Problems of the

Scan page 6

PART 12 OF OUR HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION' SERIES The world's first victorious poletarian revolution took bce in the most backward of se major capitalist countries. be devastation and destrucbn of the First World War ade the economic effects of is backwardness even more sense.

Production collapsed, rich terriwy was lost and supply routes ere Shattered. The revolution was zulted immediately by a comtate economic boycott by the capMist powers; and shortly afterards by capitalist military inter¡ation in alliance with Russian sunter-revolutionaries who for no years waged a civil war against pret power.

Get anhatara anit enemies of the revolution. For five years after the seizure of power the country was on the brink of famine, was producing only a small fraction of the industrial goods which had been produced before 1913 and was wracked by hyperinflation.

In addition there were mistakes resulting from inexperience and tensions created by the flood of just demands from workers and peasants which could notatonce be met.

All these were, as Lenin observed, ....difficulties which are due to the fact that the workers and poor peasants for the first time in centuries are themselves, with their own hands, organising the whole economic life of Russia'.

In hic rannet tn the Fifth A111918, he warned that:

"those who believe that socialism can be built at a time of peace and tranquility are profoundly mistaken: it will everywhere be built at a time of disruption, at a time of famine. That is how it must be"

Lenin did not need to specify that when he spoke of 'building socialism' he was not thinking of the possibility of the construction of socialism in a single country, let alone in backward Russia. Of such an idea, which Stalin was later to make the cornerstone of his systematic betrayal of the principles of Bolshevism, there was, as Trotsky said, 'not a peep' from any section of the Bolshevik leadership until 1924.

Every statement of Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders on this nuastinn was steened in internationideal but as a perceived condition for the survival of the revolution in Russia.

The Bolshevik revolution was seen as the first step in a revolution of the European, and eventually the world, proletariat. There was agreement on three points which Trotsky summarised: 'the workers' state cannot stand unless it overthrows imperialism in the west; in Russia the conditions are not yet ripe for socialism; the problem of socialist revolution is international The fact that the Russian economy was 'not ripe for socialism' didn't imply that the revolution had been premature. The political breakthrough in Russia was as essential to the development of the world socialist revolution as were the more developed economic resources of the industrialised West. On many occasions Lenin repeated the idea (very close to Trotsky's theory of combined and uneven development) of this mutual interdependance of the advanced and backward sectors of capitalism.

For us it is easy to begin a revolution', he said in May 1918, 'but harder to continue it. In the west it will be harder to begin a revolution, but it will be.easier to continue' Lenin and Trotsky saw socialism as Marx had, as developing in the womb of the old society. Capitalism built up the social needs and the forces of production which were necessary to a classless society. At the same time it developed the working class, the only class capable of leading society towards socialism. But the development of capitalism was contradictory and uneven and socialist revolution could not hope to escape the consequences of this. The birth pangs of the new society would be acute.

The contradictions of the arrival of the proletariat to power in the most economically backward country of Europe, where the peasantry were the overwhelming majority of the population, could only be resolved by the international revolution. Lenin believed that, even if that did not come soon enough to save the revolution in Russia, then the experience gained by the Soviet revolution would still benefit future proletarian revolutions.

INHERITED

Every revolution is bound to inherit its own particular set of problems, emerging out of the contradictions of the previous development of capitalism in that country. There could. therefore. be Mutinies and revolutionary struggles pursued by a revolutionary government. It would be an idealist petty bourgeois position to insist on the application of such a formula, regardless of the conditions which were in fact inherited from the old society, It was for making such a mistake, that, in May 1918, Lenin attacked Bukharin and the group known as the 'Left Communists' in his scathing pamphlet, Left-Wing Childishness and the Petty-Bourgeois Mentality.

INCENTIVES

Bukharin had opposed many of the economic policies of the leadership, in particular the use of piecerates and wage differences as an incentive to work, measures taken against workers' control, one man management in industry and the failure to establish collective agriculture.

Lenin turned their accusation against them. If they did not have a petty bourgeois idealist conception of the revolution, he argued, they would see that, in comparison with the existing state of Russia's economy, state capitalism would be an advance.

