Swp: the Politics of State Capitalism

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'art Two of a series by Keith White The leadership of the International Marxist Group are fond of quoting Trotsky to the effect that it would be monstrous to split with comrades over the analysis of the Soviet Union-if firm agreement existed We would agree with Trotsky but theory of state capitalism has a profound -something we begin to explain below.

Trotsky-fought Stalinism from Marxist standpoint Polish workers riot in 1970: clarity is needed in struggle for political revolution on the political tasks of the day.

Every communist in Britain and advanced capitalist countries sooner or later is confronted by the jibe "Get back to Russia". Everyone who attempts to fight in the working class for a communist perspective has to answer the question "it didn't work in Russia why should it work here?"

In answering these attacks and questions comrades often find there is little time before the questioner throws up his or her hands and walks away. It is a test of those who would argue to the home communist that they resist the temptation to adapt themselves to this sometimes hostile environment by rushing disclaim any responsibility, for what both the stalinists falsely call the communist 'states' and the capitalist class each for their own reasons.

The fight for a clear understanding of the Soviet Union and other stalinist states is a central part of the struggle for revolutionary parties througout the world.

Public opinion

If the pressure of bourgeois 'public opinion' is great in Britain today, what must it have been tike at the height of the Cold War? Certainly in the USA communists were subjected to the most vicious campaigns. Many lost their jobs or were jailed.

The most famous victims were of course the Rosenburgs executed on trumped up charges of spying for the Soviet Union.

These were the material conditions that explain the emergence of the present day Socialist Workers Party in Britain.

Now Socialist Workers Party spokesman Paul Foot writes that:

"The Socialists started in the early 1960's as a very small fringe group."

(Why You Should be a Socialist p91).

But he is not being entirely honest.

Fled trom fight

We can date the emergence of the IS/SWP from 1950 when a group around Tony Cliff fled from the Trotskyist movement at the time of the Korean War and growing Cold War propaganda to form the Socialist Review Group. :

This is significant in view of the fact that, as we began to show last week. SWP today has a profound contempt for Marxist theory.

But we should note that this same group had its origins in 1950's theoretical discussion circle which scarcely intervened in the class struggle at all.

This seemingly contradictory development becomes understandable once one considers the nature of the theories which the Socialist Review group developed, and the class pressures which gave rise to these theories.

The post-war world differed from what Trotskyists had expected in two fundamental ways.

On the one hand the Stalinist bureaucracy emerged from the war with its power extended by the absorption of Eastern Europe and later China into its orbit of influence.

Betrayals

On the other hand, the betrayal of the Stalinists in Western "Europe enabled capitalism to re establish itself on a more stable basis.

Both these developments were based on the betrayal of the working class internationally by its mass leaders during the war and in the years 1944-1947.

These betrayals in turn led to the isolation of the only groups calling, for a proletarian revolution, the Trotskyists.

The anti-communist witchhunt which developed made it very difficult to maintain the Trotskyist position of defending the nationalised property relations in the Soviet Union as a gain for the working class.

Reacting to these Tony Cliff began to question whether Russia was a workers' state.

What then, was the immediate effect of Cliff's theories on his comrades' practice in the early 1950's?

Plan Birchall in his history of IS-Part 1 (int. Soc. No 76) claims that the Socialist Review Group: "made no concessions to the Western Alliance and the South Korean dictatorship it supported."

• He quotes from Socialst Review of Nov/Dec 1951 that:

The Labour movement must oppose the alliance with Truman, Adenauer, Syngman Rhee and other representatives of Western Democracy'., they must fight for an alliance with the millions of toilers of Europe, Asia, Africa and the rest of the world."

He also quotes the May 1952 issue which denounced 'the full-scale colonial wars in Vietnam and Malaya.

Adaptation

However, Birchali made no attempt to include in these brief lines any attempt to rebutt the evidence brought forward by Ken Tarbuck (who was Secretary of the Socialist Review Group in its initial period) that the first issue of Socialist Review carried two articles on the Korean War which adapted the two pressures of public opinion.

