Is There a Split in World Stalinism?

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What is the basic significance of splits within the world Stalinist movement? Are they real splits, or merely skirmishes among bureaucrats? What is their connection with the offensive of the working class, and the response of imperialism to it? These are questions of fundamental importance for the working class which A letter from Comrade H. raised important questions divisions within the world stai held over for reasons of space) are raised in Comrade H.L's letter Comrade H.L. is absolutely right to insist that the divisions which came to head at the 25th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party between the CPSU and the leaderships of some of the main Western European CPs (see Socialist Press of March 10th) contain not a shred of revolutionary principle on either side.

But does it follow from-this that these divisions are of only superficial importance, without any long-run consequences or impact on the international class struggle?

And does it follow - as Cde H.L suggests - that the main splitting of worla Stalinism will take place within national CPs rather than between CPs internationally?

NATIONAL LINES

In our opinion the splitting of the world stalinist movement along national - lines is of very considerable importance in the struggle for an international revolutionary leadership which can unite the working class in different countries.

• The Stalinist splits express in a direct way the partial, bureaucratic basis of the Stalinist caste and its opportunist and counterrevolutionary political character: precisely because this is so they can not be easily healed.

This may be seen in the political moves by the French and Italian CPs following the 25th CPSU • Cde. B.L. sees the French Stalinists' formal abandonment of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat" and the rejection of 'internationalsm' directed from Moscow as 'completely in line with the wishes of the Soviet But consider what has followed on the heels of these 'fraternal' disagreements.

COALITION

the last few weeks the Italian CP has not only reiterated its willingness to enter a coalition with the Christian Democrats, but has pledged in advance that within such a coalition it would not seek to alter in any way the structure or budget of NATO, and that it would not seek the 'sensitive' ministries of defence or foreign affairs.

The French CP has come out clearly in support of France's own' nuclear weapons - which play a central role in French military planning : and are, as everyone knows, directed in reality only at the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

And hoping to trade on the anti-Americanism of the French middle classes, they have sharply denounced the Polish Prime Minister for conferring on President Giscard d'Estaing "nationalist' credentials which they consider should properly be theirs.

These are not secondary differences. They touch directly on the international military and diplomatic policies of the Kremlin, and on its ability to continue to use the policies of the Western European CPs-as bargaining counters with the main capitalist States. :

As the CPs tie themselves more closelv to the interests of classof Cowley in garding Socia st movement. printed below collaboration with their own' national capitalist class, they necessarily run into conflict with the Soviet leadership's strategic requirements for collaboration and 'balance' with imperialism on a world scale.

That is why there has been stalemate for a year on Moscow's plans for a conference and joint policy declaration of European Communist Parties.

These divisions and splits are the necessary outcome of the political degeneration •of the Third (Communist) International at the hands of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union.

When Stalin dissolved the Comintern in 1943, to please his capitalist allies, he declared, in his way, what the Trotskyist movement was insisting since the 1920s: that the bureaucracy was hostile to international unity of the working class, that it sought always local, național, ad hoc compromises with the capitalist powers.

COLLABORATION

Atter decades of being urged by Moscow - down the roads of domestic class-collaboration and bourgeois respectability there is attle wonder that the leaderships of the French, Italian, British and Spanish CPs now discover that their duties to their 'own' ruling classes and the particular requirements of compromise and manoeuvre in their 'own' countries now compete violently with their historical loyalty to Moscow.

It is very important to grasp that the roots of the post-war splits in the Stalinist 'monolith lie in the bureaucratic social basis and opportunist political character of Stalinism itself.

Thev were anticinated in the Socialist Press of April 7th ilist Press of Apri list Press's assessment of Press's • assessmer Our reply (which has been reply (which has violent zig-zags of Stalinist policy before the war: from the ultra-left 'social fascist acism today, ridic spied be German workers movement and allowed Hitler to power, through the Popular Front coalitions with 'patriotic and democratic' capitalist politicians (being explicitly revived by the Western European CPs today, back to the criminal pact with Hitler on the eve of the Second World War.

At each turn the stalinist 'monolith' twisted the interests of the workers movement and the national CPs to the immediate self-interest of the bureaucratic caste -though not without the most enormous strains and damage to their own ranks.

Tito, Ceausescu, Carillo and Mao.

In this process was selected and trained a breed of bureaucrats for whom cringing obedience to Moscow became second nature, for whom slander, lying, double-talk and opportunism were a daily routine.

But such politics, and such a cadre, could not possibly form a permanently united international movement. In the article to which Cde. H.L. mainly by using the described Stalinism metaphor of a scab, which cracks and splits in the course of its own development, reflecting the pressures underneath it.