No one denied that the Soviet economy was an economy of transition between capitalism and socialism. But the 'Left Communists' said Lenin, failed utterly to understand the nature of that transition.

FRAGMENTS

"The present system contains elements, particles, fragments of both capitalism and socialism'.

More specifically there were various socio-economic structures co-existing in Russia: 1) patriarchal peasant farming; 2) small commodity production (the majority of peasants who sold grain); 3) private capitalism; 4) state capitalism and 5) socialism. There was, according to Lenin, no conflict between 4 and State capitalism involved largescale production organised Con national lines, based on the latest discoveries of modern science and, most important, founded on 'national accounting and control of production and distribution' • This was a necessary step on the way towards socialism and planned WORKERS STATE Moreover, state monopoly capitalism was no danger to the revolution, because the character of the state which owned and controlled it was firmly proletarian.

In Russia, therefore, there was a struggle between commodity production and private capitalism on one side and state capitalism and socialism on the other. 'Russia cannot advance from the economic situation now existing here without traversing the ground which is common to state capitalism and to socialism (national accounting and control).

• Lenin used his idea about the progressiveness of state capitalism to emphasise further the essentially international nature of socialism. While it was Russia wher e the prolmany 1918: The failure of this revolution left Soviet Russia isolated.

Scan page 7

DALIST PRESS, Wednesday 16th June 1976 Germany where state capitalism -that is, monopoly capital integrated by the state into a national economic plan during the war - was most developed.

'History' Lenin said (which nobody except Menshevik blockheads of the first order ever expected to bring about "complete" socialism smoothly gently, easily and simply) has taken such a peculiar course that it has given birth in 1918 to two unconnected halves of socialism existing side by side like two future chickens in the single shell of international imperialism. In 1918 Germany and Russia have become the most striking embodiment of the naterial realisation of the soonomic, the productive and the acio-economic conditions ocialism, on the one hand, and the political conditions, on the othe IDEALIST Some, like the Left Communsts» held idealistsic positions about economically possible in what was Russia.

But apart from this there was very little disagreement among the Bolshevik leaders that the strategic aim of the Russian revolution could not be the immediate introduction of a socialist society.

In general the leaders saw the question as being one of holding on to Bolshevik power until the proletariat of the west could cone to the aid of the Russian working ilass.

This was not seen as any kind of military-administrative holding operation. As Lenin said:

"We can give serious co-operation to the socialist revolution in the west, delayed for a number of easons, only to the extent that we rucceed in solving the organisationis Problems which stand before Stalin- advocate of 'socialism in one country"

That was the strategic aim of the Bolshevik leaders. It was . mainrained despite major disagreements over tactics and two very major tactical changes in policy.

These changes were the intro¡luction of "war communism" from mid-1918 onwards, and then the khange tom t the New Economic Get.The consequences of Russia's economic backwardness appeared in the first major economic decree of the new government - the Socialisation of the Land.

All land was to be nationalised and iedistributed, with the peasant given the right to the use of his own plot.

SPEED The measure was carried out with extraordinary speed and led to a very considerable equalisation of land holdings. The proportion of the rural population having more than 4 desyatins (about 11 acres) of land fell from 31% in 1917 to 8% in 1920. The number of landless workers was halved.

This reform, enormous as it was, remained, as the Bolsheviks knew, a bourgeois-democratic and not a socialist measure.

Socialism in the countryside would require the rationalisation of agricultural holdings into large, collective, scientifically managed units (the application of industrial methods to farming.).

For this the peasantry, was, as yet, not politically prepared.

The task as the Bolsheviks saw it was to complete the democratic reform (of which the Provisional Government had been incapable) and then to initiate the long political preparation of the poorer peasants for the voluntary grouping of land holdings into collective farms.

To begin with, therefore, state farms were established only where capitalist agriculture had already begun to operate.

In industry, there was initially no dramatic equivalent to the expropriation of the land. The policy was to leave industry under its former management but make those managers subject to workers' Control through the factory committees.

Nationalisation was punitive and spontaneous; that is, it was only to be carried out against capitalists who refused to cooperate and it was done by local groups of workers, and not centrally by the state.

