Surrey District

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by the Frenchite opposition before their decision to leave the poverty of society in objects of consumption, with the resulting struggle of each against all. When there is enough goods in a store, the purchasers can come whenever they want to. When there is little goods, the purchasers are compelled to stand in line. When the lines are very long, it is necessary to appoint a policeman to keep order. Such is the starting point of the power of the Soviet bureaucracy. It "knows" who is to get something and who has to wait" • (Trotsky Revolution Betrayed pl12)

Both Lenin and Trotsky always realised this danger. They knew it was easier to lead a revolution in Russia but harder to defend it because of the low level of the productive forces.

For this reason they insisted on the impossibility of constructing socialism in Russia alone, and the necessity for socialist revolution in an industrialised country like Germany When peasants in Russia began grain strikes and the destruction of food as measures to oppose the policy of War Communism' -whereby food had been requisitioned with little given in return while the Civil War was in progress - the Bolsheviks were forced to introduce the New Economic Policy.

This allowed small scale capitalism to re-emerge in the countryside in order to persuade the peasants to produce. It was of course a necessary step backwards, and it had the result of prompting the growth of a layer of rich peasants ('Kulaks') in the countryside • a force hostile to socialism.

It was in this period that conservative and nationalist tendencies began to consolidate into a bureaucratic caste within the workers state, which from 1922 emerged into the open and was fought by both Lenin and Trotsky.

At first based on the conflict in interest between the industrial development in the towns and the

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SOCIALIST PRESS. Wednesday 17 August 1977