Naturally, like any metaphor, it Is only approximate; nonetheless the parallel reflects some of the essential features of post-war All of Stalinism shares a common historical origin: the establishment of the Soviet Union and its degeneration.

it is parasitic political formation, not a new social class; consequently it cannot have any permanent existence OI independent historical goals. And it begins to fragment itself into national blocks,reflecting the fact that the Stalinist-ruled states have reproduced and preserved the old state divisions of capitalism, and that within. capitalist states the Stalinist 'opposition' forces are all driven to seek their own national trada This fragmentation has objective roots, and the splits that take place (and have already taken place) within world Stalinism are neither willed nor even ioreseen by the bureaucratic tops in Moscow.

Cde. H.L. reters to (but does not discuss) the Sino-Soviet split. which has certainly not proceded according to the desires of either side. Yet this split overshadows all others in the world Stalinist movement in the postwar period, and it is one that very . clearly arises from the fact that both Moscow Stalinism and Peking Stalinism stand on national ground, are intent on defending and consolidating their own national positions, and are prepared to subordinate all principles of support or defence of the international workers' movement to these requirements.

NO PRINCIPLES Whatever revolutionary or 'Marxist' phraseology may be employed from time to time, it is in no sense a question of one side defending even the vestiges of revolutionary principle against the other.

The split has now carried the Chinese leadership, which originally assumed a garb of into foreign policy more reactionary than that of Moscow Stalinism in the whole post-war period, and to the point of becoming openly the broker for military alliances with the imperialist powers against the Soviet Union.

The Sino-Soviet split is, of course, in many ways formed by the fact that the Chinese Communist Party has taken power independently. (and against Stalin's wishes), with its own mass base and as the result of a protracted revolutionary civil war. (A similar history was key in precipitating the split between Stalin and Tito in 1948.)

BASE But the essential factor is the national, conservative social base of each Stalinist apparatus. In Rumania Stalinism was placed in power at the end of the Second World War entirely by the Red Army.

The state apparatus was reconstructed on wholly national basis, even preserving the monarchy up till 1947. The state and party personnel were built up very largely of middle-class elements, and were initially wholly subservient to Moscow.

When the Stalinists carried out the social transformation of Rumania into 'People's Democracy in 1947, they little imagined that the same pressures that had brought the dissolution of the Comintern would give rise to Ceaucescu's Rumanian Stalinism of the 1970's which is not only brazenly independent of Moscow, balancing between the Soviet Union, China and the imperialist powers, but it is even preparing to insert major territortal claims on the soviet Union into its foreign policy!

THREAT The splitting of world StalinIsm is, theretore, in no way a secondary or accidental development. As far as the ruling Stalinist castes in the workers' states are concerned, it forms a direct threat to the defence of these states against capitalist war and restoration.

Each national caste pursues above all its own interests, and they thereby jeopardise the very social base on which they rest.

And for so +ha mnna Communist Parties, especially in Western Europe, are concerned there is another important factor at work.

In Italy and France the CPs with membership well over a million, mass-circulation papers, a tight grip in the trade unions and other labour movement organisations, a thick layer of support among the intelligentsia and the middle classes - there the CPs have become the main avenue for careerism and self-seeking by bureaucratic elements, in Parlia ment, in the universities and the media, as well as within the labour movement itself.

Among the smaller CPs - such as the British - the fact that a period of service in the CP is a useful preliminary to a career as a 'left' is reflected in the same spiritual halimarks (traditionally those of the social democracy) -an instant willingness to call black white, instinctive evasion and manoeuvre, a rancid appeal to the mediocrity and cynicism of the middle classes.

DECADES

These features, sedimented and hardened . by three decades of "peaceful" post-war class collaboration, bind the cadre of the CPs to the national interests and attitudes of their 'own' capitalist states far more closely than was so before the war.

And this was certainly an important element behind the 'differences' at the CPSU Cde. HL is entirely right to point out that there are strong tendencies towards splits within the Stalinist parties in capitalist countries, as well as along national boundaries, and that some of these splits will reflect the sharpening conflict between the needs of the working class and the role of the party leadership in holding militants within the class back from struggle with the employers.

Trotskyist forces must always seek to politically develop elements whose experience is bringing them into conflict with Stalinist policy.

TENDENCIES

But the ground for the development of organised tendencies moving towards revolutionary policies remains narrow -for all their obedience to the ¿democracy: Of Stalinists principies bourgeois maintain a harsh bureaucratic dictatorship over political discussion and struggle within their own ranks.

The fact that the British CP presently permits some of its intellectuals licence to conduct open 'debates' on - for example - questions of economics, of the family, or of the place of art in society, does not mean that they will allow any such 'freedom' if the basic line of The British Road to Socialism is questioned.

And this (as. Cde.HL points out) is something that is clearly recognised - and privately appreciated - by the ruling class and the right wing in the labour movement.

It is not possible to teply in a Short space to all the points Cde.AL raises. • As we have indicated in the international perspectives of the WL* one of the most important tasks facing the world Trotskyist movement is the study of the post-war development of Stalinism; contributions in Socialist Press have an essential part to play in this.

'Fourth Prob lems an Tasks' (in Tro ism: Today, r

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