The priority in industry was seen to be the organisation of national trusts for each industry. These were to be run by the state together with the capitalists and managers. It was of the highest importance not to lose any of the forms of national accounting and control which capitalism had developed - but these must be exercised increasingly on a national scale.

Events forced enormous and rapid changes in this initial policy. In the first place the degree of capitalist sabotage of soviet plans was even greater than had been feared.

There was clearly little chance in any industry of securing reliable collaboration from the major capitalist firms.

WORKERS CONTROL

Secondly, 'workers' control' was being widely interpreted by factory committees to mean complete disposition over the assets of factories by their own workers, without any rafaranno at all to tha annamar no o peasant farmers.

'Workers' control', which should have been a step towards socialist planning was thus given a syndicalist interpretation and became, therefore, a step towards economic anarchy.

In some places factory committees sold off all the assets of factories and distributed the proceeds to themselves.

A rapid campaign was undertaken by the national leadership against this form of "workers' control' ', which gradually gave way to a greater participation of the nationally organised trade unions in economic planning and in taking responsibility for the maintainance of production and labour discipline.

Tendencies towards the collapse of labour discipline and productivity also led to the introduction of piece-rates and other material incentives to the maintainance of Scarcities of goods, however, and rapid inflation soon made such incentives almost meaningless in practice.

The increasing purchase of Russian industry by German financial interests, along with the growth of capitalist opposition and sabotage, prompted increasing nationalisation measures.

The first major expropriations had been the banks at the very end of 1917. This was then followed in June 1918 by the decree authorising the nationalisation of all Russian industry apart from one-man businesses.

All these expropriations were carried out without a kopek of compensation paid to the capitalists.

The old managers and experts nowever, were still encouraged (sometimes with material privileges) to stay and continue their normal work.

The nationalisations were not in practice carried out all at once, but over the following year or so.

WAR COMMUNISM

The difficulties of the early months were soon to be dwarfed by the problems created by the civil war and capitalist military intervention. The greatest of these, and the problem which dominated the first five years of the revolution, was that of food supply. The treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed in March 1918 involved the temporary loss of Russia's largest grain-producing areas; and during the civil war other food surplus areas were also temporarily lost.

That was one problem: In addition, there was the question of how much surplus. was produced in the areas which remained under Soviet control. And thirdly, there was the problem of mobilising that surplus and distributing it where it was needed - in the towns and cities and increasingly in the army. Theoretically there were two possible solutions to the problem of mobilising the peasants' food suplus — getting them to exchange it for money or industrial goods or confiscating it.

In the early months of the less and less common; there were hardly any industrial products available to be exchanged for food; and exchange for money was pointless since the inflation made it almost worthless overnight. Attempts were, therefore, made to tax the peasantry on the basis of the size of their holdings but these were difficult to administer and easy to avoid.

It• was inevitable that increasingly the food surplus was mobilised by a combination of persuasion and force, though good deal of it still found its way to the town through the black market.

In the summer of 1918 the poor peasants' committees were set up in the countryside to help identify the surplus in the hands of the kulaks and better-off peasantry. At the same time the Péople's Commisariat of Supply and the Soviets organised armed detachments of workers to go to the countryside and, cooperation with the poor peasants' committees, confiscate. and distribute the food surplus. poor peasants were to have some, but most was destined for the towns and the army. It was made the duty of all peasants surrender any surplus they had in excess of their own requirements Zinovier (top) and Kamenev supported Stalin' revisions.

These new moves were the beginning of the period which came to be known as 'war communism'. In industry, war communism involved giving top priority to the supplies needed by the Red Army which had to be produced regardiess of cost. Financial transactions between industries virtually ended and so did all calculations of cost had been introduced the by Provisional Government, now became virtually the only way of distributing goods.

And, with the inflation accelerating • even further, it became pointless to pay wages in cash; hence the rationing was administered at work places and almost the whole wage came to be paid in kind. At the same time labour was increasingly directed to where it was required.