"In fact two articles appeared on this question in the first issue of Socialist Review. The very first article in the journal was "The struggle of the Powers" by R. Vennant (Tony Cliff). This devoted two pages to criticising American imnarialism_and neariv five pages to attacking "Russian imperialism"

The Socialist Group's salin other article on this was entitled 'Whither Outlook" (the Healy paper in the Labour This is a scathing attack on the "pro-Stalinist" policy being pursued by Socialist Outlook (which supported North Korea against US imperialism).

It very clearly separated Socialist Review from such policies and took an uncompromising 'third camp' position.

Thus at a crucial time when imperialism was threatening the North Korean and Chinese : states Socialist Review appeared and played the role of left cover for the enemies of those fighting in the British labour movement for defence of the workers states.

Cliff's book Russia-A Marxist Analysis" bases itself on the absence of workers" democracy at all levels in Russia.

It argues that in the absence of workers control over planning, the bureaucracy becomes a class whose survival depends on a high rate of capital accumulationon to defend itself against the Western powers and against its own working class.

Parties

The Stalinist parties it claims are just the representativoe of nna nartirular ranitalict siIn ın eaAt IDInA1 IbA class in the other capitalist Use..tThe greatest danger of such an analysis is that it ignores the historical significance of the Soviet Union the international workers movement.

It is no accident that the Stalinist parties lead the masses of workers and peasants in most parts of the world.

That is a consequence of the Russian revolution. The power of the Stalinists to lead and betray millions rests entirely on the fact that capitalism has been abolished in the Soviet Union.

With a state capitalist theory it becomes completely impossible to understand the strength of Stalinism and the importance of the struggle against it.

State capitalism is a theory which is useless in guiding the everyday struggle against Stalinism in the working class but which provided an attractive pole for recruitment in the petty bourgeois intelligentsia disgusted with the cold war, and moving towards pacifist and non-class organisations such as CND.

Eloquent

If the members of the SWP want to find the most eloquent denunciations of the bureaucracy they need look no further than Trotsky, but they will find in his writings neither liberal revulsion nor adaptation to In Trotsky's 15,003 onusa. Chinese troops in Korea in 191 "Revolution Betrayed" his starting point is an attempt to define the class nature of the Soviet state was not simply to ask "do the workers control the state"? but to look at the ruling bureaucracy from the point of view of its relationship to the means of production.

"The nationalisation of the land, the means of industrial production,: transport and exchange, together with the monopoly of foreign trade constitute the basis of Soviet social structure. Through these relations, established by the poletarian revolution, the nature of the Soviet Union as: a proletarian state is for us basically defined." (p 248).

Defend USSR:

It was because of those nationalised property relations that time and time again Trotsky insisted on the need to defend the Soviet Union in the event of an attack by imperialism.

Under capitalism the means of production are held in the form of private property. The capitalist produces commodities for sale on the market in order to expand his private capital.

The expansion of capital is the increase in value held by the ruling class either in money or in the means of production.

The source of this value is that proportion of the labour time worked by those who are forced to sell their labour power for which they are unpaid.

This process does not take place in the Soviet economy, where what is in fact accumulated is not capital but means of The bureaucracy, to be sure, makes certain that it creams off the necessary resources to provide itself with privileges and the comforts of life. But the process by which this takes place is one of appropriation, not exploitation.

Again, as Trotsky writes,: "The attempt to represent the Soviet bureaucracy as a class of 'state capitalists' will obviously not withstand criticism.

"The bureaucracy has neither stocks nor bonds. It is recruited in the manner or ad renewed administrative hierarchy, independently of any special property relations of its own.

"The individual bureaucrat cannot transmit to his hairs his rights in the exploitation of the state apparatus.

"The bureaucracy enjoys its privileges under the form of an abuse of power.

"It conceals its income; it pretends that as a special social group it does not ever exist.

"Its appropriations of a vast share of the national income has the character of social parasitism.

