach in spelling out a way forward in Russianoccupied Poland:

66 .. in the sections of Poland occupied by the Red Army, partisans of the Fourth International must play the most decisive part in expropriațing the land. lords and capitalists, in dividing the land among the peasants, in creating soviets and workers committees, etc. While so doing, they must preserve their political independence, they must fight during elections in the soviets and factory committees for the complete independence of the latter from the bureaucracy, and they must conduct revolutionary propaganda in the spirit of distrust towards the Kremlin and its local agencies"

.. During the military struggle against Hitler, the revolutionary workers will strive to enter mto the closest possible comradely relations with the rank and file fighters of the Red Army.

While arms in hand they deal blows to Hitler, the Bolshevik Leninists will at the same time conduct revolutionary propaganda against Stalin, preparing his overthrow at the nrit and perhaps very near stage."

In the historical context Trotsky's work stands out as a clear guide. His writings point the way to analyse events such as the bureaucratic overturns of capitalism in post war Eastern Europe, and present a complete answer to those impressionists who would seize on these overturns as evidence of the "progressive" nature of Stalinism.

In the event, Stalin used his military control of the Eastern European 'buffer' states in the same way as his conscious betrayal of revolutionary possibilities in France, Italy and Greeceto establish a new arrangement for "peaceful coexistence" with imperialism on a world scale.

'This article is not intended as an exhaustive analysis of a programme for political revolution in the deformed workers' states of Eastern Europe though obviously the demands for national self-determination would play a major role in such. programme, combined with the necessity to defend nationalised property relations both, in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union itself.

For this reason we are opposed to any call to disband the Warsaw Pact alliance, A programme for political revolution must instead start from the need mobilise both the working class and rank and file soldiers independently of their • bureaucratic Stalinist leaders.

On the other hand it is important to include the demand that the USSR and East European states withdraw from the imperialist "thieves kitchen" of the United Nations, and from the Helsinki "peaceful coexistence" pact.

Only , by directing oppositional political currents "back to Lenin" and towards the analysis of the Stalinist bureaucracy developed by Trotsky can they draw the essential conclusion: the necessity to build Trotskyist parties, as part of a reconstructed Fourth International, to provide conscious leadership in the struggle for political Concluded Trotsky

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workers' management and radically transform the sys-