The policies of war communism were never conceived in advance by the Bolshevik leaders. They were a specific response to the acute crises produced by the civil Trotsky remarked, 'Having mounted the saddle the rider is obliged to guidethe horse - in peril of breaking his neck."

ACCIDENT

More by accident than design, they produced a situation which on surface resembled a fully socialist mode of distribution. Production was not for the market but was considered a duty; consumption was by right, through rationing, and was very egalitarian, mainly as a result of the extreme shortage of goods. Money had been virtually abolished, both in the distribution of consumer goods and in transactions between productive enterprises.

Some Bolsheviks came to see the measures as desirable in themselves and a major step towards a fully socialist economy. Lenin, Trotsky and most of the leaders, however, were quite clear that the policy was in most respects a response to immediate problems.

SCARCITY

Some of the forms of a socialist system existed but not on the basis of material abundance, which socialism would require, but on the basis of the most extreme possible material scarcity.

The objective basis of socialism actually receded during the period of war communism. The food shortage in the towns forced many workers to return to the countryside to find food from relatives. The number of workers employed in industry fell from 3,000,000 in 1917 to 1,240,000 in 1921. And real wages in the towns fell to one third of their pre-war level. The size of the urban proletariat shrunk at enormous speed. The population of Petrograd fell by 57% in 3 years;

that of Moscow by 44%. In 1920 industrial production fell to a mere 16% of its level in 1912. In the metallurgical industries the figure was 6%.

The second article on Economic Problems of the Revolution will deal with the New Economic Policy.

Scan page 8

• Join the Workers Revolutionary Party and the All Trades Unions "Although Communists may not be writing for bourgeois publications today, the Communist publications are for the most part run by second-rate bourgeois journalists. The explanation for this is that the apparatus of the press and party, materially independent of the party membership itself, has grown to monstrous proportions upon a narrow internal organisational base and now not only provides employment for Communist journalists, but also attracts bourgeois journalists, most often incompetents who are unable to make successful careers in the capitalist press. In particular, this explains the extremely low level of the Communist Party press, its lack of principles, the absence of any independent views or individual merit in it and its readiness at a moment to call black white and vice versa.? Leon Trotsky in 1929, writing on Communists and the Bourgeois Press.

corruption of the Communist International in the hands of the Stalinist faction. But it sheds an equally sharp light on the political degeneration of the press of the Trotskyist Workers Revolutionary In six weeks of publication the News Line (successor to the collapsed Workers Press, built as a daily paper in the 1960's by the then Socialist Labour League) has established a lamentable record.

And it has revealed that the "new" leadership of the WRP are loyal to not a molecule of Trotskyist principles or even of political consistency.

News Line is presented reflecting the political positions the WRP.

NOT ASSESSED Yet in the main the news reports are taken straight from the agency wire services or the capitalist press, with little or no attempt made to assess or develop the material so as to bring out its class significance, though occasionally a concluding paragraph is routinely tacked on.

Trade union news, and the most outrageously hypocritical statements of labour bureaucrats, are more often than not reported without comment, as though they were of good coin.

And where the WRP do commit themselves to expressing their opinion it starkly exposes the political degeneration which gathered pace over the last two years under former General Secretary G. Healy and has continued under his equally sectarian and opportunist successors.

The May 26th Day of Action, fro example, brought a prime example of straightfaced lying next. day in News Line's 'What We Say' column:

"The Workers Revolutionary Party supported the demonstration because we will always back any action by trade unionists to defend their rights."

In fact, the News Line carried not one word of support for the May 26th demonstrations until May 26th itself! On the actual day, with characterstic opportunism, carried a statement of support.

CONTINGENT OF But while a dozen of so WRP paper sellers busied themselves on the London demonstration, the WRP mobilised a contingent of =.. IWO people! One each end glumly atried a "Teachers Section" "All Trades Union Alliance" banner.

This one incident exposes one of the main characteristics of the News Line: it presents itself as the voice of a big movement with roots in the working class - while in practice speaking only for a small sectarian group with no serious practice Forter or programme in the movement.

Indeed its programme has now reverted to sectananism even more still and empty than the #RP -h-Trast mithin tha and others.