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Cliff's group refused to defend "All this makes the posițion of the commanding Soviet stratum in the highest degree contradictory, equivocal and undignified, notwithstanding the completeness of its power and the smokescreen of flattery that conceals it."

The crisis which faces the capitalists and that which faces the Stalinist bureaucracies are intimately related, but are different in origin.

The capitalist faces a crisis of profits: but the bureaucrat faces a crisis ushered in by the impossibility of constructing socialism in one country in a hostile capitalist world.

This is compounded by the inefficiencies of bureaucratic production methods which suppress that force-the working class-which alone can express "the deeply rooted inner needs of production" (In Defence of Marxism, p.7).

That is to say, while the working class is prevented from taking charge of the socially owned means of production, no efficient planning can take place.

Despite the crushing weight of the bureaucracy, however, great strides have been made by the soviet economy.

Logically, therefore, the IS/SWP theory of state capitalism should lead to a recognition that the productive forces can be expanded through the medium of state capitalist regimes, and that they are therefore progressive in relation to a rotting crisis-ridden capitalism.

For a marxist this would lead to a position of support for the Snviet 'mlina class' as 4110 against the Western capitalist classes.

But even this line the IS/SWP is not prepared to take , up for two very simple reasonsit conflicts with the IS/SWP line nf arrammadation to anticommunist pressure in Western capitalist society: and their political theories are not marxist but liberal.

For Trotskyists, the developments which have taken place in the Soviet economy are the result of the nationalised property relations which are in fact held back, restricted and ultimately endangered by the Soviet bureaucracy.

Not finished Trotsky in no way regarded the class nature of the Soviet union to be a finished question.

ITha Lia as well as the political is not to give a finished definition to an unfinished process but to follow all its stages, separate its progressive from its reactionary tendencies, expose their mutual Korea, the Soviet Union China relations, foresee possible variants of development and find in this foresight a basis for action" (Revolution Betrayed, pp.255-256).

The definition Trotsky gave was as follows:

"The Soviet Union is a contradictory society halfway between capitalism and socialism, in which (a) the productive forces are still far from adequate to give the state property a socialist character; (b) the tendency towards primitive accumulation created by want breaks out through innumerable pores of the planned economy; (c) norms of distribution preserving a bourgeois character lie at the basis of a new differentiation of society; (d) the economic growth, while slowly bettering the situation of the toilers, promotes a swift formation of privileged strata; (e) exploiting the social antagonisms, a bureaucracy has converted itself into an uncontrolled caste alien to socialism; (f) the socila revolution, betrayed by the ruling party, still exists in property relations and in the consciousness of the toiling masses; (g) a further development of the accumulating contradictions can as well lead to socialism as back to capitalism; (h) on the road to capitalism the counter-revolution would have to break the resistance of the workers; (i) on the road to socialism the workers would have to overthrow the bureaucracy. In the last analysis the question will be decided by a struggle of living social forces, both on the national and the world arena'"

It is this contradictory, dialectical nature of the Soviet Union that the IS/SWP cannot grasp.

For them something is either A or B-but never a combination of both.

The post-war social overturns by Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe, China and by Stalinist-backed nationalist forces in Cuba have further complicated the situation for those who want to see the word in such hlack and white terms.

• be ....

The IS/SWP are correct in pointing to the widespread confusion in the Trotskyist movement in relation to Stalinism; but they themselves have taken a step far more serious than have the opportunist sections of the post-war Fourth International, and openly abandoned Trotskyism altogether.

Thace mamhare of tho CIP who wish seniously to slue to study the work on Stalinism carried out by the WSLespecially our book 'Communists Against RevoluEastern Europe against imperialism tion.

There they will see a development of Trotsky's positions into an analysis of the post-war world reality.

Again the contradictory nature of Stalinism has to be grasped if we are to understand the process which has gone on.

For uS the defermed workers' states created by the Stalinists in Moscow, Peking, Belgrade, Havanna, Hanoi etc. -for all their manifest reactionary aspects.-are gains for the working class internationally.

Yet we must repeat that in those states it is only the nationalised property relations which we defend.