That challenge led the expulsion of over 200 WRP members thought to be critical of the Healy leadership, combined with a temporary adaptation to Thornett's critique in the form of printing some of the demands in Trotsky's Transitional Programme.

These demands have now all gone from the WRP's press, replaced by barren calls to "Bring Down the Labour Government" ", to "Read the News Line" and join the WRP.

Elsewhere in the paper the international news - especially relating to the Middle East and Palestinian struggles and Vietnam -is presented in utterly selective and opportunist fashion, reflecting in this case the turn of the WRP leadership / to Stalinist and nationalist policies.

News Line even includes reports from its own' correspondents which are open apologetics for anti-communism..

Take, for examples«from. our lengthy pieces billed as special correspondent" in Tripoli (the capital of Libya) on May 5th and 7th.

These were totally uncritical praise of the nationalist regime of Colonel Gaddafi, and his stage-managed campaign for mass support to counterbalance the pressures being applied by Egypt, Tunisia and US impe alism against the Libyan line of kipport for the Palestinian struggle.

The articles could virtually have been written verbatim by the Libyan propaganda services.

«The crowd was now pressed up to the platform, trying to get nearer to their youthful leader" "This is the awakened and unmistakeable voice of the Arab masses" ..."A short speech, not demagogic or falsely emphatic, punctuated_by chants, cheers and claps. A last short sentence and straight into the waiting Range Rover. The mercurial Colonel is off again."

In three full pages not a word of political criticism even assessment of the Gaddafi regime was uttered. Yet what is the political character of the Libyan Gaddafi came to power by toppling the pro-American clique round King Idris in 1969. His regime is Arab nationalist, certainly, but at the same time based on a narrow caste in the Army and petit-bourgeoisie, caine rat, and based ideologically thoroughly and explicitly on the religious shackles of Islam and the Koran.

In May-June 1973 Gaddafi launched a 'Cultural Revolution' aimed against 'decadence', , atheism and communism.

Marxist books were piled on the street and burned, and members of the (illegal) Communist Party were rounded up and jalled.

In Tantart this wear Caddafis monopoly of all political nghts to his hand-picked 'General National Congress'; trade unions were limited to "purely professional activities' and s banned from recruiting except with the approval of the regime. • A demonstration by left wing students in Benghazi against these dictatorial 'reforms' was crushed by troops - about a dozen students 'were reportedly killed.

Even while the WRP cuddles up to Gaddati, he is making calls for French military intervention in Lebanon - an open invitation to world imperialism to crush the Palestinians. Even the News Line report itself is unable entirely to disguise the reactionary nature of the regime. It says:

"Very few women attend these meetings yet [Gaddafi's public rallies], but no-one can doubt where their allegiance lies."

Lost in the crowd, the two-man WRI contingent on May 26th The real reason why women are seldom seen in public in Libya is that the Gaddafi regime has done nothing to loosen the feudalreligious oppression of women, egally tying them to their husband and home, depriving them even of the most elementary civil rights.

When the toiling women of Libya really 'awaken' it is absolutely certain that they will share none of the News Line's sudden and anonymous enthusiasm for Gaddafi.

MENTION Similarly there is not a mention in the reports that the Gaddafi regime is one of extreme anti-communism, that communist and socialist political activity is suppressed, and that the reason the demonstration the News Line SO enthusiastically reports is called the 'Spring Festival' is that the Gaddafi regime will not allow the political overtones of May Day.

If this might seem to be a freak omission by News Line, the accommodation to Palestinian nationalism is confirmed by the description of the PLO as *the spearhead of the Arab revolution as a whole" (June 14th) - with no word of criticism or call for a Trotskyist party to lead the struggles in the Middle East.

From Libya to London the News Line shows exactly the same lack of principle.

The early issues carried a daily column by Kenneth Tynan, the bourgeois journalist and theatre critic. He was offered space to spill out whatever reactionary idea might be in his head at the time.

Un only one issue - the nature of the police in the capitalot state - dit che panora editoria: nifer a Get lilly • No return to the 1930s!

• rurct ut uavuu guverument tha Inhaun saunanmant resign!

• For a General Election now!

• Build the alternative leadership reformism and Stalinism!

Alliance! on what he was saying.

The News Line editor, Alex Mitchell (formerly of the Sunday Times) even gave an interview to the mystical-vegetarian-radical magazine Time Out in which he defended the employment of Tynan:

"There's a waspish, idiosyncratic view of the world which we feel we should reflect. Tynan's a doyen of art critics, so let him have a say."

Since theatre criticism is Tynan's speciality, this suggest that even though his opinions on the police are dangerous rubbish, his view of the theatre is worth listening to.

In News Line of May 10th Tynan took space to celebrate the opening of the new National Theatre on the South Bank (seats over £4 a head, in case you're wondering about going to confirm his opinions).

After a few banal inches on the history of the new building and the need for a 'crusading' Minister of Arts, Tynan goes on to plead for pemotionally which will leave him plays exhilarated, entellectually stirred to the depths of my being. That sort of thing (sic!) ... I mean a spokesman, someone who allows the theatre to become a cockpit of a society's anxieties, problems and hopes.

There are, goes on Tynan, two such playwrights - Trevor Griffiths and David Hare - who "would be willing to dedicate themselves to any enterprise that was going to show the people to the people, interpret people's lives."

Now who are these playwrights?

David Hare is very expert at constructing the involved dialogues between backside and deckchair which the middle-class theatregoing absorbingublic find recognisably absorbing His plays consequently successful in the West End.

POLITICAL

Griffiths, on the other hand, is an explicitly political playwright, and his standpoint is, unmistakeably, that of a sophisticated, psuedo-'sympathetic' anti-communist.

He has written one play ('The Party') which is a slanderous political portrait of the Workers Revolutionary Party, and was first presented at the Old Vic with Lord Olivier playing the part of former WRP General Secretary Gerry Healy.

The predecessor of the News Line, Workers Press, took care to review his work with a view to bringing out. the political significance of his plays. This what it said - nuite armirateit. of Slogans from The News Line "When the commercial television chiefs spend tens of thousands of pounds on the lavish production of a play about Antonio Gramsci, founder of the Italian Communist Party, and leader of the Turin workers during the great strikes of 1920, they know what they do... they procure and transmit polished and obscene slander against Gramasci and Lenin's Third International.» "gainst Workers Press explained how Griffiths identified Leninism with Stalinism and added:

"Round this central lie various subsidiary falsehoods rotate. Griffiths distorts the entire political situation in Italy in 1920."

"The review concluded:

"The Italian working class (and Gramsci) have contributed more than their share of hard-earned experience of defeat and fascism, Mr. Griffiths has chosen to falsify WRP General Secretary Healy their history. occupation." (Workers Press, September 7th, 1974)

All this-the News Line throws overboard (along with giving space to Tynan in the very next issue for his reactionary comments on the actors union, Equity).

From • having independenti politically-serious reviewers books, plays, and films drawn troma the ranks of the party itsell, and training themselves as journalists, the WRP's press has degenerated to the hiring of 'idiosyncratic wasps' such as Tynan. (Wasps who, it should be added, clearly treat their contributions so lightly that they dictate them off the top of their heads, with the result that they are almost unreadable.)

Many other examples could be cited. But what is important is to grasp that the degeneration of the party press is part and parcel of the political degeneration of the party itself.

It is the process which Irotsky described in which bourgeois writers brought on to the Communist press:

"live double lives, and bring duplicity and outright moral corruption into the ranks of the proletarian party. From this there follows an imperative necessity to protect the party from contamination by the hired journalists of the bourgeoisie people who by virtue of their adaptability and agility easily take over responsible positions in the proletarian party, crowding out the workers." (Communists and the Bourgeois Press, 1929)

Jares Cannon once said that is a great deal easier to train Bolshevik as a journalist than it to tum a Journalist into Bolsherik. The News Line shor

----- pull-quotes -----

Trotsky's comment was directed nearly forty years ago at the

LIRADES UNIONS ALLIANCE: CHERS SECTION

Down with corporatism! •Defend your basic democratic