We are implacably opposed to 'the bureaucracies which repress the workers there. Like Trotsky, we refuse to defend each and every action of the Stalinists on a world scale.

For us as with Trotsky there are no blue-prints, no pat formulae:

"In every case the Fourth International will know how to distinquish where and when the Red Army is acting solely as an instrument of the Bonapartist reaction and where it defends the social basis of the USSR."

In his dispute with the Schactmanite opposition that argued for a "state capitalist" view of the Soviet Union within the US Trotskyist party, the SWP, Trotsky posed the nilactinn "ran the nracont varr LIC HICOCHIL expansion of the Kremlin be termed imperialism?"

His reply to his own question is that: "... in contemporary literature, at least Marxist literature, imperialism is understood to mean the sionist policy of finance While stressing the fact that the bureaucracy is indeed an agent of imperialism within the workers' state, Trotsky goes on to say:

"If we want to define the foreign policy of the Kremlin exactly, we must say that it is the policy of the Bonapartist bureaucracy of a degenerated workers' state in imperialist encirclement. This definition is not as short or as sonorous as Tony Cliff "imperialist policy" but it is more precise" (In Defence of Marxism, pp.33-34).

This in essence remains the nature of Soviet foreign policy. Surrounded on all sides with a hostile capitalism it attempts to shift and manoeuvre in order to recreate the "peaceful coexistence" with imperialism on which its survival depends.

Thus we have seen continual attempts by the Stalinists to defuse the class struggle and reach an accommodation with capitalist classes throughout the world.

Grudging aid

Aid was only grudgingly Vietnam. In given to Norin vieinam. « Africa today despite the dispatching of Cuban troops to Angola, the entire strategy is the establishment of peace with influence.

HUY.

Despite all this we ask the members of the SWP to consider this question. What would be the effect of a successful overthrow of the Kremiin bureaucracy at the hands of the capitalist states?

Would this not usher in a new period of capitalist accumulation and growth?

We know that the Kremlin attempts to check the upsurge of the colonial revolution.

But what would be the effect on colonial revolutions of a successful reconquest of power by western capitalism in what you call the "state capitalist" countries?

development of a new capitalist class was inevitable if Russia remained isolated.

The alternative economic policies advocated by Preobrazhensky and Bukharin both led to the restoration of capitalism.

This view is extended in "Deflected Permanent Revolution" to an international scale.

A working class victory in any backward country is said to be impossible, whereas a state capitalist development would develop the productive forces rapidly and lay the basis for a socialist revolution.

Neutrality

This new development of the theory enabled IS to move from a position of neutrality as the Korean War (which was seen as a squabble over spheres of influence of rival capitalist powers) to a position of support for the NLF in Vietnam (a state capitalist victory would be progressive).

It is interesting that this political shift by IS coincided with a shift in the position of the British petit-bourgeoisie from pacifism towards support for anti-imperialist struggle las long as they were a long way away).

The theory that state capitalism in backward countries could be progressive was always implied in the theory of state capitalism itself.

But its formal development marked a further important step in the IS break with Trotskyism.

It undermined the • whole Leninst concept of the present imperialist epoch as the highest stage of capitalism.

If there is in fact a higher form of capitalism which can develop the third world, then clearly capitalism as a system is not rotten ripe for socialism, and the crisis of proletarian leadership is' not immediately posed This reactionary theory clearly lies behind both IS's refusal in the 60s to recognise the importance of building a disciplined party, and its theory of the "vacuum on the left"

Permanent arms economy To put this further in perspective it is necessary to look at the Socialist Review Group's explanation of the long boom' which rests, on. their theory of the 'permanent arms economy'."

According to this notion, the arms race between capitalist and state. capitalist countries provides a highly profitable investment sector and soaks up surplus capital which could otherwise cause a recession.

This whole argument flies in the face of marxist economics. In the first place, arms as part of the luxury goods sector are financed out of the profits of the consumer and producer goods sector.

A high level of profitability in arms can only be financed by higher taxation-which must reduce profits correspondingly in the other sectors.

Furthermore, the whole expenditure on arms is a burden on the productive sectors and will slow down the accumulation of productive capital.

Shortage

Far from capitalism suffering from a surplus of capital it suffers from an ever more and more acute shortage as the declining rate of profit takes effect.

The only way arms expenditure can benefit a capitalist country is if through use of the arms it enables the country in question by imperialist exploitation to obtain raw materials more cheaply than its rivals.

The IS theory, insofar as it is consistently held, suggests that because there is a surplus of capital, the struggle of the working class for a greater share of production, and of the third world countries against imperialism actually strengthen capitalism.

This is of course capitulation to the worst kinds of Keynesian bourgeois economics, which deny any difference of interests between workers and capital.

It was a theory most popular in the petit-bourgeoisie during the "boom" , but which reality has rudely shattered in the 1970s.

The "theories" of the Permanent Arms Economy and of Deflected Permanent Revolution raised the prospect of a long period of stability, in which the building of a party was not only a hopeless but even an unnecessary task.

This again fitted conveniently with the petit-bourgeois lifestyle and outlook of the Socialist Review Group and its periphery.

It did not locate the causes of a temporary stability precisely in the crisis of leadership of the world proletariat.

Its theory was an explanation by adaptation to petit-bourgeois prejudice. In no way could it serve as a basis for action.

When IS began to recruit workers it was therefore to be expected that it would adapt to their level of consciousness in the same way as it had to the petit-bourgeoisie.

But it still remains an essentially petit-bourgeois group.

Because it does not see things in terms of a crisis of leadership, it has developed the notion that there is a "vacuum" of leadership in the working class rather than a conscious counter-revolutionary leadership of reformists and Stalinists.

It therefore thinks that all that is needed is to generalise the struggles of the class, and not to break the political hold of the existing leadership.

Petty bourgeois

It is precisely the petit-bourgeois nature of IS theory which has led to the opposition to Marxist theory so crudely displayed by its leadership and reflected among its members.

Their theory has no relation to their everyday needs in struggle, and they are therefore left : to thelr spontaneous political responses.

These spontaneous moods and feelings are of course no match for the developed counter-revolutionary understanding of the capitalists and their reformist and Stalinist servants.

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LIST PRES Wednesday June 2 71979 In Docember 1974 Joremy Isaacs, head of Thames TV sent out a notorious memo.

It read in part:

"The law in this country has changad, I am advised that it is llegai to intarviow on tolovision mombats of organisations proscribed under the Provention of Terrorism Act. So far the satiadula of proscribed organisa. tions consists of only one, the IRA.

"From now on it is impera. tive that no approach be made by any of you for an interviow with any momber of a terrorist organisation in this country without the prior consent of the Controller of Current Affairs and Documentaries. John Edwards, who will obtain my positivo approval batore giving permission to go choad."

In the annals of British reporting of Ireland this is just one of the written instructions to censor the opinions of republicans in Ireland which have become part of the history of the British media, and therefore of British imperialism.

The history of the press in selfast Europ an ary spokagain said today that rubber balloti vero used ir Anderzonstown, Beliast.

No cunuclties were ruported...

(500 pure arie) reports, Immediate eye witness accounts were later ignored, in favour of army (police) accounts.

Although this pamphlet attempts to place the censorship in terms of imperialism there is no analysis of the struggle against British imperialism itself.

Fail to progress

The producers of the pamphlet would certainly argue that this was not its aim, but the effect is to fail to progress from liberal demands for a 'freer' press to revolutionary demands for an end to imperialism in Ireland or indeed for nationalistion of the press under workers' control.

It also allows some odd mixture of articles. One concentrates on lambasting one journalist in the pocket of the British army, in a way which suggests that the problem of reporting in Ireland is an individual one.

However there is again a wealth of material illustrating particular examples of how stories are released by the army and" used as front page news

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Theory and practice

not with the IMG, for the Cliff effect on the politics of the SWP

Cliff argued in "Russia-a Marxist analysis" that the